The hand waved. And the boy was its lone witness.
His brown overcoat did not have sight to bear witness along with its owner. However it fluttered, in a windless sparse of desert.
Sandstorms neither born of the descent nor ones coming in from outside rose. None danced on the edge of the shade cast by the eloquent castle of black crystal.
Within this environment, the wanderer is alone. Facing a reality he did not foresee even in his daydreams.
"Flying out of Rigac sure has brought many things." He gulped down a handful of air.
Turning his head left and right, he made sure he was the only one the suspicious hand-like structure waved to.
'I can't even tell from this far what that is!' His worry folded over itself becoming more.
His entire body told him to move. Run even. But where? He couldn't figure that out. Was he in danger? 'No, I don't think I am in danger. So what is it?' He questioned within.
His mind trying its hardest to find the correct term in itself for the feeling he had. The premonition of what's to come is greater than what he had anticipated. This felt true to him.
Taking a step further to the shrouded figure in front of the gates of the castle, he took hold of the being's stature.
"It…It looks bigger than me. So…how?" Eyes did not betray him for the being did stood tall to be seen from afar. Yet, the one thing he hadn't paid attention to was the stairs below the being.
As if the stairs were an invisible object in front of him, same as the patch of sky he had ran after for last several minutes. He did not keep a count.
Time's meaning was losing on him in the endless desert. Yet, two times he had felt the time to exist.
Once when he spotted the mirage, the other is the moment he was in.
Step, another step. Step, another step.
The boy's feet thumped against something hard. And he suddenly jumped a few steps back, his left dagger at the ready with him already spinning the rope in his right like a mace without its head.
In front of him was the corpse of the patch of sky he ran after. The very same one he had inflicted damage with his actions of fire, ice, water and earth.
A mangled mess of transformed flesh, bone and something more stronger and stealthier by the looks of it. He focused down on the corpse then up at the being who waved at him.
'Now, what should I do?' He considered his next actions.
He opened his mouth for the second time but not to speak, to taste instinctively the air.
That's when he knew how dry his mouth had become. His lips were scratched by dehydration. His face a bit lighter in tone than he had started out from his temporary base in the desert.
'How long have I travelled?' Puzzling statements rose within. He questioned if he had missed a day or two in counting while he focused his entire mind chasing after the mirage.
With a dry crack in his throat, he voiced out, "No."
"No, I have not missed a day. I would have at least hallucinated of night." He scratched his chin with the wrapped rope around his right hand. "I should first get settled," he looked again at the being at the gate waiting, "temporarily in the least."
He crashed down next to the corpse of the patch of sky. For him the creature was a first.
"Have I-cough cough-found a new terrabeast?" His dry mouth gave him the necessity warning. His right hand drove into his brown overcoat's one of the pockets. As the hand rummaged around with the bones and barbecued meat in one pocket to the next, his hand searching the pockets. His eyes and his left dagger pierced and looked thoroughly through the remains of the elusive terrabeast.
The wanderer's eyes at times skipped to gaze at the waiting being.
That being never moved and just waited.
'Does it think I'll come?' His mind showed on his face. "What if…" He looked in another direction away from the castle.
"No, no." His parched throat gave its last warning and the boy coughed out a little blood. The drops landed on his brown overcoat and the disfigured being in front of him.
'I…where have I put my metal pipe?!' He took control of his mind and focused his entire thought at it willing himself to search for the pipe.
And he found it.
Taking it out of his different pocket than the one he started with, he drew the action of water by drawing two circles next to each other and tapped above their mid point. Water poured out at medium speed. He brought it up to his lips and drank heavily.
Quenching his thirst and dehydration within a few minutes, he resumed back to glance at the being and then at the corpse in front. His dagger bloodied in its dark blood.
"Is this red? Or not?" He could not tell if it was. The shade of the castle did not help nor the being from afar gave any signs if it could hear him.
He plunged his bone dagger deep into one of its bent "misshapen" arm, as he thought. And the arm twitched.
Rather than just jumping back, the wanderer first tapped on the surface of the corpse that was on his left perpendicular to the ground. As the cold effect of the ice expanded into the corpse he stepped back.
Watching the corpse be affected by his action of ice, he believed he will learn more. Yet, he felt whatever he could learn from the corpse would be nothing compared to what is inside of the castle.
He did not glance at the being, but the wanderer's pupils were about to flicker to the being. Stopping himself, he considered of what could the being's motives be?