Search For Water

The days were getting hotter while the nights were getting colder. The beautiful golden fields were replaced by barren yellow lands. They had finally made it to the desert. They were only two to three days from Otane now. Kies looked up at the blazing hot sun scorching them. Its glare made it difficult for him to see anything in the sky. If there was a wyvern rider, he wouldn't know about it until they got really close. Unlike sensing things on the ground, sensing targets in the air is much harder due to all the natural wind currents interfering with his.

"So, are you feeling the heat yet?" Iris asked Kies from atop her horse. She and the others were used to the scorching hot temperatures so they had no problem in this heat. But Kies on the other hand was experiencing the desert heat for the first time. This was his first time in Otane and he had no idea that it would be this hot. And to make things worse, he was wearing a cloak and other long clothing that made it much hotter for him.

But despite what the other three thought, Kies didn't feel anything at all. He couldn't feel the heat and therefore had no problems fairing in this weather. "I'm fine," he tells Iris.

"What!? You're wearing all that and yet you're not sweating or suffering from heatstroke. Does that cloak have heat resistance too or something!?"

"No." Other than being really resistant to magic attacks, the other property of the cloak is being indestructible to physical attacks. But that didn't mean that it nullified physical attacks completely. Blades couldn't cut through but he still receives bruises from them.

"Then how!?" Iris didn't understand how Kies is withstanding the heat of the desert when it's his first time here and is also wearing long-sleeved clothes.

At this point, Iris' questions were getting so repetitive that Kies didn't even want to answer them anymore. She would find out something about him that completely blew away her mind and ask him about it. And like always, he would refuse to answer the question which will tempt her to find out by going through his things. Kies really didn't want to deal with any of this anymore. But, he made a promise to this annoying princess and he was going to keep it to the end.

Even though she acted extremely immature most of the time, Kies knew that she would act properly when the situation called for it.

The four traveled through the desert until it became noon and the sun was glaring down at them so much that it felt like it was drilling a hole through Kies cloak. But although he couldn't feel pain, he could feel other things such as touch and temperature. The heat did make him a little uncomfortable but it didn't do anything else other than that.

They found shelter under a large boulder that shielded them from the sun and took a break there. The horses were tired and thirsty. They needed water, and they weren't the only ones. The rest of them, with the exception of Kies, also needed water as well.

"We need to find some water dews," Sirks tells everyone.

"Water dew? What's that?" Kies asked him. Judging by the name, it sounded like a plant that contained water. That was pretty obvious, but he had no idea what one looked like.

"It's a plant that looks like a giant mushroom. It has a cap that is very hard to block out the sun and it keeps the body safe from it."

"A giant mushroom?" Kies remembered spotting several strange-looking plants that matched the description of what Sirks is talking about.

"I'd say that three is enough for all of us," he estimates. Counting them four and the three horses, two of those plants should provide them with enough water for the afternoon.

"We only need two?" Kies was surprised how much water was in one of those things if they only needed two to quench all of their thirsts.

"Yeah. They're all over the desert and they're easy to find." To prove his point, Sirks pointed in front of them, and just outside the shade of the rock a couple of meters was three water dews lined side by side. "Only problem though is that they have armor on the outside and we need to break it to get the water?"

"Armor?" Kies squinted to try to see what Sirks was talking about. The plant looked smooth and didn't have any thorns or spikes on them. What kind of armor was he talking about?

"Yeah, we need a special axe or saw to cut off the armor and get to the soft insides. Unfortunately for us, we don't have one. All we have is this." Sirks drew his sword and planted it into the sand. "This won't work. The blade will chip before one of those things do."

From the sounds of it, it seemed that the water dews had a really tough exterior if even a steel sword couldn't get through it. But it made sense. The tougher the hide, the better the protection against the sun and the heat of the desert. This way, the water inside wouldn't boil or dry out.

"Then how do we get the water?" Kies asked Sirks, not seeing any way in which they could extract the water from the plant if they couldn't break the armor.

But it wasn't him to answer Kies's question for him, but it was instead Iris. Her eyes lit up and all three of them took a step back away from her before she even said a word. Even the horses suddenly went silent and stared at her, awaiting her "genius" plan to come out of her mouth.

"Your sword!" Iris shouted the answer.

"My sword?"

"Ehh... I wouldn't recommend it. I don't know what material that sword is made out of, but it has to be stronger than steel if you want to try to break it," Sirks told them.

"But it is!" Iris exclaimed.

"It is?"

"Yeah, do you remember how he spliced through all those soldiers like they were nothing?" Iris was talking about the soldiers that Kies fought when he rescued them. They all had steel armor on and Kies' sword cut right through their bodies, ignoring the armor and everything.

"Oh, you're right!"

It was worth a try. Kies extended his hand and the giant black greatsword appeared in it. There was a collective, "Ooo!" from Sirks and Iris when they saw the sword again. Wompa didn't say anything but her eyes did widen in response to the other two's reactions.

"Can I?" Before Kies could take a step towards the plants, Iris asked Kies if she could do it instead. He saw that she wanted to play with the sword really badly and decided to just let her do it instead.

Kies handed the sword to her and Iris ran over to the plant and hacked it right down the middle, splitting the entire thing in two.

"You idiot!" Sirks let out a painful shriek.

Water exploded from the plant and spilled all over the sandy floor. It was all absorbed in less than a couple of seconds.

"What the h*ll did you do that for!? We NEED the water!"

"Oopsie!" Iris stuck her tongue out. "I don't know how to harvest one of these things. It's my first time," she admitted. Since she spent most of her one in the castle and never went outside, she had no idea how to open one of these plants. "But on the plus side, this sword can cut through it really easily!" she said in a positive voice.

"Why the h*ll didn't you tell us beforehand then!?" Sirks didn't get it at all. And neither did Kies or Wompa. The two of them just stood behind Sirks dumbfounded by what they just saw. How could there be someone so stupid in this world? Even though Kies didn't know how to harvest the plant either, at the very least, he knew that he wasn't supposed to do 'that.'

"Arghh! Give that to me!" Sirks stomped angrily over to Iris and demanded that she handed over the sword and let him do it instead but Iris refused.

"No, I want to do it!"

"No, you'll butcher the other two as well!"

"Then just tell me what I need to do!"

"Just give it to me and I will show you how it's done!"

"I don't wanna!"

The two argued back and forth for a bit before Sirks tried taking the sword by force but Iris just ran around the giant weightless sword on top of her head. In the end, the heat got to Sirks and he couldn't keep up with her anymore.

*Huff Huff* "Look here... You see this hard disk-looking thing?" Sirks knocked on the cap-like part of the plant.

"Yes?"

"You cut UNDER it! This way, the water doesn't spill out!" Sirks explained to Iris how she was supposed to do it.

"Oh!" After hearing what she needed to, Iris swung the sword horizontally at the base of the lid of the plant and sliced it off. It flew up into the air before it spun back down and buried itself into the sand.

"There we go," Sirks sighed. He walked over to the now opened plant and looked down. "A bit too high, but this works."

"Huh? But you said to cut directly under the disk part." Iris did exactly as she was told so she didn't understand why he was still unsatisfied with the result.

"I said it works," Sirks sighed again. "You normally cut a few centimeters under the lid but knowing you, you'd probably interpret it as a few feet."

"Hey, that's rude! I know my measurements, okay?"

"Really? I kind of doubt that," Sirks tells her.

"Then I'll prove it to you! A couple of centimeters is around here, no?" Iris pointed the sword almost an entire foot from the top of the plant.

"..."

Sirks and Kies stared at Kies, unsure of whether or not she was messing with them or if she seriously thought that that was a couple of centimeters.

"What? I'm right, aren't I? Why are you all looking at me like that?"

Even Wompa, her own sister was embarrassed for her and hid her own face to conceal her embarrassment of what her older sister just did.

"You... By any chance, did you learn anything from your tutors at all?" Sirks asked her genuinely out of curiosity.

"My tutors? I hated them all so I fired them. I learned this by myself from a book!" Iris proudly boasted.

"Ah, that's why..."

---

Grammar errors, story errors, other errors, and advice, email flightless05@gmail.com

Thanks!