Chp.2: The Yuthia Desert

In general, the inhabitants of Ramat, except for very rare populations who still lived in a primitive state in a remote corner of the earth or rough and ignorant peasants who could not even read, were aware of the fact that their world was round. And on the basis of this, anyone who had a model of the known world or even just a map in hand had the opportunity to notice that the climate varied on a regular basis, passing from a single very hot band in the center of the sphere gradually more temperate and colder. The inhabitants of Ramat called this band the 'hot area' and believed that its high temperature was due to the fact that it was less affected by the oscillations of the sun and the moon and therefore was illuminated equally throughout the year. Of course, the seasons existed there too, but they were based more on changes in currents and winds rather than on a lowering or raising of the average temperature, and even when this did occur it was not a too decisive change as instead happened in the more temperate areas or even in cold regions. It was no coincidence, therefore, that most of the known deserts were concentrated in that area.

The Yuthia Desert was one of them, the largest existing desert on the continent of Ut-Arang. There were some larger ones on the other two continents, but none on Ut-Arang could beat the Yuthia Desert, either in size or in extreme conditions. It was an immense expanse of sand that took up the entire northern tip of the continent, ending only when it met the sea. Unlike the deserts present in the coldest areas, it was a truly unlivable place: without a single drop of water to trap the heat, at night the temperature dropped so much that it gave me the chills; by day, however, it was so high that even breathing the hot air hurt the throat, and touching the sand without protection was tantamount to getting burned.

Traveling to the Yuthia Desert was no different than directly defying death. It was a very long, exhausting journey, in which just slightly too much exposure to the sun could cause injuries, with the risk of having heat stroke during the day and dying of hypothermia at night. No plants to shelter under, no water to cool off in, no food of any kind for kilometers and kilometers. Only huge dunes of hot sand that burned the feet of all the unwary who walked on them and very strong winds that raised the tiny grains risking getting them into the eyes and nostrils, and which constantly threatened to turn into a relentless sandstorm that would submerged everything and everyone.

Haku had to admit that Zamor's words weren't wrong at all. The desert was truly a beast, a ruthless monster that was just waiting for its preys to make a mistake to eliminate and devour them, submerging their bodies under tens of meters of sand and making them disappear forever into oblivion.

Even a dragon would have a hard time surviving in such an environment. Of course, they were much more advantaged than the newcomers: in fact, their scales not only insulated them from heat and cold, but also reflected the light, preventing it from burning them; moreover, their legs were equipped with pads and hard skin which protected them from the hot sand. Finally, their nostrils could emit strong sneezes that freed them from the sand that the wind had dragged inside them, and their eyes were so sharp that even if they kept their eyelids open as little as possible to keep out the grains they could clearly see where they were going. The only big problem they faced were the resources of food and water, but Haku had been thinking about solving that problem for years and by now they had enough supplies for whole years. Thus, he and his family weren't too affected by the harsh conditions of the desert, even though normally they would have struggled due to hunger and thirst.

The same couldn't be said of the beastmen though. If one of them had traveled into the desert as they used to travel through the normal lands, it wouldn't have lasted more than a few hours even if they had plenty of food and water. Therefore Haku, since he now had to make sure that even his unexpected allies arrived at their destination, had studied ways to make the living conditions more tolerable for them and allow them to continue without dying of sunstroke.

First, he had devised a method to keep the sand from burning the beastmen's feet; the normal shoes they used were insufficient, so he made shoes out of several layers of leather. To prevent them from sinking into the sand, he had provided them with a large support surface, creating a sort of rigid leather heel which distributed the weight and thus prevented the heavy shoe from being dragged down into the sand until it touched the burning legs. Finally, to prevent these shoes from retaining too much heat, he had equipped them with some small ducts through which the air, carried by the desert winds, was trapped and thus cooled the feet. After making sure that the project worked, Haku had given it to Zamor and the latter had taken care to produce enough for everyone. Sure, walking in such shoes wasn't very comfortable and absolutely wasn't fast, but it was still better than setting your feet on fire. Haku had also built some for the animals that the beastmen were bringing with them and that would have served to form a sustainable food chain in the oasis; fortunately there weren't many, since for the most part the beastmen had preferred to transport fish in large cases, so building protections for them too hadn't taken too long.

The second problem Haku had to solve was protecting the beastmen from the heat. First, of course, he'd had to figure out what the source of that heat was and how it was conserved. It had been easy: given that the temperature was very high during the day and very cold at night, this could only mean that all the heat of the desert came exclusively from the sun, or rather, from its light. Therefore, if you eliminated the light, then you eliminated the heat altogether. Initially Haku had thought of using the sails of the now destroyed ships to create a gigantic marquee that they would have transported into the sky using the amphitrites, effectively blocking the sunlight and creating an immense shaded area, but unfortunately this idea had proved to be unfeasible: the desert wind was in fact so powerful that an amphitrite found it difficult to fly normally, let alone with a huge tent attached to its tail. So he had opted for the only other solution available: cover the beastmen themselves as much as possible. All beastmen were therefore fitted with very thick black clothing that completely absorbed the sunlight. Everyone was initially skeptical... but incredibly it worked: while a person without those clothes immediately felt the unbearable heat, one who wore them could stay in the sun for hours without being affected. In addition, the clothes also protected from burns and sunstrokes: Haku had in fact also designed a kind of turban thicker than the other clothes to put on the head to protect it from the infernal heat which otherwise would have almost certainly cooked the brain and killed the person. So that problem was solved too. In the case of the animals, they had been covered with cloths and pushed forward almost blindly, and the same had been done with the carts carrying the fish tanks. The weakest people, such as children and the elderly, were instead loaded onto wagons doubly covered with cloths, but provided with some very small openings which allowed the air to circulate and cool off.

Finally, there was the problem of sand getting into the nostrils and eyes. Clearly Haku couldn't close both to the beastmen: orienting themselves without eyes for the newcomers was somewhat problematic, since they mainly made use of their sight, and then how would they breathe with their nostrils plugged? The solution he'd come up with was as simple as it was ingenious: if he couldn't block the sand directly when it tried to get into his nose and eyes, then he could block it a few inches earlier. The turbans he had designed therefore had been equipped with a veil that completely covered the face, thus preventing the sand from getting close to it. This veil was black, thus protecting the skin from the sun's rays, except for a tiny area in front of the eyes which was a little more transparent (although also quite dark) and therefore allowed to see in which direction the person wearing it was going. And so, even that pesky problem had been solved, and now the beastmen could travel the desert in complete safety… assuming they never forget to put on the full set of clothes he had designed for them. In the course of just three days since they'd started wandering the desert, Haku and his siblings had already had to stop and go back ten times to retrieve an imbecile who, thinking that those clothes only made him hotter, had taken them off and procured a sunstroke and fainting without anyone noticing. Luckily there hadn't been any dead yet, but Haku would gladly have punched those idiots who seemed to enjoy making his life more complicated.

"I envy you" Zamor said coming next to him. "Seriously, how do you and your siblings go around completely naked and not get burned in this sun?"

Haku made an amused noise. "Ours are the bodies of dragons. They are made to withstand the most extreme conditions. For us, walking here is no different from walking in a forest or a prairie"

"Tsk! I wish I had your scales. Mine don't refresh me one bit" Zamor grumbled. In fact, the scales of the green lizardmen were made to facilitate swimming in the muddy waters of the marshes, certainly not to protect them from the scorching heat of the desert. "Have you found a good place to camp? We have just about an hour of daylight left"

Haku pointed to a spot in the middle of the dunes, which Zamor didn't seem very different from the others. "In that direction there is a rocky hollow, where it will be easy to camp. Continuing at this pace, we will arrive in forty minutes maximum"

"Good. I don't want to continue marching after this place gets dark and cold" Zamor said. Given the harsh conditions of the desert, Haku and Zamor had agreed to continue only during the day; as absurd as it sounded, it was much safer. At night the possibility of getting lost would have been much higher and also that of falling into holes or other types of obstacles. Therefore, since all of them still needed to sleep, they had decided to continue only when there was light, while at night they slept using every possible means to cover themselves and avoid freezing due to the too cold. Even if this was an annoying delay for Haku, given that the dragons needed less hours of sleep than the newcomers and therefore could have continued a little even at night using their superior senses to avoid running into obstacles, he knew he could not force the beastmen into a forced march, so he'd accepted that little compromise. Besides, it wasn't a bad idea to stop periodically and recover one's energies; that way, if they ever found problems, they'd be ready to deal with them.

While he and Zamor were talking, Haku suddenly sensed something; his head turned around instantly and his body stiffened, but when his eyes rested on the spot in the middle of the dunes where he had noticed the movement coming from he saw nothing. In fact, there seemed to be actually nothing. "What happens?" Zamor asked him.

Haku snorted. "Nothing. I must have imagined it" he answered, starting to walk again, but despite this he didn't stop looking around suspiciously. For a brief instant, in fact, it had seemed to him that the sand in the distance was moving.