Leaving the dunes

It didn't take long for the sledge to pass through more rocky terrain; the floor was still covered in sand, yet Midas was able to lay eyes on larger rocks sticking out of the mass of sand. With various shapes and sizes, the boulders and rubble started to appear more frequently as they headed further north. Chewing on the same grainy flatbread Alma had given him to eat inside the fort, Midas glanced out into the distance; a wall of mountains started to stretch high in front of him on his horizon, a far destination that acted as a border to the northern lands.

Lightly shaken by the bigger pebbles that hid in the sand under the sledge, Midas was reminded of his uncertainty, as his teeth began to process the dry bread into a grainy pulp. Rough images of the university sprung into his head; he had a hard time figuring out what exactly a place filled with children eager to learn would look like. It didn't take long for him to drop his idea; he was fine with simply learning the language of the water kingdom and having a bed to sleep in. Even though it would be nice to still have the others around, that at least may ease the stress of arriving in such a foreign land.

The stones sticking out of the endless sand were just as bleak as the many grains that made up the desert they passed; their color resembled a faint gray, most likely possessing a much richer color before these boulders ended up here, constantly exposed to the sun's light, slowly being ground up into tinier fractions by the passing sands kicked up by the winds emerging from the distant peaks and the now much more distant sea. Until they ultimately vanish to become part of the sand that covers the region, joining the already existing grains that started their cycle of decay.

Haya was able to count roughly ten to twelve peaks; the belt of mountains became much more crowded at Midas' right side towards the east, and most of the peaks stretched out to the skies from there. The boy faintly remembers Grafs words the first time they actually talked. The route to actually get to Cle'phoria would force him to somehow traverse this exact conglomeration of mountains; the truth of having to find his way in between them to get there as fast as possible lingered in the back of his head, completely unable to imagine what lay there or how to even reach such a place.

The dawning truth of this being his fate in the near future made him fall back onto the hay numbly, a slow motion accompanied by a sigh, just quiet enough for the others to not notice. Midas took a while to stare at the bright light blue, which probably stretched out even further distances than the sand of the dunes, before closing his eyes to focus on gathering and transporting mana through himself. The boy didn't notice much of a difference from the first time he tried to strengthen his mana capabilities; the feeling of his limbs warmth seemingly being sucked out of him at an instant was the only real thing he was able to connect to the feeling of mana flowing through him.

Unable to tell if it was real or just his imitation, fed by the concept of warmth he built up in his head, he felt a dim warmth travel through his limbs, a warmth that easily turned into a cramping feel always emerging in his head if he tried to force himself to pump out more mana than possible. It would take a while until the food he ate would become real mana, even though he had no real grasp of how much really did flow through him; besides the warmth, controlling his breathing and focusing his mind to only think about mana created a faint sensation of calmness that ran through him.

Midas got woken up by more shaking; heftier tumbling forced him to awake from the state between awake and asleep, dragging him away from the slim space bordering the two, as he got up to look around him. Meeting Inaya's hidden glance for a short while, he looked forward; the split-up rock came closer by the moment, and large crevices, which fit the sledge with ease, marked the foot of the mountains that stretched out in the distance. Rubble, consisting of rock in multiple sizes and colors, motionlessly flowed through the many cracks they began to enter.

Shook by the pebbles scattered around the now sloped floor, which the sledge drove onto, they emerged in between dark brown rocks, split up by drought and forces unknown to the boy. Whatever lay in between these was hulled in shadow, as the sun's rays were unable to reach into the large crack spanning through the stone front. The ultimate sign the group now had reached the border between the northern desert and the water kingdom's land, a place that seemed much nearer on the map Alma had showed him.

"Are you sure this is a route that is passable by using a sledge...?" Inaya began to ask unsure, holding onto the wooden board, which prevented anything from falling out. Her head switched to look upwards to the band of blue that remained visible between the halves of rock they drove through, then back at the driver's head again, which let her wait before stating an answer.

"Pah...! Where do you think this sledge was built...? I always pass through this crack when I enter the desert or come back home; this pathway has served me for years now—even my father used it..." Swirling his finger around in the dusty and still air that sat in between the tight space, he replied with a proud tone, his speech halling back at him from the walls of rock, growing higher as the slope began to become slightly steeper.

Bleached by darkness, Midas was able to roughly make out multiple bands of brown stretching through both rock fronts, their shades sometimes brighter or darker than the layer of stone next to it. Reminding him of the white fat that stretched through the hung-up meat sold at the many stands in Giv'Narva. Midas imagined northern men walking through the same ravine to attack southern provinces, marching through the tight crack, hiding from the sun, which had burnt the skin on his back yet again.

As Midas grew to take a liking to the cooler stale air, the sun began to appear again, shining through his shut lids with a strong red color. Surprised, Midas began to open his eyes again. Out in front of them, gigantic slabs of rock stretched out, broken up into pieces, some seemingly shifted up by the mountains, as if this region used to be flat. Like some sort of plant, the mountain range grew out from the dry grounds, fracturing the nearby land into the flat, yet pointy terrain the group now travelled through.

Midas silently awed at the sight, while Haya sounded his excitement at the terrain by pointing at the fractions of land, which were shifted upwards and broken up, Midas began to notice grass blades emerging from the dry rock; their color resembled more a light brown than a faint green, rarely accompanied by the barren husks of what most likely were bushes that sprouted from the ground. The wood began to scrape more loudly against the blank stone as the ground grew to become more sloped, submerging the group in the dark of yet another ravine again.

"The sun is going to settle soon... We'll have to camp here somewhere..." Unpleased, Graf announced to the group, as the slope suddenly vanished, the wood squeaked at the sudden drop, and the bit of land the ride stopped on was covered in the same dry grass, spanning out to the edges of the flat land they stopped onto. "This looks nice... plus, not many know of this route—which grants us some protection..." The driver remarked one last time, before hopping off the ride, stepping through the bundles of grass and dried-up bush-husks, to stand broadly at the edge of the cliff.

Midas followed him; the bleached wood seemed like it would fall to dust at any moment, barren and void of any leaf, the grass starkly resembling the hay that filled the ride, seemingly mere sun cycles away to develop the same dirty golden color. The boy took a liking to the orangy-brown cliffs and the unexplored ravines that stretched out in between them. Bits of land that were scattered and split up by even further stretching masses of stone. Their crowns reached to the ever-expanding blue in the distance, now much more detailed and closer than before. 

"Graf... uh, what do people from the water kingdom say to each other when greeting...?" Uncertain if he should ask, he turned to the bald driver, his brows sterned up slightly, eager to know more about the foreign place he now needed to enter. Cle'phoria was his ultimate goal; if Almas's brother wouldn't listen to him, he most likely would struggle to find out more about the looming storm to the east. Ajan was the only one Midas knew who saw and passed by the storm; given that he is an adventurer, he most likely even knows what sat in the middle of it. Making him even more important when it came to fulfilling the royalties task in saving Alma's homeland, at least from the storm.

"Its Buendi'e—at least in the western half of the country... The water kingdom has a lot of different dialects..." Graf answered, already used to Midas's sudden questions, dragging him out of the boy's overthinking, his eyes back to the driver's face again.