As Jacob woke up, Maria was still carrying him forward in her arms. The temperature around them seemed to be growing hotter as they travelled. He slowly moved himself and tried to stand up. Maria looked down at him with her jade eyes.

"You’re awake. How are you feeling?"

"A lot better. Thank you for carrying me all this way. How long was I out?"

Maria looked away embarrassingly.

"About two days."

Jacob’s heart dropped to his stomach.

"TWO DAYS?! Why didn’t you wake me?"

Slimo turned around to look at him. He had a bruised face and a black eye.

"Believe me, I tried. She wouldn’t let anyone even touch you."

Maria refused to meet Jacob’s gaze and started blushing slightly.

"Did you hurt Slimo? He was only trying to help!"

Maria coughed into her hand.

"Actually, it was my mom who did that when he tried to wake you up."

Lida started to laugh.

"I pack quite a punch, don’t I? Sorry about that again, Slimo."

"It’s okay. You can punch me as many times as you’d like!" 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"Where are we anyway? I feel much hotter and the ground feels funny."

"We are slowly transitioning into the desert. I would recommend putting cloth in your ears real soon. We can try and communicate with our hands and body language until we pass through it."

Everyone started tearing small pieces of their clothes and stuffing them in their ears. The world around them felt much more muffled. Slimo gestured for everyone to follow him.

The desert was unlike Jacob could have ever expected. If there was one word that came to his mind to describe the place, it was lifeless. There was no greenery, no water, and no animals to be seen for miles. Every now and then the group would come across bones that had been stripped of all its meat by someone... or something.

Suddenly, Slimo held up a hand, signaling them to stop where they were. Jacob looked around to see what the issue was, but there was seemingly nothing but yellow dunes for miles. Slimo patted Lidia on the back and gestured towards one of the mounds. He made sure to point it out to Jacob, Maria, and Doc as well. Even after being shown what the possible threat was, all Jacob could see was a towering mound of sand.

However, Slimo approached it with caution. He was the first to make a move. Jumping towards the mound, he slammed his fist right into it, causing a massive shockwave to ripple across the surrounding area. When the sand and dust cleared itself, the massive shell of a beast was revealed to be hiding underneath. Its shell seemed to have cracked from Slimo’s initial assault, but it still seemed mostly uninjured.

The creature itself was a dark yellow color. It walked on all fours and had large black eyes complimented with a massive maw that could tear any unsuspecting prey to shreds with ease. On each of its hands were weirdly shaped claws, presumably for digging itself into the sand dunes.

It launched itself at Slimo, but before it’s jaws could close around him, Maria sent a powerful kick right into the side of its face. Even with muffled ears, the sound still rang through Jacob’s head. The creature’s head was sent upward from the impact, allowing for Lidia to follow up. The underbelly of the beast seemed to be much softer than every other part of it.

Lidia sent a multitude of strikes into its underside, causing the creature to groan in pain. With another massive kick upward, the creature was sent flying into the air. When it landed back on the ground, it was turned upside down, allowing its weak spots to show to the sky. This was their only chance to kill it. Slimo jumped high in the air and pointed a kick right in the middle of its belly. The creature let out one more deafening shriek.

Suddenly, right as Slimo fell into its body, a dark shadow loomed over the creature, as well as the area surrounding them. Slimo looked up. Dread slowly drowned his face.

A massive bird creature swooped down and sliced apart the beast with ease. Its guts and blood hydrated the sand surrounding them before slowly going still.

The bird swooped in one more time and wrapped its gargantuan talons across its body before trying to fly off with its prey. However, the bird failed to study which kinds of creatures were the ones attacking the beast in the first place, for they had a monster of their own hiding among them.

Its wings collapsed and snapped on themselves, causing the bird to fall thousands of feet in the sky. Once it crashed into the ground, it wringed its body and cried out. In the next moments, its neck seemed to snap itself before finally going completely still. Doc looked down on the bird with pity and yelled to the others.

"We got lucky. These seemed to be infant beasts. Let’s take what we can from them."

Jacob stared at Doc with a slight fear appearing in his gut. Even though everyone needed to scream to hear each other, it was better than not communicating at all.

’Since when can Doc mangle anything he wanted? Maybe Maria was right about the essence of his power.’

Right as they walked toward the beasts, more than a dozen shadows surrounded them, forming a small circle. There was an entire flock of massive birds above them, all circling them ready to attack. Maria stepped in front of Jacob, held up her fists, and yelled back at him.

"There’s no trees around here for you to use your power. Just stay close to me, we can try and fight them off!"

Slimo studied one bird in particular. It seemed to be much larger than the other ones. Its claws seemed longer and sharper, the beak was slightly scarred, and the feathers almost seemed to glow in the sunlight.

"There’s an Elder among them. How many birds do you all count?"

Lidia put her back against Slimo’s.

"I’m counting twenty, but I feel like I’m missing one."

"I see twenty-one. The Elder appears to be trying to hide itself above the others. Doc, how many can you take out with your power before running out of fuel?"

Small beads of sweat appeared over the old man’s face.

"I can try and manage fifteen. If there’s an Elder, you two try and focus your efforts on them. Jacob, Maria and I will manage somehow."

"Good."

Slimo walked over to the dead bird’s nail and ripped one out of its hand. He then used another one of its claws to quickly chisel it down to a long, sharp object. He looked over at Lidia and smiled.

"Do you need a power up before the fight?"

Lida smiled back and ran towards him, throwing her body.

"A power up wouldn’t hurt."

Slimo sent a fist flying into Lidia’s stomach as she soared towards him. Her torso seemed to glow yellow while absorbing the massive amount of energy.

Screeches echoed above them while the shadows seemed to grow larger, indicating that the creatures had finally began their assault.