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ILIAS VAN PAYNE

Seventeen days until the rings dissolve.

It took a good chunk of the night for Clint to tell his past. He'd write one part of his story and we'd take turns reading it aloud while he wrote the next.

"You've crossed this desert multiple times then?" Joji questioned.

Clint nodded.

"Can you take us to Roa?" Jaime jumped in. "From where we are, I mean."

Clint nodded and wrote in the sand. "Not like this." The gunslinger pointed to our exhausted companions then at the cart nearing the end of its supplies. "Resupply."

The desert was a barren landscape that hardly supported life. But there was one place in my mind. "Is your village nearby?"

Clint held two fingers and pointed east.

Joji paused for a moment to give it some thought. "Trebor, how many days can our supplies last us?"

"We'll run out long before we can get to Roa. Even if we ration." Trebor shook his head. "We're already burnt out and the desert won't stop trying to kill us."

"We don't have a choice, do we?"

"We can save a few days by gambling our lives and trying to make it to Roa with what we have or we can play it safe and go to Clint's village. The choice is obvious."

Clint pointed at Jaime's throat and gave a thumbs up. He was trying to say, "Even if we stop at my village, we can still get to Roa in time."

We made our way east, hoping that the quick trek to the village oasis would go over smoothly. Ever since we began this journey, everyone's moods soured as the days passed by.

Recently, that taste transformed into hate directed at Uncle Salty. Not only did he kill more than a quarter of us, he had the easy way out laying in the supply cart while everyone was forced to dance on the hot sands.

Our companions were open about their thoughts. "Why does he get to live the easy life?" "Why are we sharing our supplies with him?" "You guys should've killed him."

Uncle Salty taunted them with his hek hek hek and slept despite the uneven terrain.

Jaime still felt a bit bitter over Clint. After all, he was the catalyst as to why her throat was being held hostage by a poisonous ring. But she slowly warmed up to him after last night's storytime.

She stuck by his side, asking complex questions that the mute boy had difficulty answering.

"If you know how to get across, why didn't you say it?"

Clint, with an unfazed look, pointed to his mouth.

"Right. Why didn't you offer to be the guide?"

He pressed his hands together as if he were in cuffs.

Clint was correct. As far as he was concerned, he was our prisoner so helping us across would put him in a worse situation. If I were him, I would've played stupid and waited for us to either make a mistake or get attacked.

When Jaime got bored of questioning Clint, she moved on to conversing with Riko who didn't seem as bothered. The runaway girl even looked like she was having fun.

She did mention that she ran away from home because she felt alone. Maybe someone around her age who acts so carefree was something she needed.

Once Clint was free from Jaime, he came to me with a list of questions concerning Odetta. It was difficult to answer most of these. She was only around for three days and she had slipped past my mind until recently. But I did my best to give him up-to-date news on his big sister.

Clint listened with happy eyes, glad to finally know Odetta's intentions and that she was safe.

We were right by a plateau when Joji pointed to a rock formation in the distance. Between us, an isolated dream-like mist hovered on the still flat sands.

"We'll camp there tonight." He faced Clint. "Is your village close?"

He nodded and wrote on the ground. "½ day."

"What's with the mist?" Trebor added.

Clint shrugged.

"I'd say we go around it. We don't know what it is or what's in it."

Joji shook his head. "It'll take too long. The night will sneak up on us."

"We can stay here then. There's no point senselessly rushing into that."

"We'll waste about a day's worth of travel if we stay here. Some of us are on borrowed time. Whatever is in it, we can hold our own."

With the sun ticking away our safe passage on the sands, our exhausted company pressed through the contradicting mist. It was so thick that you couldn't see someone a couple of feet ahead of you. We had to move at a steady pace just so we didn't bump or were bumped into by somebody else.

Soft voices hung in the haze. I didn't know if I was hearing things so I kept quiet so as not to worsen the already eerie atmosphere.

I tried to blow the fog aside or at least make it so that the nearby surroundings were visible. But every time I did so, the mists would rapidly roll back into place.

One thing was for sure—"Hey, Joji. You're a State Jynxist as well. Do you sense it?"

The old man gave a cautious nod. "This mist is made of mana and it's throwing off my ability to sense others. You've got twenty-two gates yet I can't sense a single one. All of you, something isn't right! Keep your guard up!"

We trekked further with everyone on high alert. I held my staff before me, ready to call out Zenyatta and cast any spells if need be. Jaime was in the front line, a hand resting on Clash's handle. Clint fell behind, peering around with both pistols drawn. Joji and Riko stuck close, each ready to use their abilities. Trebor took out Whip It, ready to crack. The others stuck in groups.

We should've gone out of the mist by now. How long have we been walking?

The more steps we took, the louder the soft voices grew. When someone pointed them out, I realized how foolish I was in keeping this to myself. Of course it was real.

The whispers now spoke clear words and though it was hard to understand the quilt of voices, you could make out some dialogue if you focused on one pattern.

Jaime drew Clash, the unsheathing of steel paused everyone's movements. "Ilias, do you hear that?"

"The voices?" I asked, not stepping a foot forward.

She stayed silent for a bit. "Yeah. I hear the colonel."

Camaro? Why the hell would he be here?

I could get behind Mother and Doria being here, but Camaro wasn't in the village when that light hit.

Unless he and his unit arrived back while we were out...

I focused on the whispers, hearing a mural of unique voices each hushing a string of inaudible words. No. These weren't normal voices. They didn't sound right.

They sounded... layered.

Just as I warned everyone to stick close together, people began wandering away calling out names.

Among them was Joji, the words he spoke carried a sense of longing. "Melissa? Is that you? Oh, how I missed you."

Trebor had also disappeared, his voice echoing. "I... Is that really you? Come on, that treasure is so close..."

Only a handful of us remained where we were, shooting looks of fear as the faux voices closed in. Listening to the voices must've been playing with people's minds.

Before Riko could wander off, I grabbed onto her shoulder. "Riko, are you still with us?"

The runaway girl nodded. "I'm still sane."

"Good. If it's affecting everyone, it might affect us too. Whatever happens, we can't let each other wander off. We need to snap each other back to reality."

Clint pressed his back against ours.

I turned so my mouth faced him. "Clint, no matter what, the whispers can't affect you. If all of us fall, it's all up to you."

He took a moment to take in my words before focusing.

"Use that expensive staff of yours to do something," Riko said.

"I'll wear down my gates by a lot if I were to blow all of this mist away. And it'll be useless because they'll roll back in."

"Can't you do something about the voices?"

"I can. If the whispers really are hypnotizing people, then I can cast a spell, Noise Pollution. It'll emit a loud noise that should drown out the voices."

"Do it."

"And then what? Each labyrinth has tricks they use but they have to fit a theme. A haze fits a desert, sure, but not a thick mist like this. Someone or something is controlling the mist. If we cast the spell now with nothing to follow it up with, then the enemy will anticipate its next use."

"So you think we're being attacked? By another highwayman?"

"Someone is controlling the mist and someone is using those voices. There's at least two trying to take us down."

The cart with all the supplies began to shift and rattle. Uncle Salty, who was tied up and blindfolded, had finally woken up, thrashing the inside in a panic.

He turned his head from side to side. "No, no, no, no, no. Please don't tell me y'all went through a mist. Are ya'll suicidal or what?! This is Naga terriorty! Why didn't you go around?!"

Naga? Now it made sense. We weren't being ambushed by people. We were being hunted by monsters!

What was a Naga again? I remember reading about them but nothing is sticking in my mind.

"Riko—" I turned to her.

But she was gone. She somehow must've wandered into the mist while I was thinking. The only ones still sane were me, Clint, and the horse-man in the cart.

I summoned Talking Book and began flipping through its pages, not finding a single thing about Nagas.

I must've not deemed them worthy to write in here.

"Ilias..." a maternal voice called out to me. "Where have you been? I know you're a State Jynxist, but you could still get hurt you know?"

It was Trisha's voice.

No, it's not real.

"I've been so worried ever since that beam of light took me here. I've been looking for you."

There have been hundreds of reports of people claiming to be in the same situation as us. That beam of light must've teleported people here. Mother must be here as well!

She doesn't know any jynx and she's found herself in a monster's territory.

I made my way towards her voice, finding her silhouette against the illuminating mist.

"There you are..."

Standing where I was, she coiled around me to give a tight embrace.

"Mother, you're hugging me so tight—"

Her voice stopped and I soon snapped back to my senses.

Damn it, I got caught up in the trance.

It wasn't Trisha in front of me. It was a snake-monster, a female to be specific. She had slimy gray hair, a forked tongue, and sawed teeth. The top half of her body was human-like, fading to a tail made of muscle and scale.

This thing's squeezed the air out of me.

I couldn't speak out any incantations and I was feeling so lightheaded that I couldn't cast any of my incantationless spells either. And since my body was being restricted, calling out Zenyatta was impossible.

Just as the Naga pulled out a dagger made of bone, she was shot in the chest before a third of her head exploded in a fury of brains, bone, and skin. Its tightened grip loosened instantly, sloppily dropping me to the ground as I wheezed for air.

Clint quickly helped me to my feet. A Naga behind him twitched with bullet wounds in its chest. "Clint... why'd you use the gun I gave you against me..."

I patted him on the shoulder to give my thanks.

We lucked out having a deaf guy with us.