If you spend some time walking through the world you will find that hard natural borders are fairly rare. Terrain changes gradually, from flatlands to hills to mountains; from grass to dirt to sand; from stone to beach to water. Forests grow as you walk, the younger trees growing denser and older with more and more growth around your feet.
The Black Desert was both similar to this and not. When Orwyn had us veer south the ground changed slowly, the soil becoming darker and the sound underfoot growing crunchier. As we progressed we could see, to the southwest, the yellow sand desert that glistened in the light, sparkling even more than sand normally would due to the glass littered among the grains, and Orwyn told us we were too far to the west. That, to the southwest, was the Plains of Shattered Glass.
My eyes veered to the east until I saw a line in the sand - a literal line where the sand turned black and the texture turned rough, much like the earth now beneath our feet. It was the point, Orwyn explained, where the conflict between the magical storms of the plains and the volcanic storms of the mountains had set their boundaries. The arena they duelled in was the Black Desert, stretching the length of the wastelands all the way to the nation of Fionne, our next destination. At that point the Bursting Mountains turned further east, forming a natural border between Fionne and Arestria, and the Plains of Shattered Glass simply gave way to the plains where Fionne's farmers grew their crops.
Of course, the Black Desert was a wide swath of land. We continued south and to the east until we could no longer see the Plains of Shattered Glass, instead letting the Blasting Mountains loom ominously over us. They were still some distance away, but the black clouds glowing red and orange above the mountain tops gave me the chills.
Once we were oriented between the mountains and plains the way Orwyn desired, he set us on a fast pace to the south. While we had taken our time and took five days to cross the Borderlands to the desert, he intended to cross the wastelands - five times the distance we had gone so far - in only two weeks. As he put it, any amount of injury we experienced pushing our bodies at that pace risked being dealt double by the environment if we slowed down.
It was tough for me. I was proud that carrying my pack through the Borderlands was of only mild difficulty, something I could adjust to after only a short while walking. The pace we set through the Black Desert had my legs burning within that same time period. By the time we stopped for the night - and Orwyn pushed us to keep hiking as late as possible - my whole body was aching. My legs felt like jelly, my core like a knot about to come undone and spill my guts, and my shoulders like I would be dragged back into the earth before long.
But it was a good day, according to our experts. Bromin was thrilled that no storm had threatened us all day, and Orwyn claimed that if every day went so smoothly we might even be through the wastelands a few days early.
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I silently questioned whether I would be intact to enjoy that early victory.
The others were a mixed bag of liveliness. Drifter looked refreshed, of course, that monster masquerading as a man hauling steel rods across black sand and glass like nothing. Damien, thank the gods, was dying about as much as I was, granting me some amount of camaraderie in this party of athletes. Borin was fine, Olivia was tired but fine, Orwyn was very tired but fine enough.
Damien and I sulked off to the side as the others set up camp and cooked dinner. I could already feel that the soreness of the day would not disappear by the morning, nor the next morning, and most likely it would just be an accumulation of pain for the next two weeks until either I fell apart or our party left the wastelands.
The next day, unfortunately, was not as pleasant as the first. Orwyn called for us to stop in the early afternoon, less than an hour after we had scarfed down a lunch of dried meats and biscuits without stopping. "There's an ash storm blowing in. Don't think we're able to avoid it. The tents should stake down fine here, set them up." Sure enough, there was a dark mist cresting a mountain directly east of us, growing and accelerating as it roared down the mountain towards us.
We all laid unpacked our tents and Drifter handed out the metal frames. They were too heavy for me to carry cross-country for days on end, but even my tired arms were able to link the frame together, attach the tent leathers, and stake it into the ground.
Like with the magical storm that blew into the Borderlands, we hunkered down in our tents to wait out the storm. This one was not quite as bad, which is not to say it was pleasant. First the winds picked up, buffeting our tents with a force that could pull the stakes out of the earth if I didn't drive them deep enough. Then the smell hit me, the scent of ashy smoke and acrid stone, the sense that there was not just something in the air but that something caustic was assaulting my throat. I started coughing, a reflex that did nothing to help, and heard more coughing from the tents around me.
The ash in the air was the worst of it, hovering in the tent without an easy escape, though we had been warned that it would be significantly worse outside the tent. Any temptation to open the tent was soon quashed, anyways, as the sounds of heavy rain and giant hail barraged the tent. It was neither rain nor hail, of course, but the force of sand, ash, stone, and glass being hurled at the leather exterior.
My throat felt like it would tear with each cough, but I couldn't stop. The tent blocked nearly all light, the sounds from outside drowned out even my thoughts, and the volcanic vapours were burning out my ability to smell or taste anything. All the sensation I had left was my wracking cough forced out from my lungs through my raw, bloody throat. I knew there was water in my pack, but I couldn't stop coughing long enough to take even a sip. I just suffered.
I didn't pass out, though I hardly felt conscious. Eventually the noise faded, then the scent, then the winds. I could relief my throat with some water between gasps for fresh air.
In the end the storm passed in under an hour, after which Orwyn called out with a hoarse voice that we were safe to come out. We emerged from our tents slowly, and he immediately set us to packing up and getting ready to move again.
He was relentless, but I could already see another black fog of a storm cresting the Blasting Mountains to our north. The wastelands would always be more cruel than him.
