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The next morning, I headed to Maccoy with one of the traders from Kiran.  I was looking forward to tomorrow.  Tomorrow, I’d be done with Chanda, and I could return to Eira and make sense of this whole mess with Tae and Lumi.  I couldn’t wait to go back.  I’d been back in my home country for two days and I was already wanting to leave again.

When we docked at Maccoy, I noticed a large number of people fishing just off the docks.  The village itself was mostly bare.  It appeared that these people all fished for a living.

After I stepped off the boat, I headed straight to the village.  I needed to find someone who had an inkling about something odd on this island.  Most of the island was housing, so I wove my way through the houses as I looked for anyone actually on the island.  Behind the houses, I found a patch of farmland.  There were quite a few people harvesting plants.  I approached a girl pulling leaves off of a bush.

“Excuse me.  Is there anywhere on this island that is…off limits?”

She glanced up at me. “Well, there’s the forbidden spot down south,” she pointed to the other end of the island. “But that’s it.” She raised an eyebrow. “You’re not thinking about going there, are you?”

“Oh, of course not,” I fibbed.

She smiled. “Good.”

Then I directly contradicted what I’d just said by turning around and walking in the direction she’d pointed.

“Hey, wait!”

I was off running before she had a chance to stop me.  I ran until the sand had disappeared, and when I looked down I realized that there was a massive slab of rock beneath me.  The girl who I’d talked to was right behind me, and she slid to a stop right before the rock started, her eyes wide in horror.

“What are you doing?  This place is cursed!”

I smiled. “That’s ok.”

“Don’t…don’t move!” she stammered before turning around and running back to the village.

Once she was gone, I began pacing around the stone slab.  I knew this had to be something related to a mystic, but I had no clue what it was.  I kicked some of the remaining sand on the rock around.  After a few minutes, I discovered a dislodged part of the slab.  I squatted down to examine it, but when I brushed the slab, it spun upside down, and the floor below me disappeared.

I didn’t have time to scream as I fell into a pit of sand.  Maybe that girl had been right.  Maybe this place was cursed.

I sat up, realizing that I’d landed uninjured…somewhere.  As I glanced around, I noticed that this place was entirely sand.  The floor was sand, the walls were sand.  And, well, there was no ceiling.  I could see the bright cerulean sky above me.  I pulled my hands out of the sand and brushed them off before pushing myself to my feet.

“Hello?” I asked cautiously.  I couldn’t be in here alone.

“Hello.”

I spun around and was surprised to be met with a lady made of flames.  She was petite, much smaller than me, definitely, but she had a presence you couldn’t ignore.  Probably because she was glowing red and orange.

“I see you figured out how to get in here.  What’s your prerogative?”

“Prerogative?” I asked.

“What do you want?”

“Oh!  Um, I’m looking for the fifth rune.” I held up my pendant.

She looked me up and down. “What’s your name?”

“Odelle.”

She nodded. “Very well.  Climb out of here.”

“What?”

“Climb out of here.  Then you can have your rune.”

I glanced around.  The walls were all sand.  This was by far the most unreasonable of the quests.  I’d thought climbing a volcano had been hard, but how was I supposed to climb sand?  The substance was nearly liquid with how it moved.  I knew not to argue, though.  That had gotten me nowhere with the rock man, so surely it wouldn’t do me any good with this woman either.

“All right.”

I wandered near the walls for a while, running my hand through the sand.  Maybe there was a ladder in here?  It was unlikely, but it didn’t hurt to try.  I didn’t see how I was going to climb sand.  It was pouring down from the gaping hole in the ceiling anyways.  It was clearly not solid in any way.

After a few passes around the walls, I figured that there was no ladder or anything of the sort.  So, I gave into insanity and decided to just climb up the sand.  To my shock, it worked.  The flowing sand seemed to turn to rock as I set my hands and feet in it, and before I knew it, I was at the top of the cavern, pulling myself onto solid sand once more.

The girl who had followed me here had not returned yet, which I thought was odd.  I’d been down there for a very long spell of time.  Certainly, that had been enough time to run back and get someone.  I glanced back into the cavern, but the fire woman was missing.  I sighed.  The Chandian mystics weren’t very friendly.

I pushed myself onto my feet and turned around to leave, nearly walking straight into fire in my hurry.

“You wanted this?”

The lady was holding a yellow gem out to me.  I smiled.

“Yes, that’s it.”

I took it from her and put it in my pendant, noticing that there was now only room for two more runes.  I returned my attention to the fire lady before she had time to disappear like the rock man had.

“What’s your name?”

“Mine?  It’s Idalia.  Go along now.  There’s a boat headed to Aine in a minute.  You’ll want to hurry.”

My eyes widened, and I ran for the village.  I’d only taken a few steps when I turned back to her and yelled.

“Thank you!”

Then I was off to find a boat to the mainland.  I was getting to Eira tonight if I had anything to say about it.