The desert was a maddeningly silent expanse. She could have easily thought herself deaf were it not for the sound of her feet shuffling through the sand. The compass needle jittered slightly, even when she stood still.

  From time to time she would encounter another one of the small flying pyramids, the paths of light bending to their movements. She began noticing that they were different colours. As she ventured further from the city, she saw more and more colours begin to appear. It also appeared to her that the different colours had their own behaviours.

  A blue pyramid — not dissimilar to those from the trio she had first encountered — flew over to her and dowsed her in the warm light. It circled her for a moment, then flew away again. In a short while it returned with another blue pyramid. They circled her together, and their paths of light intersected — warming up the air even more, to the point where it felt as if she were standing under the sun on a hot summer day.

  The ground ahead of her shook, and the two pyramids stopped circling her, now motionless in the air by her sides. Out from the sand burst another pyramid, this one yellow in hue and significantly larger and slower than the others. It began to approach her, and the two blue pyramids rushed ahead as if to block the new yellow pyramid from moving any closer. What followed was an event she could only describe as an ‘argument’ between the three entities. In the end each of them left, and the air around her cooled to a comfortable state once more.

  The compass needle grew more unstable. She continued walked in as straight of a line as she could — until suddenly the compass made several rapid rotations before coming to a stop in a new orientation. The entire face had rotated a counter-clockwise quarter turn — where there was once west, there was now north; and where there was once east was now south. She continued travelling on this ‘new south’.

  The desert grew more difficult to traverse. The crests of sand became taller, and she found herself clambering up their sides. Exhaustion had started to creep up on her. Faced with ever taller mounds of sand, she collapsed. In desperation she drank the last drops of her water and took one of the pink pills — still unsure as to what exactly they were. In the sand she laid, compass still clutched in her palms as she drifted from consciousness.

  She awoke to the purple sky, and a shifting of the sand beneath her. At first it moved in all directions, and then it began to shake. She lifted herself once more as the impassable mound ahead of her began to collapse. From the center outwards a valley was forming in the desert — and through it she saw the next city.

  She tried to run towards it but the sand now was like water, and she began to sink. Yet just as the ground was about to swallow her legs, the shaking stopped, and the sand fell still.

  A shadow burst from the valley, showering her in glistening sand. The creature leapt through the air like a whale breaching the ocean surface. Its body was like a seal, and it was comprised of a deep blue smoke. A thick white spine ran from the end of its tail up to its neck, and in place of its head was a dolphin’s skull adorned with the horns of a ram.

  The creature plunged into the ground behind her. She freed her foot from the sand and sprinted towards the city. The valley began to collapse around her, the air was thick and sharp with crystalline particulate. She coughed and sputtered yet pushed onwards.

  The ground shook again, she was thrown to the ground. Once more the creature of smoke burst from the ground — yet this time it dove towards her. The bone beak of the dolphin’s skull aimed like a dart directly at her.

  She closed her eyes and braced for the impact. A piercing wail emanated ahead of her, echoing with a shrill, otherworldly sound. She opened her eyes. A pyramid — yellow — had swooped in and pierced the creature through its skull. A blue mist sprayed from the fracture. The creature fell to the ground beside her, and it seeped slowly into the sand.

  The pyramid darted away. The city was still ahead. She rose once more, and ran through the remainder of the valley. Flat desert greeted her. She opened her palm to inspect the compass, its needle pointing south — directly towards the new city.

  The new city was nearly identical to the last, though Anya noted a slightly bluer hue in the colour of the buildings, and a red tinge to the vines. She walked through much narrower streets this time — back-alleys and arched passageways. The remains of market stalls littered these parts of the city, their worn out signs etched in a language she had never seen before.

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  A hard thud came sounded from behind a nearby door. She stopped and turned in its direction. It was an unassuming building — a largely blank facade dotted with grated windows. She approached the door, turned its crumbling handle, and stepped inside.

  A long dark hallway greeted her. It was cold, and damp, and a trail of slime ran down the middle of the stone floor. On either side were rows of doors, a few of them open, a few of them appearing to have been smashed through.

  Another thud sounded. She placed a hand on the pistol attached to her belt, and slowly unholstered and loaded it. She held the gun up, aimed ahead of her, and began to back out of the hallway. Her steps echoed unnaturally loudly, and suddenly she heard a scuttling rapidly approaching.

  A door burst open, and through it came a mass of bones. They were human bones, strung together with loose bits of flesh and sinew into the vague shape of a spider. It spanned nearly the width of the hallway, and stood at more than half her height. She froze. A gurgling began emanating from the bone spider, and the sound soon morphed into a cacophony of voices.

  “Are you here to help us?” it cried. “There are no more rations, have you come to give us more?” It began to creep forward. “Is the siege over? Can we go home now?”

  Anya fired a round into the creature. It screamed in a hundred different voices as one of its legs began to lift into the air.

  She ran back through the door and into the narrow streets once more, yet she could hear the creature approaching fast behind her. She picked a direction and continued down it as fast as she could. She was out of water and her legs ached, but the skeletal mass was close behind and fear pushed her forward. She swiveled her arm around and fired a few more shots at the creature, once more it cried out yet its pursuit continued.

  A second spider — this one comprised of dry bone only, no flesh — leaped down from a window and landed ahead of her. She rushed through a nearby door as the two spiders clashed outside.

  She was in another hallway, and all around her more scuttling could be heard. With nowhere to go she ran down the hallway in hopes of finding an exit. More spiders piled out from the doors behind her as she ran, each one a different size and covered in different amounts of flesh. Some of them fought one another, but most chased after Anya.

  Turning a corner saw an exit at the end of hallway — a stained glass door through which light spilled inside. With one final burst of energy she braced her arms and smashed through the glass, tripping on the frame and rolling out into the middle of the street.

  The spiders came rushing through the broken door and spilled from every window of the building. She pressed her palms to the cobblestone and attempted to lift herself to her feet, yet her arms were too weak from the chase and she fell back to the ground. She laid there as the spiders approached, the creatures wailing out in the echoes of a thousand voices.

  The gun had fallen nearby, she crawled towards it and wrapped her fingers around the grip. The weapon felt even heavier now, she dragged her arm across the ground and brought the barrel to bear upon the approaching spiders. She fired until the magazine was empty, sending a few of the spiders into the air, yet the flood of rattling bones was unhindered.

  A sudden burst of sound erupted behind her. It was high and shimmering, like the shattering of glass. A net of white light swept the ground beneath the spiders. There was a flash, and Anya was momentarily blinded. When her vision returned, she could see the creatures sinking into the ground — it was as if the ground was not there, and the spiders were suddenly falling through the cobblestone as if they were dropped from the air.

  With another flash the spiders were gone. The ground was unchanged, despite the dozens of arachnid bodies that had just fallen through it.

  She rolled onto her back and faced the city above, its perfect streets reflecting the exact paths she had just ran through. Fatigue overcame her and her eyelids felt heavy. She heard footsteps approaching, and a dark blurry figure loomed over her as she passed out once again.