012-Dead man in the desert

Nonoth has been traveling alone ever since Jack ran away. Some parts of her hopes Jack might be better off if that was the last intersection their paths would have with his. Annoying and arrogant, he was a good boy, well, over all.

The coin has been burning ever since she got into the city.

They must be close.

Frankly, Nonoth had never killed anyone before. Not after she left the cloud and got the power of Azurite, and certainly not before that when she was living the everything-perfect-and-forever dream in The Garden, and that was also why she was so shocked when Jack suggest that she would kill whoever abducted Mal.

There was stone cold murderous light in his eyes when he said that, a light that should not belong to any one, especially a kid only Jack's age.

Buried in worrying thoughts, Nonoth followed the coin to a shabby old inn. She just wanted to get over with this thing and go back to the great, peaceful journey with Mal.

Too pretty a dream to be true.

Mal was not there, the scarred man was not there, no one she had been tracing was there.

Nonoth's heart dropped heavily, and anger rose like fire in her chest. Azurite burst out without being summoned and in the next second, the whole inn was covered in blue, cracking fire, falling apart.

Standing in the ruins of the inn, Nonoth was feeling a bit regret about burning it down. But no amount of anger or regret could change the fact that She had lost Mal again, or she was never on the track of Mal in the first place. Either way, she was totally without a direction now.

...

"What do you mean the mummy is gone?!" The scarred man yelled at the messenger who brought him the bad news.

"How could he have gone anywhere? Mummies can barely move when their feet are wet! He was in a god damn water bucket and he has only one had left for god's sake! Who was on guard yesterday?!" All his men chose to stay in silence because they knew logic would not save them now, only luck could.

A kid, 17 at most, moved a bit, but before he could say or do anything, another man stepped up in front of the kid and said: "I think he knocked over the bucket in the middle of the night and turned into sand after his feet dried up and..."

"I know! I can SEE! I'm asking how could you let that happen!" The scarred man interrupted the moron and let out another outburst.

"I'm sorry..." He hurried out an apologize, but that did him no good.

"Ahh!" That was the last words out of that poor man before he dropped dead on the burning ground of the desert with a huge knife stuck on his chest.

Blood oozed out fast, as if it was the life of that man, bursting out of his body.

If anyone was gonna say anything before, they certainly weren't gonna after watching their leader threw a knife at the chest of one of his own man. A dead silence ran over these few scumbags standing in the middle of a desert, with no mummy to give them direction, and nowhere to run either.

"Move your asses and go get me the mummy." The scarred man said in a dangerous, low voice, looking at the faces of his men, one by one, seeing only fear and desperation in their eyes. "Do you have any idea about our situation right now? Without the mummy, we could never find the treasure!"

Some men started scattering around, even though no one had any idea how to find a mummy escaped god knows when in the middle of a desert, which was basically the ocean to a fish for mummies. The higher possibility here was themselves getting lost before they could even find a trace of the mummy.

Some of them didn't move at all. The scarred man rose his eyes in a dangerous motion. Obviously anyone disobeying him right now won't end up any better than the man lying on the ground in front of them.

"What are you still standing here for?" He said

"Aren't we gonna bury him?" Finally a man asked, with a low but firm voice. "He wasn't even the one on guard yesterday."

The scarred man opened his mouth to yell again, only to stopped at the man's next and also his last sentence: "He's got a mom waiting for him back at home..."

The scarred man froze for a second, and then waved his hand at him, indicating an approval to his suggestion before slowly stood up and turned to left, but he stopped after taking a few steps and said without turning back to them: "I am sorry. We'll take him home."

Fully aware that that man would never make it to home, not even just his body, he left without any other words while the rest of the crew didn't even know what a fate was lying await for them.

The men didn't break the silence, but the tension did loosened a bit after the special approval of the leader. He said bring him home, meaning they were allowed to cremate the body and bring his ash back to his home where he could be buried properly, well, better than here at least.

They are all men, selling their lives for a bite of bread and a cup of milk, some for themselves, some for their families. They knew what they were getting into when they got recruited, but death was never light to anyone, not even the most atrocious. They have a soft spot in their heart, too, maybe just smaller than ordinary people because the world hasn't been so kind to them either.

The cremation was small and simple. They built a rough pyre out of the wood tore off of the carriage used to imprison the mummy, it was not like there was a mummy to hold any more.

The fact that their most accurate compass to a lifetime's treasure just broke out started to sink in with them. Going into a desert is not a light decision, even with compass, water and food as much as they could carry, it would still be a high casualty job. Even if they choose to return now, there's no guarantee that they could make it out of the desert alive. Surely they went along with it because they wouldn't have much of a life outside anyways, but dying in the middle of a desert alone is never a pleasurable thought.

The sparks under the pyre grew into a huge fire with the help of the cold, sandy wind in the desert pretty fast.

They stood around the pyre in a circle in silence, watching a home of a soul evaporating into the thin air, leaving only a handful of ash, no longer bearing the weight of any sin.

The dead man was lying on the pyre, yet somehow, it felt like a silent funeral for all the men standing.