Lubina and I know from everything we have experienced that the Delm’ri road was the first genuine test of our resolution.

  By the time we reached the gate, demons had assailed me thrice, both greater and lesser, but even these encounters pale compared to what lay beyond our eyes in the Delm’ri road.

  Granvich negotiated the terrain expertly, much to my surprise. He was confident in his claim that he could reach the gate, and he had all rights to such confidence. A trip I had expected to take several hours through the piling snow took only one. Again, to my surprise, the ancient gate was not what I had expected.

  Perhaps because so many stories portray the Delm'ri as a people of offensive grandeur and showmanship stemming from their hundreds of years of existence, or perhaps because no one ever read me a fairytale as a child, I had no expectations.

  The structure was humble and small, formed from rough stones and supported by wood that seemed impervious to the usual rot of such organic things, the keystone chiseled with the form of a flea amidst a bed of oak leaves and surrounded by various runes. The structure was no taller than seven feet and no wider than five. By some magical means, the surrounding blizzard could not affect a radius around the gate, the snowflakes vanishing from reality at the barrier between the warm interior and the frigid environment. The gate existed in a world of its own, refusing to be touched by the natural order of our realm.

  The warmth was a pleasant relief for us all. With that bodily need resolved, we turned our attention to a different one. We focused on figuring out exactly how the gate should be operated. Neither Granvich nor I knew any Delm’rian, and we were at a loss about their culture.

  After fifteen minutes of Granvich and I blundering about like idiotic fools, theorizing and positing various methods based outside the confines of reality and understanding, Lubina spoke up.

  “Lift me,” she asked, “Just up to the keystone, could you? I cannot reach.”

  Curious, Granvich and I engaged in the exercise and did as instructed. Lubina gazed upon the runes for some time before putting her hands on the stone and hesitantly putting her lips on the ancient writing. Some sort of opaque essence pulled forth from the rock and swallowed into her lungs, and with a deep breath, she spoke words beyond our comprehension.

  We lowered her down carefully as her gentle eyes shimmered with some profound understanding.

  “Lubina, are you—” Granvich asked before she cut him off.

  “Shhh,” Lubina whispered. She explored the gate's frame, her instincts bringing her to handholds and hidden places no person of normal ability could identify. It was simply beyond human understanding. Carefully, she engaged with these invisible spaces, and the air within the structure rippled and waved like the ocean, reflecting a barren desert landscape at us.

  Granvich recited something foreign to me, “Like sands of shifting dreams and pavers formed of broken paths through life, travel with the reverent knowledge that all things die but know they never truly vanish.”

  “Where did you hear such a thing? Is that from your scriptures?” I asked.

  “No. From Arzmais. The Delm’ri woman.” He muttered back, amazed and awed by the magic of the gate.

  Lubina stood before the gate and said, “We should hurry. My understanding of the runes and the magick of their activation are fading.”

  I nodded, looked at a worried Granvich, and assured him, “All will be well. Garivansk is just on the other side. The city needs you now, brother.”

  He nodded to me, and after surpassing the hesitation of his first step, we followed behind Lubina as she phased into the otherworldly tear in our reality. Her body and soul distorted like a mirage in waves of midday heat.

  On the other side, we stood upon a monolith of sandstone thirty feet high, with stairs descending into the sand. The pleasant warmth from before became a brutal heat that immediately soaked the water from our skin. Like the gateway, the tower's stones seemed immortal despite their purposefully rough cuts. The Delm’ri, it would seem, were more concerned about efficiency than appearance. Or, at the very least, the family of Arzmais was. Perhaps it was wrong of me to assume that the Delm’ri were as much a monolith as the one we stood upon that day; humans are not; why might the Delm’ri be any different after all?

  “Is everyone alright?” I asked, gaining the approval of Granvich and Lubina, who looked upon the sands of the distant east like it were a sea of diamonds. Such a reaction to sand was common for folks of the interior who had never seen a beach. This, however, was no beach. There was no water to be seen on the horizon.

  “What… is this?” Lubina asked.

  “An imitation, I believe. Of the lands of the Delm’ri.” Granvich replied.

  Looking up at the blazing sun overhead, I enviously lamented, "No wonder people say their clothes reached beneath the soil."

  We hurried down the steps. Shifting dunes from the realm beyond the gate nearly entirely covered what one might call a road. The winds and sand never wholly covered or uncovered the road, however strong they blew. The strange realm of the Delm’ri seemed to exist in a state of equilibrium unseen in the realms of man.

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  A straightforward truth predicated such an equilibrium: that the sun never sets over the lands of the Delm’ri. So much was evident when the sky's brightness had not faded in the slightest degree after nearly six hours of travel.

  “How could anyone live like this?” Lubina groaned, desperately tapping the bottom of her waterskin to force free the final, tiniest water droplets.

  “Well,” I wondered, “Legend has it the Delm’ri have no desire for water. Or, if they do desire water, they only need to satisfy that desire once or twice in a human lifetime. Could you imagine?” I slugged behind her, trying to keep the mood light and joke with her to hide my desperation. “Two hundred years, give or take? I had a friend whose gran seemed as old, but surely she had just aged rather poorly.”

  Be it genuine or a symptom of delirium, Lubina giggled. She expressed an emotion not steeped in skepticism, fear, or anger for the first time since we met. It lasted less than a second, but I will never forget it. Even Brother Granvich, notorious for his absent sense of humor, could not help but cast his gaze toward me, shocked at the expression but ?pleased.

  Looking back at Lubina, I saw a strong, resilient woman who could lead an army. She was taller than I, and her dark hair grayed far beyond her reasonable age. Scars marred her face like mine, but she proudly wore the brand of the False Leper. I saw a daughter I had never known. With her hands, she conjured magick in the shape of water and drank from the infinite well she commanded.

  She offered me this water, and I fell to my knees. The weariness of our journey finally ground away at my joints.

  “Drink,” I heard from a raspy voice in the direction Granvich once stood. A bleached skeleton replaced him, picked clean and gnawed away by the vultures that circled overhead. When I looked back forward, the older Lubina stood before me, offering her cupped hands.

  “Drink,” she suggested, pushing her hands against my lips. I felt the water dribble down the sides of my mouth, and as I blinked, I saw her in the distance, thrashing left and right along the road. Some winged thing the size of me screamed sporadically.

  “Drink,” she demanded as I blinked again, “Drink.”

  Her hands peeled my mouth apart and forced down my throat, the strange ichor disguised as water leaking into my lungs. I coughed, desperately trying to stop her. But she continued her demands and assured me it was for the best.

  Another blink, and I saw the grainy vision of a creature standing before me, the front of its skull broken and exposing its soft, pink brain. Its eyes bulged and wiggled on the end of optical tendrils, and as I accepted its gifts, a boomerang whirled past, severing the cords that bound me to an illusion.

  A woman’s voice called out to me, “Get up!”

  I stumbled to my feet and drew my blade, unsure of what was real and what was not. An enormous bird screeched and towered over a prone Lubina who, with great resolve and fear, brought forth a magick barrier with each strike made by its sharpened beak. The boomerang that saved me sliced across the surface of the creature’s left wing but diverted on its return and embedded in the sand.

  I swept the desert for the source and saw a figure sprinting with unnatural agility across the sand as if it were simple dirt or clay. Whatever struggle we three had navigating this terrain, the figure did not.

  The barrier built by Lubina shattered, allowing the bird to grip her with its mouth and fly away. I struggled through the sand, and the figure called out to me.

  “Throw me!” She said, sprinting toward me as I closed the distance on the monster. I halved the sword out of confusion and dropped to one knee, and the woman climbed with grace before pushing off from my forearms and grabbing ahold of the bird’s imposing talon. Her steps weighed almost nothing, and I hardly felt her push, but she sprung nearly ten feet ahead.

  She fumbled with a dagger strapped to her thigh and stabbed into the meat of the creature’s legs violently. “Do something, you dimwit!” She yelled.

  Just as I had done with the imps, I reared back and sliced the blade forward, extruding the bark from the metal and casting the vines outward. As they wrapped about the creature’s other leg, I dug my feet downward, and with each mighty push of its wings, I shuffled to entrench like a ship’s anchor in the sea of sand. The woman used her dagger like a piton, scaling up the creature and under its wings, where she dug a second dagger deeper and sliced like a butcher preparing cuts.

  The monster wailed out as it lost control of its wing and tumbled from the sky. They had landed near to me, and with Lubina absent from the beak’s deadly potential, I slogged to my feet and forward before driving my blade downward between its eyes.

  I surveyed the battlefield, finding the corpse of the strange creature that had trapped me in a false reality, but I could not find Granvich. Lubina was getting to her feet some yards away, and a muffled voice called out from under the bird.

  “A bit of help?” She asked, prompting me to lift the massive bird as best I could to free her.

  Beneath her unwrapped turban were permanently sunburned skin and severe, squinted light brown eyes framing a crooked nose. She wore her hair cut short and pulled back with several ornate clips. I noticed then that the woman was nearly a foot taller than me. This was the first time I had ever seen a Delm’ri in any form, physical or painted.

  “The girl?” She huffed exhaustedly.

  “She’s alright, with much thanks to you,” I responded.

  “Where is the old man?” She asked.

  “I don’t know. I fear a creature similar to the one that assailed me may have grabbed him. If it weren’t for you, its illusion would have consumed me.”

  The Delm’ri woman moved to the corpse of the illusory creature, and I ensured Lubina was well. There were a few cuts and bruises, but with all considered, it was fortune alone that kept her alive.

  Lubina explained the attack. “Granvich wandered off when the creatures emerged from the sand. There were two of them beneath our feet as we walked, the bird hiding off until they called for it.”

  “Granvich?” The Delm’ri woman asked.

  “Our missing companion, yes. A brother of an order from the human realms.” I responded.

  A reflective expression passed over the woman’s red face before she spoke. “Yes, I know of him. My, how he has… aged.”

  “Wait, then you must be Arzmais?”

  “At least his memory hasn’t faded. That’s right, but who are you?”

  The girl beat me to a response, “I’m Lubina, and this man is the False Leper.”

  “Well, Lubina. False Leper,” my nom de guerre sounding suspect in her tone, “We have no time to lose. The sha’keer have a hive in the nearby ruins, and I'm certain they took Granvich there.”

  I nodded. “Take us there as fast as you can. We’ll keep up as best we can.”