Chapter Thirteen: The Barren

Vuko POV

Something no one tells you about Quests. There's a lot of walking, trudging, lumbering, plodding, slogging ...

... by the time the sun shimmers at the horizon behind me and the crescent moon dips below the horizon before me, I have thought of every word I know of to describe really, really, really boring walking.

There is absolutely nothing here. I think of the stories we told each other when we were pups. About wraiths that lived beneath the sand of the Barren that would pull you down into their nests. They would paralyze you and then their grubs would feed off you, slowly eating you alive. That was a favorite. There are the roaming packs of wilder-scorpions, creatures that are half beast, half scorpion. Where the beast's tail should be is a scorpion's sting that will cause your skin to turn black and then they eat you alive. Then there was the one about the tumbleweed spiders. Their bodies transparent so all you see is ripples on t