The sky may as well have been falling, as fat drops of water poured from the sky. Thunder roared as Thrax lead Kellayenasifarel through the jungle brush. It only took a few seconds after the rain started for them both to be thoroughly soaked and it didn't look like it would be letting up any time in the near future. The ground was getting muddy and difficult to walk in.

They had been on this trek for weeks, and their guide through the desert had set them up with a contact who had given them a map to what they were looking for. The Golden Temple. It had cost Kell a rather significant amount to get all the information he had been able to gather, most of it through less than over the table means, but things have never gone wrong before, and the payout was significant.

The Treeline broke, and the two found themselves standing atop a rather tall bluff, a muddy river swirling rapidly down below as the rains turned everything up. They could see further into the jungle,  scanning the treetops, but not a flicker of gold flashed in the distance.

The sun bore down on Nakato with an unrelenting fury as her burned and cracked hands pulled her body through the fine sand which had been baking for as long as she had. It had been 2 days since her last real sip of water, her lips split and her mouth dry. Her lung punished by every scorching breath of air. The sand stuck to her sweating, sunburned body which sent waves of agony through her body every time she moved.

She hadn't seen the slavers in a few hours, but then, she couldn't see much of anything. The Sun's heat created powerful shimmers in the air, and what she could see were dune of sand all around. Not a person to be seen. Still, something in her urged one hand after the other. Something tickled in the back of her head, completely unreachable, pushing her in the direction she was heading.

She crested a dune, and in the distance she saw something jutting out of the sand in a way no natural rock would. Seeing it made the tickle in the back of Nakato's head turn into a mindless buzzing. The buzzing accompanied by some sense of hope, some feeling that despite all odds, something was there that could help her. That could save her, from the slavers, and most hopefully, the desert itself.