Feeling the cool shade caressing him, the wanderer looked up. The only thing he saw was a crystal black sky. Leagues upon leagues wide.
"Maybe it's in leti-leagues," he wondered aloud.
As if in agreement, the patch of sky struck down screamed.
The cry was unbearable. It screamed its soul out, and then the body slumped down with a sweet scrunching sound.
Despite all of that his eyes never took off the black crystal above him. Standing still the boy's astonishment could be heard from leagues away.
Gusts of wind began picking up sand particles severely. Out of nowhere then the wind died.
Having prepared himself subconsciously for the slamming of wind, his astonishment was broken when no air struck him hard from any direction.
A slight jolt went through him in the absence. He turned his head from up to sideways and looked around him.
"The-the sand dunes!" He spoke aloud. "They have been leveled!"
His eyes saw the blue streak at the horizon in any direction he saw.
'Maybe it is still daytime, but then what is this thing?' Glancing up again, he gulped down dry air and spit.
Before the wanderer in the brown overcoat could form his next thought, several strikes of invisible force struck down at many places all around him.
Screams of death and pain rolled over in cacophonous volume submerging the boy in their waves of agony.
He grabbed on his ears sharply. "AHHH!" He screamed too.
He wasn't hurt by any of the strikes but he suffered their consequence by mere existence.
Sliding his hands off his ears back down, he brought them in front of him. "No blood. That's good."
At this point he did not know what even more could happen to him in this forsaken desert.
Another working of wonders began and the black crystal roof above him seemingly began to move forward in the same direction he himself was facing. To the boy, the black crystal seemed as if it was moving slow however he knew better.
'The larger the object the more fast it will have to move for anyone to be able to perceive that it is moving.' He remembered a statement he learned of in the state of Beret.
Sand around him did not move a bit nor the wind shook into existence. He felt the movement through his eyes.
Colossal crystal of enormous size moved as one. The shade by it followed after. Once he was in the light, and then in the shade of black and now the light was returning.
First his shadow arose from his feet to three directions on the sand in a light darkness.
Yet, none of the rays of light ever reached the boy.
Reason? The black crystal's upside came into view.
His eyes dilated to capture all that was above the black crystal he stood under.
A magnificent castle made from one single crystal. One so massive that the boy felt even the city of Rigac would be smaller than what floated above him.
Towers, arches, wings, curtain walls, drawbridges, and aerial balconies zoomed ahead. All held together by sheer architectural genius.
This only what he saw from the ground, for his belief in the castle having more than what was visible expanded within him.
Who built it was a question that he did not know the answer of. The castle remembered who did and what was its name and why was it named as such.
'Are there any inhabitants?' His question rose alarms in him.
If any picked up on his thought, they did not let it be known while the floor of the castle zipped ahead ever so vigilantly and with its ease.
The wanderer grabbing on his brown overcoat, wrapped it tighter as he wished within 'if I could, I would like to see inside… even once will work.'
Base of the castle had holes within them that let in reflected light to come below the castle. The boy questioned, "That's a strange design. Why would someone put it in?"
Turning his head sideways he stared at one that came close to him but missed him by a twentieth of a league. Shimmering under the reflected daylight, a corpse came into view. Then so did another and another.
Each that came under the light, raised the expression of horror on the face of the boy by one degree each instance.
Horrified of the surroundings he became stiff. Fear is a stimulant any being finds hard to ignore.
And so did it catch the wanderer too in its grasp.
'Breathe in, just breathe in!' Screaming to himself, he laboriously forced himself to take a gulp of air and drown it down his throat.
He did it again.
This time a little easier than the first, yet not so far that he had been freed.
Focusing his mind away from the harm and death he was surrounded of or would have had, he looked up at the base of the castle.
"Come on. Come on! Find something! Anything!" telling himself through squeezed tight lips. His eyes tried focusing on the floor above him.
He could not see any knowledge drawn on the base of it.
"It probably once was attached to the ground." He tried taking his mind away from the castle and into what it was.
Yet, a single thought crashed into his every thought. One of simpler instincts, 'please don't fall on me! Please, please, please!'
His mind did not freeze over but he felt threatened and at mercy, even more death felt to him having closed their hands on his heart.
He is living only because death had not plucked it off his body.
"No, no, no! No, I am not going to waste my sister's last gift. No, not today." His teeth clattered slightly.
Vision straining his mind, he seemed to see curvy and patternized figures drawn under the base.
His right hand's forefinger moved.
The boy felt the vigor he held within coming back to him, his will returning to follow his own choices, and the castle had moved ever more beyond him. Yet, it still was above him.