Leo was a snake. A mad snake.
For some unspoken reason, he felt an anger, madness, and fury so intense it was as if he were being tormented. Maybe it was the damn hexagon in front of him.
'The irony. I never thought I'd detest the aura system.'
Leo was still at a loss as to what was happening. Every theory he tried to come up with made no sense.
'Guess the Advent Volume will forever remain a mystery.'
This was his third day in the desert. He had been crawling across the obsidian-hot sand under a scorching sun without seeing a single living thing or any Castle of Light in sight. The desert proved to be endless. Leo was angered, battered, and hungry. He just wanted to shred everything into pieces.
'Pull yourself together, Leo.'
If only he knew what a Seek was, or the true origin of the Advent Volume, or who the hell this snake was. He had developed a theory that the snake was once, or perhaps still was, a living being on a journey. But what journey? To find the Castle of Light? Where was the Castle of Light located?
'Ah, the questions are back again.'
These questions had been rallying in his mind for the past three days with no valid answers. He might as well just give up.
'Who knows what's happening back on Earth? Jean and everyone must be worried. I've been gone for three days. Did Mirage only experience this for a few seconds? No, no... maybe mine is a much stronger, new volume. That's why it's much harder.'
Letting out a small roar, he kept crawling and then slowly dug into the sand. He moved beneath the surface, his shape defined by the sand above; where he passed, rigid S-shapes remained. He moved at a fast pace, already getting accustomed to the snake's body.
Moving underneath the sand, he saw nothing but total darkness, but why care? There was nothing here that could cause him harm.
That was, until he hit his face against an unknown platform. The force was so great it sent his whole body sprawling out of the sand, making him lose his cohesion.
'What was that?'
Regaining his senses, he shook his serpentine head violently and glanced around. There was nothing but shifting sands. But beneath...
He dove his head into the sand again, only to collide with the platform once more. This time he didn't recoil due to the impact, but he felt pain surge through his entire brain, if snakes even have brains.
'Is this wood?'
He pulled his head out of the sand and raised his neck high, as if trying to bite the sun. He then coiled in a circular manner until his neck rested atop his own body. He opened his mouth wide, revealing countless tiny, sharp fangs and a two-pointed, thin, black tongue.
Now, he had one thing to do.
'Time to find out what's buried under the sand.'
He crawled further and then dived back into the dunes. Soon, his entire body disappeared into the shifting, hot sand. All Leo could sense was darkness. This time, he didn't immediately collide with the platform. After traveling through the thick sand for a minute or two, his head struck the wooden structure again.
Shaking off the pain, he coiled and circled in the darkness, his body twisting around something similar to a pole.
'Could this be...?'
He crawled out of the sand and back into the burning furnace of the surface. As soon as he emerged, the sands beneath him started shifting, sinking lower and lower until a piece of wood could be seen protruding from the earth.
He gazed at the wood for a while until a mad idea snapped into his serpentine head.
He slithered back to the exact spot where the platform had struck his head. Diving once more, he began circling the structure from beneath. His jaws unhinged wider than any natural creature's should, and he began swallowing the sand, gulping down the obsidian grit to clear the space around the buried mystery.
Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.
'Taste buds be damned. Ah, so snakes do have taste buds. That's one mystery solved. One at a time.'
Losing concentration, he bumped into the wooden platform again.
'Leonard. Concentrate.'
Leo's throat expanded, his scales stretching until they were nearly translucent. Each mouthful of hot sand burned his mouth; it was heavy and abrasive, yet he did not stop. He could not stop. This might be his only chance of escaping this nightmare. There weren't many chances left, anyway.
He continued to circle the platform, creating a vortex or a sinkhole that separated the leviathan figure from the sand, his body moving like a drill. The sand around the wooden structure began to cave in, forming a massive funnel.
Gulp.
His jaw felt like it was going to snap, but he unhinged it even further. When he thought it was enough, he slowed down and crawled around the leviathan until his head met his tail.
'Wow! I am large and long!'
He looked up and saw the wood scaling high into the air. It had been buried deep in the ground, and he had cleared it in mere minutes. He managed to crawl out of the vortex, leaving the leviathan exposed in the sinkhole. He vomited the remaining sand from his mouth, praying the grains that reached his stomach wouldn't cause an ache.
The sun was still as persistent as ever. The shifting sand rose and fell in the distance with nothing else in sight. Looking at the true form of the leviathan, he was left in awe.
What sat in front of him was a large ship.
The vessel was a colossal, haunting skeleton of iron-wood, tilted at a violent angle as if it had fallen from the bruised sky and been swallowed by the sand centuries ago. Its hull was jet-black and salt-crusted, with massive timber beams curving upward like the charred ribs of a dead beast.
The pole Leo had coiled around was the main mast, a splintered pillar reaching toward the sun like a broken finger. Tattered remnants of sails, scorched to a ghostly grey, hung from the crossbeams and fluttered in the stagnant air.
'Wow.'
What scared and surprised Leo the most was the front of the ship. At the bow sat a massive, carved figurehead of a golden serpent, its jaws locked in a silent roar, a mirror image of Leo's own monstrous form.
A deadpan, tired gaze formed in his serpentine eyes.
'I don't remember signing up for this. Gods, this is way too much for a thirteen-year-old.'