The first rays of the morning sun cast themselves upon a lone ant marching dutifully up a sand dune. The ant stopped, its antennae feeling the silky contours of a droplet of morning dew. It laboriously worked its small frame under the drop, slowly lifting it off the ground. It started to turn back towards the colony, the dew drop gesticulating back and forth on its back. It felt it churning legs steadily sinking into the sand beneath its body. It tried to frantically climb out of the steadily sinking depression of sand, but it was too late. Two mandibles burst out from the sand underneath its body and in one deft move cut the ant in half.

The desert scorpion began to consume the ant’s carcass with vigor. It had hardly started its meal when a large leather boot crushed into the sand. More boots followed and landed on the dune as arrows were thrust into the sand and bows were strung. A gruff voice pierced the still morning air “Brace yourselves they will be coming out of the canyon soon.”

The canyon below was dark where the battalion marched, shaded by the high walls of rock to its sides. The clear sky over head was already a light indigo but the air was cold and still, damp with the little moisture that had accumulated during the night.

The soldiers marched steadily, but wearily after a night’s trek. Their armor clinked together lightly as they marched, and their footsteps sounded heavy from the thick heels of their boots. The clopping of the horse hooves and the creaking of the wagons intermingled with the heavy steps of the soldiers along with the occasional snort of an irritated horse.

The Starpian Minister of State had to concentrate to keep his head from drooping in fatigue. His expensive ambassadorial robes shimmered with a crimson fire and hung heavily on him, but did little to insulate his body from the cold. Only lines of vanishing silver hair protected his scalp from the insinuating desert cold.

The Battalion Commander next to him, a captain under the command of General Verco, seemed unaffected by the tiresome journey. The Minister wondered whether that may have been a result of long years of life as a soldier. The accumulated experience of long marches, bad food, sleeping outdoors, and the clash of battle seemed to exude from the Captain, his eyes alert and ready.

The Minister tried to concentrate on the problems he would face colonizing the new territories, but the more he tried to concentrate, the heavier his eye lids became. The Minister’s eyes would slowly close for five seconds and then snap open with a start. Each time it happened he completely lost his train of thought. He was tempted to ask the Captain for some rest but then he reminded himself that they would not make camp until they reached the oasis of Onir, which they would have to reach before the afternoon sun. It was only another couple of hours, the Minister tried to reassure himself as he unfastened the flask and put it to his lips. The enjoyed the soothing rush of water, it even seemed to revitalize him a little.

The Captain noticed the Minister “Not a bad idea” he said as he unfastened his own flask. He tipped the flask back and he swallowed a long gulp of cool water. As he continued to drink, an arrow that struck him in the throat. Red blood diluted in water came spurting out of his mouth. His flask fell to the ground followed shortly by the captain’s limp body. A hail of arrows followed the lead one, whistling in unison as they came in, stripping commanding officers off their horses and dropping soldiers to the ground. The small tips of the arrows easily punched through armor, helmets, and flesh.

A junior officer was trying to round up the surviving soldiers amid all the chaos. Nearly half the battalion was either dead or dying, their screams piercing the early morning air. The remaining soldiers had managed to form a haphazard circle around the wagons, raising their shields to protect themselves. The rain of arrows started to sporadically subside as the soldiers formed an effective wall of protection.

The officer was relieved that he had been given this interlude, and he tried to formulate a battle plan in his mind but then he heard a familiar sound. It was similar to the sound of thunder before a rainstorm, like a low continuous rumble from some gigantic drum. The noise increased in intensity before the officer came to a horrible realization. He ran frantically across the canyon, trying to organize the bewildered men into lines “Get your shields up! Brace yourselves!” He barely finished his sentence before they were upon them.

The heavily armored Calvary hit the first line of men, flinging them backwards as if they had been hit by an explosion. The Calvary then waded into the rest of the lines lancing, slicing, and trampling men before them. Heads flew from their bodies, men twirled, some impaled by the cavaliers lance. Others fell under the trampling hooves of the horses, crushed into the dust. Blood sprayed into the air, staining the white coats of the horses red as they charged through it. The officer, witnessing all of this, drew his short sword, roared and charged, attempting to stab one of the lead riders, but the lead riders met him first. The rider’s horse rammed into the officer, sending him flying backwards. His helmeted head struck hard against one of the wagon wheels and everything went black.

A blinding light invaded the young officer’s eyes. His vision was slightly blurred and the heat from the sand seemed to burn into the very core of his body. He arose slowly, fighting an overwhelming wave of disorientation. The heat had drained most of the vitality from his body, and the unforgiving sun had turned his skin a bright shade of crimson. Pulsing waves of agony passed through his head, throbbing in tune with the beating of his heart. He put a hand up to his head trying to steady his spinning vision, and when it came into focus, he let out a startled gasp.

The broken bodies of his fellow men lay strewn across the shifting desert dunes, their prostrate forms slowly being covered over by the relentless sand. He stood there for a minute trying to comprehend the true gravity of the scene before him, when a voice inside him whispered “The Minister”. His eyes widened with a shocked expression as he remembered the Minister, and he began to scramble up the dune with frantic energy.

He hurdled over the still forms of his men, running for the wagons, the last place he had seen the Minister alive. The Officer began to look anxiously around the wagons, turning over sand covered bodies, and glancing in the back of the wagons. He was about to begin searching outside of the wagons, when a bright flash of crimson caught his eye. It shined from a dune in the center of the four wagons. The officer scrambled over to the dune and began to urgently dig through it until he uncovered the mute form of the minister.

The Minister looked up at the officer with the glazed eyes of a dead man, and the officer noticed a wicked black feathered arrow was sticking out of the minister’s chest. It had been an expert shot, hitting the minister directly in the heart, killing him instantly. What was more interesting though, was the arrow itself.

The arrow was like nothing the officer had ever seen. It had huge black feathers at its end and it looked as though the shaft were made of some kind of metal. The officer bent down over the minister attempting to remove the arrow. It felt as though his hand was around the serrated blade of a knife. He withdrew his hand as if he had been burned and noticed that blood was dripping freely from hundred of minuscule cuts in his palm and fingers It dripped off of his wrist and hit the sand below his feet making small indentations. Holding his hand, he looked closer at the shaft of the arrow and gaped at what he saw. The shaft had been intricately worked on, the thousands of little serrated edges traveling up and down the shaft of the arrow in shifting patterns. Who ever had designed this arrow was a master of both engineering and warfare. It was the most clever and deadly weapon the officer had seen anywhere on the battlefield.

The officer began to contemplate the origins of the arrow, when his eyes fell upon a fallen soldier lying a few feet away. This soldier was dressed differently that that of the Starpian Battalion, his battle dress deep blue in color, a sharp contrast to the bright crimson colors of the Starpian army. The officer went over and bent down brushing the sand off of the soldier's prone body. He was perplexed when he uncovered the Alsalsca Dalphan sun emblazoned on the weathered breastplate of the fallen soldier.

The navy blue garments and the symbol of the desert sun were the standard battle dress for members of the Alsalsca Dalphan army. He remembered that the archers and the cavalry that had ambushed them, had been dressed in the same colors. He looked up from the soldier and saw similar blue forms littered sporadically amongst the bodies of his own men.

The officer kneeled next to the dead soldier, as if he could relinquish answers from the deceased. This had definitely been an ambush by the Alsalsca Dalphan army, but it didnt make any sense. The Alalsca Dalphans, up to this point, had been Starpia's closest ally. Together they had turned the tide of the war in the South, pushing the barbarian hordes back into the mountains. They were just starting to enjoy the fragile peace that had followed on the tailings of the recent war. Why would Asalsca Dalpha commit an obvious act of war out here in the deep desert?

The officer contemplated this and then noticed that the desert sand was slowly being blown in to small dunes around his boots. He realized that it did no good to sit out in the deep desert puzzling the extrenuating circumstances of the attack. He had to return to the Starpian capital, Pharsuus and inform his superiors before any other terrible events like this occurred.

He stood up and began rapidly searching his surroundings for anything that might help him in his hasty return. There were no horses around anywhere, they were all either dead or carried off by the Alsalsca Dalphans. The wagons too, had been stripped of all their provisions and items. The officer then resorted to the grim task of searching his fallen comrades for items of need.

Within the hour he had a few flasks of water and some meager slices of bread. One of the soldiers had concealed a bottle of blue wine in his armor and now the officer guzzled it down readily, knowing that it would probably do more harm than good. There were no weapons around except for a couple daggers that the raiding had not scavenged and he holstered one on his left leg and the other around his right ankle, not knowing what he would run into out in the desert.

It was late afternoon when he climbed out of the small valley and into the open desert. In the distance, the small, pale outline of the Delantian range dominated the horizon. This was his goal, for he was not sure what his reception would be if he headed to the oasis. The oasis of Onir was a very lightly populated spot, but if there was Alsalsca Dalphan activity in this area, it would probably be crawling with their soldiers, possibly the same party that hit him.

He walked for hours, but the mountains never seemed to be getting closer. He looked around him constantly for signs of hostile movement. The sun was falling in the East and the sky was changing to an indigo in the West. Finally darkness enclosed the entire plain and the stars revealed themselves in a brilliance he had not seen anywhere else.

The officer stopped and looked up at them, feeling the immensity of the space around him, the greatness of the universe that felt so close to him, almost frightening in its breadth. The thoughts that had consumed his active and weary mind all day faded to emptiness, and the enormity of what had happened finally hit him. He was not running anymore and now he was alone. Falling to his knees, he began to sob.

His entire battalion was dead, all his comrades, friends, neighbors, and men he had fought in campaigns with, all gone. He was filled with a hollow and empty feeling, as if the entire universe had abandoned him on this strip of desert. Would he ever reach the mountains, and if he did, would he survive to get back home? So pointless it all was, why go on, just to die?

Just then, a phrase his father had told him went through his head. The most hopeless battle is the one that is most important. He shook himself off, the blood flowing through his sore arms and legs again and he drank a sip of water, the cool liquid soothing his cracked throat. With a deep breath he started his journey again at a steady pace. He knew he could cover the most ground at night before sun-up. The stars and the two moons on the horizon provided plenty of light to see by. The mountains were now black outlines on the ultramarine horizon.

It was now midday and the Starpian officer had been walking for an entire day. The mountains were invisible through the rising clouds of dust on the ground. Wind buffeted the man and he struggled through it weakly. His lips were parched and even his soul felt dry. His breaths were horse as he faltered into the wind, protecting his face with a scrap of his cloak. This wind was hot, like the breath of a dragon. As the worst seemed to be closing in, a cloud of sand struck him and he was in the middle of a rising sandstorm. He fell backwards, letting his cloak go and clinching his eyes to shut out the stinging grains of sand that were hitting his face. He crawled onward, but he was depleted. The sand almost felt comforting as it closed in on him and he moved no more.