Chapter 1: Elph of the Desert

Chapter 1: Elph of the Desert

Erberen Desert,

Kingdom of Kashwin,

The First World

Elph of the Desert

The flesh of the shine lizards was deadly poisonous. Elph knew it with a bone-deep certainty that baffled him.

Shoving his feet into the muddy trickle of the stream and wriggling his toes in the warm water, he watched the nearest lizard curiously. Its entire body would fit in the palm of his hand, and its silver scales gleamed bright in the sun.

If I eat you, Ill die, Elph told the lizard.

It blinked at him.

Why do I know that?" He tilted his head from side to side. "Are you important?

He thought the lizard must be. After all, it was the first thing other than his own name he felt truly sure of.

Elph had woken fifteen sunrisings ago in the ruins of a house, in the ruins of a village, in the middle of this hot, dry landscape that was somehow familiar and not at the same time.

The house was little more than shattered mud bricks and broken reeds. Only a single wall was left standing intact. When he called for help, nobody answered.

A feeling in his stomach, like water sloshing in a pot, told him that this was wrong. Somebody should have answered him. The village was supposed to be full of people, wasnt it? Elph wasnt supposed to be alone, was he?

He couldnt remember.

Maybe it wasn't the empty village that was wrong. Maybe it was him. His voice was hoarse, as if hed been sick or screaming, and his clothes were stiff with dried blood that didn't seem to be his own.

Among the scattered bricks of the house, he found a doll made of straw that caused him to weep. He had plucked it gently from the ground and begun rearranging the straws of its skirt before he even thought to question his own actions.

As tears ran down his face, washing away some of the dust, he decided he must know the doll. Surely, someone wouldnt cry over a damaged toy they didnt even recognize.

You must be mine, Elph murmured to the doll. "What happened to us?"

She didn't answer.

Now, he wore her around his waist, strapped to a leather belt hed found amidst a pile of the scoured white stones that were arranged all over the village.

The stones made Elph more uncomfortable than anything else in the ruins. They made him stay away from the village, except at night, when the sounds of the desert began to feel dangerous.

What do you know about the stones in the village? Elph asked the shine lizard, watching its tail twitch.

They were old friends now, since this dirty rivulet of water was where he spent his days. But the lizard was no more talkative than the straw doll.

Since I cant eat you. Ill probably starve to death.

He had found food in many of the destroyed houses--clay pots full of grain, oil, dried fruit, and even sweet alcohol. But it would all run out eventually. Food didnt last forever, and he couldnt remember how the pots got filled with food in the first place.

You have to buy it, don't you? In the center of the village, there was supposed to be a place where you handed coins to a person, and then that person poured grain from a bag into your pot so you had food to eat.

Or maybe that was wrong. When Elph thought too hard about the people who must have lived in the village, his stomach sloshed. Once or twice, it even spilled over, and he vomited onto the sun-cracked earth.

So he didnt think anymore if he could help it.

Im sure Im not, he said, a little disturbed now as he pondered Lutchas words.

Not what?

Im sure Im not the weakest in the second world. One of them, perhaps. But Im not the weakest.

The pixie, sitting on the floor with her spindly legs crossed, paused in the act of sipping her tea. Well, she said after a moments thought, at the very least I shouldnt have been snide about it.

What? You mean I am the

The point for you to take away from all of this is that you should spend your time in study and magical contemplation, said the pixie, instead of gallivanting off to help your descendants every third minute. And you should buy better tea for my sake if not your own.

Its not a small matter Im helping them with. Theres a very real risk that theyll be wiped out.

Poor them, said Lutcha, without a trace of sympathy in her voice.

You just dont understand humans, said Megimon. We dont eat our own young if theyre born without power or skill.

Lutcha clucked her tongue. Thats why so few of you make something of yourselves. Anyway, if you want to waste your time playing savior, your little tracking bauble has been going off for a couple of days now.

What? said Megimon, looking around in confusion. To his shock, the space on the bookshelf where hed been keeping the Disc of the Sacred Fate was empty. Lutcha!

I threw it in the flycarp pond, said Lutcha. Nasty, noisy thing. I thought it would stop me from hearing that racket at all hours, but unfortunately, Im attuned to it now. Its ringing away. Must have found another dead child for you. How many is this now?

Nine hundred forty-three, said Megimon, standing up from the desk. If its been damaged, Ill rip off your wing and feed you feet first to a crocodile.

Lutcha's eyes, iridescent and faceted like an insect's, shone suddenly bright. "I would hold onto you," she said in a cold voice. "And I would drag you into the belly of the beast with me."

Megimon stared at her.

"Have fun finding lost souls and stuffing them into corpses!" the pixie said, her temper switching to chipper in an alarming instant. "Bring me back a present! I'd like a kitten. Or a goat."

"I brought you a kitten last time, and I never saw it again. So no."

#

A few minutes later, Megimon stepped out of a portal into the world of his birth. He stared up at the sun, blazing almost white in the sky overhead. He suddenly remembered, with an odd mix of pride and nostalgia, that this same sun had once been too bright to look at directly. Before he'd set out on his journey to greatness, he had only ever seen the lifegiving star out of the corner of his eye.

To stare directly at a power much greater than your own was to blind yourself. But now his eyes beheld it as easily as they did the chaotic waves of magic rising from the ground like a heat shimmer.

Strange, thought Megimon. Was there always a convergence on the outskirts of the Erberen?

He had never actually visited this part of the world, but he thought he should have read about a place of power like this during the course of his studies.

In his hands, the Disc of the Sacred Fate was ringing insistently.

"Fine, fine..." Megimon sighed. "Let's find the soul and get on with it."

In the distance, he saw the outline of a small settlement. That would be the most likely place. He shook the last few drops of pond water from the disc and shoved it into his flowing white robes before setting off. A spell speeded his steps.

Megimon was sure this job would be done quickly, and he'd be back to his cottage before the bowl of tea on his desk went cold. After all, that was how it had gone the other nine hundred and forty-two times he'd done it.

The family handled the more awkward and complicated parts of this nasty business. By now, Megimon's role in the process was more habit than hard work.

Of course...the other nine hundred and forty-two times the high sorcerer had come to this world to steal a soul, the owner of it had already died.