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I've gone too far. Once again, I've forgotten how to stop. Gods damn my incessant need for answers.

Azin and Onar turn their gryph and come back.

"I'm fine," I call, smiling and waving to show them I'm unhurt. "Completely my fault."

"Please. Careful," Onar replies, the words uncertain and thick with his throaty accent.

"Oh, shit," Jackson says. "You can speak our language too?"

Onar makes a gesture with his hand, as though he's trying to show us a grain of sand on his palm. He points to his ear and smiles. "I listen. Learn. Now, speak."

"Wow," says Jackson. "He's a freakin' genius."

"We are close," Onar says, pointing off to the distance. "Go."

With an amused grin, Azin shouts a cheerful comment before marching their gryph forward, the unmistakable tone of good-natured mockery in his voice. Even without understanding his words, I can tell he's ribbing us about our little 'accident.' I get up and dust myself off, and when I reach to pull myself back up onto the gryph, Jackson snaps the reins and takes off without me.

"Yes, I suppose I deserve that," I say, mostly to myself. "Not a problem, I'll walk."

The terrain becomes a mixture of crumbling rock and dried mud, with wide, snake-like channels carved into the earth where water once flowed. We come over a low rise and stop at its edge. Below is a wide and shallow valley, where the scattered remains of what may have once been a lush oasis cling to parched soilcracked into a thousand puzzle pieces beneath the relentless desert sun.

Many years ago, I studied how to open my senses to the energy of a place from a set of ancient manuscripts gathered by Gnosis priests from a forgotten sanctuary deep in the Arganon mountain range. I was never very good at it. But now, even with just my middling comprehension of that knowledge, I can sense something profoundly wrong about the valley before us. It's stagnant, like bad air trapped inside burning lungs.

Onar and Azin dismount, and Jackson follows their lead. I kick a pebble out from my sandal and drop to a crouch, clutching my staff for support.

"There certainly is something here," I say.

Jackson stands beside me and surveys the area. "Negative sighting. What am I supposed to be looking for?"

"I don't know."

Azin transfers a portion of water from the big pouch hanging around his gryph's neck to a smaller bladder that he tucks into his sash, and then starts his way down the steep rocky slope to the valley floor.

"We go," Onar says to us, gesturing. "Careful. Slow."

Both of them are now deathly serious. At first, it feels as though we're tracking a prize or game, moving carefully in order not to be detected. But then, I see the look on Azin's face is not the excited confidence of a hunter tracking prey. No, we're trying to avoid becoming the hunted.

It's impossible not to disturb the loose rocks and sand, and little streams clatter down the slope and make little puffs of dust as they reach the floor. Azin and Onar pause to listen and watch. Jackson crouches low, and he moves his head back and forth in constant alertness. And when the two move again, he immediately follows, holding a perfect distance from them. I'm seeing Jackson the soldier again, and am reminded that the definition of a soldier in the realm he comes from is nothing like any of the common undisciplined, inelegant foot soldiers I've met in my travels through Circeana. And he's an omega. Pregnant.

How can I not react as an alpha and a warrior? It's alluring. I can't deny it.

We come to the edge of the valley floor. Lying amongst the desiccated remains of the thorny plants stretching out from cracks in the sand are bleached white bones—the skeletons of animals.

"Jesus," Jackson whispers. "This place is a graveyard."

"They search for water," Onar explains quietly.

"Then they all died of thirst," Jackson mutters.

"Not all," he replies darkly.

I'm curious to know what knowledge the debris might share with me, and take a step forward to inspect the bones. Azin grabs my arm and pulls me back.

"No!" Onar says. "Do not cross."

I then realize that there is a clear boundary where the bright sand ends and the scattered bone field begins, and I feel like a fool for not noticing it.

"We not go further. Here is safe. Shimat far away. You look." He gestures to his eye, then points out to the distance.