//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: An Empty Place 
// by Aethraspex 
//------------------------------//

At last, some small refuge from the blistering sun and the endless red dust. Daring Do removed her pith helmet and fanned herself with it, rejoicing as the cool breeze sucked the moisture off her sweaty face.

As the sun sank towards the horizon, the sky was turning orange and the shadows were becoming longer. It would not be long before she had to light her torches and compete not with sun and heat, but with cold and dark. She hoped to explore the ruins more thoroughly before that happened and she had to return to camp.

For the moment, Daring leaned against the low wall, trying to curl her hooves away from the light. She was in a trench, running along a plain of square cut stones.

She had flown up here the previous day and pitched her tent on the cliff. Behind her then was the flat cut surface, before her was the red dunes that stretched all the way to the setting sun. She had spent the rest of that day circumnavigating the plateau, and had felt exposed at every step or wingbeat. The horizon was visible on every side and the ruins had no standing structures, only trenches and holes. Even then, these were few and far between.

Having cooled off, Daring began to follow the trench towards the centre of the ruins. It was the third of these paths she had traced since morning. The first seemingly led nowhere and the second had crumbled before it took her anywhere of note. Daring had little hope for this new route; this mysterious place had yielded nothing but sweltering heat and emptiness.

Through silence she followed the path, every step leaving a small mark in the dust gathered on the trench’s floor. Gradually, the walls grew higher, until Daring felt herself in a miniature canyon, and the still air acquired a shadowy chill.

Many corners later she came to a hole and, lighting a torch, floated down into it.

Daring descended through a little column of light, accompanied by a cloud of disturbed sand. The chamber beneath was far larger than anything she’d expected or encountered before. Her wings bore her in a spiral towards the floor, gliding through seemingly endless air until she touched down on a mound of sand.

Patiently, Daring let her eyes adjust to the darkness. The torch she held in her teeth burned with a reddish glow. She could feel its heat on her cheeks and smell the acrid smoke rising from its tip. The pool of light it cast showed little but more of the sandy slope in every direction. Looking up, Daring could see the hole she entered by shining like a star directly above the hill’s peak.

She began to slide down the hill, sending little streams of sand tumbling chaotically like little excitable foals playing games with gravity. It was a long while before she saw the wall, and it made her wonder whether this place filled up the entire plateau. She skidded to a halt at the bottom of the hill and looked up at the chamber’s border.

Covering the wall, every inch, was unfamiliar writing. It was not ordered or neat, but written at various angles, different sizes and occasionally over the top of itself. It looked more like graffiti than anything formal or official, and yet all the characters were consistent, as if written by the same being. More baffling still was that the words were carved into the rock, something that required a lot of time and effort.

The sand continued to slope down to her left. Daring followed it downwards, eventually discovering some bare ground. She was relieved when she placed her hooves on it, as the sand was always slipping out from under her. But soon she found herself stepping even more lightly, for the torch revealed even more inscriptions, just like those crowding the wall.

Daring’s next move was to trace the edge of the sand mountain along the floor. It was chilly down there, and the air held a kind of empty odourlessness that made her grateful of the life afforded by her light source. While the sand pile slowly curved through that gargantuan space, Daring only saw more of the chaotic, unknown glyphs.

When Daring felt like she had been exploring for over an hour, she finally spotted an inconsistency in the flat darkness she had grown accustomed to. At the edge of her torchlight was a jumble of square shadows, which, upon closer inspection, was revealed to be some kind of door. It was set in the floor, leading to ever darker depths, and had been left somewhat open by whatever creature had inhabited this place unknown eons ago.

Daring realised she could squeeze herself through the opening and, after considering the risks, did so. She landed relatively quickly on a hard stone floor. The striking of her hooves reverberated rapidly through the tight space. Again, Daring discovered the same writing that saturated every other surface she had seen, but this room had more than simple walls and floor. Surrounding her, harbouring shadows and secrets, were shelves. They were crowded in close together and hewn from the same yellowish rock as everything else in the ruin, leaving only a small corridor to navigate between them. Lying in neat rows along the shelves were thousands upon thousands of books.

Daring approached one of the books with trepidation. Every volume had identical dimension and they were made of the same papery substance, but their contents could vary wildly from one book to another. With a hoof, Daring reached out a touched one, only to reel back n shock as it disintegrated into dust. Even more carefully than ever, Daring trotted down the corridor.

That was where she made her final discovery. At the end of the corridor was a block. Unlike everywhere else, this stone had regular squares of text engraved on it. Shockingly, every square used different characters, some of which she recognised. They appeared to all say the same thing, a story from a long forgotten writer. Daring took out her notepad and copied the script she was most familiar with, then turned and flew back to her camp to translate it.
This is what it said:

I am the last of my race, and shall forever be. We once lived in a lush, fruitful place, but now it has all turned to dry sand. I leave behind a record of my life, for I have at last devised the method of my escape. Tomorrow I will leave this place, but by what route, I know not. Whoever discovers my words, I ask a question. It has followed me through the years and haunts me still. Would you rather die or be alone?