"This feels like a great place to take a nap." Ho Young noted.

"Oh yes," Kinesis nodded in agreement, "quite relaxing."

"I could see myself napping here." Cadena said.

"I would love a nap!" Mir chirped from above the group.

"We are not napping here." Kyle said, somewhat irritated that he could not actually take a nap.

"Not with that attitude we're not." Ho Young chuckled.

"You would die if you napped here." Adele said, rather bluntly.

There was a pause.

"Wow," Ho Young said, "just kill the mood, why don't you?"

"I do not understand," Adele raised an eyebrow, "how does one 'kill' a mood?"

"'Killing the mood' is an expression," Illium politely explained, "it means…well…you did not read the conversation well."

"I see." Adele said, before pressing forward.

Cadena made a face, leaning over to Ark.

"She doesn't actually understand," Cadena said, "does she?"

"Ah h-ha…" Ark rubbed the back of his head. "I-I don't think so, no."

Cadena rolled her eyes.

Evan stopped in his tracks. He pulled a small scrap of parchment out of his robe and compared what was on it to the area around him.

"This is the place," he said, "we'll meet our contact with the Temple of Time here."

Mir circled lazily and landed a few feet from Evan, scrunching at the ground beneath him.

"Ugh," the dragon snorted, "I hate this sand."

"Because it's course, and rough, and gets everywhere?" Kinesis smirked.

"Because it's so itchy!" Mir scratched at one of his legs with the other. He spat a few times and turned out his tongue in disgust.

"It's actually quite pretty," Illium said as he knelt down and stroked a few meaningless patterns into the sand, "hard to believe this place is as dangerous as the reports made it out to be."

"Danger often disguises itself with beauty to draw people in," Adele said wistfully, "that is why we should take extra care here."

"Hmm…" Ark bit his lip, his Specter hand itching at him for no particular reason.

"So, Evan?" Kyle waved his hand for attention. "You're the one who got briefed on our little adventure, what exactly is it that we're doing here?"

"Well…" Evan thought on the words to use. "As you might already know, we're supposed to gather as much information as we can; anything the previous party might have…well…missed."

"That's a bit…" Ho Young thought for a moment. "Broad, I think is the word?"

"Where would we even start looking? Ark asked. "The lake and the shore both seem to go on for miles."

"Isn't a beach that goes on for miles just a desert?" Evan asked curiously.

"Technically a beach is separated from the rest of the landmass by a berm," Illium explained, "which is a raised shelf where the water—"

"Yeah yeah yeah," Cadena interrupted, "we get it. So, where do we start then? Because, I gotta tell ya': Neinheart might have tricked me into coming along, but if he just expects us to wander around a big desert…"

"O-oh!" Evan clapped his hands. "No need to worry about that, that's exactly why we're meeting up with the Temple of Time. They said they found something…interesting."

"Define 'interesting'?" Ho Young cocked an eyebrow.

"Well, many unusual objects have washed up on the shore of the Lake of Oblivion—"

"I can certainly see that…" Cadena said, tapping on a half-dissolved statue of an archer to make sure it was stable before leaning back against it to relax.

"—and Neinheart went ahead and contacted the priests of the Temple of Time and told them we'd be arriving," Evan continued explaining, "apparently they found…something…something they thought might be of interest to the Alliance."

"So we investigate this unusual object," Adele recounted, "and then what? What happens when we finish?

"Well, when we're done investigating whatever it is they want us to look at, we just report in to Neinheart. Simple! The priests just need to finish up their research—they shouldn't be any longer than a day or so—then we move down the cliff and check the next area, and so on."

"That sounds…fairly straightforward." Illium said, somewhat hesitantly.

"IT IS!" A new voice resounded from behind the statue Cadena was leaning on.

The sudden, quite loud shout caused most of the party to jump lightly—and for Cadena to lose her balance and fall flat on her face, letting out a noise as she did so. Much to her chagrin.

The group turned to find a younger-looking girl, part of her short blonde hair done up in a ponytail, wearing glasses and a smooth—if ill-fitting—blue robe.

"Hello!" The girl chirped. "You must be the group the Alliance sent over! My name's Jenna, I'm one of the temple acolytes doing research here in the Vanishing Journey."

"Uff…" Cadena huffed as she sat up. "Vanishing Journey? What kind of name is that?"

"You know," Jenna said as she tapped a finger against her cheek in thought, "I've never really thought about it. I first heard it was going to be called something like 'Vanishing Road' to match with the Road to the Past, but I guess there was a miscommunication or a mistranslation or—"

"N-never mind that." Evan motioned for the girl to stop. "We're with the Alliance, yes."

"Oh goody! You know, sometimes I wander around and then no one can find me for a little while and they have to keep searching and searching but I usually hang out in the same spots so—"

Jenna continued to talk and talk and talk. Ark glanced nervously at Cadena, ready to stop her in case she decided to throttle the poor girl. And to his credit, Cadena did briefly consider doing so.

Luckily, Adele intervened first.

"Did you have something for us?" The Flora woman interrupted.

"Oh!" Jenna said, as if she hadn't noticed she had been talking for several minutes. She dug into her robes. "Yes! Here it is!"

The girl produced a small hunk of black plastic. It had likely once been shiny, but had since worn away by dust or scratches or whatever else had happened to it.

"Is that…" Kyle took the object from the girl's hands and squinted at it. "A walkie-talkie?"

"I am not familiar with this device?" Adele studied the lump of plastic. "Is it special for some reason?"

"A hand-held radio receiver." Illium explained. "Suitable for short-range communication. It's interesting that it washed up, but I'm not sure why it's important enough to send us to—"

The device crackled to life, startling several members of the group a tad. The static buzzed and clicked and produced a multitude of other sounds which contrasted against the silence of the shoreline around them.

B-RR…KSSHH…WEH-ZZ

"…I stand corrected." Illium said. "It still works, that is interesting."

"We found it washed up in the river!" Jenna announced proudly. "It almost sounds like voices, right? Or maybe it's just static? How mysterious!"

"Mysterious." Cadena made a face. "Right."

The crackling of static slowly faded away until the white noise was no more.

"Well, whatever it is, it lost the signal." Ho Young said. "Where do you think it came from?"

"That's the other big mystery!" Jenna smiled (or maybe smirked, it was difficult to tell) and pointed out over the dunes of sand. "Take a look over that way."

And the group did so. It took a short while for the sights to settle in, but nestled in between the endless waves of dust, the wrecked ships and mushroom houses and barrels dotting the landscape, was…

"Is that…?" Cadena mumbled.

"A city." Kyle frowned. "Definitely a city."

"A whole city marooned in the middle of the Lake of Oblivion." Ark said. "Do we know where it's from?"

"I do." Kinesis sighed, only needing to take a brief glance at the skyline to confirm his suspicions. "That's a city from Earth. An entire city, from my world…"

"Your world, huh?" Ho Young hummed lightly. "Sounds like fun."

"According to the villagers," Jenna continued, "the flow of the river has been extremely weird around that area as well. We're not quite sure how, exactly, because our instruments don't really work in the water, and we've had to develop entirely new ways to measure the flow of Erdas while dealing with the fact that everything is made of Erdas and—"

"Flowing weird," Evan politely interrupted, "in a good way? Or flowing weird in a bad way?"

"When is 'flowing weirdly' ever a good thing?" Cadena quipped.

Jenna shrugged, either ignoring the comment or not realizing it had been made in the first place.

"Hard to say," she said, "but regardless, something is definitely happening in that city. Something spooky. Something mysterious."

Kinesis bit his lip, frowning.

"Well then," Kyle said, "I think we've found our next destination."

"The big, spooky, mysterious city in the middle of the desert." Ho Young smirked.

"Beats wandering in the desert, that's for sure." Cadena shrugged.

"What do you think we'll find?" Ark asked.

"I don't know," Kinesis said, "but we have to go."

"Why?" Cadena asked.

Kinesis didn't even give her a passing glance.

"Someone might need our help."