They journeyed along the edge of the plateau for another day, walking on the edge of the Exposed and Isolation. Eli was beginning to feel a little bit better. His body didn't hurt so much, and his desire to walk into the open plane of nothingness was a little less acute.

Neither of them spoke much, the sound of their feet crunching over the open plain the only sound in the near silence. Eli took this opportunity to take a better look at the map. He had only ever ventured this far west in the company of his father, and those memories were now nothing more than a distant past.

"Are we heading back to the tower before we go on?" Peter queried, interrupting Eli's examination before it could really begin. Eli kept the pages of the book open to the map, his satchel swinging heavily at his side. Inside, he could feel Wink's weight weighing the bag down, though his presence was familiar to the point that he hardly noticed it for more than a few seconds.

Eli shook his head, "No, no we will not be returning to the tower. Everything we could learn there, we have here. If there is any information to be gained, any piece of evidence that could lead us to answers, it is out there," he gestured widely to the world sprawled out before them.

Peter made a face, "I am not entirely sure if the evidence we found in Genua was worth asking the questions in the first place."

Eli nodded, he heartily agreed with that sentiment, "As true as that is, any information is good information, and if we hadn't gone there, we wouldn't have our next lead. Plus," he added quietly, "It will keep me away from the Desolate and perhaps give us more time."

If Peter was having any doubts about their course of action, that little comment seemed to spur him forward, and he nodded stolidly, adjusting his pack one more time over his shoulder, "Alright then, we keep going. Where to next? Where is this guy, Ivan?"

Eli reached into his bag and withdrew another book.

Peter walked over to look over Eli's shoulder.

"What's that?"

"This is an Atlas. It is a collection of maps of places both near and far away." He turned the page, "A few of these I have drawn myself, a few of them my mother drew, and some of them came from books." He flipped through the pages, and Peter's eyes widened as he did.

"Wow, all of those?"

Eli nodded, "Yes, all of these." He flipped to a page, "This is a rough map of the Desolate."

Peter frowned, "Why are there so many edges?"

Eli shrugged, "Because no matter how many times we have tried to map it, it always seems to change boundaries.. We aren't sure if that has something to do with loneliness muddling your mind or it grows and shifts depending on who is coming and going, but either way it has proven almost impossible to map." He turned the page, "This is the Exclusion's territory. It is relatively small, sandwiched here between the lost, Genua, and the Uncanny.

Eli turned the page again, opening a double wide map that detailed the whole territory from the sea to the mountain chain at the north. It was a map with a larger view though it was less detailed than the other smaller maps. All of the shapes and curves drawn onto the page were familiar: Desolate lay to the south, hugging the coastline for miles in all directions abutting the sea as an expanse of cracked gray earth. The edges of desolate were marked with light dotted lines. His mother had drawn this map, and had not wasted ink trying to define desolation's true borders, representing generally where they tended to fall. Genua was just to the north of desolate center hemmed in on the east by the Lost and on the west by the territory surrounding mirror lake. Northwest of that would be Kurshing city within the Bounds territory, which was hemmed in on three sides by Stalk, which took up the most northern reaches of the map. It occupied the place just north of Genua as well before sprawling into the upper north east where it sat above Twisted.

At that point, they had come full circle as the Uncanny sat just below that to the east and Affliction to the south east.

Peter looked over his shoulder as he examined the map, eyes scanning from one side to the other. It was likely he had never seen a complete map of the territory. As far as Eli knew this was the only one in existence, as he had only ever found bits and pieces in other volumes he had pursued.

Peter raised a hand, his mouth turned down in thought, "Eli, what Dread is over the Uncanny?"

Eli shook his head, "The Uncanny is not a major Dread, simply an indented location in the land where minor unease has settled. It is a rather nice spot to live if you don't mind the kind of side effects it might have on you.

Peter rubbed the back of his head, "Only the major fears have Acolytes but minor fears can also have locations?"

"That pretty much sums it up what is thought to be common knowledge but in the end it is just theory."

He turned the page again, passing over the Affliction, and then over a page dedicated to the Lost, though there was no map to go along with it. Mapping the Lost was impossible, so no one in his family had ever bothered to waste their time in trying. It was called the Lost for a reason. Compasses and maps didn't work in a place like that leaving the night sky as the only thing that could guide a traveler. Some scholars suggested that if the Lost ever became a major fear, then it would be able to change the sky just like the sky was kept the same over Genua, but that was only theory.

Eli wasn't sure he believed it but he didn't discount it either.

Everything he knew was based on his own observations, his parent's works and a few bits of information he had gleaned from books on the subject, which were sporadic at best.

There was a culture of censorship around the topic of the Dreads. No one really stopped them from writing about it, but it was highly discouraged and had proven deadly at times. There were some older manuscripts still in existence that broached the topic.

Then he turned to the next page, "This is where we are going."

Peter peered over his shoulder, "Is that a mountain?"

Eli tilted his head from one side to the other and shrugged his shoulders, "Sort of?"

"This one doesn't really look well mapped either."

"That's because it constantly changes. You can't map something that is never the same twice."

Peter took the book from him, "What am I even looking at?"

"That is Kurshing city."

"What Dread?"

Eli closed the book and slipped it back in his bag, "The Bind."

Peter shook his head, "I am not familiar."

Eli turned away from Genua city and began walking, "Think of it as the fear of being trapped or crushed, the two tend to go hand in hand. It also has a lot to do with being imprisoned or caged."

"That's a lot of stuff for one Dread to rule over."

"Not really, they are all related, and the culture of the city definitely sets up the perfect atmosphere for it."

"So being trapped is a physical fear right, which means that the Bind is a physical being?"

Eli nodded as the silence around them grew more suffocating, the Desolate slowly descending on them to silence their very thoughts.

"The city IS its physical form."

Peter stared at him, "What do you mean?"

Eli sighed and reached down into his bag, hand passing along Wink's slimy exterior before coming upon the volume he was looking for. He pulled the book from his satchel and opened it before him as he continued to walk.

"The entity sits upon the horizon, stretching into the sky like a towering monolith, and plunging into the ground like the roots of a great tree. Its body is black as stone and streaked with gray. Its skin is worn of stone and its flesh of earth. The many openings in its craggy skin are like hundreds of mouths screaming silently to the sky above, and when it moves it moves like the great thundering of a landslide. It's innards stink of the dirt and of the dark, and it pulses with a horrible life as it opens and closes its many orifices pressing and squeezing and clenching downwards upon the people who burrow like maggots through its bowels.

Those who dare to crawl within the depths of the creature will soon come to understand the meaning of being trapped, of being crushed, of being completely helpless to stone and dirt as it grinds around you in the darkness. And so it sits like a tumor upon the land, burrowing its tendrils deep into the veins of the world and living like a parasite upon it.

Many live within its depths never to see the sky above, and those who worship it are known as the Incarcerated, for they have given their freedom to the chains that bind them still.

They will never move free again.

And so is the desire of the Bind, to press and squeeze and clench until its grip upon the world is firm and unbreakable."

He snapped the book closed though Peter continued to stare at him with no small measure of disgust and concern upon his face. He didn't bother to ask more questions about Bind, and they walked in silence for many minutes before.

"Wait, Eli?"

He turned around to face Peter, and had to stop in surprise as Peter came forward and used a small line of rope to loop through and around Eli's belt. Once done he pulled back and did the same to himself before turning back to look at Eli with an expression of triumph on his face.

Eli looked down at the slack rope hanging between the two of them and sighed.

He supposed this is what he should have expected, and didn't bother to fight it.

If it would make Peter happy, then he supposed that was a good thing.

Besides, just because he expected to run off didn't mean that he wanted Peter to do the same.

The rope pulled taut between the two of them as they made their way out and into the Desolate.

The gray dirt lay still and cracked below their feet, and the clouds overhead rolled by faster than they should, bringing shadows pouring over the dark and lonely landscape, completely flat in all directions except for their own silhouettes against the horizon.

Eli was just beginning to enjoy the silence which Peter's voice broke through like a hammer shattering his peace.

"Eli?"

His voice was muffled as was the custom in Desolation.

He tried not to show his mild annoyance as he took another long, slow breath before answering, "Yes Peter.'

"What fear is Wink?"

Eli paused, and at his side Wink peered out from the inside of the bag. "The fear of being talked to death by annoying assistants," he growled, glowering back at Peter. Peter for his part just smiled and ignored him, waiting for Eli to speak.

When Eli didn't immediately answer his question he began postulations of his own over the constant sound of his creaking backpack.

"At first I thought he was the fear of being watched, you know because of that eye, though that didn't really strike me as right, and then I was thinking that maybe he is the fear of darkness or something because of his coloring, but I was reading in one of the books that claims that the fear of darkness is a major fears. Also,he has a physical form, so that got me thinking that he is probably a physical fear, right?"

Eli turned to look over his shoulder at Peter's smiling face and eventually slowed his pace so the two of them were walking side-by-side instead of in a line. "My tentative conclusion is that he is a combination of the fear of being watched, the fear of darkness, and the childhood fear of monsters under the bed."

Peter turned to look at Wink, "Interesting, does that mean that the other Dreads, the physical ones anyway, can communicate?"

Eli rolled his head up to the sky, patiently suffering the barrage of questions as they fell from Peter's mouth, most of which Eli couldn't answer, and those that he was able to answer only led to the sort of questions that he couldn't. At one point, Eli looked down only to find Wink looking up at him, holding a pocket knife in his gelatinous ooze and staring back at Peter pointedly as the young man continued to speak.

Eli glowered at Wink and shook his head, but the minor fear didn't seem perturbed, simply shrugging his ooze, dropping the knife back into the bag. Eli pressed his hand to his face slowly dragging his fingers down his skin.

"What?" Wink asked.

"I am not going to kill him." Eli muttered quietly from the corner of his mouth.

"And why not? This is the Desolate so no one will hear him scream, and there is plenty of dirt here to bury him under."

Peter had fallen behind as he continued oblivious to the conversation that was happening before him.

"But I don't have a shovel." Eli pointed out

Wink thought on the subject for a moment, "You DO have a spoon though."

"You want me to bury him using a spoon?"

"I never said it had to be a deep grave. A shallow one works just fine, and out here there isn't going to be anything to disturb him."

Eli simply rolled his eyes in amusement, and reached up to adjust his glasses as he turned his head towards the sky. The sun was slowly beginning to shrink towards the horizon, but he estimated they still had a few hours left.

He hoped they would be able to make it past Mirror Lake before the end of the day. If they were stuck near its edge before nightfall, he worried what might become of them when exposed to such a concentration of the Sheer.

Eli had seen Mirror Lake once when traveling with his father.

It had been a beautiful and surreal palace where the sky melted into the ground, and the world became one single expanse of sky. During the day it was difficult to navigate but at night it would be exceptionally dangerous.

Behind him Peter had gone quiet. Devoid of questions to ask, he reached into his satchel and withdrew a book to read while they walked. Eli didn't mind as it gave him time to think while Peter plodded along silently behind him. Sometimes Pete's pace grew rather slow and Eli had to tug a little on the rope to keep them going at a set pace, but it was better than the incessant chatting that he had come to expect from Peter.

It was, to his displeasure, that the sun began to set just as they were cresting over the horizon.

In the distance, the ground suddenly dropped off and the world ended, plunging into the sky, a hazy blue now mutating into orange and purple as the clouds streaked away from the sun.

Peter drew to a halt behind him, his mouth open in awe as they looked down at the sight below him.

"Where is...where is the ground?" He wondered, shaking his head in confusion as if he was simply just seeing a mirage.

Hallucinations were rather common out in the Desolate, but this was, not in fact, one of them.

Eli paused, allowing Peter to look upon the scene.

He didn't want to get any closer, knew that he shouldn't, but the view was just too enticing not to marvel at.

He followed Peter down a shallow incline where the gray dirt of Desolation slowly gave way to granular white salt packed hard under their feet. He cringed lightly as they approached the edge of Mirror Lake.

Overhead the sky mimicked a rainbow. The clouds glowed purple and orange against a golden sun which illuminated the sky behind it with hues of orange, pink and light blue until at the corners and in the distance it faded towards dark ink. And below it lay the lake, its surface unmoved by breeze or animal or insect. There were no ripples upon its surface, so the reflection it gave back to the sky was a perfect facsimile.

Eli and Peter stood at the edge and stared out at an infinite sky..

The sun warmed their skin as there was nothing to disturb the fabric of their clothes and hair but the movement of their own breath.

"What is this place?" Peter wondered aloud, kneeling down on the ground and touching his finger to the surface.

As soon as his finger made contact with the surface, a sudden ripple moved from the origin of his finger in a large open circle breaking the glass-like surface of the lake below and sending a wave of distortion through the sky.

"It's so warm," he remarked, pulling his finger back and shaking water from it's tip.

"This is Mirror Lake. It's not actually a lake, not deep enough. At its center, it's deepest part, it is only about thigh deep." Eli waved a hand out towards the scene before them as clouds rushed them from the horizon. "The land is heavily salted, and the packed ground does not allow the water to sink in properly. Rain storms bring new rain before the area can dry out, and so the water sits in a shallow puddle for miles and miles in all directions.

"Wow," Peter muttered, gently reaching his foot forward and placing it on the surface of the lake.

When he stepped forward, Eli saw Peter walking on the water's surface.

The effect was stunning.

"We should move back," Eli said nervously, noting the sun inching towards the horizon.

"Why is that?" Peter asked, taking another step out onto the surface of the lake. His eyes were wide and ripples spread out from his feet, breaking the perfect calm of the lake only to still again once. Peter grew still also.

"If tonight is clear, Peter, we will be in real danger from the effects of the Sheer."

Peter paused thoughtfully before looking up at the sky and back down at the ground. Eli could only imagine what Peter was thinking, but assumed a similar image was being recreated in his imagination at that moment. The infinite expanse of sky above them, numberless stars reaching into infinity, mirrored below their feet on the glassy surface of the unbounded shallow lake.

There would be no way to escape the Sheer, there would be no way to avert their eyes if they became entranced by the stars.

The very ground below their feet would become the galaxy above, and they would lose all sense of time and space.

Perhaps they would fall in and disappear forever.

Eli couldn't be sure.

There were countless tales of people disappearing on a starry night when out in small groups or on their own. His parents had instilled in him the ability to anchor himself to reality to avoid becoming overwhelmed, but with a night like this, he wasn't entirely sure he was going to be able to resist.

Peter nodded and stepped back from the water, kicking up little waves and ripples, "We can head back over the horizon and make camp there for the night. It might be best if we set up one of the tents to lessen the pull of the Sheer."

Eli nodded in agreement. It was a solid plan and precisely why they had brought the tent in the first place. He hadn't planned on running into anyone, so keeping a watch was pointless and having a fire would just require them to use up some of their valuable tinder on a night that wasn't noticeably cold.

It would be best if they stayed huddled in the tent for the night and waited till morning. A part of him wanted to travel into the evening to gain some ground, but it was always dangerous traveling at night when in the Sheer, and now that Mirror Lake was part of the equation, it was going to be damned impossible.

He knew many people who wouldn't cross Mirror Lake during the day, much less at night. Most people decided to take the long way around which generally added a week to their travel time. Mirror Lake could be crossed in only a few hours if you knew the proper way, though it was only done by experienced travelers like his father had been.

His plan was to take them across the shortest part of the lake, which could be crossed in two hours at a normal walking speed. The path took them through the shallowest part of the lake as well which made it even more convenient and bring them out of the Desolate quicker than any other route.

This lake marked that boundary, and on the other side they would face much different dangers.

So he followed Peter back over the horizon, and together they pitched up the small canvas tent.

It wasn't anything special, but it had three sides and enough room for the two of them to squeeze into with a blanket or two as long as they left their belongings on the outside..

Peter was busy spreading a thin blanket over the dusty gray ground as Eli was just sitting down to unlace his boots. He didn't like sleeping with boots on, though in many situations he found it necessary. But then, as he was looking up, something in the distance caught his eye.

It was growing dark behind them as the sun was close to setting, with the first stars suddenly appearing in the sky above. A few of them he knew to be planets rather than stars, but that was not his primary focus, because off in the distance, he saw another pinprick of light against the dying illumination of the sky.

And this pinprick was red like fire.

He reached into his bag and withdrew a battered bronze eyeglass, which he held up to his eye to peer through. His glasses made the operation more difficult than it might have been for someone without corrective eyewear, but years of practice gave him a crisp image of the distant firelight.

Behind him, Peter appeared from the inside of the tent and then paused as he saw the light as well.

He stood, and walked over to Eli's side.

"What do you see?"

It was dark enough that Eli was having trouble making out the figures. There were quite a few of them, maybe five or eight all together, and they marched in an open cluster over the cracked earth. They didn't seem interested in the darkening sky above, walking under the rising Sheer with near impunity as if they were not afraid of the strange phenomenon building above them.

That is what gave Eli his first clue.

And his blood became ice.

Inside his chest his heart began to speed up and beat erratically. Under his wool coat he began to sweat, and through the eyeglass he squinted as if that would change what he knew he had seen..

The figures were moving closer, giving no indication that they planned to stop, and as they got closer he was able to distinguish more and more details about the group. He saw their ragged clothing, their general lack of supplies and materials, the way they lurched over the open ground and, finally... he saw the light fall over the face of the figure leading at the front.

A face devoid of skin on one side which exposed a chalky jaw and glittering teeth through a space where a cheek had once been.

Peter heard them the same moment Eli saw them.

"No"

"Peter, run.

"But what about-"

"Grab whatever you can carry and RUN!"