Eli woke next to a gentle breeze and the distant tang of salt upon the air. The sky overhead was flat and gray like slate rock, and the only sound he could hear was the lonely moaning of the wind passing over his face.

When he became aware of his body, he found himself sore and uncomfortable but wrapped tightly in a thick scratchy blanket. Under his body he felt the dull ache of uneven ground and the occasional pebble pressing into his skin. The sky overhead stretched into infinite grayness blue and hazy against a sky that was never clear.

He sat up slowly, his body aching dully, his teeth feeling loose and his head foggy with confusion.

Rocks shifted off to the side, and he looked over to see Peter kneeling next to him on the gravel.

"How are you feeling?"

Eli rubbed his head, "A little better.... How....did we get here?"

"I met some people out in the Lost. They had a wagon, and I traded some of my knowledge on medicine for a ride. They dropped us off here, and then I carried you some of the way. "

"And our pursuers?" He watched Peter's face carefully, examining the lines of his face as they stretched and contracted.

When Peter spoke the corners of his mouth pulled tight, and the worry in his wide blue eyes was as readable as fine print ink on Lilly white paper, "The caravan saved us. If it hadn't been for them they probably would have caught us."

"Strange that they would pursue us so readily." He continued to watch Peter out of the corner of his eye, carefully gaging his reactions, though his lacking familiarity with Peter was somewhat of a hindrance, and his mind was far too muddled to try and piece together anything more substantial.

Instead he turned the conversation back to an earlier point, which had not escaped his notice, "You carried me?" A gust of wind blew at them from desolation, tugging at the collar of his shirt, carrying with it scents he could only associate with isolation and loneliness, the calling cards of his childhood.

"Just a little, enough to get us off the track." Peter said, pausing to glance back over his shoulder, attention straying as if it had been blown away on that gust of wind, like a piece of loose paper "Those people are... strange, who are they?"

Eli sat up a little straighter rubbing at his eyes. His brain felt loose, like there wasn't enough fluid inside his skull, "There are plenty of people that wander the Lost, they like it that way, but being lost for one's entire life has.... Strange side effects, it does things to your sense of time and space. Imagine waking up every day and seeing the same thing you've seen for years on end. You walk and walk but still every day it's as if you wake up in the same place. Nothing changes, not even the stars. You cannot know where you have been or where you are going because even when you walk it seems as if you are going nowhere."

Peter shrunk back a little, "Ok...ok..."

Eli rubbed the back of his neck reading Peter's face and realizing that the thought was rather a morbid one, "Sorry, I... it's the reading that does it. If it makes you feel better, I had assumed we might meet them on our way here."

Peter tilted his head surprised, "You did?"

"Yes, The wandering ones often follow a westerly path towards Genua in order to trade the baskets they have weaved from the grass of the plains. This is about that time of year."

Peter turned his head to look back at the long, waving grass of the lost.

"So you knew we would find someone willing to give us a ride."

Eli smiled a thin smile, his lips pressed together in the mockery of amusement, "Run into them no, give us a lift? Hardly. I am impressed you managed to speak with them at all."

Conversation finished, Eli Slowly he crawled to \his feet holding the rough blanket around his shoulders as his body continued to ache, wind whipping at the fabric.

He glanced down and saw an eye glowering at him from inside his bag which lay cradled in the stones.

"Good morning, wink."

The strange creature only blinked back at him morosely: Wink wasn't fond of mornings, either that or he simply used it as an excuse to exercise his skills in being morose, which seemed more likely to Eli

Eli turned in a tight circle surveying the ground before him. Back behind them, all he could see was the stretching expanse of grassland and pale blue sky leading on into the lost, and when he turned his head in the other direction, he saw only miles and miles of gray rock and cracked dirt passing into the distance under a gray, overcast sky. The wind that blew from that vast wasteland was cold and empty.

Familiar.

The wasteland of his childhood. As his eyes scanned over the vast gray waste, he was caught in a sudden, familiar and inexplicable pull, which had become so familiar to him over the past months. It began in his chest, a deep longing ache that was similar to homesickness, which soon blossomed into a ravenous hunger, and then a craving, which slowly unfurled itself, like the wings of a great beast until it stopped at its final form.

Need.

Ravenous need, like a starving man after food, or the first breath of air after being underwater for so many minutes. The feeling was so powerful that he felt as if he would fall over, dizzy and disoriented.

"What is this place?" Peter wondered, walking over to stand next to him.

Eli blinked back the feeling grounded by Peter's presence. His hands gripped tightly around the strap of his bag, knuckles white against the fabric.

From inside, Wink reached up a tendril to steady him.

The wind tugged gently at the folds of Peter's borrowed white shirt. His shoulders were slightly Wider than Eli's so the borrowed shirt was an ill fit, though that was mostly noticeable against the rippling of cloth around his chest and shoulders.

Eli nodded towards the landscape, "Welcome to the Desolate."

Peter blink shrinking back from the wide open space, daunting in its never ending expanse.

"And Exclusion lives here?" Peter Wondered, "What does it look like?"

Eli gleaned over to Peter and then shook his head slightly, "Exclusion doesn't work like that." and when he spoke, his voice was soft.

Peter leaned in as if drawn by the lowering of his voice.

"What do you mean?"

"Exclusion does not have a physical form." He gestured around, "Exclusion can be felt anywhere in the world." He glanced over at Peter, "Surely you know something about that."

Peter went quiet but nodded, looking down at the rocks as a guilty child might after a scolding.

Eli leaned back on his rock and stared out across the barren gray landscape, listening to the sound of the wind brushing like fingertips across the lonely and desolate places his fingers dug into the rock's porous surface, afraid if he let go he would come unanchored, "We should get moving, you don't.... You don't want to be stuck in desolation when it grows dark."

Peter nodded, taking to his feet with the easy grace of someone with the required energy, and he looked down at Eli expectantly who, despite his pronouncement, had not moved from the rock. Instead, the fingers of his left hand gripped the stone, cutting his fingernails ragged against the rough surface keeping him tethered to, what felt like his only lifeline.

"Eli are, you ok." Peter wondered, turning to sit next to him.

He reached up a hand as if worried that Eli's fever had returned, but Eli pulled away.

"I.... I'm alright."

Before him, the desolate seemed to expand in his vision, threatening to envelop him on all sides.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

"Eli?"
Peter's voice seemed distant, but Eli stood steeling himself against the effects he knew where to come. For a moment he didn't speak, he wondered at first if it was shame that held his tongue in place, tied to the roof of his mouth like a recumbent prisoner held with chains, but no, no it was not the shame.

"Keep a hold of me Peter, for I fear I might not make this journey if I am not tethered to something physical."

Peter tilted his head, wide blue eyes glittering with the simple guileless confusion of a child, or of a man who had seen too little of the real world, "What do you mean."

Eli forced himself to look up at the waiting expanse. He was not afraid of what he might see there, but he was afraid of how much comfort and familiarity he would find in the site.

The words spilled from his mouth as water spills from the sky on a rainy day, so smooth it was of no doubt that he had read the passage a million times. He could see it now in his mind's eye, penned by his father's scrawled hand inside the pages of his journal. Eli rested his hand on the satchel where the journal lay but did not need to pull it out to read the words that were written there.

Exclusion rules the land far to the south by the sea, and where it lays it rests like a bank of fog to obscure the mind and enslave the soul. The earth there is cracked and gray, and the sky overhead is awash with clouds of the same color. A soft wind blows perpetually over the planes. Exclusion is a deceptive creature, one that created the desolate to cater to man's fear of isolation, for to step onto that cracked earth is to understand the truth of being alone. The world falls away as memories fail you first, happiness drained from thoughts of loved ones who are soon forgotten, followed by their faces, and their names, until your mind is left with nothing but your own thoughts. Soon even your own company will be taken, faded away as your own identity bleeds into the gray. You will leave no footprints, you will make no sound, and the very memory of you will be wiped as miles and miles of gray cracked earth turn you into a creature utterly alone.

Peter stared at him, and Eli plucked the glasses from his face, wiping the crystal lenses with the edge of the shirt before donning them again.

"I...."

Eli sighed, "I have lived in Desolation for all of my life. I have walked through that expanse and back again a thousand times, and every time I do it calls to me." He turned his eyes towards the gray vastness, could see the color of his own eyes reflected back to him. He wondered idly if his eyes had always been gray, or if the desolate had simply seeped into his soul. He lifted his head to look at Peter, and spoke words which he had never seen himself speaking to anyone, not because he was ashamed of them, but simply because he had no one to speak to, "Every time I set foot here, the more statistically likely I will be consumed by it." The wind tugged sharply at his hair as Peter looked down at him, an expression of worry in his bright blue eyes.

Eli raised his Chin and cleared his throat, "By my estimates, I do not expect to last longer than a year at the most. My time is coming, and soon...soon I will walk into the desolate and become an acolyte of Exclusion, despite my best efforts, either that or I will be utterly consumed and vanish forever. Either way I am as good as dead if I do not find some alternative, some....cure before the next few months are up."

He tried to ignore Peter's open mouthed stare.

"Perhaps with you here, I might last longer." He said quietly, more to himself than to Peter.

Peter went to open his mouth, likely to say something encouraging but empty, and Eli lifted a hand to stop him, "We should go, we do not want to be here when night falls. Peter closed his mouth, lips pressed tight together nodding once before helping Eli to his feet.

At first, the effects of the Desolate were hardly noticeable, only the moaning of a soft and empty wind across plains of rock, but the further they went, the quieter it grew until it seemed as if he had lost his hearing altogether. His own footsteps were muffled, and he couldn't hear Peter walking beside him. It was Only when Eli looked over and actually saw Peter trudging across the open plain was he able to convince himself he was not alone.

Peter seemed to be experiencing the same thing, and Eli could see the quiet desperation in the young man's eyes, as if he was afraid to look away, afraid that Eli might vanish leaving him alone, a fear that was not unfounded.. The farther they traveled the greater the effect until he could no longer detect the crack of his own footsteps despite how they should have echoed over the rock.

Eli closed his eyes, unable to help himself from drawing the slow, deep, deep breath that filled his lungs with the air of the desolate. Filled with quiet, and calm, and forgetfulness, enveloping him in pure warm arms, like the embrace of a long lost lover. He closed his eyes, relishing the sensation of being alone.

Something grabbed his arm, and Eli nearly jerked away in panic, forgetting Peter was there for a moment until he turned to see him, gripping on to Eli's arm, with eyes wide and a face filled with panic.

Eli felt a sudden flash of anger brought on by the interruption, but forced himself to choke it down and swallow hard as he met Peter's deep blue gaze.

All around them there was nothing but gray stone and sky.

Eli forgot how disconcerting the Desolate could be to those who had not grown up in it, It was normal to feel alone when you were, in fact, alone, and Eli was used to being alone

Peter gripped his arm tighter.

"Eli?" Peter's voice was normal, or it seemed as if it was, though Eli had a hard time making out Peter's words somehow. The sensation gave him the impression of being separated from Peter by a thick pane of glass.

"Yes Peter." Even his own voice was somewhat faint, making it difficult to completely connect with his own body, as if he was simply an observer controlling a sack of meat from the outside.

"Talk, please..." Peter's voice was pleading, practically begging.

Eli was tired, but he gave in to the desperate request. He did his best to remain calm and neutral so to sooth the younger man's worries, make the world seem less daunting, less desolate, "You're going to have to give me a topic. I think you will find I am not particularly imaginative."

Peter struggled for a few moments as if he was having trouble thinking.

"How do you know so much about the Dreads?"

"Research, I thought that was obvious."

Peter was holding him by the elbow now, and despite Eli's mild discomfort at being this close to another human being, he grudgingly allowed it.

His voice sounded hollow when he spoke, and instead of an echo, his words fell flat upon the ground like snow falling from the branches of a tree on a winter's night.

"I meant.... Why? Why study them?"

Eli lifted his head to the vast and tiresome sky, "The Dreads constitute our world Peter, if we begin to understand them we begin to understand ourselves: where we came from, what our purpose is, and how to make things better." Glancing out the corner of his eyes he could see his words had not satisfied Peter, either because it was vague and impersonal or because it wasn't nearly enough of a speech to fill the silence. He had to think for a long moment. He sighed, "My father was an academic, an information broker who knew more about the Dreads than any other man I had ever known." He paused, "He knew more of everything than any man I have ever known. He traveled extensively, adding to his library, and the foundations of his knowledge on the Dreads. He thought that if he could just gather more information on them, he could find a way to..... I don't know, combat them perhaps. He was an idealist, but he was meticulous....he was the best man I have ever known."

Their feet kicked up a small column of dust as they walked, in a way that it had not earlier. It struck Eli as odd, considering, as far back as he could remember, he had never noticed his own footprints in the desolate.

Peter waited. Eli sighed, "When my father..... When.... When he was no longer here, I took up his work, brokering information, studying his books and gathering what little I could to aid in his efforts."

Peter paused thoughtfully, turning the next question over in his head before slowly, and deliberately speaking the words, as if worried the thickness of the air would drag them from his mouth as soon as he spoke, "But why do YOU study them."

Eli was brought to a pause by that question, and In the silence his voice felt small.

"Because, Peter, I am tired of being afraid." Eli had finally said it out loud.

He couldn't really bring himself to say much more after that despite Peter's earlier pleas, and they continued in silence as the miles passed away as dull gray rocks under their feet. Peter kept a hold of his arm, which helped to remind Eli that he was not, in fact, alone.

It was a strange feeling, company, one that he had not experienced in such a long time.

Of course there was always Wink, but there was certainly a difference between having a minor Fear as a companion, and the real touch of another human.

It felt like both a blessing and a curse, a blessing to keep him grounded, and a curse because it separated him from what his mind really wanted most.

The day passed before them without change, and if it were not for his aching and tired body he would not have believed they had traveled far at all. He kept careful watch on the cloud cover above as the world around them began to darken, and he watched as the muted sun marched towards an invisible horizon.

Eli sped up his pace, forcing Peter into a jog to keep up.

At one point Peter lifted his nose to the sky and sniffed experimentally.

"What is that smell?"

Eli lifted his head to smell as well, catching the delicate wash of brine as it was blown into his face, "It's the sea."

"The sea?" Peter asked, "Like..." he trailed off.

"A large and incomprehensible body of salt water."

Peter frowned, "I know what the sea is, Eli. I've just never...thought it was ... real. The world is so small when you live in the same twenty mile radius your entire life."

"Yes The world is a big place especially since it has to contain all of mankind's fears, not surprising that one of them is the Depths."

"A relatively minor fear for most people, but it constitutes the incomprehensible distances especially when concerning large bodies of water. It is similar to the Sheer which deals in the same sort of fear of distances but the kind that are hard to wrap your head around, like the distance between us and the stars, or the expanse of the night sky going on to infinity. Some people are really bothered by that."

"I take it you aren't?"

Eli tilted his head slightly in thought, "It always seemed to me there were more pressing fears to worry about."

Overhead the sky was still dimming, and up ahead a light mist had arisen.

"We are getting close."

"Close to what?'

"You'll see."

The smell of salt in the air grew thicker around them, and it was only then that the two of them became aware of a distant roaring. Peter tilted his head in confusion, "What is that?"

"It's the sound of the sea."

"Huh.... never occurred to me that the sea would even make a sound."

But, yet, there it was, the roaring of an inanimate entity so vast and powerful it was hard to comprehend. And as they walked the sound grew louder, until it rolled up around them until it was the only sound that could be heard.. The stifling loneliness was washed away f to be replaced by the distant ebb and flow of water, of, life..

Peter lifted a hand over his eyes and then with a cry of surprise he pointed with a finger, "I see something!"

And, indeed, Peter was right, there, on the horizon there was a line of glittering grayness, and just next to that, a small black pin prick silhouetted against the horizon. A single black monolith in a world of monochrome gray. Even as they watched, the light began to fade behind it.

Eli slipped his elbow from Peter's grasp and clutched him by the wrist, "We have to hurry."

"Why?"

Eli didn't answer but sped up his footsteps.

"Eli, why do we have to hurry."

Eli didn't answer, but broke into a jog across the stones. It took a gargantuan effort to keep going as his body ached from the intense sickness and fever of the past few days, as his lungs were still clogged with slime. His breathing was ragged and gurgling, probably no better than the Outbreak, and more than once he feared that maybe his sickness wasn't really getting better, but still he dragged Peter on, speeding up as the light died, racing towards the distant black tower.

Soon enough Peter became too breathless to ask questions but gripped onto Eli's hand as their feet ate away at the landscape below.

As the light died, Eli's heart began to race even faster, his breathing at a fever pitch now, and off over the vast dark waters of the sea he thought he heard something.

Something immense and

Echoing.

He pushed himself even faster.

Peter must have heard it too, as he sped up until the two of them were sprinting across the stones.

Their feet should have thundered over the rock, but all was silent. still. At one point, Eli tripped and the two of them went sprawling to the ground hard. Eli scraped the palm of his free hand and smashed his knee painfully into the stone, but immediately got up and dragged Peter with him.

The lights were fading even faster now.

For the first time in what seemed like hours, Wink peered out from inside his bag, 'Better hurry, Eli."

Don't let them see you.

His breathing was gasping and desperate now. Peter was in a near state of panic, his fear feeding off Eli's.

There it was.. It was hard to make out as the night was dark and growing darker, but.... there was something.... something moving in the immense blackness of the expansive sea. Its size was incomprehensible, but somehow it moved organically, a vast shadow in the darkening space. It was accompanied with a rumbling so low that it was too deep for them to hear, but could only be felt as a rumbling vibration through the bones.

They were sprinting now, the dark tower less than 100 yards away.

Eli was gasping, ragged and sharp.

In the darkness, he saw the great blackness form into a colossal and formidable hand, its fingers expanding from horizon to horizon rising into the sky, fingers curling in the sky as if preparing to plunge upon the inconsequential tower.

Fear gripped both Eli and Peter, forcing them to race across the ground at speeds unattainable as if fear had lent them wings. The dark tower rose farther and farther into the sky the closer they got. The hand reaching its Zenith.

The two of them slammed into the stone wall, Eli frantically scrabbled for the iron key hooked to a chain on his vest. His hands were shaking so badly he nearly dropped the key. Above them the hand momentarily paused at the top of its arc and darkness pulsed all around them.

The hand plummeted to the ground.

Peter screamed.

Eli slammed the key home and thrust the door open, tumbling inside with Peter. He kicked the door shut as the two of them hit the floor. He clamped one hand over Peter's quivering mouth, and lay there in darkness for a long and lingering moment, eyes shut, waiting.

The distant rumbling continued and then subsided.

The two of them rolled onto their sides and then onto their backs on the floor, their breath gasping and heaving for air in the thick and oppressive darkness. The stone below them was ice cold and sent a chill up Eli's spine..

They were safe.

His gasping turned into coughing and then into retching as he rolled onto his hands and knees, body trembling fingernails digging into the stone underneath his hands. The cough was muffled in the darkness. There was a sharp click and a light came on somewhere behind him. A hand patted his back as he continued to cough. Heat returned to him with a vengeance, and he felt as if he would pass out.

"Eli, are you ok?"

He couldn't breathe. His body was hot and cold all over. He wheezed and choked until it seemed that he would never breathe again, but eventually he took a gasp of cool stale air and slumped down on the stone.

"Eli?"

"Give me the light."

Something wet and slimy pressed into his hand and then pulled away leaving him with the small ball of light.

He held it up, but the dim illumination barely cut a ten foot bubble of luminance from the darkness. He didn't really need the illumination hauling himself to his feet and stumbling across the familiar stones to where a tinderbox lay by the cold hearth.

He fed some wood inside, and with a little work got a small flame going which quickly at the dried driftwood hungrily blackening the bone white exterior of the wood with licking tongues of flame.

Their circle of light grew bigger, brightening the stone around him.

Eli leaned forward slightly, brushing his sleeve over one side of a cold polished surface before turning it towards the fire.

The mirror caught the light and threw the illumination across the room where another mirror caught the dancing flames on its surface. Before long the entire tower was lit with a warm orange light that flickered and danced over the stony gray walls.

Peter looked up with wide eyes, standing slowly in awe as he stared up.

The tower encased a circular room, with a spiraling staircase wrapping around the walls and accessing narrow catwalks towards the ceiling, filling the tower from top to bottom with bookshelves, and on those bookshelves hundreds of books in all shapes and sizes, some volumes as thick as a man's thigh, while others were as thin and delicate as pamphlets. At the very top of this tower, a large tarp had been pulled across the space blocking any light from escaping out the top.

Peter turned to look at Eli, a question forming on his lips, but Eli slowly began to slump to the ground. He was able to keep from collapsing by his shaking hand gripping the edge of the table. Peter rushed forward and grabbed him around the chest, supporting him as he gently lowered Eli to the floor. Eli muttered his thanks as Peter pressed the back of his hand to Eli's head.

Eli lay back on the cold stone floor staring up at the tower overhead and its spiraling staircase, and endless array of books, some of their spines dull with age, others newly bound in colorful leather. Light glittered from golden leaf and embossed spines.

At the center of the room, the warm orange firelight glittered off the table, and the three dusty bowls that sat atop it.