Now logically since he was going through a hot desert Peter decided it was best not to wear any sort of warm clothing. So between getting rushed out of Soulwick and previous night’s feast he went with a more practical attire, white shorts and a tan t-shirt. He also considered creating some sort of tunic with one of his ligher-colored sweaters if the sun is too much. The Fields of Browene, being a very large desert, is the only natural barrier that keeps the colony of Harmenage out of reach from th the backwards, criminal people of Lor.
Unlike most natural deserts the Fields of Browene is completely different; it gets hotter in this desert than most deserts ever explored across the worlds. The gigantic forest on one side and the mountains on the other act as massive blockades that block out most all moisture. Peter remembered his textbooks saying upwards of 1.3-2.0 degrees Jolte (a sort of variation of Fahrenheit were 100° is approximately 1.0°) during the day, this desert is one of the most deadly places known in the entire galaxy. And he had to cross part of it, maybe even all.
Peter waved off the obvious risk of going through the middle of such a deadly place and begun to walk, the map said help was on its way—he should be in no danger. Though hot the sun appeared to be setting and wasn’t as intense as a full day. He hoped that he didn’t run into any of the problems that made this desert legendary such as its boiling heat and mud-rain. Luckily it took most a day to get out of the forest and the desert wasn’t particularly hot at the moment—lack of heat in the desert meant two things—an oncoming storm or the setting of the sun. Peter had an inclination to hope it was for the setting of the sun. He felt confident in his conclusion when he saw the sun drooping down after a few hours as the large trees in the far distances finally faded away into a dusty horizon.
But just as the temperatures started to drop to reasonable cool amounts Peter ran into a confusing problem, a massive muddy river. He didn’t remember the river mentioned in any class, how could a river even manage fluidity in the desert? He could feel the heat of the gushy brown water as it cruised onward through the desert, directly across his eastward path. This rigid hot river stretched about fifty feet wide and was obviously way too hot and thick to wade across. He would never be able to cross a river like this and highly doubted anyone would be kind enough to build a bridge across it, but the map still showed that he must cross so there has be a way for him to get to the other side. Stumbled, with nothing else to do he decided to set up camp at the edge of the river and try to figure out how he would get across.
This was the first time he got to use the new gadgets he collected over the years. He fumbled through his pocket until he found the small cube with the red and black coded on one sides. Once he had it in his hand he smiled, yes the cube was one of the best inventions of the late 26th century, the Verx. Peter pressed on the black side scrolled through the menu for the tent mentioned earlier. Just like the map faded into the cube when he hit select a tent expanded and faded into existence. He smiled, it worked, he opened the fresh zipper and went inside.
The tent smelt like fresh palm trees and had a nicely set up cot, blankets, various cooking tools and a small stack of wood inside it. It was a standard overnight supply tent, and fairly cheap too at only 89.99 Feds. He climbed in and pulled out the wood, it had gotten surprisingly chilly outside in such a short time and with no jacket on he decided it best to make a fire.
Once the sun was down Peter had a roaring fire burning as the temperatures dropped from a hot fairly not 1° evening to a well below .4° night in less than an hour. He glanced towards the river and started thinking of how to get across. Maybe a rope, he did have one, or should he try swimming across despite how dangerous it looked? While staring at the river he noticed something odd, flow of the sludge started to slow. It was actually starting to freeze over like ice on a river from the temperatures outside. Within another hour the river's movement had completely stopped and temperatures dropped even lower to a chilly .2°.
With absolutely nothing to keep the heat locked to the surface everything in the desert vanished up into the atmosphere. Peter decided to get up from the log he was sitting on and reach down the slight from his chest to poke the river, it was frozen solid. Wow, he thought to himself, in two hours the river went from steaming hot to a frozen platform, something with the mud and water mixture screw with the water’s boiling and freezing temperatures, and that was perfectly fine—a platform river was just what he needed.
Excited about being able to continue his journey across the river he shoved everything back into the tent, pointed the red side at the tent and pressed to cause it to fade back into storage. Just as fast it appeared the tent vanished. After he stuck the Verx back into his pocket, he slowly rested his butt on the edge of the cliff and dangled his feet down, resting his sneakers on the solid river. He wasn’t sure if it was solid enough to maintain his weight. Slowly he let go of more and more weight on his arms until most of it was on his feet—even though no sounds came from the river and nothing moved he still didn't feel safe on the river. But at the same time he knew walking across it was the only way to get to the other side. He moved his hands away from the ledge and slowly pressed forward, testing the mud with one foot before talking each step. Silence, that's good, he considered, that means the mud isn’t falling apart and cracking under his weight.
Finally he got safely to the other side with little danger. The cliff on the opposing side was a bit higher than the one he came down, but he was still able to lift his right foot up onto the bank and prepare to exit. Just as he set his leg down on solid ground his other one cracked through a weak part on the river and slipped into the sludge. Since he was already mostly on the bank he easily pulled his foot out of the river to reveal a thick cast of cooled mud engulfing his leg. It smelled like dead animals with a reek he knew would stick to his foot for months. "Great! Now I have a cast of mud!" He groaned, though not too loud since he luckily didn’t get any on his shorts. He pulled a pocket knife out of his back pocket and carefully began to peel off the mud to toss it back on top of the river. After he peeled off the mud he used the cube to set up camp once more, this time on the right side of the river and went inside the tent for a nice, long night of sleep.
***
"Well so much for sleep," Peter moaned in the morning as he shuffled off the cot, "it's almost 1º already and its only 7:00 am." Well, the heat woke him up, therefore he should set off to continue his journey. He really did like how easy the cube made it to set up and take down camp, in a matter of seconds everything was packed and he was ready to move on, snacking on a few pastries and such he’d gotten from the feast and rushed breakfast. Upon walking he decided it was best to check the map to make sure he was still on track. He pulled it out and waited patiently for it to once again fill itself in and trace its line across the desert. Once it was finished he noticed the right edge had shifted over to compensate for his travel over the last two days. Now the edge was the center of the forest and yellow line trailed yet deeper into the mountains but veered north at the very edge. So, it moves with him and only can show so much, that's convenient.
He left the map open and stared at it as he walked on, watching the edges slowly moved as he pressed forward. The heat was hammering down on him, when his neck started to sting he had to stop, use the cube, and bring out a light-blue sweater to make that tunic he considered the day before, every wave of heat that slammed the ground seemed harder and hotter than the first, he kept going. A small circle appeared on the map right were the yellow line changed into its wild turning frenzy, the first time something other than the line was on the map. Bold letters then appeared above the circle ‘Hornet Cave’. Of course, Hornet Cave, the massive cave system under the desert—it would be his only way to successfully cross the desert.
He knew from geography that the further away from the shade and slight protection of the forest the more intense and dry the desert got. Even though the entire desert is dangerous he was in what was nicknamed the ‘Safe Zone’ a portion between the forest and a line about three to four miles away from the cave that is mildly cooler and slightly more moist than the second part of the desert which shows no mercy. The cave was then the only path through the deadliest part of the desert, but that was all he knew! They never explained more, it wasn't too important since school discourages anyone from leaving the city into the “dangers” of the outside world. Well, now with little knowledge of where to look for the cave, or what it would look like he had to find it, great. He folded the map back up and once again shoved it into his pocket. The map doesn't quite tell the holder where he is, just shows a line of where he needs to go, so that's no help either.
Around nine or ten in the morning, he wasn’t quite sure when, he finally started to get really thirsty. But that was fine, he had to have plenty of water in his cube. He checked under W on the cube and saw nothing, then he checked a few name-brands of water—nothing, finally he scrolled through his entire damn list, he forgot water! Out of all of the things to forget in a desert water was the worst. He took one sweeping look around the desert to see nothing resembling life or fluid, all he could see was brown cracked dirt for miles and miles. Peter forced himself on, hoping to find something soon as the phrase from the make went over and over in his head, 'supplies are of the essence, supplies are of the essence…'
Hours later still nothing, and now at midday the heat was raging. “It.. must… be like.. 1.3º right now.” He forced out, his mouth was dry and his lips were starting to crack pretty bad, yet he still staggered forward. He was only able hobbled a few more steps before he collapsed to the ground, the hot cracked surface burning his bare knees and shins. With what little energy he had left he used the cube to open his tent and went inside to hide himself from the burning sun. Once he in the fairly warm tent he collapsed on the floor unable to even make it on the cot, completely exhausted from the raging heat.
***
A chill went through his body as he woke up on the floor of his tent, his throat still parched. He pulled himself into an upright position. His body was still stiff from lying on the floor, it was completely sore from his failed attempt to cross a desert in the middle of the day. “It gets hot during the day, very hot, therefore maybe traveling during the day was not one of my best ideas.” he realized. Peter opened up the tent, went outside, and turned around to zip up his tent—he noticed something on the tent. The tent, it was soaking wet! Completely covered with mildew! Drastic changes in the temperature attracted mildew! His thirst over took him, he bolted into the tent and rummaged through his stuff until he found a small pan to scrape the sides of the tent with. Water flowed into the pan as he scraped it slowly across the tent and filled it quickly. He greedily gulped the water down until the filled pan was once again empty, then he scraped the pan against the tent until it was filled once more.
“I think I figured out how the mildew shows up, with the rapid change in the temperature the water condenses to form a fog at night, and the mist gathered on my tent, it stuck like a magnet.” After the pan was completely filled a second time Peter gulped it down once more to fill it a third time. Once done with the third time he placed the pan inside the tent and carefully covered it with its lid. Then he felt an ache in his stomach “Oh great, problem number two, there is no food in this desert,” he was starved, he hadn't eaten since that morning, how had he lasted so long?
He went through the Verx and chose the remaining scraps from the feast two days ago. He had an apple, two pieces of buttered bread and half a serving of meat. Enough to hold off his growling stomach for at least that night. Once finished with his, stale dinner he made sure the water was sitting right up in the tent and closed it up. He tucked the cube back in his pocket and started walking in the cool night, a much more logical method of crossing the desert.
Peter walked all night until he could see the sun start to rise again, he noticed first thing that it wasn't near as hot as the day before. "Finally" he said to himself thinking the lower temperature meant he was close to the Hornet Cave. He couldn't wait to get to the end maybe there would be food there or even a place that is a lot colder than this desert, a more comfortable temperature, nice and cold, he considered.
He continued to occasionally open the map to see how far he went. The more he walked with the map the more he began to guess where he was on it as it slowly shifted itself further and further to the right. When the sun started to rise he decided pinpointing his location seemed impossible, he gave up.
He went at a faster pace for another hour in the surprisingly cooler weather thinking of nice cool places. The cold abnormal weather continued into the day when all of a sudden some rock-like object whipped down from the sky and slammed directly into the back of his head. The thing hit him so hard it knocked him off his feet throwing him face first into the hot dirt. “What the hell was that?” he yelped from the ground, his hand going up for the fresh welt on the back of his head and the scrapes on his arms and face.
He forced himself back up onto his hands and rubbed his face to remove the dirt embedded in it. Once done he placed his hand on the throbbing part on the back of his head to find some thick goopy stuff in his hair. He placed his fingers in front of him to see it was brown mud that had the sweet smell of dead animals. “What kind of place is this? The Land of the dead?” With his head throbbing he got up to his feet and started to cautiously walk forward keeping a keen eye on the skies, maybe some bird is playing a dirty joke on him. Without warning or sighting another drop shot down from the heavens and slammed into the back end of his knee once again crippling him down onto the ground. The mud shot forced his knee to buckle under the pressure threw him into the dirt once more.
With his knee throbbing and a bump starting to form on his head, Peter looked up to see a quickly blacking sky. Rain? It was rain! And now he knew why this desert was named ‘most deadly’. The rain was killer—so mixed with the mud it was like rocks falling from the sky. It made sense why there wasn’t even shrubs in the desert—how could anything survive being pelted with rocks? Panicked, now was a good time to find some shelter to hide under, and he was in a flat barren desert. He shuttered at the idea of getting a label on his gravestone: killed by rain. Drops started zipping past his face, they crushed into the dirt with such force they left small indents in the dirt solid surface.
With nothing better to do, he ran forward, hoping to see something to protect him. He felt his foot slip and his body fall, he was going down, a sinkhole? His leg was trapped in the decent-sized sand hole. The ground around him was no longer rock solid; instead it was sand sinking into the hole. He was unable to grab onto the edge he started to slip further into the hole. Everything in this world tries to kill you! He panicked as his trapped legs sunk further into the hole causing sand to brush against the ends of his shorts; he was unable to get out of the hole. He felt something vine-like grab a leg and yank him downward, he went under. He could feel himself being sucked through the earth until he once more hit solid ground a couple hundred feet underneath the desert.
The thing holding onto his leg let go and he stood up brushing away what little sand was taken down with him. Where was he now? Peter looked around; he was in a tunnel dimly lit by the little hole above him and several other small rays of light from holes like the one he fell from. Maybe this was the Hornet Cave? It definitely is a cave, and it's under Browene just like his textbooks said. A loud growl came from the far end of the tunnel. Something started thrashing towards him, something big. Now was not a time to think about what this cave is! He was being chased down by some monster once again this time it sounded like he was dinner. Peter's instants took over and he started to run in the opposite direction of the monstrous thrashing.
In the midst of running through the dark tunnel he slipped on loose sand from one of the sink holes and his balance gave away. He grabbed the nearby wall to regain his balance, thrashing grew closer towards him. The wall turned like an old fashion trap door, Peter hung onto it for his dear life. It abruptly stopped at a 180 degree turn and tossed him into an unlit pitch black room. Peter heard the monster thrashing pass him near the wall less than fifteen seconds after.
"The flashlight!" he thought as he dug into his pockets to find the Verx. Poof, out came a flashlight once selected, he turned it on to see what was inside the pitch black mysterious room.
Click! Click! “Why won't this light turn on!” Peter twisted the light around to check if the bulb was actually working. He stared straight into the flashlight and saw that it did turn on, the light bulb was on, but no light came out? “What's going on now?” he wondered as he stared in amazement into a room so dark that not even a flashlight can shine.
Any good? Still not sure about this story - it was my first ever and I still feel it need more detail - more character devlopment or description of Peter maybe? Vote if you enjoy.