Illiun was on edge, constantly scanning the sky as though expecting it to fall on him at any moment. A few times Silus heard him muttering about the entity, but when he tried to calm him down, he refused to talk. Shalim and Rosalind were less pragmatic in their approach, openly criticising Illiun, soliciting snide remarks from the rest of the expedition, fomenting anger.

“You mustn’t let your emotions run so high,” Silus said one evening. “This rage does nothing to help us, or the settlement itself. Let Illiun be.”

“He put our children at risk,” Shalim said. “He has put us all at risk, coming to this place.”

“He only meant to protect you, Shalim. I know what it’s like to be helpless in the face of danger to your loved ones, to be powerless to protect them when things go wrong. Illiun’s suffering is punishment enough, believe me.”

Even so, Shalim did little to mask his newfound distaste for their leader, and he and Illiun didn’t talk for the remainder of the journey.

When the dunes rising around them became familiar — though quite how he could distinguish between mounds of sand, he couldn’t quite fathom — Silus’s spirits began to lift. Indeed, the morale of the party seemed to be on the rise as the settlement grew near. Perhaps, some of them reasoned, the ship would be alright after all; perhaps they would now actually be able to leave this planet and escape the attentions of the entity.

The smell coming to them from over the next rise, however, soon put paid to any hopes they had. The odour was unmistakable. It was the same smell that had washed through Silus’s hometown of Nurn the night the Chadassa had slaughtered the populace. It was a smell he had become intimately familiar with on several occasions since.

When Silus and his companions had first discovered the settlement, a friendly crowd had greeted their arrival, open and delighted faces welcoming the strangers.