“Mountains with white caps of snow, below lays the great white and black creatures. In the
king’s chest lies the true key.”
“What is this all supposed to mean?” Amber raged on.
I sighed and spoke out my mind, “Be quiet for a second will you? Mountains with white caps
of snow are clearly those dunes with frost over them… The great white and black creatures… What
could they be?”
“Zebras?” Amber said enthusiastically.
My palm came in contact with my face as I shook my head, “No! There aren’t zebras in Gobi!”
Taking a pause, I figured it out. “Snow Leopards!”
“Well, I could have thought about that…” Amber muttered.
I read the next line, “Yes, I’m sure you could have. In their heart lies the true key… What?”
“How should I know? How about we go over there and see?” Amber said matter-of-factly.
I laughed and started to stride forwards, heading for the frost capped sand dunes.
“There they are…” Amber pointed toward a group of snow leopards to the right. “Let’s go.”
Amber started to stand up, “No, don’t. Let’s figure out what we have to do first.”
We thought for a second, flicking between the scroll and leopards. Amber shocked me by
tapping on my shoulder. She was pointing to a large (male) leopard with a red, satin band around
its neck. At the end of the band sat a golden key. Bullseye. Amber took one of her heels and
snapped off a heel. I was shocked, she was probably desperate to get out of here to do that. She
retracted her arm into a throwing stance. She was going to throw the heel. The heel came flinging
out of her hand and hit the leopard square in the eye, making him fall. The other females fled and
it was safe for us to run. We jumped out of our hiding place and went to the paralyzed animal.
We snatched the key from his neck. I flung it into the air, triggering the same reaction as from the
ring. It broke into a million pieces and another scroll emerged.
“The final article will be found in the rushing monsoon waters. Follow the animals with the
humps to your final destination.”
“Flash flood and camels!” Amber yelled. We ran up a high sand dune and looked out into the
area, searching for rushing water in the distance. I spotted some minor flash flooding to the west.
“Amber, there!”
Amber was blooming in happiness. She started rushing down the dunes, not noticing a steep
fall of loose sand. I ran after her and grabbed her right arm just as she was about to run down it.
“What do you want?”
She raged and ripped her arm from my grip viciously. “What do you think? You want to fall
down the loose sand and get a concussion?” Amber bowed her head down as I had screamed in her
face. “I’m sorry but let’s just go. We have 1 hour.”
The clock in the sky was ticking. Amber took a deep breath and nodded her head. We
emerged to the flash flood another way, running and skipping over all obstacles in our way. We
literally threw ourselves into the water when we were there. Using our hands to search beneath
the surface, all we had found was sand and water. We were just about to give up when a herd of
camels appeared out of nowhere. We knew we had to hurry or the camels would be gone. We knew
these were the camels. They had a weird marking on their humps, it looked like a hand gripping
