him when he told them of the experience. He said that he was teleported to the sand dunes, just
like we were. On his third day of solitary, his hunger and thirst brought hallucinations. These
hallucinations were semi-realistic, but mostly fantasised. The survivor somehow entered a
battlefield with these hallucinations, where he found his way home by defeating a monstrous beast.
He was too terrified to speak of the details. He even went mad after the incident.” Bolad explained.
“So we’re going to have to starve ourselves?” I asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
Day one, I think it was the first day I went through without food. During the day, it was
burning hot. Sitting on the sand wasn’t an option, because the sand absorbs the heat, and further
heightens the temperature. Instead, we used the jackets that we brought with us as mats. During
the night, temperatures dropped dramatically. I wished I had brought more clothes.
Day two, we woke up with a pile of sand on our backs. I wonder what would happen if even
more sand were blown onto our backs. I think we would’ve been buried alive. The hunger really
struck me today. For the entire day I felt light-headed and dizzy, and that soft rumbling of my
stomach has now developed into severe cramps.
Day three, I haven’t hallucinated yet, none of us have. I was actually quite skeptical about
Bolad’s solution. But, what other choice do we have? Try to walk out of this desert? Or simply wait
for someone to rescue us? Miles and miles of sand stretched out to the horizon, we would die before
we even reach half of the journey. In a way, Bolad’s solution was the most sensible. There is no
doubt that we came here by supernatural means, therefore, we must leave in a supernatural way.
“Stela, do you see that?” Sara asked. I looked towards where she was pointing, and I saw a red
door. “Yes! I see it!” I was over the moon, “What about you Bolad?” “I see it. Let’s go.”
We were standing before the red door. I reached out to turn the knob, and the door swung
open smoothly.
We entered a small room with brick walls. There was a well in the centre.
“What will we meet in there?” I asked.
“No idea.” Bolad said.
“How do we kill this creature, whatever monster it is?”
“No idea.”
There was no plan on how we were going to defeat the monster we were about to encounter,
and this made us all tremble with fear.
“But if this is all just a fantasy, we wouldn’t actually be killed by the monster, right?” Sara asked.
“We mustn’t use our human logic to assess the situation. Anything can happen.”
We climbed down the well one by one. More brick walls formed an underground sewer. The
damp, dark environment was so silent that we were too frightened to make any noise.
From a distance, we could hear splashes of water, it sounded as if something was moving
through the tunnel in incredible speed. The sound was growing louder. Bolad grabbed me and
Sara by the sleeves and pulled us into another tunnel to the left. A large figure blocked out the
faint light as it travelled through the place we were just standing. What was that?
“Oh heavens, it’s real. The Mongolian Death Worm. It’s been in Mongolian folk stories for
centuries. I never thought it was real.” Bolad gasped.
“How do we kill it?” Sara asked impatiently.
“I don’t know. But I know that it is blind, maybe we can make use of that.”
“Ah!” Sara yelped as the worm passed through the tunnel on the right.
