Dry desert, cracked. Can you placate the harrowing heat or will you continue walking on in agony?

Raphael lead us through the sandstorm, his face wrapped like a mummy’s. He wasn’t a nice man, but he was fair. An honest day’s work, an honest day’s pay, or so he would say. 

He didn’t tell us who we were after this time. He rarely ever did. We were just the muscle, or, well, as close to muscle as you got out here. Most of us were emaciated and dying of thirst, but we had knives and we kept our teeth sharpened.

A lot can be said about the desert, and how nondescript it can be. If you don’t pay very close attention it’s easy to get lost. Raphael never got lost though, and I guess that simple fact says more about him than I ever could. He was shrewd, to say the least.

I could see a lone building down in the distance. Where we stood on a high dune of sand, it was pretty obvious this was where we were headed. Where else?

Raphael fished a photograph out of his pocket, an oddity out here in the desert. It was a portrait of a girl, in her middle teens probably. He flipped it over. “Take the girl, everyone else is disposable.” He pointed at it, making sure we were all paying attention. Raphael was mute, I guess I should’ve said that earlier.

He strode down the dunes directly to one of the front windows of the place. He looked inside, then he motioned a hulking man named Bartholomais toward the door. He kicked it in, and then the lot of us rushed in through the breach.

Six men. Strapped to the teeth with guns. Bartholomais threw himself at one, and I could hear distinctly the sound of each and every single one of his bones snapping like stray twigs. His gun didn’t even manage to go off. Bartholomais picked it up and threw it with such force that it caught another man in the face and took his head clean from his neck. 

Four left, the shock wearing off quickly. One of them aimed next to me and opened fire with a wild look in his eyes. Whoever it was he had aimed at crumpled to the floor. I didn’t recognize him, he wasn’t a regular. I stared back to the one who had fired and snapped my fingers. He took his gun and shoved it in his mouth, end of story.

Just then I noticed that Raphael had his arms around the girl, carrying her unwillingly back towards the door. I shielded him as he cleared the threshold and then strode back out myself, figuring that Bartholomais and the rest could handle the cleanup.

We began the seven mile trek back to town. The girl did not seem as displeased now as she had been. I wondered if she could fathom that she was going to be sold once we got where we were going. Also wondered if that could be a much worse fate than living where she had lived. 

I used to wonder why we did what we did. Why most of us, even the new recruits, followed Raphael unflinchingly. He couldn’t speak, and therefore couldn’t really tell us whether what we were doing was right or wrong. I suppose even if speech had taken him, he wouldn’t know what to tell us.

Is there really a right or a wrong in the desert, or does everything just bake to neutrality in the sun?