Alvin quickly wrote the name to avoid opening up other topics. He wasn't ready to hear another sad story. Everyone leaned in when they noticed a black dot in the middle of the paper.
In a flash, the dot grew and spread across the entire sheet. Elena watched the map form rapidly, showing various terrains that kept shifting and transforming. There were mountains, which turned into seas, then into a sky filled with clouds.
Contrary to their expectations, the process took quite a bit of time. Alvin glanced at the clock above the TV—it showed 11:30 a.m., meaning more than twenty minutes had passed since the map started searching.
Meryl sighed, her patience wearing thin, while Elena was happily enjoying cookies and juice with Tulip.
"I feel like I've been waiting for a year! My nerves are on fire," Meryl complained in frustration.
Tulip swallowed his cookie and quickly wrote a message:
"The map is searching through all the worlds, which is why it's taking a bit of time."
Searching through all the worlds… Alvin mulled over that particular detail. The creatures they were looking for were likely here, in the Noxara Desert. So they needed to make the map ignore the rest of the worlds and focus specifically on the Noxara Desert.
"Dear Tulip, could you ask Bluebell if we can make the map search a specific place?" Alvin asked gently.
Tulip nodded after sipping some pomegranate juice. A few moments later, he wrote a message:
"Yes. All you have to do is write the name of the region, then write the name of what you're looking for."
Before Alvin could reach for the pen, Meryl snatched it this time and scribbled "Noxara" on the paper, then added the name "Drivalisk."
"Your hand's a bit slow," she said nervously, unsettled by Alvin's sharp glare.
This time, the map revealed the city of Noxara—from north to south, east to west. Everything looked tiny at first, and many details were unclear, until the image sharpened and the map showed the broken statue of the emperor.
From that point, a tunnel suddenly appeared, as if made of clay, and then the map abruptly stopped there. Elena didn't mind—the important thing was that they had found the location of the creature they were looking for.
As she looked at the tunnel, she smirked bitterly. She had been there just yesterday, sat near that statue, and still hadn't noticed the tunnels beneath the sand.
"As I said before, they're burrowing creatures," Alvin remarked sarcastically, just to annoy Meryl—and he succeeded when he saw her angry expression.
"They're desert creatures," she retorted, irritated.
"Does that really matter right now? I'm about to die because of this damned mission, and all you two care about is whether they're burrowing or desert creatures?" Elena snapped at them for their childish behavior. Tulip, who was the only actual child among them, didn't even act like that!
Elena was seriously considering hitting both of them and throwing them out.
"We're sorry," Meryl said quietly, embarrassed, while Alvin looked away.
"By the way," he added, "how are we supposed to get under the sand? If we use bombs, the rest of the monsters will come out!"
Although Meryl had said it just to change the subject and calm Elena down, her question was exactly what they needed at that moment: How would they go underground without drawing attention?
"Through the spot the creature uses to reach the surface?" Tulip put his thoughts into a message and passed it along. In the past, Tulip used to dig tunnels in the sand to hide from the gypsies who mistreated him.
And although those times were suffocating and harsh, he had no choice but to endure them to survive. Since the creature was living beneath the sand, it surely came up from time to time—whether to search for food or water.
"Our little Tulip is so clever!" Elena said with admiration, planting a quick kiss on his forehead. Tulip had saved them a lot of time and effort.
— "Then we need to look for exits to the tunnel."
"Let's do that," Alvin said with a greedy grin. The mission was definitely dangerous, but he was thrilled at the thought of killing this creature—mainly to spite those damned Severians.
What could be better than destroying an experiment they had worked on for so many years? Nothing!
"But the desert is huge. How are we supposed to search through it?" asked Elena, still seated while the others had already stood up.
Tulip had some ideas he used for himself in the past, but despite his hesitation to share them, he wasn't sure if this creature lived the same way he did in the desert.
"I think we should search near the emperor's statue—it did appear on the map," Meryl said as she slung her bag over her shoulder.
"Maybe we should look directly beneath the statue," Tulip wrote in his message. Despite his hesitation, he sent it anyway.
Mentioning the statue reminded Elena of what had happened yesterday when the creatures attacked them. She and Alvin had been standing on the statue's base when one of the hunters shouted at the creatures to attack them—but they never came closer. On the contrary, they kept a safe distance from the statue!
If there was nothing beneath it, why had those monsters refused to approach? The possibility that Tulip was right seemed very likely, and all they needed to prove it was to go back there.
At Meryl's command, the house retreated to the location of the massive statue, which had once stood over 300 meters tall before it broke. Contrary to their expectations—they thought the return would take a long time—the house moved so swiftly it left them stunned.
The house descended, and Alvin was the first to leap from the garden onto the sand. He then grabbed Tulip, who was clutching his stuffed bear, and set him down gently. Elena and Meryl followed shortly after.
"Miss Cloud, you can return to your small form now," Meryl said gently, and the house quickly shrank down to the size of a palm. "I think this is amazing!" Elena said as she watched Meryl place the house into 'inventory.'
Up ahead, Tulip was clinging to Alvin's hand while Alvin stared at the massive statue. Supposedly, the statue had been made of Ozaline—a mysterious metal forbidden to the public, though Alvin knew quite a bit about it since he had lived in Serinthia.
It was a liquid metal extracted from the sea, and over time, it hardened into an unbreakable solid. Heat was useless against it, and even the strongest solvents couldn't dissolve it.
And yet now, here it was—right in front of Alvin's eyes—broken in half. Only now did the realization hit him. The statue was shattered. Its lower half was here… so where was the upper half?
His heart pounded violently for reasons he couldn't explain. It felt as if something inside him was screaming to pull away, to leave immediately! Alvin let out a sarcastic smile at his racing pulse.
These moments—when something dangerous was looming—always lit a small flame inside his chest… a flame that slowly began to consume him.
"How are we supposed to move the base? It's huge!" Meryl asked with a puzzled tone as she stared at the base. It was clearly too heavy to be lifted, and blowing it up might seal off the tunnel's exit.