The large sun was just barely visible now, slowly being swallowed by the horizon. With this last bit of navigation advice from Zekk, Rift took point, guiding Zekk's path. And so the trek across the desert began, with the scorching heat begging to become blistering cold. the blowing sand seemed to steal the heat right out of your body on contact. The people who had experienced snow would find that this was just as bad, if not worse, and was a lot less comfortable when it go into loose clothing.
Luckily, the moons of Tatooine had a bright shine to them, which allowed sight during the night. But unfortunately, in contrast to the assistance to vision, the winds picked up and caused air-born sand to reduce visibility range. To add to this slight disadvantage of far sight, the large dunes being in everyone's face made looking into the distance that much more difficult.
The water tank pulled mostly smoothly. The sand acted as a nice, ungrounded substance for pulling it. The problems occurred when it had to be pulled over a dune, which was a lot. Traction was near impossible to gain and the puller's feet would sink into the dune, causing a few trips here and there. But what really turned out to be an issue, was bringing it down the other side of the dune. During one of these occurrences, the tank nearly flipped over at the top of the dune and landed on a few group members, which didn't exactly start a peachy conversation.
After only a few hours into night, it became unbearably cold. The group, without any verbal communication, decided to bunker down for the night. Rift supplied Zekk and other survivors with the clothing he had collected in his bag. He wrapped himself up as best he could, and went into a very light sleep. The droid could take watch if necessary.
Five Hours Later...
Upon waking up, Rift could tell something was wrong. It was just one of those bad feelings that he had sometimes, and this was one of them. He got up and put the extra clothes back into the bag, but still kept a few extra layers on. The droid was creepily watching over Koda.
The desert was still freezing cold, but that feeling Rift had was too unsettling for him to ignore. This feeling was shared by Koda, and even by Shikle. Rift awakened the rest of the group, explaining to them that it was time to go.
Without break, the group had traveled the rest night throughout the wastes. Step after step, pull after pull, shiver after shiver, and dune after horrible dune, the suns were finally starting to come up. The morning would begin to rapidly heat everything, and everyone, up.
Rift stopped and turned around, warning everyone that it would be best to take a small break now. "The suns will soon heat everything back to its scorching levels. We should take some water now, so that when the heat does hit us, we are hydrated." Rift removed the cloth from his face and took out one of his canteens. He twisted off the cap and then took 2 small sips. A small drop rolled down his mouth and soaked into his beard. He wiped his mouth and looked back over the group. "Be sure not to drink very much, you don't want to make a habit of drowning yourself in resources."
The break lasted a good 3 minutes before he ended it. "Everyone good to move?" Without waiting for a response, he turned towards the small sun that was still peeking over the horizon. "Good, cause we're moving now." And with that, he started to head towards the light orange horizon.
Two Hours Later...
The suns were baking the whole planet, and the only two who were mostly unaffected, was Davern and Edar. The rest of the poor souls had to deal with the heat.
That feeling had not left Rift, Koda, or Shikle. In fact, it was growing stronger. It was a feeling that felt like their guts were being ripped up. It was truly a horrible feeling, and it was slowly starting to spread to the others.
Everything became unusually quiet, even for a desert. The sand itself seemed to stop shifting. Rift and Davern were in the middle of an argument where Davern was defending Mandalorians, which was the only thing that could be heard for miles. As the two walked up a particularly large dune, two blaster rifles were in their face. Tusken Raiders.
Rift immediately grabbed the barrel of the gun that was in his face while smacking it out of his face, making it fire at the sand. Rift pulled the rifle back and then thrust the butt of the rifle into the Tusken's chin. He pulled the gun from the stunned Tusken and turned the gun on it, shooting it straight in the head.
The two Tuskens had not been alone, as from the side flanks they started pouring in. Chaos ensued. For a while, there seemed to be an endless wave of them. You kill one, two more came in to replace him.
Rift shot a few more Tuskens before dropping the blaster and pulling out Adenn. He was still tied to Zekk, and stayed back with him to help him while he was blind. His eyesight was returning, but all he could make out were the shapes of people.
Two of the five other survivors from the crash were slaughtered, and once that wave of Tuskens were defeated, a new wave lined up in front of the group, across the top of the dunes. The leader of the war party raised his gun and Gaffi Stick above his head, letting out the infamous war cry of the Tusken Raiders.
The group prepared for the wave, ready to take as many of them down as they possibly could. But before the Tusken finished his cry, a loud blast was heard followed by a quick beam of light that went straight through the Tusken's head. Their leader fell and slid down the dune, which had them all looking at each other in confusion. Another bang went off, but this time it was much louder, and the sky above the group was completely illuminated with red energy. All of the Tuskens in the front followed the lead of their leader, sliding down the dunes to the group's feet. The Tuskens that were in the back rows tried to retreat, but where gunned down almost instantaneously.
Rift looked over to the rest of the group. He was hoping that these blasts came from friendlies, but in the dune sea, there are no friendlies. That dark feeling was encroaching on everybody now.
He looked to the right, and noticed that the dunes made a trench-like sand path that led to a canyon in the distance. They would have to be fast if they wanted to reach it before the assailants reached them. "Head for the canyon! Use the dunes as cover, now move your asses!"
He yanked on the clothing robe that was still tied to Zekk's waist. "Just stay with me!"
He dashed for the canyon, moving as fast as he could. The feeling that the assailants were gaining was strong, and only made him move faster. If Zekk fell, or became too slow, Rift was prepared to cut the rope and leave him to his fate. He was not going to die out here.
As the canyon became closer, it seemed to become a lot bigger as well. The canyon was very narrow in its opening, but the canyon itself was huge. The passage led in pretty deep before coming to a T intersection. The problem, of course, was getting there first, and that, was unnecessary for their survival.