Jala De’kali's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Jala sat cross-legged in front of the tall cactus and closed her eyes. She needed to start simple. Control came before power. She raised her hands and called to the sand around her feet. The grains lifted and danced in a small circle. Her fingers trembled with the effort. The sand wobbled and fell. She tried again. This time the circle held for three breaths before it collapsed. She opened her eyes and frowned. Moving sand was one thing. Shaping it into shields strong enough to stop a storm was something else. She needed to learn more than her grandmother's stories could teach her. She needed the old knowledge, the kind written down by the masters who came before. The next morning, Jala walked away from the Petrified Allfather Tree in search of answers. She followed a rocky path that wound between the dunes until she spotted something strange ahead. Two massive rocks rose from the sand, connected in the middle to form a perfect hourglass shape. Cacti grew up the sides, and bright desert flowers covered the base in patches of orange and red. She climbed up the rocks and found a hollow space inside the narrow middle section. Ancient scrolls lay stacked in wooden boxes, protected from the wind and heat. Her heart pounded as she lifted one scroll and unrolled it carefully. The paper showed drawings of hand positions and patterns traced in sand. Words in the old language filled the margins. This was it. This was the teaching she needed. She gathered as many scrolls as she could carry and started back toward her training grounds, ready to begin learning the real secrets of sand magic. That evening, Jala spread the scrolls around the base of the Petrified Allfather Tree. The sun dropped toward the horizon, turning the sky orange and pink. She needed light to read by once darkness fell. She pulled thin wooden poles from her pack and pushed them into the sand in a wide circle. Then she strung glowing fairy lights between them, wrapping the cord around each pole twice before moving to the next. The lights hummed to life when she touched the starter stone, casting a warm glow across her training area. She sat down and opened the first scroll. The hand positions looked simple enough, but the instructions warned against rushing. One diagram showed how to pull sand up in layers. Another explained breathing patterns that matched the movement of the grains. She practiced the first hand position until her fingers ached. When she finally lowered her hands, she felt ready. Tomorrow she would combine the old teachings with her own practice. Tomorrow her real training would begin. The work ahead demanded organization. Jala pulled a light tan duffle bag from her things and set it near the fairy lights. She filled glass bottles with different types of sand from around the training grounds. Coarse grains from near the tree. Fine powder from the open dunes. Red sand from the rocky path. Each type moved differently under her magic, and the scrolls explained which worked best for different shields. She added small crystals she had collected during her journey, the ones that hummed with stored heat. The bag sat ready for her to grab whenever she needed materials. She rolled up the scrolls and tucked them inside as well, keeping everything together. The fairy lights flickered in the growing darkness. Her training ground was complete. Her supplies were ready. Now came the real work of turning ancient words into living shields.