“What?! Are you crazy?! I’m not going to give the directions, Miss. That place is too dangerous for a girl as delicate as you.”

A girl, her face was covered partially behind the shadow of her hood, standing erectly before a tall middle age man, looking straight into the man’s eyes. Her eyes were surprisingly warm in spite of their cool icy blue colour. She was not very tall, but not very short either. From her appearance she seemed to be around eighteen years old.

“I must go to the desert. There are possibilities that he was there.” she spoke back firmly.

“But, Azel…” the older man was still trying to prevent her to take the suicide journey. “A-are you sure? We did hear a man about twenty with Edge’s face features being spotted there, but it isn’t…”

“No, An’jou.” Azel’s answer silenced him. He met her just a few months ago as she asked him if he saw a young man in his early twenties with an odd looking dragon with him. Without any doubts, he told her that he knew that person, being the one who saved his son’s life. He agreed to help the young woman almost immediately and they had become friends ever since.

“Then…” An’jou raised his voice after a few minutes of silence, “I’ll go with you. You need some one to protect you. We can go through the worm lair to reach the Garil Desert as…”

“No.” Azel’s calm reply stopped his sentence in the middle, leaving him confused and a bit angry as the young woman had refused his precious help.

“Why, Azel, if you don’t mind?” asked An’jou, gritting his teeth to restrain the urge to yell at her and scold her like what he often did to his oldest daughter when she did something wrong and stupid.

Azel turned slowly to him and gave the older man a penetrating look. “You’re a chief hunter, An’jou. Don’t you remember? The caravan needs you. Your family needs you, too.” she said as a matter of fact, “You must NOT leave your band in danger.”

An’jou rubbed his chin in deep thought, refusing to meet Azel in the eye. Her wise comment made him think twice before he was actually doing it as he actually had a greater responsibility as the chief of the band. Moreover, they had to find a new village to settle down as the land situation became worse and worse there.

He stopped thinking and lifted his face as he heard Azel’s soft voice, giving instruction to her ride slowly, but efficiently.

“Azel! You’re leaving, now?”

Azel nodded firmly.

“Take care! I want to see you come back and alive!”

She nodded once more, then said, almost to herself, “Don’t worry, I will. And with Edge, too. I’ll find him for sure.” She then kicked the middle section of the creature she was riding and directed it to the northwest, to Garil Desert.

A middle age woman and a young girl came out of the tent and walked to An’jou’s side. Her face showed concern as she watched the young girl travel further and further away.

“So she’s gone already.”

Her husband only nodded.

There was silence for a few minutes before An’jou finally turned around to face his daughter and commanded her, “Fei, pack my belongings, now! I’ll go and try to find a village for us to settle down, tomorrow. This place has not enough resources to feed us, anymore.”

The young girl nodded politely and answered, “Yes, Father.”

---

~ Outskirt of Garil Desert ~

Maybe An’jou was right. She really should not take this journey by herself. It was simply too dangerous. She tried to prevent the sand from going into her eyes and her nose by covering her face behind her hood, but it was not much help. She almost could not see anything. The sand had blocked her eyesight entirely.

Azel decided to set up a camp and retired for the evening, as she saw no advantage in continuing the journey. She could be killed by unseen monsters or buried by the sand storm instead of finding Edge, healthy and alive as she saw him before the last time before he flew into the core of the Tower with his dragon to stop the Tower’s activity. He did succeed for the Tower finally was put into a good, long sleep, but he was also gone without trace.

He had promised her to come back for her, but he never did. She searched for him like mad ever since, but she never found him. All things about him were gone.

Her friend was gone.

No, he was her love.

She remembered searching for him frantically around the tower, yelling his name over and over until her voice faded away and her throat sore. He could be dead, but she refused to believe it for she could not find Edge’s body. He must be transferred somewhere to another place or dimension by Sestren, the main computer that controlled every activities of the Tower.

She could probably find him again if he was just transferred to another place, but…. to another dimension? Her cold body shuddered at the thought of never meeting her one and only love anymore.

The Tower. The Ancient Tower, to be precise.

The cruelest thing that happened was to be produced by the Ancient technology apart from her self. Yes, true. She was the artificial human being that had the access of every control that activated the tower. And when the tower was activated, it was meant to control every creature’s life in this world. Machines and technology would enslave human beings.

And she was also the only key to shut down the Tower’s activity. However, instead of shutting down the tower properly and let it rest in peace, she let Edge do it, and alone! She relied too much on Edge that she let him to face Sestren. He was also stupid, willing to risk his life only for an artificial human being like her.

Azel rested her head on her knees, tears slowly falling down her cheeks. Those darn emotions! They only brought sorrow to her! She was originally a machine, but she was also programmed with basic human function like reproduction and possessed a high intellect, which resulted in having emotions like a normal human should.

How much she missed Edge…missed hearing his voice and seeing his deep, blue eyes that always danced with laughter in spite of the suffers he got when he lost the ones he loved.

Edge…. I love you.

Edge…. I missed you…. so much.

In the middle of the sand storm, her eyes drifted close. She soon slept soundly with Edge’s name in her heart.

---

“Oh, a little girl, travelling all alone?”

Azel opened an eye, and then another one only to close them shut again when a glint of sunlight reflection blinded her. She forced her eyes to open one more time and gasped when she realised that a razor sharp blade touched her neck. The cool tip of it made her shiver with fright, but she tried to stay calm for the sake of her further safety. The men in front of her could just kill her right away if she took a wrong move to handle the situation, so she just kept staring at them while thinking of a way to knock them off.

“Who are you?” she asked without emotion in her voice.

One of the men tilted her chin up and smirked as he told her, “No need for you to know that, pretty lady. Just give us all you have and you can go…”

“After you sell me as a slave?” Azel cut him short, still gave them a chilling gaze.

The man chuckled in amusement as he withdrew his hand from Azel’s chin, saying, “Pretty lady, talking too much sometimes brings bad luck, so please watch out for what you say. Right?” then he winked, “Now, I’ll repeat one more time….”

“I’ve got nothing.” Azel blurted as she lowered her head down, “You can take my life…if you want to…”

There was a pause for a few minutes. Azel’s heart raced, not because of fear, but because of the intensity of the situation.

“Boss…” obviously the man that had talked to her earlier was the leader of the group for the others called him ‘boss’. “What should we do with this woman?”

The man did not answer it right away. She noticed that he was thinking very hard from the crease that appeared all of sudden in the middle of his forehead. His next words surprised her, as it was the last thing that she expected.

He removed the tip of the blade from Azel’s neck and asked her, “What is your name?”

“Azel.”

“Azel…?”

“Just Azel. Nothing more. I have no family nor acquaintance.” She hid the fact that she was in fact an artificial human being.

“The reason you come to Garil Desert?”

“I’m looking for a person. A man in his early twenties.” she reached for a hologram in her robe’s pocket and handed the little thing to him. It projected a picture of a handsome young man with a mop of silky chestnut hair and wise blue eyes. He must be someone that was really important to her. “His name is Edge…” he heard her saying.

He switched it off and handed it over to her without bothering to inspect the details of the hologram. “Sharp…” he called out one of his men’s name, his voice trailing.

“Yes, boss?”

“Set up the camp for tonight. We’re going back to our main base tomorrow.”

“But…what about the woman?”

“Set her free. She’ll stay with us for the mean time.”

“But, BOSS!!!”

He glared side ways and gave his men a don’t-you-dare-to-question-my-decision look and walked away from the spot. Azel only followed the direction in which he was going calmly, not bothering to say thank you whatsoever to him. But she felt rather grateful, really. At last, she would find a help to find her Edge!