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Hot. Possible fever. He needed a thermometer. Hydrate himself with lots of water.  A good bed rest. Numbness in limbs. Suffering from possible dehydration. He needed to sleep. He needed to rest. It was over already for him. It was the cycle of blood as foretold by his mentors in the Abattoir. Just as the blood of the Maiden of Night and the Holy Flamingo had given rise to his great knowledge, it was his turn already. His own blood would seep back into the sands, sowing the land with red, to give life to knowledge, beautiful knowledge that would burgeon into a wholesome full-life. He laid content with his fate, grinning teeth full-bare, knowing that the Great Hippo would bless a heathen to happen upon his corpse, to discover the fruits of his works, the Panacea lying alongside him. He frowned. It should have been lying with him. 

Wait, where was the Panacea? 

His panic sharpened his dulled senses, blood-shot eyes spilling open as his body was suffused with manic energy. Rustling around weakly in the deceivingly heavy sand, his hands dipped through the rough land into his pockets, his shirt, his chest, for any signs of the sacred text. The cure to ignorance itself. Aeons of the blood, sweat, tears and the lives of Organic Mechanics would not be wasted and the efforts of experimentation would not be all for nothing. 

Sawbones had already lost track of how long he laid under the baleful bask of the blisteringly hot sun but he knew that his weakness had already cost him precious time. His already sun-torched skin seemed to crackle and hiss from the intensity of the light. He was lodged underneath an ocean of dusty sand that carpeted his entire lower body. He could taste the grinding of sand grains between his molars as he greedily sucked the stale air. With each aching movement, he slowly rose out of the sand, stumbling onto his feet as he walked onto the loose but coarse land. He needed to find the chariot that the Great Hippo had bestowed upon him. He moved through the smoking battlefield with a purpose, seething anger in his clenched fists as he thought back to the ambush.

It was quick. Unexpected. Merciless. It’d all happened so quickly. Thunder and flame alike had been exchanged between the two sides. He had remembered slicing open the belly of a raider before the right wheel of the Hippo’s Chariot had burst apart. The last thing that he saw before he was knocked out was the relentless tossing and turning, watching in horror as the pages of the Panacea were torn from their binding. He couldn’t afford this loss. He refused to believe the fate of the Panacea. 

The surrounding landscape was a graveyard of junk and rot. Wrecks of bikes, speeders, buggies and trucks were beached on the coast of sand dunes, pitiful wafts of grey rising from their crumpled corpses and the acrid, pungent odour of guzzoline was oozing out of every vehicle.   Bodies of half-life scum and full-life material were bobbing up and down in the waves of sand, drowned in the storm that had razed the entire armada. The entire convoy had been gutted, pilfered of its riches and left to decay, like carcasses. 

There! Sawbones spirit lifted as soon as he saw one of his prized possessions.  His foot-steps had quickened the moment he saw his buried vehicle. The Hippo’s Chariot was in a sorry state, indeed. The frame had been badly buckled and would require the touch of a Blackfinger in order to restore it. That was, of course, if there were any other survivors of the attack along with him. He sifted through the sand that had filled the driver’s seat, trying to extract whatever supplies were left. His expression continued to grow sour as he rummaged through the contents of the vehicle. There were just scraps. A few enamel scapels. A scratched jerry-can that was a quarter full of guzzoline.  He’d began guzzling down on the canteen of water in greedy gulps before slowing down to shameful sips. He continued to search through whatever was remaining in the Hippo’s Chariot before his fingers grazed something familiar. 

He couldn’t believe it. 

Pulling it out of the mound of sand and dusting it off, he flipped open the pages of The Panacea and balked at severity of the damage. A good half of the pages were ripped straight out of the book by the gales of winds. Organ-planting. The recipes of his lord’s blessings. All of the rudiments were still there but the storm took everything away from him. Everything that he had accrued in his journey. One question was burning in his mind as he slowly read through the Panacea, trying to account for all that was still there. 

Had he failed his lord? 

No. He hadn’t. In all consideration, he should have been torn in the dust storm but by some miracle, he’d managed to survive. His faith in The Great Hippo had not fallen on deaf ears after all. If he had failed his lord, the dust storm would be punishment enough for his mistake. It was a sign for him that his journey, his quest was to continue unabated. The path to redeeming himself in the eyes of the Great Hippo was clear now. To reclaim the knowledge that he had lost and to continue on his quest no matter the cost. He kneeled upon the desert sand and clapped his hands together, muttering a short prayer in reverence of his saviour. 

[color=DarkSlateBlue]“I thank you, oh Great Hippo, for my blessed survival per my membership of this great covenant. Oh Great Hippo, May your blessing allow me to further do know the wonders of harm itself. Onward, mechanics of the Great Hippo, continue to repair, for blessed are we in our eternal union with the Great Hippo.Oh Great Hippo, Allow me to continue to act as an emissary of your will in this world. Oh, Great Hippo, I hear you not but feel your power growing within me  every second. I, your emissary, await your orders, oh Great Hippo.” [/color]

With fresh vigour, Sawbones stood up, the Panacea cradled in his right arm, and eyed the horizon. He spotted the signs of a settlement, a faint column of smoke in the distance. He only knew what that meant. Guzzoline. And lots of it. He then reminded himself that it would mean nothing without a working vehicle. The more he thought about going to the settlement, the more it seemed foolish. It could have been very well the home base of the raiders that attacked them. 

He needed supplies. He needed material. He needed experiments. He needed protection if he was to continue on this journey. Signing in frustration, Sawbones began to tread towards the smoking wrecks of the convoy, scavenging as much usable equipment and trinkets that he could manage from the vehicles. 

The ways of the Great Hippo were mysterious at times.