“Kimberly” croaked Penny “We’ve got to run… for the oasis”
They tried to leg it for the grasses, knowing all the while that they would never make it in time.
Girls were taken by worms all around them. They ran as best as they could, but their big bellies slowed them down to nothing more than an undignified waddle. They had almost reached the grassline, as Kimberly felt Penny’s fingers slipping from her grasp.
A Giant Sandworm had yanked Penny away by her head.
“No… Penny - I’ll save you” yelled Kimberly desperately trying to claw her friend back.
However, her rescue attempt was cut short as a Sandworm of her own drooled stinking salive down on her head before gulping her up.
The two pregnant women were slurped up to baby bumps. Kimberly could easily see another pregnant girl, already being turned into an angry red slurry, through the thin segmented body of her worm. And further down, she could see the goopy skeleton of the tiny girl being excreted as a smelly pile of worm crap.

“Pen-ny” she gasped, her lungs already being burned by the acrid air in the Sandworm’s gullet.
Side by side, the two expectant mothers’ wide bellies stop-gapped the mouths temporarily, until the ravenous creatures could stretch their boneless jaws around their prey..
When they did, the two girls popped in and disappeared with one disgusting swallow.
The Sandworms slid back deep beneath the sands, slithering down into the dark to digest their meals.

A week later, and another Wagon full of travellers traverses the desert. As their cart glides through the soft sands, it passes through something both hard and squishy. The driver cautiously calls the horses to halt, and hops from the front of the wooden vehicle, landing in a pile of thick brown shit with human bones in it
“Hmmm… Sandworm shit… Looks like they’ve been busy here. Guess we’ll have to go around. It’ll add a couple of days to the journey - but it's better than becoming like this stupid lass here.”
The occupants of the wagon nod in agreement, and the driver pulls the horses around as the first of the tremors begin. They leave Kimberly’s corpse alone in the vast wasteland, alone in the seemingly empty landscape… but somewhere out there is Penny’s skeleton, and thousands more just like it, lost in the dry sands.

In the World of Bones, travel is a risk only the brave, the foolish, or the desperate take. Those that do risk everything for a new life, but are often rewarded only with slow and agonising deaths





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