This is part 2 of a double update

Read the one before this

Middle East

    Sehun had started on a ten week internship helping to dig holes and find artifacts. He had started to build a name for himself pretty quickly as the guy who could find tombs without even thinking about it. Even where they had no idea there were tombs.

    “How do you do it?” The young project director, Kris asked.

    “It's a gut feeling.” He replied.

    “Some instinct.” The assistant director, Jongdae added, clearly impressed.

    “If your gut feeling keeps up, I might want to keep you on the program.” Kris beamed.

    “Really?” Sehun grinned. He couldn't believe his luck. The stupid butterflies had actually done him some good.

    “So one more thing,” Kris said to the smiling man, “What do you make of this?” He unrolled a scroll on a nearby table and Sehun looked at it for a moment before reading out loud.

“This is a warning to all those who wish to seek the tower of Jamshid. Turn away now.

The tale I tell comes from what I witnessed with my own eyes.

My brother, the village elder, had been told that Zoroaster’s flame had gone out and the priest charged with keeping the eternal flame burning was nowhere to be seen.

We had formed a search party and the last place for us to look was the tower of Jamshid.

It was a beautiful tower, perfect for sending all of us to the sky to rest with the angels when our time came.

For some of us, our time would come sooner than we thought.

We climbed to the top of the sky tower and the smell could not be described.

Many of us became ill immediately.

Those who stayed, noticed that the tower was covered in bodies of men we did not recognise. The pit in the center for disposing of the bodies was full of blood.

There were not enough people or animals for leagues who could fill even half of the pit.

The blood had been sitting for some time in the hot sun and was ripe with putrefaction.

One of the men accidentally kicked something into the pit and although it was small, the effect was as if he had thrown a boulder into the liquid.

Those who had been unfortunate enough to touch the blood had started screaming.

It was as if they had been burned by the sun, nay, Ahuramazda himself.

They screamed and lamented until one by one they had started to attack.

They had barely made it to me before they all died.

The village elder decided that the tower of Jamshid Should never be seen again.”

    Sehun looked up at the other two and suddenly said “I need to make a phone call.”

    He stepped out and put his phone to his ear.

    “Hey y, what do you need?” Luhan's voice rang out, pleasant as ever.

    “What do you know about the tower of Jamshid?”

    “Why would I know anything about it?”

    “It's a death thing. It's got death written all over it. What do you know?”

    “Look, death is mostly on an automated system. I only really know about things that stick out.”

    “It's a sky tower where some freaky zombie happened. Apparently we're looking for it.”

    “Oh. All I can say is don't, and remember rule #1: Don't with anything bigger than your head.”

    “I thought rule one was don't wander off.”

    “Rule two?”

    “No outside food.”

    Luhan sighed in exasperation, “Rule five then. Is there a rule five?”

    “If it's stupid, Kibum had probably ed it.”

    “Who the hell is Kibum?”

    “Doesn't matter.”

    “Just don't with it. Dig something else up.”

    “Ok.”

    Sehun went back inside and looked at Kris.

    “I know my opinion doesn't matter for much, but my friend and I agree that we shouldn't dig this thing up.”

    Kris looked seriously at Sehun and then to Jongdae.

    “I need to discuss this with Jongdae.” Sehun nodded.

    “Just know that if you choose to stay, I won't be here.” The two men nodded as Sehun left. I’m not getting involved with this one.”

    “You can't let him leave, you see how effortlessly he read the scroll? We need him, Yifan. He even figured out what that word I couldn't translate said.” He whispered.

    “Why would he hide that on his file? He's not telling us something. He can't just be a dropout med student. Usually foreign languages aren't even required for med school let alone a two thousand year old, dead dialect. I'm just glad there are four sites we could choose from.”

    Sehun walked to his tent and there were several men playing cards.

    “You know gambling is illegal.” Sehun said. “So is drinking and being gay.” He furrowed his eyebrows. “How do you even police that?”

    He scratched his head and sat on the cot next to his auburn haired tent mate, Sungjong.

    “What do you suggest we do, almighty director's favorite?” He asked.

    Sehun looked into his eyes and couldn't think.

    “I-”

    “Hey guys,” Kris stuck his head in, “can I come in?”

    “Sure,” Sehun shrugged. The others glared at him, surprised that he wasn't instantly intimidated by the tall man.

    “So, Jongdae and I have discussed it, and based on Sehun's input, we've decided to leave the tower of Jamshid and find the Mozaffarieh bazaar.”

    “Does this one have a terrifying story behind it too?” Sehun asked sonically.

    “Wiped off the map after a freak sandstorm.” He shrugged, “No idea where any of the people went.”

    “Great. So we're gonna uncover a tomb?” Sehun made a strange frog face.

    “Look, they can't all be creepy cursed burial grounds. We'll look around since we came all this way and it's less than a kilometer that way.” Kris pointed.

    “Do we pack up now or do we wait until tomorrow?” Sehun asked.

    “We can go tomorrow bright and early. If we go now, it'll be too late to set up camp. Unless you guys don't want to sleep here tonight?” Kris looked at everyone.

    “I have a bad feeling about this place,” one of the other men, Sungyeol said.

    “I don't want someone to kill me in my sleep and we saw some shady types lurking around earlier,” Myungsoo said.

    The rest of the men agreed. They quickly packed up and piled into their van.

    They had plenty of daylight left before they stopped a little more than a kilometer away.

    Jongdae had driven them rather quickly through the arid land, and hit the brakes hard when he saw a caravansary appear out of the sand.

    “Good driving, Jongdae. This is exactly the area we need to be.” He patted the younger man's shoulder.

    “Let's find some place to sleep in here so we don't have to set up our tents.” He said to the other men in the van.

    There was only one large room that hadn't been filled almost completely with sand.

    “We found a well!” Sunggyu shouted from the courtyard.

    “Perfect,” Kris said, “you remember how to set up the water purifier?” He nodded and went to the van.

    “So this will be our base of operations from now on, we will split into pairs tomorrow and walk in our designated directions, ok?” Kris split everyone into pairs, giving each pair a direction to walk in.

    Sehun sent Minseok a text. ‘miss you.’

    “That's so sappy, who's the lucky girl?” Sungjong whispered.

    “No one.” He blushed.

    “How does your battery not go out?”

    “It's special.” ‘Like you’ his brain supplemented. “Lots of searching to do tomorrow. We should sleep.”

    “Guys.” Jongdae started, “I know it seems a bit awkward, but due to how cold it's supposed to be tonight, I recommend you share your sleeping bags and cover up with the second one.”

    “What?” Sehun shrieked.

    “Like he said, it's going to be awkward, but awkwardness is better than losing one of you to the elements.” Kris said.

    That night they slept with their tent mates, and the next day, Jongdae and Sehun looked terrible.

    “Didn't you sleep well last night?” Kris asked Sehun before their morning meeting.

    “I couldn't sleep.”

Last night

    Sehun lay on his cot, sharing his sleeping bag with Sungjong.

    He tried to keep a tiny distance between them, but Sungjong was shivering. He wrapped his arm across Sungjong’s chest and pulled him closer, breathing warm air across the back of his neck.

    Sungjong tried to get closer and Sehun brought his hand down to Sungjong's stomach to stop him from squirming. Eventually the older man’s breaths evened out and Sehun tried to get to sleep.

    Parts of him refused to go quietly.

    Across the room, Jongdae was having a similar problem when Kris’ long arm wrapped around him and held him close.

    He didn't sleep because he was trying to commit this to memory. It would probably only happen for the duration of this trip, but he didn't want to forget the time Yifan held him like this.