It was bitterly hot and as the sun glared and the sand sizzled, the three children scurried and screamed, pretending to be heroes and villains of primal myths, seemingly no care in the world. Scraps of metal were protruding from the desert accompanied by faint, reddish stains; telltale signs of a recent skirmish between brigands of the Shattered Lands. Just miles away the wasteland ended and something else began, with no conscious thing alive in slight, just the ever spreading, nefarious corruption.