You ask about the Gobi. People think of it as just sand and emptiness. They do not know what sleeps beneath that sand. I know. I have seen it with my own eyes. I was a young man then, herding camels near the Sevrei sum area. It was June. The hottest part of the year. The heat in the Gobi is not like heat elsewhere. It is a weight. It presses you into the earth. We had seen strange weather that week. A rare rain had passed through, turning the ground damp for just a few hours before the sun boiled it dry again. My father always told me, 'Ganzorig, be careful when the ground is wet in June. That is when the ground moves.' I did not listen. I was young.
I was checking on a camel that had wandered away from the herd, into a ravine where the saxaul bushes grow thick. The animal was agitated. Spitting, pulling at its lead, refusing to move forward. Camels are stubborn, but this was fear. I could see the whites of its eyes rolling. I walked ahead to see what had spooked it. I thought perhaps a wolf, or a snake. But there was nothing in the brush. Just the sand, baking in the sun. Then, I saw the color. A bright, bloody red against the pale yellow dunes. It looked unnatural. Like someone had spilled fresh blood and entrails on the ground.
I stepped closer. It was not a spill. It was a living thing. It lay half-buried in the sand. It looked exactly like the intestine of a cow. That is what we call it-olgoi-khorkhoi. The intestine worm. It was thick, maybe the width of a man's arm, and not long... perhaps two or three feet. It was hideous because it was so simple. There was no head. No tail. No eyes that I could see. No mouth. Just a thick, red cylinder of muscle pulsing in the heat. Its skin wasn't like a snake's scales. It looked smooth, almost wet, despite the dry air. A dark, deep red, like meat left out too long.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]