So that's why the verdora are acting so strange, Bath thought as he rode alongside the group of verdora. He snorted derisively. Their danger-sense is tingling...because they're riding horses?

Bath wasn't an expert at riding horses, but he was pretty sure they were safe. Moreover, the quasi-sapient horses were intelligent and wouldn't be unruly mounts, or so Bath assumed. Then again...Sometimes I feel like Kendrick jumps intentionally high just so that when we come back down, I fall four feet onto his saddle. For a verdora with only a few COTD boons, a four-foot drop at these speeds would hurt.

However, if anything, the wilder the horses rode over the monotonous dunes of the aptly-named Vast Desert, the more manic the verdora became, screaming the sorts of phrases expected of the extremely intoxicated. Fortunately, the wind of their passage muted all but the loudest unenhanced voices.

Bath continued to eavesdrop on Eyrin throughout the rest of the crusade to the gate. However, even though Eyrin agreed to teach Clarissa how to be an escort, he refused to do so while they were airborne. To Bath's annoyance, Eyrin didn't talk about anything interesting for the rest of the ride.

And things were getting so interesting, he thought, sighing. No wonder Juserin is wary of Eyrin; did he send the verdora with us to get him away from his criminal relations? Bath tightened his hold on his saddle and reins as Kendrick prepared to jump over a fissure. I'm still missing a lot of the picture, particularly information pertaining to his father, a so-called unsavory character, and Eyrin's position as prince.

Laying out everything he didn't know made one thing clear to Bath: Eyrin wasn't anyone that he pretended to be. He wasn't the auspicious prince, the patient listener, the naive first-time traveler, nor was he a simple kursi.

Couldn't Juserin have given Lisa and I an intelligence report on Eyrin? Bath grumbled. I'm annoyed that we have such a deceptive individual in our midst. The vanguard is supposed to pave the way for the rest of COTD; as such, it's supposed to be filled with individuals honestly dedicated to colonizing the stretch of gates leading back to Earth. Lisa and I agreed to bring along verdora as a show of good faith, but perhaps...we should have waited a bit longer, at least until the first verdora received all boons and began to generate PP.

Bath shrugged to himself. Whatever. What was done was done; next time COTD conquered a sapient species, they'd be more careful. Now that the vanguard was stuck with the verdora--who, because of their "danger" handicap, would be more of a nuisance than any source of help--Bath resolved to pay special attention to their activities, particularly those of Eyrin. And if he discovered any unscrupulous behavior?

Bath smiled savagely, his eyes glinting. Humans don't associate the devil with a dragon for nothing.

---

Two hours passed; in that time, they'd traversed the vast expanse of the planet's all-encompassing desert, eventually arriving at the edge of a seemingly-bottomless chasm. As the first to arrive at the location of the gate, Lisa and the other kursi could only sigh in awe.

The Maw of Abyss literally looks like a giant toothy mouth, she thought, eyes wide. Like a giant fish is opening its mouth wide, its body submerged in the sand. The group of kursi approached the Maw's edge, peering down into its endless black. Priscilla pulled out a flashlight from a neon pink fanny pack around her waist, shining it down.

"It's no use," Zhou muttered. "This gate is deep." He turned to face them, a confident grin plastered across his face. "But at least it isn't lava."

"Hold on," Lisa said, stepping forward. "I have an echolocation boon. Let me see if I can map out the chasm."

Nobody said anything, which Lisa took as a cue to lower her upper body over the Maw of the Abyss' edge. She opened her mouth and closed her eyes, sending out sound waves and waiting for them to ricochet back and convey the depth and contours of the chasm.

She inhaled sharply. "Damn," she murmured, pulling herself back to her feet. "I'd say it's at least four miles down."

"Americans," Priscilla sniffed. "How much is that in kilometers?"

"Priscilla," she said flatly, "miles to kilometers is easy: just multiply by two for a rough estimate."

"Eight kilometers?" Zhou said, cradling his jaw in his right hand. "Not too bad. Unobstructed, correct?"

Lisa nodded. "It's a hole leading straight down to the gate. If I had to reckon why there's such a huge fissure directly over the gate...I'd say that all this sand was deposited at this location many years past. Eventually, the sand covering the gate fell through to the other side. Since the 'other side' in this case is outer space, it has all probably just floated away."

"Hmm..." Zhou intoned contemplatively. "Which seems to suggest that some power intended to cover the gate up."

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Right."

"Khalid!" Priscilla shrieked, drawing everyone's eyes. "Why are you in the Maw?"

Khalid poked his shawled head out from the chasm. "What?"

"It's dangerous," Priscilla sniffed. "If you fall and land in the gate, you'll be in outer space."

"If I didn't know better," Ida chuckled lightly, "I'd say that you actually cared."

Priscilla glared daggers, looking as though she very much wanted to say something insulting.

"I'll be fine," Khalid shouted as he continued his downward climb. "Eight kilometers is nothing. If I fall, then I deserve my death for my incompetence."

"Wait, no," Zhou said slowly, as though processing Khalid's words a second late. "Damn it, Khalid, I don't care how incompetent you are: Lepochim would have our hides if you died."

"Leprosy can rot in hell," Priscilla snorted, folding her arms across her chest. "Fine, Khalid: if you wanna die, don't say I didn't warn you."

"Leprosy?" Lisa murmured, furrowing her brows. Is that what people are calling Lepochim? She felt like she should stick up for the irritable deepthink, but if she was going to be completely honest...

The corners of her mouth twitched into a small grin. The name kinda suits him.

"Where's Eyrin?" Zhou asked, looking around. "I thought he was flying behind us."

Eyrin chose that exact moment to fly out of a patch of thick clouds and dive toward the sand. His devilbat smashed into the loose top layer, stirring up a sizable dust cloud that covered the nearby Priscilla with dust.

"Oh my fucking god," Priscilla lilted. "Thanks, Blueberry."

"Did I miss anything interesting?" Eyrin asked, gracing Priscilla with a small smile. The devilbat walked beside him, struggling to move through the sand with her wing talons.

"Khalid went down the rabbit hole," Ida sighed. Seeing Eyrin's confused expression, she pointed behind. "He went down into the Maw of the Abyss."

"...Which I told him not to do because our superior, Lepochim, would be angry if he died," Zhou finished.

Eyrin frowned. "Is it that treacherous?"

"Leprosy can die," the devilbat grumbled from behind, speaking over Eyrin.

Priscilla shot the devilbat a look of interest. "What's your name?"

"Clarissa," the devilbat replied.

"So, you hate the alien asshat too, huh?"

Clarissa's eyes narrowed, her pupils pinpoints of black. "He's the worst."

Lisa watched the exchange awkwardly. "Uh, what's so bad about him?" she asked.

Clarissa and Priscilla instantly turned to look at her, their expressions hateful. Then, they looked at one another, as though silently communicating how to best explain why Lepochim needed to die.

Priscilla was the first to speak. "Okay. So, first off, you need to recognize that Lepochim isn't human. I have no idea what the hell he is or why he's on Earth or, more importantly, why the hell an alien is in charge of COTD's mostly human kursi, but what I don't know isn't important."

Lisa gulped. Sure sounds important from your tone.

"What is important is that he bosses us humans around like we're literal specks of dirt beneath his shoe. I showed up for Basalith basic kursi training; as soon as I did, I was sorted into this disgusting barrack. I shared a room with a guy kursi who was crazy." Seeing Lisa's alarmed expression, Priscilla sighed, regaining her composure.

"Of course," she began again, "it wasn't necessarily Lepochim's fault that my rooming accommodations and room mate were shit."

Sure sounds that way, Lisa thought.

"If this was the extent of my problems, I wouldn't complain, nor would I call him Leprosy."

Lisa heard Eyrin snort and glance toward Clarissa.

"Lepochim placed us onto teams," she explained, "and made us engage in battles with one another. The rest of you should have experienced the same thing, with the exception of Eyrin."

"Hey, Priscilla--" Zhou interrupted.

She glared at him. "I'm not done yet. Now, the difference in our experience is that I'm a young kursi, and you're not. In case you forgot, I'm forty-two. You know what happened to all of us younger, and less powerful, kursi in these 'war games' of Lepochim's?"

Priscilla gave Clarissa a look. The devilbat nodded and cleared her throat. "I was the mount of a thirty-one-year-old kursi named Caleb. Every match we entered, Caleb and I would be subjected to endless mind assaults. He was unable to defend against attacks on his own mind, let alone mine. After two weeks, Caleb was admitted to Lepochim's kursi recovery hospital because he was mentally unfit to continue.

"And me?" Clarissa laughed bitterly, her voice grating in a way that was almost harmful to hear. "I was reassigned to another kursi the day after Caleb left."

She hissed, looking at Priscilla. The two of them began to speak together:

"Relentless," said Clarissa.

"Evil," said Priscilla.

The two looked awkwardly at each other. "Er, relentless, yeah," Priscilla murmured, coughing lightly. "Anyways, he's an insensitive, cruel, tasteless ass." She flicked her finger. "He ruins people he comes into contact with. Hence, Leprosy."

Lisa cringed. I think we should tell Lepo to tone it down a bit. "While this is all true," she began, "have you considered that he's just trying to prepare you for actual kursi battles?"

Priscilla's expression darkened. "You'd never send out a kursi under age one-hundred into a real battle," she rebutted. "Eyrin, you said the average age for verdora on Illudis is in the thousands, right?"

"Right."

"Yeah, well, I bet Illudis would never send out a kursi under age one thousand. And here Lepochim was pinning woefully underpowered kursi against some of the oldest kursi on Earth."

Zhou sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Which is unfortunate, since many of the eldest, and most powerful, kursi have sealed off their emotions and any figments of remorse.

"Or are completely crazy," Priscilla concluded.

"Yeah, uh, I'll talk to him," Lisa promised, voice uncertain.

Everyone present whipped around to look at her. "What do you mean, 'Talk to him?'" Zhou asked, eyes glinting with humor.

Shit. "If I ever become a big shot," she said, recovering, "I'll give him a piece of my mind."

Ida chuckled ruefully. "I'll beat you to it, dear."

"I suppose I appreciate the sentiment," Priscilla sniffed, giving Lisa a small smile.

Clarissa grunted. "What are we waiting around for?" She looked behind, noting that the woman leading the entourage of horses and non-kursi had slowed down, drawing her own horse into a sluggish cantor. "Why have the others not reached us yet?"

Lisa frowned, looking back. She's right; we've been here for at least five or ten minutes. What's taking the rest of the vanguard so long?