The desert winds felt different today.

It wasn’t the prayers of the Gnolls within the halls of their ancestral home, nor was it the dust-caked winds billowing around the walls – the result of the Elder’s Windcallers whipping up a storm to cover the army’s movement. From her viewpoint upon the sandy battlements, Yelena looked on as warriors geared up their beetle-mounts for battle, and smiled to see Edna down there among their ranks, nuzzling up to Mendax and making even that big brute blush. In truth, the spirit of hope had infected this clan – not the spirit of death that Yelena was used to whenever she joined her Brothers and Sisters on hunts through the snowy battlefields of Averix’s frigid North.

None of these thoughts phased her. The kiss of the winds, however, brought something else. As she looked towards the Grand Palace of the First Layer looming large beneath the morning sun, she felt a real terror strike her deep in the marrow of her bones.

Deeper still, beneath her heart, sat the corrupted essence of her dark father. Waiting. Interminably waiting to be whole again…

“Penny for your thoughts?”

She didn’t even have to turn round to know it was Marius who had snuck up on her, and he hopped atop the wall beside her and straddled it like a child.

Then: a distinct wave of heat radiated up Yelena’s back. He’d brought the girl with her.

“I’ve come to deliver this pest back to you,” Amara said, stepping to Yelena’s right and leaning her back against the battlement, keeping her eyes on the crimson toes poking out beneath the skirt of her robe. “He does nothing but try and get secrets from me.”

“Perish the thought, little madam!” Marius chuckled.

“I told you: never call me that.”

Yelena straightened up. “I’ve tried to tell him to forgo his little nicknames,” she sniggered. “Alas, Voidspawn are less tenacious.”

“Hmpf,” came Marius’ reply. “Even a handsome rogue like me has feelings, you know.”

They each then felt the winds play across their faces, ruffling their hair, casting their thoughts adrift.

“We’re about to change this place,” Amara said after a moment.

Yelena nodded. “And then we’re simply going to move on.”

The crimson-eyed girl met her somber stare with her own anxious eyes.

“You know what’s waiting for us in there, don’t you?”

Yelena pursed her lips, spared a glance at Marius, and then nodded.

“It…will not be easy.”

Amara huffed. “It never is.”

“You know what I’m thinking?” Marius chirped. “How good it would be to just stay here when its all over. Rule over these hyenas like Gods. The Saviors of the Sands, right?”

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Yelena caught the irony in his voice.

“That’s the best joke you’ve told in a while.”

“Is he always like this?” Amara asked, leaning back and letting her frayed hair fall over the sandstone.

“I’m afraid so.”

“My dear girls, every party needs a joker,” he said. ‘Without me, where would our much-needed comic relief be?”

“Life isn’t funny,” Amara retorted.

Marius just laughed. “Kiddo, give it a few more years and I promise you: if you’re not laughing about the cards dealt to you in this life, then you’ll be dead.”

“Cards, Marius?” Yelena asked, not even sure why she was bothering. “Is life really just a game to you?”

“Yelena – we’re little more than characters in this world,” he said.

She’d expected him to chuckle again like he usually did. Or sigh. Or throw his arms wide and curse the world he’d been consigned to. But, surprisingly enough, he was looking out across the desert wasteland now, eyes trained on the Golden dome of the palace just as hers were.

“There’s something all the people here say,” he continued when even Amara didn’t try and interrupt him. “Have you noticed? It’s like a…catchphrase. A motif. Like it’s a line baked into their very being.”

Both girls were listening to him now. Even though, from what Yelena could tell, maybe he didn’t even know what he was getting at.

“’We can only be what we were made to be.’”

It was Amara that said the phrase, striking both Yelena and Marius with the way her voice shook as she said it.

“Precisely,” Marius went on. “It always stood out to me about this place. The Don, the Gnolls, the monsters in the dungeons, all the unspeakable horrors out there that could make even the most confident Averix guardsman shit his pantaloons – what if that’s the thing that links them all? What if that’s why we’re the heroes here?”

“Speak plainly, Marius,” Yelena said with a sudden tremble. “The eve of battle is no time for riddles.”

The rogue hunched up his knees, reaching a single hand out to grasp at the sun as it rose above them all, and the tendrils of the purple dark surrounding it stretched out across the whole Layer.

“I don’t think things in this place happen by chance. I think there’s a design going on. I think there’s a path we’re following – a path set down by someone else. Only difference between us and them down there? We get to choose which path to follow.”

Both girls looked at him blankly, their faces twisting from confusion into deniel.

“But – hey,” he said. “That’s just a theory. A Thief Theory.”

As insane as it all sounded, Yelena had to admit that there was a pinch of truth behind his words. After all, against the odds, the three of them had met each other, hadn’t they? Just like the Gnoll Elder said, they had been brought here. By her? Maybe. But maybe too that was just what she was supposed to think…

“So, he’s not just a joker and a liar,” Amara sighed. “But a philosopher too? I didn’t think he could get any more annoying.”

Marius dropped his arm and fell from the wall. “Here I was thinking Yelena’s words were harsh…”

They stayed on the wall together as the Gnolls continued their preparations for the battle that would determine the fate of the Sands. Each one, Yelena thought, probably had the same questions she had: why are you here, and would you sacrifice me to gain it?

“I am surprised you will stand beside us, Amara,” Yelena said. “I expected that you might have thought the Gnolls were enough.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Amara replied. “I’m not here to for either of you. But I’m not an idiot. I’m not gonna throw away strong people when they say they’ll help me.”

“Even if one of them is an Argent?”

Amara scoffed. “I think an Argent that kills other Argents balances things out.”

“Did…did she just tell a joke?”

“Don’t push it, Marius,” Yelena told the thief’s shellshocked face. “I have a feeling it was a one time thing.”

She turned to Amara and offered her her hand.

The girl looked at it absent-mindedly, and then back at her.

“Even if you don’t want to tell us who you are and what you want,” Yelena told her. “I know you care about these creatures. So you have our word that when the time comes to destroy their enemies, we will stand beside you.”

While Marius muttered something about how Yelena could apparently make promises for him, the girl looked back down at Yelena’s hand with scorn.

“You really want me to shake your hand? What’s the point?”

Yelena smiled. “Maybe this is all part of some grand design. But I’d at least like to think that we made the choice to trust eachother.”

The girl thought about it for a second before gingerly gripping her hand and shaking it firmly – her tiny, frail fingers wrapping around Yelena’s cold gauntlet.

And as she looked back up at her, Yelena felt it again: warmth.

“I can’t trust you,” the Lightbringer said. “But I won’t kill you.”

“That’s enough,” Yelena replied as the war horns were finally called.

In this world, it’s more than most can count on.