“We’re out of sight,” Linda said, parking her carriage behind a boulder by the side of the road. Her brow furrowed as she left the driver’s seat and entered the back. Cleo was storing the preserved foodstuffs into her space. Linda’s lips contorted as conflicting emotions wrestled in her heart. She had clearly cut ties with Cleo, so why did the little lizardling come back for her? Was it just because she had a carriage?

Cleo finished packing away the food and stopped in front of the wooden box she was sitting on during the inspection at the checkpoint. She lifted the lid and scooped the salt into her space, revealing a burlap sack. Cleo smacked the top of the bag. A muffled voice, coming from the bag, asked, “Did we make it past the checkpoint?”

“Yes,” Cleo said and untied the ropes. She pulled the sides down, revealing a ruddy-faced angel. The headmaster gasped and fanned himself with his hands.

“I thought I was going to suffocate,” Headmaster said and climbed out of the box, salt falling from his clothes. “How long was I out?”

“About a week,” Cleo said. “It took a while for Linda to get everything in order.”

“A week?” the headmaster asked, his face paling. “No wonder why I feel so hungry. Have anything?” Cleo offered him an orange. The headmaster bit into it, peel and all. “How far away from the checkpoint are we?” Before Cleo or Linda could answer, he popped open the window and stuck his head outside, looking around. The checkpoint wall was massive. “So not very. Alright, why are we stopped? Hurry up and get a move on.”

“Are you really Headmaster Hailing?” Linda asked and crossed her arms over her chest. Nothing about Headmaster made him seem like a prestigious member of society, but everything about him pointed towards crazy old man.

“You don’t recognize me, Ms. Bael?” the headmaster asked and raised an eyebrow. Orange juice leaked down the sides of his mouth and dripped from his fuzzy chin. He glanced down and picked at his clothes. Maybe he was a bit scrawnier after hibernating for a week. “That’s good, that’s good. It’d be terrible if someone figured out who I was.” He stuffed the rest of the orange into his mouth and swallowed without chewing. “But really, we should be moving. The rebel army is definitely going to attack the first sector soon. Trust me.”

“How do you know this?” Linda asked and frowned at the archangel who used his sleeves to wipe his mouth. He was too busy shaking the salt off of his body to answer. Linda snorted and sat on the driver’s seat, ordering her carriage forward along the road. She wondered if she should trust him, but Cleo had already pointed out how rich a headmaster of a school was. Well, fleeing from the first sector matched her goals anyway. She just wouldn’t have chosen to flee towards the rebels.

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“Dammit, lizard,” a voice said, interrupting Linda’s train of thought. “Give me my orb.” Linda turned her head and chuckled. Cleo was clawing and hissing at the headmaster who was tugging on her tail and legs, scratch marks on his face. Linda sighed and shook her head. She’d have to apologize to the little lizard later and, maybe, return the pure crystals…. Some of them at least, not all of them. Her seat rumbled, causing her to nearly fall off the carriage. Cleo and Headmaster stopped moving as the walls of the carriage rattled.

“What’s that?” Cleo asked as she slid out of the archangel’s grasp. She climbed up the driver’s seat and onto Linda’s head and shoulders. She squinted at the rising wall of brown in the distance.

“It looks like a cloud of dust,” the headmaster said, appearing behind Cleo. “Could it be…?” He sharply inhaled through his nose and grasped Linda’s arm, jerking it to the side. The carriage groaned as it was whipped ninety degrees to the right. “Drive that way as fast as you can.”

“But there’s no road,” Linda said.

“And if you keep dithering around, there won’t be any carriage to drive either,” the headmaster said. “Unless you think you can drive this through a whole army.”

“Hey, Cleo,” Linda said, her expression darkening as she urged the carriage forward. “Didn’t you say we could trust this guy’s words? How is it that we’re going to be the first to die now?”

Headmaster snorted. “How did it take you a week to exit the first sector?” he asked. “If I didn’t spend my powers to warn you like the lizardling asked me to, you think I would still be here? I’d be way behind that army already.”

Linda turned her head to the side. The wall of dust covered the whole western horizon. “I don’t think we’ll be able to outrun them, even while heading north,” she said and bit her lip. “Why did I listen to you? What do we do?”

The headmaster furrowed his brow and rubbed his chin. “Lizard,” he said. “Do you have any orbs of diligence? We can dig under—“

“No orbs of diligence,” Cleo said and shook her head. “I have wrath, humility, kindness, and patience.”

“And those are all useless,” the headmaster said and sighed. “Well. I guess we’re just screwed.”

“Can’t you drink your steroids and do that magic thingy where you teleport us?” Cleo asked.

“I haven’t recovered,” the headmaster said. “You think it’s easy to exceed your limits like that? I feel like shit.”

“Why don’t we head back towards the first sector?” Linda asked. She jerked on the orb in the dashboard, swinging the carriage to the right again. “We’re going back to the first sector.”

“It might be a little too late for that,” Cleo said as she stood on Linda’s head, peeking over the roof of the carriage. “Those are some really fast centaurs. And that one has four arms, what the heck?”

The ground ahead of the carriage rumbled as a wall of earth sprung out of the road. Linda yelped as she braced herself, covering her face as the carriage rammed into the wall. She opened one eye and quickly checked the damage before placing her hand on the orb. The carriage wouldn’t move. “Ah, I really shouldn’t have listened to you,” she said and clutched her head. “I just hope they don’t take my crystals after I die.”