As the camel continued trotting along, Augen slowly started to cough uncontrollably as his entire body throbbed with pain. The camel seemed startled by this sudden development, and he smoothed his hand over the back of the animal and calmed gently.
“Shit…What is going on...” As his insides felt torn out by the aftermath of using his forbidden Casts, he felt a cool presence beside him.
“Want a sip?” Ver’s voice came from right over his shoulder, and Augen hmmed with surprise when she tapped him on the shoulder with a small water-filled pouch. He reached over and pinched his thin fingers around it before downing it right away as Ver continued, “You are truly a reckless one.”
“How did you find me?” Augen asked.
“You would have noticed my presence a while back if you weren’t in such bad shape.” Ver said, scanning him up and down, “I tracked the Kraken’s shell I hid within you. Though I was going to leave you two alone until the job’s done.”
“And?”
“The job’s done back there…” Ver said, taking the empty pouch from Augen, “Wu’s got the water situation figured out, so I am here to help you. How about we start with why you were part of a…water raid in the middle of the night?”
“I will tell you if you help me get back to the Dune’s Hive as quickly as you can.” Augen smiled, "Rather, are you and the Kraken fast enough to cover the distance before I finish my story?"
"Count on it." The Kraken's voice came through Ver's mouth before she smiled and nodded.
After the long walk and talk with Ver, Augen’s aches and pains actually felt a lot more bearable, much to his surprise. That was also partially due to her feeding him enough food to make him gain enough weight to look like Uncle Zhad.
“So…what should I do?” Ver asked, “I can set up camp and watch from the outside.”
“Whatever you do...just make sure that Tonya’s alright.” Augen said as they emerged from the Whirlpool Purple as the crack of dawn finally showed itself with the Dune's Hive slowly springing back to life, “Watch me from afar, and don't get too worried if I look...beaten up or whatever. Watch out for the snakes too. If you use your Wave too much, they will notice, and they will let Zmey know.”
“Sounds simple.” Ver said, vanishing into a Whirlpool and emerging just outside one of the tents towards the edge of the settlements before she flipped her hood over and blended into the sandy streets.
Augen hurried along the well-trotted path outside before he raced back to the camp, his Wave sensing abilities fatigued to the point that he could barely figure out East from West, yet he needed to get back no matter what, and he needed to know if Tonya's okay.
When he returned to the main camp, the early risers had just started to get on with their morning duties. He ignored the group of jokers drying themselves up by the cleaning buckets and the others performing bodyweight exercises and sprinted straight back to his tent before stopping his body abruptly. However, before his hands swung open the tent, his heart had already sunk.
Then, as a gust of wind followed his movements and brushed the tent's screens aside, he poked his head instead, dreading the confirmation.
Tonya wasn’t there. Not a hint of sound or pocket of heat, and nothing in the Wave.
“Shit…” Augen felt his heart drop further and further down as he flipped through the blankets that he and Tonya shared before, and the results were the same regardless of how desperate and frustrated he become. He stood up suddenly, throwing the tent over and causing it to collapse to the side as the onlookers ignored the ruckus, instead laughing at some other joke that were told.
He slid his hands into his pocket and pressed on Ver’s shell, his Wave surging through it as a snake resting on a wooden column nearby propped its head up in alert, “Ver! She’s not here! She’s gone!”
“Shit!” Ver cursed, “How long ago was it? Can you tell?”
“Long...Her scent...The heat...” Augen started running around the camp and shouting, “LYA! WHERE ARE YOU?!”
Unconsciously, he boosted his movements with the Wave, drawing more attention of the snakes as they slowly started to hiss and vibrate their tails with more and more of them noticing what was going on here.
“Save your lungs and your throat.” Zmey’s voice came from behind him, “Your adorable companion is not here.”
“What did you do?”Augen asked, spinning around and stepping up to him when the laughter in the camp vanished, replaced by a dreary tension as all turned to face him.
“I did nothing.” Zmey smirked, “I will admit. I did not expect you to make it back here after the little accident last night. I told Beardy to make it clean, and what he did was perfectly acceptable…selling you out to the mercenaries? That was as clean as it could have been.”
“I am not scared to fight dirty.” Augen said coldly and observed Zmey's Wave signature as it remained fierce yet calm, “And whatever you are planning, it’s going to fail too.”
“You don't even know what I have planned.” Zmey shrugged, “It’s already happened. It's done. While you were stuck dealing with whatever happened yesterday, your dearest companion and the rest of my people had already departed for the largest job that we will have ever done. I do not care for who you are, where you came from, or what you were sent here to do. However, your mistake was in thinking you can lie to us, mess with us, and pretend to be one of us!”
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“What are you doing?!” Augen shouted as the group of onlookers started to close in on him when Augen noticed their light footsteps as their signature in the Wave wound up slowly with their rising aggression, “What are you planning...”
“I am starting a new age for my people.” Zmey said with snakes crawling up along his legs, through his clothes and extending back out to his wrist, “An age brought forth by the downfall of the previous royalties and anyone who supported them. Your identity remained a pointless mystery, yet I know who she is, and I am truly gracious of you for handing her straight to me. When I hand her corpse off to Mila, I shall become the ruler of the Dune’s Diamond, and everything around here. Out west, among the badlands and the desert, I alone shall be its ruler."
"You..."
"Why was she here?" Zmey tilted forward, "She was the future of the Kingdom, in your eyes. Why did you let her come into the my den and get devoured by the beasts?"
"You have no idea what she's capable of..." Augen clenched his fist.
"I did see all that she wasn't capable of, however." Zmey turned around, "Maybe after all that's happened, she will just die on the battlefield right by the new fancy water farm that they made, shot by a stray arrow from the Dune's Diamond guards, or stabbed in the back by Beardy. The sand's of Necrovia's harsh, and none will mourn for such a death.”
“Augen…” Ver’s suppressed voice came through the Kraken’s shell as the snakes immediately caught on that pulse of Wave, “I have already warned them! You need to get out of there!”
“I will save her!” Augen said, placing specific emphasis in his words as he periodically injected Wave back into the Kraken’s shell, “You are not gonna go anywhere now!”
“But what about you?!” Ver shouted straight into his ear, “You are not in any fighting shape right now!”
“Oh, how are you going to do that?” Zmey laughed, “I way outnumber you both here, and my army over there. You have no chance.”
“I will find a way.” Augen declared, swapping out the Kraken’s shell with his playing cards in a sleight of hand. Zmey watched him with interest as he swirled his finger, gesturing for the rest of the men to surround him before he grabbed onto the body of one of the snakes that looped around the pylons of a shed and swung himself up to the roof.
“Shit…” Ver rose up from the shadow where she was standing, when a group of plainly dressed fighters with blades held out had already surrounded her, “Got no time to play games. Don’t die, Augen.”
With a single flashing move of her Water Weaving Sword, she slid open the flash along the dominant hands of those men before their blades crashed onto the ground and blood splattered out. Before they reacted, Ver had already fallen straight through a Whirlpool she spawned on a wall next to her.
“Come now. Show your true strength, Augen.” Zmey said as the men revealed their blades and carefully managed their distance with Augen all according to Zmey's training, “No more hiding back now, are you?”
The first of the men carefully stepped forward with their blades as the second and third lunged in right after, timing Augen’s block and trying to capture the opening in space to attack from his blind spots when Augen launched himself straight up into the air with an enhanced jump after leaving behind a quickly decaying Summer Lotus Cast, blasts of Wave jetting out in all directions and creating explosions upon contact with the attacking men.
Sensing that their basic attack patterns wouldn't work. the group rapidly scattered, avoiding the final bouts of attack from the Cast that vanished into the Necrovia atmosphere before they found cover around Augen as he landed. Then, they attacked from both above and below, a handful jumping off the roofs and a few more sliding along the ground, giving him no room to escape.
“Winter Bark!” Augen casted, a spinning whirlwind carrying sand grains surrounding his body and acting as a shield before it rapidly expanded outward, pushing back the enemies when the small boss leaped finally made his move, leaping up and straight over Augen’s Cast, a massive axe in hand as he chopped straight down.
Sensing the disruption of the Wave lines from the body of the small boss, Augen feined a jab to the left before darting to the right, the Axe slamming into the ground with a miss as Augen revealed a Summer Lotus Cast in his hand and fired off blasts that burned into the body of the small boss.
“That’s not going to work against tough men of the dessert.” The giant man said, planting his feet firmly into the ground and pushing back against Augen’s attacks with his massive hand as he picked up his axe and swung it back around, forcing Augen to bend back when he ran into the bodies of the other attacking man that had crawled through the whirlwind of defenses.
With nowhere to go, he was shoved towards the sharp edge of the axe as it prepared to decapitate him cleanly.
“Forbidden Autumn: Decaying Inevitability!” Augen shouted, his neck rapidly turning grey as cracks started forming along his skin. The Axe’s tip made contact with his decaying flesh before it started to soften as the wave of decay spread down through the handle in an instant.
The small loss leaped back immediately, ditching his beloved weapon when Augen redistributed the areas of decay to his arms and feet, burning away the two fighters that latched onto him as large chunks of their arms and shoulders became rotted instantly.
However, that Wave of decay and rot stopped immediately as Augen regathered his Wave and attention with the rest of the fighters surrounding him with the whirlwind dispelled around him, revealing a group of men lying injured all around him.
“You are full of tricks.” The small boss said, reaching to the side before the others handed him a fresh pair of axes as he swung them around like nothing to get used to their weight, “But guess what…tricks run out. So is your luck, and so is your Wave.”
“In this dessert, the only thing you can trust is your body.” The small boss dropped into a combat stance and took in a deep breath as he locked onto the thin frame of the blind boy.
“We shall see about that.” He said, sliding out his eight cards before reshuffling them and leaving behind only one.