Nicos sprinted up desert dunes, and coasted down their sides. He crossed the endless sands at a truly blistering pace, alternating between sand-skating and his own bastardized casting technique whenever appropriate. The result was nowhere near as fast as he'd seen the Naru move, but it was well beyond his travel speed when he had first entered this gods-forsaken desert.

He was heading for what he'd tentatively identified as the midpoint between the Naru and their next destination. The tribe moved quickly, but they were many. No large group could move as fast as a single person. Especially when a great deal of the tribe were very young and very old. No matter how skilled they were, their bodies could only withstand so much. Resonance did not make a person invulnerable. It could not wash away the march of time.

The Bastion caravan suffered the same problem regarding speed. Their mounts were fast, but the boy knew it was impossible for them to maintain that speed all day. They would need to stop for rest, for food, for water. Out of the roughly forty visible warriors, only a bare handful had seemed capable of sand-skating. The Naru had few warriors, but they would be more than enough to hold off whatever meager force the caravan could send ahead of itself. It would not be worth the risk. Especially not to the gaudy slaver that had presented himself as the leader. There was simply no profit in it.

So Nicos was relatively certain that he would intercept the Naru before their pursuers did. He would warn them and they could take whatever precautions they felt necessary. This surely wasn't the first time they had been raided like this. The clear hostility the majority of the tribe felt towards Bastion was more than enough evidence of that. Everything would be fine.

As time passed, it became more and more difficult to keep his heading straight. The boy had not lived in the desert nearly long enough to keep any kind of mental map, and he resorted to using the Twins' path across the sky as his guidepost. The grains of sand kicked up by his travel brushed against his skin, and he used that touch to read into their Memory. Nicos imagined each grain like the branches of a massive tree, grown by Memory. Each led into another, led into another, on and on, as he slowly built an image of the desert.

This was Nicos' method of reading the desert in its entirety. He would never be able to use the Naru's technique, his mind simply did not view objects the same as they did, but he had worked out his own way. It was safer by far, as each piece of Memory was distinct and individual. It was nearly impossible for the boy to be overwhelmed by it. His mind would never Wander, shattered into pieces and scattered by the combined Memory of an ancient desert. It was better for Nicos, as he would not always have a Naru elder around to fix what had been broken. Even if he had managed to use the Naru's technique, he preferred the safety his method offered.

But it was agonizingly slow.

Urz was not the best scout of the Naru, but he wasn't far from it. He could brush against a grain of sand, and read the desert for miles in every direction, in a single instant. Longer, if he had time to focus. Nemuba had claimed her own grandfather had been capable of reading the entire desert at once; every living creature, every action, every movement, all revealed with a single touch.

If Nicos were to fully concentrate, to meditate waist deep in the sand with nothing else taking his focus, he would still probably starve to death long before his technique ever reached that sort of distance. His version was also less precise. He received nothing more than impressions, and fleeting at that. Each branch grew smaller as it ventured further from the trunk, forking wider and wider. The more there were, the faster they spread, the less Memory he received from them. At around three miles, it was no longer worth the focus required to continue their expansion. He felt less than a shadow of a touch from each branch. Just enough to sense movement, but little else.

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It was nowhere near enough. The desert was enormous, and he was searching for a very small group of people. His sole advantage lay in that he knew the rough direction of their eventual destination. The intercepting path he had drawn was merely his best guess, and reading the sand still required him to close the distance greatly. At the end of the day, his chance of success was low.

Assuming he defined success, as finding the tribe as they moved.

Fortunately, he needed to do no such thing. His mad dash across the desert was a bit of a gamble. He had waited until the Bastion caravan was miles away before moving, but even then, he worried at the Memory trail his movements had created. He was like a localized twister, ripping its way across the desert. He could only hope that the slavers were not more skilled than the Naru at reading the desert. It seemed a safe assumption, but it was still an assumption.

Regardless, his presence should be a beacon to any tribesman for miles around. His presence and purpose was as clear as dark clouds on the horizon, heralding a storm. He made no effort to hide the urgency in his every movement. He emphasized it, even, turning what might have otherwise been a long-distance sprint into a mad scramble.

Time passed, and the Twins slowly dipped below the horizon. Nicos kept moving, kept sensing, kept broadcasting his location. For all his pride in his original creation, Nicos fully understood that he was still hammering out its kinks. It was, he knew, extremely unlikely that he would sense the Naru before they sensed him. Beyond that, the tribe had traversed the desert for hundreds of years. Their ability to hide their presence might very well be beyond his own ability to detect. Nicos knew these things. He was at peace with these things. Therefore, he was only slightly surprised when, after blitzing his way up to the peak of yet another dune, he crashed headfirst into a familiar face.

Urz grunted as they collided, the impact sending them both tumbling into the sand. The tribesman laughed uproariously, from his position on his back.

"I figured you were regretting your decision, and wanting to join back with us," the young man commented through his own laughter. "Instead, I find myself forcefully pushed onto the ground! Should I be worried for my chastity, Nicos?"

It was nice to see Urz again, but Nicos was in no mood for wordplay. He had gotten to know many of the Naru scouts, during his time with the tribe, but Urz was the one most familiar with him. The young man had either noticed Nicos' presence, or had been sent by another scout, to investigate the boy's purpose. The tribesman was treating it like a friendly reunion. It pained Nicos to break that illusion, but it was necessary.

"I encountered a caravan leaving Bastion," he said quickly. "Slavers. They claimed to know the location of the Naru. There are dozens of them, Urz."

The mirth drained out of Urz's face faster than water in the desert. With a grim voice, he asked, "When?"

"This morning," Nicos said. "I don't— I couldn't even begin to guess the distance, but I came as fast as I could."

"You did well, my friend," Urz reassured him. "Give me just a moment."

The tribesman knelt down, and brushed his hand across the sand that Nicos had fallen in. He closed his eyes, going perfectly still. Nicos stood guard over him for nearly a minute, while the young Naru tracked the boy's path. Finally, his eyes snapped back open, and he flinched backwards. The young man's lips split into a growl.

"That is a problem," he snarled. His eyes flicked to Nicos, and softened. "Thank you for warning us. Please, come back with me to the tribe. The elders will want to hear what you've seen."

Nicos nodded, and Urz let out a shrill whistle. The sound cut across the open desert, and, within moments, was echoed by a similar whistle from far in the distance. Urz nodded to himself, then gestured to Nicos.

"Come. The others will meet us."

The boy nodded once more, and they set out across the sands.