Quell and I find them nearby at the bottom of a steep slope. We send Poppy ahead of us, who half runs-half slides down the incline, then we follow her in much the same manner. Everyone is battered, but alive.

Liz throws an arm around Quell and knuckles his head. “Way to go, little brother! I knew you had it in you. Amazing range, by the way!”

Quell fends his sister off, ducking out of her arm. “What ever happened to a simple ‘Thank you’?”

“That was a thank you!”

Darian looks us over. “You two unharmed?”

“Unharmed,” I confirm. Although, it was a close one. “You all?”

“Earnest damaged his prosthetic when we slipped down the cliff,” Darian says. “Just scrapes and bruises for the rest of us.”

Quell nudges a bone with his boot. “It looks like not everyone before us were so lucky.”

There are more bones around here, too, along with a strange musky smell. That stirs something in my memory. “Is this the smell you guys were mentioning before?”

Liz wrinkles her nose. “Yes, though it’s about a hundred times worse down here.”

“It smells… earthy,” I say.

“It’s bacteria.” Xamireb gingerly picks up a bone and tips it to the side, displaying a section of green fuzz. “The last piece of the puzzle. The reason why I felt something was odd about this storm.”

“Oh!” Quell snaps his fingers. “Yes, it all makes sense now, doesn’t it? I should have figured it out before. It is Life arcana magic. And Life arcana can’t affect wind and sand.”

Xamireb nods excitedly, clearly appreciating the scholarly interest. That makes one of us. “Precisely. It was the bacteria that became altered by the Life arcana. And what an alteration! Very clever, really. They gained the ability to create a mirage when the wind carries them into the air; then the magic disguises the cliffs and lures prey over the edge, where they fall to their deaths, providing food for the microbes. An amazing symbiosis between nature and magic.”

I wrinkle my nose at this amazing symbiosis. “If there’s bacteria in the air, is it safe to be down here breathing it all in?”

Xamireb and Quell exchange a look and an uncertain shrug.

“If it were capable of killing its prey faster, it wouldn’t need the mirage,” Xamireb says. “Probably.”

How comforting.

“Regardless,” Darian says, “I think making our way out of here promptly will be to all our benefit.”

That’s one thing I can agree with.

We spend an hour searching both directions of the ravine for the shallowest climb out, and find one we hope will make do. The real issue is our two star drakes—the third that Liz and Darian had been riding is still missing, and likely dead. When they try to climb out, the rock walls are loose enough that the star drakes’ weight causes the sand and rocks to give way, resulting in them slipping back down. In the end, we climb up ourselves using tent stakes as picks—well, all of us except Darian, who activates some type of sand spell and then hikes up the hill like it’s nothing—then secure several ropes to the top. It takes most of the rest of the night to set up the lines and haul the lizards out, Darian shifting the earth and pushing from the bottom. But finally, eventually, all of us make it to the top.

We have to back-track out of the sandstorm and canyons in order to find a path around. By then, it’s already dawn, and everyone is exhausted. Finding a rocky outcrop, we wearily make camp, eat a quick dinner, and head to bed.

----------------------------------------

Thankfully, the next two days pass without any excitement. We camp, Darian and I train, and the Crimson Aegis manages to only think about stabbing Darian twice. Small wins, I guess.

We keep an eye out for Constance and his troops as we ride, hoping to intercept him somewhere along the route to the Oasis, but so far there’s been no sign of him. Liz and Quell don’t talk about it, but I can see the worry in the way they carry themselves, in the tension in their shoulders and the bags beneath their eyes. I wonder if I look much the same.

Earnest has mostly gotten his prosthetic back in working order, though he says he’ll need to commission repairs once we make it to the nearest city, which will be the Lifespring at this point. Supposedly, we’ll reach it tomorrow.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“What’s it like?” I ask Quell that morning as we’re getting ready for bed.

He takes off his glasses and carefully folds them in a wrap of cloth as he settles down onto his bed mat. “I’ve only been once, admittedly. We were kids, and our parents were meeting with Moonfall envoys, I think. I hadn’t really paid much attention to the politics of it at the time. I was just excited to travel.”

I prop myself up on an elbow as he talks.

“It was beautiful. Everything so green—birds filled the sky, and there were so many exotic animals I’d never seen before—ice cats, and bears, and these fantastic little fuzzy creatures like snakes with fur.” He smiles. “Those were Liz’s favorites. She begged mother to take a dozen back with us to the palace.”

“Did you?”

He laughs. “No. They were delightful, but Liz has always had an attention span as temperamental as the clouds. She would have lost interest after a couple weeks anyway.”

“Álvaro would have begged for the same.” I think back to when we were kids. Our older siblings were so much older that they almost felt like a different set of relatives. But Álvaro and I are only a year and a half apart, and we’ve always been close. It was us against the world.

“He’d bring home stray kittens and try to hide them under the bed. That didn’t do much to muffle their tiny mews.” I grin just thinking about it. “Mom and Dad always took them to a shelter as soon as they found out. But I’d help sneak them in anyway.”

“You two sound close,” Quell observes.

“We were. Are.” I roll onto my back. “My older siblings didn’t really get me. I was ‘too confusing’ or just ‘too hard’ for them to understand. But when I wanted to change my name to Nye, Álvaro never even questioned it. He switched to gender neutral adjectives the second I asked. Though he messed it up a lot.” I chuckle and look back at Quell. His forehead is wrinkled with faint confusion. “I guess that’s not a problem here. Everyone seems so… understanding.”

“I don’t entirely follow,” he says.

Of course he wouldn’t. Sometimes the people here feel so familiar, and then other times, we couldn’t be more different.

But this isn’t a wound I want to reopen right now. “You were talking about the Oasis,” I prompt.

His gaze searches my face, as if there’s more he wants to ask, but he lets it go. “I’m not sure words can adequately describe it. The city shone like a sapphire in the sand. You just felt healthier, stronger, more energetic while you were there. Liz and I wanted to play with all the oversized pets, but Constance spent the whole time pouting.”

“Why’s that?” I ask.

“Mother and Father wouldn’t let him accompany them to their political talks.” Quell snorts. “Even at that age he took his inheritance so seriously.”

“You don’t seem to hold the same feelings for your position,” I note.

“Why would I?” He sighs, clasping his hands behind his head and flopping back on his mat. He stares up at the tent canvas. “Countless hours spent learning dances and court politics and table manners. For what? To exist as a trading piece and be married off to some foreign state to curry favor with their leaders? I’m never going to be king. I’m third in line. And if something happened to them to make me first…” His face falls. “I don’t think I’d be in any state to rule.”

Some of his ignorance is starting to make sense. He’s not politically inept out of indifference, but as his own subtle form of defiance. He feels locked into a future already written for him. No wonder he spends so much of his time escaping into books.

“I guess we’re both trapped by our circumstances,” I murmur.

That makes him pause. He rolls onto his side, facing me, and tucks an arm under his head. “You know, Nye, I never wanted this,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry you’re chained to me how you are. If I could put an end to it, I would.”

My chest aches strangely. “I know.”

“I want to help you find your brother,” he continues. “I know I said I was just going to help you remove your curse. But after that, I still want to help. You helped me find my family. It’s the least I could do to return the favor.”

The power of royalty, even one not first in line, could offer far more resources than I’d ever have access to on my own. It’s a more than generous offer.

The thought of us working together to find Álvaro, like we’d done to find Liz, fill me with an affectionate warmth. “That would mean a lot to me.”

“And,” he adds, a hint of nervousness tinging his voice. “I’d also like to learn more about you, if that’s alright.”

My stomach flutters. “What do you mean?”

His eyes light up. “About your world! About how you got here. About how you really ended up with that shield, and why the gods are looking for people like you, and why you have access to some strange magic system that doesn’t exist in any arcana text I’ve ever read. There’s so many mysteries! But there must be an answer to it all somewhere.”

I snort. That brief, nervous flutter is gone. “Can’t wait to be your research subject.”

“It’s beneficial to you, too,” Quell insists. “Don’t you want to know? What if all this is important!”

“What’s important is surviving,” I say, settling back into my bedroll. “I want to keep my brother alive, which means I need to keep myself alive, and I also need to keep you alive. Everything else is secondary.”

Quell sighs, shaking his head. “No scientific curiosity at all.”

I yawn and roll over. “If you figure any of it out, let me know. In the meantime, I’m going to focus on what I do have control over. And right now, that’s sleep.”

Quell grumbles, but I can hear his bedroll shift as he stretches out as well. “I’ll find the answers for you somehow.”

Strangely, I believe him.

----------------------------------------

The next night, we’re only two hours into the ride when Darian halts our procession. She stops her star drake at the top of a dune.

Quell takes ours up next to her. “What is it?”

She gestures to the valley beneath us. Lights bloom at the bottom of the basin like beads of dew strung along lines of a spiderweb. Even from here I can make out the bustle of civilization, the green of more plants than I’ve seen in the entirety of this world so far. I can catch whiffs of smoked meat floating on the wind.

“We’re here,” Darian says. “Welcome to the Lifespring Oasis.”