I run across the desert, swearing at every little inconvenience that has become my life. All the action I’ve been through has long since kicked sand in my boots, making every step an irritating reminder of my predicament.

“Stupid sand,” I growl, squinting when a breeze blows a gust up into my face as if in retaliation. I cough up the grains and blink grit out of my eyes. “Stupid desert! Stupid, stupid prince.”

[Sanity Level: 94%]

“Stupid magic system!” I shout.

The camp isn’t far ahead of me by now. The silhouette of the carrion cactus is framed against the purple night sky, glowing with stars and the two strange moons. I mentally reach for the Crimson Aegis, drawing it out of my Inventory. I’ll certainly be needing it if I’m going to face one of those killer cacti again.

Killer cactus. That’s so much better than murder cactus. Should have thought of that sooner.

The shield appears in front of me as I run, its magic immediately snatching at my arm and strapping itself in place. Its voice also instantly returns to my mind.

Irritation explodes like a sunburst through my head. Finally! It was wondering when I would remove it from that horrid stasis again. Stop doing that! It deserves to be seen! Proudly displayed! It is not some simple sheet of metal to be disposed of at the slightest inconvenience. It is the Crimson Aegis! The greatest of all shields! The most powerful—

“Shut up,” I grumble, using my other arm to help support the shield and keep it from dragging in the sand as I run. At this moment, its size is really inconvenient. “If you don’t stop complaining, I’ll put you away again.”

The shield is offended. Complaining! It doesn’t complain. Complaint is beneath it. It merely is making its case for why it is undeserving of such disrespect. Its magnificence should be self-evident.

I roll my eyes. This shield has an ego bigger than the Gulf of Mexico. But arguing with it is about like arguing with a brick wall. Besides, I don’t need it to talk, I just need it to fight.

The fight is ongoing when I skid back into camp. Several small fires are scattered around the scene, casting the area in the creepy undulating shadows of the giant cactus stalks. I have to squint against the spots of brightness, but I guess the humans here don’t have dark vision like me and need it to see. I’ll just have to deal.

A cluster of soldiers are off to one side, scribbling something in the sand. One of them plays her hands over the markings, which light up orange. A moment later, a ball of fire appears in the air before her and launches itself at the cactus. It strikes one of the limbs, which bursts into sizzling flames. The cactus swats at the group of soldiers in response, and as a vine crashes into the markings in the sand, the orange light snuffs itself out.

I follow the arrow in my interface, dodging soldiers and cactus limbs alike as I make a bee-line toward Quell. I can’t see him, but I’m being led toward a tent at the back of the camp. They’re probably trying to get him and his brother out of the danger zone. Great, maybe they’ll resolve my Role Requirement for me.

Ducking inside the flap of a tent, I narrowly avoid losing my head as a sword swings toward my neck. I flinch back as it clangs against my shield, which only saves my life because it already happened to be at head-level. Several people are shouting.

“Wait wait wait!” That’s Quell.

“Oh.” Darian lowers her sword. “Didn’t think we’d be seeing you again.”

“Me neither,” I admit. “I came back to help.”

“See?” Quell says. “I knew they weren’t part of this attack.”

“Or they are, and are just very stupid,” Constance remarks.

“We don’t have time for this.” Darian lowers her sword. “Earnest, Xamireb—get the princes out of here.” Then she juts her chin at me. “Guards, take this Moonfall soldier into custody.”

“No, wait,” Quell cries. “They saved me—”

“Now is not the time for your moral objections,” Constance says, trying to talk over his brother.

“—And I’m not going to leave when Liz is still out there!” Quell finishes.

“There’s nothing you can do to help find her anyway,” Darian says.

“But—”

I’m starting to see why everyone was yelling when I first stepped inside.

“Captain, you get my brother out of here. That’s an order.” Constance puts a hand on his hilt. “I’ll be fighting alongside my soldiers.”

“I’m not useless, you know,” Quell objects. “Just because I can’t fight—”

“This is a fight!” Constance snaps. “If I needed someone for calligraphy, I’d knock on your door.”

I rock back on my heels. Whew. Awkward.

“Now, if you would excuse me.” Constance stalks forward, and I quickly scramble out of his way. His glare flickers over me for a moment, then he’s out the tent, the sound of a sword being unsheathed following his fading footsteps.

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The Aegis’s attention snaps after him. We should also be fighting! This is what it was made for! It feels pulled to the fight. If I want to protect the prince, then the best way is to defeat that monster. It wants to fight. It needs to!

Shut up, I think, gritting my teeth. I don’t need two disembodied voices in my head constantly distracting me.

Darian huffs an irritated sigh. “Your parents’ orders still supersede his,” she tells Quell. “I will be returning to the conflict. My soldiers will escort you to safer ground. After all this is through, we’ll reconvene and discuss what is to be done about Princess Felicity.”

“I can help protect him, too,” I quickly add before the soldiers can pull away from the prince and have my sanity drained once more. Interestingly, my current Sanity stat is hovering at 94%, not going up or down. It will probably only recover when the prince is no longer in danger. But since I’m with him, protecting him, it’s also not decreasing. I guess that means I’m fulfilling my “Role.” Great.

Darian glares at me. “Absolutely not. You are to remain with my soldiers until you can be properly questioned. As a potential Moonfall plant—”

“They’re not Moonfall,” Quell says. “We’ve already been over this! If they were trying to deflect suspicion, don’t you think wearing the Moonfall sigil on their chest would be a rather bad way of going about it?” He straightens himself up, lifting his chin. “My parents’ order my supersede mine, but you’re still bound to obey if they’re not in conflict, and I’m ordering you to not detain this soldier.”

Darian’s eye twitches. “We don’t have time for this.” Then she blows out an irritated breath and shakes her head. “Fine. Whatever. Don’t let either of them out of your sight.” She says this last part to her soldiers, who I notice are the human and arachnoid who’d been escorting me earlier. Then she, too, leaves the tent to rejoin the fray.

I look at Quell. He looks at me. The soldiers look uncomfortable.

“You really came back to protect me?” he asks.

“Didn’t have much of a choice,” I grumble.

“Come, we need to leave,” the human soldier says. I think I heard Darian call him Earnest. “We’ll head to a checkpoint north of camp.”

“No way,” Quell says. “If I leave camp, Darian and Constance won’t let me back in. They’ll use it as an excuse to ship me home. But I can’t leave. I need to help find Liz.”

“Prince Quell,” the arachnoid, Xamireb, speaks up, “the captain made it quite clear: There is nothing you can do to help find Princess Felicity at this time.”

“I can look for her,” he counters. “She’ll have left a trail for us. I can find her.”

“That would be exceptionally dangerous,” Xamireb says.

“I bloody well know how dangerous it is,” Quell snaps. “I was nearly abducted myself. Now if everyone could stop treating me like I’m made of parchment—”

A thud lands hard somewhere just outside the tent. A vine crawls through the front flap, and I slam the Aegis down on top of it. Activating a brief Devour, the vine disintegrates beneath the shield.

“Regardless of where you go,” I say, “I think we all better get out of here.”

“Right,” Quell says, a little shaken. “Of course.”

The guards look relieved, and the four of us beat a hasty retreat out the back of the tent.

Xamireb leads the way, skittering smoothly around the outskirts of the camp, while Earnest stays in the back, keeping a close watch on me. Unfortunately, that leaves me next to the prince.

“So what did you mean when you said you didn’t have much of a choice?” Quell asks.

“Huh?” I’m distracted, watching for any cactus vines creeping in our direction.

“You said you didn’t have much of a choice but to come back.” Quell drops his voice. “Does it have to do with that Role Requirement you mentioned? You said you were my Knight.”

Damn, this guy has a good memory. I’d sort of hoped he’d forgotten about everything I’d said before that demigod showed up.

“Doesn’t matter,” I say shortly.

“If it’s the Champion Zeyaelid you’re worried about, I don’t intend to turn you over to her,” he says. “Besides, it’s not like there’s a shrine for Lorata out here in the middle of the dunes, anyway. I couldn’t contact her if I wanted to.”

I look at him skeptically. “You can use shrines to call up gods like a telephone?”

“Like a what?” he asks.

I just shake my head. “Never mind.”

“Well, anyway. If you want to talk about it, I’m here,” he says.

Gee, how sweet.

He looks at me, and that hungry look returns to his eyes. “Because this strange magic you’ve hinted at sounds extremely intriguing, and I must know everything about how it works.”

Oh. Not sweet. Kinda weird.

“All you need to know is that you’re stuck with me,” I say. “At least until I figure this magic out.”

“Fascinating,” he whispers.

It just figures I’d get stuck with the nerdy sibling. I glance back at the fight, which the Aegis is still urging me to join. In fact, strangely, I can feel the pull the shield is talking about; a magnetic draw. I don’t remember feeling this in the previous fights. Strange.

Captain Darian and Prince Constance are locked in combat with the carrion cactus, hacking its limbs away like a weed whacker. Now those two are some fighters. It’s a shame I didn’t get saddled to one of them. I wonder if either would be willing to teach me how to use a sword.

The Aegis, previously distracted by the fight, catches these last thoughts and turns back to me, aghast. A sword? What could I want with a sword when I have something so much mightier than that?!

I sigh. I just want to be left alone with my thoughts for one freaking minute. Is that too much to ask?

“Those mountains,” Xamireb says, pointing off to what I think is the north-east. “That’s where we’ll be heading. We should meet up with scouts around the halfway point—it might be around dawn by then, and we’ll have to find shelter among the rocks. But this time tomorrow we should be safely back within Duneshade territory.”

Quell frowns in the direction of his kingdom. Instead of turning to the guard, however, he turns to me. “Your magic means you have to follow me?”

I grimace. Don’t see much point in lying, since I’ll have to stick around him anyway. The pattern will become obvious enough once I’m begrudgingly following him across a desert. (Unless I kidnapped him and took him with me as I searched for Álvaro. Given how scrawny he is, it wouldn’t even be hard. (Yes, I know what a terrible idea that would be, and no, I’m not that stupid.))

“Protect you, more specifically,” I say. “I can tell if you’re in danger.”

“Amazing,” he breathes. “How does it determine what danger means? Are we in danger right now?”

“Please, my prince,” Earnest begs. “We need to get going.”

“This really doesn’t seem like the time to be figuring out my magic,” I agree.

Quell smiles. It’s so weirdly out of place, given everything I’ve been through tonight. In fact, in contrast to the shouts of nearby soldiers and the shadows that dance with each new blast of flame, it’s downright eerie.

“On the contrary,” Quell says. “Now is the perfect time to deduce the mechanics of this interesting magic of yours.” Then, he turns and runs toward the monster.

I stand there for a moment in disbelief. Are. You. Fucking. Kidding me? Is this guy for real? No one can be this stupid.

“Prince Quell!” Earnest and Xamireb dash after him.

The arrow in the corner of my vision starts to blink urgently. [Role Requirement,] Echo warns.

I stare up at the sky, pleading for a moment with the stars. Allowing myself one long, exasperated groan, I chase after the prince.