I groan, managing not to fall forward into the sword.

“Throw down your weapons immediately,” the woman orders, still keeping the sword level at my throat.

My vision is starting to swim back into focus. I hope I don’t have a concussion. “That might be difficult, considering I don’t have any.”

The woman narrows her eyes at me. “Don’t get cheeky.”

She’s also a dhampyr; two fangs poke out over the top of her bottom lip, her ears are pointed, and her skin is, of course, ashen. She has black hair pulled back in a tight, practical bun, and is wearing armor significantly more heavy and intricate than the leather variety Quell and I have on. She’s older than me, I think; maybe around thirty. There’s an insignia of something like a wave or mountain peak on her chest.

[Check,] Echo says as I’m taking her in. [Darian, level 34 dhampyr sand guard. Captain in the Duneshade army.]

Oh, not waves or a mountain then: sand dunes.

“Wait!” Quell cries, struggling to break through a pack of soldiers which have protectively formed around him. “They’re not Moonfall! They saved me.”

More soldiers are appearing from around the rocks, several letting out audible sighs of relief when they catch sight of the prince. They’re all dressed similar to Captain Darian, in light clothes and leather armor—and most of them with goggles, I also notice, hanging about their necks in the case of dhampyrs, or worn over the eyes for the humans. How on earth did Quell manage to get himself abducted with all these soldiers around?

Captain Darian eyes me suspiciously. “They’re wearing Moonfall armor.”

I look down at my chest plate. “Uh, would you believe me if I said I had no idea how I came to be wearing this?”

Darian gives Quell a pointed look.

“I know,” he says hurriedly. “Their story is a bit… spotty. But they saved me nonetheless. The Moonfall soldiers already had me half a mile away, lost in a sandstone formation. If they hadn’t shown up, no one ever would have found us.”

The captain is still frowning when she turns back to me, sword unwavering. “And how did you find him?”

Man, there is absolutely nothing I can say here that will make this seem good. “I have some kind of tracking spell,” I say, which is the closest explanation to the truth I can think of that doesn’t involve explaining Echo and Role Requirements and making me seem even more insane.

“Some kind of tracking spell?” Darian repeats dubiously.

“Captain, please,” Quell says. “You can take them into custody if you must, but I owe them my life, and I won’t allow you to execute them here.”

Yeah, me neither, I think, already trying to gauge how fast I can remove the Crimson Aegis from my Inventory. But with a dozen soldiers spread out around us, the odds don’t look good.

Captain Darian stares at me for a moment longer, then lets out an irritated sigh and sheaths her sword. “We don’t have time to waste on this anyway.” She gestures to two nearby soldiers, and they step forward, each grabbing one of my arms and hauling me to my feet.

One of them checks me over. “No weapons,” he reports to the captain.

Darian gives me another skeptical look—what kind of idiot doesn’t carry weapons in a battlefield?—but turns to Quell instead.

“Was your sister with you?” she asks.

“At first, yes, Liz and Constance both,” he says, his forehead pinching with a frown. “But we were quickly separated. I don’t know where either of them were taken. Are they alright? Have you found them?”

The captain starts walking, and everyone takes this as a cue to follow suit. The two soldiers apparently assigned to me gesture for me to move as well, falling into step on either side. But they don’t tie up my hands or put a gag on me, like how I’d found Quell, so I consider that a good sign.

Or maybe they aren’t worried I’ll run because one of the guards is a giant spider-person, almost seven feet tall. It’s like if a centaur was half-spider instead of half-horse. Their entire body is a tan-brown color, but faintly reflective like a shell instead of skin. And while their upper half is mostly human, they still have eight round, black eyes. They glance down at me with a frown, and I nervously tear my gaze away.

“We caught up to Prince Constance’s group not long after the attack,” Darian explains to Quell. “We’d only been following his trail and didn’t realize they’d split the three of you up until after we recovered him. By then, we had no idea where you or Princess Felicity were taken.”

“But you were on the right track with me,” Quell says. “You’ve got a lead for Liz, too, right?”

Darian is silent for a moment. “We’re doing everything we can to find her.”

“What do you mean?” Quell asks. “You’ll track her down, right? She’ll be okay?”

There’s a quiver in his voice, and it kicks me right in the heart. His concern over his sister makes me wonder where my brother’s gone, too. I can still picture the last moment I looked at him. The fear in his eyes. He can’t have gone far. He has to be somewhere nearby. I find myself echoing Quell’s concerns almost word for word: he has to be okay.

“I promise you, my prince,” Darian says. “I will ensure your sister returns home safely. I will retrieve her myself, if that’s what it takes.”

Quell’s shoulders slump. “It just happened so fast. How did they get behind our lines? How did no one notice them?”

“The lapse in security is still being investigated,” Captain Darian says. “At this moment, I am relieved we were at least able to retrieve you and your brother. We can discuss further plans with all parties present when we return to camp.”

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We step out of the boulder field and back onto the open dunes. I can still see people fighting in the distance, like ants crawling over the sand, and closer still I can make out the crater Hans and I had emerged from.

“Er, excuse me,” I say, drawing the attention of basically the entire company of soldiers. “That crater over there. Would you mind if we swing by before we head back to your camp? I left a friend over there, and he’s probably wondering where I am.”

Darian blinks at me. “A friend?”

“More of an acquaintance, really,” I admit. “But it would seem pretty terrible to leave him in the middle of the desert with no supplies or shelter or anything. Plus, you know, the fighting, and whatnot.”

“Yes, the fighting and whatnot,” Darian repeats flatly. She looks at Quell as if to say, ‘Are you really serious about this guy?’

He splays his hands helplessly in some sort of indication of, ‘Well, they saved my life. What am I supposed to do? Killing or leaving them to die in a desert after that would kind of be a dick move.’

Or something like that.

“It’s on the way to camp regardless,” Darian admits. “We’ll pass by and keep an eye out for this… acquaintance.”

I guess that’s the best I can hope for, now. But I still need to figure out what to do in the long term. I have to get away from these guys and figure out where Álvaro ended up. The captain is probably going to want to throw me in a cell or something, and I can’t totally blame her, given what I’m wearing and how I have no explanation for it. Or at least no explanation anyone is likely to believe, given Quell’s reaction. Maybe I can use the shield to break out when their guard is down. No one has asked me about my Inventory, so that’s good at least. And then there’s always the Bloodlust…

I grimace as that summons far too disturbing and fresh memories. It might have made me powerful—incredibly fast and strong—but it also cost me my mind. I… I’m pretty sure I killed those people. I’m not a killer. I’ve only ever fought when I needed to, for self-defense, and the worst that came of those fights were some broken noses. If I rely on the Bloodlust again, I might end up hurting more than kidnappers.

No. I’m not willing to let that happen to me again. Guess I’ll have to escape the old-fashioned way: with the help of a demonic, cursed shield.

“Was this the result of an artificed shot?” Quell gestures to the crater as we approach. Darian nods curtly. “What kind? The blast radius is wider than what I’m accustomed to.”

“It was a group pitch,” Darian says. “Sand base. Charmed with a repulsive spell set to activate on impact.”

“Impressive,” Quell says, scratching at his chin in thought. “What was the range?”

“Three hundred feet.”

“Hm.” He sounds disappointed. “The catapults can achieve at least double that. If some wind arcana could be applied to the shots…”

“Once we get our hands on a wind mage, I’ll let you know,” Darian says shortly.

Quell grimaces. “No, no. I don’t mean conscription. It was just a thought.”

I raise an eyebrow at the tense and awkward exchange. A prince who has hesitations about the war his kingdom is in? Sounds messy. Not that I want to be involved with this war, either, to be fair, but I also have no skin in this game.

As we approach the lip of the crater, I can make out the form of the cactus monster crumpled across the desert floor. Hans is down there, examining its corpse. He’s favoring one leg, but the spines appear to be gone from his injured foot, so it must be healing up.

“Hey,” I call. “Hans!”

The man looks up. At the same time, sand explodes into the air between us.

A shock wave hits me, the air cracking like thunder. For a moment I think it’s another murder cactus erupting from the ground. But after the sand clears, what remains at the center of the explosion is not a creature, but a person.

Another spider person. I take a startled step back, the soldiers likewise flinching away, so I guess I’m not the only one surprised by their strange and abrupt appearance.

Unlike the spider-person next to me, who is wearing armor like the rest of the soldiers, this one is garbed in loose-flowing robes and silks, and carries something that looks like a small sickle with a chain attached to the handle.

Echo provides me a brief Check:

[Name: Zeyaelid]

[Title: Demigod]

[Species: Arachnoid]

[Class: Silk Paladin]

[Level: 81]

[Attack: 325]

[HP: 650/650]

[Mana: 3000/3000]

[Allegiance: Lorata]

Demigod? What the hell?!

She’s facing Hans.

“An aberrant event was detected in this area,” the demigod says. “Are you involved?”

Hans, who fell on his ass at the appearance of the spider-person, looks up at her with a mix of confusion and fear. “What?”

Zeyaelid glances at the destroyed murder cactus. “Did you do this? What is your name?”

Hans climbs carefully to his feet. “No, I… I was supposed to tame it, or something.”

“Name?” the woman demands again. Her clipped and formal tone invites no disobedience.

“Hans,” he says, glancing nervously up toward us.

Zeyaelid withdraws a scroll, which she begins to unravel. She pauses after a moment. “Your name appears in the System.”

My heart skips a beat. System? Echo used that term. Is she talking about the stats that only Hans and I can see and hear? If this demigod is looking for some kind of “aberrant event,” my and Hans’s appearance here certainly fits the bill.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hans says, cautiously edging back. “I don’t even know how I got here.”

Zeyaelid rolls the scroll back up and tucks it within her robes. “You will be taken into the custody of the pantheon until that can be determined.”

Uh oh. I don’t like the direction this conversation is going. By now, a whisper of murmurs has gone through the soldiers, and several have dropped reverently to their knees, including Quell.

“That’s Lorata’s Champion,” one of the soldiers says to another, quickly falling to the ground as well. I likewise join the others in the sand, more so I won’t stand out than out of any form of respect. Actually, that’s not entirely true: looking at that level, I have a healthy amount of respect for the danger she poses.

I can feel my heart beating in my chest as I peek out over the lip of the crater, watching the situation unfold. I feel bad about leaving Hans down there to fend for himself, but there’s realistically nothing I can do, and I don’t like the sound of being “taken into custody.” I can’t risk getting caught—not when I still need to find my brother.

“Pantheon?” Hans repeats. “What do you mean you’ll take me into custody?”

“All will be explained in time,” Zeyaelid says. “Your cooperation is appreciated.”

Hans, apparently, decides his cooperation will not be appreciated. He turns and runs, racing for a wall of the crater. Zeyaelid doesn’t follow. Instead she sighs, unfurls a loop of her chain, spins a weight attached to the end, then casually lobs the weapon at Hans. The weight falls over his arm at the same time Zeyaelid yanks sharply back. The weight spins around his limb, wrapping it in chains, and sends the man crashing to the ground as he reaches the end of the slack. With a flick of her wrist, Hans is flung back to Zeyaelid like a fish on a line. He crashes into the sand at her feet, dazed.

The woman leans down and grabs Hans, picking him up by the straps of his chest plate. She carries him like he weighs nothing, like the entire situation was a mild inconvenience. Wearing a bored expression, Zeyaelid turns and looks up at us.

I slam my head down into the sand, pulse drumming in my ears as I will myself to vanish into the ground. Did she see me? Would she be able to tell that I’m part of the aberration too?

“I apologize for the interruption, mortals,” I can hear Zeyaelid’s voice drift over the edge of the dune. “Lorata is grateful for your discretion in this matter here today.”

Then there’s another crack of thunder, leaving behind only silence and an alarmed ringing in my ears.

What was that? There are demigods? A pantheon? Where did she take Hans? And more importantly, what did she want with him?

As I lay there, ear pressed into the sand, I notice Quell also on the ground, staring at me with wide eyes. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing about me.