Ratcatcher joined the team at the village’s edge, joining them on the road to the north. Feeling a burning shame at Augustus’ look, Ratcatcher gave him an apologetic nod for the worry that she had caused him. Letting go of her doubts, she walked straight to the two guides, allowing the negative feelings to wash over her for a moment.

“Greetings! Ratcatcher from Iterna, and you are?” She extended her hand, and both locals took a step back, looking into her open visor with something akin to terror.

Both of them looked almost identical: the same bleached by sun hair, their broken and healed again noses looking like oversized potatoes, bruises, scars, and cuts on their deeply tanned skin, not all of them recent. The man had a long scar across his nose, with the tip of his nose missing, his presumed sister had a slashed ear that healed badly. After some hesitation, the man stepped forward, followed by his sister.

“Hello.” He shook her hand, speaking with a strained voice and looking with suspicion at her left side. “I am Raaji, and my sister is Mardiyya of the al-Taheri household. We… thank you all for coming, I suppose.”

“Forgive our surprise. It’s just we never expected,” the woman added, in a slightly rougher voice, “that there are Changed in Iterna too.” Her features turned into a tired look, and she pulled the cowl of her cloak over her head. “Listen, if your kind eats humans too, just tell us straight away. Don’t give us this mockery of a hope…”

“Mardiyya!” The man raised his voice before coughing twice. Ratcatcher noticed a deep, dark blue bruise just beneath his Adam’s apple.

“Nope, not a Changed, totally and one hundred percent human,” Ratcatcher smiled to them good-naturedly, trying to look as innocent as possible. “And not a fan of any cuisine involving human flesh.”

“By this, she means it is forbidden in Iterna,” Elirob said quickly. “Iterna has a variety of people living in equality on its lands. Doubtless you will see it with your own eyes soon enough, but for now we need to know what happened to you?”

“We stumbled right into a patrol,” Raaji coughed.

“The plans that your people had sent to us were of great help.” Mardiyya wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of her nose. “They saved the lives of several of our tribesmen and helped with smuggling. But each ruler in the Dominion has an army of their own, and they change their plans on a whim. And this is how we got caught.”

“It doesn’t matter right now.” Smar pushed forward, reaching Raaji and stopping the youth in his tracks. Nodding once, she reached out for something inside her medical back.

“No… No need,” the man rasped, trying to push her aside. “Save your supplies for yourself. Sis and I are ready to lay down our lives if…”

“Unless it is absolutely necessary, we are not losing anyone, and your wounds might slow us down,” Augustus cut him off. “Smar, can you treat our guides during the trip?”

“Sure thing. It won’t be a proper treatment, but I’ll manage.”

“Then it will have to do.” Augustus looked into the desert, checking to see Kayleen, who showed him a thumbs up, before running behind the stones. “Lead us to the village. Ratcatcher, follow behind us, keep our rear safe.”

The explorator nodded, dropping the pace of her walk to stay several meters behind Elirob. With a corner of her eye, she saw how Smar treated the guides’ wounds with a medical spray before forcing them to drink some water despite their fierce protests. This brought a smile to her lips. Even after discounting the abnormal physiology that had granted most members of the group their enhanced abilities, the Iternian power armor was fully suited for working in the desert. The internal systems of Ratcatcher’s armor have collected every drop of sweat that ran down her body, as well as every piece of waste produced by her natural urges. Then this weird mass was recycled to a pristine condition and given back to her as pure water.

Thanks to the intense biological improvements made by doctors, Ratcatcher, Elirob, and Augustus could live off just by eating insectoid chitin for years if needed. It won’t be pretty, but their bodies could sustain themselves from just this, leaving the softer meat and insides for the rest of the expedition to feed upon. And this is discounting an impressive amount of nutrient paste resting in their backpack. Condensed to almost impossible levels, a single bite can sustain a normal person for a day, providing all the necessary vitamins and fluids to avoid dehydration. In short, their guides clearly did not know with whom they were dealing.

But they are sweet. Ratcatcher decided, opening a secure link with Augustus: “Leader, a question. This Raaji boy mentioned his sister’s household, but not his own. Is this just a quirk of speech or there is something else?”

“I told you to renew your knowledge of the Desolation,” Augustus sighed. “The boy only has a single name, meaning that he is the child of a concubine. The only way he ever gets a family name and a right to have a proper wife is if he is the sole survivor of his father’s family. Otherwise, he can only serve as a concubine for one of women in these lands. Mardiyya is the daughter of the first wife, meaning she is expected to continue the family line and inherit her parents’ wealth at some point.”

“Ah, different wives, got it.” The staff in her hands moved, striking through the chitinous shell of a scorpion trying to sneak after the group. Elirob turned around, pressing two fingers to his brow in silent thanks.

Ratcatcher has called up information from the private terminal and scrolled down to the cultural norms of the Desolation. Every family in the area attempted to have as many children as they could, according to information from the Underway. Famine, illness, and the flesh tithe took the lives of many people and left them without able hands, which could easily spell doom for any single family, especially those living in small hamlets. Left without people to stand guard at night, locals ended up being easy prey for predators living in the Desolation, and their masters provided next to no help, preferring to stage raids to get new flesh.

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Each family is ruled by the oldest family member, who in turn bows down to a village or hamlet elder, an elective representative in charge of dealing with their masters’ demands, and the one who pays the highest price should the Dominion get angry. Women, on average, were valued more than men in these lands, because a healthy wife or concubine meant a potential alliance between villages, as payment for a trade deal, or at the very least, a productive offspring. For this reason, many female elders choose to rule through a male proxy to prevent being killed by the Dominion’s thugs and thus depriving their commune of new children. And for this reason, most of the flesh tithe got paid by men’s lives, leading to a situation where each woman not only has to know how to raise a kid and maintain a house but also how to wield weapons.

Whoever sent these two must be really trusting in us. Ratcatcher decided, walking across the sand. On average, each household had at least eighteen children, of whom six or fewer grew up to be adults. A healthy and strong brother and sister, both in the prime of their youth. Losing them both may as well spell doom for the elder. If this is not a sign of the utmost trust around here, then she wasn’t sure what else could suffice for one.

In the next fifteen minutes, both of their guides felt better. The bruise on Raaji’s neck changed back to the healthy color of tanned skin, the swelling around the area disappeared, and the cuts on his sisters were no longer bleeding. Feeling invigorated, the young man even offered to replace Kayleen as a forward scout in order not to risk the Wolfkin’s life, earning himself Kayleen’s contemptuous laughter heard across the dunes.

They traveled for a good three hours, walking on a narrow path between several quicksand patches and passing the mostly covered remains of a sand reaper, the most gigantic predator living in these regions. Only building-sized chitin plates, turned yellow by the sun, remained from the once nearly undefeatable predator, along with its airplane-sized main scissors, still sharp even after all the years passed since the creature’s demise. Ratcatcher noticed a gaping hole in the gigantic insectoid’s side.

“Wow,” she said out loud, her voice carrying to the rest of the group through the secure channel, “any idea who did this?”

“Not a fellow sand reaper, I’ll tell you this much.” Elirob pointed at the torn edges of the chitinous plates. “Look. Their scythes leave piercing wounds, so sand reapers prefer not to fight among themselves to avoid getting injured and dying of starvation. That, and no sand reaper would leave a body this well preserved. To me, it seems like a full-blown rocket strike had hit the creature in the side, pulling out its insides and leaving it to be eaten by lesser creatures.”

“Maybe Warlord Alpha had a funny journey to the Desolation,” Kayleen’s voice added. The Wolfkin briefly climbed on top of the deceased beast, sniffing the chitin. “Nah, scratch that. Not a smell of either skinwalker or warlord.”

“The desert devil did this,” Mardiyya stated, and her brother lifted two fingers to the middle of his forehead, lowering them down in a zigzag line, no doubt performing some ritual to banish evil spirits.

“Desert devil? Who’s that?” Ratcatcher asked.

“Our mothers once told us about a naked being of might and hatred, racing across the deserts in the deep night. They told us that his steps create an earthquake, his rage makes mountains fall, and his hatred drives all humanity to extinction. None of the men who ever stood up to him even scratched his impregnable skin. Back when our mothers lived with us…” Mardiyya replied, shuddering at some memories, and her brother took her by the shoulder.

“My deepest condolences about your mothers.” Ratcatcher pressed a hand to her chest, trying to sound gentle and kind.

The pair stopped, turning to look at her. For a second, Ratcatcher assumed she must’ve somehow insulted their guides, that maybe offering condolences was a weakness or something, before she saw how the woman arched her brow.

“Why? Our mothers returned to rule their families, we see them when it’s safe in the summer,” Raaji stuttered, scratching behind his ear. “Are all your family members living with you all the time? Outlanders are weird.”

“Raaji, please show patience. Our saviors must have their own customs.” Turning crimson from the ears to the neck, Ratcatcher spotted Elirob and Smar pressing a hand to the lower end of their visors. Her ears caught their barely audible chuckles and Kayleen’s booming laughter. “We thank you deeply for your kind words, honored guest.” Mardiyya and her brother bowed, resulting in Kayleen falling from chitinous plates, holding herself by the belly. The snap of Augustus’ fingers sent the Wolfkin back on her feet and running ahead of the group. “As I was saying, when our mothers lived with us, we were young and stupid, thinking that they were exaggerating. Until…” She looked at her brother.

“Until the day we learned otherwise.” The man swallowed, a hint of animal fear behind his eyes. “Back in the days, we lived next to another village, trading water and food with each other. I got into the guard a bit earlier than Little M… I mean Mardiyya.” He hastily corrected himself with a grin after an elbow push from his sister. “And on that horrible night, me and the rest planned to spend the evening like usual when the sand began to shake. I saw literal stone formations, higher than the tallest hut in our village, rising from the ground. Cracks appeared all around our village, threatening to swallow it whole. Entire sand rivers descended into an utter void… But the worst thing were the screams. The screams that came from the other village were so loud and so desperate that even the surrounding destruction could not silence them. In the morning, Dad and the others visited this place…”

“And this is how we learned that the desert devil is real.” His sister repeated the same religious gesture. “Not even that whore Mendal inflicts such torture upon people. No living being would submit children to… to…” After a breath, she continued. “The Geld Duke himself came to see what the devil has wrought to his lands, freeing us from the tithe for an entire year and forbidding his dread mother from punishing us for relocation. But have no fear, people from Iterna. For the last eight years, ever since Brother was born, no one has seen the desert devil.”

Traveling the rest of the way, Ratcatcher lost herself in thoughts about who this mysterious desert devil could be. To her knowledge, Iterna had kept a superb list of all abnormals capable of such destruction. But this time, the terminal failed to find an appropriate person to match the description and behavior of this desert devil. The machine suggested that either the locals were exaggerating or perhaps this was an entirely new abnormal. Elirob became busy explaining to the guides how to use a portable communicator, and Kayleen had been scouting and hunting. Occasionally, the guides asked the group to change course or to hide behind rocks, allowing some patrols made of Changed to pass by unopposed. When the sun kissed the horizon, the group finally reached their resting place, a village nestled at the foot of mountains, the home of Raaji and Mardiyya.

And the main base of the Underway.