You are now level 10. Cap reached for current class [Baby Dragon] Exp toward class ascension: 0%

I stood over the remains of the slain ironhide hyena. "I just hit level 10," I told Octavia. "Now, the System is indicating I need more experience for 'ascension.'"

Octavia tapped her two front claws together in a gesture resembling a clap. "Well done! I recall when I graduated from being a spiderling. It was also at level 10. You have just a short way to go."

"What are you now?" I asked. "If you don't mind my asking."

"My first ascension made me a 'web weaver,'" she said. "Now I'm an 'acid spinner.' But I still tend to favor my web-weaving abilities."

"Does anything come after that?"

"Not for me," she said. "Not anymore, anyway. I once dreamed of ascending further and becoming an Arachne spell-weaver. Several other spiders in our colony managed to master those arts. I might have learned from one of them, if I'd been a better student. But…they're all gone now."

"Oh," I said. "I'm sorry that your friends are all gone."

"What are you talking about?" she said, giving me a tap on the snout. "I have a friend right here."

"I'm happy to be your friend," I said. "But I'm no spider."

"That doesn't make you a worse friend," said Octavia.

"I'm glad that you think so," I said. "But it does mean that there are things I can't do for you that a spider could, especially when it comes to exploring the arts associated with your species. I think you'll have to be self-taught when it comes to that."

"Self-teaching can only get me so far," said Octavia. "Being a web-weaver is something I was always innately capable of. Acid-spinning came naturally. But becoming an Arachne spell-weaver is more than a simple matter of becoming stronger, even if that is one of the requirements. I would need to study under a teacher."

"That's interesting," I said. "I wonder if I'll ever find another dragon to study under."

"You're still growing up," she said. "I don't think that graduating from becoming a baby dragon will require any special teaching. Just experience."

"True," I said. "On that note, I recall hearing what sounded like a lot more than a single hyena cackling up here. I wonder if the others might have also become ensnared. More opportunities for me to gain experience? If you don't mind, of course."

"Be my guest," she said, removing what remained of one of the web barriers that the ironhide hyena had mostly torn through.

As I walked past the torn web barrier, I could barely make out the shapes of the two smaller hyenas in the cave tunnel. They were buried under a layer of sand.

I looked to Octavia and asked, "What happened here?"

"Seems like the wind picked up," she said. "But it's died down by now." She lifted up a layer of web from the floor and began rolling it toward the entrance. "I hate it when this happens. Whenever a big windstorm kicks up, the sand gets everywhere."

I nodded. "Not only does it get everywhere, but it's also coarse, and rough, and irritating." I grinned, but she offered no sign of other sign of recognition.

As she did her best to clean up the tunnel, I poked at the two lifeless hyenas, shaking one of them enough to knock the sand loose. I noticed their eyes were tightly shut, and there was a sort of crust around their eyes, bits of sand that had clung to where tears might have formed. "Their tear ducts must have been working overtime," I said. "What killed them?" I asked.

"Isn't it obvious?" said Octavia. "It was the sand."

"I understood that much," I said. "But what was the mechanism? My guess would be suffocation, since it doesn't look like they were injured by any debris. They were buried under an inch-deep layer of sand, but…"

"That's true," she said. "It's odd that they'd suffocate under that amount of sand." She began erecting a new set of web barriers."

"Exactly," I said. "If it was a matter of getting buried, they could have just shaken it off. I bet that they got buried after they suffocated and stopped moving. My best guess is that their death was probably caused by inhaling sand, or something like that. It damaged their lungs too much for them to keep breathing."

"Why are you telling me all this?" asked Octavia.

"I wanted to see if you had any alternate theories. You've experienced sandstorms before, right? Do they, I don't know, have any magical qualities to them?"

"Why would a sandstorm be magic?" she asked.

"I don't know. That's why I asked."

She raised another vertical web wall, testing its strength before moving on. "It's no more magic than the rising of the sun. Sometimes, there's intense winds, and the winds are intense enough to kick up lots of dust."

"What about non-magical properties?" I said. "Like, I don't know, any particular hazards to worry about, like lethal debris? Is there any pattern to when these storms show up?"

"They tend to come in waves," she said. She raised a third web wall, not bothering to deal with a thin layer of sand that was still underfoot. "There's usually a smaller, briefer wind that hits with very little warning. Then bigger waves come after."

I looked down at the two sandy hyena corpses. "Even if the first gust came with little warning, I think that the hyenas had an idea of what was coming. That's why they were trying to get into the cave. Maybe the fire ants knew something, too. They all seemed like they were in a hurry to get underground, last time I saw them. It was an exceptionally windy night." I paused. "You knew it was a windy night. Why didn't you raise the alarm about a possible sandstorm at the time?"

"These sorts of events barely ever happen," she said. "I've only experienced three storms like this. Windy nights happen all the time."

"Even if it's only a one percent risk, it's something that's useful to know about," I said.

"A one percent risk might as well be zero."

"There's a lot of difference between zero and one percent!" I said. "There are some risks that are so small that you can effectively round them down to zero. But there's a big difference between something that has a one-in-a-million chance of happening, and one-in-a-hundred. Sandstorms like this might be low probability, but they're actually quite likely to happen eventually over a long enough time horizon. You said yourself that you've experienced three big sandstorms."

"And it seems we may be experiencing a fourth," she said, raising another web wall. "So perhaps you might want to go to one of the lower tunnels to wait things out. I can't make any promises about how much my webs up here will actually be able to block once the dust storm really kicks up."

I looked at the two sandy hyena corpses, a reminder of how lethal the sandstorm could be even in its 'milder' moments. I poked at one, shaking the sand off of it, and tried taking a bite. I tried chewing, and felt the grind of sand against my teeth as I bit down. I spit it out, forcing myself to swallow some of the sand that still lingered in my mouth. I had eaten a small rock before, so a little sand wouldn't kill me, but this hyena certainly didn't strike me as appetizing.

"Is there anything I can do to help here?" I said, watching as Octavia continued spinning her web.

"I don't think so," she said. "We can wait things out in the Sparkling Vault."

"Alright," I said, leaving Octavia behind to finish her work.

I headed down to the Sparkling Vault, lying down in the center. Several minutes later, Octavia arrived, dragging two web sacks behind her. I noticed that the large one contained the remains of the ironhide hyena, while the other contained the two smaller hyenas.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"You carried all of that down here?" I asked.

"Not all at once," she said. "And gravity did most of the work of bringing them down. I only dragged them horizontally. I'm not sure how long the sandstorm will last, so I thought you might want some food."

"This is all for me?"

"If you want it," she said. "I still have the fruit to tide me over. But I can consume any hyena bits you don't eat. I might have an easier time digesting them, considering the sand."

"Ah." I formed a mental image of Octavia slurping up the dissolved guts from a sandy hyena hide, then banished the image from my mind. "I appreciate it," I said. "I'll eat what I can. If we're not going out anywhere, I assume it won't be a problem for me to overeat. Does that speed up my metabolism?"

"Not in my experience," she said.

"So what do we do?" I said. "Apart from waiting."

"The Shimmergrove, as you might imagine, is unaffected by the sandstorm," she said.

"I suppose if we run out of food down here, I'll have no choice. But I'd prefer to avoid the Shimmergrove for as long as possible. Who knows what dangers lurk down there?" I paused. "Well, I suppose you do. Maybe now would be a good time for you to give me a full accounting of the Shimmergrove's dangers. And all the other dangers of the desert, for that matter, since deadly sandstorms are apparently a thing that can occur." My mind went back to the early days of my life in this world: it just happened to be cosmic good luck that the sandstorm had only started after I'd met Octavia and made her subterranean lair my new home.

Octavia took a pose of consideration. "Which things do you want to know about?"

"All of them."

"Do you really want me to tell you about every single thing I've ever experienced?"

"Honestly, I wouldn't mind that," I said. "I mean, it's not like we have TV here, and we're going to be cooped up for…how many days? Maybe that's a good place to start. How long do these sandstorms last?"

"It's inconsistent," she said. "The first one I ever experienced seemed to last for only a few hours. Another one lasted for the better part of the day. And one of them seemed to be intermittent, on and off, for a period of several days. There was also thunder at the time."

"And rain?"

"No rain," she said. "Only thunder."

"Just thunder?" I asked. "Or thunder and lightning?"

"What's the difference?"

"Lightning is what you see," I said. "Thunder is what you hear."

"Then I suppose I heard the thunder. I didn't actually see the lightning, because I was underground at the time. I just assumed it accompanied the thunder."

"That's interesting," I said. "The inconsistency, I mean. It's also odd that they're so rare. You'd think that if the conditions were right for a sandstorm…" I trailed off. "Well, I could speculate. But I think maybe I should just hear all the facts from you first. I think we're long overdue for that."

"All the details about the sandstorms?"

"About everything," I said. "You have experience. And I'd like to benefit from that experience, if you're willing to share it."

"I've been here a very long time," she said. "Telling you about every little thing would take a very, very long time."

"I don't need a full accounting of every little thing," I said. "But I'd like to know about the potentially lethal events, even if they are very rare. I'd like to hear about the sandstorms, and the Shimmergrove and all its creatures and hazards, and about your history with the ants, and…everything related to that." I hesitated. Maybe now wasn't the time to press Octavia about her deceased friends. "Maybe tell me about every brush you've personally had with death," I said, unsure if that question was more or less appropriate. "If the tally isn't too long. I think that might be a good heuristic: if something threatened your life, it might threaten my life, too."

"Alright," she said. "Where to begin?"

And so, for the next several hours, Octavia told me about what she'd survived to make it this far. She told me about the various creatures that lived above the surface, and gave me her best advice for how to avoid snakes and how to recognize which ones were venomous. She told me how to defeat a scorpion, and more importantly, which parts not to eat after I defeated one. (I could have guessed that eating the stinger might be hazardous to one's health, but it was good to hear her confirm that part.) She told me all about the hyenas (enough for me to get a basic taxonomy of hyena variants), and then told me about the various prey species that they hunted, including several that had seemingly gone extinct since her arrival, including several grounded birds like quails, and something that, based on her description of it, I assumed was a roadrunner. She confirmed my suspicions about there only being one path out of the valley; apparently, the hyenas had always guarded that particular chokepoint, so my brush with the hyenas on my first day here hadn't been an anomaly.

At several times throughout her explanation, Octavia paused to check the upper tunnel to try and estimate the intensity of the sandstorm that was brewing outside. Partway through, Octavia paused her story to go fetch a melon for dinner, and I ingested what I could of the hyenas (trying not to swallow too much sand) as she regaled me about the parts of the Shimmergrove I hadn't already been introduced to: the carnivorous plants (and the underground river that they all seemed to rely on), all lengthy accounting of the various bug species (including her best estimation of which ones were harmless, which ones were minimally threatening, and which ones should be considerably deadly).

Eventually, she brought up the subject of the ants' and their behavior. Sensing that Octavia might shy away from the topic if it went toward the spider-ant war that had left her alone in the world, I specifically asked about the ants' role in the Shimmergrove.

"So just the armored ants down there?" I asked. "No fire ants?"

"I don't think so," she said. "The armored ants do odd things."

I nodded. "Like retrieving loose glowstone."

"Apparently," she said.

"That's fascinating," I said.

"Why?" she said. "You can't eat it."

"That's exactly why it's fascinating," I said. "What do you reckon the ants were doing with all that glowstone?"

"Lighting a tunnel," she said.

"That would make sense," I said. "But I wonder if it might be something else."

"Such as?"

"Do you remember when I first encountered the glowstone, and I asked how long glowstone emitted radiant light, and you told me about how glowstone could explode under specific conditions? Maybe they found a way to extract power from the glowstone."

"What, like using it as a battery?"

"Maybe," I said. "But I was thinking maybe something like…powering an engine. That's how car engines work, you know? They're literally called 'internal combustion engines' because the thing that drives them is the combustion of gas. Maybe the glowstone can be harnessed in the same way as a fossil fuel. You just need to find a way to unleash, direct, and harness that energy."

"Or maybe they just needed a light source."

"Maybe," I said. "But that just opens up more questions about whether they're undertaking some more ambitious digging project."

"Does it?'

"Maybe," I said. "Sorry, I'm speculating. Do you want to tell me more about the ants?"

Octavia paused.

"We can save that conversation for another day," I said.

"No, it's not that," she said. "I was just wondering about the sandstorm, and whether things have picked up."

"Go ahead." I watched Octavia scuttle away for a moment, then I called after her. "Wait."

"Hmm?"

"Can I come with you?" I asked. "You've gone up several times to check. Has there been anything up there that would suggest it would be dangerous to go up there?"

"No, nothing that intense," she said. "But I might have to send you back down if things are more intense.

"That's fine," I said. "If the worst case is that I have to come back here, then I'll take a peek."

I followed her up to the entrance tunnel. I could hear the gust of wind outside, but I couldn't see much through the many web walls that Octavia had placed between here and there. The web covering didn't have much to block: the cave entrance was nestled in a divot in the ground, so it wasn't as if there was much sand or wind that could even penetrate this deep into the tunnel. But she looked toward the entrance with concern.

"Things are getting more intense," she said.

"Isn't that what you'd expect?"

"Yes."

I looked outside. "How can you even tell?" I asked.

As if in response, the tunnel flickered, Octavia's web reflecting the light of a momentary flash. Lightning.

"Well," said Octavia, "For one thing, that wasn't happening."

Several seconds later, I heard a boom outside. Thunder.

I recalled one of my first science lessons in elementary school. First lightning, then thunder. Light travels faster than sound. Count the seconds between...

A flash of lightning danced through Octavia's web matrix. I counted the seconds. One, two, boom. I turned to Octavia. "That was about half a mile away."

"How can you tell?" she asked.

"Light and sound travel at different speeds," I said. "That's why you see the flash before you hear the boom. And knowing the time between them, combined with speed of sound — distance over time — you can calculate the approximate distance."

"You did all that math in your head?"

"No," I said. "I mean, I could if I had to, but I learned it back when I was a kid. I didn't calculate it; I just learned it from smart people who had done the calculations. Five seconds between lightning and thunder works out to roughly a mile. Half that time, half a mile."

Another flash. One, t—boom. "That was closer to a quarter mile," I said. "The storm is getting closer."

"Maybe we shouldn't be up here," Octavia said.

I nodded. "I was thinking the same thing."

I followed Octavia, and less than half a minute later, we were at the Pebbleway.

I glanced behind us. Even this deep down, I could still hear the thunder above us.

"It's been a long time since we had a storm like this one," said Octavia.

"I'm not sure if I should feel lucky or unlucky to be living in strange times," I said. "I wonder what could have caused—"

And then, almost as if in answer to my question, I felt something stirring within me. A trait I knew I'd had since birth, suddenly awakened by the presence of something I'd never encountered before.

Kin sensitive: Elder dragon detected nearby