“You see, boy? This is why we must maintain our cultivation of mana in harmonious symmetry with the land around us. Without our studious care, without our vigilant guidance, the land will change to match the ambient mana most prevalent within it. We must–”

A sharp breeze blew then, kicking up sand and drowning out the old man’s next raspy words. When it had passed, Daerkin could hear him again. He wasn’t partial to lectures himself, but there was precious little else to pass the time with. His axe hadn’t seen use in nearly a day and a half since they had split the last rolling golem open for all the nearby monsters to see. They were still being trailed of course, but it was only at a distance.

For now.

“-- else the Vultures will reduce it to… this.” Bernard said dismissively, gesturing out across the dry landscape as if condemning it.

There was another pause, and this time Daerkin could see the old man’s desert-faded blue robes and leathery neck twist around the front of the wagon as he checked to ensure his pupil was still listening to him. When Bernard had reassured himself of his audience’s captive attention – ignoring the two guards on either side as if they didn’t exist, his lecture continued.

“Endless desert. Drab formations of lifeless rock.” Bernard spat off to the side just as another gust of wind caught him in the mouth. Daerkin saw it hit the neck of the man’s robes and hid a wry smile as Bernard moved on like it hadn’t happened. “And all of this blasted sand! Sand for days without end! It’s a wonder it hasn’t dried me to leather already.”

Daerkin slowed his pace by a few steps at that point, bringing himself to the rear of the caravan. He locked eyes with his hatch-brother as they marched, his weapon held loose in one hand.

“Wouldn’t that be a pity.” Daerkin muttered out of the corner of his mouth, keeping his rough voice just low enough to where he was sure Bernard wouldn’t be able to hear him.

Baerlin’s facial expressions were hard to read under his helmet, but the large lizardkin spun his heavy war axe once in his left hand. Then he switched grips and waggled the haft upwards suggestively as he bobbed his horned head up and down just enough to make his point.

Daerkin chuckled. Ahead of them Bernard continued on, either unaware or unwilling to acknowledge that he was being mocked. The aging human male clapped his weary hands sharply together, addressing his young pupil once more.

“Now, Karson. Which mana essence types must be present to form a climate like this?”

It was the third time Bernard had asked this question in as many days, and Daerkin counted them off in his head as Karson’s puberty-cracking voice responded. It had a pitch that made Daerkin glad his ancestors had diverged from the baseline of humanity. Some things be worth leavin’ behind.

“Death, Life, and… Chaos.” The boy said proudly, ticking each one off with a finger. “In that order.”

“And which must be lacking?” Bernard asked.

“Nature, Order, and…” Karson paused, and Daerkin could picture the blond-haired boy’s heavy frown as he tried to remember the name of the final primary essence.

Astral. Daerkin thought, though of course he didn’t interrupt. It wasn’t his lesson.

“... Astral?” Karson asked in a tone that made it clear his answer was a blatant guess. It wasn’t that the question was hard, Daerkin knew, but rather that Bernard’s unflinching stare during these lecture periods always flustered the boy. As if the old man’s eyes were a pointed sword.

“Good.” Bernard said, approval heavy in his tone before he asked, almost deceptively encouraging. “But is that the right order?”

This question always threw Karson off, and Bernard hadn’t actually given the right answer out yet, so even Daerkin didn’t know it.

Does it even matter if it is? Daerkin caught himself wondering. If it’s not there, it’s not there. Cut the poor lad a break.

It’s not like there were a lot of combinations to try, and Karson had already thrown out two wrong answers to this question earlier in the day. He would get it eventually Daerkin knew, but the boy still remained silent for a while as he stewed over the problem. Pages ruffled as Karson hefted and then rapidly flipped through another one of his thousand-page reference books.

Daerkin glanced around the desert to distract himself while they all waited for the boy’s latest response. It was hard not to get caught up in the old codger’s lessons as they trudged along, but doing so was dangerous. If his attention wandered too much, they might be surprised by an approaching monster looking for a meal. Rolling golems were tough, but they were hardly the toughest things out here.

Skies help us if the giants catch wind of our scent. Or the harpies. Or one o’ them blasted wyrms. None of those were likely possibilities this side of the Scourge Nest, but it always paid to be alert.

Both he and his hatch-brother had so far managed to make quick work of all the ‘interruptions’ to come poking around during their trip. Outside of the golem there had been a few walking cacti, a pair of burial beetles, and the odd mirage mirror or two. Nothing they couldn’t handle.

Still, that was no reason to get complacent.

The Sohl Desert was not known to be a forgiving land, no matter what mana essences had shaped it.

“Er… No. It’s–” Karson began, but he was cut off.

“Wrong!” Bernard bellowed, his voice echoing across the sands.

Baerlin's grip tightened on his weapon, and something in Daerkin’s gut clenched as he wished he was within reach to slap the old fool. Sound traveled farther out here than it ought to, every bloody whelpling back home knew that.

Swear on my clutch, if I’ve warned ‘im once I’ve warned him a thousand bloody times. Daerkin would have to speak with Bernard about this again. The old man simply didn’t believe that their little “see the forest” trip to broaden the young man’s horizons could possibly run into any danger, but it was too late now. His sharp eyes scanned the morning blues of the sky, the roaming hills all around them. Nothing jumped out, a fact he was sure was only due to sheer, dumb luck.

“You had the right order, boy. Be confident in yourself! Deserts are bereft of Nature the most, and so precious little grows here. Order next, the lack of which can be seen in every shifting dune and crumbling rock. The very layout of the landscape here is in flux! And Astral…”

Bernard paused for dramatic effect, and it was with some brief internal reluctance that Daerkin allowed himself to be drawn back into the old man’s theatrics. With one wary eye open, of course.

“Astral is not in abundance, but its presence can still be felt. Still be seen! It is in the abundance of sentient beasts and thinking creatures around us. For what is the purview of Astral but the realm of thought? Of reasoned study? In fact…”

The day rolled slowly by, and Bernard continued to drone on with it. It wasn’t until the old man was getting into a spirited diatribe about how Death was not actually abundant above ground level here – but rather, deep below it – that the two dune lizardkin guards finally spotted something. Baerlin pointed his heavy axe, but Daerkin’s eyes were already locked on it.

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A harpy? No… There were wide wings, but the flapping pattern was all wrong. It was too harried. Too erratic, too… rough. Harpies could glide on the air for hours, they didn’t need to work for it. His old master had seen one once and lived to tell the tale - so all of the guardsmen knew it. Wait… an owlen? Way out here? An’ what’s it carrying?

Whatever it was, it was clear the owlen couldn’t carry it much longer. That much was made evident when the owlen fell from the sky and collapsed not three dunes away from them. Which was when Daerkin noticed something even more troubling.

Some of the dunes around them were… missing.

Sweat ran down the seasoned guard’s back, and it had nothing to do with the heat. He turned to shout at Baerlin, but his hatch-brother’s gaze had changed directions to fix on another spot off in the distance to their left.

Where a shifting sinkhole was beginning to form in the sands.

How in the– Daerkin’s mind froze in that moment, completely forgetting the fallen owlen.

The sinkhole started out small, hardly bigger than a fire pit. From there it grew rapidly into a ravenous maw nearly half a dozen feet across, drawing heaping columns of sand inexorably into it to fall… somewhere.

Baerlin turned his horned and helmeted head immediately as the hole widened even further, meeting Daerkin’s widening eyes. His waraxe danced in a quick series of gestures that ended with the haft pointed forward towards the still-rising sun. Daerkin nodded, pulling his shield from his back and strapping it to his left arm with quick movements as he started a light jog.

“Time to cut the lesson and pick up the pace, sir!” Daerkin shouted, smacking the rune etched into the wagon to urge it to greater speed.

Doing so was costly, as mana-drawn wagons weren’t designed to go ‘fast’. They were designed for efficiency, stability, and cost over long journies. Driven wagons, those with monsters or tamed beasts leashed to them, could accelerate for free of course – but then you had to bring along someone who could handle them. Pushing the wagon like this would mean at least another day recharging its stores later on, but the alternative was almost certainly going to be worse.

The wagon lurched forward the instant Daerkin touched it, sending its passengers rolling back.

“What in the blighted?!” Bernard started, then grabbed onto the wagon to balance himself before he fell over completely. Karson was not so fast, and the boy was sent tumbling backwards into their cargo with a series of loud thuds. “What do you mean ‘pick up the pace’? I see no monsters around. Are we under attack?”

“We’re about to be.” Daerkin answered grimly, as more holes in the sands began to appear. His heart dropped another inch towards his stomach with each one. How could there be so many of them? And so quickly?

By the scales of the Father… Did we just stumble on a new nest?

How had they not seen the signs? How had he not? There were always signs before these roaming nightmares attacked in force! Where had the scouts been? There hadn’t been any scouts! No tracks!

The owlen. The lizardkin realized with a sinking feeling, remembering the poor bird man’s collapse from the sky. He must have been wounded. Bleeding the whole way over. They were tracking him. And now that we’re here, too…

Daerkin cursed his own lack of attention as entire dunes began disappearing before their very eyes. They ran for several tense minutes, with new holes cropping up almost as fast as they were disappearing behind them. Holes that went straight down into the dark and dirt.

Holes that Daerkin knew led only to death… and not the kind that came from concentrated essence.

Just a wee bit further… Daerkin urged as his calves started to protest against the sudden exertion. Sand was not a fun landscape to run on. It felt like he had to work twice as hard for each step.

“If we can make it outside their tunneling range, we’ll be gone long before they make it up to us!” Daerkin shouted.

“Tunneling range?!” Bernard shouted back, eyes wild. “What in the blighted do you mean by tunneling range?! What is after us?!”

In apparent answer to his question, the first of their pursuers began to emerge from the depths of the sinkholes behind them. Daerkin saw it out of the corner of his eye on Bernard’s face as it happened. The old man’s head had been on a swivel, and his dark eyes bulged nearly out of his own head when he saw what was coming for them. To his credit, Bernard ducked back inside the wagon immediately, shouting at Karson to retrieve his staff for him. Daerkin could respect him for that much, at least.

It was a smart move, if a desperate one. The old man’s reserves were not what they once were – by Bernard’s own admission. But they would need his magic soon if they were going to make it out of this. Maybe even the boy’s, if it came down to that.

Daerkin didn’t want to think about having to put their lives in the hands of a boy barely able to answer his own mentor. He would greatly have preferred a problem that could have been solved with his axe. He would also greatly prefer not having to look back. But he had to look. Had to be sure.

Looking back is how you stumble and wind yourself. Daerkin repeated to himself as he ran. It’s how you trip and fall. It’s how you get eaten by nightmare bugs. No. Don’t do it. You already know what’s coming, so there’s no reason to–

Daerkin glanced over his shoulder… and immediately wished he hadn’t.

A massive insect half the size of their entire wagon and clad all over in brown, chitinous armor with purple legs jutting out of it crawled out of a hole not two dozen meters behind him. Its large, purple mandibles clacked together as its hideous face – sprinkled liberally with fresh, magenta mushrooms – swiveled towards its fleeing prey.

Slaver Ants. Daerkin cursed mentally, wishing it had been bender ants or even the flametouched kind. It had to be slaver ants. Damn it all to the gorge.

As if sensing his thoughts – and being simultaneously angered by them – the giant ant immediately gave chase. Others of its kind began pouring out onto the surface like a rising storm coming to sweep them away. Within seconds, the previously empty desert behind the caravan was now awash with an advancing wave of purple nightmares.

The gallows-humor part of Daerkin’s mind noted in that brief glimpse that the monsters who had been trailing them had all suddenly decided prey might be easier to find elsewhere.

“Take the desert job.” His guildmaster Patturn, had urged. “It’s good money and there’s only the pair of them on a simple journey, what could possibly go wrong?”

Daerkin should have slapped Patturn full across the mouth right then and there, and turned it down. Nobody with two thoughts to rub together should be saying those words in their line of work, least of all the bloody guildmaster. An ounce of bad luck could get people killed.

It might be getting us killed now. Daerkin realized, and the thought alone almost ground his pace to a halt.

Instead, the guardsman spurred himself onward even as he choked down his own fear. At the same time, he shouted up at the very same pair they had been paid to protect. “Got anything up those robes besides lessons, Bernard? ‘Cause if you do, now would be the time to use it!”

Bernard raised his staff in response, standing on the edge of the wagon with his shoulders back and posture erect as if it were the top of his very own tower. Earth and sand rose up all around them as they went, creating hills more than thirty feet high that moved with them to block off avenues of approach. But the old mage did not stop there. He began to glow with a green-tinged light that flowed from his arms into his wooden staff as he called his magic forth.

Daerkin felt a small hope kindle in his chest at the sight. The old man was more powerful than his frail form looked. Maybe they had this after all. The guardsman gripped his axe and nodded at his hatch-brother. Wordlessly, they broke off from the caravan – which had begun to slow far earlier than it should have, the mana supplies underneath no doubt having had some malfunction that Daerkin would have to brain the wheelwright for if they survived this.

Running was no longer an option they had. Daerkin could only prey that Bernard knew some way to stall the encroaching tide as he slowed his own pace down. At least he funneled ‘em for us. Don’t have to worry about being swarmed.

His axe twirled heavily in his armoredhands as the lizardkin watched a small army of slaver ants surge forward toward their clearly flagging prey. Their small minds unable to recognize Bernard’s power flaring at the head of the wagon. Flaring with what he could only hope was a solution to all their problems.

Daerkin counted two dozen still coming before he gave up. Three to a side in the faux-half-tunnel Bernard had made them. Blood pounded hot in his ears as adrenaline surged through him. The anticipation of combat firing every autonomic response in his body. Behind him, the wagon carrying Karson and the old man slowed to a stop.

Both guards hefted their axes high as Bernard finished the forms of his next spell.

Seconds later, the ants were on them… and the desperate battle for all of their lives began in earnest.