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I found myself at the business end of a saber before I reached the wagons ringing the camp. A guard took me unawares, hoisting me by my collar and holding a blade edge so that it scraped against the lump of my throat. Dragged past the wagons I was thrown face first into the sand before the campfire. Somewhere in the dark Spinner screamed as someone wrestled her bridle.

Coughing up dirt and half blinded by the firelight, a constellation of eyes watched me. Barks from coarse folk cut short when a man stepped out to stoop over me. He was old enough to be my grandfather with a dark face raisined by decades of merciless sun but which glinted like ebony in the firelight between a white headwrap and gray billy-goat beard curling off his chin. "Well, well, well. What have we here?"

"Dinner or a guest?" purred a Khajiit from the darkness.

I scrambled to my knees, "I come in peace—I'm being pursued by some godless creature of the wastes, it may be out there still!"

The old goat smiled with too few teeth to fill the gaps, "A likely story, but we're no strangers to midnight pilferings. You'll find no easy—"

A call rang out from the perimeter. "Another stranger over that slope," and a moment later a far less masculine scream. "The eyes on it! By Meridia's fresh hell there's a monster out there."

The entire camp lurched as the air rang with unsheathing blades and men dashed to and fro, a few lighting torches on their way. The old fellow, who I took to be the caravan master, shouted a few orders but stayed beside me. "You been sacking ruins? What blighted curse have you brought onto us?”

I confessed I had no clue, but recounted how it had appeared behind me as I entered the badlands. After several minutes of running about in the caraveners returned empty-handed. All agreed the creature, whatever it was, must have withdrawn.

The caravan master, who I would later learn was named Bakker, spat upon the dusty ground uncomfortably close to me. "We'll need to double overnight guard duties until we reach Dune, and you," he screwed his face at me, "I'm about set to throw you out for bait, but that would only encourage the damned thing. Anyway it already knows where we are."

I rose stiffly to my feet. "I'm dearly sorry. But please just take me with you. I'm harmless, I swear, and I have friends in Dune who will richly reward you."

"Sure you do. Just stay out of the way and—Jolda do you still have those anti-magick cuffs?"

I was quite prepared to cry until the response came back that the last pair had been sold in Rimmen. The old goat shrugged. "We'll have to take you at your word. But I’ll have my eyes on you."

And so it was that I joined that ragged little band of caravaneers in their journey to Dune. The burly fellow who'd thrown me into the dirt appeared soon after with a half-hearted apology and returned Spinner to my care before I joined the camp in an unsettled sleep under clear eyed stars. We broke camp and rode over hills outlined by a bleary red sunrise.

I kept to the rear of the group, speaking little for the most part. I felt like an unwelcome guest; and lurching in the saddle I could smell the reek of the past week's sweat, fetid water that had caked onto me with a powdery mix of mountain soil and badland clay to form a foul skinsuit.

When I worked up the courage to broker conversation with my fellow travelers I found them to be easy-going enough despite our chaotic introduction, and after some bargaining with a one eyed ashik I was able to obtain enough food and water for Spinner and I to survive the remaining journey at the dear cost of my designer gloves, boots, and travel jacket which I'd acquired at great cost to Marius.

The genial Redguard cyclops had a passion for storytelling and told me that the group had originated far west in Hammerfell, but in their crossing of the desert had grown to include some Khajiit peddlers on shorter circuits of their own region. They were to visit Dune, jewel of the wastes, before beginning the long journey home. Privately I judged them a motley bunch as prone to trade as banditry as circumstances dictated—crude amphibians of uncivilized country.

The days passed and I cut a pitiable figure as I limped along after the caravan. Without any blade since fleeing Ayagozi Pass, my beard had grown into a prickly desert bush and since I was reduced wearing only a single white undershirt the fair skin of my forehead, neck, and forearms ran red hot with sunburn that then curled back the wreck of my skin like paper. Sweat ran down to my lips, leaving a crust of salt to greet my tongue tip running over chapped lips. My socks, which now served as primary footwear, were soon stained filthy brown by the sands that burned below.

Yet despite this I was in higher spirits than I'd been at any point since I'd believed myself charmed into a girl's bed at Marius' party. I was grateful to be among veterans of the desert roads and in such company I felt confident could repulse whatever it was that followed me — be it an agent of the southern Mane, or merely some soul sucking monstrosity which had found me by chance.

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Each day we stopped at noon to rest through the heat of the day. I'm told this is a fairly well known practice among the southern provinces, but to this northerner it was a grand revelation. I was never able to sleep in the stifling midday heat of my tent however, and instead began indulging in Eophicles' Treatise on Lunar Causality again.

Having previously only dawdled in the early chapters, I was thrilled when the text began in earnest with a detailed description of Eophicles' arrival at the south shore of Elsweyr. He had arrived by invitation of a faction of warlords after the previous Mane had died without an identified reincarnation. The kingdoms of Elsweyr had instantly splintered, with each faction seeking outside scholars to verify the authenticity of their supposed reincarnated Mane. It was written as a journal, and he went on at length on both his experiences and his theories as to how he would mystically discern the subject's legitimacy.

The parallels to my own situation were not lost on me and a grim sort of certainty began cementing itself within me. Too many leylines of fate were moving in concert for it to be mere coincidence; somehow I had become the vessel of destiny in this matter which, whatever my many failings in life, I could not shirk. It was a destiny I stood on the doorstep of — to confront in the desert metropolis of Dune.

* * *

Before I speak of that however, there was one exchange from those final days on the road that bears sharing for reasons which shall become self-evident. It occurred at dusk as tents were being raised and the smells of sizzling kabob fat and hashish smoke lingered over us between sucking desert gales. In the failing light I sat alone on a facetless stone, before me a half a disc if flatbread which a long whiskered Khajiit merchant had sold me. Each night another eighth of it had vanished, and with it my desperation increased in equal proportion. I grimly realized that even if all went to plan, I would have no meal for the final two days before our arrival — but it would be enough to keep me on my feet.

I halved my portion again, tearing a narrow wedge off before chewing my ration while eying the distance. I wondered if Eophicles had ever felt so certain yet distant from his destination.

Night fell and I retired to my miserable little tent, only to find myself unable to sleep on account of a gnawing hunger and the infinite disquiet of sobriety's repetitious thoughts — those awful days of my brother’s obsession with the Miser’s Mirror, that long summer at my family’s estate on on the cusp of manhood that would just never end in me. Even at the time the there had been a sense we were out of time, joyously and exuberant, that had since become a stale repetition of a memory I could not escape. That night after tossing about, unable to put the memories aside, I went out into the dark in exasperation.

Movement improved me, night air cool on bare skin. I paced the camp’s edge (I never dared to go beyond since my arrival) and eyed The Serpent which had ridden northward, his trail bisected by the scantest crescent Secunda as the southern swirl was now contested between knight and false dawn. I was lost in thought on the implications of my coming confrontation until I saw small figure on a flat stone just beyond the periphery.

Its dark robe billowed with slow ease, as its arms extended in devotion towards the moon, and then collapsed down again in a strange groveling pose. I froze and watched as it repeated this strange appeal, dark robe gasping and collapsing with air. The movements were so slow and wide, almost floating so that I wondered if I dreamed, yet I was preternaturally comforted by its strangeness.

My feet brought me nearer, and hearing me, the figure twisted and assessed me with inhuman eyes like two illuminated golden eggs in the dark. A black veil shrouded the Khajiit’s face; I could not discern the sex, but was certain I had not seen it amongst the travelers at any point prior.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and a moment dragged between us as I rued my oafish intrusion.

Finally its shoulders sagged. It spoke in a voice I recognized immediately as Benezia’s. “It is being followed.”

I knew I should have run, but felt sapped of my will to, caught in a curiosity at the queer creature. “I think I am, yes. And you are?”

I sensed a smile underneath its veil. Seeing it had no intent to answer me I asked if it was a lunar worshiper made outcast and fugitive by the northern Mane’s new faith. It only flicked its triangular ears. “We are all followed, aren’t we?”

“I suppose… what were you doing just now?”

“Something trivial.”

"I'm an academic, I make it my business to know trivialities, madam."

It raised its paws towards the lunar crescent. “This one prays to see the full moon once more.”

“Why? Do you think your prayers bring about the moon’s transitions?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” it hissed, the facsimile of Benezia’s voice faltering into something feral. “She moves with our without us. But the wanting is powerful. Yesterday's moon follows us, and so we must follow tomorrow’s moon.”

I confessed I did not understand its point.

“Without the wanting there is only the seeing. And what is seen is only ever a glimpse of what has followed — one is never able to see past and present at once, no? We have only seen the past. But by the wanting, the anticipating, our bodies prepare for what comes next rather than know only what has been before. She teaches us only by anticipating her, by observing her subtleties rather than our uneducated expectations. Flawed things we are, followed by our yesterday.”

Its intensity reminded me there was a non-zero chance it was an illusionist bounty hunter, or possibly even some enchanted form of the creature which pursued me. But I agreed with its point before excusing myself; it seemed equally relieved to see me gone so it could return to its adorations.

I soon forgot the odd encounter, and that night dreamed I was a child again and walked along the shores near my family’s manor. I played the game once more where I stood ankle deep in the surf and watched the sand drain away under my feet until they gave way and I spun down into the cold water.

The coming days run together in my mind. I would not see the strange lunar worshiper again, although I did seek it. The dunes rose and fell like waves of an unending sea. Briefly in the distance the small dark figures of Khajiiti nomads circled like vultures until by some signal they withdrew. I continued to watch that horizon for any sign of the creature which followed but saw nothing. With any luck, I thought, it had also given up to find easier prey.

On the final day of our journey Dune shimmered into existence, white spires dancing in the heat such that I doubted my own senses until we drew nearer and it solidified into a vast walled fortress with earthen walls, a hollowed mesa etched with murals the size of small mountains that shielded the gem of the wastes.