It had been a night and half since the initial evacuation warnings.

On the first night Atlas saw a flurry of activity on The Fool’s Road the likes of which he had never encountered before. At any given moment he could see tens of people around him. They were hurriedly headed both to and from the Halfway Hold, rushing to make a final trip before the horde struck. Many fled west back to Tinith, to safety and comfort. A few went east, seeking to reach the Halfway Hold first before too fleeing for Tinith. Fewer still went east to stay and fight.

Every few hours, Squires would remind those still on the road to seek shelter in the city. Some brought with them additional news on the horde. One Squire in particular noted that a storm was forming over the Assuan Forest and would likely coincide with the horde invasion.

Twice Atlas passed by convoys of horseless wagons. Large and imposing structures of polished steel on treads they could carry many times what Atlas could and in a fraction of the time. Both had likely left from the Halfway Hold upon receiving word of the incoming horde wave clearing a hundred miles in less than a day. Stocked with food and other goods vital for a siege they rumbled by loudly belching black smoke into the air. These dominated the road taking up two lanes and forcing other travelers to the sides. Squires sat off the sides of the wagons wearing the signature full plate of the Knights of the Pillars.

Now on the middle of the second day Atlas walked through a veritable sandstorm. Atlas had made good progress in this time making it half of the way to the city. His headscarf was bound tightly leaving only the slightest sliver for his eyes and his head was tilted down. All he could see was a cloudy brown haze that completely swallowed any features beyond his immediate vicinity. The howling winds and rasping of the sand deafened his hearing. He felt both claustrophobic and exposed in the sandstorm.

There were plenty of fauna and qi techniques that could be seen through the sandstorm. For all he knew someone, or something could was staring at him stumbling about at the moment.

Atlas’s mind was razor focused on cycling the Body of Peerless Strength. He was near his limit pushing himself hard and on little sleep. With the impending tainted wave, he wanted to make it back to Tinith quickly. Left. Right. Left. Right. Breath in, hold, then release. Relax the back and shoulders… Atlas consciously went through the motions of the Body of Peerless Strength again and again, feeling the tug of the crystals in his lungs and trying to find harmony. It eluded him still closer than years ago but still far from reach.

One moment Atlas was making his way down the road and the next his foot struck a heavy object lying on the road. Atlas launched himself forward as he tripped trying to clear the object and avoid being squished between it and his wagon. He instinctively accelerated the Body of Peerless Strength and hit the emergency release on his harness decoupling it from the wagon. Rolling Atlas came to his feet and turned to his wagon gripping the handles and controlling it to come to a stop. Coming around his cart he approached the offending obstacle. Crouching to get a clearer view he quickly realized that what he was looking at was the back of an unconscious if not dead man-at-arms.

“Hey man! You alright?” Atlas said watching the man-at-arms.

When the man-at-arms didn’t respond Atlas knelt rolling over the body. When he did his hands came away warm and sticky with blood. Across the chest of the man-at-arms three parallel gashes covered the entire torso and made it all the way through the body. The marks were spaced as though the perpetrator had had four claws but lost one of the middle two.

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Atlas froze for a moment upon seeing the gash marks.

A tainted beast? Surely the tainted horde hadn’t started yet… Could it be a wild tainted beast? Surely my luck isn’t so bad.

Atlas rose quickly and lunged for a spear that he kept on his wagon. As his hand closed around his spear Atlas spun surveying the swirling sandstorm around him. The spear hummed softly to the beat of the Body of Peerless Strength.

Nothing came after Atlas immediately. For the next few moments, he held his ground. As he did, he continued to strain his senses against the muffling effect of the sandstorm. After several long tense moments Atlas lowered his spear, if there was a tainted beast it certainly wasn’t nearby. Most tainted beasts became rabid retaining little of their natural instincts and attacking with abandon. Hopefully this meant that the tainted beast had been killed or drawn away. Atlas decided to stow the spear and reclaim his wagon. Reattaching his harness, he realigned it with the road and left at a brisk walk looking to put distance between himself and the body.

Atlas tried to find his rhythm again and to focus on cycling of the Body of Peerless Strength. His attention kept drifting from the motions of the technique and to the fallen soldier and mysterious the tainted beast that had felled him. When he looked into the veil of sand surrounding him his mind conjured imagery eyes of a beast to look back, in the howling winds he could almost hear the phantom cries of a beast.

Focus. He was distracted and it was costing him in speed, slowly he reined in his mind.

This time when he noticed the body before running into it. The body was that of a young man; dressed in exotic and colorful clothing likely a foreigner. A trail of blood smeared across the road came from the west, in the direction Atlas was headed. Atlas saw on the body the peculiar split claw gash patterns on the dead man as he had seen on the scout. Atlas felt a spike of fear and a rush of blood. A tainted beast, the claw marks are the same as ones on the man-at-arms from earlier.

Though Atlas had no intention of stopping, the body was in his way. He slowed to a near halt, the wagon he hauled had no mechanical method to turn instead it required him to lift the wagon off its front wheels to change orientation. Once Atlas came to a stop, he began to prepare himself. He would need to cycle the Body of Peerless Strength beyond his limits and lift and turn the wagon before the technique destabilized and collapsed. As he took several long and deep breaths, his eyes fell onto another body barely visible in the sandstorm. For a second, he froze. Another dead? Is the tainted beast still here? The bodies looked like they suffered injuries within the past day…

He could feel the instinct to run kicking in. Atlas suppressed his racing thoughts as they spiraled into wild conjecture, he knew that he needed to gather information to make a reasoned analysis. Pulling his spear free and detaching his harness from the wagon Atlas slowly approached the bodies. His eyes were squinted trying to decern more details amidst the cloudy sand. Instead, his eyes were drawn to another body, the third he had seen here. With each step forward he saw another body, then another and another. With mounting horror Atlas realized that he stood in a field of corpses. Looking down Atlas checked to see if he was still on The Fool’s Road and not some sandy ditch. This is clearly no ordinary tainted beast, no matter how feral and aggressive there was no chance that a single normal animal could kill so many people. Maybe if an apex predator got tainted, or a horde or… Atlas’s thought ran at a thousand miles an hour as he tried to piece together what he had come across. Every shadow in the sandstorm could be the tainted beast that was prowling this area.

His feet were rooted to the ground. He wanted to fight, but there was nothing for him to fight. He wanted to run but knew nowhere to run. He twisted his head sweeping his eyes looking for something, anything, looking, looking, looking.

From the veil of sand around him the shadow of a beast began to form. Atlas barely caught it in the corner of his eye. He faced the direction of the beast ,watching as it came into clearer and clearer form. His body stilled, and he raised his spear. His vision tunneled and he could hear the pounding of his heart.

Cold intelligent eyes greeted his own. Thick ridges surrounded the eyes. A long, forked tongue slithered in and out of the snout, tasting the air and ground. Great gashes some still oozing with blood covered its snout, chest, and forelegs. On its right front leg one of its claws was missing. Bronze scales the size of his fist covered every inch of the gargantuan lizard’s body.