“Before we walk onto the sand, I need to cast the spell Comfort Zone.”
Rai tapped his chest, then Isa’s, the Sun Knight’s, and the Sun Knight’s mount’s shoulders. Nothing appeared to happen outwardly, but he had just cast the spell in question. Ordinarily, the spell could only target one entity per casting, but he had boosted it with star energy, which allowed him to target all four of them. Now they would be protected from temperature extremes for twenty-four hours, enabling them to traverse the desert without experiencing the unbearable heat or getting burnt by the sun. When the spell wore off, he’d have to cast it again, but that was of minor concern.
“All right, here goes nothing.”
They crossed the line into the Desert of Death.
Hm, it’s warm, but not uncomfortably so, Isa mused. It’s hard to believe such an effective spell is only first circle. But I bet I can bleed off even more heat if I change the color of my scales with my newest zeroth circle spell, Vanity Scales. Activating the spell, she willed her scales to turn white.
“Isa, the sun is very bright in the desert. You’re making the light shine in my eyes. Please change your scales to a different color?”
“All right, all right.” Isa’s scales shifted to the same orange as the desert sands. “Better?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“How did you do that, Warrior?”
“A zeroth circle spell.”
“Ah.”
Rai pulled out his magic compass. “Well, based on our point of entry, we should head in this direction,” he said. “The desert’s pretty big, so we may be here a while, even if it is in the middle of the desert that we’ll find the ruins. Unfortunately, there’s no map of oases or anything. There have been reports of people living in the desert, but they interact with the outside world so rarely that we don’t really know anything about them. We’re going into this blind. There’s a reason it’s called the Desert of Death, so we need to be careful. Thanks to the cornucopia, we have both food and water, the latter of which is a major concern for desert travelers, since the spell Summon Water draws water from the air, making it less effective in the desert.”
“The Sun God will guide us where we need to go,” the Sun Knight said confidently.
“…This is about the demons and undead thing, the reason you agreed to come with us,” Isa said.
“Indeed.”
“Well, let’s just get moving.”
Because of the lack of landmarks and the treacherous footing, the going was slow. The further into the desert they got, the higher the sand dunes became, reducing their visibility. The first day was relatively uneventful, though they did spot sparse plants, such as cacti, and wildlife, such as small lizards, hares, and even one coyote. That night, they put up their tents and slept in relative comfort; despite the drastic drop in temperature, the spell protected them just as well as it had in the daytime.
The next morning, Rai cast the spell again just before it wore off. They collected their tents and continued onward, munching on fruit as they went. About halfway through the day, they started seeing circular downward slopes some sixty feet across.
“According to my research, those are antlion pits,” Rai said when they first encountered them. “Giant antlions, obviously. They’re a type of bug – a very big bug, in this case. Step on the edge and you slide down to the bottom, where the antlion pops up and tries to eat you. Or so the books on the Desert of Death say, anyway. I, for one, would very much not like to test that out.”
They were crossing a large field of antlion pits when a cloud of giant airborne creatures zipped toward them from a distance of around a thousand feet. As they got closer, they spread out, revealing themselves to be four absolutely enormous lacewings over two dozen feet long. Rai and Isa quickly cast their first circle defensive spells. In less than fifteen seconds, they had covered half the distance. Rai realized that things might get a bit dicey if he didn’t strike first.
“Fireball!”
Powered up by star energy, a giant conflagration some eighty feet across completely engulfed two of them. They emerged from the flames badly burned but still flight-worthy.
Beside him, Isa pointed, silently casting Sizzling Blood and shooting an arrow of acidic blood into the body of one of the other two, where it clung to one of the wings and began eating through it, spreading out. Then she shot another Sizzling Blood arrow at the fourth insect, where it splashed on the creature’s main body.
“Celestial Wrath!” Rai cast, using the lightning-only version of Celestial Hellfire and targeting one of the two that had been affected by his Fireball. Branching lightning stroked down from a glowing space several feet above it, and it crashed into the sand about a hundred and fifty feet away.
And then the three remaining ones were upon them. The one with the damaged wing landed and rushed the final distance while the other two hovered above from two different directions. All three attacked, each biting at a different target. Rai and Isa were able to evade – Rai entirely and Isa just enough for her scales to do their job – but the Sun Knight’s horse had trouble dodging on the sand and received a powerful bite to the neck from the grounded enemy.
The Sun Knight rushed the bug, which used its superior reach granted by its size to chomp right through their armor before they got close enough to strike. Undaunted, they continued forward, shouting, “Healing Light! Come and get me, dastard!” as they viciously swung their sword, scoring a powerful hit. The healing light shot back and began working on the neck wound of their horse.
“Hyperdimensional Strike!” Rai called out, activating his fourth tier upgrade of his second tier art Dimensional Strike, cutting right through the body of the heavily injured lacewing above him, despite it being too far away for his sword to reach. It’s body thudded to the sand in two pieces.
“Blood Lance!” Isa shouted, thrusting up at the other flying lacewing, splashing it with acidic blood all over its body. It tried chomped into her in response; she quickly hit its face with a Bloody Counter while it was in reach, killing it.
The Sun Knight traded blows with the other one again, finishing it off and healing the horse’s wound a little further.
Once they were all sure that the monsters were all dead, the Sun Knight used their Healing Hands to finish healing the horse, themselves, and Isa. They quickly left the area, taking care to avoid the antlion pits. Only a few hours later, they climbed to the top of a suspicious sand hill to find a large hole in the top.
“What is…?” Isa began, only to cut herself off as several pony-sized ants crawled out of the hole at the same time.
“Those are… very large ants,” Rai observed.
“Die, ants, die!” Isa yelled, stepping forward and splitting their heads open one after another, even as they tried – and failed – to bite her. An unpleasant odor filled the air.
“Did you know that ants release smells that draw other ants when killed?” the Sun Knight said as though it were merely an idle observation.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Run?” Rai said.
“I’d recommend it.”
They skirted around the hole and took off as fast as they could go, which wasn’t that fast thanks to the shifting sands. Behind them, ant after ant poured from the hole, at first milling about and then flooding down the hillside after them. Some ants had wings and took to the air, following from above. For every ten pony-sized ants, there was a wide-headed horse-sized ant mixed in. As the numbers passed a hundred, an absolutely massive ant as tall as an elephant exploded out of the anthill in a shower of sand. Wings on its back opened up, and it took to the air with a rumble.
Then the front of the wave of ants caught up with them. The Sun Knight was furthest back, being the slowest (and not on their horse), but they were all quickly surrounded and attacked from every direction, the bodies of the ants pushing them away from one another, isolating them in a sea of insects. Ant jaws bit all over. Though many scraped off forcefield, armor, or scales, and still others were miraculously evaded, the sheer volume meant that damage still got through. Rai and Isa burned all the daily star energy in their qi cores, Isa to double the number of arts she could dish out, using Pierce Through to impale two at a time and Blood Lance to kill six at a time, rapidly alternating between the two arts, and Rai to accelerate himself to counterattack after every single missed attack, his form blurring as he moved with insane speed.
In less than twenty seconds, they had killed roughly half the pony-sized ants. The swarm didn’t let up, however, with the ants continuing to crawl over the fallen to attack. The number of living ants continued to dwindle until all of the pony-sized ants were dead and the team was nearly buried in their corpses. It was only then that the horse-sized ants finally attacked, smashing their way through the mounds of their fallen brethren and chomping at their targets. The team whittled them down to nothing as well.
And then the giant ant landed, its weight crushing countless corpses. It bit the Sun Knight, crushing armor, and stung Isa, injecting venom (which she resisted). Rai and Isa then proceeded to hit it with everything they had, taking it down in short order.
Throughout it all, the Sun Knight was constantly using healing arts, and once they finished and managed to dig their way out, the Sun Knight also used Healing Hands on everyone until everyone was fully healed (and they no longer had any healing energy left for Healing Hands). It wasn’t until they’d put some distance between themselves and the ants that they allowed themselves to take a long rest to recover their stamina and qi.
Fortunately, the rest of the day was uneventful. The third day in the desert, like the first, was simply a battle against the environment. It wasn’t until the fourth day that they spotted camels – and people.
-x-
“…I’m at a loss,” Rai admitted as they stood atop a sand dune and watched the progression pass down below. “The beasts I get – I think they’re called camels – and the short people look like gnomes, but the taller people… I have never heard of cactus people before.”
Humanoid, walking cacti, Rai thought in disbelief, shaking his head. With flowers on top of their heads and covered in spines. Are they a native race to the desert? If so, maybe they came into existence the same way that the serpentsia did when the stars fell. They look like they’re living together with desert-dwelling gnomes.
“Scholar, look over there, in the distance.”
Rai followed the Sun Knight’s pointing finger. Far away, some sort of serpentine or wormlike figure moved up and down through the sands like a wave, traveling in their general direction. Considering the distance, the creature must have been humongous.
“…We need to get airborne,” he said grimly. “There’s no way we can fight that on the ground.”
“You’re the only one who can really do significant damage from a distance,” Isa pointed out. “I need to get up close to hurt it.”
“Isa… you need to realize that you have limits. And that thing? That thing is beyond them.”
“Agreed,” the Sun Knight said.
Isa stayed silent as the giant red-brown worm grew closer.
“Either that thing’s pretty slow, or it’s even further away than I thought,” she commented after a few seconds. “…All right. Hit me with the Flight spell. I’ll swoop at it or something.”
“Good decision. Flight. Flight. Flight. Flight.”
Wings on their backs, they took to the air and waited, following along above the caravan of camels. It took almost six minutes for the thing to actually get close, and taking its speed and size into account, Rai guessed they had initially spotted it about half a mile off. It was an enormous tube, being about a hundred feet long and ten feet in diameter, and had a circular inverted saw-like mouth on one end and a gigantic stinger dripping venom on the other. As soon as it got about a body length away from the camels and people leading them, it shot toward them at higher speed, covering the distance in about ten seconds. Screams rent the air as it burst up from underneath one of the camels, chomping down and it and swallowing. The remaining camels bolted.
So did the people, who scattered. The worm twisted its body, impaling one of the gnomes with its stinger, then looped around and ate one of the cactus people.
“We can’t just watch this!” Isa cried.
“Lightning Surge!” Rai cast his lightning version of Fireball, targeting the worm and the worm alone. It barely seemed phased, despite the lightning dancing along its length.
“Argh! If only I had some way to attack it from up here! If I could just breathe Dragonfire!”
The moment Isa said the final word, she felt something stir in her blood: the awakening of a new fourth circle spell. She opened her mouth and a torrent of rainbow-colored flames shot forth, scorching the side of the worm as she turned her head back and forth for several seconds.
“Shield Toss!” the Sun Knight called out, throwing their shield to bash heavily into the worm and bounce all the way back to their hand.
The worm turned its eyeless face skyward for a second, then heaved its back end into the air, sending its stinger hurtling toward Isa, stabbing the enormous appendage straight through her side before she slid back, surrounded by mist, and it fell back to slam against the sand, sending up a cloud of grains.
“Celestial Wrath!”
“Dragonfire!”
“Shield Toss!”
Lightning fell and rainbow fire blazed; the shield bounced back again. The worm actually looks hurt! Rai thought. We can do this!
Then the worm dove underneath the sands. Ten dreadful seconds passed.
With an unearthly roar, the worm burst up in a spray of sand that obscured all vision. Its maw closed in around Isa, teeth clamping tight and piercing into her from all directions. As they both fell, her grip loosened on her halberd, and went the worm hit the ground sideways, her weapon went flying from her hands.
Even so, she didn’t begin to panic until it swallowed her. Surrounded by walls of undulating muscles, she was dragged down into darkness. Her dark-sight showed her a scene from a nightmare. She clawed desperately at the flesh in front of her, dragging her sharp claws through it even as her strength continued to fail as the venom from its stinger ravaged her body. The worms muscles contracted, crushing her, and her higher brain functions shut down from sheer terror, her claws moving according to the whims of her instincts.
And then her awareness returned, and she found herself lying exhausted on the sand beside an open tear in the side of the worm, which lay still. Several strokes of lightning fell onto it, and then all was silent.
She closed her eyes and passed out.
-x-
Rai was sitting beside Isa when she woke up again.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” he said with a smile. “The Sun Knight’s out of healing power – apparently their healing energy recharges each dawn – so you might want to heal yourself. You don’t look so hot.”
“I feel like dragonshit,” Isa groaned.
“I’m not surprised; you got eaten by that thing. You managed to cut your way out, thankfully, or you probably would have suffocated inside even if I managed to kill it before you were crushed to death. Speaking of which, between the two of us, we did, in fact, manage to kill it.”
The Sun Knight cleared their throat, causing Rai to glance up to where they were standing.
“…The three of us,” he amended. “Anyway, it’s practically a miracle that you’re alive at all.”
Isa rolled onto her back, wincing, and raised a hand above her face. “Blood Elixir,” she cast. A globule of blood dropped down from her hand and landed in her open mouth. She felt her bones move back into place. “Blood Elixir. Blood Elixir. Blood Elixir.”
She let out a long sigh. “Well, that takes care of my injuries. The venom has left me severely weakened, though.”
“Then it’s a good thing we have the Recovery Rod, isn’t it?” Rai took out the magic item in question and activated it twice, touching it to Isa’s chest.
“That is… much better,” Isa said in relief. She sat up. “Where’s my halberd?”
“Right here, Warrior,” the Sun Knight said, dropping Isa’s weapon next to her.
“Thanks.”
“So, that was a new healing spell… though it looked the same. Higher circle version?”
“Yes. Third circle, thrice as potent as the first circle version. It also stays effective for several minutes rather than several seconds if not used immediately, which means I could theoretically store it in potion bottles and hand them to you right before a fight we know is coming.”
Isa, cleansed herself with the spell Tricks, then grabbed her halberd and stood up. “So… what now?”
Rai pointed behind her. “Now, we talk to the survivors who are coming to check on us. I don’t know if they’ll speak the common tongue or not, so it’s a good thing that we got an extra Strap of Tongues before departing.”
Isa glanced over her shoulder as the small group of cactus people and gnomes. “Go ahead and give it to me now, just in case.”
“Of course.”