The wind that morning had teeth, even under the cloudless blue. It whistled low over the dunes, tugging loose grit from the ground and seeding it into everything, hair, food, wounds. The sun hadn’t yet reached its peak, but already the heat pressed down like a weight. Heavy. Relentless. The sort of heat that made you tired in your bones, that made every breath taste like sand.
Sa’ro woke to that heat creeping beneath the tent flaps, sweat slicked across her back, her tongue dry and woolly. Her limbs ached with a stiff, sour sting. She blinked hard against the light. Outside, canvas snapped in the wind, inside a pot clinked over a low fire. The sharp and metallic scent of cooked meat reaching her nose.
Her breath came in shallow, slow gasps, her limbs felt heavy as stone, and her thoughts were tangled in a venom-drenched fog. The sting still burned deep in her calf, like a brand etched into bone, but it wasn’t pain that woke her; it was a …pulse. Not heat. Not sound, or light, but a pressure, like the whole world inhaled without warning. In that breathless instant, her spirit arched like a bowstring, like prey sensing the hunter too late.
Then it was gone. No thunderclap. No tremor. Just a silence so sudden, it felt like the air had forgotten how to breathe.
She stirred slightly, her lashes fluttering against her cheek. Canvas above. Sand below. A tent. Someone had dragged her from the sun, but not out of kindness. She could feel it. The ache of old instincts whispered for her to watch first, and move later.
Through the haze, a voice drifted close.
“Storm’s to the south again. Good. That’ll keep the vultures off a while longer.”
The speaker’s tone was low and clipped, a woman’s voice. Not familiar. No accent she recognized. A silhouette passed between Sa’ro and the tent wall, lean, deliberate. Sa’ro let her gaze shift, slow and narrow. The woman knelt by a small brass pot atop embers, long black hair tied back with a leather strap. Her hands were wrapped in bandages, stained from the desert and something darker.
Sa’ro’s fingers twitched closer to the haft of her axe, still looped beside her bedroll. Sa’ro’s pulse still stuttered in her ears, but her fingers had found the familiar ridges of her axe haft. Not ready to rise, but ready enough. Across the tent, the woman glanced over her shoulder. Sharp eyes, slate-colored, lingered on Sa’ro’s face. She didn’t smile.
“Huh. You lived.” She turned back to her pot, unconcerned. “Didn’t expect that.”
“I used you as bait,” she said simply, stirring the brass pot with a carved bone ladle. “Didn’t mean to, exactly, but I saw the thing tailing you, figured I’d let it wear itself out on the chase. Never thought it'd catch you first.”
She turned with a dry chuckle, holding up a charred hunk of meat on the end of a skewer, thick, pink-orange flesh scorched black at the edges, still glistening with fat.
“Least I can do is share dinner.” She offered it without ceremony. “Scorpion. Not bad when you don’t let it kill you.”
Sa’ro stared at the meat, then up at the woman. Long black hair, streaked with wind-snapped dust. Slate eyes, hawk-sharp. Face smudged with dirt and heat, but beneath the grime, something almost familiar. A shadow from another path that Sa’ro couldn’t place.
The woman tilted her head. “You got a name, or just grunt like most of your kind?”
Sa’ro didn’t answer. She took the skewer instead, slow and deliberate, and bit off a piece. Chewy. Smoky. A little bitter, but she’d had worse. The woman nodded once, satisfied. Then leaned back on her heels.
“Didn’t think you’d last long out here, alone.” She paused, eyeing the scars on Sa’ro’s arms. “But you’ve seen blood.”
The woman tilted her head as Sa’ro gnawed at a charred chunk of scorpion meat. “Did you feel that earlier?” she asked, voice low, eyes reflecting firelight. “Like a wave of pressure. Like a cramp, in the skull.”
Sa’ro paused mid-chew, nostrils flaring. She had felt something, deep in the fog between consciousness and dreams. A rolling force, like thunder underwater. The woman didn’t wait for an answer. She turned back to the fire, feeding in a crooked stick. “It passed quick. But it felt … old.”
Sa’ro swallowed hard and licked the grease from her thumb. The meat was better than she’d expected, rich, peppered with desert herbs. She hadn’t realized how hollow her belly had gotten until now. She hated the weakness of it. Hated being fed. She wiped her mouth roughly and muttered, “You out here alone?”
The woman’s mouth quirked. “Aren’t we all?”
Sa’ro grunted, eyes flicking toward the tent’s only door. The woman sat in front of it, silhouetted in amber firelight, one boot braced, elbow on her knee. She measured the odds. She could charge her. Move fast, keep her shoulder low. Hope the woman wasn’t armed or wasn’t quick. Or, her eyes slid toward the canvas wall. The fabric was stretched taut over the wind-carved frame, patched in places, frayed in others. Soft. Quiet. A blade could slip through it like skin. If she dropped low, kept her breath, she might be gone before the woman even stood.
She clenched her jaw. She hadn’t survived the attacks on Jarren’s Pride by trusting shadows with smooth words and mystery pulses. And this woman hadn’t fed her out of kindness. Sa’ro could smell the calculation on her, like old blood under perfume.
Still, she muttered, “Thanks. For the food.”
The woman’s eyes didn’t leave the fire. “We survive out here by helping each other, by working together.”
“Using me as bait,” she said flatly, “that’s your idea of working together?”
The woman, still crouched near the fire, gave a half-shrug. “Worked, didn’t it?”
Sa’ro gave a dry snort. “You hunt giant scorpions for fun?”
“No,” the woman said, turning a skewer of charring meat. “For food.”
The woman looked up. “You helped me catch it. I helped you survive it. We both got something.”
Sa’ro narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t choose to help.”
The woman nodded once, like she’d expected that. “Doesn’t change what happened. You were stung, I chose to help you, now you're alive and we’re both fed.”
There was a long silence, broken only by the soft hiss of meat and the crackle of fire.
“Simple math,” the woman added, softer this time. “Doesn’t have to be more than that.”
Sa’ro wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, already on her feet. “Thanks for the meal. And the whole… not letting me die thing.” She took a step toward the flap of the tent.
“That’s it?” the woman asked. “You’re just gonna walk away?”
Sa’ro paused. “That’s the idea.”
The woman stood now too, casually, but there was something in her posture, ready to act, or stop her. “I could use your help.”
Sa’ro had already rolled her shoulders, already half-turned toward the tent’s flap. She didn’t stop, but her eyes cut back. “No, thanks.”
The woman bent to pick something out of her satchel, drying strips of meat, a small tin of something oily. “They’ve got supplies,” she said. “Not just rations, but real gear. Packs, bedrolls, maybe even coin. Enough for two people to disappear in different directions.”
Now Sa’ro stopped. She had run from the White Feather in tears. She hadn’t thought to pack supplies.
“I saw the camp from a ridge before the venom took you down,” the woman continued. “They're wounded, hiding from the sun. It’s the perfect time. We slip in, take what we can, and vanish. You go your way, I go mine.”
Sa’ro’s brow furrowed. “Who are they?”
The woman crouched by the fire, poking the edge of a coal-bed with the tip of a knife. Sparks flared and danced. “I wasn’t even on watch,” she began, voice quiet but rough-edged with memory. “We’d stopped early that night. A dust storm out of the south had caught us hard, couldn’t see more than ten feet. So we hunkered down. Took turns sleeping, one lookout.” She dragged the tip of her blade in slow circles through the dirt.
“It was Brosh who spotted them. Said there was movement upwind. First, we figured it was scavengers. Then we saw them: a dozen figures, shambling, slow. Looked like dead folk walkin’ from a distance. Skin all pale and cracked. Blank stares. We started packing up fast. Undead ain’t worth the coin.”
She paused, jaw flexing. “But we were wrong.”
Sa’ro remained still, eyes half-lidded, heart low and bracing.
“They didn’t behave like husks. They waited. Circled. Pinched off the escape routes one by one like they’d rehearsed it. By the time we realized they weren’t zombies, they’d already split our line.” The woman let out a dry laugh, bitter as old ash.
“Reema took a spear in the back while trying to climb the ridge. Davik went down with three of them on him, stabbing him over and over like he owed them something. I tried to run. One of them… this big bastard with warpaint and a scar like lightning down his face, he saw me. Came straight for me.” Her voice cracked, but she covered it with a sharp sniff and a drink from her canteen.
“I threw my satchel at him and jumped off a ledge. Sprained my ankle, tore my side open, but I lived. Barely.”
She looked up at Sa’ro now, eyes darker than before. “I spent two days crawling through the sand, patching myself up with deadman’s linen and cactus pulp. Found shelter here, tracked that scorpion for food. Then I saw you… And it felt like the sand finally stopped shifting under me.”
She leaned forward, earnest. “You don’t have to believe me, but I saw what they did. They weren’t right. And they’re still camped there, so wounded or not, we’ve got one chance to take something back.”
She gave Sa’ro a lopsided grin. “It’s not revenge. It’s what … balance?”
The woman shrugged. Sa’ro’s stomach dropped. A single beat of silence passed like a bell tolling in her chest. She didn’t notice Sa’ro’s fists curling at her sides.
“Call it what you want,” the woman said. “I need help, you get a share; then we part ways. Clean, simple.”
Sa’ro’s voice came quieter than she expected. “You’re saying your people were killed by the White Feather?”
The woman cocked an eyebrow. “They have a name?” She smirked. “Of course, they do.”
Liar!
The word struck like a hammer in Sa’ro’s skull, loud even though it never left her lips. Her jaw tightened as the woman spun her tale, tragic and breathless, eyes wide with the practiced shine of someone used to selling grief. Maybe it had happened, but not like that.
The WhiteFeather, people who had taken her in when no one else would. They were refugees and survivors. And the woman’s crew? Opportunists. Raiders. They had come for blood and plunder and left with neither. But Sa’ro let none of that show. Her expression remained unreadable, her tusks catching just a sliver of firelight as she stared at the woman across the flames.
“Alright,” she said at last. A single word, low and even. “You saved me from the scorpion. Let’s balance the scales.”
The woman smiled, relieved, and nodded like a plan was already forming in her head. Sa’ro tucked the haft of her axe into her belt. Then she started forming a plan of her own.
By evening, the sun had lost its fury, but the heat lingered in the rocks like a threat. Sa’ro crouched beside the woman on the edge of a high bluff, both cloaked in shadows as they looked west. Below them, nestled in a low basin between sand and stone, the White Feather camp settled for the night.
Faint lanterns flickered like fireflies between the tents. Cooking fires had burned low, replaced by the sounds of night: quiet voices, the shuffle of guards changing posts, the hum and moans of a pair of restless camels. Now, she watched it like a thief watches a locked chest.
Tilleue rested on one knee, black hair bound into a long tail down her back. Her green eyes were sharp, always watching. She wore supple leather armour, worn, cracked at the joints, but well-fitted, and carried a small dagger strapped to her thigh and a notched battleaxe over her shoulder, wrapped in a swath of cloth.
The woman beside her adjusted the strap of her satchel, eyes scanning the camp’s perimeter. “They’re tired,” she said softly. “Sloppy. They’ve got supplies tucked behind the cook tent, closest to the southern path. We slide in, take what we can carry, and we’re ghosts before dawn.”
Over the afternoon, Sa’ro had listened, asking questions, nodding at the right times while chewing on the woman’s story like gristle. Tilleue had spoken in clipped, tactical terms, outlining routes and guard shifts. She spoke like a woman used to slipping past trouble.
“I don’t do good or bad,” Tilleue had told her earlier, by the fire. “Just smart or stupid. That crew? They were stupid. But you…” Her smile had been wolfish. “You’ve got instincts.”
Sa’ro had nodded. But even now, seated beside her with the dusk wind in her face, she could still hear the echo in Tilleue’s voice when she’d described the slaughter. She called them zombies, feral and clever. The woman believed her lie; that much was clear. The White Feather weren’t a zombie, and they hadn’t killed her crew for sport. Sa’ro knew, because she’d been there. She remembered the screams. The fire. The shudder when her axe found bone, because she’d been the blade that sent this bitch packing.
And now the woman wanted to molest them further, steal from the very people Sa’ro had left behind—the people who, despite everything, had offered her a family and forgiveness.
Sa’ro didn’t answer. Not yet. She just looked down at the life she’d walked away from, then back at the woman who’d dragged death into it. Sa’ro let the silence stretch between them as her eyes traced the familiar tents.
A flicker of movement near the fire pit caught her eye. Children, laughing and playing, chasing one another in the dust.
Sa’ro’s jaw clenched. She would not let this woman take anything else from them. Not if she could help it.
Tilleue stood slowly, brushing the dust from her legs. “Alright,” she said, voice low. “We wait until the second bell. No sooner.”
“…Alright,” Sa’ro said at last. Her voice was low, even. “Second bell.”
Tilleue smirked. “Smart girl.”
Sa’ro didn’t smile. She reached down, checked her axe where it rested in her belt. The weight of it comforted her. She gripped her staff. She turned her gaze back to the camp and whispered to herself, “Let’s see how smart you are.”
The desert night was thick with the hush of sleeping canvas and low-burning fires. Sa’ro moved like a shadow across the sand, slipping around the western edge of camp where the breeze carried the scent of lentils and smoke.
Tilleue had gone east, just as they’d planned. “Let her chase shadows and sacks of grain.” Sa’ro thought her boots made no sound as she passed the grazing camels tethered near the outer stakes. She crouched low, avoiding the lamplight spilling from one of the healer’s tents, and crept along the familiar path between the cook's shelter and the water barrels. The way hadn’t changed. Not in the short time she’d been gone.
And just ahead, Saka. Round and copper-haired, the dwarf sat on a squat stool near the firepit’s edge, a spear in his lap, the straps of his leathers hanging loose. He was nodding off, shoulders twitching each time his chin dipped too far. Sa’ro almost smiled.
She stepped from the dark like a breeze off the dunes, fast and silent. One arm curled around his chest, the other clamped over his mouth before he could cry out. Saka jerked, muffled panic rising in his throat.
“Shh,” she hissed in his ear. “Don’t be stupid.”
He fought her at first, legs kicking, elbow grinding into her ribs, but she twisted his weight sideways and dragged him off the stool, back into the gloom behind a half-empty supply tent.
There, in the deep dark, they collapsed into the sand. She kept her hand over his mouth until the fire in him dimmed, until the shock settled behind his eyes. Her voice was low, urgent.
“Saka, listen.”
He blinked at her. Recognition bloomed behind the fear. “Sa’ro?” he mumbled when she loosened her grip. “What the—”
“Quiet,” she snapped. “There’s a thief in the camp. She thinks I’m helping her. But I’m here to stop her.”
Saka stared at her like he’d seen a ghost.
“I need you to trust me,” Sa’ro said, eyes locked with his. “Can you do that?”
His mouth opened, then closed. He nodded slowly, swallowed hard. “This… This you makin’ amends?”
Sa’ro’s jaw tightened. “No. This is justice.”
Tilleue pressed herself into the shadow of an acacia tree, the desert wind teasing a few stray black strands across her face. The sand was still warm beneath her, the heat of the day leeching slowly into the night. She watched the camp below with patient eyes, lip curled in amusement.
“Poor little Sa’ro,” she thought. “So eager to be useful.” Sending her west had been the easiest part. That was where the fires burned longest, where guards paced tighter loops, where every shadow was already spoken for.
Tilleue had circled north, then crept down from the bluffs into the dry sand near the healer’s end of camp. Nobody patrolled here. Not really. They all trusted the quiet. She crouched low beside a stack of broken crates and waited for the second bell.
There. A soft chime, barely more than a ripple in the night air. A few heartbeats later, it started. Voices rising. A sharp shout. The unmistakable clatter of something, or someone, falling hard in the sand.
“Good girl,” she whispered to herself with a grin. She sprang to her feet and crossed the remaining space to the supply tent like smoke on the wind. Her boot hooked a peg and yanked, clean and quiet, and the canvas lifted just enough for her to slip beneath the edge without disturbing the flap.
Inside, it was dim and cool, a scent of cured leather, dried herbs, and salted meat thick in the air. She let the canvas fall behind her, already gliding past burlap sacks and waxed boxes, eyes sharp for rope-bound parcels and food crates with proper markings.
She wouldn’t take everything, just what she could carry. A few days’ worth of meals. A good knife, or maybe something shiny, if luck was kind. Her dagger whispered into her palm, slicing twine with practiced ease, stuffing a canvas pack as she went. She moved efficiently, deft hands scooping up dried grain cakes, smoked lizard meat, and flasks of potable water. She opened a lacquered case of fermented mole and immediately recoiled, pressing her sleeve to her nose. The smell was pungent, sour, almost cruel. She grimaced, but didn't waste time closing it. Someone would eat it. Someone always did.
She kept digging. Beneath a sack of tubers, she found a small mortar and pestle carved from soapstone, the bowl stained dark from herbs long since ground. She slipped it into the side pocket of the pack without hesitation. Next came a whetstone, cool and slick in her palm, well-used but serviceable. She gave it a quick pass across her dagger’s edge with a satisfied nod, then tucked it away. This wasn’t a treasure hoard, but it was more than she'd had that morning.
Tillieu paused at the tent’s edge, pack full and confidence swelling. She pressed a hand to the canvas wall and tilted her head, listening. The distraction on the far side of camp had bloomed like thunder, shouts, scuffling, the low bark of orders. Good. Sa’ro had played her part.
Tillieu slipped from the tent with the grace of a striking cat, eyes already scanning the paths between the tents, and froze.
She was surrounded.
Figures emerged from the shadows, broad-shouldered nomads in patchwork leather and tattered cloaks, weapons drawn and steady. At the front stood Sa’ro, face hard as sunbaked stone, her staff held across her body, the second bell still echoing in her bones.
Tillieu froze at the sight of the gathered White Feather warriors. Her fingers, still dusted with spice and old salt from the pack she’d filled, hovered near her hammer, but something in Sa’ro’s stance, in the eerie silence of the trap she’d just stepped into, stopped her.
Then Rita appeared. She moved through the warriors like wind through tall grass, effortless, inevitable. Her red cloak shifted with her steps, its tasselled edges fluttering like a desert flame. Up close, it was easy to see the care in the quiltwork, but from a distance, it could have passed for nothing but rags, an illusion as layered as Rita herself. Her grey hair danced in the breeze, framing a face softened by age but sharpened by wisdom. And those eyes, those large, green, searching eyes, were rich with compassion, but by no means blind.
Rita stopped beside Sa’ro, taking in the scene with a glance that missed nothing. “What’s this?” she asked, voice low, gentle, but edged with something that could cut through lies like silk.
Sa’ro straightened a little more. “She’s one of them. One of the bandits who came for us. She used me to get inside the camp. Said we could ‘help each other.’” The corner of her mouth twitched, not quite a smirk, not quite regret. “I figured helping meant bringing her to you.”
Tillieu scoffed, but there was a flicker of fear behind it. “You’ve got this all wrong—”
Rita didn’t raise her voice. “And yet, here you are. Alone. In our camp. With your hands full of stolen grain and knives meant for backs.” She turned her gaze on Tillieu, and it wasn’t hard. It was worse, disappointed.
“You’ve spilled blood, haven’t you?” Rita asked.
Tillieu said nothing.
“We’ve seen enough of that,” she said, and her sigh was deeper than the desert’s bones. Rita’s hand rose, not to strike, but to signal, and the circle closed gently, yet firmly, around Tillieu.
The tent was cooler inside, a blessing of layered hides and Rita’s ever-sensible architecture. Lanternlight flickered from a low hook, casting dappled shadows across the embroidered walls, maps of their journeys, stitched in memory and thread.
Sa’ro stood near the flap, arms crossed tight over her chest, jaw locked, eyes narrowed at nothing. Rita sat cross-legged on a cushion in the center of the room, the red of her cloak pooling around her like a quiet fire.
“You could have died,” Rita said, voice calm, but laced with a sharp tension. “Running off on your own like that. No scout. No escort. No plan.”
Sa’ro didn’t answer, just stuffed her fists deep into her pockets, palming the iron bullet.
Rita's gaze lifted to her, eyes soft but unflinching. “And don’t give me that silence like it makes you wise. I’ve buried warriors older and stronger than you because they thought their pain permitted them to be reckless.”
Sa’ro’s fists clenched tighter, nails biting into her palms. Still, she said nothing about the scorpion. About waking up in someone else’s tent, barely breathing. About the strange pulse. About nearly not being here at all.
“She didn’t even recognize me,” Sa’ro muttered finally. “Didn’t know I was the one who killed her crew.”
Rita sighed, a long, weathered breath. “She might be many things. Alone, desperate, and surrounded. You were merciful. That matters.”
“No,” Sa’ro snapped, stepping forward. “Don’t do that. Don’t dress this up like some lesson. She lied. She used me. She walked into our camp like it was hers, ready to steal what we had. And you, you want to let her stay?”
“She has nowhere else to go,” Rita said, quiet but firm. “And we have rules. Justice, not vengeance. Community, not pride.”
“Then I’ll kill her myself,” Sa’ro growled.
Rita stood now, slow but steady, and in that small space, her presence filled every shadow.
“If you can’t follow the laws of the White Feather,” she said, “then you cannot stay among us.”
That hit like a blow. Sa’ro’s face twisted with disbelief, then fury. Her breath shook, nostrils flaring, eyes stinging with a heat she refused to show.
“You’d cast me out,” she said hoarsely, “for that …murderer?”
“No, of course not,” Rita said, with the full weight of command, “But I might for forgetting who you are.”
That night, sleep refused her. Sa’ro lay with her back to the tent wall, arms folded beneath her head, watching shadows stretch across the stitched canvas. Outside, the wind whispered over the sand like a lullaby she couldn’t believe in. Her thoughts rolled with the dunes, too hot, too tangled. Tillieu had slept under guard, bound and fed, already halfway to being a sister in someone’s eyes, but not in Sa’ro’s.
By morning, she was dressed and packed before the first bell. The clan gathered without summons; word had spread quietly, as it always did when farewells were imminent. They formed a half-circle of tired eyes and sun-brushed faces, arms full of small parting gifts. Dried meat. A waterskin refilled and stitched with white thread. A worn book of local flowers. An extra scarf for the desert wind.
Saka handed her a bundle of flint and kindling. “You light better than you talk,” he said, gruff but warm.
Even Alene, stiff as ever, offered a wrapped ration and a curt nod.
“Eat it before the flies do.”
Sa’ro grunted something like gratitude and tucked it into her pack.
Rita came last, leading the pale camel, Aklu, with gentle fingers looped through his bridle. The animal snorted once, then nudged Sa’ro’s shoulder like he knew her path would be long.
“He’s yours, you should take him,” Rita said softly.
Sa’ro shook her head.
“He’s needed here.”
Rita didn’t argue. She only stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Sa’ro, tight and lingering.
“Stay near the river,” she whispered. “Let the water guide you. It’s slow, but it remembers the way.”
Sa’ro blinked hard, pulling back just enough to meet those vast, green eyes.
“And be wary of strangers,” Rita added, her voice turning sharper. “Especially the ones who don’t ask for your trust. They’re the ones that cost the most.”
Sa’ro gave a small nod and turned to go, but a hand caught her wrist. She turned to see Armand, standing tall, if unevenly. A thick leather brace clung to his back, but his eyes were bright, defiant.
“Still standing,” he said, with a boyish grin. Sa’ro stared at him for a moment, this strange, stubborn boy who refused to break, and gave a small nod.
“Walk tall, kid,” she said. “Or taller than Saka, anyway.”
Armand laughed, wincing slightly. “That’s not hard.”
Then she saw her, Tillieu, bound but unguarded, standing in the back of the crowd with her head lowered. She did not speak, did not meet Sa’ro’s gaze, but her posture had shifted. No longer smug, no longer amused. Not quite sorry, but something close. Sa’ro held her stare just long enough to let the silence burn, then turned her back for the last time.
The first light of dawn cut the desert in long slashes of gold. With her pack on her back, axe at her side, and nothing but the horizon ahead, Sa’ro set off, alone again, but not entirely untethered.
Behind her, the White Feather watched in silence until the dust took her from view.
The next day dawned with a restless wind, carrying heat like coals hidden in its folds. Sa’ro rose early, the memory of Rita’s embrace and Armand’s defiant smile still tucked behind her ribs. Her path snaked beside the Cardy River, the water a ribbon of muddy gold glinting in the morning sun.
She moved at a steady pace, eyes sweeping the terrain like a scout, a habit learned from her time with the White Feather. The desert here was stranger: the sand more gravelly, the wind spitting dust into tight pockets of the canyoned riverbank. She kept one eye on the current and the other on the rocks. Twice she dipped into the shallows to cool her skin, careful to stay low and watch for snakes.
Around mid-afternoon, the wind picked up again, dry and sharp. Her breath tasted of grit. She stopped to adjust the wrappings on her calves and drink from her waterskin. That’s when she felt it, a tremor. Low. Brief. Like a heartbeat on the world.
Sa’ro went still, crouching beside a crooked bush. Her fingers curled around her staff. She waited. Another tremor, closer. Then another. The ground to her left buckled, then erupted.
A spray of sand and pebbles rained down as something the size of a small horse burst from the ground, chittering and reeking of bile. The creature’s hide was layered in glistening chitin, sickly yellow streaked with dark green veins that pulsed beneath the surface. It stood on four digging claws that split and splayed like scythes, its tail a heavy, serrated spike that oozed a faint hiss of smoke where it brushed a stone.
<agility: 5H+9F+1+2miner= 17F / yes, dodged but… tease, decline, promote>
The creature’s head turned, if it had a head, and a single, clicking hiss escaped its mandibles as if it breathed from somewhere deep inside. Acid Burrower. She’d only heard of them in stories: pit beasts that bled through armour, their acid boiling flesh and steel alike.
Sa’ro didn’t hesitate. She let out a low grunt and dashed sideways, trying to circle the creature and keep its weight on the unstable sand. It lunged, fast, too fast. She rolled beneath the slash of a foreclaw, came up with her staff in both hands, and struck hard at one of its legs.
The staff glanced off the creature’s armoured hide.
A spray of hissing green acid burst from the creature’s mouth, eating into the ground like fire. It splattered her bracer, bubbling instantly. Sa’ro tore it off with a snarl and backed away fast.
“This ain’t how I die,” she growled, circling again. “Not for some overgrown termite.”
The Burrower shrieked and reared up, revealing a pale underbelly just beneath the main carapace.
Sa’ro planted her back foot, drew in a sharp breath, and centred. The heat. The dust. The trembling rage of the creature. All of it pulled inward, coiling around her core like a spring.
Then she moved. The first strike was fast, a jab to the snout, just between two flailing antennae. There was a crack of impact… and something grew. A tiny dandelion, golden and absurd, unfurled from the contact point, petals trembling in the air.
The creature reared back with a shriek.
“Yeah?” Sa’ro spat. “Let’s make it a garden.” She pivoted into the second blow, a sweeping low strike across one of its knees. Another bloom burst into being, shedding a cloud of feathery seeds. The insect screeched again, trying to retreat. A sharp upward thrust into its shoulder joint, then, a backhanded crack across its flank, a fierce downward strike onto the arch of its thorax. The final hit, center-mass, dead in the breastplate. Each blow landed with punishing grace. And at each point of contact, another dandelion sprouted, bright and defiant in the dust. The air filled with the soft shimmer of drifting seeds.
The Acid Burrower twisted in agony, legs scrambling. The flower's roots burrow into its chitin. The scent of ozone and wild pollen laced the air.
Sa’ro stepped back, panting, staff held firm.
“You picked the wrong girl,” she said through her teeth.
The creature trembled, its legs buckling as it hunched low to the sand. From each of the six points Sa’ro had struck, dandelions now bloomed, vibrant and inexplicable, their golden petals slick with blood and… acid. The scent as they burned was acrid, like rust and broken eggshell, and steam curled where the fluid touched stone.
Sa’ro exhaled, lowering her stance, watching its movements.
“I warned you.”
The beast snapped upright, mandibles flaring. Its segmented throat contracted with a wet click, and with a horrible retching hiss, it spat a stream of acid straight at her. She twisted away, barely, and the acid struck her side, just above the hip. Her leather armour sizzled, and the smell of burnt hide and singed flesh made her gag. The pain was immediate, searing, but not deep.
Sa’ro hissed through clenched teeth, the acid sizzling through the side of her tunic. The smell of burning leather curled up into her nose, followed by the sharp sting as the caustic fluid kissed her skin beneath. She didn’t flinch. Not yet. Instead, she reached behind her back and drew the short-handled axe on her hip, the one with the heavy bone-etched haft and the faint blue shimmer along its edge.
With one clean, practiced motion, she hooked the blade beneath the strap of her ruined tunic and sliced it free. The leather fell in two, still smoking, baring her scorched side to the desert air. The pain licked at her nerves, but she didn’t stop moving.
“You’re not the only one who can spit fire,” she muttered. Then, in one fluid pivot, she hurled the axe at the Acid Burrower. The weapon spun, end-over-end, catching the sun like a wink of promise. It struck the beast just beneath its gaping mandibles, but only glanced off its hardened shell, embedding briefly before bouncing away, clattering uselessly into the sand.
The beast hissed, turning sharply toward her again, acid still dripping from its mouthparts.
Sa’ro didn’t blink. She extended her hand. The axe vanished from the dirt, and with a gentle shunk, it reappeared in her palm, the haft cool, familiar, waiting. She smirked.
With the axe back in hand, she twisted her body low, letting momentum coil through her core. Then, with a snap, she launched the weapon again with a sharp grunt. This time, the axe sank deep, burying itself into the soft gap just behind the creature’s forelimb, where shell met flesh. The Acid Burrower screamed, a high, warbling screech, and reared back.
Sa’ro was already moving. She charged, closing the distance in two quick steps. Her staff was out of reach, but her fists were not. One strike to the jaw joint, where the shell cracked with a flash of heat. A second, just above the axe, driving the weapon deeper. A third, straight down onto the creature’s crown, her knuckles blooming with dandelions as they struck, each flower erupting with a hiss of acid where it touched exposed tissue.
The creature shuddered, legs kicking out as acid bubbled from the open wounds.
Sa’ro rolled backward, tucking her arms to her sides as she hit the ground and tumbled clear of the splash. Steam rose in ragged clouds behind her. She came up in a crouch, panting, and hissed as pain lit through her hands. The skin on her knuckles was red and blistered where the acid had kissed her. One bloom still smouldered, curled into a charred spiral in the middle of her palm.
The Acid Burrower staggered, wounded, leaking, still alive, but just barely. The axe slipped from her blistered fingers, half-buried itself in the sand, and stayed there, silent and waiting. Sa’ro was already reaching for her staff. The moment her fingers closed around the wood, the Acid Burrower lunged, wounded and furious, snapping like a wildfire.
Sa’ro pivoted, letting it rush past. Its claws raked the air, its head slammed into the sand where she’d just stood. She moved like wind swirling about the beast, brutal and untouchable.
The first strike, a swift sweep to the rear leg joint. A dandelion burst from the impact, delicate and golden, only to sizzle and blacken under leaking acid. A second strike, a whirling jab into its plated side. Another dandelion bloomed, trembled, and wilted in a hiss of smoke. The third strike, overhead, down on its skull. Crack. Bloom. Burn. Then a final, clean thrust into the soft joint between its mandibles. The dandelion at the base of its throat opened wide and brilliant, then crumbled to ash.
The creature groaned low and long. Its body shuddered, then collapsed, spraying acidic blood into the sand, searing flowers and stone alike. Sa’ro stood over it, breath shallow, arms aching, knuckles stinging from earlier burns. All that remained were petals turning to soot, and the silence of a desert holding its breath.
With the battle done and the desert stilled, Sa’ro rolled her shoulders, feeling the ache where acid had kissed her skin. She walked to the river’s edge, careful to keep the axe ready in her belt this time, and knelt to wash her wounds.
The cool water stung, but in that honest way of healing. As the blood and sand ran from her knuckles, her eye caught a glint beneath the gentle current. She reached in, and her fingers closed around something cold and strange: a skeleton key, ornately carved from some ivory-colored metal, hollow-eyed and weightless. It pulsed faintly in her palm, not exactly magical, but not ordinary either. She tucked it into her pouch with a frown.
Back at the creature’s carcass, she knelt again, retrieving her dagger. The Acid Burrower was cooling now, its hide already hardening to stone-like brittleness. Sa’ro found an uncracked plate along the back leg and pried it loose with care, working the edge slowly until it snapped free. Piece by piece, she harvested what she could, plates like dull emerald, streaked with soot and acid scarring.
Under the thin shade of a crooked fig tree, she spread out her leather tunic, now little more than burnt strips and fraying cord, and began to stitch the chitin into place. It wasn’t elegant, but it was tough and solid, and that was enough.
Once the repair was done, she bit into a piece of flatbread and poured herself a cup of bitterroot tea, still warm in its tin. Her muscles loosened. Her heart slowed.
The river hummed softly beside her, but she didn’t linger. With the sun slanting westward, Sa’ro wrapped her water skin, slung her pack over one shoulder, and turned back toward the dunes. Her footsteps were sure as the trail of flowers she left in her wake, but she didn’t look back.
With the sun hanging low in the west, casting long gold and blood-colored streaks across the dunes, Sa’ro made good time along the banks of the Cardy River. The river carved a welcome path through the harshness, cool when she needed it, familiar in a world full of shifting sands.
Then she saw them, two figures on the horizon, their silhouettes long and wavering in the heatlight. Sa’ro dropped low, crouching into the curve of a dry section of river bend, half-shielded by scrub and sand-slick stone. Her staff lay still across her thighs. She did not move.
The taller of the two, a man, older by his voice and gait, was booming with bravado, retelling a story Sa’ro had no interest in hearing.
“... and so there I was, halfway up the cliff, both arms bleeding, the rope frayed to fibres, still had the package, mind you, and the commander shouting down that we were surrounded by devils in masks…”
The younger one, walking behind him, dragged his feet.
“I’m hungry,” he muttered. “Are we even close yet?”
The elder stopped. “You think I’m walking for my health, boy? I said sundown, didn’t I? That’s as close as close gets.”
The younger mumbled something Sa’ro couldn’t hear. The older man kept moving, muttering curses. From her perch, Sa’ro narrowed her eyes.
Neither looked like bandits, and they weren’t desert-dressed travellers, then. Lost, maybe. Or worse: chasing something. She stayed hidden, breath quiet, eyes locked. Waiting, listening.
The two figures trudged past her hiding place, no more than fifteen feet away. The younger one slouched under a pack too large for his frame, dragging his feet through the dust. The elder kept a steady pace, his voice raspy with the strain of long storytelling.
“…swarmed the ruin, but I held the north pass alone till dusk. Four arrows in me and still I stood…”
The younger groaned, adjusting his pack.
“Tillieu said something about a hoard of zombies… I thought we’d be there by now. She was expecting me yesterday morning.”
At the mention of that name, Sa’ro’s vision tunnelled; her blood boiled. She didn’t think or hesitate. Her axe was in her hand in an instant. A single, fluid motion. One breath. One heartbeat, and it sank deep into the younger man’s back, severing his words mid-sentence. He stiffened, gasped, and dropped.
The elder had only enough time to flinch before Sa’ro was on him. A warcry hissed through her teeth as she struck. Her knee slammed into his stomach. An elbow cracked across his brow. A spinning backfist to his jaw. Then a downward punch drove him to his knees.
He collapsed next to the younger one, blood mixing with dust. Both groaned. Neither had the strength to rise.
Sa’ro stood over them, her chest heaving, her fists trembling.
“A horde of zombies,” she muttered bitterly, voice sharp as flint. “Is that what she told you?”
The two men were still on the ground, coughing and groaning in the dirt. Blood dripped from split lips and swollen brows, but both still breathed. Sa’ro stood over them, tense, panting. Her fists were slick with sweat and blood.
“Please—don’t kill us,” the older one gasped, curling around his ribs. “You win. We’re done.”
The younger one, eyes wide and terrified, scrabbled in his satchel and tossed a jingling pouch toward her.
“Here—take it. Gold. All we have.”
She picked up the bag. It was full. Another pouch came out, and another. A small hoard of stolen coin.
She threw their weapons into the river, except for a single dagger, which she jammed into the ground between them.
“That one’s yours,” she said, her voice like grit. She turned to leave but looked back at the younger man, “Your friend’s dead.”
He blinked.
“Wh… what?”
“Tillieu,” Sa’ro said, meeting his gaze.
He froze. His lips trembled.
“She’s my sister.”
Sa’ro turned her back. “The zombies took her. She’s ... one of them now.”
She walked away, her jaw clenched so hard her ears rang. The wind tugged at her sleeves. Her boots sank into the soft sand. Behind her, the boy sobbed.
She looked down. Her hands were still trembling. Her satchel was heavy with gold. She cursed under her breath, yanked the bag of gold out, and tossed it into the dust behind her. Then another. Then she started running. She ran until she couldn’t see through the tears. Until the tears stopped. She ran until it was too dark to see at all, but no matter how far she ran, the boy’s broken voice chased her across the desert.
“She’s my sister…”
Sa’ro woke with her belly growling and her mouth dry. Sand clung to her arms and cheeks, wind-drifted into the folds of her clothes and braided into her hair. The sun was already above the horizon, casting long golden shadows across the dunes around her. The river was nowhere in sight, and the wind had erased the trail behind her. She sat surrounded by an endless ocean of sand.
She cursed under her breath and sat up slowly, her muscles sore from a night spent sleeping curled atop a patch of cracked stone. Her stomach tightened again, angry and hollow.
Fumbling through her satchel, she pulled out a heel of bread and a few withered dates, chewing as she unfurled the cloak she’d been gifted by the WhiteFeather on her departure, thick linen, finely stitched, the interior lined with an embroidered map of the known desert.
Sa’ro spread it across the ground, brushing away sand. The stitching gleamed faintly in the sunlight: rivers, trade routes, oasis markers, a few sacred sites. She traced the familiar line of the Cardy River with a dusty fingertip, trying to remember the last bend she’d passed, the last landmark she could swear by.
There. That crescent-shaped outcrop, she'd seen it the day before yesterday. A knot of tension eased between her shoulders. She was off course, yes, but not hopelessly so. If she veered east, she could intersect the river again by nightfall.
She wiped her mouth, tucked away the crumbs. Then she stood and looked out over the dune-swept horizon, cloak draped over her shoulders once more, her compass, her comfort, and her past.
"Alright," she muttered, adjusting the clasp across her chest. "Back to it."
And with that, she walked.
The sun shone high, but the desert was merciful today. The heat was tempered by a steady breeze that tugged at Sa’ro’s cloak and carried the dry scent of salt and dust. Her boots crunched softly over shifting sand and hard stone as she moved southeast with purpose, head low, shoulders hunched against the glare.
It wasn’t as hot as the day before, and for that she was grateful. Her breaths came easier, her stride steadier. She only stopped to sip water from her skin, already lighter than she liked, and press on. No lingering. No thoughts. Just the rhythm of feet over sand, cloak brushing her calves, and the memory of Tillieu’s wide-eyed brother breaking in her ears like a heartbeat.
The sun was falling before she knew it, painting the desert in golds and blood-red shadows, when she spotted smoke. A thin coil of it rising from the southern horizon, just above the line of low, broken hills. Not a campfire, it was too steady. A wildfire, maybe, or something bigger.
Sa’ro paused atop a wind-swept drift and narrowed her eyes. The smoke was faint, but the breeze carried it true. She couldn’t see what lay beyond the next stretch of dunes, but something was there.
She wiped sweat from her brow with a calloused thumb and stared south, chewing the inside of her cheek.
“Could be trouble,” she muttered. Then again, what wasn’t? She adjusted the strap of her bag, tucked her empty water skin beneath her arm, and started down the slope toward the rising smoke.
The heat grew heavier as Sa’ro approached, the breeze no longer a balm but a furnace breath. The scorched grasses crackled beneath her feet. In the distance, the wall of flame writhed like a living thing, licking upward into the fading blue sky, casting a ruddy light over the low hills.
She crept closer, boots sinking into the soft, sandy edge of the grasslands. Ahead, a half dozen villagers moved frantically, pouring oil in wide arcs into the dry soil. They worked methodically, shouting to one another over the roar of the fire. They were creating a ring.
In the heart of that ring, Sa’ro spotted a figure darting through the smoke: a woman, alone, eyes wide with panic, her clothing tattered and face streaked with soot. She was circling the interior of the burning field like a penned animal, seeking a gap in the encroaching inferno.
From a rise just beyond the circle of fire, an archer stood ready. He wore no uniform, but his aim was disciplined. Every time the trapped woman veered too close to an edge not yet engulfed, a warning shot thunked into the dirt ahead of her. Herding her. Keeping her inside.
Sa’ro narrowed her eyes, a scowl creasing her brow. This wasn’t a rescue. It was a hunt. And the fire was a cage.
She pulled her cloak tight around her shoulders, feeling the burn of yesterday’s guilt still raw beneath her ribs, and watched, silent for now, as the villagers worked and the woman inside the flames ran out of time.
The heat no longer mattered. The stink of scorched dirt and burning grass was drowned by Sa’ro’s fury as she stormed toward the nearest villager.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she bellowed, voice cracking through the smoke like thunder.
A stocky man, sweat pouring down his ash-smeared face, turned with a snarl, gripping a sloshing can of oil. “She’s a demon!” he shouted, jabbing a finger toward the ring of fire. “She was a giant spider just moments ago, I swear it!”
From the rise, the archer exhaled slowly and drew his bowstring taut, aiming straight for the woman in the fire, but Sa’ro was already moving.
Her hand shot down to her side, fingers curling around the hilt of her axe. In one fluid motion, she threw it — a blur of iron and fury that spun through the smoke and slammed into the back of the archer’s head with a sickening crack. The man crumpled without a sound, the arrow loosed into the sky at a wild angle and vanishing into the smoke.
Gasps erupted, a few villagers turning in shock, just in time to see Sa’ro charge.
The man with the oil barely had time to raise his arms before her fist crashed into his jaw with bone-cracking force. He stumbled back with a cry, the tin of oil flying from his grip and dousing his chest as he fell. A moment later, embers from the fire kissed the slick on his shirt, and he ignited like a torch. Panic surged through the group. Someone screamed, advancing with a sword that came fast. Sa’ro was faster.
She pivoted to the side, letting the blade whisper past her ribs, close enough to taste the wind off the steel. With a sharp whistle between her teeth, she signalled the woman trapped in the flames. Then, with a fluid motion, she brought her staff around in a low arc, striking the sworded man’s knee with a sickening crack. He stumbled sideways, disoriented, and vanished through the wall of fire with a howl, lost to smoke and heat.
Sa’ro turned, already moving. Another villager lunged toward her. She met him with two clean strikes, to the thigh, then the collarbone. Dandelions erupted from each impact, ethereal and vivid, their golden faces blooming like curses. The man screamed, the flowers blooming then wilting from the heat faster than his breath could keep up.
Then the ground answered her fury. The grasses, though scorched, writhed and twisted like serpents, binding the man where he stood and lashing toward another beside him. Roots and stems coiled tightly around their legs and arms, pulling them to their knees, then rose and curled above them, forming an arched passage through the blazing ring. The fire bent in respect.
The woman, ash-smeared and wide-eyed, sprinted for the opening, collapsing into Saro’s arms. The last villager, seeing the odds reversed, turned and fled. His boots kicked up sand as he darted around the flames and disappeared into the tree line beyond.
Sa’ro’s breathing slowed, shoulders rising and falling in rhythm with the dying wind.
The woman stumbled the last few steps through the arch of living flame, and as soon as her feet touched the unburned grass beyond, her strength gave out. She collapsed forward into Sa’ro’s arms. Unconscious, fevered, barefoot.
Her skin was a strange, soil brown, not from ash or sickness, but as if she had grown from the ground itself. Delicate vines traced across her collarbones and shoulders like veins, disappearing into the smooth, bark-like skin. Her hair, thick moss dark with soot, smelled faintly of lavender and loam beneath the smoke. One of her hands still twitched, fingers like curled tendrils of a climbing plant, grasping in sleep.
Sa’ro caught her, knees buckling under the sudden weight. She stared down at the stranger. A breath caught in her throat. Something about this woman, this creature, felt ancient, powerful, and impossibly familiar.
But Sa’ro had no time to wonder. She hooked an arm under the woman’s knees, cradling her with practiced ease, and rose. The flames crackled behind them, casting the two of them in deep, flickering shadow. Without a word, Sa’ro turned her back on the scorched ring and carried the unconscious woman into the trees, weaving through the underbrush with steady, purposeful steps. The heat fell away as they crossed into the shade. Cicadas whispered in the distance. Somewhere nearby, a stream trickled faintly.
She found a grove, a little pocket of green where the canopy had stitched a cool shelter from the sun, the heat of the fire behind them giving way to the cool hush of leaf and soil. There, she laid the woman gently in the grass, brushing a singed lock of hair from her face. As the stranger’s body touched the ground, flowers, blue and white, soft as breath, blossomed in a circle about her. Sa’ro blinked, taken aback by the sudden beauty, and by the woman herself.
Sa’ro knelt beside her, listening to her shallow breaths. She was strange, not human, not elf, not like anyone Sa’ro had ever seen. Her skin held the pale sheen of bark just beneath the surface, her hair like twisted moss entwined with bits of ash. Even limp and still, her body had the poise of something… sacred.
But she wasn’t breathing. The woman’s chest shuddered, then stilled again. No rising, no breath. Panic twisted through Sa’ro’s gut. She didn’t know what this creature was, but she knew life when it was leaving.
A memory rose unbidden: a village long ago, her mother crouched beside a fallen child during the orc raids. Blood on the walls, smoke in the air, and her mother, calm as stone, lifting the child’s chin and pressing her lips to his. Breathing for him. Giving him life.
Sa’ro had never tried it. Had never needed to. But now…
She slid her arm behind the woman’s neck, cradling her gently. Her breath trembled with uncertainty. Then she leaned in, pressed her lips to the woman’s, and gave her a long, slow breath.
A shiver moved through the woman’s chest. The flowers at her side trembled.
Sa’ro pulled back just enough to watch, hope caught in her throat. The woman’s lips parted softly, her eyes fluttered, and the flowers bloomed a little brighter. Sa’ro breathed into her again.
The woman jolted. A rush of breath escaped her lips as her chest heaved on its own, eyes snapping open, green, wild, and deeply confused. Sa’ro had just begun to smile when the woman’s hand lashed out and slapped her hard across the cheek.
“What are you doing?!” the woman gasped, scrambling backward on her elbows, eyes darting as if she didn’t recognize where she was.
Sa’ro held her hands up, palms open. “You weren’t breathing! I—I was trying to help!”
The woman pressed herself back against the roots of a tree, coughing, one arm protectively over her naked ribs. Her gaze narrowed at the orc girl, breath catching ragged in her throat.
Sa’ro lowered her arms slowly. “You were dying. I didn’t know what else to do.”
The woman didn’t reply, but her breathing slowed. She looked down at the grass, then at the blossoms blooming in her wake, then back at Sa’ro, uncertain.
She had no idea who the woman was, but something deep in her gut, something old and sacred, told her this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.