Snut Halftail cared not for the purposeless title of Contubernium the Human female had awarded him. In his eyes, her selection criterion had entirely been trivial, for those with the most spawn merely raised their hands, and she gave nods without a second glance.

At first, Snut was full of expectation that the sorceress would gift the mischief more than food and water, especially when he saw the Elders of Jildam, Plithf, and Chuluu lap at her secreted elixirs, transforming them into something exceeding mortal Rat-kin.

To Snut's disappointment, their Centurion, Skaz, a Longtooth from the Great Clan of Saaral, was not "Ascended". The rat's jealousy thrilled Snut, for the brute had cared only for the kin from his Clan, barking orders at Snut even though he was no better.

Then— then nothing. No more food or blessings.

Snut expected more; was he not a Contubernium? A leader of his pack? Were he and Skaz not equally sick with some forsaken illness spread by the Humans in the first place? It must be because he was from the minor Clan of Bayajuu.

During the first leg of the march, Snut had already tested his peers' resolves and found that all bar two would happily escape the column. To prove his leadership, Snut had found a solution for their potential snitches. When the mischief fought off the Sand Wolves, Snut had placed the two dissenters on the flank and then waited for nature to run its course.

After the ghosts of the Sawahi with their bean-green glowing eyes had made off with the two dissenters, Snut and his crew anxiously waited for an opportunity to execute their plan.

Now, that time grew nigh.

"Sruot, Qree, this way," Snut said to the rest of his Contubernium, now numbering eight. The other Rat-kin shot them unhappy glares but were too jaded or tired to care. Their reaction was also with Snut's calculations, for he knew well the meek disposition of his battered people in accepting what came without complaint.

Lucky for Snut, there was some commotion happening ahead, something about a child too sick to continue. From what he could see, the Human female was knelt over inspecting the future carcass while her creatures patrolled overhead or fanned out nearer the front of the column. A few of the dogs likewise patrolled the rear, though it didn't take long for the monsters to stray.

Once his group displaced from the column belonging to his Centurion, Snut gestured for his rats to follow, then stepped into the shadow of an enormous arch that split the column four-ways.

Too easy, Snut's nerve gradually relaxed with the growing distance. The sorceress was powerful, but she was a fool. He was glad that they were the first, for if they succeeded, others likewise inspired would soon escape the sorceress's control. By midnight, the woman would have such a volume of desertion that she would be utterly helpless, while Snut's rat-pack would be hours away, hidden in the Badlands, foraging for nuts and insects to eat.

In silence, using all their cunning and stealth, the group continued to travel until the sound of the marching column faded.

"Sruot," Snut called for his second as his hunched body rose from the darkness, his nose stirring with the air of freedom. "How's our rear? Do you smell anyone following us?"

When no reply came, Snut furrowed his brows and craned his neck to hiss at his scout and rear guard. "Sruot!"

"We haven't seen him since the last rockfall." Vixx, a small framed Rat-kin, a tanner by trade, shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe he ran off alone."

Snut furrowed his brows. Sruot was from the same Clan as he was, so fleeing alone would be the height of stupidity. He had set his Clanmate in the rear to observe the others, not the other way around. "Impossible. Qix, Qree, have you see Sruot?"

The other two rats shook their head. These were another pair from an affiliated Clan. "Contubernium, we haven't seen Vaxz and Zazh either."

"Stop calling me that," Snut snapped with annoyance, mindful of the ration bars still in his pouches, then inspected his crew. "… damned pox-bearers, where's Toch— what's that?"

There came the whistle of something swinging on a rope, then—

_SPLAT!_

The sound of wet flesh striking hard sandstone drew their eyes to the base of a monolithic plinth. Snut, who had the keenest eyes, recognised the mangled shape at once.

"Srout!" he inhaled in pure horror. "Scat! Close up on me! Draw your weapons! There must be—"

Before Snut could finish, a shadowy silhouette rose from behind the yelping Vixx. For a split second, Snut saw with complete clarity the realisation in Vixx's eyes as the bone-white edge of an Afaa Al-Halak tooth rested against the Ratkin's jugular.

"VIX—" Snut's warning choked halfway, for the bone blade sunk itself into Vixx's cheek and sliced horizontally across the rat's skull, loping off the front half of his face like a lump of protruding wood.

"GURRRNNGN—!" while Vixx choked on his blood, the shadow reached into Vixx's saddle pouch and withdrew the Rat-kin's blade star, a three-sided throwing knife stitched from the mandibles of the Black-Gold Scarab.

Snut dove for cover a little too late, though thankfully, the target wasn't him.

The triple-bladed weapon sang a song of chitin as it flew, rounding in an impossible arc, missing Qree, who was the closest, to bury itself in the unsuspecting throat of Qix.

"Scat—scat!" Snut scrambled away on fall fours, his finger fumbling for his bone baton. What in pox's name was this thing hunting them? Not a Horse Lord! A Dao? Or was it another one of the Human sorceress' minions?

“YEAAGH—YAAAAA!!!” The rat drew his weapon, then made a sound akin to a banshee. Overcome with rabid, irrational horror, Qree chose to stand and fight the phantom.

The Rat-kin's bravery lasted two seconds.

Their assailant, now entirely at ease with the two foes that remained, stepped from the shadows. From his piebald fur and dark eyes, Snut recognised the rat as a member of Clan Jildam.

"YEAAAAAGH—!" Qree charged, claws extended and teeth glinting, a half-length pilum held aloft in one hand. "GURRK—"

He made it about a dozen steps before a thrown dagger struck his face with such force that Qree's neck snapped back like a deer shot by a Nokud's tendon bow, stumbling forward like a drunk before the other Rat-kin finished the job by opening Qree's abdomen from crotch to chest, spilling the rat's worm-like guts in a crimson, crescent arc.

Snut swallowed the spew swimming in his throat.

Snut wasn't stupid. He knew he was alive for a reason.

"So…" the rat picked up the dagger and cleaned the edge on the dead rat's fur. In the aftermath of their assailant's killing-spree, there were butchered rats strewn across the valley, filling the air with the stink of rotten iron. Yet, the Rat-kin looked as though a labourer finishing another day at the granary. Slowly, the rat produced a length of rope from his cloak. "...You lead, or shall I?"

"Please, sorceress." The pair of Rat-kin parents kowtowed so deep their bodies appear to lower into the ground. "Even if you sell this one and my wife and everyone in my family, we are not worth one strand of your hair, so all we can do is plead. This child has never possessed anything other than life. That's the only thing we could afford to give her."

Gwen's jaws grew as grim as her heart was heavy.

If she were Elvia, perhaps she would heal herself to exhaustion, but she was the Rat-lin's leader, not a Cleric.

A leader made the Rules.

RULES were important when leading a large group.

And an important part of having rules is respecting the minutes, else why bother setting boundaries at all?

Even a leader flouted the rules she had set; how could she then command the Rat-kin and maintain their trust and respect? These rats were meek. But what if they realised her heart could be emotionally blackmailed?

Lucky for the rats, their saviour wasn't a hard-headed bureaucrat. In her old consultancy business, only mediocre consultants looked at the rules and warned their clients. Comparatively, the good consultants circumvented customs, while the high-rollers made side-hustles viable and maximised profitability by writing off lawsuits as proportional expenditures. In the past, she was a single-digit income away from the latter.

Once her plan ripened, Gwen reached out with both hands to gingerly cradle the sick pup. Up close, the Rat-kin child reeked of disease and rot, yet even so, she could see an immutable ember of hope, one present in the feeblest of creatures. She wanted to save the pup, Gwen decided, though she would first wield its suffering like a fist.

"What this child needs... I can provide," she announced. "And yes, there is no doubt that every ounce of flesh on your bodies will not pay for even a smidgen of the gift I may bestow."

As one, the family continued to kowtow, making dull thunks in the dirt.

"Look about you. Many more need to be saved," Gwen reminded the parents. "This child is but one among a thousand, while my resources are limited by time and volume. For one to rise, another must abstain."

She turned to one of the Centurions, the one responsible for the sick child's Contubernium. "Do you understanding, Centurion Ix? Are you willing to forgo the Ascension to save the life of this one under your jurisdiction?"

A hundred and more pairs of eyes shifted from Gwen onto the stunned body of the group's yet-to-be transformed Centurion, a broad-shouldered warrior caste from the Clan Chuluu. At her question, the rat's face twitched, his fur growing instantly dank with nervous excretions. The Rat-kin had looked forward to the "Ascension", as their kind had dubbed the sorceress' gift. Since the transformation of the first twenty Elders and then some, the talk in the ranks had been of little else.

In the Rat-kin's eyes, Gwen could see their thoughts. Give up the Ascension for a child? A useless, mewling babe? It was a foolish thing to do.

The rat swallowed, his throat bobbing with indecision.

"The child shall soon pass the gates of no return and be one with Caliban." Gwen wondered if her coerced morality theatre was too much for Ix. "Make your choice, Centurion Ix. There is no penalty for refusing. What's promised to you by your station will be delivered unless you gift it to save the life of another."

"Mistress, I…" Ix's whole body was trembling. Something passed through the Centurion's eyes. Understanding? Gwen guessed. Or perhaps acceptance? After a brief pause, the rat deflated. "Please save the child."

Gwen nodded with satisfaction.

Before Ix could change his mind, she dipped a finger into the mouth of the child cradled against her bosom. The sorceress' pupils grew briefly viridescent, then a drop of Almudj's primordial Essence passed from her finger into the Rat-kin's throat.

"What's her name?" Gwen asked the weeping parents, who were now kowtowing toward the relaxed Ix.

"Riri, oh Mistress." The father's voice was barely audible through his choked lamentations of joy.

Gwen lowered the bundle of fur in her arms. Mere breaths ago, the fever from the Necromantic Phage was on the verge of consuming the Rat-kin's life. Now, Almudj's Essence had not only banished the tiny motes of Negative mana but utterly infused the child's body with a new genesis, awakening dormant physiological potentials.

Propped by her newly envigored arms, the child sat upright.

"Papa?" Riri's eyes were pure and as blue as the cloudless sky above. Her nose as well grew pink and moist and no longer cracked and infected. The girl's fingers and toes, which had resembled twisted springs, uncoiled.

Gwen released the confused child in her arms, allowing Riri to stand.

The family remained at a distance, too afraid to approach.

"Good work." Standing, she placed a hand on the head of her martyr and ruffled the hair between his rounded ears. "I'll remember you, Ix."

Her Centurion fell to one knee. "Thank you for enlightening me, Mistress."

Gwen stepped back, giving the family enough space to dote on their child while the rest of the Rat-kin watched with contemplative expressions, attempting to digest the morality play that had just transpired.

Gwen trawled her mind for a suitable Shakespearean quote to seal the deal—

"MISTRESS, WE REQUIRE AN AUDIENCE!"

The contemplative silence of the moment was interrupted by a great commotion from beyond. The owner of the resonant voice was Stian, the Ascended Elder from Clan Jildam.

To receive her petitioners, Gwen trod on air.

The mischief parted as a stinky sea, revealing Stian's crimson-cloaked visage. The faded salmon was something her twenty-odd Prefects self-adorned without her bidding to distinguish themselves. Presently, Stian stood beside a younger rat standing half-ahead shorter with the same piebald fur pattern, holding a leash attached to a rat that looked to have pissed and shat himself.

"What is this?" she made her enquiry from above.

"Here is a faithless deserter." Stian pointed to the rat. "While this is my grandson, Strun. He says that he witnessed your grace at the coastal Plague Pits, and he had followed your grace's Flight to Nukus and now, to here."

The Plague Pits? Gwen examined the younger rat. She doesn't recall seeing his likeness at all, else Caliban would have voided the sod.

"At our rear, he caught sight of a Contubernium peeling away. Strun followed them, ascertained that they were deserting and not merely resting, then slew them for traitors. He had brought you a gift, the deserter's leader— Snut of Clan Bayajuu."

"Clan Jildam lies!" The rat Gwen vaguely recalled as "Snut" fell face-first into the sand to grovel like a worm. "We were resting! Is fatigue a crime punishable by death?"

"Faithless worm!" the young man called Strun drew a bone dagger as long as his arm, then pointed it toward the traitor. "O Priestess who reigns over the Afaa Al-Halak, do not trust the worm-tongue of this ingrate." With his other hand, he fumbled for something in his cloak. "Here, I present the scalps of his co-deserters."

A wet and furry bundle landed beside the snot-faced Snut.

The corner of Gwen's right eye twitched as she fought down the bile in her throat.

"This rat is a murderer!" Snut writhed on the floor. "Justice, Great Sorceress! I want redress for my slain kin!"

"Lying slave!" The murderous aura from both members of Clan Jildam could have sliced cheese.

Gwen quickly distanced herself from the rioting emotions on display.

To desert at a time like this? That meant Snut was a scoundrel of absolute selfishness who saw personal survival as trumping his ten thousand litter mates, overshadowing the risk she took in saving their tails. To then lie and accuse his prosecutors in an attempt to turn his fate around—

If anything, Gwen felt impressed by the thickness of Snut's skin.

Circumstantially, she had no reason to doubt Stian, who had been immensely helpful and one of her most instrumental Prefects in organising the Cohorts. The only fate Snut deserved was to be put against the wall and receive a full clip of "Rat-a-tat, tat, tat, tat." Unfortunately, violence committed without instruction may only serve to inspire greater insurrections in her present company.

In place of the satisfaction of voiding Snut, she wanted the rat to instruct his kindred, to temper their obsequious natures with the nurturing hand of dignity.

But she wasn't a Mind Mage like Petra.

Or a Radiant Demi-god like Gunther.

Nor an avatar of empathy like Evee.

She also had no interest in having Stian torture the sod.

Which arguably left her with only one option.

The very one she loathed.

Luckily, her present circumstance did not align with the dread of sliding into indiscretion, for the traitor Snut was a perfect specimen.

Firstly, the rat had chosen his fate and made his choice; what free will Snut could exercise had already been exhausted; all that remained was the consequence.

Secondly, she had anticipated that a betrayal like this would happen and that inevitably, saving the "good" rats meant she had to exercise her full potential.

Thirdly, whatever the outcome, she had no desire to abuse Snut. The moment the rat's usefulness extinguished, she would grant him freedom.

With her mind made up, Gwen cloaked herself with Desolation Aura, then called a Void Hound to attend her side, drooling from a maw half its body length long, dribbling with the Void ooze that served as its teeth.

Her first act had earlier concluded; her second act was now beginning.

"J-Justice!" Snut's eyes grew bloodshot as his body convulsed from extreme vertigo. "I-I am a victim! They're using our lives to elevate themselves!"

"Great Priestess! Give the word!" Strun positioned himself to silence the Rat-kin at the slightest hint from Gwen.

Gwen waited until the crowd grew agitated enough to stink. Once more, she ran her deductions through her head, satisfied that her plan was for the greater good.

Lowering herself to the floor, she landed beside Snut.

"This Priestess will now discern truth from lies," she informed her audience, borrowing the title in Strun's address, for it seemed to resonate with her audience. Kneeling a little, she placed a hand on the warm skull of the thrashing, indignant traitor. "Snut, do not resist, lest you cease to exist."

"M-mercy!" Snut offered a final, futile plea.

Gwen silently spoke the sacred invocations of the dark-skinned Elves her Master had usurped for the IMS, then activated the necessary Sigils within her Astral Body to enable the Necromantic portion of the incantation. From her Elemental Gate, Void matter flooded her conduits, turning her eyes dark as obsidian.

The invisible aura of wretchedness encircling Gwen rippled, tripling in diameter and intensity, sending all the surrounding Rat-kin to kneel, scrap and reel, with at least a half of the individuals refund their breakfast rations, leaving only her Centurions standing among the groaning mischief.

"SOUL TAP!" Gwen proclaimed the final invocation with a tip-tap of her tongue.

A tendril extended from her Astral Body, crossing the metaphysical space of existence to invade the sacred soul space of her victim.

Snut grew instantly rigid, his eyes spinning wildly in their sockets. To the outside observers, Gwen's head-gripping hand glowed sickly green— not the vivid emerald of Almudj's genesis, but the sickly pale fluorescence of deadly fungi busy at decomposition.

A tiny pebbled soon joined that densely compacted mass of Essence held within the metaphysical well of her Astral Body. With every effort, she had metered the strength of the soul siphoning so that it took only the tiniest possible mote from the rat, preventing her victim from being extinguished by existential shock.

With the deed done, Snut slid from her palm to coil onto the floor. The Rat-kin's expression had frozen in inexplicable horror; his eyes were blank, lacking the means to express his internal horror.

Gwen's will bore into the rat's skull.

"Snut, speak the truth," she said, feeling distanced from her following words. "Obey your Priestess!"

The Rat-kin's mouth moved as though manipulated by phantom threads.

"I… am a deserter. I convinced the others to flee with me. Strun killed my fellow deserters and arrested me. What Clan Jildam said is true."

"Stand up and speak up."

Snut performed as told. The will of a slave-rat was far too fragile to resist her compulsion.

After the third confession, the mass of Rat-kin refugees let loose a collective sign. Considering what had happened in front of Saran to doom them all, Snut's betrayal came as no surprise.

"Thank you, Snut." Gwen gave the vermin all the mercy she could afford. "Goodbye, Snut."

The Rat-kin did not resist her Void Dog.

All who experienced Gwen's Desolation Aura first hand understood her kindness and her generosity in giving Snut a painless end implicitly.

"Who is Snut's Centurion?" She asked the crowd.

"Here I am, blessed Priestess of Sawahi!" The neglectful culprit leapt from the trembling wall of bodies. "Skaz knows he has failed you, Priestess. Skaz will take punishment."

Her Centurion's ownership of his offence was pleasing to her.

"Skaz's title is at this moment absolved," she said to the creature and watched his ears droop. "Go and form a Contubernium from the survivors, Skaz, and lead them well. Do not make this mistake again, else what awaits you will be far worse than Snut's end."

"Yes! Mistress!" the Rat-kin quickly retreated.

Gwen turned to their pair from Clan Jildam: as pivotal as punishment was reinforcing positive actions. "You have done well, Stian and Strun. And as you have done Skaz's duty, Mister Strun, I would like to offer you his position as Centurion of his wards. Are you willing?"

"More than willing!" Strun's ears perked up at once. Kneeling, the Rat-kin lowered his head. "I live to serve, Mistress! Not a single kin shall escape my watch!"

The Rat-kin's passion made Gwen hopeful for risking the effort of eliciting positive reinforcement. "Thank you for the confidence, Strun. As an additional boon for your service in paying an unowed debt, I would offer you Ascension. Do you accept?"

Elder Stian kicked the stunned Strun so hard his grandson fell on both hands. "YES! YES, MISTRESS!"

Gwen chucked. Taking a deep breath, she turned to the rest of the rats. "RAT-KIN! WITNESS STRUN—"

"Strun the Swift…" The Rat-kin whispered.

His grandfather boxed the young rat around the ears.

“— STRUN THE SWIFT of Clan Jildam!” Gwen's Clarion Call echoed through the plinth-filled valley. "CENTURION Strun, partake in the gift."

She cupped both hands and circulated her Essence until a small pool formed.

With eyes feverish with worship and reverence, the rat dipped his lips atop her fingers and lapped hungrily at her palm until every drop was gone.

"Blessed fruit!" Elder Stain appeared overcome with emotion.

The younger rat grunted, coiling his body while his bones and joints expanded to accommodate his enhanced sinews. Unlike the others, the Rat-kin maintained a reverent posture of stoic worship throughout his metamorphosis, like a faithful pilgrim supplicating before an ivory idol.

When Strun finally stood, Gwen was doubly impressed to find that he was almost up to her shoulder and was taller than his grandfather, who was already an impressive specimen. Gingerly, the huffing Rat-kin allowed his long fingers to flex, then tested the power of his sinews by bouncing on his heels.

Amazed, the rat knelt, then gazed upward with undisguised zeal.

"I pledge my life, my soul, my being to you, O Priestess of the Afaa Al-Halak," Strun the Swift declared with a voice that had grown resonant and deep. "Allow this one to be your shadow, your dagger, your hand of judgement."

Elder Stian knelt as well, though without the swearing. The pair's actions seemed to inspire the others to do the same.

Suddenly, half the mischief was on their knees, even those who had no idea what was going on and was merely going with the flow.

Gwen felt her scalp crawl.

From their Essence sympathy, she could sense Strun was entirely serious, though someone with her sensibilities, she felt equally stimulated and horrified by the pledge of absolutist obedience.

Was this… Gwen gulped at the unwelcome epiphany. Was this how cults started supply-side churches?

The Sawahi Badlands.

Midnight.

Strun, Stian, and the Clan's surviving senior members sat huddled around a heat dispensing magical device their Priestess had dubbed "Maxwell's Camp Heater". Behind them, the weakest of their kin slept two-stacks deep in windproof canvas tents, likewise provided by their benefactor.

Strun sat with a full belly, listening to his grandfather speak of transpired events.

"If you must blame someone," His grandfather's voice sounded like a ghost's on the wind. "Blame my helplessness. I shouldn't have let her go."

"Nonsense, it was mother's choice to work at the Pavilion." Strun felt torn in twain by the news of his mother's sudden demise, his anguish feeling like a jagged flesh wound. "But her passing, that fault belongs to the Khanate."

"Don't overthink her death, Strun," a voice said in the dark. "Don't dream of revenge. It will only bring more grief."

"She dropped a Djinn-damned plate and was used for sport!" Strun spat, his ire burning a hole in his lungs. "By the Priestess of the Afaa Al-Halak! You'd think mother insulted the Khan to his face, then spat in his food!"

The group remained silent.

"What else do you wish to do?" The same voice from the senior Rat-kin scoffed. "What do you expect us to do? Fight?"

Strun flexed his fingers, watching his elongated fingers unfurl. In the murky dark, the light from the fire cube refracted off his claws and the interior of his aubergine pupils.

With his health improved and the phage in his body banished, Strun wore clean clothes for the first time in months.

Earlier, he and the other centurions had accessed a magical item that produced water when an LDM was inserted. Once their kins' waterskins filled, Strun and a few others sifted through the "Survivor's Kits" to found soap and shampoo. Strun was no stranger to these items, though regular access to such supplies was rare in the Pavilion.

Not wanting to offend the Priestess, whose nose may be more sensitive than even their from what Strun had observed, he had urged the others to bath as well. Most performed the sacred rite of cleansing willingly, though some of Strun's peers had to be convinced with snarls and gnashing teeth.

As the youngest and a trained Shadow Runner, Strun welcomed all challengers. A few warriors blessed by the Priestess obliged, only to be floored by Strun in seconds, a testament to both what the Rat-kin had lost to their life of servitude under the Horse Lords, and the potential of what could be.

"Grandfather…" Strun looked up at his patriarch, one hand resting on the pommel of his teeth-blades. He had been thinking of his following words since his Ascension and in observing his people aiding one another. "What if… there was a better way for our people to live? What if— Clan Jildam no longer returned to the Pavilion?"


The badlands came to a flat and unenterprising conclusion after two days, leaving only ochre earth and blue horizon stretching over rolling dunes.

A shapely silhouette, "The Calamity", hovered over her gathered mischief, with her guardians Caliban and Ariel floating on either side, awaiting the return of their third sibling.

Compared to the stretch of sandy space ahead, the rock-strew valley had provided much-needed shelter against aerial and subterranean predators. Above the valley, very few flying creatures were a match for Golos. Below, her Familiars, Hounds and Centurions took care of business from terrestrial predators like the Goanna-shaped Basalt Basilisks.

The Ascension of her Centurions had greatly lubricated the passage of her rat-tag stream of refugees through the twisting intestines of the gorge. By now, she had rewarded most of the worthy. And though she had Essence to spare, Gwen decided to save such opportunities for reinforcing positive behaviour, such as in the case of Ix, who finally received his just reward after throwing himself into "public service" with a zealous fervour.

The extra caution meant the transit took more time than anticipated, unduly taxing her limited resources.

First of all, day four marked the end of her Cure Disease potions.
Her Healing Potions were also running low.
Her supply of rations was at its last pallet, as was most of her SPAM.
When they entered, there had been no visible means to provide food for the rats on the scale necessary, at least not during their slow meander through the badlands. That said, according to Strun, there were Bactrian camel herds in the hundreds of thousands meandering between Smarkland and Ashgabat. Likewise, in the rocky hills of Dushanbe, hundreds of thousands of rock goats scaled the basalt cliffs, while further out, innumerable Saiga ranged just outside the dunes.

The problem, alas, was getting the food to her people, or vice versa.

"Priestess. Once past the stone forest, we must tread lightly on the sand," the well-travelled Strun had supplied her with additional information for the journey beyond, including the lands surrounding Shalkar. Over the past few days, she had extensively relied on the whiskered Demi-human, whose title of "Shadow Runner" proved more than just a cool moniker. When she had inquired about its meaning, Strun's grandfather had informed her that the title meant courier. Within their Clan, those who possessed the strength to fight, the agility to obfuscate their presence and the cunning to evade foes in the desert trained to be the bearer of messages between the settlements. The Runner's fighting prowess, Strun had explained, was a necessity of the job rather than their primary function.

"...Between the herds and us, the Sand Wyrms reign. None may pass peacefully without the means to fly, and even then, there are Rocs and Harpies reigning over the skies. Shalkar is a place with water and shelter— but it is also a natural prison."

Curious, Gwen asked the rats how the tribe had reigned in the Wildland's past before they became Tasmüyiz. Stian the Elder wistfully informed her that in the days before the Beast Tide, when their numbers were in the tens of millions and more, Clan-kin would swarm their enemies and pick them apart, each armed with the teeth-blades of the Afaa Al-Halak. Many would perish in such battles, but given enough bodies, their hunts were seldom unsuccessful. However, when the desert rapidly expanded after the descent of the Fire Sea, extensive droughts decimated the Rat-kins' fields. Consequently, Clans warred among themselves, after which the survivors chose bondage.

"Strength in numbers..." Gwen recalled feeling ill, coming to understand a small part of why the Centaurs were so keen on pruning the rats' numbers, as well as why they saw death as utterly pedestrian.

Thankfully, she had immediate endeavours to distract her.

Her Wyvern was on its way back, communicating through thoughts imposed via Empathic Link.

Unlike in their arboreal adventures or Shenyang, the Wyvern thoroughly enjoyed the open terrain. When her creature landed, she verified his enjoyment from the crimson gore around his mouth and on his hind claws.

"What did you run into?" She inspected her Planar Ally for damage and was satisfied that the Wyvern was unharmed,

"The rat speaks true." Her Wyvern dipped its head, blasting her with his foetid breath. "Camels, horses and deer range in the lands beyond the dunes."

"How was the oasis itself?"

"Hee," Golos snorted. "Occupied."

Gwen raised both brows.

"By Centaurs, naturally." Golos huffed. "And no, I didn't eat them."

Were these Centaurs a part of the Khanate? Gwen thought to herself. How would the residents treat her rats when they arrive en masse? Hopefully, the Khan had sent a message across via his eagles; else, things could get awkward.

"How does our passage look?" Gwen continued. "Sand Wyrms?"

"Lots of young ones with their sand pits here and there." The Wyvern drew a quick map with the tip of its wings. It didn't take a stretch of the imagination for a flying creature to visualise what could be seen from above. "Just so you're aware, Calamity. There must be a bastard somewhere either to the north or south, where the land turns to Dragon-teeth."

Gwen took Golos' meaning to infer that a lower-tier Dragon likely occupied the more mountainous regions. That much was within expectation, as the general rule applied to Wildlands everywhere. However, compared to the Yinglong, the desolation of the desert and the badlands spoke of their "bastard" cousin's poverty, reinforced by the fact that the Sand Wyrms here were infinitely more "Worm" than "Wyrm", both pointing to the end-product of a multi-generational dilution of divinity.

When Golos finally finished his etch-a-sketch map, Gwen turned to her crowd and invited her Prefects. "Gents, take a look. What do you think?"

The Ascended rats shrunk their bodies as they huddled beside her, wary of Golos' lean and hungry gaze. Now that they had taken on her aspect, their flesh was far more gratifying than ordinary rodents.

"This isn't good— the Afaa al-Halak has multiplied," Stian remarked while Golos roughly marked where he had seen the enormous nests. Unlike its far-ranging adult form, a young Sand Wyrm remained in its nest-burrow until it had gained enough vitality or Essence to morph. These, according to Stian's description, ranged from creatures a dozen segments in length to elder variants a century or older, with burrows thousands of meters in length and tremor-senses covering four to five kilometres. That the Sawahi was overpopulated was interesting as well, for it meant the ecological pyramid of the Eastern Steppes had essentially collapsed without the Rat-kin. "This will not be an easy trek, Priestess. It may take weeks if we wish to be safe."

Strun's job, together with other volunteer hunters, scouts and half-trained Shadow Runners, would be to fan out in front of the great column, using their survival skills to test the path before them. It was a selfless task, for a mishap would mean falling into the maw of a Sand Wyrm.

Looking at the "map", Gwen had to concur.

If Golos was even remotely correct, "avoiding the Afaa al-Halak nests" would involve crossing the Sawahi in great loops and swirls, like finger-painting a Van Gogh rendition of "Swirly Swirly Sawahi".

In that time, how many would collapse from the extreme heat and cold?
While the upper regions of the Caspian froze and the southern coast boiled, the desert's climate meant that at noon, temperatures reached the mid-thirties, while at midnight, the surface could drop below zero. With the phage further weakening the stamina of her followers, she possessed scant confidence that they could dally in the desert for long. In the open Sawahi, the probability of running into an adult Sand Wyrm also multiplied. In that case, Gwen could only pray that their enemy was a younger Wyrm and not the ancient beast that the Khan had bested with the help of ten thousand Horse Lords.

"Our best bet is to punch through," Gwen suggested. "Gogo, how strong are these larval Sand Wyrms?"

"I could take them if they're exposed," her Wyvern grunted. "If you can lure enough of it out, I'll tear it from its hiding hole."

"The young Afaa al-Halak will retreat at the first sign of danger, Lord Golos." Strun's voice drifted toward them. "They're quick— very, very quick for their size. A few breaths, that's all it takes for the larvae to retreat deep into its den."

Golos scoffed.

"I'll have Cali provide backup," Gwen thanked the rat for this advice, then motioned to her salivating Big Bird. "His Afaa al-Halak form should be able to chase down injured specimens or flush them from the burrows."

"As you wish, Priestess." The other rats joined Strun's heartfelt supplication.

"Shaa-Shaa!" Caliban extended a pair of twisted, lolling tongues in blue and red.

Gwen received the gooey lick without flinching, wiping the slime off her bodysuit with no more bother than a nursing mother brushing milk from her sleeve.

"EE-EE!" Not to be beaten, Ariel nudged her arm, demanding a pat.

"Right, anything else?" Gwen obliged while addressing her thoroughly impressed Prefects.

"We're ready to march!" the gathered crowd of red-cloaked rats attempted to reply as one, though their timing made the spectacle more comical than grand. "Will us into the desert, Priestess!"

"Right. Perform a head-count," Gwen gave the command, then took to the air once more. "Check equipment. Pack the camp. We leave as soon as the roll call concludes!"

When the sun reached its zenith, Strun's scouts encountered their first juvenile Afaa al-Halak.

Her Void dogs sallied forth at Gwen's command, "tumbling" and "stumbling" as the sand turned liquid, sending her creatures downward into the bottom of the bowl-shaped dunescape, which from the air resembled a hollowed-out circle.

Mid-tumble, parasitic Shell Scarabs that lived within the Afaa al-Halak's domain burst from the sand in an attempt to hijack their host's prey. But, when her dogs snapped back and consumed the beetles, the swarm quickly discovered more amicable game in the mischief stickybeaking at the pit's edge.

The Shell Scarabs converged into a swarm to her relief, making it easy for her to disperse the buzzing spearhead with a Void Maelstrom. Together with the Centurions and her hounds, the Rat-kins escaped with many injuries but no deaths.

Nearer the centre of the Sand Wyrm pit, the eye-less, larval monstrosity emerged as a pale-white stalk six meters across and covered in ghoulish chitin. If Gwen had to give the thing a terrestrial parallel, she would say it resembled a Sand Lion Bobbit Worm chimaera. Golos, who had been circling the whole while, instantly accelerated into a supersonic dive, striking with equal grace and power to harpoon the creature as a living bolt of Wyvern-shaped lightning.

The sand shifted as Golos landed with outstretched claws gouging the crushed carapace. Then, with purple ichor spraying in every direction, the Sand Wyrm larvae lifted into the air.

"Yee—yee—YEE—YEEEE—!" the larvae's weeping was like a babe's as Golos dragged out its prawn-like lower body, snapping cartilage and crushing exoskeleton as the Sand Wyrm rapidly ascended.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Screee! Screee—!" came the cries of worship and awe from below.

With the whole hog exposed, Gwen could see that its entire lower half was without armour and semi-clear, like larvae in the middle of moulting. Evidently, the older the Sand Wyrm, the more segments it grew and the more armoured it became.

Once her Wyvern reached a suitable height, it let loose a sadistic cackle, then allowed the creature ten seconds to learn flight.

"THKREEEEEEE—!" came the sound of a semi-trailer meeting a sudden stop on un-compacting sand. Though the larvae's outer armour held, Gwen could see that its internal organs had ruptured from the impact, if not outright exploded by the shockwave of its landing.

Gwen and her company of Centurions observed the gory results, then with a mightly "SCREEE—!" from Stian, the swarm converged on the deceased holy beast.

Above the Rat-kin, their Priestess suddenly realised she had made a terrible mistake.

"Fuck!" Gwen howled with sand-stomping frustration. "Gogo! You need to kill it IN-RANGE! Farrrrrrk! My Afaa al-Halak CORE!”

Strun walked among his assigned Centurion, followed by two of his Contubernium, each carrying hefty plates of steaming Wyrm meat.

Following their successful hunt of the Afaa al-Halak larvae, the Elders made good use of the carcass, letting nought go to waste. The Priestess was happy to see her people acting industriously, encouraging the Rat-kin to recover the crystalline flesh she jokingly called "Manna".

The carcass of a holy Afaa al-Halak was full of treasures. The meat would keep for weeks when dried. Its chitin could be bent and moulded into armour and tools, while its teeth and mandibles made primitive but deadly weapons.

Watching his kin feast, Strun considered his preference for the rations and the salty, fatty cans of ambiguous flesh his Priestess bestowed. For his meek people, however, the steady stream of white-jade meat was something that happened only in the Rat-kins' illustrious past.

"If we survive." One of his Contubernium adjusted his grip on the enormous platter. "We'll be telling this to our children for generations. The Great Trek from Nukus to Shalkar— with our Priestess conjuring the flesh of the Afaa al-Halak from the air."

"Manna," Strun corrected his officer. "She called it manna."

"Ma-nuh." The Contubernium mouthed the word. "I like it. What does it mean?"

Strun shrugged. "I do not know, Bizth, although I suspect we'll be eating Manna for some time if she has her way."

The crowd laughed, some nervously, others with fragile hope.

"Eat up!" Strun commanded. "Eat until you're bursting! The march ahead is long, and you will need all your strength when the time comes to flee."

Dozens of dirty hands reached out and retrieved their share.

The sound of slurping and gnawing filled the camp. Usually, the Rat-kin tasted flesh once a month, and that's if they're lucky to receive scraps from the Centaurs. In winters of great famine, tribes less civil than the Gold Pavilion straightaway saw their slaves as two-legged sheep to fortify a stew, turning mouths into food.

Now, watching his fellow Rat-kins eat and laugh despite the fomenting illness brewing inside them, Strun wondered what would happen if his people, who were experts at growing grain and sowing wild seeds, could have a land to call their own. Would their children still die from milk-less mothers? Would their bones still be brittle and their arms and legs the likeness of stark branches washed up on the shore of the Caspian Sea?

"Calamity!" Golos' Empathic Link stirred Gwen from her meditation. "Get up. They've returned."

Gwen forced her leaden lids to open, revealing bloodshot eyes.

After six days of vigilance over her charges, even Almudj's Essence struggled to keep up with her psychic fatigue. While she did attempt to take catnaps here and there, inevitably something would require her attention, such as yet another sick Rat-kin bursting like a virulent pustule, coughing and hacking until they expired.

From observable evidence, the manifestation of the "phage seed" inside the Rat-kin progressed in stages. First, the seed took root in the rat's starved bodies. Then, the incubation period brought on fatigue, weakness and mild hyperthermia. Finally, the last stage involved violent expulsion and an all-consuming fever.

With the early sufferers, she had felt obligated to offset the illness with motes of her Essence.

But on the second night, Strun and Stian had approached with the disheartening news that many in the lower ranks now looked forward to the ripening of their phage seed and had neglected hygiene in the hope of being unduly transformed.

Gwen had felt dispirited by the news, though not surprised by the low ambition of the mischief's entrepreneurial spirit.

After that, she restricted herself to the hierarchy she had inadvertently created, dispensing Essence-infused Maotai through her network of Prefects, Centurions and Contuberniums. Her concoction wasn't enough to Ascend the rats, though it did stave off the worst of the ripened phage, catalysing a robust recovery. That and Gwen prayed the bounty of Sand Wyrm protein she piled into the hungry swarm would keep their overall health buoyant.

After Gwen's priestly duties were delegated, she did her best to rest, entering deep meditation for no more than an hour when their next item of woe appeared on the horizon.

Harpies.

These weren't the fair-faced birds of paradise like Gogo's pretty Phalera, but vicious, vulture-feathered beasties in black and brown with mien the likeness of Troll-hags. By Strun's confession, the Harpies were the Rat-kin's principal predators from time immemorial, regularly picking off stragglers in the field or those too young or weak to hide in a burrow in time. Occasionally, when either sides' numbers grew too great, all-out battles would break out, with either the Harpies emptying Clan warrens or the Rat-kin swarming up the badlands for bird roasts and omelettes. After the Tide, when the rats' numbers fell, they became fodder.

While crossing the Badlands, their first encounter with the Harpies had been brief. Golos had told the Harpy to "Flock off". They did not, to which Golos answered by reincarnating their Priestess with a single Dragon Breath.

Now, the birds were back with a vengeance, both for blood and for the meals on legs under Gwen's charge.

"Calamity, I think they brought the whole tribe." Her Wyvern's voice brimmed with anticipation.

In the distance, where the red-rimmed sun struck the flat horizon, she could see a thin-black horizontal line growing larger.

"… That's a damned bird Tide!" Gwen's temple throbbed. This time, unlike with the Big Birds, it was her fault for not entertaining the idea of eradicating all witnesses. She had even chuckled when Golos dispersed their avian foe with a Draconic-flex. "The same shit we saw in Amazonia..."

Gwen regarded her surroundings. "...Only now we're exposed."

What she meant was that they lacked the cover of the forest. Without the trees to block their foe, even Golos would eventually be taken to task like a Sand Wyrm brought down by wild Rat-kin.

"How long until they get here?" Gwen decided they may as well prepare for the worst.

"Another five minutes or so," Golos replied. Unlike the Harpies, the Wyvern flew at a much higher stratum of atmosphere to perform its favourite tactic— barrel-rolling its whipping mace-tail into his enemies, crushing their bones and bodies and hearing the lamentation of their flesh.

"Use Dragon Fear to delay them," Gwen commanded. "Buy me more time."

Her Wyvern obeyed.

"Prefects!" she commanded the chittering mischief with a word. "Your natural foes are upon us! Dig in as you've been taught! Protect your wards!"

At once, the swarm burst into furious activity.

The survivor's kits Walken had procured came with military-spec spades enchanted with Minor Earth Moulding cantrips, allowing the user to expend an LDM to slice stone and shape the earth. In the hands of the Centurions and Contubernium, they served as weapon and tool for shelter and defence. Together with the Rat-kin's natural tunnelling instincts, it was possible for most of the rats to hide in makeshift dens while the battle above took place.

Once sheltered, each burrow would be guarded by an Ascended Centurion, whose newfound strength should rival that of a Vulture-kin.

Without the need to worry her head over the rats, she could concentrate on dispersing the birds.

"Alright." Gwen redoubled her attention on the approaching line of hungry avians. "Ariel, Cali, Gogo— clump up those bloody bin-chickens. I want that flock nice and tight and ripe for a Maelstrom!"

The terrible screeches of a tempest-tossed heaven strained the limits of Struns' hearing.

Hungrily huffing at the ozonised air, the Rat-kin wondered if the Old Ones in the lost annals of his people spoke of similar cataclysms when they carved the Tribal Totems of his people.

Above his burrow, two swirling Maelstroms had transformed the golden dusk of dying day into bruised mauve. From the lightning layer, lashing bolts of fulminating emerald arced across the churning heavens, tossing Harpies like paper planes. Below, a second eye glared down, its pupils the very stuff of the abyss, sucking in anything that flew close enough to be touched by licking tendrils of Void-born wind.

Bathed in alternating hues of light and darkness, Strun fought tooth and nail against the wayward Harpie raiding their borrow to make off with his helpless kin. Already, no less than three Vulture-kin lay by the entrance of his makeshift shelter.
The first had been foolish, entering headfirst with its violence-maddened eyes. Strun had allowed the creature to pass; then, as it menaced his Contubernium, he had descended with his teeth-daggers, striking the Harpy near the collarbone, instantly disabling its serpentine neck.

The next assailant attempted to dismantle the burrow itself, forcing him from his shelter. Strung had parried the Harpy's claws, taking full advantage of his Essence-fed dexterity, then lopped off the bird's feet from the ankles before proceeding to decapitate his foe.

His latest kill was a Harpy Matron, a bird-woman capable of using innate sorcery. When the creature disabled an adjacent burrow with its screeching curse, he dove into the shadows then emerged from below the bird. To his dismay, his daggers proved ineffective against the steely feathers on the Matron's wings and legs. The hen's abdomen and lower organs, however, were a much softer story.

When finally Strun returned to his burrow, he was crimson with gore and steaming with offal. Around him, hundreds of his kin perished, but ten times that number in Harpes had paid the price.

With eyes dyed red with worship with reverence, his gaze swept upward for more prey.

"Ariel! Empowered Chain Lightning!"
"EE—EE!" came the thrilling trill of death by electrocution.
As a goddess of vengeance, his Priestess walked on air, directing the heavens to denounce the Vulture-kin, cooking the birds by the dozen as they sought to close in and strike her down.

"SHAA—!" Strun turned his gaze southward, where a giant bird half-melded into the uncertain light snatched Harpies from the air as though hapless mayflies, cramming its mouth with screaming bird-kin even as its slender finger-claws mutilated more victims. No matter how many instances the Harpies scored gouges deep enough to kill a Rat-kin outright, the dark falcon continued its flight, cutting a swarth through the panicked flock.

Elsewhere, her Wyvern barged through the scattering bird-Tide as a flying battering ram, shedding down, bone and blood with every passage of its brutal body.

In the past, Strun had seen the Khitani Horde do no less.
But here was one Human female.
His lone Priestess, against a Clan of Harpies!
Such confidence flowed through Strun that his veins felt like conduits channelling her viridescent Essence.

"SKREEEE—" The Shadow Runner let loose a battle shout, the cry of the free Rat-kin, a cry of anguish and gladness with the pent-up frustration of three decades of abject misery.

"SKREEEEE—" another cry echoed from a burrow not far from Strun. Another victor emerged, missing an arm but munching on the wing of a splayed bird.

"SKREEE—!"
"SKREEE—!"
"SKREEE—!" More of his kin announced the end to Rat-kin's humility.

"Priestess!" Strun cried out.

“SKREEE—!”
“SKREEE— SKREEE—!”
“SKREEE— SKREEE—! SKREEE—!”
More voices joined Strun, some buoyed by victory, others using the collective resonance to strengthen their body against mortal injuries.

Louder and louder, the chittering of the Rat-kin swarm overcame the maddening song sang by the Harpy Tide, informing their foe that the Rat-kin had returned to reclaim the Sands of the Sawahi and that without terrible bloodshed and incalculable violence, they cannot be made meek ever again.

"… Calamity…" Golos' warning came for the umpteenth time.

"What is it now?" Gwen dispersed her Wall of hovering Void and retaliated with a fire-and-forget volley of Ball Lightning in the Void variant. Her eyes followed the trailing balls of hungering Void ink until they splashed against her intended targets. "Did the Harpies call for a Roc or something?"

"No." Her Wyvern's tone was curiously wary. "I think our battle has attracted the attention of the one I spoke about in the southeast."

"What do you mean?" Gwen squinted her eyes, perceiving nothing on the southeasterly horizon.

Clicking his tongue, Golos turned her in the right direction. "An old Wyrm. I can smell its bastardised Essence stink even from here."

Gwen's electrified fingers grew arrested at the news. "You're shitting me. That the Dragon you talked about?"

"No," Golos assured her. "This thing's Essence is lower than mud— know well, Calamity, that only dumb and hungry things will be attracted to our ancient Essences. Even a bastard would think twice about our Patriarchs before showing themselves."

"Then why is it coming here?" Gwen furrowed her brows. Assuming Golos was correct, they were woefully equipped to deal with the Death Worm.

"Probably the sound, the mana and the spilt Essence. We are causing quite the stir—" Golos pointed a wingtip to her Warding Bolts, Thunder Storm, Maelstroms and her Familiars, each adding to her brilliance in the night. "How many times have you used the Ancient One's power? I could probably sense your presence from a few mountain ranges away."

Fighting off a wave of spell fatigue, Gwen doubled-checked the Harpy swarm, noting that, at the very least, the bird brains were scattering. Her present resources were unbalanced, for though her mana ran on fumes, her vitality was brimming, flushing her cheeks and making her insides all strange. To offset the distracting overflow, she had bled the excess into her Centurions via Death March. "So it's smart enough to find us. Do you think we can frighten it away?"

"That's assuming it's also smart enough to think." Golos' thoughts transmuted into her mind. "More likely, if the bastard's bastard is dumb and desperate enough, it'll charge right past us."

"Why past us?" Gwen willed her Familiars to return to her side. Below, her rats were emerging from their holes and chanting in as though communing with some netherworld power. "Are we not morsels that could hasten its evolution into a higher-order Draconoid? Help it shed its worm-like coil, that sort of thing?"

"For one, we True Dragons fly." Golos laughed with undisguised arrogance. Then, observing Gwen's confused consternation, his tone grew mocking. "Foolish Calamity! Have you forgotten? Your Essence isn't just in you anymore."

Gwen glanced down at her mischief. "My rats? There's barely a hundred of them! Surely it's got camel herds to devour?"

"Ah— but the Primordial One's Essence is exquisite and nourishing," Golos reminded her, shaking the gore from his silvery scales. "And for an Essence starved bastard living in a place like this with no mountains and no patron, even a mosquito is meat!"


Without a second of hesitation, Gwen activated Death March, simultaneously delivering an unambiguous order for her Rat-kin to flee in four routes away from the incoming Afaa al-Halak. This way, even if one-quarter of her wards got caught up in the earth-churning battle to come, at least three-quarters should remain safe.

Unlike the original Greenskin spell, she conducted no ceremony nor worship. Instead, with complete practicality, Gwen tethered her conduits to Caliban, then incanted the rites that would activate the Sigils necessary to mimic the effect of the Shamanistic enchantment. A second later, she became a living vitality transformer, her Astral and physical body substations to Caliban's Consumption-powered generator.

Fighting exhaustion, her irises sparked with vivid viridescence as the converted vitality of countless living beings Caliban had consumed empowered her favoured Rat-kins, concurrently saturating their scions with an emerald vibrancy.

"Priestess!"
"Goddess!"
"Scree— SCREEE—"
"Scree— SCREEE—SCREE—"

Her screeching Centurions transformed into shamrock beacons in the dying light of day, turning the rat horde an eerie shade of chartreuse.

Through them, Gwen could feel her rats, their whereabouts, and the buoyant emotions of hope and worship and faith flowing through their minds like a mighty river.

"GO!" she commanded them, instilling her rats with a silent command to work as one.

Her Rat-kin fled, those hale and able carrying the sick, while the Ascended each bore three Rats, one on their back, one in each arm, bounding down the dunes for the safety of darkness and distance to Shalkar.

Some may yet fall victim to the surviving Harpies or the desert cats that roamed the valley, but Gwen had no energy now to spare the unlucky few.

"EE-ee?" Ariel nudged her side, sensing the resonating anxiety stemming from her Divination Sigil.

"Shaa-Shaa!" Caliban remained keen on finding another source of vitality to replenish what its Master had removed via sorcerous coercion.

After soothing her Familiars, Gwen materialised from her Storage Ring a Sand Wyrm larval Core, the largest they had recovered along the way. Then, shuddering as the Void Energy ravaged her overly-taxed conduits, she activated her latent, life-saving defences.

"Reactive Bone Shield!" Her first insurance spell consumed the Creature Core, manifesting in the space surrounding her body as phantom scarab shells that would solidify into physical barriers should her health be threatened.

"Lesser Sanguine Mantle!" The second spell was her true-preserver— another layer of insurance on top of her Contingency Ring; as helpful as the storages were, it neither prevented mortal injury nor assured survival against the Land Leviathan.

"Sympathetic Life-Link!" Concluding with her final insurance, Gwen felt her skin crawl as faint scarlet threads materialised in the direction of her Familiars and her Planar Ally.

Caliban was a giant clump of aberrant vitality that manifested in the Astral Space of her mind like an enormous, tumorous growth. In comparison, its brother Ariel was a sleek sliver of condensed lifeforce brimming with Positive Energy, atypical of Lightning-imbued Magical Creatures. Golos, conversely, was a crystalline nucleus of unalloyed life, as befitting the scion of a True Dragon. So long as Life-Link remained active, Ariel and Golos should both benefit from Caliban's future feast.

Other lesser buffs followed. Everything from Resist Elements to Enhanced Ability, though these were now insignificant. If she took a full blow from something delivering the equivalent force of a rocket-propelled skyscraper, having a more robust constitution or the means to bench another fifty kilograms wasn't going to help.

Her current plan was simple. If the Sand Wyrm proved intelligent enough to negotiate, she would use Almudj's Essence to bluff the beast. However, if the creature revealed itself to be dumb, she could only fight to delay its passage.

As for wrangling the worm as though she were Lancelot of old...

She had met and fought enough Magical Creatures now to know that the older the being, the more exponential the "force" required to best them. A genuinely ancient monster that had lived a millennium or more in the sands of the Sawahi weren't something Caliban or herself could hope to consume without paying an equal cost.

Mayhap Shoggy could give the Sand Wyrm a run for its money. For now— the best she could hope to do was divert the creature long enough for her rats to flee for shelter.

"I'll attack first." Golos huffed, filling the frigid night air with motes of arcing electricity.

"There'll be a literal mountain of meat to dig through even if we do get through the carapace," Gwen projected the woe of her Divination Sigil. "Assuming Caliban manages to enter the Wyrm in the first place."

"That's assuming it can't regenerate," the Wyvern said. "Earthen Drakes are tough bastards, even the bastards."

“Void prevents Regneration.” she reminded her half-arsed True Dragon.

"Do I look like I have a problem growing back scales after our bouts?"

Gwen had wondered about that.

"Earth Drakes are ugly, can't fly, and infinitely dumber, but they are far tougher and more robust than us upper world Dragons."

Dumber than Gogo! Gwen felt a chill tingling her spine. Not much of a chance to negotiate then. She just hoped the creature was smart enough to know pain.

"… It's coming toward us," the Wyvern announced after sniffing the air. "... and now it's advancing southward."

Gwen cursed internally. That was Strun and Stian's group. Was it because they had received the most Essence? Out of all her Prefects, the grandfather-grandson duo had been the most useful by far and thus had gained the lion's share of her blessings. Now it seemed her generosity had done her favourites the opposite of a favour.

"Ariel, Cali, with me!"

"I'll go on ahead and give it a kick to see if anyone's home." Golos dived, twisting so that his enormous head led the charge. "If you see it attacking, then negotiations have broken down!"

At her best, Gwen could fly just under a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour, which was nothing compared to a sound barrier piercing Wyvern.
Even though she had grown significantly in power, she wasn't sure that their battle would be closely contested if she fought the Gogo of today. While the power-focused Wyvern remained a one-trick pony in many regards, his supersonic attacks, like Temir Khan's "Pilum of the People", wasn't something readily defendable within the realm of Spellcraft.

If a Mage had to face Gogo headfirst, they would require prior knowledge and preparation; both luxuries only upper-tier Mage teams could afford.

Sometimes, Gwen fantasised about the prospect of revisiting the Lich that had almost taken her for a roundtrip down to the underworld. She knew a little too much about Necromancy now and could keep the creature occupied until her Essence ran out. If so— how would an Undead at that tier resist an alpha strike from Golos? Or would it explode into ribbons of necrotic flesh the moment Gogo reamed the skeletal bastard from behind?

"Calamity!" On cue, her Wyvern's guttural Draconic ricochetted around her skull. "The bastard's tougher than I thought! Those rats of yours are worm fodder!"

It took her another minute until Gogo and the Wyrm came into view. She was still a fair distance away, yet already, her heart sank like a Land Shark into quicksand.

The elder Afaa al-Halak was a God-damned tunnel boring engine, a living Bertha blasting across the desert, with only its enormous head and the occasional segment dipping above the seemingly liquid sand. From the air, its scale boggled the mind, for the only other being which left such a wake was Almudj, whose aftermath she had witnessed a lifetime ago at the Royal National.

Comparatively, her private jet sized Wyvern was a flying lizard harassing the back of a black Angus Auroch.

Her mind struggled to conceive the prospect of fighting an elemental force of nature.

Gliding on currents of air flying off the Sand Wyrm's silica-polished carapace, Golos lifted into the air and met her mid-way.

"You couldn't push through the chitin?" Gwen's grim lips were glum from the frigid, desert air.

Her Wyvern pointed a claw-tip toward a chunk of armour lying somewhere half-buried in the sand the size of a car. "I think that's the first of a few layers. Also, the damned thing can grow armour back quicker than I could peel it."

"… Fuck." Gwen felt her temple throb. The Sand Wyrm wasn't fast, but it was tireless. If Golos couldn't break the thing open, there was little chance she could do anything either. Monsters innately possessed magic resistance, meaning her sorcery could only do so much against a creature like Golos. For a brute at the scale of the Wyrm, she might eventually succeed with Void magic, but by then, Christmas may have come and gone, the war would be over, and Evee would need to go home to her Rectrix. "Does it talk?"

"I tried. Watch." Golos sucked in a lungful of electrified air. " _Haug Wux! Xideevdru! Renthisj Svern!"_

Her Wyvern's Draconic insults visibly tore through the air, demonstrating that harsh words could indeed kill.

The Sand Wyrm slowed for a fraction of a second.

"I think it—" Gwen spoke.

The Sand Wyrm moved on.

"— Fuck. What does that mean?" She turned to her Wyvern for unlikely wisdom.

Gogo shrugged mid-flight. "Maybe it's slow?"

"How about I'll try." Gwen mulled over the possibilities for a few seconds, then made her decision. Gathering her Lightning mana, she willed herself to speak in faux-Draconic provided by her Translation Stone, then channelled the words into an Almudj-powered Thundering Shatter.

"OI! FATHERLESS IMBECILE! DOTH THOU KNOW HOW TO SPEAK?"

She wasn't exactly sure of the etiquette when addressing lowly "bastards" and so had to follow her Planar Ally's lead.

The shockwaves of her Essence-enhanced spell, which was enough to overpower portable Walls of Force when concentrated, rippled across the interlocking chitin, sending huge chunks of old carapace flying into the distance while shattering others.

The Sand Wyrm stopped, this time coming to a complete halt, piling up a new dune in the process. Its head dug into the sand, then the lower sections of its body began to form a coil.

"See? Nothing like a bit of Charisma," Gwen scoffed at her scowling Wyvern, then thought of an off-colour joke the likes of Tao might make. "You know, Gogo, they don't call me the Worm Handler of Fudan for no— WHOOA!"

The ground imploded.
The Sawahi erupted.
Her Divination Sigil screamed.

A bullet-shaped head larger than an A380 Dreamliner burst from the rising dune with the pressure of a volcanic eruption, slowly rotating in place while its seams peeled back like a three-petalled flower. In slow-motion and with an insurmountable force, the Sand Wyrm gained altitude with a rapidness that bellied its size, reaching for Golos, Gwen and her Familiars.

Gwen Dimension Doored, then Doored again for good measure. As an avowed worm handler, she dared not risk the rapidly distending Afaa al-Halak being a grower.

A hundred-odd meters away, she observed her stoic Caliban.

"Shaa-Shaa!" Her Big Bird cawed as the whale-like tripartite lips enclosed, locking her poison-pill creature into the Wyrm's maw. In the aftermath, the interlocking chitin sealed the slits, showing nary a sliver of fault.

"EE-EE!" Ariel reappeared by Gwen's side, worried that its sibling might be in for more than it could handle.

"Cheeky prick!" Golos circled after a sudden acceleration to escape the Wyrm's un-sportsmen-like assault. "If it thinks it can take us because of its girth, it's got another thing coming."

Gwen double-checked the phantom sphere of Undead chitin surrounding her body, wondering how well the Bone Armour would hold out against a worm with a partiality for vorarephilia. "Well, Cali's inside now."

She winced as she switched to Link Sight. "Strewth, the tongues have teeth!"

Though Caliban's optics wasn't helpful in the traditional sense, its life-sensing organ could create something akin to night vision while inside the Afaa al-Halak. Presently, Caliban was rolling its way down the palate and tongues, where every inch had evolved to grind flesh and crush stone. Thankfully, the Wyrm was a swallower and not a chewer, for she could sense the undulating maw rolling its walls of rat-swords, sending Caliban backwards into its gullet.

As for Cali, it bounced to and fro as a ball of Da-peng feathers, using its borrowed resilience and anti-Draconic talent to preserve its vitality. Thankfully, its feather armour held, which affirmed Gwen's confidence. Even with the Da-peng's seemingly impressive wingspan, Caliban was half the size of Golos, while the inside of the Sand Wyrm's maw could fit a whole Da-peng from wingtip to wingtip, and again from roof to tongue. Likewise, the crushing component of the Wyrm's mouth did not possess the equivalent of molars, resembling more so a serpent' oesophagus.

"It's coming again," Golos warned her. "The imbecile doesn't give up easy."

The dunes exploded, pouring silica down on the Sawahi.

Gwen waited for the last moment before Dimension Dooring again to safety. By the third thrust, their phallic predator appeared to lose interest, or at least conceded that just as Golos and Gwen were short on firepower, it lacked in other ways.

Meanwhile, Caliban had finally made it past the Iron Maiden section of the Sand Wyrm and was now home free in a pink oesophagus thick with digestive mucus.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Outside, the Sand Wyrm once again resumed its bee-line for her fleeing Rat-kin, crushing the dunes like an arctic icebreaker as it sailed into the sand sea.

"Barbanginy!"

Gwen gave the great Wyrm another thump on the head, enticing the beast with her concentrated Almudj's Essence.

The Sand Wyrm ignored her.

"I knew it! This bastard's intelligent!" she surmised at once.

Golos grumbled. "If Ayxin or Ruxin were here, this brat would know real pain!"

And if Gunther was here, Gwen mused. He could probably slice and dice the Sand Wyrm like schoolboys sectioning a flatworm to see what parts would grow back and what would die.

"Shaa!" Caliban had transformed itself into its serpent form and was now freely swimming through the digestive slime, replenishing its exterior as it went. Gwen had contemplated using the Earth Wyrm form, but the reality was that increased surface area would only mean Caliban got digested faster. Different to the life-seeking serpent, its Wyrm form was best for solid rock, not the slippery, mucus-lined digestive tract that resembled a Pocket Space of its own.

Should she empower Caliban now and have it randomly wreak havoc? In her mind, Gwen had hoped that some distance into the Wyrm, there would be signs, such as segments closer to its heart or lungs ripe for exploitation. At best, a significant nerve cord could sever the creature's movements; at worst, a spleen or a kidney could set the Wyrm to writhe.

But it would seem her hypothesis was far too optimistic. Elemental creatures were terrestrial in their anatomy but hardly required to follow the natural laws her body followed. If the Sand Wyrm began life as a creature fed by an Earthen Core and digestive tracts came later due to acclimatising to the Prime Material, why should it follow the evolutionary boundaries of mortal creatures untouched by mystic energies?

Whatever the case, the Sand Wyrm was now picking up speed. By her conjecture, she suspected it was going at fifty, maybe sixty kilometres an hour, meaning it would catch up to Strun's pack within the next ten minutes, despite her rats fleeing with every ounce of energy afforded by Death March.

Death March increased her Rat-kin's stamina near-infinitely but had limited impact on speed, especially considering that they were sick to boot and hardly consistent in athleticism.

As if sensing her growing paranoia, the Sand Wyrm sped up once more.

"This fucker…" Gwen swore. "Ariel!"

"EE-EE!" Her Kirin transformed into her hammer of chastisement.

She gathered up her mana, then sent forth the Familiar to coast just above the Wyrm. Just as the creature crested a dune, Gwen loosened the reigns on her spell.

_BOOM—CRACK!_

A triple-threat Babanginy in the form of Thundering Shatter struck the Sand Wyrm on its exposed carapace, lighting up the crevices where the chitin conjoined. As the compressed energy of the sonic spell rapidly discharged, purple ichor erupted from torn ligaments and burst veins. First, a destructive ripple rolled down the Sand Wyrm's side like a Mexican Wave; then, a secondary eruption sent chunks of chitin flying in every direction.

"YAAAARHGH—!" Golos charged in at the opportunity, emerging with claws clinging to an enormous block of jelly-like fat. In his violent passing, the exposed flesh became scorched and blackened.

Gwen huffed, happy at the result but exhausted by the expenditure.

The Afaa al-Halak "shrugged", the wound sizzled shut, then it moved on.

"SON OF A WORM!" she swore. That was the equivalent of ripping out a giant's toenails! Was the Wyrm so dumb as to not feel pain?

More so than the Wyrm's unstoppable health, she could envision the damned thing slowly catching up to her Rat-kin like the proverbial tortoise, erasing all of her efforts with a steady and agonising pace.

"Void Sphere!" Out of both frustration and curiosity, she let loose a tenebrous ball of Void-ink to splatter over the Wyrm.

Its scales sizzled, chunks of chitin faded into nothingness, consumed by anti-matter. Yet, Gwen dug no deeper than arm's reach into a layer of armour some meter-thick, not to mention there was another layer of insulating fat, and under that, far denser muscles.

Picking up the pace, she, Golos and Ariel arrived at a space ahead and overhead of the Sand Wyrm's trajectory.

"Enervating Orb!" Her body grew rigid, this time not from the sympathy of Caliban running through a bed of daggers but from the arcane chill of Negative Energy licking her innards.

After almost four days and five nights, her Almudj's Essence was reduced to fumes, as was her mana pool, restricting her to emergency arcanistry like Dimension Door. The sorcery she performed now was raw Void Energy tapped without the protection of serpent juice. Like the Gwen of old, she would have to suffer, then recover, a process to which she had grown accustomed; a testament to the elasticity of the human psyche.

When Petra had again labelled her a masochist, Gwen had rebuffed her cousin's compassion with an analogy comparing Void Magic to chilli consumption, drawing on the Scoville gradient. In the beginning, Gwen had explained, even Jalapeno was capable of keeping her immobile with debilitating cramps. But, after consistent "Consumption", the litmus for becoming bedridden grew to a mouthful of Ghost Peppers; now, after years of substance abuse, she could toss a Trinidad Scorpion down her gullet and chase the fact with pickled Void poppers.

Most importantly, akin to the sensation of overdosing on Capsaicin, once the life-threatening threshold of Void was surpassed, the complex agony transformed from unfathomable suffering into something of an acquired taste. In detail, there existed pleasure and pain in mixed-measure to each Void spell, distinctly possessed of unique sensations. For example, Void Sphere maintained a sharp Negative Drain like a sliver of ice between one's ribs, accentuating the pleasure of restoration provided by her Essence-soaked body. Comparatively, spells with Necromantic bases such as Enervating Orb seized her lungs— but when the life drain returned dividends, her torso grew soaked with invigorating warmth.

Therefore, what should have been undesirable to the Core had transmuted over the years into an addiction that all chilli-fiends shared. Of course, there was the morning after when one contemplated, like Rodin's Thinker, over the bathroom bowl, but the itch for hotter "heat" had to be scratched.

Such was the slippery slope to which Sobel rode to the fiery end, sacrificing both mind and body. Such was now Gwen's fate as well if she wasn't careful.

Below, the Sand Wyrm passed without incident.

It was a shame that her Necromancy-empowered Enervating Orb was not a physical sphere that the Sand Wyrm could swallow.

Feeling light-headed, Gwen reviewed her remaining resources.
The answer was more despairing than not.
What she needed was a way to inflict catastrophic damage.

_Shoggy?_
Even if she could set up the Planar horror, how would she put the jack back in the box without endangering her Rats? Besides, there were strict parameters in place for summoning the Shoggoth. If she conjured her trump card at a time and place where she was in no danger, and only to save "disposable" Rat-kin, how would the Mageocracy trust her "sterling" judgement ever again?

Use Strun and Stian as bait? No. That was a lose-lose scenario.
She didn't want to lose her chittering worshippers.
AND she loathed the idea of losing.

"Bloody Petra..." Gwen sighed.

Her spine straightened as her mind settled on a particular course of masochistic action. She had a reason, though. Without entering the tiger's den, one couldn't traffic in tiger cubs; without risk, how could she reap the rewards?

"Cali!" She whispered through her Empathic Link. "Hydra-form! Give the bastard indigestion! Slow em down!"

"Shaa— Shaa—!" First came the reply, then came the skull-numbing Negative Drain.

The onward march of the Sand Wyrm grew suddenly erratic as a twenty-meter Hydra manifested inside its gut and began to furious imbibe every mote of vitality upon which it could get its slimy lamprey-heads latched. Like a seven-headed Potter Wasp larva, Caliban attaching itself into some uncertain anatomy of the Sand Wyrm, its seeking tentacle-tongues piercing the slime and the membranes to seek out the white-jade mutton flesh of the giant caterpillar.

"How's that?" Gwen shouted at the Afaa al-Halak, channelling the stolen vitality toward herself, balancing the output with Sympathetic Life-link to prevent a potentially orgiastic overdose. "If you know how to beg, now's your last chance."

The Wyrm's body coiled and writhed, crashing through the dunes to simulate a spontaneous, localised quake. Dormant bursts of Earthen mana ruptured from its magical organs, turning the sand liquid or solid or creating crashing waves of rolling silica.

"Bastard was hiding his talents!" Golos' voice stabbed her teaming brain like a fistful of needles. "Good thing we didn't fight it on the ground, eh? Calamity—"

Her skull buzzed like a knocked nest of hornets. From inside the Wyrm, Caliban's hydra-heads dug in, boring into the flesh, seeking out the creature's mana veins, trying to ascertain the whereabouts of its Core. At the same time, Gwen could feel her body tingling with overstimulation, particularly her sticky dermis, which shared some of Caliban's senses. The concentration of the acid surrounding her creature had grown significantly more potent, and parts of her Hydra's lower body were already failing to keep up with the dissolution rate. At the same time, the Sand Wyrm's rapid regeneration kept Caliban from meaningful ingress.

She needed to apply more pressure on the bastard.
They were locked now in a deadly balance, and for her to triumph, one of them had to up the ante.

"Gogo," she called to her Wyvern, instantly transferring her plans through a series of empathic impressions. "I am going to try and invade the worm."

Golos dipped his enormous head. "Where?"

"There, punch a hole big enough for me to land." She gestured to a section of the writhing Afaa al-Halak. "I can't enter through its mouth, but if I can break into a part of its body where it can't get me, I'll gift it with enough of Cali's mates to matter."

The Wyvern's arrogant mug grew strangely severe. "Calamity… you disgust me."

"I just hope this dumb-ass will give up before it's too late." Gwen drew in a deep breath.

"I'll keep it distracted by insulting its lack of ancestors," Golos promised with a cruel smirk.

"Ready?" Gwen shook out her body. Hopefully, what she had planned wasn't going to hurt too much. "Start the fireworks, Big Guy."

Her Wyvern responded by turning in a great arc until he drew enough distance for a supersonic approach. At an optimal range, the creature opened its maw, gathered its innate mana, then—

" _LOREAT_ —!" The lightning-charged Dragon Breath, empowered by Golos' growing mastery of Dragon speech, beamed through the night, illuminating half the desert, turning dunes to shadowy mountains as it struck the carapace of the Sand Wyrm. The section afflicted by Golos' best efforts glowed red hot as the extravagant energy obliterated the Wym's magical resistance, cooking its flesh, then—

Her Wyvern struck, removing the crispy layers of armour entirely.

"BLADE BARRIER!" Gwen's follow-up was instant.
Through stacked feats of Spellshaping, Gwen condensed the original wall of inky Void Blades into something resembling an inverse semi-sphere dome, manifesting just inside the wound.

The spell fatigue that simultaneously struck felt like Golos clipping the side of her head with his tail club. If Magister Patil were present, the sorceress would have scoffed.

"GUUUAAARRRRL—" Finally, their stoic victim made a sound that indicated the limits of its pain tolerance. Before the Wyrm could halt its body, her Blade Barrier gauged out a lesion the size of a bi-lane swimming pool long enough to do laps. At the same time, even as the afflicted flesh stanched its bleeding, it grew tumorous with scabs spurting purple blood, signifying that her Void matter had corrupted the Wyrm's regeneration.

"Dimension Door!" Gwen executed the next stage of her plan, arriving inside the wound with a splash of Void as neighbouring interlocking plates began to converge, sealing off the open area to prevent further assault.

Without delay, she activated all of her defences.

Sanguine Mantle.
Bone Armour.
Gunther Shield.

Her world instantly reduced to the darkened interior of a Void Egg.

For what she was about to perform, she had no idea how the worm would counter, though she could imagine the creature leaping through the air to land on its "bedsore", attempt to bust her like a bloated tick.

"Quickened Elemental Swarm!"

The meta-magic for rapid manifestation of spells usually applied to sorcery with direct cause and effect. In the case of Elemental Swarm, "Quicken" maximised her rate of Conjuration from the get-go, averting the ramp-up but placing an ill-advised burden on her body.

Multiple portals opened outside her shell, pouring forth her tiny minions, each the size of a River Lamprey, all possessing the potential to become Amazonian Pythons if given the opportunity.

Within moments, she felt her creatures connect with the necrotised flesh of the Sand Wyrm. Though she couldn't see, it took no feat of the fantastic to imagine her eel things instantly reaching a state of existential frenzy.

She wasn't done yet. "Hydra!"

Sobel's Signature Spell possessed an unusual feature. If the Void Conjurer was willing to yield control of the multi-pronged Void Worms she summoned, she could keep pumping them out until her vitality ran dry.

Unlucky for the Sand Wyrm, all Gwen had left was excess vitality.

As with her Elemental Swarm, the Hydra "Swarm" took to meat like maggots to gangrene, digging into the translucent inner flesh, gorging themselves full of Demi-divine vitality.

Concurrently, Caliban Life-Linked the vital forces collected by its summoned siblings, repairing itself while simultaneously draining the Wyrm.

For how long could the Sand Wyrm last? Gwen wondered as the first tremors came. The worm turned, attempting to nix the cancerous growth on its skin. Outside, she could feel the pressing of grinding plates gnashing her Void and bone barriers like a gigaton press.

Yet, within the Void Egg, she was sans sight and sound. All she could feel was the icy sweat oozing from her pores, making slick her arrested body while the vitality flux taxed her with unimaginable fatigue. Her egg was being churned in the flesh-space like a tennis ball in the well of a front-loaded washing machine. Yet, within the dark interior of her weightless egg, the Devourer of Shenyang felt only the call of the slumbering dark.

Would she hold out?
Or would the Wyrm hold out?
The walls cracked and crinkled, then began to close in.
Her mind slipped on something slick, then suddenly, her consciousness began to spiral.

"CALAMITY!" Golos' voice tore Gwen from her chambered cocoon of sensory deprivation. "Calamity. You can come out now. Are you still sleeping?"

Her leaden lids shot open.
_Holy fuck_ — Her spine jolted her body with a shot of pure adrenaline. _Christ! Had she dozed off?_

"Is the Sand Wyrm dead?" Gwen heard a voice speak. It was her voice. "How long was I out?"

Now awake and paranoid, she inspected her Astral Body, then the state of her active invocations. To her surprise, her Elemental Swarm was gone, as were the Hydra swarm. Caliban remained materialised, nestled in a tunnel, while Ariel was some distance skyward, likely patrolling.

"The bastard's fled back to where ever desert it came from," Golos said. "But it's left you a spoil of war."

Gwen winced as she forced herself to sit, wincing when she saw the red-rimmed horizon.

"Oh, Jesus…" She shielded her eyes from the reflected light. "It's daytime?"

"Daybreak, actually." Golos coiled around her protectively, spraying her with sand. "Well done, Calamity, you showed that bastard who is pure-blooded and who is _Edar_."

In the warm light, Gwen inspected herself for potential damage. Her Sanguine Mantle had triggered. She could tell that much from the spell's invocation and the expenditure of her blood reagent, not to mention the bloodstains covering her armour. Her Reactive Bone Armour had likewise been expended, which was something she had anticipated, considering the topsy-turvy tumbling she had to endure.

She slid a hand inside her armour.
Her fingers emerged covered in clotted blood.
Something had broken, and then her Sanguine Mantle had stitched her together with glue. Along with the Balefire Golem, this was now the second time she was spared the Contingency Ring.

For a second, she imagined herself with Bone Armour expended, Sanguine Mantle covering her body, bouncing like a rag-doll inside the Sand Wyrm.

"Your injury was from later." Golos read her thoughts. "When the Wyrm split in half, I had to drag you from out under it..."

"I see..." Gwen nodded. Her plan had worked, but she couldn't sustain the aftermath.

Five whole nights without deep sleep had proven the better of her resilience, and when she had delved into the darkness of the Void Egg, the womb-like warmth became the final Hydra that broke the Sand Wyrm's back.

Still, the Afaa al-Halak fled?
Gwen bit her lips.
For a tiny moment there, she had thought the Core of her future Tower ripe for collection.

"EE-EE!" Ariel came drifting down from above.
She placed a hand on her creature's mane to steady herself, then gave the beastie a full-bodied hug, thanking it for the fluffy offering. To see what Golos meant for the Sand Wyrm, Gwen invoked a spell of Flight, then took to the air with Ariel's aid.

"You broke off its arse." Golos' delight was boundless as he joined her. "Ha! I can't wait until Ruxin hears of this! Worm handler, indeed, Puhahahaha—"

There, lying half-buried in the sand, was a length of Wyrm about four to five carriages long, with yet more segments still buried somewhere underground.

"Caliban!" She called in the general direction of her Void monster. "Cali, come home!"

Where the carcass of the Sand Wyrm's lower half lay, a piece of carapace lifted, revealing her Caliban, or at least something that resembled Caliban. Her creature slithered from the carcass with difficulty, landing with a "Plop!" then rolled around with great comedy until it righted itself.

"EE-EE!" Ariel's mockery rang out.
"Hue—hue—hue—" Golos was no less amused by the indignant condition of his once-abuser.
"Oh, Gods…" Gwen's eyes watered. "Poor Cali…"

Without her there to temper and portion away excessive vitality, her creature had grown not just bloated but positively corpulent. The Caliban that now inched forward wasn't so much a sleek serpent with a thirty-inch waist the likeness of a nightmarish, Lovecraftian statue crafted by Surya, but a blob, a Void slug, wobbling with every inch.

"It commanded, then consumed your other beasties," Golos explained. "Then it became like this."

Gingerly, Gwen prodded the Vitality stored within Caliban with a very long and very delicate mental stick. As she suspected, her creature had reached the limits of what her tier 7 Conjuration could endure. Its Astral presence was so choked full of the mystical "life force" siphoned from the Great Afaa al-Halak that its physical manifestation had deformed.

Observing her Void beast, she was reminded of what she had done to the Soul Flayer in Shenyang and how the Undead had reacted to her pouring every ounce of vitality into its withered conduits.

Never had Gwen felt gladder that she could shut Caliban's life-well through Life-Link. If this were the old days, and if this much vitality were to flood into her— Gwen shuddered. No sorceress would want to experience a reckoning of that magnitude.

For now, it was safest to leave Caliban out in the open. If need be, she could command it to transform into an Earthen Wyrm to blow off some steam.

"Gogo, Ariel, can you round up the rats?" Gwen approached, then sat on the bloated body of Caliban. To her delight, Cali was bouncy, blubbery, blobby and warm. "I am going just to sit here and… rest."

"EE!" Ariel pawed the air, gaining altitude with every leap.

Golos eyed the immobile Caliban. "Why is it still looking at the bastard?"

"Shaa—! Shaa—!" Caliban's Empathic Link entangled her mind once more, transmuting her creature's latest report.

"… Are you for real?" Gwen fought off the sleepiness threatening to send her off to another catnap on Cali the Void-stuffed daybed.

"What's wrong?" Golos craned his neck close enough for his ridge feathers to brush Gwen's cheeks. "What's it saying?"

"Cali says…" Gwen pushed the giant Wyvern's snout away, then turned to regard the buried lower half of the Afaa al-Halak with hazel eyes brimming with uncertainty. "I don't know how— but Cali reckons... that thing's still _alive_."