I groan, managing not to fall forward into the sword.

  “Throw down your ons immediately,” the woman orders, still keeping the sword level at my throat.

  My vision is starting to swim bato focus. I hope I don’t have a cussion. “That might be difficult, sidering I don’t have any.”

  The woman narrows her eyes at me. “Don’t get cheeky.”

  She’s also a dhampyr; two fangs poke out over the top of her bottom lip, her ears are pointed, and her skin is, of course, ashen. She has bck hair pulled ba a tight, practical bun, and is wearing armnifitly more heavy and intricate than the leather variety Quell and I have on. She’s older than me, I think; maybe around thirty. There’s an insignia of something like a wave or mountain peak on her chest.

  [Check,] Echo says as I’m taking her in. [Darian, level 34 dhampyr sand guard. Captain in the Duneshade army.]

  Oh, not waves or a mountain then: sand dunes.

  “Wait!” Quell cries, struggling to break through a pack of soldiers which have protectively formed around him. “They’re not Moonfall! They saved me.”

  More soldiers are appearing from around the rocks, several letting out audible sighs of relief when they catch sight of the prihey’re all dressed simir to Captain Darian, in light clothes aher armor—and most of them with goggles, I also notice, hanging about their necks in the case of dhampyrs, or worhe eyes for the humans. How oh did Quell mao get himself abducted with all these soldiers around?

  Captain Darian eyes me suspiciously. “They’re wearing Moonfall armor.”

  I look down at my chest pte. “Uh, would you believe me if I said I had no idea how I came to be wearing this?”

  Darian gives Quell a pointed look.

  “I know,” he says hurriedly. “Their story is a bit… spotty. But they saved me heless. The Moonfall soldiers already had me half a mile away, lost in a sandstone formation. If they hadn’t shown up, no one ever would have found us.”

  The captain is still frowning wheurns bae, sword unwavering. “And how did you find him?”

  Man, there is absolutely nothing I say here that will make this seem good. “I have some kind of trag spell,” I say, which is the closest expnation to the truth I think of that doesn’t involve expining Echo and Role Requirements and making me seem even more insane.

  “Some kind of trag spell?” Darias dubiously.

  “Captain, please,” Quell says. “You take them into custody if you must, but I owe them my life, and I won’t allow you to execute them here.”

  Yeah, me her, I think, already trying to gauge how fast I remove the Crimson Aegis from my Iory. But with a dozen soldiers spread out around us, the odds don’t look good.

  Captain Darian stares at me for a moment lohes out an irritated sigh and sheaths her sword. “We don’t have time to waste on this anyway.” She gestures to two nearby soldiers, and they step forward, each grabbing one of my arms and haulio my feet.

  One of them checks me over. “No ons,” he reports to the captain.

  Darian gives me another skeptical look—what kind of idiot doesn’t carry ons in a battlefield?—but turns to Quell instead.

  “Was your sister with you?” she asks.

  “At first, yes, Liz and stah,” he says, his forehead ping with a frown. “But we were quickly separated. I don’t know where either of them were taken. Are they alright? Have you found them?”

  The captain starts walking, and everyoakes this as a cue to follow suit. The two soldiers apparently assigo me gesture for me to move as well, falling into step oher side. But they don’t tie up my hands or put a gag on me, like how I’d found Quell, so I sider that a good sign.

  Or maybe they aren’t worried I’ll run because one of the guards is a giant spider-person, almost seveall. It’s like if a taur was half-spider instead of half-horse. Their entire body is a tan-brown color, but faintly reflective like a shell instead of skin. And while their upper half is mostly human, they still have eight round, bck eyes. They gnce down at me with a frown, and I nervously tear my gaze away.

  “We caught up to Prince stance’s group not long after the attack,” Darian expins to Quell. “We’d only been following his trail and didn’t realize they’d split the three of you up until after we recovered him. By then, we had no idea where you or Princess Felicity were taken.”

  “But you were on the right track with me,” Quell says. “You’ve got a lead for Liz, tht?”

  Darian is silent for a moment. “We’re doing everything we to find her.”

  “What do you mean?” Quell asks. “You’ll track her down, right? She’ll be okay?”

  There’s a quiver in his voice, and it kicks me right in the heart. His over his sister makes me wonder where my brooo. I still picture the st moment I looked at him. The fear in his eyes. He ’t have gone far. He has to be somewhere nearby. I find myself eg Quell’s s almost word for word: he has to be okay.

  “I promise you, my prince,” Darian says. “I will ensure your sister returns home safely. I will retrieve her myself, if that’s what it takes.”

  Quell’s shoulders slump. “It just happened so fast. How did they get behind our lines? How did no oice them?”

  “The pse in security is still being iigated,” Captain Darian says. “At this moment, I am relieved we were at least able to retrieve you and your brother. We discuss further pns with all parties present wheurn to camp.”

  We step out of the boulder field and bato the open dunes. I still see people fighting in the distance, like ants crawling over the sand, and closer still I make out the crater Hans and I had emerged from.

  “Er, excuse me,” I say, drawing the attention of basically the entire pany of soldiers. “That crater over there. Would you mind if we swing by before we head back to your camp? I left a friend over there, and he’s probably w where I am.”

  Darian blinks at me. “A friend?”

  “More of an acquaintance, really,” I admit. “But it would seem pretty terrible to leave him in the middle of the desert with no supplies or shelter or anything. Plus, you know, the fighting, and whatnot.”

  “Yes, the fighting and whatnot,” Darias ftly. She looks at Quell as if to say, ‘Are you really serious about this guy?’

  He spys his hands helplessly in some sort of indication of, ‘Well, they saved my life. What am I supposed to do? Killing or leaving them to die in a desert after that would kind of be a dick move.’

  Or something like that.

  “It’s on the way to camp regardless,” Darian admits. “We’ll pass by and keep a for this… acquaintance.”

  I guess that’s the best I hope for, now. But I still o figure out what to do in the long term. I have to get away from these guys and figure out where álvaro ended up. The captain is probably going to want to throw me in a cell or something, and I ’t totally bme her, given what I’m wearing and how I have no expnation for it. Or at least no expnation anyone is likely to believe, given Quell’s reaaybe I use the shield to break out when their guard is down. No one has asked me about my Iory, so that’s good at least. And then there’s always the Bloodlust…

  I grimace as that summons far too disturbing and fresh memories. It might have made me powerful—incredibly fast and strong—but it also e my mind. I… I’m pretty sure I killed those people. I’m not a killer. I’ve only ever fought when I o, for self-defense, and the worst that came of those fights were some broken noses. If I rely on the Bloodlust again, I might end up hurting more than kidnappers.

  No. I’m not willing to let that happen to me again. Guess I’ll have to escape the old-fashioned way: with the help of a demonic, cursed shield.

  “Was this the result of an artificed shot?” Quell gestures to the crater as roach. Darian nods curtly. “What kind? The bst radius is wider than what I’m aced to.”

  “It was a group pitch,” Darian says. “Sand base. Charmed with a repulsive spell set to activate on impact.”

  “Impressive,” Quell says, scratg at his in thought. “What was the range?”

  “Three hundred feet.”

  “Hm.” He sounds disappointed. “The catapults achieve at least double that. If some wind ara could be applied to the shots…”

  “Once we get our hands on a wind mage, I’ll let you know,” Darian says shortly.

  Quell grimaces. “No, no. I don’t mean scription. It was just a thought.”

  I raise an eyebrow at the tense and awkward exge. A prince who has hesitations about the war his kingdom is in? Sounds messy. Not that I want to be involved with this war, either, to be fair, but I also have no skin in this game.

  As roach the lip of the crater, I make out the form of the cactus monster crumpled across the desert floor. Hans is down there, examining its corpse. He’s fav one leg, but the spines appear to be gone from his injured foot, so it must be healing up.

  “Hey,” I call. “Hans!”

  The man looks up. At the same time, sand explodes into the air between us.

  A shock wave hits me, the air crag like thunder. For a moment I think it’s another murder cactus erupting from the ground. But after the sand clears, what remains at the ter of the explosion is not a creature, but a person.

  Another spider person. I take a startled step back, the soldiers likewise fling away, so I guess I’m not the only one surprised by their strange and abrupt appearance.

  Uhe spider-persoo me, who is wearing armor like the rest of the soldiers, this one is garbed in loose-flowing robes and silks, and carries something that looks like a small sickle with a attached to the handle.

  Echo provides me a brief Check:

  [Name: Zeyaelid]

  [Title: Demigod]

  [Species: Araoid]

  [Css: Silk Padin]

  [Level: 81]

  [Attack: 325]

  [HP: 650/650]

  [Mana: 3000/3000]

  [Allegiance: Lorata]

  Demigod? What the hell?!

  She’s fag Hans.

  “An aberra was detected in this area,” the demigod says. “Are you involved?”

  Hans, who fell on his ass at the appearance of the spider-person, looks up at her with a mix of fusion and fear. “What?”

  Zeyaelid g the destroyed murder cactus. “Did you do this? What is your name?”

  Hans climbs carefully to his feet. “No, I… I was supposed to tame it, or something.”

  “he woman demands again. Her clipped and formal tone invites no disobedience.

  “Hans,” he says, gng nervously up toward us.

  Zeyaelid withdraws a scroll, which she begins to unravel. She pauses after a moment. “Your name appears in the System.”

  My heart skips a beat. System? Echo used that term. Is she talking about the stats that only Hans and I see and hear? If this demigod is looking for some kind of “aberra,” my and Hans’s appearance here certainly fits the bill.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hans says, cautiously edging back. “I don’t even know how I got here.”

  Zeyaelid rolls the scroll back up and tucks it within her robes. “You will be taken into the custody of the pantheon until that be determined.”

  Uh oh. I don’t like the dire this versation is going. By now, a whisper of murmurs has gohrough the soldiers, and several have dropped reverently to their knees, including Quell.

  “That’s Lorata’s Champion,” one of the soldiers says to another, quickly falling to the ground as well. I likewise joihers in the sand, more so I won’t stand out than out of any form of respect. Actually, that’s irely true: looking at that level, I have a healthy amount of respect for the danger she poses.

  I feel my heart beating in my chest as I peek out over the lip of the crater, watg the situation unfold. I feel bad about leaving Hans dowo fend for himself, but there’s realistically nothing I do, and I don’t like the sound of being “taken into custody.” I ’t risk getting caught—not when I still o find my brother.

  “Pantheon?” Has. “What do you mean you’ll take me into custody?”

  “All will be expined in time,” Zeyaelid says. “Your cooperation is appreciated.”

  Hans, apparently, decides his cooperation will not be appreciated. He turns and runs, rag for a wall of the crater. Zeyaelid doesn’t follow. Instead she sighs, unfurls a loop of her , spins a weight attached to the end, then casually lobs the on at Hans. The weight falls over his arm at the same time Zeyaelid yanks sharply back. The weight spins around his limb, ing it in s, and sends the man crashing to the ground as he reaches the end of the sck. With a flick of her wrist, Hans is flung back to Zeyaelid like a fish on a line. He crashes into the sand at her feet, dazed.

  The woman leans down and grabs Hans, pig him up by the straps of his chest pte. She carries him like he weighs nothing, like the euation was a mild invenience. Wearing a bored expression, Zeyaelid turns and looks up at us.

  I sm my head down into the sand, pulse drumming in my ears as I will myself to vanish into the ground. Did she see me? Would she be able to tell that I’m part of the aberration too?

  “I apologize for the interruption, mortals,” I hear Zeyaelid’s voice drift over the edge of the dune. “Lorata is grateful for your discretion in this matter here today.”

  Then there’s another crack of thunder, leaving behind only silend an armed ringing in my ears.

  What was that? There are demigods? A pantheon? Where did she take Hans? And more importantly, what did she want with him?

  As I y there, ear pressed into the sand, I notice Quell also on the ground, staring at me with wide eyes. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing about me.