The question was so obnoxious. What did he an? What did we drink? We drank water, of course!
"Uhm. Water?"
He frowned at us, including Tristan. Seeing the expression on his face, a subtle frown creased Kassie’s brows and she stepped forward, leaving Cindy’s side and passing inside the pillars that jutted from the ground like enormous spikes. The mont she stepped onto the reddish concrete structure, she stopped dead. Her frown deepened, sothing shifting behind her eyes.
"Cade! Get out of there now!"
As she yelled, the pillars began to grind and vibrate. The vibration resonated with the ground itself, a deep tremor that ran up through my legs — and the floor imdiately tilted, driving straight toward the depth I had drunk from.
Not just . Tristan and Nisha too.
I rolled, grabbed a stone slab. The bulge wasn’t large enough for my fingers to find purchase. My hand slipped against the worn surface, nails scraping uselessly.
But before I could fall, a hand caught mine and threw upward with brutal strength.
Storm exploded beside in a howl of wind — Tristan and Nisha had summoned their spirits instantly.
I flew into the air. Below , the pillars rotated and shot inward with imnse speed, stone grinding against stone, determined to crush between them before I could escape. Before they could close, Kassie flew between the converging pillars and split her legs in a perfect horizontal line, catching both surfaces and stopping the massive structures from slamming together. The impact sent cracks spiderwebbing through the ancient stone.
In the anti, I fell.
I summoned my sword at the sa instant, body plunging straight toward the water. But white flas ford a tornado directly beneath , swelling for a mont before exploding outward with crazy speed — seconds before impact. I used the explosive force to launch myself outside the ring of pillars, boots skidding against sand as I landed.
Kassie retracted her legs and rolled through the air with practiced grace. As the pillars moved in again, they suffered a thunderous sequence of kicks that resonated across the entire desert. Each impact cracked the massive structure and made it slow down, almost as if reconsidering its choices, before Kassie landed outside the sphere of pillars as well.
Nisha, Tristan, Levi — all of us were now on the sa side. I summoned Maggie just in case, feeling her familiar warmth materialize beside .
The structure was shifting now. Sand rose and fell like a waterfall in reverse, cascading upward and outward — evidence that sothing monstrous wanted to reveal itself from beneath.
I narrowed my eyes as I watched this happen, heat rising in my chest.
Levi stared with a dark scowl on his face. A sandstorm was forming around us, grains stinging exposed skin, when he spoke softly against the rising wind.
"I think... this is very, very bad news."
I glanced at him.
If Levi was saying this, I wanted to believe it truly was. But I still needed to be sure what exactly he ant.
"What... exactly do you an?"
He sighed, looking up even as sand completely obscured our vision, the sky disappearing behind a wall of churning brown.
"Well... that’s no doubt the Oasis of Shemiah desert." He exhaled and added, "It’s a popular spirit beast that plagues Travellers. Over three decades, it’s been well known and marked."
His expression and voice grew wary.
"Which makes its presence here quite confusing... it’s supposed to be in Hotvale desert. This is Tamil desert. Hotvale is over to the west of the continent, not the east."
Tristan and Nisha were as clueless as I was.
Tristan turned to the rising mountain of sand and asked:
"What rank are we looking at?"
Levi answered imdiately. "Apex... and if we’re looking at the sa Oasis, then it most likely could be a level 3 Apex."
I paused and thought for a mont.
The Maelstrom Serpent I’d fought was level 3, but at least it had been Primal. Roughly as strong as the boss of the ice gate would’ve been. Now this was an Apex tier, level 3...
I wasn’t sure twice as strong was going to cut it. It was more accurate to say that whatever this beast was, if Levi was being accurate, it was going to be at least ten tis stronger than the Leviathan Eel had been.
Kassie interrupted my thoughts at that mont.
"How about you guys sit this one out?" She turned to . "...and let the fire wizard and I take care of this."
I glanced at Pyre Saint, who stood staring upward with a dark expression, flas already licking at her fingertips.
I found this idea to be actually amazing. Kassie was a genius.
"Guys, I think we should—"
Just as I spoke, the entire place shook and the sand began to co undone. A mountain of it rushed across the ground, forming a storm that could swallow us whole.
Nobody at this point needed to be told what to do. We lunged backward, trying to outrun the storm and avoid being caught up in the collapsing dunes as the colossal creature finally revealed itself from the sands.
I watched the sandstorm roll forward with devastating power and swallow Kassie, Maggie, and Cindy instantly, their forms disappearing into the churning brown.
But while I was moving away, I saw Kassie’s silhouette plunge out of the storm and into the sky. A silvery thin chain glittered behind her, flying upward like a thread that was infinitely long.
Kassie had summoned her sword already, and the chain was following her sword arm. It wasn’t until she cocked her arm backward and slung the blade that I discovered the chain was connected to the weapon itself.
The sword covered vast distance in the sky and buried itself in the body of sand that had risen above half the visible horizon.
A loud cry thundered across the entire desert — my ears felt like they were going to split in two from the sheer force of it.
But the sword had found strong purchase now. The chain pulled taut, then slacked. The next thing I saw was Maggie rising into the air like an expert stuntman, using the chain as her guide.
She erupted fla in her arms. Each one was like a falling teor — their white radiance brightened the shadowed sky and turned the sand to glass where it touched. In the next mont, they crashed into the abhorrent creature and exploded into a torrent of fire that ca raining down.
As the flas descended in actual drops of liquid fire, the rest of us had to run and move further from the battle scene so we wouldn’t get burned.
Well, them in particular. I had no issues with Maggie’s flas and couldn’t be hurt by them.
The creature, hit by the ferociously white flas, finally began to reveal itself.
What I saw was a body of pillars. The creature was like a worm — a worm made of crude, colossal spikes, all of them connected in segnted sections that stretched beyond counting.
If I had to take a strange guess... I wanted to say that perhaps that one Oasis, or what at least had looked like an Oasis, was only a single segnt of the beast’s body.
My face paled at the realization.
Terrifying... Truly terrifying.
User Comments
0 comments from readers