The underground chamber smelled of stagnant air and rotting meat.

  Xylora stood at the center of the formation. She drew her short swords and closed her eyes, focusing on the grit compressed around her forearms. The sand flowed like water, swirling between her hands before snapping solid, fusing the two hilts into a five-foot shaft of pressurized sandstone.

  Kael and Hassin stepped to her flanks, drawing their khoposhes.

  Above them, hovering over the balcony railing, Velcryn watched. He didn't speak, revealing a grim, skeletal expression, and flicked a single finger.

  The first wave was slow.

  A dozen infected, feral beasts of the Wastes shambled out of the dark archways. They moved with a jerky, disjointed hunger.

  "Rhythm," Xylora ordered.

  She was the anchor. Kael and Hassin were the current. The two younger Sandsworn moved in a tight rotation around her, using their speed to intercept the creatures, slashing tendons and kicking them inward. They didn't try to kill; they funneled.

  Every time an infected stumbled past their guard, Xylora was there. Her glaive was a death sentence.

  "Clear," Hassin called, ducking under a claw.

  "Switching!" Kael responded.

  As a heavy, four-armed beast lunged at Kael, he didn't block. He didn't have the weight. Instead, a stream of red sand shot from Hassin's armor, flying across the gap to form a floating, razor-sharp shield in front of Kael. The beast swiped the sand-shield, shredding its claws, giving Kael the opening to gut it.

  Kael didn't keep the sand. He spun, flinging the grit back to Hassin, who caught it on his shoulder, hardening it within seconds to take a blow from a flanker.

  They were trading the armor between them, a fluid economy of defense.

  Velcryn leaned over the rail, his chin resting on his hand. "Interesting," he murmured.

  He flicked two fingers. The trickle became a stream. The shadows of the archways boiled over.

  "Tempo up!" Xylora barked.

  The Sandsworn accelerated. They shed the heavy plating on their chests, keeping only the essentials on their greaves and bracers. They needed speed now.

  The sand flew between Kael and Hassin in a constant, abrasive ribbon. It was a moving buzzsaw, a shield of swirling grit that they passed back and forth to cover each other's blind spots.

  Xylora was mowing them down without mercy. She hadn't used a grain of her own reserves yet. She stood in the eye of the storm, her glaive tearing through bone and gristle as Kael and Hassin kept the flanks clear.

  "Too many!" Hassin shouted, batting a leaper out of the air with a blast of dust. "We can't hold the perimeter!"

  Fatigue was setting in. Kael's footwork faltered. He stepped back on a slick patch of gore, his balance breaking for a fraction of a second.

  The horde didn't hesitate. A massive, insectoid creature slammed into him, knocking him flat.

  "Kael!" Hassin screamed, turning to help.

  "Focus!" Xylora roared.

  She saw the pile-on beginning. She stomped her foot, channeling sand from her shins into the floor. A ring of jagged sandstone spikes erupted from the ground around Kael, skewering the six creatures around him. It was a brutal, precise save.

  But it wasn't enough. From the darkness beyond the spikes, a long, ropy tongue lashed out. It wrapped around Kael's ankle.

  "Xylora!" Kael screamed as he was yanked backward, dragged through the gaps in the spikes, and into the teeming darkness of the room.

  Xylora didn't chase him. She couldn't leave the center.

  "Forgive me," she hissed.

  She reached out with her mind. Before Kael disappeared into the shadows, the sand on his remaining armor unraveled. It flew across the room, adding to Xylora's reserves.

  "You took his armor!" Hassin shouted, his voice cracking with panic as he parried two feral infected alone. "Commander, how long can we-"

  "Dance for me, little rats!" Velcryn laughed from above, his voice booming. "This is the most fun I have had since awakening! More! More!"

  He swept his hand. The floodgates opened.

  A wall of flesh hit Hassin. He fought bravely, his blades flashing, but without Kael to trade the sand-shield with, he was exposed. He vanished under a tide of claws, dragged into the shadows.

  Xylora clenched her jaw, her heart turning to ice. She ripped the sand from Hassin's body. Now, she was alone. But she was full. The sand from her two fallen comrades swirled around her, a massive, choked cloud of red dust.

  Xylora's eyes snapped open. They were stars of molten gold.

  "Enough," she whispered.

  Her golden runes flared, a stark contrast against onyx colored skin. The sand responded to her fury. It slammed into her, not just covering her, but encasing her. Within seconds, she was clad in a full suit of seamless, pressurized sandstone plate, the golden runes glowing from beneath the rock.

  She threw her fused weapon into the air. The sand gripped the handle, snapping the fusion. The two swords separated, hovering on either side of her, held aloft by invisible hands of wind and grit.

  Xylora became a walking natural disaster. Every step she took, a line of spears erupted from the floor, clearing a path.

  She flicked her wrist. The floating swords spun like propellers, blending through the horde. Every swipe sent out a crescent wave of physical, razor-sharp wind that cut through mounds of flesh.

  Velcryn stood up straight, his eyebrows raising. "Oh? A grand finale?"

  Xylora unleashed a wordless cry of rage and power. She was a golden sun in a dark room, shredding everything that moved. The infected couldn't touch her; the spinning barrier of grit flayed the skin from their bones before they got within five feet.

  But Velcryn was a creature of attrition. He watched, counting the seconds.

  "Impressive," the lich noted. "But wasteful."

  He began to send the larger creatures. Massive, bloated abominations of stitched flesh lumbered in. Xylora sent her swords to butcher them. The blades sank deep into the rot.

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  But they didn't come back.

  The sand driving the swords got stuck in the thick, viscous gore of the giants. The projectiles she fired buried themselves in bodies and didn't return.

  Her storm began to thin. The golden light beneath her stone armor flickered. Xylora gasped, reaching for grit that was no longer there.

  The spinning barrier slowed. The floating swords clattered to the floor, the magic connection severed by the distance and the gore.

  An infected slammed into her. Then another. Her stone armor cracked.

  Xylora fell to her knees. The golden runes faded to dull embers. She looked up, gasping for air, watching a massive fist raise to crush her skull.

  I am the desert, she thought, her eyes burning with a final, defiant fury. And the desert does not yield.

  She focused on the heavy, sandstone plating fused to her own body, her last reserve.

  "Break," she shrieked.

  She detonated her own defense. The compressed armor clinging to her shins, arms, and torso shattered outward in a violent, omnidirectional burst. It wasn't a cloud of dust; it was a shockwave of razor-sharp shrapnel.

  The blast hit the circle of infected like a shrapnel charge. The compressed sand sheared through rotting flesh and snapped bone. The giant raising its fist was flayed open, the high-velocity grit tearing through its torso and embedding itself deep in the black organs beneath.

  The monster collapsed, its chest a ruined crater of sand and gore.

  Xylora slumped forward, her hands hitting the cold, clean floor. She was unarmored now. Exposed. The last of her power was buried in the meat of the dead enemies around her.

  She tried to stand, but a shadow fell over her. She closed her eyes, accepting the dark.

  "Halt."

  The final strike stopped inches from her face. It just stood there, a statue of rotting meat. Slowly, the horde stepped back. The circle widened.

  "Magnificent," Velcryn's voice drifted down. "The way you cannibalized your own kin for power? Truly... inspiring."

  He floated down from the balcony, landing softly on the gore-slicked floor. He floated toward her, over the bodies of his puppets.

  "I could kill you," he mused. "But that would be a mercy. And I have prepared a much more interesting lesson."

  He crouched down, bringing his skeletal face level with Xylora's.

  "Now," he whispered. "Let us see what breaks first. Your body... or your heart."

  Velcryn paused. His glacial eyes shifted away from Xylora, darting toward the tunnel entrance. The skeletal smile faltered, giving way to genuine confusion. He cocked his head, listening to the low, vibrating roar echoing from the dark.

  "What is th-"

  A wind, impossibly strong for being underground, howled through the tunnels outside the chamber. A tornado of red sand and grit roared into the room. It tore through the infected's rear lines, flinging bodies into the air like ragdolls.

  At the center of the cyclone, floating a foot off the ground on a disc of compressed wind and dust, was Ragith-Kar.

  He was a demon-possessed. He thrust his hands forward, and the howling tornado obeyed.

  The cyclone slammed into the infected around Xylora. The creatures didn't even have time to scream. They vaporized, sanded down to bone, and turned to red mist in a split second before being blasted across the room.

  Ragith-Kar descended like a hawk. As he passed over Xylora, he reached down, his hand gripping the back of her arms with bruising strength.

  "Hold on!" he roared, his voice distorted by the gale.

  He yanked her off the ground, pulling her onto the disc of wind beside him. His eyes darted to the floor. Xylora's twin blades lay discarded in the gore of the giant she had shattered. He snapped his wrist. A tight sphere of pressurized wind wrapped around the hilts, yanking the weapons off the ground and locking them into the slipstream behind him.

  Velcryn's eyes widened. "Stop them!"

  Ragith-Kar wasn't done. With Xylora secured, he threw his free hand out, unleashing the megaton of compressed silica he had dragged all the way from the surface. The sand detonated outward like a shrapnel grenade, expanding to fill every inch of the chamber.

  Velcryn hissed, his arrogance vanishing in a flash of genuine alarm. He snapped both hands up, weaving a hasty, shimmering barrier of blue necrotic power just as the wall of grit slammed into him.

  The sound was deafening, millions of grains of sand tearing against the defensive ward like sandpaper on glass. The sheer kinetic force of the impact shoved the lich backward, forcing him to slam his feet down before skidding inches across the stone floor.

  For a moment, the room was nothing but a brown-out of abrasive chaos.

  When the howling wind finally died down and the dust began to settle, Velcryn lowered his shield. The blue barrier flickered and died. He brushed a layer of red dust from his pristine robes, his expression unreadable.

  He looked at the tunnel. It was empty.

  Ragith-Kar and Xylora were gone, exploding out of the chamber and racing back toward the surface.

  - - -

  The escape was a blur of wind and grit. They rode the dying momentum of the storm for miles, skimming the dunes until the Ragith-kar's power finally gave out.

  They hit the side of a massive dune hard, tumbling over the crest in a tangle of limbs and exhaustion. Xylora rolled to a stop at the bottom of the basin, gasping for air, her lungs burning with the dry heat.

  For a long time, there was only the sound of the wind hissing over the silica.

  Xylora pushed herself up onto her knees. Her golden runes had faded to dull scars on her skin. She looked over at Ragith-Kar. He was kneeling in the sand a few yards away, staring back toward the distant, shimmering heat haze where the city lay.

  "Ragith," Xylora wheezed, her voice raspy. "We need to-"

  Ragith-Kar raised a hand, cutting her off. He didn't turn around.

  "Stop," he said. His voice wasn't angry. It was hollow.

  He took a slow, shuddering breath, his shoulders trembling.

  "I broke formation," Ragith-Kar said quietly. "I abandoned the unit. I put the mission, and your life, in jeopardy."

  He slowly turned to face her. His face was streaked with dust and dried blood, but his eyes were clear. Painfully clear.

  "I know the penalty for desertion, Xylora. I accept it."

  Xylora opened her mouth to speak, to scold him, but he pressed on.

  "I had to know," he whispered. "I had to look her in the eye. I told myself that if I could just get to her, if I could just speak to her, I could pull her back."

  He looked down at his hands, hands that had just conjured a storm to save Xylora.

  "But there was nothing there," he choked out. "When I looked at her... it wasn't Vora. It was just a husk. A puppet made of meat. The Vora I knew... the Sandsworn who taught me how to listen to the wind... she's gone."

  He looked up at Xylora, his expression shattering. "She's truly gone."

  Xylora stared at him. The reprimand died in her throat.

  Instead of speaking, she shifted her weight, crawling across the sand until she was in front of him. Ragith braced himself, perhaps expecting a strike or a formal dismissal.

  Xylora reached out and pulled him into a fierce, crushing hug.

  Ragith stiffened, shocked, before he collapsed against her shoulder. He didn't sob, but Xylora could feel the vibration of his grief against her chest. She held him tight, anchoring him to the earth.

  She didn't say a word. She just held him. Because she knew.

  The memory clawed its way up from the depths of her mind, sharp as broken glass. "I lost someone too," she whispered into his ear. "Centuries ago."

  Ragith pulled back slightly, looking at her. The great Mistress Xylora looked small. Vulnerable.

  "His name was Rovan," Xylora said, her eyes losing focus. "He was the fastest Sandsworn I ever met. He could fly circles around me. He loved the Wastes... loved the freedom of it."

  She looked down at the sand.

  "Then the Sangrathi found us."

  Ragith went still.

  "It was a wild hunt," Xylora continued, her voice trembling. "We thought we were fast enough. We thought we were strong enough. But the Sangrathi... they don't tire. They don't stop."

  She swallowed hard.

  "I found Rovan, alone, mutilated in the sand. If the fastest among us couldn't outrun them... what hope did the rest of us have? That was why I left the Sandsworn, Ragith. I couldn't bear to wear the armor anymore. I couldn't look at a Sandsworn without seeing a corpse."

  She looked up at him, her golden eyes wet.

  "And when Vorzan and Thra-uk said a Sangrathi had returned..."

  She shook her head.

  "I was arrogant, Ragith."

  A single tear leaked from the corner of her eye. It rolled down her cheek. As it reached her jaw, the excess essence in her system reacted. It hardened.

  Tink.

  The tear fell from her face, hitting the sand as a perfect, crystallized droplet. A tiny, glittering monument to fear.

  "I failed you," Xylora whispered. "I failed Kael and Hassin. I commanded like a coward."

  Ragith-Kar looked at the crystallized tear in the sand. Then he looked at Xylora. He didn't see a coward. He saw a survivor.

  "We are still breathing," Ragith said. "Which means the mission isn't over."

  The wind shifted.

  Xylora took a deep breath, wiping her face. The grief was still there, heavy and cold, but she pushed it down. She packed it away, deep in her core, fueling the fire instead of smothering it.

  It was time to remember who she was.

  She rose. The sand beneath her swirled, lifting her effortlessly, dusting off her body, and settling into a protective cloak around her shoulders. Her posture straightened, the slump of exhaustion replaced by the regal, dangerous bearing of a matriarch.

  She looked down at Ragith-Kar and extended a hand.

  "You are right," she said, her voice finding its steel again. "To Cindercrest. We have an emperor to meet with."

  Her eyes flashed gold. Ragith-Kar reached up, gripping her forearm.

  "Cindercrest," he agreed, letting her pull him to his feet.

  "And Ragith?" Xylora said, looking him in the eye as the wind began to gather around them once more. "I'll be damned if I'm flying into that wretched city alone."