"That sounds… very impossible." Lukal says, irked with reservations.
Saia shakes her head, flicking her silver locks all around her. "It's totally true!" she declared confidently. "Giant birds made of metal with huge wings as wide as a town. They were called air-o-planes."
Arienne snorted with a chuckle. "And what kept these behemoths in the air? Magic?"
"Yes. They had strange magic. Constructs that were powered by liquid fire and bottled lightning. At least, that's what the books say." Saia answers, as her little legs swing off the edge of her seat.
"They sound more dangerous than the Dark Lord." Lukal murmurs.
"They probably were!" Arienne said, her voice growing sharp and agitated. "They disrespected the domain of The Great Spirits, tried to mold the laws of nature to their liking and paid for it dearly. Destroyed by their own hubris… I take solace that they are no "
Lukal nods solemnly, while Saia's face folds to a frown.
"Tell me more about this Dark Lord. He sounds scary." Saia states.
"An entity of pure malice. He seeks only to corrupt the purity of nature." Arienne sneers.
"Evil. That's what it is." Lukal adds. "It's been keeping that bloody storm going for longer than Northenia has existed."
"Is The Dark Lord a person?" Saia asks, her eyebrows lifting with curiosity.
Lukal, unsure, looks across to Arienne who pouts and shrugs pensively.
"No Northenian has ever been able to reach the Dark Lord's stronghold. Any living creature trying to approach is torn asunder by some unknown magic."
"He sounds really scary." Saia shivers, rubbing her feet onto her ankles. "Please tell me something else about your home. Something nice."
"Have you ever heard of snow?" Lukal smiled as he leaned in close.
The two happily converse on the topics of their homelands.Laughter echoing through the cabin as Lukal regales Saia with tales of summer festivals and the northern aurora sparkling above biting blizzards. Sunlight trickles over the western horizon as the twinkle of endless stars begin to take over the evening sky.
Arienne sits quietly in her seat, her mind drifts northward on thoughts of her family as her fingers gently brush across her pendant. Smiling as she loses herself in positive thoughts of Northenia, imagining her sister hard at work in her lab at the Guild and her mother tending to her quiet garden at the family's estate.
As darkness overcomes the desert, Pestle brings The Hog to a slow halt, hiding it between a group of tightly packed dunes.
"Get some sleep." He grunts. "I'll keep watch."
He pulls a leaver under his seat, sliding it back and another tug brings the backrest down. He settles into the makeshift bed, lifting his feet onto the instrument panel in front of him. Sais quickly followed, tucking in behind him as she muttered innocent goodnights across the cabin.
Lukal curled into a corner with his tarp while Arienne snuck off into a quiet corner, propping herself up on her pack as she sat up in silent contemplation a bit longer.
As The Hog filled with the sounds of Saia and Lukal's soft snoring, Pestle produces a few sheets of paper and sticks of charcoal from a hidden drawer. He flicks a knob ahead of him, igniting a small source of light that buzzes with peculiar energy.
Humming to himself gently under the dim light, he eagerly and gracefully sketches various scenes of the day's events. Flicking his fingers and rubbing at the pages, he smiles softly as he transfers the memories of his water battle with Arienne and the wolf-kin cubs onto paper.
"You draw well…" Arienne states softly as she peeks over his shoulder.
Pestle jumps and quickly scrambles to shove his art back into the draw.
"I can keep watch for a while." Arienne offers. "Rest with the girl."
"Thanks." Pestle grunts.
He flicks a knob, and the light winks dead as he turns to sleep.
Arienne would be woken the next morning by Saia's excited squealing and the smells of grilled and spiced meats. After a short breakfast, The Hog groans and clanks to life, carrying the group on their journey east across wind-blasted plains.
Cresting a large dune, Pestle suddenly brings The Hog to a dead stop. He jumps from his seat, weaving past Lukal and Arienne in the cabin as he reaches for weapons and a harness.
"Enemies?" Arienne asks, her hand already on the hilt of her sword.
"Sand Dragons." Pestle replies as he slips a massive machete into a sheath and straps it to his back.
"You mean to fight them?" Lukal asks worriedly?
"We hunt them. The meat is good. The scales we sell. Good for armour and alchemy."
"Allow me to join." Arienne states firmly, lifting from her seat as she places a hand on his shoulder.
He twists his neck toward it, eyes blazing. "Don't!" he grunts.
Arienne quickly snaps back her appendage. "Apologies..."
He scoffs, turns to the side-door and slams it open.
"Come. Bring your swords." He mutters as he drops out of The Hog.
Arienne, with Lukal's help, quickly prepares her armour and weapons and meets Pestle outside.
"Keep her safe." Arienne instructs Lukal as she slides the side-door closed behind her.
The pair silently sneak up towards the next ridge and watch as two, long, sturdy sand dragons hissed and snapped at each other in a delicate mating dance.
"What is the plan?" Arienne whispers as Pestle retrieves a machete from his sheath.
"Two of them. Two of us." He replies.
"W-What? That's not much of a strat—"
Before Arienne can finish, he's already gone, sand exploding behind him as he streaks towards his target.
"Storms take me!" she sighed before racing after him.
Pestle slipped over the sand like a hawk. Low and precise. "Take right." he yells out as he feints left.
His announcement draws the beasts' attention. They break from their tussle, turning to the encroaching humanoid figures. They rear up, revealing their impressive length and release thunderous screeches across that shake the sand.
Pestle doesn't flinch, he beams straight towards one of the monsters, his massive machete held firm in his hands. Arienne hesitates. Unsure of the creature's abilities or methods of movement, she opts to watch Pestle's approach first.
He reaches his beast and immediately winds up a wide, powerful swing of his blade. The creature reads his movement and shifts to defend, flicking its long, lizard-like body flat against the ground to throw up an enormous plume of sand.
Pestle cleaves the air where the monster stood, ripping through the veil of grit and dust, but both creatures vanish in the cloud, moving beneath the sand swiftly and silently.
Before Arienne could react, both monsters burst from the ground in fountains of spiralling sand and stone, slamming her into the ground and she shrieks in pain.
The screeching beasts circled her as she struggled to find her feet. As the air clears, they both flick powerful stinger-ended tails at her heart.
"ARIENNE!" Pestle screams. "DEFEND!"
Eyes burning with dust, coughing and spluttering as she struggles to find her breath, Arienne hears Pestle's warning and immediately launches into a defensive stance. She swings both swords over her head and with a powerful pulse of her magic, launches out a dome of ice from her body that wraps around her in layers upon layers of thick, crystallized liquid.
She clenched her teeth as the stringers hit her ice-shield with explosive force, over and over. The impacts crack and cleave through its layers as Arienne strains deep inside to maintain its magical structure.
A glint of light, and whisper of movement signal Pestle's return to the fray as he instantly cleaves a tail off one of the beasts, sending it tumbling through the sand as it shrieked in terror. He ends its pain with a swift blade through its skull, causing it to thrash around savagely before slumping down dead.
The other creature responds with an ear-split screech. It leaps onto Arienne's shield-dome, crushing it under its weight. But a shrill cry erupts from its mouth as Arienne digs two-blades deep into its belly from below. An explosion of fire magic erupts from her blade, ripping the beast in half. Its scattered remains rained down around the pair as Arienne broke herself out of her ice dome.
Arienne, coated in blood and viscera and huffing for air, stares at Pestle as he strolls toward her, picking pieces of bone and meat out of his hair.
She snickers, wiping blood off her face and blades. He helps her to her feet as the two survey the aftermath of their hunt.
One dragon lay dead with its tail neatly removed from its body, and a single slit through the top of its skull. Another lay scattered across hundreds of feet of desert sand, reduced to crushed scales and black-charred meat.
"You're not very good at hunting." Pestle scoffs as he kicks at a chunk of flaming flesh. "We're supposed to sell it when we're done."
Arienne winces. "My apologies, Pestle. Perhaps I may have been a bit overzealous. I have never encountered reptiles of this size."
"We can sell one. That's good enough." he replies. "Don't ruin the meat next time."
He chuckles as they start walking back to The Hog, teasing Arienne relentlessly as they walk past glowing embers hundreds of feet from the scene of their battle.
The pair find Lukal and Saia waiting on the crest of a dune, having eagerly watched the duo's battle from a safe distance. Saia tackles Arienne, showering her with praise for her ability to weave nature magic into her weapons and attacks.
Pestle moves The Hog closer to the sand dragon corpse. Retrieving a menagerie of blades and tools, he quickly begins the painstaking process of descaling the creature and cleaving the meat for sale and consumption.
Lukal watches on intently, eager to learn about the preparation techniques Pestle uses for such a large creature. Pestle, noticing Lukal's wide-eyed interest, would eventually gesture for the young quire to join him for a lesson on how to dress a large dragon.
Saia helped Arienne attend to some superficial wounds before they moved to assist the men with the packaging and storage of acquired scales and meats. The mood lightened and laughter echoed through the dunes as the group diligently worked.
By late afternoon, they feasted on freshly-prepared dragon steaks and leftover mead from the Silver-Tooth clan. Arienne relaxes, full and content, on a bench beside The Hog, her fingers intertwined as they rest behind her head.
"I could get used to this." she sighs, smiling.
"It looks like you already are." Saia giggled.
Arienne chuckles, but before she can respond, Lukal suddenly shouts from a nearby ridge.
"I see something!" he yells out. "A structure!"
The rest of the group scramble up behind him. Barely visible, poking out from between some dunes, a sharp silhouette jutted out of the ground. A sunken tower of rusting metal and ancient stone. A collapsed dome encircled with strange runes and glyphs.
Saia eyes widen as her eyes fall onto the shape. "Old-world ruins!" she yells excitedly, grabbing and tugging at Pestle's arm.
He turns to Arienne, who shrugs with a pensive smile. A sudden gust of wind pulls away more of the sand covering the structure, revealing a set of stairs, spiraling beneath the ground.
"Please!" Saia cried, staring at Arienne and Pestle with big, blue eyes that beckon at their own curiosity.
"Shall we go?" Arienne smiles, gesturing toward the structure.
Pestle rolls his eyes and grunts in affirmation.