After the Skull Jaws burrowed underground, as Vance and Eleanor galloped for safety, the dunes ahead of them began to slither and undulate. It was as if the desert itself had become a living creature, with its own will and its own devices; but getting closer, Vance could tell that such wasn’t quite the case. The slate-gray sands weren’t moving out of their own volition; they were being pushed and mixed and stirred like the granular ingredients of a potion. And the alchemist who worked so diligently to produce the concoction was another dweller of the desertic depths—flesh at parts, bone at others.

“What’s that thing?” Vance said.

“Dunaliathan,” Eleanor replied.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“An undead Leviathan. Its body forms a ring around most of the desert.”

“And you said we’ll cross it?”

“Yes, we will.”

“You mean we’ll jump on its back and gallop to the other side?”

“It’s the only way to escape the Skull Jaws.”

“Can’t you see the way it’s moving? We’ll get knocked off.”

“Don’t worry.” Eleanor petted her mount. “Agatha won’t fail us.”

The gray-skinned Dunaliathan continued to undulate, raising mountains and carving valleys as if in a speedy time-lapse of geological activity. And Eleanor rushed toward its massive body with unwavering determination—or perhaps irresponsible recklessness, for in such a context, it was impossible to tell the former from the latter.

If Vance had been alone, he would’ve chosen to stop and fight the Skull Jaws, since it was better to get chewed by a few teeth than to fall under the colossal snake, into the bottomless sandy depths, and get churned into human butter. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea (or more precisely, the battle and the deep gray desert), he would’ve chosen the devil sans delay. But because the most logical course of action wasn’t necessarily the wisest, and because Eleanor had spent a longer time in merciless Middlerift, he decided to trust in her experience and in the judgment that she derived from it. He hung tight to her waist and prepared for a stormy ride.

Halfway toward the serpentine body of Dunaliathan, the shark fins began to surface from the sand, and the purple-eyed skeletons rattled and crepitated. The Skull Jaws finally returned. They cut off the way out of the desert, just as Eleanor had predicted, and their teeth, bows, swords, maces, and spears were lusting for Headbound blood.

“We’ll break through their lines in one dash,” Eleanor said. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah.” Vance equipped his steel dagger. “You can count on me.”

Eleanor squeezed with her calves and heels, and Agatha, the three-headed mount, accelerated into maximum speed.

“Incoming arrows!”

“I got this!”

The skeletal archers took aim and fired a round of arrows, but Eleanor thrust her black spear forward and activated Warmaiden’s Rose. The dark petals—the budding spearheads—formed a spiky barrier that blocked the enemy fire and mitigated its potential damage. Upon contact, the bone arrows shattered into a cloud of dust and splinters. The sharp fragments scattered in all directions and rained down on the two riders. Eleanor had her heavy armor to protect her, but Vance was wearing plain clothes that offered him no shielding. And his body jolted back as he felt a sudden sting.

“Are you hurt?” Eleanor said.

“No, I’m fine,” Vance said, pulling a bone shard out of his chest. “Just keep going! Don’t slow down!”

With a tri-thunderous battle cry, Agatha emerged from inside the dust cloud and continued to gallop forward. Realizing that their ranged attack had failed, the skeletal archers turned around and started retreating to a position from which they could fire again. The threat of the bone arrows was gone for now. But Vance and Eleanor still had no breathing space: the many Skull Jaws that wielded melee weapons were advancing to fill the void left by the archers. And although these close-range fighters had no real tactician among them, they still managed to launch an offensive much similar to a phased cavalry charge.

“Focus on defense!” Eleanor said. “And don’t retaliate!”

“Got it!”

A skeleton attacked from the left, steering its sand shark with its right hand and swinging a mace vertically with its left. So close was its sharp weapon to decapitating one of Agatha’s heads, but Eleanor reacted with experienced poise and split-second timing. Her spear struck the skeleton’s skull and knocked it back into the sand before it could even finish its attack.

No sooner had the first skeleton fallen, however, than another appeared on the right. It raised a basket-hilted rapier and thrust it forward with an elegant motion. Eleanor didn’t have time to react, but Vance was there. He raised his dagger. The rapier slid along the sharp steel edge, but before it could reach the blunt ricasso, Vance had swung his arm up and deflected it to the side. This deflection was enough to disrupt the skeleton’s balance, and it fell off its shark and into the sand.

“Good job,” Eleanor said. “Keep it up!”

Using speed to their advantage, Vance and Eleanor continued to repel the skeletal attackers and avoid the shark bites. They knocked down one skeleton after the other, but they never stopped to deliver a finishing blow, because even the briefest pause would’ve given the Skull Jaws a chance to crowd around them and overwhelm them. They were winning because they chose to remain on the move. And it wasn’t long before they had gone past the last charging enemy. Defying another round of arrows, they broke through the backward line of archers, and the final obstacle between them and Dunaliathan appeared.

There it was—a Skull Jaw twice the size of the others. The fin was four meters tall, and the enormous skeleton that clung to it was once not a human but a giant who wore a bull-horn helmet and wielded a broadsword. The mere size and appearance of this final enemy filled any human with abject hopelessness. It wasn’t only intimidating: it exuded the unmistakable aura of a predator, and it discharged a mysterious Mana, which filled the air with a pervasive miasma.

Both Vance and Eleanor could feel this dark influence, and the latter tried to steer Agatha away from the path of this enemy. But the mount refused to obey her commands. And less than a second later, the reason behind this sudden unruliness became apparent.

Status Alert

You have been enmeshed in your enemy’s Ensnare.

You can no longer escape.

HP decreases by 5 points per second until direct confrontation.

Endurance and Magic Resistance drop by 20% during the confrontation.

“Take over!” Eleanor said quickly.

Vance put away his steel dagger and grabbed Agatha’s mane.

“Keep it steady.” Eleanor drew her bow.

The giant skeleton yanked at the four-meter-long fin, and an oversized sand shark appeared from underground, opening a bloodsoaked mouth, with fresh ligaments stuck among its teeth. If a normal shark could swallow a human in one bite, this one could swallow horse and rider with as little effort.

“Keep it steady,” Eleanor repeated, with a hushed voice, as if she was talking to herself. “Keep it steady … Keep it steady … Keep it steady.”

When the right moment came, she activated Markswoman’s Blaze, released her taut bowstring, and let three sharp arrows fly simultaneously. Fiery spirals formed in the air as the arrows traveled toward their targets. The first hit the giant skeleton in the sternum; the second struck the upper jaw of the shark; and the third continued into the belly and kindled an internal inferno.

As the shark closed its mouth in pain, Eleanor switched to her black spear and galloped forward at full speed. With a kick of her heels, she gave her mount a signal, and Agatha jumped higher than any ordinary horse. The glass hooves landed on the shark’s closed mouth. Seeing its enemy within its reach, the giant skeleton attacked with a sweep of its two-handed broadsword, even while its bones were burning; but Eleanor activated Warmaiden’s Rose and thrust her spear at the flaming bones. Unable to block her Skill, the skeleton shattered into a thousand pieces, and she emerged from among the scattering fragments, like a victorious knight after a challenging joust.

Battle Result

You gained a reduced 0 EXP.

The Witch of Decay speaks through her defeated conduit:

“Abandon your ignoble cause, Adventurer Slayer. Seek the truth. Seek me.”

“Hang on tight! We’ll make the leap for Dunaliathan!”

Having lost its osseous master, the oversized shark began to dive. Without losing momentum, Agatha continued to run on its sinking back. Then Eleanor kicked with her heels again, and the mount jumped for a second time.

“You miscalculated!” Vance shouted.

“I didn’t! Trust me!”

For a few seconds, the two were flying above a deep gorge. Then they began to fall into the darkness, into the valleys that Dunaliathan carved in the gray sand. But they didn’t plummet to their doom; they didn’t end up trapped in the gory serpentine blender. Soon after they began to fall, the undulating body of the undead Leviathan rose from the darkness and welcomed them on board. As the glass hooves sparkled, Agatha touched down with unmatched grace and then continued to gallop across the dead flesh of the serpentine back.

“We got away. The Skull Jaws won’t chase us anymore.”

These were the liberating words that announced the end of the ordeal. Vance heard them and felt a sudden rush of relief, as if his brain had been waiting for this moment to release all the feel-good hormones. Except that I don’t have a brain now, or so it seems. For the first time, he laughed about the absurdity of his situation, and Eleanor joined in the laughter, thinking it had been celebratory. Rather than a celebration, however, it was a sign of acceptance and adjustment. Life finds a way to continue; humans find a way to adapt and acclimatize.

After a five-minute gallop across Dunaliathan, Agatha jumped down and landed on solid ground. The sand gave way to brown dirt and black soil. The two Headbound riders dismounted. And while Eleanor readjusted her armor and took a short breather, Vance tended to his non-serious chest injury. The bone shard that had hit him left a puncture wound that didn’t penetrate too deep toward his lungs. He applied an antiseptic to prevent festering, but he wasn’t sure how he should stop the minor bleeding. And he checked his vitals, worried that it might be affecting him in an adverse way.

HP 352/455 MP 860/860 Stamina 860/860

“You won’t lose HP from something that small,” Eleanor said.

“I still don’t want to leave it like this.”

“Bandages won’t work?”

“I’ll have to wrap them around my torso.”

“And that’s a waste.”

“Yeah. I want to save them for battles. Do you have any other ideas?”

“Well, I have a needle. Want me to stitch you up until you see a healer?”

“All right … if it’s not asking for too much.”

“Don’t worry. The thread isn’t made of gold or anything.” Eleanor opened a small bag that hung around one of Agatha’s necks. From inside, she got a needle and a roll of sewing thread. “Sit on the ground, and try to relax a bit. You’re not afraid of needles, are you?”

“No.” Vance sat down.

“Believe it or not, I used to be.”

“It’s all right if you don’t want to do this.”

“No, no, I meant as a child,” Eleanor laughed. “I got over it long ago.”

As the painful needlework began, Vance cast one last look toward the raging body of Dunaliathan and imagined the desert that lay beyond. With a strange sense of detachment, he recalled the events of the past half hour and absorbed the details that his mind had shut out during the intense chase.

“I owe you one,” he finally said.

“Actually, you don’t,” Eleanor said, as she worked with the needle. “They had been chasing me before I ran into you.”

“You mean …”

“I’m the reason you had to go through so much drama. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know how to feel about this. So … if I had been alone?”

“You would’ve been attacked by one or two Skull Jaws, not by twenty.”

“How did you manage to draw all this attention?”

“A secret Skill of mine,” Eleanor said, jokingly. “Anyway, just as I said, you don’t owe me anything at all. I’m the one who owes you … an apology, I mean. Let me make up for what happened.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I like to own up to my mistakes and set things right.”

Vance paused for a second before he said, “Suit yourself.”

“You said it’s your first time in Middlerift.”

“Yeah.”

“Let me give you a ride to Argilstead, then.”

***

The desert and Dunaliathan disappeared behind Vance, and he found himself advancing through endless plains. The ground was covered in blue-green grass, which grew to the height of a human’s knee and whose stalks ended with black rubber-like seeds. The land wasn’t completely flat, so Vance surmised that one or more ugly abominations must be skulking somewhere near—in sunken lairs, hidden holes, or even unimpressive burrows. What he did see, however, was a group of gargantuan mantises—each the size of a two-story building—but Eleanor told him that these insect monsters were not enemies but rather the vehicles of a trade caravan.

“They’re traveling to the same destination as ours.”

“Argilstead,” Vance said.

“Yeah. I have to say you’ve got a good memory.”

“Just because I remembered the place’s name?”

“First-timers experience memory problems, so it’s quite impressive.”

“The pain of the First Death makes us forget, right?”

“No, it’s not just the pain. The Honeydew Flies mess with your head, and it can have some long-term effects on you. Didn’t Haraldr tell you about this?”

“Haraldr who?”

“Didn’t you meet him? At Rust Lake?”

“I only met three monkeys.”

“Monkeys?” Eleanor laughed. “That’s so weird.”

“Who’s this Haraldr anyway?” Vance said.

“Haraldr the Sage is the entity that guards the havens. He explains how the Flame of Revival works, and he gives valuable advice.”

“The monkeys I met explained nothing.”

“What? Seriously?” Eleanor almost let go of Agatha’s mane by mistake. “So you don’t know what I’m talking about? You don’t know about the Flame of Revival?”

“I’ve never heard anything about flames or revivals.”

“No wonder you were just wandering in the Witch’s lands!”

“Well,” Vance said, “could you tell me what I need to know?”

“I suppose I can.”

“Please do.”

As Agatha slowed down a little, Eleanor began, “I’ll try to be brief and to the point. To help you achieve your Class Ascension, the Honeydew Flies rip your head off and deliver it to a Middlerift Beast. The beast fills it with the ancient knowledge that you need for the ascension, but you don’t get it back after that.”

“I don’t?”

“The beast keeps it for itself, and you have to recover it by force. You kill the thing and snatch your prize.”

“And how do I find the beast that took my head?”

“You follow the guidance of Thurvik.”

The bloodstained footprints … So I was on the right track. Vance felt some relief and said, “And where does the Flame of Revival fit in all of this?”

“It’s the dark flame burning at the top of your neck,” Eleanor said. “It grows weaker over time, and if it goes out, the Middlerift Beast gets to keep your head forever, and you die. Think of it as a timer. Oh, and the more you’ve leveled up past the ascension threshold, the less time you have.”

So the two levels I gained with Timathor will actually hurt me timewise. Vance laughed. I’m glad I didn’t try to play it too safe. Imagine if I had decided to grind for more levels … All these years, and the Woodcutter Parable still comes in handy.

“What are you laughing about?” Eleanor said. “If it’s joke material, don’t keep it to yourself. I’m in the mood for a good one.”

“No, it’s nothing … Is there anything else I should know about?”

“Stay out of the Witch’s lands, and hide whenever a mist forms.”

“Anything else?”

“Trust no creature, except Haraldr and the other Headbound.”

“All of the Headbound?”

“Yeah, we’re like a big family.”

Vance laughed.

“I know you’re used to conspiracies and machinations,” Eleanor said, “but all of that smarter-than-thou you-fell-for-it nonsense belongs in the human world. We leave it all behind, so there’s only trust among the Headbound.”

“Can a murderer trust another?”

“You survived today because you did.”

“Fair point.”

“Why do you sound so disappointed?” Eleanor laughed. “Did you want to flex your Duplicity or what? Save it for Amirani’s humans, hotshot.”

“Fine, fine,” Vance laughed. “Easy on me, okay?”

The long trip to Argilstead continued for a little more than an hour. During its course, Vance and Eleanor bantered and joked. Neither mentioned anything about their lives in the human world, however, and they didn’t disclose any information that could be used to infer their identities. Each of them seemed troubled by some curiosity, but they didn’t probe or pry. Far from meddlesome or intrusive, their casual conversations, which often interrupted silent gallops, always began with Vance’s quizzical comments about Middlerift. And Eleanor would answer with a blend of trivia and essentials:

“The grass covering these plains is called Targrass. I heard about a guy who took it back to our world—the poor fella inhaled its poisonous pollen and died. It’s great we don’t have a nose in this world, right?”

“The caravans we saw earlier belong to the Fly Merchants. No one knows for sure where they come from, but they stop at Argilstead and trade goods with us. They’re a weird bunch. You’ll soon get what I mean.”

“The Witch of Decay? She wants us dead, and we want her dead. Why? I don’t know. It’s always been like this. The creatures of this world don’t really explain themselves before they snatch at your entrails. It would be funny if they did.”

As Eleanor talked, Vance began to form his general impression of her. She seemed to be the serious, self-motivated type—powered by an internal engine that seldom stopped for maintenance—but her vivacity set her apart from the rest of her kind, whose goal-oriented attitudes often degenerated into curtness and coldness toward others. She never forgot what she set out to accomplish, but she smiled and laughed and even appreciated a friendly distraction. And it was perhaps only because of this contrast that she was willing to help Vance.

“Yeah, it’s always dusky here. I have a friend who loves to meditate while he looks up at this eternal sunset. He loses himself in these colors. They bring back all sorts of memories, and he weeps without tears. Then he remembers that he needs to hunt a beast, and the sobs quiet down on their own. I tell him to try to smile more, but he just ignores me. Or maybe he thinks I’m messing with him.”

“I’ve always wondered about the dark spheres, too. No one knows what keeps them up in the sky, but some of the, um, more creative Headbound have started a pseudo-religion centered around them. They say the world will end when the spheres crash down. Every other week—yes, week!—they predict that the real end’s tomorrow. It’s even funnier because their followership is growing. Me? I like to focus on the future I can control.”

“No. No one lives in Argilstead, Vance. I know I called it a city, but ‘city’ isn’t really the right word … It’s a shared base where the Headbound can meet and help each other out. Some call it ‘the haven Haraldr never built,’ but that’s just another exaggeration. The place isn’t protected by a barrier; we band together and keep it safe. That’s how the Headbound came to trust each other in the very beginning, or so does one legend say. I know, I know, old legends aren’t always true, but I feel this one’s different. It makes me want to give back, you know, so I often volunteer for the Dullahans, the cavalry who protect Argilstead.”

Vance was about to ask for more information about the Dullahans, but at that moment, as the Targrass swayed in the wind and released its pollen, he noticed that the ground ahead came to an abrupt end. The plains continued to roll until a sundering line, and then the soil and grass disappeared—they were obsoleted and replaced by an emptiness that was neither ocean nor sea. And Vance waited to see where Eleanor would steer her mount. He could see her hands tensing up on the snaky mane, but she didn’t pull the snakes right or left: she tugged them back and forced Agatha to decelerate to a stop.

On the edge of a vertiginous drop, as the gusts blew at him with a breath of enlightenment, Vance realized that the uncanny void was in fact an impact crater—a circular depression in the ground that seemed to have been caused by the ancient crash of a meteor. Argilstead was there in the center of that wide crater, located as if it were the falling star that had remodeled the landscape. From far away, Vance could see the silhouette of its buildings, which were made of clay and colored like pottery, and its branching dirt roads, which curved like the decorative lines on an earthenware vase.

“It doesn’t look that impressive, does it?” Eleanor said. “No fancy buildings. No paved streets. No magical crystals or orbs floating in the sky. Nothing.”

“It looks like a primitive village,” Vance said.

“Or an unplanned slum, if you want to be brutally honest,” Eleanor added. “But you have to remember: it was built by Headbound like us. They fought the beasts for this land, and their Flames of Revival grew weaker as they piled up one mud brick onto the other. When I think of their efforts, I find these slums much more impressive than the cities of our world.”

“Things are only valuable because of what you sacrifice to create them.”

“You put it nicely.”

“But sacrifice too much, and you end up with nothing.”

“Yeah … you’re right.”

The two continued to watch Argilstead from afar. They could see the flames of the Headbound who roamed the streets. Every faint light that tread in that dusky gloom was associated with an untold sacrifice, for such was the fate that awaited anyone who rejected the gods and chose Thurvik. But there was no telling which of these wandering flames had made a lucrative sacrifice and which had ended up empty-handed. In the clay village, they all roamed as one, and in the cold eyes of the Master of Middlerift, there were neither winners nor losers—only Adventurer Slayers.

“So, Eleanor …” Vance averted his gaze from the lights and shifted it to the daunting precipice. “How do we go down from here? Do you have an elevator or something? Hopefully not slime-infested?”

Eleanor laughed and said, “You still haven’t noticed, huh?”

“Noticed what exactly?”

“I thought you had an eye for detail.”

Vance searched the dangerous drop for any signs of a mechanism.

Eleanor laughed again and said, “Hang on tight.”

The moment Vance grabbed her waist, she whipped the snaky mane, and Agatha galloped forward and off the edge of the crater. They started falling, just as they had fallen into the valleys that Dunaliathan shaped. When they were about to hit the ground, however, Agatha’s glass hooves began to sparkle with a subtle but beautiful glow. The mount glided in the air for a few scary seconds, touched down on a scree with a few graceful steps, and continued to gallop toward Argilstead, where a caravan of Fly Merchants was just arriving.