Sand roared around Angel with such intensity that he couldn’t even hear himself think. It bit at his flesh and slipped underneath the scarf covering his face, getting into his eyes and mouth.

It rose up a massive churning wall all around him, the violent winds threatening to knocking him off his board. He and the others were huddled together tightly, moving as quickly as they could to avoid getting completely swallowed by the storm without outpacing it.

Angel inwardly cursed himself for the foolish idea of trying to hide within the force of nature. He’d been smug for all of an hour before the storm had arrived. There was no way the Reawakening would be able to spot them within the chaos of the sandstorm. If they were smart, everyone within Blackstone would be hiding until the storm passed over the city.

What Angel hadn’t considered long enough was that there was a very good reason why people hid from sand storms. The flying sand particles bit into him mercilessly, warning what would happen if they fell behind enough for the full weight of the storm to crush them.

They shot toward Blackstone, but the walls that had seemed so close before were now distant and looming. Someone shouted something, but Angel couldn’t make anything specific out over the din.

Tilly stumbled and Lilian grabbed her before she could fall, righting the girl and pulling her closer to the party. Angel’s mind offered up scenarios of what might happen if they just waited until the storm passed, but each of them filled him with dread.

With no other option, they pressed on. The sky grew darker as the storm gained on them despite their best efforts. Winds somehow grew further in intensity and it became difficult to repress the barrage of pain assaulting him from every angle.

Angel wasn’t sure how much time they spent within the grips of the storm, but it felt like an eternity. It became impossible to tell where they were going. If they hadn’t been trying to move in a straight line together, he was almost certain they would have gotten lost.

Blackstone’s base appeared from within the storm without warning. They slowed to a stop just instants before slamming into the city and huddled down beneath a jagged rock.

The city muted a portion of the sand’s screams and provided scant shelter, but it was better than nothing.

“That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,” Silver yelled. Angel could barely make him out. “Why did I let you convince me to travel in a Barren cursed sandstorm?”

“Why did you let me convince you?” Angel screamed back. He huddled, pulling his scarf down and picking some sand out of his ears with a grimace. “Someone should have been smarter!”

Lilian’s mouth moved, but Angel couldn’t hear her. Even with the magnification of the device he and Tilly had built, her voice simply wasn’t loud enough. She pressed her lips together and yelled something into Alison’s ear.

“She says we still need to get into the city or we might get caught while entering!” Alison said.

“I know,” Angel replied, examining himself. The storm had cut him up, but his body was already healing the wounds. They’d placed Alison and Tilly in the center of their little shield wall, so the girls had been injured the least. “Just getting the sand out of my brain. I don’t know if I would have been able to get any farther with all that sand in me.”

“Look at my hat,” Silver complained, brushing it off. “Holes! From the sand! First Reave, and now this. I’m going to need to buy another one.”

“Something tells me you haven’t bought a single one of your hats,” Tilly said, trying to shake some of the sand out of her hair without much luck. The storm just outside their outcropping was still pelting them, so any progress she made was undone within seconds.

“I bought the first one,” Silver said. “The rest have been gifts.”

“And how many hats have you had?” Angel asked.

“I lost count after fifty.”

“Figures,” Angel said. He pulled his scarf tighter around his face. “Let’s get ready to move again. Storms don’t stick around for long, and we need to get to the main entrance. There’s no gate, and the chances of a guard being out in this weather is zero. Once we get in, we just find a building and run inside. If we see any Reawakening clones, kill them as fast as you can. We don’t want them warning anyone that we’re here.”

They all nodded and braced themselves once more before slipping out from their shelter and back into the full brunt of the storm. They kept close to Blackstone, not risking getting lost as they worked their way toward where Angel hoped the entrance was.

Luckily, it only took a short while until they nearly stumbled right over the slanting road that led up into the city. They struggled up it, only able to keep their footing by holding onto each other.

The forms of guardhouses rose and fell behind them as they pressed into the city. Angel wasn’t surprised to find the area completely deserted – although the entire city could have been standing a dozen feet to his left and he wouldn’t have known with how low the visibility was.

Their aimless trek led the group up to a stone door with a circular shape drawn on its front. Angel grabbed the handle and jiggled it. It was locked. He growled, grabbing the lock with his mechanical hand and giving it a sharp twist.

The metal shattered and he ripped the knob out, hooking a finger through the hole and prying the door open despite the wind’s best efforts to keep it shut. They piled thorough the door and he let it slam shut behind them before plugging it with what remained of the handle.

Silence washed over them. The roar of the storm faded to a dull mutter and pattering of sand on the walls. Angel wiped the sand from his eyes as best he could and raised his hands, preparing for a Reawakening member.

Instead, he found himself staring at a horrified boy about Alison’s age. He’d taken cover behind a large counter. The kid held a rolling pin in one hand and wore an apron covered with flour. They stared at each other for a few seconds.

“Ah… sorry about your door,” Angel said. “We got caught in the storm.”

“A-are you one of them?” the boy asked, pointing the rolling pin at him. “I swear, you won’t take me. I’ll brain you with my rolling pin, I swear it.”

“Relax,” Angel said, raising his hands. He quickly realized that the mechanical arm probably wasn’t the most calming thing, so he lowered it again. “Do you mean the Reawakening? Because we’re not with them. If we were, we certainly wouldn’t be walking around in a sandstorm. We saw the Buried Gods flanking the city – the Reawakening has much better places to wait this out.”

The boy nodded, lowering the pin and watching them warily. “Then who are you? Nobody in Blackstone is stupid enough to go outside in one.”

Angel unwrapped his scarf and smacked his hand against the side of his head, trying to knock the sand from his ears. The others all started scrubbing as much of it out of their faces as possible as well.

“I’d love to share my life story, but do you have water or something? We can pay you for it.”

The boy let out a bitter laugh. “With coin? That won’t be doing any of us much good.”

Still, he lowered the pin and edged along the counter to a large pitcher. He pushed it toward them and Angel gratefully scooped some of the water out, splashing his face with it. They went through the entire thing within a minute, and Angel still felt like there was sand lodged in his very soul.

Angel wiped his face down and caught the kid staring at Alison. He cleared his throat and the boy jerked his gaze back to him.

“Can you tell us about what happened here?” Angel asked. “We’re opposing the Reawakening, but we’re at a bit of a loss as to what’s going on. Why are there Buried Gods flanking the city?”

“Those are Buried Gods?” the boy asked, his eyes going even wider.

“Whoa there,” Angel said as the boy started to back up. “Relax. You’ve been alive this long, so they want something.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.” The kid took a long breath and let it out slowly. “I can tell you, I guess.”