Zuken Banksi turned his bottle of freshwater upside down.

Not a single drop fell.

“Empty,” he commented, with all the dryness of the desert around him.

Six hundred years ago, this place— this vast, arid plain of heat and sand —had another name. They called it Nahmaz, once a lush, fertile land that met with the sea flowing further east. It was a kingdom belonging to a race of creatures whose skill with mana manipulation was practically unrivaled.

They were called Yokai. Of the other.

An apt name, since the Yokai were, in fact, other. Entities that had come from a different world, with different rules, different laws of physics, and different modes of existence. A world that mirrored their own, yet remained as different as ‘different’ could be.

And sitting at the heart of the once-expansive Yokai kingdom was Nahmaz, the capital city and its surrounding territory.

Until the Great War happened.

It was a war fought between the Asukans— a bremetan extremist organization —and the Yokai. Named after their leader, Emperor Asuka himself, the Asukans wanted nothing more than to liberate the world from any and all traces of Yokai.

Blood was shed, lives were lost, and lands were burned before the war finally came to a close. Today, the once-fertile soil of Nahmaz, translating to ‘blessing’ in the ancient tongue, was known as ‘Namzuhuu’, meaning ‘that which is dead’.

It was a lasting memorial to the warlord that fought for the freedom of this land.

An exemplar of the wrath of Amaterasu, goddess of the Sun and Queen of the Asukan Pantheon.

Today, the Asukan Empire was the largest theocracy in the world. The main kingdom of Asuka was the new center, while the other kingdoms swore fealty to them. Asukan Gods were worshipped everywhere— practices mandated by Asukan laws and priests.

The world was Asukan, and anyone who claimed differently was beaten down. Forced into servitude. Those who managed to escape joined the fringe kingdoms in the extreme north and west. Others, like the Llaisy kingdom, became Asukan provinces, entitled to self-ruling so long as they made their obeisances to the Asukan Gods.

“Empty?” Elena whimpered from beside him. Between the biting cold air of the night and the sounds of chirping insects, her words seemed more ominous than they had any right to be.

The past week hadn’t been favorable for the changeling. Her pale skin was reaching shades of crimson, with rashes appearing on the back of her neck due to prolonged exposure to the dead sands of the desert. Not to mention the overwhelming heat spared not even the slightest bit of moisture in this vast plain.

And she wasn’t alone. He fared no better.

“That was our last one, wasn’t it?”

“Well what do you expect? This place is cursed,” Tanya muttered from his right as the trio fell into a comfortable pace, trudging through the sand. Zuken had purchased a pair of bicorns— one for Tanya, and the other for himself and Elena— before they left the city. Bicorns were durable creatures, and increased their odds of surviving a trip through the desert.

Expensive, too.

But none of that mattered anymore.

The first bicorn hadn’t lasted four days. As fast as they were, sandworms were faster predators. The second had been heavily injured in that altercation, and they’d collectively agreed to put it out of its misery.

At least it made a wonderful brunch.

“What do you mean?” Elena inquired.

Before Zuken could come up with a response, Tanya beat him to it. “This is where the goddess Amaterasu fought against the Champion of this land. But when she found herself unable to defeat him in combat, Amaterasu burned the entire plains down, purging every single soul, spirit, and consciousness from the land itself.”

Elena’s eyes were wide, as she paid rapt attention. “And it became cursed?”

Tanya nodded. “When the fertile plains were reduced to a barren wasteland, the dead sands of Nahmaz cursed the goddess, forever barring her worship in the Llaisy kingdom.”

“So that’s how it happened, huh?”

“Asukan priests, of course, paint a different picture,” Tanya drawled. “They call it the magnanimity of Amaterasu to allow the worship of a lesser God in her place. Classic Asukan hypocrisy.”

It was here that Zuken decided to interrupt.

“That’s a singularly biased way of telling the tale.”

Tanya raised both eyebrows. “Oh? Have I missed some tiny nitpick to quibble over, Banksi?” She batted her eyelashes at him, causing Elena to fume silently as she noticed the interaction.

Zuken sighed, seeing the blonde’s blatant smirk.

How did an anomaly exploration turn into... this?

He dropped the baggage from his shoulders and plopped down onto the sand, attracting blank looks from both girls.

“What? I’m exhausted. Let’s call it a night.”

Life in the desert was a perversion of the natural order. At night, when there was no sun, it was safest to travel. But during the day, the warm rays of the sun burnt the skin, drained one’s lifeforce, and trapped unwary travellers in all sorts of insidious hallucinations.

With identical shrugs, the two girls followed suit and shed their own baggage as well.

“Anyways, you were saying?” Elena pressed Zuken. For some reason, she seemed awfully interested in this conversation. He almost wondered whether it was because he and Tanya were her sole sources of gossip out here in the middle of the desert.

The thought felt strangely uncomfortable.

“While it’s true that the Asukan Empire took over the world after the Great War, it doesn’t mean that they’re literally evil incarnate, you know.”

Tanya looked more than mildly offended at that. It made Zuken wonder if she was one of those people who considered it a fashion trend to speak against ruling governments, or if she had a more… personal reason.

“This desert speaks otherwise,” she retorted.

“Throughout the Great War, something like Namzuhuu was a singular event, and probably the darkest chapter of Asukan history as a whole. Besides, the goddess herself has brought in a great many changes to this part of the world. And for the better.”

“And what about the people who lost their lives in the Great War?”

“Lord Naowa considers the actions taken in the name of conquest as regretful,” Zuken automatically replied. His own opinions aside, he was a Banksi first and foremost. Every single action, every single word, had to be neutral.

We are arbiters. We do not take sides.

“I’m sure the dead,” Tanya picked up a handful of sand, letting the grains slowly slip through her fingers, “are very appreciative of his regret.”

Ouch. She really feels strongly about this.

“But how do you know it’s cursed?” Elena steered them back to the original topic. That, or she didn’t want Tanya to be interacting with him any more than necessary.

He snorted.

“What?” the brunette looked affronted.

He half-shrugged, gesturing to Tanya. “You explain.”

Tanya blew him a kiss instead.

These two are impossible…

“I’m still waiting, you know.” Elena looked like she was one step away from stomping in frustration.

“Fiiiinnee!” Tanya drew out the word, kicking at the sand beneath her foot. “After the sun goddess destroyed the land, it became a hater of all things living. So long as the sun is up, nothing alive can walk along its surface.”

“What about the animal life here?”

“During the day, they lie like corpses beneath the sand, imitating the dead in every possible manner. They only venture out at night.”

“And if they move during the morning?”

“They say those who cross the sands in the day die horrible deaths,” Tanya’s voice softened. “They become wailing wraiths who retain their bremetan form, only nude. Mindless vessels that stand and stagger around their graves, never leaving the proximity of their putrefying flesh as it decomposes and gets lost under the sand.”

Her voice somehow went even lower. “They say those wraiths come like vicious wolves. You can run, but they’ll chase after you. You can hide, but they’ll hunt you down. You can fight, but they will always overwhelm you.”

Elena was trembling from head to toe. “I— is that why we didn’t travel during the day?”

Tanya nodded somberly, as if acknowledging a great injustice. “Our stay in the shady caves is symbolic of the darkness of death. We rest during the day and travel at night, like all things living in this desert.”

Elena gulped.

“If you’re done scaring her,” Zuken deadpanned, “we need to focus on finding the anomaly.” As funny as it was seeing Tanya scare the crap out of Elena with her little embellishments, he was starting to run out of patience.

Scans performed by the Adventurer’s Guild were hardly able to pinpoint accurate readings, much less plot out an actual location. When it came to the desert of Namzuhuu, the difficulty only increased tenfold. With the way things were going for them, it would take a considerable amount of time before they could find the right location and start to make progress.

If at all.

Zuken sighed. He really wasn’t built to handle all this crap. Politicking and business expansions were his bread and butter. What Elena saw in this profession, he’d never understood.

“Anomaly? All I see is sand, sand, and even more sand,” Elena complained. “Are you sure there’s actually an anomaly out here? They’re supposed to be cool and stuff, with monsters and chests and precious metals and—”

“Let me stop you right there,” Tanya interrupted, bristling at her words. “Anomalies are not a joke. We’ve already exhausted our supplies, and the last thing we need to do now is torture ourselves imagining treasures from a place we haven’t even found yet.”

“But the anomaly—”

“—Is here. Somewhere. But we need to find it,” Zuken grunted. “Anomalies don’t have any marked entrances, Elena. It can be literally anywhere in this desert, or even above it. I’m almost positive that some of the other groups have already considered alternate avenues for finding the entrance.

“Like what?”

Tanya pointed at the sky. “I’m reliably certain someone chose the aerial route.”

“The aerial route? This, even after I told you I can smell your bullshit from a mile away?”

Tanya’s lips thinned. “I saw a pair of shkroi hawks flying overhead.”

“What are those?” Zuken asked.

“Shkroi hawks, Zuken,” Elena interjected. “Don’t you remember? Lord Masuya has a pair of them. We saw them when they were up for auction back in—”

“I remember that,” he interrupted her sharply, before she could start sharing tales of whatever shenanigans she had coerced him into pulling over the time they had known one another.

“You’ve seen one? Face-to-face?” Tanya asked, her face colored with skepticism.

“Yep,” Elena smirked. “It was about... this tall,” she touched her own shoulder, “with a bright crimson plume. At first, it tried to intimidate us, but I was petting it by the end of it all.”

Zuken rolled his eyes fondly. Elena could be scared to death by a harmless prank one moment, and then pet all sorts of vicious creatures in the same breath. In fact, the more dangerous the creature, the more Elena felt comfortable in its presence, wanting to drop everything and rush towards it. He’d once seen her pet a manticore caught by a Mithril-plate traveling adventurer, and that thing had been mewling like a cat underneath her dexterous fingers.

…Come to think of it, a monster day-care center with her at the helm would probably be a profitable venture.

Something to consider after he was done with this damned mission.

“You pet a shkroi hawk before?” Tanya sneered. “Are we even talking about the same creature here?”

“You are,” Zuken chimed in. “It may be hard to believe, but trust me. Elena’s got a way with monsters.”

The brunette in question beamed at him.

“...If you say so.” The blonde spiritist still seemed uncertain, conflicted between maintaining her own skepticism and trusting in his vocal support of Elena.

The changeling, on the other hand, looked somewhat affronted. “I’ll have you know, this isn’t the first monster I’ve come across. My own familiar is one.”

Tanya blinked.

And it was like looking in a mirror.

He faintly remembered the first time Elena had revealed that particular bit of information about herself. She was a changeling, which allowed her some capacity to use elven magics. But more importantly, she had a familiar.

“Let’s see it then.”

Zuken stiffened. “Let’s… not.”

“What?”

“That might not be the best idea. Not under the current circumstances.”

Her familiar was the one thing he resented about his bubbly companion. Zuken had the misfortune of meeting it face-to-face one time.

It was an experience he’d hoped to never repeat.

“Why?” Tanya pressed. “Is it scary or something?”

And wasn’t that a loaded question?

Truth be told, Elena’s familiar wasn’t exactly large or spooky to look at. It was, in fact, a baby. One with a tiny pair of wings and a tentacle-filled face and big, bright eyes. It could neither fight nor defend, sort of just… sitting there most of the time. Yet despite all this, there was this aura of eeriness about it, something very strange and alien and wrong. Something he couldn’t quite place a finger on.

All he could remember was feeling utterly violated the moment he met its gaze. It was as if this thing knew him inside out— his deepest secrets, his ugliest thoughts and his darkest desires were all sucked out of the recesses of his mind and gobbled up like a tasty morsel.

A composed, consummate diplomat for years, Zuken had been reduced to a quivering wreck for the better part of a week.

“—way,” Elena was saying, “he’s just an adorable baby. His name is Joey.”

I nearly forgot that accursed name. Zuken swallowed. Hello, my old nightmare. We meet again.

“It’s a sensor, right?” Tanya questioned. “Then why not just bring it out? Maybe it can help us find the anomaly.”

“No!”

Zuken knew he had to interject. The past week— traveling by night in the midst of dangerous predators, resting in the shadows of boulders and caves —had been an unwelcome deviation from his regular schedule. So much as looking in the mirror would likely scare the crap out of him right now.

He really didn’t want an extra helping of nightmares before they even found the anomaly.

Tanya blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Let’s... not be hasty here.”

“Hasty?” Tanya repeated the word, looking at Zuken like she was seeing him for the first time.

He grimaced. “You want to meet her familiar? Fine, be my guest. But not while I’m here. Though I will warn you, it will affect your psyche. Badly.”

“It’s a familiar,” the blonde spiritist emphasized the word as if speaking to a particularly slow child.

“True, but it’s also a monster.” Discomfort and irritation piqued at him, but he knew better than to act on it. Speak when you’re angry, and you’d give the best fucking speech that you’ll end up regretting.

“Don’t listen to him, Tanya,” Elena defended, an act that made him believe something was well and truly wrong with the world.

His mind rewinded to the memory of seeing the creature for the first time, how its sharp eyes had peered into his soul and—

Zuken shivered.

Anything but that.

“Tanya,” he tried once more. “Believe me, you don’t want to see it. Whatever that thing is, it’s weird. Like, weird weird. I’ve met hundreds of monsters and lethal creatures during trips with my elder siblings, I’ve even visited Lord Naowa’s personal menagerie, and believe me. It scares me like nothing else.”

“Oh boohoo,” Elena grumbled. “Joey’s supposed to be the baby, not you. Seriously, he’s just misunderstood. He needs to make friends, but Zuken’s always scaring people away every chance he gets.”

“Okay, now I’m really interested,” Tanya admitted.

“Joey’s just the sweetest, you’ll love him,” Elena cooed. Cooed. “He’s also really shy, but I’m trying to get him out of his shell.”

“Can we just return to the main topic?” Zuken weakly tried.

“Which one?”

“Anything but this,” Zuken muttered to himself. He suddenly blinked, looking up and giving Tanya a bright smile. “Let’s talk about you.”

Tanya’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Why the sudden interest?”

“Well, you’re part of the team. I’ve known Elena for quite some time now, and we’re going to be working together for the foreseeable future. I’d like to know my compatriot.” He grinned. “I’m sure even Elena would want that.”

“That’s hardly—” Elena began.

Zuken kicked her in the shin.

“—something to ask about. Of course, I’m interested.”

Tanya raised a brow at the action, before ultimately sighing. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

Elena immediately perked up. “Ooh! Tell us something that nobody in Haviskali knows about you.”

Tanya pursed her lips. “Nobody?”

Elena nodded.

The blonde girl remained silent for a moment. “Well… I just have the biggest fear of bedbugs.”

Zuken stared at her incredulously. Elena looked like she was about to explode.

“Seriously,” Tanya went on, her tone betraying nothing. “They carry diseases, they come when you’re sleeping, and they bite you in your—”

Elena threw a fistful of sand at her.

“Alright kids, enough playing around,” Zuken admonished them. “The sun’s about to come up, and we need to find another cave to rest in for the day.”

“This is such a drag,” Elena moaned. “Why can’t you just raise a cave from the ground?”

“Because,” Zuken bonked her on the head with his hand, much to her chagrin, “holding up a structure like that will be incredibly taxing.”

“Who cares,” Elena grumbled. “Honestly, I doubt there’s even an anomaly here.”

“Why would you say that?” Tanya asked.

Elena made a face. “Because of what you said, genius. Nothing ever stays above ground during the day, right? So if there was an anomaly, it’d be killed by the desert’s curse.” She crossed her arms, pushing her well-endowed chest forwards. “That means there can’t be an anomaly here.”

“...”

Zuken stared at her blankly, as his brain registered her words. Even if Tanya’s tale had been heavily embellished, it was true that nothing survived this place during the day. Every living creature burrowed underground, but an anomaly could hardly dance around like that.

No, if it grew all the way to Class-3, then it was in a place where it could thrive regardless of the harsh environment or the desert’s curse.

That only left one option.

He looked down.

“...Son of a bitch.”