Tanya awoke to a quiet room, red morning sunlight peeking through cracks in the shutters. She lay in bed for a moment, unsettled. Something felt wrong. It wasn’t that she was waking up in an unfamiliar place. Traveling from one kingdom to the next for years had accustomed her to a nomadic lifestyle.

The room was empty. And large. And uncrowded. And…

Comfortable.

Yes, that was it. It was comfortable.

Her nice, circular bed was the size of her old room back at the Meewich Gate, draped in smooth, silky sheets with curtains of pure white drifting on gentle currents of cool air around her. The temperature was cold enough that her breath condensed when she exhaled, but she was still warm beneath the covers. She never really had an issue with the cold. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Tanya sat up with a frown. It felt weird having a room all to herself. Even at the Meewich Gate, she had to share her chambers with others, and finding privacy was an ongoing struggle. This, on the other hand, reminded her of a life she had chosen to forget. A different life that could have been hers, if not for—

Her knuckles turned white. Why did those days come to haunt her again and again?

Knock knock.

It took Tanya a second to realize they were expecting a response. “Come in.” The door to her right opened to reveal a woman in traditional maid’s attire, carrying a tray with an ornate porcelain cup and several containers of liquids, each of which looked more expensive than the last.

“Master Banksi has been informed that you have woken up,” the maid stated, not at all surprised by her being awake. “The container with flowers has a beverage with several unique herbs mixed in for nutrition. The one without is a solution often drunk after a healing procedure.”

“Healing?” she asked warily.

“My apologies, miss.” The maid bowed politely. “My master arranged for Miss Maude to perform restoration magic upon you while you were asleep. The last meal you were served contained particular herbs to guarantee unbroken sleep for long hours for the procedure to be completed.”

With a shriek, Tanya leaped out of bed. She knew she shouldn’t have trusted him. Of course he had tried something. By the Great Goddess, if she was cursed or entrapped or had her kami taken away from her…

She paused. Her right shoulder… It wasn’t painful anymore. The same went for those bruises she had above her left calf, on her ankles, and below the sternum. A quick glance at the mirror in the corner showed that even the darkened spots beneath her eyes were gone for good.

Tanya looked down at herself. Her usual clothes were gone, replaced by a ridiculous toga-like bedroom attire that extended to her thighs. Her body felt fresh and clean, something she hadn’t felt in a long time. The svartalfar could arrange for cold water, but showers and foamy baths were more than a little odd to creatures that traveled through the very earth itself.

“Maude did all of this in one night?”

“You have been asleep for an entire day and then some, miss. It is close to the noontide now.” The maid patiently put the tray down on the bedside table. “The door to your left contains a bathroom with a shower. My master took the discretion to purchase adventurer robes fitted to your size, along with anything else you might require for the mission. He and the rest of your team are in the conference room, expecting you in one hour. Please use this time to make yourself presentable. I suggest you hold any questions you have for him unless there is something else you would like to inquire of me.”

Tanya opened and closed her mouth several times as she tried to get her stunned mind working again. “Wha—what’s your name?”

“Fuyume,” the maid replied. “I am one of the few fortunate enough to be in Master Banksi’s service. My role in this household is to look after those who frequent the estate, such as yourself.”

After the maid left through the same door she had come through, Tanya spent the next hour relaxing in bed, standing under the lukewarm spray of the shower, and fitting herself with the clothes Zuken had purchased for her. Eerily enough, the size was a perfect fit. She desperately hoped it was the maid who knew her so intimately. When she was ready, she walked out of her room and toward the conference room.

As she walked through the Banksi mansion, she could not help but think wealthy at every turn and corner. There were miniature forests of oak and birch planted with roads in between them, giving off the appearance of being outside in the wild while staying within the premises. With how many intricate carvings were etched into the architecture, the estate would have required the minds of several dozen terramancers and onmyōji to complete. And this was without considering the dozens of wards interspersed with one another like an elaborate spiderweb.

All in all, it was a poetic reflection of the man who lived there.

As she approached the conference room, she could hear voices from the open door. One could ward off sound using enchantments, but Zuken seemed to not care for the subtlety. That, or he simply wanted to make a point about his confidence and control of his household. It was both incredibly daring and impressive at the same time.

Her fingers twitched, and a thin blade of wind formed between her fingers. It felt colder than usual, with slower currents than she expected—worrisome, but not alarmingly so. Her powers had begun acting out a bit the last time there was a Black Moon in the sky too.

Tanya gritted her teeth. It would be safest for everyone if she just hid away under some rock until the Black Moon waned. But if she did that, she would lose her one chance at freedom.

She peeked in from around the corner of the door. A hearth burned at the side, adding some warmth to the otherwise chilly temperature. Winters in Haviskali were a biting cold, or so everyone said. Zuken Banksi stood with one elbow resting upon the hearth, a glass of expensive-looking wine in the other hand. Maude shared one of the couches with Olfric while Elena was sprawled across the other.

“Miss Tanya,” Zuken greeted with a smile, noticing her standing outside. “Do come in.”

“Just Tanya is fine,” she replied, feeling somewhat self-conscious. Living life the way she had, she’d always found comfort in obscurity. Even when she worked as a sanctioned adventurer, she was always the silent member of the group, opting to do her job as instructed and staying out of others’ way. Some, like Olfric, took it as standoffishness. His insecurity over her greater mana output and performance hadn’t helped matters.

“Tanya, then. In the interests of a synergistic partnership, please call me Zuken.”

Olfric scoffed derisively.

Tanya scanned the room and found two empty chairs, one next to the open window while the other was beside the changeling. Deciding not to trust the changeling’s presence, she let out a resigned sigh and moved toward the window.

“I hope you like the attire,” Zuken offered.

She offered him a slow nod. The new wristbands were extremely supple and comfortable to wear. When she had tried channeling mana through them, she found the process far smoother than she was normally used to. She could really get used to this.

“Well, that’s all of us,” Maude said. “Can we get started on the specifics now?”

“Specifics?” Tanya asked.

“Not all of us are experienced on the subject of anomalies. I’ve worked with adventurer teams before, but never on an anomaly mission. Zuken and Elena have never needed to. Only you and Olfric are full-time adventurers, and…” She trailed off, looking a bit peaky. “You’re the only one here who can say they’ve destroyed one.”

Olfric rolled his eyes. “Excuse me for not wanting to drench my hands with Sin.”

Zuken gave Tanya a wink. “Alright, let’s talk. We’ve got something of a task ahead of ourselves, and the sooner we begin outlining a plan, the better.”

“I assumed you’d already have a plan by now.”

Zuken shrugged. “You were asleep.”

“And all of you sat around doing nothing yesterday?” Tanya asked, flustered, before realizing that she might have come off as a little aggressive. “Sorry. That came out harsher than I thought it would.”

But he waved her off. “We’re peers now. There’s no need to bring in additional complications. Feel free to treat me as a fellow team member.”

A team member that controls my freedom, my career, and possibly my life.

“Plus, it’s not all that bad,” he continued. “I have people ready to provide for the rations and other amenities we might need for this mission. I’m hoping today’s meeting will get me a list of everything we need to get going.”

“What he means,” Elena smirked, “is that I talked to those people. Maude spent the day treating you while Zuken played shogi with Olfric.”

Despite Zuken’s insistence on everyone using his given name, there was something even more familiar in the manner the changeling addressed her employer. Clearly, there was more to their relationship than what met the eye.

“My dear,” Zuken drawled, “if I have to do work, then I’m not doing my job.”

Olfric snorted.

Zuken laughed. It was warm and unassuming. “I know what needs to happen and I have a few ideas on how to do it, but you don’t just gather a group like this and tell them what to do. We can work this out together, starting with a list of problems we need to deal with.”

“It sounds simple enough,” Olfric said, raising a finger with each point he made. “We leave for Namzuuhuu Desert, walk in blind for anything that might strike at us there, try to find an anomaly that could be anywhere within the desert, find an entrance, kill everything that moves, collect hypothetical loot, and have our resident Sinner deal the final blow.” He looked at everyone. “Have I missed anything? I’m running out of fingers.”

“The part where we escape with our lives?” Maude helpfully supplied.

“Well, that’s still up in the air, isn’t it? It’s entirely possible we get killed in the last step. The outlaw has already done it once before, but twice is better, right?”

Tanya reared up to give him a piece of her mind, but Maude interjected again before it could devolve into a shouting match. “I think our main problem is the lack of information about the desert. We can’t hope to deal with the anomaly if we’re obstructed by the desert itself,” she said.

Zuken walked over to the blackboard and began writing.

Study the desert’s curse and its possible counters.

He looked back at the team. “I’ve already acquired reports on the history of the desert. Elena has read them. She can describe them in brief for you afterward.”

Tanya tried very hard not to look at anyone. The last thing she wanted was for the others to know that she had crossed that very desert in the past, or that she had firsthand information about the nature of its curse. It would accelerate their plans by a magnitude, but it could also end with her head on a spike.

“What else?” Zuken asked, tapping the piece of chalk against the board.

“We need a way to locate the anomaly without having to scour the whole desert,” Olfric offered.

“Mentioning the anomaly brings up another point. How can we make sure we destroy it in time and get back?” Elena pitched in. “I doubt its vulnerable parts will be easily accessible.”

Narrow down the anomaly’s location went up on the board. As did Study the structure, layouts and protections of anomalies.

“I’m also going to add infiltration to the list,” said Zuken. “It might turn out that Cyffnar has known about this anomaly for a while and has anointed soldiers to guard the entrances. We need to make sure we move unseen, while getting both in and out. And we also need somehow to get away with our loot. It’d be terrible if we had to leave everything behind and escape after going through all the effort.”

“With Cyffnarians shooting at us from behind,” Elena replied with a shudder.

“Anything else?” Zuken asked.

“Well,” Tanya said dryly, “if we’re listing all our problems, maybe add the fact that we’re all unhinged and functionally insane for even considering doing this.”

Zuken wrote down Tanya’s cynicism right after infiltration, recon, and evasion tactics.

“Is that a bad thing?” Maude smirked. “I happen to think cynics are playful and cute.”

Everyone laughed, except for Tanya, who frowned at the board, trying to decide whether this whole thing was a joke or not. The list on the board wasn’t just daunting; it was outright disturbing. Finding a counter to the desert’s curse? The same curse that kept the Great Goddess’s power at bay for millennia? With the Black Moon present, all sorts of wraiths and spirits would be free to tear them to shreds.

“I can’t believe you,” she murmured. “Do you really think this will be easy?”

“You did it before,” Olfric pointed out, and for once, the ever-present sneer on his face was missing.

“By luck,” she countered. “And that was a Class-2. This is a three. It will be larger, more complex, with far superior monsters and who knows what kind of traps. And that’s without considering its real defenses and its guardian. Plus, there’s the desert to consider. How many of you have experience traversing it? How many of you can last in that place until we find an entrance into the anomaly?”

That shut everyone up.

“I hate myself for saying this,” Olfric muttered, “but she has a point. Making a bulleted list is one thing, but the reality of it is different.”

“The reality of it is exactly why we are in this conference room making a list, Bergott,” Zuken answered softly. “To break down an immense problem into simpler steps until it no longer appears daunting. It might not give us a solution, but it does offer the opportunity to consider more angles than otherwise.”

Tanya pursed her lips and decided to move ahead without adding anything else. The less attention she drew to herself, the better. “Fine,” she grunted. “Let’s get started. I suppose you have something on the origins of the desert’s curse?”

“We do.” Zuken chuckled. “And it made for very interesting reading too. Elena has painstakingly compiled narratives of the origins behind the desert’s curse.”

“Narratives? Plural?” Maude murmured. “I wasn’t sure that writings of the Time Before existed, much less were available. Where did you get it?”

“Some of it is from my own library,” Zuken replied, a hint of pride lining his words. “As one of the Sacred Eight, my Clan predates the current calendar. The rest is from the Graken Mountains up north. There are tribes there who follow the Old Folk. The residents remember what it was like before the days of the Great Goddess’s ascension.”

Before the Jade Empress ascended to the throne as the Great Goddess and let her Eternal Light scour the world and rid it of the darkness, Tanya surmised. She had studied the tales of the World Shaper and her war with Amaterasu, but she wasn’t going to mention any of it here,

“It’s unfortunate, actually,” he went on, “that there’s so little information about things older than the Asukan Empire. But that only makes the information we have worth more. I had to pay a good amount of mezals to acquire it.” He pointed at the folder in Elena’s hand. “That there contains the entire story of the yokai kingdom and the days before the Great War. The ascension of Amaterasu as the Great Goddess, the rise of the Asukan Empire, and most importantly, how the once-fertile lands of Namzuuhuu became an arid desert that kills everything within its borders.”

“I don’t know about everyone else,” Maude said, “but I, for one, would love to read it. Knowing the curse’s history may be instrumental in figuring out a way past it.”

Elena got up from her position and fetched five more folders and passed them along.

“Happy reading!” She beamed.

Tanya’s discomfort ballooned. Did these people not realize that the curse had held strong for millennia for a reason? Even more disturbing was how matter-of-factly they handled the issues. The group regarded their list of problems with grim yet mirthful determination, as if they understood they had a better chance of making the sun rise at night than they did of overthrowing the curse, yet would still try nonetheless.

Worse still, their pointless optimism was almost contagious enough to make her believe in it.

“I’m not sure why we need these alternative narratives,” Olfric muttered, flapping across the pages from his folder. “The official translation alone should have done the job.”

“Yeah! That way we’d all share a singularly biased way of looking at it.” Maude laughed.

“Excuse me?” Olfric snapped, drawing himself up.

Tanya nearly formed a wind blade. Situations tended to escalate whenever Olfric was involved. Doubly so when his infamous Asukan pride was hurt.

“You heard me right,” Maude replied, her voice steady. “I’ve read texts on our ancient history, about the war. How the empress transcended into the Great Goddess to exterminate an accursed civilization out of the annals of history.”

“And?” Olfric demanded. “We all know that’s the truth.”

“No. We’re told that that’s the truth.”

I should have seen this coming. Tanya grimaced. Maude wasn’t a bremetan. She was a vanir, or at least half vanir. By the Great Goddess, she even used the Nordic gods to exclaim and curse. If anyone would take offense at a biased telling of history, it would be her.

Life in the Asukan Empire was difficult if you weren’t bremetan. Other races had to register with the Cobalt Army first, at which point they were given a choice between worshiping the Great Goddess’s pantheon and relocating to the fringe territories. Asukan Law was clear: if you weren’t a worshiper of the Asukan pantheon, there was no place in the land of Eternal Light for you.

Although…

Tanya narrowed her eyes.

She makes no secret of her worship of the Aesir, and she’s still here as part of the team. But unlike me, Bergott is on good terms with her. What’s the catch?

Meanwhile, Elena looked utterly indifferent to the conflict. The changeling was another outlier. Sooner or later, every changeling morphed into a ljósálfar or a dökkálfar. The former, also known as light elves, were treated kindly in the Empire. It fit the Asukan narrative of light being holy and dark being evil. The other side of her heritage, the elves of shadow and darkness, were treated with absolute disdain and barely seen in the Empire. The official story was that when the dökkálfar had taken control of Alfheim and threw the ljósálfar out, the Asukan Empire gladly invited the luminous beings to become one of their own.

Yet, Elena seemed so utterly indifferent to it. Was it because she was destined to become a ljósálfar? Or had she simply developed a good poker face?

“You’re over-generalizing it, Maude,” Olfric proclaimed.

“That’s just what an Asukan noble would say!”

Tanya shared a glance with Zuken, who also seemed utterly unbothered by the sudden antagonism between team members. In fact, he was watching the developments with interest, as if he were studying them.

“Rather hypocritical of you, Maude. You’re assured work by the nobility, regardless of how happily you ignore our faith, choosing to believe in gods that perished long ago.”

A cold silence permeated across the room.

Maude slammed her palms on the table. “You’re right, Heir Bergott. I work for the nobility despite not believing in your Great Goddess of the Light. Do you know why? Because it is my faith in Eir that allows me to perform naturopathy, the same art that has saved countless Asukan lives in the years I have served the Empire. The same Eir that your Empire doesn't care enough to recognize!”

She ruefully shook her head. “I never should have agreed to this plan. We—we will be defiling the world by destroying something as innately precious as an anomaly, a seed that would eventually give rise to new races, all because of politics. And I have to be a part of this process because that is what the great Asukan nobility demands of me.”

Maude launched herself out of her chair and stormed toward the window. She stared out at the sky, where the Black Moon reigned. Tanya waited for someone to say something, anything. The abrupt silence was beginning to get to her.

“Unfortunately, Maude is correct,” Zuken grimly said. “No one is perfect, not even the Empire. It’s led by people, and people have agendas. But right or wrong, the Empire has shaped our beliefs for over a millennium. We don’t have to speak up against it, but we can accept when someone calls out a wrong.”

Silently, Tanya began perusing the document she had been handed. There were writings by famous scholars of the past, several of them being members of the Banksi Clan. There were theories on what had happened at the end of the war, and speculations on the reasoning behind the Ascension of the Empress Amaterasu into the Great Goddess they worshiped. But as she read through more and more pages, she began to realize something vital was off.

The texts were blatantly ignoring a fact that could spell disaster on every member of the team. If they kept operating like this, they wouldn’t last in the desert. They would all die.

Hesitantly, she raised her hand.

“Yes?”

“There is something you must know,” she began, feeling all the eyes in the room fall on her. “I’m a vagrant. You understand what that means?”

“A wanderer, traveling from place to place,” Zuken replied. “Most freelancers and mercenaries fall under that category.”

“And before coming to Haviskali, I wound up in Cyffnar for a time.” She paused. “Then I came here. Through the desert.”

Olfric shot up from his chair, and slapped his arms against the table, his eyes scouring her face like an eagle eyeing its prey. “You’ve traveled through the desert? I knew there was something wrong about you when I first met you. No wonder you’ve Sin—”

“Enough!” Zuken snapped. This was the first time Tanya had seen him look annoyed. She wondered how much of that was because of Olfric and how much from her own admission. Zuken was, after all said and done, a member of the Sacred Eight. He might have a reputation for skirting the lines every now and then, but there were some lines he’d never cross.

Lines like the ones drawn by the Cobalt Army.

“Go on,” he replied. “Tell us. Clearly you have something to say about it.”

Tanya weighed her options. She had already opened that door and stepped inside. There was no going out.

“The official text says that the curse impairs the Eternal Light there, which is why it’s declared a forbidden zone. The truth is, there in the desert, there is no Eternal Light at all.”

An uncomfortable silence dragged on for several seconds. And the worst part of it, she couldn’t blame them.

The Eternal Light was a manifestation of the Great Goddess Amaterasu herself, an illumination that bathed the Asukan Empire. Its radiance had no physical source, but it brightened every nook and corner, be it inside or outside, day or night, deep underground or in the middle of the street. It cast no shadow and exuded no heat. It was simply light. Pure, warm, holy light.

And it was absent in the desert.

“No Eternal Light?” Maude exclaimed. “Then at night—”

“There is no light. Only pure darkness, and all kinds of creatures that come out to hunt.”

“Evil creatures,” Olfric growled.

Tanya ignored him. For all his boasts, he had very little experience of the real world outside of the theatrics of nobility and adventuring. By Wind, he’d probably have a heart attack just by spending a day with a jotunn, much less a dökkálfar.

“You said you’ve crossed the desert,” Elena chimed in. “What’s that like?”

“The desert…” Tanya trailed off. “It hates you. It hates life. There’s no food, no water, nothing but a never-ending ocean of bone-dry sand. During the day, it’s like standing before a fiery wyrm, and at night, frost coats your skin. It feels as if death’s hungry maw eyes you from everywhere. From the sands, the rocks, the decaying bodies of animals, and then…”

“Then?” Olfric pressed.

A dark part of her rejoiced at their pinched expressions. “And then there is this.”

Tanya opened the very last page of the document and grabbed one of the pens from the table. After a moment of consideration, she began drawing a rough image of a man on it. It wasn’t artistic by any means, but enough to get the point across. Finally, she drew a circle with rays emanating out of it on the upper left corner of the page and scratched the portion around the “man’s” feet in black. A twisted reflection, tapering at the edges and larger than the man itself, only the reflection was on the floor and not in some mirror.

“This is called a shadow,” she explained. “In absence of the Eternal Light, these…things form underneath your feet.”

“Shadow?” Maude asked.

“Evil!” Olfric repeated.

Tanya snorted inwardly. The Eternal Light provided an all-pervading illumination from every direction. But there in the desert, the only source of light was the sun overhead. And that light cast a shadow beneath her.

“Call it whatever you want,” she replied. “The Curse of the Desert, evil incarnate, monsters hiding in the dark—they’re all the same. Shadows. If you’re to travel through the desert, you’ve got to come to terms with it. Else we might as well just disband right now.”

Zuken looked at her with unabashed curiosity. “Tell me more.”

She continued in a harsh whisper. “Your shadow falls beneath you. Sometimes it extends ahead, blackening the path in front as if you were descending into madness with every step. Other times, it draws behind, like a dagger ready to pierce you from behind, something you will never see coming. And then it can coalesce right beneath you, making you stand in a pit of blackness of your own making.”

Olfric staggered, pointing a finger at her shakily. “You lie! Nothing so sinister can exist under the All-Seeing Eye.”

“But the All-Seeing Eye can’t penetrate the desert’s curse,” Tanya replied, her voice soft and mysterious. “It’s a land corrupted in all forms. A taboo upon the world, so vile and wrong that all mentions of it are erased from Asukan texts.” She met the aquamancer’s eyes. The conflicted expression on his face was a delight.

“The heat is cancerous. It blinds you, suffocates you, makes you want to seek a shadow. The cold is haunting. Everything there is either wicked and warped or blasted and burned. During the day you have cruel birds of prey circling you from above, spelling death and disease on you. In the night, an infinite void of blackness surrounds you. Wyrms and bats and hideous insects entrap you while you sleep. It’s a vast pan of emptiness where everything sentient resents anything else alive. They want to rip into you, splinter your bones, and feast on your flesh. Everything has poison, paw, or claw. Or sorcery so malignant that even the demonic yokai couldn’t have survived.”

Elena began to hyperventilate. Olfric had gone deathly pale, like he’d seen a wraith. Maude shot worried looks between the both of them. And even Zuken no longer looked unflappable—his face was taut, like a stretched bow, as his sharp eyes followed her every movement.

“What?” Tanya asked, trying to keep the dark amusement from seeping into her tone.

“You…you’re not making this all up, are you?” Zuken asked.

“You’re Zuken Banksi. How difficult is it for you to confirm my words?”

“But—but—” Maude spluttered. “You crossed it, right? I mean, what you’re describing is—”

“Impossible? Hardly!” Tanya challenged condescendingly. “The world is more vast than you can possibly imagine. Lots of things exist that do not fit the idyllic Asukan dream.”

“If it’s as bad as you say, how did you survive?” Olfric demanded.

Tanya bared her teeth. “I guess being a vagrant has given me a stronger appetite against the ugly.”

Olfric scowled but said nothing.

“Then how did you do it?” Maude asked. “Cross the desert, I mean.”

“The desert is a lover of the dead and hates anything alive. If you want to survive it, you have to become the dead.”

“Become what?”

“Put simply, imitate the qualities of the dead. They’re cold; they lie motionless beneath the earth and rest in the shadows. During the day, I lived in caves and underneath the rocks. When nothing was around, I covered myself with sand and placed my bags over my head, hiding from the sun. And when the light was gone and darkness covered the land, I came out and traveled.”

“In the darkness?” Olfric asked in disbelief.

“In the darkness,” Tanya confirmed. “When the other predators came out.”

“But what if they attack you?” Elena asked, biting her nails.

Tanya arched an eyebrow but said nothing. If nothing else, her episode with the desert seemed to have shaken everyone, especially Olfric. Still, the respect seemed to be a double-edged knife. While it made her seem valuable, it also painted her in a darker tone. She could picture Olfric somehow citing her journey through the desert as the corruptive influence that led her to destroy the anomaly.

And the worst part? He’d be right. Partially.

“How is something as blessed as an anomaly even born in such an environment?” Maude asked.

Tanya shrugged. “Potential blooms in the unlikeliest of places. But yes, an anomaly blooming in the desert would probably be the weirdest anomaly we’d ever encounter. An anomaly seeks growth, and the curse eliminating all of its creations would be detrimental to that. The monsters are likely somehow immune to the desert’s curse or are simply good at dealing with it.”

“There’s a third possibility,” Zuken said. “The anomaly’s creations survive the desert’s curse by ignoring it. It could be underground.”

Tanya looked at him with surprise. “Underground?”

“You said it yourself. To survive the desert, one needs to imitate the dead. The anomaly might well be sprawled across the desert, only below the surface.”

And suddenly, Tanya knew what they were looking for.

“A cavern,” she began, and everyone turned toward her. “One with tons of empty spaces allowing monsters within to locomote from one place to another. Probably a vast network of tunnels beneath the desert, deep enough to avoid the heat overhead, but close enough to the surface to allow for proper aeration, water resources, and, most importantly, entrances for prey to wander in.”

“I imagine most of the monsters would be based on creatures that live underground.” Olfric suggested, “Insects, spiders, snakes, worms—twisted into fiendish monstrosities.”

Tanya grinned at him, and then realized who she was grinning at. Quickly, she looked away.

“The way you describe it,” Elena replied, still looking absolutely sick and pale, “it’s like we’re entering some kind of crypt.”

Tanya nodded. “We just might be. A crypt of worms.”