Changa holds the audience in his eyes. His people and the rapt spirits surround him on all sides. They were silent, for once. The children, who lost their parents and were left on their own, they were raised on the greatest of stories, legends of heroes and the struggles of great warriors. They wait to hear the story Changa will spin, ready to rise up if it isn’t good enough, because they stand in a sacred place. The circle is no place for the weak. The spirits, who lost their lives and everything they were, come into the village on a promise, ready for the greatest story ever told, or the lives of the fools who dare to fail them.

For a while, Changa watches the bonfire, struggling for where to begin. He takes a pig-iron pitchfork and pokes the burning logs. They crackle and spit embers into the air. Those embers rise on the smoke, and his eyes follow them up and up, to the heavens where the sky is covered by clouds, heavy and swirling. The village sits in the center of a terrible storm.

“It was,” Changa says, “a normal hunt…”

***

We crossed the dunes at a sprint, but once we came near the pale rocks we slowed down. The sands that way are full of life that can catch a hunter’s legs, break an ankle, or drag them into quicksand where they’ll never be seen again.

Aye, those lands are past the great dunes, past the Corpse Stones. The home of snakes and scorpions and plants that thirst for blood is no place for the ignorant. It swallows the blind up. We’ve seen the dangers they hold, so we were confident going slow and careful.

Aska snorts.

Slower and more careful than usual…

Aye, the Prickly Giant Resting Grounds were our destination. They sit near the canyons where the Shimmering Sands, the Grave Sands and the Blasted Badlands meet. They’re absolutely bursting with life. We stopped at the rock hanging over the hills, marking where the sands end. We surveyed the land, as any hunter must. Even when you reach someplace familiar, study it, or you might run to your death.

The desert always changes. Even past the shifting dunes, sometimes a rock might get up and make its way someplace fresh. Locusts might clear a kilometer of trees and grasses. A spring might dry up and force a whole horde of animals to migrate. Hell, a hundred years ago, it’s said a hunter went out and found a lake full of fish, yet in his lifetime it disappeared.

The Kuachwa desert is a place of transient things. You can hardly trust your memories.

This is why we stopped at the edge of the Resting grounds to prepare. It was noon when we arrived. We stretched and drank and ate. We checked our weapons and our supplies.

“Here,” Uvumi said. She had rolled out a leather scroll and was drawing a rough map with a stick of charcoal. It’s good to keep track of what’s around you while you’re there. Even better to keep track of what changes over the years. No one wants to drown or starve for the changes in the world. A village can die out just as easy as any nest.

Uvi draws pretty well, so in the few minutes it took us to eat, she had a rough outline of the terrain, and she was digging in her bag of tools, pulling out compass and protractor, level and sextant—she obsesses about these things, which isn’t bad, but…

“Some other time,” Malkia said. “We can’t spend the night out here.” What she meant, young ones, is the spirits’ price is always steep. And you should avoid making deals with the dead.

There’s a terrible rustling from the crowd. As some children turn their heads, they notice the strange shapes standing tall and looming behind them, bending at the waist like windswept trees, shaking in silent laughter. Those children wear fear on their faces. Fear and surprise. They tap their neighbors. They whisper and whimper, and try to step away, but they can’t. The circle can’t be broken.

The stage is set, after all. Whatever plays out must see its end.

“Bit of a hot day to be doing this,” is what Jildun said. It was hot, even for us. After a few dozen meters, heat waves started to blur the landscape. We had our full getup on: pants, shirts and sandals, leather breastplates, furs and cloaks. We wore headwraps and dark goggles. Heavy packs sat on our backs. We were strapped with weapons. These things are hot, and they each add up. I know you little ones like to run around half-naked, but you better get used to the layers now, because there’s no avoiding it. They might save your life. I’ll tell you in a second how they saved mine-

Malkia calls from where she’s sitting, getting her hair braided by Uvumi.

“Changa, we have a promise to fulfill. Teach your lessons later. This is about the tale. Make it a good one, or it might be our last.”

Right…

“Odds we find another spring?” Jildun said.

“Same as always.”

“Let’s just take down a giant quick. We can find water after, and if we move fast, we might have time for some fun.” Malkia pointed to the distance, where a shadowy column was spinning. Those were giants, whipping up their dust devils. They usually keep to themselves, prickly as they are, but these ones were standing in some kind of swirling, sandy communion.

“We piss off that group and they’ll whip up a real storm. Might even trouble the village if they get angry enough.”

“We can find a straggler. Just keep an eye on that group. If it moves, we need to disappear.” Malkia said. Prickly giants don’t like guests.

“Should we spread out?” I asked. I wanted it over with. So close to the Badlands, all I could think of was finding a herd of sand runners. Always fun to fight, those ones.

“Aye.” Was Malkia’s response. “Keep in sight.”

We started slow, just to get a feel for how the Grounds had changed. Once we started jogging, the dunes were replaced with rolling, sandy hills. There was a lot of green; we swept over slopes covered in tough grass and gnarly bushes. Joshua trees stood every dozen meters or so. There were a hundred species of cactus out there, not just the giant, walking, hungry ones. Little barrel cacti, prickly pears, tall Saguaro’s, cholla- there was no end to them. Some were easy to avoid, but we couldn’t help but get the little ones underfoot.

Our way was filled with obstacles: pools of quicksand that looked no different than normal dirt, dry riverbeds littered with bone and crawling with vipers, crumbling rock bridges crossing fissures filled with zebra bats and shadows, grasses and shrubs hiding giant trap beetle pits—this was a journey. We spent hours bypassing traps. Those hills and hollows have always been home to the fiercest ambush predators.

We kept moving west, until Kujificha pass, where the traps and dead ends gave way to one dusty, crumbling slope. It fell off suddenly on the left, became a sheer drop into the depths of the Bila Macho sea. The far shore was hard to make out in the distance. Lit from above by the sun, the world seemed to lose definition when we saw the undulating surface of the quicksand ocean. Iron fins traced circles across it, as big as sails, sending out ripples. Even sand couldn’t hide the shadows underneath. Those shadows didn’t stay in the quicksand. They ran into shores and kept on creating tremors, always seeking food.

We kept clear of the edge. It would be all too easy to fall in, and knocking rocks into the sea is almost as bad as diving in yourself. Sand sharks are curious creatures. It’s why they say never to dance in the badlands.

Anyways, we passed below the cliff the giants were gathered on. Their sandstorm was right above us, and when we hit the high winds and the dusty haze, we lost sight of the sun. It was like we stepped into another world. We were glad for our heavy layers then. We pulled our weapons close, pulled our cowls low, and then we marched on.

We made it past without any trouble. One the other side, we spread out our formation. Aska kept glancing back, wondering why the giants gathered in the first place. We all did, but there wasn’t much we could do but wonder. They gave an ominous feeling to the wind. In its howling, I wondered if I could hear them shouting up there. The sands were quieter for it.

We stayed focused on our mission.

The first giant we found was a little round, spiny thing. It blinked at us with big eyes and waddled away on tiny legs, swinging tiny arms. Shuja caught it- don’t know why. We weren’t gonna eat it. It’s too cute. But he does pointless things sometimes. He’s a silly guy.

“Of all the-”

“Shhh!”

Well, for all his trouble, it almost shot him full of needles. He threw his cloak on it at the last minute, and we watched it get blasted to shreds.

“Ah, you little shit! Get outta here!” It slipped under a rock, trailing the rags of his cloak, and that’s what he gets. You shouldn’t bother something that weak, and you shouldn’t underestimate it either.

We left behind his tattered pride.

Afterwards, it seemed like only me and Uvumi were interested in getting the job done. The others? Useless idiots. Aska kept his eyes on the gathered giants, so much that he was falling behind.

Malkia couldn’t keep her eyes off her new blade. She was testing it on anything we passed. I could see her a few hills over, chopping at things. I wanted to shout at her, ‘yes! It can cut that! That too… and that.’ She was trying to cut rocks in half without slowing down—and failing. I suppose while she was looking for targets, she was looking for giants, but our noble leader was lacking focus, playing with a new toy.

I still haven’t had words with her about that-

“Noted.”

… But that can come later.

Jildun was obsessed with finding a cave or tunnel, hoping to fall in some underground spring. While he was busy poking the shadows under rocks and trying to hear trickling water over the wind, we were doing real work.

And that Shuja! Goddamn it, not only did he not find a giant, he stole some fun while he was at it.

We were running and I heard a pop! All of us glanced Shuja’s way, but he was hidden behind a hill. It had to be sunder ants, of course. Nothing else in the desert sounds so much like fireworks. I dropped my pack, took my spear in hand, and leapt to the rescue. It could’ve been a hive. Yat! Could’ve been an army.

On the other side of the hill, he was facing two worker caste. The third had already turned itself into a charred, smoking crater. A ring of debris and acid droplets was spread around the blast radius. Shuja dodged around the mandibles of its two partners.

They were big enough kill a man easily. They had a reddish-brown carapace with sharp ridges and fuzzy hairs. Their eyes were big and black. Glowing orange bands wrapped around their ass-ends. Sunder ants are a sight to see. Good-looking ants, in their own way.

They clicked and clacked, darting after him so fast their legs blurred. They tossed their heads trying to catch a part of him, but he was just fast enough to slip away every time.

When one tried to bite him in half, he threw himself against a rock and rolled around it. Its monstrous jaws crunched on the boulder instead. The ant lifted that massive rock and heaved it after him like it weight nothing. He rolled under the throw and came up cursing, bow ready.

His arrow ricochet right off the closest ant’s head. The short bow he used was useless with all their armor. While I was still a hundred meters uphill, a handful more burst out of the ground, covered in dirt and blood. There would’ve been hundreds if we kicked a whole nest. Instead, there were seven moving to surround Shuja.

I was running downhill when one of them started clicking its mandibles and trembling. I felt something sweep past me, bending the grass and sending dust out in a wave.

Debris and dirt all through the clearing began to vibrate, then levitate, then drift towards it. It all clumped up on that ant, too quickly to stop. I was too far and Shuja was busy backflipping and summersaulting out of the jaws of the other ants. The trembling one was buried in anything it could gather, then it detonated. A cloud of smoke covered to clearing. I ran around the edges of it and saw Malkia, Aska, and Jildun coming to join me.

“Where is he?” Uvumi was last to arrive. I pointed to the smoke in the bowl between all the hills. The wind wasn’t spreading it thin. It wasn’t going anywhere.

“Six sunder ant workers. His bow won’t do anything. I’m sure he lost his pack and his spear.”

She whistled loud and sharp, through her fingers. We all spread out and readied our weapons.

“Shuja!” I called. “Head this way!”

A few seconds later, there was another pop, and a flash in the haze. Shuja appeared out of the smoke like a ghost, rolling again- I don’t know why. He took off in our direction, with the surviving ants chasing his shadow. He was about twenty meters downslope, and they were fast enough to catch him before he was even halfway.

Uvumi shot at one. After a few bullets in its middle, a small explosion tore it apart. It left half its body and a streak of acid behind. It clawed just a few meters higher before collapsing.

“Shuja!” Malkia threw her blade, spinning end over end down the hill. Shuja jumped for it, rolling and bringing the blade up. Ichor sprayed, and the lead ant lost its head. That’s the key: decapitate before it decides to go boom and you’re good.

Shuja slid back when another tried to bite his leg off. He dropped a heel kick on its head hard enough to stop it in its tracks. That gave him enough room to spin around another bite and chop another neck in half. He stabbed the blade right between the disoriented ant’s eyes, and as it started to shake, he retreated with a half dozen backhand springs.

“Cover!” We all dropped and covered our heads. The thing exploded and raised more haze. A few sizzling drops fell by us, but we were far out of its range.

“Shu-” Malkia was cut off by Shuja’s triumphant laugh. The sword, that wooden blade that seemed as hard and sharp as diamond, was flying into the air, then falling down. It landed on one of the last ants and punched straight through its carapace. Shuja stomped on its head and grabbed the hilt. He flipped behind it, tearing the sword out, through the back and head. I swear the ichor seemed to spray out in slow motion before it glowed and exploded. He was lost behind another cloud of dust.

We heard his footsteps on the rocky hillside before he darted out of the cloud, trailing smoke.

“Clear!” He yelled.

The last one seemed confused, running here and there. Uvumi shot it down. Precious bullets gone, but worth it for a creature that can kill with only a bite and a thought. We stood and watched it detonate, kept our heads down as the rain of acid passed and waited for the dust to fall. Shuja was busy scrubbing at his arms and neck with a rag.

“Yat! That burns!”

“You okay?”

“No!”

We all watched him, until Jildun broke the quiet.

“Better check his pack,” He said and went scouring the ground for anything we could salvage.

“Didn’t get any of that action!” I said. “So disappointing!”

“We need to move before something comes sniffing around here.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Uvumi said. She climbed the hill and swept her gaze around. She was frowning, probably counting the bullets she lost.

“Let’s just go. Fuck the pack…” I said, maybe a little agitated.

“We will.” Malkia didn’t seem happy either. Probably sad to see the blade in someone else’s hands. She always loved swords, even though spears are superior weapons—remember that young ones. But don’t just believe my words. I’ll tell you the rest to prove it.

“Oi!” I said, loud enough for all to hear me. “When we find that giant, I wanna fight it.”

“Changa…”

“By. My. Self!”

“But who will bury you?”

“Say what you want, but the next battle is mine. I’ve been sitting for too long and I’m fit to explode. Those giants aren’t so tough. By itself? Psh! I’ll show you how to fight.”

“Changa, if you manage to kill a giant by yourself…”

“Oh I will! Been awhile since I felt my blood rush. Hunts have gotten so… by the book. I’m tired of it. Next round goes to me.”

“Aye. Then stop talking and lead the way…”