“Ouch!” yipped Enru as the large covered troop transport carriage she was riding inside hit another large bump in the road causing her to smack the back of her head against the hard wood, waking her from the uneasy nap she had managed to slip into. It was not a very comfy carriage, the frame and body consisting of rough wood and a linen covering stretched high over the rounded top. It had four large wooden wheels with metal rings around them for support and hard wooden benches inside with space for around two dozen people to sit. Rubbing the back of her black shoulder length hair covered head, Enru groggily looked around the carriage as her memory quickly came back to her. Enru’s wind mage guild had been contracted out by the city of Warford, which was the city controlled by the main family specializing in wind magic, the Warfords, to head South to the great desert and assist one of their branch families with containing and repelling an unusually large sandstorm that had been discovered to be heading North. The Warford family and wind mages in general mostly lived along the Southern border of the continent where the lush lands of humanity ended and the sandy desert belonging to the ferocious and majestic dragons began. Quite often sandstorms from the great desert tried to blow into the open plains on humanity’s Southern border but wind mages were quite adept at using their magic to help repel the storms and keep the desert from becoming even larger than it already was. History told them that long ago the plains stretched much further and the desert was much smaller so humanity was determined not to let it grow any larger. Enru is a sixteen year old girl with the usual dark tanned skin, black hair which she left mostly unattended to with the exception of keeping it shoulder length and a body that left people mistaking her for someone much younger unfortunately. She was born to a family of wind mages and thankfully has the gift herself instead of being born as a non mage, although she was quite weak as far as mages go. That was why she joined one of the guilds as soon as she hit the minimum age of sixteen. The guilds had their fair share of powerful mages but the vast majority of members comprised of mages weak enough that their magic was not very useful on their own. However when under the control of a more powerful mage, the weaker mages powers can be combined and become useful. Free training and an easy job until she had the money to go follow he dreams sounded good to her. Hence why Enru was currently riding inside of a troop transport carriage to the border full of other wind mages from her guild while a few of the more powerful members of the Warford branch family rode in a more luxurious carriage nearby.

Still grumpy from being woken up so rudely Enru turned to her neighbor on the bench and said “Any idea when were gonna get to the border? This is the bumpiest carriage ride I’ve ever been on. Its soo hot in here too!” Her neighbor was a gruff middle aged man with a fairly long bushy beard and several scars on his face that had been with the guild his entire life and so she hoped he had a good idea of the distance left. He wore the same clothes that they all currently had on - simple tan linen pants, a tan linen shirt, worn looking brown leather work boots and a leather hooded cowl with an attached piece that could be pulled across their mouths to keep the sand from their faces as much as was possible. The clothes were designed to keep the sun exposure out here to a minimum as even with humanity living in perpetual daylight and being used to heat and light, the desert was a truly harsh place that still burned the skin and pushed their bodies to the limits. “I dunno lass, why don’t you tell me?” The man responded to her with a playful smirk, as the carriage slowed to a halt. “Ok, everybody out!” Yelled one of the nobles in charge of the expedition.

As the carriage thinned out and it came to Enru’s turn to exit, she hopped off the back and looked around curiously as she had never actually been to the great desert. Sand. Sand. More sand. That was all she saw, the rolling dunes going on for as far as she could see. In the far distance she could see the massive mountain at the far end of the desert piercing the sky, going up higher than she could clearly see. If she turned back around the way they came she could see some green in the far distance, signaling the plains. A few sparse trees dotted the horizon as well, although the plains certainly lacked trees in general. They had ridden quite far into the sand to stop the storm as far from the plains as they reasonably could. “Line up over here! Hop to it!” Yelled a fancily dressed man. Enru was rudely pushed forward as she realized she was still blocking the exit from the carriage. She walked over to line up with her guild mates as the man had commanded and took a moment to study him. He was, after all, the first noble she had seen up this close. He had on the same general clothes readying him for the desert as everyone from the guild but his were very clearly above their status. His shirt and pants were purple while his hook was a deep blue, all expensive colors to be had for regular folk. Golden thread held together all of the stitching and the sword at his belt had so many gemstones embedded in it looked to be more gemstone than sword and was surely more for looks than real use. That made sense though, as the man was also flanked by two hulking body guards who, despite the heat, were wearing thick leather armor covering their whole bodies and had both unstrung bows on their backs as well as very well made looking steel swords on their waists. Even the branch family ruled over several towns and villages, so some opulence is to be expected whenever one shows themselves in public. Enru thought this was a bit excessive even for them however. The man was in his young 20s, the prime of his life and the perfect time for his family to send him out to make a name for himself without embarrassing them. His hair was black as was everyones and was shaped into a bowl cut often seen among nobles. Numerous earrings adorned his ears and his face was soft and androgynous - most would describe him as beautiful rather than handsome.

“Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, my name is Badir. As you all know, you have been brought here to assist my brother and I” everyone looked around at this remark, as nobody had yet seen another man dressed like Badir, causing him to sigh and stop mid sentence. “My apologies, this barbarian dressed like a guard to my left is my brother, Reban.” Reban raised a hand in greeting and smiled sheepishly. The only part of Reban’s equipment that visibly differed from the other guard was the quality of his sword and sheath. It looked to be of much higher quality steel and the sheath was adorned with a variety of engravings while the pommel had a large white gemstone. Reban is in his early 20s and has a rough face most would associate with a bandit or rogue of some kind, but while still managing to be what most would consider handsome. “The similarly dressed man to my right is our guard Ebrer. As I was saying, you are here to assist my brother and I in forcing back this dust storm that threatens to cover our lands in more sand than we already have to deal with. We will cast the standard wind wall spell in concert while adhering to the group spell shaping type three. Depending on storm severity we may switch to other spells as needed. While lined up, I will stand on one end while Reban stands on the opposite with your strongest spell caster in the middle to assist. Everyone is to hold hands skin to skin and open yourselves to the flow of mana, sensing it swirling around you but not reaching out to meld it as if you were casting a spell. You will feel the three of us begin to pull mana through you as a conduit - you are not to resist as this will ruin the connection. This will allow the more powerful of us to shape much more mana than we are usually able to as the strain that large spell casting usually brings will instead be spread throughout all of you. Any questions? No? Good. If you’ll notice, the storm is visible in the distance so please everyone take your positions and ready up.” Badir finished his speech and everyone quickly got into formation for spell shaping type three and prepared to do as told.

“First time out in the field, rookie?” Said the man who was holding Enru’s hand to her left. To her right was Reban - as she was the weakest that the guild brought, she had to be placed next to one of the major powers in order for the formation to work properly. So far he had said nothing to anyone however, including his brother, and that did not change for her either. “Yes, I only just finished my basic training to become an apprentice two weeks ago. This job came in so fast and required so many of us though, that I was still sent.” She shakily responded with an unsteady smile on her face, clearly nervous at her first expedition being so important. “If you just got out of basic the steps should be fresh in your mind then at least, so just focus like that noble said and things will go smooth.” He smiled reassuringly at her as he said this, but then was called to attention. “Everyone, begin!” Yelled Badir down the line, which was repeated in the middle by their expedition leader Aibor so that the people at the far end heard for sure. Enru breathed in, breathed out, breathed in and breathed out. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the energy around her, in the air, in the ground, in the people next to her - mana permeated everything. For reasons humanity did not understand they could only interact with the inert mana in the air and could not do anything with the mana within their own bodies let alone other beings or objects, yet it penetrated every facet of life. Enru focused on the mana around her and waited for the connection to start.

After a few seconds, she felt an outside force probing at her natural mental barriers. She instinctively resisted for a moment before she managed to quell that natural reaction and relax enough to let the foreign presence of Reban fill her mind and energy pathways. It was a very intimate contact that made her shiver, as if their very beings had merged on a basic level. After his energy permeated her body in its entirety she felt a new connection open to her left, and again, and again - the line was slowly all connecting in a similar way and becoming one, although the energy of the others did not fill her as Reban’s did, they just brushed up against her awareness. After the entire line was connected, she gasped as suddenly the mana in the air rushed into her body at a rate far faster than she was normally capable of. She felt the telltale headache of mana overuse beginning to form already and hoped that this storm would prove easy to dissipate. As quickly as the mana entered her, it left and channeled into Reban next to her as he began casting an impressive wind wall at the same time as the other two focus points down the line. Enru’s clothes whipped and whirled around her, as did the sand, resulting in a wall of wind and sand stretching high into the sky just as the storm hit. Enru could feel the enormous amount of mana being channeled through everyone and her headache kept building, but she persevered as did everyone else. The storm and the wind wall fought for a time, before suddenly she felt something odd with her mana sense. The storm quickly began shifting and reshaping as a thick vortex of mana thousands of times more powerful than their own streamed into the storm from the North, how far she did not know, and then the storm began shaping into tornados!

“Men, someone is interfering with the storm!” Screamed Badir over the wailing of the wind. “Reban, Aibor - focus on warming the stream of cold air coming with the foreign mana. If we warm that up close enough to the rest of the storm it cant create a tornado like they are clearly trying to!” The two men began doing as instructed while Badir took on the brunt of managing the wind wall himself, the three silently partitioning the power reserves of the gathered mages between the tasks. Unfortunately, the efforts of the two were for naught as the foreign power nearly doubled in strength and several large tornados formed within the storm. As they quickly touched down, Badir finally gave the order to retreat. “Everyone, get out of here! This storm is out of control! We need to retreat to the safety of a major settlement until we can get reinforcements from elsewhere along the border!” The connection to the others in Enru’s mind broke as everyone stopped holding hands and began sprinting away from the storm and back to the safety of the plains. The carriages would take too long to get ready for travel, and Badir and his guard were on two of the horses while they held the third for Reban to escape on. As nobles they were more important than the rest of these people after all, and they needed to quickly report this incident. As Enru began running she almost immediately tripped in her fear, scrambling in the sand and struggling to see through the sand storm raging around her. Reban, who still had yet to say a single thing to her, stopped and helped her to his feet. He gave her a grim smile and pointed the direction to run. “Thank you!” She tried yelling back, but just as she started to a tornado touched down directly on the two of them! Enru screamed out and Reban grabbed onto her as the tornado lifted them into the air. Enru’s vision began failing and darkness slowly crept from the edges of her vision, the sound of the wind whipping around their tightly embraced bodies slowly faded and then she passed out from the fear.