“There you are. Took you long enou- well, don’t we clean up nicely?”

My cheeks turned red as I looked down at myself. After magically appearing outside the thread shop, I had found my clothes neatly folded within a bag lying on the sandstone block I had been sitting on earlier. Getting changed had been a matter of finding an alley that looked deserted and switching clothes before anyone had a chance to see me half-naked.

“Have you guys been waiting long?” I questioned, changing the subject.

“Yeah, half the damn da- ow!” Zet flinched as his sister smacked him on the back of the head.

“Not that long.” Tez answered for her brother, still mumbling about being thwacked upside the head.

“I appreciate the lie.” I smiled half-heartedly, feeling guilty about making them wait so long on me. “Things just took…. Longer than expected.”

“Anything involving Sinbad takes time.” Veronika nodded empathetically, making me wonder just how much she knew. “Bit of a strange man, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.” I murmured. “You’re telling me.”

“Anyways-” Dayvin stepped forward, “-let’s move on. The Ring Gate won’t just come to us.”

Watching him usher us on, I realized that something looked different. Before, they’d been wearing light desert clothes, but now there was a noticeable increase in tough leather and metal in-lines to reinforce and protect vital areas.

“What’s with the outfit change?” I questioned, Veronika looking at me curiously.

“Precaution. You already heard us talk about it yesterday, but this operation has a chance of being more dangerous than a group like ours would normally take. We’re used to acting as escorts against minor threats. Suppose this girl never made it to her mother while being under the care of an Iron-rank adventurer and part of a traveling caravan. In that case, there is a chance we may end up directly involved with a hostile force, be it magical beasts or monsters of the human variety.”

“What do you think happened?” We were walking towards the opposite side of the city from which we had entered, earning a few curious glances from some of the city’s citizens as they went about their business.

“I don’t know, truthfully.” Veronika answered with a quick shrug. “There could be several different options. I would have suspected foul play had it just been the girl and the adventurer. There are adventurers out there who will take on commissions such as that, and if they discover valuables on their escortee, they will kill them and run.”

“Is that common?”

“With official adventurers? No.” Veronika shook her head. “But unofficial adventurers or parties have no official backing of the adventurer’s guild who has the backing of the region holds. But, as the girl and her escort were with a caravan, you would think there would have been news reaching the mother in Kar’anza. Leaving us with several other possibilities. First-” She raised a finger up as if for emphasis. “-they ended up caught in the territory of an aggressive magical beast or monster. Depending on what it was or how many there were, they may have been breakfast.”

Little crude of a way to put it.

“One second,” I interrupted, a question popping into my mind. “You keep separating magical beasts and monsters like they are two different things.”

“That’s because they are.” Dayvin answered. “Magical beasts have mana interfused with their bodies, monsters are just big ole nasties with a shit attitude, glorified animals in short.”

“Oh.” I thought back to my master, an elevated magical beast, and how he had once explained that he had no need for a mana core as a magical beast.

Makes sense now.

“Anyways, as I was saying-” Veronika coughed loudly, I’d come to learn she hated her lectures being interrupted. “-aside from the non-human element, my second guess would be an ambush by raiders.”

“Raiders?” I questioned, eyebrows raised.

“You’ll see them out here from time to time. As I said the other day, because adventuring parties tend to congregate towards Dunehold, it leaves the outer rim of the central desert largely a lawless place. That’s not to say there are raiders and the like at every twist and turn, just there is basically no one there in the first place. As a result, you get raiders who like to camp out here, picking off lightly guarded caravans from time to time, just often enough that they don’t draw the ire of a response force who could deal with them.”

“I guess that makes sense, but why?”

“Why do humans do anything bad?” Veronika sighed. “Desperation, morbid curiosity, outright evil, take your pick.”

“That’s…. depressing.” I glanced down in thought. It wasn’t that I’d lived such a sheltered life that I was unaware of such things, but having to be the one confronting it directly gave it a new dimension that I had never considered it form. “So, what are we supposed to do?”

“First-” Dayvin spoke up. “-we need to make it to Kar’anza and meet with her mother.”

“Why?” I questioned. “I thought she never made it there?”

“It might give us information which the letter didn’t explain or that she failed to mention.”

“Failed to mention. Like, just…. Forgot?”

“Something like that.” Dayvin grumbled before pointing forward. “Well, looks like we’ve got trouble.”

“What?” I stared forward, trying to figure out what he was pointing at when I finally saw it.

“Oh. That’s not supposed to be like that, is it?”

“Nope.” Veronika chimed in merrily. “Guess we finally found out what happened to that super pack.”

I stared, slack-jawed as descending on the city from over a large dune was a sea of oversized ants, hundreds rushing forward.

“That’s a problem. That’s a problem!” I spun to look between both Veronika and Dayvin. “Isn’t it?”

“Oh, it is, but if something like that were enough to wipe out a city like this, it would have happened already.”

“Oh?”

“Just watch and see.”

I shielded my eyes from the sun, unable to blink without feeling like I was about to miss something important. With every second, the super pack came closer and closer to the city’s outskirts that we were nearing ourselves. I felt myself anxiously reaching toward my sword, but Veronika gave a quick shake of her head as she waved her hand down, prompting me to withdraw my hand from the interior of my new grey cloak.

Is it really okay?

Just as the oversized ants reached the wall, a wall which we were only a hundred meters back from, the air above began to shimmer like oil in the sun.

“What the-?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Dayvin crack a quick grin before it vanished just as quickly as it appeared.

The ants never saw it coming. One moment they were about to charge into the city; the next, they were being eviscerated by the fluctuating barrier of shimmering multicolored lights.

“Oh. Oh, that is rancid.” I began to wave my hand in front of my nose as we neared the carnage, ants still burning up when they touched the dome. “What is that?”

“Desiccation Dome.”

“Desi-what?”

“Desiccation Dome.” Tez rolled her eyes at me. “It’s a type of magic that causes whatever touches it to wither away, every last bit of liquid evaporated.”

“How does that work?”

“I don’t know.” Tez answered with a shrug. “None of us here can use magic.”

“From what I’ve heard-” Veronika stepped into, answering where Tez couldn’t. “It’s a multilayered magic, a system of spells that powers or integrates with the next. Normally magic of this scale would be impossible, far too complex, but a system of smaller spells makes up for the shortcomings. Haven’t you ever wondered how a city like this, large enough to draw attention from monsters and magical beasts but too small to house a proper militia, manages to survive?”

“I guess I hadn’t.” I shrugged.

“Tsk.” Veronika looked annoyed as she snapped a finger. “And this is what I keep saying, it’s important to know more about the world you live in than how to swing a sword. Politics, geography, defensive theory, I could go on and on-”

“We’d prefer you don’t.” Zet grinned as Veronika shot him the stink eye.

“Brats.” She grumbled after a moment, but not without the corners of her mouth crinkling upwards. “Before we head out,” She vaguely gestured forward, referring to leaving the city bounds. “Do we have everything we need for the trip?”

“Depends.” Tez scratched at her nose as she jostled her pack. “If we have to take the full trip? I vote we eat Zet if we run out of food.”

“Hey.” Zet glowered at her indignation, but his sister continued to ignore him. “If the Ring Gate works, though? Good here.”

“Everyone else?” Veronika looked between the rest of us, but we all made similar comments.

It’s going to work. I’m sure of it.

Looking back semi fondly of the small city one last time, we walked past the short stone wall, the glowing dome no longer visible as the last of the ants were fried.

At least, I hope so.

------------------------------------------------

In the three days that it took us to reach the Ring Gate, I can proudly say that nothing really happened for once.

Sure, Zet managed to fall into the den of an oversized antlion at one point, a trend of giant insects I had noticed. Still, other than the surprise of the sand swallowing him up, it was largely uneventful, the inhabitant of the den seemingly out for whatever reason.

And thus, three days of travel through the scorching sands passed just like that, far more comfortable than one would have expected for a desert trek.

Well, I was comfortable at least, the clothes made by the enigmatic thread store owner making the desert heat no more uncomfortable than a day spent lounging in the sun. As for my compatriots, well, based on their lack of arguments, I could tell they preferred to get this trip done.

Halfway through our third day of trekking through the coarse sands of the central desert, we had been in the process of sliding down a rather tall dune when Veronika raised a hand, stopping us.

“Look.”

I followed the direction of her outstretched hand, cupping a hand over my eyes as I looked towards the horizon.

“What is that?”

“That’s what I was wondering.” Veronika muttered.

“You don’t know?” I looked at her in surprise.

“I don’t know everything.” I expected some sort of laugh or smile to cross her face, but she looked toward Dayvin, an unspoken conversation.

“When we get near, I want eyes up.” Veronika finally announced after seconds had ticked by. “Something strange is going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t tell what that is, but I can tell you what it isn’t.” Veronika looked around as if keeping an eye for any other strange things. “We should have been reaching the Ring Gate sometime today, and by all rights, we haven’t lost any time or lost our way.”

“Wait, that’s not it?”

“No.” Veronika answered. “The Ring Gate looks exactly what it sounds like, an oversized ring. That looks like some sort of…. Building maybe? It’s hard to make out from as far as we are.”

“Shouldn’t we avoid it?” I put the question out there, but I was met by a universal look of disbelief.

“You do remember what our official title is, right?” Tez was staring at me as if I’d hit my head too hard. “Adventurer. Ad-ven-tur-er.”

“I get it.” I grunted. “Adventurers adventurer. Isn’t it a bit dangerous, though?”

“Perhaps, but-” Veronika glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “I think we will manage as long as we watch ourselves.”

It was beginning to become apparent more and more that Veronika was perhaps overstating my abilities.

Or maybe I’m the one looking at it backward.

My entire experience with the world at large had started with the appearance of a Great Sage, then being taken under the temporary tutelage of an elevated magical beast, culminating in a mad dash up a magic mountain while being pursued by nameless enforcers of the central power of Haerasong.

Perhaps I was the one looking at things from the wrong frame of mind. It wasn’t as if beings of such legendary status or power would be hiding behind every nook and cranny.

At least, I hope.

Don’t get me wrong, anyone my age dreamt of being whisked away on an adventure, but now that I had been, I was beginning to quickly realize there were differing levels to an adventure, and my early one had already been enough for quite some time.

“How long do you think until we reach the building thing then?” I tried to scan the horizon, but I could only faintly make out a blocky patch.

“Two, maybe three hours. Then, at the very least, we can get out of this gods forsaken sun.” Veronika huffed, marching forward as the group began to follow along once more.

The matter settled; there was nothing more to do than quietly observe as we drew closer to the mystery on the horizon.

---------------------------------------------

Zet whistled lowly as we stood before the towering pillars, the five of us taking a moment to really drink it all in.

“Well, that’s something new.” Dayvin admitted as his head scanned about the surroundings. “It’s like it all just…. Popped up overnight.”

“Well, you aren’t all that wrong.” Veronika answered as she stood up from letting her hand sift through the sand. “It, in fact, does appear to have sprung up overnight.”

“Huh?” Dayvin looked at her with a dull surprise on his face. “I wasn’t seri-”

“I know you weren’t serious, Dayvin, but I was.” Veronika pointed down towards the sand. “Look.”

“What about it?”

“Look at the pattern, the movements of the sand ripples.”

I stared down, trying to make out what Veronika could see, but clearly, I lacked the experience she had as I saw nothing.

“The sand isn’t uniform.” It was Tez who pointed it out, pointing off in several directions. “Normally, the sand should have a sort of pattern created by the wind, but this, this looks like it was pushed back.”

“As if something large emerging from below displaced it.” Veronika was smiling as she looked back at the construct. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I said before frowning. “But, uh, what exactly ‘is’ it?”

“Looks to be at least from the reconstruction era, maybe even earlier.” Veronika was pacing, her steps leaving small indents in the soft sand. “There have been signs of similar era relics near some of the other Ring Gates, but I’ve never heard of an entire temple appearing around where one used to be, and literally overnight to boot.”

“Reconstruct- time out. What did any of that just mean?” I looked towards the twins, but they both had glazed-over eyes as she spoke.

“The reconstruction era was what we call the early historical period marking the rise of the current iteration of Haerasong. There have been four eras, technically five if you count the current. First was the Lost Era, which has most of its history lost to time, if you couldn’t guess that. What remains of that era has seemingly been destroyed, the erasure of their history likely an act of vengeance against them from their successors.”

I’m guessing that the Lost Era was when the Sages were around then.

“After that, we have the reconstruction era, the formation of Haerasong into three regional powers. While the powers themselves have fluctuated and varied over the years, the basic power structure has remained largely the same.”

“Right, got it.” I nodded. “And so this temple thing is from around then?”

“You can tell by the architecture.” Veronika pointed towards one of the nearby columns that formed a pathway towards the temple’s interior entrance. “Relics of the early reconstruction era are often marked by ring-like carvings, though the importance of those rings has never been deciphered.”

Bet I could tell you right now

As tempting as it was, I kept my mouth shut. A fifteen-year-old guy whose story was that he came from a small village spouting off lost historical knowledge would likely do little good for my cover story.

“Anyways, these ruins have risen from beneath the sands for whatever reason.” Veronika was babbling, excitement in her voice. “Meaning, if the Ring Gate really is inside, it may be active.”

“Meaning we get a short trip.” I said.

“Meaning a short trip and a chance to learn some lost history. For an adventuring party of our rank and status, it’s not exactly a common occurrence for us to get the chance to delve into lost ruins that haven’t already been studied or pillaged.”

Veronika placed her hands on her hip, staring at the imposing entry into the temple-looking building. “Alright, it’s decided. We will head in and see what we can uncover.”

The twins sighed as if they expected it before Dayvin gave me a reassuring nod.

“She gets like this.” He was watching as Veronika quickly made her way towards the temple entrance, gesturing us forward. “Finds an opportunity to discover something, and she shifts gears entirely. It can be a bit of whiplash, but it’s what makes Veronika Veronika. And besides, she has never led us astray.”

I nodded, at least thankful for the vouching word by her longest-running traveling partner.

“Now c’mon, before she leaves us behind.” Dayvin thumped me once more as we caught up to Veronika, who led us inside after she saw us following.

“Whoa.”

The inside was…. Well, not what I had expected. It was like an inverted pyramid, the entrance descending a long set of stairs towards a single flat marble slab. Most striking was that at the very bottom, a giant ring was positioned directly next to three steps atop the slab at the bottom.

“Um, I take it that’s the ring gate?”

“You’d be correct.” Veronika said excitedly.

“So, I’m just going to go out and ask the question that I’m hoping others are thinking.” I stared at the Ring Gate, feeling myself resisting a sort of gravity drawing me towards it. “If the Ring Gate used to be outside in the desert, how did it end up inside a temple which apparently rose overnight?”

“That is one of the questions we are looking to answer.” Veronika answered.

She sounds too excited about this.

We slowly made our way down the descending steps towards the looming ring gate. With each step, gravity pulled me forward, growing stronger until it took everything I had to resist the pull at the bottom of the inverted pyramidal structure.

“You guys feel that?” I could feel my legs beginning to shake from the effort.

“Feel what?”

“Like you’re being pulled toward the gate.”

“No. You feel like you’re being pulled?” Dayvin was eyeing me cautiously as gauging whether I was about to explode.

“Yes, or sort of? It’s hard to explain, I can feel it, but I don’t think it’s really happening.”

“Interesting.” Veronika watched me as if excited that I was feeling something abnormal. “Any other effects?”

“Not really?” I poked my arm just in case, but nothing special happened.

“Well, if that’s the cas- does anyone hear that?” Veronika froze as we began to look all around us.

“Hear what?” After a moment of being unable to make out what she was speaking of, I finally asked.

“Something like….is that water?” Zet said, speaking up.

I leaned in, trying my best to listen to the sound that both Veronika and Zet were apparently hearing. After several moments of silence, I heard it, a quiet rushing sound like a small river coursing by.

Except, I’d grown up next to a river. And that wasn’t a river.

“I don’t think so.” I answered Zet’s question as the others looked at me. “It sounds too coarse.”

“Sand.” Tez said after a moment.

“Yeah, it sounds sort of like rustling sand.” I snapped as her words made the sound click into place.

“No. Look. Sand.”

Pointing towards the entrance we had entered from, our heads turned in unison to witness what she meant.

Sand. Pouring in slowly, at least for now, sand was rushing in, but with each passing second, more and more began to spill down the steps until a river of sand was coursing forward.

“Uhh, that’s not supposed to be happening, is it?” Panic began to fill me as I stared at my compatriots.

“What do you think?” Dayvin grumbled. “Alright, change of plans. To the Gate, we aren’t going to manage to get back up those stairs like this.”

Rushing the Gate, we clambered onto the marble dais, hoping to see a sign of activity from the empty Gate frame.

Nothing.

“Alright, Rook, you’re up.”

“I am?”

“You’re the one who said the Gate would work, so show us why you were so confident.” Veronika looked between me and the rushing sand as she spoke before giving me a fake smile. “No pressure.”

Yeah, as if that has ever made anyone feel any better.

I made my way towards the Gate, hoping the Gate would simply react to my presence and begin doing whatever it did.

Except nothing happened.

Oh, this is not good.

I peered at the Gate, and much like it had been described, it was covered it two sets of carved bands, five on one side of the archway, five on the other.

How would a Sage make this work?

“Hey, you know, Veronika may have said no pressure, but now might be the time for some pressure.” Zet was nervously looking between me and the entry.

“Why?”

I made the mistake of looking over as well, only to feel the pit of my stomach drop.

Oh, oh, this is so not good.

The sand was coursing in as if pressurized, and we were at the bottom of the interior of the inverted temple pyramid. We would be the first things buried, sand already beginning to reach us.

Okay, Rook. No pressure, except yes, pressure because we are all going to die.

That would be one way to go out. The ‘reincarnated’ Sage, dead to a bunch of sand.

I’d rather not.

I desperately began to feel along the smooth stone of the arching Gate, but I couldn’t find a switch or a button. The Gate was nothing more than a fancy-looking circular stone in its current state.

Think Rook. If the Gates were that simple to activate, they would have figured them out long ago.

What was it that the Sages had that those of the modern era didn’t?

The Rings, obviously.

If I had to guess, the Gates could be activated when mana was pulled from the rings of a Sage and channeled into the Gates. Ordinarily, that would be a problem, as I was still a long way off from even my first ring.

But while I may not have had any such Rings, what I did have was a body molded by the magic of a Great Sage of all people. I was sure that had to count for something.

I hope.

Closing my eyes, I let my sense of the world wash away as I focused on the mana within my surroundings. Earthen, thermal, the usual.

There!

There was distinct mana within the Gate, the Gate connected to some unimaginably old mana source below, like a river of magical energy.

Is this what they call a leyline?

I’d heard it mentioned here and there from my mother, natural repositories for mana that would travel deep beneath the earth, which could be tapped into.

And apparently, the Sages who had likely built this Gate had done precisely that.

Alright, well, if that’s the case….

“Rook, hurry!”

I didn’t bother opening my eyes; distracting myself would only be worse for us. Gently, I reached within myself, to my own pathetic embers of mana smoldering within. Because of my body, I would never unlock the full potential of those embers, never see them develop into something great of their own.

But they didn’t need to be anything great for what I was doing. Imagining it within my mind, I took one of those embers, gently blowing on it until it fluttered out from me and into the Gate, where it sank in without a sign.

Please, please work.

“Rook!”

I finally opened an eye, just in time for a wave of sand to crash into me.

“The Gate!”

All around us, sand was crashing forward in one endless wave. We’d be buried within seconds, but the empty stone frame of the Gate was no longer empty. A black vortex swirled within the circular stone arches, red lighting firing sporadically from within the darkness.

Hey, that looks like-

But my mind never got to finish the thought, as one moment I was staring at the Gate, the next I was being hurled at it as Dayvin scooped us all up as if we were nothing more than children and leaped into the darkness.

If this is what I think it is-

As if on command, suddenly I was falling, falling through a dark vortex that would have terrified the daylight out of me if I had not already fallen through once before.

I mentally sighed, crossing my arms.

At the very least, I just hope it doesn’t take as long this time around.