Residing a day of fast travel away from main roads that lead away from the Dune’s Diamond, the Dune’s Hive is the largest gathering of settlements within the whole of western Necrovia. The usual journey would have involved a stroll across scenes that slowly transitioned from more vibrant grasslands to desolate desserts. However, only endless dunes greeted Tonya and Augen as headed off early that morning.

As they rode on both sides of the camel’s hump while it trotted off, Tonya couldn’t help but notice Augen’s yawn despite his best effort to be polite, “Augen…I am sorry to have dragged you into another thing again…”

“I should have slept earlier, but Wu and Lera were chit-chatting until way too late…” Augen said as he placed rested both hands behind his head and tried to relax, “And no, don’t mention it. I mean it. We will support you for whatever you need to do, because that's what friends would do. Plus...it's also the right thing to do...”

“Fine, I won’t anymore...” Tonya smiled lightly as she played with the hair on the camel’s back with her fingers, “Wu and Lera…how long have they been together?”

“From what I know, quite a while.” Augen leaned back until his entire body's nearly dangling off the camel before he took a small sip of the water in the most difficult way before continuing, “Before me and Fatera, before the Academy, and before even Ver, they were just on solo adventures. When you do everything with just the two of you, I am sure that’s when their budding flames were lit…And look at us now, another solo adventure, am I right? Haha…”

“Yeah…” Tonya nodded when Augen hurried.

“I am joking! Of course…I didn't mean that!”

“I know!”

And so they continued on with their journey. To pass the time, Tonya had been asking all about Augen’s past and his time at the Infinite Academy. That especially included that strange encounter with Mus and Mila during the Cultural festival. With all that had transpired, it wasn’t exactly hard to fill a day of travel with his stories.

When the darkness of the night started to darken the southern tip of the Western continent, the two stopped to give the camel a rest and feed before setting up camp for the night. They shouldn’t be too far away from their destination as Augen taught Tonya how to check their locations with the compass and the map in hand. After a short quiz that ended because of Tonya's rumbling stomach, Augen concluded that they should be another few hours of travel away until they reach the outskirts of the Dune’s Hive.

Knowing that they only have a small distance to cover the next day, they two then prepared for the night.

Nights at the dessert had always been far from quiet, from the breeze that brushes through the dunes and sends grains rolling down the slopes to the chirping of bugs and hissing of snakes. With his Summer Lotus card that had the yellow flower painted in hand, Augen sat and waited for a snake as it snatched forward to eat a bug before he fired off his beam, cutting off its head cleanly before the headless body flopped onto the ground and twitched a few times.

Returning to the camp victoriously with his catch, Augen activated his Forbidden Winter card before creating a sharp edge made of ice upon it and descaled the snake, revealing its tender flash.

“You want some?” Augen asked as he lightly seasoned the snake’s flesh and put over the fire to grill. Tonya held her dried bread and looked at the meat longingly before wondering if eating lowly snake meat disqualifies her from being a future princess of Necrovia, “So…that’s a yes?”

“Oh, no! I…shook my head…but you couldn’t see it…” Tonya sat up and lowered her head apologetically while still peeking at Augen shrugged and laughed.

“No…I felt it, your honest answer through the Wave.” Augen said, standing up and leaping over the fire before taking a seat next to Tonya with two sets of roasted snake meat. He found Tonya’s hands easily before placing one of the wooden sticks in between her fingers, “Or rather, I heard your stomach grumble from a mile away!”

“Hey!” Tonya slapped Augen on the shoulder lightly as he laughed and tore off a piece of the meat to eat with a large bite, “Don’t say such things to a princess!”

“Sorry sorry…” Augen suppressed his chuckles and quickly finished the snake meat in a few bites. Then, he felt Tonya’s right arm pressing against his left as she shifted closer ever so slightly. She watched the beautiful stars above, and Augen went to work on those roast meats.

It was only when he leaked the wooden stick clean that he took notice of the surroundings. The noises remained, yet the Wave around him was different. He could feel the wonder emanating from Tonya’s pure Wave.

"The stars...it's stunning..." Tonya murmured, "My mother always said that the stars are the most beautiful away from all the lights of the city..."

"Do you prefer to be out here?" Augen asked as Tonya slowly started to bob back and forth, and he matched her slow movements.

"Absolutely not..." Tonya chuckled, "But it isn't half bad now that I am here..."

Tonya woke up after Augen as the morning sun was above the horizon, and they buried any evidence of their stay before heading out quickly.

It wasn’t long before they caught onto evidence of the Dune’s Hive’s existence as dozens of smoke trails decorated nearly all of the horizon when the two finally started to appreciate the true scale of the Hive.

Some referred to the Dune’s Hive as the people’s capital, and that is no exaggeration. From the moment they marched over the last peak, there were countless tents of all sizes and colors as far as they could see, and far beyond. The people moved around as streams of white dots as busy markets, shops, training squares, and residential tents filled the city with life.

There were other traders riding camels and dragging carriages of containers coming into town at the same time as them, and those carriages were responsible for kicking up the smoke trails. The two of them joined the entourage while covering up their face as their ride trotted down the main road into the settlement before coming to a halt near the busy main square.

“You’ve never been here, have you?” Augen asked as he and Tonya both put on the hood and parked their camel at a small stall towards the edge of the city where other camels were being cared at. Tossing a Necrovian coin at one of the workers and taking a leather strip with a number burned into it, the two then continued on foot.

“This is not a place where a princess is allowed to go to…” Tonya said as she followed closely behind Augen, “We should go to a good gathering place to find out about this rumor of an...attack…”

“Well…I think that’s the issue…” Augen smiled dryly, “There are too many places to gather.”

As they turned into the main road with stalls and mountains of people piling up as far as Tonya can see, she finally started to appreciate the gravity of the situation.

Not everybody can afford to live in and around cities, and those that roam the desserts eventually found each other, thereby creating the Dune’s Hive after years of congregation. And now, hidden within the countless people, is a budding rebellion that will threaten everything that Tonya has left. To find the flames of rebellion amid the heat of the Dune's Hive is to find a needle in a haystack.

Though curiously, there seemed to be no shortage of water around here.

The combined chatter of thousands of people became suppressed as song as a bell became rang from the main square, and the people standing on the main road suddenly came to alert before quickly moving to the side as Tonya and Augen were forcibly moved along by the crowd.

Like a saint parting the oceans, the main road had completely opened up as Tonya held onto Augen’s wrist to prevent them from being split apart.

“What’s going on?” Augen asked quietly when Tonya squeezed him and murmured straight to his ear.

“I don’t know.”

A series of camel trots started to become more and more audible as a group of riders pushed through the square and moved along the main road. Tonya got onto her tippy toes and looked towards the entourage when she caught a glance of the man riding at the very front. He scanned the crowd with routine indifference while enjoying the attention deep down.

He was a tanned man with a clean-shaven head that reflected the shine of the sun unapologetically. He had deep yellow eyes akin to that of a serpent behind his tall nose and in between lines of facial tattoos on both cheekbones of his face. He wore clothes that were made from materials that reminded Tonya of the snake scales that Augen had sliced off the night before.

As he passed right in front of them, the man's gaze swiped passed them before quickly skipping ahead to others.

“The mighty Zmey Korol looked at us…He looked at me…” The voice of entranced women from behind them caused Tonya’s heart to skip a beat nervously, and Augen turned to Tonya and spoke lightly into her ear.

“He’s strong in the Wave. Far stronger than anyone else here…”

“Including the other riders?” Tonya asked, picking up Augen’s hand and bringing it towards the group of riders behind him.

“The others seem…normal, but he’s special,” Augen confirmed when the others opened the containers behind them and revealed the containers of water within.

“Water!” Tonya gasped lightly, “But that’s far more than what would have been stolen yesterday…And these won't be enough to support a town as big as this regardless...”

“Maybe it’s not from the Dune’s Diamond…” Augen murmured as the crowd started to surround the riders with their purchases as the pushing and shouting began. Augen and Tonya instead turned the other way and followed after the man with a handful of guards beside him, "And there are other ways to harvest water, just not all are equally as pleasant..."

Tonya nodded, and thought back to the disgusting taste of cacti juices. They have gone past a few dedicated cactus farms along their way here, and there would also have been a handful of underground rivers that people have found among the desserts also.

“I don’t suppose you have heard of Zmey Korol's name before?” Augen asked.

“Nah uh.” Tonya shook her head as she avoided the broad shoulders of another man and walked around him with Augen, “But if there’s anyone that’s capable of gathering an army here, then it has to be the strongest person.”

"That was easy then." Augen shrugged when Tonya gave him a look and sighed.

They continued following the man on his camel ay past the market section of the settlements until they eventually reached the inner parts of the settlement which had dozens of training circles fenced in a stronghold with groups of men training intensely in close-quarter combat with regular weapons. The two hid behind an abandoned toolshed and watched the man leap off the camel and straight into one of the rings, correcting the poses of one of the trainees before and watching them practice again.

“That's too obvious now…” Augen murmured as he pressed himself against the wooden side walls of the shed and felt for the faint signatures of the Wave when he heard a hiss from a snake that had curled around a pole next to him. He scared off the snake with a single flash of his Wave before continuing, "It’s not like he’s trying to hide it either…”

“So…what do we do?” Tonya asked when she kept turning her head back and forth to make sure she can see the going-one of everything on the streets around the stronghold, “This has escalated far beyond something we can easily deal with!”

“We join them.” Augen said, placing a hand on Tonya’s shoulders, “Prove our worth and join the ranks. Easy peasy.”