"Do I have something on me, Gervais?" Gíla called out to her former lieutenant.

The bear-maiden lifted her eyes from the thick, tattered book in her hands to cement them on the bulldog countenance of the man in question. At another firepit some close-ways away, he stared back at her as hard as he had the forest that one night after Vucan, lips pulled down in a permanent frown of disappointment and anger. She asked him the question again to no answer save a barely noticeable scoff that transitioned to him looking away at last. Gíla sighed and returned to her book, though the image of the man's gray eyes boring into her kept her from fully appreciating the words she was to divulge from the text.

Up to that point, Gervais had yet to take his eyes off her since they made camp in this patch of oasis in the vast desert of Tahrir, focused on her for some obscure reason she had yet to identify. It was a routine by now, one Gíla was undoubtedly tired of. Ever since her return to the fold from Heaven Above, and especially since she had organized this jaunt into Tahrir with the permission of King and Bishop, Gervais Tamas had found every reason to question her authority, reasoning, and purpose for not being branded a heretic. At times, she was even confident that he had considered killing her in the dead of night or accusing her of some witchery the others were too blind to see. The latter was more or less already performed by this time, having been one of his primary arguments against the expedition into Tahrir. Reynfred, to his credit, had shut it down as quickly as it formed, leaving the bulldog leashed on a prong collar.

She found the idea of him trying to kill humorous, knowing that even he posed no more threat to her than a gnat did to a snake. God Almighty, or Aedol as he had corrected her, had ensured that she would be unassailable by any mortal man in the land of Central Khirn. However, she was more than aware that such defenses meant little in dangerous places such as what lay north and south of Khirn and even this cave system they were marching to.

A shock of fear ran through her as she recalled the atlas Aedol had crafted solely for her, the sensation heightened by her reading the book in her hands. So many words saying how great the vast lands of Khirn were, from the Hell Pit to the Secluded Lands south of Belanore. How splendid E'aura was when the religion of Aedol - named God Almighty after a universally accepted mistranslation of a Dwarven word - migrated from its sands and built the proto-Vamourin Dynasty during the time of the warlords such as Acominatus - back when they were known only as the Golden Lords. It terrified her, remembering just how puny Khirn and E'aura were compared to the landmasses mortal life had been blinded to by Aedol during his rampage, and how the actions of those puny insects that inhabited it would decide the fate of the world in its entirety. She had considered telling the Bishop this, that Khirn and E'aura were no more continents than archipelagos compared to what actually made up the world. Such knowledge would ruin the minds of Eadward Crius and his followers.

"Lady Arsinoe," said a silvery voice from the shadows outside her campfire's range. She looked back up to see the sauntering approach of a comely dressed Galeran Reynfred, his luxurious hair pulled back with a band and glistening with scented gels. A pendant of the Blessed Harbinger's eye-sigil hung from his neck, gleaming gold with a ruby iris. "May I sit?" he asked.

"I care little for your presence, you pissant pup," she began to grumble, stopping herself mid-sentence to instead say: "Of course."

Galeran slowly lowered himself on the opposite side of Gíla's firepit, crossing his legs and holding his hands to the flames as the chill winds of the desert night crept through the camp. Gíla could hear every knight, even those of the Lambency, slightly shiver from it. Even she could not avoid a moment of chilled shuddering as the wind whistled in its dance.

"How fare you from this journey, my Lady?" Galeran asked. Gíla snorted at the kindness showed to her, unused to her former captain being so polite and courteous to her. She recalled, again, how he had once treated her as an oddity, a curiosity in his ranks rather than someone to treat with a modicum of deference or respect.

"I am well, Galeran," she said kindly, lowering his eyes back to her book. "And how do you fare?"

He took a moment to respond, perhaps wondering why she was refusing to meet his gaze. "Well," he said. "Though I cannot say the same for my men."

"All of them, or just Gervais?" she quickly asked, flipping a page for emphasis.

He laughed. "All of them." He paused for a moment. "It is true that Gervais finds this journey quite unfortunate, though I imagine he, and the others, would be worse off in the North."

"Why do you say that?"

"I've yet to tell him, but I have received letters from our soldiers in Veoris. No fighting so far."

Gíla was pleasantly surprised, looking up for a moment from her book. Galeran, illuminated by the flames, was practically divine in his appearance. The gold of his pendant and his hair shone like clusters of stars, the studs of his doublet glistening as much as the gel in his hair. A beard of stubble had begun to form on his stone-chiseled face, further emphasizing his objectively handsome features. It was a wonder no woman had taken him to marriage yet, though she was sure that many had taken him to bed at the very least.

"How long do you think that will last?" she asked him.

"I could not say, but I can hope that it will last until they reach whatever church lays in the mountains. You are sure the King has all directions needed to get to it?"

Gíla nodded. "Yes. And I gave instructions to his generals. If they miss it, then they are fools. Or, more foolish than they are already."

Galeran smiled through the fire. His teeth were perfectly set and painfully whitened with bleach. "There you are again with that lack of reverence for our King. It fascinates me."

The bear-maiden's eyes flared, and the wall she had built around her choler crumbled a few inches. "Why?" her voice was thick with annoyance, and there was a tinge of an accent that had not been there before. An Aslofidorian accent it remained, but broken in places by something one could only call alien. Her parents had warned of that. A Drayheller's voice was never set in stone, constantly changing to adopt the ones of those most around them, like a child constantly developing its voice as it aged over and over again.

Galeran noticed it with a flicker of his eye but kept it away from the discussion. "We are all servants of him, and we all seek to do right by him."

Gíla scowled behind the fire. "Do right by him? I seek to do right by God, not Aslofidor."

"Yet you still serve him, like me," Galeran declared, shifting himself uncomfortably on the sandy grass of the oasis floor.

"I serve God, Galeran. Not Aslofidor. Not your King."

"Aslofidor serves God by proxy. His Excellency Crius said-"

Gíla snapped her book shut, cutting him off. "I know what Eadward said, and I find you unworthy of repeating it."

Galeran's smile faltered into a disturbed curl. "I meant no disrespect-"

"And there was none taken, Galeran. I speak only the truth as it is. You are a soldier. More so a glory hound trying to impress the ladies-in-waiting of some hen at court. Do not presume to spout rhetoric at me unless we are fresh from a battle."

Galeran's disturbance rose. "My Lady, if I offended-"

"I said there was no offense taken, Galeran. I simply tire of your presence and your voice. Leave me now and go back to your men."

Galeran was silent, and the bear-maiden could see that he had no recourse for this situation. Never had he been so thoroughly removed from power or charisma; never had he been so thrown into the pit without hope of climbing out of it. Gíla waved with her hand to brush him away. He did so slowly and cast a quick confused look back at the bear-maiden before vanishing into the shadows between firepits, leaving the bear-maiden alone again as she preferred.

It was not long before a new man arrived at her firepit, his scowling face lined with old scars, buried hate, and vein-bursting loathing for the seated woman. Gervais Tamas was every bit the intimidating knight up close that he was at a distance, despite the fact that he posed no threat to the bear-maiden.

"Who do you think you are, Drayheller?" the bulldog asked the bear-maiden. "By God Almighty, who do you think you are to speak to Galeran Reynfred in such a manner? A man blessed with skills you could never have."

Gíla sighed and snapped her book closed again. "I speak with the authority-"

"You speak with the authority of shit," Gervais snarled, kneeling to meet the bear-maiden eye-to-eye. "You push your boundaries too far, Drayheller. You speak ill of our King and now of our commander. You slander their names by uplifting yours with lies and contempt."

"I speak the truth, Gervais."

"You speak the truth of a false prophet. A charlatan who has wasted the time of our King and our church. And when we find this cave and see it empty of what you claimed lies there, the others will realize it too."

Gíla rose to her feet, lifting Gervais with her in the motion. Her stature was titanic in the light of the flames. Voices from around the camp hushed in sudden awareness of her rise and Gervais' presence by her. "Do you seek to ensure the end of all our lives? Do you so hope that what I have told the King is a jest? A power play?"

Gervais shook his head. "I do not hope. I know. I have known since you first showed up in Jore. The others saw you as a prize to protect. Some special attraction. But I saw you for what you were. What you are. A Drayheller. A thief of knowledge, a manipulator of history. Always pretending to be weaker than they are so they can strike the unsuspected. Serving without their own causes. Uncaring of all lives but their own."

"And yet, in Galeran's words, you sought to preserve my life in battle. Despite all of that belief. You sought to ensure I was aware of how wars were fought after Vucan, ensuring I still lived. You still did this even on Galeran's orders, which you could have disobeyed."

Gervais' face softened only a sliver at the memories. "I sought to perhaps turn you to our side after the battle. After I saw how...human you were. I wanted then to steer you away from the pit of all your damnable kind." His face darkened. "I was a fool to let Mille allow you to leave the Harbingers for that bitch. That outsider only furthered your fall into damnation."

Gíla's choler began to reforge. The flames of her firepit intensified slightly with the clenching of her hands. "The outsider you did not notice until the war was already over? Until you saw with clear eyes again?"

Gervais had no counter to this. None of those who turned against the rebellion could ever have a counter to this. Jira ne'Jiral, the knight of secrets, the human at the borderline of humanity, had swindled her way into their ranks by arcaeno or other methods and convinced all of them that it was normal. That she was normal. That she was human. "I should have killed you in the Bastion before you left for Murlay. I failed to save your soul, and this chicanery could have been avoided had I done so."

"Jira would have killed you before you ever had a chance," Gíla growled, her eyes brightening to sunlight radiance, the flames growing hotter and broader as the walls around her temper crumbled more.

"Captain!" shouted Galeran Reynfred from a nearby firepit. Gervais turned to his commanding officer. "Leave the bear-maiden be. You are on watch tonight for the northern perimeter."

Gervais halted as he instinctively walked away to his new post, returning his glare to the bear-maiden. "By the end of this foolery, you will be killed. And I will be the one to kill you."

Tahrir was a land of desert. Endless, cacophonous desert sprinkled with oases, forts, buried villages, holdfasts, walled cities, goat farms, and - most importantly - forgotten or frequented holy sites. It was a land perhaps even more religious in their faith in God than Aslofidor. Maybe this reasoning makes relations between Tahrir and Aslofidor markedly better than any other.

It was joyous to the company, then, when they came upon one such forgotten site, an obelisk inscribed with old scripture that Eadward Crius took great pains to study during the next few nights that they stayed there.

"It is an old blessing from the first Luminances who made it out this far," Eadward mused. "I wonder if it is by the same people who found the cave. Perhaps it is a ward to keep further travelers from harm."

"Or perhaps offer them shelter from the blistering sun," said one of the Harbingers as he doffed his armor. "God, how can the Tahririans deal with such heat?"

"They are built for it, like their goats," another answered. "Just as we are built for more temperate climes. I will say, I miss those temperate climes."

"I wonder what Veoris is like," asked another.

"I hear it is cold and empty aside for some forests and grasslands here and there," answered the first, now down to his undergarments. "What I would not give for such a climate now."

Gíla watched Eadward ignore the conversation between his faithful, his old hands running over each inscription. She had earlier taken up some effort to study the scripture with him but was more preoccupied with further reading the books she had taken along for the journey - namely the one she had required most from the Bishop's library. A strange sensation came with it like it did not want to be read. Each page brought a new feeling of nausea, neck pains, eye strain, and even - at one point - a trickle of blood from her nose. According to the Bishop, she was capable of reading far more than he could before having to put it away. In another time, she would have considered turning this text into more appropriate hands, perhaps a Drayheller family set to go across the Jade into E'aura. Unfortunately, she had to hold onto it. As it was, the book was impossibly informative in her eyes - impossibly in the no of the divine. Eadward had said that it was as if he was hearing the book talk to him some nights, translating the Words of God into his ears. Gíla found difficulty in denying that the more she read, and the more she understood. Judging by the book's content, they were but a few days from the cave's entrance. A few days from the wellspring. A few days from the Athenaeum.

For three of those days, the company elected to enjoy a reprieve from the scorching heat of Tahrir. For three of those days, they stayed at that obelisk, basking in the shade that it provided from the sun and even encountering a lovely caravan seeking momentary rest from their own journey. Ten silver bought them a goat to eat for their rest, and ten more silver replenished their water supplies. Eight gold from the bear-maiden procured journals, spare maps, and a personal canteen of Tahririan wine that tasted distinctly of strawberries, while five silver and two copper fashioned her a better cowl to hide her face from the sunlight. That night, the company rested, ate, and drank with the caravan at a short distance, and they felt a sense of safety in the shadow of the holy site which seemed to invigorate and bring out the best in each of them.

On the fourth day, a mere hour after the caravan departed, hell came for them.

The ground shook when Eadward Crius asked: "Do you feel that? What is that?"

The ground was shifting when Galeran Reynfred said: "Something is moving under the sand."

The ground was bursting when Gervais Tamas said: "Take positions!"

The ground was gone when he finished.

What came from the sand was not a particularly tall thing, but it was monstrously large enough to defy the reason the company had grown up with over the years. Arachnid and black, its bulbous mass of eyes swollen with orange pus, its crooked lobster-like body ending with serrated claws and a stinger held high in the air. From the sands, it had erupted like a volcano, claiming one of the Harbingers in a gory deluge of limbs and sinew. Gerould, she knew him. Reduced to a stain under the sun. It screeched horrendously after the blood and cloud of sand settled.

Gíla breathed hard as she immediately recognized it as one of the horrifically mutated things that screamed internally to Aedol for salvation from its torment. A scorpion, so cursed to become this horror defending what likely was its hunting ground.

"What the fuck is that thing!?" a Harbinger cried out.

"It got Gerould!"

"A demon!" Eadward Crius blubbered through snot and tears. "A demon! It blasphemes this holy place!"

"A mutant. An aberration!" Gervais Tamas boomed.

"Demon or not, we kill it!" Galeran Reynfred proclaimed. "Send it to Hell, brothers!"

Gíla pushed one of the Lambency out of the path of its stinger, grunting as the shockwave of the impact toppled her balance. She rolled just as it pierced down again, swinging her hammer in a curving arc to bat it away from her body. The head of her hammer connected with a crack, orange slime spilling from between the splinters of its shattered shell. Gíla scrambled to her feet as a member of the Harbingers rushed past her with a battle cry and a flourish of his mace. The thing turned on his crooked legs and skewered him with its stinger, chunks of spine spilling from his back as he was lifted and then thrown onto the ground with a dulled thud. Several of the horses were taken as well. Crushed into the desert, devoured in the maw of teeth, or dismembered in tornadoes of viscera.

"Aim for its eyes!" she shouted to the company, motioning with her hand to the cluster of pus-oozing orbs in the center of his face. The scorpion-thing's maw opened into a fanged bellow of noise as if angry that she had pointed out its most obvious weak spot.

Pyrin Titanmark lunged at it from the side, jabbing with his pontoon and skewering a single orb. Pus spurt from the wound as the thing back-clawed the Lambency into the obelisk, their arm clattering from the impact. Another of the elite did the same - this one caught midair by the thing and shoved into its mouth. Screams gurgled into silence as the Lambent knight was chewed into a metallic pulp.

"Kill the fucker!" Galeran Reynfred screeched, leaping with side slashes and hacks at the scorpion-thing's carapace with his mighty sword. Pieces of shell cracked free onto the sand, giving Gervais opportunities to draw blood from its growing number of wounds as it focused on stopping Galeran.

More struck out at it, another one of the Harbingers being severed in three by gnashing pincers and a Lambent knight being crushed into the ground by its flopping weight. Gíla ducked a sideways swing of its left arm and smacked down at its cluster of eyes. One popped like a grape from the blow. Gervais jumped on top of it and stabbed down into the bunch with his sword. Gíla jumped as well, angling her leap to pull the bulldog off the back of the scorpion-thing as its stinger ruptured where Gervais had been standing.

"Thank you," he said breathlessly without a hint of begrudging tone.

Gíla offered a curt nod and rose up, swinging her hammer for legs, back, side, tail, and face. Anything that she could hit, she hit, thundering through its carapace with ease compared to the humans. Pyrin Titanmark advanced again, shaking off the pain of colliding with the obelisk, jabbing his speartip into the open maw of the beast. The creature snapped the weapon like a twig and reared its pincer to cut for the Lambent knight.

Eadward Crius appeared from nowhere to pull the knight away into safety as the pincer severed air. It screeched in frustration and turned to Gíla and Galeran. A backhanded claw sent Galeran flying back, and suddenly, the thing thrust its body forward into Gíla's. Gíla dropped her hammer from the impact of the hit and shot both her hands out as the scorpion-thing crawled for her, intent on devouring its first taste of Drayheller. Her hands gripped gnarled fangs as the beast reached her, pushing against it with force only a Drayheller could fashion in the company of humans. Screeches poured from the thing as much as its own ichor did. The angle Gíla stood was impossible for the thing to counter, unable to reach her with its pincers and lift her against the strength she pressed down against it.

"Kill it!" she commanded. "Kill the damned thing!"

It swung its body to the right with enough momentum to result in Gíla pulling the thing's fangs out of its mouth. Gíla stumbled into Galeran, prompting him to shove her onto the sand as the thing approached, bleeding from two holes where fangs had been. Drooling slime and roaring in pain, it lunged.

And wrapped its left pincer around Galeran Reynfred's torso.

Time stood still at that moment, the percussions of fate booming in the background within the orchestra of the universe. Gíla found her bearings and sprinted as fast as she could in this non-time, her body straining as speed was practically non-existent. She screamed in slow-motion, rearing her fists up to crack them down into the cluster of pus-filled eyes, hoping that such an action would get it to drop the man from its grasp.

"Kill it! Kill it now!" Galeran screamed, defiant and distorted as the thing's serrated pincer began to close, blood belching from his sides as time remained in mud-slowness.

He was an anomaly, his body moving faster than time was flowing, swinging, roaring a challenge at the thing's face, slicing through the left of its eyes and stabbing into the messy remains. Elsewhere, Gervais Tamas lunged through the air like a man possessed by divine might, leaping so high as to have produced invisible wings, descending similarly with a great spear of the Lambency poised to pierce the skull of the thing. Eadward Crius, in an incredible performance of bravery more likened to a man fifty years his junior, had lifted a sword of a fallen Harbinger, rushing opposite Gíla, his mouth bursting with slowed war prayers.

It closed its pincer, and Galeran Reynfred, mouth agape in the apprehension of his sudden mortality, split in half at the waist as three attacks hit the beast. Blood, sinew, intestines, and ichor flowed freely on the sand.

"Galeran!" Gervais wept as time resumed.

"Commander Reynfred!" the remaining Harbingers echoed, rushing to the man's bisected corpse.

Gíla found herself unable to move as she stared at the ruin of monster and man, her thoughts running as quickly as the tears on the faces of those kneeling over Galeran Reynfred's broken corpse. Three days had been spent here in peace, granting the faithful a chance to worship, to converse, to be calm in a place that was not an oasis or holdfast of-

Gervais Tamas' fist cracked off her jaw in a moment quicker than a dying star's explosion. Gíla felt no pain, nor was she moved an inch by it. Gervais struck her again and again, tears flying from his aged eyes as he screamed bloodied hate for the woman. "This is your fault! You brought us here, you fucking witch! You charlatan! You Devil's whore!" Nothing registered in Gíla's mind from the crosses to her face, to the hooks against her chest and belly, to the kicks - even those to her groin. She felt nothing from the attacks of the bulldog whose screams mingled with the caterwauling of his soldiers.

A sudden ringing, horrible pain filled the area like a thousand lances of glass descending upon them. Gíla fell to her knees as she covered her ears, Gervais doing the same but keeping his glaring hatred set on the bear-maiden. "I will fucking kill you," he growled as the pain increased and the screams of the Harbingers rang in the air. Gíla closed her eyes, focusing on internal thoughts as the area was suddenly beset by a reddish glow and a shaking of the earth.

Silence filled them all in an instant, broken only by the collapsing form of a Lambent knight who was more armor than he was flesh by the time life fled his body. Gíla righted herself onto her feet and shook the stinging ache from her head. She rubbed her temples as the sands around the obelisk settled at last.

"What the hell was that?" she prepared to ask.

Galeran Reynfred sat up with a scream followed by heaving breaths as color returned to his pale skin. Gíla fell onto her backside once more at the shock of the man's movement. She gave her own yell and reactively reached for the nearest weapon, a longsword of a fallen Harbinger. Galeran jumped to his feet and explored his body with confused roamings for the wound that had separated torso from legs. He, and the others, found it mended.

Eadward Crius, panting and on his knees, smiled and wiped the blood from his nose. "So did Calion Oddo give his life for Galeran Reynfred's own. In the name of God Almighty, we worship this sacrifice and praise the revival of a man most touted as the greatest of all knights."