At first it was a low, slow rumble, lost in the roar of the geyser. Dorian didn’t register it, not at first. Only when he heard the click-click-clicking of jostled glass did he bolt upright, just in time to see a beaker of healing elixir topple from its perch to land mouth-first in the sands. There it trembled with the ground, all its red gushing from it in spurts.

Kaya was still inert on the ground. He leapt to his feet and burst out the door-flaps. He scouted the perimeter for threats, then his surroundings. Nothing. Was it an earthquake?

He closed his eyes, feeling for the tremors in his feet. In times like these he wished he had Spiritual Sense to do an in-depth probe of all his surroundings; instead he had to rely on limited feeling. As the trembling rose, as voices cried out and bleary-eyed heads poked out oftents all around him, he mapped the rhythm of the sands.

All he got was a sense of direction. The epicenter was in front and to the left… he turned to face the geyser, frowning. Around it sand leapt up in jostling waves, dark-yellow pinpricks bursting about in all directions as though every speck of sediment had come alive. Was the epicenter directly under the geyser? How could it be?

In the corner of his eye he saw a procession of Festival officials burst out of a tent, a few still in silken bed-clothes. A second later a figure shot into the sky. It was Zhang, staring out at the rest of them and the geyser with a furrowed brow. “Do not panic!” he shouted, his voice supernaturally deep and rich, boosted by qi to drown out the very-much-panicked cries. “Officials are investigating the disturbance as we speak. Stay where you are. Stay calm. We shall deal with it shortly.”

By now the trembling had gotten so bad the Festivalgoers had trouble staying upright. It wasn’t just shaking anymore; the ground tilted under his feet, careening from side-to-side, sending plumes of sand gushing back and forth, crashing over tents and uprooting cacti whole. Screams filled the air, louder this time; the sound of heavy thumps, then sharp twangs as tent-strings were snapped from their moorings en masse and objects of all sizes, beakers to hides to trunks to halberds, flew in all directions. Beneath it all was a low, dragging groan of the earth, smothering all. Zhang shouted something else, raising a lordly finger, but it was lost in the noise.

Natural disaster? Yesterday’s dream came to Dorian in a flash. Was this what Fate was warning about? He tapped his interspatial ring. All his valuables were stored within; he was safe. Then he paused, glancing back to his tent. Almost all. Somehow, Kaya was still dead-asleep.

Before he had time to dash for her, the ground bucked beneath his feet like a stallion. He nearly fell over; he had to steady himself on his hands. Then, with a growl of frustration, he took to the sky with Cloud-Treading steps and surveyed the landscape with a grim eye. All of the camps were in chaos; a mass hysteria had gripped the Festivalgoers. Warriors, hopped up on qi, chucked techniques at random; Tribesmen ran to and fro, screaming and yelling, searching for a refuge that wasn’t there. All of the Tribesmen knew what to do when struck by an enemy clan or Beast, but this attack had no form nor face. In the desert there was nothing solid to cling onto, either. No shelter. All of them were clear out of their elements. From this vantage it was like watching the panicked scrambles of an ant-colony dropped in a lake. Add to it that none of them had ever felt an earthquake in their lifetimes…

Dorian stilled. Then he searched through Io’s memory again, just to be sure, his arms crossed. No memory of one. He couldn’t recall reading of one happening either—in Io’s lifetime or any other. Were there earthquakes in this realm?

Something wasn’t right. Dorian felt it down to his bones. It unnerved him.

Then Dorian noticed the dots in the sky. He’d been so focused on the geyser that he noticed them only now, and when he spun around, taking them all in, a spike of deja-vu struck him. He’d seen dots much like these weeks ago. Only this time he had the eyes to make out the contours of feathers and slick black beaks in the far distance. Eyes that coursed crimson. A Vordor swarm, coming fast.

But that wasn’t all. Now that Dorian let his perceptions expand, he saw peculiarities in those shifting sands. The ground upended itself in streaks; it came from the distance in droves, drawing closer at a frightening pace. Something—many somethings—were burrowing under the sands, and made dozens of lines straight for them. An attack! Coordinated. It must be.

Then a sound enveloped the world, devouring all else: a fathomless, distant rumbling, deeper than even the groans of the ground. It came from the depths of the geyser, rising fast in pitch and sound and scope. Dorian froze as soon as he heard it. With his eyes still fastened to the mouth of the geyser, he unleashed his qi. Yama’s Chains wreathed his arms and fell in long strands on either side of him, inky as night. All other threats were forgotten. That roar… he knew it with a certainty cold as the pit forming in his gut—that was no earthquake’s roar.

On instinct he leapt far into the air, up and away. The roar was rising to a crescendo; now it sounded like metal screeching against metal, piercingly shrill. In that sound Dorian heard seething rage. Something had to give. The sands ridged up, sending bodies tumbling down new dunes; the roar grew deafening, echoing madly.

Cringing, Dorian thought back to last night. Old Man Fate’s words. The old fucker was right! What had he said? Blood, tragedy…all-seeing eye?

Above him Zhang swerved around, grimacing. Underneath, several Festival officials fled for cover, shrieking. A few had buried themselves under barriers and defensive qi-treasures. Chaos. There was too much to keep track of.

“Stay calm!” roared Zhang, and his body lit up with shining, silvery-white qi. “This is all under control. Stay where you are!”

As though on cue, the geyser exploded.

Whitewater crashed out in all directions in a bone-rattling boom. A great mist tore through the air, blasting Dorian and sweeping past his hair. He was twenty feet in the air and still a torrent smashed him with so much force he went flying, drenched head-to-toe. A thousand screams were drowned in an instant.

He spun, gathered himself, wiped the water from his eyes, and recovered just in time to see a head the size and color of a glacier emerge from the mouth of the geyser.

He saw cruel, snow-white eyes. Scales which flashed blindingly in the low light. Horns the size of parapets ringed its jaw, climbing to a mouthful of jagged teeth. Blistering ice-blue qi poured from its mouth, as though it held a blizzard in its throat. Then that mouth opened in a blink, unveiling rows upon rows upon rows of those icicle teeth, stretching to an impossible size.

Zhang didn’t have the chance to so much as flinch before it closed around him with a sickening crunch.

Dorian watched in a sort of incredulous shock as the rest of the beast emerged, translucent wings unfurling like webs of billowing frost. Four scaled limbs knotted with muscle set next to an underbelly armored by thick ice-plates. Its tail, a spiked whip of ungodly scale, was the last to come out. Frost Dragon. Beyond the Profound Realm—it must be! What rank? Earth? Sky, even? And this was no ordinary Frost Dragon at that. This one must be centuries old, maybe millennia. Its mere presence was like a dent in the world; so much pressure came from it that the air around it caved in, warping. The pressure struck him like a hammer-blow to the chest; he had to fight to keep from toppling out of the sky. This was a creature impossible to fight. Not at his stage.

At the same time the Vordors drew closer. The creatures burrowing beneath the sands were almost upon them. The men and women below had all lost their heads. Dorian whirled around, heart pounding. How this had gone so catastrophically wrong so fast he didn’t know. He had to flee.

Where was Kaya? The ground was a mess; everything that could fall had fallen. He searched as fast as he could. There was no time. He’d need to abandon her. The thought sent a pang through him but he suppressed it before he even identified the emotion. There was no time for sentiment, either. By the state of things on the ground, whoever had ordered this attack had struck a fatal opening blow.

Then the strangest thing happened.

“Hi-ya!” went a voice. A beam of golden light streaked up from below. Approaching the Frost Dragon it was so small it looked comical. But when it struck it sizzled against the scales, sparking fiercely, and where it fizzled there was a blackened hole in the ice-armor. The Frost Dragon reared, bellowing, and turned to face its attacker.

Pearl stood there, a wild grin on his face. “Come!” He roared, another tongue of sun-gold qi blossoming on his fingertips. He said it with the bullheadedness of a man blissfully unaware he was about to die.

By now the Vordors had surrounded them on all sides. Streaks of black dive-bombed would-be escapees, engulfing them mere feet from the main Festival grounds. The sands burst open, and out poured Wyrms big enough to swallow men whole, eyeless and clad all over in rough, brown, segmented skin. Their mouths were horrors of onyx black and sandstone yellow. There must’ve been hundreds of them, all in the Vigor Realm, circling from all directions. It was enough to seal off any possible avenue of escape.

Panic buzzed in Dorian’s ears, but he tuned it out by force of will. He felt like he’d been caught in a landslide. Where was there to go? What was there to do? It’d all come so fast. This sort of attack didn’t just materialize out of thin air. It must’ve been planned meticulously. The mystery felt like a mental itch he couldn’t quite scratch. Shadows of knowledge hovered in his subconscious, begging to come to light. He gritted his teeth. “Tch!”

In front, the Frost Dragon bellowed full-throated. The Wyrms crushed in on all sides, opening their maws in near-unison and tearing at the flesh of hapless Festivalgoers. The Vordors descended in rhythmic sequences, wings beating uniformly. The sight triggered a memory in Dorian’s mind; in a flash he knew who’d done all this.

“Ugoc Shaman,” he breathed aloud. It was just like the last attack. He didn’t need to overwhelm the enthralled Beasts if he could strike at the one controlling them.

But where was the Shaman? Nobody was perched on the backs of Vordors. Nobody had come riding a Wyrm. It took a tremendous degree of concentration to orchestrate an attack like this. Was he seriously to believe the Shaman didn’t maintain close range? Or stay in sight-line of his beasts?

No. The more likely explanation was that the Shaman was among them. This was timed too well. Perhaps he’d been here all along, blended into the Festivalgoers, and only now, when everyone was properly drunk, properly vulnerable, did he tug on his thrall-connections and summon his Beasts to him.

Who was it? There were thousands of people here—hundreds in the Vigor Realm!