Chapter 766: Evander, At Your Service

…Several days earlier…one hour since the Midnight Sun…

“Hurry up,” Tauri called out as she marched up one of the many dunes that surrounded them in the desolate desert.

“Slow down,” Gale replied. Unlike Tauri, she trudged through the sand at a measured, slow pace, her eyes searching for anything out of the ordinary.

“What are you doing? We’re going to lose Stryg,” Tauri said, hands on her hips.

“We already lost Stryg. That is why we’re in this mess in the first place.”

“Which is why you need to hurry up. You saw the Astral Light. You know just as well as I what it means. Holo and Melantha forbade him from using that power for good reason.”

“And you think rushing blindly into the desert will help? Look around, Tauri. We’re lost.” Gale gestured all around them with her arms open wide. There was nothing but dunes of sand in every direction. Though the stars shone above them in the night sky, neither of them knew the patterns of the Aurous stars well enough to guide them.

“The Astral Light was ignited that way,” Tauri pointed to the horizon. “Which means Stryg must be somewhere around there.”

“Are you forgetting that the light caused a sandstorm that laid waste to everything several leagues from its epicenter? For all we know, Stryg could be buried under any one of these dunes. We could have already walked past him and we wouldn’t even know it.”

“So what do we do? Sit around and do nothing? The Astral Light would have left Stryg weak, if not worse. He needs us.”

“If he needed us, he wouldn’t have left us with just a damn note!” Gale snapped.

Tauri paused, taken aback by her companion’s outburst. In all the time they had spent traveling, she had never seen Gale genuinely angry at Stryg, until now. “...He must have had his reasons.”

“I told him not to go. Whatever that weapon was, it warranted enough protection to be guarded by a small army. We needed a plan, an actual plan. And what did he do? What he always does. Head straight into battle like a blundering fool.” Gale groaned in frustration, “Has it crossed your mind why Stryg ignited the Astral Light? What sort of enemy could have driven him into such a corner that he felt no other recourse than to use the one ability that could kill him?”

“The letter said there wasn’t enough time to formulate a proper plan. Maybe he had to take the risk, no matter the foe,” Tauri held up the piece of paper, as if it would somehow support her argument.

“Then he should have told us himself. We could have figured something out together. But he didn’t. Do you know why? Because he didn’t trust us enough.”

Tauri’s expression softened. Tauri knew there was no one in the world Stryg trusted more than Gale, though she kept that observation to herself. “Trust us to do what?”

“To fight with him! To support his plan, however stupid it may be.”

“Maybe this whole thing was his plan,” Tauri said thoughtfully.

“What?” Gale looked at her as if she had gone crazy.

“The Astral Light. Stryg knew the weapon was being guarded by a small army of elite warriors from House Clarus. Powerful artifacts. Elite battlemages. Creatures of ancient and powerful magic. The weapon was being transferred and our window of opportunity was closing. Maybe Stryg realized that there was no way of reaching the weapon through ordinary means. So, instead he chose the one thing that no one could stop, not even himself.”

“The Astral Light.” Gale shook her head. “But that’s stupid. He can’t control it. Holo said he got lucky the first time, but that if he ever ignited the Astral Light again he could die.”

“Maybe Stryg thought the risk was worth it.”

Gale sighed and sat down on the sand, head hung low. “Yeah… that sounds like him. Then again, so would rushing into that encampment without a plan.”

Tauri sat next to her, legs crossed. “True. But if he did plan to ignite the Astral Light, then he wouldn’t have wanted either of us near him when it happened. He would have known neither of us would have approved of him taking on that kind of risk, so he left us a note instead.”

“A note that says nothing regarding the Astral Light.”

“True,” Tauri admitted with a frown.

“The problem is that if what you say is true, then Stryg is a greater fool than I imagined. The Astral Light didn’t just destroy the weapon and its guards. It destroyed that small town. And who knows how many other towns were nearby, let alone travelers. The sandstorms would have buried hundreds if not thousands of people. Those innocent lives are on Stryg’s hands. The Stryg I know wouldn’t have done that, not on purpose.”

“You’re right,” Tauri whispered.

“I guess we’ll find out the truth when we find him.”

“So, what’s the plan?” Tauri nudged her shoulder.

“Find a town that isn’t buried in sand. Hopefully one of them will have a map of the stars. We can use that with our map of the region to figure out where Stryg might have gone. If we’re close enough, I should be able to sense him through our bond.”

“Could your Chosen Bond sense Stryg if he was buried under a mountain of sand?”

Gale chuckled, “Yeah, I think so—” She stopped mid-sentence as the sands of the dune ahead of them began to shift.

“Please, tell me that’s Stryg.” Tauri got up and hefted her morning star.

“It’s not.” Gale drew her sword and took a stance in front of Tauri.

As the shifting sands reached the bottom of the dune, it stopped. Gale and Tauri shared a tense glance.

After a long moment, Tauri spoke, “What do you think that was—?”

The sand burst from beneath their feet as multiple long, winding limbs sprouted in a whirlwind of sharp carapace, sending both women tumbling down the dune in opposite directions. An orange spider the size of a carriage emerged from the sands, its eyes a bright milky blue. Its fangs chittered in delight as it zeroed in on Tauri’s prone form at the base of the dune.

Gale shook the sand off her body and got up with an angry grunt. “Tauri!” she yelled as the spider rushed the orc, but the latter did not move. Brown mana filled Gale’s legs and she leapt across the sands, sword held high. Blue mana surged into her sword, sending tendrils of lightning crackling through the blade. She landed haphazardly on the giant spider’s back and drove the sword between two of its dark orange plates near the head.

The spider shrieked an ungodly sound and shook from side to side, trying to throw Gale off. The vampire clenched her jaw and held on tight. “Die already!” She drove the blade in deeper and poured lightning through it into the spider’s flesh. The monster seized up and collapsed, its limbs twitching. Gale slumped atop it and exhaled heavily.

“Watch out!” Tauri yelled, but it was too late.

Gale turned in time to see a second spider leaping out of the sand right behind her. The spider pinned her against its mate’s corpse, its sharp limb digging into Gale’s breastplate. Gale grimaced in pain and instinctively reached for her sword, but it was stuck in the dead spider’s flesh.

With a mighty roar like the warlords of old, Tauri sprinted at the monster. She spun low in a circle, deftly dodging the spider’s bite, and came up swinging in a wide arc. Her morningstar slammed into the limb pinning Gale down and cracked the carapace open in a bloody green mess. The spider chittered angrily and pulled back.

Tauri responded with her own war cry and slung fire into the spider’s eyes. The spider squealed and fell back, scratching at its eyes. Gale rolled to her feet, yanked her sword out of the dead spider, and filled the blade with lightning once more. She held the sword in front of her with two hands, the blade pointed up, and only a centimeter from her face.

Gale closed her eyes and took a steady breath. “I am the Chosen of the Winged One, Lord of Death, and Prince of the Moon. I fight in his name, so let my blade strike true, in this life and the new.” The blade shimmered with a power that belonged to no mortal. Eyes still closed, Gale pulled her arm back and hurled her sword at the spider. The air cracked with a sound like a whip, though deeper, as the blade flew in a burst of lightning and cut through the spider’s body, cleaving the massive beast in two.

“Holy shit, what was that!?” a man yelled from atop a nearby dune, his hands on the side of his head as he stared in awe at the scene of carnage.

Tauri and Gale turned simultaneously and glared at the man in question. “Who are you?” Tauri asked.

“Oh, my apologies. I am Evander, a humble bard, at your service,” he bowed deeply, hand on his chest as was custom in these lands.

A tendril of water extended out from Gale’s hand and grabbed her sword, before pulling it back into her grasp. “Did you send these monsters after us? Speak quickly, or I will have your head.”

“What? No, of course not. I’m not your enemy, rather, an ally. I swear it,” Evander said.

“What are these creatures?” Gale asked suspiciously.

“Those are deepsand spiders. Like their name suggests, they burrow deep in the sand and wait for unsuspecting prey to come nearby before ambushing them. They usually hunt in pairs.” He stared at the two dead spiders and swallowed loudly.

“Why are you here and how did you find us?” Tauri asked.

“I saw you both at Red Pond. When I realized you were heading south, I had to warn you.”

“Warn us of what?” Tauri asked.

As if to answer her question, a dozen more chittering shrieks resounded in the distance.

“This is spider territory. And whatever that thing was that lit up the night sky disturbed the spiders’ sandpits. We have to get out of here before more come,” Evander said.

“Why are you helping us?” Gale asked.

“I don’t think that really matters right now.” Tauri glanced at the surrounding dunes warily. The sounds of the spiders’ chittering were only growing.

“Fine, lead the way, human,” Gale said.

“Gladly,” Evander sighed in relief.