Dare Echoes of the lost

[Thea Seydou]

The dunes rippled like old skin. Twilight hung low and purple, bleeding across the sand. The sand was still warm underfoot, though the sun had long slipped behind the broken ridgelines. Dunes loomed like sleeping giants, and the wind dragged its dry tongue across the stone.

Sahu.
Ghost-lizard.

She’d heard the rumors in the caravan camps: the breast tall as a wagon-stack, armored in glassy scales. It had torn through two water-trains last moon. Left a caravan half-eaten. The snaremaiden had arrived at the shattered caravan this morning. She had found no clean kills. Just frenzy and panic.

Thea moved with no more sound than the dusk itself. Her feet padded over shale and grit without disturbing a grain. Wrapped in her windcloak, she was colorless and scentless. The sahu had been here: the claw-prints were fresh, splayed wide and deep. Thea crouched beside one, fingers brushing the depression. Heavy. Female. Brooding, maybe. That meant unpredictable.

She rose slowly, her snarepole balanced across her back like a spine. The tracks led uphill, toward a cluster of sandstone fangs jutting from the sand. She loosed a scrap of dried fruit from her pouch and whispered a word. A name, round as sand. Moments later, without a sound, a Dustjack slipped from the scrub. Lean as bone, ears flicking, eyes pale and clever. It circled once, then settled at her side to a piece of that sweet dried fruit. Belly low to the ground. A half-wild shadow. If trouble came near, bandits, stalkers, poachers or worse, it would signal her by clicking of its teeth.

If Thea fell, it would know.
And if the hunt went well… she wouldn’t be alone.

She moved like poured oil, all lean limbs. The ridgeline broke. There, outlined in the dying light, was a shape. Massive, coiled, tail twitching with nervous energy. Scales like cracked nacre shimmered faintly, and its nostrils flared at the scent of something. And Thea knew it wasn't her scent ...

 

[Cerridwen Castille]

The cracked bones of places like the Kaikias Desert had always called to people like Cerridwen.

Magic loved old things best. And the dunes of Suldaza were saturated in it. Shroud baked in every grain of sand by an unforgiving sun, while her moons granted solace— stretched long the shadows between every oasis that dotted her golden flesh. It was a place where the earth knew more whispered prayers than the gods they claimed shepherded these lands. For what good were old gods when they forgot the names of the rain to fill the starved aquifers, or how to call back the fire rocs from the high mountains when the days grew shortest? So it was Kaikias who knew the blood of mercy best and when to answer her dutiful people. A cruel but fair mistress to all those who stepped onto her sands.

And in old places like this, in a desert that forgot more things than Cerridwen would ever know, that her truest form felt most welcome. Walking the wastes on four limbs rather than two, her black horns curving like ridged riverbone around large ears that dissipated the heat, and a hide dusted in ochre and salt.

It was true that she was a Devahni scholar when she needed to wield language and reason, but like all Devahni, she was a great prowling feline beast when she dealt with matters of instinct. The Warden was just fortunate that hers happened to have such large teeth.

But Cerridwen Castille had not originally come to Suldaza intending to use them. She had come on a funded guild expedition to excavate and translate runes of a temple half-swallowed in the folds of the desert, where wind and time had all but buried its past.

That was until she first crossed paths with a caravan along the Kaikias trading roads, rumors of a great monster ransacking and disrupting the supply lines had begun cracking angry whispers amongst them. The traders she'd encountered had been sun-blistered and scared. One told her, flat-eyed, of a creature taller than the camel he rode. Another swore it shimmered like molten seashells from the south, and that its cry had cleaved all peace from the night.

She hoped that if she could help discover what was enraging the beast, she could solve the issue and release it back into the wild without man-made interference. A kinder word than violence. But fear could only ferment for so long before it became a harder poison to cure— or, more likely, the moment gold bled from the wrong pockets, someone would be paid to put the thing down. Because it was easy to label something a threat when you refused to be inconvenienced by understanding it first.

Cerridwen had tracked the disturbance for the better part of a day, weaving through crumbling gullies and dune-throated basins until she found the carcass of a broken caravan.

She came upon it at dusk, just as the last gold ray bled from the stones and the wind began to drag cooler fingers across the dunes. The wreckage was recent and still sour with fear. She noted unmoored cargo scattered like entrails and peppered by flies, and even a wheel half-buried in the sand, its spokes splintered and pointing skyward like jagged shark teeth.

But buried beneath the smell of salt and oil, she caught two smells that gave her pause. One being the creature whose scent ventured off from the wreckage, and the other of a person who didn't just survive, but dogged the steps of that very beast that had left this mess behind. And they were close.

And so she had moved on, following a trail until it sharpened as she ascended a ragged ridge of sandstone. Tracks gouged deep into the shale.

She crept forward, her body low, belly skimming the warm stone, like a shadow stitched to the rock. Below, a basin stretched out, womb-shaped and drowsy in the dimming light.

But just before Cerridwen could crest the lip and glimpse the beast, she felt the wind turn traitor.

Where she had originally approached downwind, now great gusts swept beneath her and up her ribs, carrying her scent into the basin.

And then came a startling chittering of teeth like cold flint that froze the Devahni beast where she crouched. Her eyes narrowed, pupils wide in the dark, searching the shadowed slope opposite her.

@Thea Seydou

 

[Thea Seydou]

The sharp chitter from the Dustjack told her everything before her eyes could.

“Easy...” she whispered. The Dustjack’s tail whipped once. Thea's eyes flicked up the ridge. She knew that shape. “I see you.” Not the beast, but the form. Long-limbed. Wrong-footed. Like it couldn’t decide whether it was beast or not. A Devahni. That explained the Dustjack’s fear. They smelled like both.

The Sahu turned its heavy head toward the slope, pupils narrowing to slits. The scent wasn’t the two-legged people it had come to know. This was different. Familiar in the way fear remembers fire. A low, guttural sound vibrated through its throat, more felt than heard. Muscles bunched under the glossed scales, shimmering faintly like mother-of-pearl beneath the thin film of dust. Colors shifted across its armored flanks, muted silvers, bruised purples, the ghost of blue.

A hiss, slow and cold, vented between jagged teeth. Claws flexed against the stone. Then it began to move, not a charge, but circling. Closing. Heavy tail dragging like a scythe through the sand.

Thea watched the creature’s breath, not its teeth. Listened to the sand under its claws and the hiss.
Then, her jaw tightened.
Thea understood.
She exhaled a warm breath through her nose. Long. Controlled.
“Fear.”

It wasn’t chasing caravans because it wanted to. It was driven. The scent from the ridge, the Devhani, had tipped it fully into confusion. Now it would strike at anything. Thea reached down, brushing her fingers once along the Dustjack’s trembling spine. The little creature pressed tighter against the stone, its pale eyes flicking to hers, waiting.

Quietly, clicks. Distinct, patterned sound. Short-long-short. A signal. One the Dustjack had learned as a pup. Track the little ones. The Dustjack twitched. Ears flicked toward the circling beast, then back. Thea breathed “Go.” It peeled away from her side, slipping into the rocks like water pouring down a crack.

Then she turned her attention back to the Sahu. Thea’s pulse slowed as she watched the beast pivot, nostrils flaring, head tilting toward the ridge. Toward the Devahni. The ghost lizard lunged, straight for the ridge. Its bulk moved like a landslide, heavy foreclaws tearing grooves into the shale as it charged.

“Shit.”

 

[Cerridwen Castille]

There were moments in the field that froze the breath in one's lungs— for the exquisite, obliterating clarity they brought.

This was one of them.

ShitShitShitShitShitShitSHIT. The chant slammed against her ribs as she watched that massive, lumbering form cleave across the sand, scale-crusted hide shivering with momentum.

Cerridwen could see now what the creature was. A Sahu, a burrowing creature of the desert that fed off the concentration of shroud in the area and used it to form crystalline scales that were resistant to magic. They were aggressively territorial, especially now in the middle of their breeding season. It made for a formidable creature, and a worse foe. Especially one running at you with the ill intent of a deranged battering ram.

Thank every forgotten god, she was faster. The Devahni beast turned on a clawed heel, shale skittering beneath splayed paws as she bolted off the ridge in a spray of dust and slate.

Her thoughts scrambled to match the rhythm of her gait—Could it be rabid? Displaced? Why in the fuck was it above ground now?

Sahu typically nested deep below the shale this time of year, tunneling chambers to house their clutch and warding them with enough Shroud saturation to blister the skin off any would-be predator. Off-handedly, she remembered reading somewhere that sahu young were a favored snack of the giant sand centipede, as their new baby hide was especially poignant with shroud.

For now, she couldn't risk it redirecting toward the woman. Not until she’d calmed it.

Cerridwen pushed for her Shroud, calling to that familiar current like a branch reaching for sunlight. She was skilled in her ability to calm beasts with her innate Devahni magic. She just needed to establish a connection, and she could coax the sahu to stillness. But the effort struck a wall—the magic dead on contact. It seemed those scales indeed proved durable against even her probing. New game plan. Fucking great.

A guttural roar exploded behind her, the sound rattling through the stones. Closer now.

Fine. If she couldn’t calm it, she'd have to trap it.

With a sharp breath and a guttural bark of will, Cerridwen twisted the Shroud again. The light surged outward, coiling gold and hot around the beast like a jaw snapping shut.

A thunderous thud behind her. Cerridwen skidded to a stop, claws digging into the earth. She wheeled around.

The Sahu was encased, howling and raging within the dome of shroud she’d conjured. Sand blasted from its thrashing limbs as it hurled itself against the shimmering wall

She stared, chest heaving, as disbelief broke into incredulous relief, and she aimed her attention back at the figure half-hiding amongst the rocks.

With quick effort, she pulled the shroud back through her body, the beast-flesh peeling away like wind-worn birch bark, reforming into skin and bone. Horns shrank. Talons retracted. She stepped toward the woman, reaching out a hand.

“Greetings,” she managed between panting breaths. “I’m Professor Castille. Are you ok—?”

The ground beneath them trembled.

Cerridwen froze, then whipped her head back toward where the sahu should have been.

The orb was empty.

In its place: a large collapsing mound of sand. A dark, gaping hole. Of course, it was a burrowing creature. What a fucking idiot.

“…Well, shit.”

@Thea Seydou