The wind was wild and vicious with little fangs of sand carried from the desert floor. The sun above beat down mercilessly and the ground stretched on endlessly. Theron took it all in, and loved it. For here, history had been written.

“Why’d you stop?” Another man trudged up the dune to stand behind him, clad head to toe in same brown robes as Theron. His voice came through clearly despite the conditions, transmitted through the magicked cloth over his face. “Seeing a beautiful mirage?” The man, Isaac, came up even closer to look directly over Theron’s shoulder. “Because all I see is the same sandy wasteland we’ve been trekking through for hours.”

Theron stepped away from the sudden proximity, but it was more reflex than anything to do with his old friend. His attention had long since been consumed by the desert before him. “No.” He held up his left hand, clenched tightly around a compass. The needle, crafted from something like glass, glowed with a bright red light. “We’re here.”

“Eh?” Isaac scanned their surroundings again, eyes squinting even tighter against the wind. “Really?”

“Don’t sound so disappointed.” Their third companion joined them. A woman, though you could only tell from her voice. “You haven’t been the one lugging everyone else’s crap around.” She dropped a towering series of packs on the sand. She rolled her shoulders, accompanied by a great pop and a luxurious sigh. “I don’t care where we stop at this point. Honestly, where do you guys get off treating a lady like a pack mule?”

Isaac adjusted his own small pack and held up three fingers. “Right, Val: One, most of that stuff is yours. Two, if you’re going to base your magic around monstrous strength you should be prepared to use it. Three, pack mules don’t talk.”

She clicked her tongue. “Just so you know, as soon as I’m no longer your body guard I am going to hurt you.”

“Which is precisely why I made sure Hal’s contract lasts longer than yours,” Isaac replied. The last of their group, Halvard, finally approached.

“I look forward to the battle, Miss Valencia,” the man said. His was not a joking tone. He stuck out from the others, even cloaked much the same way. He was a head taller than any of them, and the pale strip of skin around his eyes stood out fiercely against the brown of his head covering.

Theron ignored the entire exchange. Instead, he strode over the dune until the ground leveled out. In his hand he held the compass, gently moving it from side to side. Dark eyes seemed far more interested in taking in every little grain of sand, yet he followed some invisible trail laid out by the gentle pulsing of the compass. He stopped again, once the beat had become so frenetic it seemed a stable orb of light. “Here…right here,” he said, barely more than a breath.

This was the center of the desert. Somewhere around here, maybe even where Theron stood right this moment, the last demons of the Great Incursion, one thousand nightmares wrought in flesh, were defeated. It was here that the kingdom of Viridiam, the whole continent, was saved from certain destruction at the cost of a single human life.

“Well, according to the legend, this all used to be mountains, too…” Theron mused, looking over the rolling expanse of desert. The constant rushing of the wind broke a little as another body came up beside him, snapping Theron from his reverie. He shuffled for his tools beneath the folds of his cloak.

Halvard had kept pace, but their other companions had become embroiled in some new argument until they realized they had been left behind. By the time Isaac reached him, Theron had finished driving a stark white marker into the sand. “This is really the spot, huh?” he mused aloud. “I expected at least a monument or two for the hero who saved the realm.” What may have been an offhand comment rang harshly from an adjutant of the Royal Assembly. It was a terrible offense to their nation’s history, and an even bigger breach of public relations protocol. What had his ancestors been thinking?

“Oh, there are several,” Theron replied. He stood, idly brushing the sand from his knees. It was a vain attempt. “They’re all buried under the sand, though. Every few decades after the Incursion a new king or lord would pilgrimage out here to erect a statue or something, but the desert just kept swallowing them up. One should be right below us, now.”

“Almost like the hero’s ghost was embarrassed, isn’t it?” Valencia caught up, carrying far fewer of the bags with her. “That’s surprisingly cute.” There may have been a certain edge to her voice, but Isaac chose to pay it no heed.

“You were saying something pretty different when we told you why we were heading in on foot,” he said.

Valencia’s smile curdled. “What can I say, a little humor helps me deal with raging stupidity.” Theron plucked a bag from her hanging hands and brought it back to the marker.

Isaac rolled his eyes. “What kind of mage doesn’t believe in ghosts?”

“A modern one! Certainly, some sort of psychic imprint could scare off animals, but an actual manifestation capable of blowing an airship out of the sky is completely ridiculous! ‘Ghosts’ like that only exist in old wives’ tales!”

“And official historical accounts from the Royal Library,” Isaac replied.

“Yeah, from as recently as when airships were basically wooden bricks with sails,” Valencia countered. “Brought down by a sandstorm, no doubt. They’ve made a few strides in design in the last century or so, you ignoramus.”

Theron sat hardly more than a yard away from the bickering of his companions, but paid them as much mind as the wind. A number of implements now lay around his marker as the scholar did his work.

“Bluster all you like,” Isaac said. “I remember the way your eyes lit up when I said our goal was the Desert of Blades.” He leaned in when his target flinched. A sly smile grew underneath the cloth. “I bet a girl like you grew up listening to all the old stories of the heroes that came out of this desert. Maybe you’re even hoping for a bit of sharp and pointy loot of your own, hm? Maybe become the hero of this Incursion?”

Valencia shoved her employer rather than take a step back herself. “Old legends have nothing to do with it. It’s a well-recorded fact that hundreds of magic weapons were brought to bear against the demons here. It’s why we’re all here. That doesn’t mean I believe a ‘ghost’ is going to tell my future and throw my perfect sword at me. It means only sixty or so of those weapons have been found so far, swallowed up and then spat out by the desert, same as the monuments.” She grit her teeth, as if to cut off the growing tirade. Isaac practically radiated his amusement, and she refused to stick to his pace. Instead, she turned to Halvard.

“Just a little one?” she pleaded. “I won’t even do anything permanent, I promise. He’ll be good as new by the time he gets back to the capital.” Isaac wisely danced out of reach, kicking up sand, to take cover in his other body guard’s shadow.

“Just a reminder, I am paying you explicitly for the purpose of denying such requests,” he said. “It’s in your contract, you can check.”

Theron absently turned to put his back between the small site and the scuffle. He poured little drops of something green around the marker, and made notes on the tiny billows of steam.

“There will be no violence here,” Halvard said, a soft declaration made no less surely for it.

“Ha! Wait, here?”

Valencia made a guttural sound from deep within her throat. “Don’t tell me you believe in these ghost stories too?” If Halvard was embarrassed, it didn’t show.

“My people marched an army across this desert, bent on conquest,” he said. His voice grew increasingly solemn. “Thirty thousand of the warriors that put the whole of the West underfoot.”

“Wait, you invaded us?” Isaac said. His eyes jotted back and forth, recollecting years of study in history and politics to become an official of the state. “That’s news to me!”

Halvard turned, head leaning down to look his employer in the eye. “Exactly.” He left on one heavy word, marching some way past them into the desert.

“W-well,” Valencia quickly found her voice, “that could just be an old folk tale. I mean, the Beornic Empire fell more than two hundred years ago, when their western forces…suddenly…broke…apart.” The wind howled around them.

“Welp.” Isaac cleared his throat and straightened his robes. “Theron found the origin point, so who wants to get the fuck out of here?”

“Oh, now you’re both just being silly.” Theron stood from where he worked, foregoing any attempt to brush his cloak this time. He smiled, visible only through the happy crinkling of his eyes. “Quit jabbing at each other and I am ninety-eight percent certain we won’t be eviscerated by the Phantasmal World.” Isaac and Valencia shared a look. “Besides, we still have to find a few more points if we want to sketch out a map of the nexus web.” He held out a spool of bright blue thread in one hand, leading from the white marker. “Here, one of you can hold this while I find the next point.” His eyes practically closed under the growing weight of a smile. “For king and country, gentlemen and lady.”

Isaac gracefully stepped behind Valencia, whose glower could practically be felt in the air. Still, she took the thread in hand. “For king and country,” she mumbled.

Theron led a march of varying moods over the sand, compass glowing in one hand and something like a level in the other. They could spy Halvard standing sentinel on a not too distant dune. Isaac joined him just a little more quickly than was dignified. It left Theron and Valencia some ways off when the scholar set down to hammer in the second stake.

Valencia stood there awkwardly, holding the blue thread. She really wanted to ask what the Hell a ‘Phantasmal World’ was supposed to be, but the young scholar had just made it sound so obvious…Dammit, she was supposed to be the mage here!

“So…” she paused. “Did you come here to study this Phantasmal World thing?” Smooth work, Val, she though. She almost hoped he wouldn’t hear it so she could try a better lead in, but the wind had chosen then of all times to die down some. Theron looked up from the stake.

“Hm? Well, it is a fascinating phenomenon,” he said. “But smarter men than me have poured over it for the last thousand years to no avail. I’m just here to do what I can.” Theron had been giddy with excitement since Valencia had met him at the beginning of the trip, a constant energy that was belied by his reed-thin and sickly appearance under the desert cloak. The sudden depth of emotion in just those words broadsided her. The feeling around Theron passed in a moment, but Valencia considered him more carefully as he asked for a few loops of thread.

“You know, I was kind of surprised when I first saw they sent a proper archaeologist with the advance squad,” she said, passing him the spool. “Dismissing ghosts, it’s not the safest trip.” That hardly needed to be said. After all, they came all this way to make traveling the realm safe again, among other things.

Theron chuckled nervously, a sound so quiet it might have been lost before the wind slowed. “Well, I thought it was important to make sure we got it right, but Isaac convinced the Assembly I was the right man for the job,” he said. “If we don’t tie down the nexus web properly before we march everyone in, it will be close to impossible to locate any of the artifacts among the clutter of everyone’s energy signatures. This isn’t a resource we can afford to squander, if there really is another Incursion on the way.”

Valencia raised an eyebrow. “Very pragmatic. Should Isaac have been teasing you about going demon slaying?” Theron flushed up to his eyes.

“Aha, oh no,” he said. There was a pause as he finished tying up the stake. “…Only in my childhood day dreams. I’m not exactly,” he made a casual gesture at himself, “well, anyway, this is all I can do to help.”  He stood, preparing his devices once again. Valencia took back the spool without being prompted.

With her free hand, she pulled down the cloth over her face, no longer harried by the blowing sand, and favored him with a wide smile. “Well, find some nice toys here and I’ll make sure the Hunters know the first kills are for you.” Theron looked at her, eyes wide, then laughed.

“Deal,” he said. “Ah, I’d shake your hand, but…” A number of other tools seemed to have joined the level and compass. Valencia waved him off.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. Let’s go—onward to victory, right?”

Isaac watched them go along toward the next point over Halvard’s shoulder, squinting. “Huh, looks like I missed a juicy conversation.” He sighed. “Dammit all, if it isn’t impossible to eavesdrop when the wind is like this.” Halvard said nothing, of course, but he also watched their other companions. And their cloaks, unmoved by the howling desert winds that engulfed him and Isaac.