Emily puts all of the ptes through a series of tests, cheg everything from their resistao bullets and magic to their density in order to select the perfect choice. She settles on a blend of steel taining a touch of bck iron, the best option for barength while using up as little of her magical resources as possible.

  After ing to a decision, Emily gives Podrick the scrap testing ptes as him to engrave identifying markers into each so she use them agaiime she o pick a specialised material for something. While he pletes his monotonous task in the er, Emily sets about cutting and shaping new panelling for Calypso.

  They work through the night without issues, and the ship tinues on its pnned path the eime as Emily follows Ange’s instrus. In the m, they take a short break to grab breakfast when Ange and Tony take trol once again. Afterwards, Podrick heads to his room to sleep for a while, uo keep up with Emily as she returns to work on the armour.

  She works aloil he returns, her body moving uhe and of her sedary cores, carefully following her new blueprint for the ship while her primary sciousness focuses on refining her design for some defensive arrays to engrave on it.

  In the early evening, after Podrick has returned from his rest full of vigour, Emily pauses in the middle of bending a rge sheet of dark grey metal, releasing her foot from the pedal of the mae she’s using as she turns her head to stare at the wall with a frown.

  “What’s the matter?” Podrick asks as the hiss of steam stops, and he looks over to see her staring into the distance.

  Emily doesn’t respond, barely even hearing the question as her attention remains on the image ing into her mind across her e with her bird on the ship’s balloon. On the horizon, along with the beautiful golden glow of the setting sun, is a creeping yellow haze, quickly approag the ship.

  “Get to your room and hunker down,” she says, quickly pulling the armour panel she was w on into her belt and turning to rush out. “There’s a sandstorm ing.”

  She bolts out of the door and rushes towards the bridge, hearing hurried footfall in the corridor behind her as Podrick heeds her instrus. A loud horn sounds as Emily turns the er to the bridge aers the ship’s are to see it starting to lower towards the dunes below.

  “I take it you’ve spotted it?” Emily asks, walking over and leaning on the back of Anton’s chair.

  “Of course we did,” Ange responds indignantly, frantically adjusting her trols to help bring the ship down smoothly. “We’re professionals you know. I’m no worse than your little birdy.”

  She taps her periscope as she speaks, reinf her point.

  “Fair py,” Emily responds with a shrug, realising her haste to warn them ointless. “Anyway, what’s your normal protocol for sandstorms?”

  “We set down and deploy our anchors,” Anton answers. “The and pray that nothing attacks us until the storm has passed and we take off again. Though with you and the guns you gave us, I’m hoping we’ll be fine even in the worst case.”

  “Of course, nothing will bother us,” Emily responds, pushing off his chair and turning to leave, patting the pistol ohigh.

  She heads out of the bridge and calmly makes her way to the drone’s deployment room. Ohere, she pops oped steps out, dropping from the ship and falling rapidly towards the sandy ground below. A green magic circle s around her legs as she uses air walk to create a few footholds on the way down to arrest her momentum.

  Emily nds on the sand softly and quickly pulls out the barrier disc as the ship follows close on her heels. She sets the disc off and tosses it up into the air, letting the anchors that mark its borders spread out to full extension before dropping to the ground along with the disc.

  A one-way sound barrier soon s around the ship’s nding zone, so Emily quickly moves out of the barrier and waits for Calypso to e down while pulling her scarf to cover her fad protect her from the sand being kicked up by the rapidly increasing wind. After a few mihe ship drops into the barrier, and all sounds of its engine vanish as it silently touches down.

  Hopefully, nothing big below the sand will know we’re here now.

  With her first dealt with, Emily quickly approaches the ship again, moving to collect her barrier disc as Calypso shoots four sturdy cables into the ground, one on each side. The corkscreed anchors on the end of each cable hit the ground outside the barrier and dig in a little, with over half their mass still above the sand. The ship’s stairs lower as Emily picks up the barrier disc, cheg the crystals mouo it and frowning.

  I knew setting it to full size would be bad, but I didn’t realise it would fully drain a lesser crystal within a few minutes. If I want to use this froups, I’ll o either work on the array, upgrade the crystals, or both.

  She puts the disc away and approaches the three, armed crew members ing doweps to meet her with an assortment of goggles and fabrics proteg their faces from the elements.

  “Emily? Why a-” Anton says in muffled fusion through the cloth ing his mouth before cutting himself off and shaking his head. “Never mind. Please help us set up the anchors.”

  Emily nods her agreement, and they all split off to each deal with a different cable. Emily heads to the cable furthest from the steps and grabs the two handles oher side of the hefty metal post. She turns it in pce, digging it deeper and deeper into the sand until only the cable and its mounting are left above the surface. The sands around them grow more and more unstable as she works and, by the time she’s finished burying her anchor into the ground, Emily ’t see more than a few metres around her on each side.

  She pushes against the howling winds as they flow between the ship’s nding gears, approag the steps again and ign the harsh scratgs of sand battering the metal surrounding her. She climbs to the top and finds Anton and Ash waiting for her.

  “Where’s Ange?” Emily shouts over the wind as the ship shudders.

  “Not back yet,” Anton shouts back, anxiously gng up at the almost fully defted balloon above them as it starts to move about in the rough wind. “Shit.”

  Emily follows his gaze up and frowns. She quickly checks on the bird she left up there, finding it safely tucked into the folds of the heavy fabric, befng back out into the storm.

  “You guys get that tied down,” she shouts, turning towards the cable anche was dealing with. “I’ll get Ange.”

  She steps off the edge of the stairs, falling through the dusty winds onto the ground below. She nds with a light thud and breaks out into a sprint towards Ange’s st known position. She els eartheion as she runs, trying to use the spell to locate the missing pilot and struggling with the overload of information from the tumultuous sands.

  She arrives at the anchor, finding it pletely dug into the ground, fully set up but with no sign of Ange. Clig her tongue in frustration, Emily turns her focus on a cluster of heavy movement a little distance from the ship, praying it really is her target as she charges ahead, away from the prote of the ship.

  The visibility around her drops more and more, the worst of the storm finally reag her, bringing with it the familiar weight of dense mana and powerful winds that buffet her forcefully, making each step harder tha. Ign the surprisingly-magical storm, she keeps moving towards the cluster of motion. Before she sees what’s going on, Emily hears a distorted gunshot nearby and feels a bullet whiz past her arm. Log her eyes to where it came from, she lowers herself to reduce the wind’s impad makes a break in a straight line, running knee-first into a skulking, khaki predator.

  Her leg sms into the rge, dog-sized beast, with the same colouration as the swirling sand-filled wind around them, breakiride. Despite her surprise, Emily doesn’t lose her band instead drives her knee forward with more purpose, f the beast to the floor before she quickly sshes a bde down its stomach.

  Sand stalkers.

  Gng up after firming her oppos, Emily spots aner figure a few metres ahead of her through the sand. Without wasting a beat, she springs over the newly created corpse and approaches the figure before they vanish into the storm.

  “Ange!” she calls in warning while reag out and g a hand onto the distorted form.

  Luckily, her judgement is corred Ange es into view, l the rifle that oi Emily.

  “Thank Goddess,” Ange shouts, making no effort to shake Emily’s hand from her arm and frantically looking around. “I think I’m surrounded.”

  Emily gnces down at the gashes in the woman’s clothes and the blood dripping from her wounds, notig how she’s leaning to one side and struggling to stand on one leg.

  Shit. How many of them are there?

  Holding Ange firmly to help her keep her bance, Emily looks around, searg for any signs of motion withiwisting sands. She sees several flickers of movement, but none of the beasts approach them.

  “Did you kill them?” Ange asks, her panic redug as nothing happens for a few seds. “I thought they were everywhere.”

  Are they scared of me?

  With an evil smirk, a flood of sky-blue runes flows from Emily to form a glistening magic circle above her head.

  “I haven’t yet, but I think they tell I’m strohahey’re scared of this,” Emily says as the crag orb of untained violehat is ars above her.

  Instantly, a streak of psma shoots off, log onto a movi nearby and striking it. The moment the magical mark is applied, and the beast pauses from the shock, Emily grabs the Spitter from her thigh and fires a shot at the blistering target. Six more tendrils of power find targets nearby, and Emily kills them all while calmly pulling Ange back towards the ship’s entrah the spell floating above them for prote.

  Emily tucks herself under Ange’s arm and pulls her up the stairs as quickly as the woman’s injuries alloarticurly unpleasant-looking gash ohigh slowing her down. As they step into the safety of the ship, the hatch shuts behind them and Antohes a sigh of relief.

  “Thank Goddess you’re alright,” he sighs, moving over to take a look at Ange.

  His eyes go wide when he sees the blood still p down her leg, creating a pool below her.

  “That looks bad,” Anton says with . “What happened?”

  “I got attacked by a group of sand stalkers when I tried to return,” Ange expins, wing as Emily sets her down on the etal floor, and pulling her face c off to breathe properly. “They surrounded me and pushed me away from the ship. I wasn’t sure I would make it batil Emily here showed up. She used some freaky ball of lightning to find them while she dragged me back.”

  “It’s a spell called arc,” Emily expins as she pulls out a vial of healing potion and pulls off the cork, staring at an exposed artery calmly and hoping Ange will tio focus on her words instead of the pain to e. “It attacks any nearby living things when activated, so I excluded us from the targeting and the off. Makes it easier to fight things you ’t see. I desig for an expedition into The Gde.”

  Ange and Anton listen ily, the former still wing and grindieeth, holding in a scream as Emily pours the glistening red liquid onto the fresh gash on her leg.

  “Fuck,” she chokes out between tears as Emily finally moves the half-empty vial away from the injury and hands it to her.

  “Drink the rest of this. It will help with the pain,” Emily says, watg her leg slowly knit itself back together.

  She’ll live, but she’ll definitely be left with scars from this… maybe this is a ce to get the ss I wanted?

  “Thanks,” Ange says after gulping down the rest of the potioing out a relieved sigh as her pain eases.

  “Anytime. That potion should close the rest of your wounds slowly, but that one’s probably going to scar,” Emily expins, gesturing to the already scabbed-ash. “I try to help if you want, but you’ll o let me run an invasive s for that.”

  “What does that mean?” Ange asks, leaning back against the wall and making no effort to get up.

  “I’ll send some of my energy into your body to draw a blueprint of things like yas, skeletal structure, and muscuture. I won’t hurt you, but I’m not the best at healing magid I think it’s because I don’t uand the human body well enough yet.”

  Ange pauses to sider her request, looking up at her with a twisted expression.

  “You want to see inside my body?”

  “Yes,” Emily answers calmly.

  “And it won’t hurt?”

  “Not at all. If you’re worried you ask Pod. I’ve dohem on him before.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Ange says, moving to push herself up and gdly accepting an offered hand from Anton. “Let’s do it. You already saved my life, what’s a little bodily intrusioween friends.”

  KeroKeron