“Out!” I shouted, struggling not to rub the sand deeper into my stinging eyes. “Before this thing shreds us.”
Together, we stumbled from our shelter into the night.
Chapter Four
As sand swirled around me, I snatched my weapons and followed the others out of the shrine. In the open air, the maelstrom receded, and the sand fell to the ground, leaving us dusty but unharmed.
I blinked to clear my watering eyes. Kegohr was cursing the grit while Vesma and Kumi dealt with it in silence.
Once my view was clear enough, I looked around the open space in front of the shrine for the lizardman who’d stolen our food and attacked us with the sandstorm. With darkness falling, it was hard to make out what was happening, but I caught movement between a pair of buildings opposite us.
A pile of dried-out wood sat off to one side, whether the remains of a fallen building or something that had been gathered for firewood, I couldn’t tell. Either way, it would serve its purpose to illuminate the darkness. It would also be dry thanks to the heat and the arid desert environment.
I launched an Untamed Torch to set fire to the wood. As flames started to creep up one side, I used Flame Empowerment to strengthen them. The fire rapidly spread across the heap of wood. Within seconds, it was a blazing inferno.
The flames cast the sand-sunken village in an entirely new light. The houses became square faces against the blackness of the desert night, their windows and doorways gaping eyes and mouths. Some of them had wooden framed roofs instead of the flat adobe we’d seen at the city, their style imitating the pagoda roofs I’d seen in other provinces. Traces of ancient carvings, mostly worn away by the sands of time, were exaggerated by the play of light and shadow, making them suddenly visible once more. I saw serpents writhing through forests, humans and horses striding across open planes in vignettes immortalizing the Gonki Valley that had been lost.
Also illuminated was our attacker. He stood between two of the houses, a fanged and mischievous smile on his face. His skin was covered in sandy yellow and orange scales, a forked tongue flickered from between his lips, and his slitted eyes were turned away from us.
“Such power!” he said. “Summoning a raging inferno just to see little me. Heroes of great Vigor, aren’t you? And heroes with great gifts.”
He dipped a scaled hand inside the haversack again. This time, he pulled out a ring of dried apple. He tossed it into the air, opened his mouth wide, and shot out his tongue like a frog to catch the fruit as it fell.
“Good and sweet,” he said. “So long since sweet things grew in poor Gonki.”
“That’s ours,” I said. “Eat another one, and I’ll cut off your hand.”
“Oooh, that’s a little extreme, isn’t it?” He held out the bag. “Since you ask so nicely.”
Vesma strode toward him across the open ground.
“Actually…” The lizardman snatched the bag back at the last moment. “I think I’ll keep this. Just too tasty to let go.”
Vesma grabbed for the bag, but it was gone. The lizardman whirled around her in a shower of sand and hit her in the side with the bag. The blow clearly caused far more shock than anything else, and Vesma stood dumbfounded as the lizardman walked away, calling back over his shoulder.
“You’ll have to do better than that, won’t you?”
He walked easily across the soft sand, his bare feet splayed wide. Pale blue robes swayed around him. They had a gap on the back, in the middle of his right shoulder, revealing a shape marked out in the scales there. A Wild mark, like every Wild had, including Kumi and Kegohr. While most Wilds concealed them, I had seen Wilds around Qihin wear their clothes like this, the mark proudly and defiantly on display.
Vesma rushed at the lizardman. Without turning to look, he sidestepped to avoid her charge. But Vesma was used to such tactics; they were among her own favorites. She sidestepped with him and grabbed for his shoulders. One hand took hold, but the other missed as he spun around, grabbed her wrist, and swept her feet out from under her with a kick. Vesma hit the ground with a grunt of pain. The lizardman twisted her arm a little further, until something clicked, and then let it go.
“Give the lady a hand!” he exclaimed.
By now, the rest of us were running in. Kegohr was the first to the fight, determined to protect his old friend. The lizardman easily sidestepped the thunderous approach of the half-ogre and shoved him in the side as he passed. Kegohr stumbled but kept his feet, turned, and swung a punch at the space where the lizardman had been. Instead of hitting scales, he was left grasping at a swirl of sand.
“Where’d he go?” Kegohr growled.
“Here!” The lizardman burst out of the sand behind Kumi.
She swayed away from him and then back in, following the flowing, wave-like martial arts of her people. As the lizardman flung a punch at her head, she flowed around it and grabbed hold of his arm. She wrenched it down and around, a move that should have thrown him off balance, but he went with and through the movement, throwing himself into a lunge that broke Kumi’s hold. He struck her in the side with the edge of his hand, and she fell gasping to the ground while he disappeared into the sand once more, leaving some of it swirling the air behind him.
“How’s he doing that shit?” Kegohr pointed at the ground where the lizardman had vanished.
“Vigor,” I said. “He’s clearly an earth Augmenter, and he’s using it against us.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah? Well, I’ve got Augmenting too, and I’m gonna show him how we work with fire.”
Flames sprang from Kegohr’s hand.
“Really?” a voice said behind him.
Kegohr spun around, but the lizardman was
