We didn't get as much sleep as we'd planned, or at least the others didn't. My ability to sleep while I also kept watch meant I got more shuteye than anyone else, especially because being anxious didn't keep me awake anymore - at this point I could keep fear and excitement from messing with my body chemistry for the most part and only experience it via my soul, which meant in all but the worst situations my body was able to settle down and go to sleep just fine even if I was mentally all over the place.

We found out some things about iron, mainly that even if my friends specifically didn't want to hurt me the iron would still burn like a son of a bitch if they were planning on using it to harm Sahrger. There was no exclusion for friends and family. That meant that I had to find somewhere else to be while they talked to the blacksmith, and worked on the device Katrin was making with some suggestions from Calliope. It also meant that when the time came for us to hunker down for the night, I had to decide if I was okay with being sealed into a room by iron over the door and window. I could force my way through, sure, but it would feel awful and leave me with a headache for hours - not the best state to be in if we were attacked.

The other option was to be on my own outside of the protection, and that wasn't great either. Thankfully I remembered that the anti-scrying devices that had been on the wagons were in the box of random magic trinkets that I had shoved into my domain in Biltagiretzae before we left. I should have had it on me at all times, just on principle, but I hadn't really gone through everything before leaving on this trip. Errod escorted me out to a secluded spot beyond the walls, and after twenty minutes or so I was able to retrieve the box, find one of the devices, and put everything else back. I also put some of our other stuff in there, since we wanted to travel light - Katrin seemed unsure about how well the saddlebags would work on the mounts she'd chosen, and wouldn't elaborate on what they were.

It wasn't reassuring.

The downside to this was that if I got killed, everyone else would be in a very bad situation with no way to retrieve anything. Then again, if I was dead they also would need to abandon the mission since nobody would be able to get them to Earth. With anti-scrying measures in place, I found a good hiding spot and wrapped myself up against the surprising chill of the evening and then watched with divination for most of the night, until my mana ran low. No Sahrger showed up, and as dawn began to lighten the sky we gathered up outside the gates. Katrin ran off for a few minutes, and when she returned she looked nervous.

"So. Connie, Errod, you two remember... you remember how you had those parasites on you, after going through Nusos?"

I sure did. "Yeah, and I'm a little scared that you're bringing that up right now."

"Well if you'll recall, Cyne said that they lived in Nusos most of the time, but followed people back to the prime plane to pupate. It turns out there are other things that do this. Um. While I was looking for better mounts for us, I talked to someone in town that sells exotic animals. Connie, you've read about the planes. You know about Besemurto?"

In my memory palace, I slowed time and grabbed the book to refresh my memory. "Yeah. Flat, circular dimension filled with sand - or sand-like stuff, anyway, it's like the metal water in Brinkmar so if you take it out of Besemurto it disappears or something. The book says it's surrounded by portals to the prime plane, and there's devices to find the portals but people don't bother much anymore because it was mostly good for airship travel and since the fall of Brinkmar made mana batteries hard to get people mostly travel through Heregie or Arrapidae or something.

"Katrin, this sounds super cool and we should absolutely use this once the airship is up and running, but there's this whole warning about only using the portals to get in and out. You're not trying to get us to travel through this plane, are you? It says if you enter from anywhere but a portal you just land in the middle of the sand sea, and either drown in the sand - I guess it acts like a liquid - or get eaten by horrible monsters."

She nodded, biting her lip. "Yes. So. About those horrible monsters..."

The gate opened again, and someone came out with a wagon - on the back was the cage we'd seen the other day, with the hideous giant centipede thing. It was maybe a foot wide, and very long although its exact length was difficult to guess since it was all curled in on itself like a knot. "Ho there!" the man yelled in Erathi, before switching to broken Imperial. "As agreed, I get to watch, yes? If it eats you, where you would have me send your things?"

Errod was just staring. "Katrin. Katrin. What... is that thing?"

The man perked up. "Ah! Is ravenous sandcrawler, yes? Very special. Comes to desert here to grow, may take many years. In Besemurto, see, it get eaten right away, yes? Here it grows as fast as it can eat and find mana, favorite food is being people, haha."

Katrin was already holding up her hands defensively. "It's like the Behemoth, it can use mana to grow. And maybe your book doesn't mention it, but Garl here says that people use them to travel across Besemurto and salvage crashed airships and things. They're part spirit, so... Connie, you should be able to control it. In theory. I'll feed it mana until it's big enough for us to ride - Garl has custom saddles that should work so long as the curvature of its shell stays consistent as it grows - and we'll catch up to the people that kidnapped Matlyn and Grunkle in no time. It's very fast."

Garl nodded. "Oh, yes. Very fast. Only problem, see, is imbalance. You use mana to make big, it must either keep getting mana or replace with meat. You stop feeding mana, it eats you, yes? Once in balance, when body is enough meat to sustain, it goes home to find a mate. But no worries, it will stay and be safe so long as someone is controlling it and someone is feeding it. Your friend, she says you have this covered, yes? And if not, yes, I send your things to your families. No worries."

Cool. Cool. I decided to use English so Garl wouldn't understand us. "Okay. Uh. Katrin, you're going to need to keep me topped up on mana. I don't want to do this as a fate thread and be attached to it forever, but when I do the tether with regular magic it uses a ton of mana. I can probably learn to do a simpler one, one that's just the normal spirit tether thing, but now isn't the time to practice that."

Errod frowned. "Can you channel enough mana through yourself to feed the... ravenous sandcrawler... and keep Connie full at the same time without overloading yourself? I don't want you growing crystals in your body again."

She nodded. "I'll be fine. That was undirected mana, I'll be in control of the flow the whole time. Connie, make the tether now and see if you can keep it calm while we open the cage."

I tossed a tether at it, and then slowly opened the connection up a little so I could feel its mind. Whoever decided to include 'ravenous' in this thing's name had known what they were doing, because it was thinking exactly one thing: must eat. I tried to send a feeling to it, a sensation that we would feed it, but that immediately turned to the idea that it should eat us. The creature was simple, it didn't have a concept of being cared for or fed by someone else. Hmm.

Surely it had some way of understanding a thing could be better left alive? If it was true that people had ridden these things around before, they would have to. Could I make it think we were family? Probably not, since it seemed they didn't raise their young. Maybe I could make it think I was a potential mate, but that seemed dangerous in other ways. Well, there was nothing for it but to use force. Leaning a bit on my ability to bundle up ideas from the Common Local Understanding, I sent a big powerful message to the centipede thing that amounted to: we're stronger than you, and if you try to eat us you will die.

That seemed to work.

Step two... I signaled Katrin to be ready and sent another idea down the tether, something like 'staying with us makes you stronger', and then had her start sending it mana as we opened the cage. The creature spooled out onto the sand, and immediately I began to see a change come over it. It was swelling, growing, not quite as rapidly as the Behemoth but easily fast enough to see it happen. Katrin and I stood right by it while Errod and Calliope hauled over the saddles - every time the thing tried to squirm away or hiss at us, Katrin immediately cut off the flow of mana at the same time that I sent another 'don't fuck with us' message.

It seemed to learn, and after a few minutes it was sitting there chittering quietly as it grew. We put the saddles over it and Katrin slowed its growth as it approached the right size for us to ride. Garl was literally dancing with glee, clearly it was very exciting for him to see his pet grow to such a size, and a handful of other townsfolk that were awake at this early hour had heard what was going on and were very cautiously peeking through the gates.

The saddles were barely more than leather blankets with handles and a little ridge to make it less likely you'd slide backwards, but they seemed like they'd probably do the trick. We got them fastened on, and Katrin slowed the flow of mana to a trickle - just enough to maintain the beast. I was able to sense its emotions somewhat and help her get it just right, but once we were there I had to double down on the warnings about eating us. The ravenous sandcrawler was desperate to maintain its mass so it could return to Besemurto, and for that to happen it needed to eat something, right now.

"Okay, everyone on! I'm telling it that there's meat ahead, and that's how we're going to have to steer I think. Katrin, I need you to get me all the way full - I'm about to use a lot of mana all at once."

We all hopped into the saddles and held on tight, and with great effort I kept the monster's attention away from us. I pinged Matlyn with a generic fate thread, one that had no other purpose than to attach to her, and noted where it pointed as it snapped into place before dissolving. I focused on the ravenous sandcrawler, and fed it that information. There. That way. That's where all the food you could ask for is. I am leading you to meat, if you just go where I tell you.

Suddenly, we were traveling at a ridiculous speed.

Or at least... it felt ridiculous. The fact was, I couldn't say for sure; there was no speedometer of course, and the erratic path it took over the dunes made it difficult to gauge how much ground we were covering. Certainly it was fast enough that there was significant wind in our faces, but beyond that metric I was too busy hanging on for dear life to worry about it. I was watching over us with divination, getting a slightly higher perspective in case there was some sort of threat coming up, and I took a moment to check on everyone.

Nobody had fallen off, so that was good. Katrin, right behind me, was concentrating as she ensured mana was flowing into both me and the centipede. Errod, behind her, looked absolutely miserable, but determined. Calliope, in the back, was grinning from ear to ear. Yeah, that checked out. Personally, if I hadn't been so aware of how much this thing wanted to kill and eat us I would have been enjoying it too; it felt a lot like a carnival ride, one of those ones they set up in a parking lot for one weekend, where you can tell it's not entirely safe.

The sandcrawler had limitless energy, but that didn't mean we were able to keep going all day. Everyone needed the occasional break, since hanging on to a speeding insect monster as it undulated and made unpredictable turns was actually very hard work, and at one point we came across some things that looked like armadillos the size of full grown hogs - we could have avoided them, but our mount saw meat and wasn't going to let us pass that up. We were forced to fight them, and when we finally got past the armor and killed them we had to wait while the ravenous sandcrawler lived up to its name.

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I was a little worried that if it ate too much it would decide to head to Besemurto, which would have been terrible. Either we'd be dropped on our asses in the middle of nowhere and have to proceed on foot, or it would drag us there with it and we'd have to try and steer it towards the edge of the plane - which for all I knew would be hundreds of miles away. Thankfully, when all that was left was the armored shells of the beasts, the urge I felt coming through the connection was still a need for meat.

It did go way slower after that, though, and while it sped up some over the remaining hours of the day it meant we lost a lot of time. We also lost some time by going the wrong way, because the sandcrawler had its own instincts about where to go and all the dunes looked the same. It wouldn't travel in a straight line, preferring to leave a seemingly random squiggly trail, and that made me frequently lose track of where we were going. I couldn't keep the fate thread attached to Matlyn without making it permanent which I was hesitant to do, and I couldn't just rapidly re-cast it because it used so much mana.

Still, despite all these minor setbacks, we were absolutely going faster than the people we were following. It didn't matter that they'd gotten a huge head start, they were a big group and the four-legged dinosaur things I'd seen pulling their wagon didn't look like they were built for speed. Sure enough, in the late afternoon I finally saw them in the distance - they'd veered off course unless we'd somehow gotten all the way around to the side of them, but after a moment I saw why. There was a rocky outcropping ahead of them, and they were angling towards it.

It was getting to be evening, sure, but there was still time in the day for travel. It was odd that they... oh. Oh no. I squinted at the horizon, and realized that it looked all wrong. What I had thought was a ridge in the distance was starting to look fuzzy, and was getting taller. "Uh. Guys? I think, maybe, possibly, there's a colossal sand storm coming. Like, 'takes up the entire horizon' kind of big. And I don't think we can get to the rocks the Coelestis assholes are heading for."

I scanned around, and didn't see anywhere for us to go. Fuck. There was only one thing I could think of, and it wasn't great. I forced the sandcrawler to a halt, and turned to talk to everyone. "Hey guys. If we go super fast, we can get at least close to those rocks for shelter. But then we'll be fighting those assholes in a sandstorm. I'm looking at them right now with divination and a telescope," I said, still somehow bothered that that trick worked, "and they have Matlyn and Grunkle in a crate still - the side is open, and they're giving them water. The point is... they probably wouldn't get eaten if a ravenous sandcrawler attacked. And we'd get there in time if it was super, super hungry like before it ate those armored things."

Errod actually got it first, or at least was the first one to say it out loud. "You want Katrin to make it even bigger, don't you?"

I nodded. "We can use a rope to hold on, loop it around in two spots - Hugh taught me a bunch of knots, I can make it adjust as the thing gets bigger."

Everyone was looking towards the horizon as the sandstorm loomed. There wasn't time to try anything else. I pulled out the rope and got to work as Katrin began dumping as much mana as she could into our mount. Errod pulled the saddles off so they wouldn't squeeze it, and we all climbed back on as it continued to grow, and grow, and grow. I pointed it towards the Coelestis camp, and fed one thought into the creature as strongly as I could. There's all the meat you want, and it's about to get away.

As the sandcrawler bolted across the dunes faster than I'd dared to imagine, the problem with my rope setup became clear. I'd done the knots just right, and in cooperation with Calliope at the back we could adjust and let out the rope as the sandcrawler got larger, beginning to approach kaiju territory. But... there wasn't a great way to ensure the rope stayed on top of the monster, as opposed to sliding around to its side where we would all get pummeled by its thrashing legs before falling off and being left behind.

The solution, as ridiculous as it was, involved Errod and I leaning right while Calliope and Katrin leaned left. The bit of tension helped, and if we felt our side moving too far we could adjust, but my thighs and arms were burning as we hurtled over the sand and I was sure that at any moment someone would slip. The rocks were getting closer, but so was the storm - it took up the whole sky now, but it was almost impossible to say exactly how far it was when the dunes kept blocking my view.

When it did hit, it was surprisingly solid. The news used to make a big deal out of the haboobs that hit Phoenix, and they certainly looked impressive, but that wall of dust was fairly insubstantial; the leading edge could have strong winds, but the majority of the time after that initial blast of air it was just... dusty. It looked like when someone in a movie was on Mars, but it wasn't scary or anything. This? This was different. It was sand rather than dust, and it didn't let up. It was stinging my skin wherever I wasn't covered up, and I could feel a shocking amount of sand pouring into my clothes.

The rope pulled tighter, and I was pulled closer to the center line as Katrin slipped backwards and barely hung on. Errod moved to catch her but that shifted the balance of the rope which made me start to slide, and when I went to correct by leaning the other way it turned out Calliope had had the same idea and also leaned over, further twisting things. At the last second I hauled on the rope, pulling it as tight as possible around the sandcrawler and barely preventing us all from flipping over into the sand, but it was a stopgap and we couldn't dangle on there for long.

I tried to yell back to Katrin, but the sand was too intense - I couldn't open my mouth without getting a lungful. In my divination view I found that I could eliminate the sandstorm, but only within a roughly twenty-foot radius of my divination which didn't really help. We'd ended up further apart as the monster grew, because I had to keep letting out rope between the two loops or it would catch on the thing's legs, and twenty feet no longer even let me see Calliope.

I felt the ravenous sandcrawler's thoughts, panicked and demanding. It was big enough, bigger than it had expected to be, but now it needed meat more than ever. It needed to maintain this size, so it could... it wasn't clear if it fully understood what its instincts were telling it, but I think there was some foggy idea that it was going to be the biggest strongest sandcrawler and get the most mates and fight everyone. It couldn't do that if it was burning mana to artificially keep its size. It had forgotten it had meat on its back, thankfully, because now it could sense the group up ahead. I wasn't sure what sense it was using, but we were close enough that it was darting towards them like a missile.

Finally, we hit the camp. The sudden stop as the sandcrawler tackled one of the four-legged dinos caused us all to fly off, and it was all I could do to maintain the connection so I could keep track of the thing. It murdered the first dino almost instantly, and then there was just chaos in the dark maelstrom of sand as people screamed and tried to fight or run. Katrin's flow of mana had ceased back when she slid away from me and almost fell off, and the thread I was maintaining cost a fortune, so I knew I only had a couple minutes before I had to drop the tether.

Speaking of tethers, I could see where the other three had ended up thanks to threadsight. Katrin and Errod were together and staying still for the moment, and Calliope was moving towards the wagon - or at least I was pretty sure that was where the wagon would be. That twenty-foot radius of clear air in my divination view that had seemed so useless while on the back of the sandcrawler was suddenly a life saver, and I charged in with my eyes closed to get a better look at things while I still had the monster on my side. It had killed one of the big mounts but the other was gone, and the wagon was tilted onto its side.

Some of the men were attacking the sandcrawler, and they were doing their best, but it seemed totally unbothered by the sandstorm and was casually murdering them. I ran around until I found the moskar, and wasn't surprised to find some people untying them so they could run for it. I wasn't about to let that happen. They were watching for a colossal monster, but a regular person-sized enemy walking up and stabbing them in the neck when they couldn't see for shit was not something they could prepare for.

I'd been expecting a fight, but this was just a slaughter. Calliope showed up next to me in time to kill someone that came rushing over to the moskar a little late, and then I felt a change in the sandcrawler's thoughts. It had run out of people near it, but it could sense more nearby. Hidden. I knew that would be Matlyn and Grunkle, locked in a crate on the wagon. I tried to tell it no through the link, tell it those were mine and it needed to finish eating the big dino instead. It hesitated. I sent a further threat, that if it didn't eat the dino right now I was going to swallow it whole.

The events of the day must have had it confused - that or it was just really dumb - because this convinced it for the moment. It dug in, but was making short work of it. Soon it would be finished eating and still hungry, and I would be out of mana and lose the connection. I had to get to Katrin. Walking was like wading through mud, but thankfully it turned out she was also headed towards me and we met in the middle just in time - I was about to run dry when I felt mana flooding into me. I started to lead them to the wagon, forcing our way against the wind and feeling the sand leave a thousand tiny cuts all over us. When we arrived Errod went to work checking on them, and I huddled in the meager shelter of the wagon and pressed my face against Katrin so we could speak.

"It's almost done eating that thing already! The second it's finished and starts looking towards us and the moskar, I'm going to try and convince it to fuck off to its home plane. I'll squeeze your hand if it seems like it needs persuading, and just fuck it up as best you can."

She nodded, and we moved a little closer so I could keep an eye on the thing. Its meal was nearly finished, the sound of bones crunching managing to win out of the rushing of the storm. I watched in horror and amazement as it finished up, crushing the beast's massive skull and slurping down the fragments. It was as big around as a car, and the front of it was all mouth. It turned to face me, and I felt its thoughts again. I was claiming the remaining food, and I was somehow strong - somehow had a measure of control over it. But also... also... it knew I would fit in its mouth. And wasn't it big? Wasn't it doing such a good job growing and eating? Was it sure that I would win this fight of dominance?

I threw every ounce of mental will I had at it, bundling up mental images of me stomping it to paste and eating it and sending them down the line. I was big, I was scary, I was death - and it should leave. It should go where it belongs, where it would be the strongest thing and get lots of mates.

Come on.

Come on.

It prepared to lunge, and I squeezed Katrin's hand. Lightning flared out, empowered as much as she could with the mana from the battery. There was still a limit to how much she could wrangle, but this blast was enough to give the ravenous sandcrawler pause, and in that instant of hesitation I once more sent my message. Go home. Go where you'll be powerful. If you stay here, you die. It wasn't entirely a lie; I was sure that we could kill it, I just wasn't sure one of us wouldn't die in the process.

It roared, and then for a split second I saw light streaming through the sand in the air from an impossible angle. And it was gone.

The sandstorm stopped a few hours later, at which point we had a quick look around. Katrin sent orbs of light up - the sun had set - and we surveyed the wreckage, or what we could find of it. The wagon was mostly buried, as were the corpses that hadn't been eaten. The moskar had been in the shelter of the rocks and were fine, but the other four-legged one was unaccounted for. It wasn't the only thing missing.

"He had her," Matlyn said, "she was knocked unconscious and he was hauling her with him. He was going to take Grunkle too, but then the wagon tipped as his men were getting the pack beast loose."

Matlyn's sister was gone, along with a few of the men that had taken them. Now that we'd caught up, the whole thing was bothering me. "Matlyn... where were they taking you?"

"They're after the same thing as us, lost treasure from the Temple of Convergence. They kidnapped Zee, and she promised them whatever she could think of in the hopes we could rescue her when we got there. And then Grunkle told them he could guide them to the temple, and I told them... I lied about my family's situation, said we would fetch a ransom. I don't know if they're running off back to town to try and sell her back to us, or if they're continuing to the temple."

I didn't have a way to check, because I didn't know them well enough to make a fate thread that went to them. If they were Coelestis, they would presumably only care about this to the extent that it overlapped with their interests on Earth. So they would be going to the temple, in the hopes of finding a planar lodestone that would make travel back and forth easier. I couldn't think of any other reason. Whatever it was, it wasn't a coincidence.

Something glinted in the light of Katrin's orb, something silver on the shirt of a man mostly buried in the sand. I leaned down and pulled the Coelestis Acquisitions pin off, and looked it over. The symbols on the front said One Hundred Fifty-Seven. I was trying to decide if I should hide it or let Matlyn see it to see what she said, but as it turned out the decision had been made for me. She came around the side of the rocks unexpectedly and immediately saw the pin, rushing over in excitement.

"You found my sister's pin! Those monsters took it from her, I'm sure she'll be so glad to get it back."

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