The dawn came not with a gentle light, but with a searing blade of orange that split the horizon, igniting the desert in a furnace glow. The chill of the night was burned away in minutes, replaced by the familiar, oppressive weight of the sun. The camp stirred with the grim routine of men facing another day in hell.
Alistar stretched, the worn leather of his cuirass creaking. He could feel the latent energy of his [Super Regeneration] humming beneath his skin, having already repaired the minor muscle fatigue and sun-stress from the previous day. He felt… good. Sharp. The constant, gnawing hunger of his real life was absent here, replaced by this soldier's body, this vessel of potential.
He fell into step with the caravan as it lurched into motion. The slaves seemed different today. The blank despair in their eyes had been replaced by a simmering, focused tension. They moved with a little more purpose, their shuffling steps a fraction more deliberate. They were holding onto their secret, a tiny, poisonous ember of defiance in their hearts. Alistar noted it with clinical satisfaction. The variable was stable and active.
To maintain his cover and gather more data, he decided to engage with the other soldiers. He needed to be seen as one of them, a grunt, not the silent, calculating outlier. He found himself walking beside a pair of legionnaires, a brawny man named Brant with a broken nose and a quick-to-smile younger one called Finn.
"Another day in the gods' own oven," Brant grumbled, squinting at the rising sun. "I swear, the sand gets into places sand has no right being."
Finn chuckled, adjusting the strap of his helmet. "You're just sore because you lost the dice roll for latrine duty back at the last fort. Could be worse."
"Don't remind me," Brant groaned. He glanced at Alistar. "You're the quiet one, aren't you? The new fish Kael seems to have taken a liking to."
"Just trying to do my job," Alistar said, keeping his tone even but less formal. He forced a slight, weary smile. It felt unnatural on his face.
"Aye, that's all any of us can do out here," Finn said amiably. "Finish this delivery, get our bonus, and get back to civilization. I'm telling you, the first thing I'm doing is finding a proper bathhouse. Then, a proper meal. And then…" he grinned, a wide, boyish expression, "…a proper woman."
Brant snorted. "You and your 'proper women,' Finn. You have a type for every port."
"A man should have standards!" Finn retorted, laughing. "I like 'em with a bit of fire, you know? A girl who can laugh, who isn't afraid to tell you you're an idiot. Curves in the right places, sure, but it's the spirit that matters. What about you, Brant? Still pining for that barmaid from Karth?"
Brant's rugged face softened slightly. "Lysa. Aye. She's… sturdy. Knows how to run a tavern and a household. Got a good head on her shoulders. Doesn't put up with my nonsense." He looked at Alistar. "How about you, new fish? You leave a sweetheart behind in the training yards?"
Alistar's mind, for a fleeting second, conjured not a person, but a feeling—the profound, absolute silence of his empty cube in Sector Seven, the only thing he'd ever truly shared his space with. He shoved the memory aside. This was a test of a different kind.
"No one," he said, and the truth of it, in both worlds, made it sound convincing. "Never really had the time. Or the luck, I suppose."
Finn clapped him on the shoulder. "Ah, don't worry! Once you're a full-fledged legionnaire with a few campaigns under your belt, they'll be lining up. Just remember my advice—find one with fire."
"I'll keep that in mind," Alistar said, the ghost of that practiced smile returning. The conversation was inane, but it was data. Brant was sentimental, dreaming of a stable future. Finn was driven by base comforts and a simple, optimistic lust for life. They were predictable. They were human. And in the coming chaos, predictable humans were tools.
The march wore on, the sun climbing its merciless arc. The conversation drifted to home, to favourite foods, to past battles—all the normal, mortal things that men used to stitch together a sense of identity in a place designed to strip it away. Alistar listened more than he spoke, offering just enough to seem engaged. He was a specter at the feast, taking notes on the living.
It was around midday, when the heat was a physical hammer on an anvil of sand, that the desert struck back.
The first sign was a subtle vibration, a low thrum that traveled up through the soles of their boots. Then the sand a hundred yards to their left began to shift, to bulge upwards.
"Worms!" Kael's voice roared, cutting through the lethargic air. "Shields to the left! Spears forward!"
The caravan exploded into disciplined chaos. The soldiers formed a defensive line with practiced speed, their large, curved shields slamming into the sand to form a wall. The slaves huddled behind the line, their chain clinking in a frantic rhythm of fear.
Alistar's heart didn't race. His breath didn't hitch. A strange, cold calm settled over him. This was just another variable. A dangerous one, but a known quantity in the desert's ecosystem.
The sand erupted. A monstrous, segmented body, pale and slick, burst from the dune. It was easily as thick as a man was tall, its front a gaping, circular maw lined with rows of rotating, razor-sharp teeth. It let out a deep, guttural hiss that vibrated in their bones—a Sand Leviathan.
Two more bulges appeared, then three. A whole pack.
The soldiers braced, their spears leveled. The first worm slammed into the shield wall. The impact was tremendous, sending two men flying. Spears thrust into its hide, drawing gouts of clear, viscous fluid. It thrashed, its tail whipping and sending a spray of sand high into the air.
Alistar didn't join the initial press. He held back, his [Enlightened] mind processing the scene at lightning speed. He watched the soldiers—their movements, their coordination, their weaknesses.
Brant was a rock, bellowing curses as he drove his spear deep into the worm's side, holding firm against its thrashing. Finn was quicker, dodging a lashing tail and jabbing at the creature's sensitive flank.
Another worm zeroed in on their section of the line. A soldier beside Alistar, a man he didn't know, screamed as the worm's maw closed around his shield, crushing it and the arm behind it. The man fell back, writhing.
The worm, distracted by its maimed prey, turned its blind head, seeking another.
Now.
Alistar moved. He wasn't flashy. There was no wasted motion. He darted forward, not at the fearsome maw, but along its flank. As Brant and Finn harried it from the front, drawing its attention, Alistar saw his opening. A patch of the worm's pale hide, just behind its head, pulsed with a faint, rhythmic glow. A nerve cluster? A weaker section of its chitinous armor?
He didn't hesitate. He drove his spear forward with all the strength of his new body, aiming not for a killing blow, but for a precise, disabling strike. The spearpoint sank deep into the pulsing spot. The worm shuddered violently, a high-pitched shriek replacing its guttural hiss. Its thrashing became uncoordinated.
"Finish it!" Brant yelled, seeing the opening Alistar had created.
Brant and Finn drove their spears into its maw and side. As the creature writhed in its death throes, Alistar calmly placed a boot on its head, yanked his spear free, and with a final, efficient thrust, pierced its primitive brain, stilling it for good.
He did the same for the next one, and the next. He became a ghost on the battlefield, a reaper of opportunities. He never engaged a fresh worm. He let the other soldiers do the hard work of wearing the monsters down, of taking the risks. He watched their stamina, their technique. And the moment a worm was injured, disoriented, or over-extended, he was there, his spear striking with a cold, final precision.
To the others, it looked like impeccable timing and battle-field awareness. A lucky new recruit with a knack for killing blows. They didn't see the constant, calculating analysis behind his eyes.
By the time the last worm burrowed away, wounded, the sand was churned into a bloody, chaotic mess. nine sand worm corpses lay steaming in the sun. Alistar was credited with the final blow on six of them.
Finn leaned on his spear, panting, and clapped Alistar on the back again, this time with genuine respect. "By the gods, new fish! You've got the eyes of a hawk and the luck of a demon! I've never seen anyone place a thrust like that."
Brant nodded, wiping worm ichor from his face. "Aye. Good work. You kept your head. That's more than I can say for some greenhorns." He glanced at the maimed soldier being patched up by the medic.
"Just did what needed doing," Alistar said, his tone neutral. He wasn't seeking praise; he was assessing the result. The attack had cost them one soldier permanently injured and several others with minor wounds. Their water supply had been slightly depleted fighting the heat and the battle. But morale, surprisingly, had been boosted. They had faced a terror of the deep desert and won. And he, Alistar, was now firmly positioned as a competent, if quiet, member of the unit. Trust had been earned. A valuable currency.
The rest of the day's march was tense, every soldier eyeing the dunes for another attack that never came. As they made camp that night, the atmosphere was different from the previous evening. There was a camraderie forged in battle. The shared experience of survival loosened tongues and built bonds.
They sat around a larger fire, passing a skin of harsh, fortified wine. The conversation was louder, more boisterous.
"—and then the big one, the one Alistar here finished, it nearly took my damn head off!" Finn was recounting, to the laughter of the others.
Kael even offered a rare, grunted compliment in Alistar's direction. "You fight like you've done this before. Not a wasted movement."
Alistar simply nodded, taking a small sip of the wine. It tasted of chemicals and regret, not unlike the synthetic soup. He let the conversation flow around him, waiting for his moment.
As the talk turned to the mission, he saw his opening. "So," he began, his voice casual, "how much longer until we're rid of our… cargo?" He gestured with his chin towards the slave pen.
A soldier named Dorian, a lanky man with a talent for navigation, answered. "Three days. Maybe four if the sand shifts against us. We're making good time, despite the worms."
Three days. The timeline solidified in Alistar's mind. It was a tight window. The slaves' morale and physical strength would only degrade from here. The poison needed to be deployed at the optimal moment, not too early, not too late.
"Three days," Alistar repeated, then forced a wider, more genuine-looking smile. It was still a foreign expression, but it served its purpose. "Then it's back to a real bed and a proper roof." He raised his cup. "Might as well start celebrating now."
A cheer went up around the fire. "To a real bed!" Finn shouted.
"To a roof that isn't made of stars and sand!" Brant added.
The mood lifted, the grim purpose of their mission temporarily buried under the prospect of its end. Alistar clinked his cup with the others, playing his part perfectly. He was the quiet, reliable soldier, one of the boys, looking forward to his reward.
But inside, his mind was a whirlwind. Three days. we will be able to reach the alter in three days
Later, as the fire died down and the men began to turn in, Alistar lay on his bedroll, looking up at the alien constellations. He thought of the policeman's words. They are illusions. Phantoms. He thought of Revik's tormented conscience, of Brant's dream of a sturdy barmaid, of Finn's simple desires.
They feel so real, he mused, the thought a quiet, almost treacherous thing in the fortress of his mind. Their hopes, their fears… it's all just data generated by the Spell. A complex simulation to test my will, my adaptability. When I wake up, all of this—the heat, the sand, Kael, Revik, the slaves—will cease to exist. It's a dream. A nightmare.
He closed his eyes, the [Super Regeneration] already soothing the phantom aches of the day's battle. There was no guilt. There was no attachment. There was only the path forward, a road paved with calculated risks and ruthless efficiency, leading through the heart of a fading dream towards a power that was very, very real.
The desert wind whispered secrets he had no interest in hearing. Tomorrow, the grinding stone of the march would continue. And he would be ready.