Tristan woke up with a start. Someone was moving near the tent, and he grabbed his sword, silently unsheathed it by folding the sheath in some of the bedroll, and got to a crouch. Peering out the small gap at the top of the front flap, he felt some relief. Just the guards, he thought, letting the fabric loose. It was very early morning, judging by the brightness of the sky, and having already woken, Tristan elected to remain awake. He silently spun his crucible, grabbed the amulet belt, and applied Alter Form as he took on his Demonkin guise of Marius Lestrange. He quietly put on his armor, making only the faintest of slight rattling noises as some metal clasps brushed against each other.

Slipping outside the tent, he belted on his blade and walked over to one of the guards atop a wagon. He whispered loud enough to be heard, but quietly enough to not wake the encampment. "How goes the watch?"

The Demonkin who was standing with crossbow at the ready glanced down at him. "All's well."

Tristan gave the man a thumbs-up, and headed to the central fire pit. The chef from the night before was up already, preparing to cook before others awoke. He gave Tristan a brief wave. Tristan nodded in acknowledgement and took a seat on one of the now-slightly-dusty rugs around the fire pit. He leaned back on his hands and stared up into the skies of the Demon Realm's nightscape. The fingers of night were already on the horizon, retreating from the oncoming sun rising in the east. Above, the purple-black began to brighten. Tristan just watched and let his mind wander as the play of colors shifted above.

The rest of the camp roused and began to gather for their morning meal. The chef was spooning out porridge with some meaty chunks inside. Tristan elected to drink a clearcool elixir instead. Once Eloise was up, he got up, went to the tent, and helped pack it away into Felicity's storage dimension. The sleepy fairy dragon mumbled and grumbled at having such an early start.

As the sun rose in the distance and the skies turned to their deep, red and then grey hue, they prepared to leave the caravanserai ahead of the traveling merchants. But Bedivere came over and flagged them down. "'Twas a pleasure talking to you," he said with a smile. He handed Tristan a letter with a wax seal. "Just hand this to someone with the Tousles crest, and they'll get you in contact with someone who can put you on the path to meeting with Lord Philippe."

"Thank you," Tristan replied as he pocketed the letter in his hip pouch. "Safe travels. Watch out for boars."

"We have guards for that," Bedivere replied with a grin. "But I thank you for the caution."

The hours passed rapidly. As soon as the caravanserai was over the horizon, and the trio were fully alone on the road, Tristan used the combination of Dragon Leap and Wing Glide to convey them across the expansive landscape. The hills gave way to a gradual slope as the terrain became rockier and less forgiving. Patches of plant life persisted in the clefts between rocks, but the unforgiving minerals dominated the terrain. They were able to glide for quite some time, and Eloise revealed that they were descending from a slight plateau and down into the region that the Alphinaud House controlled – Brightmarch.

The name was apt, as Tristan was greeted with a familiar and alien sight. The rocks gave way to a cracked badlands, and finally to a shimmering, bronze expanse of sand. A desert, that glittered like polished metal as the entire horizon was filled with shimmering sparkles. Eloise explained that the sands were full of the mineral called copper, which gave it the unique hue. The road was gone, and only solid, white spires with black tips marked out a path toward civilization. Easily five feet across and three times as tall, the obelisks were a ready means to find the hidden path.

Flying across the desert was only taxing on essence, and Tristan's grip strength as he had to hold Eloise during the jumps and glides. I should really look into making a blended spell, Tristan thought. Put these two together into a single gesture and phrase. They had to land several times to allow his essence to recover, and he made sure each landing was next to one of the obelisks.

As they stood in the shade cast by one of the pillars, he spotted something off in the distance. A slight bump traveling along the sand. "Any idea what that is?" he asked in Demon's Tongue – their default as all three could speak it now.

Felicity sipped from a canteen she held in her adorable paws. "Beats me."

"Could be a spinal gorger," Eloise stated as she shielded her eyes from the harsh sunlight. "They are massive, scaled creatures that burrow across the realm. But, Brightmarch is their preferred terrain. Much easier to dig through sand than stone."

Makes sense. Tristan kept an eye on the slight geyser of glimmering copper that shot skyward from the rapid travel of the entity across the dunes. I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen any other travelers. He glanced at Eloise. "Do you know why we haven't seen anyone during our flight? This is one of the main Demon Houses' territories. I'd imagine that there would be…someone coming and going."

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Eloise's eyes narrowed slightly as she met Tristan's gaze. "I had thought of that as well. We should be seeing-"

"What's that?!" Felicity shouted, her voice filled with excitement as she pointed to Tristan's left and thwacked his pauldron with his tail to direct his attention. "It's pretty looking."

Tristan looked to where she pointed, and he could see a huge, three-hundred-foot tall geyser of the sand that blasted skyward about a mile away. "Some type of spell? Or one of those spinal gorgers emerging?"

Eloise replied firmly. "No. They don't breach and fling up debris. They are ambush predators. Something is wrong." She looked at the non-invisible Felicity. "Mind going to check it out?"

"On it!" Felicity turned invisible and flew off of Tristan's head. A few minutes passed, and Tristan retrieved and strung his bow. Eloise gave him a sideways glance, and her hands rested on the pommels of her daggers. Felicity came flying back, and ended her invisibility, landing on Tristan's head once more. "It's a giant worm! Covered in nasty, white colored scales. It stank!" She pinched her nose with her paw to emphasize the severity of stench.

"That doesn't bode well," Eloise said as she snapped her gaze on Tristan. "Spinal gorgers, if that is what it is, are a deep, steel grey color."

Tristan frowned and his grip on the bow tightened. "Could it be another disease, you think? Maybe that's why we don't see anyone else on the road to Alphinaud lands? They're all quarantined…or worse." He looked to the corpse that lay hidden behind the dunes. "We should investigate. I can use that Determine Affliction spell to see what it is. Maybe it died of natural causes…but I have a feeling this is the start of a pattern." He turned and began walking that direction, his feet slightly sinking into the metal-infused sand. Eloise walked behind him as he continued speaking. "The Feather Scourge over in Dalphatroux territory, and now a possible disease outbreak in Alphinaud?" He glanced back at Eloise. "Thoughts?"

"If this thing died to disease, and if we find evidence that more diseases have spread to this part of the Demon Realm, it is reasonable to think the two may be connected. You tracked down the Feather Scourge's origin, correct."

"Undying Realm," Felicity replied.

Eloise cleared her throat and spoke with calm clarity. "If this is a disease, and if it has indeed spread in this region, and if it also originates from the Undying Realm, then I think we would have a reasonable assumption as to who is responsible."

"Can you contact anyone back at the Citadel to look into prominent bloodlines originating in that realm?" Tristan asked.

Eloise shook her head. "No inter-realm communication. We have to be on the Mortal Realm. And my contact-" she went silent, and turned her head away as her voice cracked. "Former contact is no more."

Tristan did not press further and instead faced the front as they approached the enormous corpse Felicity had warned them of. The stench hit him immediately, and he wrinkled his nose as he spun his crucible, pouring the essence into his armor to activate his defensive spells – Scales of Our Foe, Armor of Ice, Lucky Instinct, and Near Miss. Pulling an arrow from his quiver, he nocked and pulled back the bowstring, letting a shot loose into the fleshy pit near the front of the worm-creature's head. The shaft sank into the body, and there was no response. "Okay, it's dead." Tristan slung the bow over his shoulder and pushed essence into his Pocket Dimension II amulet. He retrieved his Omnitome, and knelt a few feet away from the corpse as he performed the spell phrase and gesture for Determine Affliction.

-----

Subject: Diseased.

Affliction: Creampox.

Transmission: Fluid contact with new host.

Symptoms: Initial infection is dormant. After an incubation period the Creampox manifests. As the disease spreads in the body, pustules form on the skin that contain a milky white substance that will explode when near uninfected individuals, spreading the disease. After the pustules have spread across the majority of the body, the host perishes in an explosion of contaminating ichor.

-----

"Blech!" Felicity said loudly as she flew back and away a few dozen feet.

Tristan put his Omnitome back into the Pocket Dimension II and glanced at Eloise. "Now we have to figure out if this thing is wide spread or not. Ready to fly?"

She nodded. "Let's go." Her voice was filled with a grim resolve.

Felicity flew back and landed on Tristan's helmeted head. He walked over to Eloise, wrapped his arms around her chest and under her arms, and jumped as he rapidly incanted the two spells for his pseudo-flight.

The travel progressed into evening, and the signs become even more grim as they continued their journey. The obelisks, those beacons marking out the path through the dunes spaced out every quarter mile, were surrounded by corpses. Coated in the sands, and exposed to the elements for some time.

"The spinal gorgers must have taken longer to succumb," Eloise said. "Their large size meant it took longer to kill them." Her prediction appeared accurate, as they saw two more of the worm-like creatures breach the surface of the dunes and lay atop the sands, curled in on themselves as white oozing fluid that smelled atrocious leaked out of them.

They glided over several villages that were surrounded with small walls and located around the edges of various oases. All of them were quiet. The water's slightly white color told the story well enough; the residents had succumbed to the Creampox. Tristan was disgusted, not just at the fact that the smell was horrible every time they passed over the corpses, but that this type of warfare existed. Using diseases to kill people…its vile. They had no chance to fight back.

They had to land and make camp, and kept on a watch rotation – Tristan sleeping first, Felicity second, and Eloise last. Nothing accosted them in the night, and they continued onward as the corpse piles became larger and larger. They also were fresher, as one landing and inspection confirmed. "Only a few days at most," Eloise muttered.

A city came into view on the horizon – one that was flying flags that showed a gauntleted fist, held upright in a gesture of defiance, on a field of green that stood out against both the darkening sky and the golden sands stretching in all directions. Tristan swooped down and they landed a few hundred feet from the shut gates. "Let me do the talking," Eloise said as she took the lead.

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