The Skarnveils lived under the desert. That was the cue. They lived where the sand was plenty and the mountains gave way to the long stretches of nothingness, which meant that they could be found just about anywhere in the Dead Lands. Gathering fifty of them would be a pain had Celme not been busy preparing for her Trial long before Belgrave fell.

"You will keep your distance," she said as they trudged across the mountain path, the Ashen City barely a dot in the back. "I'll deal with each and every one of them."

"What if we chance across a swarm bigger than we expected?" Valens asked, the tails of his blue robe flapping in the wind, the new shoes crunching over the dead rocks in a single rhythm. "Then we get to interfere, right? Have some for our plates, eh?"

"No." Celme shook her head. "The number doesn't matter. It'll have to be me."

"Told you. Being a Berserker is a fool's business," Nomad said, the edges of his false lips wrinkling, riddled with rotten dots from which oozed a filthy stench. "You'd get a hundred of 'em, usually. Two hundred if you're not one of the lucky lot."

"Nothing complicated," Celme shrugged. There was a glint in her eyes, a stride to her step, a feeling of expectation about her face. She rubbed at her left hand as if some itch bothered her, but Valens knew it was the yearning of blood.

It was during these times he felt a certain disconnect between the image of a woman in a fancy dress guiding him through a ball dance, feet soft and each step expertly taken, rolling her head to the notes of music as they coursed in between the pairs crowding the hall, and the cold-blooded Berserker out to crush a bunch of dwellers.

But then, they were in the Broken Lands. Some change was due if they wanted to keep their heads on their shoulders.

Down through another mountain path, a scenery of burning brown and hazy clouds welcomed them. The steep cliff had patches resembling steps carved by the strong winds the mountain bore, leading to a rocky, but manageable climb down toward the desert. Barely visible across the distance were dunes, standing disturbingly still as though painted by the brush of a master.

The stillness of the frequencies disturbed Valens when he set foot on soft sand, and as they conversed before, he managed his Windpulse Barrier right away in case of a welcoming assault. His sound vision was greatly impacted by the layers upon layers of sand underneath, making him deaf against the threats of the desert.

Nomad, instead, bounded forward with a giant sword hefted over his shoulder. He had refused to clad himself in what he called impractical armor, saying it would only slow him down. Celme, thankfully, accepted the set Valens had bought for her and Selin, knowing she could use every bit of advantage in her Trial.

"Stay here," she said after a beat, halting Nomad in his steps and walking over to him. She kneeled and placed a palm down on the ground, closing her eyes in focus. "This will do. Back off."

Nomad and Valens exchanged glances before they decided to leave her alone a few strides from the mountain to the back, but not too far that it would keep them from helping her in case a need arose.

"Think she could do it?" Valens asked, seeking refuge from the wind whistling past his ears. "She doesn't have any weapons—"

"Look at her face," Nomad said, peering out into the woman's figure, a small back facing an endless desert. "Feel the heat of her heart, do you? The frustration and the anger rising? The tingling around her fingers. The impatience clouding her thoughts? That's her Trait, right there. She couldn't wait to punch some sense into those worms."

"I still think she could've been more clever about this," Valens scowled as he felt through the Resonance the air stirring around Celme with heat. "Get a shield and a sword, or perhaps some stakes through that part." He waved a hand to Celme's side. "Create a lane so the Skarnveils can come only from a single direction."

"That'd be too wise for a Berserker," Nomad scoffed, then sucked in a long breath of mana. "You don't understand. A warrior's heart is a different thing. Beats with the lust for war. Yearns to become a part of it. She hasn't been much of a part of anything lately. That, she remembers still. She knows she has been a liability, a useless lump of flesh back in Belgrave, paired with an Undead Chief and a damned Surgemaster. That takes a toll on someone's worth. Makes them feel tiny and small."

"So this is her way of shedding those feelings?" Valens frowned. Painful as it was, he could see the reasoning now. He had felt much the same in this world. He threw himself into a horde of skeletons back in the Necromancer's Rift as if he had something to prove. But that hadn't been about proving. It had been more about the heart and the change, and power.

Warmagic is an insidious poison.

For a slave, that was, since it showed a new way out of servitude. In a way, Celme had been a slave too, for people she had thought of as family betrayed their own city for reasons that alluded most.

Nothing is simple. Nothing is what it seems. The Duality Guild, namely the Order of Zodros… The Lightmaster is not someone who would cherish the death of thousands. Opening that gate must mean something for them. A piece of a grand puzzle, perhaps.

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Well, he would see to it that the puzzle revealed itself soon, but to do that, they had to take the steps first.

A tremor. That was the first thing. Trembling across the surface of the desert, disturbing the still sands. They rose all around Celme, seething close to her feet, being drawn in as though something sucked a deep breath from underneath.

"The first one's coming," Nomad said, both hands resting on the hilt of his sword. "It's a small one."

A head burst out of the desert, lunging with its circular, petal-like maw gaped wide open, ringed with shark-like teeth but curving inward. It was like a blooming flower made of obsidian thorns. The body of the creature resembled a vast, sinuous worm, armored with keratinous plates that shimmered under the sun. They rippled ever so slightly as the creature lunged for Celme, making it seem bigger than it actually was.

[Skarnveil - Level 99]

Celme remained standing with feet planted tightly in the warping sand, barely reacting to the fast-approaching creature, both eyes closed in muted focus. Then, when the thorn-like teeth were about to clamp around her right arm, she shifted, left hand barreling into a screaming punch that caught the creature square under the chin.

It was a shower of broken teeth and pouring blood, a painful screeching that tore through the silence across the desert. The Skarnveil fell with its body plates crushing into one another, its under-maw a disintegrated mess of flesh jutting out of its circular head. Dead, in one single move. Celme's eyes were still closed.

"There it is," Nomad said, chest rising with papery laughter. "Small one, told you."

"More is coming," Valens noted as he felt the shift across the Resonance. Dozens of strange rhythms poured into the otherwise silent frequencies, the chorus of them shambling into an unrecognizable mess. "A lot more."

"Eh," Nomad shrugged as he peered around him. "No people, no buildings, and no mastermind out scheming from the shadows. There's a lot to appreciate in the simplicity of it."

Right.

Valens's breath stilled when a dozen Skarnveils burst into the surface at the same time, all varying in levels and sizes, yet sharing the singular trait of their worm-like species: sharp teeth.

He winced when Celme jabbed one right in the teeth, pulling a bloodied hand as the others swept in close. She threw herself backward, allowing three Skarnveils to pass harmlessly across before sweeping a leg to finish off two others. Streaks of blackened blood spattered over her face, dripping sickly down her skin, painting the knuckles of her fingers with gore.

She spun wildly a moment after, one hand latching onto a particularly devious creature that tried to nibble at her feet. Caught it from the nape of its circular head, swung it round, and smashed it hard into another's face. A shower of teeth and a fountain of blood, of screeches tearing into her ears, of sand moving dangerously fast under her feet.

Then she was moving, feet pounding on the ground, leaving a bloodied trail behind her back. From her left and right burst more Skarnveils as if she was in a show of waterworks with a score of dolphins to her side, except there was no water and no crowd to entertain.

"Fifteen," Nomad pointed when Celme splashed another Skarnveil flat on the ground, dragging her left heel across its corpse to ensure the work was done. "Our Berserker is going fast."

Valens scowled as he felt the rising tide over the Resonance. With each group, the level of the Skarnveils was rising, their ranks becoming wilder and more dangerous to deal with. Some of them decided to start being clever about it by going around her feet and assaulting her using the sandy ground as cover while the others kept demanding her attention.

A gaping hole opened right around her left calf, flesh squirming tenaciously as blood streaked down her leg. Her eyes gained the same color as her blood as she tore another Skarnveil to pieces, bathed under its blood, bared her teeth like a maddened beast to the circling tide of creatures ahead.

That gave them a pause, as if something feral in her affected their mindless assault, a pause which Celme didn't take for granted and instead used to the best of her abilities. She caught a Skarnveil the size of an Undead Chief, flung it round with teeth clenched and into the rolling waves of sand behind.

"A sight for false eyes," Nomad cackled at the scene. "Can you believe she was made a princess back in Belgrave?"

"Not a princess," Valens said. "A nephew."

"Same thing," Nomad grinned. "But finally, the bird's free and it's reaping blood and flesh. Give her a decade, then she'll become a true killer, if that head of hers stays in the right place, that is."

"It will," Valens said, fingers clenched into his robe, heart thumping in his chest. Felt odd that seeing someone deal with a bunch of creatures was harder than dealing with them on your own. Alone, you have no one else to consider, no one but the beast ahead of you. But to see your company bleeding out with you having to keep away?

That was torture.

"That's thirty-five. The big one's about to come." Nomad pointed a finger across the desert where one of the dunes began moving. "A big brother, you think? Or the mother of this lot? Reckon it'd be pissed."

"Stop it," Valens said. "This isn't a game. She's hurt. At this rate, her body's going to fail her if she allows more wounds to accumulate."

Nomad looked at him as if he were the biggest fool in the world. "You know she's a Berserker, right?"

"So? What about it?"

"It's those wounds that keep her going," Nomad sighed. "The pain and the misery of it that make her blood boil. Look at her face. She's smiling, the mad woman. She's enjoying this."

Taking a long breath, Valens shaded his eyes with one hand and stared at Celme's face. He paused when he saw the bloody grin on her face, the glint in her eyes, the joyful dance of death she performed in the middle of the swarm of Skarnveils.

We're all lunatics.

The realization dawned slowly, painfully, but there was no mistaking it. Had he looked the same when dealing with those Skeleton Soldiers? What about the time in Belgrave when he peered into the endless tides of enemies and cleaned the filthy fog out of their bodies?

Was that fun? He shook his head. That had been necessary. There was little fun to have when the matter involved the lives of others. Little else but responsibility that prevailed in one's mind. The heaviness of it—

He stopped. Who was he kidding? There was, in some twisted way, an insidious joy to see the dwellers fall under his spells. That feeling of power and control, the thrill rising, his chest swelling, the air reeking of his own doing.

No wonder Celme was smiling. Her class and her Trait, beyond that, her whole character… If Valens could feel that guilty joy after some time in this world, she must be swimming in an ocean of it right now, free of the societal shackles she was forced to wear most of her life.

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