Chapter 15: Chapter 15: Worms…

Sitting on the Pointy Rock Up North (Illyxa refused to think of it by the Alliance name), the party were left unsure what to do. The des worms continued to circle, but the large igneous outcrop was large enough the worms couldn’t reach them. However, there was also no clear route for the party to get anywhere. At least without having to go where the worms could reach them.

“So… what are we going to do?” Hyi asked.

“Wait,” Illyxa said, sitting down, leaning against a rock, and crossing her arms to pout.

“That’s your plan?” Fuan hissed.

“I don’t like it, but there’s nothing else we can do,” the goblin muttered. “The des worms are safe from anything we can throw at them thanks to whole spans of dirt protecting them. That’s some very good armour.”

“They’ll go away, though,” Gragya said, offering a bit of optimism and a smile. “They’ll realise they can’t eat us and will go to find food elsewhere.”

“Are you sure?” Fuan asked, his tone sharp.

“They’re animals. They need to eat,” Gragya said with a shrug.

“What do they eat?” N’ratha muttered, looking out at the dry landscape. “There’s not much out here.”

“There’s more than you would think,” Pin replied. “The Waste is not a natural desert. It was cursed during the Sun War. By both sides. No plants can grow there, but I have heard that other things can. Especially due to the fact there were Dwarven cities out there, fed by long aqueducts pulling in water from the Long Inlet. So, even if it doesn’t rain much there’s water to be found.”

“Huh,” N’ratha said, turning to look out at the sands south of them.

Having no better ideas, the others eventually set in to find places to sit. After about an hour, Pin decided to try to nap. Illyxa summoned up a packet of cards, which Gragya joined in a few games on. The pair were both at least somewhat familiar with the arcane mysteries of the game instructions that occasionally came with the cards. Though Illyxa had to remind Gragya of a few rules.

Some of her ‘reminders’ Gragya suspected were actually made up on the spot for her own benefit. She didn’t know enough to argue, however. As such, she stuck to simply giving Illyxa dirty looks when those ‘rules’ proved unfairly in Illyxa’s favour.

After a few more hours, everyone became rather hungry. They fished around to find food they could eat without cooking, due to the lack of wood. 

“How long do we have to wait?” Hyi asked, while chewing dejectedly on some fruit leather.

“I’d wait until the morning,” Illyxa replied. “This rock is a decent place to sleep.”

After dinner, Illyxa headed over to the main peak of the rock outcrop. Rubbing her hands together, she then proceeded to clambour up the pinnacle of stone. Before she made it halfway up the others had all gathered around to watch her. She saw Hyi looking ready to try to catch her. Also, Gragya standing in a relaxed pose that Illyxa recognised as one actually ready to catch her. Though she was fairly certain Gragya respected her climbing abilities and didn’t actually think she would fall.

Ignoring them, she continued to climb, until she reached the top and was able to look around. 

There was another rock outcrop to their south east. It had been on the hazy horizon when she was down lower, but from here she could tell it was about three leagues off. She wasn’t sure if they could make it that far on foot, if the des worms stayed nearby. The ground started getting even sandier over that way. Even easier for the des worms to dig through.

Plan B might be needed.

“What are you looking for up there?” Fuan asked, visibly annoyed that he couldn’t figure it out.

“Plotting our course,” Illyxa shouted down.

“You are looking towards the south, though!?” the cursed-Elf shouted back.

“That’s because that’s where we’re going. Obviously.”

“Should we not go back north?” Hyi asked.

“Nope. There’s no rock outcrops that way,”  Illyxa replied, before pulling out a bit of parchment and a pencil to sketch some calculations down.

The others were quiet for a few more moments, and she was just starting to get into actual mathematical thoughts, when Fuan piped up again.

“So!? South means more worms!”

“South is supposed to mean ‘any worms’,” Illyxa replied, rolling her eyes. “If they’re this far north, who knows how much further they’ve gone. Something is scaring them, so we can’t take risks. We’ll have to take the Orcish trade route instead.”

She had hoped that would be enough explanation, but no. Everyone wanted to know about the trade route. And only Pin seemed to have anything approaching a relevant knowledge base (knowing that Orcs crossed the Waste at all). Feeling a bit grumpy, Illyxa told Gragya to explain how it worked.

The results were… basic. Gragya knew that the trade routes followed the rock outcrops that dotted the desert. She’d never actually taken the routes, so she didn’t know what traders did to actually cross the expanses between the outcrops. After thinking it over, Gragya decided the secret was Orcs having longer legs, so they could run faster from the worms. After all, she could.

Also, possibly that merchants simply accepted some of them might die.

The others responded to that theory with varying levels of horror.

“Skates,” Illyxa shouted down, not wanting to see Gragya flail aimlessly any longer. “They have sand skates.”

“How does one operate skates over sand?” Hyi asked.

Illyxa felt a smirk spread across her face. “You’ll see when we get to the next village. Or… hopefully before that, if there’re any northbound merchants.”

With that vague answer, she went back to her calculations. It took her the better part of an hour to work the variables out, and then another hour to double check her work. In the end, though, she felt confident about everything but the landing.

Everything done, she scrambled down the rock once more, and found Hyi, eyes closed and deep in prayer. Illyxa waited a minute or two, realised Hyi was likely to be at it for a while, and so cleared her throat.

Hyi jumped at the sound, having been lost to the world with her religious devotion, and took a moment to realise Illyxa had made the noise.

“Yes? How may I help you?” she asked, ears still twitching from the surprise.

“Your barrier spells… would they work against falling damage?” 

The priestess blinked. “Falling damage?”

“Yeah. Like tumbling off a cliff or a bridge or something.”

“Oh… yes? I believe I know one that would work on that.”

“Great!” Illyxa replied, grinning. “How quickly can you do it for a whole group?”

“It would only take moments?”

“Good. Good. That should work,” Illyxa said, nodding and starting to walk back to her backpack.

“For—for what?” a worried Hyi asked.

“It’ll make sense tomorrow,” Illyxa replied, pulling out her bedroll. “Good night.”

“The sun’s barely set?” Gragya said, taking a break from trying to explain a card game to Pin.

“I need to be up early tomorrow,” Illyxa explained.

---

That had not been a lie. The sky was still very dark when Illyxa began drawing her magical circles. This was not to be a simple bit of chaotic battle magic. She was going to need to move the entire party. And with quite precise aim. The target rock was barely a dozen spans across and several leagues away. That was the sort of bulk precision magical work that usually took people years long apprenticeships to learn. Even she needed to concentrate to hit a target that small. 

Though, if they missed by anything less than a hundred spans, they would probably be alright. That was close enough she was pretty sure they’d be able to run to the outcrop in time.

Probably.

Well, Gragya could, and would likely grab her on the way. The others she was a little less certain of.

She stopped for a cold and dry breakfast of more jerky as she looked over her circles and runes. Pulling out a measuring tape, she made sure everything was perfect, and then sat down to watch the sunrise. 

Well, the first little bit of it. She had to meditate and rebuild her magical reserves as she waited, letting herself grow intune once more with the chaotic shifting base of the universe.

She heard a few chants from the others as those who needed to did their own dawn rituals. Then they came over to inspect what she’d been up to.

“Quite the circle you’ve created here,” Fuan said, begrudgingly impressed.

“A highly precise circle of flight,” Illyxa explained with a grin.

The others nodded, starting to put together part of the plan. Only for both Fuan and Pin to have a wave of worry wash over their faces.

“Now, I mean no offence,” Pin said, “but, if I remember correctly, ‘flying’ and ‘having been thrown’ are the same word in Goblin? And your magic seems to be written in Goblinish runes…”

“Mhm. Hyi said she can put us in a magic barrier so that we stick the landing,” Illyxa replied.

“I—that… well…” the priestess mumbled, as her brain clicked the pieces together. “I did not realise you planned to launch us with wild Goblin magic.”

“It’ll give you loads of time to get the spell up, don’t worry,” Illyxa replied. “We’ve got a nice generous arc.”

Hyi went as pale as she could, but then gave a small nod. She was ready to try.

They all grabbed their bags and gathered in the middle of the circle. Illyxa gave the activation phrase, and the spell sprung into action, flinging the party into the air with slightly more speed than Illyxa had expected. 

Clearly she’d needed to factor the uneven surface of the rock face into her area calculations of the circle. She’d do that next time. 

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Unfortunately Hyi responded to being hurled thousands of spans into the air by screaming. Which really wasn’t very conducive to pulling together a magical shield. Nudging herself through the air, Illyxa moved over to Hyi’s side. Then she gave her a helpful chomp on the ear, distracting Hyi from their altitude.

The priestess gave her a look of pure betrayal, which Illyxa replied to with a glare. That seemed to remind the Elf what she was supposed to be doing, and she pulled a magical barrier around them. Her actual words of activation were lost to the wind, but thankfully magic did not need to physically hear such terms to respond to them. 

Signed words of magic also worked, after all.

The party then slammed into the sand nearly two hundred spans from their target. Illyxa hissed a Goblinish swear that was both far more foul than any in human tongues and used more casually than most human profanities if you spent any time with Goblins.

“We missed,” Fuan muttered.”

“And we’re at risk from worms if we open the barrier,” N’ratha added.

“I have an idea,” Illyxa said, sticking her arms out of the sphere of magical protection.

She let off a fireball, and the sphere rolled in the opposite direction. Towards the rock outcrop. Towards safety.

… For half a rotation before the friction of the sand stopped them.

“Alright... Back up plan. Run as fast as you can,” Illyxa said, climbing onto Gragya’s back.

Her cousin grumbled, but did as she was told, scrambling across the hot sand towards the nearest igneous monolith.

The others rushed after them, though they lacked Gragya’s added encouragement of being barefoot on such scorching ground. With N’ratha carrying Pin, Hyi ended up the slowest once again. Though, thankfully, even she managed to make it to the rock before the geysers of sand began circling once more. 

With des worms rearing from their surroundings, though, the situation did not seem any great improvement on where they had been before Illyxa had launched them like a catapult stone.

Fuan was the first to speak, leaning against a rock as his heart returned to a normal pace. “How many more of these rocks until we reach the village?”

“Mmmm… maybe a dozen?” Illyxa replied.

He threw his boot at her. It missed, bouncing harmless off a rock beside her head, but the message was received.

“Listen, this wasn’t my first choice either,” she muttered.

“I don’t see the next rock,” Pin said, climbing on the tallest part of the new outcrop.

It lacked any sort of grand spire like the last one.

“Yeah, I’m going to have to toss myself up to try to see where it is,” Illyxa replied. “We can probably still get to it this evening, though.”

---

Five days and ten launches later, the group were starting to get used to the unpleasant process. Even if they were also getting rather sunburnt. A process that had interesting results on the green skin of Goblins and Gorcs. The red surrounding the various golden scales on N’ratha’s skin was also a somewhat unusual look.

Despite his darker complexion providing him better protection than the others had, Fuan was grumbling the worst about the process. Likely because Elves did not burn, as Hyi was displaying with her unchanged skin tone, so Fuan had done little to protect himself.

Sunburns were not the primary concern, however. 

No, the main issue was that, even launching herself into the air as high as she could, Illyxa was not seeing another outcrop.

“It’s not supp—there shouldn’t be a gap,” she muttered, pacing about on their current island of safety.

A space that was little larger than a boulder. With the des worms circling constantly. She plunked herself down into a thinking position, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Had she taken a wrong turn?

No. She couldn’t have. There’d only ever been one visible outcrop each time she’d launched herself up to check. And she’d gone more than high enough each time. Probably.

She was pretty sure.

Yet they were staring down a dead end. Something must have gone wrong.

“Why are they called ‘des worms’ anyhow,” Pin asked as one reared up to clack menacingly at the edge of their boulder.

“It’s either a corruption of ‘death’ or a contraction of ‘desert’,” Illyxa muttered, still focusing most of her brain power on the greater issue.

“Or they’re named after somebody named ‘Des’,” Gragya offered.

Illyxa had to do a double take, staring at her cousin. “What.”

“What? It could be a name, couldn’t it?” Gragya replied. “It sounds like it could be a name in some culture or another. Maybe Nagan? Or Centaurish?”

“Arlight, fine… The new third etymological hypothesis is that they’re named after someone named Des,” Illyxa muttered, not really wanting to argue the point.

Pin nodded, pulling out a journal to write that information down. After that, though, the party was mostly quiet. It was getting dark, and the others had no real better ideas than to eat some more of their dwindling food supplies. 

Supplies limited enough that there was no way they could turn back now. 

As Illyxa continued to try to hunt through her memories for a possible answer to their mystery, Hyi decided to make herself useful by placing warding runes at the edges out the rock. N’ratha and Fuan had to fend off aggressive worms on a few occasions, the great beasts trying to grab Hyi when she got too close to the edge, but once the wards were up they had far more breathing room on the small outcropping.

---

The next morning Illyxa still lacked a solution. She’d tried launching herself even further into the air, using a solar flare spell to push herself higher than a flight launch could get her. It had proven for naught. There was nothing out there in any direction, apart from the rock they’d been at the day before. 

She crashed down into Gragya’s arms full of annoyance at the situation.

“We’re going to have to think of some other way across,” she muttered, wandering over to stare at the sands.

When the others decided to have lunch she was no closer to a solution. Still, she didn’t like trying to think on an empty stomach, so she accepted her food. 

“Can we try killing them?” Fuan asked.

“If I were a master of earthen magic, maybe. As is, I think my attempt at an earthquake spell would only annoy them,” Illyxa muttered.

Though, she supposed she might have some information on ground magic somewhere in the tomes she carried. After lunch she decided to hunt through the collection for anything possibly useful. She wasn’t making much progress when she was interrupted by an exclamation from Hyi.

“Dragons!”

The others all looked up from whatever they’d been doing to pass the time, turning to see a half dozen slightly unclear shapes soaring along the horizon. They did indeed seem to be dragons, however. Illyxa narrowed her eyes, squinting to try to make the shapes out.

“Black and green dragons, I think,” she said, only to have her guess confirmed when the mighty drakes began belching forth poisons upon the sands where they flew.

“What are they doing out here?” Fuan asked, staring out and glad the dragons seemed to be coming no closer as they travelled.

“Probably from the Domain of the Eastern Mountains,” N’ratha replied. “I didn’t think they’d cross the wastes instead of just going north to meet up with the main Draconic Realm forces, but… maybe it’s a pincer strategy?”

“Why are they pouring out poison like that?” Hyi asked.

Illyxa smacked her fist against her palm. “Of course! That’s what chased the des worms north! The dragons are moving Kobold armies across the Waste, so they have to poison the land to keep the worms from eating too many of their troops. It also explains the worms being so persistent chasing us. Their other food supplies have probably taken to hiding to avoid the dragons. So they’re half starved.”

“They might have destroyed the next rock too,” Gragya offered, annoying Illyxa in that she didn’t realise the possibility.

The dragons did not change their course, and eventually disappeared back over the horizon. 

Illyxa returned to her books, the distraction having not done anything to help them. Knowing why they were at risk of dying from des worms didn’t undo the risk, after all.

Staring at books with the threat of death looming overhead was not doing wonders for her stress levels, however. The desire to bite or burn something was rising, and books were rather flammable. She found herself nibbling on jerky for stress relief as much as to deal with hunger the longer the day wore on.

It was evening when Illyxa let out a shout of inspiration once again. Or of exasperation overwhelming her higher brain functions, but she didn’t think it was that.

“You found the spell you were after?” Pin asked.

“No. No… better!” Illyxa announced, turning to face the dunes as the sun slipped below the horizon, a manic grin across her face. “I remembered what happens when you mix sand with heat.”

“When you… glass? You get glass?” N’ratha replied, having some memories of what her lightning breath weapon had done when she’d visited the beach as a child.

“Exactly!” Illyxa announced, shoving her books in her pack.

Then she turned and let out a shout of ‘Pykezetpayzte!’. The blast of plasma travelled at least a hundred spans, leaving a line of rough and bubbling glass below its path. The wild glass was, at most, ten spans across. To Illyxa, though, that seemed like a grand boulevard.

“Ha! Hahaha! Yes! This’ll work!” she declared, grinning from ear to ear.

She then rushed out, doing a dance on the uneven surface. “Huzzah! See! I am Illyxa! The greatest sorceress in the history of Goblin kind! I can forge my own pa—”

A des worm burst forth from the sand, crossing the narrow path of glass easily, its mouth open. Swallowing Illyxa whole did nothing to slow it down.

The others in the party stared in horror.

Apart from Gragya, who wore a small smirk and laughed to herself. “Dolt.”

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