Veiled under the dark sky and with only the bonfire’s light to illuminate the intruders, Lian at first, mistook the attacker for another human. The one with a dagger next to Ogda’s neck had thin, bony arms, veiled by grey fabrics and straps. A leather armor covered his chest and torso. But then she noticed his legs, which bent forward at the knees, and while the exposed skin glittered in the sunlight. And the helmet on his face was elongated like a bird's beak.

His associates, hidden under the night’s cover, were probably similar to him, or at least that’s what Lian’s hunches told her. She got her answer the moment the one with the chains made them disappear in thin air.

Stranger 1 -” Goidel, let’s mind our manners first and properly greet these strangers”, proposed the feline helmeted warrior. “Also remember to put your weapon away this time.” He was the shortest of three, but wider in frame and had a puffy, short tail, at which the duo had the same, secret reaction; “Cute.”

After the remark, the beaked attacker changed his stance as easily as one changes socks and mellowed out instantly. The aggressive pupil in his eyes turned to a relaxed oval, but his tone was fastened, like a shy teacher meeting his students for the first time.

-” Oh, right. My mistake, Captain.” replied Goidel. Afterward, he tried to apologize to the duo, but from his quick barrage of sentences, only the first one was understandable. “Sorryyoutwo. I’m still a, uhm. Right. Also, sorry fortryingtoattack you... big guy.”

-”No…problem…” Ogda said while turning his head towards Lian for help. The girl could only shrug back.

The two were a bit more at ease now, a bit confused, but the liquid being kept his guard up just in case. The third member quickly presented himself as Blitz from a distance and without even looking at them. He seemed more eager to return to the dune than to chit-chat, as he fidgeted around with gauntlets and metallic plates on his back. The Captain raised his neck to talk with him and after what seemed like a short, but intense exchange, he flew back from where he came.

Captain -” Sorry for Blitz, he’s more of a straight-laced kind of man when we are on a mission. So, what brings a little human girl and uhm…”

Ogda -” Hello. I’m Ogda.”

Captain -” Ogda. Are you two lost or…what? How did you even enter this layer? The Captain tried to maintain a friendly tone, but he was definitely interrogating the two. Unbeknownst to them, it looks like they somehow managed to trespass in this somewhere place as well.

Lian was a bit weirded out about how direct yet pleasant the stranger tried to be. He seemed to care only about finding out the truth. “But he still has more information…How much should we say and how much can he hide?”

The feline warrior, after giving them some moments to reply, tried to guess their deal now. “Or are you another fresh batch of a Fetch pair that’s too eager to go on an “adventure” ?”, with heavy quotation marks at the end.

Both of them shared confused glances between them, still unsure of the trio. Lian was prepared to invent a whole story out of the blue, but Ogda took a leap of faith with the Captain.

Ogda -” No, we’re not. We don’t even know what that is, to be honest. It’s just that we woke up in this desert a while ago and…”, he pauses to see if Lian wanted to intervene, but without luck “and that’s about it. We were just trying to find a way out of here.”

-” Hmm, weird”, replied the Captain, scratching his chin while caught in thought. “ Little girl, is that right?”

But Lian kept quiet, racking her brain about everything. More weird creatures, more foreign terms, more that’s out of the ordinary. “ I’m uhm…I guess I agree”, her stumbling words made the beaked warrior suspicious of them, and the girl caught on to it. He appeared absent from the conversation, but in truth paid a lot of attention to their reactions. So the girl took a deep breath to calm down. Counted down from 3 to 1 and tried to imitate the appearance of confidence. “ Sorry for that, just a bit jittery from the…attack, I guess. So before we say anything, can you tell us who you are?”

The Captain's polite smile broke for a bit, jolted from her sudden change, but right away got back to his jolly self; ” Right, looks like I’m catching some of Goidel’s and Blitz’s people skills. “

-” It’s always easier this way”, chipped in Goidel with a friendly snark.

Captain -” The name’s Krass and I’m the elected Captain for this mission. We are members of a little rescue and exploration team from a group from the eastern continental layer. Are you at least familiar with that?”

-” Krass…Captain…sir? Which do you prefer?”, asked Ogda.

-” All of them at once if possible”, replied Krass in jest.

-” I guess Captain”, said Goidel earnestly.

-” INTERIM IS THE CORRECT ONE!” yelled Blitz from far away, to which Krass replied with a bone fragment thrown at the speed of a flying bullet. For them, it was a normal interaction, but seen from the outside it was way over the top and a bit disturbing. Which the Captain caught on from the looks on their faces.

Captain -” Wait, don’t be scared! He’s got fancy radar and super hearing, he can easily dodge that. It’s a normal thing between us.”

Goidel, with half a smirk, tried to appease their worries, but he at the same time seemed kinda tired of doing it as well.

-” Ooook”, said Lian in an unwilling high-pitched tone. “ So, I’m Lian, and as you guessed I’m a human. I’m looking more like me, for now, and Ogda is helping me out. Do you know if there are other people, humans, in this…layer?” The girl finally caught on to the weirdness of the word used to describe the land. Is that how these people separated the borders between places?

Captain -” Yeah, you could say that. We’ve got two humans in our group. A lady who helped us form the Platinum Union, and her son is a member...in training. A trainee; If you want, you could meet them...in exchange for some answers. So, do you mind if we go back to my first question? Can you explain now how you entered this quarantined layer?”

Lian wanted to take Ogda aside and hatch a story, but they were already set up in the roles of travelers who just met in the desert.” And, to be honest, I’m not sure why I want to beat around the bush this much”, the girl admonished herself. “ I should follow Ogda on this one and be a little more trusting…in measured bites though.”

As the girl caught the needed confidence to explain her situation, a loud yell from the ridge of the dune replaced the gathered tension with another concern now. Blitz finally found their real target.

…

Captain -” Huh. The lucky bells do seem to toll for the patient. We’ll continue this later on, for now, we’ve got work to do. And try to run, or not, I don’t mind either way. Goidel, let’s move!”

The quiet fighter nodded a short goodbye and followed his Captain, leaving the two unsure of what to do. They could walk away, in the direction they came from…but knew Blitz would catch up with them in flight. And whatever minuscule dialogue they built, would be thrown out the window in the blink of an eye.

-” I think we can, well, not trust them entirely, but at least give them a chance?”, mentioned Ogda. And to his surprise, the girl agreed with him. “ Ugh, I almost blew our chance with my paranoia buddy. Sorry, by the way”, she said, in a tired, remorseful tone.

Unbeknown to Lian and Ogda, the dune was steeper on the other side, at tens meters in height, at least. More than enough to destroy a falling vehicle. Krass and Goidel leaped with no hesitation in their feet, landing about halfway down and sliding the rest of the way. Blitz followed them in a way that shocked Lian. She thought at first to be weird armor or accessories, but the gear the warrior had was something she recognized as technologically advanced. A sort of propulsion jet grafted into his back and thin-bladed wings, which he used to glide and fly around with.

Lian -” Ogda, do you recognize that?”, not really expecting a clear answer. He shrugged but did mention that it seemed familiar. “ I somehow feel like it’s a common thing for me.”

Curiosity was still ingrained in the two, and settled to get a better view from the top of the dune; “ I think it’s actually called a-”, Ogda remembered and tried to remark before his word being stolen by Lian “Draa? I knew this one, buddy”, she smirked cheekily before her nose was stung by a putrid smell. It stung her nostrils from that high up and almost knocked on her back from the surprise hit.

At the base the situation wasn’t rosier, the soil blanketed by a shade of dark green, emptied of sand or rocks. The pungent smell came from deep underneath it, through cracks that split the festering land. Krass and Goidel were using metal bars dropped by Blitz to poke and search for something. In the meantime, he was surveilling the area, keeping a bird's eye on the surroundings. And it didn’t take him long to notice sudden shifts in the ground, with the cracks becoming wider at breakneck speed.

Short tremors soon followed and the fighters on the ground ran away on opposite sides, waiting to enact their plan. A beastly leg broke the upper crust, spreading dirt earth around as if thrown by a geyser. A monster was slowly rising from its sleeping hole, showing first its thin legs that arched at where an elbow should be. But there didn’t seem to be any bones in this creature, just four elongated worm-like attachments, which lifted up a rocky, mound-like- body. Except at its curvature, where it was perfectly disc-like.

It didn’t make any guttural noises, and it seemed to lack eyes, or a mouth, or anything that could make you guess where its face was. Or if it even had one. But weird sounds did come out of it. Whenever an arm moved, it creaked like an old, unoiled machine. By the time it finished lifting up, its shadow covered up to the middle point of the large dune.

…

Blitz was the first to draw blood, to Krass' annoyance. The flier pointed his gauntlets at the being and shot it with small projectiles, fired from tips of his weapons. Unlike the rest, his gauntlets were much thicker, with holes in them and he could modify their form to whatever projectile launcher he wanted, as his next attack was a barrage of cannons to cripple the legs.

With the spring-like shape of his legs, Goidel launched himself into a large leap right on top of the monster and used his daggers to slice off pieces of the rocky skin. Underneath all of this Krass was keeping the foe distracted and confused with his speed and agility to dodge all of its attacks. Whatever properties his golden chain had, it looked like it put a spell on the beast at the beginning of the fight.

His arms were folded and chains started to emanate from his body while he whispered a hushed chant. The golden bonds flew right into the monster while linking the two together, and ever since, the foe completely ignored the other two team members. Every stump it did was in an attempt to crush the small runner. Every swipe that missed him, and every turn was to keep up with him, while the warrior was distracting it with small slices to the appendices.

At some point, Goidel yelled out as loudly as he could, letting them know that he found something and used the metal rod from the beginning to mark a spot. Afterward, all three chose the nearest leg and attacked its joint. One exploded, another was sliced cleanly and Krass punched it off entirely.

With that, the best fell to the ground, unable to move or do anything else anymore. The three then converged at the point made by Goidel and started to dig deeper into the layers of its body. While they were quite far away, both Ogda and Lian were a bit surprised to see no traces of blood or meat being thrown out, mostly just pieces of a shell of stone and crystals. Goidel was the first to find what they were looking for, violently pulling out of the carcass.

It was a pod or cocoon made out of blue minerals, with vines that pulsated like veins traveling alongside its outer parts. Lian couldn’t easily tell from the top of the dune, but she could tell that a glint was emanating from the center, in a light-blue tint glow. For those up close, they could observe even more, like how something was moving inside them, casting a shadow with each wiggle of their deformed body.

Blitz grabbed the cocoon and brought it back to the oasis, from where they first appeared, and where they also left their travelling gear. Along with a timely-prepared metallic box to deposit the cocoon into. After which, as blase as possible, Krass tried to return to his questioning of the two spectators. Unfortunately for him, their spectacle left quite an impression on the duo.

Lian -” What was that? Did you ju…how did you fight it off so easily? Did you kill it?” The girl’s reserved nature from before evaporated and her curious nature started to act up.

Captain -” Yeah, hold on, give me a moment. That was the target we thought your friend over here was at first”, he mentioned pointing towards Ogda. “ Not the right size, but still, we apologize again. We fight these kinds of beasts from time to time. Not to brag or anything, but we are professionals, you know.” Krass paused for a second to catch his breath. He then eyed the two, unsure of them anymore. Both behave too mysterious for his liking but are also way too curious and naive about everything like it was their first day at, well, everything.

Goidel seemed to harbor the same suspicions and even glanced back at Krass to ask what they should do. The Captain was pondering, scratching his chin while attempting to put his thoughts in order.

Captain -” Listen, before I answer more of your questions, I gotta ask something from you. Can you be a bit more cooperative? I would like to help you out, but I need to trust you, at least for a little. I need some truths out of you. Not your life story, nothing too in-depth, but just something."

Ogda was unsure if Lian would want to cover for this with another lie, but, to his surprise, the girl took the initiative and explained their situation. 

Captain -” Memory loss? On both of you?”

Ogda -” Uhm…yeah. We don’t know how or why, but it seems that way.”

The Captain contemplated her story for a bit, but for the first time, he felt she was finally not playing a cat-and-mouse game. “I never heard of it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there are memory-altering ability users.”

He then left the two to talk with the team about it. Lian and Ogda tried to guess what they were saying from their reactions. Blitz seemed to be the more vocal and aggressive, growing more upset with each sentence, but after a few minutes, a consensus seemed to have been reached. Through a vote, 2 against 1, they decided on what to do with the duo.

Captain -” We’ve decided to bring you back with us. So, to make it official, would you like to visit our home base…as guests?”