Arlen chewed hogroot as he walked. It was bitter and made his stomach churn, but he was covered in demon scratches, and it helped keep them from infecting. Besides, without food, even nausea was preferable to pangs of hunger.
He drank sparingly, though his throat was dry and swollen. His shirt was tied around his head to ward off the sun, leaving his back vulnerable. His skin was blotched yellow and blue from the beating he had taken, and burned red on top of that. Every step was agony.
Arlen kept moving until the sun was nearly set. He felt as if he had made no progress at all, but the long line of tracks blowing away behind him showed a surprising distance covered.
Night came, bringing corelings and bitter cold. Either was enough to kill him, so Arlen hid from both, burying himself in the sand to preserve body heat and hide from the demons. He tore a sheet from his notebook, rolling the paper into a slender breathing tube, but still he felt as if he were suffocating as he lay, terrified that the corelings might find him. When the sun rose and warmed the sand, he dug free of his sandy grave and stumbled on, feeling as if he had not rested at all.
So it went, day after day, night after night. He grew weaker as the days went by without food, rest, or more than a splash of water. His skin cracked and bled, but he ignored the damage and walked on. The sun beat down with increasing weight, and the flat horizon grew no closer.
At some point, he lost his boots. He wasn’t sure how or when. His feet were scraped raw from the hot sand, bleeding and blistered. He tore the sleeves from his shirt to bind them.
He fell with increasing frequency, sometimes getting right back to his feet, at other times passing out and rising minutes or hours later. Sometimes, he would fall and continue tumbling all the way down a dune. Exhausted, he took it as a blessing, saving himself painful steps.
By the time the water ran out, he had lost count of the days. He was still on the desert path, but had no idea how far there was yet to go. His lips were split and dry, and even his cuts and blisters had ceased to ooze, as if all the liquid in his body had evaporated.
He fell over again, and struggled to find a reason to get back up.
Arlen awoke with a start, his face wet. It was night time, and that should have filled him with terror, but he lacked the strength to fear.
He looked down, and saw that his face had been resting on the edge of the pool in the Oasis of Dawn, his hand in the water.
He wondered how he had gotten to be there. His last memory … he had no idea what his last memory was. The trip through the desert was a blur, but he didn’t care. He had made it. That was all that mattered. Within the warded obelisks of the oasis, he was safe.
Arlen drank greedily from the pool. A moment later, he vomited it up, and forced himself to sip slowly after that. When his thirst was quenched, he closed his eyes again, and slept soundly for the first time in over a week.
When he woke, Arlen raided the oasis’ stores. There were supplies as well as food: blankets, herbs, a spare warding kit. Too weak to forage, he spent several days simply eating the dried stores, drinking cool water, and cleansing his wounds. By then, he was able to gather fresh fruit. After a week, he found the strength to fish. Two, he could stand and stretch without pain.
The oasis had stores enough to get him out of the desert. He might be half dead when he crawled from the scorched clay flats, but he would be half alive, as well.
There were a handful of spears in the oasis’ stores, but compared to the magnificent metal weapon he had lost, sharpened wood seemed woefully inadequate. Without lacquer to harden the symbols, carved wards would mar with the first thrust through hard coreling scales.
What, then? He had wards that could burn the life from demons, but what good were they without a weapon to affix them to?
He considered painting stones with the attack wards. He could throw them, or even press them against the corelings by hand …
Arlen laughed. If he was going to get that close to a demon, he might as well paint the wards right onto his hands.
His laughter died as the thought germinated. Could it work? If so, he would have a weapon no one could steal, one no coreling could knock from his grasp or catch him without.
Arlen took out his notebook, studying the wards on the spear’s tip, and those at its butt. Those were the offensive wards; the wards on the shaft were defensive. He noted that the wards on the butt did not form a line by linking with others, as did the wards along the edge of the tip. They stood alone, the same symbol repeated around the circumference of the spear, and on the flat of its end. Perhaps the difference was one of cutting versus bludgeoning.
As the sun dipped lower, Arlen copied the bludgeoning ward in the sand, over and over, until he felt confident. He took a brush and a paint bowl from his warding kit, carefully painting the ward onto the palm of his left hand. He blew on it softly until it was dry.
Painting his right hand was trickier, but Arlen knew from experience that with concentration, he could ward equally well with his left hand, though it took longer.
As darkness descended, Arlen gently flexed his hands, making sure the movement would not crack or peel the paint. Satisfied, he went to the stone obelisks that warded the oasis, watching the demons circle the barrier, smelling prey just beyond their reach.
The first coreling to catch sight of him was a specimen of no particular note: a sand demon about four feet in length, with long arms and bunched, muscular legs. Its barbed tail slithered back and forth as it met Arlen’s eyes.
A moment later, it launched itself at the wardnet. As it leapt, Arlen stepped aside and reached out, partially covering two wards. The net broke and the coreling tumbled past him, confused at the lack of resistance. He quickly drew his hand back, re-establishing the net. Whatever happened, the demon would not survive. Either it would perish fighting Arlen, or it would kill him and die when the sun rose and it could not escape the heavily warded oasis.
The demon righted itself and turned back, hissing as it bared rows of teeth. It circled, its corded muscles tensing as its tail flicked sharply. Then, with a catlike roar, it pounced again.
Arlen met it head on, holding his hands with palms out, his arms longer than the demon’s. The creature’s scaled chest struck the wards, and with a flash and a howl of agony, the coreling was thrown back. It struck the ground hard, and Arlen could see thin wisps of smoke rising from the point of contact. He smiled.
The demon got back to its feet and began circling again, this time more cautiously. It was unaccustomed to prey fighting back, but it soon regained its courage, leaping to the attack again.
Arlen caught the coreling’s wrists and fell back, kicking it in the stomach and flipping it over him. As he made contact, the wards flared, and he could feel the magic working. It did not burn him, though the coreling’s flesh sizzled at the touch, but there was a tingle of energy in his hands, as if they had lost circulation and gone prickly. The feeling shot up his arms like a shiver.
They both rose quickly, and Arlen returned the coreling’s growl with one of his own. The demon licked at its scorched wrists, trying to soothe them, and Arlen could see grudging respect in its eyes. Respect and fear. This time, he was the predator.
His confidence was almost the death of him. The demon shrieked and lunged, and this time, Arlen was too slow. Black talons raked across his chest as he tried to twist out of the way.
He punched out in desperation, forgetting that the wards were on his palms. His knuckles scraped against