The night outside Tan'thalon's walls was as restless as Talia's mind. The desert wind howled like a wounded beast, carrying dust and whispers across the sand. Talia's vigorous training had at least led to a guard captain noticing her. And she had been invited to go on a night time patrol outside the arc wall. These patrols happened quite a lot, just outside the gun emplacements' , that decorated the top of the wall, range. That way they could still get support if they needed it.
Talia's patrol had started as routine—three guards, a short sweep beyond the Arc Wall—but nothing was predictable in the desert.
The attack came swift and shattered the routine. Cloaked figures spilled from the dunes, blades glinting faintly in the light of the stars. Raiders, or worse, cultists. The guards fell into defensive formation, steel clashing in the dark and shields raised. The captain didn't even need to bark orders as they reacted by instinct.
Talia's blood surged with the familiar thrill of combat, eager to prove her worth after her encounter in the alleys. Her blade sang as she met the first strike, parried the second. But there were too many hostiles. Shadows moved faster than her eyes could follow in these low light conditions, and for every one she cut down, two more closed in. One of the guards evened the field a little by channeling his light and illuminating the environment. Talia's heart sank as she noticed just how badly outnumbered they were. Worse still, their path to safety of the gun emplacement support had been cut off by the cloaked figures. Talia tried to channel her own light to her hands, ready to scorch a few heretics, but against these odds her doubt crept back in, causing her light to falter.
But then she noticed something. The sand stirred. Soft at first, then increasingly more.
A pillar of sand carved through the raiders, plumes and jets of sand that forced them back. Talia traced the trail back to where it began. And there she was.
The Diviner stepped into the chaos as though it belonged to her, runes along the shaft of her staff glowing, blind eyes half-lidded. Her body moved with unnerving certainty, turning to intercept a strike from behind before it landed, sweeping her staff in a fluid arc that sent a wave of sand crashing into another attacker. Talia stared even as she fought, unable to look away.
"You again?" she shouted over the clash, half accusation, half relief.
"You're welcome," the Diviner replied evenly, staff cracking against a raider's jaw.
She didn't even face him when she struck, as if she had felt him instead of seen him.
"That's not what I—" Talia cut herself off, her frustration rising as hot as the desert air.
She drove her blade into another raider and snarled, "You think you're so untouchable, don't you?"
The Diviner blocked a blow aimed at Talia's exposed flank without turning her head.
"And you think you don't need saving."
The words stung more than the fight itself.
"I don't," Talia spat, slashing through another foe.
The Diviner's blind gaze tilted toward her, calm even as her magic arced from her staff to drop three enemies at once by shifting the sands under them, her nose twitching slightly as if sniffing the air.
"Then why are you bleeding?"
Talia glanced down, almost against her will. A shallow cut along her ribs stung, blood soaking through her tunic. She clenched her teeth, angry at herself—for missing it, for her weakness, for the Diviner seeing it before she had.
"Stay out of my way," she growled, throwing herself forward into the fray.
"Then stop leaving openings," the Diviner said, her tone maddeningly serene.
The two of them fell into a rhythm, unwilling allies bound by necessity. Talia's blade flared with holy light, her resolve strengthened by the Diviner near her, her strikes strong and decisive, while the Diviner wove earth and strikes through the gaps, sandblasting every shadow that slipped past and knocking the rest down. Seeing their teamwork inspired the guards as they aimed for the raiders, making short work of any strays. By the time the last raider fled into the dunes, the sand was littered with broken weapons and armor. Talia's chest heaved, sweat stinging her cuts, but her eyes were locked on the Diviner. The woman stood steady, staff planted in the sand, calm as ever—untouched.
"You drive me mad," Talia said at last, the words spilling before she could stop them.
The Diviner tilted her head, blind eyes fixed unerringly on her. For the first time, a hint of a smile touched her lips.
"Good. Then you'll remember me."
Her focus shifted as suddenly as she appeared, her playful gaze now serious. If Talia didn't know better she would think the Diviner was like a cat.
"Get back to the wall. Amateur hour is over." She readied her stance as she gestured for both Talia and the guard to leave.
Talia only huffed, protesting.
"Who are you to–.. ".
Then she felt it, a shudder in the sand. Soft at first, then increasingly violent. The dunes convulsed as though the world itself recoiled. Then it came, the desert exploding as it surfaced. A desert colossus, a centipede-like behemoth longer than anything Talia had seen before, its body a chitinous mountain of armor and writhing legs. The desert was its domain. For decades, the colossus had ruled these sands, rising from the dunes to devour caravans, scattering soldiers like ants. The trembling of the earth always meant prey, tiny, fragile, blind to its power. Its head rose high above them, mandibles snapping like swords, eyes glowing with molten fury. The shimmer of light Talia had managed to summon now disappeared completely. The captain and her guard shouted for Talia to follow as they made a run for the wall, but the paladin stood frozen in place, fear gripping her. The Diviner noticed and whistled sharply.
Talia felt more shudders in the sand, this time soft and fast. Almost as if a giant horse were galloping towards them. The Diviner only smiled faintly, the slightest curve of a lopsided smile aimed at Talia, almost as if saying Don't worry, I got this.
In an instant, Talia saw it. Standing at the Diviner's side. A massive dire wolf. Standing at nearly the size of a horse it still easily dwarfed the woman standing besides it. Its frame was built of coiled muscle and sinew. This was a beast built for speed and power. She swore she could see faint glimmers in its fur under the moonlit sky. Her jaw dropped when she saw the Diviner swing effortlessly on its back, her fingers sinking deep in its fur, both of them setting off to combat the colossus.
The giant centipede rose, a mountain of chitin and hunger, mandibles splitting wide, eyes burning with molten rage. Below, prey stood waiting. A wolf. A woman. The beast lunged, expecting screams, panic, death. Which it got from Talia, who saw a mountain of mandibles and writhing limbs coming straight for her. The dire wolf darted forward, impossibly swift for his massive frame. The Diviner leaned into the motion, her arms forming the hooks of her praying mantis style. As she snapped her hands upward, a ridge of stone erupted from the desert floor, slamming into the creature's face and deflecting its strike to the side.The ridge shattered from the sheer mass colliding with it, but it had fulfilled its purpose of keeping Talia safe. To the monster it seemed unnatural, nothing like it had ever experienced before. Its jaws struck down, yet stone rose up like a wall of fangs, blocking its bite.
"You can stare at it in awe later! Get to safety!" The Diviner shouted from the wolf's back. The wolf twisted, his claws raking across one of its legs. At the same instant, the Diviner mirrored his motion, her clawed hand slicing downward, calling a jagged line of stone spikes to burst upward beneath the beast's underbelly.
The colossus thrashed, furious. Prey was not supposed to fight back. Prey was not supposed to shape the world. Yet the world bent, again and again, into the form of that small human's stance. It began to understand fear. The ground and wolf struck as one.
The wolf leapt high onto the monster's side, sinking his fangs deep. The Diviner arched backward into a mantis counter stance, and the earth obeyed. Pillars rose beneath the wolf's leap, giving him height and strength as if the desert itself flung him upward. When the colossus' tail whipped toward them, the wolf rolled aside, his weight pulling the Diviner low. Her palm struck the sand in perfect timing, channeling the movement into a shockwave ripple that diverted the tail into the dunes.
The wolf roared as his claws dug deep. At the same moment, the Diviner thrust both hands forward in a mantis strike, and the desert surged. A tidal wave of stone and sand crashed into the monster's chest, sending the colossus reeling.
The monster saw a wolf move faster than any predator it had ever known, claws raking fire across its armored limbs. And the woman…
The woman was worse.
She did not flinch. She did not flee. She moved her hands in strange, hooked motions, and the desert obeyed. Spikes of stone mirrored her strikes, waves of sand matched her steps, tremors echoed her stance. To the monster, it was not a wolf and a rider. It was as if the desert itself had turned against it. Every claw of the beast was met by a claw of stone. Every lash of its tail was redirected by the shifting earth. Every roar was drowned by the thunder of collapsing dunes. And always, the wolf's glowing eyes and crystalline fur flared in rhythm with the woman's blind gaze, as if the two were one body, one spirit.
Talia still stood frozen in place. Not from fear or terror, but completely in awe of seeing this woman battle a behemoth more than twenty times her size and doing so without fear. She shielded her eyes from the spray of sand, watching in disbelief. It was not a rider and a beast. It was not even woman and earth. It was a single entity, a living storm, each movement of wolf and master mirrored and amplified by the shifting ground.
The colossus rose again, enraged, towering above them like a living mountain. The wolf crouched low. The Diviner felt the tremor in his body—the signal.
She pressed her forehead against his neck, whispered a single word "Now."
The wolf leapt. Higher than any beast should. His crystalline fur glimmered like stars as his claws sank into the monster's head. The Diviner dropped into her final mantis stance, arms drawn back like hooked scythes. With a snap forward, she pulled the desert itself upward, spires of obsidian and sandstone surging from the dunes, anchoring the beast in place. The wolf roared, a sound like thunder, and wrenched downward with all his might. Its skull cracked against the spires, its body shuddered, and for the first time in ages, it fell. As darkness claimed it, the last thing the beast sensed was the rhythm: the heartbeat of wolf, woman, and earth, thundering together as one.
Then the desert fell silent.
The wolf landed heavily, dust clouding around him. The Diviner slid from his back, one hand pressed to the sand, the other resting on his flank. Her blind eyes lifted toward Talia.
"Even mountains can fall," she said softly "Come, let's check if everyone is alright".
The wind swallowed her words as she turned, staff clicking against stone, walking away into the dark desert sky. The now silent night was only disturbed by the whistles of the blind woman and the clicking of her tongue. Talia stood trembling, sword still in her hand, heart hammering with something that wasn't battle-fury.