“It’s an ocean,” Christoph said. “What makes the waves? There’s no wind?”

“Not the air,” Diana said. “It’s the winds of the magic, and the currents below the sand, too. The rest of the plains might as well be utterly devoid of mana compared to this place. Can’t you feel it?”

“Not with the wards up,” Christoph said. “And the sunlight’s too bright to see any mana right now… what about the monsters, then? Shouldn’t the pits be covered in crystal beasts with this much mana?”

“There aren’t many creatures in the desert to begin with,” Diana said. “There are beasts here, though. You might not see them, but they’re there.”

Christoph squinted over the shifting waves, peering into the grains of sand. Mana… the sunshine prevented him spotting the pale glow of the beasts’ spirits. “I can’t see anything,” he said. “We should have come at night.”

“The dragon roams the plains at night,” Diana said. “Caravans as far as the northern strait have been targeted by the beast, and that’s hours from here.”

“So this is what passes as a plan for you?” he asked. “What did you do last time?”

“The last dragon was different,” Diana said. “That one was ancient, and far from home. It came down from the mountains in the east, and made it nearly all the way to Starthall before the guild and the church decided to do something about it.”

“So it was almost the exact opposite of this, then?” Christoph asked. “An ancient dragon, left its lair and came into your territory, and you had the support of the guild and the church…”

“Don’t worry,” Diana said. “That dragon was old, but this one’s probably the replacement the World Serpent made after we’d killed the other one. I doubt it’s more than five years old, if that.”

“Still…” Christoph said.

It’s fine,” Diana replied, waving her hand. “All you have to do is stick your sword in it. Even if it swallows you, you’ll live.”

“That’s reassuring,” he said. “Actually, how large is it, anyway? What are we supposed to do if it leaps out of the sand and swallows our skimmer…”

Christoph’s voice trailed off as a rising wave approached their ship from the side. Banking the craft around, he sped away from the flowing dune as it moved towards them, a v-shaped wave following behind the initial swell. Looking back at him, Diana ducked her head under his arm to look back at what he was fleeing from.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s probably it, then.”

“Are you crazy?!” Christoph poured more and more mana into the skimmer as he raced away from the dragon. “If the bow wave is that big, it would almost be large enough to swallow us whole!”

“Yeah, you’d better turn around if you don’t want that to happen,” she said. “Not yet, maybe… two seconds.”

“What-”

Christoph was interrupted by an eruption of sand from behind him, rocky grains blasting over the ship as the dragon burst through the surface and leaped into the air, jaws poised to crunch down on the elven aircraft.

“Just turn!” Diana slammed Christoph’s hands off the controls, banking the craft around as the dragon splashed back under the sand just ahead of them. Retaking control of the skimmer, Christoph fought to right the ship as the sand rose up beneath them, the dragon’s giant tail flicking out to smash them aside as it vanished below the surface once again. The skimmer was shunted aside by the force of the dragon’s blow, wards flashing as Diana channeled her mana into maintaining the barriers.

“It’s circling back around for another attack,” she said. “Here, this is where we part ways.”

“Part ways?” Christoph looked down at the elf woman as warmth flooded through his body, a sudden hardening of the air blowing him from the back of the skimmer. Betrayal? No, he shook off his confusion as he landed on the sand, feeling her mana pulsing through his body. Splitting up was a valid strategy, too.

“See you!” Diana said, smiling as she waved. Reaching forward to grasp the controls of the floating craft, she sent the skimmer in a bobbing spin before shooting away across the sand.

“Well bye, then,” Christoph replied, tamping down on the sand beneath him with his feet. Rather than the shifting grains of the pits, the sand he stood upon seemed to be solid enough. Was this due to his condition? He had never… no, he recalled something similar happening once in the beast forests. A shining sea of flowers, their petals growing dim as he approached. When had this-

Shaking himself back into the present, he gave silent thanks that he wasn’t about to sink below the coarse waves. Diana had disappeared into the distance, the small skimmer easily vanishing from sight behind the heat-hazes that surrounded him. Bereft of the elven wards, the winds washed over Christoph, mana-laden and pleasantly invigorating. Taking a deep breath, he swore as the sunlight blinded him. Rather than fight, how was he even supposed to find the dragon in this place?

The waves rolled silently past him as he drew his sword, the dragon’s rolling bow-wave catching his eye as it approached. Ah! There it was! Christoph felt a grin creep over his face as he waited for the beast. A dragon! He couldn’t imagine what strength he would gain from this encounter. His grin widened as a crystalline sail broke through the surface of the sand. So large! When the beast rose up from the sand, he’d… He’d do what? What was it he was supposed to do to a beast that massive? Christoph’s grin fell away as the dragon grew near. There’s no way he could break the charge of something like that! Turning away, he sheathed his sword and broke into a sprint. Where was Diana, anyway? Wasn’t she supposed to-

A spray of sand interrupted Christoph’s thoughts again, the giant lizard-like creature bursting out from under the sand and arcing through the air towards his patch of solid earth. The rocky beast splashed heavily over the area he had been standing in a moment before, jaws snapping closed over the entire island of sand as it dissolved in his absence. In contrast, the sand ahead of him stiffened as he ran, settling into compact ground as his feet pounded over the desert. No, the sand ahead wasn’t yet as firm as the area he had been standing on before – it took time for him to leech the mana from the earth. In that case, running would only serve to tire him out before the fight.

…

Diana gathered her energy, firing off an arc of lightning at the dragon as it disappeared beneath the waves once more. Was Christoph still running? No, he’d stopped now. Good, she hadn’t gifted him so much of her mana for nothing. A water dragon… the Ouroboros was brilliant indeed. What little she’d seen of the creature had been enough to make her re-consider her plans. Christoph barely stood as tall as its closed jaw, and the beast itself seemed to be made out of rock rather than flesh. If she didn’t know better, she would have called it a golem rather than a dragon. It was as if the World Serpent had carved an ocean out of stone, and created a great leviathan to match.

The dragon surfaced again, arcing over Christoph’s patch of firm land and narrowly missing the human with its bite, the crack of its jaws slamming closed with enough force to raise a shockwave of dust over his tiny island. Diana retaliated with another lightning bolt, targeting the beast’s head this time. On the ground, Christoph struck out at the dragon’s stomach with his sword, gouging a long crack into the statue-like creature before it could pass over his head. Sinking below the sand again, it circled around the human twice more, the short sail barely visible under the agitated surface of the desert sea as it leaped fruitlessly at the swordsman.

Diana laughed as she mimicked the dragon’s movements, circling around her frantic companion. Christoph’s patch of land seemed to have spread somewhat, a large circle of firm ground forming in the middle of the swirling sand. This dragon was nothing like any other she had ever heard of! The flat vertical tail and long body of the marine reptiles, a short sail that replaced its wings, and limbs that folded flat against its body while it swam. The dragon Claude defeated had possessed tremendous claws on its forelimbs, but this one attacked with the strength of its jaws, saw-shaped teeth filling its reptilian skull.

Widening her arms, Diana released her mana over the area, a barrage of lightning bolts cracking down over the sandy seas. Rather than the dragon, her target this time was the sand itself, jagged branches of glass forming to bob on the surface of the pits. They might not be enough to damage the dragon itself, but they disrupted its movement, like driftwood over an ocean.

Because of the way Diana had slowed to cast her spell, she almost missed the rising bow-wave as it surged towards her skimmer, banking hard left to avoid the dragon as it lunged up at her craft. Twisting its body to the side, the dragon caught the craft with its tail once again, slamming it down onto the sand and smashing Diana from her seat for a split-second. Shaking her head, the elf looked up just in time to see the dragon lean down on the wards with its forelimbs, jaws opened and ready to swallow the ship when her shields gave out under the pressure.

…

Christoph waved over to where Diana was circling around him. The lightning strikes had created a swathe of glassy islands over the sand, not that he could make use of them. He had managed to land a few good strikes on the beast, but even so his blade wasn’t heavy enough to do more than cleave into the dragon’s rocky skin. He shrugged, crunching down on one of the gems he had knocked from the creature as it arced overhead. Although it had seemed like nothing more than regular stone, even the skin itself had been filled with mana, the distinctive crystalline taste filling his mouth as he ate. What was Diana doing, anyway?

The dragon rose up from the sand, and Christoph winced as it narrowly missed the elven skimmer, slapping the craft aside with its tail. Instead of disappearing back beneath the waves, though, the beast rose up again, leaning forward to push Diana into the sand. The skimmer blurred as Diana’s wards began to flicker under the sheer crushing weight, the shields forming a sphere-shaped bubble of air as the craft slowly sank beneath the waves.

Christoph started to run, struggling over the loose sand as he sprinted towards the craft, not giving the sand before him any time to settle into firm land. What if he sunk below the surface before the sand lost its fluidity? He’d be trapped, buried alive… even if he got too close to Diana now, he’d just be adding weight onto her wards, giving the dragon a firm surface to crush her against. Shaking off his concerns, Christoph continued towards the reptilian beast. There’d be no time to act if he hesitated now. Just before the grains of sand closed over the top of the Diana’s wards, though, a brilliant blast of mana shook the sandy ocean, the dragon reeling back to splash under the waves with a roar of pain.

Rising up from her ship, Diana floated into the air, lightning arcing off her body to strike at the sand as she had done before… no! Christoph stopped as her mana signature grew tremendously, a gigantic beam of light piercing down to wash over the surface of the sand pits. Blinking his vision clear, Christoph stared over at the changes the elf had wrought upon the ocean of sand. Where waves had stood before, there was only glass. Diana had created an island amidst the sand, a platform large enough to support even the weight of the behemoth they faced. Christoph grinned as he readied his sword. Diana had done her part by now – it was his job to actually slay the dragon, after all.