Kael's reluctant agreement forged a fragile, transactional peace. They set off at dusk, when the brutal heat of the Glass Salt Flats began to recede into a more tolerable, baked warmth. Their journey together was a study in contrasts, a dissonant duet of survival philosophies.
Kael moved with the quiet, instinctual awareness of a creature of the wild. He was silent, his senses extended, feeling the faint, almost imperceptible shifts in the land's dead resonance, listening for the tell-tale crunch of a predator's footstep. He was a part of the landscape, relying on the strange, internal compass of his Dissonance and the hard-won lessons of his solitary journey.
Ria, by contrast, was a whirlwind of practical knowledge and specialized, resonant technology. She was never truly silent. She constantly consulted a compass she wore on her wrist, a complex device whose needle didn't point north, but quivered and spun away from hidden Dissonant fields or unstable salt crusts. Every few hundred paces, she would stop and plant a small, tripod-like device on the ground, which would emit a series of sonic pings to test the stability of the salt shelf beneath their feet. The water-reclaiming respirator hissed with a soft, steady rhythm, a constant reminder of her mastery over the hostile environment. She saw the world not as a living thing to be listened to, but as a series of complex, dangerous problems to be solved with the right tool and the right application of force.
Their conversations were as sparse as the landscape, clipped and transactional. Kael, remembering Silas's wisdom, tried once to explain his worldview. "The world has a song," he'd said, looking out at the shimmering, endless salt. "We just have to learn how to listen to it."
Ria had let out a short, sharp laugh, the sound devoid of all humor. "The world has teeth, mountain man. And it's trying to eat you. Harmony, Dissonance… they're just different words for a hammer. Different ways to hit the rock until it gives you what you want." Her cynicism was a solid wall, impenetrable and absolute. To her, the world was a hostile machine, and resonance was just another lever to pull. Kael found her philosophy bleak and empty, but as he watched her expertly navigate a treacherous patch of thin crust that he hadn't even sensed, he couldn't deny her effectiveness.
As the violet twilight deepened, their journey was abruptly interrupted.
Without a sound, the salt crust around them erupted. A dozen creatures, their forms a mottled, crystalline white that had perfectly camouflaged them against the salt, burst from beneath the surface. They were the Salt-Scuttlers Ria had mentioned, fast, crab-like Echoes the size of large dogs. They moved on multiple, sharp-tipped legs, their multifaceted eyes glowing with a hungry, predatory light. They surrounded them in seconds, their attack a silent, coordinated ambush.
The fight exploded in a flurry of motion, forcing them into a reluctant, desperate teamwork. Ria was a brutal and efficient fighter. Her weapon was a heavy polearm with an axe-like head made from polished, sharpened obsidian. She spun and fought with a practiced, deadly grace, her movements economical and powerful. She also used a handheld device, a resonant stunner, which emitted a concussive, low-frequency sonic blast that would disorient the creatures, leaving them vulnerable to a killing blow from her polearm.
Kael, armed only with the crude, chipped obsidian knife from Barren, was at a severe disadvantage. He was forced to rely almost entirely on his Dissonance. He stomped his foot, sending a focused shatter-pulse into the salt crust beneath a charging Scuttler, causing the ground to give way and sending the creature tumbling into a shallow pit. He used sharp, focused hums, like sonic needles, to target the joints in the creatures' legs or the weaker points in their tough carapaces, trying to disable them before they could get too close.
They were an effective, if completely disjointed, team. Ria was a whirlwind of precise violence and technology, while Kael was a locus of chaotic, invisible power.
In the chaos of the battle, as Ria swung her polearm to decapitate one Scuttler, another one burst from the ground directly behind her, its sharp, sickle-like claws raised to strike. Kael saw it. There was no time to shout a warning, no time for a precise, focused attack.
He acted on pure instinct. He threw his hand out, and a raw, powerful wave of Dissonance, more forceful than a hum but less chaotic than a scream, erupted from him. The Salt-Scuttler's white carapace cracked violently, and the creature exploded into a shower of crystalline fragments just before its claws could find their mark in Ria's back.
The last of the creatures, its pack broken, scuttled back beneath the salt crust and vanished. Silence returned to the flats, the air thick with the smell of ozone and shattered crystal.
Ria stood panting for a moment, then slowly turned. She looked at the glittering pile of shards that had been about to kill her, then looked at Kael. The dark lenses of her goggles were unreadable, but for the first time, Kael felt like she was truly seeing him. Not as a salvageable asset, or a boy with an interesting scar, but as something else. A powerful, untrained weapon.
She walked over, her boots crunching on the salt, and nudged his Jag-Wolf fang with the toe of her boot, pushing it toward him.
"Keep the tooth," she said, her voice flat.
Kael eyed her with deep suspicion. "What's the catch?"
"You're more useful with it," she stated, as if it were a simple, tactical fact. "My price has changed."
Her head tilted, and even behind the dark goggles, he could feel the intensity of her gaze. "You get my guidance to Silt. I get you there alive, no more talk of payment." She paused, letting the offer hang in the air before delivering the real price. "And in return, you owe me a favor. One favor. I can call it in whenever I want, for whatever I want. And you have to say yes."
The new deal was infinitely more dangerous than giving up his knife. It was a blank check, drawn on his life and his power, handed to a cynical stranger who saw the world as a thing to be exploited.
Kael knew it was a terrible deal. But he also knew, with absolute certainty, that he would not have survived the flats alone. He needed her expertise, her knowledge, her tools. He needed to get to Silt.
He looked at her, then down at the Jag-Wolf fang. He bent down and picked it up, the familiar weight settling back into his hand. He slid it into his belt. "Alright," he said, his voice a low rasp. "One favor."
"Good," Ria said, her tone giving nothing away. An uneasy, dangerous alliance was forged in the twilight of the salt desert.
She turned and pointed to the horizon. Kael followed her gesture. The flat line of the world was broken by a faint, hellish, orange glow that illuminated the underside of the sky. The air, even from this distance, shimmered with an intense, palpable heat.
"The Molten Sea," Ria said. "And on its shore, Silt."
The next stage of his journey was about to begin. And he was no longer alone—but he had a terrifying feeling that his new companion might prove to be just as dangerous as any monster he had faced.