Desert Raid
Level Up Harem — Book 2
By Machine George
Sand. Steel. Stamina.
The guild reward wasn’t gold or gear—it was a Rare Crafting Schematic. The kind that could upgrade their entire party’s equipment tier. But to get it, Jace and his party need to cross the Ash Wastes, survive the antlion sinks, and reach the Obsidian Gate before time expires.
A fennec fox-kin guide with enormous ears and sand goggles joins the team. A rival party with clean sashes and dirty tactics wants the same prize. And somewhere in the heart of the wastes, a Scarab Colossus is waiting that will push them further than they’ve ever gone.
New characters join the party:
- Nadiya — Fennec fox-kin scout with ears that read wind shifts
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Chapter 1 — Rent, Sand, Resolve
Jace tipped the clay jar and let the last of their coin clatter onto the scarred table. Ten silvers. Fourteen coppers. One foreign bit with a hole in it that no scribe would take without a story. The jar made a hollow sound when he set it down—like a bowl that remembered soup.
“Rent by fifth-bell tomorrow,” Mira said, perched on the windowsill with her knees to her chest, tail flicking an argument with gravity. “Landlord’s eye twitched when he said it. He’s practicing saying late fee in the mirror.”
“We pay him,” Elara said, calm as ever, “or we move our bedrolls to the roof and pretend it’s a blessing.”
Jace stacked the silvers into two careful towers and stared past them at the city—Starfall stretched all the way to the gulf, roofs like scales, alleys full of traffic and intentions. “We won’t earn rent in the training yard.”
“Then we take a board job,” Mira said. “Something with teeth. Teeth pay better.”
Elara’s mouth softened. “Teeth bleed.”
“Not if we use our heads,” Jace said, and pushed back from the table. “Board first. Bench after. If Tamsin’s feeling generous, we borrow a sand kit.”
They stepped into heat that had the manners to be honest. The sun already tanned the day hard. Market calls rang out, gulls argued law with the fishermen, and incense smoke from the Warm Hand shrine curled through it all like a dropped and forgotten ribbon.
The guild hall kept its cool by being stubborn about shade. Scribes nested behind tall desks. A watcher-stone watched the door the way old cats watch mice: with contempt that didn’t rule out affection. The posting board held its square of the world—a riot of parchment under little brass nails.
Mira slid to it first. “Purse-cutter,” she called softly, skimming past the low-coin jobs and the laughable “honor” quests.
Jace joined her shoulder to shoulder. Elara hovered a pace back, fingers warm on his arm in that absent way she had when reading more than ink.
There it was, near the center: clean handwriting, a quick sketch of a salt-glass crowned grove.
DESERT RAID (E)
Oasis glade spirit reports theft of heart-seed by ruin-scavvers.
Recover and return intact.
Non-lethal engagement preferred by local shrine.
Reward: twenty-five silver + boon.
Route: South Gate → Dune Spines → Whispering Grove.
Hazards: antlion sinks; sun-beam corridors; glass wasps; hive galleries.
“Oh, I like it,” Mira said, voice gone low and pleased, like a cat spotting a new high shelf. “Ruin, puzzles, things that bite your ankles.”
Elara touched the line about non-lethal and nodded. “If the spirit asked, someone at the Warm Hand will be listening to see if we honor the request.”
Jace read it twice, imagining the dunes and their special treachery. Heat pressure on lungs, sand that loved you until it didn’t, a ruin’s logic. “E-rank coin, but enough to stop our landlord from being brave. And a boon.”
Mira tapped the corner with one claw. “And rivals. Look—ink’s still wet where someone pried this up and nailed it back. Bright Lances fingers. They like their ‘salvage writs’ more than spirits do.”
As if summoned by the insult, a familiar profile in a too-clean sash slid into his periphery. Torvy of the Bright Lances wore the smile of a man who owned a mirror and consulted it before telling the truth.
“Looking above your weight, Jace?” Torvy drawled. His scribe—thin, pinched, ink-splotched—hovered a pace behind like a shadow that wrote itself.
Mira’s grin turned bright and carnivorous. “Hello, cloth-belt. Find your courage yet, or is your scribe holding it in a jar?”
Elara’s fingers tightened once on Jace’s arm. He took the warning and stepped forward half an inch, enough to put his shadow between Torvy and his people.
“We’re reading,” Jace said.
Torvy made a show of looking bored at the board. “Ah. The sand trifle. Don’t worry. We’ll be gentle with the grove. As gentle as the law requires.”
“The law requires you to respect a spirit’s terms,” Elara said, pleasant—which with Elara meant dangerous in about six heartbeats. “Non-lethal is written clearly.”
The scribe sniffed. “Non-binding suggestion.”
Elara tilted her head. “Only if your conscience is.”
Torvy’s eyes flicked to the corner of the posting where the reward glinted in neat ink. “Twenty-five,” he mused. “You’ll need it.” He let his gaze slide to Jace’s knuckles, still scarred from last week’s training, and waited for Jace to react.
Jace didn’t. He’d learned to spend openings, not trades of insult. “We’ll take it,” he said instead, lifting the parchment free.
Torvy’s smile thinned. “See you in the dunes,” he said, and turned, scribe in tow, like a man who had managed to win by leaving the room.
Mira made an inelegant suggestion with three fingers.
“Later,” Jace said.
She made an elegant echo of the same suggestion with her tail and laughed. “Later,” she agreed.
He took the parchment to the clerk, a lamplight of a woman who’d been watching the exchange with eyes that counted more than coin. “We accept,” he told her.
She dotted a line with neat precision. “Jot your party and mark that you’ve read the non-lethal clause.”
“Jace,” he said.
“Mira,” Mira said, leaning over to steal the clerk’s quill with a flourish.
“Elara,” Elara said, adding a tiny sun symbol by her name that no scribe would dare rub out.
The clerk read them once, then twice. Perhaps the names arranged themselves into a pattern she liked. “You’ll want a Silence Chime for the grove if that dryad’s the kind that hears more than speech,” she said. “And sand anchors, if you mean to cross antlion bowls without ending up on the menu.”
“Bench,” Jace said. “Tamsin?”
“She’s watering a temper this morning,” the clerk said, “but she’ll trade it for metal. Stamp here.”
A cold chime ticked at the back of Jace’s head. It felt like a decision sealing.
[SYSTEM] Quest Accepted: Desert Raid (E) — Recover heart-seed (intact). Engage non-lethal where possible.[SYSTEM] Travel Advisory: Heat — stamina regen reduced; hydration rites recommended.
Elara’s eyes unfocused for a breath. She always heard the chime differently—more hymn than bell. “Warm Hand can grant a small rite,” she said, already deciding which verse might persuade passage. “We’ll want to carry blessed water and make offerings if we take from the ruin.”
“Take little,” Jace said. “We need sand anchors more than souvenirs.”
Mira hooked her arm through his as they stepped away from the board, a casual intimacy that felt like luck bumping into him and deciding to stay. “Gear first,” she said. “Then you can shout at the sun about stamina and pace until it blushes.”
He smiled despite himself. “I don’t shout. I brief.”
“You brief like a sermon,” she said. “Elara’s the priest. You’re the shield.”
“If you two are done,” Elara said dryly, “perhaps we collect tools before Torvy buys them all.”
They crossed the hall toward Tamsin’s bench—a cramped kingdom of springs, straps, and ideas she hadn’t been paid for yet. Tamsin herself hammered a rivet with the patience of someone pretending to have it. Leather apron, hair pinned back, goggles perched on her head like a crown she refused to admit she liked.
“If you’re paying me in compliments, turn around,” she said without looking up.
“Paying in coin and gratitude,” Mira said sweetly. “You like one and mistrust the other.”
Tamsin set the hammer down. “Desert kit. I can smell the posting ink on you.” Her gaze snagged on the parchment in Jace’s hand, reading it all without moving her eyes. “Silence Chime, three sand anchors, sun-hoods, dust veils, dune-cooled cloaks if I’ve got them in your sizes. You’re late.”
“Guild clerk said you had a temper to water,” Jace said.
“I watered it,” Tamsin said. “It grew.”
Mira laughed. Elara laid two silvers on the bench—the kind that held more value for their honesty than their weight. “We’ll bring you a rune plate sample if the ruin’s kind,” she said. “You can polish your temper against it.”
Tamsin’s mouth twitched. Not a smile, but the seed of one. “Rune plate? Don’t overharvest. Dryads hold opinions. But if you find a broken panel, I’ll turn it into knee-baffles and make you famous among people who care about knees.”
“Jace cares about knees,” Mira said. “He collects them. Left, right, his, not-his.”
Tamsin slid a tray forward. Three small brass chimes strung with thin silk cords rang almost imperceptibly when Jace lifted them. “Hold this under your tongue if you’re negotiating with a spirit that hears your pulse,” she said. “It softens intent. Doesn’t lie, doesn’t silence you. It just… makes your breath sound like respect.”
Elara handled one as if it might take offense and found the cord’s notch without looking. “Blessings on the hands that make useful things,” she said.
“Blessings on the hands that return them unbroken,” Tamsin replied, deadpan, though her eyes warmed a fraction. “Sand anchors,” she continued, sliding three bronze heads and a length of rope across. “Bite them into the rim, give the line a song, and don’t argue with physics.”
“Physics is rude,” Mira said. “We never argue. We just step aside while it falls down the stairs.”
Jace counted coin. The towers he’d stacked back at the room came apart here, as they always did. Rent had a voice; gear had a louder one. He left the bench lighter and felt better for it.
On the way out, the clerk leaned over her desk. “South gate winds are shifting,” she said. “Dust tells calm, but the gulls say cross-shear by afternoon. If you’re marching, march now.”
“Gulls gossip,” Mira said.
“Gulls see,” the clerk countered.
They took the warning. Outside, Starfall’s wind carried that knife-edge that comes before the blade. Jace adjusted the pack on his shoulder, checked his shield’s fit, felt the familiar tug in his muscles that meant work was close and welcome.
“Pace,” he said, turning to face them both. Elara already had her veils out—clean white that turned her smile into suggestion. Mira stood with sun-hood tilted, ears slotted through, eyes bright with mischief and something kinder beneath. “We go as we trained. Two sprints, one walk. Drink when the sun marks the shadow to your knuckle. We do not chase rivals. We do not race our own lungs. If I say down, you get low. If Elara says stop, you stop. If Mira says the floor’s lying, you believe her.”
Mira dipped into a theatrical bow. “Sir yes sir,” she said, then ruined it by stepping close, rising on toes to kiss his cheek. “Don’t carry the sun for us, Jace. It has its own legs.”
Elara brushed his other cheek with her fingers, cool as a shrine basin. “We’ll bring you your openings,” she said. “Spend them.”
He swallowed both smile and the knot in his chest it wanted to carry. “We leave now,” he said. “Before Torvy talks himself into sense.”
A small cold ping touched the back of his eye—a ghost of future warnings.
[SYSTEM] Travel Condition primed: Desert Fatigue — Heat drains stamina; shade and hydration rites mitigate.Elara’s veil fluttered as if hearing the same thing and approving. “I’ll stop at the shrine as we pass,” she said. “Two verses, one bowl. The Warm Hand favors those who speak first and loudest to their own thirst.”
“Make it three verses,” Jace said, thinking of dunes and long walk-backs.
They moved.
South Gate was a mouth that had forgotten how to close. Traders in sand-sleds skidded through, camels blinked their long-lashed indifference, and the guard yawned in a way that implied he defended against boredom, not invasion. Beyond the gate, the world became a grammar of tan and heat and small stubborn plants clinging to their opinions.
By the time the city shrank to a thumb on the horizon, the sand had learned their names. Jace felt it in his calves, shoulders, lungs. The first antlion bowl showed its rim like a smile that didn’t reach the eyes. He pointed. Mira nodded. Elara was already stepping wide.
“Anchor,” he said.
He bit the bronze head into the rim, gave the line a song with his hand, tested the pull. The bowl’s crust sighed a warning, then accepted their weight in the practiced way of traps that prefer to eat without chewing.
“Good sand,” Mira murmured. “Stay asleep.”
They crossed. The wind hushed, then kicked. A whisper rose beneath the crust—the kind of almost-sound Jace had learned to distrust. The world talking in a voice he hadn’t been taught to hear.
He glanced at Mira. She’d frozen in that particular poised way when her body had opinions. Ears high, head cocked a fraction. “Hear that?” she asked, but her mouth said no and her eyes said yes and the hair on his arms agreed with her eyes.
“Nothing,” he said. “Everything.”
“Mm.” She set her foot down one finger’s breadth left, weight easy. The crust under her old footprint caved with a sigh like disappointment. The hole was small. Confidence was smaller. They widened their line and stepped more carefully.
The dunes took them on, one spine at a time. Heat settled over his shoulders like a neighbor who meant well but didn’t understand boundaries. Elara’s voice rose and fell in soft verses that tasted of cool water. Mira hummed a market song about a fishmonger with morals, and Jace laughed—the sound free of counting coins left in jars.
By noon, the whispering grove was a smudge on the horizon, its salt-glass crown catching sun in a way that made his eyes want to blink forever. The ruin showed a low, broken shoulder on the dune beyond, shadow pooled in its mouth.
Rent would be paid. Boons would be asked for politely. Rivals would be handled with proof, not blood.
Jace lifted his hand. The three of them stopped together, like a word ending in agreement.
“Plan,” he said, and saw both sets of eyes sharpen. The city and what it had made of them breathed at their backs. The desert and what it would ask of them breathed in.
“Let’s do it,” Mira said.
He nodded once, felt the weight of shield and the lighter weight of being seen, and started down toward the grove where a spirit waited to ask them what kind of people they were.
Continue the Adventure
Book 1: Starter Dungeon
Book 2: Desert Raid — Available now on Amazon (Kindle Unlimited)
Book 3: Sky Tower
Book 4: Ice Labyrinth
