Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 93: Dodgeball

We keep the Ferredons at a walk. Slow, deliberate, each stride placed soft on the sand. Nobody needs to explain why. The vibration of a gallop is an invitation, and we’ve already RSVP’d to one Worm attack today.

The silence between us has texture now. Not the comfortable kind from before the ride. The kind that forms over a wound—thin, fragile, functional.

Minutes pass. The tower grows.

What was a silhouette on the horizon is becoming architecture.

The twisted coral helices reveal detail with every hundred feet we close—fossilized ridges spiraling upward, grooves deep enough to park a Ferredon inside, the bioluminescent pulse stronger now, rhythmic, slow.

The whole structure rises from the desert floor with the obscene confidence of something that was never meant to be questioned.

It’s the size of a small skyscraper. Maybe bigger. Scale is hard to judge when nothing around it offers comparison—just flat sand and the fake stars above.

"Holy..." The word escapes me before I can catch it.

Boris glances over. A tired smile touches his mouth—the kind that comes from watching someone see something for the first time that you’ve been staring at for years.

Then the smile drops.

"Something’s wrong," he says.

I look at him. "What do you mean?"

I wasn’t feeling anything unusual from the environment. Same dry heat, same dead air, same false sky. No monster energy signature.

"The Tide Worm." Boris keeps his eyes forward, scanning the dark terrain as he speaks. "In all the years we’ve been here, it’s attacked Lost Ark parties exactly twice. Normally it ignores humans entirely. Treats us like pebbles."

"Could be our group size," I offer.

Boris hesitates. Chews on something internally. Murmurs a few words I can’t catch, then shakes his head. "No. Something changed. The Red Tide was different too. Bigger. More erratic. More aggressive than anything I’ve seen in two years."

Of course it was. Chaos Theory.

I know exactly why. My passive is a disruption field that rewrites the threat calculus of everything within range. The Red Tide scaled up because I walked through those gates. The Worm attacked because my presence broke whatever equilibrium Lost Ark had maintained for years.

I can’t tell them. Walking next to a man who makes the world more dangerous just by existing isn’t exactly a recruiting pitch.

"The last time the Tide Worm showed up unprovoked was when—" Boris starts.

"We’re here." Jacob cuts in from the front, pulling Max to a halt. He points ahead. "And we’ve got company."

The cactus field opens before us like an alien garden.

Thousands of them. Dense, tall, black-spined plants spread across a massive swath of desert between us and the tower’s base.

The spines themselves are what we came for—long, razor-pointed, so dark they absorb the starlight. They look less like plant matter and more like polished obsidian. Natural arrowheads growing in neat rows, waiting to be harvested.

But the cacti aren’t alone.

Three Reef Sand Sharks are circling the field. Not buried. Not hunting. Patrolling. They move in slow, lazy arcs around the perimeter, their flat heads occasionally dipping toward the base of a cactus with an almost tender attentiveness.

Guarding them? Why?

Jacob reads the confusion on my face.

"They feed on the sap," he says, keeping his voice low. "Symbiotic relationship. The sharks drink from the cacti, and in exchange, they deposit a secretion from their saliva that hardens the spines. Makes them tougher than forged steel. Best natural ammunition in Lost Ark."

As if on cue, one of the sharks drifts toward a cactus and, with excruciating care, sinks its teeth into the base. Not a bite. A latch. The jaws close gently, the way a mother cat picks up a kitten—firm, precise, no damage.

It holds. Motionless. Feeding.

I count in my head. Fifteen seconds. Then it releases, slides away, and resumes its patrol.

Fifteen seconds of total vulnerability.

Reef Sand Sharks are Rank C. Boris is peak C. With our numbers and the element of surprise, it’s manageable. These aren’t apex predators like the Stalker—they’re territorial grazers with teeth.

Oliver shifts his grip on his weapon, clearly running the same math. "They’re Rank C," he whispers, keeping his head low. "But there’s only three of them. We’re six. We can easily overwhelm them with numbers."

Boris kills the idea before it even takes a breath.

"And destroy the entire field we rely on to survive?" The older man gestures to the dense rows of black spines. "A full-scale battle in there doesn’t help us. We’ve tried it." He points a thumb back at Lola, who is currently draped over her saddle like a wet towel. "Imagine that little one firing her cannon in the middle of our ammo supply. There’d be nothing left to gather."

He’s right. Collateral damage in a farm is a net loss.

Not to mention, the sheer wildcard of my Chaos Theory. A pitched firefight wouldn’t just destroy the cacti; the System would probably use the noise to pull the Worm right out of its dead zone just to spite me.

Before I burn neurons on a plan, I ask the obvious question.

"How do you usually do this?"

Jacob’s mouth twitches. He looks at Boris. Boris looks at Jacob. Then Boris lets out a laugh—a real one, deep and rolling, the kind that shakes the chest and makes no attempt to be quiet.

The sound is so out of place after the last hour that Oliver actually lifts his head. Rhayne blinks.

Lola doesn’t react. She’s already lying flat across her saddle, cheek pressed against the leather.

"You any good at dodgeball?" Jacob asks me.

I stare at him.

Boris grins. "Think of it this way. They’re the balls. We’re the ones dodging."

What kind of garbage plan is that.

"Dodgeball is boring..." Lola mutters from her saddle, her voice muffled by leather.

We dismount. I glance toward the dark desert behind us. "The Worm?"

"Doesn’t come this close to the tower," Jacob says. "We’re inside its dead zone."

With my Chaos Theory, dead zones are suggestions.

Boris turns to me. "Just you. The girls and he wait. Follow us. Too dangerous for them."

Jacob takes point. I fall in behind him. Boris flanks my right. The three of us walk into the cactus field.

The spines are beautiful up close. Each one is a natural masterpiece—smooth, tapered, the black surface catching the faint tower-light and throwing it back in thin, razor-sharp reflections.

I reach out and touch one with my fingertip. The edge draws blood instantly.

These aren’t arrows. These are surgical instruments.

We push deeper. The sharks are visible now—massive, grey-skinned shapes gliding between the cacti with the lazy grace of animals that own the territory and know it. Their flat, dead eyes track us without urgency.

My tank is full. Good.

Jacob stops. We’re close. Close enough that I can smell the sharks—brine and ammonia and the specific, oily musk of something that lives half-submerged in sand.

Jacob looks at me. Looks at Boris. Takes a breath.

Then he screams.

Not a war cry. Not a tactical shout. A raw, unhinged, primal shriek—the sound of a man who has been doing this so many times he stopped caring about dignity and started optimizing for volume. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

All three sharks stop.

Six flat, glassy eyes lock onto Jacob with the synchronized precision of security cameras swiveling toward a breach.

Jacob flashes me a grin that belongs on a man half his age and twice as insane.

"Game’s on. Try not to get hit."