We’d slipped through a crack in the fortress wall about six minutes ago, which was honestly a miracle considering I’d already tripped over two of my own footsteps and nearly sat on a cactus trap. The fortress interior was enormous — a cavernous sandstone pyramid filled with towering shelves carved directly into the walls, every single shelf packed with stolen goods. Diamonds sorted by size. Wool organized by colour. Iron ingots stacked in perfect pyramids. It would have been impressive if it wasn’t so deeply, completely wrong.
“The vault has to be deeper in,” Biscuit murmured, consulting the list she’d started writing the moment we entered. It was already three pages long. “The shade crystals we collected should help mask our heat signatures from the Sand Minions, but we need more time. Significantly more time.” She looked at me in a way that meant she had seventeen plans but none of them were quite right yet.
That’s when we heard him.
