The Master of Assassins takes a step forwards, raises one hand to the sky - and bellows. Her shout rolls clear across the battlefield and up towards the distant sky. Her hands are raised in a royal gesture that has been depicted since since the first slave put paint on a clay pot. She matches, exceeds the distant thunder and hears it roar in return. It is a simple secret but when one wishes to address Zeus Most High, it is best to do so loudly.

"Master of Thunderstorms!" bellows the Master of Assassins. "I am Sagakhan! It has been three hundred years since I ascended the Papaveraceae Throne! I have not forgot you in my libations! I have not forgot you in my administration! I was a parent to those who had none! I was a saviour to those ill-treated by their masters! Behold, my justice! I have captured Molech, whose sins were unspeakable, who in word and deed reflected your tyrant father! To him I have bought suffering unimaginable. Behold, my mercy! Before me stand prisoners, the ill-treated captives of my Kaeri servants! To them, I bring freedom! Before your sight and before this battle, I turn them loose - four thousand strong right arms who I will not even ask not to raise a hand against me! Even though I am outnumbered four to one I freely add to my enemy's ranks, and I would give them another ten thousand had I ten thousand more to give!"

Lightning flashes in the distance. One, two, three.

"I seek your blessing, O Zeus, as kings have done since there were kings!" she cries. "I do not ask for an easy victory! I do not ask for your thunderbolt! All I ask for, Zeus Cloudgatherer, here on the field of Sahar so many miles from home, is your rain!"

Zero.

The lightning bolt strikes the centre of the battlefield, the impact casting a vast spray of sand into the air that is molten and fused instantly into a jagged sculpture of glass. And then comes the thundering, pounding rain, falling thick and heavy against the desert soil of Sahar.

And beneath the desert, something stirs.

The surface breaks. Thin green shoots, tender and young, budding with flower. Thicker grasses, wooden branches, the first saplings of trees. And then - a hand.

The desert blooms with the living dead.

Sagakhan, Master of Assassins, has been waging her war against Hades for the better part of three hundred years. In this time she has murdered the crew of the Plousios a great many times. Sometimes she destroyed the ship through sabotage, sometimes through treason, sometimes by walking step by step through the corridors personally stabbing each wretched and suffering soul herself. But after each kill she bent low to slip a tiny seed into her victim's ear before moving on. And at the end of each year she collected the piles of the dead and carried them here. To Sahar.

In the absence of water, in the scorching heat of this lifeless desert, corpses mummified and biological activity ceased. But the seeds waited. All they needed was a single storming rain and they'd sprout and grow, roots entangling and sustaining the victims brains and nervous systems. Now the true garden of the Master of Assassins sprouts: half-tree monsters, bonsai growing wild. They still wear their arms and armour, their captains uniforms, their marks of championship, their innumerable banners raised lurchingly high. The tree branches burst through skin and sprout with blossoms, fingers tear asunder to make way for jagged wooden splinter talons. They are beautiful, in their way.

Where once it was four to one now it is forty to one.

Demeter's keening laugh drips out of those lips still capable of making the sound. It reverberates against the Master's laugh, just as mad, the cackles harmonizing hideously together.

To cross this desert you must defeat all those who came before.