“Whoa! What’s that?” Ahmad clutched Winnie’s arm. The two of them rocked back and forth, trying to maintain their balance while not getting swallowed whole by the erupting ground beneath them.

A bizarre structure rose from beneath the sand: square and bricked in, it resembled a fortress, complete with what appeared to be pixelated soldiers marching back and forth on its walls. The mice cowered and chittered behind them, not daring to move forward.

In the building’s courtyard stood a scale of gold, each side being tugged upon and bounced against by the same horrible zombie-monkeys they had encountered during the jungle level. They yanked at the arms of the scale and tossed themselves on and off the platforms.

“Ugh, return of our furry not-so-friends,” Winnie groaned.

Ahmad groaned too, but for a different reason. A scroll blinked and flickered in front of him. “I have a feeling things are about to get much worse.”

He reached out and tapped it once. It unfurled, and Winnie leaned over his shoulder to read too.

Race the rising sand! Balance out the monkeys on the golden scale—an accurate weight shall bring forth peace and an ebbing of the wind!

“Well, that sounds easy,” Winnie said sarcastically. “At least they didn’t tell us to form a cheerleader pyramid with them or anything.”

Ahmad frowned. “There must be a trick to it. It sounds too easy.”

He was ever so wrong. There was no way it could have been worse. Because they had to get ahold of the monkeys first, and they were hardly feeling cooperative, running this way and that and squealing—shrieking, really—with delight and amusement as the kids tried to chase and capture them.

“Maybe we should grab them by the tail,” Winnie suggested, already out of breath.

Ahmad gingerly reached out behind one of the creatures. “Easy does it,” he gritted out. “Don’t turn around, don’t turn around—”

Another of its watching comrades let out a high shriek of warning.

“Ow, ow, ow!”

Ahmad was left sucking at the scratches and attempted nips left on his fingers.

“Oooh,” Winnie winced in sympathy. “Maybe . . . maybe we should try to get one of those guys to help us! It feels like they got put there for a reason.”

Sure enough, there was a neat row of soldiers on the fortress walls, standing shoulder to shoulder, many decked out in turbans and beautifully embroidered tunics, holding glistening swords at their sides.

“Hey! Um, hello up there!” Ahmad and Winnie hollered together, jumping and waving their hands.

It didn’t take long for them to realize that it wasn’t going to work.

“They haven’t blinked,” Winnie grumbled, lowering her hands.

“They are non-playable characters,” Ahmad said. “That’s disappointing. Maybe we could have used their spears to corral the monkeys into place. No one likes a pointy tip.”