The Restless Desert, of the continent of Sarlona, and the nominal nation of Riedra, is as unwelcoming an environment as most deserts. Prone to blistering heat during the day, and piercing cold at night, the climate alone would make a crossing difficult. The Restless Desert, however, is not merely difficult to cross: the entire desert moves some ten to twenty leagues every day, seemingly at random. Worse still, its few major landmarks, rock formations, and even oases and watering holes are equally restive within it. For most people, a crossing relies entirely on luck, and usually ends in despair – a mere handful of men can sufficiently predict its moods to make the crossing reliably. It is generally held that this motion is the strange lingering after-effect of some terrible weapon of mass destruction unleashed during the War. Whether this is true or not is another matter.
So it is that six strangers found themselves travelling in caravan with Faroud abn-Makhtoun bin Pokhara al-Abin, and his sizable family. Making the crossing for different reasons, and paying their way by varying means, all were made welcome as passengers or employees of the family. After an amiable greeting from the great merchant himself (“Please, just call me Faroud!”), they had seen very little him on the journey, as he spent the great majority of his time with either his ledgers or his grandchildren. Thus, the wanderers’ day-to-day dealings were mostly with his two eldest sons, Haroun and Mukesh.
After some weeks of happily uneventful travel, however, the caravan was forced to an unplanned halt as Mukesh’s wife went into labour. What should have been a joyous occasion was tempered by the knowledge that the child was dangerously premature. Camp was made at a nearby oasis (that only a man such as Faroud could have found at such notice), and the midwives, sisters, aunts and grandmothers busied themselves with the business of bringing Mukesh’s new son into the world. Mukesh himself (along with his brothers, the passengers, and all other unnecessary distractions) was firmly dismissed and encouraged to find some distracting way to pass the afternoon.
It was Haroun’s idea to enjoy some gentle sparring – the physical exertion would leave Mukesh with little energy or time for worry. Haroun also declared that his younger brothers and nephews would profit from observing the many varied fighting styles and foreign techniques of the passengers; for a while, at least, the dire concerns of the morning were forgotten.
It was not to last. Mukesh’s wife was growing ever weaker, and even the most experienced midwives found themselves at a loss to help her. The morning’s game swiftly forgotten, three of the passengers came to a decision: this was no longer a family matter, but simply on of life and death. Individually, there would have been little they could do. Perhaps, as a group, Marach, Nevitash and Corbin possessed such skill as would be necessary to save a life, or even two.
The other three felt largely redundant. The Half-Orc veteran Ootah could see little use for his longsword during a birth, barring the cutting of an uncommonly tough umbilical cord. The Halfling, Calli, was decidedly not the maternal type, and found the poor woman’s ordeal deeply unsettling. The final passenger, a human by the name of Cohen, was most distressed of all; he found himself wincing at every cry of pain from within the birthing tent. He could proudly boast of being able to put out small fires from thirty feet away, or make the darkest night glow with reassuring light. Surely there was something he could do to help? With a flash of inspiration, he turned to the worried brothers. “Ho, friends – don’t worry! My colleagues seem fairly competent, and I’m sure everything will be fine. Look – perhaps there is something in your hat that will take your mind off this sad affair!” With a twinkle in his eye, and a flourish of the wrist, Cohen plucked the hat from Mukesh’s head and held it out. As Haroun and Mukesh looked on, he cast his hand over the hat. With a sparkle and a distant chime, a pair of perfect, snow-white doves emerged, and flew off into the heavens. Cohen beamed at the brothers as they stared at him. With some satisfaction, he noted a look of genuine shock in their eyes.
It was Calli who was the first to notice that something was amiss. What she had thought was vague sense of disquiet soon coalesced into a sinking sensation of dread when she realised that, quite impossibly, she was feeling cold. By the time she had managed to find Ootah, it was impossible to ignore: the edges of the lake were freezing over, and in the distance, they could just make out the rolling front of a distant bank of fog. Consulting Cohen (whom they had to extract from some form of fracas apparently involving a hat) merely established that there was, indeed, an arcane aspect to the phenomenon – but that was hardly unusual given the nature of the Desert. At Faroud’s request, they went to gather the livestock and prepare for a swift departure.
As the final animals were being gathered in, Ootah felt a faint eddy in the fog around him - with a faint whump, the distant silhouette of a camel seemed to simply disappear. Ootah strained his eyes, yet saw nothing more. Feeling a faint spatter on his gauntlets however, he turned his hand to his face; even through the fog, he could see fresh blood splashed on it. From within the blinding mist, something was hunting them. Ootah turned to the camp, drew in his breath, and bellowed. “STAND TO!”
Two more camels were taken as he struggled to locate Haroun and Calli in the fog. The first human, a young man whom Ootah knew only as a nephew of Haroun, was plucked into the mist even as he warned them. By the time the emergency evacuation was under way - women and children rolling away to the East in hastily-packed wagons - several more were missing, snatched away to the sound of mighty wings, beating. And as Mukesh’s wife screamed in the final moments of her agonising ordeal, the beast landed amidst the convoy for all to finally see, exceeding the very worst fears of those who remained. Standing amongst the kindling of the wagon it had crushed, and the corpses of those had sought to escape in it, was a dragon: frost-white, colossal, and ancient. It was the Half-Orc who spoke first: “We cannot defeat such a creature.” No reply came: the rest had already come to the same conclusion.
Mukesh was the first to move – with a scream of equal terror and rage, he charged. Haroun followed quickly behind, loading his crossbow. He addressed Calli and Ootah as he ran past. “We must lure it away from the wagons or they won’t stand a chance! Please, my friends – I cannot ask you to do this, but…” Unable to finish the sentence, he turned, and sprinted towards dragon. After a moment’s pause, Calli, Ootah and Cohen followed.
Within the tent, the mother gave a terrible scream amongst the blood-soaked blankets. The bard and the artificer furiously concentrated all their remaining healing powers on her. Corbin looked down – in her hands, she cradled a tiny child. Three pairs of eyes looked expectantly at her. “Congratulations. It is a boy,” she said. As the baby began to wail, she handed him to the midwife. Plucking her twin blades from her pack on the floor, she walked silently from the tent. Exhausted, Nevitash and Marach looked at each other. Turning to the elderly midwife, Nevitash asked “Can you prepare her for travel?” Stunned, she nodded. He turned to Marach and gestured to the door of the tent. “After you, old man,” “Hrm,” Marach replied. For a brief moment, he looked every bit of his hundreds of years of age. He gathered himself up, unsheathed his daggers, and followed after Corbin. Nevitash squeezed the mother’s hand. “You have our blessings. Go well.” Then he, too, plucked up his crossbow and jogged after his companions.
Outside, Haroun and Mukesh furiously harried at the white dragon as the caravan rolled slowly past. Claws the size of a horse swept inches over Mukesh’s body as he rolled under its wings. Corbin ran to his side and hauled him up. “Careful, Mukesh! You have a new son to look after”. Mukesh stared at her as he stood. She simply smiled at him, gave him a pat on the shoulder, and left him standing there as she ran for dragon. It started to round on her, but too slowly – climbing like cat, she dug her blades in and started to climb up the beast’s flank. Haroun gave a shout of encouragement as he fired bolt after bolt. The dragon roared in anger and shook its huge body, sending the ranger flying to the ground. Twisting in the air Corbin landed on her feet, skidding away on the frosted sand, snarling. The dragon reared up above her-
-and slammed its jaws down on Haroun. Caught by his leg, it flicked him effortlessly into the air. The group could only watch hopelessly as Haroun fell, screaming, into the open maw. Mukesh yelled out in rage, his face encased in frozen tears, and charged. In response, the dragon languidly lowered its head, and breathed out. The cold was instantly staggering, cutting through clothes and armour, and painfully driving the breath from every pair of lungs within fifty feet. Mukesh simply ground to a halt, frozen to the ground with the shout still on his lips. With a casual flick of a claw, the dragon shattered him into a thousand pieces. Faroud’s cry could be heard from the final wagon as it rolled past. A young boy leapt from a caravan before his mother could catch him, and ran towards where Haroun had been standing only a moment ago, screaming his father’s name. The mother yelled out desperately, but before she could even follow him, the dragon simply flicked the child away, where his body crumpled against a frozen palm tree. The bard rushed to his side, trying to repair the child’s crushed chest. “I can save the boy, but someone needs to get him out of here!” No help came, however – as the final wagon rolled away, and the mother’s screams grew quieter through the fog, Nevitash watched his young charge succumb to the cold and breathe his last. The dragon looked after the retreating wagons, and roared. It raised its huge wings, and beat them once as it prepared to take flight-
-as Corbin ran again up its tail, and buried her sword in its hide. Arcane artillery burst around her as Cohen tried to keep the dragon on the ground, and she felt Marach’s deadly sharpening enchantments coursing through her weapons. Aborting its flight, the dragon shook again. Corbin spiralled away, but this time could not keep her feet – she fell, heavily. Something gave way sharply in her leg. Staggering to her feet, she winced in pain. She tried to run, but her leg crumpled beneath her. She looked in defiance as the dragon stood over her. Something rumbled in the back of its throat, long and low and loud. With a horrible clarity, she realised it was laughter. She held up her two swords to deflect the inevitable blow, but it whipped at her inhumanly fast, catching her square in the chest. Pinned to the ground, she felt her ribcage collapse. Her bones cut into her heart and lungs, as the cold bit into her skin. The pain was incredible.
Her colleagues looked on in horror as the elf crumpled into the sand beneath the dragon’s foot. Marach’s gaze was baffled – why would such an awesome creature be interested in them? In desperation, he yelled out in the Draconic – “What do you want?” It raised its head. A low grumble rolled from its throat like distant thunder. To the group’s horror and Marach’s shock, it started to speak.
WHERE
IS
IT
They stood, stunned. What was it referring to? Marach stammered a response – “I don’t – what – what do you mean?”
In reply, the dragon lifted its claws. Corbin, fading mercifully into unconsciousness, felt her body lifting. The dragon hurled her, full force, at the old Deva. He never had a chance to duck. Corbin’s remaining life snuffed out the instant her body slammed into him; Marach felt the bones in his neck snap as his body fell helplessly to the floor.
“You BASTARD!” screamed Calli, as she ran to prone forms of Corbin and Marach. She never made it. Something sharp and hard caught her in the side, and she spiralled away through the air. Thumping into the frozen sand, she howled in animal rage, as she tried fruitlessly to move the legs bent unnaturally beneath her.
Ootah turned to his remaining comrades. “The wagons have escaped. I will hold the beast here. You must run.” But Cohen and Nevitash simply looked at each other, before resuming their attacks on the dragon. “Pshah. Have it your way,” Ootah growled, as he charged in once again, Cohen’s arcane missiles fizzing past him as he ran. Above him he heard a whistling, and saw the dragon’s tail whip past – bracing himself behind his shield, he waited for the impact. But it never came.
Cohen found himself on the floor. He felt peculiar. He had been doing something important, but he couldn’t remember what. He tried to get up, but didn’t seem to be able to. His head flopped to one side. Ah, that explained it. His legs lay twitching a few meters away. Well, no wonder he couldn’t get up. He should probably put them back on, but he wasn’t sure how. A huge shape loomed above him, blocking out what little warming sunlight there was. He swatted at it with his staff in annoyance, but his arms soon began to grow heavy.
Ootah and Nevitash watched the wizard die, his staff beating ineffectively against the dragon’s hide. “There is no more honour to be had here, bard. We must run.” As Nevitash nodded in agreement, Ootah turned and started to sprint. He braced himself for the blow that would end his life, but it wouldn’t come. Six paces. A dozen. Twenty, and still no blow. What was the creature doing? He turned to see and
STOP
Ootah stopped. The mighty will of the creature bore down on him as strongly as any physical blow. His legs left like lead. He tried to turn his head, but could not. His thick skin prickled as the terrible cold intensified. Something was very close to his face. Its breath smelt of iron and ozone. Ahead of him, Nevitash looked back once, then ran on into the freezing desert.
I WILL BE BEHOLDEN TO NO MAN
Ootah could not reply. His fingers and face were numb from the cold.
LITTLE HALF-MAN
TAKE YOUR SWORD
AND END YOURSELF
With a horrible, slow inevitability, Ootah found himself dropping his shield, and turning his trusty longsword on himself. He gently positioned the tip against a point between his ribs, and breathed in. He could no more resist that a leaf could resist the wind. He pushed. The sword slid up through his heart with all the efficiency he had learned in his years of soldiering. It was a fine kill…
***
Six hours later, and the cold of the oasis was long forgotten. In the blazing midday heat of the desert, the bard was already desperately dehydrated. It was all he could do to crawl away, any hope of finding the caravan long forgotten. He could not even remember which direction they had travelled in. It was almost a relief when he heard the sound of mighty wings, beating, and felt the freezing shadow settle over him.
WHERE IS IT
Nevitash turned. A giant golden eye regarded him, dispassionately. It regarded him as a man might regard a mote of dust. He said nothing, there was nothing to say.
Nevitash closed his eyes and thought of home.
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