Tales Under a Burning Sun

The younger of the two herders look across the fire at the old ashik, waiting on him to continue his tale. The old ashik had paused to take a cup full of precious water from the oasis and the herder’s older brother was just finishing checking on the beasts. The ashik seemed to not want to tell his tale unless both siblings were listening with their full attention. Finally the older brother settled down by the small fire once again, with his younger brother giving him an ‘at last’ glance, and the old man continued… The worker Wezer flies straight up to the lip of the hole that has just been created and immediately attacks Kank. Fortunately for Kank it misses, but now that the Wezer is at the edge of the hole Arthur and Scar are able to hit it, which Arthur does with a mighty blow knocking dead to the floor ten foot below. Balboa quickly uses his powers to create handholds down to the tunnel floor and Kank uses them to lower himself down. Balboa drops down behind him and they sneak f...

The old ashik looked across the fledgling fire at the two herders making sure that they were listening to his tale. It was important that they heard everything that he had to say, every aspect of his tale must be told and more importantly heard. Seeing that they were indeed hanging on his every word he began to weave his spell once more. As Arthur of the Mul-Ard clan drops lifeless to the floor, the soldier Wezer moves past him in the corridor and begins to engage Scar and Balboa. Within heartbeats there is the flash of an obsidian blade and Scar’s shortsword dispatches the Wezer. The second soldier Wezer does not appear to have moved from its position and is doing nothing but making an almighty buzzing sound. Scar and Balboa quickly fall upon it and make short work of silencing the creature. They both look at Arthur and can see that he is lying dead still. Balboa sadly moves across to his corpse and double checks. He looks up and smiles at Scar when he realises that Arthur has a p...

One of the herders startled awake, and in doing so awoke his brother. What had startled him from his fitful slumber was the sudden absence of noise. The sandstorm had ceased as quickly as it had started, and the only constant seemed to be that the old ashik was still telling his tale. The siblings threw off the blanket, and a significant amount of sand that was covering them, and looked around. Their beasts were starting to rouse and extricate themselves from the deep sand left in the storms wake and the landscape looked different as it always did after such powerful storms. But as far as they could tell all of their herd had survived the storm. Finally the brothers checked the old ashik, and he too seemed unaffected by the ferocity of the sandstorm. The herders knew that it would be at least an hour before the herd were ready to move on, and as they had lost the majority of the day they agreed that it would be best to remain at the small oasis for the night. Telling the old ashik...

That morning the brothers woke up to a worrying sight. To the west the sky was dark, far darker than just the disappearance of the night. They quickly checked their herd and found that the beasts had bellied down into the sand and tucked their heads under their bodies. That was all the evidence that the herders needed to know that a sand storm was coming. They quickly retreated to the oasis and one of the brothers filled their water carriers while the other roused the old ashik. Then all three of them bellied down on the leeward side of one of the herd beasts with a heavy blanket covering them, and they waited for the storm to hit. The mounting tension was broken when the old ashik decided to continue his tale. Ka-Reen woke up feeling very thirsty and a little confused. Slowly she remembered why she had been unconscious, she had stretched herself to her limits to heal Scar and had passed out due to overexertion. As she thinks of Scar she realises that she is not alone and she ope...