Two months had passed. The men of the Carnakane deserts continued to dig hole after hole under the scorching sun from first light until last. Up in the cool shade of the cliffs above resided Dalian Dagnar. The Lord of the Caves, as Egalo heard one of the slaves call him one night as they jammed into a tent far too small for the six of them.

A bit had changed since the shock death of Randor Redcloak. There was a new man at the Forager's Tent—it was the hunchback with the ugly face. He was a man not too pleasant to rest eyes upon. Egalo remembered his encounter back at the Magi Temple that night. It seemed as though that was a year ago when Randor told him to leave immediately and he had not heeded his warning. Egalo wondered if Randor was genuinely trying to help him by warning him that night. It seemed as though he had meant for this to happen all along. The hunchback too, playing his part in capturing Egalo and bringing him to this dreadful place.

There are no magical stones out here. Although, I did follow the glowing lights to the Magi Temple...that felt sort of magical. Egalo felt hopeless as he went about digging his holes. He had recovered from the beatings of the whip and within the past week his mind had started to come back to him. Thoughts of home and family weighed in on his mind. He missed his mother; he didn't want to imagine what she might have thought happened to him. He had left without word of where he was going. It was a spontaneous decision, in his own right. Where would his father be? Egalo, son of Elgamar. The words echoed in Egalo's head. He hated when those words rattled on the lips of The Worm, Lord Dagnar, the watchmen who teased him as he dug. His name came off their lips like poison.

The watchmen had mellowed out a bit since the night that the last one was killed by Dagnar himself. Dagnar hadn't come down from the cave mouth since the incident. The day that Randor's cloak was found had inspired much talk amongst the slaves. In fact, so much so, that almost ten men were whipped that day. The Worm had enjoyed himself far too much that day, smiling wide with a mouth full of rotted teeth swollen gums.

Egalo was relieved that amongst all the death and beatings, Baradorn and Harod were still alive. The three continued to spend nights in the same tent at night if possible and tell stories and share hopes of escaping the desert plains. Egalo would tell of his home in Sunswood and how he missed the taste of his mother's mince pie. Baradorn missed his wife, who was pregnant at the time he had been captured. He didn't know if she was still alive or not because of the war. Harod never showed sentiment, he only told tales and stories, drawing satisfaction from the horror looks that would result on the faces of the other men. The other men in the tent would awake and give a look of bother.

One night, Egalo was swapping stories as per usual, and at one point through the story a low growling came from just outside the tent. The shadow of a creature moving by set all of the men in the tent to silence, almost not daring to breathe. Baradorn had always said that if you stay in your tent, they would never hurt you—Egalo was suddenly doubting that by the time the shadow had moved around to the front of their tent by the flap openings.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The figure jumped through the tent, and Harod nearly stabbed the man half to death before realizing just in time, it was one of the other slave men, Pierce. He loved a good jape, but he paid the price with beatings by The Worm. He wasn't laughing so much this time as he had nearly taken a knife to the gut if he hadn't sprung himself out of harm's way from Harod's knife.

"Where on earth did you get a knife?" Pierce was in disbelief.

"My question is, why on earth did you just do that? You probably woke half the camp and The Worm is probably on his way right now with that pet whip of his!" Harod was visibly quite upset. It was then that the silence of the rest of the tent was broken with hysteric laughter. Egalo nearly wet his breeches with laughter, and Baradorn was choking on his own spit after swallowing his saliva clumsily in the midst of his obnoxious squeal of a laugh. The laughter was soon quelled by a much realer sound coming from outside the tent. They heard loud cursing that could be no voice other than The Worm. They heard whispers from one of the watchmen.

"I swear sir, I think I heard it coming from that tent right there. They must be playing some game of the sort because it's been nonstop laughter all night."

Egalo and the men all exchanged panicked looks, there nothing funny about the situation now. Baradorn cursed his breath, Harod scuffled to a corner of the tent to tuck his knife away under some furs.

"He'll have us skinned for waking him up in the night!" One of the men who had been asleep was now wide awake, whispering louder than a normal talking voice. Their voices grew silent as the shadow passed by the tent. It was The Worm with the silhouette of that long-curved whip. Harod stood up right outside the tent flaps, a look suddenly came over him that signaled he was about to do something crazy, his knife grasped firmly in his right hand, poised to strike. The shadow was mere feet from the flaps of the tent.

"What're you doing?!" Baradorn whispered fearfully to Harod, panic evident in his voice.

The inexplicable happened next. The Worm's shadow passed by the flaps of the tent, and his burly voice shouted into the neighboring tent.

"DON'T YOU LOT DARE FAKE YOUR SLUMBER; I HEARD THE LAUGHTER MYSELF!" Egalo and his tent heard the sounds of men struggling as watchmen crowded into the tent and threw the slave men out of the tent to be beaten. The rest of the night was the worst of all. Egalo listened to the dreadful sounds of men whimpering and crying. The whipping wouldn't stop, and Egalo cringed with every strike. Pierce was actually reduced to silent tears, realizing his silly joke had resulted in beatings. Harod and Baradorn had to use all their strength to prevent Pierce from running out of tent and admitting to The Worm.

The whippings stopped an hour later. The watchmen threw the men back into the small tent and The Worm huffed a final breathe of anger. It was finally done. After that there were only a couple hours of dark left before first light, and none of the men in the tent slept a wink.