Lo'Ref Itched his soil-covered nose with the nubbed digit that he lost at some distant juncture in his blurred remembrance. He did not yearn for its presence, gnawing at the scarred fringes to alleviate the tension of the massacre he had just witnessed in astonishment.

The tarnished remains of the SandHounds lay before him. Every last one, besides the strongest of the mercantile banditry regiment, was roasted to grey-cindered bone by the tempest called upon by the exile turned Crimson Monarch, HuckleBerry Vasca.

He pushed through the glass particles and toppled tawny sands of the dune that had erupted into a molten outburst due to the injection of cyan plasma energy that had barreled its way into it. The lowered Oasis that the squatting SandHounds battled him over was like a profane glass mural, the only evidence the man who Lo'Ref believed to be human was so much more.

As he crouched to position his hand on the smoking remains of the leader of the Hounds, Lo'Ref lingered. Smelling the suffering emanating from the crispy bones. This man had caused him to become a murderer himself in order to safeguard what little he had as a vagabond. His round Buritian features now looked foreign, contorted in a flashed frame of torment that was experienced just before becoming slated for extinction from the sky.

"P-Please...Please, help me." Lo'Ref saw who had caused the fight between King Vasca and the Band of merchants, Beo, speaking to him. It baffled him. Lo'Ref saw King Vasca crush his lifeless hand back into a shallow grave, watched as the King smiled after nearly being chopped in half by Beo's axe. There was no feasible way that the suffocating half-buried man was still living, let alone pleading for aid from Lo'Ref.

Lo'Ref wanted to articulate, but nothing came from his arid brown lips. The time spent among the sands only documenting journals and constructing lethal snares took a massive toll on his psyche. "P-please, I-I'm so...Thirsty." Beo struggled in his predominantly concealed state, cringing his face at either the dismay of his family's genocide or the genuine pain he most likely felt.

The wind ululated as the two stared at each other, Lo'Ref made a gesture with his hand toward the carcasses littered near the warrior before him. He wanted to ask why this had happened, his throat gurgled and croaked but still no phrases came out. Lo'Ref put his hand to the scar just above his Adam's Apple.

He remembered Beo, the brutish fellow was one of the more ferocious components of the clan. The last month alone he watched Beo and his father hide behind the rocky outcrops in wait for passersby. Lo'Ref knew little of their Doigan-mixed nomadic culture but knew that it was not good business for them to butcher most of their customer base in what was essentially Noman's land.

The moan from Beo forced him to race behind a rust-colored boulder as his feet nearly gave out from his fatigue. His eyes fell back onto the now squawking man just when his brown eyes began to glow a feverish green that was unlike anything Lo'Ref had ever seen besides the King's cyan-glowing hand markings.

"I'LL KILL HIM, FUCKING VASCAN HYENA!" Beo's voice changed, the pleading tones turned into a vibrating bass that shook the teeth of Lo'Ref with each cadence. "I WAS SO CLOSE...FUCKING HUMAN'S. USELESS." Lo'Ref couldn't imply what truly was transpiring.

The dread overtook him as he fell to his knees in silent prayer to the Vascan diety Dhira. He begged the god of conflagration to sanctify his soul in what he thought were his final moments, to protect his younger siblings from harm, and to usher him into the superheated fires of deliverance once he left the mortal realm.

"You, you didn't help this worthless sack of shit...Why?" Lo'Ref heard Beo chuckle as he wriggled fruitlessly in his sandy crypt. "SPEAK WORM!" The entity's outrage was palpable, black veins now pulsing under the dark brown skin of Beo's body.

Opting to flee with his life instead of speaking, Lo'Ref took flight into the darkness after finishing his invocation of Dhira. The mud-covered entrance to his hidden home was the only thing that made him stop sprinting, finding the small shovel he had buried in the sand nearby.

Lo'Ref would omit this, forever. He would not permit the desert to play maneuvers on him any longer, the SoundHounds were eradicated. Lo'Ref told himself he had nothing to fear as he heated his hands on the simmered coals that kept the bottom of his dwelling hospitable in the frozen Buriti nights.

He reasoned that much like his encounter with the TerrorBird, Bertha, it was simply just his mind trying to personify the trauma he encountered. Establishing this logic on the scant pedagogy in psychology before leaving to explore the wilds of Buriti-Vasca's vast sands and rocky plateaus for many years.

The Tahul clan he claimed lineage of before his family's ascension to modern traditional Vascan cultural ways instead of the tribal warring strings of warriors that passed down stories of their conquest of the entirety of the countryside; Spurring his spirit of adventure as much as his interest in the diverse cultures that roamed the lands.

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What they also did was instill in him a harsh sense of pragmatism about the spiritual world that other Buriti natives were much more keen on decoding. As Lo'Ref closed his eyes he made a plan to go back to the area Beo was stuck in, knowing in his heart and mind that he would be there...Mortal and waiting to be consumed by the scavengers of the dunes.

Morning rose without bothering him, his sleep restful and dreamless under the muddy dome of his darkened crevice home. Lo'Ref stretched for a moment as he remarked how well he had dozed. Anxiety must have made it easy to overlook the many annoyances he suffered leading up to the night before.

He was startled to hear the sounds of boots and men close to the secluded entryway to his dwelling. "General Ewabatta has made strict orders...If you see a SandHound, shoot'em." Lo'Ref heard a slight northern tinge to the soldier's voice, marking him for being either half-Svet or born in slavery in the Icey peaks of the north Steppelands.

"Shut up, Angus. I heard her when she said it...You senile and pale bastard." The second voice was more intimidating, having deep native dialects of southern Nakk. "We're lucky we're not on clean-up duty over in the gulley...You really think a plane crash did that?"

Lo'Ref palmed a dulled machete, waiting for the two men to hopefully pass over the waterlogged trap that prefaced his abode with no issue. "I'm not gonna question the General or her little boyfriend the King...I still have dreams of what they did to poor Vadim."

That peaked Lo'Ref's interests to no end, Vadim Sankov had been the man who replaced his father as the chief advisor to the former King of Buriti-Vasca; Causing a sharp decline in his mental state and health condition. Lo'Ref wondered if King HuckleBerry truly had disposed of man as well as the SandHounds.

"I've heard from the Royal Guard that they have already rounded up most the remaining SandHounds that tried to bring grievance to the capital over the loss of their leader..." Fear radiated even through the wood-lined walls of the buried hutt.

Lo'Ref held his breath. "Do you think they will even survive the holes we stuck them in...King's been gone nearly a week." The man sighed, releasing the tension within his chest. If Lo'Ref was able, he would also do the same.

"Better them than us...We have to be careful, Minister Yana may be one of us but she definitely won't stop that Vascan from 'cleansing' any Svet's out of the army and capital." There was a sturdy laugh that could be heard as Lo'Ref listened to the conversation fading with the distance. "Better the King than Aygu, Crazy one-armed Bi--"

A blood-curdling exclamation bellowed through the mud. The men were unsuccessful at bypassing the invisible pitfalls left by Lo'Ref against the SandHounds. "What the FUCK!" Another phlegm-tinged scream made Lo'Ref cover his ears from how intensely the man reacted vs the hardy SandHounds when losing the bottom half of his leg.

The Durik-Trap's jaws cleaved through the considerably smaller target than its intended game of large Goat-Bull beasts. "Angus! Oh, Shit--Your fucking leg is--" Lo'Ref winced.

He could only imagine how grievously the man was injured above. "Oh, sweet Gald above...Take me into your hall of valor!" A gunshot went off, surprising him further. The horrified sounds of the second man came distinctly to the stinging ears of the hiding trap layer.

"What the...fuck. Angus...What the FUCK, MAN! I'm never gonna unsee you trying AND godamn failing to blow your head off while you spout off about religious bullshit!" Lo'Ref ingested the apprehension of other people he had harbored far before he had left the capital in search of substance.

Bracing himself for the chance of being slain. He left the mud behind with a satchel of thread, rope, and a skinned Cacti-wood branch to aid the man in need. When Lo'Ref emerged he was an eyewitness to the fountain of blood that had spurted from the light-skinned man in Vascan military garb.

"SandHound!" A bullet hummed past his face, slicing through the matted raven dreadlocks on the side of his head. Lo'Ref wanted to scream that he was friendly but the only noise he could manage was a strained squeal that only made the remaining soldier more bewildered.

In the slight moment he had racked his gun Lo'Ref charged him in an instant. It was not his intent to slaughter the ill-prepared soldier, but much like the SandHounds who wished to evict him from his desert oasis, Lo'Ref would exhibit his innards if he did not cease his fire.

He could feel the sand whipping between his toes as he dove behind a small rock for cover. The sediment it was comprised of sent tuffs of chalky smoke when struck with the repeated fire of the Soldier's long gun.

Just as he let the breathe from his lungs a sight beyond his worst fears was lying right next to him; The still form of Beo sat next to him, crust and maggots forming where his orifices once were. The oxygen left him altogether.

Lo'Ref stumbled back, being struck twice in the shoulder by the large bullet rounds. "Stand down, ASSHOLE!" The Soldier ceased firing once he confirmed that he had hit his mark. Lo'Ref scrambled to get away despite the pain and peril of being exterminated on the spot.

He feared what that creature who puppeted the bloodthirsty warrior would do to him far more than any mortal hurt. "I said....Stop godamn moving." Lo'Ref finally halted rolling once a small clearing away from the chipped rock that concealed his supernatural antagonist.

"Get your dusty ass over here now before I...Oh, shit. My bad! You're not SandHound--I bet you don't even speak the crimson tongue, ya little Tahul freak," The soldier let out another chuckle as Lo'Ref was finally able to study his face between his glances back toward the boulder.

He was lighter-skinned with short buzzed blonde hair, his blue eyes were wild, much like a wandering Andrewsarchus--Most likely the two shared an untamed brutality that couldn't be reasoned with as Lo'Ref noticed he did not even cast a downward gaze toward his wounded companion.

The pool of blood only inflated as they both checked the other for menace or acrimony. "Do you speak? I know I didn't hurt you that bad...HELLO?!" The stillness was the answer he wanted, adjusting his shoddy Vascan-made gasmask as he finally turned his eyes to the man he called Angus before.

"Well...Looks like Angus got what he wanted." The man slapped the nonreactive face of his partner with the butt of his gun, His eyebrows came up at the realization that he had left the mortal coil set in. "I'm gonna be in more shit than the damn SandHounds, UNLESS--"

Lo'Ref cowered as the man started to quickly seal the fissure between them, his energy was illiterate and set Lo'Ref whirling once again into the orange dirt below him. "How would you like to help me not get executed??"

The drifter nodded. Lo'Ref had seen enough of Buriti's badlands to understand when a murderer asks you for something....You obey. He also was now exhaustively cognizant that the King was a creature beyond comprehension, along with the spirit that steered Beo. There was no turning back from this revelation of pure faith in his heart.

End