The vagabond thought of water. It was captivating how light shone on the little waves, and filled up the valleys between, sparkling like an oil of gold atop the surface. How it felt, running through his fingers. The cool taste. The smell of damp soil and living grass.

He coughed, blood running over his tongue. An entirely different taste. Metallic-bitter. He felt a tooth swimming in the depths of his mouth, and spat the ugly pale thing out.

A boot landed on his face and crushed him down into the sand. It was burning hot, as if his cheek was being pressed into a skillet, the grit scraping his bruises and cuts.

At least he’d gotten to see something beautiful before he died.

The bandits were elves. Stories remembered them as pale, elegant, with beautiful faces and cold eyes. They’d gotten the eyes right.

These things were savage. They wore fox-hide robes with armor made by layering plates of carved bone together, and rope belts, crude axes and clubs hanging by their hips. They moved like shadows. They ate, according to more recent stories, human flesh.

“Ai’cra, nakkalla?” He didn’t understand a word till the leader, this old, long-faced man with an enormous cascade of curly snow-white hair, leaned down. Fingerbones - human - clicked and clacked as they hung from a leather cord around his neck. Withered, round-tipped ears too. Some of them very small.

“Human, your aura tastes sweet. You’ve been touched by Mana. Where?” His voice reminded the vagabond of snakeskin, old and smooth.

“Other side. Near the salt-plains, there’s a little outpost-”

The bandit stepping on his face lifted their foot, and the vagabond braced himself. The kick slammed into his gut, made him heave, acid splattering up through his throat and staining his tongue. God, he’d kill for a little more water just now…

“I know that’s a lie. No humans here for a long, long time. The gods of this desert don’t like you and your weak flesh. Your souls are thin and bitter like piss-water.” The old creature knelt down, his skinny limbs groaning.

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The bastard stuck his finger into the vagabond’s eye. It was so withered down it was practically a claw of bone, and the vagabond could feel the fingernail scrape his iris as it dug in, wedging itself down between the lump of soft matter and the socket. The pressure felt like it was moments away from making his eye split open, crushed like soft fruit. Tears poured relentlessly out, unbidden, covering the intruding finger down to the knuckle.

“Think carefully.” The elf smiled. His teeth were sharp. “It’s worse than dying, what could happen to you.”

The pain was piercing into his skull, a relentless pressure, his whole body twitching with the urge to move, to fight. Nothing. He was weak from hunger and exhaustion, and the leg that stood atop him was an iron bar. The urge to scream was rising in his lungs.

“Fuck you.” He spat.

But it was hard to feel satisfied when the blinding wave of pain pierced into him like a needle through his skull, and he felt the soft matter of his eye give way.

For a long moment the world was a white wave of burning, ferocious pain, and he was trapped beneath, drowning under the endless waves. It didn’t stop. It didn’t relent.

When he could hear again he knew he’d been screaming. He was pretty sure they’d stopped him by kicking him till there was no air in his lungs.

Bloody spit ran off his lips.

“Where is it? What did you find in my desert?” The old bastard demanded.

Half of his vision was gone, and the other swum with water. It was just as well. He didn’t want to see what was in the elf’s hand.

Or see it looking back.

“You know, it’s one thing to be brave before you’ve felt real pain. That’s just, mm, we have a saying- that’s just having marrow in your bones. It’s another to ask for another taste of the whip. That’s being an idiot.”

The vagabond didn’t have another moment of defiance left in him.

Somewhere in the sands behind him was a beautiful island of life, the air alive with the sound of water. A place where the shade was deep and the sun's heat not so cruel. It had been a holy place; he knew with all his heart it was some god’s mercy to show him the way there.

A teardrop of light in the dead, dry lands.

But.

He was just a man, and the pain was gnawing at him, even now, burrowed down into him and gnawing like a beast chewing his bones. The strength wasn’t there to defend his secret. The shame rose in him even as his mouth spat out the words.

“I’ll show you.”

The old elf smiled, and flicked his grisly trophy into his mouth.

The vagabond closed his one remaining eye but still heard the sound of chewing.