Kasim had had better days. He sat on the edge of the dune, wiping the sweat from his uncovered brow, just above his masque. From his sandy throne, the expanse of the desert was laid out before him. The sea of slow moving sand reflected the light of the two bright suns dancing in the sky. With a sigh, he stood – his short break over. He held up his arclead, a small circular device with an arrow pointing in the direction of the nearest Hub. Not much further now, he thought trying to keep himself in a positive mood. He’d been out in the Pickings for three weeks, with almost nothing to show for it, but an increasingly tattered map from his constant manhandling of the parchment. It turns out the map he had spent a small fortune on was another dead end, well almost, he thought remembering the small object he had found in the small chest he had dug up. The inscriptions on it were indecipherable, which was unusual to such a student as him. He could feel the lines of action moving through it but couldn’t make out the unusual lettering. To him, it looked like a small bell without a clapper.
Lifting his pack, he shambled down the side of the dune, going as fast as one can in the desert without the proper walking equipment or mount. He’d really hear it from Pasia when he returned to the Arlam, with his clothes all sand worn and nothing to show of it, well, almost nothing he reminded himself. As Kasim made his way across the dunes, he would occasionally hear a small tinkling sound as if carried by the wind, a mere whisper.
As the larger of the two suns set, he set down his pack. Taking out the heavily inscribed canteen, he took a gulp of water from the nearly empty vessel. Odd, he thought. He inspected the canteen’s inscription and saw that one of the small markings had been scratched and broken, causing the lines of force moving through it to nearly stop flowing through it. He had inscribed the canteen to pull and purify the water in the air into the canteen. A handy thing in the desert. That is, if it isn’t broken. Great. Well, at least it didn’t completely break. But how’d it get damaged?He had inscribed strength into the metal along with the water components and nothing should’ve been able to scratch unless it was empowered blade.
Kasim sat down onto the edge of this dune next to his pack and looked inside. The small bell-shaped item had worn its way through the cloth and would’ve rubbed right up against the canteen. Aha!Kasim grabbed the trinket and looked closely. No rub marks on it! This thing is tough. A metal object like that should fetch a high price if sold to the Inscriber’s University in Arlam. Kasim put his treasure back into his pack and took out the supplies needed to set up camp. Already he could feel the air begin to chill and he pulled out his overcoat that he used as a blanket to sleep.
A fire started, a simple meal of roasted grains, and a gulp from his canteen that he fixed while it all cooked settled Kasim down for the night. The dune was situated so that it blocked most of the wind, and also provided some cover so others wouldn’t see his fire. Had he the money, he would’ve used a camping crystal, and what he wouldn’t give to take his masque off. His masque, inscribed by him to allow water and food through, along with filtering the air was his crowning achievement. He had also made some adjustments to the inscription, such that he didn’t lose so much water to breathing, which any desert wanderer knew was one of the ways the desert stole that precious liquid of life.
He still heard the tinkling sound and found out that it came from his prize. It was making the sound more often now, which caused Kasim to be a little unsettled, but as a veteran of the wastes he had dealt with more dangerous things out searching on his own. That was one of his quirks. Most people felt the great expanse of the desert push on them – a constant reminder that they are very small in a very big world. That is one of the reasons why the others chose to move in groups. Another person went a long way in guarding against the loneliness of such an open yet oppressive place. Kasim didn’t mind. He was used to being alone. An orphan taken in by the University, trained when he had shown promise – some might say too much promise – and was now a fledging journeyman Inscriber that was years younger than his peers. Needless to say, this favorite of the Professors, as his jealous schoolmates called him, did not inspire others to be his friend. Only Pasia, a woman who many thought to have too big of a heart, bothered to look after him.
He smiled as he looked into the fire, remembering his last interaction with Pasia. She had been quite upset that he was going to this part of the Pickings. After many attempts of placating her with mostly fictional tales of others who had traveled these parts with no problems had she finally relented and let him go. He looked down into his sun beaten hands at the object reflecting the firelight. She won’t have to worry about money for a while, Kasim thought.
Tinkle. Well, time for bed.Tinkle. Huh, its getting faster, Kasim thought as he readied his clothes closer to the fire to go to sleep for the evening. Tinkle. Kasim just shook his head and put a few extra folds over the object to quiet it.
Kasim awoke with a start to shifting sands coming down the side of the dune. For the past three weeks he had constantly dealt with the sand. It was his constant and only companion. It caressed him throughout his travel with a brush of his cheek as the sand was blown by the wind. It hitched a ride in his shoes and clothes, to be carried with him as he travelled the many miles. Kasim was used to the sand, one had to be to be successful out here and not go crazy. As such, Kasim had started to consider himself, especially in the presence of impressionable ladies at the bar, a sort of sand whisperer. If the wind blew hard and caught the top of a dune, you’d get so much sand, but if it blew this way or that wayyou’d get this much sand. The amount of sand that tried to take up the same space as Kasim was not from the wind, with its supposed sprites and spirits. It was from something walking on the dune above him. The sleep left his mind. Something was walking on the dune above him.Even though he was already motionless, he tensed up like a rock, trying to keep his breathing slow and steady. Please let it be a scorpion, he thought. He had the expertise to deal with the animals of the desert with minimal trouble. He even carried a few containers of the expensive anti-venoms for the most common creatures that nature had blessed with the ability to slow the death of a mortally wounded creature, or the gods forbid a person, to a crawl. Tinkle.
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Slowly. Tinkle. A muscle at a time, Kasim rolled over toward the direction of the sand. Looking up at the forms silhouetted against the bright moon, he knew he was in trouble. Tinkle. The object felt hot against his skin. He could hear their grunting now. The sounds of someone choking, drowning where there was no water. Tinkle. Options, options, options,he thought quickly. There wasn’t much time, the figures, six human shaped forms shambled down the slope of the dune toward him and the remains of his fire. Tinkle.
As they approached he reached to his pack and pulled out one of the crystals he had in there. He had inscribed the crystals for over 100 hours each – that much time, by a journeyman meant that these were worth at least ten times their weight in gold. When it stopped you from getting murdered by a roving band of the Corrupted in the Pickings, they were worth every penny.
Grasping the three gems closely, he activated them with a force of will. He threw them toward to the rambling band, now only 50 or so feet from him. As the three gems came close to a figure, it seemed to pull somethingfrom them. The figure stopped and collapsed, its silhouette appearing much thinner than the others as it did so. Three followed in this fashion, leaving three more for Kasim to contend with. He drew his inscribed blade, a long dagger, more of a tool than a means of hurting something or someone.
The three figures were now upon him. The stench of them nearly made him vomit right then and there, but his stomach was clenched so tight that wouldn’t have been possible anyway. Their skin was loose and noticeable even in the faint light of the moon overhead and their clothes were torn long ago.
Positioning himself so that at least one of the Rovers was between him and the other two. He got into a fighting stance. He pulled a thin rod from his pocket; the entire length of the rod was covered in runes and glyphs. With his dagger forward, he started to move the rod. The ground responded to the binding and welled up around the rover in front of him, binding its feet. The Rover toppled over from its feet suddenly not moving. Kasim giggled a little, partly from the ridiculousness of the scene – he’d always want to try that on someone – but mainly from fear and stress. Tinkle. The sound of the bell brought him into focus. Already, he could feel the rod was getting hot. It was not his best work and he had already been using it every day for the past three weeks to shift the sands to find hidden things. Setting his jaw, he moved in. Stabbing down on the toppled Rover, just as the others reached him. A gurgle came out of the mouth of the one on the ground as he stabbed down into its back. The weak flesh parting and the bone shattering to give way to the hardened steel.
The prone Rover shuddered once and then laid still. Well, that’s one, he thought. He said a small prayer of thanks to Brim, the god of luck and wisdom. He shifted again on the loose sands to move again such that he only faced one of the Rovers at a time. He wasn’t quick enough to completely evade the closer one and suffered a swipe of a clawed hand against his forearm. The cuts burning in the cool night air. They weren’t deep, but the claws carried the Affliction, that which turned normal people into these shambling shadows of what they once were. He knew he had some time to purify the wound, with fire or with a blessing from one of the gods, so it wasn’t a focus in his mind.
After the next swipe by his current opponent, he ducked under it and drove the dagger up under the sternum of the creature. He felt the dagger screech against bone as it drove home. This was a fatal blow for the Rover, but left Kasim in an awkward spot. His dagger had caught on some bone as he pulled it out. In his fright, he refused to let go. The Rover, its strength fading, dragged its claws along his back, opening tracks of red blood to the night air. It choked one more time and fell forward onto him. The weight threw Kasim off balance, causing him to lose his grip on his blade as he attempted to keep his feet.
The other Rover went around the bound Kasim and let out some choking noises. Grunting, Kasim shoved the now dead Rover off him. He lost his blade in the chest of the Rover, leaving him with just his sand rod. The remaining Rover hopped forward and swiped a meaty claw against his back. The force of it caused Kasim to turn, and his feeting getting caught up on the legs of the now prone figure, stumbled to a knee. The remaining Rover let out a gurgle of victory and leapt at Kasim. It tried to bite his exposed neck, but Kasim in a last bid of desperation, shoved the length of the rod into the eye of the Rover, driving it all the way into the skull and brain of the stupid beast up to his hand. It gurgled once and struggled against his hand, trying to bite him. With a shudder, one of its arms jerked across Kasim’s face and tore his masque from his face. With a cry and breathing in the sharp acrid of the desert for the first time, Kasim pushed the Rover over and went for his masque. The claws of the Rover had damaged many of the glyphs that covered its surface. Shit, shit, shit.Kasim wasn’t worried about the scratches, but he was worried about the air. He only had a few minutes before he would go dumb as the air filled his lungs and his body with toxins. His hands shaking, he hurried to his pack, cradling his damaged masque in his hands.
He took out his inscribing stylus and worked to fix his masque. This glyph should be a shaa,that one a lef,Kasim thought as he worked to save his life. His vision blurring, he continued to work. As he started coughing, he realized that he could not fix it completely in time. Doing some damage control, he managed to get most of the purifying glyphs set, but exhaustion overtook him before he could get it working again. His mind felt sandblasted and raw. Slumping, he started to drift off and the throb from his wounds seemed to deaden. He started to hallucinate. Memories flooded in front of his eyes. Getting his rank of journeyman from the University. Professor Stillfen clapping him on the back, warning him not to be too cocky but congratulating him never the less. His classmates looking at him in disdain, for achieving much in a little time and seeing one smiling, one genuine beacon of happiness amongst the hate. Pasia had stared up from the crowd, a look of genuine love on her face. After telling her about his last trip, he remembered her making him promise her to not come out here again. He remembered hearing her silent crying, and looking at the paper of eviction he found at her place long after she had gone to bed when he spent the night one time. A promise to himself that this would be his last trip, just one more to stop Pasia from getting kicked from her home. A promise he couldn’t keep, he thought. He closed his eyes, and after a while his breathing slowed, became harsh, and then stopped.
The desert night became quiet then, or rather it returned to its nature. The only sound being the rustling of the sand across sand, and the whispers of the wind as it filled the space between the dunes. The blood of the slumped figure was slowly drunk by the sands. After some time, even that stopped. And in a rare event, the wind stopped. The silence was absolute then. The moon shone, and the stars twinkled above. Both battling to the light the sky with their presence. In the moment, or perhaps it was between the moments, wedged deep into the space when time has stopped, the quiet rested, a reprieve from being shattered by the necessity and failure of survival. And so it did, as if also to give the wind a break from its eternal travels, and to just stay. Like a clock rewound by some outside force, the wind picked up again, and the sky rotated above the sands of the Pickings. As the moon descended to retreat behind the horizon, a thin light broke the opposite horizon.
Tinkle.