The Desert

Chapter One

The desert had always been dangerous, but these days the monsters were even more plentiful and had gotten much bolder. In the days of old they stayed away from the large caravans crossing the desert. However, in the last two months alone, nine separate caravans were forced to fend off attacks and two of them were never heard from again.

Today was my first time getting to make the trip with the trading company that my grandfather had founded all of those years ago. I mean I call him my grandfather but really he was just the orc elder who adopted me when my elven parents abandoned me in the market square and fled. I probably would've been just another servant girl if my grandpa hadn’t noticed my connection to Methis, the God of Knowledge, and had me train under the local priest.

I donned my white clerical robes and pulled my blonde hair back into a ponytail, in the front, it hung down covering my scarred left eye, with that I was ready and we set out.

There were about forty of us in the caravan spread between ten different carts with loads of supplies and trade goods in each. I was sitting in the front of our cart looking around at the other people in the caravan when I noticed there was a man entirely covered in his cloak lounging in the back of one of the carts ahead of us, he didn’t look like he fit in. “Who’s that?” I asked the cart’s driver, who was an older jaguar tabaxi, that was what we called the cat-folk in this country, “I dunno, never seen the guy before. Maybe he’s a traveler?” I looked back over towards the hooded man unsatisfied with that answer.

That night we made camp and all of the caravaners were gathered around the campfire but when I looked around the crowd I didn’t see the hooded man anywhere, I wandered away from the crowd curious where he had gone. As I got beyond the circle of carts I saw the hooded figure sitting atop a nearby sand dune muttering something to himself in a language that I did not understand “Magnae matri gratias ago, quae mihi hanc ensem concessit pro auxilio suo in inquisitione mea.” He then stood up and turned to face me. “It is not kind to eavesdrop young one.” And then without another word as I stuttered trying to figure out what to say he simply walked past me back into the camp. As he walked past me I noticed something I hadn’t seen before, he had a giant long package wrapped in cloth across his back. I wondered what it could possibly be as I descended the dune and returned to my cart. Seeing him up on that hill talking in a strange language only added to my questions of who this person was and what he was doing here on this trek?

A few days passed without much note and we were about half a week into our trek when as we began to make our way down off of a dune into a valley a giant creature with white feathered wings and huge razor-sharp talons, came flying out from behind the dune that made up the other side of this valley and divided down towards one of the carts in the middle of our group. “Get down that’s a Roc!” Shouted one of the caravaners as I jumped to my feet in order to cast a spell at this beast. But as I did there was a burst of wind, just as the Roc was about to grab one of the horses the cloaked figure appeared under it blocking its talons with a huge sword with a blade curved like a hammerhead. I stood stunned in that moment, he moved like no one I had ever seen fight before. He then pushed it back causing the Roc to fly a little backward, recovering for a moment before he jumped into the air and slashed it across the chest. Just as he hit it its right wing swung and slammed into him knocking him to the ground. As he rolled and came back to his feet his hood flew backward revealing that underneath his hood was the red skin, square jaw, and scarred face of a hobgoblin. As the hooded warrior took a moment to recover a blast of golden energy shot forth from my hands striking the beast causing it to fly up. The warrior quickly pulled his hood back down as the Roc dived at him. He rolled to the side and managed to deliver a powerful slash along the beast’s right side causing it to stagger before he lept into the air and impaled his blade through the beast’s skull causing it to collapse to the ground. I looked on in stunned silence as he dealt the final blow, I had managed to put a hit on the beast but this hobgoblin, whoever he was, was in another league entirely.

He then quickly removed the blade from the beast and swung it to the side, removing as much of the blood as he could before walking back over to his cart and beginning to clean off the rest with the cloth that had been covering his blade. Most of the caravan quickly began cleaning up in a stunned silence. Repacking the supplies and gear that had been knocked about in the attack while others began to skin and butcher the Roc as to not waste it’s meat and hide.

Once the blade was free of blood he covered it in the cloth once more and slung it onto his back. As he did I approached him and spoke, “It’s surprising to see to a hobgoblin outside of Caltharsis, and even more so a warrior. How’d you escape the Bronze Horde?”

He looked up at me with a cold look in his eyes as he spoke “You know little of what you speak, I could ask the same of you. Why is an elf living among the orcs of this desert?”

I was taken aback as he spoke but I then responded “So why hide? The orcs aren’t like the humans of Sumera. They don’t care what race you are as long as you can prove yourself in battle.”

He chuckled, I looked down at him confused as he spoke once more “Let us just say I have my reasons to hide who I am and leave it at that.” He then stepped up into the cart and sat down leaning against a pallet of wheat with his eyes closed, I stepped up into the cart and sat down cross-legged in front of him meditating. I wasn’t sure who he was but what I knew now was that I had a lot that I could learn from him about the world around us.