Great, frothy clouds of pitch blanketed the sea foam blue, smothering the murderous sun like great, heavenly shadows. Vultures ambled the sky, blank eyes targeted to the stench of sweating flesh. Hoards of silky, raven gloss peppered the sandy earth, screeching in protest to the kings and queens of scavengings arrival, signaling the crow’s dismissal. The witty birds arose in one vast army, the battle of the feathered now beggining, the object of victory: an almost dead elfin girl. The vultures, patient yet ugly creatures, waited for her death as the ravenous crows had already perched atop her slumped, skinny shoulders.

The parched earth offered no comfort as the shifter begged for shade. Mother Nature would not even offer a scrawny weed to assist her. Josette tumbled on, sweat oozed from pores, her toes stubbed her heals as she tried to stay upright. The weight of the unfriendly birds on her shoulders dragged her down and her chest heaved with the efort of consuming the brittle air.

She felt herself slipping. Her heart fluttered like a humming birds wings, faint and delicate. Black velvet, dark and cool enveloped her slim body. The reaper promised her the shade of deathly shadows. Josette had to fight, death was not an oppotion. Not after how far she had come just to survive. THe heat would not prevail over her strong soul. Wings sprouted from her shoulders, hitch-hiking crows now aloft, ready to follow their half human princess.

Midnight velvet, a single speck in gray, granted the sky with a glory only a raven beholds. Josette flew, the witch bird of the dead lands, and took residence in a dying willow; taking her maiden shape again she sat atop the highest branch and swooned, setting the crows screeching with excitment as her body fell limp to the ground.

The heat visibly radiated from the parched ground that crackled beneath Jaz Verdek's heavy steps. The sun's light hammering oppressively at his bandana-covered head and shoulders. Salty sweat dripped from his brow to sting his eyes, obscuring his veiw of the vast empty wasteland that was the prevailing scenery of Dori'ba.

The Land of the Dead was no place for a down on his luck half-elf.

But then again, given the number of dragons, demons and vampires that Jaz had the doubious honor of surviving interaction with on what seemed like a fairly regular basis over the past few months, a haunted land wasn't particularly out of the ordinary for him. Still though, the monotonously baren landscape was taking its toll and the lack of sleep due to the nocturnal unnatural moaning ghosts of the land was leaving him increasingly disoriented.

With evidence proving the conclusive innocence of Count Webbly tucked in the bottom of his backback, he had fled the city of Angband as fast as his stolen horse could carry him. Driven off the main road by the minions of Nawab Jershid, Jaz had led his pursuers on a long, winding goosechase south. Eventually abandoning the pursuit, Jaz had thought himself safe to return to Lomedor with his precious cargo. Unfortunately, he realized a little too late, he had done such a good job of evading capture that even he didn't know where he was. To make matters worse, his horse, having taken several arrows from the Nawab's expert bowmen, died shortly afterwards, leaving Jaz very lost and very alone.

And so he had wandered in what he approximated was an easterly course, deeper and deeper into this nothing of a land, managing to keep his canteen filled with brackish water from small ditches filled with run-off.

Perhaps he would have been better of with the Nawab's men after all.

Forcing his mind to focus on things aside from thirst, heat, sweat and every other physical discomfort, he noticed a flock of circling birds in the air. At first he thought nothing of it, musing sardonically on how noble vultures looked during flight when compared to gangly they looked on the ground.

While considering the nature of vultures, he stumbled across the realization that vultures, being scavangers, only circle if a meal is preparing itself for them by getting ready to die.

Which meant whatever it was they were looking at wasn't dead yet.

Which meant that whatever it was, Jaz was not completely alone anymore.

Not alone...

He picked up the pace with his feet into a scuffling double-time, cresting a small hill just in time to see a young woman fall through the branches of a dead tree.

The 'hows' and 'whys' of this situation didn't register in his mind. His instinctual desire not to die alone prevented logic from playing into his desision making process as he dashed towards the fallen figure.

If she knows the way out of this place...

He bent down to scoop rocks into his hands, then threw them at the raptors as he ran. Some of the birds took to the air, while others squawked in response. One buzzard, jealously guarding its lunch, waddled into Jaz's path and leaned forward to warn him away with a long, loud screech.

Jaz, of course, wasn't intimidated, and punted the vulture with a sharp kick to the chest. It sailed off in a flurry of brown feathers.

Panting, he knelt next to the young brownish-blond haired woman. Noticing her rapid breath and pronounced sweating, he recongnized the early signs of heat exhaustion. What he was stuck on was remembering what the appropriate response to heat exhaustion was. Vague memories of his five minute first aid training with the EATC were scattered in his mind.

Responsiveness, breathing, bleeding... no no..

Airway, Circulation... no, no...

Capillary refill, dialated pupils.. wait, this is heat exhaustion not concusive head wound.

Ooh, elevate feet, that's pretty much everything.

He grabbed a few of the dead broken branches littering the immediate area and piled them beneath her legs.

Provide shade...

Noticing a complete lack of anything to provide shade with, he huffed in exsasperation.

I'll have to come back to that one. Hydration...

He removed the red bandana from his head and twisted it to strain his warm sweat. He then took the canteen from his backback and doused the rag with the container's cooler, albiet still warm, water, and wiped down her face and forehead. He poured a little more on her lips, being careful not to waste more than necessary. He would need as much water as possible even she didn't recover. And even moreso if she did.

Loosen clothing...

He perked an eyebrow at that one. A random female alone in the wasteland probably wouldn't be particularly keen about the gropings of random males that happened to stop by. But then again, this was no time to be overly modest.

Josette stumbled through the hell of the in between. Shadows poured out of the darkness, only to reproduce more shadows. A thick, heavy mist flowed over her shoulders and in between her shaking legs, consuming everything in a damp, grey darkness.

It was so cold, oh so cold and her skin was white, practically translucent. Her spirit was only a slip of thing, and Josette stared her soul in wonderment. She glowed with a slivery light, like the moon, and her footsteps made no sound. Her bones ached with the cold of death. She shivered and collapsed to the ground. The silence became noise in its self, humming and torturing her with its seclusion.

A single, frozen tear trickled down her flushed cheek and her heart seemed to drop, the way it does when you’re dying. It dropped into a fathomless pit, only to be retrieved by the light life.

But then hope! Her senses came to life. Flashes of heat, flickers of light! Josette began to shake uncontrollably. Was it just her imagination? Trying to cheer her up from this great depression? Or was life tapping on her bony shoulder?

He felt quite embarrased loosing the girls attire. Had she woken up at the time, it would have been a very awkward situation. He breathed a sigh of relief when he had finished without soliciting a response.

He set about arranging shade as the next major course action.

He took a broken branch, and cut a wedge with his sword at one end. Then, taking another branch, he whittled the center down to fit into the gap of the first, fitting the two together in an approximate shape of a cross.

He then set about digging a small hole, once again using his sword, the greatest multi-purpose tool ever designed, this time as a shovel. Once the hole looked deep enough, he placed the crude cross into the hole and secured it in place by filling in the empty space with previously removed dirt. Then, taking his beloved jacket, he placed it over the cross, sliding the arms of the coat over the horizontal extentions. The resulting apparatus vaguely resembled a scarecrow.

Well, at least we won't have to worry about ravens.

He dragged the girl into the small amount of shade afforded by his little creation. She didn't protest, but that really wasn't particularly surprising given that she wasn't conscious at the time.

Feeling the intensity of the sun burning his scalp, he removed his linen shirt and pulled it over his head, tying the sleeves together to cinch the shirt in place. The result looked, in a vague way, like the keffiyehs worn by desert nomads. He had thought the nomads to be ignorant, even primitive when he had first seen them, but after spending time amongst them he began to realize that their ways were a time-honored solution to the harsh environment that they lived in.

His work completed, he took a break, squating down next to the girl. Taking a shot of water for himself, he then repeated the ritual of putting water in the casualty's mouth.

Her breath seemed to slow down, which, if he recalled correctly, was a good sign, and her cheeks seems far less flushed, which he knew was a good sign.

Don't die on me now

With little else to do, he simply monitored the patient.

She wasn't particularly half-bad looking. On the Isabelle scale, with 1 being a multi-headed visceral maggot demon and 10 being Isabelle, this young woman was at least a 6. Well, being fair, more like seven. Definately at least 7. Although you could probably round it up to 8, just to be fair. Although if you removed the dust and bruises from falling out of the tree and maybe straightened up her hair...

Stop it

Anyway, she was an elf from the looks of it.

Jaz didn't know much about elves. Sure, he was a half-elf, but he had spent his life amongst humans, and only peripherally knew a few actual elves from his travels. The rest of his knowledge of the elvish race and their culture was based on the ravings of his grandfather. The old man was pretty biggoted in general, but especially when it came to Elves. He had never been shy about reminding Jaz of that fact.

So he sat there, pondering the nature of the universe, when he arrived at another problem with this unthought out plan.

What are we going to do when the sun goes down?

It was like waking from nightmare. Groggy, glistening with cold sweat and being smothered by the terrifed screams that escape your closing throat.

The maiden’s chest convulsed once, her slender body arching, pulling against the greedy grasp of death. The emerald around her pupils stretched to a thin ring of grey as her eyes fully dilated. With small, shaking gasps Josette brought her starving body back to life. Her cheeks turned from ash to a rosy shade, her lips bloomed into a delicate pink.

She felt oddly exposed. There seemed to be a breeze touching places of her copper flesh that were usually not exposed to air, or sunlight. But who cared, she was alive!

Painstakingly she propped the top half of her body up by her elbows, wincing as her weight hit the pressure point of a bruise. Twilight was just arriving at Arda’s doorstep.

How long was I out?

Jaz had passed most of the afternoon throwing rocks at various carrion-eating birds when they approached, making a game of it by seeing how many times he could skip a stone before it struck. He warded off the few that chose to land within arm's reach with a brittle branch he wielded like a club.

Occasionally, the young woman would stir in her sleep, cough or moan, then fall silent again. Although he was concerned the first time it happened, the repeating pattern eventually lost its sense of alarm. Padding her forehead down with the wet rag and periodically giving her small dabs of water was about all he could do to assist in maintaining a proper body core temperature, and eventually he resigned himself to the fact that one way or the other the situation would have to resolve itself.

At times he almost resented the girl. After all, he had wasted an entire day tending to her, and had consumed a fair share of his own water supply in the process.

If you die on me, I swear I'll kill you. He said in a sudden burst of frustration. Looking down at the girl, he chided himself for thinking that. Wait, that doesn't even make sense.

Picking up a large clump of dry soil, he sent it sailing towards a nosey vulture that chose to land in range. The nugged of dirt disintigrated on contact with the buzzard's unfeathered head, soliciting a blurted squawk as it bounced away.

How is it her fault that you're in this mess, he pondered, You're the one that got yourself into this one


As day passed into evening, the landscape took on a new, even more ominous feel, even the scavanger birds took to the air. Jaz realized that very soon he would have a whole new set of problems to resolve. Clouds rolled in, and Jaz took the shirt off his head, putting it back on just in time to feel the weather change.

The breeze picked up, driving a chill across the barren land. The wind pulled up a layer of loose dust from the parched earth and, as if aimed by some unseen force, sent it washing over the only two living creatures in the area. Wind rattling through the hollows of the lifeless trees gave off an foreboding groan.

And that was when the girl heaved.

Jaz yelped in surprise, the reputation of the forbidding land at night already had him on edge, and the sudden movement and noise sent him over the edge.

Rolling away, he lept to his feet and brought his sword up to face whatever evil entity came for him. His wits returned slowly, and he became aware of the shifting movements coming from his charge.

Oh, it's just the girl... His eyes widened. The girl!

Sticking the sword in the dirt, he knelt beside her as she propped herself up, mumbling something incoherently.

"Are you alright? Are you okay?"

The world had transformed. Dark clouds billowed on the horizon. Words were whispered to her by the breeze, seductive and cool. The carnivorous bringers of death had retreated to their scrawny young, awaiting them hungrily with outstretched beaks.

A lazy smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, she winced as the parched, paper thin skin tore drawing small, pearly drops of blood. The heat of the desert chased out the fragment of the mark of trhe dying, leaving her warm and even more sedated.

Still caught in the dim of the in-between, Josette blinked once, twice at the baritone notes that seemed to appear out of thin air.

Alright? she mimicked. Turning her head slowly she finally laid eyes on her savior, illuminated in the last dying rays of the sun. He looked celestial. His skin glowed a magnificent bronze and his eyes sparkled in the last of the light. She gazed at him with emerald pools of uncertainty and question.

But a menacing gleam caught her wary eye. The blade of a sword, winking at her dangerously. Desperately trying to stand she swaggered like a drunkard, gravity tugged at her wobbling knees and the wind sighed as it shoved it her shaking body, bullying her to the ground.

She was afraid, none the less. Alone in the dessert, just waking up from a major pass out and finding that a stranger had been waiting, watching.

On the road of life, the bard said, there are passangers and drivers. Unless you happened to be Jaz Verdek, in which case you were hanging out on the median while eating a sandwich.


Jaz watched as the girl's ocean-colored eyes went from wide-eyed uncertainty to wide-eyed fear, and traced the line of her gaze to the sword. His mouth opened to issue some hastily made apologetic excuse for the sword blade, but he was cut off as she wobbled off her feet in a drunken fumble that took her to the ground. She recoiled from him as if he were some type of desert viper.

In a sudden burst of clarity, he realized that while he might have spent the better part of the day studying her, she spent it in complete ignorance of him altogether.

Back off and giver her some room, you moron. Don't lord over her like an Orc.

He backed off slowly, raising his hands over his shoulders.

She is terrified. Do something to put her mind at ease

Like what?

Give her water or something. And stop internal monologing. She'll think you're crazy.

Slowly, lowering his right arm, he bent sideways and reached for his canteen. Picking the wooden container up, he held it out in her direction, shaking it lightly to cause the fluid inside to slosh back and forth.

"Water?" He asked.

Josette wiped her mouth with the bare flesh of her fore arm, crimson streaks smearing across her silky skin. She shook her head no to his offer, messy curls dancing, observing his body language carefully with a practiced eye.

Pressing herself against the furrowed bark of the ancient tree she shivered from the icy chill of the wandering breeze.

"Who…" she fumbled, "who are you?" Brow creasing with worry she wrapped her arms tightly around her chest. Trouble was last thing she needed.

Dori'ba, the Land of the Dead was known for its scorching hot days, but also for it freezing nights. The temperature dropped with a steep decline every evening, leaving the warm bloods that dare walk its surface scavenging for fire wood. Sliding to the trees base Josette snuggled in the crook of an enormous root that was sprouting out of the ground like a giant tentacle, as she stared at her unknown companion with doe eyes, her chin atop her knees.

The sun had left, leaving mother moon in its place. She crawled out from behind the cotton like cloud covers, smiling with a shimmering incandescence. The stars made their entrance, glittering, open portals to the vast heavens.

As the girl crawled backwards, refusing his offer of water, Jaz was befuddled. A million thoughts raced through his head, each taking precedence over the increasingly chilly temperature or the approaching nightfall.

Jaz had never thought of himself as intimidating. He had always considered himself 'the small one,' in a runt-of-the-litter kind of a way, the sort of person that had to prove himself over and over again to receive any respect. That the girl would shy away from him was something peculiar, after all, none of his coworkers ever did.

That Jaz's average coworker was a piratical mercenary given to recurring bouts of alpha-male thuggery never entered his thinking.

"Who...who are you?" The Elf-girl asked timidly from the base of the dead tree, huddled around herself.

He sighed heavily, pulling his leather jacket off the cross stuck in the ground. As prepared to toss it on, he glanced over at her again, thinking to reply to her question. But with that one second of a stolen look the words were still-born in his throat.

Her eyes, perhaps catching a glare from the rising moon, seemed to beam at him with a child-like inquisitive focus, terrified attention, an innocence magnified by her huddled posture and wounded lips.

We make for a pathetic pair, trapped in the middle of nowhere, this elf-girl and I

He couldn't help but chuckle in resigned exasperation at the absurdity of it all.

He hung his head and dropped heavily into the dirt, swinging his legs around and sitting up cross-legged. Plunking the canteen down in the dirt next to him, he ran a hand through his forest-green hair.

"Perhaps it would be a good idea to start from the beginning. My name's Jaz. You look cold. Would you like a jacket?"

Cautiously, she tipped her chin down, peering through her luscious lashes internally debating weather or not to accept an article of his clothing.

Yes...please. The syllables barley squeaked past her lips as she jerked her head up, completing the prolonged nod. Unconsciously she hugged her legs tighter into her chest, practically squeezing herself blue with brittle nerves.

Josette went absolutely rigid when he moved, her shoulders turned to stone, her breathing became quick. But after he settled himself a good distance from her, head drooping, her muscles became fluid. Not usually being in the company of anything that spoke verbally the elf had become custom to her personal boundaries, the invisible bubble that kept her safe from prying hands.

Nibbling on the tender, ruby skin of her inner bottom lip she caught his eye and gave him a wincing grin, hurriedly averting her glance afterwards.

His name was Jaz, or so he said. He seemed pleasant enough, helpful too, but his male strangeness made her shy away. Men had always brought disaster into her life. Only a select few were allowed to even come remotely close to being a long term companion of hers and only was she feeling foolish when she befriended them. After the incident...

She inhaled a shallow breathe, closing her eyes.

I’m Josette. She whispered at last.

He had been caught up in the moment of heady gentlemanly conduct when he offered her the jacket, but after she accepted, he almost wished he hadn't. It was getting pretty chilly out there, and the linen shirt he wore beneath did little to take the bite off the windchill.

You're a freakin' grown-arse man, Jaz could almost hear Aromi's ghostly voice demanding better, freakin' act like it!

She gave him what looked like a grin, but it seemed to vanish almost as quickly as it appeared. He was crestfallen. He had assumed that her acceptance of his coat meant some sort of breakthrough in communication, but her return to timidity meant she was still suspicious of him and his intentions.

And you would be too, if you woke up and found some random guy ogling you

I'm not ogling her

Yes you are, look it up in the dictionary

He blushed as he glanced away, refusing to admit to being in anyway entertained by her delightful feminine mannerisms.

He was lost in his own thoughts when she whispered her name so softly it was almost inaudible. Had it not been for his own damnable elvish ears, he wouldn't have heard it at all. He couldn't help but notice she had a very sweet sounding voice.

"Well...pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Jahsed," He said in the most confident voice he could muster, "Although we probably could have wished for a more...agreeable place to meet."

Leaning forward, he slowly and deliberately reached over, keeping a careful eye watching her for any negative reaction, and dropped the jacket at her feet. He then quickly retreated back to his own starting postition. Feeling the cold, he slipped his hands into the crooks of his knees. He dropped his eyes to the dry, cracked earth as if to read it.

Don't need to ogle her

Sitting in silence for a moment, he started to chuckle again, raising his head to gain eye contact.

"I, um, saw you fall out of the tree," he said with a mirthful grin, pointing up at the broken boughs of the dead hulk behind her, "You should really try to avoid making a habit of that. It's, well, not good for you, after all."

Feeling a twinge of regret she slipped his coat over her lean shoulders, nestling into the cozy fabric.

Tilting her head back she followed the direction of his finger, cringing at the sight. It seemed as if she had had a nasty fall.

"I don’t usually plummet from the sky." She chortled, easing up a bit becoming a little more like the Josette most people knew.

The wind whistled, tree moaning as its arthritic arms swayed and the dead leaves that clung to its decaying branches skipped and danced.

A hush fell between them. The shadows stretched. Time seemed to stop. He was gazing at her. Crimson rippled across her cheeks, a timid smile transformed her face. She started taking notice of his features.

His forest locks were striking, his eyes a yellow gold. The lanky curves of his body accented the healthy tone of his muscle build.

She eyeballed him openly, taking in the tiniest details, from the arch of his brow to the swell of his bicep. He was one of those men that women would kill for, young, strong and exceedingly handsome, if they had a taste for the slightly exotic, which Josette did. The maiden shocked herself into realizing that she didn’t mind the way he gaped her.

No! she scolded herself. Hands off the handsome, mysterious stranger.

"I don’t usually plummet from the sky," she said with a chuckle that Jaz was relieved to hear at last. He allowed himself a smug smirk at having finally broken through what had all evening long seemed like a very intimidating layer of ice.

It was followed though by a long silence as she seemed to stare blankly at him. The shadows strung throughout her hair seemed to frame her face, which gave off an unearthly, angelic glow as it dimmly reflected the moonlight. The tiny motes of light in her eyes looked like stars trapped in bluish whirlpools. Lost in this oasis of beauty in the dead land around him, he didn't notice the fact that she had finished talking.

He felt the chill wind pick up again, and he found his teeth involuntarily chattering. He clenched his jaw to avoid displaying discomfort in front of the pretty Elf-girl. If she became aware of his shivering and offered the jacket back, he'd probably be forced to hang himself from the tree out of embarrassment. Thankfully, she didn't seem to notice; instead she simply continued to silently appraise him.

Was something wrong? He couldn't tell if she expected him to speak or not and he certainly didn't want to seem rude. Somewhere in the back of his mind he abruptly became aware that it may have been a rebuke, not just a reply.

"I didn't mean... you know, that climbing trees is a bad thing per se," He apologetically stammered, "I just meant that, you know, falling, like the hitting the ground part, tends to suck."

He fidgited nervously, struggling to come up with something to change the subject with. "So how did you wind up all the way out here? I, for one, got lost a while back when my horse...ah... took off... while I...ah, slept. Probably should have tied him to a tree branch or something. But anyway, I've been wandering around here for a few days now. There are no landmarks of value from what I've seen. Everywhere I go it feels like I've walked in a circle. If you could help me find the road out of here, I'd really appreciate it."

Inexplicably, he hated having to lie to her, even though he knew it was the right thing to do. The statistical probability that she was in any way, shape or form associated with the Nawab's men was microscopic or less. But in the cut-throat world of mercenaries and bounty hunting, there were no second chances, nor was there any room for unnecessary mistakes. What she didn't know, what she would never know, couldn't possibly hurt her.

Then why do I feel like such a rat? She is, after all, just an Elf. I helped her, now she helps me. What could be wrong with that?

“A road?” Her tone became distant, making any mental map of this hell hole was near impossible because it all looked the goddamn same. “Nope, the only way out is north, towards the Taurai Woods.” Waving her hand in what she guessed was the general direction he should head.

Random shrieks of the long dead ricocheted across the desiccated terrain. The deceased had awoken, once again, to haunt the living, to terrorize and twist their minds with the images of their rotting, gory flesh and the never ending bellows and bays of their agony, of their pain.

Her heart thrummed in her ears, the delicate, fist sized muscle that kept her alive. Josette hated to think that her utter existence depended on such a fragile thing. Twirling her golden tresses around her fingers she glared vacantly out into the dim.

She, herself, had absolutely no reason for being here. Just looking for adventure, having gotten bored with the usual stop and go routine that made up most of her life. And she felt no reason to share this.

"The only way out is north…" murmuring these words with a weary sigh Josette tugged the barrowed jacket tighter over her body, settling deeper into the dust.

Jaz rolled his eyes at the banshee wails echoing through the darkness. His first night in this hellish land had been quite rough; the ghastly apparitions had, although he wouldn't admit to it, thoroughly terrified him. But after three nights of it, their cries were more maddening than hair-rasing.

Yes, I get it, you are dead. I get it, it sucks to be you. Yep, that war definately was horrible. Okay, now shut up and leave me alone.

"Light!" He shouted, casting his magic on the sword that he had left sticking in the sand. More effective as a source of light than any campfire, the magical illumination tore away the veil of gloom from the surrounding area. Colors flooded in to conquer what the darkness abandoned.

Jaz winced, momentarily blinded. His eyes had adjusted to the night, and his dilated photosensitive pupils took a moment to clear.

No undead would approach within a stones throw of the radiant sword.

I really need to get out of here

With a shake of his head he returned his attention to the pretty Elf girl. She had just gotten done saying that the only way out of this cursed place was north through the Taurai Woods. If this were the case, with the Woods being to the North, then he had wandered much further east than he had previously thought. He had a dim, general recollection of the geography of Ea. What he did know was courtesy of an old out-of scale map he had once read, the sort of map that had Lomedor as the center of the world and the words "Here Be Dragons" written in the margins.

If the Woods are north, then another few days of hiking east should put us on the outskirts of Estolad

He picked up a splinter of wood and began to doodle a map of Ea to plan his route.

"Well," he said to the girl, "I guess I've got a lot of walking ahead of me. You should come with me. It could be fun."

A restless spirit, out amid the darkness in the periphery beyond the sword's semi-sphere of light, emitted a foul, gurgling scream loudly enough to rattle the dead leaves of the ruined willow.

"Well, maybe fun isn't the right word. How about not boring? It could definately be not boring."

"Gladly." She chimed, beaming at him. Finally! Someone to WALK with. Someone to TALK with. But the best, most preeminent part was that he was a person she didn’t mind being around. Josette was slowly thawing.

Scrutinizing his scribbles she sluggishly inclined her noggin closer to his own, tracing the squiggles with her eyes, wanting to escape the flat, lifeless hell they were caught in just as badly he, maybe even more so.

“I believe,” her thoughts were spoken, but only for the sake of planning and direction, “that we are right…here.” Jabbing her finger in the middle of his “map” she used her free hand to sketch a line “if we cut over this way” her dirt path veered to the right, “then we can get out of this nightmare in a day two.”

She lingered, not realizing how much she liked his closeness. Ringlets of her tangled mane masked her face, covering the crimson tide that had engulfed her cheeks and neck. Small pricking sensations arose on her skin, her hands quivered, and that was it. Scooting away she retrieved a tad bit of her poise and personal pride.

Her longing for any kind of companionship was what drove her away from company. The baffling structure of her vulnerable, feminine mind caused her to believe that what she begged for, what wanted most deeply, she couldn’t have because she already lost it.

As the pretty elf-girl scooted away Jaz released the breath he had been holding in. He wasn't sure when, exactly, he had started holding it, but was when her hair nearly touched him that he realized he needed air. What all that was about he didn't know, and shook his head to dismiss the odd sensation.

Somewhere out in the darkness, another mourning spirit announced its presence with a martial-sounding roar.

"Wonderful," he said, trying to distract himself with idle conversation, "Two people working together always have a better chance than one person alone. Not only is it less boring, but you also have someone else to watch your back. If you get in trouble, like twisting your ankle or falling out of tree or something, you've got someone to help. It's like that old saying 'Together Everyone Accomplishes More.'"

Uncurling his legs, he boosted himself to his feet. He dusted himself off, wiping away the accumulated dirt and other debris that had collected on his clothes while he had been sitting. When he was satisfied that there were no clumps of mud on the back of his trousers, he placed his hands on his hips. He scanned the surrounding area with practiced eyes.

"Now, under normal circumstances, I'd say we should rest here until sun up, and start the journey nice and fresh. But given..." He paused for a moment, waiting. Emphatically bobbing his his head, he whistled.

As if on cue, a piercing undead howl sliced through the silence. Jaz resumed talking wth a smile "...That that is going to be going on all night long, I don't think that either of us going to have much of an opportunity to get any real sleep. Besides, I'd like to make as much head way as possible before the sun gets overhead, by about noon we'll wind up spending more time trying to find shade just to get away from it than we will actually traveling. It woud also be a good idea to look for stuff that might collect dew water so I can fill up the canteen around dawn."

He looked down at the girl. His smile suddenly faded, his brow creasing contritely as he mentally kicked himself in the buttocks. "I mean," he stammered, "Only if you're up for it. If you need a little bit of rest, that's okay."

Dawn was approaching. They had about four hours before the sun would stretch its lethal rays across the barren land. Yawning Josette bobbed her head yes. Even though fatigued had captured her body and she desperately desired to surrender to dream land she agreed with him.

"Let’s get started." Hefting herself up she peeked into the foreboding gloom, swords luminosity a small halo of yellow, barely carving a dent in the darkness.

The breeze had become monstrous. It wailed and coiled; it bellowed and rolled with furious speed. Small grains of sand pinched her skin. Clouds dust raged in the distance, rising in torrents to great heights, then plummeting, smacking the ground with an earthly splash.

The shrieks had grown deafening, like the dead wished to compete with the storm. It seemed as if they were surrounded by maniacal beings.

The elves hair whipped around her head like medusas locks of serpentine death. Her body quaked with the blows of the wind. It seemed like every force of nature was against her, trying to drag her down.

"With fickle weather and moaning dead dudes this night will prove to be interesting." Taking a deep breath she gathered her courage and faded out into the dust, out of their bright bubble and into the clouds of sand and shadows, into the bellows of mother nature, into a hurricane of dust.

As the Elf girl pulled herself to her feet and began trudging out into the chaotic darkness beyond the glow of the light, Jaz couldn't help but be impressed. It had been a long, uncomfortable and eventful day for both of them too be sure.

He liked to think of himself as a hardened mercenary, immune to casual weakness, capable of meeting any challenge with a sardonic grin. His view of himself was more fanciful that realistic, but even so he was a pretty tough cookie. But as much as he might not like to admit it, he was feeling the draining effects of physical exertion, dehydration, sleep deprivation and the alternating extremes of hot and cold weather. Minor pains here, a feeling of weight on his neck, moving along wasn't what physically felt good, it was simply what he knew to be right. And if army training had taught him anything, it was how to suck it up and drive on.

But the girl piqued his interest. She clocked in at about a buck-oh-five at best. A few digits shorter than he was, she had a correspondingly smaller frame. She had fallen out of a tree after passing out from heat exhaustion earlier this afternoon and with little to eat or drink was on her feet again and moving.

As she resolutely threw herself head-on into an oppressive gust of icy wind, he shook his head in wonder. He had seen pirates, grown-arsed men as it were, the self-described tough-as-nails types, brought low by less.

If only I'm like that when it's my turn to be strong, he thought to himself.

He squinted as dust, driven by the fast moving winds clawed at his eyes. Grasping the sword by the handle, he pulled it out of the ground and kicked residual dirt clumps off the tip of the blade with the toe of his right foot.

Scrounging up his backback and canteen, he looked back to find she had disappeared into the night altogether, lost behind the veil of the debris-strewn air. Suddenly gripped by fear at the thought of losing the only companion to be had out here, he frantically scanned the ground for signs of her passing.

He located her footprints shortly before they were buried forever beneath the sandy dust.

"Hey, wait for me!" he shouted, the sword's light bouncing about in the air as he tore off after her.

An almost opaque wall of filth had risen before her. They had marched right into the heart of a dust storm.

Horror stories from the past instantly brought a bought of despair. Tales of sand plowing down the throats of unprotected animals, stealing their breath and concealing their weighted corpses forever under tons of drifts of dirt, never to be discovered, haunted her imagination. Was this to be their fate?

What a time to travel. Barley being able to hear the words that scuttled across her mind set Josette amidst a cloud of confusion. Jaz’s light was barley a flicker and deciding on any cardinal direction was ridiculous. So, the bamboozled elf stopped.

"Jaz?" She asked the wind, words carried away by its trembling fingers; she doubted he had caught her quavering shout. The mans baggy coat snapped and knotted as the wind tore at it greedily, dust filling all the chinks and pockets. Josette caved within herself. Hunching over her scrawny arms clung to her slight frame. It was almost too much for her now undernourished body to bare, the burden of the wind. Dehydration was demanding all energy, it was an effort to swallow now.

Stumbling she fumbled for any kind of contact, blinded by biting sand. Her fingers finally brushed warm flesh, squeezing tightly, she grabbed hold, hoping it was his hand.

The wind howling across the land tore at Jaz's linen shirt with a vengence. A combination of the cold wind and the sandy dust that rode within it had lacerated Jaz's skin into a rosey red. He couldn't keep his eyes open long enought to decern his own direction much less the location of his comrade. He tried keeping his head down, sheltering it with his left arm but the sand still seemed to find his eyes, rising up from the ground to strike at him. He had tried walking backwards, to put his back to the storm. Still the storm had engulfed him. The roar of the wind was deafening, he could barely focus his own thoughts enough to hate his environment. The sand beneath his feet shifted under his feet, each footstep became a trial of coordination. This sensory overload would have driven a chill down Jaz's spine had he not already been shivering from the cold air.

The sword, still glowing, could barely be seen even though it was a mere arm's reach away. What light it did give off revealed nothing more than the bubble of yellowish brown dust around him.

Maybe trying to hike at night was a bad idea after all

He found himself regretting leading the Elf girl into this horror. But when he reflected on their little camp by the dead willow, he new the choice was inevitably the only one he could have made.

This land sets itself against us. It is death, and it's trying to add us to its collection. Better to have met it on our feet, to go down fighting, than to have been sitting at the foot of a dead tree when this storm came for us.

He trudged onward, moving in what he thought was the Elf girl's direction, the wind seeming to carry an echo of her melodic voice.

Something, he couldn't tell what seemed to snag his foot. Caught unawares, the half-elf stumbled forward, tearing his foot free. He landed on his knees in the sand, bracing himself with his arms.

As he pulled himself to his feet, he felt a strange sensation of disorientation. Something seemed to be competing with him, shifting beneath his feet. He tried to stabilize himself as best as possible, not trusting his own sense of balance at this point.

Something else brushed against his left side and the presence startled him, as it reached out and snatched his left hand, adding a microscopic warmth to the world of cold. Instinctually he thought to tear it out of the foriegn grasp but, hazarding a glance, found that it was Jahsed at his side after all.

"Jahsed?"

Had his thoughts not been distracted by the fashion Dori'ba saught to claim its victims, he probably would have had some conflicting emotions and something stupid to say about this contact.

Regardless, he would have had little time to think about it as the ground beneath him collapsed in on itself, opening up like a great black maw and swallowing him hole.

His sudden decline into the earth sprawled the elf girl across the dancing sand. Her small body slid along with his, her weight not being able to save them both from a splattering death. Jabbing her knees into the quaking ground she desperately tried to brace herself against the waves of sand that pummeled against her. With a vice like grip she tugged at his arm, struggling to drag him above ground. Jaz was a dead weight and her muscles groaned with the heavy lifting.

She knew she could attempt to save them both. She knew a whole lot she could do to save the man who rescued her. She owed him. Big time.

Sand pecked at her legs, her face, her hands. Burrowing her head into the nest of her straining arms she tried once more to haul him to the top, but to no avail. The fracas in her mind blocked out all noise, the wailing of the wind, the manic bellows of the dead.

Should she do it? Should she risk breaking the oath of secrecy she made to herself? She only unveiled the fog of lies if she was caught in the act of her ability. Inhaling a deep, dust filled gasp she made the change.

Her bones cracked, the joints of her knees and elbows squealed as they extended and became bulky. Spiked wings sprouted from the bony blades of her shoulders. Her neck stretched and thickened while her springy locks evaporated and gothic tines of bone grew from the base of her pointed, leathery head to the tip of her arrow sharp tail. Glistening, sea foam green, serpentine scales shimmered as her muscles convulsed and rippled and her reptilian body urgently pulled the now dwarfed man. She had to be careful, she hoped to god that her claws didn’t tear off his arm.

The dragon flailed her wings, creating huge gusts of wind and engulfing them in more sand. As she had said, she owed him. Now they were even.

And who was Jahsed?

He slid into the hole with a violence that he could not hope to compete against. Amid an avalanche of earth, he felt his arms and legs becoming immobilized by the layers of pouring dirt. Rushing waves of dry soil put far more pressure on him than the Elf-girl could summon to pull back, and it tore his hand away from the out her grasp.

Jaz took a long, final breath, expanding his lungs to the point that pain shot through his chest. He squeezed his eyes and mouth shut as tightly as he could as the sinkhole swallowed his head. For long, agonizing second, a universe of debris caved in around him, flooding every nook and cranny of his clothes. He could feel the dirt trying to force its way past his lips.

He braced himself for the worst. Fighting was futile, all he could do was hope and wait for the abusive rain of dried clay and sand to subside.

Then, suddenly and without explaination, a massive force yanked at his left arm, threatening to pull it from its socket. Pain seemed to grind the bone in his left shoulder, a searing pain in his chest.

He opened his mouth to utter a involuntary scream, but the space was met with a rush of dirt, causing him to cough and gag as his body was wrenched out of the ground in an explosion of dirt.

He choked on the dirt in his mouth, coughing violently in between gasps for air as he returned to the surface. He didn't realize he had let go of the sword until the moment after he did, the light appearing as a blur in his watering eyes. He reached out a hand to correct his mistake, catching the falling sword by the blade. It cut into his palm, the burning sensation was welcomed as proof of his continued survival.

He shook his head, spitting out slobbery clumps of gritty soil. Looking up, he locked eyes on the force that had torn him back from certain death.

A massive serpent, a dragon even, with bright green scales and massive leathery wings. It had a terrifying visage; pointy horns of bone rising from its cranium, while a large, powerful forward jutting jaw contained rows of razor sharp teeth. It held him in the massive paw of an arm that appeared to be a mass of chisled muscle.

His fear of the dragon was overridden by only one other concern.

"Don't worry about me, you stupid beast, save the girl!" He shouted, coughing out the remaining filth in his mouth.

"Save the girl!" He had sputtered, dirt flying from his spittle specked lips.

This exclamation launched tremors of random emotions through her essence. Confusion, pain and sudden affection surfed along her nerves knocking on doors that, if opened, lead to things she would rather have kept locked up forever.

Tongue forking out between jagged fangs she attempted to make words, but she instantly clamped shut the cave of dangers when she heard the horrendous growl that escaped her long, tube like throat.

Well, dont I sound just peachy?

Decideing against explaining what she had done to herself, she figured if he was smart he would figure it out, eventually.

The wind began to meander, strolling to steady, but light hit and miss thrusts of upturned soil. The she beast began her steep landing, readjusting her grip on her carryon passenger, flinging him about a bit.

A final alter in her appearance sent them pitching from the last, dehydrated cough of dust. It wasn’t a long fall and the elf somersaulted her way back to earth.

THUD! And Josette skidded to a stop.

"Promise yourself, no more sky diving."She moaned, rubbing her head while she inched over to Jaz’s side.

"Sorry… "the apology was faint; her lips were cracked and oozing black blood, and so was his palm.Tearing off the belly portion of her thin tunic she snatched his hand between her own quivering palms, wrapping it with nimble, experienced fingers, making sure to squeeze all the dirt poisoned fluids out before apply the only remedy she had.

The dragon opened its mouth and gave an abbreviated roar in reply, one that died in its throat almost as soon as it began. Knowing little about dragons, Jaz did not know what to make of it.

Instead of offering any helpful reply, the dragon went into a dive, carrying them further over the barren landscape, away from the worst of the sandstorm. Jaz flailed helplessly, his body whilpping against the dragon's hide as the pair decended back down to earth.

Then, suddenly, freefall.

The dragon's grasp ceased to exist and Jaz found the ground rushing up to meet him. He discarded the sword, whose light flickered away, and reached both hands out in front of his head as he touched down.

Tucking in his head, he bent his arms and drew in his legs at the moment of impact, using the force to put him into a hard roll. Though this did deflect the most severe portions of the jolting collision with the ground, it still sent shockwaves of pain rolling through his upper body. The force of the roll brought him all the way back to his feet, flinging him forward and off balance. He stumbled to the ground.

He spun into a crouching position, scanning the air for signs of the dragon. He saw nothing, save the handful of stars that emerged sporatically from the cloud cover.

Out of the corner of his eye, movment.

He turned to face it, finding Jahsed kneeling beside him.

His mind raced through a million different questions to ask, most of them pertaining to the dragon or where she just appeared from. The thought that she was the dragon, while perhaps logical to some, and perhaps could have been infered from his past experiences with half-dragons, was still miles from his train of thought. There were numerous other, better, explainations that he would have to disprove first.

"Sorry," she whispered before he could speak. She tore a length of fabric from her shirt, entertaining him with a not unwelcomed veiw of a well-maintained midriff. Before he could protest, she took his right hand and began to delicately bandage his hand. He couldn't help but smile as she focused her attention on his wounded palm, disheveled brown hair dancing around her face. He didn't know where she learned to tie a field dressing, but she was quite competant at doing so.

That was when he noticed her lips, cracked and bleeding, needing attention even more than his palm. His eyes tightened in concern.

That has got to be more painful that this little scratch of mine

He reached back to pull the canteen from the side pocket of his rucksack.

He raised his bandaged right hand to her chin, bringing the canteen around with his left.

"Your...mouth," he said, struggling to come up with coherent words, the tumble and excitement having driven his vocabulary from his mind, "...they look bad. Here, water will clean it off..."

Tenderly brushing the fleshy pads of her delicate finger tips against her scabbed, split open mouth the elf bent over and hacked up a red puddle of half clotted, saliva stirred blood. Wipping her mouth, she swallowed the rest of the thickening liquid.

“I think,” she said “that I bit my cheek.” The jarring fall was obviously the origin for the stinging bite mark on the inside of her lip.

She held out her hand plam out and arm fully extended, refusing once again his offer, she said “Save your water. We will need it soon.” Pointing towards the horizon, making sure he noticed the newly born enemy.

Long tendrils of searing, white light exploded from the earth’s womb. Oranges and molten yellows followed. The shadows withered as the sun trampled the earth with its sizzling radiance. The time of daylight had arisen as the glutton star consumed every dark, shady spot in the valley. Cheerily, the bright death bringer emerged from the blankets of hell.

They had approximately an hour till actual morning, but dawn was still as hot as dragon’s breath. Perspiration made the girls bronze skin glisten. Skittering to her feet and shedding the borrowed jacket she proffered her hand.

“Lets get this show on road.”

Josette became edgy and uncomfortable. Mother nature was not vouching for them. She hoped for rain, she begged for a drizzle. The forces of the sky did fullfill her desires.

With the temperature slowly rising to a scorching warmth and the breeze, their only source of reprieve from the heat, dieing to a nonexistent trickle, their day began.

Jaz was honestly taken aback when she refused the canteen again. She was clearly dehydrated, but still chose to soldier on and save the water. He couldn't tell if she was just being polite or not, but if she wasn't, it was a testiment to her physical fortitude. Every hour this girl figured out another way to surprise him by exceding expectation.

squinted as he turned his head in the direction she indicated. He grimaced in resignation at the sun flooding the horizon with light. The sky was colored with orange, pink and purple. It would have almost been pretty, had it not been so serious. They had a few hours to move until the temperature became unbarable, but still, it was yet another unappetizing day in the Land of the Dead. After a night of grinding sandstorms, it would be another day of oppressive sun.

Dori'ba, it seemed, was not going let them go unmolested.

At least we know which way East is.

Jaz stood up, folding the canteen back into his bag. Walking over to where the sword had landed, he picked up the weapon and resheathed it as they would have no need to worry about light for quite a while. He reached out to accept the jacket from the girl's outstretched arm. Slinging it over his left shoulder, he dragged sand out of his hair with the fingers of his bandaged left hand.

"Let's get this show on the road," she said, clearly impatient to get out of Dori'ba as quickly as possible. Jaz had no problem with agreeing to that sentiment.

He sighed emphatically, the weight of exhaustion and sleep deprivation, as well as the tossing and tumbling the night before, wearing his joints.

"Here we go again," he muttered, pulling on his reserves of strength to see him through the next scorching day. Then, suddenly, he remembered what he wanted to ask her.

"Where'd you go when that dragon showed up? Did it pull you out of the sinkhole too?"

Where’d you go? He probed.

Chortling with slight amusement at his curiosity (or was it total confusion?) a furtive smirk brought on those dashing dimples of hers. Lips parting slightly as she exhaled, breath arid and parched, it seemed as if she would answer but the explanation was almost impossible.

Why tell him, an absolute stranger? What reasons did she have to allow him a complete review of her life, past and present. Yea, he may have salvaged her ass from hellish oblivion but how did she know he wasn’t spitting lies at her?

Then again, what if Jaz was a friend and not a foe? Josette new hoards of thugs and villains who lived to slit her throat. She was the girl, the one who had slipped away, the soul survivor. She was their worst nightmare, deathly silent and driven by a murderous passion. Her blade was saved just for them, for Him.

Paranoia becoming the pilot of her actions, the elf shook her golden head to rid herself of such thoughts. Her ringlets of sunshine had become a wild array vaulting springs and her complexion cleared, giving her the air of childish innocence once again, istantly making her glow with angelic halo her usual self possessed.

"I feel," she finally said, voice hushed, "that you can figure it out…on your own." Smiling she pranced away, hands twirling as she hummed light heartedly to herself, the perils of before already forgotten.

Jaz watched her dance off with a look of incredulity. He paused, considering the numerous different implications of her cryptic statement. Magic, undoubtedly, but what type? Did she hide herself from the dragon? Or did she summon the monster? That would explain the creature's ability to vanish into thin air as soon as they had been rescued from the sink hole.

She's mocking you, you fool

This new revelation froze Jaz's blood as surely as if an Ice Dragon had breathed on him. His eyes narrowed, staring daggers at the Elf-girl's back as she arrogantly sashayed away.

She knows you are no true elf. She's mocking your weakness. That is the way elves are. Life is a game to them, they have no sense of its value.

Jaz could hear a mantra of his grandfather's racist denuciations march through his mind. Images accrued from a lifetime of discrimination floated before his eyes. He had fled the village to escape the small minds of racial bigotry. He had fled Lomedor after finding it well established there as well. And now, in the middle of no where, the Elf girl felt the need to rub in her sense of racial superiority. To marginalize him, to make him feel weak. To remind him, once again, that of the many things he was, he was most certainly not an Elf.

Elves mock humanity. They are immortal. They do not, they cannot, understand or care about human life. They merely bide their time, and wait for us to show weakness. We cannot allow ourselves to trust them. They will destroy us.

Jaz's mood darkened, rejection swelling his nerves. His teeth ground against each other, his subconcious overriding better judgement. He was a fool to care. She could just have easily magicked herself out of this situation from the beginning. She was merely dragging him along... like a lost puppy.

It's not her fault. She's an elf. She knows no other way of life

Jaz pulled the warring emotions back into line, fighting with all the discipline learned mercenary training, leveling his creeping snarl and turning his face into a mask devoid of emotion all together. He could not blame her simply because her culture was one of exclusion, a door Jaz would never be able to enter.

He turned to follow her, resolving to get through this trial and be done with the Elf girl and this accursed land all together.

"Oh, I'm sure it's obvious," Jaz said, his words dripping with a sinister sarcasm.

The shifter was a bit miffed by the cynicism that gushed from his remark. Her optimistic swagger came to a gradual halt, the cheery jingle slowly dwindling to a quiet hum, then nothing. Former reserve coming to her aid, Josette sank deep within herself once again, footsteps echoing dully across the windswept plain.

Shoulders slouching, boots scuffing the dirt the maiden’s body language illustrated the obvious welts of the harsh whipping his words had done. She was greatly effected by verbal abuse, not that he had actually mistreated her, but her lack of company and caring nature made her extremely adept to others emotions.

“Ya know,” she said, twisting in his direction “it really is not that hard to figure out.” This was reaching a point of simple stupidity. Why hadn’t she just revealed her secret in the first place? She knew why, but fighting over her race was something she wasn’t in the mood for.

“Can I trust you?” the sentence had escaped before she could make up her mind, let him stew in his own aggravation, or to just blurt it all out.

To late now….

“I can tell you one thing. I’m not exactly an elf…” clues to her actual person were confusing. She wasn’t exactly and elf, but she wasn’t exactly anything else either. She was everything. Hopefully, by now, he could complete her puzzle.

Once again, she gave him a wonderful view of her back side as she sauntered away, the space between her and the only other living thing for miles growing farther and farther apart.

"Not and elf," He mimicked under his breath as she walked away. If she wasn't an elf, he had lost his footing, his argument, his rallying cry. Her statement had hit his concious like a ton of bricks, shattering his usual defense mechanisms of aggression and indifference. Some how, she had read his emotions better that he could. And clearly, she hadn't liked what she had seen.

Was I wrong?

Well, it appears the answer to that is obvious

I wasn't asking you

His emotions fluxed in his head, an avalanche of questions and images swarmed through his head. It was one thing to react against predictable enemies, known factors. This girl, on the other hand, was an anomaly.

But why? If she wasn't an elf then what? A half-dragon? The answer, as he reflected, was obvious. He had met a half-dragon once, fought against its minions. The creature had the power to transform into both dragon and human shapes. An Elf wasn't that different than a man, in shape, anyway.

But that hypothesis simply opened up more questions. If she was a dragon, then why was she here? Why was she laying around, dehydrating in Dori'ba when she could just as easily have flown off? Had he not seen her wince from a handful of superfluous wounds? If she was a dragon, why had she been afraid of him?

Perhaps she wasn't a dragon.

A sorceress then?

The idea perked an eyebrow. Many adventurers Jaz had met throughout his travels had magical powers. Although he hadn't thought of it before, that this girl might have powers greater than his wasn't a large stretch for the imaginiation. If, as a sorceress, she had run into trouble, perhaps depleting her reserves of magic, it would explain her disheveled appearance.

But why elf guise then? Wouldn't she just be a human? Perhaps some form of lesser angel; appearing to the world as an elf, but truly not one.

She didn't stop walking away as he theorised, and it took a moment or two for him to mentallly note the fact. Whatever she was, who ever she was, why ever she was here, was entirely irrelevant. She was the only other intelligent being in this dead land and traveling with the stranger was infinately preferable to doing this alone.

He sprinted after her, feet digging up clouds of sand and soil as he pounded his way over. He caught up with her, slowing down to take up position at her side.

"I'm sorry," He appologized. He could decided if he meant it or not, but he didn't want to alienate his only companion in this wasteland. "I didn't mean to be an arse. Its this land, it's been making me irritable. But if you can control dragons, why don't you just use one to get yourself out of here?"

The man really could not discover the answer of her small, made up guessing game. She really found the answer quite palpable. The way the color of her eyes would sometimes randomly change, the tint of her irises would blend with blues and purples, when she was reasonably pissed they would turn a peculiar shade of florescent indigo. The times when the elf became over come with emotion the tiniest details of her features would shift, the excitement bringing on the unnoticeable alteration, or the fury changing her completely.

The bouts were brought on by moments of lost control. Josette, young, and never being taught how to grasp her mental ability to change at will always had hard time getting a good grip on the movement of her bones. Her mind and body loved the variation of the hosts it could transform into. All signs of your every day, inexperienced, shape shifter.

Not that this acquaintance had known her long enough to be an expert at her anatomy, Josette sighed and shook her head.

Control dragons? Smiling at the idea of her, a petite woman, controlling such a huge beast almost Unimaginable. But her becoming one, not so impossible.

“Jaz,” Looking at him through the shroud of her thick, dark lashes she tried to explain “as you have come to know, getting out of this hell pit is not so…hopeless as it seems. At least not for me…” and she was right. By now, if she had wanted, the girl could be basking in the glory of relaxing on the grassy “beaches” of the famous Lake Alein, feet propped up on a cool, mossy boulder, fingers dragging shimmering ripples through the glassy water. But what was life without a little, deadly adventure? “But,” she concluded, “by no means do I have any power, what’s so ever, over giant lizards.”

Jaz struggled futiley to wrap his mind around the elf-girl's last comments. He stared blankly, the myriad possible explainations dancing before his eyes.

If she doesn't need to be here, why is she here?

Certainly not for your company

He kept silent as they trudged along. Several times he opened his mouth to speak, but before he could collect his thoughts into some semblance of practical coherence, another thought would jump into his head.

If she can't control dragons, and if she didn't summon the dragon... she must have used magic to transform herself.

He watched his companion more closely, noticing her hair dancing lightly in the weak breeze. If Jaz had paid more attention, perhaps he would have noticed the slight fluctuations in her appearance. Jaz, of course, was not looking for such subtle hints, and they floated by unnoticed. For mere moments he thought he saw something, but just as soon dismissed them as a mistake on the part of his eyes.

She is a soceress, he concluded, his eyes widening, But why is she being so coy about it?

Deciding then that discretion was the better part of staying alive, he felt that whatever reasons she had for concealing her powers were probably best left unspoken. If she had wanted him to know, she would have told him. If she, being a powerful soceress, didn't want anyone to know, then it was probably just as good to leave it at that. Whatever could scare someone like her could definately make mincemeat out of a scrawny mercenary armed with nothing but a sword.

Ultimately, he felt it best to leave this kitten in the bag, and change the subject all together.

"So, ever been out in Lomedor? Crazy city, I'm telling you. There was this one time, oh, about six months ago, when I was supposed to be pulling guard for this one Count. Appearently, someone stole his family's signet ring, so they tasked me out to go and find it. So there I was, Mister Newboots himself, all up and in the middle of these fancy-dress parties on the Upper End. Now, have you ever seen one of those banquets? They've got, like, seven different spoons and forks for eating dinner! Seven! This was all new to me, and, lemme tell you, it was definately an adventure trying to fit in...."

The girl glanced at him with a simpering grin, waiting patiently in silence, noting how his lips parted, then closed, as words escaped his ability to comprehend. Being surprised by the fact that this man, Jaz, who seemed to actually possess a brain (unlike most of his gender, whom are mostly mindless buffoons) only based his opinions on magic, not natural power.

Then he mentioned Lomedor, the famous city, full of its hustling and bustling merchants selling their imported goods to the highest bidder, drunken sailors who were, inevitably, hitting on the mullets nearest to their beer breath and cow like body odor. And, of course, the unforgettable rich snots, who pranced around in their frilly frocks and pointy shoes, golden coins jiggling in the laces of their expensive purses.

Josette had not taken any pleasure in her stay there. The streets were so crowed, the people so busy. She had had no room to breathe, and the only place of peace had been the library. Thousands upon thousands of books, stories untold and legends so old that the gods hadn’t even witnessed their happening. Opening the ancient, dust swathed leather bindings had taken to her to worlds she had never even imagined could exist.

And then there was her run in with the street gaurds...

“Yes, Lomedor, I have been there.” She said “But seven spoons? You have got to be kidding me.”

"Hard to believe, eh?" Jaz said, excitement at retelling his tale glinting in his eye, "Back on the farm we ate with a fork and a knife. I didn't even know what a spoon was until I got to Lomedor. Crazy city. Infinately preferable to say, undead haunted wastelands, but most of the time I'm there I'm always thinking of the next excuse to get away. The streets tend to stink, especially in the summer, and wading through the street traffic gets on my nerves. The worst part? The pickpockets. By the time you find the vendor you're looking for, your wallet's already on the other side of the city."

He continued to walk with her, the sun creeping ever higher into the sky, the temperature slowly increasing. Before long, it would start getting unbearable again, and whatever breakthough he could have with his companion he was to have would need to happen before that. She seemed to be responding favorably to his rambling story telling, which was far better than having her become irritated with him and just... well, fly away, appearently. Oddly though, he almost welcomed the oppressive heat of the day, preferable in many ways to the baying howls that dominated the night.

At least you can think while you're dying of thirst He morbidly mused.

"But I digress," he continued, hoping to keep her attention with more time-killing chatter. So he returned to recounting his misadventures among the social elites, "It was more like four different types of spoons and forks, so like eight altogether, and then three different types of knives. I didn't have the foggiest idea what to do with them, so I just improvised. I just stuck the medium sized ones, which, as it turns out, was the wrong way to do it. So I had to play it off like it was actually the right thing to do. 'That's the way we do it in Ondolond, you see,' I said. Which was when one of the other guests brought up the fact that he was from Ondoland and had never heard it being done that way. It all turned out alright though, since the guy who stole the signet ring was also in league with a band of assassins and some on-the-take city wardens. A whole lot of slinking around dungeon passageways and boppings over the heads of guards later the bad guys were all arrested and everyone lived happily ever after. Well, except for me, that is. I wound up getting stuck out in Dori'ba, where I met a very nice not-Elf-girl named Jahsed. So, yeah. What about you?"

Raising a slim brow at the mispronunciation of her name she mimicked him yet again, adding a jocular jingle as she went.

“A not-Elf-girl named Josette.” She looked at him smiling, subtlety correcting his miniature error, eyes reflecting his own twinkling animation. His story was interesting, to say in the least. From his small tale she learned he found things for rich people and that he had once lived on a farm, like her.

But what was she doing out in the middle of a life sucking desert?

Only running for my life from a band of blood thirsty killers of course.

“Well, I took a wrong left turn and ended up here, suicide jumping from dead trees.” She began sweetly, not exactly sure how to extend her explanation. She hadn’t really been doing anything in particular. She didn’t really find work, or money, necessary for she could fend for herself, getting everything she needed for her lonely survival from the land that she traveled.

“But I take it,” she said, trying to continue their ever blathering banter, “that you are some sort of …detective for the richies?” she asked, actually catching an interest in what he did with himself when he wasn’t rescuing starved maidens from parched and shattering ends.

Detective for the richies? He kind of like the sound of that. The phrase 'richies' curled his mouth into an amused smirk.

"Richies?" he asked with a chuckle, "Is that what they're calling 'em these days?"

He twisted his head to stare off into the sky, considering a response to her question. 'Detective' would be a bit of an exageration. He thought about lying and saying he was, perhaps it would impress the girl. But no, she'd probably see right through that. He turned his head to give her a sideways glance.

"Well, ish," he said, jesturing vividly with his hands as he spoke, thoughts flowing to his mouth almost uncontrolably. For the first time, someone, it seemed, had taken an interest in his exploits. Contrary to his better sense, he found himself rambling on. "Though you'd have to replace the word 'dectective' with the words 'hired goon,' and the word, ahem, 'richies' with the words 'anybody with money.' Unlike normal people, like yourself, who have all sorts of fun, economically viable skills to keep themselves fed with, all I've ever been good at is hitting things with my sword. And, truth be told, I'm not particularly awesome at that, either. Most of the time, its a matter of charging into the middle, hoping to survive long enough to grab whatever it is we need to get, then running like the dickens in a desperate bid to stay alive. There was this one time, when I was running with a bunch of privateers out of Haudihar Island. Mean chaps, you wouldn't have liked 'em. But anyway, yeah, we were on this one island, and I nearly got swallowed whole by a lion-thing the size of a horse. I don't know how I did it, but the thing choked on me and keeled over. Not the most pleasant of experiences, if I do say so myself. Oh, then there was this one time, I was hiking across the grasslands when..."

He stopped with a swiftness that surprised himself. When she said her name...

"Wait, your name's not Jahsed? Wow, I've been calling you that all night long. I'm so sorry."

He shook his head at his own mistake.

"So, what's up with suicide jumping from trees anyway? Was it actually suicide jumping or is that just a cool buzz word for an extreme sport?"

“Though you'd have to replace the word 'detective' with the words 'hired goon,' and the word, ahem, 'richies' with the words 'anybody with money.' Unlike normal people, like yourself, who have all sorts of fun, economically viable skills to keep themselves fed with, all I've ever been good at is hitting things with my sword…”

Tittering with amusement at his anecdote, he considered himself goonish and somewhat useless it seemed, the tolerant elf paid careful attention, snatching whatever useful tid-bits he threw at her and painstakingly putting together a mental mosaic of information, trying to form some kind of picture that would lead her to who he really was, friend, foe, assassin, maybe even one of those half elf people.

“Oh, then there was this one time, I was hiking across the grasslands when..."

Reducing her urgent march to a listless stroll she prepared herself as he dove into another life account, gazing at him with a concentrated, yet jovial mask of utter affability. But he stopped short, apologizing for his name mess-up.

“It’s fine.” She reassured, blowing it off with a nonchalant shake of the head.

The fiery ball in the sky had scooted to mid point, giving the world a hellish grin that immediately encircled the two in a hug of heat waves. The puddles of illusion evaporating into invisible mist as they slowly plodded on.


"So, what's up with suicide jumping from trees anyway? Was it actually suicide jumping or is that just a cool buzz word for an extreme sport?"

“No, it was more like an accidental freefall.” She said, shrugging her shoulders “My preferred sport’s are stealing horses, and of course, escaping those damp, cage like boxes where they keep pick pockets. It takes alot of energy to wiggle through those rusty bars.” She smirked inwardly at her somewhat delinquent ways. So far, astonishingly, she had only been caught twice, one for “barrowing” a war stallion from the stables and the other for cutting a counts purse strings.

The sun’s fiery rays had wrapped them in a tide of steaming heat waves. Her clothing had decided to cling to her curves, drenched in her salty perspiration. Her hair was becoming a sudden nuisance, long and heavy it stuck to her sticky flesh like honey, refusing to part from her skin. Her mind also began to wander, to the cool shade of forest trees, the green dappled light of the damp jungle and the rippling tides of the shushing ocean shore.

Eyes counting the cracks that threatened to part the earth Josette began to think of how absurdly lucky they were. Yea, the unbearable scorch of the constant light killed off most, but those who survived the night and morning usually got eaten off by the numerous, cannibalized dead things that roamed the land.

But she had thought to soon, for there on the blinding horizon. Directly in their wandering path, rose a dark figure, a dark, large, snarling figure.

The mercenary wiped sweat from his chin with his bandana as she described her favorite pastimes of escaping from prison and stealing horses. He found this deeply amusing, for most of the females he had met who had prison records were larger, manly types with lots of tatoos. Certainly, this waif of a girl would look the part of a child compared to the hardened female killers that out fought men for spots on pirate ships. Then again, he also knew of the femme fatale types, who used their feminine charms to convince otherwise shrewd war-like men to lower their guard long enough to unleash deadly first strikes.

Of course, neither of these two stereotypes struck Jaz as fitting for this not-elf girl. From the sound of her story, she seemed to be the ragamuffin type of criminal, forced into a life of rational criminality simply to survive on the often unforgiving streets. He knew well from personal experience that the children of Lomedor's poorer quarters had an uncanny knack for figuring out where a passerby's wallet was and how best to relieve him of it. To a certain extent, he almost sypathized with the children, they were simply doing what they had to do to survive. More over, listening the lavishly wealthy complain bitterly of the casual criminality of the commoners was often entertaining. If the leaders of the first estate did not extort every single ducat they could from their peasant employees, perhaps abject poverty wouldn't be the everpresent problem that it was. As such, the wealthy loosing a bauble or two to a mob of hungry children smacked of some form of cyclical social justice.

He grimaced, although if it was from amusment at the not-elf girl's story or at the scorching sunlight he couldn't tell. He patted the red rag over his forhead and the bridge of his nose. When he drew the rag away, he could see a visible layer of mud and grime that darkened its white designs. He could only imagine how ghastly he must look to the poor girl, having a face covered with several days worth of grime. Jaz didn't even want to think about his hair and how disorderly that mop must be.

When I get back to Lomedor, or hell, even Estolad, I'm taking a very long hot shower, he thought, glancing at the clear blue sky that was absolutely devoid of cloud cover. The air seemed to shimmer from the waves of heat rising from the ground, like a pool of water. Just for a second, Jaz was tempted to pick up a rock and throw it into the air, to see if the thick waves would ripple as it passed Check that. A nice cold shower


The girl froze as Jaz's eyes swept over a shadow on the horizon. Years of practice caused his sword to leap from its scabbard into hisb right hand even before the leather jacket, instantly released from his grasp, could settle on the cracked clay ground behind him. Instinctively, he protectively reached out his left arm to shield the not-elf girl, his blade pointed in the dark figure's direction. He opened his mouth to challenge the as of yet unidentitfied interloper, but before he could speak the shadow seemed to lunge in their direction.