"But my lord! Please! Have mercy!" Wybert called out in desperation as his malnourished seeming frame clung fiercely around Volkar's leg.

The dragon, a magnificent beast whose breadth was far more colossal than any he had ever seen was soaring above all the known terrain of Ea. Its flesh, what he had expected to be in the likeness of hardened leather was not in any way near the ordinary. Its scales were made of steel, of shimmering plates that were to his touch, cold as the feel of armour. Van der Buck knew not where they were going. All he could see were the pale golden dunes of the desert. There, with every fearsome flap of wings came the dense mist of dust. He nearly coughed as they descended, rubbing his eyes from the grains that had come to strike pain upon his eyes even when he wore such protective spectacles.

Von Mortem on the other, gazed upon him from above. Not an ounce pitied him for his transgressions. The vivid image of the night before, returned to him where he was found with his two mistresses within a pub in Lomedor, wasting away tournament gold as if the profits were his. How he had wished that he had never defied the man. It pained him to even blink if only to implore mercy once more. His eye was sore for when the lord had once struck true to his skull, leaving him with a clotted evidence of a fine beating.

"Have pity on an old man!"

He clasped his fingers together once more, but he would not be heard. Instead, Volkar would stir, shaking the leg from which the old fool had clung for dear life.

Wybert held on with a vice grip, unwilling to exile.

"Please my lord! Not here! I would do anything! I will be your slave! I will--- Nooooooo!"

With a mighty thrust, Volkar sent the elder into a heart-stopping fall.

Through the barriers of wind, he broke, layer after layer as he fell face first unto a sandy dune. He tumbled, rolled and tumbled again. His world spun in a dizzying display of sky and earth where he alternately consumed the powdery grains of Anfauglir's surface. He dug for anchorage but he would be unable to stop.

For a good hundred meters, his acrobatic feat continued. Had he been tossed into a plain of snow, he would have made quite a large snowball. Instead, he was here, on a bed of sand where the only sign of life was filled by the cacti in a distant mirage.

“Well, well, look who his here, it is funny how fate turns their behind to us sometimes, isn’t it?” A voice erupted from above, filled with an ironic tone. The speaker stood on a white horse, and shadowed over the laying figure of the old man, who seemed to have undertaken the ride of his life.

Adorned in billowy and sandy white clothing, the rider blended perfectly with his surroundings offering him an advantage while fighting on those lands, from the distance and even from up close, while moving, he looked only like a mirage. Most of his face was covered even, and upon a closer inspection he seemed to be one of those inhabitants of the desert you are always told to fear and avoid while traveling through the Anfauglir. They delighted in making their victims suffer, eventually leaving them at the mercy of the desert after stealing all of their supplies.

Moments earlier, the huge shadow of the dragon, which made its way across the sea of sand, alerted the desert man, and something told him that he was not the only one.

“I admit this is the first time when it is raining with old men around here.”

Of course, the identity of the unfortunate one couldn’t have been mistaken, Zekhen was pretty sure that the other day, an awfully similar ‘patron’ enjoyed his time with two mistresses in one of the local pubs of Lomedor, hence the ironic tone that accompanied his words every time he spoke.

“Curiosity is not a trait of mine, but I’m itching to know, what on the mighty scorpion, have you done to upset that dragon so much. Messed with the wrong person?”