Your skin glistened with a healthy sheen of sweat in the high heat of the midday desert. Just one of the things that you had gotten used to in your time on the Tal'Adeen deserts. The heat and constant sun were so very different from your cold, dour, northernly homeland. The animal handlers released their beasts from their yokes, and the rest of the caravan busied themselves with setting up camp. You, however, remained on watch. It was the entire reason that the caravan master had hired you. A big, muscular, foreign barbarian, sure to scare away any bandits on the desert roads. Twenty days in the desert had turned your skin from being merely sun-kissed to thoroughly sun-loved. Glistening, bronze, you no longer felt much discomfort, even in the untamed heat of the sandy wastes. Like a blade that had been heat treated in the forge, your skin had hardened to the harsh sun. You reveled in the adversity, relished the way that your body adapted to this harsh environment. The natives mocked you for it of course. The locals often wore several layers of clothing, obscuring even their faces from the sun, but you held no such fear. The desert dwellers seemed to hide from everything. They hid from the sun, hid from a fight, hid from their own laws. A skulking folk, but one with flowing wine and gold aplenty. A rich land of potent spices and sand-colored dancing girls. A place where a strong, courageous barbarian like yourself could do quite well. Wealthy desert merchants often hired your kind as guards. Honest barbarians often made for better guards than the shifty locals, or so you had been told.
As you stand guard at the edge of the camp, two of the royal serving girls approach. Their faces are hidden by delicate veils, but you can tell that they are youthful and beautiful beneath their flowing robes. "Hey! barbarian! We heard that you have the strength of three men. Is that true?" they ask, giggling as they stare up at your foreign face.
"Three of your men perhaps," you answer with a little chuckle. The locals seem to have no end of fascination for your height, your strength, your flowing locks.
"My friend thinks that you could break this ox strap with your bare hands. I say that that is impossible for a human. Help us settle a bet?" the girl with the green eyes and green veil says as she offers you a strap of thick leather about as wide as your wrist. It is one of the leather bindings that the caravan uses to bind oxen to the wagons. Thick, durable.
"And, what do I get if I do break it?" you ask the giggling girls curiously.
"Five silver pieces," the smaller, quieter one offers in a shy and nervous way. You can see her eyes roam over your impressive physique, sand colored eyes that shine like fine oil in a golden dish.
You take the strap from the girl and grip it on either end with both hands. You take a few seconds to make sure that your grip is sound, but then slowly, you begin to pull. The strap is thick, and well made. Your arms flex, muscles bulging as you slowly ramp up the strength. Your muscles and tendons flex and ripple with bestial strength. The girls "ooh!" and "aah!" as your trunk-like arms flex. Little parlor tricks like this are usually beneath you, but these girls are offering enough money to pay for your drinks for a few days. A little show is a fair trade.
"SNAP!" The leather strap snaps in two with a crack loud enough that it spooks a nearby pack mule. You let out a chuckle and your two little fans seem incredibly impressed.
"Here," you say with a grin as you hand the green eyed girl the two roughly split pieces of hide.
"Goddess above... how are you so strong!? Even our oxen have trouble breaking these," the tall girl says as she gives you the five silver she owes you. Her big eyes shine in the fading light as she looks up at you with a mixture of awe and fear.
"The oxen don't know their own strength. I do," you say to her with a grin. The servant girls scamper off as the guard captain comes up. He's a bit larger than the rest, and wears some silver accessories that denote him as superior. Though without the silver badges, you'd never be able to tell him from any of the rest of the cloth-draped locals.
"Ey, Barbarian. You're guarding the servant tent tonight," he says to you simply.
"Fine by me," you answer with a shrug. The servants always want to chat and share their booze, which makes the shift go quickly. "Better than guarding the animals."
As night begins to close in, the scene at the camp is the same as it has been for the past two weeks. The servants busy themselves with their daily duties, the merchants count their goods and coin, and the guards, like yourself, stand about and try to look intimidating. It has been a peaceful journey so far, but the caravan master assures you that bandits and ferocious beasts alike stalk these sandy wastes. Not to mention the tales of desert demons, djinn, sorcerers, and ancient undead. Still, it seems like there are more guards around than caravaneers. You were hired to protect some little princess. You're not sure on the noble titles of this land. Not sure if your charge is some middling princess of a royal line, or simply the child of some well-to-do merchant. You haven't even been allowed to set eyes on the supposed princess. For all you know there could be no princess. The princess travels in a covered palanquin by day, and none but her handmaidens are allowed into her tent by night. But that is all par for the course for royalty. Can't have dirty heathen eyes like your own gazing on her assuredly royal skin. Not that you really care. The payment for this little guard job should keep you in wine and wenches for half a year at least.
Sunset passes into night, and the desert heat is traded for a biting cold. The sparse fires of the caravan provide a little warmth, but the uneasy wind keeps you on your toes. So while the well insulated locals huddle around the fires, you stand cold, and very awake. So it is of little surprise that you are the first one to spot the oddly shifting sands outside of camp. The sands always move, but these move like water, shifting and swaying almost organically under the moonlight.
You turn to the other guard helping you to guard the servant's tent and say, "Hey, over there. Should the sands be moving like that?"
The guard looks out where you point, and her eyes widen in sudden fear. "Hasssakk! Hasssakk!!!" she shouts, and the camp immediately erupts into absolute chaos.
You have only moments to wonder just what "Hasssakk" means, before the question is answered. The cause of the moving sands becomes obvious as a viridian serpent man bursts from the sand mere feet from you. His powerful form explodes from the ground in a burst of silvery sand and dust. The man is half reptilian, with scales and slitted eyes. His head is like that of a cobra, complete with a hood that is adorned with various piercings and jewelry. The wicked dagger in his hand plunges toward your chest. On instinct, your hand is on your sword hilt before you can blink. Your trusty steel screams as you drag it from its sheath, but it sings as it cuts through air and flesh with a comfortable ease. Your northern steel carves a bloody canyon through the bone, meat, and scales of his torso. A ruinous strike that kills him almost before he has time to feel it. The serpent man, or Hasssakk as you assume it is called, lets loose a low wheeze as it crumples at your feet. But it looks like he was far from alone.
All about you, the camp is in an uproar. The Hasssakk burst from beneath the sand from every direction. The serpent-bodied marauders assault the pack animals, the guards, the merchants, and every living thing around. Dozens of them. Some of the scaled brutes must have been lying in wait beneath the very sands of the oasis, just waiting for a caravan to stop, and a chance to pounce. You flick the blood from your steel and grin as you realize that it is finally time to earn your pay.
You lock blades with a second serpent man as you move to defend the servants. The cook pot spills over in the chaos, and the camp alights with a blazing oil fire as the serpent man hisses in your face. A hiss cut short as you drive your blade through the underside of its mouth and into its brain. The fanged fiend goes slack, limp hands trailing down your arms as it dies. The serpent-like bandits are fearsome, but they die as easily as any man. They seem to rely first on intimidation and are unprepared for a determined opponent like yourself. A lesson that your fellow guards seem late to learn.
Some of the local guards put up a token resistance. Some fight well, and a few even sell their lives in the ambush. But you see just as many fleeing for the hills, abandoning the camp and their sworn duties in the face of a deadly threat. Cowards, but that is what you have come to expect of their desert culture. Their convictions shift as easily as the sands that they build their cities upon. Not that you really blame them. The serpents easily outnumber the caravan guards. But it does leave you in a bad predicament. You swore an oath to defend the princess and her caravan until they arrived at their destination. Fleeing now would mean breaking your word. Also, if she dies, you assume you won't get paid, and these serpents don't seem like the types that might accept you into their ranks. Let them take the cattle, all you need to save is the princess to get paid.
You steady yourself as you make your way toward the royal tent. You see several snake marauders slithering into the royal tent, and hear the squeal of the attendants within. You sprint towards the gilded tent, sandaled feet digging into the soft sand as you move to protect the desert princess.
You rush into the gilded tent and as you push aside the heavy flaps a flash of movement catches your eye. You narrowly avoid the dagger strike aimed at your face, but not before a clean cut slides over your chin. A ribbon of blood pours from the wound and you face off against your assailant. "Leave, foreigner! Our business is with the royal. We have no interest in you!" The snake-faced woman says as a sickle-like dagger dances in her right hand.
With a thunderous shout, you strike. The Hasssakk blocks the swing, but only just. Your sword knocks her dagger from her hand and sends it sailing through the perfumed air. The reptilian marauder is far from defeated, however. She hisses, and quickly envelops your muscled body in her thick coils.
Her scaled body presses in with crushing force. Coils tighten, pinning your arms to your side and squeezing the air from your lungs. Untold eons of serpent evolution bear down on you. Her kind has been bred for this specific purpose, to crush the life from their prey before they devour them. For a normal human, this might spell the end, but you are far from being a normal human. The Hasssakk has failed to realize that this is a test of strength, and you have never lost a test of strength.
You can feel blood vessels in your eyes straining as you manage to slip one arm free from the entangling coils. One is all you will need. Your callused hand finds the snake's throat, and you do some squeezing of your own. Your fingers sink into its tender flesh, grip tightening like a vice tightening on a wet piece of wood. The snake gurgles as you choke it, but it also redoubles its efforts to asphyxiate you. Its grip tightens further, and you can hear your joints creaking as your bones threaten to break. Muscle vs muscle, will vs will. A true test of physicality, and one you will not allow yourself to lose. Your grip tightens, fist clenching with an eagle-like strength. The serpent woman is the first to falter. Her bones are no match for your iron fist. Bones pop like chalk under a heavy boot, and her spine is reduced to the consistency of wet gravel. Crushed to pulp by fingers as strong as strap iron. The bestial warrior goes slack with a pained hiss. Its long body falls heavy to the floor, once tense muscles now limp and lifeless.
You pick your sword and grip it tight. When all else fails, this, at least, you can trust. You raise the finely honed blade high above your head, like a scorpion might lift its tail. A threat both deadly and obvious. You creep towards an enclosed room in the back of the tent. The princess could be nowhere else, though you have no way to know if she has been captured by the serpents yet. You throw aside the heavy curtain door, ready for whatever danger might lay on the other side.
The danger, it seems, comes in the form of a rather poorly thrown cup. A very expensive cup that sails a few feet to your left and hits the wall of the tent harmlessly. "Who dares!?" the princess screeches, but softens a bit when she sees that you are her hired guard, and not one of the marauders. "Oh, northerner, it's just you. Tell me, where are my personal guards? They should be here. The camp is under attack, is it not?" she asks intently. Her big eyes are both innocent and canny. You are stunned for a short moment as you see the princess for the first time. You're not sure what you expected of a princess of the Tal'Adeen desert kingdoms, but it almost certainly wasn't this. You never expected her to be