His skin glistened with a healthy sheen of sweat in the high heat of the midday desert. It was just one of the things he had gotten used to in his time on the Tal'Adeen deserts. The heat and constant sun were so very different from his cool, forested homeland. The animal handlers released their beasts from their yokes, and the rest of the caravan busied themselves with setting up camp. He, however, remained on watch. It was the entire reason that the caravan master had hired him. A tall, foreign spellsword in the iconic brimmed hat of his kind, sure to deal with the many bandits on the desert roads. Twenty days in the desert had turned him from being barely well-off to being well-paid. Rewards from a rich land of potent spices and sand-colored dancing girls. A place where a strong, courageous swordsman like himself could do quite well. Wealthy desert merchants often hired him as a guard. Professionals often made for better guards than the shifty locals, or so he had been told.
As he stood guard at the edge of the camp, two of the royal serving girls approached him. Their faces were hidden by delicate veils, but he could tell that they were youthful and beautiful beneath their flowing robes. "Hey! Guard! We heard that you can fight three men at once. Is that true?" they asked, giggling as they stared up at his foreign face.
"Three of your men perhaps," he answered with a little chuckle. The locals seemed to have no end of fascination for his height, his strength, his waving hair.
"My friend thinks that you could turn this leather strap into two. I say, that's impossible. Help us settle a bet?" the girl with the green eyes and green veil said as she offered him a strap of thick leather about as wide as his wrist.
"And, what do I get if I do break it?" He asked the giggling girls curiously.
"Five silver pieces," the smaller, quieter one offered in a shy and nervous way. He could see her eyes roam over his impressive physique. Sand-colored eyes that shone like fine oil. "And the strap," added the first girl.
Needing no further motivation, he took the strap from the girl and gripped it on either end with both hands. He took a few seconds to make sure that his grip was sound, but then slowly, he began to pull. The strap began to flex, twisting and warping as he slowly drew it apart. His brow beaded with sweat as he concentrated. The girls "ooh!" and "aah!" as it became longer and longer. Little parlor tricks like this were usually beneath him, but these girls were offering enough money to pay for his meal today. A good show was a fair trade.
Finally, the leather strap made a clear 'drop' noise, as if it were made of water, and came apart into two. He chuckled, and his two little fans seemed incredibly impressed. "Here," he said with a grin as he handed the green-eyed girl one of the two identical pieces of hide.
"Goddess above... how is that possible!? Have you defeated nature completely?" the tall girl asked exasperatedly as she gave him the five silver she owed him. Her big eyes shone in the fading light as she looked up at him with a mixture of awe and fear.
"Not defeated; just tricked," he said to her with a grin. The servant girls scamper off as the guard captain comes up. He was a bit larger than the rest, and wears some silver accessories that denote him as superior. Though, without the silver badges, he'd have been hard to tell from any of the rest of the cloth-draped locals.
"Ey, foreigner. You're guarding the servant tent tonight," he said simply.
"Fine by me," the mage knight answered with a shrug. The servants always wanted to chat and share their booze, which made the shift go quickly. "Better than guarding the animals.."
As night began to fall, the scene at the camp was the same as it has been for the past two weeks. The servants busied themselves with their daily duties, the merchants counted their goods and coin, and the guards, spellsword included, stood about trying to look intimidating. It had been a peaceful journey so far, but the caravan master assured the guards that bandits and ferocious beasts alike stalked the sandy wastes. Not to mention the tales of desert demons, djinn, sorcerers, and ancient undead. Still, it seemed like there were more guards around than caravaneers. The mageblade, in particular, was hired to protect some little princess. He wasn't sure of the noble titles of this land, or of whether his charge was some middling princess of a royal line, the child of some well-to-do merchant, or something else still. He haven't even been allowed to set eyes on the supposed princess. For all he knew, there might not have even been any princess. She travelled in a covered palanquin by day, and none but her handmaidens were allowed into her tent by night. But that was all par for the course for royalty. Can't have dirty heathen eyes gazing on her assuredly royal skin, of course. Not that the mage knight minded. The payment for this little guard job would keep him in wine and wenches for half a year, at least.
Sunset passed into night, and the desert heat gave way to biting cold. The sparse fires of the caravan provided a little warmth, but the uneasy wind kept the guards on their toes. So while the well insulated locals huddled around the fires, the mage knight stood cold, and very awake. Thus, it was of little surprise that he was the first to spot the oddly shifting sands outside of camp. The sands always moved, but these moved like water, shifting and swaying almost organically under the moonlight.
He turned to the other guard helping him to guard the servant's tent. "Hey," he asked, "..What's with the weird sand?"
The guard looked, and her eyes widened in sudden fear. "Hassakk! Hassakk!!!" she shouted, and the camp immediately erupted into absolute chaos.
The foreigner had only moments to wonder just what "Hassakk" meant, before the question was answered. The cause of the moving sands became obvious as a viridian serpent man burst from the ground in a burst of silvery sand and dust. The man was half reptilian, with scales and slitted eyes. His head was like that of a cobra, complete with a hood adorned in piercings and jewelry. The wicked dagger in his hand plunged toward the knight's chest. On instinct, his hand was on the hilt of his sword. His trusty steel screamed from its sheathe, and sang as it cut through air and flesh with comfortable ease. The steel carved 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 Hassakk as he assumed it was called, let loose a low wheeze as it crumpled at his feet. But he was far from alone.
All about him, the camp was in uproar. The Hassakk burst from beneath the sand from every direction. The serpent-bodied marauders assaulted 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.. The spellsword flicked the blood from his steel and grinned. It was finally time to earn his pay.
He locked blades with a second serpent as he moved to defend the servants. The cook's pot spilled over in the chaos, and the camp was lit with a blazing oil fire as the serpent man hissed in his face-- cut short as the mage knight drove an icen spike through its mouth and into its brain. The fanged fiend went slack, limp hands trailing down its arms as it died. The serpent-like bandits were fearsome, but they seemed to die as easily as any man. Unprepared for a determined opponent.. But that was a lesson that the foreigner's fellow guards were late to learn.
Some of the local guards put up a token resistance. Some fought well, and a few even lost their lives in the ambush. But just as many fled for the hills, abandoning the camp and their sworn duties in the face of the threat. Cowards, the mage knight though. But that is what he'd come to expect of their weak mettle. Their convictions shifted as easily as the sands they built their cities on. Not that he could really blame them. The serpents easily outnumbered the caravan guards. It did, however, leave the mage knight in a bad predicament. He'd sworn an oath to defend the princess and her caravan until they arrived at their destination. Fleeing now would mean breaking his word. Also, if she died, it was safe to say he wouldn't get paid, and these serpents didn't seem like the types that might accept him into their ranks. Very well, the spellsword thought. Let them take the cattle. The princess, however, would stay safe.
He steadied himself as he made his way toward the royal tent. Several snake marauders could be seen slithering into the royal tent, and squeals cried out from the attendants within. He sprinted towards the gilded tent, leather boots digging into the soft sand as he moved to protect the desert princess.
He rushed into the gilded tent, and as he pushed aside the heavy flaps, a flash of movement caught his eye. He narrowly avoided the dagger aimed at his face, but not before a clean cut slid over his chin. A ribbon of blood pours from the wound and he faced off against his assailant. His assailant hissed maliciously. "Leave, foreigner! Our business is with the royal. We have no interest in you," The snake-faced woman sais as a sickle-like dagger danced in her hand.
Heralded by a thunderous rumble, he struck. The Hassakk blocks the swing, but not the force of all the magic behind it. His sword broke her dagger in two and sent its pieces sailing through the perfumed air. The reptilian marauder was far from defeated, however. She hissed, and quickly enveloped the knight's body in her thick coils.
Her scaled body pressed in with crushing force. Coils tighten, pinning his arms to his sides and squeezing the air from his lungs. Untold eons of serpent evolution bore down on him at once. Her kind had been bred for this specific purpose: to crush the life from their prey, and to devour them. For a normal human, this might have been the end.. but her 'victim' was far from defenseless. The Hassakk had failed to realize that this was a test of wit, not strength, and her opponent was no brute.
He could feel blood vessels in his eyes straining as he struggled to focus. He only had moments remaining, certainly, but one moment would be all he needed. It started with just a tickle, then a buzz. Suddenly, the serpent was overcome with a shock that blinded her and burned her scales from her body. The smell of burning flesh mixed with the exotic scents of the tent, but before she could suffer any longer, the Hassakk fell unconscious. The bestial warrior's coils came undone with a pained hiss, and her long body fell heavy to the floor with a final thump.
Catching his breath, the spellsword retrieved his wide hat from the ground and set it on his head. It didn't seem like there were too many other serpents about anymore. Most had been chasing off the guards, and if any had seen that particular display, they knew by now not to trifle with this one.
Finally, he crept towards an enclosed room in the back of the tent. The princess could be nowhere else, though he had no way to know if she'd been captured by the serpents yet. He threw aside the heavy curtain door, ready for whatever danger might lay on the other side.
The danger, it seemed, came in the form of a thrown shoe. A very expensive shoe, which sailed a few feet to his left and hit the wall of the tent harmlessly. "Who dares!?" the princess screeched. She softened a bit when she saw he was her hired guard and not one of the marauders. "Oh, warrior. It's just you. Tell me, where are my personal guards? They should be here. The camp is under attack, is it not?" she asked intently. Her big eyes were both innocent and canny. He was stunned for a short moment as he saw the princess for the first time. He wasn't sure what he'd expected of a princess of the Tal'Adeen desert kingdoms, but it almost certainly wasn't this. He'd never expected her to be