The desert's sky flashed with dying lights, the stars falling like rain.
The wind was picking up, breathing the frigid night air into the very cracks and breaks of the sand, streaming the surface like interlocking unending waves, mesmerizing, soft and tender. But the raw invasive sand was anything but tender.
A figure appeared over a high dune, crawling up with both hands and feet. The cloak around its form was little more than layers of weathered rags, billowing in the gentle breeze. Its hood was up, hiding features in shadow. A Dune Nomad.
The dark figure followed the dune's top, keeping far above the constantly shifting currents below. Each step betrayed resolution, bleeding it like sweat. The motion was odd, nearly mechanical, unconscious and determined.
Something caught the figure's attention and its head swivelled and cocked to one side, as if listening intensely. Deftly it slid down one side of the dune on elbow and knee, its movement hurried and deliberate.
The figure's shadow blocked out whatever little light the starless sky provided, looming over the pitiful form of the small boy clutching a piece of exposed rock jutting from the sand.
The Nomad's breath steamed in the crisp frozen air. Startlingly blue eyes shone from the darkness of the hood, as icy as the night.
"Are you them?" The voice was quiet, hoarse and rough as if the very act of speaking was unfamiliar, the question more musing than inquisitive. The cadence was unmistakably female.
A hand extended toward the boy from under the cloak, calloused and bruised, palms up.
"You are."
----
The smell of rotting flesh was only tolerable because the wind was blowing the other way.
Kywr forded the rocky terrain with familiar ease, effortlessly avoiding sandpits and fragile formations of stone ruins making his way through the rough field outside the City's walls. The butcher's mouth and nose was covered, his hands and feet woven tight within layers of rags. He hummed softly to himself, a tuneless melody that was quickly swallowed by the harsh wind.
He had done this countless times, and the last trip had been especially fruitful. Someone had wrapped a noble's body in a carpet and dumped it under the other corpses, no doubt smugly gloating about the ingenuity of the plan to someone else afterwards. It was frankly a piss-poor job, but Kywr wasn't complaining. He got a mostly new carpet, a set of fancy if somewhat bloodied clothes that he sold for 17 Loks, and silver ring. That last one he had had to kill four men over, mostly beggars and thieves. But openly displaying something valuable on one's person was a mark of status and power in the underdark, and he radiated it like he was a Baron. The new wound across his eye would also make for a great scar. All in all, a single turn of fate in the Pits could change one's life as surely as being favoured by the Hounds.
Kywr's pleasant humming abruptly cut off at the sight of moving figures over the Pit. His Pit. In the dim starlight one could just make out the form of a child and a woman. Beggars and vultures trying to steal scraps from his table. Kywr's mood fouled in an instant. In the past he would have had no qualm doing the dirty work, but time had changed. He was more than that, now, he was a much more valuable piece if not a player at the table.
Stepping out from behind the ruins he had come through, Kywr plastered a smile that was half a grimace onto his face. "Out for a stroll, are you?" He had to shout over the constant murmur of the wind.
They always ran. He always caught them in the end. Perhaps he should learn from Lyric and strung their corpses up on poles around his Pit.
----
The man's nose twitched sharply and he sniffed the air like a dog. He smelled something odd. It wasn't the ever-present smells of dry waste unwashed human odour that permeated the air like sand. No, this was something different, something out of place. It smelled pleasant, mingled with blood. A wide grin spread across the man's gnarly twisted features.
What he found wasn't what he had expected. The noble was alive, despite the overwhelming foul metallic scent and the pool of stain on the dirt. Still, it was no matter. The well-dressed man seemed confused, disoriented and barely able to stand.
The grin widened into a savage snarl, showing rotten crooked teeth. He pushed into the alley and before the other man could react his fist thumped hard against the man's stomach, knocking the air out of him and doubling him over. In the half-light of night the two forms looked almost entangled.
His going through the rich man's pockets was cut short by a rustling from behind. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a new figure at the mouth of the alley. This one too was draped in tattered clothes, a common sight in most parts of the City-States. The figure's face betrayed little emotion except for the intense dark eyes and tired lines.
"Piss off." He said with venomous irritation in his voice. "This one is mine. I found him first."
"Leave him." The stranger replied, his voice holding as much roughness and ferocity as him.
"This street is the Muds'." He growled, getting to his feet. He stood a head taller than the stranger, looming menacingly. "Piss off or I'll knock your teeth in." He advanced on the smaller man, his hands flexing in anticipation.
In a single flash faster than the eye could register, a glint of metal in the stranger's hand lashed across his throat. The Mud thug dropped to his knees gurgling blood, his hands around his throat. Crimson soaked darkly through his fingers.
The ragged figure watching silently as the thug died. Then his eyes moved to the crumpled form of the well-dressed man further in the alley.
"Can you stand?" He asked, extending a hand. The blade in his hand gleamed dangerously scarlet, and the look in his eyes was that of a man who knew many things.
---
The cobbled stone street of the High District was deserted at this hour. All who lived there could afford to stay indoor at night. The eerie silence was almost haunting. Even here where the wretched high and mighty of ruins made their home, the sand could not be kept out, could not be denied. The cracks in the stone were filled with it, every door way, every window, every wall. The desert claim this place, too, the respite was momentary, a mere illusion. And across its landscape two souls are pulled toward one another, like sparks ignited on two ends of a string.
The quiet was broken by the clicking of iron heels on the cobble, the sound not in sync but perfectly at ease. Two men and a woman marched down a side street in a relaxed formation, one ahead, two close behind. Their clothing while not clean was well-made and sturdy, albeit a colourless grey. On their chest pinned a metallic brand of a talon grabbing the sun. This identified them as team of Inquisitors, the Nightguard.
They marched in a careful pace through the twisting alleys and streets of the District in an unseen pattern that covered ground in reasonable time, passing through every corner, every path.
A raised hand from the leader stopped the small party. He pointed, and through the lazily drifting veil of sand they spotted a shape up ahead, slowly, almost confusedly wandering the street. The leader frowned, and together the Inquisitors approached the figure carefully, until the shape could be identified as that of a man. His features could almost been seen from this distance, though his expression was still shadowed by the unlit gloom.
"Halt!" The leader commanded loudly, pointing with his cudgel. "What in dirt's name are you...?"
A hand on his shoulder cut his words short, as a second Inquisitor stepped out from behind the first, his eyes squinting against the sand, glinting with recognition.
"Master Niklas?" He asked, his voice tinged with perplexity. "What are you doing out at this hour?" He eyed the dark spot on the front of the man's shirt quizzically. The third Inquisitor swept her gaze out toward their surrounding, brows furrowing.
She had heard something else mixed within the constant hum of the breeze.
----
The old Steel Inquisitor stood frozen on the doorway of his wife's funeral chamber. His hands shook where it grabbed the frame of the door with white knuckles, as if it was the only thing keeping him on his feet.
"Udu's grace." He breathed, the words tumbling out of his mouth almost unconsciously. "You're dead. Dead. Dead. You're not dead. Udu's eyes."
Suddenly he surged forward and grabbed the red-clad woman with both hands on her shoulder, his grip hard as iron. His mind, an Enchanter's will bored into the tiny form in his grasp.
"How dare you? HOW DARE YOU? Get out of her head! Get..." Suddenly he stumbled back, his head flashing with familiar images.
His face paled to an almost ghostly white, his eyes wide in shock and disbelief. "It is you." Only then did he notice her healthy visage, the gaunt features replaced by that of someone a decade younger.
The room trembled, the Inquisitor's mind reeling like leaves battered by the rain.
