17th of Vhalar 720
Dusk was falling on the treasure hunters’ camp, and it was Demda’s task to try and organize this group into something resembling a neat and orderly gathering of archeologists. What she’d gotten, since signing on for the treasure hunt, was a pack of charlatans, low-brow mercenaries, and eager layabouts looking for easy wealth. They’d sent for a person with experience in logistics and running people across the desert. What they needed was a life coach.
Their first stop and destination were to be the Kankaro Sky Caves, where a tribe of people was said to know the location of many of the treasures hinted at in the cache of maps that had recently been uncovered. One of these maps, now in Demda’s possession, suggested that the key to unlocking the Temple of Illusions lay with a venerable seer in the Kankaro caves. Why the Museum thought that this ‘seer’ was still alive and well in this day and age was beyond Demda’s reasoning. Perhaps ‘seer’ was a hereditary position in that tribe. Whatever the case, she was tasked to find them.
”Get up.” Demda began making the rounds, rousing the various dirty men and women who’d gathered under their tents. She hadn’t spoken loudly enough. Perhaps pouring cold vinegar over their heads would work better? ”GET UP!” She shouted louder, and then the grumbling ensued, and the gathering of scum began stirring from their slumber.
”We have to make ready to move before the suns sink below the horizon.”
One of the followers, bleary-eyed, glanced at Demda and smacked his mouth. ”How about some water first? We haven’t even eaten yet!”
Demda stared incredulously at the man. Then she shrugged, ”If you want to waste your supply, you’re welcome to. Don’t come crying to the rest of us if you run out later in the trip. You’re advised to take no more than ten drams of water to drink after waking. We’ve got a limited supply, and our reserve water is for emergencies. A gallon a day is your allotment, that's around four skins full. So do keep count.”
It wasn’t like her, at least the person she’d grown up as, to be so hard with people. She’d had to learn such a draconic attitude during her time as a planner for desert exhibitions. Surprisingly, she’d found it came easier to her than she expected.
She kicked another of the full sleeping bags, bidding the person inside of it to get out of their slumber and wake up. ”Time to rise! Let’s go people, we have time to make before we get to the Kankaro Sky Caves!”
The word had gotten out to the city, hopefully, from the runners and criers that Demda had hired to include a notice of a recruitment drive for those interested in fabulous treasures beyond imagining. They were only a break south east of Nashaki, and would be a few trials before they got to the Desert Rose, where local tribesmen had said they found and uncovered small artifacts here or there. She'd seen one of these herself, a pristine tribal necklace, bearing the teeth of a great serpent, with a cord fashioned from its hide, and smeared with its still red blood. Something about the object called to her but the man was utterly unwilling to part with it but did mention that there may be more where that came from in the desert, around the place where they'd found it.
Within a few breaks, after allowing the workers to take their drams of water after rest, and to eat, they set off in the direction of the Desert Rose.
They were about a break away from their next stop, which lie somewhere between the sandy dunes southeast of Nashaki, from which they’d disembarked many breaks ago, to the Desert Rose. Demda had instructions on how to organize the treasure hunt, which she intended to follow to the letter, perhaps barring a few alterations as necessary. But she being new o the entire logistical operation of a treasure hunt, she intended to adhere to the plans and specific instructions as closely as was reasonable. One thing her time spent in the boring lecture hall in that Trade Academy, was that flexibility was part and parcel of good planning.
On the way to the Desert Rose, and hteir next camping stop, she heard the men speaking of strange stories. Of battles fought and lost in the desert dunes, how the sands swallowed the traces of so much conflict, even the ghosts were made to forget the obsessions and prejudices that prompted them to wander the world in ghastly anguish.
She heard them tell however of more specific tales. Whispers of witches and magi, men and near-gods who’d fought battles using that accursed power. Demda wondered if it was really as bad as the Towers would have the populace think, at times. She thought that magic could be something special, beautiful, even wonderful. Yet to hear the men whisper of it as they rode along the sands, and settled down to camp, they dreaded it almost more than the sand ghosts said to haunt the dunes.
There was one particular tale that caught her attention. Not for its fantastical elements, or the fact that both principle characters in the tale were magi. But more for the fact that it was a tale of lies and betrayal, not unlike the incident that had prompted her to escape her life of relative ease and comfort for the open road.
He was a anti-mage, and she was a powerful enchantress and shapeshifter. They’d clashed, the men claimed, not far from the Desert Rose, where the male magi had lured the enchantress ostensibly to propose lifelong loyalty. Little did she know the treachery that clouded his eyes. He intended to imprison her, to give her to the tower of Flesh that he might enrich himself. The traitorous antimage nearly would’ve succeeded, but for some magical flourish from the enchantress, which saw her severed from her own self, and turned into a wolf to run away and escape the anti-mage, as he lie prone on the desert.
As she ran away, she looked back at his prone form. But she hadn’t the heart to kill him, even as the beast’s mind was taking over. It’s said that her wolf-like form stalks the dunes even today, looking for her lost humanity…
Those were the sorts of tales that caught Demda’s attention, and made her wish she had the talent for telling stories. When it was her time to relinquish the watch, she dozed off in the shadow of the camp, not far from the fire, however, as it was beginning to get cold in the night.
Within a few trials, they finally found their way to the destination. The Desert Rose. The colossus of Moseke, or what must have been a colossus of the Stone Maiden, lay mostly shattered upon the dunes. Demda was caught by the grandeur of the structure, not only by what remained in ruins, but also by what must have been one of the most impressive structures in existence, once upon a time. A true wonder of the world. An expression to devotion to a goddess, that went beyond any mortal attachments.
She didn’t have long to stand in reverence of the fallen colossus, however, as they were set to dig around in a pattern, around the statue.
They spent much of the next breaks setting up positions around the front of the statue. The instructions were quite explicit in their requirement that she dig where the eyes of the statue faced.
So, within a half a trial, she had the dig sites marked, and ready for the men to start clearing away the sands, looking for something, anything that might be of cultural or historical significance.
Demda took the moments in the waning sunlight, to wander nearer to the Colossus of Moseke. There, she stared into her sandstone eyes, wondering who had commissioned her building. Was it an Immortal themself or something greater? Perhaps a priest of the goddess. She sighed as she studied every intricate detail that remained to the fallen colossus, until some glint of silver caught her gaze, from the east. She turned her head, to make sure she wasn’t just catching the sunlight against an errant strand of hair. No, when she turned, she saw that there was something shining in the sands.
She went over toward it, ignoring the chatter of the men as they dug away at their site. A few bits later, she stood over where the trinket shone through the sands, and knelt down over it. She began clearing it away, and was surprised to find a well-preserved silver amulet, in surprisingly good condition. Socketed on the silver medallion, were two human molars. Fresh blood, or what looked like red blood, smeared the face of the coin, while a braided cord of chocolate brown hair coiled around the loop of the medallion, creating a sort of pendant. This, she wrapped around her neck and then stuffed beneath her clothes. She felt the heat of the medallion beneath her tunic, and felt somehow comforted by its presence.
A good luck charm? Perhaps, but at the end of the day, they were running low on supplies well before scheduled. Demda was forced to call off the treasure hunt without finding anything of great significance. Yet for all that, she had her own keepsake from the adventure. One that strangely reminded her of the tale of that enchantress, who’d met her defeat at the hands of a lover.
