[b]Toltegin Hills, Elymea Satrapy, Shahdom[/b]

The desert winds skirted the ridge of the escarpment. The cliff, bared by centuries of erosion to its stratal framework, marked the horizon between the wastelands and the starry sky, kindred in their vast and largely empty space. The sands rolled endlessly on into the night like the waves of some dead ocean. It was cold.

A lone silhouette traversed the rock, defined by starlight. The camel bore two humps and a rider on a saddle between with various pouches attached. The beast's shaggy coat grew in tufts over its hooves, muffling its passage and distorting its prints. All that could be heard was the wind.

In the distance ahead rose the undulant mountains.

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The hills howled at the rider. The headwind impeded the camel's passage and billowed dust and sand into its face. The camel marched on with its head lowered to the ground.

Time and space warped around the rider in the eye of the storm. After what may have been minutes or many hours, the camel emerged from the sand stream and knelt gracefully down. Its rider dismounted and walked a few paces before stopping at the head of a mound of earth and sand. The figure bent and dug.

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The skeleton lay with its arms crossed on its ribcage. An assortment of trinkets and a tattered waterskin surrounded the corpse. It is said he who sleeps eternal in the desert will need water on his way. The skin was long dry.

The gravedigger retrieved something silver from beside the body's skull. The hand paused by the bony face. The rider shifted the object to their far fingers and touched thumb and index to cheekbone. They delicately traced the runes etched deep, like a sculptor admiring his finished work.

[b]Elsewhere, in the northeastern Bonelands[/b]

The crone awoke. Her legs had gone numb from falling asleep crosslegged again. She massaged her haunches, watching her callused hand work. When had she gotten so old? She could not feel any familiarity for this flesh despite how long ago it had lost its youthful suppleness. She sighed.

Before the crone lay a large copper wok. In it were scattered the bones of small mammals and birds, beaks, kidney stones, fragments of charcoal, sandstone and quartz. To the untrained eye they appeared randomly assorted but to the oracles of the desert they were a map to the future. Each article could be interpreted in hundreds of ways in relation to where it fell in the wok and its proximity to other objects. It takes decades for even the most gifted young oracle to master the arts of divination it is told, and the crone was the oldest.

People came from far across the sands to seek her guidance, to ask whether their wives would birth many children or if their livestock would prosper. She was their shepherd.

The cold and the silence of the camp told the elder it was late night. She drew her furs closer and gathered up her materials. She released them as she had countless times before and observed as they clattered off the metal pan in all directions.

What she saw sent a chill up her spine so cold the desert night would envy. The crone rose with a speed she had not achieved in almost half a century. She hobbled to the portal and threw open the flap of the hut.

"[color=wheat]DARK ONES! DAR...[/color]"

The elder fell as an arrow sprouted from her side. Sometimes the path is too dark to see the dagger till it sits in your belly.