[b][centre]Osmodeus[/b][/centre]

The king's eyes flashed open. They beheld the white drapes before them with confusion for a minute as the ruler awakened and recalled where he was. Cramp was settling in his legs and he shuffled awkwardly from his crosslegged position. The air was close, yielding sweat from his brow and harrowing his breathing. He would have to stretch his legs soon for fear of his mood darkening on this important day. He would need all the clarity he could muster.

Osmodeus had no inclination of how long he'd slept. Judging by his thirst, he guessed a few hours. Reaching for his waterskin, his thoughts turned to what he'd dreamt about. The images were fresh and vivid as a rich tapestry in his mind. He remembered two great birds, their talons interlocked in a fierce battle for supremacy. They fought atop a high castle wall as snowflakes the colour of blood fell all around them from a sky as black as pitch. Theirs were the only cries as the world died and froze around them.

[i]I am no oracle[/i], he resolved, taking a large swig of water. If the dream had come to Nana Obara, his grandmother and most trusted advisor, he would not have been so dismissive, but it is known in Alabast that men cannot read the many paths of the future. All Osmodeus ever saw in the bones was death and the potential for armour.

"Your Highness," a deep voice from outside uttered, stirring him from reverie, "Dust on my doorstep for disturbing you, my king. We approach the city."

The king put the skin aside and thrust aside the drapes of the royal palanquin. A figure of horrific aspect sat beside the litter astride a monstrous camel. Both were clad in an uncanny raiment of bone, in bands of lamellar sheets on the camel's neck and legs and the man's arms and legs, and reshaped ribcages for their torsos. The man's gauntlets and sabatons were worked from the bones of arms, hands and feet and the camel's hooves left bare. Upon their heads were helmets molded from camel and human skulls respectively with circular eyeholes and rounded tops. The camel's helmet encompassed it's whole head whereas the man's terminated below the nose in a half-helm. The yellow eyes of a Nomadii shone out of the half-helm's empty sockets. Aside from the armour, the man wore a sand-coloured leather undertunic and cloak, the latter emblazoned with the cattle skull sigil of House Marrow, and the camel a leather saddle with a long bone-handled scimitar and other provisions strapped to it and the house's sigil upon a cloth flap extending down to the stirrups. The man was a soldier of the Alabasti elite, the Skeleton Guard, the private force and guard of the king.

The guard bowed his head in respect. The sound of hooves clopping against the cobbled path and the sound of metal chains filled the air, the latter swinging from the legs of the six thralls that carried the king's palanquin up the mountainside. Sweat beaded from their naked, sunburnt and whip-scarred backs as their slavedriver spurred them on from horseback behind. Unconcerned with their hardship, King Osmodeus peered beyond his camelry's loping march to see a serpentine mountain path winding up to a large city among the peaks. It had a remarkable resemblance to the landscape in his dream. 

The king wordlessly closed the curtain to the guard and the outside world. He shuffled again.