Emmaline walked over towards the skull, scooping handfuls of sand away in an effort to reveal more of it. This proved to be a useless endeavor as more sand simply trickled into place to replace it. Muttering in disgust she gestured Amal back and raised her staff, whispering the words of a half remembered spell. A gust of wind burst from the tip of the staff, blowing the sand away at the pressure of water bursting through the base of a tall dyke. The sand flowed away from the skull to reveal the teeth and jaws of a great serpentine beast, a dragon beyond doubt.  The spell faded away and sand began to trickle back with the slow insistence of an hourglass though it would take hours for the sand to reclaim the skull completely.

“Wait…” Emmaline said, glancing down at the markings on her arm that the wizards device had rendered on her flesh. A dragon skull was marked just above her wrist. As she beheld it the ink seemed to run, moving up her arm towards an oasis, the ink adding detail to the previously hinted at wadi, the two moons above the water shifted their position slightly and she glanced up at the sky, both moons hung waning in the sky just as the tattoos depicted. 

“It’s like a bearing,” Emmaline mused in Reikspiel.

“A what?” Amal asked in his own language apparently not having the word.

“A direction, if we keep between the two moons, we will come to an oasis,” Emmaline explained. That was a very good thing because they didn't have anything to drink beyond a few bottles of wine.  She leaned closer to the skull and seized one of the half foot long fangs and pulled it free with a snap.

“What are you doing?!” Amal asked in obvious alarm. Dragon’s teeth had alchemical properties and were worth a pretty penny to the right buyer. Emmaline snapped off a second tooth and tucked it into her bag before reaching for a third.

“Waste not, want not,” she quoted with a smirk.

The walked south and east following the path of the two moons. Attempts to rouse the strange magical carpet had been greeted with at best lethargic flaps of the tasseled edges. It was clear that the carpet, or whatever magic animated it, required rest. The going was tough and they had to stop and adjust their course at the top of each dune, but by the time the sun began to rise and the moons faded in the illumination of the dawn,  they could glimpse the distant green fronds of date palms that were a certain indicator of an oasis. There appeared to be several buildings around the pool, but as they drew nearer it became obvious that these had fallen into ruin long ago.

“We can at least find water and shelter from the sun, maybe some dates as well,” Emmaline said hopefully as they descended a dune and reached the rocky fringe of the oasis. Tough scrubby grass grew here and a few twisted bushes as well, but most of the greenery lay closer to the rare and precious water at the wadi’s center.