After successfully scaling the inside of the brick well, Liga Burr sneaks a quick peek over the lip of the circular stonework, his short but able fingers confidently gripping the rough edge. Gazing quickly around, despite the heat-haze, the sharp-eyed Halfling realises that the odd, leafy green canopy overhead is actually shielding them from the worst of the fiery blaze of the large, bulbous, yellow sun. Squinting up, he also spots a second, smaller, redder one over its shoulder, further contributing its extra heat.
Two suns!
This world's extreme heat though, is still a welcome change from the recent bitter iciness of frozen Kik-ri and, despite still being in the shade, his clothes are already half dry.
Under the lush trees and bushes all around them, a soft, ochre coloured sand surrounds, not just the well, but the ground beyond. The strange, spindly trees vary in height but several of them reach perhaps thirty feet at their angled zenith. It also looks like bunches of weird, giant nuts are hanging from near the top, just under the sail-like fronds.
The air is sweet and fragrant with the scent of exotic fruits and flowers, but also... with an underlying acrid smell of cold iron, blood and death.
A few yards away from the well, lies a darkly bearded man, face down in the sand. He's dressed in blood stained, loosely wrapped, but expensive looking silks, a head scarf and strange curly toed boots. A wickedly curved knife has fallen inches from his swarthy, outstretched hand. Watching his chest for any sign of breath, it soon becomes apparent that the man is quite dead.
There's also a monstrously large snake hanging limp and lifeless from a sloping trunk, about twenty feet above and ahead. Its forked tongue lolling out of its gaping maw, its grey, glassy eyes, unblinking and its scaly skin pierced by a dozen, very precise looking sword thrusts. The creature's dried blood has dripped down and stained the sand, further darkening its shadow, directly below it.
Despite being tricked by Sir Briefadel twice now, Liga Burr is still confident that the body is... was… Zephyr, the 'Circle of the Scale' Druid - Guardian of this Desert world. Bad luck for him but proof positive, that they're at least on the right track this time!
After sensing nothing moving nearby, Liga Burr strains his much-scarred but sensitive ears for the sound of anything or anyone moving around in the undergrowth. Weirdly though, he hears nothing. No creeping footsteps behind the bushes, no animal noises. Nothing at all. Not even the drone of buzzing insects.
Beside him, helped by Arowe, Rifkin and Fortu, pushing his keen nose above the well lip, his faithful hound; Mir Hundur sniffs at
