Kthaahthikha

My legs were sore and my breath short. I had been walking for seven days, since the Barakesh had fallen upon my caravan a month from Iskapar. Their baron, a mace clutched firm in hand, had loosed a barrage of wracking cries and knocked the Captain's head clean from her neck. Our much-vaunt gunnery amounted to little more than a deafening display when met with scatter-bows from trenches in the embankment.

It is somehow hard to believe that where those travellers fell was once a river. The drop is a hell-hole for travellers, and there will be many more deaths before the Primate finally conceeds to place a garrison on the lip of the Escarpment.

A river, and now I wandered an ancient sea. Outcrops of bedrock, weathered to uncommon smoothness, arched up from the softer sediments and displayed the skeletons of ancient dragons old before time. Lances of metal shot from the plain, unyielding to my knife. On the third day I had come across the glassed-off site of a flier landing. Dust lay thickly upon the cracked disc. I slept there, clutching my pistol in fear of marauders.

On the fifth day, I awoke where I had tumbled with the darkness. The sun, dipping and rising above the horizon, the starless night in this strange latitude left me disoriented and afraid. I found an arcing jut of dun stone rising above me as though ready to fall. Stumbling from its shadow, I had been confronted by some primordial creature, snarling as I lept for my pistol and shot the think through the neck.

It was scaled and dark in complexion, and its flesh tasted rancid and sweet. Yellowed fangs jutted from its jaws, its fins bent and muscular to an amazing extend. Its tail flicked, coiled and uncoiled, even as I butchered it.

And on the seventh day, as the pangs of hunger worried me again, I saw Kharir gleaming on the horizon