Verses of the Black Sands

TW: Themes of violence and gore. The following is a work of fiction.

For three days, they had travelled directly south. The camels steadily trekking over satiny dunes. The beasts had belonged to Belfin. Although the Capelli were known for their fine desert horses, they did not thrive at Belfin and there was no need for them. The camels did not need as much water and could live off the sparse pasture, giving milk and a means of travel. The marauders, as Urla knew them to be now, had stolen the lives of so many of her kin, along with the black furred camels that were so precious to them. Had been so precious to them.

All the other livestock, the chickens, four goats, had mostly been left for dead. Some had made up the last meal Laukey and his men had had before leaving Belfin at the sunset of the day when Urla’s people had been slaughtered. The few who survived long enough to flee were lost to the night. At least Laukey had had the dead burned.

Urla had watched as each face of the people she had grown with and loved was made to ash by the heat of the stinking fire until she had been pulled away by her captors.

If they wanted to live, they should kill her.

But if they wanted to live, they had to keep her alive. For they wished to cross the Black Sands.

No matter what they did, the end would be the same. They would die. At least Laukey would.

To her disgust, after four days, Laukey tried to talk to her.

“I suspect we will reach a ruin if we direct our path to the east,” he said. She looked at him from where she sat, sweating, wrapped in her robes, but refused to respond. She knew the ruins, although she had never travelled there. She had spent most of her life at Belfin.