The spirit looked at me as if noticing me for the first time and then it slowly began to speak, "Yes I awoke laying next to three beings that were strangers. Though I do remember speaking with the mul at the arena in Draj."
"Yes father you told me this. His name was Bo."
"Bo, yes that is correct. The dray later told us his name was Rhogar and the elf's name was Rolen. I remember being reluctant to tell them my name because my last memories had me wondering if I was still a renegade gladiator with a price on my head. I remember flaming pillars of obsidian all around us. As I tried to put my thoughts together a flock of kes'trekel attacked us."
"The four of us, mul, dwarf, elf, and dray, made a temporary alliance and worked together against the kes'trekel. Our weapons were nearby but there was no time to get my armor on so I fought in a loin cloth. Without armor I got shredded by the kes'trekel's jagged beaks and I fell unconscious from blood loss. Luckily for me the mul, the elf and the dray; uh Bo, Rolen, and Rhogar; were stout folk and defeated the kes'trekel where I could not. When I came to and was trying to get a grip on the situation the mul, Bo, started yelling at Rhogar, the dray slaver and then began to beat the reptile senseless with his bare fists."
"I stayed out of it because I was considering the same thing. Generally dray all look alike to me, except maybe for their color, but this dray was unusually tall and thin and so I think I remembered him as one of the slavers that bought me in Urik and carried me off to Draj. If that wasn't enough the dray vomited acid on me while he was aiming at the kes'trekels. At least I think he was aiming at the kes'trekels. The dray didn't fight back and soon was stretched out in the sand."
My father's shade fell silent and so I was forced to prompt it yet again, "What happened after that father? Did the mul kill the dray?"
The shade began to speak again, "No he did not. Though it seemed to me that he would have liked to. People will tell you that there is no mercy in the open desert, but just like the city, mercy can be found in surprising places sometimes. Or perhaps it was just that we knew we would need each other to get out of the desert alive. For whatever the reason the four of us made a temporary alliance and ventured out into the desert."
After a brief pause I felt compelled to prompt my father's spirit once again, "Did anything happen on your journey father? Surely you did not cross the desert unscathed and without incident?"
The spirit continued its narrative, "A couple of days into our journey we stumbled on what seemed to be several dried out corpses, or so we thought. It was the first time I had ever fought undead, and while it tends to rattle you, they fight too poorly and with too little regard for their own safety to be any real threat to someone arena trained.
I gave the walking dead everything I had and cut them down without mercy as I would do with any creature created with defiler magic. Unfortunately that was not to be our only battle that day and so I was a little tired when we came across what remained of a caravan and their foes. It was tareks, four or five of them, I lost count."
"I would have just avoided them but Rolen told us they had prisoners and the tareks seemed to be torturing them. We made a quick plan and split up. Bo was going to release the tareks' crodlu mounts and chase them off while Rolen, Rhogar, and I snuck up a nearby cliff and kept their attention with ranged attacks."
"My job in the raid was simple I was just guarding the goat trail to the cliff so that Rolen could use his bow and Rhogar could spell cast without fear of hand-to-hand combat. My two allies opened the battle with a deadly volley that quickly took out the tareks' own caster. When the captives were clear I rolled a boulder down on one of the tareks. It was strange but the tareks never tried to come at us up the goat trail but one tarek with more guts than brains tried to scale the cliff. I figured the best way to do protect our two ranged members and to get to grips with the remaining tareks was to drop on him from above. Somehow the tarek managed to keep a grip on the cliff and Rolen put an arrow through him before I could finish him off. Unknown to us Bo was keeping two tareks busy by throwing stones at their crodlu mounts. By the time I was off the cliff the tareks figured out what was going on and they were chasing Bo around a large boulder. Bo caught a bone pick in the shoulder and dropped just as I got close."
"I cut loose with our traditional dwarven battle cry to distract the two tareks just in case Bo was still alive, and it was a good thing too because he was alive, just unconscious from blood loss. It was a tough fight but my arena training gave me just the edge I needed to kill the last two tareks."
The spirit of my father paused again and so I quickly prompted him, "Father you did not mention what happened to the caravan's merchants and guards."
"Yes the caravan, I remember...... We saved most of them from slavery or worse. There were about six of them still alive. I used the healing skills that I picked up in the gladiator pits to treat their wounds as best as I could. While helping to organize for desert travel someone found a strange bowl with a ball in it. After some investigation it seemed to be enchanted perhaps even some sort of a magical navigation device. We should have destroyed the thing when we found it as it was to lead us out of the frying pan and into the fire as they say."
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