Javeed was only a boy when the crystal clear night turned to flames, five years old and short for his age he watched the sabers of the elders clash and send sparks briefly into the air. Facewraps streaming behind their warriors like the tail feathers of agile axebeaks. Swiftly the enemy were cut down, in the dance the warriors were trained in from birth. He was going to be no different until that night.

Born to the chieftains brother, he was in a position bound for great honor. In the warlord caste he found himself, and already had he taken up the blade. Though beneath his cousins notice, not so much out of self righteous arrogance but having been set on different paths he watched as his fifteen year-old cousin Vanhi had began the rights of priest hood. The family elevated him above the others. His strange appearance being a gift from the desert. Javeed was nothing special in that regard however he also admired his cousin and that he shared blood with him.

But none of that mattered any more, clutching the dagger he wore at his waste he skittered up a sand dune away from the fires of the camp. So much blood was being spilled, yet the enemy kept coming. Savage men who consorted with darkness and polluted the deep wells; the lifeblood, of the earth. Their bodies were stacking up in a macabre orgy of blood, but so were his own people.

Green flames were dancing over the sands and looming dark shapes lurched through the dunes. Panic took him as one of these shapes was illuminated by a tent set ablaze, a giant beast two legs a tale and the torso of a giant man. The face was still in shadow but its eyes were on fire and the scent of sulfur drifted in waves of putrid air upon the breeze. The beast, bringing its giant hooked blade in a sweep severed men at the waist with no resistance. His father, died in this manner. He watched as he screamed and cried out crawling with his hands away from his legs as his entrails left a bloody trail in the sand behind him.

That was all he could bare to see, and he barreled over the dune and stumbled falling down the other side. It seemed like he fell forever, head over heels, rolling bouncing until finally he stopped with his head cradled gently by a rock as he slid into a grove of cacti. The last thing he remembered of that night, was thinking if they don’t find me here its going to really be bothersome removing these thorns.

The night was over, dawn came and went and young Javeed found himself coming to with the sun directly over head. Vultures were already circling him, his scent of blood drawing them from who knows how far. Pulling himself out of the grove his back stung, it was like fire and his head throbbed. He reached behind him and felt the stiff edges of cactus thorns.

He tried to forget about the pain, he began pulling himself back up the dune to where his tribe had been camped the night before. The sky was clear and there were no signs of the battle that took place on his side of the hill. Hope began to swell in his chest as he crested the hill. Perhaps the tribe fought them off, perhaps he would still have some family to return to. The image of his father popped into his head and he stomped it down it was when he crested the dune that child hood dreams died. The bodies of warriors lay where they fell and a couple gnolls were scavenging through the burnt out remains of the tents. His strength left him and he collapsed there.

The following days were a blur of pain, he thought the gnolls took him. He remembered their wretched smell. Being tied by a cooking pot as his thorns were unceremoniously plucked from his flesh. He knew of gnolls, he figured he was being prepared for eating, he didn’t care.

But that couldn’t have happened, because the next thing he remembered was waking in the back of a wagon being pulled by camels. A kindly old man was leaning over him and tending to his injuries. Javeed panicked and reached out to touch his desert wrappings. They had all been peeled away.

He never learned the names of his rescuers, however they were obviously some sort of merchant caravan. One night he heard the old man talking to a young woman in hushed tones about him. They were going to leave him in the city. The man was firmly against it but the woman was not going to support a desert child. Her mind had been made up.

When they parted ways Javeed was not angry, they had shown him kindness and bandaged his wounds. He swore that day watching the caravan ride away, that he would get his revenge on the savages who destroyed his family. He would find some way to make them pay.