12th of Summer, 517 AV, mid-afternoon, the Prairie:
It was a couple bells since he was dispatched. Namely, two not-so-expendable apprentices went missing recently, and a couple warden initiates were sent across the island to search for them. Obviously the buggers couldn’t have been too important to anyone, lest at least a couple of full-fledged wardens would be sent after them. Being told that the search will likely be a lengthy one, the man had brought with him a full waterskin, a couple bites of food, his eating knife, flint and steel, and the blanket that came with his dull room, all neatly rolled up and packed into his rucksack. Either way, Einar was already tiring of the fruitless search that this gods-forsaken wasteland was providing him with, and for what? Two probable self-important pricks who likely won’t be missed by anyone. Hell, he was under the impression half the apprentices, within the first week either get blown up, killed by a monster they spawned, or are simply dragged away into some deep dark hole by their masters, never to be seen again. Be his assumptions as they may, there was still bloody naught but sand, dirt and dried up, dead husks of plant life in this bloody glorified desert. Naturally he had his poleaxe ready in hand, accompanied by a belt of throwing knives strapped over his chest, mostly covered by the worn coat he donned. He expected himself ready for the occasion of sand and dust giving way to hungry, horse-sized dogs with nine legs… or whatever some idiotic Nuit thought of popping out of their arse and leaving to spread its stench in the Prairie.
Though soon Einar was at the point of hoping for an encounter with a monster, for that meant salvation from boredom, from having sodding nothing to do. The most eventful thing he witnessed across the last three bells was some insect scurrying away when he kicked over the rock it was hiding under. His hopes were poorly seen to, as evening descended without another bloody encounter with a living being, much less with a stray warlock wannabe. A lengthy search, fair enough, but for the love of Cheva, he did not sign up for a half a day long encounter with petching thin air. He never found any trace that his experience would have him assume could be left in a clumsy apprentice’s way. No recently scorched earth, no freshly drawn, unfinished circles of runes, no ungodly abominations carelessly prancing about, absolutely, ploughing nothing. Before evening descended into complete darkness, Einar made sure to find the best excuses for firewood he could, lots and lots of brittle growths and creeping roots, along with the occasional couple branches of deadwood. He stored his finds beside and upon the naked, cracked skull of some long dead gargantuan monstrosity, on which he would spend the night. The bloody thing stood four and some feet tall at the forehead, and about six feet long, by shape he concluded it either belonged to some degenerate reptile or to an overgrown canine monster… though, location in mind, it was probably some unholy conjoining of both. At least the gods didn’t see fit to allow him into the world at an age where beings like this one actually walked and dined. As grotesque as this little seat within the ruins of a skeleton would be, he certainly wasn’t about to go wandering through the night with gods know what lurking about.