The man proved to be rather a good kisser, using his tongue but more lightly and subtly than most young men, and yet still doing more with it somehow; long years of practice, no doubt, and an increasing appreciation for youth and life's pleasures as his own self arced through brief human life.<br/><br/>As Kass turned to go he said, "No doubt the temple would cover the coin for your deposit on the camels; but you shall need not even that, or rather, the temple shall cover it through me now: you cannot go into town without seeing the Stables of Ihmpotehnt, which is the vendor I recommend in any case - and you see, mention my name, Semmon, and that I sent you and 'send Hysis my best', and you shall find camels a hastily given gift. You see, I claimed his second wife's virginity a number of years back, and he rightly suspects that she seeks me out to be gotten with child or to be simply sodomized from time to time...and he's always been worried I shall tell the town and make a shamed cuckold of him! Don't think me cruel...'tis more pleasure than she gets from Ihmpotehnt, this I know, and he has more coin than any one man in a town so small could rightly need, and not the virility to sire his own heirs. Or so the rumor goes." The senior Sharessan priest stroked his manicured beard and fond with years of fond memories dancing in his eyes. "Ah, the duties a priest must satisfy for the town he loves."<br/><br/>Aria, two miles above the temple once she reached her highest after twenty minutes of vertical ascent, had a view she knew she would remember all her life (which she hoped would be long yet, and with choice persons to share it with). She could see the glorious green delta around Skuld before the sea to the west, and far to the east, a great range of mountains - she knew not their names, but realized that beyond these, must lie the trackless steppes and waste which eventually stretched to the eastern shores of the megacontinent, where lay the several empires of Kara-Tur.<br/><br/>Whether because she was not eagle-eyed enough, not high enough, or the sun still rising in the southeast made that in the direction of mount Goldflail harder to see with sharp relief, she never noticed or confirmed what Kass was just then finding out. After beginning a descent at a somewhat scary four times the speed of her ascent, she saw the laid-out agreed signal in the courtyard and continued.<br/><br/>Once she rejoined Kass, and had many full waterskins and even a water-conjuring wand foisted upon them by the girls, they got their first up-close glimpses of the town of Siwa, a sleepy and mostly agrarian community with drew its sustenance from the river, both directly from fishing and indirectly through agriculture for orchards such as they'd seen about the temple and what. Small herds of goats and sheep could be seen shepherded by young boys on the nearest hillsides, and gaining camels proved as simple as Kass had been told. Aria found herself rather annoyed by their bumpiness for much of the journey, and kept herself rather covered against the sun. "I was always sensitive to hot weather," she explained to Kass as they crossed desert so open and flat it seemed almost like a white-beige sea, two-spurred mount Goldflail looming ahead and quite visible in the clear dry air, "I am from one of the coldest corners of Faerun, as it happens, and I've long suspected my erinyes devil ancestor was from one of the frozen rather than fiery layers of the Nine Hells. It's actually rather fortuitous that my armor is affixed with a gem to ward oneself against environmental temperature extremes, to some degree.<br/><br/>Several miles outside Siwa they passed on one side a small but classically picturesque oasis, were no doubt some spring bubbled aboveground in defiance of the dead desert, surrounded by grateful grasses and palms and small birds. A few simple old hovels of white stone were clustered in an arc on one side of the oasis, their roofs collapsed, and any tenants fled along ago - poisoned or diseased water, some passing war or monstrous raid, who knew.<br/><br/>Closer to mount Goldflail they could see several old watchtowers on its peaks and spurs, abandoned as far as they could see, but once some strategic purpose in all likelihood.<br/><br/>As they came around the south spur of Goldflail it was visible ahead, rather starkly so with so few other terrain features about: a great wooden statue of a thin man, the ends of its upraised arms perhaps fofty feet above the flat sands. Around its feet wer littered debris which might've excited an archaeologist: old tools and broken weapons and many bones, including several charred skeletons - perhaps one was the very same that Semmon had seen almost thirty years ago.<br/><br/>Rana was much as Kass had scryed her, encaged and bound, painted and delirious, and now growing steadily more sunburned despite her native skin.<br/><br/><br/>With Kass and Aria still over a hundred paces away, the desert's solitude changed: lightning tore not down from the cloudless sky, but right out of the ground ahead in a nearly horizontal line. Aria reflexively leaped up, feet atop its hump for a split-second before vaulting clear of the camel with her cape spreading into wings. It tore through the camel, which (mercifully, perhaps) did not even have time to cry out. It exploded like a fast-heated corn kernel into horrible-smelling hunks of black fried flesh, painting the surrounding circle of desert black and red.<br/><br/>A swath of sand between the traveling girls and the wooden effigy they sought exploded into a brief grainy cloud. Gritty blue scales glinted in the sunlight as an elephant-sized dragon with a snout horn like a rhinocerous burst out of some hiding burrow it'd made. Its long maw snapped shut after the lightning breath bolt, but then it roared in a voice like thunder, "It worked! It worked! One is a morsel, three and two camels a fair feast! Know the presence of Ozonyminidonaxandius, ere your flesh coats his gullet and your baubles are shat out and destined to adorn his hoard!"<br/><br/>Kass's camel bleated and turned about with surprising swiftness for such a comically shaped best, clearly about to bolt as fast as it could. Animals understood few things well, but fear well enough.<br/><br/><br/>Edited.<br/><br/>Got wand of create water, 20 charges<br/><br/>Breath weapon (200' line of lightning): 71 elec damage, reflex DC 31 (!) half, at Aria and her camel<br/>(I rolled a d2 to randomly pick which girl it targeted.)<br/>The dragon is Huge (they normally have a 100' line breath weapon; this one used a metabreath feat to increase that).<br/><br/>Frightful Presence: Will save DC 27 or shaken for 18 rounds (or panicked if 4 or fewer HD)<br/><br/>Aria reflex: 31+3r, evasion<br/>Aria will: nat20 ( thankfully; she has a fear-specific penalty from one of her feats)<br/>(camel has 19 hp and iss dead even if it makes the save - poor camel!)<br/><br/>Kass's camel will vs frightful presence: 1 + 14r, panicked! (it will begin running away from the dragon as fast as it can, 200'/round, but as Kass's mount it acts on her turn and she can go before it if she doesn't want to be carried with it)<br/><br/>Aria and Kass are 195' from the dragon,which is Huge; 15'x15', currently two-thirds burrowed (5' of its height above the surface of the sand), and the effigy is another 15' behind the dragon.<br/><br/>Aria init: 32<br/>Blue dragon init: 5<br/><br/>(So Kass is guaranteed to go before it and after Aria. Aria will probably use one 60' flying movement action and her blink ring, FYI if you wish to post Kass's first turn in your next post. As usual Aria might delay 'til after Kass if there's some tactical incentive to.)<br/>