They'd just finished defeating the Nagas and repelling their sudden attack when the ground literally opened up to provide yet another problem to deal with. Xalmann was starting to think this little oasis town was cursed or something, like the universe was trying to tell them today was going to be its last day of survival no matter how hard they tried.

As Xalmann was wondering just what this town could have done to deserve such a fate, other than being full of criminals and bandits, desicated corpses began to flood out of the hole in the sand and swarm the town. Undead. Xalmann wasn't a fan of fighting the undead. His dagger didn't work on them, it's power to horrify those scratched with it having no effect on the mindless creatures. Xalmann noticed a flicker of light on the ground nearby and spotted the obsidian blade whip that the Naga leader had been using. With a flick of his tail, he flicked the weapon off the sand and caught it in his wooden hand. It would make a fine addition to his collection and offer more reach than the dagger.

New weapon in hand, Xalmann began to hack and slashed through the torso of the nearest walking corpse running toward him. With a swipe of his axe, the dried skin burned to a crisp, giving off the smell of burnt flesh as the unwrapped mummy collapsed, bisected from shoulder to waist.

One down. Just a... whole horde to go...

SPOILER: Click to show

Quest Name: Unwrapped
Participants: Two or more
Location: Zeinav Desert
Post Requirements: 6 post per person, 200 words per post
Reward: +1 Renown, +Dark Catalyst, +1 Zombie Ash
Description: Further exploration and excavation of the Zeinav desert has disturbed many once forgotten tombs, causing the spirits inside to become restless. Now an uncontrolled amount of Unbandaged have been seen roaming the desert, preying on travelers and merchants. Brave adventurers are being asked to dispose of these creatures, helping to cull the growing threat in the desert. Take down a roaming band of 6 unbandaged, making Charon safer and helping their spirits find rest.

They just cannot catch a break, can they? Astrid sees the undead come clambering out of the pit in the center of town with eyes glowing red, jaws misaligned, and mishapen nails ready for snatching. She has no idea what the heck these things are, but they can’t be good if they’ve been buried for who knows how long?

Not wanting to take any more chances, Astrid dashes away from the pit and applies a coating of silvery oil across the head of her war hammer, something she got from the WEF for fighting evil creatures like undead. With her two silvered hammers, Astrid charges back into battle, ignoring the tiredness that’s starting to pull at her muscles. She might not have gone so hard earlier if she knew there’d be more fighting ahead of her.

Several of the undead have scattered across town, chasing after civilians who came outside to check on the situation. One of the men scrambling away trips over the loosened sand, and an undead rushes him and touches him. Instantly, the man shrivels up, like a bag sucked empty with a straw. It’s gruesome to see someone go from perfectly healthy to a human raisin. Astrid’s eyes go wide, and she hesitates in her charge into battle.

“D-Don’t let ‘em touch ya!!” she manages to shout, drawing the attention of a few undead. "Everyone get back inside!!"

---

Silver Coating

Creature stats:

SPOILER: Click to show

Unbandaged
Zeinav Desert

SPOILER: Click to show

Power Level	Alignment
High	Hostile

Description

An Unbandaged is the reanimated corpse of someone who had been mummified. An Unbandaged seeks to become whole again by filling its empty body with the organs that were removed during the mummification process. The Unbandaged must continually steal organs from living victims in order to survive. An Unbandaged's touch has the ability to drain a target's body of all water, reducing them to shriveled up husks. The Unbandaged can also turn their own body into dust temporarily as a way to infiltrate buildings or travel vast distances while being carried on the wind.

Abilities

- Undead Nature - Dehydrating Touch - Dust Manifestation - Summon Sandstorm - Organ Snatcher

Well, that definitely made these underdressed mummies a much more formidable foe than Xalmann had thought. It also made this swarm of undead a much greater disaster for the town as several of the unbandaged began turning to dust in the wind and attempted to sneak into the buildings through gaps beneath doors and between window shutters. It was only lucky for the townspeople here that the houses had been designed to withstand sandstorms, making it difficult for the unbandaged to infiltrate the sand-resistant seals around the doors and windows. Difficult, but not impossible.

Xalmann, not wanting to end up a piece of lizard jerky, burst into flame, his form once again becoming a being entirely made of fire. These monsters wouldn't be able to suck the moisture out of him if there was no moisture to begin with. One unlucky mummy who had been attempting to do so just before he'd transformed found itself also bursting into flames as it touched Xalmann before it could stop its forward momentum. Without having to worry about being harmed now, Xalmann went into a frenzy, mowing down unbandaged with his axe and new obsidian blade.

Some of the unwrapped stopped as they one of the Nagas who had been incapacitated but not killed lying on the ground unconscious. He didn't stay unconscious though as the unbandaged began viciously tearing him open and pulling out his internal organs before stuffing them into their own bodies. His screams were cut short as one unwrapped shoved its hand into his mouth and tore out his tongue, placing it into its own mouth before looking toward Astrid, its new snake tongue flicking in and out, and running toward her.

---

Full Elemental Manifestation- Fire

Dealing with tiny mimics disguised as dinnerware? Easy. Dealing with killer bandit naga? Also easy. Watching an unconscious naga have their innards ripped out right before her eyes? Oh gods, she’s gonna be sick. Sure she’s casually tossed a severed arm back into a swamp but that came from someone long dead and long drained of blood.

There’s work to do.

Shaa’s voice echoes in her mind, and Astrid shakes the fear from her shoulders just in time to see one of the unwrapped rushing her with a mouth and chest full of blood. Her hammer freshly coated in monster-killing silver oil, she reactively slams the unbandaged across the underside of the jaw and sends it flying across the square with a broken neck. That won’t stop it, but she at least did some damage.

Astrid takes a deep breath and a step back, steeling her nerves. There are screams from inside one of the buildings. People are in there! She rushes around the square, looking for the source of the screams and tries the door but it’s locked. There’s no time, so she raises her fist. But if she smashes a hole in the wall, the others will have an easier time getting in? The screams get louder. No time to think!

Flames erupt behind her as Red takes on his fiery form. Oh, right! Lightning wreathes Astrid, and she twists the element to squeeze through the cracks too where she finds an unwrapped cornering a family.

“Get down!” she shouts, rushing in and slamming her hammer into the unwrapped just before it touches the mother.

---

Full Elemental Manifestation - lightning

The flow of unbandaged swarming out of the hole in the ground was endless! Xalmann felt like he'd cut down an army of them already, but it didn't seem to even make a dent in them as they just continuously ran out and tried to find the nearest living person they could. Some turned to living clouds of dust before Xalmann could swing his axe or blade whip through them and immediately started trying to get into the nearest building.

Xalmann slashed and burned, the mummies unable to touch his fiery form and drain him of his moisture or tear out his organs, but that wouldn't last forever. It was another war of attrition, just as his fight with the sand golems had been, but this one seemed far less likely for Xalmann to come out the victor.

Xalmann raised a hand into the air and formed a large sphere of flame in it before slamming it down right onto the ground beneath him and sending out and explosion of flames in all directions. With these things rampaging through the town, Xalmann couldn't worry about causing some collateral damage anymore and was going all out with his fire magic to try and burn this horde to ashes before he changed back.

With his guardian spirit standing behind him empowering his magic, the explosion washed over nearly the entirety of the small oasis town. Even some of the unbandaged who had turned themselves to dust were burnt up in the flames, disappearing in a puff of flame as the flammable particles ignited. Some of the wooden shutters and doors were charred  and some of the nearest were even smoldering on the outside, but none of the homes were burning thanks to being mostly made of adobe.

The town was clear of any unbandaged that hadn't already managed to make their way inside a building, but a new horde was already emerging from the hole in the ground. With a swing of his axe, a ring of flames circled around Xalmann and  the hole in the ground.

Xalmann let out a hiss that was a swear in his language as he began to hack and slash again, trying to keep the horde at bay long enough for Astrid to take care of the ones that had made it into the houses.

---

Massive Fireball
Spirit Shroud
Ring of Fire

This is tough. This is incredibly tough. Not only has this day been full of fighting, but these mummies or unbandaged or whatever they are pose a genuine threat to her, Red, and the people of this town. Her silvered weapons make doing damage to them easier, and after the first strike, the one that broke into this house flees to the outside only to get eviscerated by Red’s flames.

Charging herself with lightning, Astrid rushes toward the wall and phases through, zipping her way through each of the buildings around the square, knocking and deterring as many of the unbandaged as she can so they can be caught in Red’s hot trap. Despite her efforts, she doesn’t make it in time to save everyone. One home’s walls are painted red in blood with multiple victims dying in puddles of their own viscera. This only pushes Astrid to try harder, and she barrels through building after building until she’s worn out from everything.

But the battle isn’t over. Opening her wings, Astrid bursts through a roof to see the carnage going on outside around Red below. The howls and screeches of burning undead, the cries of the citizens, it all has to stop.

“We need ta close the hole in the ground!” she shouts to Red. “Ya got anythin’ fer that or should we improvise??”

---

Full Elemental Manifestation
Silver Coating
Silvered enchantment (battle hammer)
Bullet Dash for speed
Bat Wings [post 1/3]

Just how did she expect him to plug this giant hole in the sand? He was already pretty damn busy keeping the flood of extremely dehydrated undead from overwhelming the town. The ring of fire he made surrounded the hole, keeping them from running off in every direction and burning them if they tried. They could suck the moisture out of people in seconds, but being so dry also meant they burned even better than most wood. They burst into flames like flash paper if they got anywhere near the ring, or Xalmann.

But the problem wasn't really solved. They did need to plug the hole, but how? Xalmann couldn't plug it with fire forever. They needed something solid. A big rock, or enough sand to fill it back in. The Naga leader had used earth magic to form the sand into a large boulder, but Astrid had smashed it to bits to protect a cart and its driver. If only he could just make the sand into a boulder.

Maybe he could? He'd used his wooden arm to bring rocks to life before, maybe it would work on sand?

Dropping to one knee and using his axe to keep slashing any unbandaged that came near, Xalmann placed his left hand on the ground and tried it. The roots and vines making up his arm unwound themselves and started to dig into the sand, changing back from fire to plant as they grew out from him.

---

Animate Stone

Look, Astrid doesn’t know what Red can do! Fire magic is part of Earth domain, so why wouldn’t he be able to do at least a little bit of rock magic? Then again, she doesn’t do a whole lot with wind even though she’s pretty ingrained in Sky domain. Semantics don’t matter! Fight!

She sees Red drop to a knee and his plant arm starts to manipulate the sands, but the ring of fire keeping the zombies from getting to town starts faltering as his concentration shifts. Plus, several of the undead have figured out that the flaming lizard is the source of the ring of fire and beeline for him. Astrid flings her hammer down, smashing through one of the unbandaged in a spray of dust and sand then she recalls the weapon and lands in the sand beside Red, her hammers poised for defense.

“Ya look like ya have an idea!” she says over her shoulder, flinging her hammer at a pair of zombies. It ricochets off each of them, blasting limbs off and slowing them down. When a handful of undead charge forward and threaten to overwhelm her, Astrid gathers the magic Bellighul taught her and an invisible force freezes the undead in their tracks, giving her and Red a moment to breathe.

“Now would be good!”

---

Full Elemental Manifestation
Silver Coating
Silvered enchantment (battle hammer)
Bat Wings [post 2/3]
Resounding Rebound
Halt Undead

With the undead frozen by whatever Astrid did, Xalmann felt safe enough to focus his concentration on the vines burrowing into the sand around him. His body became solid again, his scales returning to their usual bright red and pale yellow as he shifted all of his focus to the sand and ended his fiery manifestation. The ring of fire around them died down and the intense heat went back to levels one would expect in the middle of a desert.

The sand beneath Xalmann started to rise up, a massive version of one of the sand golems the Naga leader had summoned, but with a tangle of black vines and roots intermixed with the desert sand, providing a sort of skeletal structure within it and reinforcing the sand on the outside. With Xalmann standing on top of its head, continuing to add more roots to it through his arm as it rose, the sand and root golem stood up to a towering height with a rumbling roar.

The sand golem looked like it could have destroyed the entire town on its own. Some of the townsfolk cursed their luck, assuming the thing was yet another hardship to deal with. First a bunch of mimics, then Nagas, Unbandaged, and now a huge sand golem? Several of them already made plans to move somewhere else if they managed to survive this bullshit.

But, as intimidating as the massive golem's sudden appearance had been, the townsfolk were left speechless as it, without a second though, sat right down and plopped itself on top of the hole that the unbandaged had been flooding out of with a boom, sealing it shut with its sandy posterior.

The ground rumbles under Astrid’s feet as sand starts to gather around Xalmann. She keeps her feet moving to avoid slipping and falling down as she steps back and watches the massive sand golem form. The people of the town are completely exhausted and at this point have given up hope for being safe after all the nonsense. Astrid sees their downtrodden expressions and shouts, “No, it’s alright! We’re fixin’ it!” However, this does not instill any confidence.

With a heavy thud, the hole is filled, the golem taking it up. Astrid lets out a sigh of relief, but they’re not completely done here. What unbandaged remain have started moving again, the grip Astrid’s magic has on them faltering. Collecting herself, Astrid grips her hammers and lights herself up. With lightning crackling around her form, she barrages them in succession, a trail of electricity following her movements. Each unbandaged gets blasted with electricity coursing through them, and ending her motion in between them all. An explosion of lightning blasts them all apart, killing them and raining mummy parts down in the square.

Spent on energy, Astrid collapses on her butt in the sand, breathing hard. That has to be it, right??

---

Full elemental manifestation
Astrid’s Valkyrie Strike

That had to be it, right? Nothing else was going to come along and attack this town? Xalmann was exhausted. He laid down on his stomach, arms and legs splayed to the sides across the top of the sand golem, and let out a heavy sigh. He wasn't used to playing hero, and now he'd been forced to do it three times in a row with no rest in between. Coming to this town wasn't worth it.

The sand golem sat, the hole the bandaged had flooded out of completely blocked by its bottom. It patted its hands on its knees idly, looking around. It had existed for less than a minute and in that time it had found its entire purpose in life was to fill a hole with its butt. A noble existence. The town was safe from those undead monsters now.

Xalmann got up and climbed down the side of the giant sand golem that was now the new centerpiece of the oasis town. He'd made golems before now. What happened to them afterward... wait, what did happen to them after he left? He'd never actually seen it. Maybe those boulders he animated in the swamp were still just running around out there. Well, he wasn't coming back to this town again to check up on this one. Not in this lifetime.

Xalmann looked around to make sure there were no unbandaged left. All of them had been reduced to ash by the fire and lightning magic from him and Astrid, who had plopped into the sand nearby to lie on her back. Now would be a good time to leave, while she wasn't looking, if only he wasn't so tired. Was it worth it to stay here for the night to rest? Surely nothing else would attack this town while he was here, right?

With the sand golem plugging the hole and all the undead dispatched, Astrid looks around. Things are eerily silent in this tiny desert town. After all the excitement today, she is absolutely ready to go home. Looking over at Red, she sees the lizardfolk looks equally as exhausted and the contemplation on his face tells her that he wants to leave.

After gathering her energy, Astrid pulls herself to her feet and walks over to Red. “Yer a good fighter,” she says almost breathlessly. “Glad we were both here ta help with…” She looks around hesitantly, almost as if saying something will cause another disaster. “Anyway, it was nice ta meet ya. Are ya sure I ain’t seen ya somewhere else? I erm… Used ta be part a’ the Fighter’s Guild, but I ain’t anymore. Coulda swore I’d seen ya there, but maybe not.” Though earlier the bartender asked if Red was from the guild, it’s hard for her to know if he responded yes to the request to help with the mimics or if he was agreeing that he was in the guild.

“If ya want a fast way outta here, I got a potion that’ll teleport ya ta any city on the map,” she offers, pulling out a potion of strange liquid. “Or if yer lookin’ ta go ta Sky Peak, I can get us both there fast. I’m probably headed ta Darkveil meself. Supposedly there’s some big community event happenin’ up there.”

---

Elsewhere Juice

Xalmann doesn't receive compliments often, or at least he doesn't realize it when he does, but this time he could appreciate his fighting skills being praised. A small nod and a simple "Hm." was more of a response than most people might receive from him in exchange for any praise. After that much fighting together, this little girl had earned more respect from him than most adults.

His eyes awkwardly averted Astrid's gaze as she started speaking about the Fighter's Guild. On the bright side, it seemed Xalmann wasn't the only one to have a bit of a falling out with that guild, but that didn't guarantee it would be a good idea to admit his current problems. He was still technically a member, though him being wanted by the guild now was not a good thing.

"Yes." Xalmann replied with a nod. He'd already sort of admitted he was in the guild back in the bar, but it seemed she must have forgotten or misunderstood during that conversation. He'd reasoned then that admitting that wouldn't get him immediately killed, and he reasoned the same now, especially as, if she was telling the truth, she was no longer a member herself.

He didn't expect her to offer some kind of teleportation. He wanted to go to Darkveil, but there being some big event there was news to him. He must be out of the loop on some things now that he was avoiding contact with most people. Would it still be a good idea to head there? There might be some faces there he didn't want to see. Still, it was where Zarius lived... Maybe it would be better to make his own way there from Dragon's Cradle rather than suddenly appear there. Travelling from there would be easier than through the desert, and anything was better than staying here and waiting for some other disaster to fight off. But, it would be so much easier if she really could just bring them straight to Darkveil...

"Darkveil." Xalmann responded as he looked around one more time, a bit of paranoia visible on his usually emotionless face.

Astrid notices there’s something off about Red when she mentions the Fighter’s Guild again. Earlier it felt like he was being a bit vague, but with the confirmation, she starts to worry that he’s bothered because…he knows about her role in the guild losing Vikram. It stings a bit, but she refrains from mentioning it since it is a bit of a sore spot that’s trying to heal over.

“Well… I hope thin’s are goin’ well with ‘em,” she says almost shyly, rubbing her arm awkwardly as her eyes drift in another direction as if to avoid getting too into detail. “Stuff was a bit messy fer a while, but I’m sure it’ll be back ta normal soon enough.”

After producing the potion to offer to Red, and he declares where he intends to travel, she says, “Well, ya don’t hafta tell me where yer goin’! But since we’re goin’ ta the same place, maybe I’ll see ya there!” Then, she produces a second potion of the same color out of her bag for herself, holding it up with a bright smile. “All ya gotta do is drink it an’ think about where ya wanna go. Easy as pie!”

“I’m gonna do a bit a’ cleanup around here before I go though, but don’t feel like ya gotta wait up fer me. I’m sure we’ll cross paths again lookin’ fer trouble.” With a wink, she stows her second potion and goes to help make sure people are okay and offer a little bit of support or healing with what means she can.

She’ll be seeing Red around soon.

---

Transmuter - Alchemical Mastery

Xalmann was a bit wary of drinking something given to him by a near stranger, but not as wary as he was of some other bullshit showing up for him to fight.

With a quick check to make sure he had his belongings, including his new blade whip he'd taken off the Naga leader, he downed the potion without saying goodbye to Astrid and vanished from that oasis town he was never going back to.

The golem of sand and roots waved goodbye as Xalmann disappeared and then continued looking around. One dried up Naga corpse near it caught its metaphorical eye and it reached down to pick it up and threw it as far as it could. The corpse sailed off into the distance before landing with a burst of sand somewhere out in the desert. It held a hand up to where a face would have been as if it was blocking the sun so it could see better.

It continued picking up and looking at whatever it could reach, like a bored child left alone in a room. All it knew for certain was that it definitely shouldn't get up, but whatever else it did didn't really matter. The townsfolk slowly became less afraid of it as it moved slowly and stayed planted in the ground.