A slim figure appeared on the dune. There was a small town on the horizon. Where it had once been lively and bustling to an extent, it was clearly on the way to a slow death. The arid heat felt worse than normal, and it didn't take much to realize someone had been up to mischief.
The figure, hiding behind a sensible cloak and cover their face from the sand, walked into town. The people were clearly dying, squabbling over any water they could get their hands on. A closer inspection of the wells revealed most if not all were bone dry, or on the verge of becoming so.
Looking around, it was clear the adults had all but given up, and the children were all highly suspicious of the stranger.
This wouldn't do. Children were supposed to be happy, not looking like they were on the verge of death. Even the small infants were coughing as they struggled to breath in the dry desert heat.
Heading to the nearest tavern, the owner gave him a Look. Clearly they had very little to spare, but at the same time they desperately needed the cash so they couldn't turn him away idly.
Seeing him pull out a decent sized water bottle that was clearly half-full of liquid, the owner looked slightly relieved. The others looked at him, and he knew if he didn't handle this right he was likely to get robbed later for the water he had on him. Things were that bad.
After observing the area a bit more, an idea formed. He knew who the culprit of this particular mess was, but it would be stupid to confront them directly.
But...nothing said he couldn't use a bit of misdirection to disguise what he actually planned to do.
It took an hour to gather enough of the children and teens who were all too happy to humor the stranger who gave them honest coin for a bit of fun. Well that and the promise of water.
The adults barely paid any attention to the frivolity...at least until they sensed the magic gathering around the stranger.
Suddenly they paid full attention to the young man, who was evidently a mage as he chanted...
"Respite in the scalding sands, a neverending party. Dance! Sing! Oasis Maker!"
The stranger tossed up his nearly full water bottle into the air, and cut it in half. Before the crowd could storm at him in outrage, something amazing happened.
A single drop of water hit the face of the nearest adult. He was too far to have been splashed by the careless stranger's antics, so he looked up. More droplets hit the faces of the astonished adults, before people started to realize that thick, heavy rain clouds had formed above the town square where they had been dancing.
Disbelief and shock turned to utter delight and relief as heavy rain clouds began to deliver their much needed contents.
The stranger's grin was infectious, as their signature spell gave the town the rain that had been missing for entirely too long.
Unnoticed, several people slipped away from the joyous crowd to report back...unaware that they were now ticking time bombs.
Midway through the night, there was a loud explosion in the distance.
The stranger smirked, satisfied. That pesky artifact wouldn't be bothering these people anymore, and he hoped that asshole cousin of his learned a thing or two. Or even better, was caught up in the main explosion.
When the stranger left the next morning, no one had thought to get his name. Either way they were incredibly grateful to him for solving the year long drought.
One child had managed to catch a glimpse of his tattoo though, and it didn't take long to realize the infamous Gryffin had appeared to save them.
"Hey Jamil!" said Kalim excitedly, holding up a newspaper. "The Gryffin was sighted again!"
Jamil gave a tired sigh, though secretly he enjoyed the stories of the mysterious Gryffin as much as Kalim did. After all, what most people didn't know was that this person had been discreetly targeting a lot of operations run by the Al Asim family on the side. Not the main family of course, but the many brothers/cousins of the family head.
The problem was that the Al Asim family couldn't target this individual because public opinion was firmly on their side. It didn't help there was so few details about them, or that they could apparently appear and disappear at a whim.
A few facts were known about them though. They always seemed to know when people needed them, they knew exactly how to dismantle the operations being run to favor the Al Asim in some way without actually being seen in the process, and they had a massive tattoo of an elaborate gryffin on their back...hence the name as they never gave one.
Kalim was utterly fascinated with the mage, because they were considered a mysterious hero by this point, much to the annoyance of his father. To be fair, Kalim was incredibly spoiled and soft, at least as far as the Al Asim were concerned. He also rarely thought things through.
He was only now getting off his recent punishment where he accidentally destroyed some fancy (albeit it rather ugly) vase that had been donated by some important person. It was also horrendously expensive.
Kalim had looked contrite...for all of an hour before returning to his usual happy-go-lucky oblivious behavior.
Since Jamil had not been with Kalim, as he had been with his mother at the time, he wasn't being punished.
"What does it say this time?" asked Jamil, humoring him.
Kalim took out the paper and handed it to him.
"Apparently the town had been suffering a really nasty drought, and he used some weird spell to make it rain. There was also something in there about an explosion but the paper didn't go into any real detail outside of the fact that a few people were killed in it and that police were investigating."
Jamil looked at some of the names and inwardly snorted.
Right, the police were investigating because he recognized a few of the names as those belonging to one of Kalim's more malicious cousins. There was no telling if said cousin had been caught up as well, but Jamil hoped he had at least gotten maimed. He had never liked that prick to begin with.
Listening to the servants, Jamil had to hide a dark smirk hearing the actual details that Kalim had been uninformed of.
Apparently the cousin had gotten badly maimed, but would live with the reminder. He had been trying to extort the town to make it his own territory and had borrowed an artifact from one of Kalim's uncles (also a bastard), but the artifact had reacted badly to some sort of curse and had blown up.
Furthermore it seemed that his own men had been the source, and had basically been turned into a ticking time bomb.
Jamil liked the Gryffin's style, pulling off that sort of stunt. Not only had he dealt the Al Asim a nasty blow, but he had managed to keep his hands clean in the process. He'd love to meet this mage, and find out his motivations for targeting the family.
There were no doubts in his mind that Kalim was unlikely to be the target...this Gryffin character only ever went after the nastier operations and had never gone after the innocent.
Jamil wouldn't be surprised if Kalim's odd charisma had them becoming best friends in minutes.
Kalim looked around, crimson eyes calm. He remembered this incident very well, and it still pissed him off. One of his uncles had hired men to kidnap him to pressure his father into something. What, Kalim never did figure out, but Jamil had been badly hurt last time.
This time Kalim had known about the kidnapping in advance, so he had drugged the cup Jamil was using so that he'd be knocked out quickly rather than give him a chance to fight back as hard as he had before.
It wasn't pleasant, and Jamil would be sick as a dog for several days, but that was a small price to pay.
They had basically tossed him into a room, gloating about their payday from the Al Asim family.
Kalim smirked to himself...mostly because he didn't plan to stick around.
It took a little doing, but he was able to remove the shackles they had on him by maneuvering his arms in a way that he could pull his hands forward. A bit of quick work with his teeth and he had the lock picks he had been keeping hidden.
In less than a minute he had picked the locks and was stretching as quietly as he could.
The idiots were getting drunk, with the guards well out of proper earshot.
A quick inspection revealed that the window was too high up for someone to climb down...not without doing major damage anyway.
Then again Kalim had no intention of climbing down to begin with.
Hearing someone coming, he went to the door and waited. The guy with the food (likely drugged for all he knew) came in, was about to shout only for Kalim to cover his mouth and knock him out with brutal efficiency.
He kept the tray from making any noise, grabbed the man's dirty cloak and gauged how drunk the other men were. From the sounds down the hallway, the man he knocked out had been picked because he had been on guard duty and they were ordered to keep the prisoner fed enough not to cause them trouble later.
A quick test revealed that the drink was poisoned with some sort of paralytic. Not enough to kill, but enough to give him enough trouble reacting that he'd be easy prey.
Stealing their cloak, he covered himself and grimaced slightly at the smell. Looking outside, he could see a sandstorm on the horizon. Not a big one, but one that would impact their ability to see anything properly for a few hours at least.
With that in mind, Kalim walked out the door, made some half-assed excuse about having to use the restroom from too much drink and walked out of the base.
By the time anyone figured out something was wrong, Kalim was long gone.
Somewhere deep in the desert...
Okay, so maybe slipping into the storm wasn't the smartest move but he'd be damned if he was some helpless hostage like last time.
Fortunately it seemed a different mercenary group had been in the area, so he was able to find shelter with them. He was glad he kept the mask that he usually wore while working as Gryffin, because it had kept the worst of the sand out of his eyes and mouth while he walked, even if he couldn't see worth a damn.
He didn't chug the water they gave him, but was a near thing.
"So you're the Gryffin. You're a bit younger than I expected. What were you doing wandering in the storm anyway?"
"Had a bad run in with another merc company who were holding some heir hostage. Managed to get him out, but ended up getting lost in the storm while escaping."
"Shit, for real?" said one of the men.
"Kid was pretty friendly. Little too friendly, and didn't seem to understand the danger he was in," said Kalim. "Total puppy from what I could tell, just in a bad spot."
The leader looked outside to the storm, and knew it would go on for a few hours yet.
"So what's the deal? I mean you've caused some major waves in short order, but never explained why."
Kalim looked at the men around him...he peripherally knew of the Red Sands mercenaries, but he had never really interacted with them personally. Still, his gut instinct said he could trust them with a bit of information.
"Long story short, I'm laying foundations for something," said Kalim.
"Foundations?"
"There's a rot in the family I belong to, one that's set too deep for me to properly deal with. At least, not in a way that would actually do some good. I know my family won't like what I have planned, especially due to certain...factors. So I'm laying a foundation to work with if and when they cut me off. That way I can at least hit the ground with both feet running, and survive without them," said Kalim honestly.
The Al Asim could pretend to be as generous and 'friendly' as they wanted...Kalim knew for a fact his parents were homophobic and would never tolerate his love for Jamil. Especially since he was one of many children.
The only reason he was even the heir was because he was the eldest of the entire lot.
As the storm dwindled, Kalim partially disappeared...and made sure the Red Sand group found "Kalim" instead. In short order, the mercs got a big payday for returning the Al Asim heir and for 'rescuing' him in the first place.
