Forums » Fantasy Roleplay » Cities of Sand (open)

"Huh..." she grunted and looked at him, taking in his appearance and blushing as she found herself attracted to him.

"Huh?" Miri dissappeared and materialised again on the lip of his own 'pond' with his feet in the shimmering water.

She watched him then moved and sat down with her feet in the real Oasis again.
"Why do you do that?" she asked, "Mirages are such cruel things, yet you do not seem a cruel being."

"Cruel?" Miri sounded taken aback by the suggestion that they were cruel. "I show the dieing that there is comfort yet to come. I give the eye and mind abreak from a barren landscape! Rarely are my mirages cruel. It is not my fault that others cannot bethankfull for what I give them!" By this time the pool had turned a blood red, reflecting his emotions.

"It is cruel to give them false hope. You give them images of water and of life in the middle of a desert when maybe there is none for a hundred miles still, and then they die because they try drinking the water which is sand," Eshe replied calmly.

"They die of their own stupidity," he saids stubbornly as he crossed his arms and turned away from the priestess. "You would know a lot about sand," he muttered.

"They die because you trick them. And yes, I do know a lot about sand. That doesn't mean anything though."

"You're not very nice," replied Miri.

"You're the one who tricks people to their deaths with false hope," Eshe retorted, "I'm plenty nice. I haven't made fun of you or anything, but you're trying to deny what you do. If you want to give people hope, send people mirages of arrows pointing the direction of water, not illusions of water that kill people."

"They help them go farther. Not too many actually drink from them. Only when I'm notcpayingattention do they do that." He didnt look at her at all. He didn't like being accused like this andeas thinking of leaving.

"Maybe you should pay more attention when what you do has the potential to kill some stupid human," she retorted and leaned back in the sand.

"You try controlling so many. Eventually you let it run itself and only focus on te ones you come across personally. You aren't even nice," said the mirage. He started to shimmer more than usual as he pulled his feet out of the puddle and it dried back up to its original state. Then he was gone. Miri dissipated into the air and faded. He placed himself somewhere else, away from people this time as he fished into a watery illusion.

Eshe shrugged. She'd have liked some company, but she could do without any

Some amount of time passed. The Desert Mirage had no idea how much, though. He didn't bother keeping time, since he himself was a timeless being. As he walked along the graining earth he heard something going on, some sort of comotion. The Desert Mirage's curiosity took over and he followed the noise until he could see everything that was going on.

It had only been about a week since their last meeting and now Eshe was having a more large scale war of the sand people. The armies were now made up of soldiers about as tall as her foot from te ground I her heel (which is about 1.5 ft since she walks on her toes like a real dog.). Some were riding camels and others were riding elephants and there were Even chariots bot most seemed to be on foot and carrying spears. Eshe herself was sitting on top of a sandy pillar, her ankles and wrists bound in sand ropes. She had given an objective to each army to try and save her from her prison on the pillar and so now the soldiers fought all around the pillar, the fight stretching for about a half a mile and packed full of soldiers.

Miri whistled under the sounds of battle and watched before a smile crept onto his heavily tanned face. It seemed that the sand soldiers had a mind of their own by the way they fought so he decided to test that theory. On the fridges of the battle field Miri created ghost mirages of the same size as the little sand men before him. The green tinted images floated slowly at a few soldiers. Miri sat back on a mirage chair, the sort of thing only he could actually sit on, and watched to see if his theory was correct.

The soldiers that they appraoched immediately stepped back and pointed their spears at the ghosts and tried to stab at them before just turning back to the fight, realizing no harm could e done to the mirages. Yes, they did think on their own, but they also knew they could not truly be harmed.

This made Miri very curious. Unknown to him he had once been able to manipulate sand, making the mirages give it color and look lifelike, but he had lost that skill over a thousand years ago. Now as he sat there on his shimmering chair, he debating whether or not to try and mess around with these soldiers, whether the creator would like it or not. Temptation won, so Miri, with all his power of mirages, created a fog that only hindered sight, not sound, movement, or even the actual air. It gradually became denser and denser. Although he could have done a sandstorm, he thought that would have been a little too cliche.

Eshe watched with a frown as the armies became hidden from her view, and she heard their yells of confusion, then they stopped fighting altogether so that they wouldn't accidentally attack their own team mates.
The anubian priestess stood, her sandy bonds collapsing and she looked around, knowing that this wasn't a natural thing, though she couldn't spot the person who caused this, due to the size of the armies.

The Desert Mirage parted part of the fog, creating a path for him to slowly find his way to the middle. He walked slowly, trying not to step on anything, er... anyone. His shimmering feet nudged away any sandmen that didn't move fast enough, weapons unable to hurt his sandled and protected feet. This path of clear air cut across the entire field even though he was only part way across.