Excerpt: Lupe begins

As Alexia vanished I took the javelin out of my leg and healed the wound. I would have to be more careful if I ever wanted to keep a set of clothing intact, not that I had been convinced clothing was such a good thing. I walked to the top of the dune again and could see the bodies had been scattered. Weapons were still lying about, so Alexia must not have considered them treasure.
Zephaniah flew ahead of me to look around as I walked down. The lizard-folk had probably taken the caravan by surprise based on the numbers and the condition of the bodies, but I didn’t understand why the lizard-folk would be out in the middle of the desert when water is such a big part of their life. They would naturally be desperate to control the oasis if stuck in the desert, but that didn’t seem to fit this situation as it looked like the caravan had set up tents before the lizard-folk struck. There were trade goods that seemed untouched, although some had blown about in the cyclone, and more bodies of caravan people in the collapsed tents, most looked like they had been slain in their sleep or shortly after being awakened.
Underneath one of the big tents there was a section of worked stone showing and I pulled the tent away to reveal a partially buried capstone. I asked Zephaniah to fetch me a digging spell and examined the stone which looked like in ancient times it had some sort of relief on it but the shapes had worn away completely.
I brushed away a bit of the sand before Zephaniah returned and the cast the spell throwing great amounts of sand away from the structure, but much of it ran back into the hole I was creating. The structure looked like a combination of a fortress and a crypt, but with no hint as to the age it was hard to guess.