The oasis city of Doran within the Vin-haras desert was known far and wide for its wealth and hospitality. Being a rest stop between the Mehan kingdom to the east and the Akari Dominion to the west, it had a steady flow of income pouring in from beyond its sandstone walls.
But the city wasn’t the only one benefiting from this of course, a significant portion of that wealth went to the traders that frequented Doran.
One such merchant was Akdar Adeem, known for his wines and brews that he brought in from the east. The days during which he set up his stall were almost seen as a small celebration within the entire city with his customers ranging from manual labourers to the nobility and the Sultan of the city himself.
And tonight, the White Tear group of bandits were planning to rob him.
It had been decided by their leader Harasan that the wine merchant was getting rather too comfortable and it was their responsibility to relieve him of his burdens.
The city gates of Duran remained closed at night and only opened them for travellers at first light.
Many pitched tents and caravan carriages could be seen outside the gates and slightly further from them was Akdar Adeem’s carriage, not particularly remarkable in size or design but a functional wooden carriage. The large goats that had pulled the carriage were nowhere to be seen, which the bandit’s took as a blessing as they didnt want Adeem to be alerted to their presence too early.
Led by Harasan’s right hand man Midan, the bandits snuck their way towards Adeem’s carriage, making sure to stay out of the light of the other caravans.
But once they reached his carriage and looked in, all they found were crates of bottles of liquor and no sign of the merchant himself.
‘To think he would be so careless as to just leave his wares unattended…yeah, he deserves what’s happening to him’ Midan said to no one in particular. Taking everything in the carriage but its window curtains, the bandits abandoned the temporary settlement of caravans and returned to their hideout.
The next morning Akdar Adeem’s shop opened like usual within the market district of Duran; his wares were celebrated like usual for the next three days.
The bandits were dumbstruck ‘How…we completely cleaned his carriage out…’
‘Did he have someone else carry more liquor for him? One of the members asked.
‘No, we have had people watching his shop for the last three days now, he sells all his liquor from the booth he sets up outside his carriage….and aside from the occasional servant sent by the nobles to buy his wine, no one has entered his carriage’, Midan sat down, rubbing his forehead.
‘Well, we only have one thing left to do, we strike again when he leaves to collect all his newly acquired wealth’
The next night, about a day’s travel from the city, the bandits attacked Akdar Adeem’s Carriage, once again finding it devoid of the merchant himself or the beasts pulling the carriage, and this time only containing a couple of crates of unsold wine and a pouch of about 4 copper coins.
Frustrations apparent, the bandits took what they could and one of them tore off his window curtains as they left, determined to cause the merchant at least some discomfort.
Three weeks later they found Aktar Adeem’s cart returning to the city, the gang attempted to rob him one more time, succeeded and again found with increasing distress, the man selling wine out of his shop as if nothing had gone amiss.
Harasan was furious, now sitting with the merchant’s torn off curtains put up behind him as a reminder of that man’s insult. The wine they had last stolen from the merchant had caused the entire gang to be sick and bedridden for the last two days, some even losing sensation in parts of their body.
‘This has gone for far too long now… don’t bother with his wine, just END HIM’ Harasan almost whispered the last part, his throat hoarse with rage.
The night that Akdar Adeem’s carriage left, the bandit’s didn’t bother to wait for the merchant to stop to rest, instead they simply rushed his carriage while it was moving. Midan could see the merchant who had been sitting in the front jump into his carriage through an opening in the front and shut it quickly. That wouldn’t matter to them, the idiot still had his stupid window that used to have his curtain, wide open.
Not bothering to draw their weapons, they all threw bottles filled with a pinkish sweet liquid into his window, listening for the crash and retreated just as quickly. The gas from those bottles could kill an elephant within seconds and the last thing they needed was to get caught in it themselves.
Asking one of their scouts to remain about a 100 metres away from the cart in case that man somehow survived, the rest of the bandits returned to their base, finding it completely quiet.
They could see all the bandits slumped in awkward poses on the floor and their leader harasan himself sitting in his chair, in front of the curtain … .unmoving.
There was a sickly sweet smell lingering in the air.
The scout was surprised to not notice any of the pink smoke rising from the carriage, he knew that the colour generally faded after a bit, but there hadn’t been enough time for that.
Approaching the carriage, he couldn’t smell anything and on looking inside, the carriage was completely empty but for what looked like a curtain laid on to the floor.
Stepping in he felt his feet sink into the curtain and then his whole body fell through, landing hard onto what felt like…grass?
Looking around, he seemed to be in a forest clearing, during the day… It had been night when they had attacked the carriage. He heard a growl in the distance, he whirled around, brandishing his sword but couldn’t find anything aside from thick bushes and woods at the edges of the clearing.
Looking up he could see a curtain identical to the one he had stepped into, strung up between the branches of a tree and as he watched, the curtain unravelled thread by thread and disappeared. This was followed by the scout hearing a low growl right next to him, he could only glimpse what seemed like red scaled and yellow eyes, right before he felt a sharp pain on his neck and then darkness.
Midan stood still, his body feeling weak as he knew his comrades would also be feeling as he looked at his leader and all those who remained in their base, lying dead.
The curtain behind the leader’s chair rippled faintly and a hand emerged from within it, not so gently grabbing the chair and pushing it out of the way, sending Harasan’s body sprawling.
Then as they watched, the owner of the hand stepped through the curtain, now clearly visible to be Akdar Adeem.
He looked slowly over each of them and chuckled, ‘All this just to sample my wares? You could have just asked’ he slowly pulled out a crystal bottle filled with a red liquid from within his robes and placed it on a table.
‘The wine you fine gentleman last borrowed from me was poisoned, as you might have guessed by now, what you probably would not have known is that it takes several days if not weeks to start truly working’ He straightened his robes, looking at each of them with calm indifference
‘Once it starts working, parts of your body will simply fall off, starting of with your fingers, then maybe your eyes, one by one until all that will remain of you would be a lump of flesh with nothing but a beating heart and about a week of life left to live’
The bandit’s eyes were wide and some of them were rubbing parts of their body that had gone numb a few days ago.
‘So I leave this here as a gift’ he tapped the crystal bottle ‘it’s an antidote…’, some of the bandits stepped forward with hope. ‘…enough for one person’ Akdar completed.
‘As for who gets it, I’ll leave that to you comrades to decide, I’m afterall just a merchant.
He then calmly turned around and walked right into the curtain, shortly before the whole thing unravelled and disappeared as if it had never existed.
One by one each of the bandits drew their swords and about an hour later only a single bandit drank the antidote from the crystal bottle and he died of poisoning shortly after.
The rest of bandits were of course found later with gashes across their body, having died of sword wounds… with not a single drop of poison within their blood.
Akdar Adeem came again to Duran a week later and again there was a celebration, as there had been for years and as there would be, for years to come.
