Darrkon rushed out to the green where he saw a small
assembly of dragons.  Calindeth had contacted Vonn to let
Meena know two more would be joining her search.  This
would be his first excursion following a wingleader since
T'grat had given up the reigns of Beta wing.  He knew of
her situation with her family, and had an immense amount
of respect for the woman.  Dealing with recent events in
her life and taking on the responsibility of wingleader
couldn't be easy.  He hoped their relationship turned out
better than the one with his previous leader.

There wasn't much to be said.  Darrkon stood among the
other  riders as only as long as it took to look at the
maps Ardomok had drawn.  The others seemed to be
preoccupied, and he had his own reasons for wanting to
search.  Although he didn't trust his ememies information
he decided to use it as a base to start from.

After a few more moments of preparation Meena gave the
signal, and the search party was airborn.  They
teleported to the desired sight and split into small
groups.  Darrkon ended up with R'kilith.  It was a
strange departure, he was used to having S'ran as his
wingpartner.  He didn't know much about this man, but he
was sure he was a capable rider.  Anyway this was just a
scouting mission.

Darrkon had volunteered to check out the camp sight.  It
lay in a mountain range along the wesern edge of the
Norwall terrain.  They had been looking for some evidence
of habitation for hours, but there was no sign anyone had
been in the area for years.  They were about to call of
the search when Calindeth announced he had seen something
odd.

<What was it?>  Darrkon asked.

As the dragon turned to land in the questionable area he
answered <The land is wrong.>

<Tell Xavier where to look, and explain what you mean.>

<He has already seen it.>  Calindeth answered <And you
will understand when you see.>

The dragons descended to the earth quickly.  Darrkon was
unstrapped and on the ground shortly after.  He was
examining one of the oddities the dragons had seen when
he heard R'kilith come from behind.

"Come look at this." he called to his search partner. 
"See this rock?  It doesn't belong here.  So there was
definitely some sort of settlement here."

"Xavier let me know that before we landed. he replied, as
though Darrkon were wasting his time.

"Did your dragon also notice how jagged these rocks are?"

"Yes, he did." R'kilith answered full of pride in his
dragon.

"Good.  At least one of you two is useful."  Darrkon
answered reaching deeper into the pile of rocks and
pulling out a rounded stone "What he missed is this.  You
get stones like this in two ways.  Either from being
worked by human hands or from a source of running water. 
Well there's no river here so guess what made them."

"So what does that prove?"  the younger rider asked
unimpressed.

"Doesn't prove a thing.  But it tells me that there was
a settlement here recently?"

"How is that?" R'kilith asked.  He was now curious but 
unwilling to admit it.

"It's an old bandits trick.  If the law was closing in on
us, we'd bury anythingg we couldn't carry.  Then we'd
cover it with old stones to make it look like an old
grave.  Sometimes there weren't enough old stones so we
put newer ones down and covered with a craggy layer.  A
layer like this."  He indicated the jagged stones on the
ground.

"So what do we do now?"

"We dig it up."  Darrkon answered, and began pulling away
stones.

R'kilith hesitated.  Some people were very vary of
desecrating a grave, but he eventually began to work.  A
grave was nothing sacred to Darrkon.  Some of his best
artifacts were found in the grave of others.  In his
mind, the dead don't need anything.  A treasure buried
with them is just going to waste.  Although he still held
the same attitude, he no longer found it necessary to
steal from the dead.

When the grave was fully uncovered Darrkon stared in
shock.  The sword lying across the decease's chest
matched that of one of the members of his old gang.  But
the face of the man holding it did not.  The corpse was
relatively new but there was no telling how long it owned
the sword.  Darrkon wrestled the blade of his ex partner in
crime from the dead man's grasp, and headed for his dragon.

"What do we do now?"  R'kilith asked as he strapped
himself to his dragon.

"We report what we found to Meena and Naomi."  Darrkon
answered.  Placing his friends sword amongst his own
weapons, the dragonrider finished to himself, "Then I get
some answers from Ardomok."


Submitted by

Darrkon & Calindeth
aKa
Ismail AbdurRahman

NRPG:  We're back and ready to report.  Mordig'n and
R'kilith are NPC's of Mikki's.  I asked her about using
them a while ago and got the OK.  I still have their
bio's if they're needed.