The poisonous midday sun baked the gravel scorching hot as five old steam freight trucks powered by Fuelstone chugged along the Scale-Earth Rift Road, black smoke from their exhaust pipes twisting into strange shapes in the heat haze.
The Scale-Earth Rift Road—a branch road of the Trail of a Thousand Snakes.
It was named for the snake-scale patterns covering the ground.
Nick sat atop the cab of the lead truck, legs crossed as he swayed a bottle of cheap ale in his hand. The liquor gleamed a murky gold under the sun.
He was a middle-aged man nearing forty.
Lean in build, he had white cloth wrapped around his head and face to shield himself from the direct sunlight, leaving almost nothing exposed but his eyes. Every so often, a glint more cunning than a Goblin's flashed through his brown pupils.
"See that? That protruding rock face over there."
Nick pointed his bottle toward the Wilderness on the right ahead. "Three years ago, I led a crew and dug up a chest of ancient Elf coins beneath it—pure gold, engraved with archaic runes. I flipped them to some old scholar in the Northern Frontier and made a full fifty thousand gold coins!"
Ptooey!
The scar-faced driver spat from below.
"Give it a rest, Nick! Last time, you said that chest of old coins was the Dwarf king's toilet seat!"
He was a Dwarf.
His beard was thick, his body short, powerful, and stocky.
He was missing two front teeth, and his words leaked air when he spoke.
Nick grinned, revealing a row of crooked teeth.
"That was another chest! The Dwarf king's toilet seat was bronze. I soaked it in acid, aged it into an antique, and sold it to some nouveau riche merchant. That idiot still has it displayed