Msaka slowed. The end of the jungle proper was just a short distance ahead, the savanna stretching beyond it into the distance. Careful to remain hidden, he moved through the remaining trees, until he could get a good view of the land beyond. Much of it was obscured in the shadows of night, but some of its features were silhouetted in moonlight. None of them seemed to be of importance, and there were no signs of any people on the plains, no fires dotted the landscape.

From this point, he would need to practice a great deal of caution, as he would be in unfamiliar territory, full of people who were not likely to be friendly, and few good places to hide when danger approached, or when trying to close in on something.

"Perhaps I should wait until tomorrow night." he thought, "Most of them sleep then, so it would be far easier to pass unnoticed." Msaka scanned the sky. The moon was sinking low on the horizon, and it would not be long before daylight began to show. Still, there might be enough time to make it to the pool before the sun rose...

He set out again, moving as quickly as he could without making too much noise. If he had to travel the last couple of miles in daylight, he would. By then, he should be far enough away from the cow herders' village that he could avoid them.

Another hour had passed when he heard a roar nearby. It was still too dark to see what had made it, but whatever it was, it sounded angry. Msaka froze and whispered an incantation which caused him to fade from view, remaining still so as to not break the spell. It would do nothing to mask any noise he made, or hide his scent, but it might be enough to cause some creatures to pass him by.

A shout followed the roar a moment later, then another roar, not so loud. "A battle?" Msaka thought. Breaking the invisibility spell, he crept towards the sounds, which certainly sounded like a human fighting a beast. The sky was just beginning to lighten on the horizon, so he couldn't stay here long, but he wanted to see what was happening.

He soon found out. One of the cow herders was engaging a large reptilian beast, dancing around its attempts to bite him, deflecting its claws with an oval shield, and stabbing it with a spear when an opening appeared. The man was bleeding from one shoulder, apparently a claw wound from the beast - a dinosaur, if Msaka remembered correctly. They were never seen in the jungle, but they did wander out here. Why was the man fighting the thing? It was a foolish thing to do, especially seeing as the man was obviously faster than the creature - it would be far more prudent to simply run away.

He crouched down and recast his spell of invisiblity, and watched the fight proceed. The man was slowly winning, the wounds he was inflicting slowing the creature down, making it a progressively easier target. Eventually, they proved to much for the beast, and it collapsed. The man finished it off with a solid blow to its throat.

The man shouted happily, drew a large knife, and set about cutting off the horn on the dinosaur's head. "The fool was fighting it for its horn!?" Msaka thought, "What idiot would risk his life for such a thing!" Nonetheless, he continued to watch. The man soon finished his task, cleaned his knife and put it away, picked up the horn, and started walking away northward, leaving the dinosaur's corpse sprawled in the grass.

Msaka remained still until the man was out of sight, then stalked toward the body, letting his invisibility dissipate again. He looked it over, gauging its size and strength, realizing quickly that this was not something he would want to have fought. "The cow herders may be ignorant, but they are not weak." he thought to himself, "Even so, it is simply stupid to seek out trophies like that." He turned and resumed his journey southwest, knowing that the pool was not too much farther away.

The had just risen above the horizon when he spied the pool ahead. "I made it." he thought, and sped up his pace. Walking all night had been tiring, and he was looking forward to spending the day there.

Ten minutes later he stood next to the pool, gazing at the magical fountain that fed it. He knelt and took a drink from the water, feeling the revitalizing energy flow through him, banishing the physical fatigue of his journey. He refilled the waterskin he had drank from during the night, then looked around for a good place to sleep. His glance fell across the large boulders next to the pool, and he immediately recalled the magic there.

He spoke several words of magic, raising his forearms opening his hands palms upward; he saw immediately the magical rune that sat on the boulder, normally invisible. Its meaning was unknown to him, but the rune's magic had the same gentle feel to it as the pool itself, and the area around it, and had almost certainly been placed there by whoever had first created the pool, decades if not centuries ago. Their magic had to have been very powerful to have created a place such as this, that would last unattended through the years.

Msaka removed his pack and lay down on a spot near the pool and boulders, the soft grass cushioning him against the ground beneath. The sun was up now, its light illuminating the whole of the savanna, but Msaka was not interested in the spectalce. He closed his eyes, thinking over the day's events, and slowly drifted off to sleep.