One score and two lunar eclipses into Sultan Ratoul Al’Jediah’s reign. Winter solstice - the Palian deserts.
A sandstorm lashed the men, deafening them with its howl. They struggled onward, heads buried in the crooks of their arms, free hands pressing cloth masks to their faces. A rope tethered one man to the next, pulling taut then falling slack as they moved. The closer they ventured to their destination, the harder the desert fought their steps.
These were no ordinary men. Curved swords swung at their hips, swaying against strong legs corded with hard muscle. They were Storm Dancers, the ultimate practitioners of Palian combat arts. Undaunted, they challenged the shifting sand and buffeting wind.
Sultan Ratoul was among the fourteen men who walked the dunes that day. Two sunrises prior, Palian scouts had discovered a mystery, a site unearthed by the designs of the desert. The sultans of Palia investigated every such discovery within their borders. Ratoul knew his people whispered rumors, speculating on what he sought. His secret tormented him alone, just as it had his fathers before him.
Tarnil, chief of the Sultan’s personal guard, tugged at Ratoul’s arm to halt his steps. The two men worked cloths down from their mouths. Their words warred with the wailing winds.
“I do not like it, Ratoul. The heavens warn us from this place!”
“Agreed, Brother, but we must discover why we are unwelcome.”
Tarnil shook his head gently and gestured to the swirling sand that rose around them.
“Not all secrets are meant to be known, nor should every answer be sought. In a handful of sunsets the desert may reclaim this site. If the gods truly wished to bring you here, then why do the skies oppose you?”
Ratoul smiled, lowering a gauze-wrapped hand to clasp Tarnil's shoulder.
“I do not fear what lies in the darkness, Brother, for I have you to watch over me.”
“Me,” Tarnil laughed, “or a dozen of Palia's finest fighters?”
Tarnil swept his hand before the men who waited - calm and alert - despite the tempest engulfing them. Ratoul flashed Tarnil a roguish grin, then leaned into the wind once more. In his wake his robes flailed, dancing with the sand given flight by the gale.
Before long they crested a rise and Tarnil jerked twice on his rope. The group halted. Tarnil examined his lodestone, while his men swigged water from camel skins.
“We must be close, Ratoul. My stone never lies.”
“Yes, I can feel it, Tarnil. Our will is greater than that of the storm. Let it tire and we will see what has been hidden from us.”
“Agreed, the winds are fickle. They too must pause for breath.”
As though Tarnil's words held power, the gusts soon relented and sand cleared from the air, the obfuscating cloud receding to a dusty, golden haze.
“It seems the very elements fear our words, Ratoul.”
Ratoul laughed, then kissed the tips of his fingers. He blew on them, then opened his hand to present his palm to the sun. After he whispered words none could distinguish, he curled his hand over his eyes to scan the valley below.
Their path had been true. Two imposing, granite monoliths, each the height of a dozen men, towered from the desert floor. Sinking between them lay a void, a black descent to a nameless place. Tarnil waved his men forward. They spread out to surround their sultan, then descended from the dune.
With the shelter of the monoliths reached, an eerie silence blanketed the subterranean entrance. Ratoul and Tarnil paused, while the others shrugged off the rope that linked them. A series of steps marched down, hewn from the bedrock.
“Who carved these, My Lord? Why here?”
Ratoul responded with the barest of shrugs.
“Maybe the stones provide an answer. Stones never lie, I have been told.”
Tarnil laughed.
The men moved to the pillars, to examine them with hand and eye. They probed the smooth stone with fingertips and brushed their palms along the surface. Those keenest of eye stepped back, to run their gazes from base to tip. All shook their heads.
“My words are true, Ratoul. These stones do not lie, for they have no tales to tell. Let us see what lays beneath them.”
Ratoul nodded. Tarnil gestured to the steps. His men strode past him.
Blackness engulfed them. The stairs proved a welcome change from sand, cool beneath their cloth wrapped feet - solid and sure. They worked their masks down their faces to test the air. It was dank and tasted thick and stale, but was free of grit. A few of the men coughed, while others took torches from packs. They struck flint to tinder. The pitch flared when lit, guttering at first, before feeding hungrily off air rich with the memories of a forgotten age.
The wash of orange light illuminated strange runes and carvings that layered both walls of the stairwell. The images flowed together in what appeared to be a story, even to men incapable of interpreting the tale. The etchings depicted a struggle from an ancient time - men and beasts engulfed in fire and war. Along the base of the carvings scrawled a runic tongue, symbols from an archaic, unfamiliar language. One of the men idly traced the runes with a finger, recoiling his hand at a stinging hiss from Tarnil.
The well of stairs twisted twice. The passage became narrow, forcing the men to advance no more than two abreast. Noise was stifled by the claustrophobic confines. Their torchlight danced and flickered against the walls, casting sinister shadows that stalked their every movement. A hundred paces marked the journey downward, before the thin passage ended at an arch. They discerned a chamber, an expanse spreading beyond the limit of their light.
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“A tomb, Ratoul?”
“I am unsure. If so, it is not Palian. The records make no mention of this place.”
The Storm Dancers entered first, then fanned out across the room, scimitars preceding their steps. Their flood of torchlight revealed the extent of the chamber. In the center of the visible space, a stone pedestal rose to the height of a man’s chest. The base of the structure was carved from the floor, and the surface of the column featured raised, twisting ribbons of rock that resembled vines. The twining ridges spiraled up to a flat top, where two shelves of stone folded out, like the open halves of a book.
The Palians moved their torches in a slow arc. All four walls were covered floor to ceiling in the same mysterious runes as the stairwell.
“What in the timeless sands is this?”
Ratoul left Tarnil's question unanswered. He took a torch from one of his men, then crossed to the pedestal. The leaves of stone had similar inscriptions to those marking the walls. Ratoul paused for a moment, before brushing his fingers gently across the surface, sweeping away eons of dust. He stooped to blow clean the grooves.
Disturbed, the dust did not settle to the floor. It rose in a cloud, hanging in the air, swirling and transfixing the men in the room. The haze danced and dazzled, countless motes spinning of their own volition. From the refracted light of the torches, the specks glittered, creating a multitude of rainbow prisms that whirled ever faster.
While the men watched, they slowly spread apart, each fragment finding its place in a mesmerizing mosaic rearranged to assume its correct pattern. Then, they whisked away, though no air stirred within the room. They dispersed to the sides of the chamber, embedding into the runes on the walls. The chamber became bathed in the soft light of countless glowing glyphs, each pulsing like a tiny, beating heart.
No one spoke. The twelve who followed Tarnil and Ratoul turned in slow circles, eyes wide, and jaws slack.
“Great sands,” breathed Tarnil, “what magic is this?”
Ratoul stared at the column from which the dust had issued. He clenched the top, his knuckles white with strain. The torch resting against his palm slumped lower to lick flames across the rock, as though by fire it could burn away its mystery. The rune-etched slab mirrored the walls, its sigils pulsing, emitting the same mysterious luminescence - no two glyphs or colors alike.
Ratoul’s thoughts were no longer with his men. His gaze was distant - beyond the tablet he grasped. Memories flashed before him, fleeting, running together, dulling the radiance of the sigils with their clarity. His childhood came flooding back in a rush of images, and tangible sensations. Recollection of his long dead parents kindled conflicting emotions of joy, and sadness. His breathing quickened. He raised a trembling hand to his brow, covering his eyes.
Tarnil crept to Ratoul, his hand on his master's shoulder as gentle as his voice.
“Come, My Sultan, my friend. Let our sages consider this mystery. Something here pains you, and I shall not bear it.”
Ratoul remained still. Tarnil let his hand fall. His fingers grazed the leather wrappings on the hilt of his sword, though he felt no compulsion to draw it. He waited, leaving a silence to be filled by a command. He never questioned Ratoul's will, even from his vantage as the chief of his personal guard.
“No, Tarnil.”
Ratoul’s words were so soft that Tarnil barely heard them. The sultan’s head slumped forward, chin resting against his chest, his eyes closed, and arms limp at his sides.
“I fear we are already too late.”
Tarnil's head snapped away from Ratoul, eyes darting left and right. Something caught his attention as his master's words died in his ears.
A flash of movement - a streak of shadow.
He opened his mouth, unlocking his jaw to sharpen his hearing. A shape flickered in the periphery of his vision.
A single heartbeat timed the response of his men, as they flew to surround their sultan.
Oblivious to the danger, Ratoul was an anchor of calm, fettered within the growing storm of motion. He opened his eyes once more to regard the runes. The longer he considered them, the deeper they confounded him. In his mind the symbols blurred, dispersed, then mixed together once more. He blinked twice to clear his vision, but it remained clouded by cryptic shapes. He could not discern a message, nor recognize any words. There was no order to be distilled from the chaos.
Behind him, a blurred shadow cut across the light of the torches. The Storm Dancers rose on the balls of their feet, bodies poised like coiled serpents.
“Impossible!” Tarnil spat, as a vaguely humanoid figure blazed toward them.
Despite the creature’s speed, Palia’s finest warriors met it. Storm Dancers waged battle with swift, graceful movements which resembled a frenzied dance, beautiful to behold, and terrifying to oppose. When abandoned to the fervor of battle, they leaped and spun with the fury of a hurricane, and their blows fell like the rains that never touched their lands.
Two men twisted from the path of the creature's assault, their assailant landing without striking a blow, shards of stone chipped from the floor by the force of its leap.
“What is it?”
One man gave voice to the question of many.
“I do not know.”
Tarnil's response comprised both truth and lie. He did not recognize their foe, yet understanding resonated within him. Without explanation, he knew why the creature was here. It had been waiting, for time indeterminate, hidden from view. He perceived a message of great importance in the surrounding runes. The entity they faced guarded this knowledge.
The price of the answer they sought, could only be paid in blood.
Bathed in the soft radiance of the walls and torches, the creature twisted to face the men. It rose to its full height, three heads taller than the Palians. Long arms resembled the limbs of a bat, though with no membranes to serve as wings, ending in long, barely curved blades of chitin. Its skin appeared black and plated, but in contradiction to the solid form, the flesh moved, rippling as though fluid ran just below the surface. The creature’s face stretched long, smooth and featureless. Its skin held a lustrous sheen, almost metallic, reflecting the rainbow light of the walls, like a film of oil across water. A lithe body suggested power and speed, a truth apparent from its leap across an impossible expanse of the room.
The entity waited, shadows and black liquid bleeding from the points of its arms. While they watched, the space where ribs should be bubbled, and swelled. Two new forelimbs thrust forward, rupturing the skin, bursting from the lower torso of the creature. With the new limbs fully extended, the creature clashed the blades together, striking sparks along the edges.
Tarnil understood his men. Fear slowed their movements. Even so, they would not yield. His men began training once strong enough to walk, with scimitars their constant companions. Only a tornado twisted and spun with greater ferocity than the Storm Dancers of Palia.
A tornado did not wield razor-edged steel.
“Ayadah jarhad!”
A dozen voiced the cry as the Palians engaged their enemy, driving forward, twelve men moving as one. Their blades filled the air with a gale of steel, the men living whirlwinds of flesh and metal that threatened to tear their opponent apart - their sinuous movements heralding death to mortal foes.
This was no mortal foe.
The creature returned the assault, contradicting laws that constrained ordinary men. Its silhouette jerked in jagged streaks of black as it moved, rending the very fabric of reality. Its armor warded its skin from mundane weapons, earthly steel holding no authority over its otherworldly flesh.
The onslaught unleashed by the Storm Dancers should have protected them. Their deluge of blows left no gap to exploit, the blur of metal serving as their shield.
Their assailant did not need one.
Its arms never rose in defense, nor attempted to parry strikes. Its armor proved impenetrable. Palian swords glanced from its hide, denied by a resilience their edges could not breach.
In return, the scimitars of the Storm Dancers were cleaved by the creature's arms. Sundered metal clashed and skittered against the floor and walls. Fallen torches bounced showers of sparks. Cries of agony knifed the air.
Of the twelve warriors, only eight still drew breath when they hit the ground. Four brothers twitched in early death. Limbs were severed. Their blood ran thick with the virulent poison of liquid shadows. One of the men was disemboweled - another decapitated. Shattered swords lay ruined, with broken blades clutched in lifeless hands. Their fallen torches sputtered, billowing smoke, drowning in gore - their dying tongues of fire lapping against stone.
The arms of the remaining men burned from the effort of their futile blows, and the light of hope faded from their eyes.