Flanked by his two thugs, Rachid paced along the row of cages in his compound outside Cairo. He reached the end and counted his tallies. 75 captures. Not a bad haul from his hunters.
As he began to divvy up the slaves, he noticed his pant legs were beginning to whip in a sudden wind close to the ground. He saw that a small dust devil was picking up in the compound, centred on a spot a few feet behind him. The cloud of sand began to grow taller, and the funnel began to narrow. After a few seconds, the dust devil was about seven feet tall and just wide enough to fit a person. The kicked-up sand abruptly coalesced into a colossal man dressed in scarlet linen and gaudy jewellery. A sparkly blue-and-yellow headdress was perched on top of his head, clashing with the rest of his outfit.
The man grinned. “Hello, human! It is I, your new overlord Thel!”
“Who in the…” began Rachid. His two bodyguards pointed their assault rifles at the “man” who called himself Thel.
Without reacting, Thel continued. “I see you have a nice selection of slaves for me. Well done! I am going to give you to the count of five for you to join them in their cages. One, two…”
“Who are you? How did you do that?” Rachid began to yell. His men tightened their grips on their guns. The slaves shrank back in their cages.
Thel did not even slow down in his counting. “Three, four, five. Well, I warned you.”
In the blink of an eye, Thel lunged forward. His fist went straight through Rachid’s chest and came out the other side clutching the slaver’s heart. Rachid was dead before he could even make a noise.
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The guards were contrasted by screaming slaves as they opened fire on Thel. Some of their fire was blocked by Rachid’s corpse, but most of it bounced cleanly off of Thel’s hide. Thel glanced over at the guard on the left, who instantly dissolved in a flash of red light. The guard on the right screamed and aimed directly at Thel’s head.
As the last bullet in his magazine was fired, the muzzle of the guard’s rifle began to disintegrate into reddish sand. The trail of dissolution began to move up the gun, destroying the chamber, trigger and armrest. When the entire gun was nothing but sand, the guard’s hands began to crumble. He staggered back, staring horrified as his wrists and arms slowly fell away. He let out a guttural scream as his shoulders vanished. Finally, he was silenced as his neck vanished and his head was severed from his body.
As the guard’s corpse fully disintegrated into a pile of sand, Thel retracted his blood-covered hand from Rachid’s chest cavity, still holding the heart. He turned around to see another dozen guards pointing the trembling ends of their guns at him.
“Alright,” he began. “Maybe the first few guys didn’t hear me right, so I’m going to speak a little louder this time. All of you are going to drop your guns and get into those cages with the other slaves. Right. Now.”
The remaining guards all dropped their guns and rushed into the cages. The slaves gazed at Thel with fear and awe. One spoke up.
“A-are you here to save us?”
Thel chuckled. “But of course! I am here to save you from a meaningless existence, to let you make something out of your worthless human lives.”
The slave looked dejected and stayed quiet. Thel let loose a quick whistle and half a dozen Chinese demons descended from the sky.
“I dealt with the original owner,” explained Thel, tossing Rachid’s heart in his blood-soaked arm like a baseball. “Now you guys can start organizing the slaves. And be quick, a new world order doesn’t always happen overnight. For now, I’m gonna take inventory of what we just got our hands on.” He threw the heart to the ground, stomped it to a pulp and flew off to scout out the compound.