CHAPTER ELEVEN—MAGICAL ATTENUATION
Six months ago…
With his Scorpion Guard outside, Darius walked across the exquisite carpet through the sorcerers’ den and deeper into their strange territory just outside the city atop Mount Hajjaru where he would hopefully find the answer he was seeking.
The self-made sultan could have summoned them to the palace, but knowing these strange sorcerers and how the respected no powers of men on this world, he chose to abstain from doing so. Had he, they would have declined.
No man could decline the summoning by Darius al Hassarani. To preserve his dignity, he would have had to have these sorcerers executed.
And that was unacceptable.
Their temple was crowded due to narrow corridors. Talismans jangled from the ceilings made from every material imaginable, most from animal remains such as bones or leather weaves, dried eye balls and teeth.
Touching nothing, Darius entered into a chamber where the sorcerers stood around a fire, the smoke of which billowed unnaturally toward the roof and through the skylight into the open night sky.
The chamber was hot and sweaty. Darius had forgotten it was like this, otherwise he’d have removed his outer coats.
Their leader, an old man with folds of skin so aplenty that his age must have been extended far beyond that which was normal, nodded for Darius to sit next to the fire.
He did as he was bid and the black-robed figures sat down along with him.
“What is it you wish of us?” the old man said, his voice a hiss like that of a raspy snake.
“I’ve felt a disturbance in my magical aura,” he said, his voice powerful and carrying. “I can feel my magicks receding by the hour.”
“Did you not leave the guardian in the dungeon as we commanded?!”
Darius narrowed his eyes. In their environment, he was the lesser.
Or so they saw it that way.
He let them.
“I did as you told me.”
The old men, in their hooded cloaks, gestured between each other, strangely no words were exchanged. Then suddenly Darius jerked back as one of the men tossed a green powder into the fire that exploded into a plume of bright green light swirling with black smoky tendrils.
But the smoke only slightly escaped the unnatural vortex leading through the hole in the roof as the sorcerers watched it go up and dissipate.
There was more gesturing between them. Darius was beginning to feel impatient. Then after a time the old man turned to him and said, “Weeee! Willlll atttennuaateeeee!”
Darius said nothing for a moment, but then finally nodded.
The old sorcerer with his dry skin and gnarled nails took him by the collar and with a force unexpected of such an old man—even a strong young man—he ripped Darius’ tunic open. Then he took his outer coat with both hands and forced it down his back, leaving his sleeves on, but his chest and back bare.
Another of the sorcerers came forward with a bowl of some mysterious milky liquid and thrust it under his chin.
Darius took it, looked at the sorcerers, wondering if they would poison him. Of course, if they did that, they would all be brutally tortured and killed.
He drank the liquid, the bitter taste making him wince.
Suddenly his vision began to blur as he had a feeling of heightened sight and sound and touch.
The old man who had sat across from him, hidden under the hem of his hood, came forward. Pulling back hid hood, his visage was revealed to be like that of a white lizard.
And then he struck with red eyes and curved teeth.
Darius cried out slightly as the lizard sunk its teeth into his neck. All went to a delirious blur before he passed out.
Waking, Darius muttered, “Where—where am I?”
His voice seemed to echo beyond where he was far into the distance. Everything was hazy, but he saw earth beneath him. Hot sands—in the desert?
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There was a strange pulsing in his ears.
“What is this?”
What has happened?
“Fiiiind…” a hissing voice echoed through the space, far and wide, the voice everywhere all at once and yet nowhere.
How was that possible?
“Fiiiiinnnd yourrr teeathhherrrrs.”
“What does that mean?!” he demanded, his voice travelling across the sands. Everything was hazy, the edges of his vision pulsing with black and red and green tendrils.
Am I dreaming?
A voice answered him in the negative from the far distance. Again it insisted in a vicious hiss that echoed across the sands.
A sheen of green swept over the horizon, soft and murky as the stars shot by, the sun looping about.
That’s when Darius saw something—something strange—more so than his delirious vision. It was like… a blue string, floating across the desert.
Without a body, he realized he could will himself toward it.
“Yessssss!” came a hiss.
“Follllooowwww.”
Darius caught up with the ethereal string, took it in his hands and pulled.
Suddenly the world below him spun and came to a place farther into the desert, to an oasis. To the dungeon!
The dungeon he had named Akarilion after what he was told to name the beast egg that was given to him by these self-same sorcerers.
The blue string split into many tendrils leading into the dungeon.
Darius followed them.
Within his vision he found two adventurers.
They were speaking.
Their voices sounded distant, echoing—like they were under water.
“Ha!” the one man scoffed, his voice echoing deep into the cavern. “What did I tell you, my friend?”
He was from the lands of the Abassir Empire. Darius could tell by his accent.
The other man—some strange foreigner the likes of which Darius had never seen before—said nothing. He seemed speechless as he regarded the chiseled impressions on the wall. “More of the Three Princes War?”
“Hmm,” the Abassir said thoughtfully. “Some of it looks familiar, but some of this, I cannot say. Look.” He gestured with his torch. “What is this? A magical rite?”
The foreigner shrugged. “They’re your histories.”
“I have never known of this. They must be secret histories.”
“Which means more treasure.”
Then the men disappeared as they walked on, their forms becoming black smoke.
Darius followed deeper into the dungeon, looking for them.
They appeared again in a haze, almost like a black mist, materializing, speaking.
“Shiro! There are more!” the Abassir said, turning about and shining a luminous stone ahead of him.
Monsters appeared, hissing and slithering into the space.
“You take those,” the man the Abassir had addressed as Shiro, said. He was calm, at east with their situation. “And I will kill these.”
“Shiro!” the Abassir exclaimed.
“Pull yourself together, Adventurer!”
“Umm—all right!”
“Now fight!” the one called Shiro shouted and moved toward one of the spiders.
Then they faded, their voices and the sounds of their battle disappearing into an echoing nothingness.
Darius narrowed his eyes, his heart beating faster in his disembodied chest. The sensation was… surreal.
Swallowing, he continued further in.
The men materialized again.
It was the Abassir, calling for the one named Shiro, to run.
A monumental battle took place within the dungeon.
The beast…
It was Akarilion.
Dead.
And then there was a woman, her form hazy in the murk. Darius squinted after her.
“Ah,” she said. “So you’ve defeated the dungeon guardian.”
Darius snarled.
He recognized that voice. It was Jessamine. That treacherous whore of a jinni! He needed to see no more.
In anger he backhanded the images before him, but instead of taking him out of the vision, the images melted and reappeared above the dungeon at the top of a moonlit hill under a patch of palm trees.
It was the man the Abassir had called Shiro.
“A little honey for the fly?”
That whore-jinni laughed, a subtle tinkling flirtation. “You are no fly. You’re my adventuring isekai. My savior and my hope, Shiro.”
Bitch!
“Hmm.”
“Darshuun is the jewel of the empire. We can have a grand time. We may discover something that we don’t yet know, things that may aid you, or me, or even both of us. Say you’ll do it, Shiro?”
The man nodded and Jessamine threw her arms around him.
Whore!
“Thank you!”
“It would not hurt to see.”
“I’m glad the honey worked, Shiro, or else I’d have had to use the whip.” Her tone was the same as she had said similar words to Darius in her seductive flirtations.
That whore! That bitch!
The red tendrils deepened, crawling over his vision.
“JESSAMINE! I WILL RIP YOU LIMB FROM LIMB!”
The red tendrils surrounded his vision, blotting out everything. His eyes hurt—like they would explode.
He screamed.
Screamed louder.
Was he dying?
Were these sorcerers killing him?
And then his eyes shot open and he scrammed as he jerked up into a sitting position. He was next to the fire, his loyal Scorpion Guard in the chamber, huddled about with their weapons drawn.
The sorcerers didn’t seem to care.
One of them thrust a bowl of some new liquid in his face. He almost swatted it away, but then the old man—the one that had appeared as a lizard—said, “To counterrrr the pooiiisson.”
Doing a double take at the old man, he no longer appeared to be a white lizard with poisonous fangs.
Was that my hallucination or…?
He took the bowl of liquid and drank it in one gulp.
Getting up, he practically used the sorcerers as arm stools, but his Scorpion Guards also aided him.
Darius’ feet felt like bricks.
His whole body hurt in a way that massaging his skin and muscles did not help. He stalked out of the den, nearly falling as he went. His guards tried to aid him, but he shrugged them off.
The hot night air felt cool on his skin after what he had been through. He swiped his hand across his chest and it came back slick with sweat.
“Gods,” he muttered, breathing in deeply as the stars gave him some comfort.
During all of that, he had learned four things. The first, was that Jessamine was a traitorous whore! The second, she had been taken from the dungeon after Akarilion was defeated by a foreign adventurer called Shiro.
The third thing he had learned was that an Abassir man, though he knew not his name, had helped.
An finally…
This adventurer is making his way to my capital.
Darius glanced about, unsure as to what he could rip and kill. Then he screamed, the veins in his neck bulging and his mouth a rictus of pure rage and hate.