The mornings are cold, out on the sands. The sun colours the sky and the dunes a deep, blood red. The mists sink into the recesses of the desert, obscuring the vision of those trapped within with a pinkish haze that is as dense as it is monotonous.
She pulls the cloak tight around her shoulders. From head to toe, she is wrapped in heavy cloth, but it does little to ward off the chill nipping at her skin, and even less for the deeper shiver that runs through her core. There’s evil, here in the mists. Not beasts, nor sandstorms, nor the threat of thirst. All the old enemies of her people are made trivial by that which gently pulls her in now. But she must go through if she wants out.
The first looms up through the pink mist. A great, black monolith that materialises into terrible form as she approaches. Her sword will do her no good here.
With each step, a new vision solidifies in the mist at the edge of her sight. An eagle’s view of a river, forded by a vast army of horsemen and their wagon homes. A small town, without walls, put to the torch. It’s people scattered in their own streets, hunted like animals. Armed men moving from house to house, taking what they can, destroying what they cannot - people included. Then a long line of slaves chained together and half-dragged across sands by the horsemen and their army, onto the next town.
Soon she is past the monolith and before her another one presents itself, casting its hard shadow across her face. Once more she is assailed by visions at the periphery, themselves constructed of that same, pale mist and the bloody light of the half-risen sun. She sees her home, as she left it. Grand. Opulent. Overseeing a teeming city grown fat on riches, circled by thick walls and guarded by veteran legions. Around the city, it's army celebrates its many victories. Large circles of cavalry sending dust swirling into the sky. And she also sees that beneath the city, the foundations rest on bones. Thousands of bones. She sees a child dip her fingers in a marble fountain, and they come back to her slick with blood.
A few more steps and she is beyond the pull of the second monolith. It is not long before she sees the third. This time, it’s much further away and its presence is seen long before she saw the others. But approach it, she must.
Now she sees the city as she has never seen it; in ruin. The bronze domes of its tallest buildings have been pulled down into heaps of broken limestone or are blackened by the fires that rip through the city. The air is alight with embers. The streets are covered in ash. Grey flakes float on pools of blood that run into the gutters. The inferno drowns out the screams of thousands. And, suspended above, a great black disk swallows all vision of the sky. Lightning ripples along its circumference, drenching the land with a piercing light that shatters the grand architecture of the city like a straw house in a strong wind. She is there, in this vision. Helpless. What can a person do against insurmountable force? Like trying to conquer a hurricane.
The departing vision leaves her with a nosebleed. She wipes it on the back of a worn glove and presses on through the mist, leaving the monolith behind. There is little she could do in the vision, but that has yet to pass. There is something she can do now.
Her feet fall on something that is not sand. A rock. The first of many, placed as steps that lead up the side of an orange mesa. Her ascension brings her out of the mist and onto a flat, stone plateau. Stretching before her, the mist-soaked desert where only the tallest dunes pierce the surface of that pinkish sea, making ripples across its surface. Beyond that, the city. The bronze domes catch the sun and send glittering flashes across the many leagues from there to here. To see it fills her with dread; for what it was, what it is, and what it will become.
Turning from the desert and the distant city, she follows the path of stones across the plateau. As she walks, she finds herself increasingly surrounded by thin iron spikes, driven into the stone. Each is about hip height and each bears a small flag, most bleached by the sun and tattered by the wind. Gold or silver thread bears the wishes, promises and threats of those that walked before her. They increase in density, like a forest of muttering silks, before she reaches the lip of a great shadow.
Before her is a monolith, far larger than the ones that surround and protect it. Larger than even the highest building in the city. It sits suspended a few inches above the mesa itself, unmoving despite the warming breeze that tugs at her clothes.
Walking in the shadow of the monolith is even colder than walking in the mists below. When she reaches its perfectly smooth surface, she extends a hand and rests the tips of her fingers against the unfeeling material there. Neither hot nor cold; perfectly neutral.
A voice, or a rough approximation of a voice, assaults her bones and runs through her blood.
Offer.
She grits her teeth, snarling, bracing against the vicious sensation. ‘Life,’ she grunts.
Unsated.
She closes her eyes, trying to shut out the agony that snakes up her extended arm.
‘Thousands. I offer you thousands.’
Sated.
‘And what do you offer?’ she snaps, pressing her weight against the monolith, so her hand doesn’t snap away from the pain.
Time.
She jumps back, arm screaming with pain, mind rattled and her bones singing. Time. More time. That’s all she can give them.
She walks out of the shadow of the monolith to look down into the valley below. There, in its center, rests a hole. A circular chasm that descends at a shallow angle, stretching far into the unseen depths of the earth. Stretching and stretching, but no certainty of ending. Where it leads, nobody knows. But that is where she must send them, to some uncertain fate. Thousands of them, she promised, whereas the others only sent hundreds. She will not allow her ambition to be so limited.
She looks back across the desert, at the twinkling domes of the city. She will return, amass the legions of horsemen that await her command. She will bring them their thousands, no matter their kin or blood, even if it takes her to her final days.
Paddy Dobson
21st September 2020