The Oasis of the Damned
Entry: Day One Thousand and One; The Oasis of the Damned
Soh Dumuduru
“I had walked for a thousand lights and a thousand nights, until, at last, I came upon the edge of the Sand Sea of Alzrala’aldin.”
Soh stepped carefully around the few remaining muddy puddles that dotted the quickly drying trail. Calling them puddles was being generous, he decided. They were exceedingly shallow when they were filled at all, but in every case the sludge that remained would be annoying if he stepped in it.
The mountains loomed in the distance, stark against the sky. As the sun crested behind their forested peaks, they cast a long shadow before him. It had rained the night before; not for long, but still it had rained. Soh’s clothes remained damp. He’d slept not far off the road, with no real coverage to guard him from the short downpour. In damp clothes, then, he trudged onward. Uncomfortable, but generally unconcerned.
There was no particular endpoint which Soh had in mind for his journey. He merely walked. Walked, and wrote. That was all there was to his life now. He’d never be able to return home.
‘Not now. Not anymore,’ Soh thought.
Nonetheless, he knew the rough geography of these far lands, and there was no doubt that what he could see just a few spans ahead of him, sprawling, with nearly invisible tendrils of heat rising from it, was the Sand Sea of Alzrala’aldin.
There wasn’t anyone traveling the road as he was either. ‘Who’d want to?’ No one crossed the Sand Sea. He was alone. Only the sounds of the last vestiges of animal life, clinging to the meadows that were rapidly giving way to the oncoming desert, and the gentle rustling of the sparse copses of trees around him kept him company on the lonely road. The grasses were drying up now. It was a gradual shifting from the expansive fields that had covered the area between the forested mountain roots behind him to sparse coverage. Eventually, the grass would all but cease, and the ground would turn to dust, then silt. Until, at last, sand would consume all.
‘At least,’ Soh thought, ‘the travel isn’t so burdensome.’
After all, he barely owned anything. He tightened his grip on the cross-chest strap of his one bag. In it he kept only three things. A charcoal pen with which to write. A cloth-bound parchment book in which to write. And, as the chief reminder of why he could never return…
Soh ripped his mind away from that line of thought.
‘Best not to think on that, Soh, you damn fool.’
Dangling from his buckle-belt, nearly full, was a water-gourd. The brief rain had been enough to top it off. ‘Thankfully, or I’d have been in real trouble heading into the desert.’ Only one stream had wound its way down from the mountain, but it’d veered off in a completely different direction about a day ago. That had caused some concern for him, but fortunately the rain had come. The price had been the damp tunic and usually baggy trousers now annoyingly clinging to him. Overall, it was a small price to pay.
He cleared the distance with his usual nonchalance despite the grumbling in his stomach. He hadn’t eaten for two days. The fact casually crossed his mind in a detached sort of way just as his bare feet sunk into the first bits of the sand sea. Soh reached up and pulled his tattered indigo scarf over his mouth and nose. The tails of the scarf billowed behind in the soft wind. ‘Don’t want to be breathing in the dust.’ Such was known to cause dry lung, and dry lung was known to cause death. Though generally having no purpose in life other than to wander, Soh didn’t desire to die. ‘Certainly not in that horrible way.’ Still, he wasn’t decidedly committed to living either. He just was, and he didn’t cherish the notion of going by way of dry lung.
The sand was already warm on his uncovered feet. With each step, his foot sank, was buried under the abrasive grains, and then he pulled it back up with increasing effort. In this way, alone, Soh disappeared into the desert depths.
The sun beat high over head. Sweat coated Soh’s skin. The sea of sand rose and shifted. Each peak tinged with aqua, highlighted with amber. The sand itself was stricken with rivulets and crimson streamers the color of blood. It was, Soh admitted to himself, among the most beautiful sights he’d even seen. Alluring, but lethal. He struggled with each step to keep his feet from sinking too deep, and then to haul them up again, shoveling out great piles of the warm grains each time he yanked them out. ‘My muscles are on fire!’
Every step shot a throbbing sensation up through his thighs. With his mind merely focused on each and every step, Soh crested a particularly massive silty tidal wave. The orange glow of the Great Light, the sun, which Soh’s people called Tzhon, threw stark shadows beneath the undulating peaks of the great sand sea. There was no sign of people, nor of any civilization, nor of anything at all but the pulverized gravel and silence of the far-reaching dunes. Each rose higher than the last. Some gained heights that seemed impossible, like the crowns of the waves at the head of a raging tsunami. The air was laced with salt and a dryness that scraped his skin, rubbing him raw with the grittiness of hard bark. “I need to find shelter and water,” Soh said, his voice cracking in the arid stillness surrounding him.
The shimmering haze that decorated every distant rise had grown more intense the further he’d traveled into the desert. Even now, as the Tzhon was beginning to sink, the waving fingers of heat tickled the rose and copper sky. As he walked, he tightened his scarf around his face, tugging it higher, trying in vain to guard himself from the sting of the warm biting wind. Plumes and dustings of grain and grit pricked his skin where it was exposed. His face had grown red from exertion, from heat, and from abrasion. His mouth had become like a field in a drought.
Thoughts drifting to the dryness of his mouth, Soh snatched his water-gourd with sudden haste and took a quick sip. It barely slaked the thirst he felt. His throat was like baked brick. Still, Soh moved ever onward. He worked himself simply to keep from moldering in the heat and torrid breeze. He was having trouble maintaining focus now. He’d been walking for hours. The majority of the day in fact. Still there’d been no sight of any place for Soh to find some reprieve or hydration for himself. His stomach grumbled for the hundredth time. He glowered, detached indifference finally wavering into pure frustration.
There was no water left. Several hours of trekking into the Sand Sea of Alzrala’aldin, nearly having to climb in places, Soh had taken his last sip. It’d been just a few drops really, and then the gourd had gone bone-dry. What else was there to do now? He clambered ahead on his hands and knees, scrambling up a steep slope of rough silica. When he rose atop it, he froze. Soh saw something. Yes. He could just make out a handful of stubborn trees standing not far away. He began to walk toward them. They stood solemnly, guarding… ‘Guarding what? What is that?’ Soh asked himself. Then he paused mid-step. ‘Thank the Light and the Stars!’ It was water! Soh was sure of it.
The sun was nearly gone now, pulled thin like a thread of light across the far horizon. Craggy peaks of cliffs stretched far into the distance. The flood of sand consumed everything in between. Everything, it seemed, except for that elusive oasis. He’d rushed ahead after first catching sight of it. He was nearly running, or as close to it as he could manage, with the sand gripping his ankles like leaden weights with every step he took. It had to have been over an hour now, and still he hadn’t reached it. His frustration, which had been softened at the prospect of water and shade, was now bubbling to the surface again. It was uncharacteristic for him, he knew, but it seemed it was impossible to control. ‘I’m so tired. And thirsty. Dammit, I’m thirsty…’ As the daylight waned, the Lesser Light, the moon, which Soh knew as the Mhon, was beginning to take watch. It was growing dark. The temperature was rapidly dropping too. Where once he had been drenched in sweat from oppressive heat, Soh was now drying in the coolness of the late evening. The moisture mutated into salty freeze on his skin. Because he had no appropriate garments, he shivered freely as he carried on.
Shortly after the Mhon had begun to rise, he finally reached the trees. It was a verdant oasis, entirely surreal with all its shrubbery and vegetation. The sanctuary was a detail totally out of place, and totally welcome. His tiredness evaporated, and he dashed for the water. Stumbling over himself, he fell to his knees and threw his grime ridden shaggy head into the pool. Coolness washed over him. He drank deeply, pulling his head up for gasping breaths before dunking it back under again. After a few minutes of this, he sat back with a belly full of water. Then he noticed it for the first time. On the other side of the pool, nestled in a copse of palms and cramped vegetation, there was a small fire. He’d not seen any smoke rising as he’d neared the place, he was sure, but there was no doubting what he saw now. Brushing the sand off his seemingly interminably damp clothing, and shaking the water and grit from his hair, Soh stood and tromped around to the fire.
Dusk had fully waned to night by then. The sky was now an expanse of ashen azure and obsidian. Pinpricks of pure light punctuated the vault overhead. It was as if the heavens had been sugar-dusted by some far-off god-hand. Soh turned his gaze back from the night sky to watch his steps as he neared the fire. There was someone there. Sitting by the flames, he saw an old man. ‘Old doesn’t do it justice at all,’ Soh thought. ‘Ancient is more like it!’ The man’s face, by what could be made out in the dim glow of the fire, appeared a wrinkled battered canvas. A long beard flowed down from his chin. The hair looked brittle and it was knotted with beads and stones — common jewels it seemed. The light danced off them, throwing a kaleidoscope of colors onto the sand and dirt before the man. The shifting of the hues was striking in the quickly darkening night.
He was smoking an enormous pipe. It looked like it had been carved from a single gargantuan bone of some kind. The pipe was the biggest Soh had ever seen. So large, in fact, it stretched from the man’s face, down to the ground, ending in an enormous tub that narrowed rapidly towards its top. There, in the top of the enormous bowl, was a small pile of shash. He had had shash several times on his journey, but never had he smoked the flavorful leaf from something even remotely like this thing. ‘No-one has!’ He chuckled to himself. The thing could hardly even be rightly called a pipe. It was much more like some massive floor instrument than anything meant for causally smoking shash.
The old man had been lost in thought when he approached, but he stirred at Soh’s chuckle. He pulled his mouth away from the giant pipe. Letting a huge cloud out through his mouth and nose, the man said, “Sit. Please, sit.” With a weathered hand, he waved for the disheveled newcomer to take a place next to him. His nonchalance rapidly reasserting itself after his brief refreshment in the pool, Soh shrugged and sat. He crossed his legs as he lowered himself to the ground with a sigh.
Cinders danced in the flames. Smoke stained the air. Soh’s eyes stung from it. There was a muffled cough from beside him, and Soh turned his gaze from the fire to the old man again. “You okay, Grandpa?”
Another cough, an aging fist rising to stifle it. After a few of these, the man took another puff from the ridiculous pipe. His eyes met Soh’s. They were deep. Like whirlpools, ripping whatever they saw right into them. The color was hard for Soh to make out with only the bobbing and weaving firelight by which to see.
Mist drifted out of the man’s mouth and streamed from his nostrils. “Grandpa, huh?” he chuckled with a harsh wheezing sound. “No respect for the ol’ timers these days, even when such offer a warm fire on a cold night only getting colder, no?"
Soh shifted. The man wasn’t coy. ‘Guess that’s to be expected. Grandpa’s don’t have much to worry over do they? So, why care what others think?’ The thought made him laugh.
Apparently, the mysterious man understood since he also laughed lightly.
“Anyway, what brings you out here, young one?”
Soh reclined, bringing his knee up. With his head hung back, Soh stared up into the cosmos for a moment. It was a spiral array, the pattern of ages of life and decay. Lips pursed, he collected his thoughts.
“I have no home.”
His makeshift companion grunted while continuing to enjoy the shash.
“No home means no place to stay.”
A brief nod.
“No place to stay means I move on.”
A grunt.
“I move on, and on, and on…” Soh’s voice drifted off.
“A nomad, then?"
“Something like that.”
“I may be off the mark, but I figure a young fellow such as yourself might not just be wandering, but mayhap running, no?”
‘Damn, he’s still a sharp wit…’
Soh didn’t answer.
The man chuckled again. “Well,” another puff, another exhalation of flavorful smoke, “tell you what. Why don’t we pass the time with a story. I’ve got nothing else to do, and it seems you’ve got no hurry to move on, and on, and on just now, no? I’ve a suspicion, aye, a hunch that you do more than just wander ‘round here and there. Perhaps you’ll be interested in this tale of mine.” He paused then, his old eyes shifting and his air of long-won confidence wavering for a brief moment. The falter was so brief, Soh might not’ve caught it at all were it not for having looked at the old man’s face at just the right moment. The instant at which a branch had snapped in the fire, sending up a pulse of heat and hundreds of additional embers. The boon in light had been just enough. Soh hadn’t been disinterested in the old man passing along a tale — this was, after all, what Soh really did, right? Traveled and recorded. Now, though… ‘I think this tale may really be one worth hearing.’
Soh nodded. The desert was eerily quite. Water stood unmoving at the center of the oasis. Soft silence was broken only by the crackling of the small fire the two shared. The crackling was accentuated by the subtle bowing of the handful of tall trees and low flora in the staccato breeze. The punctuated sounds came together to form a low moaning chant, a desert song sung in atavistic tones. The old man began his story. Soh listened intently.
“For a time, there was peace. Not just peace here, but peace throughout the whole world of Idramah.” Another inhalation. Another dragon-smoke plume enshrouding his rutted, bearded face.
“Aye, peace that seemed would be everlasting. So, too were it true in my homeland. Lands abutting east of this here desert.”
He nodded. Soh remained fixed.
“My homeland was lush and bountiful. My people strong and vigorous. Aye. We’d grown wealthy and large over centuries of hardworking — mostly building and blacksmithing, you understand. Some agricultural works. In our strength, though, we drew eyes upon us. With eyes upon us, we fortified ourselves. Just in case. Though peace abounded, man’s heart follows its broken pattern, no?” The old man sighed to himself at that thought. Soh merely nodded.
“Yes, it follows its own shattered form. So, we readied for what may come. The eyes we drew weren’t just man’s neither. Oh, no!” His voice grew louder at that exclamation.
After a deep breath, he continued softly again. “We drew the gaze of those creatures what covet all manner of riches and knowledge. Dragons.”
Soh’s eyebrow shot up at this.
“Dragons, Old Man?"
“Dragons.”
“Dragons are myth.”
The old man pursed his cracked lips for a moment, one wrinkled and spotted hand combing his lengthy mustache and beard. The gems woven throughout his beard clanked.
“Aye, myth now, but not always so.”
With a skeptical nod, Soh encouraged the man on. ‘Let’s hear it then.’
“Dragons were abundant but mostly themselves peaceful — peaceful even if they were known to be covetous in their way. And so, the lush forests and fields provided sustenance and power. With that, and knowing the ways of man and the desires of creatures, we armed up. I myself joined the kingdom army."
“What was the name of the kingdom? In fact, what’s your name Old Man? Mine’s Soh. Soh Dumuduru."
It was the old one’s turn to raise an eyebrow. Then he chuckled and took a draw on the pipe. With an exhale, smooth this time, he said, “Neither’s important for this tale boy.”
“Isn’t it kind of rude not to give yours, when I just gave mi—“
“Hush now and listen!” A grimace of anger flashed for a split second across the aged face.
Soh shifted a bit.
‘What the hell?’
The old man continued without waiting for his response.
“So, I joined the army. Within two years, I had risen to the highest of ranks. No battles really. But rumors of war had begun. The neighbors weren’t so keen on having us acting as we were without themselves bolstering defenses and growing their own armies. This is the way of it, of course. And there were other happenings: dragons became violent. Even the Azar/Ta/Va, that’s what we called ‘em, you understand, the divine avatars. The Azar/Ta/Va were the avatars of the gods. Gods in wyvern flesh. Not mere creaturely dragons, but deific ones. Lords of all the dragons; dragon-gods. Our king had reports of kingdoms in flames and ruin, ice and snow drowning entire cities. It was with these things in mind, that the kingdom shifted its attention to our nearest Azar/Ta/Va. The one we knew with certitude resided not far away. We called him Szar/Re/Na, but in your tongue it would be: Serenur. Anyway, Szar/Re/Na had nested itself in these here lands on the border of my kingdom for eons, or so it had always been clai—”
Soh interjected, “In these lands, but there’s nothing here? It’s an endless ocean of sand and wind. Boiling by day and,” he gave a small shiver, scooting closer to the fire, “freezing by night. Why’d a dragon, or a god, or whatever, want to stay here?”
The old man burst out laughing. “Aye, aye! I should’ve said earlier, these here lands weren’t always marrow-sucking wastes. No.”
A moment passed, and he grew somber.
“No. Once, this land was just as lush as my own homeland. It was teaming with rivers, dotted with streams and lakes. Even summits and pastures. It was practically a paradise. Just, few settled here. After all, who’d dare to call home where it is that the divine avatar, Serenur, called home? Eh? No, not likely that many would dare claim to reside where the gods do. So, the land was desirable, but unsettled.”
Soh tried to look out into the desert. He couldn’t see much in the deepening ebony of the night. Still, ‘could it be true?’
Without waiting for encouragement, the man rolled onward. “Serenur dwelt here. At least, that’s what we’d always been taught. True enough, some had seen his brilliance from a distance. Those sightings invariably led here. Anyway, we grew suspicious of Serenur. His glory shone too bright, for he was, in fact, the Lightbearer, the source of Idramah’s light. We were taught in my land that it was he, in his divine energies — that is before he dwelt in dragon-flesh — that placed the Sunaina and Munaina in the sky overhead.”
Soh recognized the terms from his travels elsewhere. He knew that, while he and his called the daylight Tzhon and the night light Mhon, in other lands people called them the Sunaina and Munaina. Lands like Ae’aa. ‘So, his people must’ve had roots in Ae’aa originally? Couldn’t be Ae’aa he’s speaking about as his kingdom though, that’s thousands of spans from here. Doesn’t match up. I wonder if the two nations had contact or trade or something though?’ Soh’s thoughts wandered momentarily down this path, before he was pulled back by the continuation of the tale.
“Against such glory and legend, ours paled. Yet, the king was certain of one thing: Serenur would strike. Why, you ask?” He coughed, “Why else? What is man to take such power and glory for himself, huh? The divine ones weren’t like other dragons, not really. Those things lusted for trinkets and stones. The dragon-gods had higher aims — and loftier grievances. They were angry with men. That’s what we were told anyway, and so we made to hunt him ourselves.”
His face seemed to aged in the dancing of the flames with that last utterance.
“Yes, we aimed, you see, to slay the last divine dragon: Serenur. Others had been slain throughout Idramah — at least, that’s what we’d heard. More rightly, what we’d been told by the king and his officials. By our count, the Lightbearer was the last. So we marched, leaving the pleasures of home and wife behind — leaving children in our wake who’d never see their father’s faces again. The king commanded we take to the hunt. Better to strike first, you see.” Soh scanned the darkness around him, his eyes adjusted poorly because of the campfire before him. He thought he could see something out there. ‘No, it was nothing…’
He turned back and continued listening.
“After several weeks’ march, I led the royal armies to these here lands. The dragon-god had made nest atop a tall peak — just that way, in fact.” He pointed toward someplace in the dark. “I could tell by the cyclopean cavern that was clearly visible even from the low pastures. The palatial cave at that summit was only suitable for a god. We’d never have been able to slay him there though. No. So, I myself scaled the peak, and atop it found his dwelling. The beast was at least a league in length. Longer than half the city-wall back home. Hundreds of spans, you see? It was coiled and bundled over on itself. Piled like thick scaly rope. It had a dozen pairs of lamellate wings folded close to its body. I must admit, even now, I was terrified. I was nothing but a beetle in comparison. What the hell had we thought to do against this? Even so, I was the commander, and I was a man of my word.” He choked a little on the shash smoke. From the singed smell, it had grown harsh as he’d told his tale. Soh just waited.
“I kept it. I kept my word. I built a fire, quietly as possible, around the thing. T’wasn’t long before the entire cave, though the word doesn’t do justice to the scale of that place, was stifled by smog and smoke. It was the hottest blaze I’d ever felt. I couldn’t stay long, but the dragon just slept on. So, nothing else for it, I departed. Hurriedly, I scaled back down the mountain. Just as my foot touched the grasses at the base, the top of the thing shot off!” He made an animated gesture at that last word.
“It rained boulders and ash. Debris plumed and blanketed the sky. Darkness descended in mid-day. The dragon, Serenur, was awake. It raced upward. It’s golden scales throwing spears of light all across the land. Harsh rays that cut through the waste and smog. My army had been waiting for my return, formed and coiled for battle. Well, battle we had then.”
Soh was enraptured by the old man’s tale.
“The dragon descended on us. I ordered archers to release their shots. Arrows clinked off its hide like dust off your back. It swooped and harried my men. Over and over. Out of range for spears. Certainly not within sword strike. Half my army was down in mere minutes. Thousands ripped to shreds. Thousands burned to crumbling charr from the pure intensity of Serenur’s light. Who the hell had we thought we were? It was in that moment, in the middle of the battlefield, drowning in the wails and cries of grown men begging for their mothers that I understood. We’d not needed this. Serenur had been asleep. He’d been resting you see. No,” he cleared his throat which had grown hoarse, “no, he hadn’t been asleep. No, no, he’d been in hibernation. It was true. My mind raced trying to, but I couldn’t recall a single mention of a sighting for… years. Well, except that the king had claimed such news. You understand don’t you?"
Soh didn’t understand, so he shook his head dumbly.
The man shook his in response.
“The king hadn’t had any news. Not really. He’d himself just been overcome with the things all men are overcome by: greed, lust, desire for power and wealth. Well, he’d not been overcome exactly, that’s too light a word. He’d been possessed by something. I knew it then, standing numbly covered in blood and ash, the sky thick and gray overhead punctured by rays of searing radiance that cooked men alive. With Serenur weaving its way, beating its wings, through my army like a boar through a bush, I knew the truth. The king had become something different. Something horrible. He hadn’t been acting normal for quite some time. I recalled snippets of memory: odd commands, concubines who cowered, strange advisors. Even, I think now, faces that had disappeared without warning altogether. Murdered most likely. Removed in his gluttony and evil pursuit for more and more power. I was crushed by the realization that I’d thought to slay a god for a daemunic-king.”
“You didn’t notice it at the time? Why didn’t you stop him?”
“I guess I noticed alright, otherwise I don’t think such terrible memories would have plagued me on the battlefield that day. But who was I compared to royalty? Mens’ minds, young one, have a way of convincing themselves that reality isn’t real, you see? Aye. We like to think what we think and have that be the end of it. Of course, mens’ hearts are frail and fall easy to worldly things. In the end, our king became no better than any other liar, murderer, or rapist. Worse even. He was overtaken and possessed by the Great Darkness which always consumes us when we fail to keep lit the beacons of life-giving light. The darkness wins when in our dereliction we snuff out the light, you see? So, there, with the army in tatters, surrounded by death, I realized my mistake. I’d given in to evil myself: greed and lust for power and position had led me to turn a blind eye to the king’s deterioration; to his metamorphosis from holy royalty to wicked enslavement. In that blindness, I’d led thousands of men, husbands, fathers, souls to their deaths. And, worse, it was death by folly and blasphemy. Death in attempting to slay a god. The very Azar/Ta/Va of Light!”
He stifled a sob.
Silence fell between the man and Soh. Twigs snapped in the flames. Soh’s eyes were growing heavy. The night was stretching deep. It was beyond late now. In the pause, and with heavy lids, Soh again looked out in the dark. Only, it seemed there were other things out there, and, in fact, some had begun to draw in around the fire as well. Yes, he was sure of it. Hundreds. No, thousands of crystalline lights pulsated with green and blue effervescence. “Souls,” he whispered, staring as they swarmed in around the two men. Soh’s hair stood on end. The realization that he was sitting in an impossible oasis which waited in the middle of the desert of the sand sea full of long since dead souls sent a shiver down his spine. A preternatural response rising unbidden from his body.
The old man was snapped out of his grief. “Aye. Souls.”
“Finish your story, Grandpa.”
The man drew on the pipe and let out a cloud. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he carried on. “The battle had been folly. We’d stood no chance. Yet, there’s more to say. A pillar of my army still stood. Oh, a pillar were a thousand men, understand? Anyway, a pillar stood alongside me. We rallied. Archers and spearman. I myself had a commander’s blade and the dagger my own Da had passed to me. Good knife. Jeweled hilt. See?”
He pulled a dagger from beneath his robes. Robes, which Soh now noticed, even in the dim firelight, were heaped over the old body in multicolored layers upon layers of cloth upon cloth. The blade drew his eye now though. It gleamed in the rhythm of the flame-tongues. Ornate and curved, with a hilt of gold and pearl, sheathed in deep sapphire leather and ruby cloth. It had to be utterly ancient. Soh had never seen anything quite like it. “This is the very dagger with which … I slew… Serenur.”
“Slew?!”
“Aye. Let me finish boy. Let me finish. With our rally, and most of the men dead, we made a final stand. The dragon, thinking us subdued, landed. He stretched on like clouds in the across the horizon. Then, in a flash of light so bright we were forced to shield our eyes, the dragon-flesh became man. A warrior of men, though. Armored to the hilt. He carried a massive claymore. I’d not known such ability existed. No tales had I heard of the divine dragons taking on other flesh forms. Still, it is the truth of what happened. I ordered my men to hold form, and I approached the dragon-man. He then spoke to me. This is what he said:
‘I’ve no idea why you, commander of men, have assaulted my home and torn asunder my respite. I rest now from work which I completed after long lifetimes for you small beings. Tell me, for which crime do you seek to slay me?’ I, of course, had no answer. He’d committed no crime other than that he, by his own light and existence, accused my king of the evils of which he was truly guilty. Still, bound by some foolish notion of duty, and exhausted beyond wit, I merely said nothing. Instead, I struck with sword. Immediately, a duel ensued.
The army made to rush the man. He swirled the large blade like it were a leaf. Parrying my sloppy swing, the dragon-man rushed past me in a radiant gleaming. His speed gained as he ran, until, in seconds, the man vanished. There was only light. I fell to my knees, covering my eyes from the intensity of the blaze. When my vision returned, I stood. A hundred spans away, I could see the tiny form of the dragon-man. He still shone brightly. About him only heaps of bodies lay, slain in mere moments. Tens of thousands died that day. Yet, I still stood. The lone commander facing down the human form of the divine dragon-god Serenur — and unjustly at that! I lost myself in rage: furious at myself, my king, my men, this… this… Serenur! I hated everything in that moment. In an eye-blink, he’d recrossed the distance and was upon me.
I struggled against him. The clinking of blades and the scraping of metal on metal echoed all around. Sparks shot in every direction as we clashed. In moments, my sword flew out of my hand and stuck the ground a few spans away. Then he swept to strike me down. In that moment, I realized, Serenur had made a blunder. Yes, the divine avatar of light had made a single mistake. He’d not known that I’d been carrying this here dagger, hidden in the folds of my tunic beneath my armor. I always carried it pinned to my lower back, you see. As he bent and swung, I kicked out with both legs and brought them together. I forced his body to the ground by the knees. I rolled, drawing the small blade as I did so. Without hesitation, when I came out of the roll, I sprung to my feet and lunged at him from the side. Even with all his deific speed, the dragon-man had been too slow to react to this sudden shift and my surprise attack.
I plunged the dagger, down to its hilt, into the throat of the dragon-god, and tore it through his neck. The head rolled away. His eyes and mouth burst apart in blinding columns of brilliance. Where blood should have soaked the sand, only luminance spilled out. There was a smell like honey and salt. A horrid sucking sound rang out, like the world was inhaling, all at once, the entirety of its air. My vision failed. When it returned, I saw then: nothing remained except the bones of every dead man and the bones of the dragon himself. Massive gleaming bones. The dragon was dead. I had slain the last of the divine dragon-gods: Szar/Re/Na, the Azar/Ta/Va of Light. Well, last if the rumors we’d been given from the wicked king were indeed true. But, he’d have the last laugh. I myself had taken a fatal wound during our duel. I hadn’t noticed, but what I thought to be a glancing blow had turned out to have been a death-pierce. Right here.” The man made a gesture to his stomach area, then said, “And, of course, there’s more to life than this material plane, yes? So, his last laugh stretched further still.”
Soh couldn’t speak. He was entranced. ‘Is he really saying what I think he’s saying?’
“You see, I hadn’t known something my king had, and which he’d no doubt hoped to avoid for himself while seeking to accomplish his twisted ends. I hadn’t known that to kill a divine one was to damn oneself. Not just myself neither. Aye. I led thousands, remember? They were all complicit in my deed. So, all shared in my guilt. And not just them neither. No, son. Just as they were complicit in my deed, the king, being the source of all that horror, he too was bound by the laws that framed the cosmos. With him, the kingdom. It all went to hell. The fool hadn’t understood that complexity, had he now? No. No, he’d too had been deceived.”
He laughed bitterly. “Aye, no way to really kill divinity, no? So, slaying divine forms here on this earth,” he paused and snatched up a handful of sand. It drained from his grip slowly before he continued. “Slaying them here, only kills their flesh, if flesh they even have, you see? That leaves them entirely free to enact their divine justice on us for our hubris and evil. So…” the man gestured out to the abyssal night about them, the souls now further crowding in. They were no longer merely smudges of luminescence, but had, themselves, begun to take human form. Soh could see pained expressions of grief, anger, sorrow, and all the wounds of the world painted across the undulating misty faces about him. The man continued, “We’ve all been damned to roam these wastes for millennia. And the kingdom, well, it’s long since gone too. The king himself suffered worse. Much worse. So much so, I’d not utter his fate even here, even now.”
Soh looked around again. He’d seen right then. Even beyond the thick press about him, he could see thousands of dancing flames lighting the distant desert with soft effusion. ‘Souls.’ He turned back to the old man. He looked far older than when Soh had first sat down. His wrinkles had become yawning canyons across his weary visage. The usual nonchalance with which Soh held himself, slipped. He related. ‘After all, why shouldn’t I? I’m not so different from him, am I?’
“No, I think you’re not, Soh Dumuduru. It’s not easy bearing curses such as those as are ours, no? No. And, of course, the land here itself was stained. It withered. It died. It crumbled. Indeed, the very sands upon which you strode to this place, this, this… oasis of the damned, were formed from the ruins of Serenur’s dwelling place. It’s not easy, Soh, not easy to bear these weights…” his voiced drifted off, dripping with agony and regret.
“No. Not easy,” with a deep inhalation, Soh replied, “But. I have something to say to you, Grandpa. No doubt you failed. No doubt, you made mistakes. No doubt, if this tale really be true at all, you ended your life in evil deed,” Soh paused. What was he saying? Was this ancient man really dead? ‘Am I really sharing a campfire in the middle of the Sand Sea of Azrala’aldin with a dragon slaying spirit and his host?’ He scoffed at himself quietly, then continued.
“Still, you’d made to fight for righteous ends in the first place, right? You’d sought to provide peace and protection; to safeguard lives? And you’d been deceived. Sure. Ignorance is never a perfect defense. But, at least in my mind, it bears weight on the guilt. For, to be deceived, is to be robbed of consent. Without consent, I have trouble seeing the perfection of guilt on a person. I may be wrong, but…” with a soft waver his voice went quiet. Soh thought back to his own past. ‘How can I say such things? Can I mean them even when I can’t think that way about myself? I don’t deserve it… do I?’ He made up his mind, then. ‘Maybe, I don’t, but he does!’
"So, Old Man, I…I forgive you.”
The commander-spirit’s aged hand dropped the skinny tube handle of the gargantuan bone pipe, the pipe that was made, Soh now saw, from the very bones of the dragon-god himself. He clutched his dagger tight with the other hand. He locked eyes with Soh. Tears were freely streaming down his cheeks now. Then, Soh was overwhelmed with drowsiness. The last sight he saw before he passed out, leaning against a palm that had stood watch by his side over their palaver throughout the night, was the growing shine of the congregating spirit-lights in the abyssal desert night and the mass that had crowded in toward the fire drifting off to rejoin their ranks.
His skin was hot. Soh’s eyes snapped open. He found himself laying on his back, half buried in a newly forming brittle dune. With a grunt of effort, he sat up. Sand poured off him, out of his hair, onto his lap. Bits of stone and grit clung to the skin around his eyes and mouth. He looked around. There was nothing but the waves of the sandy sea in every direction. No trees. No water. No oasis. No spirits. Soh was thirsty. He checked his gourd. It was filled to the top with clear water. Eagerly, he took a long pull from it. It was cold water too. He stood.
‘Did I pass out? Was last night all just…delirium?’
As he bent, stretching himself out, trying to get a grip on what had happened, he noticed something peaking out of a pile of rocky pebbles and grains not far off to his right. Stepping over to it, Soh paused for a moment. He recognized it. Then, hurriedly, he fell to his knees, digging the rest of the object out of the heap, clawing and scooping with his bare hands. Glinting in the harsh light of the desert day was the old man’s dagger. The very one that had slain the dragon-god Serenur. ‘Then it was real after all?’
The night had really happened, and the ancient warrior had left something tangible behind for Soh. A token. ‘A gift?’ It was a reminder. It was proof. It was an accusation. It was…‘a shared burden.’
After a moment of hesitation, Soh snatched it up. The weapon that had brought such desolation and sorrow to the world was his weight now.
He took a few minutes to try and get some bearing or a heading. Then Soh, with calloused dirty feet, shrugged his bag up, the ancient dagger hanging from his belt by its scabbard, and walked off into the haze and the heat of the Sand Sea of Alzrala’aldin.
“So, I had wandered the Sand Sea. I had shared the night with the spirits of the damned at the oasis in the heart of the land which was once home to the avatar of light, the dragon-god, Serenur. And I, to this day, carry with me the dagger by which he was slain. Still, I often wonder to myself, could it not have been that Serenur hadn’t been slain so much as that he had willingly lain his life aside? I’ll never know.”
Addendum: “But, in these long years since, I’ve occasionally heard rumors. Some say, now, that flowers have again begun to bloom throughout the Sand Sea of Alzrala’aldin.”