Chapter 23 - Rammani-Thuul Eternal Emperor of the Sand Sea

Nothing.

There was nothing.

Just a soup of warm, inky, primordial blackness. Wrapped in a blanket of it. Fuzzy darkness lined with faint pulses of pink light around the edges. There was a hazy sensation of movement. Floating. It felt like he was gently drifting down a stream. Cradled by a hundred tiny hands. Everything was warm and wet, soft as syrup.

His consciousness felt as miniscule and insignificant as a grain of sand. A bubble of foam on a wave in the surf, in an ocean with waves beyond counting. He was a tiny spark of awareness, safe and secure in a protective bubble insulated from the raw, throbbing horror of existence. Here, he was anointed in the absolution from self.

Here, he didn’t have to think. Not if he didn’t want to. He didn’t have to do anything anymore.

Ever…

Memory, thought, feeling… all seemed like strange abstractions. Devilish words that only brought trouble with them. He tried to stop thinking about thinking, but there was a gnawing feeling nagging at the back of his mind. Itching like a spider bite. A pebble in a shoe. A thorn in his fingertip. A sore in the roof of his mouth. Something he knew he should be doing. Something he knew he should be worried about.

It was somewhere much deeper, in a chest at the bottom of the ocean. A shard of jagged glass wrapped in a cloth and stuffed away, so he didn’t have to look at it. A tiny wrapped up parcel of importance.

Curiosity bade him to open it, to pluck at the thread binding it together. Pulling on the string was a mistake. A ray of searing white light thrust into the sanctuary of his dark embryonic shell. He wanted to flee, wanted to scurry back into the darkness like a cockroach, but everything was flooded with blinding light. The brightness made him feel queasy, vulnerable, and exposed. He changed his mind, already filled with instant regret. He didn’t want to know any more. He didn’t want to remember. He wanted to put it back, but it was too late now. Inside was a jagged piece of reflective glass. A mirror.

A somber face stared back at him in the reflection with sobering clarity. It brought with it the alien concept of a name.

Did he have a name? He hoped not. He didn’t think he wanted one.

Too late… A single word bubbled up to the forefront of his consciousness like rotten sewage. Malfus. It clung to him like an oily stain. The more he tried to wipe himself clean of it, the more it smeared all over him. It’s never coming off now. Malfus. It left a bitter taste in his mouth.

He tried to throw the piece of glass away, but he couldn’t. It was manacled around his wrists, chained to him like an anchor. He wasn’t floating anymore. He was sinking. The sudden change in direction made more of his memory flood back to him. The last thing he remembered was falling. Falling and pain. The hands that had been carrying him were covering his mouth now. Choking him. Pulling him down. He tried to shout, but he couldn’t breathe. A dull roar filled his ears, growing louder and louder.

He sputtered and coughed, choking for air. The burden of breathing firmly bestowed back upon him.

Malfus groaned as he washed up on a shore of red sand. Gentle, lapping waves caressed his cheek, like a mother’s embrace, trying to pull him back down to the inky abyss, but the coarse sands of existence ground against his face, refusing to let him go so easily.

Malfus pushed himself up. Memories trickled back into the cracks of his fractured mind. His hands instinctively grabbed at his chest, tearing through his sopping wet clothes. There was no dagger sticking from his chest anymore. He pulled his shirt up just to be sure. No wound and no pain.

“Where is it?”

Malfus grasped frantically around in the sand. There was no sign of the rod anywhere. He grabbed a handful of sand, feeling it slip through his fingers. Tiny red jewels. Like miniscule beads of glass. Is this a dream, or am I really dead this time?

He stood up and looked at the ocean behind him. A sea of blood stretched out, vast and eternal. Hungry waves licked at the shores. Above him, the crimson sky looked like a big red wound.

Malfus turned away from the ocean and saw rolling dunes of red sand yawning out in the distance until they turned into mountains and peaks the color of copper and rust, scraping up at the sky like hungry knives. Far above, a giant eight-pointed star sat at the top of the sky.

“Hello!”

His voice echoed in the distance. The voice that echoed back at him sounded cold and mocking. Hollow. Alone.

His clothes were coarse and clammy, clinging to him like a lizard’s skin. Malfus brushed off the jeweled sand that encrusted his sopping wet clothes, then started walking.

As vast and endless as everything seemed, there was a claustrophobic curtain that seemed to hang over it all. It was like some strange trick of the senses, like holding up two mirrors next to one another. Each step was disconcerting. Everything felt numb and distant, like the echo of a dream. As isolated as he felt, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.

Was this really death? It wasn’t at all what he expected the plane of death to look like. He figured it would be… darker, blacker, not so red at least. Perhaps just the antechamber of the afterlife.

Malfus continued walking toward the mountains in the distance, uncertain of why. Uncertain of much of anything. He felt like he just woke from a long slumber, surrounded by distant dreams. But as soon as he tried to reach out for any of the fragments, they slipped away, slimy as an eel in the water. He tried to think, tried to remember. He remembered his name. He remembered the searing pain from a knife and falling, but he couldn’t remember what led up to that. He knew there was more scratching below the surface, but his memory felt strange and tenuous here. As shifting as the sands beneath his feet.

The sands in front of him kept stretching out forever. The jagged mountains seemed no closer than they had before. Malfus turned and looked over his shoulder, and saw the ocean separated by only a few sand dunes. Surely, he must have walked farther than that. It felt like so much longer. The white star crossed in the sky seemed to follow him as he walked, as if it were watching him.

In the corner of his eye, he saw something in the distance, floating above the ground. A black spot, like a hole in the world. It filled him with a strange sense of purpose. Malfus changed his direction and continued walking toward the sphere of darkness in the distance. Felt like it should be hot, but there was no heat. No discomfort. Even in his wet clothes, there was no cold. Temperature seemed to be absent from this place. He had no reason to stop, either. He wasn’t tired. Wasn’t thirsty or sore. He just… was. He continued on, unabated.

“Kaylee?”

The void in the distance triggered something inside him, a string of memories.

Vague images of the mage academy of Akkadia flashed in his mind. He was a wizard… a necromancer. But who was Kaylee? Why had he said that name?

A vague, cloudy recollection sharpened until a beautiful face stared back at him from his memories. Raven hair with the slightest of waves. Green eyes still bright with hope. She had been a wizard too. He remembered that. She pointed at him with an outstretched, accusatory finger. Then she faded away until all that remained was a finger pointing at his soul.

Shame burned his cheeks. Guilt weighed down on his shoulders. There was something in the back of his mind where the finger was pointing. Something in a box he didn’t want to see, locked away even though he held the key. The bloated corpse of the past trying to rise to the surface.

In the distance, above the black hole, an ominous grouping of clouds formed, charcoal with underbellies-tinged red. Streaks of silent lightning, black as the void arced in spiderwebs above the clouds instead of below. It was as if they were clawing against the edge of the sky, trying to escape. Malfus ignored the darkening clouds and continued on.

The winds began to pick up. Plumes of red, glittering dust skittered and whipped along the dunes in front of him. Before long, the wind was howling and shrieking like a lover scorned.

Billowing clouds of sand that appeared as tall as the mountains rose up in front of him, obscuring the black hole. Voluminous curtains of sand approached him like a towering colossus, slow and steady, orange like a funeral pyre. He gritted his teeth and held his hand over his eyes as the coarse sand blew in his face. He pulled his sand-encrusted shirt over his mouth and nose so he could still breathe. The unrelenting sands whipped at his face, eroding away the walls of his walking amnesia. He remembered the giant, the gnolls, the fort and soldiers… the Inquisitor… whipping him in the face harder than the biting sands.

Was he still alive? If he was, he knew had to get back to help the soldiers. Or do I? If he was dead, his undead would all be unbound and would attack everything living, both the soldiers and the gnolls. Maybe none of it mattered anymore. Ennui’s gnawing voice told him to just sit down here and let the sands cover him. Free from torment from the Inquisitor. Free from the threat of the gnolls.

What was there to even go back to? Just an endless, scathing sea of unfulfilled desires. Where you’re always wanting things from people who didn’t want to give them. Where you need money just to survive. Full of things not done, tasks not finished, words left unsaid, mistakes never made right. A bog of rotting hopes and unfulfilled dreams.

The thread of his life had become a tangled mess. It was like pulling on a string that unraveled a ball of tiny but endless disappointments. He was a fugitive on the run from the Vesenian Inquisition, for a murder he didn’t commit and for practicing necromancy, and the real crime of it was that he wasn’t even a very good one.

He had no idea what direction he was going anymore. The object he had seen earlier had disappeared behind the sheets of sand. Malfus was about to give up and stop right there, but the frustrations from the stinging sand didn’t care whether he stopped or kept going.

Then he heard singing, ethereal and otherworldly. It had an inhuman aesthetic to it that sounded like a musical instrument as much as a voice, transcending the limitations of human flesh. It was still undeniably feminine, soft as silk but as sharp as the cutting sands. It raised the hairs on his arm and neck.

Malfus changed direction, following the beacon of sound in the torrential sand. The only landmark in the blinding storm.

The haunting melody brought the joy of something fondly remembered, but the pain of knowing you’ll never hold it again. It brought Malfus a deep sense of longing, for Kaylee, for things he knew he’d never have in a world that would never give them to him. The words were in some language that he not only didn’t know; he had never even heard before.

He wasn’t sure if the siren song was promising an oasis from the storm, or if it was a leading him into a trap. Like the plants that lured insects to their death with honeyed scents.

He continued toward the distant song. It seemed as if it was calling just to him, singing to him alone. Who else could it be for?

Malfus kept pushing through the wall of sand. It grew more impregnable the louder the singing got. Malfus raised his hand to shield his eyes from the harsh winds and pressed on. Just when he thought he could go no further, the sands cleared so abruptly that he fell, stumbling to his knees. He stood up and brushed himself off, then looked over his shoulder, but there was no sign of any storm at all. Just calm, endless red dunes behind him. He looked for the source of the singing, but it was gone, along with the winds. Both were replaced with a venerable silence, like the inside of a temple, the eye of a storm, or the mouth of a dragon’s lair.

In front of him, red tiles made a path through the sand, with pillars of red stone that lined it, leading to a raised dais. It was the first sign of any life since he awoke into this endless desert. He walked down the path until the red stone steps of the dais lay ahead of him. On top was a chaise lounge, brocaded in red silk and velvet, ornate furniture fit for royalty. There was an altar at the center of the dais, a lustrous red bowl filled with blood. However, all of it was covered in a thin layer of unimportance compared to the figure reclining on the lounge.

A goddess, with black skin tinged with the slightest blue, like a moonless midnight sky. She reclined, but sat proud and regal, like a statue. She sat there as if she hadn’t moved for an eternity.

Malfus squinted and kept walking closer. Her undeniably feminine silhouette seemed to eat the light around it. Her dark skin was even more striking because of the red that bathed everything here.

She propped herself up, resting her hand underneath her chin as she watched Malfus continue walking. At first, it surprised him when she moved. She appeared so pristine and perfect, her features so exact and symmetrical, he still had doubts she could be real. She looked like someone had carved her features from onyx, after being imagined by one thousand of a kingdom’s finest artists and sculptors, not simply grown in a womb like the rest of us humans. She was undeniably human, but her beauty was a rival for even elven standards.

Her face was full and heart-shaped, with high cheekbones. Her eyebrows were exquisitely arched black lines that added a shadow of mystery to her angled, almond eyes, red as rubies. Sitting below cheekbones as sharp as a scorpion’s stinger kiss were shiny, glistening, full lips that expressed the faintest hint of a smile at the corners, as if she were expecting a joke to be told. She had a bald, cleanly shaven head, as lustrous as a black pearl, only adding to her statuesque appearance.

As Malfus continued up the steps, she stood up. She was tall for a woman. The same height as Malfus, perhaps an inch or two taller, but it was impossible to tell from this angle. She wore a sapphire gossamer gown. The sheer fabric clung to her skin and left little to the imagination. The cloth was embroidered with tiny gems that shone like stars in a night sky. As the folds of cloth moved, the mosaic pattern of gems seemed to stay in place, while new patterns emerged as she walked. Malfus watched in amazement. The fabric of her dress appeared to be a curtain of the cosmos itself, showing another dimensional space through it.

He was less than a dozen paces away from her now. She stared at him, her ruby eyes fixed on him, hungry like a predator as she waited for him to say something. She said nothing and began walking toward him. Just strides away now. She moved with both the calculated grace of a spider and the strength and assuredness of a hunting cat. Each delicate step had a hidden power that looked like she could pounce forward in a single bound and devour him.

“You took your time getting here… Have a lot on your mind?”

Her voice was thick and husky, like smoke from a muzat pipe in the back of a seedy inn, promising the same excitement and danger. She spoke the same language as Malfus, but her accent was different from anything than he’d had ever heard before. Even in a busy port town like Akkadia, where every culture from inside the Ossory Empire, and several from outside of it, come to trade, mixing and simmering together like a pot of badly flavored stew. It was strange and exotic, reminding him of hints from some of the accents that came through Akkadia’s harbor. It almost sounded like the Ornajellian perfume and oil merchants, or the Kendreatic tea merchants, perhaps with a hint of the strange spice merchants from the Vitreoun Isles to the far east of the Ossory Empire. It was like all of those and yet something else entirely.

He opened his mouth to speak, to say something, anything, instead of standing there like a mute idiot, but suddenly words seemed so meaningless. All his trivial questions sounded so childlike and impotent in his mind.

“Who are you?” His mouth fumbled out the words clumsy as a drunk stumbling out of a bar.

“Who am I?”

She laughed, then took another step towards Malfus. Close enough that he felt his skin tingle. Close enough that he was aware his breath had quickened in his throat.

She leaned her head back. “I am Rammani-Thuul Eternal Empress of the Sand Sea.” She announced it as if there had been fanfare playing. With the way she carried herself and said it, perhaps there should have been.

“Wait? You are the ancient necromancer tyrant that ruled over the Al-Umbra Empire for over a thousand years?”

“The one and the same.”

Malfus looked perplexed.

“Don’t believe me…”

“It’s just that the books said…” Malfus paused, searching for the right words. “I guess history and… I always thought you were a man.”

“Most men do.” She smiled. Ivory white teeth shining like pearls between her full, black lips. It felt like a viper showing off its fangs to a rodent, a before dinner smile.

“But if you were him, er, her… that means…” Malfus began counting on his fingers. “The Al-Umbra Empire has been dust for over two thousand years.” Shock, worry, and fear made Malfus’s breath come in quick gasps. “Is this the afterlife? Are we dead? Where are we?”

“Slow down, darling. One question at a time. Don’t want too much excitement to spoil you prematurely.” She chuckled. “No, this isn’t the afterlife. I am dead, but you are not, at least… not yet. As for where we are… do you not already know? You are a necromancer. Have you not figured it out yet?”

“The rod…” Malfus whispered, realization sinking in. “You are a lich. The rod, it wasn’t just a magic artifact… it was your phylactery.”

“Bratan!” She clapped her hands together, then paused as she saw Malfus’s confusion at the word. “That means excellent in my tongue, darling.”

Malfus remained silent as the dawning realization of everything sank in. “So, I’ve been carrying you around with me the entire time. Ever since I found your rod? It was actually… you?”

“Perhaps that soggy sponge inside your skull will be of some marginal use to us after all.”

“If you really are her, what should I call you exactly? Eternal Empress of the Sand Sea? The Scorpion of Vespertine? The Butcher of the Blood Coast? The Scourge of the Southern Sands? You have gone by many names.” Malfus’s voice was speckled with sarcasm, tinged with doubt.

Her eyes narrowed like slivers of glass reflecting firelight. She lunged forward with the power of a dragon inches away from Malfus’s face.

“You may call me Ramma… but only because you still remain in my good graces.” A demure, but threatening smile crossed her face, but behind her eyes, Malfus saw a touch of sorrow. “But let me ask you, do you know what Thuul means?”

Malfus shrugged his shoulders and offered a blank look back.

“Thuul means slave in Umbranese. I was a slave. Born into it. Simply because my mother was born into it. As was her mother before her. Al-Umbra was always a dark place. Long before my reign over it.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Do not presume to judge my methods or my past without knowing its entirety.” Her voice was as sharp as the biting sand. “Truly, you of all people should know that.”

The truth of her words stung him, and he sought to talk about something else. “Why am I here?”

“You were a poor, stray kitten that showed up on my doorstep.” She made an expression that was unctuous with fake sympathy. “What am I to do? Just let you die there? My phylactery has enough space to house such a tiny soul as yourself, too. So… I took you in.”

“Well then, what are you going to do with me? What happens next?”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk… one of those straight to business types. Don’t be such a bore. Every woman enjoys a bit of foreplay. It’s never fun if you just rush in and end things too… quickly.” She paced around Malfus, just out of reach. Each movement was as graceful as a cat, but as hungry as a circling vulture.

“If you are who you say you are, I doubt I’m just here on your good graces. I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need me for something… unless you’re just playing with your food.”

“You are indeed a tasty little morsel.” She sauntered towards him like a snake, putting her hand on his cheek. Her hand was cold as marble. “But as flattering as it is to keep talking about me, why don’t we talk about you and what you want.”

She fixed him with this knowing look that seemed to know more about him than he did. Which wasn’t hard at this point with his fractured memories still coming back together, like a shattered mirror.

“I’ve seen you struggling, young Malfus. You aren’t a failure. You are too hard on yourself.” Her voice was soft, with genuine empathy. Malfus swallowed and tried to look away, but her gaze fixed into his, searing into him.

“Who can blame you? You haven’t had a proper instructor in necromancy, the so-called black arts. It isn’t your fault the insignificant are so afraid of it. Imagine… even an academy of wizards afraid to touch an entire school of magic. Wizards afraid of their own shadows. What has this world come to since I left it?” She shook her head, then fixed him with that piercing, hungry gaze again. “I can offer you true power… knowledge and proper instruction.”

Malfus had to think about it. Truly, it was what he wanted more than anything. Necromancy was the one thing in his miserable life he had an ounce of aptitude for. He wasn’t a prodigy by any means, but he had found more of a talent for necromancy than anything else. If he had a mentor, especially one of the most infamous necromancers ever known, there was no telling what he was capable of. Then he could finally find a way to restore her, but he had to know for sure… had to see if there was a chance.

“When they called you the Eternal Emperor, er… Empress.”

“Yes?” Her eyes narrowed, a dark cloud of impatience settled over her countenance, reminding Malfus of the storm clouds pregnant with black lightning.

“Was it true you ruled for over nine-hundred years by bathing in the blood of those you conquered? Can necromancy really be used to extend natural life without undeath involved? Can it… can it call someone’s soul back from the plane of death?”

She sighed impatiently, then looked away as if she were bored. “Oh yes… your little finger girl… what is she to you? Is she the first girl you ever managed to get your fingers wet in… then you killed her and took her finger as a trophy?” She tittered. “That’s a weird kink if I’ve ever seen one, and I’ve been around for quite some time.”

Malfus’s face flushed several different shades of red, adding several never-before-seen hues to this crimson-saturated world. “No! It’s not like that. It was just…” Malfus said louder than he had intended, struggled as he tried impotently to find the right words. “Look, I just want to fix a mistake I made and let’s leave it at that.”

She looked at her fingernails, seeming uninterested. She sighed and then looked Malfus up and down. Getting the measure of him as if he were a cow, and she was a butcher at the market.

“Yes, it can be done. But… necromancy is so much more than that.”

She fixed him with a look, a thin veneer of patience stretched over annoyance. A look Malfus had gotten from many of his instructors in Akkadia.

“Listen… your first lesson will also be the last lesson once you fully understand it. And once you understand it, there are no more lessons for me to teach you. With all magic, everything is just a path up the same mountain. Just as a high priest can kill with the power of positive energy, so can a vile necromancer use entropic energy to control the forces of life.”

Malfus said nothing, absorbing it all.

“Energy is energy. You will see. I will show you what I know… if you let me.” She approached him seductively, her waist seemed to move as if her spine was made from twine instead of bone.

Malfus crossed his arms, trying to break his gaze from her seductive hips. “And just what do you want in return? Only a fool thinks anything is free.”

“Oh, nothing much… Just a little help… and a body.” She turned slowly before him, spinning just out of his reach, but close enough for him to smell her. “Sadly, this beautiful form you see before you is just a memory. It is a tragedy for all the men of the world… and for countless women, but my body has long since aged to dust. I’ll need a new one if I’m ever going to set foot out of this cage again.”

Before Malfus could consider the implications of this, she continued.

“Speaking of bodies.” She walked over to the altar in the middle of the dais. An ubiquitous construction that looked like little more than a birdbath made from red stone and filled with what appeared to be blood.

Malfus swallowed as he approached the pedestal, unsure he wanted to see what she was about to show him. She waved her hand over the liquid, which made it turn silvery like mercury. An image slowly appeared after the ripples stopped. His broken body was lying on the side of the cliffs on top of the giant.

“You are a bit worse for wear, but I can still heal you. You will need to decide quickly, though.”

Malfus looked at the broken form lying on the cliff on top of the dead giant. “Will I be undead?” Malfus’s voice cracked.

She put her hand to her mouth as she tittered. “Nothing quite so fancy… not yet… at least, not if we don’t hurry.” She paused, as if thinking whether to say the next words. “There is a price, though. When necromancy is used to heal the body, your life force is borrowed from the other end of your life. Shortening your candle’s wick… as it were, but I’m sure you have plenty to spare.” She looked down, then winked at him. “So, do we still have a deal?”

Malfus swallowed. “Alright, so if I agree…”

“Then I get you back into your body, fix it, solve your little giant problem, get rid of the gnoll infestation, then… you just need to find me one… little… body.”

“A new body?”

“What’s the point of living forever if you can’t change your wardrobe now and then? In exchange, I will save your life. And I’ll even teach you some necromancy along the way. What do you say… my little pupil? All for a single corpse.”

“Why haven’t you just stolen mine from me already?”

She tutted her lips together in mock hurt. “You think I would do such a thing?”

Malfus nodded.

She smiled. Every time she did, the expression made Malfus feel like she was about to bite him in half. “It’s not so simple. There is a ritual involved to get me into a new body that I can’t do on my own. And besides, as handsome as you are…” Her icy hand caressed Malfus’s jaw. “I prefer to stay a woman. So you’ll need to find me a new one.” She looked at Malfus’s pensive face, drawn with indecision. “I’ll need your word, though, and don’t take too long thinking.” She motioned to the reflection of his body on the pedestal. “If you don’t decide soon, we will have to consider other alternatives for bringing you back. This is one of those, what are they called… limited-time offers.”

Malfus hesitated, wondering if that meant he would have to kill someone to get her a new body, or how many people she would kill if she was unleashed back upon the world for a second time. Then he looked at his own body and thought of the soldiers that still remained alive. What choice do I have?

“Alright… I’ll do it.”

“Bratan!” She smiled her hungry smile again and leaned closer.

“Just a warning though… before we get this party started. If you even think about betraying me or forget what we agree to here… Do not doubt my vengeance. I have drank the blood of thousands of my enemies whose names I’ve forgotten, and countless more souls with names I never knew. For those that have truly vexed me, let’s just say… immortality and necromancy afford artistic freedoms for torture that a mortal can only dream of… and I’ve dreamt for thousands of years. Even still, I can’t imagine what I would do to you if you tried to betray me after I help you.”

Malfus swallowed again, unsure of what to say to that. Unsure of what anyone could say to that.

“Oh, and one more thing. When you go back, I can’t promise there won’t be any… pain.”

Malfus swallowed. “W-what do you mean?”

“You are the one who said they wanted to stay living, didn’t you? Pain is part of the package, baby. Besides, there is no pleasure that isn’t sweetened with a little pain.”

She approached closer still to Malfus. The hungry look in her lips spread to her eyes. A dark, wordless yearning smoldered in Malfus’s chest as she approached.

“Just as I have made some room for you in here. You will make a little room for me inside your vessel when you return. There will be a little bit of me… inside you.” She whispered, grabbing Malfus by his hips and pulling him against her. He felt the cold press of her body against his.

She leaned in and kissed him with wet, full lips. A hungry kiss that left Malfus’s passions yearning for more as soon as she stopped. Then she slapped Malfus across the cheek, sending him reeling back. He glared up at her in surprise.

“Don’t keep me waiting… lover boy.”

Before Malfus could say another word, the red sands below him opened up and swallowed him whole.