Chapter TWs: Mentions of death, sun poisoning, general injuries.
Breathing is an entirely new sensation. The feeling of air being pulled in and pushed out of the chest, to and from the nostrils, comes so naturally that one would hardly even notice it. It is a common, insignificant experience, but one he is not accustomed to. His first breaths are filled with burning sands that rage in his throat, tearing into the flesh with what feels like a million shards of glass. The pain is like nothing he has ever felt and he feels weak. Regardless, the pain, this new sensation, is welcomed gratefully and he slips out from under the sands with clawing hands, digging into the ground and grasping for freedom.
The sun beats down onto his back, baking it under the heat and threatening to crack apart the new flesh. His body feels as if there is a vice squeezing around him, drawing his flesh against him so tightly that he fears he may collapse under the pressure.
This unimaginable torture though? This is good.
It means he is alive. Back in the land of the living, as it were, and this is an opportunity he intends to enjoy to its fullest extent. An enjoyment that can only be truly fulfilled once he is seated at his rightful place on the throne of Persia, while a certain false prince lays before him, bloodied and broken; dead, preferably.
Finally, with far more effort than one may expect, he pushes himself free from the blanket of sand that rests upon his back and shoulders. The shimmering of the sand obstructs the scenery around him for a moment – the same moment he takes to gasp for another lungful of fresh air—before once more settling itself below him. Falling forward, his palms rest flat on the ground, keeping him steady as he attempts to take in the variety of new sensations wracking his body.
Sand continues to slide down his shoulders and stick to the wetness of his skin; the feeling tickles him and his sides quake as the coarse powder runs across him. He stirs again and below him his hands and knees feel the pinpricks of pain as the small rocks cut into his flesh. After a moment, he notices how dry his throat is, how hard it is to take each new breath, and how much the pain is growing by the second.
He wonders if this is what it feels like to die.
He tries to think back to the sensations he had only known for fleeting moments in a time that seemed to have taken place millennia ago, sensations that had not been ones for him to experience, but those he had felt the ghosts of when his royal host had been careless. From what little he knows of these fragile forms, those feelings had been nothing like those that he felt now.
He refuses to return to the darkness. He refuses to know death again.
As he pushes himself up and onto his legs, his muscles scream for mercy and his heart—he could almost laugh at the very notion that he has a heart—pounds with a force that makes him worry it shall burst from his ribs and shrivel up on the hot sand that surrounds him. He steps forward. One foot, then the other, and then the first foot again. So it repeats. He walks forward, trusting his new form to guide him to shelter, towards anything that will ease his pains, and tries his best not to think about what will happen to him should that trust be misplaced.
When evening arrives, he finds himself once more buried beneath the dirt. The air has begun to cool, but his skin burns as if the sun has settled itself within it. Now, exhaustion has beaten his stubbornness and he fears that he shall meet oblivion so soon after some foolish god seems to have granted him this generous gift.
He is barely conscious when a passing trader drags him from the sands and pours water down his throat. He is unable to register the irony that the very thing he hates is also what saves his life in one short moment. His world swirls around him as the unknown man talks and questions, tries to get some sort of response out of the life he has just saved. He is unconscious by the time they are through the gates of Babylon.
In what seems to be a twist of fate, the Dark Prince is brought into the gates of the great city he intends to conquer and destroy.