Kall-Su was upset. Kall-Su was babbling about prophesy and ill omens. He was hard to ignore, hovering close enough to feel his unease. He made it damned hard to concentrate on what was occurring in the sands below. The storm had died down. A new dune had been added to the landscape, sucked in by the tremendous winds-- the tremendous force that had exploded from the underground crypt beneath a long buried city. A city buried again, and likely to stay that way for a good long time by the look of it.
"We should go while we can." Kall made so bold as to tug at his sleeve. Annoyed Schneider whipped around to glare at him.
"Will you shut up? We're not going anywhere."
Kall blinked at him, great blue eyes disturbed, fair hair speckled with sand and dust. He'd lost his turban somewhere in the cave in. Schneider's was unraveling around his shoulders. He yanked the end of the cloth, ripping it from his head, letting it flutter aimlessly towards the earth.
He followed its path downwards, and his eye was pulled towards movement across the sands. Small dark figures making their way towards the stationary riders that had come up from the earth. Survivors of the devastation. He wondered if the Moulay were among them. He wondered if this was what the old man had expected. If it was, he had lied to Schneider about the nature of this entombed power. How much of anything they had been told was truth? He certainly had no intention of letting the old man get away with playing him for a fool. He had no intention of not finding out what it was that he had helped release.
He began a downward decent. Almost, he expected Kall-Su to protest, but there was nothing. He touched ground, his boots sinking into loose sand and Kall touched down behind him, silent and wary. The desert men approaching the still riders were indeed the surviving guard of the Moulay. The old man was among them supported between two of his men. He barely looked at Schneider in passing. His rheumy eyes fixed upon the riders.
Warriors, surely. Armed and armored. Black. Everything from the leather and metal of their padding, to the links of chainmail that peeked out beneath cuirass and shoulder pad. Their faces were obscured by helms. Ornate helms formed in the shapes of animals both mythical and real. The only color to the lot of them were the faintly glowing eyes of the horses. Demonic, red eyes that held within their depths a preternatural intelligence.
The riders made no move as the Moulay and his followers approached. The old man fell to his knees in the sand, crying out words of worship and devotion. Of great joy at finally releasing them from their eternal sleep.
Schneider trailed behind him, lingering at the edges of the his men, studying the dark warriors, sensing a great, dormant well-spring of power within them. A quiet power. Controlled and harnessed, so that its depth was deceptive. It annoyed him that he could not delve deeper, that he could not perceive what magics they controlled, what manner of elemental alliances they practiced. What he was certain of, though, was that each and every one of them exuded power, some more, some less than others. He knew which one was the leader, for that one fairly burned with latent energy. That one out of the lot of them released himself from unnatural stillness and urged his mount forward, to stand above the old Moulay.
His helm was the facade of a dragon, horned and long snouted, with metal teeth jutting outwards at angles. He said nothing for a long while, the sound of the Moulay's wavering voice the only sound to pierce the silence after the storm. Then slowly, with the sound of creaking leather , he lifted an arm. The Moulay sputtered into silence, tears of reverence streaming down his wrinkled cheeks.
A voice out of the crypt spoke. Eons of silence made it rusty and hoarse, but it reverberated into a bodies bones with the pure force of persona behind it.
"How long?"
The old man cringed back, clutching his hands to his breast. His men cowered, lowering faces to the sand. Schneider took a breath, feeling the power of it himself and not liking it.
"Five -- five thousand years since you last walked the earth, my lord Ramalah."
The dragon helm continued to stare. A few of the black riders behind it, stirred, uneasy at the suggestion of such a long sleep. "My ancestors have labored to release you for a hundred generations -- we have been loyal ---"
The hand went up again, commanding silence. With a creak of leather and armor the leg swung over the saddle, and a heavy body touched earth. Stood in the sand and stared out over the horizon. Dusk was coming on. The sky was streaked red with its onset. The dragon helmed warrior strode to the top of the dune, past the Moulay's cowering men, past Schneider and Kall-Su and stood looking out over the desert.
"It has changed." He said, his voice carrying. "The world has changed."
"Yes, my lord." The Moulay agreed. "Very much so. It will be my honor to guide you in its new ways."
"Guide?" The helm turned slightly, canting to one side almost in curiosity.
"Wrong thing to say." Schneider whispered, quite, quite interested in what the dragon helm would do. He would have been most offended by the suggestion that anyone guide him in anything.
"I need not the guidance of a decaying mortal."
He didn't even flick a finger. The Moulay was kneeling in the sand one moment, eyes fixed on the lord of the black march, and the next his body turned to grains of glass. A billion grains of sand that held his shape for one moment in time before falling to the ground, filling the indention's left by his knees, blending perfectly with the surrounding sand.
Schneider blinked, patently impressed. It was not a spell he knew. He could melt a body where it stood, but the changing of its basic composition was something else entirely.
The Moulay's men whispered prayers, burying they faces in the sand in abject supplication. The creature summoned out of the buried tomb walked past them, as unconcerned for their existence as he might be for a grain of sand under his boots. He paused in his step, the intricate, demonic face of the helm swinging around in the direction of Schneider and Kall-Su, who stood beyond the kneeling desert men. Neither one of them, regardless of grudging appreciation for the nature of the creature's spells, were inclined to prostrate themselves in the sand. It rather made them stand out amidst all the cowering robed forms.
He moved towards them, a palpable fascination pricked. Schneider could feel the curiosity, the none too subtle probe of interest that washed over him. He repelled it, like he might shake water off an all weather cloak. What the creature, this lord of the Black March thought of his denial of his inquiry, was hidden in the shadow of the helm.
He stopped perhaps five feet from Schneider, and the dragon facade stared pointedly at him. Schneider tilted his head, returning the study. Sending out probes of his own to gauge the type and amount of power that lay within this thing they had released from the sands. His efforts were shuffled aside with as much ease as he'd deflected those used upon himself. He took a breath of annoyance and the master of the Black March spoke.
"What are you?"
"What are you?" Schneider crossed his arms under the fluttering length of his cloak, lifting a black brow caustically.
No answer. The dragon helm shifted through the sand, displacing a great deal of it, as if his weight were considerably more than the physical shape suggested. His regard turned on Kall-Su, which Kall-Su did not like at all. Kall-Su radiated dislike and hostility where Kall-Su was usually unreadable in the direst of situations.
"Pale." The words echoed out of the dragon helm. "Like the sun and the moon."
Schneider sniffed. Talking about their hair again. As if a little variety in this godsforsaken place were the most unspeakable, unimaginable miracle.
"Yeah, and what do you look like under that helm? A thousand year old, dried up corpse, straight from the grave?" it was a taunt from phrasing to tone, because he was tired of this stagnation and wished to evict a little response. He wanted to see what else this creature could do.
No recoil of indignity. No snarl of anger. It turned back to him, drifted close enough to smell the faint staleness of old air and cloying herbs, but nothing of rotting flesh or death. It smelled suspiciously of life and boiling energies.
"You are not a child of the desert. You do not belong here."
"I belong wherever I wish to belong." Schneider's lips twisted up into a arrogant grin. "You're the one who was trapped in that tomb all this time. Careless of you, wasn't it. And it took the efforts of that old man you turned to sand to free you. Why'd he bother? What could you have done for him?"
"You --" the gauntleted hand rose as if to touch a fluttering strand of Schneider's hair. "--Have the tongue of a braying ass."
The fingers closed over a stray lock and Schneider snarled, slapping the offending hand away. He felt the whole of the company beyond swell with power. He felt the dragon helm -- the master of the Black March -- Ramalah, as the old Moulay had called him, ignite with sudden, black indignation.
Schneider did not bother with mouthing the words or summoning an elemental to fuel the strike. He hadn't the time. He pulled straight from his own powerful reserves, performing the duel tasks of creating a shield and launching an offensive strike in the moments between one breath and the next.
Something hit him, like a fist in the chest, even as searing bright lightening smote the earth in front of him where Ramalah stood. The both of them took a step backwards. Wary and suddenly gauging the before unknown abilities of the other. Both of them probably shocked -- at least Schneider was -- that their individual assaults had as little effect as they'd had.
"You dare attack me?" Soft spoken words from the helm.
"That ought to be my line, you armor plated moron."
At which the sands rose up and tried to consume him and he cursed and created a blast that radiated out in all directions around him and hoped in a side portion of his brain that Kall had had the sense to put of shields before this. The sand blasted outwards and more filled its place, much like the waves of the ocean when the damned brother of the sea had attacked him. Only this wasn't the desert reacting to protect one of its own. This was powered solely and completely by the creature standing before him. The creature that had not been moved an inch by his last spell.
He was vaguely aware of the forces lurking behind Ramalah, the not unimpressive power of the Black March, who were circling on their great dark horses like wolves around a still dangerous prey. Something came out of nowhere, slipped past his magical awareness and slammed full force into him. Shield's shattered, body broke. He screamed in more fury than pain, although the pain was intense, and took to the air, hissing the words to the Forbidden Spell as he went, not giving a damn about the hapless desert men down there, who had lent their full will into reviving this thing.
He had a clouded awareness of Kall-Su, shielding, not far from him. Not healed enough for this. Not in his element enough to combat this. Goddamned if Schneider wanted him as a distraction.
"Get the fuck out, Kall!!" All on one indrawn breath between lines of incantation. He didn't have time for more. The last line. The power surged through the conduit that was his physical body and the desert exploded in a white hot mushroom of destruction.
Something came at Kall through a storm that consisted of sand and rock and winds so strong he couldn't easily maintain his position, shield or no. A dark figure on a horse that brought down a sword lancing with energy towards his shields. He snarled the words of a reflective spell and the strike rebounded and smacked the wielded in the chest. Enough to knock him off the horse, but not enough to take him out. Or the ones behind him. Strong wizards, all of them. Not just for show, the minions of the Black March. Kall cried out the words of a concessive energy spell and launched it at the storm obscured figure. That knocked it off its feet and into the even fainter form approaching from beyond it.
Get the fuck out, Kall. Rang in his ears. Indignity that Schneider thought he couldn't hold his own fought with the realistic fear that there was no holding their own, him or Schneider either one, against the odds they faced. These were not hedge wizards. These were not even first rate, but still insubstantial battle mages, who had worked for them during their various campaigns back home. These were damned good, damned powerful --- enigmas, who did not use practical magic or known magic and who did not stay down when felled. And that did not even begin to cover the master of the Black March. He wondered if they were dead. Walking dead, who were immune to physical harm.
What had they raised? What had they raised, that prophesy said might change the world as they knew it?
A blast that shook the earth, that changed the pattern of the storm and threatened to shatter his shields. It slammed him from the air and into the sands and it had not even been directed at him. He had no earthly idea if it had been Schneider's or Ramalah's. The power was flowing so freely that it was all a haze of hissing static in his head.
Something reared over him, dark and sizzling with energy. He shot both hands out and flung a ripping, hard edged swath of corrosive magic. There was the sound of an equine shriek. The first sound he had heard any of those great, black beasts make, and a roar of pure, hatred, agony, loss from the rider who was flung backwards with the charred carcass of the war-horse.
The ground shook again and this time he recognized the scent of Schneider's magic. Momentarily the storm itself was pushed back, all the winds and flying sand concussively blown outwards. For a moment with the air clear of flying matter, he looked up and saw the hovering shapes of Schneider and the Master of the Black March. Then the winds rushed back in to fill the void and with them the dark, ominous shapes of the March, levitating skywards to back their master.
There was a joining of powers. A melding that made the very air seethe with rancid vitality. A union of forces. A concerted effort that lent everything the lesser members of the Black March had to their master.
He might have been on a level with Schneider before -- now one hardly ventured to guess what awesome power he might wield.
The desert felt it though. The desert convulsed and shuddered with it. The earth exploded outwards at the last expulsion of energy and it was all Kall could do to maintain a semblance of a shield. A lot of the residue power got through. It hurt like hell. He shook it off, a little dazed, a little disoriented and looked for the unique magical scent that was Schneider's -- and couldn't find it.
He panicked and forced it back by main will alone. Started to take himself into the air again when he realized the lay of the world had changed. Walls rose up about him as far as the storm allowed him to see. He stretched out his other senses and found himself at the bottom of a mind boggelingly massive crater, dug out of earth and sand and bedrock by that last mighty strike. The strike that might have taken Schneider out along with a great portion of the desert.
He stretched his senses further looking for that spark of familiarity that was Schneider, a spark of magic and life that meant he hadn't been blasted straight back to hell.
And found it somewhere through the storm to the east. He thought it was east. His internal sense of direction was groping desperately for equilibrium. But it was not alone. There were more vital, darker points of power occupying much the same space. The Black March. A dozen or more spots of intense energy and one that fairly radiated might.
And out of his desperate mental search he discovered something else. Something that had been buried too deep beneath hundreds and hundreds of feet of sand and bone dry earth and rock. Water. A great deal of water traveling so far beneath the surface that none of its precious life giving strength could nourish the sands above. But the explosion that had created the crater had removed much of that barrier.
Gods, it might very well lend him an advantage he had not had before, withering in the waterless hell of the desert. Most of his spells were ice based and without even the source of water in the air, he had no fuel to cast them. He had given up on the possibility of calling the elementals that before had responded so readily -- none of them would dare the desert and even if they had, the arid heat would have made short work of them. But with a source of water he could utilize his own repertoire of spells.
He headed towards the spark that was Schneider, reaching through the bedrock as he did, calling up everything he had to breach that solid obstacle and feeling the stretch inside him -- in the mental circuitry that channeled magic -- of scar tissue protesting. Almost healed. Almost recovered from the mutilation left by the Prophet -- but he hadn't truly tested the bounds of that restoration. Had not expanded the muscle to the point that the scars were shed.
Little choice now but to make the effort. Not to would mean sure death. It burned, like a brand inside his head. He ignored it. Furiously called upon the spell he wanted and forced it to seek the fuel it needed. Demanded it draw to the surface that which it needed.
He passed by the first of the Black March, ignoring them, visibly blind to them from the furor of the storm. Some of the lesser ones reached out for him and he avoided the testing strikes, concentrating on his own spell. He felt that which was Schneider ahead. Listing. Exuding no offensive magic, just the low hum of internal energy that always surrounded him -- always protected him to some subconscious degree.
There. Half buried in the sand, a glint of silver. And hovering above the seething cauldron of power that was the master of the Black March. Kall-Su skidded to the earth next to Schneider, extending his shields to take in that limp, bloody flesh. Wrapped his arms about Schneider's upper body to drag him out of the sand. And Ramalah stared down dispassionately, the storm parting to veer around him, as if the windblown debris was afraid to defile his person. The gauntleted hand lifted and the beginnings of power radiated from it.
Kall-Su screamed forth his final demand of the spell he'd been creating and the earth heaved under him. The sand coated bedrock split with a deafening shattering crack and jagged, building sized spears of ice thrust into the air, defiling the heat and the desert storm with their very presence. Razor sharp points impaled unsuspecting bodies. There was fear and shock at this sudden apparition that sprang forth from the very earth itself. This cold death that the desert had never known.
The earth beneath him split and Kall shot airwards, taking Schneider with him, a sheet of ice severing his view of the master of the Black March.
It wouldn't last. The heat worked too diligently to destroy what he had created. It took more effort and concentration than he had at the moment to maintain it. So he fled, diverting some of his strength into covering their tracks, obliterating the mental and magical signature that would lead their enemy to them.
In the distance something slammed against his working and the backlash hit him like a hammer blow in the head. He let go the spell entirely, stunned from the power of that which had tried to break it. Into the sand again, but this time the air was clear, the storm centered around the crater and what had been the ancient city. He still clutched Schneider in his arms, limp and bloody and breathing erratically. Kall shivered, tightening his hold, pressing his cheek into blood and sand matted silver hair. Trying to calm his own breathing and to reinforce the aura of invisibility that he had begun to weave around them.
When he thought it a solid, unbreechable thing, he let himself relax marginally, let his hold loosen somewhat upon Schneider. Made himself settle back into the shifting support of sand and look for what damage had been done to the other wizard. He regretted that healing was the least of his arcane talents. He very badly wanted Schneider awake and aware. Even a weak, battered Schneider was better than no Schneider at all. If he didn't bounce up and insist on flying back into the face of adversity. Kall would not put such insanity beyond him. When matters of ego came into play Dark Schneider was not always at his most rational.
There was a shifting in the sand behind him. He spun, letting Schneider fall out of his grasp, a spell on the tip of his tongue. It was a tattered, stunned looking desert traveler. A mortal one and a familiar one. The traitorous little guide, Abu, struggled through the sands, hardly aware that he staggered towards them. Kall was frankly amazed that he had survived the destruction of the city, much less the resulting war of magics.
"Allah --- Allah --" the man was muttering under his breath, then his eyes drifted up from the ground at his feet and happened upon Kall-Su and Schneider. Those dark, lined eyes widened in shock.
"Blessed Allah, you live."
Kall glared at him. "No thanks to you and yours. You fool, do you know what you've raised?"
Slowly the little man shook his head. He wrung his hands furiously, to still the shaking. "Not me. It was not my dream. I merely followed the directions of my master. I had no notion -- no idea what dwelled beyond those runes. I should have guessed --oh Allah, I should have guessed -- from what hints the inscription in Meshed gave. What have we loosed upon the world?" he moaned and fell to his knees, pressing his face into the sands, as if such humility would grant him absolution.
His whimpering irritated Kall-Su's already abused nerves. They were not far enough away from the quickly dwindling storm. He needed to move, yet to sit in the sand with no more draw upon his power than the shield was comfortable. Calling the winds to carry himself and Schneider aloft seemed a wearisome chore.
"Meshed? Is that where you found the inscriptions telling how to raise these --things?"
Abu motioned assent without raising his face from the sand. Kall sniffed. "And did these oh so informative inscriptions tell how the ancients put the Black March to rest in the first place?" It was uttered as a sardonic derision, a vent for his frustration.
Abu lifted his brown head, his eyes suddenly glittering with expectancy. "Yes, my most exulted djinn lord, they did."
Kall blinked at him, then shook his head. "I don't care. Gods, I truly don't care. I just want away from here. I want to find my woman."
"But great djinn, if there is a way to ---"
"Its not my problem." Kall hissed, "If they consume the whole of this desert I care not."
"I care." Low, ominous voice from below him. He whirled and stared down into Schneider's slowly blinking, blue eyes. Blood ran down from a cut on his scalp, creating a lacing pattern of red across the bridge of his nose and down one sharp cheek.
"DS." Kall whispered. He didn't ask if he were all right. Even if he weren't, Schneider would make himself whole in short order. It was his nature. You don't care." He insisted still soft spoken, putting all his powers of persuasion behind that insistence. "You don't care about any of these people. You hardly care for the people back home."
With a grunt, Schneider pushed himself to a sitting position. He swayed and reached out a hand to clutch at Kall's shoulder. Left the hand there, fingers biting hurtfully into Kall's flesh.
"I care about sending him back to hell." Just as whispery a voice. But his eyes blared indignation and fury.
"Are you completely daft?" this time Kall's voice rose an octave. He shook his shoulder out from under Schneider's grip and leaned forward to glare. "He beat you. You'd be dead now if we hadn't run."
"They. They did it. Not him alone. I almost had him, Goddamnit. Those fucking cheaters. They lent him their power."
"And they can do it again. I can't pull you out again when they do. Do you understand?"
"How did he do it. Draw their power and use it for his own?" Schneider's look grew contemplative, wondering at an ability he'd never contemplated before. Kall-Su felt a prying touch at the edge of his mind. Schneider lurking around looking for a channel to siphon his power from him. He reacted blindly, in panic, striking out physically when he hadn't the energy left to strike out magically. The back of his hand caught Schneider across the face with enough force to send him toppling back into the sands.
"Stay out." He snarled. "I will have no other hand in my head ever again. Not you. Not anyone."
He expected retaliation, but instead Schneider merely lay there, one hand going to the new trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, his eyes gone hazy and thoughtful. Calm. Too calm for Kall-Su's peace of mind.
"You're right." He finally said. "I can't just go and take him head on while he has the Black March behind him. This might require some thought." He scowled at that, never much one for tactical planning when it came right down to his power against an opposing force. There had historically been damn few opposing forces that came close to giving him a challenge.
"I think I want to go to this place where these inscriptions are and see what they have to say."
"Meshed is very far away, oh great djinn." Abu said helpfully. Far, far to the east of here."
"How far?"
"Many, many weeks travel under the best of circumstances."
"Damn. And I don't even have my djinni."
At which utterance, the wind stirred a great deal of sand and they all put up hands to shield their eyes, and then in a swirling gust of sand and colored smoke, the curvaceous figure of the djinni in question appeared and flung herself directly into Schneider's arms, wailing and crying as if she had personally brought about the end of the world. Which, considering, might not be that far from the truth.