The little guide, Abu, had never in all his life been so afraid. He had been many things in his forty years. Thief, trader, guide, merchant, slaver, assassin on occasion, translator and most recently the running dog of the Moulay, whom the demon sent company outside had killed in a most disturbing manner. He had never quite had the faith the Moulay had, that what they sought would be anything more than ancient runes, holding ancient relics. He had certainly never expected the Black March. Djinn as a rule were unpredictable, unsavory beings and he'd rather have nothing to do with any of them for love or money. But of course money held a draw that love and loyalty did not and for a great deal of it, he had tracked down the charmingly curved, spitefully tongued Djinni that had bypassed the seal that kept the March imprisoned. And with her had come the two foreign Djinn, who had been frightening at first, but upon comparison with the Al-Zafif Al-Asouad, were by far the lesser of two evils.
So much so, that he hesitated not to lay hands upon the long, inert form of the Al-Mookamir, the one with the moonlit hair and shake with some vigor. That one did not move. It was as if he were dead already, strikingly handsome planes of his face in peaceful repose, black lashes a stark contradiction against pale flesh.
Outside he could hear the strangely muffled sounds of the storm, though no wind wormed its way into the interior of the mastaba. The other one was out there, facing his death at the hands of the March. Daring to stand in their way. Abu wouldn't have cared, it meant one less djinn to deal with after all, save that the slumbering one would take great offense and might very well take out his vengeance on poor Abu. He had no notion where the djinni, Malice, was. Sulking somewhere, he supposed after a spat with the sun haired one.
The ceiling shook and bits and pieces of rubble fell down, littering the already debris cluttered floor. He shook the djinn more forcefully, begging in his native tongue for the creature to awaken. Abu did not wish to die here. He most certainly did not. Not in this time forsaken tomb, not even rich enough in artifacts for tomb raiders to have plundered. He might have thrown himself on the mercy of the March, save that he did not think they had any. His hope therefore, lay with the foreign djinn, but the one outside could not do it alone.
"Please, please wake." He pleaded in the djinn's tongue, thinking perhaps he might respond better to that. "Al-Zafif Al-Asouad are here and they'll be the death of us all. You'd not have them kill you while you slept, would you? There's no honor in that."
He lifted a hand then, in desperation and slapped one pale cheek. The head turned listlessly. Wind began to whistle through the mastaba, as if whatever had held it back outside had failed. Abu lifted his fist and struck again.
Kall-Su took a staggering step backwards, struck by a combined force of casual power that made his head reel and his magic crumble. He shook it of with an effort, drawing power away from the shield he had erected around the mastaba and pooling towards his own personal shields.
Ramlah took a step forward, so that he stood adjacent to Kall-Su, the facing outwards towards the line of dark riders, the other staring into the crumbled entrance to the tomb.
"What do you know of it, Al-Shayhtaan bil'Sha'ir Al-Shamcii." Sun haired demon.
He took a breath, a trembling, ragged breath and fought back the pressure in his head, against his body. Ramlah spoke to him -- at him -- as if it were nothing more than casual conversation, but the power spilled out of him, pressing against Kall-Su, testing his limits, seeping beyond them.
"She betrayed you and she died. She was mortal and there is nothing of her left to exact vengeance upon." He kept his voice low, calm, kept his eyes upon the unnaturally still figures of the March. He felt the dragon helm turn slowly to look at him.
"You know not the vengeance's I might take."
He shivered to dwell upon it. What power it might take to torment a soul long dead. He knew of no such power -- that existed today. What might have been possible millennia ago, when the world reveled in magic and the arcane -- that was a mind boggling thought. It was a morbidity intriguing one. He glanced to the side, to that metal encased visage and found its dark attention focused upon him still.
"Is that all you wish for? Vengeance?"
The wind sifted through the remnants of his shield and whipped hair into his eyes and sand against his face. He lowered his lashes to protect from that mundane attack.
"You made the ice?" Ramlah asked bluntly.
Kall blinked, taken off guard, recalling what he had called forth from the stingy heart of the desert when he'd been so desperate to get a wounded Schneider away from the combined attack of the Black March. He thought he might have taken a toll upon the March with that attack. He was not certain admitting to such was a wise notion.
Warily, he inclined his head.
"Lower your shields, sahir saghir, or I will crush them and you as well."
"No." He would not willingly move aside and let them into the tomb while Schneider was defenseless. He felt the static stirrings of accumulating power and thought he might not have the choice for very much longer.
And just as suddenly he felt them subside, as Ramlah's attention riveted to the mastaba entrance.
"Is this what you want?"
Kall swung around. Schneider stood there, a little dusty, a faint, patronizing smile on his lips, balancing in his palm a withered, mummified head. He bounced it once and a bit of powder fell from sunken eye sockets. He tossed the thing at Ramlah and the dragon helm's gauntleted hands came up to catch it. It was a reflexive movement and it diverted both Kall's and Ramlah's attention a hair's breath of time. That was all it took for the deafening, blinding blast to issue forth from the air before Schneider's hands.
It hit Ramlah dead center. It almost took Kall's shoulder off, personal shield or no. The shield kept him whole at least, even in its last gasp of existence. He was thrown backwards from the impact though, into the midst of thick horse legs and dangerous sharp hooves. He didn't even have the time to see what Ramlah did in response to Schneider's attack, for the earth heaved up under him and the mounted members of the march and the supernaturally calm steeds began to scream and scramble for purchase.
The sand swirled as if alive, and he resurrected his shield to protect himself from the stinging attack of it. A curved sword came at his head, backed by arcane force. It almost sliced through his shield. It lodged there a moment, giving him the time to see the black robed, helmed wielder. A faceless attacker that sought to take him out from behind with a sword through the skull. He snarled and retaliated. A tremendous burst of energy that he channeled through the very shield that imprisoned the sword. The sword was a mystical thing. He felt it try and repel his counter attack, but his blast was more than it could handle. The shock wave went through steel and into the flesh of the wielder. The dark wizard screamed, unprepared for the assault, and toppled off the back of his horse, steam coming from the openings of the helmet.
Not dead though. Through the swirling storm, Kall-Su saw the creature stagger to his feet and make a lumbering grab for the reins of the prancing horse.
Damn. Damn. Even the members of the pack were preternaturally strong. The others were circling; dark figures in the growing gale.
A crackling finger of energy descended from the sky and the earth beneath them all disintegrated.
That had been a goddamned big blast. He had another like it, maybe two up his sleeve then he was reduced to fighting with a less overwhelmingly destructive arsenal. He'd taken the fight away from the mastaba a bit. The crater in the desert he'd created from that last strike did not quite encompass the edge of the tomb. The sand from the backwash covered most of it though. He didn't give a rat's ass about the little Arab who'd awakened him, who was cowering in the depths of the mastaba in fear of a life that probably wouldn't last that long anyway, or the djinni for that matter, wherever she might be, but he had a concern for Kall-Su, who had too many disadvantages working against him to be up to his usual standards. That concern divided his attention. Made him go out of his way to draw an enemy away and gave that enemy one more chance to strike at him in the process. Damned annoying to give a damn about something enough for it to put him at a disadvantage If it had been Yoko down there, obscured by a raging sea of sand, he'd probably have been dead by now, trying to protect her and deal with an enemy that just --- blew his mind. An enemy that wasn't slowing down, that kept drawing power from reserves that Schneider just didn't have. That was taking hits that had rocked the god of destruction itself and shrugging them off. That had a damned big shitenno down there that was feeding him energy, while's Schneider's was down to one and he hadn't a notion where in hell he was at the moment.
He hoped he was distant enough that the fire bomb he was about to drop didn't catch him in its ravenous reach. He uttered the words that would summon the elemental, a nasty tempered, hard to control at the best of times creature that had taken him two dozen years to fully master. The air sizzled around him and flared into flame. The tongues of fire never burned him, though they lapped about him greedily. With a hissing command he directed it to find his enemy and it rocketed away, igniting grains of sand with the intensity of its heat as it went. He could see its path through the sand, though little more.
His sense of the other powers out there was muddled. There were so many and they merged and dispersed from each other like mingling water. In the brief moment of respite, while he hovered far over the desert, yet still within the range of the swirling sandstorm, he stretched his senses trying to locate the central points in this game. Found Kall-Su easily, a burst of frigid power that Schneider was intimately familiar with. The others were too numerous to pin down. He stopped trying, blocking out the lesser ones and seeking the greater. Found it of a sudden as the desert flared into flame. His elemental had found its mark. Schneider screamed in triumph and swept down through the battering barrier of sand towards the heart of the inferno. He built another high power strike as he went, not willing to go into this with anything but his most powerful attack.
He saw his enemy. Saw the twisted horns of the dragon helm, as the man stood with arms outstretched in the center of his conflagration. Schneider let loose with his blast. Sand, earth and rock spewed up, creating a ragged crater a hundred feet in diameter, half that deep. The fire demon roared, seeking fuel for its fire, but sand and stone did not burn for long. It faltered, wailing its frustration. It wanted combustible matter to feed upon. It wanted flesh to burn. Schneider kept it there from sheer will alone, kept the fires burning as he sat foot on jagged earth and stepped towards the black heap that was his enemy. A leg was gone, the armor was half eaten away, exposing blackened ribs and glistening insides. The dragon helm had been knocked a dozen yards away, bent and charred.
Schneider smiled, letting out a breath of relief that he couldn't stop. He moved closer, almost to the point of letting his elemental free.
The heap on the ground shifted. Lifted a splay fingered hand and slowly made a fist. Schneider took a sudden, painful breath, and quite suddenly couldn't take another. It wasn't an attack on him, he could have shielded against that. It was an attack on his elemental. His enemy stole the air from the crater, and bereft of oxygen the elemental writhed in pain, but it couldn't even scream as it withered and died.
"You --- are a worthy adversary." The words came out hoarsely from the bent figure. The sand stirred under it, flowing into the ragged ends of the charred stump, into the gaping wound in its side, and where sand filled, flesh was made anew. He pushed himself to his feet and Ramlah lifted his head to meet Schneider's eyes. Shoulder length, straight dark hair clung to dark skin. Deep, black eyes glittered beneath slanted brows. A trim beard graced a long, strong jaw. He parted his lips and smiled. A startlingly white smile against bronze skin. "I shall remember you well after you are dead."
"In your fucking dreams." Schneider snarled, then whirled at a shifting of rock from behind him. Through the swirling sand, dark figures appeared at the edge of the crater. Not all of them, perhaps only ten or fifteen of the March. But it was enough. He felt them lend their power. Felt Ramlah gather it up and thought desperately that he didn't have the endurance left to counter this.
There was a echoing crack of explosion from the south, a slight trembling of the earth as some battle proceeded on another front. Which meant Kall-Su was still in play and that if Ramlah took Schneider down, he'd be the only other target left. And the hell if Schneider was willing to let the bastard have the both of them. He wasn't crazy with the possibility of his own defeat, but damned if he would back down while he still had the capacity to fight.
He shot skyward, bevied by fierce winds. At the very least Ramlah's storm lent him some of its power. Perhaps he could harness more of it. Sand storms were not his foray, but for the sand to rage, there were winds to carry it along. He could utilize those winds and the ferocious weather system that had been created to bring them to life.
"Malice!!" he bellowed her name into the storm and again, willing the djinni to him. He wondered if she could fly. Wondered if he were not calling in vain, then the eruption from below caught him.
He put up every shield he had and still it battered him. The sky went dark, the sun blotted out. Or was that his vision? Even with the shield, it shattered him. He heard the cracking of his own bones as that malignant force washed over him, felt the bursting of blood vessels, the rupturing of flesh. He screamed. He couldn't help it. Lost all control over the currents of air that held him aloft and plummeted like a wounded bird to the ground. He was trying to heal himself even as he did, but the power bled out of him, even as the sand soaked up his blood and clung to the wetness on his face and hands.
He cursed fluently, anger lending him strength. He called the djinni's name again.
And she was there, terrified, scrambling in the sand to cling to him. It hurt, her hands on his broken body. He shrugged her off violently.
"Find Kall. Get the hell out of here."
"Yes. Yes." She agreed frantically, reaching out for him again.
"Not me, you stupid bitch." He hissed. He was pulling himself together even as he spoke. Each breath mending a bone. Sealing an artery. "Don't give him the chance to say no. Now GO!!" He slashed a hand at her, backing it with a precious backwash of hurtful magic. She squealed and dissipated.
And in the wake of her disappearance, shadows moved out of the storm. A good many shadows. Some on horse back, others afoot. Ramlah moved at the fore front. He had his helmet in his hand, but he might as well have been wearing it, for all the expression his dark face held.
Schneider rolled to get leverage and something hard poked against his hip. The bottle strapped to his belt. He shifted in annoyance, pushing himself laboriously to his knees. Hair as well as sand clung to his face, getting in his eyes. He spat a strand out of his mouth, but made no other move to brush the tangle of it away.
"So," he said to the lot of them. "Shall we try this again?"
They were deserting him, save for a few, which should have been a blessing, but that he knew where they were going and what they would lend their strength to do. And he hadn't a chance of stopping them. It was all he could do to survive and even at that he was slowly failing. There were too many. Any one of them was his equal in this place, where their power was aligned with the very sands and his was avidly unaligned. There wasn't even a vein of water under the sands to draw upon. And he hadn't been able to lure an ice elemental here since he'd first stepped foot into the desert.
He thought he'd killed one of them. It had taken the most powerful blast he had in him, and even that had seemed inadequate here, where it was hard to tell how much destructive power was actually being unleashed with nothing but sand to feel the impact and the storm fogging the issue. But he'd seen smoldering lumps of man and horse littering the sand and assumed that the creatures couldn't come back after something like that. He hoped.
He'd taken a slice across the back observing his handiwork though. A sword that got through shields and cut through cloth to score a hit. It burned. It bled down his back. He'd whirled, striking out with the sword he'd stolen from his victim, and clashed blades with his dark attacker. The helm made the man look larger than he was. But he was still a better swordsman than Kall, who much preferred magic to melee. If he'd had the Ice Falcion things would have been different. That unearthly blade was a power unto itself.
He staggered back, loosing his footing and went down. His shield saved him from the first blow. The sudden, darkening of the sky saved him from the second. The world went black. A great crashing wave of power surged in the near distance. Kall cringed from the backlash of it. Curled and brought his hands to his ears as if that could shut out the deafening mental wash of energy. The helmed attacker staggered, going to his knees in similar shock.
It faded slowly, and the light came back, fighting its way past the storm. Kall got up, swaying slightly, veering around his recovering enemy, more intent on the direction of that awesome strike. He knew who the target had been. He'd felt the resonation's of Schneider's and Ramlah's battle all along. But this had been something different. Something more. Not an easily recoverable thing, he thought, panicked. He was having a hard time sensing the power that was Schneider. He didn't think, if he waded into the heart of that maelstrom that he could get him out again. He had no magic at his disposal this time to distract the Black March.
There was something else building. He felt the stirrings in the eather.
The djinni appeared before him, wild eyed and frantic.
"Out of my way." He brushed past her, desperate himself suddenly as that building power released and the world shook again.
"No." He cried out, because he felt Schneider's magic trying to repel it, indomitable and stubborn, and then it was just washed away and there was nothing of his scent left.
The djinni clutched at his arm. He went to shake her off, and quite suddenly the sand disappeared from under his feet and solid reality went hazy and indistinct. Her damned djinni magic, taking them elsewhere. Taking him from the place where Schneider was struggling. He cast about savagely, blindly trying to free himself of her influence and quite abruptly found himself sprawled in the sand, entangled with Malice.
"Get off." He shoved her away and she rolled a few feet down the slope, only to glare back up at him indignantly. There was no storm here. No sand filling the air. That massive dark front broiled in the distance. Miles away perhaps. She'd taken them that far, before depositing them in the desert.
"What have you done?" he screamed at her.
"Only what my master asked." She hissed back.
"What he ----?" He tore his eyes away from the distant darkness to stare at her. "Why didn't you bring him?"
She flung a hand at him angrily. "Because he did not wish to come. More the fool, him."
Kall took a breath. Then another, gathering calm. Gathering what power was left him.
"I'm going back."
"More the fool, you too, then." Malice hissed.
But she followed.
It was worse this time than it had been the last. Dying, that was. It hurt like hell, but that wasn't the most grating part of it. The worst part was that it was done by an enemy he hardly knew, that he didn't understand in the least, that was loose by a mournfully bad decision of his, and who laughed in his face while he did it.
The laughter was the worst. The laughter made him flare up when his body and the power at his command was spent beyond reason, and retaliate with one more destructive spell. It didn't phase Ramlah, but it took out several of the black armored wizards behind him. Just tore them to pieces in the backwash of what Ramlah himself deflected. That pissed Ramlah off. That stopped the triumphant laughter and sent the dark skinned demon into a rage.
That's when Schneider began to loose his grip on physical reality. Unfair really, that he was so badly outnumbered. Unfair that the majority of his crucial defeats were the hands of coalitions instead of individuals. If he'd had the breath, he would have flung that in Ramlah's face. That he hadn't been able to do this without the support of his followers. But he didn't have the breath. That was slipping away with the rest of it.
He did not wish to die again. He truly did not wish to tempt the powers that be one more time and perhaps end up in a situation where he was not in an advantageous position. There were only so many times that a body could avoid fate and he'd had his share of evasions. So this time, as the powerful spells of his foe ate at him and destroyed his defenses, he flung about desperately for a method out of this madness. He should have used the djinni when he'd had the chance. Stupid not to. But at the time his ire had been up.
There was a great ripping separation of flesh and bone. His left arm ceased to be. He screamed and curled up, a tight knot of pain in the center of the storm. Something came at him out of the sand storm, a body and a blade that ripped past his defenses and sliced into skin and organs. The maelstrom swallowed the attacker. He hadn't even seen who it was.
He was dying and he sought escape, not caring at the moment where he found it. Something beckoned. Something odd and distant and infinitely unfamiliar. There was the faint outline of a doorway, that he perceived on the level where he recognized magic and magical things. He was not certain he trusted that unknown, but he was left little choice.
So he fled towards it. And it opened and accepted him. There was a change going in. Something happened to his being. To his substance. Physicality became an abstract concept. It was there was but not.
He was afraid for a moment it was death after all. That he'd crossed to the other side in a manner he'd not encountered before. But after a moment's consideration he thought not. His soul had not separated from his body. His body was here, only he didn't quite know where here was. There was no sand. No desert. No sensation save the distant throbbing pain of his hurts. He'd brought those with him, but nothing else.
He was in limbo. But it was limbo with restrictions. Faintly he became aware of walls. Of opaque walls. Mental or physical, he couldn't be sure. He looked for the doorway out and found nothing. The walls were seamless. Another panic hit him. Of being trapped and helpless. He surged against the walls, but was either too weak to make an impact or the walls were impervious.
He sagged into the eather, exhausted, injured and not having at the moment to strength to repair himself. He stared up at the strange walls of this prison he had plunged himself into and thought perhaps there was sand beyond them. But it was fast obscuring his view. There was nothing more to see. No essence of his enemy to concern him. So he shut his eyes and drifted.
The bottle rolled down a shifting slope of sand, unnoticed by the men that dwelled within the storm. The hoof of a great black horse kicked it aside, its rider more interesting in tracking down prey that had disappeared without a trace. The storm swept sand across the ornate surface of the bottle, burying it beneath layers of grit. Soon, it was completely gone, another victim of the storm that had reburied the square structure of the mastaba in the distance.