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Chapter 11: To the Victor Goes the Spoils
(Second Version)
Dhandi walked into the throne room, heart high with triumph. She glanced around, the room seeming to sway. She shook her head and the room was once again at a standstill. She continued her investigation of the throne room, ducking her head into the corridor.
It'd figure if he had stairs in this place, Dhandi thought to herself as she walked down the corridor. This place looked huge from the outside. At the end of the corridor, sure enough the stairs were there, but she had not anticipated them to be so...complicated. Above her head, there were numerous sets of stairs and arches that intertwined so intricately, but seemed to be going into different directions at same time. Her head began to hurt, trying to follow one of the paths mentally. However, she found a separate set of stairs, wrapped against the wall and going in one direction, up.
Maybe he had a lot of free time on his hands, Dhandi decided as she climbed the stairs. Would be interesting to try that place out if I get another chance.
The steps were narrow, so most of the time she clung to the wall, side-stepping. The soles of her feet scrapped against the sandstone as she climbed. The corridor that she had left shrunk in the distance when she spotted a doorway, above. Her pace became quicker as the doorway came into sight. The final step was reached and Dhandi stood face to face with the door. It was plainer than the rest of the sanctum, suggesting it had been more of an afterthought. There was no door knob, only the simple rope handles that she knew inhabited the poorer parts of Agrabah. Dhandi pushed the door open and found a small round, modestly furnished room. She walked in, looking about. She ran her fingers across the ebony frame of the divan, when she spotted the terracotta jars. Her curiosity piqued, she ambled towards them. She found that along their bases, powders of different colors had piled up.
Magic powders! An intrigued smile appeared on her face. Sadira and Eden had often talked about them and of certain combinations that resulted in either explosion or enchantment. For Sadira, the former often resulted. However, this didn't seem to bother her as she lifted one of the lids. If she couldn't find a way out in her experimenting, she could at least defend herself. After all, she didn't know how long he would be lying there unconscious or how terrible his wrath will be when he wakes up.
Dhandi glanced at the powder, dark green in color, and took a whiff. It smelled earthy. Little doubt it was henna.
Unless Mozenrath wants a dye job, Dhandi scoffed as she set down the lid, moving on.
She went to the next jar and peered into it. It was very dark whatever was in there, even the light pouring in from outside seemed to be absorbed by the contents. Dhandi set the lid down and stared at the black sand, curiously. She reached her hand in and scooped up sand. She had never felt the sands of the sorcerer's kingdom. Even when she had spent some time there as a child, Eden and Genie kept her inside the Citadel. Compared to the more benign sands of her home, it was finer, like the ashes from a potter's kiln.
She dropped the black sand when she saw something moving. Something was tunneling around the sand in the jar, creating narrow mounds on the surface. A dreadful feeling began to churn in Dhandi's stomach as she felt for the lid. She grabbed the lid, but as she slowly began to set it down, the sand exploded in her face. The sound of shattering pottery was heard in the confusion as was Dhandi's shriek of pain. She turned to the source of her pain, Mozenrath's familiar Xerxes latching on to her arm with his razor-sharp jaws and not budging.
"Let go!" Dhandi screamed, trying to shake the eel off. Xerxes, a malicious smirk on his face, clamped on tighter. Beads of sweat forming on her face, the girl suddenly fell upon the floor. The air seemed grow heavy and pressed down on her body. Her hand, in spasms, felt around the floor. She felt the pointed and serrated edge of a terracotta shard. She wrapped her hand around it and flung it at Xerxes. The shard's teeth slid across the eel's skin, slicing a wound upon it. The eel shrieked and unlatched himself from her arm, fleeing back to the jar.
Dhandi sunk lower to the ground, grabbing her arm, now bleeding profusely. She sprawled upon the floor, her body becoming very numb and rigid.
Am I gonna die? She thought to herself, frightened. No. No, I'm not. It's just like when I was ten, when he first tricked me with Xerxes. Her throat became horribly dry. Dear Allah, I should have known better. He doesn't stop, he never gives up...
She heard footsteps. She couldn't turn her head to look, but she had a terrible inkling of who now stood above her.
Mozenrath looked at the girl's body upon the floor, an uncompassionate expression on his bruised face.
"Unlike you," he seemed to say to Dhandi with that look, "I had a back up plan." He glanced at the shards of terracotta upon the floor beside her and then at the jar of black sand. Xerxes popped his head out and slithered towards his master.
"Good boy," the sorcerer cooed as Xerxes draped himself on his master's shoulders, nursing his own wounds. "Let's see," he continued to himself as he knelt down beside Dhandi, "Three year plan ruined thanks to a meddlesome servant, lost the bait to lure the street rat here along with the shard to get me out of here to said servant, was humiliated by an Incarnation..." He sighed. "All in all, it still was a good day."
Xerxes slid off his shoulder, looking at Mozenrath like his face was melting. The sorcerer chuckled softly as he picked up Dhandi and flung her over his shoulder.
"I still got the consolation prize," Mozenrath drawled as his legs shook under the additional weight. Heavier than she looks, he thought as he straightened up.
Xerxes cackled as Mozenrath reached his gauntleted hand into the jar of black sand. His fist glowed dark blue for a moment and he opened his hand, pouring the magically-charged sand and forming it into a circle.
She may have pulled a fast one on me, he thought as he finished the circle, using that...name against me, but next time...oh, she won't be able to.
He turned to Dhandi who was still awake despite being unable to move and smiled maliciously. "When we get home," he told her in a mockingly sweet tone, "I'm gonna see how really special you are."
Though she couldn't talk, Mozenrath knew, by her soft whimpering, that she was screaming with fright on the inside. His grin became broader with triumph as the circle glowed and swirled. Mozenrath, Dhandi, and Xerxes disappeared as the swirling ceased and the room began to twist and contort violently as it spinned on itself and the colors swirled like paint, freshly mixed straight in the pail.
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Jasmine held her cloak close to herself that night as she and Aladdin stood at the border of the Land of the Black Sand. She quickly turned her head around, abruptly.
"What is it, Jasmine?" Aladdin quietly asked his wife.
"I could have sworn I saw something," Jasmine replied, in hushed urgency. "Any chance that Mozenrath knows we're here?"
"Genie and Eden are staying low until we call for them," Aladdin whispered. "The magic detectors couldn't have been set off."
"That still just leaves regular watch," Jasmine pulled her cloak closer. Tonight was especially bitter cold. Suddenly, there came a great whistle in the air.
"Jasmine!" Aladdin grabbed her and ducked down as spears landed about them. The pair tumbled down the dune, spears flying through the air.
It had been three days since the guards dropped before her the would-be kidnapper of Halim, her first borne son. Amin deMoolah was a sniveling wreck when the guards found him. Seeing him being hauled to the dungeon had almost aroused her pity, in spite of past grudges.
Then he had called out Dhandi's name.
This then aroused her curiosity and concern. Dhandi had been Halim's sitter that day and, since they had found Halim but not Dhandi, she had become worried. As did Eden who at that moment popped in, scared beyond her wits for her master who had not returned home. Jasmine had decided to interrogate the thief who, to her distress, had become mute when the guards exceeded their bounds and had him hanging upside down in nothing, save his underwear (as to what they wore as underwear in that day and age would be another tale). It would have been two more days until he would utter another name- Mozenrath.
Jasmine and Aladdin now stood in the middle of an army of mamluks, the half dead soldiers armed each which a scimitar.
"You think we déjà-ed this vu already?" Aladdin asked Jasmine. Jasmine smiled playfully.
"There's always room for more," Jasmine replied as she scooped up two spears with her feet and launched them in the air. The husband and wife leapt, grabbing the spears. The mamluks lurched towards them, scimitars drawn. Jasmine swung her spear like a bat, knocking the head off of one. Aladdin used his as a pole vault and launched himself in the air, knocking two to the ground. This continued until there was a pile of mamluk parts scattered upon the dunes. The couple, exhausted, dashed off towards the familiar horizon line of the city and, more importantly, of the Citadel.
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Aladdin and Jasmine didn't know when or how they had entered the throne room. They remembered running towards the Citadel and suddenly disappearing and then reappearing. They had noticed a figure in a full concealing purdah, sitting quietly next to the throne.
"What do you know?" Mozenrath's voice echoed, saturated with sarcasm, "The street rat and the royal pain." From where they stood, Aladdin and Jasmine scanned the room for the sorcerer, vigilantly. "Had I know you were dropping by, I would have baked a cake."
"Mozenrath!" Aladdin shouted, still scanning the room.
"Mozenrath," Jasmine stepped forward, her royal air exuding from her stance, "As Sultana of Agrabah, I demand that you show yourself!"
"You don't have to shout," Mozenrath said condescendingly, now standing beside her. "Let's use our indoor voices, shall we?" He looked at Jasmine in her disguise with interest before sauntering nonchalantly past the royal couple and to his throne where he sat down, one leg hanging idly over an armrest. "What's the occasion? Decided to drop by for coffee? Hummus? Battle to the death?"
"We've come to negotiate the return of your hostage to us," Aladdin answered confidently. Jasmine looked on with reassurance. Mozenrath chuckled softly, swinging his leg over.
"It's so sweet that you learned all those big words just for me," the sorcerer said, in a tone that one would use talking to a four-year old, "but I'm afraid I'll have to decline." He held his index fingers side to side and up to his lips. "It's seems...I've grown attached to her." He then snorted. "Who am I kidding? I've been attached to her for years! Only for the past three days, I've actually had her and, well, the answer is no."
Aladdin glared at him furiously as he stepped forward. "Where is she?" he demanded. "We want to talk to Dhandi! You have no right to keep her here!"
The corners of Mozenrath's mouth formed a smirk as he pointed towards the seated figure on his left. Jasmine gasped as the figure stood up slowly and lowered her hood. Indeed, it was Eden's mistress, right down to her coarse hair and her scrawny figure. However, she looked so sickly. It easily rivaled Mozenrath's own pallid countenance, though when she glanced back at the sorcerer, Jasmine had noticed that his skin seemed darker as if he took the time to let the sun brown him. Then, there was that emptiness in the girl's eyes, like the fire of her soul had been snuffed out.
"How a few days can make a difference in a girl's life," Mozenrath smiled cruelly as he got up. "One day, she's playing with dolls and the next, she, for lack of a better word,-" he wrapped his arm around Dhandi's shoulders, the girl accepting him unresisting. "-becomes one."
Aladdin and Jasmine looked on with horror as the sorcerer leaned over and, sliding his tongue between Dhandi's lips, kissed her, but worse of all, Dhandi kissed back.
The End
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A/N: And this would be the "romantic horror story", AKA "sad" ending. Or possibly the beginning of a new story, entirely. Thank you for those who managed to hang in there with me. Like many of my other works, I put a lot of time in them and I would greatly appreciate feedback on them.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters.