13 Jan Damneus and the Jinns of Shadow Valley

Born from smokeless fire, they straddle the line between seen and unseen, good and evil. They move betwixt those spaces between life and death. They may choose to help or destroy on a whim. Beware in the shadow valley, the cursed Jinn.

Chapter 1 “A Den of Iniquity”

Fists hammered down on rough tables, cups smashed against walls, and at the back of the low-ceilinged tavern, a scratchy violin was being played by a toothless and blind necro-man. Shrouded in the gloomy haze of firesmoke and candlelight was a crowd of ragged men and loose-legged, scantily dressed women who shouted and bickered and fell about the place in lazy arguments.

Around the scattered tables and wine barrels were weathered and amoral thieves, leering dark-eyed murderers, and swaggering sellswords; all lingering in the shadows with their cheap steel that flashed in the dimness and promised only groundless violence. The room reeked of stale wine. The smell of sweaty, unwashed bodies radiated up from the floor and remained trapped there, at the smoke-stained ceiling of the den where hyena preyed upon hyena.

In the corner of the den, sat Damneus, shrouded in the gloom, watching them all. His hardened face peered out from the darkness over the round of animal-fat candlelight. He had arrived in Showta seven suns ago, after escaping Hetra, and had spent his time drinking blood-wine and eating mutton, replacing his lost equipment with what he could unearth at the flea-ridden markets and the travelling caravans on the roads along the way.

Damneus now wore a boiled leather baldric, strapped across his broad and bare chest, and a layered pauldron over his left shoulder. Sheathed on the baldric were two thick, blood-steel sabres that sat on either side of his modest, fur-lined quiver full of bone arrows, on his back. He had also managed to procure a leather and fur-lined gladiator skirt that gave him complete freedom of agility, and had several scabbards to conceal daggers and blades about his waist. With it, he wore leather bracers and basan shoes that were fashioned from the monstrous two-headed wolf pelts of the Borderlands. Draped over him was a large cloak made of a waxed leather that concealed his equipment from opportunist cut-pursers and thieves. Outwardly, he appeared nothing more than a lone beggar  nursing a cup of wine. He had learned long ago that it was easier to navigate as such.

No one had dared look at him when he had unassumingly ridden into Showta several suns ago, with the desert breeeze and the moonlight at his back. He had ridden into the squallid trading settlement, past the adobes and clay houses, and from their broken mashrabiya windows strange, gaunt faces peered out at him before shrinking back into the blackness once more. They’d all shuffled away into the gloom at the sight of him, but not because of him.

There was something else in the air with him. A strange breeze that held a distinct malevolence in it. Something following him? Something from Hetra, maybe? Pursuing vigilantes?

What is that? Damneus thought. He couldn’t shake the feeling that clung to him like cold mud on his back. It had been with him since the edge of the desert. Strange place…

He’d ridden to the other side of the colony without harassment, through the moonlit markets and plazas, past the many decrepit, iniquitous criminals and addicts slinking in and out of the countless domed alcoves. Expecting to find a raucous hive of drunkards, he instead found only eerie stillness. He rode on through to quieter districts, through to where the road began to wind back out into the empty desert beyond, and at the colony’s edge was the inn. Around the inn were abandoned sod-huts and more adobes and clay-stables with no livestock in them. Thatched-roofed, squarish granaries made of mud littered the open spaces like dead tree stumps in the sands.

Had it not been for the single lantern above the inn, Damneus would’ve assumed that the place was deserted. For there were only the stars, the sand of the road under the camel’s steps, and the slow rustle of the dead palm leaves in the desert wind with him. It was the ideal place to lie low and regain his strength. He knew he wouldn’t be noticed amongst the other vagrants and murderers. But there was that presence again. He’d turned over his shoulder, hoping to spot something, but there was nothing. Hmmmm.

He’d frowned with puzzlement before hitching up his camel and entering the inn where he would stay for the next seven suns.

Damneus sat there now, tied up in his own thoughts, drinking greedily from his wine cup, and thinking over and over again about what Orion had said about the Midnight Wall and what stalked behind its granite barrier. He’d seen such things in his nightmares, or maybe even memories—vague flickerings of fragmented memories. If Orion was right, then he would have to help him—even if it was for the sake of repaying his debt for being freed. In addition, the opportunity to seek revenge on Portverto for what he had done to him was too good to pass up. Damneus had not expressed to Orion what it was that Portverto had done, but somehow he felt Orion already knew. But again, the question kept on rising out of the rudder ether of his mind—Why help me? How did he even get into Hetra, forget the cursed dungeons… Too many strange happenings…

A dishieved and stinking man, known locally as Hamn, interrupted Damneus’s thoughts and rudely sat down opposite him, bumping into the table as he did. He looked at Damneus blearily through yellowed eyes, and his crooked lips drew back into a wide grin of blackened teeth. Danmues stared at the insolent man.

“You seem to like that corner,” Hamn slurred as he gestured to the wall. His hand then fell to the table with a lazy thud. The man had naively mistaken Damneus for an easy mark. For the last few suns, everyone had seen only the sullen and brooding face of a stranger in the corner and assumed only that he was a beggar who’d found his way into enough coin to remain drunk for a long stretch.

“It keeps dogs like you from getting too close,” Danmues said after a tense pause.

“Can ye spare some coin for me, brethren?” The beggar replied, seemingly not hearing the insult. “Ye must have some about yer.”

“I have no coin for the likes of you.”

Hamn grinned wider. “You’ve been here long enough to must have some about yer. Maybe, I’ll just take that purse from you and—”

Before the man could even finish his sentence, he felt the cold, thin bite of something through his hand. He howled childlike, and his face scrunched up in agony. Hamn looked down at his hand on the table and saw the large steel dagger through it. Damneus had slammed it down viper-like through the man’s hand with such force that the blade passed through the table also. The man seethed and cried, and his sucking breaths sounded like a hiss.

“Hard to steal anything with your hands skewered to the table,” Damneus grunted and twisted the blade slightly.

Hamn bellowed in response. It was the first time Damneus had made himself known to the many lowlifes and thieves in the bar as something more than a mere peasant. Under the sheep’s cloak was a savage wolf. From the shadows and the tables, many faces watched and scrutinised the stranger in the corner differently now. He’d rather have stayed anonymous, but the uncouth drunk had annoyed him too much to let it pass.

“I’m sorry, me lord, I’m sorry. I haven’t eaten in days. Please release my hand, me lord!”

“You’ve had money enough to keep yourself saturated in wine, however.”

“I know, me lord. I’m sorry. Forgive me,” he barely managed to say between the gasps and howling.

“I’m no lord, you fool.”

“Please, release me! Mercy!”

“I’ll make you a deal. You tell me all you know about the Midnight Wall and I will…” Damneus leaned forward across the ale-sodden table.

“I don’t know anything! Please!”

“Too bad,” Damneus smirked and began twisting the blade ever so slightly to the left.

“I don’t know anything! Only that it’s ancient! Honestly!”

“Then what do you know? Damned fool of a sinning barmaid’s offspring!” Damneus snapped. “Might as well use you for sacks for fodder. Ballas on the ships. You useless sack of excrement. Your weak kind make me despair.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know anything. But, he does,” the slovenly thief said desperately as he turned and pointed wildly at the lone violin player in the corner.

Damneus looked over Hamn’s shoulder and glanced at the musician, playing for no one but himself. He was a frail skeleton of a thing, standing in the shadows, with thin wisps of greyed hair clinging to his gaunt skull, and sullen charred skin that was wrinkled and leatherlike, as if taken from a reptile. He wore a filthy hessian sack over his torso, and his limbs were wiry and moved spider-like around his instrument. He looked nothing more than a reanimated corpse ghoulishly playing his morbid music. Damneus frowned and looked back at the snared man at the table.

“Him? He’s a necro-man. He looks as if he wouldn’t last ten minutes outside this tavern.”

“He’s been there! Ask him. Please,” Hamn begged through gritted teeth.

Damneus barely heard the next few protests and thought to himself for a pause. How was a creature like that able to see the wall and survive?

He considered, then, with no great haste, yanked up the dagger from the wounded hand and kicked the man from his stool. Hamn slumped to the floor with gasping relief, clutching at his bloodied hand and pulling it tight to his chest. Damneus stood up and stepped over him, whipping off the dagger on Hamn’s shoulder as he did, and then sauntered over to the violin player. He crossed the bar area and came close to him. The necrotic man, with seemingly unnatural hearing, heard the approach and stopped playing the violin. His shoulders slumped down, and he dropped the battered instrument to his side apologetically.

“Would you wish I played something else, my lord?” The necro-man rasped painfully with a rough and gravelled voice, and it was clear to Damneus that he was not accustomed to speaking often.

“How did you hear me coming?” Damneus asked, intrigued.

The necro-man looked at the floor with blinded, milky grey eyes, but there was a vague hint of a prideful smile on his face. “I can hear everything,” the necro-man offered.

“The room is full of noise—each different—you can still hear?”

“Yes. I can hear everything,” the necro-man said, still looking down at the empty busker’s basket at his feet. “I can distinguish the different sounds,” he said in between coughing out dust.

“Such as?”

“I can distinguish that you have been sitting in that corner every day for the last seven suns and that your shoes are not broken in just yet. They are newly purchased,” the necro-man said hoarsely. “It is how I move around now.”

“Would you like a cup of wine?” Damneus replied, impressed with the player’s intuition.

The necro-man craned his head up ever so slightly and tried to look at Damneus. His dulled grey eyes seemed to twinkle briefly at the gesture. Then the necro quickly remembered his position and looked back down once more.

“Forgive me, my lord. It is rude for me to try to meet your gaze.”

“I’m no lord. I wanted to ask you something,” Damneus said softly.

“Of course. How may I help?” he croaked.

“What do you know of the midnight wall?”

Upon hearing the words, the necro-man instinctively took a step backwards and shuddered noticeably. As if the mere mention of the word would summon its very essence back forward to the faces of men. Something about the innomiable name rang hard like a bell for the violin man.

“It is an evil place, sir,” he said gravely. “It is…”

“You’ve been there?” Damneus replied, noting the haunted look in the player’s face.

“Yes. Once. It is not a place any living thing should dare approach.”

Damneus thought for a moment. Then he asked, “I wish to know more. I’d like to hear your story if you’re willing. Care to join me at my table?”

The musician looked around with his blind milky eyes, nervously seeking out disapproval amongst the crowds. Although he could not physically see the judging stares of the filthy patrons, he could feel them all the same.

“Necros and humans are not supposed to associate here,” he said.

“If anyone takes umbrage with that, they can speak to me.”

Damneus turned and headed back to his table, brushing past the delinquents as he did. The necro-man sighed, then reluctantly followed in his wake and sheepishly limped behind Damneus like a scorned child, trying his best to avoid the stumbling patrons around him.

Damneus sat down first. He shuffled into his corner and looked across at the necro-man—

“Sit,” he said after a beat.

The necro-man, still shy and weary of the taboo, cautiously sat down opposite him. Without query, Damneus poured a cup full of blood-wine from the pitcher and handed it to the necro-man before pouring another for himself.

“Drink,” he added and drank greedily from his own cup.

“No one here has ever given me a drink before,” the necro-man said reflectively, a sombre tinge to his voice.

“Do you have a name?”

The necro looked up, finally having the courage enough to meet Damneus’s gaze. “Royce,” he said, almost apologetically. “My name’s Royce. A name I haven’t used in a long time.”

Royce clasped his hands around the cup of wine and looked at Damneus for consent.

“Drink, you fool. I wouldn’t have poured you one if I didn’t intend for you to drink it. Besides, I’ll not drink alone,” Damneus said. Royce’s lips creased into a thin smile, and he lifted the cup to his mouth before muttering, “Thank you.”

“When did you journey to the wall?” Damneus asked.

Royce set his cup back down and spoke with a pained whisper. “Many, many suns ago. It was long before you were even born, I suspect. I have been to the wall, yes…”

“What made you go to it?”

“Long ago, I was an acquisitions agent for the diamond mines of the worm fields to the south. We’d heard from one of the slaves that there were vast plains of geysers and rocks that were full of diamonds to the west. So numerous were they that they’d literally sprouted from the very fissures in the stone like the plumage of weeds. After some time, the owner of the diamond fields, a young man named Yotiy, had heard of this. He commissioned a scouting party to go and find these diamond fields for him. He sent me and twelve others to do so. All soldiers and logistics men. I was sent with them because I had an extensive background in the study of stones and jewels.

We rode out, past Dragon’s Back mountain, past the Shadow Valley, and eventually across the sulfur plains and the vast lava plateaus and calderas. It took almost thirty suns to cross the unyielding terrain. I can still see it now in my mind. Acrid volcanic fields. Thick white smoke plumed up from the earth, and it smelled of rotting flesh. We travelled further. The air hummed, and the ground was a lurid pulsing black. There were many storms, and the rain soon became acidic the further we journeyed. Then the animals started appearing. Strange, misshapen animals crawled in and out of the cavities in the earth around us. Small at first. Most were sickly and mutated, it seemed. Some bore two heads or had extra limbs. Then the bigger ones came out. They looked like emaciated children. Grey skin and hairless heads, and they crawled around on their fours with no faces to their skulls except for two glowing white eyes. They looked like they were human once. Maybe. I don’t know. But, worse than that, in the air, we thought we heard voices. It was coming from the west, beckoning us closer. We rode on. We lost five men to unknown illnesses.”

“What illnesses?”

“Painful ones. They died slowly. Their minds seemed to go before their bodies.”

“What then?”

“Then, on the horizon, we saw breaching up from the storms, the wall. It was monstrously big, as tall as Dragon’s Back mountain. It ran the entire length of the horizon, and it was as smooth as glass. There was not a single imperfection across its entire pitch black surface. We stopped at its base and just looked up at it. No masonry of men could create such an edifice. I must admit, it was mesmerising. I felt nothing but pure adulation at the sight of its magnificence. I couldn’t help myself. I reached out and touched it. My hand rested against its oddly warm surface, and I smiled to myself. Then we heard it.”

“What?”

“The voices again,” Royce said frightfully. “From the other side, echoing through the wall itself were voices. Many different languages. All of them trying to tease us closer. Awful ghostly voices. Spectres of souls long since dead. They wanted us to cross over.”

All of the remaining men, enthralled by the sirens, climbed up and over to meet its call. I never saw any of them ever again. I only heard their twisted and pained voices merge into the swirls of all the others. Then, they wanted me to climb over and join them. But I heard the agony in their calls. The fog was making them talk. Torturing them to do so…”

I turned around and rode away as quickly as I could. I rode back over the salt plains and the volcanic wastes. It took me months to cross it all. As I did, I noticed the skin on my forearms slowly turning grey. My veins changed to a dark purple, and my bones throbbed with a strange and lingering pain. I’d tried to heal it, but the infection was aggressive. I was so weakened that I could barely stay on the camel. Soon, my vision began to blur and become myopic. My muscles atrophied, and my teeth broke away in my mouth. My body was rotting. By the time I made it to Showta, I was completely blind. I haven’t gone much further than this tavern since then. That was a very long time ago…”

“How are you still alive?”

“I do not know.” Royce looked down at his fidgeting hands, and even though he could not see them with his eyes, he could feel his flesh withering and eroding from his bones.  “I won’t live much longer… And I’m glad. Better to purge the sin than swallow it within,” Royce said quietly and finished his cup.

Damneus watched the tortured soul and felt a great wave of sympathy overtake him.

“Do you know a man named Orion?” Damneus asked gently.

“I have heard of him. Yes,” Royce replied, facing him. “But I’ve never met him. I heard he was one of the great sorcerers once.”

“Do you know where I could find him?”

“What do you want with him?”

“He freed me from the prisons of Hetra. Came like a gust of wind. He asked for my help in exchange. It’s about the Midnight Wall.”

“The wall?”

“Orion said the wall won’t hold much longer. He said whatever is on the other side of it will spill over soon and smother everything. Whatever you felt is coming for us all.”

Royce took the horrifying statement in and thought carefully for a long time. For a man who had been at the wall and witnessed and felt that inominable terror first-hand, it became very much apparent to him how important it was to help this cruel mercenary plying him with wine.

“I understand,” he eventually replied. “He hides in a cave just beyond the Shadow Valley, at the base of Dragon’s Back mountain.”

A strange silence fell over the pair, and Damneus thought for a great length of time before speaking again. Why was this poor soul able to survive when the others perished? What part did he have to play in all of this? Damneus realised something.

“How good is your hearing? Can you hear great distances?” He asked.

“Yes. I can hear wagons approaching from the other side of the settlement. I can hear the dusty whores across town moaning like trapped horker seals,” Royce replied.

“If I pay you, can you take me to Orion? Could you show me the wall?”

“Take you? You mean leave Showta? Go out into the desert wastes?” He fretted, the panic rising within him.

“Yes. I know not what cave entrance is his.”

“I would not survive even the ride across this settlement, forget out there,” Royce said earnestly.

“I’ll see to it no harm comes to you.”

“But I have no transport. I barely have enough clothes.”

“I’ll get you everything you’ll need. But I must find Orion. You must take me to him. For that, I will pay you forty gold sovereigns, and you can keep the camel once we’re done.”

Royce coughed out a wisp of dust at the statement. He composed himself once more and frowned with vague terror in his eyes.

“But the Shadow Valley and the deserts further beyond are perilous places. There’s a reason these ragged people have clumped together where they could to fashion settlements like Showta. For the wilderness and the open plains are filled with horrors. There are strange things out there that toy with the strings of the mind…”

“I know. I’ve travelled across many lands and have seen much. And I still require your help. I cannot find it alone.”

“You have not been far enough west, I fear,” the necro-man replied. “It is different.”

“All the more reason why I need you. Don’t make me beg,” Damneus smiled.

Royce considered the offer and smiled also.

“I will die soon anyway. May as well die being of some use. If Orion is right, then we’re all dead already. I will go with you.”

“You’re a good man, Royce,” Damneus said and patted him sincerely on the shoulder.

“Thank you,” Royce said with sincerity. “That is very kind of you,” he mumbled and tried to hide his blubbering. “When shall we leave?”

“Tomorrow night. It’ll be safer to move at night. It’ll give us time to find you some new clothes and a camel from the markets.”

“Thank you. Where are you laying your head?” Royce asked.

“In the grain store behind the tavern.”

“As a word of caution, bar the door tonight. I’ve known strangers to disappear at night, and their charred remains end up in blackened pits in the desert. Their belongings often find their way back to the stalls and markets here with no accounting for where they were from. Those blades of yours have most likely been worn by many before you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. But I’ll not worry myself about a rabble of surreptitious thieves. I’ve faced far worse. If they creep for me tonight, I’ll slay them without even rising from my bed.”

“It’s not mere men that kidnap people at night. It’s not these lot in here that do it. It’s something else…”

“What?”

“I’m not sure. But there is a presence here…”

“Interesting,” Damneus pondered. Bizarrely, he believed he knew what Royce was referring to. He’d felt it himself since the moment he’d come to Showta. There was a strange uneasiness in the air, and the haunted faces of the many people he saw held more than mere superstition, yet no one talked about it directly. There was indeed a presence here in the settlement. A hunter and a killer lingered among them.

“I’ll find you at sunrise in the market square. Take the jug of wine and go get some sleep yourself.”

Royce thought for a pause, then stood up shakily, his weakened knees failing him, and he prepared to leave. “What about you?” He said as he picked up the flagon with his strongest hand.

“I’ll see you in the morning. First light.”

Royce nodded, then walked away slowly and left through a low side door. Damneus sat there for a while longer and just hoped that he would not regret this. He should’ve been in Quinnguy with his own by now, but instead he was there.

Chapter 2 “The Jinn of the Wastes”

Sunrise rose strangely, and the desert winds around Showta groaned strangely also. As if something in the air had changed overnight, grew stronger even. Damneus noticed it. He’d awoken in the morning to the sounds of the chanting prayers of the Dhuras echoing quietly from their guilded temple on the hill. It was their ritual, and he’d heard it every morning since he’d arrived.

He’d awoken not in a daze, but with the full alertness of a wild tiger that had just been snoozing, sabre still in hand. His instincts, primal and honed, had not been dulled over the years by civilization like most people’s. Throughout the night, he’d subconsciously noted the various changes in the winds, the many footsteps, and more prominently, the vague shufflings of a bizarre and unnatural presence that floated around in the moonlight out there.

At one point in the small hours, Damneus felt its shadowy presence just outside the door to where he slept, yet it did not linger there long and only tried the door once. Whatever it was, it moved like a shadow, leaving no traces as it did.

Was that what was kidnapping these people?

He stood up now in the creaking morning and discarded the notion of something other than rough, cutthroat men stalking the alleys at night. It wasn’t his problem. He was leaving that evening. He left the grain store and stepped out into the darkened dawn streets. The louring brown clouds seemed to hang lower than usual, and somewhere at the edges of the colony, a woman sobbed.

He made his way through the grim and tight tunnels that led out into the bleak market square to meet Royce. He moved past a mangy dog and a beggar with a missing leg as he did, and soon came to the square. Dust swirls blew across the cobbled stone floor and around the various despondent stall vendors who all stood by their wares with dull vacant glares. They chatted idly amongst themselves in strange, unknown languages, and decrepit old people shuffled past Damneus holding their spices and baskets. He drew his gaze across them all only to find that Royce was not among them. Glancing up at the sun, Damneus could see that it was well into the morning.

Where is this ragged fool then?

He grunted and began walking up and down the stalls with purfunctory. Some offered him tattered wares and curios to consider, but he waved them away and continued looking for the necro-man named Royce.

Perhaps he’d gotten scared? Can’t say I blame him, Damneus thought to himself and continued wandering around. But what is that strange presence? Could it be Orion?

He’d passed many stalls when an old voice called to him from over his shoulder, breaking his train of thought.

“You’re looking for the ghoul, yes?” The voice said.

Damneus turned slowly to find a hunched-over and old dark-skinned man tending to his wood crafts. He was sanding away at a piece of bone-white driftwood and appeared to be crafting a staff of sorts. Damneus studied him briefly. He was from Slavers’ Cove. The scars from the chains were prominent around his wrists and ankles. His eyes were yellow and sunken in on a shrivelled brown face. He wore a white thobe and had a long and grey beard with a silver chain headband. Damneus took a step towards the stall.

“Have you seen him?” He asked.

The bearded vendor didn’t reply straight away. Instead, he grinned sardonically and nodded.

“Where?”

He simply looked back at Damneus with a dismissive shrug and smiled. Damneus grunted with annoyance and tossed the man a gold coin. It landed onto the wooden stall with a clang, and the old man looked at it without picking it up.

“I saw him earlier. He rode out not too long ago, heading west.”

“He rode out?” Damneus questioned with puzzlement. “He didn’t have a camel.”

The frail, bearded man shrugged and twitched his nose. “That is what I saw.”

“You sure it was him?”

“Thin, rotting-looking man with grey hair and a violin on his back, yes? I saw him. He had a very thin brown camel and a backpack also. He took the lower track west, towards the mountain. That is all.”

Damneus studied the rough old face for a beat. “If you’re lying to me, I will come back for you.”

“I know,” the old man smiled. “Before you leave, take this with you,” he said as he held out in his withered hand a small bronze square talisman. It was a square amulet on a leather string necklace, and it had odd hieroglyphs along its edges. “It will keep the bad things at bay,” the old man said. “It will keep that thing away,” he emphasised.

Damneus looked at him curiously. “What do you know about that presence?”

The old man simply shook his head and handed it over to Damneus. “Nothing. Only that you will need it…”

* * * * * *

Night crawled around with the certainty of the grave. The dull orange sun sank down over the horizon, and its fading glow bled out across the flat purple landscape like a great wounded animal that drained the last of its vitality into the earth one last time, before darkness took over, and silence fell eternal over the plains.

Damneus watched it from the saddle of his camel. When it was gone and the clouded sky had turned dark blue, he lifted his reins and struck into a trot. The entrance to the canyons of the Shadow Valley was to the west and lay at the foot of Dragon’s Back mountain like a laceration in its side that carved itself all the way through. The last thing Royce had said to him was that Orion’s cave was beyond the Shadow Valley. That was all Damneus knew, so he rode for it. He’d searched Showta all day for Royce and asked around for him. But no one had seen him.

Did that presence take him? He pondered.

Showta shrank into the twilight blue behind him, and soon he was alone in the desert. The dromedary hoofed across the wide dusty road, and the plains were silent. Only the vague clinking of his sabres gave any sort of definition to the emptiness. As the camel loped reluctantly across the plains, Damneus felt out for the talisman around his neck. He lifted it to his sight in the dark and studied it once more. There were no glyphs on it that he recognised, but he did acknowledge the vague sense of security it installed in him.

Unusual for a vendor to gift a stranger jewellery, Damneus thought.

He rode on for the rest of the night. Overhead, stars flung themselves across the sky in odd arcs, like glowing arrows on their brief trajectory onward to their own predestination.

He rode for most of the night until he came upon a dilapidated ruin that once was a farmhouse. It sat squatting off the edge of the road like a landslide of rubble, looming blackly among tattered paddock walls and deep and dried-up wells. The four walls had been empty for so long that even the wild scavengers and desert rats had not appropriated it, and the ill will around the place hung heavy like smoke. Or perhaps there was another reason it was empty.

Damneus hitched up his camel and furtively dismounted before stepping forward to face the ruin. As soon as he’d crossed the threshold into the empty and roofless room, he felt it. That presence was back again. For a moment, he thought he’d seen a vague form in the corner of the ruin. It took on the aspects of a cloud of smoke upon first glance, but as Damneus squinted in the gloom and his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw that there was nothing there. Still, he could not be rid of the feeling of something watching him.

“Who goes there? Show yourself. No use hiding in the shadows like a coward,” Damneus growled, and only the silence answered. The desert winds flowed over the building and holes in the masonry seemed to groan as the wind filtered through them. He stood in the emptiness for a pause and considered. Whatever it was, it was the same presence he’d felt since coming to Showta and it seemed to be following him.

Still unconvinced that he was alone, Damneus lit a small stave and illuminated the room. He searched along the crevasses and in the fireplace and the alcoves, but found no signs. Frustration or ambivalence soon took over and he decided to bed down near the fireplace.

* * * * * *

In the morning, he awoke to the sounds of Orion’s ghostly voice calling out to him. “It grows by the day, and with it, those monstrous abominations that hide in its swirls will come too. Hideous demons lurk in that fog,” Orion said from somewhere in the wind.

Damneus bolted up from his slumber, sabre in hand, and he carved his gaze around the room. But there was nothing there.

“Twisted and grotesque horrors that are incomprehensible and much more terrifying than simply frothing fangs and talons. It is eternal death, Damneus,” Orion’s voice rose and fell like the stir of a wind. It seemed not to emanate from any one direction, but was instead all around. “Never-ending torture and agony for all who become enveloped in its smothering clouds…”

“Orion?” Damneus growled. “Show yourself, old fool.”

“The fog of death is coming for us all, Damneus,” the winds echoed hauntingly, and then fell away, and then the morning was silent once more.

“What in Talboss’s name is happening?” Damneus snarled, seeking out the amulet as he did. He held it tight.

When no further response came, he saddled up and headed forward, further into the western deserts.

* * * * * *

He rode on for three suns, and camped out in ravines and ditches by the side of the road, never lighting a fire. The days were long and barren, and the nights were strange and full of unease.

Peculiar voices called out to him from the arid brushlands, but he saw no one there in the gloom. They sounded like they were trying to advise him somehow, but when questioned, they stopped responding.

The days were weirder still. That presence was always there. It came first as a voice that whispered against his back something indistinguishable. Then, ahead on the dirt road, he would see a floating cloud of black smoke that seemed to wait for him at checkpoints before moving on and waiting for him at the next one.

“Hello? Show yourself. I’ll not be led along like cattle by a shadow,” Damneus called out to it. But it never answered.

On the fifth morning, Damneus rode along the desert track and saw ahead that same black apparition. Growing weary of the games, he rode along with chargrin and dismissed its presence entirely as he passed it by.

“I’ll not ask you any more, damned shadow of a whore. I’d sooner seek guidance from the half-sunken bones in the sand, or call out cat-like at the stars, demanding advice from faint glows rather than you. What? What is it you want from me? Speak!”

The shadow did not respond. It simply floated there like wet smoke.

“Speak! Whatever you are… By Talboss, if you’re Orion, I’ll slay you myself.”

The pall of smoke then dissipated and blew away in the desert winds. When it did, Damneus saw fully Dragon’s Back Mountain in all its awe-striking aspects, looming over the horizon ahead like a great black tidal wave. Was that shadow guiding him all along? Did it guide Royce also? Why did Royce journey forth alone? What was the nature of the presence, and why did it pick him?

All questions he had no answers to. The only thing he could do now was broach the valley and silently pray to himself that the whole affair was not some elaborate trap.

Chapter 3 “At the Foot of the Shadow Valley”

On the sixth sun, Damnues came upon the entrance to the Shadow Valley. The sky was a grim orange and horrible brown clouds churned about its scape with rumbles of thunder. Dragon’s Back mountain sat to his right, stark and brutal against the bleak sky. It was a massive pyramid of jutting black rock and high crags with great dark geysers that spewed out from fissures in its ridges, like a huge chained beast exhaling acrid breaths. The Shadow Valley was a wall of rock that tapered down from Dragon’s Back mountain like its tail. The only way in was a large crack in its wall.

When he came to the hole, he stopped and stared headlong into it. The passage was a stark black fissure in the canyon, like an opened mouth, and it groaned with a strange inhaling wind that chilled his exposed skin. For he could see the way was cursed and no living soul had ever left its perimeter. The canyon held its ghostly captives like an insubordinate child. But yet, he must journey forth into its aspects.

His camel began to snort and grumble, sensing something malign within, and it tried to pull away instinctually. But Royce had said that it was the only way to get to Orion’s cave. There was no other road to it. Damneus suspired and reluctantly snapped the reins to go in. The camel marched forward obediently, and both were soon swallowed by the shadowy shroud of the valley.

Much later, too much later, and Damneus noticed that he’d been riding for a very long time and yet the landscape had not changed. The sun had not changed either. Just the same quiet tunnel of dirt. A never-ending chasm of earth. The clay of the walls was the same. The sand below his feet was the same. The air even tasted the same. But, still, the tunnel continued. He rode and rode and could only hold notice at the stark silence that hung over the valley like a smothering blanket.

Eventually, mercifully, the tunnel did change, and Damneus rode on until he turned at some point and finally came into a wide open gorge with only a single dusty track snaking through the middle of the towering cliff faces all around. The Shadow Valley. Its horrific aspects loomed over him like the enveloping blanket of night.

On either side, huge, grotesque hooded monoliths with skulls for faces lined the gorge like sentries. They were carved from the very rock wall by unknown alien devices, and the masonry of beings primordial and unseen. For no tooling of man could brave such horrific worship and put forward the notion of reverence to those figures. They intervalled the gorge walls like an avenue of ghastly timbre struts against a collapsing coal mine.

Some clasped their stony hands together in prayer, others had their heads bowed, and most looked forward at the skulls of the opposite. It was the valley of souls long since forgotten. A monument of times far fallen. Those Gods might be disregarded and forsaken now, but their presence is everlong.

A lone vulture was circling overhead. It landed regularly upon a bound and hanging corpse, dangling from one of the hideous dark statue’s hands like a fly caught in a mass of web. The vulture picked lazily at the desiccated corpse and squawked.

Damneus was alone. He didn’t dare look up at the terrifying and imposing statues of those Gods of old as he meekly passed them by. For the very sight of them inspired a terror so deep and primordial within him that he felt the gaze of something unspeakable and eternal against his back. He trotted forward through the chasm, carving out a path in dust that hadn’t been touched for eons.

He rode on for what seemed like days. Until the Shadow Valley answered his trespass.

He heard it at first. A deathly gust of something unseen that sounded like howling. Then Damneus saw it. Shimmering in the gloom at the far end of the tunnel, like shadows at first glance, was a horde of riders fast approaching.

A cavalry of ghoulish half-naked marauders, some ten in number, clothed in garments fashioned directly from nightmares and jacketed human skin. Blood-stained leathers, rawhide helmets, ghastly black swords, and necklaces made from ears. Damneus knew exactly who they were. The Daimons of the Shadow Valley. He’d heard stories about them.

Only fables were told, for no one had survived their encounter. They were said to be men once—lost men who sought shelter in the valley long ago and never escaped. In feverish desperation, they turned to each other and the flesh of their own poisoned their minds and turned them into heinous savages, beholden to the higher evil that dwells in the valley. The presence that had been guiding him along through the desert had led him into a trap all along.

The Daimons came through the gorge like the wind and they cried out in barbarous sounds wholly unnatural for any human vocal cords. Their braided and tarred hair whirled around their bodies like severed vines. The mere sight of them spurred him into a full retreat. He knew what would happen if they caught up to him—brutal bloody death. He tugged at the reins and span his camel around and rode fast back the way he came. The whole thing was a trap that he must escape. The marauders gave chase and clawed after him through the valley.

He rode and rode and whipped his camel into near death. It gasped and protested and tried to slow down, but Damneus would not let it. The pursuit lasted most of the day, and by sunset, both camel and man alike were worn down and beaten to the point of submission. Damneus could now see the way back out to escape. If only he could make it into the canyons, then he might evade and pounce upon them. In the long wide-open valley against ten, he was a canary. But in confined spaces, everything was his advantage.

He rode and rode and eventually came upon a hole in the wall and made for it. But before Damneus could get in and steal away into the many corners of the canyon, a rogue spear, hurled from one of the riders, plunged into the side of his camel. It wailed bird-like before it came crashing down onto the rocks and pitched Damneus from his saddle. He was flung through the air over its corpse and he hit the ground with a loud thud. The fall rocked his senses, and he staggered to his feet quickly before limping towards the mouth of the canyon. Arrows chased him back into the dark opening from whence he’d come.

Damneus turned. The Daimons were close enough now that he could see their teeth grinning at him; horrible, fanged teeth that looked more like the teeth of the phiranna than man.

With the speed of a cheetah, Damneus drew his bow and let loose one arrow after another. Their shafts whistled through the air before striking one, two, three camels and downing the riders with them. The next volley of arrows found their marks in the chests of three of the Daimons, and they yelped as they fell from their camels.

But, before any more arrows could be loosed, the riders dispatched, leapt from their camels and pressed Damneus back into the canyon.

He ran into the tunnels like a hare evading a fox. He scurried through a blur of dead-end rock faces and weaving chasms. The Daimons were down to seven, but still enough to present an insurmountable challenge and the labyrinth held many dead ends. There was no way he could beat them in a straight-up conflict.

He moved through the streams of rock frantically and eventually found a high position to ambush them from. He climbed up to a boulder at the lip of the chasm’s edge and led down and waited. He tried to cool his breathing. He looked up at the mottled brown sun and thought of something vaguely resembling home.

The Daimons came filtering through a few moments later in pursuit. They’d clearly been following his footprints in the sand. They moved through the gorge like a pack of bloodhounds sniffing out their prey. Damneus laid still and watched them pass by. When the last man moved past, Damneus sat up and fired his arrow through the man’s neck. It hit him straight in the jugular and stopped any notion of calling out to his companions. He was so far behind the pack that his falling went unacknowledged.

Damneus then stood up and cut along the rim of the canyon, leaping across, following them. One of them at the back had seemingly noticed the stalking presence behind him, and instinctively spun around and looked up to spot Damneus standing above him. A squat silhouette against the setting sun. But before he could call out, Damneus pounced from the rock and landed upon him like a falling boulder. His sword plunged through the top of the marauder’s chest all the way down, and the Daimon fell down in the dust.

The dull thud was too much to disregard, and someone from the pursuing pack had noticed. They all turned and headed back to investigate. Damneus, hearing the approaching footsteps, and now in the maze with them all, ran. He bolted and made through a small crevasse. The hunt was on and Damnues was heaving deep breaths as he slid through crevasses and fissures. If it became a wide-open chase, then he would perish. He knew it. And so did they. The Daimons had found the trail and funnelled into the chasm after him. Damneus lurched and ran, scraping past rock faces as he did, and he heard over his shoulder the wild baying of the Daimons echoing.

Coming into a small round that was shaped like an arena, Damneus knew he would not out-run them now. If there was even a modicum of a chance for escape, it would be through a fight. He stopped, steadfast, and turned. He drew his sabres and faced the remaining five Daimons head-on. They filtered in after him through the crack in the wall, like rats spilling out of a drainpipe. And they soon circled him, each holding outstretched those ghastly iron swords smelted in the pits of civilizations old.

Damneus sucked in a long hard breath of oxygen before he swung the first blow. It cut through the air like lightning and then the fight was on.

Using the environment to his advantage, he dived and jumped around the boulders cat-like and forced the savages into bottlenecks and tight corners. In foolish eagerness, one of the Daimons darted forward with a low stab of his sword towards Damneus. Damneus retorted with a flurry of swings that disembowelled and beheaded the bandit within the blink of an eye. Damneus bobbed and moved around their blades, and his sabres sang through the air as he lashed them in all directions with the whirlwind fury of a surrounded panther swiping its paws. Damneus wildly headbutted one Daimon in between desperately parrying the swings of another, before he rolled under the third dashing blade and responded by taking the savage’s leg off just above the knee. The battle was vicious and relentless. In a flash, he was in the centre of a tornado of lunging spears and sweeping swords. Spear heads stabbed into his limbs, and the swords carved over exposed shoulders and stomach. Soon, Damneus’s whole body was slick with his own blood. The clang of steel against steel and the grunting and shouting of warriors echoed in the valley as they jostled back and forward.

In a frenzy, he grabbed one spear just behind its head and yanked it towards him. The Daimon, still gripping the shaft, stumbled forward with it and with a monstrous swipe of his sabre, Damneus sheared through the Daimon’s neck so cleanly that his head fell one way and his body another.

The Daimon next to the beheaded man then kicked Damneus to the floor and lunged over him to finish him. But, finding the hilt of his dagger, Damneus ripped it from its sheath and plunged it into the beserker’s foot. As the marauder hissed in pain, Damneus swung the dagger upward and uppercutted the man’s head right below his jaw with it. So merciless was the strike that his head snapped back and he fell down into the bloodied sand like a fallen tree.

Damneus lurched back up to face the remaining two. He staggered backwards over severed limbs, slashed out entrails, and pools of blood, before he found himself against the rocks. His spine pressed neatly against the rough wall of the canyon. He panted hard and held his position. He was beaten. The two remaining Daimons drew closer. Their demonic faces, enlightened with glee, bit and snapped at the air around him like wolves snarling over their prey. Damneus met their gaze with cold indifference. His sabre’s grip sticky in his hands and trickles of blood ran down his legs and into his sandals. They grinned manically, each knowing the kill would be soon. Damneus’s thoughts leapt forward to the night ahead, and he imagined himself roasting over a spit as these crimson-soaked animals tore and gnawed the charred flesh from his bones. All ten of them would become revitalized from the fleshy hunt. He imagined them giggling around the fire like drunk hyenas, and it enraged him.

Knowing now that he was truly trapped, the unreasoning red fury flowed through him once more, singing his funeral dirge, and he tensed himself, ready to leap forward in one final volley. His eyes blazed like white-hot coals in a fire pit, and his panting morphed into a growl with each sucking breath. He always knew his life would end as such, but he was not going to make it easy for them. If his flesh was to fill their stomachs this night and he didn’t slay them, then the infected wounds he’d give them would.

In a fit of fury, he kicked a wave of sand at one of their faces, long enough for him to lurch forward and sink his blade in the Daimon’s abdomen. As the other moved forward, Damneus spat a wad of blood into his face and stunned him. The Daimon swung wildly, blinded by the spit. Damneus, unable to grip his sabres anymore, jolted forward bare-handed and wrestled the blinded man to the dirt. They grappled and threw wild punches at each other before Damneus rolled over on top of the last Daimon and pushed his thumbs in his eye sockets until they squelched against the jelly, and the Daimon howled out like a dog. Dameus, not satisfied enough, then leaned over the Daimon and wrenched his neck with a savage jerk of will that would make civilized men shudder.

When it was done and the last Daimon stopped screaming, Damneus gasped, and rolled off his corpse, and led there in the sand next to him and heaved deeply.

The valley was quiet now. He sucked in the heavy evening air and panted. He could feel the blood seeping out of his wounds and the sand below drinking it up greedily. He was so enervated of strength that he simply laid there and looked up at the twilight red sky. The moon was low and glowed like a piece of coal in the furnace of the night sky. Damneus knew this was the end for him. There was not a chance he could claw his way back from this one. He would die here with those Daimons.

Curiously, a calming blanket of peace fell over him now. He felt serene and relaxed. It was almost a relief that he did not have to fight anymore. It was all he’d ever done. It was all he’d known. No more.

Damneus smiled. The talisman on his chest felt warm and its glowing pulse helped him relax further. He gazed up at the sky, exhaled a long breath, then he closed his eyes and slowly drifted off into a deep and interminable slumber. Time to rest…

* * * * * *

Dripping water. Cold, wet rock. Chanting of some kind… Somewhere in the gloom, Damneus felt his flat, unmoving body being carried along on something. A stretcher made of stone, perhaps. He forced his eyes open and peered up at the rough wall as he glided through a darkened tunnel and came into a dim arched room with braziers burning in the corners. The stretcher hovered into the middle like an altar in the centre of a macabre tableau. Floating around him were shadowy forms made from smokeless fire, faceless and anamorphic. The spectres leaned over him and scrutinised his wounds. Although faceless, Damneus could see them looking at each other and discussing something. At the foot of the altar was that presence again. It levitated there and looked down at the body on the table before it turned to the other shapes and shook its head. Damneus felt his eyes shut once more, and then the sensation of being lowered into warm water took over him before everything faded away…

“Wake up, Damneus. You must wake up. We’re here,” Damneus heard Royce say.