01 Nov Damneus and the Kingdom of the Flayed Ones

 In a faraway future, across limitless desert wastes, living in the ruins of the old world, lay the emaciated colonies of the new one.

The feral lands of Zimitra. The land of forgotten knowledge. The land where the memories of the ancient world were lost to the sands of time, and all that is remembered now is savagery and slavery.

Chapter 1 “The Assassin from Quinnguy”

The dungeon was lightless and reeked of fresh blood. The metallic tinge of it clung to the air like smoke. It smelled of death in there; slow agonising death at the barbaric surgical hands of the flayed ones.

Damneus the damned hung from the stone wall in thick cast iron chains that clinked and rattled in the darkness. The blood of the fallen souls from ages past was slick and sticky against his bare back. In the corners were piles of old bones and rotten clothing. He did not know how long he’d hung there for, but if he had to guess, it was for days. Days without definition. So long so that the circulation in his arms had long since departed. Everything hurt and he could feel the bruises and lacerations groaning and stinging across his naked body.

Only simmering anger had kept him conscious now. “Curse the gods of the dust and the wind both for fating me to this. Curse them all!” he snarled to himself. “I shall escape this place and purge it all back into the wastes from whence it came…”

He’d been set up. That much was apparent. The assassination of Hamu-Uti the demon priest was intended to bring order to the ravaged lands of the wastes. The attempt had been contracted to him by a mysterious figure in a lowly tavern in Port Raki some ten suns ago. But now, after Damneus had had time to ponder it, he realised that it was nothing more than a mechanism to garner more support for Hamu-Uti. It was staged, more than likely by Hamu-Uti himself, to display to the mob that their lands were indeed being invaded and influenced by outlanders, outlanders like the bronze-skinned Damneus. And more sacrifices would be required to appease the God Hetra now. Sacrifices just like him—the outlander from Quinnguy.

He knocked his head against the wall in frustration.

“How could I fall for that?” He muttered through gritted teeth, once again to himself, and nothing but the copper-smelling stillness of the cell answered him. “Blinded by gold, you fool…”

He went quiet once more and hung there in the darkness for some time. Nothing now but silence, and the impending sense of one’s own doom. He’d gotten so close to completing his assignment. But one more arrow and it would’ve been done. The exits were clear. The target was almost eliminated. Yet, they were waiting for him. They had to have been. Before Damneus could even draw his bow, five hulking Hetrian guards came rushing out from the disguised side door and pinned him to the ground. There was a struggle, and Damneus had mortally wounded at least two of them with swift swipes of his sabre, but then came the vicious black stone club straight to his temple. And it all went quiet from there.

* * * * * *

The door to the cell suddenly creaked open, its ancient iron springs groaning as the bulkhead door was pushed ajar and a shaft of dull amber light slit across Damneus’s hanging naked body. He squirmed awake, and cocking one eye open, tried to spy the movements of the shadow coming into the pit. The fresh light was dazzling to him, but still, blearily, he saw the figure enter—the first visitor he’d had since landing himself in the chains. Standing in the doorway was a strange and hunched-over figure draped in a long black cape, holding a chamberstick. The hunchbacked silhouette stood motionless for a pause before groaning and closing the door behind him, and then coming forward. Whoever he was, he was hiding something underneath his robes, hugging it even.

Damneus said nothing, watching inquisitively, assuming only now that this new hooded figure was his replacement torturer. Yet he had come alone and brought no tools for the procedure.

The figure then stopped abruptly in front of the chains, as if hitting a mark on a stage. Standing before Damneus now, he then raised his head and lifted his hood back ever so slightly. In the waning candlelight of the stranger’s chamberstick, Damneus could see the man’s withered face. He was an old man. Unmercifully old. Perhaps one of the stewards of the temple who took pity on him? The face was grey and gaunt, and his forehead held the deep wrinkles of time. His skin around the neck was bubbling and full of lesions, and it looked as if the infection went all the way down the stranger’s chest. The man’s eyes were a smoky purple hue, and his lips sagging and sullen.

Wizard’s eyes perhaps, Damneus thought to himself.

Damneus watched curiously. The stranger looked up at him with a bizarre and haunted look in his eyes.

“You must be hungry,” rasped the figure. “Come.”

The hunchback lifted black-nailed claws holding a terracotta jar of ale to the imprisoned man’s mouth, and as soon as Damneus smelt it, he clasped his lips around the thing and drank it greedily. Half the ale spilt down his broad chest and splattered onto the sand, but Damneus cared not.

Then, the hunchback raised up with his best arm a hunk of sourdough bread and held it to the man’s mouth as if feeding a horse. Damneus ate it gladly and ripped big chunks from the loaf. When the bread was done, the stranger then produced a short, seared chunk of meat seemingly from his sleeve and held it once more to the incarcerated man’s mouth.

Damneus considered for a moment, then assumed that there was no need to poison him now. If they wanted to kill him, then they had many more agonising ways of doing so. So he bit into the meat hungrily and ate it all.

The hunchback waited patiently for the savage to finish his meal. Damneus chewed slowly, savouring each nourishing bite. The meat was seared and peppered perfectly, and it still held the juices of a fresh cook. The stranger had prepared it just for him and he’d wondered why. But the thought didn’t stay for long. It was the first thing he’d eaten in seven suns, and it tasted like a divine present sent straight from Talboss himself.

When he’d finished chewing, the hunchback then took a step forward and examined Damneus briefly like a bartering merchant considering the purchase of a dromedary. The stranger looked over every aspect and sniffed indifferently at the sight. The prisoner was scarred and beaten, yet he still commanded the presence of a fighter. His dulled azure eyes stared back at the stranger like a primal tiger caught in a corner, and the dried blood across his body appeared as like a well-earned war paint to the old bodach.

Danmeus wasn’t a particularly big man, standing about the same height as most others, the stranger assessed. Yet, he held the distinct Panther-like qualities that had made him lethal to the point of legend. His reputation was well earned, and in many inns and burrows across Zimitra, his song was sung. The singing blade. The swift-footed one from the shadows.

Damneus commanded a lean, muscled back with coiled, tense arms and with it, a savage abdomen that spoke of hyenas. His shoulders were rounded and bulky, and his neck thick with bulging veins. His face was sharp and angular with a long scar down the left side and thick eyebrows. His hair was dense and dark brown and always tied up in a high ponytail with flowing sides, almost like a mane. His legs were sinewy and hardy and had seen many miles.

The stranger caught himself in awe of this chained-up beast, this prisoner. When he’d discovered that the mercenary he’d been seeking was taken prisoner and had been in the dungeon for seven suns, he was expecting to find nothing more than a ragged and wiry husk of a peasant. But instead, he’d discovered something completely exotic and unseen. For he was of a breed from a different time, or even just lands. Savage and unspoken primordial instinct surged through every part of his body. Damneus looked indeed more like a starved panther than a man. Although he had keen and sharpened eyes that glowed with razor intelligence, there was also a wild ferocity and hunger behind those same irises that was unmistakable and could not be caged nor bridled. He was something infinitely more primal than any civilised mind could tame, and it spoke loudly of an eon when humans were still predator and prey simultaneously. The tribal beating of the drums. All of it swirling in the primordial oze of genesis. Crawling out of the mire was slow.

The stranger cautiously took a sample of sweat from Damneus’s brow upon his finger and licked it. The stranger sucked his finger bizarrely before speaking.

“Despite your punishments, I do believe you still have some vitality in you yet,” the stranger coughed. Damneus said nothing.

“Shame about your recent endeavours, wasn’t it? What was it? Or did you have no vitality after all?”

Damneus groaned in frustration. “Vitality has never been an issue. It’s politics I can’t surmount.”

“Yes. I can see that. A warrior without a war. A tool without a purpose? The ages have left you behind? No need for such instruments anymore. Such a fierce instrument of war you were. Gods, how I miss the days when it was just fighting. The first age of man. Steel against steel. Will against will. Now, it’s all talking, talking and bartering, and bureaucracy and bribes as the world curls up and dies.”

“Who are you?” Damneus asked in puzzlement.

“I’m Orion. The last of the True. One of four left.”

“I know you not.”

“But I know you, friend. All too well.”

“I hold no friends.”

“But you are Damneus. The mercenary, the thief, the nomad. There are no lands in Zimitra that your sandaled feet have not walked. Am I wrong?” He spluttered, trying to contain his cough.

“What do you want?” Damneus grunted.

“I have a proposal. One that would see you rid of these chains. But…” The man then stopped and looked furtively over his shoulder before continuing. “It is extremely dangerous, and the price for failure is something far worse than death.”

“Tell me what you want, or I’ll have no more words for you.”

“… I wish for you to kill Porverto…” Orion said with a tinge of desperation in his voice.

The sentence fell heavy like a great hammer falling in the room, and for a pause, there was only silence. Damneus thought for a moment, looking at Orion, contemplating any and all schemes that might be in play now.

“I’ve already failed one assassination attempt,” he finally grumbled. “One is enough.”

“Your first failure? Was it not?” Orion shrugged. “Then you shall stay here. Perhaps you would prefer to have that bronzed skin of yours rendered from your flesh? For that is the only prospect you have now, unless you take this offer. What a shame it would be to see your proud head taken from your spine and set upon a spike at the city gates. Such an ignominious end for such grand potential.”

Damneus considered, then, “I’ve made my peace with my God. If I die in my bed fifty ages from now or tonight makes no odds to me.”

Orion smiled curtly. “You speak like a true outlander. You are not from Zimitra at all. Are you?”

“I am from Quinnguy. A land far away that has no time for such talk. A land of hardy folk who have seen many battles. Not these weak-limbed scavengers who eat their own.”

“Hmm. Interesting. Yet, I do not believe your cavalier attitude towards death for one moment. I believe you use those words as an armour against something that you truly feel about life and death. Something you perhaps learned and committed to memory along your travels. To stowaway what you truly know about this land. Hm? Because, deeply, in your very bones, you feel that there is more to this, don’t you? You can feel its vibrations when you sleep. You can hear its call in the red sun. There are broader things at play than merely life and death. Perhaps your purpose is more than this?”

Damneus simply frowned as a response.

“No matter,” Orion said sardonically. “I must have the wrong mercenary after all.” He stepped back and looked away, as if preparing to depart. “And, as a note of interest, you were indeed correct with your idle thoughts earlier. It was a set-up,” he then said before looking back at Damneus, smirking.

Damneus pushed off the wall to meet Orion’s gaze. “Bastard!”

His teeth gritted hard and his stone blue eyes blazed with Jaguar-like fury. If he’d not been chained to the wall, he’d have torn the man’s head clean off with his bare palms.

‘My, my, what a ferocious beast you are. Give you a sword and you’ll slash a kingdom. Give you an army and you’ll bring about the destruction of our time. Won’t you?”

“Blast you, you’re a telepather!” The Quinnguy man growled. “You’ve been listening to my thoughts? How long for?”

“Indeed,” Orion said gravely. “One of the many benefits of being abandoned at the foot of the forgotten Obliesk.”

“You read minds with the same disregard as reading a scrap of paper. But the minds of men are not yours to read.”

“I cannot always control it. By sheer proximity, was I able to hear your thoughts. But my advent is not by chance, and I come with this offer. I wish you to capture Porverto, bring him to me, then we may kill him, in the most brutal fashion. I’m assuming, a mercenary and bandit as well-travelled as yourself, you are aware of this man?”

Damneus settled and grunted once more.

“Tell me about him,” Orion probed. “If you know so much?”

After a heavy sigh, Damneus spoke. His gruff voice filtered out through tight lips, and Orion heard the hatred in the nomad’s tongue.

“He’s one of the Twelve Acolytes. The Sworn Twelve, they call themselves. They parade around as champions of the economy, of healthcare, and agriculture, but they’re nothing more than a band of scheming thieves who’ve built their lives on the spines of slaves. A gang of greedy fat men, all made of butter and sin. They each hold vast stocks in the diamond mines of the worm fields, the slave colonies, and the Silverhole quarry. They coerce and inculcate every aspect of this land’s economy. They rule from the shadows. They sell the diamonds and the harvests to the far-off lands of Grycet. And when the profits come back, they keep it all. Porverto presides in a marbled mansion on the north side of the Azure Isles, fat and gravid with wine and cheese. Reaping the profits and having little girls of broken families tend to him. He’s a thief.”

“And what are you? Was it not you who stole the sacred jewels of Bumi-hadin from those same jungled temples of Grycet?”

“Porverto is the worst kind of thief.”

“And how’s that?”

“I steal what has been stolen from others. I steal jewels; he steals labour and souls.”

Orion afforded a light grin with satisfaction. “And that is exactly why it must be you who kills him. After all, you have more of a reason than anyone to want to slay Porverto.”

“Why would I help a dusty old sorcerer like you settle a score?”

“It is more momentous than that, I’m afraid. This is no mere political assassination. For he and he alone knows the secret weakness of those things that stalk behind the midnight granite wall. The fog of death is coming for us all, Damneus. 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. Twisted and grotesque horrors that are incomprehensible and much more terrifying than simply frothing fangs and talons. It is eternal death, Damneus. Never-ending torture and agony for all who become enveloped in its smothering clouds. I’ve seen it. The wall will not hold it for much longer. I implore you, if we do not stop its encroachment, then all the lands in the known world will soon be smothered in its eternal shadow and every single man, woman, and child will die, over and over again, forever…”

Damneus thought for a long time before speaking again. “I’ve heard of the midnight wall and what lies beyond it. I’ve heard of the lake of fire and the vale of smoke and the unnatural monsters that dwell there. But I’ve never seen it myself, and they’re behind the wall anyway. How do I know you’re not lying?”

“I am going to leave you with this,” Orion continued and produced a small filing tool from his sleeve before placing it squarely in Damneus’s mouth. “If you are who I think you are, and if you can find a way out of these chains, I wish for you to meet me three suns from today at the city of Emerence. You know where that is, do you not?”

Damneus snorted and nodded, the tool still clasped between his teeth. Of course he knew where the cursed city of pestilence was. He’d been so far south and north alike that the mere idea of Zimetra was a guilded cage to him. For there were far-off lands with leagues more mystery than what this desert pit could offer. All of which, Damneus had traversed and explored to the edges of reality and sheer horror.

“There is a hideout on the cliffs that overlook Showta, the merchant city, of which I’m sure you’re familiar with. Meet me there when you’re ready, and I shall tell you everything.”

Damneus carefully shuffled the tool to the side of his mouth with his tongue and spoke out the other side of his mouth.

“What’s in it for me?” He growled.

“Gold. Lots of it. Rubies, sapphires, diamonds. All of it.”

Damneus thought long and hard, then, as a signiture of accepting the contracted terms, he simply nodded once.

“Meet me in the cave in three suns’ time. That is, if you can make it out of this pit alive,” Orion nodded solemnly before turning and leaving, shutting the clunky door behind him as he did.

Then the room was quiet once more, and Damneus hung there still, filing tool in mouth, numb limbs.

“Old fool,” Damneus grunted.

Damneus turned his head and set to work filing away the chains from his wrists. He’d found the weakest point in the chain and set to work scrubbing away at it with the tool. His head jerked back and forth rhythmically like a pigeon for hours and hours.

Chapter 2 “The Streets of Blood”

Much later, Damneus flopped onto the floor of the pit with a thud, finally free of his chains, and it was the first time in seven suns since his feet had touched earth. He collapsed in the sand like a newborn fawn and laid there for a pause. After a while, after massaging his limbs back into life, Damneus stood up wearily and tried the door. It was locked.

Another test from Orion?

“Bastard,” Damneus muttered. “He’s not making this easy.”

Damneus looked around his cell. It was tight, with high walls and no windows. The ceiling seemed to stretch upwards infinitely into blackness. The walls were made of sandstone and were porous, but smooth and uniform. The masonry was so precise that no mortar was used.

 No way to scale these walls, Damneus thought.

He moved back towards the door and examined the lockhole. It was nothing special—a simple bolt and latch mechanism. With the newly gifted filing tool, he set to work. He snapped the instrument in half and curved one of the bisceted pieces into a claw-like aspect. With the other, he bent a small rivet into the lower section to have a distinct waved character to it. Then he started picking the lock. It didn’t take long. The lock clinked gleefully with the invitation of access, and Damneus then stepped forth into the hazy amber tunnels of the dungeons below Hetra.

He crept cautiously through the shrouded labyrinth, still completely nude. They were low and dusty and reeking of putrifying flesh. Various torches burned meekly in the dark. Giant earth-ants scabbered about his feet, and the buzz of flies was all around him. Somewhere in the haze, Damneus could hear the low sad moaning of the other prisoners. They were all awaiting their turn to give up their flesh. He couldn’t help them. For in Hetra, the city of sand and maize, life returns through suffering. The shedding of one’s flesh was viewed by them as the greatest of transformations; the bridge between decay and vitality. They had been ‘selected’ for the offering and he couldn’t help any of them even if he had the means to. Damneus was unconvinced whether he alone would be able to escape, let alone considering the others also.

He moved down the corridors, through the dimmed flesh pits where heinous surgeries were performed, past piles of desecrated bodies, along with others hanging from the ceilings by meat hooks. Some were still alive. They groaned in delirium as Damneus slithered past them. Parts of their bodies had been amputated or their faces skinned, yet they were kept alive for reasons he did not want to know why.

Later, he came to a long dark arched hallway that had wooden-barred cells on each side. He shuffled past them all, and one by one the prisoners noticed him. They stood up each and thrusted their starved limbs through the bars out towards him, clutching desperately at the air. The howls of the sacrifices inside them soon rang out and grew into a crescendo as he passed by. They were all ragged and wearing tawdry slips of clothing—bruised and beaten. Their desperate eyes glowed like stars in the theatre of their emaciated faces behind the rough wooden bars, against the stark black backdrop of gloom and despair.

“Please! Please, help us! I have a child! Please help us!”Someone screamed, and Damneus was conscious that the noise would soon raise the perimeter guards.

“I have no debt with you. I cannot help you,” Damneus muttered gruffly to one of the scabbed and diseased souls. “Hold your tongue or you’ll get us all killed.”

“Please, please, lord!”

“I cannot help you.”

“We were snatched from our villages as we slept,” the dishevelled woman cried. “All of us. They took my son. They ate him. They came in the night and snarred us all with ropes and dragged us here from across the desert. Please!”

“Keep it down,” he said.

“Please. My son is already gone. I have three daughters with me. Here in this prison. Please! Help us…”

Damneus stopped and dwelt upon the thought. He looked at the woman. She was mature and motherly. Her long brown hair was a mess, and her rags barely covered her dignity. But her eyes were strong and wisened. Her intelligence was obvious. She reminded him of his own mother somehow. Damneus softened.

“Where’s your tribe from?” He called lowly.

“From Rokon on the edge of the wastes. Please! Help us!” The woman sobbed too loudly.

“Shut up!” Damneus barked. “You want to awaken every sentry in the city?”

The mob behind her howled and bickered and squabbled.

“Tell them to shut up also!” He said, his voice full of lethal intent. “Least you want to have us all skinned by nightfall.”

She did. She called for hush with a simple calming hand gesture, pleading to them all, and the baying of esurient souls behind her gently fell into a silence. They stood morbidly, all looking back at Damneus with wide, imploring eyes. He grunted and looked each way down the corridor. No guards yet. He sighed.

“I’ll give you the means to spring the locks. I don’t have any keys, but that’s the best I can do. Here,” Damneus said and handed through the bars the fashioned lockpicking device.

The woman took them in her hands, and her eyes welled up with tears. “Thank you, outlander. Thank you.”

“Just be sure to escape through the sewers rather than out onto the streets. I don’t need a riot on my hands. You understand? I need you scabby dogs to be quiet when you make your escape. You won’t be able to get all of them out, but you can try. Head for Port Raki when you do. It’s South. Leave here and turn East first. Leave at nightfall. You’ll never make it through the desert plains to the South. Once you turn, follow the aching river all the way down.”

“And you?”

“A contract was opened on Hamu-Uti. It must be closed if I am to leave here without shame.”

Damneus moved away. He then slinked silently up a rough stone staircase and moved swiftly past several guards in the catacombs. He expertly dodged and weaved through the low-ceilinged dungeons like a shadow, avoiding every sentry, rolling and diving as he did. Only the faint poofs of dust in his wake gave any sign of his passage. He just hoped that the prisoners below him wouldn’t blow his efforts with a hasty breakout. Kindness is never repaid.

When he came to the prison exit some time later, he saw a large stone doorway with two sentries posted there. It was low and cavernous, and flickering amber torches glowed in the small corners of the cave. The guards had their backs to him. They were clearly stationed there to check the entrants to the dungeon, rather than stop anyone exiting.

There was only one way he would escape now, through the two guards. Damneus knew that in his current famished state, he would not be able to take on both of them at once. He was severely weakened and his arms felt heavy. It would have to be one at a time. He would have to pounce upon them and take them by surprise.

He climbed up into the eaves of the cave, far off from the exit, and threw small rocks at various intervals onto the ground. After a while, the incongruous sound was enough to rouse the suspicions of one of the guards.

He’d heard it over his shoulder. The guard peered into the dark inquisitively before considering, then, shuffled forward with a shrug, carrying loosely in his left hand an obsidian-bladed mallet. The Hetrian guard was savage and tattooed and lean, with piercings all over his face like warts. It would be a hard fight if it didn’t go well. Damneus braced himself for a vicious encounter.

The guard sighed with ambivalence as he examined the source of the noise. He lazily looked up at the stalactites and then saw it—the tense, brutal bat-like creature clinging to the roof above him. He gasped in shock. His wide eyes yielded to the sight.

Damneus quickly fell upon the dordeling guard, landing on him in a belly flop, and, with a shuffle of force and a grunting wrestle in the dirt, Damnues found his way to the man’s throat. Thin, powerful hands pressed unmercifully against the sentry’s trachea and squeezed it vice-like until it popped in its membrane. The sentry looked up, surprised at his deliver’s face, and found nothing but pure cold stone staring back at him. Then, with one vicious wrench of force, Damneus twisted the guard’s neck completely backwards, so much so that his head was facing his spine and it draped over his left shoulder and his eyes sunk cold and grey. The corpse fell lifeless into the dust with a dull thud, and Damneus stood over the body.

He took up the man’s mallet and scabbard and clothing. He then dragged the body into an alcove of the cave and tossed it amongst a pile of broken stones before making his way towards the guard room.

The other sentry had seemingly not noticed the absence of his peer. He stood idly by the opening, looking forward at nothing in particular. Damneus came forward slowly, creeping up behind him with the absence of sound, like a cold gust of wind. He stood there and raised up the obsidian stone mallet high above his head before drawing it down onto the back of the man’s head like a great hewing axe. The force of the swing was so monstrous that the mallet shattered into pieces in his grip and the guard’s head exploded like a bloated watermelon, showering the dirt walls in blood and gore.

Damneus stood over the corpse, victorious, and took up the replacement mallet in his hands before turning and leaving silently. He moved on and slinked up the tunnel towards the red light that marked the way out, hugging the wall with his back as he did. To his surprise, there were no more guards at the exit. He came to the wide-open hole of the dungeon without challenge and slinked out into the darkened streets of Hetra.

* * * * * *

The exit had brought him out into a narrow market square full of spice vendors, chained slaves, and squabbling livestock, all in their wooden pens. Only a few curious glances were exchanged between the folk as they saw him come up from the dungeon. Damneus noted this and met their stares casually, then began his masquerade as a guard. He boustriously swaggered through the crowds, idly threatening some with his cold stare. Most of the peasants barely paid attention to his presence. The ones who had, shrugged and carried on with their babbling exchanges in that rough, unknown language. He moved on, away from the market, and knew he wouldn’t get much further as he was currently dressed. Damneus had to become anonymous—someone who could blend in.

He snatched a hessian bag from one of the unattended merchant stands and slinked off down a dim alleyway. There, he tore a hole in the centre of it and fashioned the sack into a poncho and draped it over his lean and hungry frame. Then, to complete the look that would proclaim him a beggar, he threw himself into a nearby horse manure pile and bathed in the excrement, massaging it over his exposed skin and into his hair. He then stood up in the filth and turned in the direction of what he thought was the direction of the city gates.

Finding a large waxed tarpaulin on his way out of the alley, he took it and donned it across his broad shoulders like a cape. He hid the mallet under it, and, with an artfully acted limp and gait, he staggered into the swirl of another bustling bazaar market full of the unnaturally sun-burned and scarred folk of Hetra. Being entombed under the city for several suns had only served to complement his performance.

He bowed his head and limped through the flowing, strangely-tongued crowds, clasping his newly found mallet as he did. All of the people were tattooed and scarred to the point of mutilation. Their faces were all sharp and hawk-like, and their eyes glowed strangely in their faces like two black stones catching moonlight.

The desert city was squat and festering with many beggars and lepers huddling in its dusty alcoves. The air reeked of pestilence and rotting meat and dirt, and on various corners, those people stood begging, dying, rotting.

It was a city of sand and stone, set against the backdrop of a scorched red sky, full of towers and minarets and ceremonial platforms. All of which were exotic, rugged, and clamorous, yet covered each in the layers of desert dust. There were many alleys and side streets, and it was easy to lose bearings in such a place.

Damneus tried to orient himself and struggled to remember which direction the South Gate was. He’d been here before, but in much better conditions and a long time ago. The pallid orange sun hung above, and he found it hard to look at anything other than the dusty ground and sandals kicking past him. Days of abuse and neglect had withered his usually powerful and deadly body into something resembling more dog than man. The hideous wailing of the horned instruments from the festival assailed his ears and made it even harder for him to gather his thoughts.

“Gods, I will not die here,” he mumbled to himself. “Try as you might, I will not…”

He staggered on and soon found himself caught in the tides of a rushing parade. They pulled him along with their stampeding, and he could do little to resist.

The streets held an identical scent to that of the dungeon, and all around Damneus was the carnival of blood. The celebration of sacrifice to the sun god Hetra surged across the city towards the plaza, to the centre of it all. He was pushed along, down streets and past rows of beheaded and flayed bodies impaled on stakes, into the plaza square.

In the middle of that plaza stood the horrifying terraced pyramid of skulls where the sacrifices were performed all day, every day, for thirty suns. The towering pale edifice of stark white bones jutted up into the sky at least thirty lengths, with stone stairs running up each corner towards the apex; on top of which stood the shaman and his acolytes.

The lord, the flayed one. Hamu-Uti. The one who walks in skin not his own. Stretched over his body as like a second layer, sagging and crimson-stained. To the mobs of Hetra, it was holiness. They stood at the foot of the teocalli, looking up at him, utterly enamoured. And they all screamed and shrieked and clapped manically for the blood-letting, begging for him to rejuvenate the dying sun for them through sacrifice.

For the flayed one ruled over agriculture, war, disease, and regeneration; standing in that pulsing heart of Hetra, atop that pyramid of skulls, the peak where death and life were never separate, only two sides of the same offering. To them, he was the giver of life in the face of death.

He wanted their bodies. He desired their blood. He wanted their skin torn from their flesh and worn by the red priests of old, swaying from them as they danced through the city and the festival raged on. Only then would the sun be satisfied. When the celebrations were over, the skin would be left to rot and desicate under its dulled yellow glow and the darkened red skies, and so the world would be blessed through their suffering.

Damneus looked away as body after body was ceremonially beheaded and flayed before having their corpses thrown down the stairs towards the mob. It was common practice for the bodies to be divided among the peasants for… sustenance.

“Damned savages,” he grunted to himself as he quietly slipped through the crowds and away to quieter streets. It was only a matter of time before the guards would return to the cells and find that the assassin was gone. He had to move quick.

Damneus knew he needed to escape beyond the city walls before that happened. For if he was still within its perimeter when the lockdown was called and those awful horns blared into the burning night sky, then he would never leave. The hunt would begin, and he would face a worser fate than if he’d have never left that cursed dungeon altogether. One thing the people of Hetra are known for, they can make the pain last. But he could not leave yet.

Hamu-Uti, the demon priest, must die. Damneus would not leave until the task was fulfilled. The priest resided in the centre of the colony, in one of the many jagged stone temples that overlooked the festering squat city. It wouldn’t be an easy task to gain access to it. There would be many guards and high walls to contend with. He knew he would need the advantage of nightfall.

Damneus manoeuvred through several squalid condominiums and hovels, blending right in as one of the beggars, before coming to a disused grain storage building behind one of the markets. He went in.

The room was dingy and smelled of bird droppings and old hay. Damneus peered around. There was no one inside. He soon found some feral chickens making a nest in its corners. He took a few eggs from their nests and cracked them on the hilt of his axe before sucking each one down raw. Then he came and drew deep gulps from an abandoned water trough. Damneus wiped the dripping liquid from his chin and looked around. He saw a half-crumpled staircase running up the back wall towards the roof.

He climbed the dimly-lit, dilapidated stairs to the roof of one of the towers. It was once maybe a watchtower, or a silo, now crumbling into ruin. Once on the roof, he saw that he had complete vantage over the entire city. The view stretched off into a blinding haze in every direction. Beyond Hetra, laid the endless desert wastes, seemingly limitless and empty under dark crimson and clouded skies. The constant stream of caravans threaded across the sands, towards the city limits, full of slaves and sacrifices, like a line of ants. Squawking crows circled the wagons. The smoke and the dust and the shouting rose up from the city below as if it were vapour from a rotting corpse under the dimmed sun. It was an intense miasma of stink and sin that radiated up from the place and crawled up his nose like smoke.

From the tower, Damneus spied the temple of the priest. It was off in the distance to the north. It was the biggest building in the city, and Damneus knew the best infiltration would be up the temple walls. He would have to find some climbing gear and weaponry to do so, but not yet.

He barred the door behind him and sat down, his back against the wall, his mallet across his knees. There was nothing else to do but wait patiently—await the anaemic orb of the sun to fall below the rim of the world and for night to fall. It would be much easier to strike at night. Damneus hadn’t slept in over seven suns, and he took the opportunity to get some much-needed rest and gather his strength. Almost instantly, he drifted off into a deep snooze, and the baying sounds of the awful city below soon fell away from him.

Chapter 3 “The Temple of Sin”

The howling horns of the watchmen rang out into the deep black night, and suddenly, the hungry colony was awake once more. Damneus bolted upright from his slumber and quickly leapt to his feet, clutching the mallet as he did. The horns blared rhythmically, and Damneus heard—somewhere out of sight, like hyenas smelling the vulnerability of a wounded prey—the soldiers of Hetra leaving the city in a frenzy. They were screeching and shouting as they poured out of the gates in pursuit of something. He looked to the east and saw fifty or more torches down there, beyond the city, twinkling in the inky blue of the flat desert lands.

The swirl of lights looked like a swarm of fireflies gliding over a sea of blackness. Damneus remembered the woman from the dungeons and wondered if those torches were pursuing her and whoever else was unlucky enough not to die in their cells.

“Damned fools. If they catch you, it’ll be worse than if you didn’t try at all,” the man from Quinnguy mused and was glad he’d not chosen to help them further.

After a second thought, Damneus realized that their escape efforts would actually provide an adequate distraction for the soldiers. With half of them running around like beheaded chickens in the dark out there, the city streets would be emptied, or at the very least, quiet.

He then turned and looked at the temple of the priests once more. Damneus gathered his particulars, then headed down the broken stairs and back into the bowels of the dusty city.

* * * * * *

The streets were desolate now. A far cry from what they had been not long ago, and Damneus was greeted only by an eerie silence when he came into the labyrinth of narrow and arched alleyways. Bodies littered their alcoves like discarded clothes, and the thoroughfares were open-air graveyards. He moved forward, heading toward the temple. Suspecting hidden figures waiting for him in the shadows, Damneus held up his mallet ready for an ambush. But none came.

The city still screamed in the ambience, but the commotion was far away—beyond the settlement walls—and it reminded Damneus more of the low howling of distant wolves than any pursuing army. The pursuers must have assumed that Damneus had escaped with the others.

He crept silently and alone through the maze, checking each corner as he did, until he came upon a large stable of dromedaries and other exotic animals. The stables were quiet and practically unguarded. The few remaining sentries who’d not joined the hunt had taken the opportunity to lounge on duty. They were mostly idle and snoozing in the hay around a loose camp in the courtyard of the stables. Only one stood watch. A large fire burned in the middle of the camp, and over it, spitted on a long iron rotisserie, was a headless and charred man.

Damneus peered from the darkness at the edge of the fire and saw a sleeping Hetrian in the corner, out of view of the others. Next to his slumbering body was a large hunting bow and a quiver of arrows with volcanic black glass heads.

The sleeping guard snored like a well-fed tiger, and his lips snarled menacingly and strangely with each sucking breath. Damneus came upon him quickly. He thrust his knee into the man’s chest and promptly slit his throat with such surgical precision and speed that the surprised gasp of the guard left through his laceration rather than his lips. His head slumped back into his chest as if he’d fallen asleep once more. The curtain of blood spilled down his body, and the hay he was sitting on drank it up greedily.

Damneus relieved the guard of his bow and quiver and took up also the large obsidian dagger hilted in camel bone, stuffing it into his scabbard belt. He then buried the body under a few armfuls of hay and, with swift feet, moved to the stables. Creeping into them, Damneus came up to the farthest stall that held several camels. He unlatched the half door and went in. The animals, completely ambivalent to his entrance, only ceased their eating to look across at him with unconcerned looks before returning to their hay.

He approached the nearest camel and gently led it out of the stall before saddling it and leaving through the back door. The beast was not bothered by the transition and followed Damneus obediently. He led it away from the stables with ease and into the gloomy lanes as if it were a loyal pet.

* * * * * *

Later, he came to a small opening in the perimeter wall that gave way to the chinampas to the west. They were vast wet fields with potent-smelling herbs and rows of maize and corn that bordered the city walls. He decided that once the priest was slain, he would escape the city this way. With the dromedary hitched up at a fence, Damneus tested the bow briefly and loosed a dozen arrows into a nearby cart. The string was supple and responsive, and the arrows were well-crafted. It would do. With everything in its place and feeling suitably prepared, Damneus moved with the supple ease of a great stalking panther back towards his target.

He soon entered the part of the city reserved only for the tecpans of the priests and Hetrian royalty. On all sides of him, terraced pyramids stood like staged mountains against the blood-red night sky. In the middle was the palace with a great open kancha courtyard. It shone amber in the starlight—veined marble pillars and golden minarets stretched upward like trees, and the balconies on each face were numerous and staggered. The braziers burned bright, and the patrolling guards numbered at least thirty, but the majority of them were too busy torturing and burning slaves to be a problem.

Damneus assessed the best route and then stalked through the courtyard, clinging to the shadows all the way, avoiding the guards, before coming to the base of the palace wall. He looked around before turning and scaling the rough stone surface like a gecko, carefully climbing upwards, until he came to the balcony of the Flayed One’s temple.

He slithered over the railing and went through long winding passages and wide open rooms filled with burnished pots and golden braziers burning in the corners. After quickly slaying several lone guards, one after another, he crept stealthily down the hallway towards the den of the demon priest—the bedroom of the Flayed One.

Shafts of red moonlight streamed down through the gaps in the roof, turning the bedroom into a dim crisscross of light and shadow, gold and red, marble and nighttime wind. Grasping his bow and arrow firmly, Damnues entered with the slouching gait of a stalking panther, eyes fixed on his oblivious prey. He came closer and saw him.

Hamu-Uti lay naked across his silk-laden bed. Surrounding him in a grotesque kind of exhibition were several children of different ages and sexes. Damneus did not know whether they were asleep or not, but the sight of it alone made his blood swell in his veins and his face glow red with seering anger.

Hamu-Uti heard something from the dark behind the silk curtains. Bearily blinking awake from a sinicuich daze, he then saw moving out from the shadows, a sunken head and noiseless feet that glided over patterned rugs towards him.

“Damned dog of a man,” the spectre from the shadows growled at him, drawing his bow tight to his chin.

Hamu-Uti sat up and slowly raised a casual, pleading hand outward, calling for Damneus to lower the bow so he might process what was happening. He looked at Damneus with a mixture of shock and inquisitiveness. He studied the silent assassin, and the initial vulnerability of surprise in his cold black eyes was soon replaced with a scowl at the audacity of the intrusion. It was him. The outlander who’d tried to kill him several suns ago. The assassin.

Hamu-Uti smirked with the realization. Hamu-Uti was a tall and thin man with bronzed skin and tattoos and piercings all over his haggard body. The scars of ages past were present all over his battle-hardened frame. The Flayed One was a powerful man, both politically and physically. He did not feel threatened by Damneus and even took the trespass as a welcome change of affairs. Hamu-Uti slowly drew his gaze away from Damneus and towards the collection of blades and instruments resting against his bed. He then turned back to Damneus and grinned menacingly. The thin lips drew back, revealing sharp filed teeth coated with a veneer of crimson.

Wordlessly, Damneus gestured for the disgusting priest to make a move for them. Hamu-Uti did not. Instead, he shrugged and pointed towards a large table laden with gold and sapphires. The table was encircled by flickering candles, used knives, bloodied skulls, and smouldering incense sticks that smelled like burning wood.

“Etu ack di. Hut chai mai,” Hamu-Uti said in a gruff aged voice. He again gestured at the jewels and pointed back at Damneus, offering it to him. “Cot chai. Tu at mat…”

Damneus stared at Hamu-Uti. He drew the bowstring back further. “Those who buy life with stolen wealth deserve neither life nor wealth,” Damneus snarled through tight lips.

The arrow let loose and the shaft, whistling through the air, bolted right through Hamu-Uti’s left eye. Hamu-Uti twitched for a pause and held up a shocked hand in defense, as if he hadn’t even realized what injury he’d just suffered, before slumping down against the headboard. The draw was so incredible that the arrowhead had practically passed right through the priest’s skull. Thick purple blood trickled out of his punctured eye. Looking down at him now, Damneus studied the kill curiously, feeling a rising sensation of vindication within him. He concluded that no one was powerful enough to escape death. No matter who they might be, once they’re dead, they’re nobody. He grinned to himself lightly before turning and checking the children’s vitals. They were all gone.

The fleeting smugness Damneus had felt was soon swallowed up by an immense aching sadness and an anger that swelled in the pit of his stomach. He could only offer a defeated sigh at the sight of the horrendous scene that Hamu-Uti had committed. Damneus dreaded to ponder how many nights before this one had a similar act occurred.

In a fit of frustration, Damneus drew another arrow and put it through the other eye before drawing near to the body and taking the priest’s head off with one swing of the obsidian-bladed axe.

Hamu-Uti’s head rolled off the shoulders clumsily and landed on the silk pillow like a sack of flour. The white sheets soon pooled red. Still feeling unsatisfied, Damneus seized the beheaded body, dragged it to the balcony, and cast it over the side down into the inky twilight kancha. He heard it thud somewhere below.

“Let the crows have you,” he growled lowly.

He turned away, took up some regal clothing and a red cape along with a purse of coins, and climbed back down the temple walls before stealing away into the darkness once more. When he made it back to his hitched camel some time later, those feelings of anger had melted down into a great melancholy that drowned his thoughts, and Damneus rode the beast quietly through the chinampas and maize fields for the rest of the night, reflecting deeply on the savage nature of humanity and its willingness to commit horrific acts. The task had been completed, and he felt he could leave with a modicum of honour, but still, the injustice did not sit well with Damneus the damned.

Chapter 4 “The Wandering Merchant”

In the morning, the desert was cold and barren. Damneus trudged on alone across the empty road with the moaning wind at his back. The vultures picked at the carcasses along the road, and there were many bones half-buried in the sands, scraped clean by the desolate winds until they shone white like pearls under the groaning sun.

It was the much lesser-used track, and Damneus thought it prudent to avoid the areas of high traffic. They would no doubt be looking for him now. Hamu-Uti’s massacred body would’ve been found, and the city would have been torn apart in search for him. He rode on and kept his eyes fixated on the horizon all around.

* * * * * *

The next day and Damneus saw, shimmering in the distance, a vague black spot on the road. It was moving towards him. He watched it and considered hiding off the road somewhere until it passed. Under the dimness of the tortured red sky, it was hard to make out what it was exactly. Damneus squinted and watched still. As the black dot drew closer, Damneus saw that it was but a lone merchant’s wagon with only a single rider. The wagon staggered forward towards him, clinking with laden goods and pots, as if it were a wandering and thirsty cow.

The squeaking merchant’s wagon soon came to a stop in front of him. Damneus sat motionless on his camel and watched a thin, grey-bearded man with a burgundy robe and jewelled hands stand up atop his merchant’s wagon. The man looked down at Damneus for a pause and considered. There was a vague hint of a grin across his sunburned and weathered face. The man had deep green eyes and dark skin, and he wore a white turban with a red feather in its crest. On each hip, in camel-skinned scabbards, were two immense schimitars.

Damneus met the man’s accusing glare with cold, indifferent eyes. The man was old but was clearly capable of fighting.

“Byuashka?” The man said after a long pause, his hands dropping to his sides, brushing over the hilts of his schimiters.

“… I’m alone,” Damneus said while slowly reaching for his volcanic black dagger. The man saw and gestured for him to relax.

“Buti kora, shinhie. So are we all in this world, my friend. Who rides alone through the desert wastes with no supplies and a flea-ridden camel?”

“Someone who’s lost,” Damneus grunted.

“Lost from where?” The merchant inquired, his face narrowing into a stare. “Your cape proclaims you a Hetrian soldier.”

“I’m one of the pretorian guards of Hamu-Uti. The priest has been slain. My men rode out to pursue the assassin who stole away in one of the caravans leaving the city. We were set upon by the Khans of the wastes. Only I remain.”

“That is a shame, my friend. I show reverence for your lost brethren. Although you do not look like a Hetrian at all,” the merchant smiled inquisitively, probing the Quinnguy man.

“I’m a mercenary. I was hired as a bodyguard for Hamu-Uti.”

“It seems you’ve failed then,” the man grinned and sat back down again with a groan. “I am Buna. Who am I speaking to?”

“Topec.”

“Ahhh,” Buna said. “Strong name.”

“I need to get to the Azure Isles. May I ride with you?”

“One does not simply let strangers near their possessions so willingly.”

With that, Damneus reached for his belt and took out the stolen coin purse before chucking it up to Buna. The man caught it in his grip almost as instinctively as a hawk catches a mouse, and gladly opened it and poured the large embossed coins into his hand. He examined each one carefully and sniffed and licked at them. “Yes, yes, these are the coins of the priests indeed,” he mumbled to himself feverishly.

“More where that came from. I need to find the man responsible for the assassination.”

Buna looked back at Damneus with a wry grin. “Of course, my friend. You may ride with me. The road is long and the company shall be much welcomed. Besides, many bandits and raiders on the roads now. Any protection would be greatly appreciated.”

Damneus nodded stoically and came to the wagon’s side. With that, Buna whipped the camels, and the wagon turned around and rode back in the direction it had just come from.

“Now that I have earned enough gold for thirty suns, there is no need for me to go to that cursed market anymore. The filthy merchants can starve without my flour,” he chuckled.

Damneus smiled lightly, and they headed down the road together in silence for the rest of the day. The clouds to the west turned grim and louring, and the carrion vultures of the plains began following the pair.

* * * * * *

They rode on for several suns and camped out in small ravines and under dead and hardened palm trees. The nights were long and cool, and the days were uneventful. No dust clouds were on the horizon, and neither man saw anyone pursuing them. Both men spoke cautiously to each other and rarely ventured past the subjects of the elements and where to camp. When they came to the edge of the desert and onto the merchant’s road, Buna spoke once more.

“Topec, is it?” he announced, breaking the extended silence.

“… That’s right.”

“Strange name for a man from Quinnguy,” Buna accused joyfully. “I was unaware that they used obsidian blades,” Buna said, gesturing to the man’s weapons.

Damneus said nothing and turned to look across at the merchant.

“Quinnguy is a good place. Strong people. Honourable. Only blue-eyed folk come from Quinnguy.”

“I told you, I’m one of the pretorian guards for Hamu-Uti.”

“If you were, I would not have helped you…”

Damneus thought for a pause before speaking. “And you? What is your business in Hetra?”

“I have no business there and I never will,” Buna cursed and spat. “Those savage bastards deserve to starve.”

“You talk like a man who carries the weight of a grudge.”

“That is a very gentle way of putting it.”

“Did you have bad business there?”

“… It is more than that,” Buna said solemnly, and turned away to hide the single tear rolling down his burned face.

“What is it?”

Buna sighed and swallowed before speaking. “…Once, long ago, I had a family. Three girls, two boys, and a wife. They were taken from me. Kidnapped at night and taken to Hetra. I was away, travelling with a merchant caravan to Silverhole Quarry when they were taken from me. I know not what happened to them, but I also know they are no longer here…” Buna looked at his feet briefly.

“I’m sorry,” Damneus said.

“Each night, I pray to Talboss for a great pestilence to overrun that city and swallow it up into the sands, so no more shall ever have to suffer in the name of the sun. No amount of blood-letting will revive that. I will never set foot in that city.”

“Perhaps one day your prayers shall be answered.”

Buna scoffed. “Not in this life, my friend. Only misery can exist here. Only suffering is strong enough to live in such a place.”

Damneus looked forward, and they rode on in silence once more.

A day later and the pair came to a crossroads. They stopped, and Buna sat upright in his wagon. To the east was the aching river, which ran all the way down to the delta of Port Raki. To the south was Slaver’s Cove and the worm fields and the cliffs of the world’s end that overlooked the dark roaring seas. To the west was Showta, the bustling market city and the trading hub of Zimitra, where many merchants travel to. Past it was Orion’s cave.

“This is where I must leave you, my friend,” Buna announced. “For I now have business in Port Raki. Firstly, spending these hard-earned coins on ale and food,” Buna smiled and held out his powerful hand. Damneus took it, and they shook hands firmly. Buna had an immense grip, and Damneus felt the pressure wrestling against his own.

“I thank you for the escort. May you find what you are looking for, and may your roads lead you always to warm beds and full bellies,” Buna said graciously.

“And you too,” Damneus retorted.

“Goodbye, for now,” Buna chirped as he released his grip and prepared to depart. The wagon pulled away and rode off down the road, clinking and groaning with pots and wares as it did until it vanished over the brow of the hills.

Damneus watched as Buna gave one final wave, then turned the camel and moved off in the opposite direction. He should’ve gone with Buna and head all the way to Port Raki together, where there would be women and wine and roast chickens, then stowaway on the next ship out of the continent, but something was not settled within him—something Orion had said, something he’d done.

Why risk the journey to try spring me? A mere mercenary? Why me? It must mean something?

But, more curiously, how was Orion able to artfully steal into the dungeon without being spotted? He had a notable limp and dragged his left foot across the ground as he walked. How was a shuffling old leper like him able to evade every single guard from the city gates to the cell door? Something curious stuck out in Damneus’s thoughts about it all.

Why me? There are plenty of assassins in Zimitra. Why me in particular?

Perhaps Orion was correct. Damneus had heard many stories of the evil that lurked behind the massive granite barrier of the midnight wall. But he’d never been there himself. For the jet black wall laid far off to the west, over the rugged mountain ranges of Dragon’s Back, and across vast salt wastes that stretched off limitlessly, and then the volcanic sulfur plains with unnatural glowing sands and rocks, before finally coming to the colossal wall, standing at least 500 leagues high.

It was pitch-black and as smooth as glass, and it slid away out of sight in both directions. Some say that it had no end and that the wall simply went on forever. For no one knew who’d crafted it nor how long it stood against the swirls of malevolence behind it, only that it was the only thing keeping Hell at bay.

Damneus decided to hear what Orion had to say. The least he could do was grant him an audience after Orion had helped him escape. He turned the camel towards Showta and rode on through The Shoulders and past the Shadow Valley, with the dying sun falling away at his side.