The Sword In The Sand

Shade appears in the vast Sahara desert, being sent back 4000 years to ancient Egypt. Finding a legendary sword, and befriending a young Egyptian peasant.

Chapter 5 the sword in the sand

            In an instant, Shade was displaced into a divergent land. He cracked open his eyes and tried to sit up feeling faint. His whole body was sore like his being had been stretched and torn apart. He couldn’t think straight for a moment, and then everything hit him.

            “No,” he panicked as he stood up. He frantically looked around, felt the sand with his bare hands, and looked into the bright sky above him. He stared in a daze into the distance and saw the endless horizon of sand. Shade turned his head slightly to the left and panicked even more.

            “No…It can’t be, I won’t believe it…” Shade blankly stared at a half built pyramid far off into the distance.  “How? It just... can’t be.” He rubbed his eyes and opened them as if he were to wake up from a horrible dream, but the view did not change and it seemed to scare him even more as the seconds flew by.

            He fell in defeat, and laid on his back gazing into the hazed sky. “It’s true. No one’s coming for me,” he accepted. “They’re gunna move on to another subject and mark me as a failure.” He hit himself, angry still trying to cope with the truth he faced. “There’s no way home, my home doesn’t even he exist yet,” Shade laughed hesitantly.

            He again stood on his feet, “So what do I do!” He shouted to no one. “Wait here until I die!” Another truth suddenly hit him hard. “Funny… I can’t die.” He whispered to himself as he remembered what Dr. Thomas Smith had said about immortality and time travel. “So! I just get to wait around here for the next…” he paused a moment trying to estimate how far he had been sent back based off the great pyramids. “FOUR THOUSAND YEARS!”  

            Shade kicked sand up into the air. He wasn’t sure what to do. He fell to the hot sand once more, throat dry and pools of sweat dripping down his forehead. He felt alone, more than ever. He almost started to cry, but then whipped the tears from his eyes. “No! It’s not going to be this way. I’m not gunna sit here forever while the days go by.”

            He picked himself up undefeated. Shade looked at the partially built pyramids with a sense of pride, “Looks like forever starts just over there.”

           

The pyramids were much farther than he had originally thought, Shade had been walking towards them for the past three hours, and he felt like he was making no progress. The Sun was still high in the sky and he felt his skin starting to burn. “Haha, good thing Egyptians invented sunscreen.” Trying to keep himself optimistic.

            Another hour passed and large holes and sand piles started to surround him as he got closer to the distant pyramids. By that time Shade had been lost in thought and his eyes started to fall beneath him. He wasn’t paying any attention and he tripped and fell into a deep hole.

            “Whoa!” Shade shouted as he fell, and hit belly first with a thud. “Ow! What’s with all these holes out here?” He then realized how deep the hole was. He ran to the side and tried climbing out, but the sand wouldn’t let him, there was no place for him to grab on to and sand kept avalanching down under him.

            “Dang, I don’t want to be in this stupid hole for the rest of my life,” Shade muttered. He tried a running approach, but to no avail. He then tried digging himself out. He clawed at the sand, he was making little to no progress, but he didn’t have any other option. He spent a good thirty minutes until his finger received a large cut down the middle by an extremely sharp object buried in the sand.

            He stared at his cut and watched in shock as his skin put itself back together. “Wow… That’s actually pretty cool” he thought to himself. He was then curious about what had cut him. Shade dug carefully into the sand, He pulled out a magnificent looking sword and couldn’t believe what he had found.

            “What? What is this thing?” He thought as he studied the complexity of the sword. It was like nothing he had ever seen. He gently moved his hand over the blade knocking the last grains of sand off. He gripped the sapphire crescent shaped hilt and noticed a recurring crescent shaped pattern all over the sword.

            “Well someone went a little over board with the design,” Shade said as he swung the beautiful sword around a bit. “Wow I'm pretty good at this.” Shade joked as he accidentally drop the sword to the ground. “Whoops, my bad.”

            Shade grabbed the sword off the ground, he gazed at the blade intensely, and suddenly something seemed really wrong about this object. “Is this iron?” Shade whispered to no one. “Correct me if I'm wrong…but this is the copper age, right?” 

            “Hey! What are you doing with that?” Someone suddenly shouted from above.

            Shade spun his head and stared at a middle aged man looking down upon him. He took a step back and held the sword in front of him.

            “Well, answer me!” The man said angrily, “Where in the hell did you find that!”

            Shade hesitated, shocked by the man’s presence. He shuffled a little and then spoke. “It was buried in the sand, right over there,” as he pointed towards the place he had found it.

            “I see I see…So you just happen to stumble upon it, yes? Just out of the blue, after a hundred years of searching and a foreigner just happens to find it?” 

           “What exactly did I find? What is this thing?” Shade asked hesitantly.  

            “It’s a sword dummy, what else. But if you meant more specifically it’s the long lost Blue Moon Sword, A sword of legendary feats, fabled to be used by the gods to create the sands in the desert.”

            “Well, um… ok. What should I do it?” Shade asked as he fumbled around with it in his hands.

            “Hand it here, and then I’ll help you get out of that hole.” He gestured as he held out a hand to take the sword.

            Shade carefully held the sword by the extremely sharp blade and rose it up so the man could grab the hilt. “So what’s your name?” Shade questioned as the man grabbed hold of the legendary sword.

            “It means nothing to you now,” as he stood up with the sword in his hand.

            “Wait, what do you mean?” Shade laughed nervously as he extended a hand so that this strange man could pull him out.

            “I mean that I’m leaving you down there, I found this sword fair and square, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

            “Wait!” Shade panicked, “If you leave me down here, you’ll…”He shouted angrily, not sure what he was actually getting at.

            “What could you possibly do boy? I have the Blue Moon Sword, and soon everybody will know my name… Nour Fenyang. And with this, I will kill pharaoh, and Egypt will be mine.”

            “What! That’s crazy, you can’t do that!” Shade cried suddenly, worried, as he had suddenly realized the grave mistake he had made. “You could change all of history!”

            “I certainly plan on it, nothing will be able to stop me and the black sun as we ruthlessly conquer land after land, people after people, and life after life! All Hail Nour King of Egypt!”

            “Black Sun? What??? You can’t possibly conquer Egypt with just a sword by yourself.” Shade questioned.

            “Did you not just here me? I'm not by myself! Sun and moon will no longer be at odds but will work together towards a superior future. And with that I say good bye…?”

            “Shade,” he answered.

            “Yes, fair well Shade of the Sahara. May the black sun have mercy on your soul!” Nour cheered as he walked away.

            “Hey! Come back!” Shade screamed, but it was too late. Nour had gotten onto a horse and rode away. “Well, that’s not good.” Shade then ran to the side of the hole and continued scraping away at the side. Eventually after the sun was low in the sky Shade was able to pull himself out.

            Tired and exhausted, Shade started making his way towards the great city that now presented itself in the distance. It looked magnificent. Large structures stood towering over the rest of the city. He could barely make out the tallest of trees that grew in the streets and behind them stood a fortress like palace which ruled over them all.

            As he approached the city, he passed by multiple small houses and huts. He found himself walking on a road as the final rays of sun disappeared from the sky. A small wall surrounded the city forcing newcomers to enter inside the heavily guarded gates. Shade started towards one of them with a small group of people who did not acknowledge his presence. But before he could do so, a stranger similar in age grabbed him by the shoulder.

            “What are you doing?!” He whispered harshly as he pulled Shade back.

            “I'm just headed inside the wall,” Shade answered trying to sound casual.

            “Are you stupid? heading inside pharaohs city with no shirt, and sunburned? Those guards over there only let in people of wealth and importance, or an occasional bribe, common folk like us are trapped out here, you certainly won’t get in looking like a beggar, I know those guards pretty well…” he paused, “they aren’t the nicest bunch, they’ll probably end up slapping your sunburn for fun.”

            “Well, what should I do?” He asked annoyed.

            “Follow me.” he said, “Oh by the way my name is Tarik,” Again he paused and looked at the guards talking to each other on the wall, “TARIK! IT MEANS GREAT WARRIOR!” he shouted so that they could hear him.

            They turned to him and laughed and shouted back, “Oh great warrior of peasants! Spare us form your dirt and filth! Tarik! The greatest warrior of the lower class!”

            Tarik laughed at himself and motioned Shade to follow him away from the wall. “Come on I’ll get you something for your burn.”

            Shade hesitated to follow, already being tricked once that day he was careful not to let it happen again. “Why are you being nice to me?”

            Tarik turned around, he hesitated and gathered his words, “…It’s tough for people like me, living outside the city, living on scraps and crumbs like rats. We don’t need more people thinking we’re just trash, plaguing the city with our existence. I guess what I'm saying is that we need friends… I need friends.”   

            Shade smiled and nodded his head, he wasn’t going to deny someone his friendship again after what had happened back in his time at the cafeteria. “Alright, nice to meet you Tarik, I’m Shade.” 

Author's Note

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