Chapter XI - Kojan Desert - Zukan

Zukan awoke in the balmy morning, his hair matted with his own sick. Fortunately what little had been in his stomach was mostly coffee, though the stench was anything but pleasant. The instant Zukan caught a whiff he promptly sat up and retched again, but this time it only came up bile. The foul, bitter taste lingered in the back of his throat. Though sweating profusely, buried in a pile of blankets, coats and underclothes, he still shivered as if their journey had taken them to the far northern tundra of Carren Helm. Withdrawal from the crystalquick is less fierce than I had imagined, he thought, though the riot in his stomach made him second guess that statement.

His coughing and dry heaving inevitably woke Jiro, whose first words upon stirring were, “wow, and I thought you were pale before.”

Zukan would have laughed if he wasn’t so miserable. “Is there any water left in your canteen?”

“Nope,” Jiro lamented, turning the canteen over and shaking it fruitlessly. “Not unless you want some with extra salt.”

“Fetch me some,” Zukan stated flatly.

Jiro narrowed his eyes. “I was being sarcastic. It’s not going to help.”

Zukan was growing impatient. “Consider this your next lesson; the ancient word for salt is mika, and akiva means, more or less, to call forth or beckon. You put two and two together.”

Jiro just stared for a moment, dumbfounded.

“I was not joking about becoming a pillar of salt, boy, or would you rather become bones and sand?” Zukan quipped. Though his vision danced with dizziness, he could still see Jiro roll his eyes before getting up from the fire to carry out the task.

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” Jiro mumbled.

“Someone has never been through withdrawal,” Zukan snapped.

After what seemed like an eternity, and after a “f**k” or two from Jiro, he returned with a canteen full of clear, pure water, leaving behind a pile of dusty salt. Taking a few gulps and a nibble or two of jerky, Zukan found he was able to sit up without feeling the urge to retch. Shakily, he stood, taking a few paces and a few more sips of water to regain his composure. He saw Jiro frown as he emptied some of the canteen over his head to wash out the dried vomit from his hair. It may have been a waste, but Zukan could not bear the stench, and to his surprise, the fledgling maege held his tongue.

The rising sun had begun to illuminate the chamber of the mausoleum, sunbeams glancing brilliantly off of the stained glass ceiling. Zukan may have been able to read the story they had to tell, were they not so unkempt, with many large pieces missing. As his gaze fell downward, he could plainly see, where shadows once gathered,  row after row of burial plots, stacked high like bookshelves in a library. His eye followed them down to the far end of the chamber, to the entrance of a tunnel that appeared to have been dug by hand.

Jiro had taken to gathering up their scattered belongings from around the smoldering embers of the fire, draping several coats and cloaks around his belt and folding the rest into his pack. “So what’s your poison?” He asked Zukan as he tidied up, finding a sick-soaked tunic and feeding it to the cinders.

“I was a crystalquick kind of man.” Zukan shrugged the thick fur cloak he had borrowed from Jiro further up onto his shoulders. “The bluer the better.”

“I wish I would have known the man I just agreed to travel the known and unknown world with was an addict.”

“I would like to see you try to travel from one edge of the world to the other with nothing but the robes on your body, the myst in your veins and a fat pouch of zoom voodoo!” Zukan boasted with a cheap grin. It was apparent that he was feeling better, for the time being.

Jiro was unimpressed.

“You have no right to judge me with your pack full of psybocil, lyserg, starpowder and what have you. Not to mention the sweetleaf.”

“Oh no, I haven’t gotten stoned in like ten whole minutes, I’m gonna throw up on the floor.” Jiro jeered.

Zukan smirked. “If you were going to sleep instead of just waking up, you may be singing a different tune.”

Jiro simply huffed and returned to packing. There were more than enough places for him to carry a blade in his belt loops, so he gave Zukan his sheath and placed the second rusted sword in it for him.

“Although it is a life I have jut recently put behind me, it is behind me all the same.” The former maege explained as he secured the sheath onto the rope belt of his robe. “In one of the last conversations I had with Sayaka, she convinced me to toss the rest of my stash at the base of the Monolith. I hope it brightens the day of some crestfallen miner.” Zukan shrugged. “We had reached the end of our journey, it seemed like the time for new beginnings. Little did I know things would end up this way, else I would have saved myself a crystal or two, and perhaps some misery.”

Jiro went silent just then, not with a huff or a sigh, just silent. Zukan’s words seemed to have an impact on him, which became evident when he asked, “Zukan… is there a way that you could somehow, you know, get your powers back?”

In the brief moment before he could answer, the faint and far-off voices of a foreign, clacking tongue echoed down the stairs and around the dome of the mausoleum.

“We should hide, Jiro.” Zukan panicked, feeling meek without his lifelong partner at his side.

“Hold on,” Jiro hushed him. He bent himself over in a squat, placing one hand in the sand and the other on his swordbelt. “There’s only two of them, talking in desert-speak. Wish I had a clue what they were saying. It sounds like they’re lugging something pretty heavy.” He stood. “Let’s find out what it is.”

They took cover behind the third row of coffins, far enough back that the shadow could conceal them. Jiro retained his crouching position, but Zukan had to take his hand off of the hilt of his sword to keep his shaking from clattering it about its sheath.

Whatever it was the desert-dwelling strangers had with them, it took some considerable effort to haul it down the stairs. Their grunting and cursing couldn’t drown out the pounding of Zukan’s heart. He thought he heard wooden wheels creaking. As the two of them panted and squabbled amongst themselves, he could almost pick out some of the words they were saying. Most of it was gibberish, but certain words stood out, words that were similar to his native tongue; mostly nouns. He became completely certain when he heard ‘fire’, ‘stench’, ‘footprints’. Zukan’s stomach dropped.

“They are not as stupid as we had hoped,” Zukan croaked. “We have been made.”

“I hope you remember your stances,” Jiro drew his rusted blade in a flash, and then he was gone.

Zukan drew a deep breath, then brandished his blade and charged. But by that time, Jiro was already tearing his sword from the chest of the first bandit. The sand-colored cloak of his assailant turned a deep shade of crimson as life faded from his almond-shaped eyes. The second one blocked Jiro’s first swing with her scimitar, but she didn’t stand a chance. In a few moves, Jiro was on her, catching her under the arm by surprise, whirling, then splitting her shoulder blade with a sickening crunch. Her death rattle gargled with blood.

Zukan approached as Jiro used the cloak of the dead bandit woman to wipe his sword of blood. “How did you know they were onto us?” Jiro asked.

“Well, firstly, we did not exactly cover our tracks very well, or at all. But, somehow, the ancient words of my people still live in this land. I could, at the very least, get the gist of what they were saying.”

“Did they say anything about this?” Jiro pointed to the simple wooden cart that the two bandits had painstakingly hauled down the steps, only to be rewarded for their efforts with an untimely demise. The mysterious mountain it concealed was secured by a burlap tarp.

“Nothing of note,” Zukan shrugged, “but no language barrier can stop you from finding out yourself now, can it?”

With a nod, Jiro whacked at the wooden pegs on the corners of the cart with his rusty sword, releasing the tarp. He yanked it back and let it fall to the ground, revealing a gargantuan pile of gleaming crystal krima; large chunks held fast by a rope net.

Zukan’s jaw dropped. “With this much krima, I could have flown myself across the Kojan Desert and back, and still have enough to cast every spell in any shadowtome of your choosing.”

“With this much krima, you could buy yourself a meager lordship in Elowyr.” Jiro snorted.

Zukan reached inside the net and pulled off a shard of krima about the size of his hand. His fingers remembered the cool, rough texture of the crystal, but he no longer felt the warm, tingling sensation he once relished. “What possible use could one have for this much krima in the middle of a desert this vast?”

“Isn’t that the perfect reason?” Jiro answered. “No krima means no magyk, right?”

Zukan snorted a laugh. “I honestly doubt a soul out here would know what to do with a single shard of krima unless they were planning to sell it.”

Jiro shrugged. “It’s always been rumored that the Kojan Wo still practice an archaic form of their old rituals. You know, voodoo stuff.”

“Is that so…?” Zukan pondered. “Regardless, no simple blood ritual would require nearly this much krima.” His gaze swept from the cart of gleaming crystals at his right to the hand-carved tunnel on his far left. “Tell me, Jiro, have you ever played dress-up?”

“I don’t see the relevance.” Jiro seemed to balk at the question, his cheeks flushing lightly.

Zukan grinned. “Oh, it is very relevant, I assure you.”

The unlikely pair quickly tossed the tarp back over the top of the cart, then shrugged the bandits’ cloaks over their heads. Jiro used some magyk-drawn salt water to wash out what the could of the bloodstains, though the tears in the fabric they were not able to mend, and the heft of Jiro’s pack made him look like a hunched old lady under the cloak.

“This will never work,” Jiro lamented as he took his position on the right side of the wagon.

“What could possibly go wrong?” Zukan chuckled.

“Somebody could try to talk to us,” Jiro responded flatly.

“Then let us pray that the disguises are unnecessary.”

Zukan lifted the handle on his side of the wagon, with some difficulty, and they plunged into the darkness. Jiro had re-lit a stick from the fire to use as a torch, but they did not need their dim light for long; after just a few minutes trudging the heavy cart through the tunnel, they could see the flickering of a flame casting oblique shadows a bit further down. Jiro ditched the stick as the cautiously approached the end of the tunnel, where they were not met by people, but by statues.

The crudely dug shaft gave way to an immense antechamber, walls decorated as ornately as the mausoleum, and in the same fashion, though the floor was nothing but sand. At least a dozen oil-burning candles illuminated the room, and several more to light the way down the corridor between the grizzled, robed men of stone. The ornate bronze runes on the walls - strange figures, men and women dancing, plants, animals, other obscure shapes - continued down the tunnel, as if guiding the adventurers on their way. Something was off about the room, however, Zukan observed; from where he stood in the sand, the chamber appeared to be at a slight slant.

“This place must be ancient,” Jiro awed as his wide eyes swept the chamber.

“It is not as old as you would think,” Zukan replied while doing the same. Now that he had gotten a closer look, not to his surprise, many of the hieroglyphic symbols adorning the walls were very similar to his own language. “But it is still very old.”

“But why build it underground? How, even?”

Zukan chuckled that knowing chuckle. “My boy, this temple’s current, ah, altitude, appears to be a fairly recent development. I imagine a day, millennia past, when this temple rose high above the sand. This tunnel was most likely carved between two separate towers, the lower levels are likely buried. The civilization that built this place must have been magnificent.”

“I’ve never heard anything about a Kojan Wo civilization,” Jiro commented, “but then again, they don’t teach this kind of s**t in school.”

“There is likely much they do not teach you in school,” Zukan replied without peeling his eyes from the story plastered on the sandstone brick. “For some things, you simply have to be there to know.”

Jiro seemed to notice Zukan’s trance like state. “Are you telling me you can read this chicken scratch?”

“The short answer to that is sort of,” Zukan quipped. “Ah, onward, Jiro, quickly now. I must turn the page, so to speak.”

With a heave and a grunt, the two fellows got the cart moving again. As they trudged, the sandy floor sloped downward, but the ceiling remained at the same height, distancing Zukan from his story with every step. He knew Jiro would have been content to walk in silence as he read, but the former maege could feel the excitement bursting from his chest, and found himself without anyone to tell but his sarcastic traveling companion.

“The Wo peoples have quite the story to tell, indeed,” he began. “You call them ‘desert bandits’ as if they are barbarians, but they are anything from it. They managed to build quite the sophisticated little empire for their time, without any help from the maege. Well…” Zukan paused in an attempt to decipher a particularly puzzling glyph. “Gods be damned,” he exclaimed. “If my translation is correct, your Kojan Wo may very well be the descendants of the very first maege to ever step foot in Phaedyssia. This tale tells of a once lush and fruitful land, robbed of its lifesblood by the zuul. The demons of the land were vanquished, but at dear cost to the earth.” Zukan shrugged. “It is nothing I did not already know, but much can be gained from a little perspective.”

“So the old legends are true,” Jiro murmured in disbelief. “The zuul weren’t just fantasy. They were a living, breathing plague.”

Zukan chuckled heartily. “If you are still doubting that by now, boy, you are even more lost than I thought you to be. If the zuul had not existed, neither would the maege. My ancestors invented magyk as a means by which to defend themselves against the scourge.

“Perhaps the reason the Kojan Wo have been labeled as barbarians by Lissium is because they are passionate about their heritage. They simply wish to reclaim what is rightfully theirs, stolen from them by the usurpers who had forgotten them in the first place.”

“I’d honestly never thought about that before,” Jiro admitted. “But couldn’t the same be said about the zuul? Scourge or no, this land was theirs before the maege decided they wanted it.”

“An excellent point,” Zukan offered, “but unfounded, because the zuul were, indeed, a scourge. Just like maege, humans, and all things on earth, the zuul required myst for survival. But when myst is used incorrectly, it can have devastating effects. When a zuul uses krima, it never returns, or rather, it becomes foul and tainted. The clouds of myst that form from this tainted krima become a breeding ground for bloodkin, and the myst that created last night’s bloodmoon was especially foul.

“The very reason the Kojan Desert is a desert now is because the zuul robbed this once fertile land of all of its lifesblood. Without krima, there cannot be life. The zuul were devourers, destroyers. They upset the balance of nature and needed to be stopped. But their ghosts still linger, in bloodkin and even fouler beasts. That is why I became a maege, because the struggle for balance is an eternal battle.”

“Wow,” was all Jiro could manage. “That was quite the life story, Zukan.”

“I could say the same of yours,” Zukan huffed a laugh. “The son of a noble who abandoned his throne to seek himself within the depths of the west. It is the sort of tale bards would sing of.”

“All my life, all I ever wanted to do was explore the world and uncover its mysteries. I just never imagined it would be under circumstances such as these.” Jiro shrugged. “But it’s of no consequence. I was never meant for ruling a country. The Holy Elowyr Empire is better off in the hands of my sister.”

Zukan perked up. “You have never mentioned a sister.”

“I have an older sister, Celeste, and a younger brother, Roald. After my father’s passing, and after I left, there was no suitable heir to inherit the throne. Traditionally, succession usually passes to the oldest male, but Roald was only four years old at the time. I had expected my Lady Mother to take over, but from the news I heard, she fell ill not long after my leaving. So, naturally, Celeste took over, and she’s every bit the conqueror my father was.” Jiro shrugged again. “I honestly believe the prophecy was meant for her. My father always had high expectations for me that were better placed in Celeste.”

“You say that as if you are still trying to impress him,” Zukan mentioned. “How can you impress a dead man?”

For all of his bluntness, Zukan always cut to the core of the matter. “That’s something Delphi would have said.”

“Who is this Delphi?” Zukan inquired. “Yet another person you have not mentioned.”

Jiro was not about to deign him with a reply, but he found that he did not have to. In the silence of the conversational lull, they could hear faint sounds echoing from farther down the corridor. It started with the clanging of steel on stone, then gave way to the clangor of voices, the same harsh, clacking tongue as belonged to the cart-bearers. They were still out of sight, as far as they could tell, but they could see that the corridor gave way to a much larger room not far ahead. Exchanging a silent glance, they temporarily abandoned their stolen wagon to steal a closer look.

The cavern within was even bigger than they had imagined it, which was at one time likely a place of worship. Old marble walls rose to what could have easily been 50 feet. The floor, however, was mostly sand. Dozens of Kojan Wo worked tirelessly, shoveling the sand into carts that must have once carried krima.

But it was what they saw at the far end of the chamber that took their breath away; a gargantuan stone statue of a demon with monstrous horns and a red gemstone the size of a man’s fist embedded in its forehead, face forever frozen in an intimidating snarl. Its head alone, the top of which nearly grazed the ceiling, was easily larger than the largest Kojan Wo in the room, and it had only been excavated down to its stone midriff. Zukan stared into its large eyes, iris and pupil glazed over with gray slate, and felt a shiver roll down his spine.

“Why on earth would the Kojan Wo need all this krima just to excavate a statue?” Jiro whispered. “None of this makes any sense.”

“It should not make any sense, yet I am still filled with dread,” Zukan replied. “Perhaps another history lesson will help you get on my level. That, my boy, is no mere statue; it is a Sentinel. In the days when the earth belonged to the zuul and the maege fought to claim it for their own, the foul demons sacrificed many souls of their own people in order to engineer an army of Sentinel. They were an unparalleled force of destruction, capable of flipping entire cities. Not even ten of the world’s most powerful maege could fell one, so they sealed them away instead; turned them to stone and buried them. So there is your what, but as to the why, I am afraid I am just as confused as you are.”

“They must need the krima in order to use the magyk that breaks the seal, right?” Jiro looked up at Zukan, who nodded to confirm. “The only place in Phaedyssia with that much expendable krima is Lissium. But where else would it come from, if the Kojan Wo would only use the power of the Sentinel to destroy Lissium and reclaim what is rightfully theirs? This is no independent act, someone in Lissium is calling the shots here. But who…”

Jiro trailed off. Zukan took his silence to mean that he was still turning the gears in his head, so he took the time to listen in on a conversation; it wasn’t difficult to single one out, a tall, muscular man wearing a beard and a green vest was barking orders as a handful of Wo workers. He must be in charge around here. Or, at least, more in charge than any of the others.

“They are aware that their shipment of krima is late,” Zukan warned, after a few moments of eavesdropping. “We cannot stay here.”

Jiro perked up, who had been attempting to listen in as well. “Is he saying anything about who sent the shipment?”

Zukan leaned back in for a moment, treading lightly. “Hmm… I believe the idiom in your language would be, ‘the Lord will have our heads,’ but I could not quite catch the name. Terry, maybe? Lord Terry?”

“Tariik,” Jiro seethed through gritted teeth. “I don’t need to know any desert-speak to pick the needle out of that haystack. The slimy f*****g b*****d, he wants to seize control of the Monolith for himself, and he’s probably got his family in Phobos backing him too! And the Cardinal Blades on the night of the Bloodmoon…” Shaking with rage, Jiro looked as if he were about to scream before Zukan swiftly planted hands on his shoulders.

“Jiro, my boy, I understand that you are used to solving your problems with the edge of your blade, but there will be no vengeance for you if we do not away, posthaste! There is only one thing you can do right now…” Zukan firmly grasped Jiro’s shoulder blades and looked him hard in his deep emerald eyes. “You must use your magyk to collapse the chamber.”

Jiro’s eyes softened. “What, you mean, the whole thing? With everyone in it?” Jiro shook his head, baffled. “Even if I had the power to do that, Zukan… those people in there are just pawns! The Kojan Wo are by no means rich in anything other than sand. Those men are just trying to feed their families, and for once they’re not stealing and killing to do it. I know, as a killer myself, I don’t have much room to talk…”

“Do you not see?” Zukan shook him. “This is killing. That beast is the most powerful weapon this side of the Grand Barrier. Think of the tens of thousands of lives you will save if you nip this in the butt, right now. You would be defending more than just yourself.”

“It’s bud,” Jiro snorted a laugh. “Nip this in the bud.”

“Why would you want to nip bud when you could just smoke it?” Zukan threw his hands up. “Your eastern idioms make no sense to me. But I digress,” the former maege walked a few paces back to the cart and fetched a palm-sized crystal of krima. “I know you have the power, Jiro. I would not believe it if I had not seen it myself.” He tossed the crystal to Jiro, who fumbled to catch it. “You have the power to stop a war.”

“You know, there’s something my father used to tell me about war. ‘A king who tries to stop a war before it starts fails every time.’”

“Well you are certainly no king,” Zukan chuckled. “But you know yourself that this war has already begun.”

Jiro fiddled with the crystal of krima in his hands as he chewed on his lower lip. “Alright,” he conceded.

“The word for earth is tekka, or rock is jyogo, stone is kabei, sand is shulud, whatever works best for you. Also keep in mind that time is definitely a factor,” Zukan replied casually.

With a sigh, Jiro closed his eyes and gripped the crystal of krima hard, like he wanted his fingers to sink into it. His third eye opened with a rumble, and the ceiling of the chamber began to crack and split. There was an audible outcry from the crowd of Wo below them, but they had little time to react before great chunks of stone rained down on their heads. Zukan tried to block out their screams and the crunching of their bones, but he knew that their voices would be rattling around in there for quite some time; after all, it was mostly empty up there now. By the time the quaking ceased along with every cry of pain, the crystal of krima Jiro once grasped was gone. Zukan attempted to speak, but Jiro took off full speed for the entrance.

When Zukan finally caught up to him, huffing and puffing, he was standing outside at the top of the stairs, the desert sun beating down on him with a tangible heaviness. He had removed his stolen Kojan Wo cloak and was clutching it in a hand at his side.

“I hope you realize the number of lives you just did right by,” Zukan panted between breaths. “We can move on now.”

“No, we can’t,” Jiro replied curtly, his eyes to the sun. “You said the Zuul made an army of those things. There could be others still buried.”

“You are not wrong, but there is no way to know where the others could be.”

“No, I know exactly where we can find one. And we have to get there before Tariik does. But if my bet is worth anything, it’s already too late.”