Suzerain Hall

Natsuki touched him gently as they both glowed before they all vanished in a dim light of silver and rusted blood.

Ukino was impatient, "Aika you bitch you should have gone, but now your damn nails were just down. For fuck sake girl do you do anything useful here or do you just spread your legs to get useless info." the small boy snapped at the black haired woman. "Ukino!" Claudia snapped at him.

The voice came to the Suzerain, soft and shimmering g this night. The dragon king of We'Darastri stirred from his slumber, immense blue bedsheets and showers of gold coins falling from his body.

Tyretlethen.

The time has come.

You know what to do.

The room lit up with a dull yellow glow as Tyretlethen opened his great eyes. A dream? Perhaps. A sending? More likely. Normally the Suzerain might ignore such trivialities, but he had been watching the stars. Watching them begin to wink out, one by one.

Whether a machination of his subconscious or a message from beyond, the portent was right.

It was time.

"Grey." Tyretlethen whispered. A few moments passed before a slight breeze passed through the room, carrying with it an old wizard, dresses in azure robes.

"What is it, my Suzerain?" Grey asked with a slight hint of weariness in his voice. Clearly he had been awakened from a deep sleep as well. Almost automatically, Grey plugged a cigarette into his mouth and ignited it with the brush of a thumb.

"Long have I waited for a sign to expand my holdings. Do you not feel it, Eustace? This verse in the eternal song of Io is ending. The world has slowed to a torpor, and the time for conquest is nigh." Tyretlethen said in a pensive tone. He stretched his wings and trundle over to one of the empty windows in his quarters.

"Go to the High City, and make the preparations. Come morning, the Sapphire Empire marches on Skyfall."

It was on this very spot, nearly two solar years past, that Suzerain Tyretlethen had launched his great crusade against the Western kingdom of Skyfall. In those two years, money, soldiers, and food had flowed steadily westward to feed the war effort, and seemingly naught had come from it. That was perfectly acceptable, in the mind of the Suzerain; dragons had a patience for attrition that the lesser species find appalling. Many of his advisors had begged him to call the forces back, crying that he had left the Empire vulnerable and open to attack. Tyretlethen has scoffed; there was no other power on the continent of Siv'ven who would dare challenge them. If anything, hamstringing Skyfall's own military reserves was an act in the interest of their defense.

But that had not been the main reason for doing so.

No, on this spot two years ago, the voice of the Crawling Chaos had called to Suzerain Tyretlethen, and bade him launch this crusade against the human kingdoms. The Suzerain never questioned that voice, for he knew it well, and so he had done so without further concern. Now, tonight, as Nedelethakor swooned her way into the glittering, vaulted heights of Suzerain Hall, regret and treachery were the furthest things from his mind. Similar to Nedelethakor, Suzerain Tyretlethen was dressed in the current height of draconic fashion; a long blue robe that was bedecked with thousands of tiny sapphires. Golden bangles and brooches littered his claws and snout, and his entire body was tattooed with lettering from the ancient Sifleod people; the native desert elves who had lived along the Sapphire Desert's only river before Tyretlethen had systematically wiped them out. An ill omen for the dragon king, if ever Sekhemkare had seen one.

Now a great pageant was held by various clerics of the draconic faith of Io. Speaking in the language of dragons, they showered both the Suzerain and the Lady in sprays of perfumed water while singing doleful hymns to the Twin Gods. The Shaman and the Lady's handmaiden's waited patiently at the edges of the large throneroom, guarded in place by no less than four hulking demons wrought in masterful black armor. As Tyretlethen and Nedelethakor proceeded to engage in a ceremonial dance that would culminate in their mating, the Favored Concubine sent another missive to the shaman.

Sekhemkare, if thou wouldst aid me in this fate, try to obtain the Suzerain's shed raiments whilst he and I perform our deeds. His royal cloak contains the key to a great weapon that I might use to undo him. See to it, and I shall install you in great esteem within my court.

With that, and a series of rhythmic hisses, Nedelethakor sidled up to Tyretlethen, and the dance began. It wasn't easy at first glance to discern one dragon from the other, save that Nedelethakor was smaller and had a more lapis coloration in opposition to Tyretlethen's cyan cast, but it didn't matter. When the crucial time came, it would be easy to tell which dragon was which...

The ceremony was not his to observe. Sekhemkare did not know their tongue, their clothes, their rites, or their faith. All he knew of their ritual was the letters inked onto the scales of the Suzerain. It was an old script, one he knew well. The Silfeod, the Riverwalkers, the Ashir-Er-Kahut. He knew their ancestors, savages digging in the silt for grubs, not yet masters of their own bodies. How he knew them, he did not know. Perhaps they were vassals to his people. Slaves, even. What he did know was that when he woke, they were not there, save for a few shattered remains, barely a shadow of what they were. There was but one family squatting on the riverside, starving and weak. The eldest elf, calling himself Manurha, lived to see his people fall. He taught Sekhemkare the ways of his kin, all the while weeping bitterly. Sekhemkare could offer no aid that would save them, and they perished in a heap. It was clear to him now, what the elder meant by the 'Flying Ocean'. Blue death, come to wash everything away.

Sekhemkare could not feel anger. He felt no pity for the elves, nor fury at their destruction. However, when his gaze swept over the dragon, he sensed it stirring. It was not his. It came with the memories, flashing across his vision. Burning clay, searing those trapped inside. A river turned red and thick with offal, boiling like rotted stew. A lamentation from below, answered with a roar growing ever closer... The Suzerain must not have known what the words meant, only seeing it scrawled on rooftops or torn from the throats of mothers. It was a plea for mercy. One that would never be answered.

Except, perhaps, for today. He was brought back by the orders of the Lady. The cloak would be the death of the ruler, if he could acquire it. How would be an issue. Sekhemkare had no illusions about his charisma. He looked like an outsider, a mage, someone you would expect to sit naked in the desert until he started seeing the face of God. Gods. He was never sure.

So, when the ceremony began to transition, Sekhemkare approached the servant who was becoming buried in a pile of discarded clothing. The man looked terrified, naturally, both from the sudden approach of the mystic and the fact that he was now responsible for the attire of the Suzerain himself. Sekhemkare watched him struggle out from under the impressive weight of the jeweled cloak, and Sekhemkare wondered if any of those jewels were taken from the earth. Knowing what he did of the scaled ones, likely not.

Wordlessly aiding the man in steadying himself, the desert shaman gripped his arm tightly, closing a trinket into his palm. The attendant attempted to look him in the eyes, but only found cloth wrappings dusted with sand. A word of protest formed on his lips, cut short by a slow shake of Sekhemkare's head.

"A gift for the king. A talisman of ages lost. Fixed to a cloak, a ward against the march of time and armies alike. Fixed wrong, a beacon for things far worse."

The mystic saw the attendants face drain, but felt a sense of respect when he saw the poor man nod. This man was loyal. What it would get him would to be praise. He continued, kneeling the attendant by the cloak.

"You are trusted, Keeper of Cloth. Will you be the one to give your king this boon? Or shall I?"

The servant looked at Sekhemkare, the cloak, and finally at the talisman. It was a small copper beetle, nothing fit for a ruler. He scoffed silently, about to admonish the petulant wizard who dare to foist a bauble onto the Suzerain and call it magic, until it fluttered it's wings. Glass, milky from age, veined with gold. A bit of sand fell from it, swirling under it's own power on the ground before lying still. The servant blinked and quietly handed the talisman to Sekhemkare, who motioned him away from the cloak. He knelt over it, holding the beetle in his palm. His ancestors saw fit to bury him with it, whatever the meaning was. Perhaps he had just given it a new one?

Sekhemkare remained turned away from the ceremony. He could hear it, and that was enough. He had no interest in the matters of flesh. His mind reached out to the Lady as the beetle crawled into a fold of his clothes and emerged back into his neck, becoming inert once more.

The cloak is mine. The key is yours to use. The lock is ready. The door beckons. Hear it on the wind, the stirring of the sand. The desert seeks action. It calls for you by name. Feed it and be one with all it offers.

As the mating ritual between Tyretlethen and Nedelethakor ended, the two great dragons lay in a heap at the center of the room, crackling with lightning and breathing in great, rumbling gasps. Altogether it had been less...violent than Sekhemkare had been anticipating, but the entire room had been shaking at times, all the same. Now, though as the Suzerain rose from entanglement with his Favored Concubine, he sauntered over to where he had left his royal cloak. He sauntered up to the desert shaman with a curious expression, his milky yellow eyes scanning the form of Sekhemkare with more bemusement than malice. He spoke in a deep, thrumming voice, bringing his jagged face close to the stalwart sand-mage's own.

"Hmmmmm...you are one of Nedelethakor's new pets, yes? Hmmmm...you smell old, and yet, familiar. Where do you hail from, dune walker?" the Suzerain asked, spreading his wings in the expectation that the shaman would dress the Emperor in his cloak once again. A few of the Suzerain's own attendants scrubbed him down in the mean time; an entourage of dark, devilish fiends with shaven heads and glimmering, molten eyes. They glanced at Sekhemkare with suspicion, but would take no action, save at the behest of their Suzerain.

Nedelethakor caught Sekhemkare's eye, glancing over the Suzerain's shoulder as her own harpies attended her.

Forestall him a moment more, dear Sekhemkare, whilst I and my footwomen prepare his snare. Whatever thine action, do not dress him in that robe. Cling to it as you would your long life.

With that, the harpies surreptitiously flitted off to the eaves of the Suzerain's Hall, fiddling with the glowing, arcane symbols around the sandstone framing which held the Eye of the Suzerain, that most magnificent gem, dozens of meters across and set into the ceiling, whose scintillation dominated the warm light of the Hall...

Sekhemkare faced the dragon, still kneeling on top the cloak. His head was bowed, his arms spread in offering. It was not in submission, but concentration. The massive ego of the scaled one would likely keep him blind to this, however. Few kings expected the slave to strike.

"Al-Khasa. Its memory but sand, as are its people. I do not have the words to tell you of it, but I shall do what I can. This tale is one that must be told. Allow this, for it is the way of my people. Only knowledge and strength will come from it."

Arcane words drifted in his mind, once scrawled onto caves and chiseled in tablets. He needed more time. The desert was not one to give itself willingly. It had to be coaxed, shaped, and this tale would allow it. The desert listened to all stories, ate them, made them. It was listening to him now, he could feel it.

"Near my home, there was a mountain. Red, taller than any. I do not remember much of the time before, but this mountain I do. It hid armies, gave us shade, let us build our towers and temples, gave us all that we needed. We called it Teshem-Hin-Nursha, Father Of All Red Stone."

He slowly ran a hand along his neck, talismans swaying gently. The winds were stronger, now. There was a heat to them.

"I was buried under that mountain. A tomb of rock and gold. I do not know the purpose of it, nor what I wear now. It was the way of my people, and it is lost. For how long I was among the dead, I cannot say. When I rose, it was in darkness. I walked below the sand for many ages, the great tunnels giving no passage, no escape."

Locusts flitted about him, issuing from him in a swarm. Some made from bronze and bone. A swirl of sand played at his knees. The wind was hot now.

"I did find a crack, deep in the tomb. I walked in the sun for the first time in my memory. But there was no mountain. There was only sand. Time had worn it away, like it does all things. I knew nothing of the living. I saw only death, heard only cries. Many have returned to the desert, but they do not find peace. They linger, trapped between every grain, every gust of wind. All they can do is call out, whispering things to men mad with thirst. Do you know who they speak of?"

The guards were getting nervous now. The wind was searing and howling with anger. Sand poured from Sekhemkare like a shattered hourglass, pooling on the stone.

"They speak of you, scaled one. The Suzerain. The Blind Wyrm. The Wurha-Il. The Hithirma. The Eastern Scourge. They speak of your strength. How you slaughter kingdoms with ease. Bring silence to the dunes. Defy the sands themselves. They know you, this wasteland of souls. They have watched you build your spires, gather your armies, settle your lands. They have been waiting, all this time, some as long as you claim to live, to find rest But, that will not be. You are a dragon, fierce and terrible. A force beyond peace..."

It came then, over the dunes. A sandstorm, roaring and boiling as it tore across the sand towards the palace. Shapes flickered across, forming and dissolving as it roiled. Faces, beasts, symbols, words, remnants of the dead and dying, swept up by the desert to seek out that which had caused it to feel so much pain. It set upon the a palace, and in the moment before it struck, there was silence. Sekhemkare raised his head, blind staring at the blind.

"So I will give them war."

It hit with the force of the Gods themselves, and soon the world was naught but boiling sand.

The rage boiled within the veins of the Suzerain, and though he was shy of no sandstorm, the affront this wretched soul payed him was of a deadly price. Lighting gathered itself in Tyretlethen's throat, crackling and chirping eagerly for the kill, but it was not to come. In the instant before the bolus of gleaming peril was loosed, Nedelethakor set upon the Suzerain with mighty jaws and talons like a lion upon the boar. She was lesser in size, but all the more spry, and Tyretlethen bucked and howled with irate indignation at her sudden attack. The blast of lightning went wide as the Dragon King twisted his head to retaliate, tracing a black line up the walls and singing even the boiling sands in its wake.

There the two dragons did fell combat, wrestling like feral cats, great as the dunes themselves. Their crackling lightning could not harm the other, and so tooth and claw had to take its place. For all his size and strength, the older Dragon King's age showed in his nigh-ponderous attempts to pin down the Concubine, whilst she wove and dodge like a great serpent under, over and around. The fiendish servants of the Suzerain turned on the followers of Nedelethakor; some against the harpies, and three against Sekhemkare himself. They cast red lances of bloody magic through the sand-choked air, barking chants of blasphemous wizardry. The shrieks of the harpy women were comparable only to the howling of the haboob that the shaman had conjured.

Down below, on the lower floors of the Azure Citadel, the forces of Nedelethakor's honor guard were having an easy time of storming the fortifications from within. Given time to prepare, the Suzerain's desert palace was nigh impregnable, but it had welcomed these troops in with open arms, and in that manner was easily sacked. Still, for what it was worth, large banging came upon the wrought adamantine doors that led into the Suzerain Hall as the forces of the Dragon King tried to come to the aid of their liege.

Through all of this, the gleaming blue light of the Eye of the Suzerain swelled in intensity, as if feeding off of the strife and vitriol which the collected forces were slinging at one another through sword or spell. At length, Tyretlethen separated himself from the Lady, and roared vehemently at her.

"Harlot! Thief! Hoarde Raper! You have not the might to undo Tyretlethen, and you newly annointed brood shall not avail your death!"

With that, the Dragon King began to his an adroit chain of arcane words, causing his blind eyes to turn over in their sockets and regain their slit pupils. These gleamed with imperious might, and Sekhemkare could see the magical domination seething from the Dragon King towards Nedelethakor. The Lady did her best to remain staunch against the shriveling magic, but eventually shrank under the dominion of the spell and cowered most loathsomely at the far end of the hall...

As the sand roared around him, Sekhemkare faced down the servants of the scaled one. The sand whirled around him as he slowly raised a wizened hand. It coiled around his fingers, rumbling with untold force as the grains began to howl with the anger of thousands of souls. A cry went out as it shot towards the demons, a mix of fury and triumph as the long-dead sons and daughters of the desert sated their anger. It went into every pore, every wound, forcing itself into the bodies of the servants. Water floated in the air for a brief moment as it was torn from the creatures, vanishing in the grains. The cries of the demons grew silent as desiccated forms crashed to the floor, crumbling as they fell. The sand went across the battlefield like an enraged viper, flaying any combatant Sekhemkare thought to be an enemy, until the Suzerain's men were no more.

He turned from his own fight to see the Lady struggle against the powerful magic of the Suzerain. How much of his might, he wondered, was ripped whole and beating from the hearts of those who called the sands their home? He bowed his head, spread his arms, and received his answer on the wings of thousands of ravenous locusts. They roiled out from his clothes like a whirlwind, plated in bronze and shrieking with golden jaws. The sand bore then faster than even their unnatural wings could carry them, hitting the Suzerain with tremendous force. They would bite through scales, worm their way into every wound, feast upon eyes. The desert was starving, and the scaled king would be their feast.

Suzerain Tyretlethen shrieked loudly as the insect horde slammed into his flank, breaking his entrancing spell upon the Lady Nedelethakor and forcing him to thrash and swat at the locusts in panic for a moment. Ripples of lightning traced their way down the Dragon King's body before a gout of arcing electricity lashed out in all directions from his body, forming a cage of jittering light around his regal visage.

Tyretlethen shouted in the ancient tongue of dragons as he fought off the consuming swarm. It was a language Sekhemkare knew to be of alien origin, having arisen only from the time of the Colossi and the sundering of Eras. The Suzerain was cursing the desert shaman, calling him scum, a drifter, and a feckless oaf. Some were true, others not. It didn't matter, for the sands would abide the gamut of truth, lies and secrets.

Nedelethakor regained her bearings for a moment, shaking her large head before charging through the Suzerain's cage of lightning and tackling the larger dragon with her full weight. The azure wyrms tumbled and wrestled for some time, slamming into pillars and shattering furniture as they rolled, roaring, all around the sand-choked hall. Even for one as old and wizened as Sekhemkare, it was an awesome sight. Then, all at once, the entangled dragons burst through a wall, so close to the shaman that he almost had considered stepping out of the way.

As it were, the two dragons were now on the wing, circling the Azure citadel and firing bursts of lightning and magic power at one another. The sandstorm was even more fierce outside of the ruined antechamber, but the dragons were in such a frenzy by this point that they scarcely paid any heed to the withering blast of heated dust. Still, the Locusts of Sekhemkare quested after their royal quarry, which seemed to be giving the Lady Nedelethakor the upper hand. Those few servants of the Suzerain or Favored Concubine who remained in the royal chambers now huddled tightly into whatever eaves or crannies they could locate to wait out the duration of the vengeful, desert sorcery...