A small, delicate note rolled up and sealed with pale, yellow wax. The sign of a three-tailed scorpion pressed into the center. Off handedly passed to him in the busy street, by a messenger who hadn’t cared to look back or acknowledge him.
It read:
Meet me at sunset, dear brother.
Let us share tea this evening.
Signed – MH
He threw it away in a nearby pit. The flames consumed the parchment quickly – for a moment he could afford to stare at it for some time. Watched the small thing evaporate into smoke, dissipating with its last breath – a sense of giddiness quickening his heart. Aroused, for just a quick second, at the prospect of gaining new orders.
The meeting at the teahouse was always brief. The female – she called herself Mata Hari, ‘the light of day’ – always assumed the face of an entertainer. Of silks and detailed jewelry adorning her otherwise plain canvass. She had since lost her amusement of Noam over the years. Her kind words always followed a hint of irritation and revulsion for Noam that he couldn’t quite place.
“Alam Masih. Recognize that name?”
“Yes.” “He’s wanted. Dead, rather than alive, if you ask me…”
“Do they care?” “No, but there’s a bonus if you manage to bring him in alive.”
“Why’s that?” “Oh – you know… He’s been tipping the authorities to his advantage. I imagine they want to know whom he might be working with. That sort of thing.” She smiles with a giggle. Her eyes glow momentarily in the dim light. A viper poised to strike.
“My, my, we’re full of questions tonight aren’t we?”
“Hmm,” he takes that as his cue to leave.
“Try not to mess this one up.” Her restrain is delicate. It’s hard to fathom this lithe creature is capable of any real harm.
He takes one large gulp of tea, and licks his lips as he exits the shop. Savoring the sweet cardamom flavor while he could.
He wondered briefly how many other informants Mata Hari had hired for the job. That her faith in his abilities had waned over the past couple of months was fair at best. To think his usefulness might prove detrimental to them, merely nailed him further into his coffin. Perhaps, he thought on a whim – this is the best-case scenario. And that was how it should be – death was inevitable. Noam had cheated its grip for too long. Mata would poison him one day.
He went about searching for the target’s location. Spent the days leading up to the present to observe from a distance. Alam was wealthy, but he’d been smart enough to flaunt it elsewhere. Followed by hired guards.
It was worth noting the change in his patterns day-to-day. Watch, as the target on his back enlarged – and his paranoia increase in bouts of half-thought out plans, and impromptu decisions. Many of which included getting rid of as many slaves in transit; but by then, none of his regulars wanted to purchase from him.
Then there was the buzzing of the sands, the chaos of the earthquake and Solterra splitting at its center. Gaping wide in a wake of discarded bones, and vengeful spirits.
Amidst that chaos, Alam had fled the city. Perhaps shaking a few of his pursuers in the process.
Patient, Noam followed the stallion at the fringes. He imagined Alam would seek refuge in a hidden cavern if he could, or in some forgotten recess of the desert. The guardsmen he managed to bring with him, and the slaves – began to turn on him in time. Until at last, Alam struck down one of the guardsmen in pure luck and ran off into the desert night.
The sparrow had lost Alam's figure from his vantage point. Alam's camp regrouped between themselves, and seemed to not care for the mad man running towards his death.
Noam took the opportunity to sleep. A moment of respite, under a canopy of familiar stars – abed the shifting sands. Leaving Alam’s fate in Solis’ hands.
Two days had passed since then, a day now since Alam’s footsteps disappeared. Noam hovered in the air past midday, far above the stagnant drawl of the desert – carving through the prevailing winds high above. He kept his bearings – familiar dunes too large to have completely shifted form. A working log of the Vitae Oasis, Day Court, the Elutheria Plains, the Arma Mountains – Denocte…
Thoughts crawled back to the earthquake interrupting his focus. The familiar buzzing – while long since gone, had the uncanny effect of humming behind his eyes now. Screams, children and adults crying – it made his skin crawl briefly, made his muscles twitch in old remembrance. He had the burning desire to turn around then. Pull away from these subtle delights. Coaxing the idea that those secrets belonged to him too. A part of him had caused the same nauseating buzz inhabiting his head. And momentarily, he needed to know why.
Noam’s head swam; he took a breath that he’d been holding. Began his descent. Making a sharp and halting land against the crest of a large dune, kicking up the sand. His eyes searched for the Day Court on the horizon. Muddled out from the heat that bent the light, too far to distinguish any buildings.
Lost behind the miles ahead.
ooc// open to any!
06-08-2020, 10:19 PM - This post was last modified: 06-08-2020, 10:21 PM by Noam
It occurs to him, fresh from the catacombs, that he has spent too much of his life in this desert that wants no one. In this inhospitable, wretched place, a land that never wanted to be colonised. Zayir thinks of this long and hard after his emergence; in the uncertain days that follow, he is uncertain what Arete are alive or dead. He doesn’t know anything. Even the name of the new Sovereign seems foreign—Orestes—and everything, everything else.
Zayir is no longer in a world he knows.
And so when he goes out to the desert, he thinks it is to leave. Perhaps he can find passage on a ship from Denocte, into the great wide sea beyond. Perhaps he can even return—and Zayir can barely manage the courage to think it—Inebu-Hedji, the White City. Perhaps that is the same—
and in his hoping, he realises he has been imprisoned—or dead, or lost, or forgotten—for ten years.
Nothing is as it was.
Except the desert, of course. The endless desert, that loves nothing. He is walking rather than flying, a hurried and out-of-breath gesture. Despite his body remaining virtually unchanged, physically he feels… depleted.
Zayir might have trekked into the desert until he was either lost or dead. He might have done it, as dejected as he is. But then he sees a shape descend sharply from the sky and he is reminded, even more sharply, flying with such grace and precision would be impossible for him at the moment. The sight feels him with an ire so intense Zayir nearly snaps aloud.
It is mere chance that crosses the two mens trajectories. But it does. And as they pass Zayir asks, more sharply than he intends, “Where are you going?”
The buzzing doesn’t subside. Dulls for a moment as a figure approaches. A bone-white canvass highlighted by the shimmering quality of gold. Such a creature appears out of place, immaculate in the hellscape. Noam raises his head, neither facing nor greeting the stallion with a submissive bow. Muscles recoil below the surface of pale blue, while maintaining a rather indifferent expression. One that hasn’t changed, despite the stallion’s barbed tone.
Noam stands tall, winged limbs hanging by his sides. Left partially open, as they flagged the breeze of hot air breathing between them. He sets a glassy eye on the figure. “Nowhere.” The voice is half parched, heavy and rough. He decides to divulge, just a smidge. The ornate stranger does not fit the description of a head-hunter, unless – he has been fooled to believe so. There is always a level of threat that hangs in the balance. Even if the sweat on his skin emits a glow from his labors, and for a moment appears ill at ease with the desert. There is an air of command that follows the fellow, in a way Noam has trouble piecing together. Altogether familiar and foreign.
“For one who hunts. The dunes will show me where I must go.” The nagging to return to the Day Court pulls at his chest. It aches, vexed by the quarry that has disappeared into the maw set before them – gaping out indefinitely. To the lands blessed by rich soils and blooming foliage, not here – where the bones are bleached and left forgotten. Only Solis knows of the graves, of the peoples consumed by war before them – repeating, over and over again. Inheriting their taste for blood, and their love for warfare.
“You look Solterran,” he muses aloud. Considering the lithe build, the flesh that wraps nearly thin around bone and sinew – limbs that are meant to traverse miles of sand and heat.
“Why come here? There’s nothing here.”
Except for the vipers, the poisonous creatures lurking beneath their feet. Or the desperate, the lost – the guilty.
For a moment Noam breaks his gaze, lowering his head as it moves in the direction of the sun. Rays fierce, as the afternoon wanes. Noam can sense its strength ebb as the seasons change. And yet it continues to bare its teeth, give no reprieve – even the weary are forbidden alms.
ooc// @Zayir
06-12-2020, 04:55 PM - This post was last modified: 06-12-2020, 10:58 PM by Noam
There is something about the man that reminds Zayir of the stray dogs that used to be commonplace in the Solterran capitol, odds and strays that darted about the streets and shied from the hooves of horses. Yet they were brazen, and savvy, and it was difficult to underestimate creatures that were so grizzled.
Nowhere. The man’s voice is the desert’s voice: thirsting, rough. Zayir nearly judges the answer, but then acknowledges—to himself, at least—that he might have given the same answer. Zayir assesses the other man. There is a certain irony to discovering another wanderer in his trek out of Solterra; the desert is vast, and there is no reason for their trajectories to intersect as they had. Zayir knows he could walk for miles—days, even—without encountering another. The sands bake around them; the heat wafts off and reflects under his eyes so that everything takes on a temporal brightness. The stranger is dark where Zayir is predominately light; stark where Zayir is metallically gleaming. The man’s mane is clipped short, militarily; broad of chest and shoulder; but somehow Zayir finds him utterly unremarkable. If he had passed Noam in a crowd, he would not have looked at the man twice.
For one who hunts. The dunes will show me where I must go. The answer, to Zayir, seems cryptic. This annoys him and so he asks, “What does that mean? What are you hunting? Zayir feels as if he is slipping into a daydream of impossible questions and impossible answers, where nothing about this encounter makes sense. He begins to wonder if the heat is getting to him.
You look Solterran. “So do you.”
Why come here? There’s nothing here.
Zayir is stepping as if to move on from the conversation, back into the desert. This stops him, and he turns to cock his ears in a way that resembles curiosity. He has always had a way about him, when he directs his interest, that is too intense: he fixes Noam with his eyes now in a stare that belongs less to a horse and more to a falcon. “Do you mean why come to Solterra? Or to this spot?”
Zayir tongues his teeth before answering. “If you mean the first, I was born here. Solterra is in my blood—but…” he trails off, before regaining confidence. “If you are asking the second question, I’m in this spot because I am leaving Solterra.”
There is nothing left for me here.
But even as he explains himself, Zayir realises how contradictory his statement is. How can he, in the same breath, confess the desert is in his blood while betraying it in the next one?
He blinks sweat from his eyes and glances away, toward a small arroyo with bursting desert shrub. “Perhaps we could both use the companionship. The heat is said to make men lose their minds.” Zayir gestures toward the shade of the shrub, an invitation, although he cannot say what compels him to do so.
Noam expects the stranger to continue his path, undisturbed by the words that fall out of his mouth. He expects the lack of hospitality in his eyes, or the impenetrable stance to deflect any hint or purchase of intrigue. It appears to be working. Even as the gilded ghost finds his footing momentarily, and his questions rise – rhetorical, when the gap between them lengthens with each step. Noam’s body remains stiff and unyielding on his perch of sand.
It is when he has cast his gaze out into that infinite world, that he feels the stranger’s gaze sink unabated for attention. The deflection of gold eyes that bend with such precision, that the sun has lost its touch on Noam – for just a second – a second that peels his gaze from the return of solitude. From what little joy he takes wandering these forgotten places.
Do you mean why come to Solterra? Or to this spot?
Noam finds he is strangely amused that the ghost extracts two inquiries. And that these two questions have set the stallion astir. Such that the change is swift – that embers have become flame, and the energy peaks past the stranger’s perspiration and labors, to breathe lively in the stifling air. To ascertain anything else leads to pure speculation, and without having to open his mouth, the ghost is already two steps ahead. Perhaps the ghost is a prideful creature – though not uncommon among those who claim to be Solterran.
Who would deny their birthright to the God of Day?
The flame wanes inside the ghost – and perhaps, there is doubt in the way he silences himself. The way his gaze loses precision. Gaining breadth, and vigor with another breath of words.
“Leaving…,” Noam could only imagine it. Had he thought of leaving before? Not for forever, not in the way that one abandons ship, plant roots in the other kingdoms… They were here, somewhere – eroded, unkept and finite – he was cursed to feel this desolate connection to the earth that had bore his life.
Noam finally moves to consider the carved-out sand ahead, and the hint of greenery nestled in its berth. He offers an off-handed huff, his version of a laugh as the ghost mentions the heat. “Lead on,” he consents. Drives his limbs into the sand, though – he would much prefer taking to the air instead.
“I’m hunting for a man who likes to dip his coffers in the slave market.” Takes pause – though only briefly as he glances beside the stranger. Observing – for what he could, to supplement what little he knew of the proud Solterran. “Some things never change.”
Noam would leave it at that – step back and see what might transpire. Some were indifferent of the slaves, but just as many condemned the trade – it was illegal after all. Not that it stopped such exchanges entirely.
He trailed just slightly behind the stranger. Not entirely abreast, not too far. His wings shuffled close when they began to walk.
“Then, there really is nothing here for you. If you seek the other kingdoms.”
It seemed traitorous, to even say it out loud.
As they approached, his eyes scanned the sand for any signs of life under the brush. Pressed the sand momentarily with the weak pressures created by the telekinesis. Raked the surface with what he had imagined were claws – and appeared satisfied when nothing stirred. He waited until the ghost sat to one side, and he the other.
ooc// @Zayir
06-13-2020, 11:55 PM - This post was last modified: 06-13-2020, 11:58 PM by Noam
Then, there really is nothing here for you. If you seek the other kingdoms.
Phrased in that way, Zayir feels like retching. If you seek the other kingdoms. He thinks of Terrastella first, then Delumine. Finally, he thinks of the mountains outside of Denocte, where an older Solterra had once waged war. Where he had been a general. A lifetime ago.
“No… not leaving in that sense.”
It seems to be too much, but once he had begun to explain the explanation itself takes on a kind of life, a kind of story. “I simply don’t recognise Solterra anymore. I think I would rather the desert swallow me, or the mountains, or the sea. There is a part of me that is persuaded I belong to a breed of man that has outlived his time—that recognises if things do not adapt, they die.” Zayir’s lips take on a bitter kind of smile. He thinks of how the magic, which once flowed so readily in his blood, is absent now. He thinks of his ultimate failure: not only to Solterra, but to Solis himself.
“Old lions wander off to die, eh?” The statement seems bizarre coming from the lips of someone so young.
As he has been speaking, Zayir has taken note of the other man’s observation—they sit side-by-side, again like comrades, and Zayir begins to wonder if perhaps the catacombs never opened, and his memories of reality have begun to loop into elaborate, realistic fantasies. There’s nothing here to convince him otherwise, save the light.
And even that, when he looks to long, takes on an aura of the celestial. He looks at his companion, etched beside him as if of limestone or granite. He asks, quite boldly, "Do you only hunt slave traders? Or is it whoever is worth a bounty?"
There is more to the stallion, than Noam feels privy to unravel.
He does not share well with others. Nonetheless, make sense of the patchwork keeping his mind together. This occurrence is strange, stranger than all his travels – perhaps he is finally losing it. Breaking at invisible seams and slipping here – a bit too much there. He should have left to search for Alam, but now – now it seems too excessive. And he starts to convince himself that the night will yield better results.
The stallion speaks of a different Solterra. Noam has only known Solterra in red ink, a gathering of the unsung. Of shifting rulers, and a relentless underbelly – feeding off old powers. They ensnare their prized possessions with a vice grip.
Through these base desires of man over man, kingdom over tribe, Noam could ascertain the allure of power and wealth. Not to any intimate degree, only so far as the blade attached to his arrows – or the radius of a sword.
Noam spots the smile forming on the stallion’s pale lips. He cannot say he recognizes the gesture entirely. Only that it reminds the sparrow – quite suddenly, vividly, of the soldiers and their smiles. Dead men walking into battle ill equipped. Tired and hungry – he could still taste the fear lingering behind his chest. Becoming tight, as it ached and coiled around his throat.
Old lions wander off to die, eh?
The saying eludes him – for now.
As a means to prevent memories from regressing – these reveries from picking speed, he offers quickly, “Tell me… Which Solterra do you speak of?”
A frown escapes his façade, pinching between his brows. Eyes vacant, lost – in the rise of that buzzing hum that begins to heighten. Staring off into that endless horizon above the sands. When the sweat against his hide finally chills with the wind.
Do you only hunt slave traders? Or is it whoever is worth a bounty?
“I didn’t realize it mattered.” Noam releases his gaze. Takes in those gold irises that accompany the ghost, and wonders if they will shine again with vigor. What sort of stallion resides beyond them? A concession of defeathangs upon those lips – the lion-heart worn down and pulverized into dust.
What remains of him?
“Who’s asking?”
Noam refrains from pointing out his efficiency. Considering Mata Hari’s lack of faith in said abilities. He hesitates now that the sound, that sound continues to hum behind his eyes. He wanted to voice that they didn’t suffer long, and they didn’t feel much before the final blow – usually. There were always a few, who went out of their way kicking and screaming to the final breath.
The way the other stallion asks it whets Zayir like a blade; it sharpens him as a lion sharpens for the hunt, or a falcon for the dive. He turns his eyes—his eyes like ichor, his eyes that have seen into death—to appraise the man another time. Tell me… which Solterra do you speak of? He wonders if this slave-hunter asks a barbed question; do you miss the days of slavery? Zayir does, before it was tarnished under Zolin’s rule. As a soldier—a career soldier, born for it, bred for it—he knows the necessity of slave labour, of how wars are won on the backs of slaves, how countries are built upon them. The weak. The desolate. Those who succumbed to stronger wills—
Yet there was a beauty in subservience, one that he does miss. Not in the rumours of Zolin’s house of whores, or the slaves that fought without honour—as coerced, frightened animals—upon the sands of the Colosseum. No, Zayir misses the tribal dancers in the city of Inebu-Hedji, or the woman who raised him without her tongue and her entire heart. These are not the things Zayir had considered, however, when he wandered into the desert—these are not the things he misses the most.
“I speak of the Solterra made in the likeness of our god. A city that shines as Solis does; with pride, arrogance, violence. I speak of a Solterra helmed by natives rather than foreigners—“ Zayir is aware of the contradiction in the statement, as Lady Marcisa Arisetta had always been a foreigner, but he does not stop. “—I speak of the Solterra that would never have submitted to a tyrant without complete and utter bloodshed. A Solterra full of pride rather than brokenness.” There is a curling bitterness to his tone. Zayir is proud to be Solterran; but expressions of pride are few and far between in the city streets. Even the Sovereign, whom Zayir has only observed at a distance, seems to wear an expression of piety and subservience. He looks as if he is paying a penance rather than leading a kingdom of warriors, of Solis's chosen children—
“A Solterra built on steel, blood, and sand. Not a Solterra built upon tragedy.” Zayir realises, of course, he has gone on far longer than is socially acceptable. Where Noam had offered the question quickly, Zayir had answered it as one allows embers to smoulder; slowly, and with fire.
I didn’t realise it mattered.”
Zayir almost laughs and, in the same breath, nearly scoffs. He finds… the response to be anti-climatic, devoid of passion. Perhaps this simply illustrates the difference between soldiers and assassins. No matter how pragmatic the act of war became, the killing itself always had motive. So Zayir says, “A man’s purpose for killing always matters.”
He then shrugs his supple shoulders; even fresh from the catacombs he is lithe, a supple creature of sinew and lean muscle. Here and now, Zayir looks almost too thin. The shade of the desert shrubbery accentuates it; it transforms the smooth white of his features into hard, angled plane. Zayir finds it strange he has confessed so much for a stranger; he has delved so willingly into a discussion when his companion has hardly revealed anything of themselves. It is this revelation—that Zayir has confessed much and this stranger so little—that makes his next answer so short. “Zayir.” He says, and intends to leave it at that. But the name, delivered so softly into the desert air, sounds ephemeral. The wind across the hot, barren sand nearly whips it into oblivion. So Zayir adds (as he is, and will forever be, a creature of pride): “Of Solterra’s Arete.”
When he says Arete it sounds like, “Troy” or “Persepolis”, “Sodom” or “Gomorrah.” A thing dead and gone, except in legend, except in ruins.
A wry smile turns his lips. Above them, a hawk careens through the too-bright desert air. Zayir envies it. “And you, Hunter?”
Indeed, the expression of the stallion’s pride omits his prior brokenness. Or perhaps it was merely an illusion cast of bitterness and frustration – whichever the case, the ghost is aflame. He seems to be singing in the heat of the desert, a proclamation of unyielding faith – of what was.
He speaks of tragedy, in that way between the lines – but to say what it is exactly proves to assume too much. Perhaps this ghost is more real than himself – for Noam is knit on little more than survival and half-memories. Oblivious to the collective blood of clan and tribes people soaked into the sands. Unawares of his stake in the world that caused so much pain, numbed and erased from his brain. While he may have shared a destiny with the stranger – they could be anything but similar.
The laugh would have made Noam flinch, if not for the encroaching fatigue. He lets out a sigh instead, recalling his quarry – the job, the living thing counting his last breaths. Or thinking he might escape the blade. To omit his satisfaction for his job was to share too much to his companion. Not that it always had, more so than ever before. There was something admittedly freeing in that act. And he doubted anyone else could emphasize with that – the intention bordering on the spiritual, rather than power and control.
“Arete?” There is a subtle inflection of doubt that carries in the wind. Breaks his concentration. It is a dead word, a word whispered between the commanders. A thing tucked away and hidden – largely forgotten that unfolds on Noam’s warped memories. On the edges of a dream, and passing on the airs shared between soldiers – of legends and stories that succumb to the earth.
“The Arete are dead.”
His words speak with an edge of finality. He thinks, between the holes that puncture throughout his recollections – of the places he’d been ordered to bring prisoners. Kept between dusted coffins, and the endless dark – a void, impenetrable of any light.
Noam regards the creeping smile of this ‘Zayir’. Wondering if the heat has finally cooked his insides.
“Noam,” the word is said simply. “I fought in Zolin’s war.” He adds, curious if this might inflame the so-called Arete ever more. And in the back of his mind, he half expected it to.
Voicing this was both unusual and novel. There were so few who could admit as much, and if they did – it was not a campaign worth gloating over. Without any clear victor, without a figurehead worthy of Solis’ grace and mercy – the war ruined and destroyed Solterra’s reputation and vigor on a grand scale.
“I was fighting for Solis after all,” he says off-handedly. More as an after thought, an acrid tone that causes the sparrow to move and stand. Spreading out his stiff wings.
He hopes the ghost is volatile, he hopes he strikes back with vengeance – he wants to feel guilt again. But can’t possibly fathom the emotion just quite yet.
ooc// @Zayir
07-04-2020, 06:09 PM - This post was last modified: 07-04-2020, 06:14 PM by Noam
