Tarek was a man who ventured into the desert wastes to collect the bones of fallen animals and things. It was not dangerous work, of course, he knew to avoid the random snakes that would rattle and he scooted by them. He knew of the eagles large enough to swallow a man whole, but somehow they avoided him. He would be gone for days at a time, scouring the wastes for bones. Sometimes he would find equipment left behind, arranged in a neat pile.
He would grin of course. Finding the leavings of a dreamer was fortuitous indeed. And so he thought nothing of it, he added the piece to his collection. Oh yes, I am describing the beginning of the end for poor Tarek. For you see, this particular item was cursed, infact, the nature of how this advanturer came to die is related to said curse, but he had an out, not so for Tarek.
The moment Tarek touched the item, the armor, the iron banded helm, he was trapped. He wore the helmet the moment he found it. To his amazement, he could see for miles further than he ever had before. He could see invisible things, and he always knew when someone near was casting a spell. The problem was, he couldn’t take it off, ever. The helmet had fused with his skin, and turned it black. In a panic, when he discovered this one fateful day, he tried to take off the helm. He tried all these mundane ways to remove the helm, but those failed. He spent all his remaining money, money earned from years of scavenging, to have the curse removed from the helmet.
That didn’t work as he intended, for the helmet remained on him. Of course, the helm also lost it’s beneficial properties. He languishes in his home, brooding. I wish he would go outside and taste the dry desert air, but nothing I say reaches him. When I last walked by his home to drop off his dinner I thought I could hear a conversation. Ever since that day, at strange times, I’d smell an acrid stench whenever I was close to his house.
He told me, on the rare times he would speak to me, that he found help. I pressed him on this point and I could see in his eyes, raw from weeping, a terrible purpose.
Chapter 2
I climbed the steps to the palace. The once thriving temple to Yogash that dominated the city, now a howling ziggurat of madness, and despair. The priests were gone, having been overthrown after it was noticed that they had no power. They would scream as they were thrown off the top of the temple. Now, there was an endless procession of supplicants climbing the stair, a line that stretched from the top of the once proud monument to Yogash, all the way to the city gates. Men in grotesque helms kept the line in order. The once proud followers of Yogash had a new master.
“Keep your eyes at the top of the palace!” the words came with the crack of a whip, and I felt the lash through my threadbare clothes. I had to bite my lip to stifle my cry. I could hear those who were returning from the top coming down the stair twenty feet to my left. Everyone was carrying something. One man had a goat on his shoulders.
You’re doing the right thing, came a voice from inside my head.
What do you know about the right thing?
I eventually made it to the top of the temple, and only a few people remained in front of me. A massive pile of treasure could be seen past the double doors of the dome. The man with the goat walked through the doors and handed the animal to a guard, bowed to the king, and kissed his black iron helmet. He backed out of the room and passed me without looking at me. I was next.
One had to master the art of looking at someone without looking at them. I gazed at the helm, but not his eyes, and brought out a small jewelry box. Its purple felt exterior brought out expressions of curiosity from the guards flanking the king.
“Open it,” the rasp of the king echoed throughout the chamber. Behind him a large white cloth was covering a large rectangular shape. It framed him nicely as he was sitting in an ornate chair that was gaudy and foreign in this temple. He clutched the jade tipped armrest, his knuckles turning white. I calmed my nerves and opened the small box.
I imagined his eyes narrowing as I opened the small case.
“STOP!” he yelled. But I was too close. I would die for this act, I knew, but I had already made up my mind. The acid spray hit the king in the face, and he reeled in agony, stumbling over his throne. The guards caught me in their grip, as they were already moving. Attendants rushed to the king’s aid, groaning in pain as he was, and they carried him off. I would spend the rest of that night in a cell.
The sun beat down on my shoulders. I sat in a puddle of my own filth. Down here, water pooled around me, and―.
Suddenly I was bathed in shadow.
“It must pain you to know that you failed,” the voice came from far above. I looked up the thirty foot shaft, past the grate, to see the silhouette of the king's helmet looking down at me. I said nothing.
“It would’ve worked you know. I had thought I recognized you, but I’ve seen so many faces, I couldn’t place how I knew you. Then I remembered, you gave me dinner when I was too scared and beside myself to leave my home. But once I found the one beyond, you hated me. You hated that one so disfigured could actually enjoy themselves. Above all, you hated the power that I have taken. You could have ruled as my right hand. Instead you schemed to ruin me. But I don’t go down easily, not anymore. I am beyond human, beyond you.”
I found myself shouting back despite myself. “No, you were a scared man, a man who ruined himself! But living with what you had done with yourself was too much! Wasn’t it!? You had to make others feel how you felt!”
Laughter echoed down the narrow shaft not even wide enough to lay down in. I was still wearing the clothes I wore on that fateful day.
“That’s amazing. Isn’t that the very thing you tried to do? Disfigure the one who disfigured your city? Your empty platitudes are as hollow as this shaft, empty, containing nothing.”
The sun returned to my cell.