Kingdom of
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Kingdom of
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The pale-skinned Queen Roxanna lies in senseless, stately grace among the slim golden towers of far-famed Ophir, lost in dreams torn from Black Lotus leaves, prisoner of ethereal smoke from a jade-carved censer. Twelve royal guardsmen in plates of burnished bronze stand mute witnesses to their Lady's tortured slumber. Their tightly-gripped spears and gilt-wrought shields serve not to awaken their beloved Queen, or to defend her wandering, fear-stricken soul from the daemons which feast on her dreams.
Young Pythas, with eyes of smoldering jet beneath a dragon-peaked helm of gold, at last can stand no more the ringing of the Empress of Ophir's screams. To her bedside he strides with a damning oath, his heavy sword drawn as comrades protest: "Pythas! Thou must not intervene! As the marble pillar stands, so must thou! From thy post thou must not stray!"
The youngest of soldiers, Pythas stands alone: "Seest thou not what this Lotus hath brought? Damn the cost, I'll attend my Queen! For devils of some outer realm do assail our Lady in dreams!"
"How wouldst thou vanquish these phantoms of fear?" speaks Hurin, the eldest of guards, "The Black Lotus our Queen hath given her soul, while we stand bound to the waking world!"
Doffing his helm and casting aside his shield, young Pythas approaches the flaming censer. Grabbing a pinch from the Lotus-tray he tosses dark herbs upon embers aglow. "Into dreams, then, I too shall go...." As the sweetest of fumes rise to drown his lungs the young warrior swoons beside his Queen, his spirit released by the Stygian weed while the Lady continues to shift and moan, a victim to spectral fiends.
On a darkling plain Pythas finds himself, beneath swirling stars, buffeted by the nether-winds whose touch is the cold of the lightless void, where naught but the outer daemons may tread. The ground at his feet now seethes and coils, wrapping itself round his thighs, the foul, living flesh of a vast, unknown Thing which hungers to gnaw upon his bones. The blade of Pythas sweeps fierce through the tendrils, he strives against some ravenous power, folding and steaming in blasphemous shapes, stretching its pulsating bulk to far horizons. Forward he wades, with each step a battle, cleaving the dark world's flesh. For somewhere in hungry, numberless coils lies the Empress Roxanna near death.
Wet with the gore of unspeakable forms, he crosses the heaving plain, spying now a thing which rises in arcs not altogether sane. A far-distant fortress which blots weaving stars, impossibly tall against the night-black realm; a citadel stands, built by no mortal hands, angular, perverted, and vast. Strange, shrieking beasts flap over his head on membranous wings borne aloft, peering down upon Pythas, awaiting a lull in the coursing, visceral struggle, that with blood-hungry fangs they might swoop and feast, and know again the taste of mortal flesh.
Ever-closer across the nightmare realm does brave Pythas near his goal, marching through rivers of clinging ichor, striving for every step. A dancing aurora of crimson comes now, surrounding the fortress afar, expanding to fill the dizzying sky with a gleaming, blood-bright glow. Higher loom the bloated towers as Pythas draws near, its gargantuan gates limned in the glow from the torturous blood-sky. Now the dark land's grasping at last abates, and before the slabs of god-sized steps, young Pythas stands dripping and free. Beyond the daemonic portals resound the faint screams of an anguished Queen.
Climbing now the monolithic stairs, Pythas battles the winged fiends which seize at last their chance to rend and slay, and drink the blood of Man. One by one he mounts the blocks with weaving, flashing blade, beneath the sky gone horrid scarlet. At last he gains the topmost step, slain devils marking his path. Survivors flap away, fleeing in fear of the dreaded portal, while Pythas smites the iron doors with blood-soaked fists and steely rage. Inward swing the massive valves, laid bare is the hall within, lined with eidolons of terrible gods bathed in the glow of unseen flames. Into the gloom young Pythas stalks between the rows of leering idols. He sees each pavestone carved with the tortured face of a forlorn soul long lost, whose fate was decreed by forgotten dreams: the Black Lotus’ terrible cost. A cry emerges from deep within the darkness of the maze, and Pythas runs toward regions unknown, fearing that soon his Queen’s fair face will don these hellish walls.
Through endless corridors heavy with mists which reek of bliss and oblivion Pythas strides toward the source of the despairing screams, past yawning pits where black infinities gape, gleaming with alien stars; through sickly-sweet chambers immensely vast, and cavernous vaults which wend and swerve. As if in protest to his tread, the evil stones writhe and swell, pulsing black and palpitating. The citadel spasms and and Pythas knows the fortress is a living, protesting thing. He has come as an invading spoor, to travel its deepest veins toward some foul and pestilent heart where the Lady of Ophir’s lifeblood drains.
Now he emerges among her fierce screams in a vastly domed chamber with pillars of dark, quivering vine. Before him stands the petal-shaped altar where the weeping Queen lies entwined, dark blossoms pressed against her pallid flesh, consuming the nectar of body and soul. A silent, hooded figure looms near, bent close to study the comely face, probing with jointless digits, caressing the sweet, moaning lips. Here, then, is the sorcerous King who rules the daemon-realm, draped in fibrous black. Pythas rushes forth in red fury, swinging deadly steel.
The dark-robed figure turns to face Pythas in movement inhumanly smooth. Waving a spindly hand, it casts forth a cloying cloud of mist which whirls and wraps like living arms about the warrior’s armored form. Grasping, scented tentacles surround him, chilling his body, besieging his thoughts in a paroxysm of icy fear. Stock-still stands Pythas now within the dreadful fog, his blade raised high to smite yet unable to descend. As the silent King draws near to Pythas the shadows flee his hood, and the warrior sees the awful visage of the daemon-realm’s Lord. Now he screams, brave Pythas does, the mist-scent choking his breath, for within the hood sits no regal face, but only a great, black blossom of quivering petals, contracting and unfolding in sentient, malevolent glee. Stalk-like fingers explore the lad’s face as the Lotus-King studies his prey, and Pythas is gripped by the horror of revelation for he knows that soon he will line the walls of the awful palace, a mournful face in living stone.
Now from the altar comes a bloodless scream, and Pythas remembers the love of his Queen. His heavy blade falls, driven once more by the rage which fires his soul. As a scythe through chaff, the great sword cleaves the Lotus-King’s body in twain. And Pythas rushes to slice off those vines which grasp and devour the Queen. Gasping and panting, cut free of the vines, the Roxanna now lies in Pythas’ arms. In that strangest of rooms where pillars of black ivy writhe and angrily sway, Pythas meets his Queen’s emerald eyes. As Roxanna beholds his rugged face, far more than a Queen's love of her guardsman now thrives in their desperate embrace. Their lips come together in a lusty kiss and around them the dark realm fades...
Rising at once awake in her chamber, the Queen on her bed sits alone. Twelve guards stand as always along her tapestried walls. "Our Lady awakes!" announces Old Hurin, whereat the soldiers bow and kneel. Roxanna stands on delicate legs, the heat of discovered passion still burns as the King of Ophir enters the room, festooned with crown and gleaming mail.
"My wife, thou hast returned at last from the senseless embrace of night! Now may thou bid thy husband farewell, for I ride to lead the charge against the godless legions of Koth." The Queen stares dumbly around the chamber, as if searching for a lost, precious thing.
"Where is the warrior with eyes of jet," she demands. "The youngest of those who guard my sleep?"
Ophir’s King frowns with tightened jaw: "I found the fool lying next to thee, he’d scented thy Lotus and joined thee in bed. What base effrontery to lay with the Queen! Such insolence cannot be borne within this court! With my own sword I severed his head."
The Lady fell faint before her Lord, weeping diamond tears, and the pitiless King of Ophir rode off to war to trample the Dogs of Koth beneath his armored heel. That night the Queen Roxanna lit again her jade-carved censer and breathed in deeply the sweet, dark vapor of the blissful, numbing Black Lotus.