Must We All Fade Away? [Marax]

A dissonant sound interrupted the poignant scene. The scaping of metal tools against stone and the ping of hammer strikes echoed from deeper into the ruins. The noise wasn't continuous. It would stop every now and then for a short few seconds before continuing to grate away at the ears again. Should curiosity draw Zubaidah deeper in to find the source she would eventually stumble upon a creature there in the darkness of shadow. Some of the pillars in the temples construction had been redundant and among them some had been carved into unsightly visages of some kind of troll or ogre. The ancient Parthevian inscriptions that had once graced the noble pillars totally desecrated by this twisted art sense. Sure enough, the culprit was caught redhanded too. A short and dwarf-like fellow with a large brown beard and a metal helmet was hunched over there chiseling away at his latest work when Zubaidah arrived. Though he didn't notice her at first, he startled once he did.


The man reached up to protect his statue in the making as if fearing she would steal or damage it, but despite this he remained relatively calm. After a short moment he recovered his composure and asked curiously if the setar playing had come from Zubhaidah.

The already cautious and frightened creature jumped when Zubaidah started yelling at him. He seemed torn between running away and staying behind to defend his precious artwork. In the end he jumped onto the pillar he was working on and clung to it desperately despite the fearful expression he held until finally all the angry shouting was done. He peeked an eye open and looked over cautiously to give Zubaidah a blank look. "So...you aren't the one who was playing that pretty music?" Asked the dwarf innocently. The little bastard hadn't listened to a word she said and was clinging onto this seemingly unimportant question. "I liked that music. Helped me get into my flow! Oh how the muses dance when there is music!"

The dwarf then hopped down from the statue in progress and picked his tools back up. Ding! Ding! Ding! The ping of hammer blows on chisel and stone sounded once again, but this time it was with a rhythm that poorly matched the sitar playing but was close enough that one could tell he was trying to emulate it. The little dwarf became easily drawn into his work as he "played" and soon forgot Zubaidah was even there again. His focus entirely on carving out yet another abomination of a statue. Right before Zubaidah's very eyes his chisel was chipping away bits of history to become debris on the floor.

Blissful joy came over the dwarf and he became even more entranced by the secrets of the stone. But suddenly he stopped swinging his hammer and trembled. The strange creature's eyes followed a chunk of pillar tumble to the floor and took in the sight of debris around his feet. Overcome with a sense of loss and frustration towards the desecration, he collapsed to his knees and burst into tears. "Oh no, what have I done!? I've done a terrible thing!" Cried the dwarf seeming to only understand the weight of Zubaidah's feelings towards the pillars once they were magically thrust upon him. But amidst the crying of the diminutive stone mason there was a sudden cut to silence as the dwarf vanished before Zubaidah's ever eyes. No attempts to find the strange little man turned up any results and upon leaving the room and returning, the statues were all gone. Or rather, the pillars had been restored as though the stone mason had never been there in the first place.

Days later in Zubaidah's personal estate she would receive a most unusual guest. One that had somehow managed to find his way into her private quarters no less. A young boy, seeming to be no more than 10, was waiting there for her one evening seated on the bed casually. He greeted her with a smile and the gemstone embedded in his forehead gleamed in the light as he shifted side to side with excitement. "There you are, I've been waiting for you!" The child would exclaim cheerfully before hopping up to his feet and places his hands upon his hips.

"I am the djinn, Marax. After passing my test, I've chosen you to inherit the rukh and will of my former king. Interested?"

The child stood in silence as his chosen candidate read the flow of rukh and quickly found a calm frame of mind. The djinn smiled and narrowed his eyes. Her quick wit and willingness to wield it against others was why he liked her, but the reason why he chose her was ultimately guided by the rukh. When the fated King Candidate asked her questions the child made an expression far beyond his apparent age. His eyes gazed beyond now, into a far distant past even before his dungeon had been raised. The ages had been long and lonely but before even that there had once been a King which Marax had lost. His thoughts then flashed forward to his first King Candidate and he too had been lost, though in a different fashion.

"You could say that, but you could also say that he is here. His name was Yakuroro. A magician born to a tribe of Imuchakk."

The djinn smiled meaningfully at Zubaidah but instead of elaborating he moved the conversation to more about Yakuroro. "Fate demanded a price of my first candidate which he could not accept. His pain and anger twisted him onto a foolish path of self destruction..." The deep regret could he heard of his voice. The child sighed and shook his head with closed eyes. When he opened them again, they shot a heavy glare meeting eyes with Zubaidah. "If the black birds of destruction try to seduce you, I suggest you remind yourself of what that got him."

The sharpness on his face then softened and he moved to step forward but fell to one knee. His face congealed in pain for a moment and he stopped breathing. After a few seconds he began to gasp for air and his face eased. Standing to his feet, he had a look of determination on his face. "I don't have much time left." The gemstone in his forehead lit up and a swell of magoi surged around his body. It all flowed into the gem and a magic circle shone brightly from within.

From the magic circle emerged a small grouping of rukh. Three tiny little birds of light that desperately seemed to cling together. But they were feeble and fleeting. It was the rukh of a person. But it was incomplete and cut off from the whole. A tiny fragment of Yakuroro's rukh from before he fell into depravity. It seemed like it could float off to rejoin the great flow at any moment but some indomitible will kept it struggling on here.

That tiny flock of rukh carried in it an imprint of Yakuroro's will. A conviction that fate had chosen him. A sense of love towards family and friends. The habit of hiding his intentions and lying to friends for good reasons. These three core aspects of his ego weighed heavy in those three birds of light and they were slowly making their way over to Zubaidah. The child seemed incredibly drained from this act to the point that his body gave out. With his dying breath he hoarsely croaked.

"Accept the rukh...of my former King Candidate...If you can bare it...my power is yours."

---

Notes:

As the foreign rukh entered Zubdaidah's own internal flow there would be a moment where she found herself in a strange place. It was as if she had a form but was all at once formless. There was no physicality to her presence at all. This was the space inside her own heart and soul. A private place, one where her truest self lay. Inside was every secret and trauma, every love and passion, everything that made Zubadai who she was. But now there was a guest intruding on this inner sanctuary.

A large figure appeared, looming like a giant and bringing with it the will of another. This figure seemed mighty at a glance, but a closer look and she would see that he was frail and weak. Or perhaps better said, incomplete. The figure was faceless with fragments of the body missing all over. His form wavered like a flickering candle and blurry lines of broken rukh could be seen at the edges of his missing pieces. This was the remnant of Marax's former master, and it was not willing to submit.

No mouth to speak of or words to reason with came from the phantom. Only a sense of overbearing dominance and willpower was expressed by the fragment. But this was not its domain. Zubaidah was master here and this was merely the remnants of a dead man. One which had no real power here. But still it stood there proudly radiating a sense that fate had chosen him. That Zubaidah was simply a new vessel with which to forge his path, oblivious to the fact that it had long been cut short.

After confronting this figure, Zubaidah would find herself back to consciousness. On the floor across from her, a corpse. The child to be exact. The gemstone in his forehead was dimming out with the last of its light. Crack! It then splintered with cracks and fell to pieces. The child's body soon followed suit, breaking apart as if it had been made of stone. Soon the body was simply a pile of dust which then further still dissolved into loose magoi as the last of the magic maintaining the homunculus faded leaving Zubaidah alone with her thoughts.

-Exit-