Chapter 6 - The Last Messenger

Chapter 6 - Dakkar

Dakkar sat in the darkness of his tent as Fane approached from outside. The man dragged the back of his right foot, and the sound of it across the sand grated on Dakkar’s senses. Should he force the man to carve off his heel? No, they didn’t have a Green with them, and it would take Fane too long to heal on his own.

Free me! A familiar voice boomed inside Dakkar’s head.

The compulsion jolted Dakkar, and his mind splintered. Bolts of pain radiated like lightning across his body, and he cowered in his tent.

Thalt have mercy, Dakkar pleaded.

A sliver of Dakkar’s mind laughed at the irony of the prayer, offered to the very God who caused him this pain, had caused him this pain for more than a thousand years.

A bell, struck with a padded hammer, rang from the tent’s entrance. The sound waves crashed against his body, pelting him like rain. Fane wished an audience. The acolyte standing in the corner of Dakkar’s tent jumped at the sudden sound.

Dakkar waited a few seconds, unsure if Thalt would call again, and re-shatter Dakkar’s thoughts. His training reasserted itself, and the last pieces of his mind congealed. He pulled on the power of his body and placed his response into Fane’s mind. The most powerful Yellow to ever live did not need speech. Enter.

The tent shook as Fane entered and then resealed the outer chamber. Anxiety sprayed from Fane’s mind like a wet sneeze, covering Dakkar. He vacillated between removing the man’s fear and stopping his heart. Fane shuffled to the entrance of the inner sanctum. The man’s anxiety turned to fear. Dakkar pushed his irritation into Moonless Night. He couldn’t afford to kill another of his tools.

Dakkar, attached like a leech on Fane’s mind, felt the softness of the rugs against Fane’s arms and legs as the mage pulled himself under the curtain that shrouded Dakkar’s inner sanctum. Fane stopped as soon as his head entered the chamber, and he pressed his face into the velvet rug, squeezing his eyes shut in the pitch-black room.

Dakkar, perched in the darkness, stared where he knew the mage lay. Fane didn’t have much time left. His connection to the Almighty would soon be closed, and unable to use Thalt’s power to heal his body, the two-hundred-year-old mage would quickly sicken and die. Fane was middle-aged, but Dakkar had forced Fane to overuse his power, hastening the shrinkage of his connection. Now, only a trickle of magic flowed through the Red Mage.

“Holy One, there may be another,” Fane spoke into the rug.

Dakkar didn’t wait for Fane to continue. He pulled on his power and slid deep into Fane’s mind, like a snake into a pond. Dakkar sifted through the man’s recent memories until he found the conversation between Fane and the camp’s western sentry, a Blue mage named Guyth.

Your duty! Thalt’s voice boomed.

Thalt’s compulsion hit Dakkar’s mind like an avalanche, and the connection to Fane snapped taut with energy. A single whimper escaped Fane as Thalt’s voice destroyed his mind. Mortals, even mages, were not meant to hear the voice of God.

Dakkar jerked his mind back to his body before Fane died. He didn’t want any part of his mind to remain trapped inside the dead man’s head. Dakkar recited the mantra that had kept him sane through all these centuries. He held up his accomplishments like a shield.

I have found your body. The compulsion stopped compressing Dakkar’s mind.

I can shift the balance. The compulsion eased.

I am near their secret. The compulsion retreated.

Dakkar took a minute to recover. Thalt was impatient, the compulsions more frequent. Dakkar just wanted this to end, to be free of the compulsion, to be dead again.

With Fane dead, Dakkar needed to interrogate the Blue mage himself, and that would require more power. Dakkar reached out with his mind to the acolyte in his tent, one of six that tended his needs and carried him as the group traveled. The man huddled in the left corner nearest the exit with his face pressed into the tent’s fabric. Even in the darkness, they didn’t want to look at him.

A drop, Dakkar pushed the thought into the acolyte’s mind.

Metal scraped on metal as the acolyte removed the cover from the box he held. A glow filled the tent as the acolyte placed the box and lid on the floor. He stood, a thumb-sized vial cupped reverently in his hands, and shuffled toward Dakkar. The man placed the bottle into its receptacle in the table to Dakkar’s right and removed the vial’s glass stopper. Grabbing a tiny brush, the bristle a single hair, he inserted it into the vial until it just touched the glowing liquid. He removed the brush and, for the first time, looked at Dakkar. The man’s hands started to tremble.

Dakkar sensed the man’s terror and disgust. The disgust made him angry. How dare this piece of meat look down on him. But he had already lost Fane, and Thalt might call again. He needed to act quickly.

The knee, Dakkar sent to the man.

The acolyte bent over Dakkar, but his hand with the brush didn’t move.

“The knees are gone, Holy One,” the acolyte whispered.

The forearm then, Dakkar boomed into the man’s mind.

The acolyte sobbed, but Dakkar felt the brush against his forearm, and power flooded through him.

He sent his mind westward toward Guyth, one of his Blue mages. Dakkar had kept his party small to avoid attention, and Blues made up half his camp. In case of trouble, physical trouble, he would need them. The mental trouble he could handle himself.

Guyth laid on the crest of a dune a hundred yards from camp. The sun, three fingers shy of the horizon, still scorched the air. Guyth had flattened his body into a large oval, colored his skin brown to match the sand, and altered his red hair to look like dead sage.

Dakkar entered Guyth’s mind without the Blue noticing. Nothing to be proud of, external mages were like open books. Only one had ever given Dakkar a problem, and she had died, twice.

In moments Dakkar had found the memory: sand sliding down the side of a distant dune, a short shadow on the eastern side of the dune like someone perched atop it, but nothing stood there to cast the shadow.

Dakkar nudged Guyth to look at the dune again, dilated the man’s eyes, and magnified the image. Nothing was visible. Most dangerous things weren’t.

Leaving the Blue, Dakkar circled the camp with his mind. Halfway through the rotation, the energy needed to keep his mind separated from his body decreased, and his senses grew crisp.

Dakkar withdrew to his tent and clutched at Spinning Wheel, buying himself time to work out the best solution. This trespasser had been trained and would be prepared for them. They couldn’t be treated like the others that had come before.

The intruder must be taken alive so Dakkar could learn their objective. Did they know who he was? What he searched for? Dakkar would succeed this time. He had never been closer to peace. Freedom from the compulsion and pain. Death.

A Shade Messenger had found them. But they had spread their Void too wide. Dakkar had felt the surge of his magic as it overlapped the…what did they call it…Raln’s fog. That meant the Messenger was either inexperienced or incompetent. Either way, Dakkar had the advantage.

It irritated Dakkar that he needed to worry at all. He had been invincible, or as close as a mage could come. But that had been before his failure. Now he needed to be cautious. It had been centuries since a mage assassin had found him. He had destroyed that Shade, but it had cost him a finger. He couldn’t blame the Messengers. The best always wanted a challenge, and there was no greater challenge than fighting one of Thalt’s six Cheriphim.

This Messenger had no idea who waited for him. If the Shades had known who Dakkar was, they would have sent dozens of assassins. This one appeared to be alone. Hopefully, Dakkar would be finished with his mission before anyone missed the assassin. Soon this would all be over. Nothing would stand in the way of his success.

The acolyte in his tent had begun putting the vial away, so Dakkar reached for the next nearest person, the camp cook.

Remove Fane from my presence, Dakkar put in the cook’s mind.

Dakkar felt the cook wet himself, and the man’s terror pleased him. Despite the Shade who had found them, things were going well. The Cloud Temple was near. He just needed to find it and somehow get inside. Maybe this Shade had been there. It would be a challenge to possess someone so trained, but the personal cost to Dakkar’s power, limited as it had become, might be worth it.

Yes, maybe this was the break Dakkar needed. The acolyte covered the vial of Sun Tears, and Dakkar’s sanctum returned to darkness. He craved eternal darkness, a place free from the pain of the compulsion, true death. He was so close. 

If Dakkar had still had hands, he would have rubbed them in pleasure.