Rise of the Dark Alin (Part 1)

The city of Mezekesh shuddered on the night the Talisman fell from the sky. All the Alin cities shuddered on that night. Buildings crumbled, fires dimmed, and the tallest spire on the citadel at Azar Harif shattered, raining splinters upon the people below. Scorpions turned on their riders, and mantas fled their masters. Such were the reports from every corner of the Alin Kingdom, on that night when the blackest of skies was scarred with yellow firelight.

Such was the night that witnessed the death of Fassarri the Wise, King among the Alin.

As was my custom, I had spent the earlier hours of that evening walking along the outer walls of Mezekesh. It had been a ritual for me since my youth, a patrol of sorts, though nothing more than a superstitious habit, were I to speak truthfully. When I was still a boy, I took this patrol armed with little more than a stick. I fancied myself a Desert Walker in those days. That was before my gifts as a mystic were revealed, before the endless hours of training and study and practice within the schools of fire and sand, and eventually, glass.

As I gained these skills, my patrols continued. I bore no company during these treks around the perimeter of the city. I sought no comrades, I harbored no secret hopes for a chance encounter with a companionable stranger. I have known men like that, soldiers and mystics alike, men who seem to spend every odd moment looking behind them, on the off chance that their mask of duty has inspired someone with the desire to peer beneath. I am not such a man. In those days, I sought but one thing on my patrols. I sought an enemy.

The Alin Kingdom had no enemies. It hardly had nuisances. There were other peoples scattered about along the peripheries of our borders, to be sure, but these were not enemies, any more than a sand fly is enemy to a mountain. We were a Kingdom at peace, achingly, endlessly at peace. I was an Alin Mystic, and charged with the task of defending my Kingdom. I longed for a chance to do so.

There is a saying among the Alin: a wish may be stronger than the man who makes it. I have long since been cursed with a deep understanding of these words.

On that evening, I walked as I always did, and cast my accursed wish into the desolation of the sunset. Looking back, I would like to think that I felt a wrong thing, an odd feeling, any sense that would portend, in hindsight, of the horrible events that were to begin that night. But I did not. I walked my patrol, silently, brooding, and finding adversaries only in my imagination, I returned to the deeper night of my chambers in the Sand Spire.

I slept. And my wish was granted.

Next