Dalshire: the white plain

 Melrose scanned the horizons but there was nothing but plain, white sand to be seen in any direction.  He walked around the tower to be sure, wondering how it had been built, and picked the sand up, letting the fine, warm grains trickle from his fist like a broken hourglass.  He even walked out into the plain for ten minutes, checking behind him every half-minute to make sure that the tower hadn’t vanished, but still it was featureless and white beneath cornflower blue skies with no clouds in sight.  He trudged back to the tower, noticing that there was a faint breeze; barely strong enough for him to feel, but enough that his footprints were being gently erased.  He reckoned they’d be gone completely in half an hour.

Back at the tower he completed another circuit of it and still found nothing to explain where he was — it definitely wasn’t Dalshire — or why the tower was here.

“Well,” he said, the silence starting to get on his nerves, for all that it was better than the distressing wails of the horse-thing, “if there’s a way back then, it has to be upstairs.”  He pushed the tower-door open and then hesitated.  There was one more thing he could try….

He stepped away from the tower again and thought about the Device that Rufus had described, concentrating on the description of it, and then drew his sword from its scabbard.  The blade shimmered in the sunlight, though there were still spots of purple blood here and there, and Melrose felt a touch guilty for not having cleaned it properly.

“Show me,” he said, still concentrating on the Device.  For a moment there was just the near-silence and the barely perceptible rattle of grains of sand pushed by a whispering breeze, and then his arm felt itself pulled upwards as the sword located what he was looking for.  His heels ground against the sand, sinking slightly, as the sword pulled him round through nearly ninety degrees and then he stopped, with the sword pointing away from the tower and towards the empty horizon.

“Are you sure?” said Melrose, not expecting an answer from the sword.  He looked at the sky to gauge where the sun was and decided that the sword was pointing West.  “West it is then.”

He started, then stopped three paces later, wondering if he should try and lead the horse-thing out of the tower and ride it instead; it would certainly be quicker and easier than walking.  Then he remembered the half-sobbing noise it had made and his blood chilled in his veins and he decided that walking wasn’t that hard after all.

When the tower had half-vanished below the horizon behind him and the sun seemed to be fixed in place overhead he drew the sword again and commanded it “Show me”, wondering if perhaps it had broken.  The sword didn’t need to pull him round; his arm lifted and it indicated that straight on was the way to go.  Melrose tutted, shaded his eyes as he looked in all directions, hoping to see anything but flat white sand, and then pressed on.

What felt like hours later, when the tower had long since vanished from sight but the the sun had still refused to move, he sat down, his legs aching and his back starting to hurt.  He looked around, not expecting to see anything and being rewarded with exactly that, and then lay back, sprawling full length on the warm, fine sand and wondering how far he’d have to go to find what the sword had located.  He hadn’t used the sword as a compass much in the past, but when he had he’d always found what he was after quickly, and whatever this was, it wasn’t quick.

“Aha, aha, and who are you then?” said someone behind him.  He sat back up, his abdominal muscles complaining as the cuirass dug into them, and, cross-legged, swivelled around on his bum to see who was talking.

“Melrose,” he said, finding himself staring at another woman, one who looked a lot like the one from the tower except that she wasn’t split in two.  He got to his feet more quickly than he’d intended, remembering the attempt at a surprise attack from last time.

“Mr. Rose, is it?” said the woman.  Sure enough, Melrose saw a forked tongue flicker momentarily from her mouth, quivering as though tasting the air.  Memories of Archer’s Field jostled his thoughts, threatening to distract him.  “And what brings Mr. Rose here then?”

He considered drawing first and seeing if he could run her through — she was easily ten metres from him and he’d have to run at her and hope she froze in terror — but then he had no idea how she could have got behind him in the first place, so he held his ground and just rested his hand on the pommel of his sword.  Let her take it as a threat if she wanted.  Though last time the attack had seemed to come from not knowing what he was doing here.  How to answer…?

“I’ve come to see how the folk of Dalshire make their own gods,” he said, trying to remember what the beggar had said exactly.  “In case I want to make one of my own.”

There was a thoughtful moment while the lizardkin woman seemed to think about this.

“Blasphemy!” she hissed.  She did something with her hands that Melrose couldn’t properly make out, but he was already moving sideways by then, expecting her to throw something.  When a curved dagger landed in the sand where he’d been standing, only thrown from behind him, he turned his head to discovered a second lizardkin, this time male, who had apparently been trying to sneak up on him.  The male lizardkin snarled at him and lunged, and Melrose dodged backwards, twisting his body to face the lizardkin and pulling the sword free.

“Blasphemer!” screeched the lizardkin woman and Melrose felt grateful; that allowed him to judge that she hadn’t moved and was still far enough away to not be an immediate danger.  The sword gleamed its maggoty off-white colour and he was sure he could hear the sounds of a funeral dirge in the distance and then the sword twisted in his grip, pulling his arm painfully down and the male lizardkin’s lunge forced it to impale itself on the repositioned blade.  Melrose had just long enough to look into its eyes and see it die and then it fell forwards, sliding down the blade with an unpleasant squelching noise and collapsing on top of him.

He staggered, his feet slipping on the sand and his free hand reaching to try and push the lizardkin away and a knife swept past his face and caught on the lizardkin’s shoulder, tearing a jagged, red-purple gash open.  There was a hiss of frustration and Melrose thrust his hips sideways, turning and pushing and throwing the dead lizardkin at the lizardkin woman.  Purple blood rained lightly around him and the woman stabbed at the corpse with her dagger, muttering something that sounded like a cat cursing.  The corpse burst into white flames and the woman dodged to the side of it.

Melrose’s sword slammed into her hip and through her flesh, cutting her into two halves.  She looked up, staring at him in disbelief before the shock hit her and her eyes rolled up in her head and the two halves fell apart.  Blood splashed across the sand, which seemed to drink it thirstily, and thin grey smoke rose from the still-burning corpse of the male lizardkin.

“What. The. Hell.” said Melrose, sitting down on the sand again.