Frost King of the Wastes Chapter 22

 

ARC V  THE SANDS OF BAALANIA

Chapter 22  The Black Desert

The snow ended at the edge of the world. Beyond the frozen sea and the dying western wastelands, the land slowly transformed into scorched stone and black sand beneath a blood-red sky. Ice gave way to ash. Rusted ruins vanished beneath endless dunes.

And the wind changed. Cold northern winds became furnace heat carrying whispers through the desert night.

Baalania. Even the name felt ancient. Cursed.

Einar stood atop a broken ridge overlooking the endless black desert stretching beyond the horizon while heat shimmered across the dunes beneath three pale moons hanging low in the sky.

Far behind them, the New World had already disappeared into distant storms.

Ahead only ash and fire remained.

Tenji drifted silently above the dunes beside him while white robes moved softly through burning desert winds. The Fairy looked deeply uncomfortable here.

The shadow crows circling him had become restless since crossing into Baalanian territory.

Even the sky felt wrong. No stars shone clearly above the desert. Only drifting smoke clouds and crimson moonlight.

Mordecai walked behind them through the dunes like a moving shadow cast by no sun at all. The Death Reaper had grown quieter with every mile south.

As though he remembered this land. And hated it.

The trio traveled alone now.

Kael and the surviving Iron Oath convoy had remained behind in the New World. Humanity needed rebuilding.

But Einar’s path led elsewhere. Toward the buried king sleeping beneath the sands.

Toward Baalania. The desert stretched endlessly for days.

Black dunes rose like frozen waves beneath skies filled with ash storms and distant thunder. Strange ruined towers occasionally emerged from the sands half-swallowed by timeancient kingdoms erased long before the modern world collapsed.

Some ruins still burned faintly at night.

Without fuel. Without reason. And everywhere the whispers followed them.

Soft voices drifting beneath the dunes.

Not carried by wind. Voices beneath the sand itself.

Tenji heard them first.

The Fairy suddenly stopped atop a massive dune while silver eyes narrowed toward the black desert below.

“…Do you hear that?”

Einar nodded once.

The Frost King heard them too.

Ancient prayers.

Endless chanting.

Millions of voices buried beneath the sands across centuries of conquest and sacrifice.

Mordecai’s shadows twisted violently around him. The Death Reaper hated the whispers.

That alone unsettled Einar.

Then the storm arrived. Without warning, the horizon vanished beneath a gigantic wall of black sand spiraling across the desert toward them like a living apocalypse.

Lightning flashed inside the storm.

Red lightning.

The dunes shook beneath the approaching force while distant horns echoed through the sands.

Not machine horns. War horns.

Tenji rose silently into the air.

The Fairy’s robes drifted weightlessly around him while shadow crows scattered into the storm above.

“We are being watched.”

Then shapes emerged within the sandstorm.

Gigantic beasts moving slowly through the dunes.

At first Einar mistook them for mountains.

Then one opened its eyes.

Dreadhorns.

Colossal rhinoceros-like siege beasts covered in obsidian armor and burning ritual scars. Entire fortresses had been built atop their backs from black iron and dark wood while chains and sacred banners whipped violently in the storm winds around them.

Cities walking through the desert.

The first Baalanian war caravans.

Dozens emerged from the storm.

Massive crawling fortresses surrounded by mounted riders cloaked in black cloth and bronze armor glowing faintly with fire sigils.

Ashsteeds galloped across the dunes beneath them silent horses with burning eyes and smoke trailing from their hooves.

The riders themselves looked monstrous beneath the crimson moons.

Towering men with bronze-dark skin hardened by desert warfare, thick sacred beards braided with iron rings, and glowing amber eyes touched by black flame rituals.

Each carried curved blades etched with ancient scripture. Every warrior moved with brutal discipline. And every banner bore the same burning symbol:

The Flame Eye of Baal-Zhur. The rising kingdom of Baalania.

Still small. Still fractured into warring clans and holy dynasties. Yet already terrifying. Someday it would become an empire capable of drowning continents in fire.

But even now the desert trembled beneath its birth. The massive war caravan halted before the trio. Dust and ash spiraled through the silence between them.

Then a rider approached atop a towering Ashsteed.

His bronze armor resembled scorched cathedral metal while black flames flickered softly across sacred carvings covering his gauntlets.

A priest-warrior.

Zhurakhim.

His burning eyes settled first upon Einar.

Then Mordecai.

Then finally Tenji.

The Baalanian did not hide his fascination.

The Fairy’s pale beauty beneath moonlight contrasted sharply against the brutal desert warriors surrounding them.

Whispers spread quietly among the riders.

“Skyborn…”

“A celestial…”

“Beautiful…”

Tenji ignored them completely.

The priest-warrior slowly dismounted from his Ashsteed.

Sand shifted softly beneath heavy armored boots as he approached the trio.

Then he spoke in a deep calm voice.

“Foreigners are forbidden beyond the Black Dunes.”

Behind him, the Dreadhorns exhaled smoke and embers into the night.

Einar remained perfectly still.

“We seek the buried king.”

At those words the desert wind died.

Several riders immediately gripped their weapons tighter.

The priest-warrior’s glowing eyes narrowed.

“…There is no king beneath the sands.”

But Einar saw it. Fear. Very slight. Very well hidden.

The Frost King stepped forward slowly.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“There is.”

Far beneath the black dunes something ancient stirred in its coffin.

The whispers beneath the sand suddenly grew louder.

And somewhere in the endless desert darkness a gigantic pair of burning eyes opened beneath the earth.