The Adversary: The Lone and Level Sands
by ThomasNickerson
Somewhere in Egypt, 1402 BCE.


Torch smoke in close quarters always made the wizard sneeze. Not a good time to begin a spoken spell, as he'd learned a long time ago, so he waited until his nose stopped tingling.

"Six gods to bind it," the apprentice said. "Astonishing."

"Caution breeds good magic," the wizard replied. "Vengeance multiplies when the hand that strikes is steady and controlled. But it is not just the binding that's needed. The six we've invoked all owe me debts for my service against the Dark Ones. With their help, we shall reforge darkness."

Nodding, the apprentice read the names of the gods to himself before commenting. "Strange to see Sutekh invoked with Horus and Amon-Ra. Zeus, Anubis and Marduk...Zeus? One of the new ones."

"Yes, one of the new gods across the Northern sea."

The thing bound to the floor hissed at them. The apprentice jumped back; the wizard didn't move.

"Time to get to work, I think," the wizard said.

All the necessary magics were in place, written on the thing's body and on the floor to which it had been affixed by the men the wizard had hired to capture it and bring it here. Paid well, they'd already fled. All the necessary magics were in place, needing one last magic word, spoken, to set them in motion.

The wizard looked at the thing that had been his son and was no longer. One of the Demons of False Souls had found his son and changed him and sent him back to the wizard as a punishment and a promise. The Old Walker had done this, the one that called itself The Master.

No matter. The wizard felt a flutter in his breast. His ninety years were almost up. His heart had travelled long beyond its allotted number of heartbeats thanks to the gods he served and the powers he wielded. Tonight would be a good death.

Magic: words and blood for some types of it. This magic required his blood, all of it. If the gods were kind, he'd watch his vengeance walk the Earth long after he'd left this world.

"Sir?" the apprentice said.

"Just thinking, boy. Just thinking." The voice of the wizard's tiny, flitting, invisible watcher whispered in his ear. The Master was coming, bringing an army to end the magics that had been used against the Old Walker's cold breed for so long.

Watcher. The wizard laughed as he realized the irony. Well, there were other powers in the Earth. The Master had skirted some of them, but he would not forever. Old, rough magics with neither subtlety nor choice, magics the wizard would never have countenanced had he been in charge of the operation. But the Slayer had served her purpose over the centuries. Perhaps some day that line would know its history, and make decisions with that knowledge revealed.

But that was not his fight. What would his Slayer have been like, had he invented such a thing? He didn't know, but he would have liked to have met a Slayer before he died. Such an interesting idea, so poorly deployed. Now, if they had found a demon that hated its own kind and a woman who wanted to take on that demon's power...but so much for idle musing. So many magicians, so few understanding the power inherent in choice.

"You are released, boy," the wizard said, "you and the sprite both." His watcher whispered again. "Apparently, she'll accompany you if you truly want to continue in the old ways. Otherwise, she'll do what she wants."

"Sir?"

"Stop gaping, boy. You're smart enough to know what this last entails. I've saved power to send you on your way a long way from here. The Master's army approaches, and I release you from your service. Be what you want after this...." As he said the last, he spoke a word. A gate of light and sound roared into life beside them. "...but you must go now. There is no time."

"I want...I want to continue your work," the boy said.

The wizard smiled and spoke another word. Knowledge jumped a gap and flowed into the apprentice's mind. It would take the boy years to master all of what the wizard gave him now. The boy started as the last of the knowledge allowed him to see what only the wizard could see before -- the shimmering, translucent demon, as much insect as woman and really nothing like either, that buzzed around the apprentice's head and spoke to him now.

"She'll watch over you," the wizard said, "and she won't leave you unless you die or hand over your watch to another."

"It was..." the boy began.

"You were a good apprentice. Go. Go now. Both of you."

The little demon buzzed around the wizard's head one last time and then entered the gate. The boy raised a hand and followed.

Another spoken word. The gate collapsed.

"Father," the thing on the floor said.

The wizard ignored it.

"Father, why have you trapped me here? Please, please, release me."

The wizard shook his head. He pulled the knife out of his belt and drew it three times across his flesh. Blood flowed. The spell began to coalesce. Almost time for one last word.

All of it based upon one premise, all his vengeance founded upon one simple truth: the demons that animated the changed bodies, the Demons of False Souls, were finite in number. Dispatched by stake or fire or decapitation, they fell back. But they would return in time, in a new body. And so on, and so forth. End without world, world without end.

Well, a second truth aided the first: the fundamental nature of the False Souls could be changed. Moulded. Shaped.

Nothing is immutable.

All one needed in the end was the good will of six gods, power built up over decades, and the willingness to die.

Simple, really.

His enemies tried to be quiet, but he heard their footsteps as they descended into the cave.

Time was up, and he was feeling faint.

"Father..." the thing on the floor said.

The wizard laughed and said one last word.

Like a flash of lightning, a reflection of the light of creation lit the room for a moment, reducing everything -- wizard, vampire and all else -- to ash and glass and smoke. The Master's lead men died as well.

When the cave had cooled, the Master himself entered, along with a few of his chosen. But nothing that remained explained what had happened. Finally, the Master laughed.

"Sir?" one of his favourites said.

The Master idly stirred some ashes and grit around with the toe of one leather-clad foot. "Nothing. The old fool obviously had prepared some ambush, some trap. And obviously, it failed him. Humans are stupid things, boy. Here endeth the lesson."

After spitting on the ground, the Master motioned to his people to follow him. The sun would be up soon.

Centuries passed.

Gods and demons rose and fell.

And...

Farm country. It sniffs, looks down at itself, laughs.

Its sire laughs with it.

A crowd of memories from the body: time, place, idiom. Useful.

Its sire and the others with it are about to fall upon a village in the valley below. But its sire had been sentimental, had found the village woman he'd been betrothed to when he was alive and changed her.

Sentimentality would have a price.

Still laughing, its sire blows to dust with the strike of a tree branch.

Startled, the others turn. But they are slow and they are surprised.

Whistling in a moonlit glade, it rifles through its body's memories. There are no more vampires in the village. Vampires tend to congregate in cities. The scattering dust of its prey makes the moonbeams solid. It pauses to regard this peculiar beauty before returning to its task.

Ah. Ilium. Seven days' ride. Time to get going.

Eventually, it will die. But it will be born again. There are only so many fish in the sea.

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