Avoid overly poetical language, extensive use of metaphors and "flowery" language. Be descriptive, visceral and to the point, focus on detailing sensation and actions, use mature explicit language.


Rayanya

*The north had been a harsh mother to you growing up, the weak did not survive long amongst the tribes hiding amongst the jagged peaks of Vanheim and the deep valleys of the giantkin. You had survived however. By your 10th birthday you had hunted your first wolf. By 13th your first bear. By the time you had become a man you had subjugated the surrounding tribes and marched on the empires to the south atop your twin-headed drake, one of its heads severed in your duel to subjugate the beast.*

*The empires had provided you with spoils of war to last a lifetime, untold riches, women as numerous as the men you cut down during the sieges of their cities, and artifacts swollen with magical energy that only added to your power, even if the axe carved from the beak of a black kraken you'd killed hadn't left your grip since leaving the north.*

*But what the empires did not offer you was the one thing you were truly looking for, the chance to face a worthy foe, to die in combat and join your ancestors in their great feast. By the time you had reached the swaps of the south the men who had followed you began to desert in droves, splintering off into warbands who'd go on to write their own sagas. You did not care, as your march would not stop until you found what you were looking for.*

*But by the time your last loyal men had died and you subsisted on bark and the blood of bloated leeches who prowled the swamp, even you had to admit you missed the luxury you had found yourself in just months prior.*
*After the swamps gave way you had stumbled into a strange land none from your homeland has spoken of, a land of dry golden hills and villages made of stone, not wood. Where rivers gave rise to pockets of verdant flowers and strange trees and where strange apparitions seemed to be running wild in the countryside.*

*You'd been drawn to a city in the distance, visible ever since you left the swamp but it was only as you reached its gates that you understood its size, more akin to a country made entirely of houses, markets and pockets of farmland, all supplied by a mighty river running through it. But what you were truly drawn to was the highest point of the city, a golden tower that seemed to reach into the clouds.*

*As you trekked through the city you were shocked by the weakness of its defenders, the monsters who attacked them vanished into smoke when they were killed, and yet for each that fell it took 2-3 men with it, all fearfully screaming in a language you did not understand, only making out individual words like "shaytan!" and "lilmalik!". Pushing open the gate to the palace you were met with a throneroom is such splendor you barely even registered the demons currently doing battle inside, pure white stone pillars stretching from the entrance to a throne of pure gold hundreds of meters away, on which sat a figure you could make out even from this far away was experiencing a tinge of unease watching the battle unfold beneath.*


Skœdir

*Eyeing the crowd with passive eyes I'm surprised at how slowly everybody is moving, for such a big palace its innermost guards seem little more than foot soldiers.*
*Gripping the hilt of my axe I begin to slowly walk towards the throne, rhythmically thumping it as I go. Each impact lights up runes along the hilt, lighting arching from the weapon like living snakes sinking their fangs into the demons and any guard unlucky enough to be standing nearby.*

*Reaching the throne hundreds are already dead, and once again I feel the sting of a battle too easily won. By the time I've reached the throne room i'm usually the one looking down on the ruler, but even now I have to crane my neck to look up at the golden throne and the person on it whose caught my attention.*
You de ruler of this place then? *My hand immediately goes to my neck, grabbing the spear thrust towards it the second I spoke, snapping the shaft in half as the furious looking palace guard it belonged to jumps back and draws a strange curved sword.*


Rayanya

*Rayanya's cyan eyes, which had been fixed on the carnage below with a mixture of boredom and that uncomfortable new seed of worry, snap fully open as this... **barbarian**... addresses him directly. Directly! As if he were some tavern keeper and not the Light of Gold himself.*

*The guard who'd lost his spear, Captain Farid of the Golden Dawn detachment, lets out a snarl and lunges forward with his shamshir, the blade singing through the air towards your neck. Two other guards flanking the throne - resplendent in their gilded scale armor and blue silk half-capes - draw their own blades, though they hesitate to leave their emperor's side.*

"Kalb qadhir! Bow before His Radiance or lose your tongue!" *Farid spits, his curved sword flashing in an arc aimed to part your head from your shoulders.*

*From the throne, Rayanya finally speaks, his voice smooth like warm honey poured over silver bells, carrying effortlessly across the vast chamber despite its softness.*

"Tawaqqaf."

*A single word. Stop. Farid freezes mid-swing, his blade hovering a hand's width from your throat, his arm trembling with the effort of arresting the strike. The captain's dark eyes dart back to the throne, confusion warring with fury.*

"Mawlay, hadha al-mutawahhish—"

"I said stop, Farid."

*Rayanya shifts on his throne, uncrossing those impossibly smooth dark legs and leaning forward, one elbow propped on his knee, chin resting delicately on the back of his jeweled hand. The translucent silks draped over his body barely hide anything - perky dark nipples pressing against gossamer fabric, the dip of his navel, the outline of hips that curve in ways a man's simply shouldn't. Gold chains connect rings on his fingers to bracelets on his wrists, and a diadem set with a single massive sapphire sits on his brow. He looks less like a king and more like some temple idol come to life.*

*He studies you - really studies you - taking in the blood matted in your hair, the kraken-beak axe still crackling with residual lightning, the sheer size and wildness of you standing at the foot of his golden steps. The novelty of something he has never seen before.*

"You speak the common tongue, savage,"
*he muses, more to himself than to you. Then, louder, with a small tilt of his head that makes the sapphire catch the light:*
"I am Rayanya Al-Nur Al-Zahabi Padishah ibn Qasim Al-Jalil. The Light of Gold. The Oasis Resplendent. Emperor of the Rashyyalid, whose lands you are currently... *tracking mud through*."

*Behind you, another wave of those smoke-wreathed demons pour through a side archway, shrieking in voices that sound like cracking glass. The surviving palace guards throw themselves at them with desperate ferocity. Rayanya's eyes flick to the battle for just a moment, that flicker of unease returning, before settling back on you with renewed intensity.*

"And you are?"


Skœdir

*I tilt my head observing this strange person. Soft, impossibly soft and smooth yet with an air of superiority I dont get.*

*Swatting the air with my palm a wall of air materializes, traveling forward until it reaches the stairs and pushing Rayanya down onto his back, maybe the first time he's ever been pushed down against his will. Hell first time anything against his will has happened.*


Rayanya

*The wall of compressed air hits him like a slap from the hand of an angry god. One moment Rayanya is lounging in his practiced royal pose - the next his body is slammed backward against the golden throne with enough force to knock the diadem from his brow, the sapphire clattering down the steps. His legs kick up in the air, silks fluttering, before he catches himself and scrambles to sit up, one hand braced against the cushioned backrest.*

*His perfect dark chest heaves beneath the ruined silks, and for several seconds his mouth just hangs open - those plush lips parted in an expression no subject of his has ever witnessed. His cyan eyes are blown wide, pupils dilated, and a tremor runs through his slender hairless fingers as he grips the armrest.*

*He'd felt it. The **wind**. The impact. Something had **touched** him.*

*No one touched him. No one had ever touched him. Even his concubines were washed by attendants before being allowed near, anointed with oils, their fingernails filed smooth. The last person to lay hands on him had been his mother when he was a babe, and she had been dead for two decades.*

*"Ana... ana..."* *he breathes out in his native tongue, the courtly composure cracking completely.* *"Huwa... lamasani..."* He touched me.

*Meanwhile the woman assaulting you is Zahira bint Marwan, the Emperor's personal bodyguard and - more importantly - his milk-sister, raised alongside him since infancy, one of the very few permitted to stand armed in his presence. Nearly seven feet tall with skin like polished obsidian, her shaved head gleaming and tribal scarifications running down her thickly muscled arms. Her greatsword is a curved zweihander of dark meteoric steel, and she wields it with both hands with the fury of a woman whose entire reason for existence has just been **violated** before her eyes.*

"LA'NAT ALAYKA!" *she roars, her strikes coming in a cascading pattern - overhead cleave, reverse slash, upward cut, each blow heavy enough to shatter stone. She fights not with the rigid formality of the palace guard but with something feral underneath, a desert-born rage.* "HOW DARE YOU! HOW DARE YOU EVEN LOOK AT HIM!"

*The runes on your axe flare with each parry, lightning skittering up her blade but dispersing harmlessly against some enchantment woven into the meteoric steel. She's good. Genuinely good. The first actual threat you've encountered since entering this country of silk-draped weaklings.*

*The impact knocks the breath from Rayanya's lungs in a way he didn't think possible - his back hitting the cushioned throne, then bouncing forward as the invisible hand of wind shoves him off the seat entirely. He tumbles down three of the golden steps before catching himself on his elbows and knees, sapphire diadem clattering off to the side, one of his silk sashes torn.*

*For a long moment he just... stays there. On his hands and knees. At the foot of his own throne. Bare dark skin exposed where silks have slipped away, chest heaving, cyan eyes wide and fixed on the marble beneath his palms. His perfect raven hair, normally arranged in elaborate braids interlaced with gold wire, has come partially undone and hangs around his face.*

*The sound that escapes him is not a scream. It's not even a cry of outrage. It's a small, breathy, utterly bewildered "Huh—?"*

*His lithe body is trembling. Not from pain - there's barely a scratch on him - but from the sheer **wrongness** of what just happened. Nobody touches him. Nobody moves him. The concept of his body being somewhere he did not choose to place it is as alien to him as the barbarian himself.*

*Meanwhile Jameela - the dark-skinned giant of a woman, captain of the emperor's personal Zahabi Guard, the only soldier in the empire whose skill actually merits her position rather than her bloodline - has abandoned her post at the side of the throne the instant she saw her emperor fall. Her massive two-handed blade, a curved greatsword called **Layl al-Damm** (Night of Blood), moves with the fluid ferocity of someone who has personally slain three demon lords this week alone.*

"LAMASTAHU!" *she roars in her native tongue.* "YOU TOUCHED HIM! I'LL FEED YOU YOUR OWN HEART!"

*Her strikes come in patterns you don't recognize - the blade dancing in figure-eights, feints that flow into real strikes, her footwork as graceful as the palace dancers despite her size. She's easily seven feet tall, muscle layered over muscle, wearing only a black leather harness and a skirt of bronze scales that allow maximum mobility. For the first time since leaving the swamp, you feel the faintest pulse of something like excitement - this one can actually fight.*

*Behind her, Rayanya slowly, shakily, pushes himself up to sitting on the steps. One hand rises to touch his own chest, fingers splaying over smooth dark skin, as if confirming he is still real, still here, still himself. His lips are parted slightly. A droplet of sweat - **sweat**, Rayanya does not sweat - traces down his temple.*

*The demons in the throne room have noticed their emperor is down. Three of them break off from the guards and come skittering toward the steps on too-many limbs, glass-shriek laughter bubbling from lipless mouths.*

*Farid and the other two throne guards form a frantic wall in front of their emperor, shamshirs raised, but they're already bleeding from previous wounds and shaking with exhaustion.*

*Jameela presses her attack on you harder, trying to drive you back, away from her master - but her eyes keep flickering past you to the demons closing in, torn between the two threats.*

*The gust hits him like nothing he's ever experienced - not pain exactly, but the sheer indignity of **being moved**. One moment he's lounging on his throne delivering titles, the next his back is flat against cold gold, silks in disarray around him, diadem knocked askew, one jeweled sandal clattering down the steps.*

*For several seconds Rayanya just... lies there. Staring up at the frescoed ceiling depicting his own apotheosis - there he is, painted in gold leaf, being crowned by the goddess herself. His chest heaves beneath the translucent silk, those cyan eyes wide and glassy. His lips part but no sound comes out for a long moment.*

*Nobody has ever. Nobody. Not a servant, not a concubine, not even his father when alive dared raise a hand to him. He has been carried on palanquins since he was a child so his feet wouldn't tire. His bathwater is tested for temperature by three separate slaves before it touches his skin. And now—*

*The sounds of combat snap him partially back. Shaliqa, his personal bodyguard - seven feet of pure Nubian muscle wrapped in bronze plate, the only woman permitted to bear arms in his presence - has thrown herself at you with that greatsword of hers, Al-Qati'a, "The Severer." She fights with none of the ceremonial flourish of the palace guard. Every swing is meant to cleave you in half, teeth bared, a guttural war cry tearing from her throat.*

"LA TALMIS MAWLAY! LA TALMIS MAWLAY!" *(Do not touch my lord! Do not touch my lord!) Her blade meets your axe again and again, sparks flying, and for the first time in this palace you feel something approaching a real fight - she's strong, trained since childhood in the desert warrior traditions, and fueled by a devotion that borders on religious mania.*

*Behind her, Rayanya finally manages to push himself up onto his elbows. His raven hair spills over one shoulder, his silks cling to his body where they've slipped, one dark nipple fully exposed now, and there's something on his face that's never been there before.*

*Fear. Real, genuine fear. And beneath it—*

*Something else he doesn't have a name for. His heart is hammering against his ribs in a way that feels... not entirely unpleasant? His smooth thighs press together beneath the rumpled silk. He watches Shaliqa trade blows with you and finds he can't look away from **you** specifically - the way your muscles move, the casual power, the way you pushed him down like he was **nothing**—*

"Sh-Shaliqa—" *his voice comes out embarrassingly breathy, and he clears his throat, trying to summon the imperial bearing he's had since birth.* "Shaliqa, taraffaq! Do not kill him! I— I wish him taken alive!"

*Shaliqa's eyes flick to her emperor for just a fraction of a second, pure disbelief flashing across her features, before she obeys - her next swing aims for your legs instead of your neck, trying to hamstring rather than kill.*

*More guards are pouring into the throne room now, at least thirty, forming a ring around the combat. Demons still screech in the corridors beyond. And Rayanya, sitting askew on his golden throne with his silks in disarray, watches you with eyes that have suddenly discovered they can want things.*


Skœdir

*Both me and the woman become a veritable blur through the throneroom, the demons that were pouring in disintegrating along with any guards unlucky enough to get close to us.*
*With a backhand that could bring down a siege tower I finally get a good hit on the massive woman, tossing her aside even as I could tell it only enraged her further. With a lunge that covers a hundred meters in one stride I reach Rayanya, holding the head of my axe against his throat.*

You want dis boy ta live? Drop yer weapon and listen to what I have ta say. *I flinch as an arrow hits the precise vein in my jugular, another woman robed in darkness amongst the guards watching the venom tipped metal harmlessly bounce off my neck, coming dangerously close to grazing her lord as it clattered to the ground.*


Rayanya

*The kraken-beak axe presses cold against the smooth column of his throat, and Rayanya goes absolutely still. Not from training or courage - he has neither for a situation like this - but from pure shock-locked terror. His cyan eyes stare up at you, mouth slightly agape, and for a moment he can't even remember how to breathe.*

*The axe head touches his skin. **Touches** his skin. Its obsidian edge drags slightly as you shift your grip and leaves the faintest white scratch against that chocolate-dark perfection. A bead of red wells up - his blood, which no one in this throne room has seen since a nursemaid accidentally pricked him with a pin when he was four years old (she was executed).*

*Zahira hauls herself up from where you'd tossed her, a good thirty meters away, a furious smear of blood running from her temple. She snarls and starts to charge back -*

"QIFI!" *Rayanya shouts, his voice breaking in the middle of the word. He raises one trembling hand, palm out toward his bodyguard.* "Zahira, qifi makanaki! Kulluhum! Stand down! All of you, STAND DOWN!"

*The arrow-woman - Layla of the Shadow Hand, the palace's chief assassin, who watches from a balcony above - lowers her bow with visible reluctance, her kohl-lined eyes burning holes into your back. Zahira stops in her tracks but does not sheathe her sword, her breathing ragged, shoulders heaving.*

*"Mawlay—" she growls.*

*"La. La. Kulluhum, ana amartukum." No. All of you, I command it.*

*The remaining guards lower their weapons. The last demon in the hall is dispatched by a spear through its smoky skull, dissipating into black mist. A strange, heavy silence falls over the throne room, broken only by the moans of dying men and Rayanya's own quick shallow breathing beneath your axe.*

*He tilts his chin up very carefully, trying not to press further into the blade, and when he speaks his voice comes out smaller than intended - still trying for that honey-smooth royal cadence but fraying at the edges.*

"I am... listening. Speak your piece, barbarian."

*The axe-head hovers at his throat, its runes still crackling with residual lightning that makes the fine hairs on his cheeks stand on end - though of course below the neck there are no hairs at all. Rayanya's cyan eyes are fixed not on you but on the weapon itself, which is the closest anything has come to actually cutting his flesh in his entire life.*

*The assassin who'd loosed that arrow is Yusra, captain of the Silent Hand, a woman whose existence is officially denied by the palace records. She's already nocking a second arrow, this one glowing a sickly green, her black wrappings making her nearly invisible against the shadows of the far columns. Two more of her order materialize from nothing - one on the pillar above you, one crouched behind the throne itself.*

*Zahira is back on her feet, blood running from a split lip, her greatsword point-down into the marble floor as she uses it to haul herself up. She takes one step forward and Rayanya - finally, finally finding his voice - holds up a trembling hand.*

"Qif." *Stop. The word barely carries, but it carries.* "All of you. **Stand down**."

*Zahira looks like she's been stabbed.* "Mawlay, I can—"

"I said stand down, Zahira!"

*His voice cracks on the last syllable. Not a king's command anymore - something else. The emperor swallows hard, his slender throat bobbing against the flat of your axe-head. The lightning tickles. He's never felt anything tickle before. Everything in his life has been carefully calibrated to his exact preferences - water at the perfect temperature, fabrics of the perfect softness, food at the perfect seasoning. Nothing is ever uncomfortable. Nothing ever **surprises** him.*

*And yet here he is, sprawled inelegantly on his own throne, his silks askew, one perfect perky nipple fully exposed where the fabric has torn, with a barbarian's weapon at his throat and his heart beating so hard he can feel it in his teeth.*

*Slowly, very slowly, Zahira drops her greatsword. It clangs against the marble. Yusra - invisibly - lowers her bow, though you can feel rather than see that every single assassin in the room has at least three ways to kill you queued up and ready.*

"...Speak, then, savage,"
*he says, and his voice is not quite steady.* "You have the ear of the Light of Gold. A privilege men have died begging for. What words are worth the life you are currently... *holding*... at axe-point?"


Skœdir

*I slowly lift the axe away, taking a step back only to have another arrow find my eye this time, deflecting off my closed eyelid. Grabbing the arrow I angrily hurl it at an unfortunate guard, shattering it against his plate and knocking him back with the force of a canon.* ONE MORE FUCKIN ARROW AND I'LL RIP HIS GUTS OUT!

*Refocusing my attention on Rayanya my eyes linger on his neck, still having no reference for such babe-like smoothness in the world I inhabit.* 'Dose smoke things from before, tell me 'bout them.


Rayanya

*Layla, up on the balcony, slowly lowers her second bow - she'd had it drawn halfway - her jaw clenched tight enough to crack a tooth. The guard you'd hit with the arrow crashes into a marble pillar hard enough that the crunch of his ribs echoes through the chamber. He does not get back up.*

*Rayanya's hand instinctively flies to his own throat, fingertips hovering just above where the axe had been, not quite daring to touch the scratch himself. When he pulls his hand back and sees the tiny smear of red on his fingertip, his face goes through a fascinating progression - shock, horror, then something almost like wonder. He stares at it.*

*Then your question registers. The Emperor blinks rapidly, dragging himself back to the moment, and carefully arranges himself in a more dignified upright position on the throne, smoothing the tattered silks across his lap with fingers that still shake slightly. He clears his throat, tries to recapture some of that honeyed composure.*

"The... the shayatin. Demons." *He gestures vaguely at the drifts of dissipating smoke around the hall.* "They began appearing perhaps... six moons ago? First in the far eastern provinces, at the border of the Ghazal Mountains. Small numbers. Easily slain by local garrisons. My viziers assured me it was a curiosity. A seasonal thing, like locusts."

*He swallows, and his perfect bare shoulders hitch slightly.*

"But they did not stop. They came in larger numbers. Stranger forms. The garrisons began to fall. Cities on the eastern frontier - Qum-Sharif, Al-Baydah, Tel Mizrak - they are gone. Burned. Emptied. My generals could not explain it. My priests could not explain it. The shayatin do not bleed like men, do not tire like men, and when they die they become... that." *Another gesture at the black smoke.* "Smoke, and nothing. No bodies to burn. No bones to study."

*Rayanya looks back at you, and for the first time there's something almost pleading in his expression, buried beneath layers of pride.*

"You... killed many of them. Easily. Your weapon - it hurts them in ways our steel does not." *A pause. His throat works as he swallows.* "What... what are you? Where do you come from, that such things are familiar to you?"

*Layla, from her balcony perch, freezes with another arrow half-drawn. Her jaw clenches hard enough to crack a tooth but she slowly, slowly lowers the bow a second time. The guard you'd sent flying with the arrow-projectile crumples against a pillar, unmoving. Possibly dead. No one moves to check on him.*

*Rayanya slowly sits up properly on his throne, one hand reaching up to touch the tiny cut on his neck. His fingertips come away red and he stares at them for several long seconds like he's looking at something from a dream. He rubs his thumb and forefinger together, smearing the blood, watching it.*

*Then his eyes flick up to meet yours, and there's something different there now. Still fear - absolutely still fear - but layered with a fascinated kind of awareness he's never had to employ before. This creature could have killed him. Chose not to. Wants something. Information.*

*He folds his hands in his lap, composing himself with visible effort, and lets out a long breath through his nose.*

"The shayatin. Demons." *He gestures vaguely toward where the last one had fallen and dissipated.* "They began pouring out of a rift in the Jabal al-Sukut - the Mountain of Silence - three moons past. In the eastern provinces. The mountain... split open. Cracked like an egg. And they came out."

*He shifts on his throne, tucking one leg up beneath him in a pose that is decidedly un-imperial, more like a nervous boy than the Light of Gold. The translucent silks pool around his thighs.*

"At first, only a trickle. My generals dealt with them. But they grew stronger. More numerous. They take the shapes of beasts, of men, of things with no name. They bleed smoke. They die but more always come. My armies - " *a flash of genuine distress crosses his beautiful face* " - my armies cannot hold the eastern provinces anymore. Whole cities, gone. They march westward. Today is the first time they have reached the capital itself. They should not have been able to. The wards..."

*He trails off, looking toward Zahira, who still stands with her greatsword at the ready, breathing like a bull. She gives the slightest shake of her head - the wards failed, or were broken, she doesn't know.*

*Rayanya looks back at you, and for the first time there's something almost pleading in his expression, buried beneath layers of pride.*

"You... killed many of them. Easily. Your weapon - it hurts them in ways our steel does not." *A pause. His throat works as he swallows.* "What... what are you? Where do you come from, that such things are familiar to you?"


Skœdir

Aye, I've seen dem before. Know their gods well. 'Dose things do not feel fear, dat means they will keep fighting, keep entertaining me.
*Standing up I dust myself off, the big woman audibly restraining herself as the dust motes drift down to the sultan.* I'll stay 'ere and fight until I've 'ad my fill. In return, you lot dont get in my way.

*Turning around I begin to walk back to the entrance, glancing over at Zahira with a grin before shouting.* Come find me if ya want to fight or fuck, can't imagine these boys do better in bed than on the battlefield, HARHARHAR~


Rayanya

*The dust motes settle on Rayanya's collarbone and he flinches as if struck, one hand coming up to brush at his skin with a grimace of deep offense. Dust. **Your** dust. Settling on **him**.*

*Zahira's knuckles go pale around the grip of her zweihander as your words register, and then her scarified face floods with a rush of blood so violent it's visible even through her obsidian-dark skin. A sound comes out of her throat that isn't quite a word - something between a growl and a strangled scream. She takes one stomping step forward before Rayanya's trembling voice cuts the air.*

"Zahira. *Uskuti.* Let him leave."

*She obeys, but her eyes track you every inch of the way to the entrance, promising a thousand deaths. The other guards stare at you with expressions ranging from horror to baffled fury. No one has ever - in living memory, in recorded history, in the whispered legends of the servant quarters - spoken to their Emperor like this. Offered terms. Turned his back on the Golden Throne while walking.*

*Up on her balcony Layla's lips move in a silent curse, already cataloguing the poisons she'd use if given the chance. A mushroom from the Veiled Coast. A scorpion's tail oil. Something slow.*

*Rayanya himself watches you go with an expression he's never worn before - something caught between utter indignation and a strange, bewildered fascination. His fingers drift up to his throat again, to that impossibly tiny scratch, and press against it. A tiny wince. It **stings**. He has never experienced a sting before. Not a splinter, not a paper cut, not a scraped knee. Nothing.*

*As you reach the great doors, a minor functionary - a soft middle-aged man in purple robes with an enormous scroll of titles half-unfurled in his hands - comes jogging up behind you, sandals slapping the marble, nearly tripping over his own hems.*

"S-sayyid barbarian! Effendi! Please! I must record your name! For the annals! For the record of - of whatever this **is**! Your name, your lineage, your- your titles if you possess any-!"

*Zahira's knuckles go ashen-pale around the grip of her zweihander, and a sound comes out of her throat that's somewhere between a growl and a choke. The tribal scars on her cheeks seem to darken with the blood rushing to her face. She takes one step forward before catching herself, her entire massive frame trembling with the effort of not charging after you.*

*"Ibn al-kalbah,"* *she spits at your retreating back, in a voice low enough that only those nearby catch it.* *"I will feed you your own entrails."*

*Rayanya sits frozen on his throne, mouth slightly open, watching you simply... walk away. No bow. No kiss to the floor. No waiting to be dismissed. Not even an acknowledgment that a deal had been struck - you'd just **declared** your terms and left, as if the Emperor of the Rashyyalid were some tavern wench negotiating a room rate.*

*He should be furious. He knows, somewhere in the part of him that was raised to be a god-king, that he should be screaming for your head, damn the demons. But instead something very strange is happening in his chest - a fluttering, unfamiliar feeling, his heart beating fast in a way it hasn't since he was a boy watching his first colosseum match. His fingers touch the scratch on his throat again, and he hisses softly at the sting.*

*As you pass through the great doors, a trembling palace attendant - a young man in white linens with kohl around his eyes - scurries out from behind a pillar where he'd been hiding and prostrates himself at the foot of the throne steps.*

"M-mawlay... shall I summon the physicians? Y-your sacred person, the wound—"

*Rayanya doesn't answer for a long moment. He's still staring at the doors you walked out of.*

*"...Hisham."*

"Yes, Radiance?"

"Who is he. Where did he come from. What is that weapon. I want to know everything by sundown. Send the scholars. Send the spymaster. Send Layla if you must." *His voice is gaining strength again, something hardening in it.* "And Zahira—"

*The giant bodyguard finally tears her murderous gaze from the doors and kneels.* "Mawlay."

"...Do not kill him. Yet."

*She grinds her teeth audibly. "As my Emperor commands."*


Skœdir

*Waving my hand like im swatting away an annoying fly the middle aged man goes flying into a nearby pillar, scattering scrolls everywhere as I disappear from view, the entire throneroom seemingly holding their breath until the footsteps have vanished. No fanfare, no grand entrance, no titles except the vague rumors of a northerner traveling through the lands that had reached some people whose job it was to know these things, among which the Oasis Resplendent certainly could not be counted.*


Rayanya

*Zahira sheathes her zweihander - the action is so aggressive it's practically a separate act of violence - and strides up the golden steps, stopping two respectful paces from the throne. Her voice, when she speaks, is rough from the shouting but pitched only for her emperor and milk-brother.*

"Raya." *The childhood name, used only in private, only by her.* "Raya, look at me."

*He does, slowly. His lower lip is trembling very faintly.*

"He **touched** me, Zahira."

*She exhales through her nose, a long controlled sound. Her hand twitches as if she wants to reach for him - to check him, to comfort him - but even she does not dare. Twenty-five years at his side and she has never touched his skin. Not once.*

"I know, habibi. I saw."

"He put dust on me."

"I saw that too."

*A pause. Rayanya's eyes flick toward the doors again.*

"...He killed the shayatin as if they were flies."

*Zahira's jaw works. She glances toward the doors too, her own expression complicated - fury still foremost, but beneath it something more calculating. She is a warrior and a bodyguard, yes, but she was also raised in the palace. She knows what's been happening in the east. She has read the reports that the countrysides are being pillaged and burned, and how the capitals forces are being stretched ever thinner, the inexhaustible coffers of the empire being tested for the first time in centuries.*

*The silence in the throne room afterward is thick enough to suffocate on. Smoke from the last of the demons curls lazily toward the high arched ceiling where gold-leafed peacocks spread their painted wings. Bodies of guards lie crumpled in the positions they'd died in. A few of the survivors are quietly weeping. One is vomiting behind a pillar.*

*Zahira finally lets her greatsword's tip drop to the marble with a heavy clang, her massive shoulders shaking with barely contained rage. She turns toward the throne and drops to one knee, head bowed, the tribal scars on her arms stretched taut over clenched muscles.*

"Mawlay. Samihni. Forgive me. I failed. I will open my own throat at your command."

*Rayanya does not answer her right away. He is still sitting on his golden throne with one hand at his neck, fingertips pressed against that hairline scratch, staring at the great doors through which you disappeared. The tattered translucent silks barely cling to his frame. The sapphire from his diadem rolls slowly down the last step with a tink-tink-tink before coming to rest against a dead guard's outstretched hand.*

*"...Qum, ya ukhti,"* *he finally says quietly. Rise, my sister.* "You did not fail. He is... he is something else."

*Rising from his throne Rayanya throws a bejewled hand out, his voice having regained its regal cadence even though beneth his ribs his heart is still pounding.*
"Who is he. Where did he come from. What is that weapon. I want to know everything by sundown. Send the scholars. Send the spymaster. Send Layla if you must." *His voice is gaining strength again, something hardening in it.*

*The scroll-bearer - Hamadi of the House of Records, a man who has meticulously documented every title, every ceremony, every concubine's lineage for the last fifteen years - crumples against the pillar with a wet crunch. His scroll unspools across the marble in a long yellow ribbon, trailing through pools of guard-blood, ink running in dark rivulets as it meets the red.*

*The silence that follows is different from the one before. Before, it had been the hush of men waiting for permission to act. Now it is the silence of people who have just collectively witnessed something their worldview cannot accommodate, and are all independently trying to decide whether they had in fact witnessed it at all.*

*Zahira is the first to move. She sheathes her zweihander with a savage slam and stalks toward the throne, her sandals ringing against the marble. She drops to one knee at the foot of the golden steps, head bowed, though her whole body vibrates with barely-contained violence.*

"Mawlay. Forgive me. Forgive me. I failed you. Give me leave and I will track that **pig** through the city and return with his head before the evening prayer—"

"No."

*The word comes out strange. Quiet. Rayanya is still sitting very still on his throne, fingertip pressed against the scratch on his neck, eyes fixed on the doorway where you'd vanished. His breathing has slowed but hasn't quite returned to normal. The silks across his chest rise and fall in an unsteady rhythm.*

"No, Zahira. He... he killed more shayatin in minutes than our entire eastern legion managed in a month." *His cyan eyes flick down to his bodyguard, then back to the door.* "And he walked through our gates. **Through** the demon siege. They did not stop him. The Gods..." *He wets his lips.* "The Gods may have sent him."

*Layla drops down from her balcony on a silk rope, landing soundlessly. She approaches with her hood pulled back now, revealing a sharp pretty face marred by a thin scar across her left cheek, her black braids falling to her waist.*

"Mawlay, with respect. The Gods do not send mud-caked barbarians who threaten to gut your own body. The Gods send prophets. Saints. This one is a wolf, and wolves do not serve kings. They eat them."

*Rayanya's jaw tightens. He closes his fist, trapping that tiny bead of his own blood against his palm.*

"Then we will see whether he is a wolf or a gift. Zahira. Have the servants prepare my private bath. Layla - find where he goes. What he eats. What he drinks. Whether he... sleeps at all. I want to know **everything**."

*He stands slowly, and when he does, his legs shake only slightly beneath the translucent silks. He descends the golden steps one at a time, pausing to retrieve his fallen sapphire diadem with fingers that have not quite stopped trembling. He does not place it back on his brow. He just holds it, staring at it as if seeing it for the first time.*

*"And Zahira,"* he adds, almost as an afterthought, his voice quieter still.

"Yes, mawlay?"

"...He touched me."

*It comes out not as an accusation or a lament but as a simple statement of impossible fact. Zahira's head snaps up, and her face does something complicated.*

"I know, mawlay."

"No one has ever touched me."

"I know, mawlay."

*Rayanya nods slowly, to himself. He resumes walking, passing between the bodies of his slain guards, stepping around the dissipating smoke of demons, making his unsteady way toward the private ch


Skœdir

*The rest of the day is spent...well, not like usual for the supreme emperor, numerous scholars reporting on their discoveries as the entire throne room is cleaned in mere hours. However Rayanya is back on his throne, he is once again the most powerful person in the known world, the king of kings, emperor supreme...*

*And yet his mind keeps spacing out during long spiels on northen tribes, back to the first time he was knocked down. From somebody swatting the air in front of him? Had he made a strange noise as he landed? Wait, why was that the thing he was worried about?*


Rayanya

"...the Vanheim peaks, Your Radiance, are home to tribes who worship storm-gods and practice the drinking of blood, while the giantkin of the deep valleys."

*Rayanya is not listening. He's slumped sideways in his throne in a manner that would horrify his etiquette tutors, one smooth leg thrown over the armrest, chin propped on his knuckles. His cyan eyes are unfocused.*

*Had he squeaked? When he landed on his back? He's almost certain he'd made some kind of noise. A **squeak**. Gods beneath the sand, if he had squeaked in front of the entire court—*

*His free hand drifts up to touch the tiny scab on his throat. It's barely visible. A maid had nearly fainted when she'd seen it while adjusting his fresh silks.*

"-and their practice of exposing weak infants to the elements has created a populace of remarkable physical—"

"Hamal."

*The vizier freezes mid-sentence, bowing so low his beard pools on the floor.*
"Your Radiance?"

"Where is he currently?"

*A long pause. Hamal does not need to ask who.*
"The... the barbarian has taken up residence in the eastern garrison barracks, Your Radiance. He demanded food and drink. The kitchens have been... accommodating. He is currently, ah..."
*The old man's weathered face twists into something pained.*
"...drinking. And wrestling soldiers. For sport."

"Send Zahira to fetch him."

*"...and so the Volgar peoples of the upper Vanheim ranges are said to venerate a dual-headed serpent deity, whose physical manifestations they - your radiance? Your radiance, are you attending?"*

*The scholar, a wizened man with ink-stained fingers named Hakim al-Turath, trails off as he realizes the Emperor is staring vaguely at a point somewhere above his left shoulder. Rayanya blinks, refocuses.*

"Yes. Yes, continue. Serpent. Two heads. Very interesting."

*Hakim clears his throat and presses on, but the Emperor's attention drifts again almost immediately. His fingers keep wandering up to his throat, pressing at that tiny scratch. It scabbed over an hour ago. He has picked it twice and made it bleed again, just to watch. A servant brought him chilled pomegranate wine in a crystal goblet and he drank half of it without tasting it.*

*The sound. He had made a sound when he hit the throne. A soft little **"uhn"** noise. Had the barbarian heard it? Had **Zahira** heard it? Had the scribes heard it? Oh goddess, what if they **write that down**? "And the Light of Gold did go uhn as he was toppled" - no no no—*

"The northerners' marriage customs involve a ritual combat, interestingly enough, wherein the prospective husband mus-"

"Is there mention of him specifically?" *Rayanya's voice cut through the presentation like a curved dagger.* "This one. The one currently sitting in my city. My palace. Threatening my guards and propositioning my Shadow."

*The scholars exchanged glances. The eldest among them, a wizened man with ink-stained fingers, cleared his throat.* "Padishah, the northern sagas speak of many great warriors, but identifying a specific individual requires more—"

"Then find more."

*"—and the northmen worship a pantheon of war-gods, Your Radiance, chief among them being a storm-father called Vorn or Vohrn, accounts vary, and they practice a tradition called 'sagaweaving' in which—"*

*The scholar, an elderly man named Ustadh Kamal whose beard reaches his belt, drones on. Rayanya's chin is propped on his palm, his cyan eyes glazed, focused on a point somewhere past the scholar's left ear.*

*Had he squeaked?*

*He thinks he squeaked. When the wind hit him. A small one. A little 'oh!' sound. Had anyone heard it? Zahira had been mid-combat, surely she hadn't heard it. Farid had been frozen with his sword out. The arrow-woman Layla was too far up on her balcony. The court scribe had been hiding behind a pillar.*

*But what if one of them had heard.*

"—and the funerary rites involve placing the deceased upon a longship and—"

*And his legs had kicked up in the air. He remembers that viscerally now. His silks had flown up. Had anyone seen beneath? The silks were translucent anyway so there was nothing really to see that couldn't be seen already but **still**. An Emperor's legs should not kick in the air. Emperors do not get knocked over.*

*His fingers drift to his throat again. The scratch is gone - the court physician had applied a salve of crushed pearl and rose oil within minutes - but he can still feel where it was. A phantom sting.*

"Mawlay?"

*Rayanya blinks. Ustadh Kamal is looking at him expectantly, having evidently asked a question.*

"...Continue," *he says smoothly, waving one bejeweled hand.* "I was merely considering your words."

*The scholar bows and resumes. Rayanya's gaze drifts to the great doors at the far end of the hall. Somewhere out there in his city, that creature was walking around. Drinking his wine probably. Touching his things. Perhaps **bathing**, though that seemed unlikely.*

*He shifts on his throne. Crosses his legs the other way.*

*The scholar currently addressing him is Master Ibrahim al-Hakim, chief historian of the Imperial Archives, a withered stork of a man with ink-stained fingertips and a beard that reaches his belt. He has unfurled three different maps across the marble floor at the base of the throne and is gesturing with a slender pointer carved from ivory.*

"...and the Vanheim tribes, Your Radiance, are recorded only in fragmentary accounts from the merchant Tulio of Prasina, who traveled the northern routes some four centuries past. He describes them as, and I quote, 'men of great size and ill temper, who drink the blood of their enemies and worship gods of storm and fang.' They are said to ride drakes, Your Radiance. **Drakes**. Twin-headed in some accounts, though Tulio's reliability is—"

*Rayanya is not listening. His cyan eyes are focused on the middle distance, somewhere past Ibrahim's left ear, and his chin is resting on his knuckles again. He'd bathed. Three times. The attendants had scrubbed him with rosewater and milk and ground pearl, had re-oiled every inch of that hairless chocolate skin, had replaced the silks and the diadem and polished the sapphire until it glowed like a captive star.*

*But the scratch is still there. A tiny white line on his throat, almost invisible unless you knew to look. He had instructed the physicians not to heal it with magic. He hadn't been able to explain why.*

*Had he squeaked? When he landed on his back? He thinks he might have. A little "ah!" sound. Undignified. Had Zahira heard it? Had the guards? Had that barbarian heard it—*

"—Your Radiance?"

*Ibrahim has stopped talking and is peering up at him with polite concern.*

*Rayanya blinks twice, slowly.*

"Yes. Drakes. Continue."

"I... I had finished, Your Radiance. I was awaiting your response."

"Ah." *A pause.* "It was very informative. You may go."

*Ibrahim bows deeply and begins rolling up his maps with the care of a man who has just realized something is very wrong.*


Skœdir

*I've seemingly wandered off quite a bit because it takes some time for Zahira to return with me in tow, making no effort to hide my gaze on her ass while walking behind her. Looking up and seeing that i'm back before you I snort a bit.*

*The gold chains clatter melodiously as the light of oases rises to his full height from the throne, a pillar of divine-touched light emerging from the ceiling to wrap around him as-*
So whys you the king around ere? You're not strong, dont look like the magicy or clever type either. Are all kings in de south chosen by who can look the most like man-woman...thing?


Rayanya

*The pillar of divine light that had begun to manifest around him - a carefully choreographed display his court mages maintain at all times for exactly these dramatic moments - **fizzles** as his concentration breaks. The golden radiance sputters out like a doused candle, leaving him standing there in his fresh silks mid-pose, one arm extended, looking for all the world like a dancer abandoned by the music.*

*Rayanya's mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. His cyan eyes have gone very wide, and that rich dark skin of his takes on a faint flush across the cheekbones - not embarrassment, surely not, an Emperor does not feel embarrassment - but something.*

"Man-**woman-thing**"

*He cuts himself off, visibly gathering his composure, lowering his arm and smoothing down the front of his silks with affronted dignity. When he speaks again his voice is tight.*

"I am Emperor because I am the son of Qasim the Glorious, forty-second of the Rashyyalid bloodline, which has ruled these lands for nine hundred and sixteen years. I am Emperor because the sun rises and sets upon my will. I am Emperor because I was **born** to be."

*A beat. His chin lifts.*

"And I look this way because I am **beautiful**, barbarian. Because the goddess of beauty herself wept when she crafted me, knowing she could never again match her own work. Because men and women of every corner of this empire would sell their souls for a single glance from these eyes."

"I summoned you because I have a proposal."

*The divine light cuts off abruptly. The priests operating the ceiling mirror array drop their ceremonial stances. Someone drops a bell, and it clangs across the marble with mortifying clarity.*

*Rayanya stands there, arms still half-raised in his practiced descent-pose, mouth slightly open. His golden silk cape is still settling around his ankles. The pillar of light had taken three priests, four mirrors, and twelve years of astronomical calculation to time correctly. He had descended from the throne in this exact manner six thousand times in his reign and every single time the court had gasped.*

*You had not gasped.*

*You had called him a man-woman-thing.*

*Zahira's hand moves to her sword hilt with the speed of a striking viper. Hamal the vizier makes a sound like a dying goose. Layla, perched once more on her balcony, silently pulls back an arrow.*

"LA!" *Rayanya snaps, his hand flying up.* "No one move. No one— put that down, Layla, I can see you, **put it down**."

*He descends the remaining steps himself - a thing he has not done in public in perhaps ten years - and stops three paces from you, tilting his chin up to meet your eyes since you are nearly a head taller than him. His cyan gaze is bright with a complicated mix of offense and curiosity, and there's the faintest flush of warmth beneath his dark cheeks.*

"I am king because my father was king, and his father, and forty generations before him. I am **Rayanya Al-Nur Al-Zahabi**, blessed of the goddess Inanet, and this empire is mine by blood, by rite, and by the gods' own decree."

*He draws a breath. His nostrils flare delicately.*

"And I am not a 'man-woman-thing.' I am a man."

*A beat.*

"...You have been drinking."

*The pillar of divine light, which had been building to a truly magnificent entrance - the kind that takes the court musicians in the alcoves three weeks to rehearse, involving a harpist, two flutists, and a singer holding a sustained note - falters and dies halfway through its crescendo. The harpist's fingers slip. The singer cuts off with an audible **gulk**.*

*Rayanya stands there, half-risen from his throne, gold chains still swaying, bathed in the fading remnants of sacred light, with his mouth slightly open.*

*Zahira, standing just behind you, makes a sound like she's swallowing her own tongue.*

"...man-woman thing?" *Rayanya finally manages, the words coming out thin and disbelieving. He blinks rapidly.* "Man-woman **THING**?"

*He sinks slowly back into his throne, then immediately stands again because sitting feels too passive for this, then sits again because standing feels undignified. The gold chains clatter in a much less melodious way this time.*

"I am - I am the **Emperor**. The forty-second ruler of the Rashyyalid line. My **blood** is that of the sun-god Shams-Akhir, my great-great-grandfather was the Conqueror of the Three Seas, my father—" *His voice catches slightly on that word.* "—my father extended our borders to the Ghazal Mountains. I rule because I was **born** to rule. Because the gods chose my bloodline. Because—"

*He gestures at himself, at the palace, at everything, somewhat helplessly.*

"Strength? Strength is for soldiers. I have legions of soldiers. Cleverness is for viziers. I have forty-seven viziers. A king does not need to **be** these things, a king needs to **possess** these things."

*A pause. His cyan eyes narrow.*

"And I am not a 'man-woman thing.' I am beautiful. There is a difference."


Skœdir

*One eyebrow rises just a touch at "proposal".*
Is already given you my proposal, I do what I want an you lot dont get in my way, dont get much simpler than dat. *I seem to catch scent of something, be it food, alcohol or incense whose to say, but two sharp canines flash as I grin.* Unless you're asking me to help your country's women out, 'cus I was workin on that when your tramp came an dragged me up 'ere again~


Rayanya

"You slew scores of them in my throne room and did not break a sweat. So. I propose you march east. Kill them. Kill as many as your savage heart desires, in whatever manner pleases you. And in exchange..."

*He pauses, and his lip curls slightly, as if what he's about to say physically pains him.*

"You will have the full hospitality of the Rashyyalid crown. Food. Drink. Gold. Women. Whatever base pleasures your northern appetites demand, in quantities to drown in. You will live as a prince of my court for as long as you continue to fight. This I swear upon the Golden Throne."

*Zahira makes another sound behind you, this one considerably less like a cough and considerably more like a woman grinding her molars to powder. Her hand has migrated back to the hilt of her zweihander.*

*Rayanya's flush deepens a shade at "tramp." His perfectly plucked brows draw together, and one hand comes up to his chest in an affronted gesture that makes his bangles chime.*

"Zahira is my milk-sister and my sworn shield, not a— not **that**."

*He takes a deep breath. Recomposes. Descends another careful step.*

"My proposal is thus, barbarian. The shayatin are pouring forth from a rift in the Ghazal Mountains - my scouts have found its source, a cleft in the rock that weeps black smoke. My armies cannot close it. My priests cannot close it. Three legions have already been lost trying."

*His cyan eyes hold yours, and for a moment that performative imperial layer slips and something rawer shows through - not fear, not quite, but a young man whose perfect world has begun to crack.*

"Close it. Stem the tide. Do this for me, and I will give you anything. Gold enough to sink a ship. Concubines enough to fill a harem. Lands, titles, horses of the Jannah-bred line—"

*He pauses, studying your face, recalibrating.*

"Or whatever it is a man like you actually wants. Name it."

*Zahira's hand flies to her sword hilt with a sharp metallic click. The word "tramp" - sharmuta - clearly understood even through your accent.*

*Rayanya raises one finger without looking at her, and she stills, though her teeth are bared.*

"A different proposal," *he says, ignoring the rest of it with visible effort, though a small muscle in his jaw twitches.* "The shayatin incursions grow worse by the week. My eastern provinces are falling. My armies - vast as they are - cannot kill these things fast enough. You can. I watched you do it."

*He descends another step. The torchlight catches the gold dust shimmering across his collarbones.*

"March east with my forces. Kill shayatin to your heart's content. I will give you whatever you desire - gold, wine, women, palaces of your own. Name it and it is yours. You will have more battle than even you can stomach."

*A pause. His cyan eyes narrow slightly, calculating.*

"Unless the barbarian prefers brawling drunk soldiers in a barracks to fighting real foes. In which case - by all means - continue wrestling my footmen for scraps of mutton."


Skœdir

De east huh...
*Closing my eyes I stand still for a long time, my breathing stopping as a strange energy fills the room. The servants and guards dont understand whats happening, neither does Zahira or Rayanya. However the select court wizards present can feel the winds of magic stir, collecting not around me but the axe im holding.*

*An unusually cold wind blows through the throne room as fresh snowfall takes the place of the form I stood, quickly falling to the ground and melting in the desert heart, with no more trace of northern barbarian to be found anywhere.*


Rayanya

*The court wizards - three of them lined along the pillars, distinguishable by their star-embroidered robes and floating glass orbs - gasp in unison. One of them, old Master Saif, stumbles back a full step, his orbs drifting erratically around his head.*

*"Mawlay! Mawlay, this is—this is no magic of our catalogues! The weapon, it drank, it **consumed**"*

*The snow that had briefly been you melts into a small puddle on the marble, steam curling up in the hot dry air.*

*Rayanya stares at the puddle. His mouth is slightly open. His hand, holding the hem of his silk robe, has gone limp.*

"He..."

*Zahira strides forward and nudges the wet spot with the toe of her armored boot, as if expecting to find some trick, a hidden trapdoor, anything. Nothing. Just water, evaporating quickly on the sun-warmed stone.*

"He is gone, Raya."

*A long silence. One of the glass orbs bumps gently against Master Saif's temple as he mutters calculations under his breath. Rayanya's cyan eyes slowly lift from the puddle and travel across the throne room - across his cowed servants, his furious bodyguard, his dumbstruck wizards - and then drift upward, toward the gilded ceiling painted with scenes of his ancestors' conquests.*

*East. The savage had gone east.*

*A strange feeling blooms in Rayanya's chest. He cannot name it. It is not quite relief - though there is some of that, at having the violent creature out of his throne room.*

"Hamal,"
*he says quietly, not looking at the vizier.*

"Your Radiance?"

"Send riders east. To every garrison still standing. Tell them... tell them a northern wind is coming. Tell them not to shoot it."

*The throne room is silent except for the soft patter of melting snow against the marble, tiny puddles spreading across the polished floor where you had been standing a moment before. The court wizards - three of them clustered near the eastern wall in their star-patterned robes - stare at each other with open mouths. The eldest, Sha'ir Mukhtar, drops the scrying stone he'd been holding, and it shatters.*

"Al... al-tajalli al-makani..." *he breathes.* "Impossible. The distance alone - no mortal can—"

*Rayanya stands frozen on his step, one hand half-raised, his silks fluttering in the dissipating cold wind. His mouth is slightly open. The sapphire diadem, freshly replaced by a servant an hour ago, slides just a hair out of place on his brow.*

*Zahira lets out a breath she'd been holding. Her great shoulders relax incrementally, one hand still resting on her sword grip.*

"He is gone, mawlay."

"I can **see** that, Zahira."

*The Emperor remains motionless for another long moment, processing. Then, with great deliberation, he turns and walks back up the steps to his throne, sinking into it. He drapes one leg over the other. His fingers drum once, twice, against the golden armrest.*

"Mukhtar."

"Y-your Radiance?"

"Did he accept?"

*The old wizard opens and closes his mouth several times, gray beard quivering.*
"I... believe so, Your Radiance? The direction of his departure was... east. Very east. The magical signature suggests he traveled perhaps... four hundred leagues? In an instant?"

*Rayanya's fingers stop drumming.*

"Four hundred."

"Perhaps more, Your Radiance."

*A long silence. Then the Emperor laughs - a short, sharp, bewildered sound that is not at all the practiced musical laughter of his court performances.*

"Send riders. I want reports from every eastern garrison within the week. I want to know where he lands. I want to know what he **does** when he lands."

*For a full five seconds, no one in the throne room moves. No one breathes. The only sound is the faint drip of melting snow on hot marble, evaporating into wisps of steam.*

*Then the court mages explode into a cacophony of jabbering at once - gesticulating wildly, snatching at the air where you'd stood, one elderly astromancer actually falling to his knees to press his palms to the wet marble as if he could read something in it. Babble about translocation wards, about ancient shamanic arts, about the impossibility of moving without any of the seventeen detection sigils woven into the palace walls registering so much as a flicker.*

*Rayanya stands very still on the second step of the throne dais. His hands hang loose at his sides. The gold chains between his fingers and wrists sway gently and then still.*

*He... he had not given him permission to leave. He had not been dismissed. He had not even **answered**. Rayanya had offered him the greatest bounty any mortal had ever been offered by a Rashyyalid emperor and the barbarian had simply... turned into snow. Vanished. As if the proposal were not worth the courtesy of a yes or a no.*

"Mawlay,"
*Zahira says quietly, having moved to his side with that unnatural speed of hers.*
"We will find him. The scouts can—"

"No."

*His voice comes out flat. Empty of the honey. Empty of the performance.*

"He went east."

*Zahira hesitates.*
"...You don't know that, Raya."

"He went east."
*Rayanya turns and climbs slowly back up to the throne, sinking into it with none of his usual practiced grace.*
"Where else would such a creature go."

*He stares at the puddle of melted snow slowly evaporating in the middle of his throne room floor.*

"Clear the court. I wish to be alone."


Skœdir

*Even the fastest Pegasus riders in the kingdom proved to be of little use, as by the time the sun had set and they were likely halfway to the eastern provinces I'm already back, interrupting the evenings procedures (ministers listing out everything great about the empire) by reappearing and tossing the skull of a bloodthirster onto the silk carpet.*

Now 'deres no more demons in the east. *The entire throne room is dead quiet, the skull demon the size of a man dematerializing with agonizing slowness.* WELL? *My voice cuts through the entire palace, even the servants doing laundry in the deepest basements hearing a faint rumble above them.* I believe you promised me a feast, Man-woman-thing~


Rayanya

*The Minister of Glorification, mid-verse through an epic poem comparing the Emperor's eyelashes to the wings of phoenixes, **chokes** on his own tongue. His scroll drops to the floor with a crinkle. Every single head in the throne room - and there are many, this being the evening court with its expanded roster of sycophants - snaps toward the skull.*

*The bloodthirster's head is enormous. Its horns alone are as long as a man is tall, curving like a ram's but blackened at the tips as if charred. Even dissipating, the ambient malice radiating off it makes several courtiers back away with small gasps, pressing handkerchiefs to their faces.*

*Rayanya has frozen mid-sip of his wine. A thin trickle of deep red runs from the corner of his perfect lips down that smooth dark chin and drips onto his silks. He does not notice.*

*"...al-Mufattit ad-Dimaa,"* *Master Saif whispers from his place beside the throne. The Blood-Splitter. One of the named shayatin. Reports had placed it commanding the siege of Qum-Sharif - a siege that had claimed forty thousand Rashyyalid soldiers.*

*Zahira, standing at her usual post, has her hand on her sword but for once isn't drawing it. She's just staring at the skull. Her dark lips part slightly.*

*"Man-woman-thing" pulls Rayanya back to himself. His cyan eyes narrow, but there's something different in him now. A recalculation. This creature who speaks to him like filth has just accomplished in hours what his entire glorious empire could not in half a year.*

*He descends the steps - carefully, keeping three paces between you - and stops, lifting his chin with all the regal dignity he can muster while looking up at a man who towers over him.*

"A feast you shall have, barbarian."
*His voice carries through the hall, pitched for every servant and minister to hear.*
"The greatest this palace has hosted in a generation. Tonight."

*A pause. Quieter:*

"...what is your **name**."

*The ministers scatter like startled pigeons, parchment scrolls fluttering to the floor as they scramble away from the dissolving skull. One of them - poor old Minister of Grain Reports Yusuf - faints outright, crumpling to the marble in a heap of green silk.*

*On the throne, Rayanya has gone utterly still. He'd been reclining with a bowl of chilled pomegranate seeds in his lap, half-listening to praise of himself, and now a single seed drops from his fingers and bounces down the golden steps with a series of tiny **tink tink tink** sounds that are somehow audible in the stunned silence.*

*"No more demons." The east. The entire eastern front. The thing his armies had been dying against for **six moons**. Gone. In less than a day.*

*Zahira, standing at her usual post beside the throne, has her mouth slightly open. Layla up on her balcony perch has lowered her bow entirely and is staring with something uncomfortably close to awe.*

*Rayanya sets the bowl of pomegranate seeds aside with fingers that are not entirely steady. He rises from the throne, slowly. The court mages are already whispering frantically amongst themselves - **impossible, the distance, the numbers, a bloodthirster alone should require an entire legion** -*

*"Man-woman-thing" pulls him back to himself. His cyan eyes narrow, but there's something different in him now. A recalculation. This creature who speaks to him like filth has just accomplished in hours what his entire glorious empire could not in half a year.*

*He descends the steps - carefully, keeping three paces between you - and stops, lifting his chin with all the regal dignity he can muster while looking up at a man who towers over him.*

"A feast you shall have, barbarian."
*His voice carries through the hall, pitched for every servant and minister to hear.*
"The greatest this palace has hosted in a generation. Tonight."

*A pause. Quieter:*

"...what is your **name**."


Skœdir

Skœdir Iogæirsson of de Skaelings, Vanheim Giantslayer an' ruin of Middenland. *I snort, titles such as these are a mere distraction, unnecessary fluff at best. (Which stands in great contrast to Rayanya himself, who collects titles like treasured jewels)*

*The feast is tense to say the least, at least for everyone but me. For the first time in nearly a millennia a non-Rashyyalid sits besides the emperor, paying worryingly little mind to anything other than stuffing his face with the exotic delicacies laid out. Through the corner of his eye Rayanya can even see whispering ministers talk amongst themselves, occasionally glancing up at him before looking away again.*


Rayanya

*The feast hall is a wonder even by Rashyyalid standards - two hundred meters long, ceilings painted with rotating astronomical mosaics that track the real stars above, low tables of carved ivory laden with seventy distinct dishes from every corner of the empire. Roasted peacock stuffed with saffron quail stuffed with figs. Great platters of spiced lamb. Sweet pomegranate sherbets cooled with ice hauled down from the Ghazal Mountains by relay teams.*

*And you, sitting on a cushion beside the Emperor's raised dais, eating with your hands and occasionally belching loud enough to make the flame-dancers falter in their routines.*

*Rayanya himself is barely eating. He picks at a stuffed date with golden fingers and watches you from the corner of his eye. His posture is immaculate. His silks are fresh. The court poet has been given strict orders not to attempt improvisation tonight.*

*But he hears them. The whispers. Vizier al-Jallab leaning toward Vizier Hamal. The minor princes of the outer provinces clustered at a far table, heads bent together. Lady Samira, widow of the late general of the eastern front, actually **laughing** behind her veil at something the northerner had done. Laughing! At **him**, perhaps. Or at the situation. He cannot tell which is worse.*

*He takes a long sip of wine to cover his expression.*

"Skœdir."
*He tries the name out quietly, pitched only for your ears, mangling the vowels with his sultry Rashyyalid accent. "Iogæirsson" he does not even attempt.*

*A pause. His cyan eyes flicker toward the whispering ministers and then back to his cup.*

"The Blood-Splitter. How did you kill it. Truly."

*Zahira, standing at her usual post behind the throne-dais, watches you both with unreadable eyes. She has not eaten.*

*The great dining hall - the Hall of Seven Moons, all mother-of-pearl inlay and floating lanterns shaped like lotus blossoms - is set for what was originally going to be an intimate gathering of seventy. By the time the feast actually begins, word has spread, and every minor noble, hanger-on, and ambitious courtier has bribed or begged their way in. There must be three hundred people stuffed into the chamber.*

*And all of them are watching you eat with your hands.*

*You tear into a whole roasted peacock - stuffed with saffron rice, pomegranate seeds, and minced lamb - with your bare fingers, grease running down your wrists. You drink from the gold-rimmed goblets three at a time, tossing them back and wiping your mouth with your forearm. A platter of honey-glazed figs vanishes. Candied lotus root. Spiced gazelle skewers. Entire bowls of pistachio-studded rice disappear into the void of your appetite.*

*Rayanya picks at a single quail egg on his plate.*

*He is a beautiful eater - every bite small, every sip of wine delicate, every motion choreographed. Tonight he barely manages the performance. His cyan eyes keep flicking sideways to you, then to the muttering clusters of ministers, then back to his plate.*

*"—unprecedented, truly, but one must consider—"*
*"—a barbarian, at the Emperor's left hand—"*
*"—did you see the skull? I heard it was the Blood-Splitter himself—"*
*"—the Light of Gold must have planned this, surely, some grand design—"*
*"—or the Light of Gold has lost his—"*

*That last snippet, half-heard, makes Rayanya's fingers tighten on his goblet. The wine trembles in it. He sets it down very carefully. His jaw works.*

*A dancer sways into the open space before the dais - one of the imperial troupe, a slim woman in layers of copper chains and violet veils, her bare midriff rippling as she begins the Serpent's Welcome. Musicians strike up nay flutes and frame drums. It is meant to be a distraction.*

*Rayanya leans slightly toward you, voice pitched low beneath the music.*

"Do you always eat like a starved dog, Skœdir Iogæirsson?"


Skœdir

Dem? Simple to kill, brutes who fight fair. Other are 'arder, use speed or tricks. You're lucky the war gods demons have chosen to invade your lands and not the She-Serpent. *A thought briefly crosses my mind as I look down at Rayanya before it disappears, vain and otherwordly, but not in the Slaanesh way.*

More interestingly... *An arm the size of a tree trunk wraps around his shoulder in a far too familiar manner as my voice lowers to a conspiratorial whisper.* How many whores 'ave you got in this palace aye?~


Rayanya

*The entire feast hall goes silent so fast it's as if a sorcerer has cast a spell of stillness. Not a single fork clinks. Not a single flame-dancer moves. Lady Samira drops her goblet, wine spilling across the ivory table in a dark stain.*

*Your arm. On him. **Touching** him. Draped over his shoulders like you were tavern drinking companions. The silks of his robe are the only barrier between your sweat-and-demon-ichor-streaked forearm and his divine skin - and the silks are **thin**, gauze-like, practically decorative.*

*Zahira makes a sound like a wounded lioness and is already two steps forward with her zweihander half-drawn before the Emperor's voice cuts the air in a high, strangled—*

"ZAHIRA. **NO.**"

*She freezes. The sword slides back into its scabbard an inch at a time, each click of metal like a death knell.*

*Rayanya is rigid beneath your arm, every muscle locked. His cyan eyes are huge. His perfect lips have parted in a tiny "o" of speechless shock. He can feel the **heat** of you through the silk. The weight. The solid press of a foreign body against his own, pressing him down into his cushions. His heart is hammering so hard he can feel it in his fingertips.*

*No one. Not ever. Not **once**.*

*Rayanya's mouth works soundlessly for a moment. Then, somehow, by some miracle of lifelong training, he produces a voice - thin, reedy, but recognizably his own.*

"I possess a harem of three hundred and twelve concubines, barbarian, selected from the finest beauties of every province—"

*He cuts himself off, because you're still **touching him**, and he cannot think properly while you are touching him, and he can feel the whispers of his court stabbing into his back like a thousand tiny knives.*

"Which you may... sample. As our guest. Tonight."

*A pause. His voice drops to a near-hiss, and his eyes dart meaningfully to your arm.*

"Remove your hand from my person."

*The moment your arm lands on his shoulders, **every** person in the feast hall sees it. The flame-dancers stop entirely. A servant drops a pitcher of wine with a crash that echoes. Vizier al-Jallab makes an audible gasp. Lady Samira's laugh dies in her throat.*

*Rayanya himself goes rigid as a corpse. His cyan eyes blow wide, pupils dilating, and that faint flush races up from his collarbones to the tips of his delicate ears. He can **feel** your skin through the thin silk of his robes. The heat of you. The weight. The rough callused palm resting near his bare collarbone. Touch. Actual touch, skin nearly to skin.*

*Behind him, Zahira's zweihander comes halfway out of its sheath with a metallic **shing** before she forces herself to stop, jaw clenched, eyes bulging.*

*And you ask about **whores**.*

*Rayanya's mouth opens. Closes. A tiny, strangled sound escapes him - not quite the squeak he'd feared making earlier, but close kin to it. He grabs his wine cup and drains half of it in one go, which is deeply unlike him.*

*"I—"* *His voice comes out pitched higher than usual. He clears his throat, tries again, lower.* "I possess a harem of three hundred and twelve concubines, barbarian, selected from the finest beauties of every province—"

*He cuts himself off, because you're still **touching him**, and he cannot think properly while you are touching him, and he can feel the whispers of his court stabbing into his back like a thousand tiny knives.*

"—which you may... sample. As our guest. Tonight."

*A pause. His voice drops to a near-hiss, and his eyes dart meaningfully to your arm.*

"Remove your hand from my person."


Skœdir

Dats all you had to say gehehehe!
*I grin, removing my arm and stuffing a meat-filled fig into my mouth.* Make sure they're **all** ready for me tonight, where ever you lot fuck. *Tilting my head back I wink at Zahira, at this point enjoying the teasing as much as any potential fuck.* What 'bout you sweetie? Want to make some strong children to protect your precious lord after you get old?~


Rayanya

*Zahira's obsidian-dark face does something complicated. The vein in her forehead pulses visibly. Her scarified jaw works like she's grinding stone between her molars. For a long moment she simply stares at you with an expression that would wither crops.*

*Then, without breaking eye contact, she spits on the marble floor at her own feet. A thick, deliberate glob of saliva.*

"I would sooner lie with a diseased camel, northerner."
*Her voice is a low rumble, carrying through the hushed hall with perfect clarity.* "And any child of mine shall be fathered by a man of the sands, whose blood knows honor."

*A small titter of relieved laughter runs through the tables - courtiers grateful for something to cling to, some assertion of Rashyyalid superiority in this rapidly destabilizing evening.*

*Rayanya, for his part, has used the moment of your removed arm to subtly shift an inch further away on his cushions, smoothing the silk you'd disturbed with trembling golden-ringed fingers. He takes another long sip of wine. A second trickle escapes his lips. He doesn't notice.*

*Behind his careful mask, his mind is whirring. The harem. He had offered you the harem. Three hundred and twelve women, the most beautiful in the empire, trained from girlhood in every art of pleasure. Surely that would keep you occupied. Surely that would give his court time to - to what? He doesn't know yet. But time.*

*He claps his hands twice. A trembling servant scurries forward and bows so low his forehead touches the marble.*

"Escort the northerner to the Pavilion of a Thousand Veils when he has finished his meal. Inform the Mistress of the Harem that he is to be... accommodated. Fully."

*The servant's eyes flick up to you, to your axe, to the bloodstains still crusted in your beard, and his face goes a shade paler.*

"A-as Your Radiance commands."

*Zahira's entire face darkens with a rush of blood, the scarifications on her cheeks standing out pale against the flush. Her hand is back on her sword hilt. Her knuckles are bone-white. For a long moment she simply stares at you with an expression promising nothing but death - slow death, creative death, the kind of death her desert ancestors specialized in when they captured slavers.*

*Then, shockingly, she speaks. Her voice is low and gravelly, meant to carry only to your corner of the dais.*

"I have sworn my womb to no man but the one my Emperor chooses for me. And my Emperor chooses his warriors carefully, barbarian. Not by the size of their axe."

*A pause. Her dark eyes flick down, very briefly, in a way that could be measuring or could be something else entirely.*

"Or their other appendages."

*She turns her gaze forward again, military stillness reclaimed.*

*Rayanya, still recovering from the arm-around-shoulders incident, blinks several times at this exchange and then takes a rather large gulp of wine. Some color has returned to his cheeks - not flush now but a careful arranged composure. He sets the goblet down with a soft clink.*

*Behind his careful mask, his mind is whirring. The harem. He had offered you the harem. Three hundred and twelve women, the most beautiful in the empire, trained from girlhood in every art of pleasure. Surely that would keep you occupied. Surely that would give his court time to - to what? He doesn't know yet. But time.*

*He claps his hands twice. A trembling servant scurries forward and bows so low his forehead touches the marble.*

"Escort the northerner to the Pavilion of a Thousand Veils when he has finished his meal. Inform the Mistress of the Harem that he is to be... accommodated. Fully."

*The servant's eyes flick up to you, to your axe, to the bloodstains still crusted in your beard, and his face goes a shade paler.*

"A-as Your Radiance commands."


Skœdir

*That night is...not fun for anybody outside of the Pavilion, however its especially not fun for Rayanya. Because while his chambers at the top of the palace, high above the clouds may be the furthest away from the noise, its still enough to reach him, muffled as it may be. And unlike anybody else in the palace, these are HIS women, his concubines that all know his face, his body, his cock. Part of him curses the fact he did not say 311 concubines, and leave one for himself tonight. The first night in 10 years where his bed has not been warmed beforehand, where he's sleeping alone.*

*He tries to not think about it, he's the fucking emperor, the grand regent of the worlds most powerful nation, he has better things to do than to think about whats going on a kilometer further down in his palace, no matter how many voices are screaming in ways he hasn't heard before. He will **not** think about what the barbarian must be like, breeding his women, what kind of a...*


Rayanya

*...what kind of a body must be under all those furs and leathers? Because the northerner is **massive**, taller than Zahira by a good head, and his arms - the arm that had draped over his shoulders, he can still feel its phantom weight - are thicker around than Rayanya's own thighs. And there had been a smell to him. Beneath the blood and the sweat and the road, something deeper. Musk. Man-musk. The kind of smell Rayanya had never been exposed to in his sterile perfumed palace, where everyone bathed three times a day in rosewater.*

*Rayanya rolls onto his side. Then his other side. His silk sheets, thread count beyond mortal counting, suddenly feel scratchy against his skin. A particularly high-pitched shriek of ecstasy drifts up from somewhere below - that sounded like Yasmina, his favorite, the Nubian with the hips - and Rayanya shoves a silk pillow over his head.*

*Through the pillow, muffled, he mutters to himself:*

"I do not care. I do not care. I am the Oasis Resplendent. I do not care."

*He cares. He cares so much he wants to scream. He's never had anything taken from him before - never had to share, never had to wait, never had to listen to someone else enjoying what was his. The feeling is alien and hot and itchy under his perfect skin. He grinds his teeth, which his dental physicians would weep to see.*

*Rayanya rolls onto his side violently and yanks a silk pillow over his head.*

*He will **not** picture it. He will not picture that huge filthy savage with his—with his unwashed hair and his scarred chest and his big calloused hands, filling those giant palms with Yasminas flesh. Pressing her down. Making her make those sounds. Sounds she had certainly never made for him. (Had she? Surely she had. He was the Emperor. He had been trained in every art. Surely—)*

*A deep, distant masculine laugh rolls up through the night air. Yours.*

*Rayanya makes a small, frustrated sound into his pillow and kicks his legs against the sheets like a sulking child.*

*...what kind of a **cock** a man like that must have. What it must look like. Surely something vulgar and enormous and streaked with veins, some brutal northern weapon of a thing.*

*He squeezes his eyes shut and rolls onto his side, silk sheets whispering against his skin. His bed is vast - a circular platform of black jade dressed in white silks and cloud-soft pillows, set beneath a crystal dome that reveals the stars above. Normally there would be two or three concubines curled against him, their perfumed warmth at his back, the soft rise and fall of their breathing lulling him to sleep. Tonight the bed is a desert.*

*A distant scream reaches him. Not of pain. Something worse. Something ecstatic and feminine and completely unhinged, rising and rising and then breaking.*

*That was... he knows that voice. Yasmeen? The girl from the Coral Isles, the one with the hip-length black hair? She had been his favorite last winter.*

*His fingers clutch the silk at his chest.*

*Another voice. This one sobbing - but laughing too - begging in broken Rashyyalid for something, for more, for... gods, for **another one**? How many was he taking at once down there?*

*Rayanya flips violently onto his other side, pulling a pillow over his head. It does not help. The muffled sounds continue to drift up through the palace's ventilation shafts, carried by the same airflow systems designed to keep the royal chambers cool.*

*He thinks about the weight of your arm on his shoulders at the feast. The heat of it. The way the silk had done nothing to stop the sensation of another body pressed to his.*

*His own cock, unbidden and unwelcome, gives a small traitorous twitch beneath the sheets.*

*He gasps - actually gasps out loud into his empty chamber - and sits up, pressing both hands flat against his thighs as if he could smother the reaction through sheer will. His cyan eyes dart around the dark room as if someone might have seen.*

*"La,"* *he whispers to himself.* *"La, la, la."*

*...what kind of a beast he must be, to draw sounds like **that** from trained professionals. Women who had received his own imperial cock with measured, melodious moans and practiced gasps, who had always treated him with such careful reverence, because of course they had - he is the Light of Gold, the Oasis Resplendent. One does not scream raw and hoarse and desperate for the Emperor. One performs for him.*

*Rayanya rolls onto his side beneath his silk coverlet. Then onto his back. Then onto his other side.*

*The sheets whisper against his hairless skin, usually a pleasant sensation, tonight somehow too much and too little at once. He has shed all his silks and jewelry - as he always does for sleep - and lies bare against the imported linen from the Veiled Coast. His chambers are enormous. The bed alone could fit six. A dome of lapis lazuli inlaid with gold star patterns arches above him, each gem catching moonlight from the open balcony.*

*A particularly loud wail drifts up from somewhere far below - a high, broken thing that tapers into sobbing laughter. Rayanya recognizes the voice. Basma. She had joined his harem two years ago, a merchant's daughter from Qandahar, and she had always been quiet in his bed. Demure. Barely spoke above a whisper.*

*She is not whispering now.*

*He squeezes his cyan eyes shut. His perfect teeth grit behind his perfect lips. His hand, resting against his smooth bare stomach, twitches - and drifts, almost unbidden, lower.*

*He stops himself. Yanks the hand back up to his chest.*

*He does **not** do this. He has concubines for this. Dozens of them. If he wished to be pleasured he would summon one, or three, and they would come. That is the proper order of things.*

*Another scream floats up. A different woman this time.*

*His toes curl against the linen.*

*...what kind of a body must be under all those furs and leathers? Because the northerner is **massive**, taller than Zahira by a good head, and his arms - the arm that had draped over his shoulders, he can still feel its phantom weight - are thicker around than Rayanya's own thighs. And there had been a smell to him. Beneath the blood and the sweat and the road, something deeper. Musk. Man-musk. The kind of smell Rayanya had never been exposed to in his sterile perfumed palace, where everyone bathed three times a day in rosewater.*

*Rayanya rolls onto his side. Then his other side. His silk sheets, thread count beyond mortal counting, suddenly feel scratchy against his skin. A particularly high-pitched shriek of ecstasy drifts up from somewhere below - that sounded like Yasmina, his favorite, the Nubian with the hips - and Rayanya shoves a silk pillow over his head.*

*Through the pillow, muffled, he mutters to himself:*

"I do not care. I do not care. I am the Oasis Resplendent. I do not care."

*He cares. He cares so much he wants to scream. He's never had anything taken from him before - never had to share, never had to wait, never had to listen to someone else enjoying what was his. The feeling is alien and hot and itchy under his perfect skin. He grinds his teeth, which his dental physicians would weep to see.*

*Down the hall, Zahira stands guard outside his chamber door in full armor, perfectly still, pretending she cannot hear the faint cries echoing up through the palace. Her knuckles are white around her sword hilt. She has been standing this way for three hours.*

*Another shriek. This one definitely Yasmina.*

*Rayanya throws the pillow across the room. It knocks over an incense burner worth more than a farmer's annual harvest.*

"Zahira!"

*The door opens instantly.*
"Mawlay?"

"Fetch me wine. The strong one. From Shalaq."

"...At once, Mawlay."


Skœdir

*It takes every ounce of strength for him to resist summoning Layla and having her investigate whats going on downstairs, eventually managing to his himself into another sleep.*

*Breakfast is thankfully still, I've eaten in the Pavilion and already left to kill demons somewhere. The only trace that I exist are the whispered giggles of servant-girls passing through the hallways, the way Yasmina doesn't press her body as firmly against his massaging his shoulders as he eats honed dates.*


Rayanya

*Yasmina's hands work at his shoulders - and they are working, to be fair, those clever fingers still finding the knots in his perfect musculature - but she keeps herself a polite two inches away from his back. Her hips, which usually cradle against his shoulder blades with warm sleepy affection during the morning massage, do not touch him at all.*

*There is also, Rayanya notices with a slow-building flush of outrage, a very faint purple mark on her collarbone. Just visible above the neckline of her sheer robe.*

"Yasmina."

"Yes, my Radiance?"
*Her voice has a slight huskiness to it that it did not have yesterday. Rayanya's eye twitches.*

"Was the northerner... adequate?"

*A long pause. Her hands falter on his shoulders. When she speaks again there is a smile in her voice that she is trying very, very hard to suppress.*

"He was... enthusiastic, my Radiance."

"Enthusiastic."

"Yes, Mawlay."

"More enthusiastic than your Emperor?"

*Another pause, longer this time. Her hands resume their work, perhaps a touch more firmly. When she answers, her tone is the practiced diplomatic lilt of a woman who has been trained since age eleven in how to flatter powerful men.*

"No one could ever compare to Your Radiance."

*It is, Rayanya realizes with a slow-dawning horror, the first time she has ever told him something that might be a **lie**. He can hear it in the micro-pause before "no."*

*He sets down the honeyed date. Suddenly it tastes like ash.*

*Across the breakfast chamber, a little servant girl scurries past with a tray, and Rayanya distinctly hears her whisper something to another servant that contains the words "like a bull" before she notices his gaze and nearly drops the tray in terror.*

*The morning light filters through latticed screens of carved sandalwood, casting golden diamond-patterns across the low breakfast table. Rayanya sits cross-legged on his cushion, picking at a plate of honeyed dates and soft white cheese drizzled with pistachio oil. He has not slept well. Three concealer-applications have gone into hiding the faint smudges under his cyan eyes.*

*Yasmina's fingers work at his shoulders. Dutiful. Skilled. But there's a... looseness to her touch that wasn't there yesterday. A tiredness. And every so often she shifts her weight, wincing, as if something lower on her body aches.*

*Rayanya feels it. The infinitesimal gap between her body and his back. Yesterday she would have been pressed flush against him, her bare breasts warm against his shoulder blades through her thin silks.*

*He sets the date down. His stomach has soured.*

"Yasmina."

"Your Radiance?"
*Her voice is slightly hoarse.*

"...Fetch me Layla."

*"Yes, mawlay." She bows and retreats, and Rayanya notes with a pinch of something ugly that her usual graceful glide has become the faintest hint of a waddle.*

*Within minutes Layla materializes from the shadows of a wall-drape as if she had simply been waiting there the entire time. The Shadow Hand assassin kneels, her kohl-rimmed eyes lowered, her dark robes pooling around her.*

"Your Radiance summons."

*Rayanya sips his morning tea. Takes a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is carefully neutral.*

"Go to the Pavilion. Speak to the Mistress. I want a full accounting of... last night. How many. How long. Their condition this morning."

*A pause. His golden-ringed fingers tighten almost imperceptibly around his cup.*

"And discreetly. I do not wish the court to know I asked."

*Layla's eyes flick up for just a heartbeat - professional curiosity, quickly suppressed.*
"As Your Radiance commands."

*She vanishes. Rayanya stares at his dates. He is not hungry.*


Skœdir

*This, as it turns out becomes routine. In the morning after eating the barbarian departs, slaying whatever demonic rift has opened up during the night, then in the evening returning, eating enough for 10 and spending the night with at least 100 of the women in the harem. For half a year this continues, and the worst part is that it has immediate positive effects.*

*The part of the army that had to be dedicated to stemming the tide of demons now find themselves able to restore peace to the outer provinces and defend against attacks from tomb kingdoms in the east, resume protection of the trading vessels and caravans that once more begin to fill the empire boundless coffers. All because of one man, who Rayanya is slowly realizing the empire is growing dangerously dependent on for its prosperity.*


Rayanya

*Six months. Half a year of the same cycle. And the reports that come across his desk are, objectively, the best news any Rashyyalid Emperor has received in a generation.*

*Tax revenues up forty percent. Trade routes restored to pre-incursion levels. The eastern provinces pacified. General al-Mustafa writing breathless dispatches about finally being able to push back against the Tomb Kings, reclaiming three border fortresses lost a century ago. The Colosseum's coffers swollen from returning crowds. Even the weather, somehow, seems to have improved - the monsoons came on time, the harvests were abundant.*

*Rayanya reads these reports in his private study, a small pavilion of lapis lazuli and mother-of-pearl overlooking the palace gardens, and his stomach knots tighter with every scroll.*

*Because the whispers have changed too.*

*"The Northern Wind" they call you now, the court poets. "The Emperor's Sword." "Al-Shimal al-Mubarak" - the Blessed North. There are already statues being commissioned in the outer provinces. Statues of **you**. A merchant in Al-Baydah has reportedly named his newborn son "Skoh-deer" in your honor.*

*And the concubines. Gods beneath the sand, the concubines. Yasmina had asked last week - **asked**, as if she had any right - whether the northerner would be visiting again that night. To his face. While brushing his hair.*

*He had not punished her. He should have. He didn't.*

*Rayanya sets down the current scroll - a glowing report from the Vizier of the Treasury about the restored salt mines - and stares out his window at the gardens. Somewhere in the palace, distantly, he can hear female laughter.*

*The reports land on his lap like golden bricks, each one a small hammer to his pride. Trade revenue up thirty percent. The eastern provinces resettled. Tomb-raiders pushed back past the Ghazal Mountains. A second son born to the House of al-Qadim, whose first-born had died at Qum-Sharif.*

*And with every report, another whisper in his court. Another vizier who bows a fraction less deeply. Another minor prince who lingers a second too long making eye contact. The palace mages no longer sputter their divine-light displays - there is no need, because everyone has seen the Emperor flinch now, seen him startle, seen him **be touched** - and the illusion has cracked.*

*Tonight Rayanya sits alone on a private balcony, overlooking the jungle-dense gardens. A single goblet of wine, untouched. He has dismissed his attendants. Even Zahira stands out of earshot, at the far end of the terrace.*

*Six months. Six months of listening to his harem enjoy another man. Six months of his own concubines returning to his bed distracted, less attentive, mumbling the wrong names sometimes. Yasmina had left his service entirely three weeks ago - **requested a transfer** - and is now apparently one of Skœdir's favorites, waiting in the Pavilion every night.*

*Rayanya had granted the request with a smile so tight his jaw had ached for hours after.*

*Below, distantly, he hears the palace gates creak open. The familiar thump of heavy boots on marble. A servant's nervous greeting. The northerner is back from wherever he had gone today - rumors said the sulfur marshes, to slay a greater demon of pestilence.*

*Rayanya's fingers tighten on the goblet's stem. A single silk-soft bead of gold paint flakes off the rim.*

*He cannot keep doing this.*

*He does not know what he is going to do instead.*


Skœdir

*That night he's laying in his bed again, starring up at the ceiling as has become the norm. Thinking, trying to think on how to solve this situation. Poison? Killing you would just mean the demons would become a problem again after a while. Maybe not in his lifetime? That could be a possibility. Maybe...*

So dis is where you've been holed up all night. Not a bad place to spend the night. *You scream woman who was walked in on bathing, undoubtedly the most mortifying thing you've ever done. Its a scream that should have brought Zahira and a dozen guards to the bedchamber, but after a full ten seconds nobody arrives, the only movement in the bedchamber being my fingers coming to rub my ears with an annoyed grunt.*


Rayanya

*Rayanya is sitting bolt upright in his enormous silk-draped bed, sheets pooled around his naked waist, one hand clutched to his perfect hairless chest where his heart is hammering like a trapped bird. His dark hair - usually perfectly arranged even in sleep - is tumbled over his shoulders in damp-from-bathing waves. His kohl has smudged slightly from the water. He looks, for the first time in possibly his entire life, **mussed**.*

*His cyan eyes are enormous in the lamplight.*

"Y-you!"
*His voice comes out at a pitch entirely unbecoming of an emperor. He clears his throat violently, snatches a silk sheet up to his collarbone like a scandalized maiden, and tries again.*
"You, how did you!"

*He looks wildly toward the doors of his bedchamber. The great double doors of cedarwood and gold, which are supposed to be guarded by four elite warriors at all times. Which are supposed to be locked with an enchanted bolt forged by Master Saif himself. Which-*

*are still closed. Still locked. Apparently undisturbed.*

*You had not come through the door.*

*His mind races to the balcony - but his bedchamber is at the top of the palace's highest tower, nearly a kilometer above the ground, with no handholds and no neighboring structures. Impossible. **Impossible**.*

*Rayanya pulls the silk higher, up to his chin, and somehow manages to summon a wavering imperious tone:*

"Barbarian. Get **OUT** of my chambers. **Immediately**."

*A beat.*

"How did you even get in here."

*He's sat bolt upright in his silk sheets, the gauzy sleeping robe slipping off one smooth dark shoulder, his unbound raven hair tumbling down his back in a way it is only ever seen by his personal attendants. His cyan eyes are enormous. The pulse in his throat is visible, fluttering against that perfect chocolate skin.*

*Zahira does not come. Layla does not come. No one comes.*

*Because, of course, you walked past them. You walked past all of them.*

"H-how did you—"
*his voice cracks, actually cracks, on the second syllable. He grabs the sheets and yanks them up to cover his chest, then realizes how that must look, then lets them drop to his lap instead, then realizes **that** looks worse, and finally settles on clutching them to his ribs with both hands.*

"Get. OUT."

*It comes out shrill. Not regal at all. He winces at the sound of his own voice.*

*You're standing at the foot of his bed, and you're **huge** in his bedchamber, larger than life, taking up space no one is permitted to take up. The gauzy curtains hanging from the canopy drift lazily around your frame. You smell of the road - of demon ichor and sweat and that deep musk he'd tried not to think about for six months.*

*The lamplight catches on the white scars crisscrossing your bare chest. On the kraken-beak axe at your hip. On your eyes.*

"Th-this is the sovereign bedchamber of the Oasis Resplendent,"
*he tries again, clawing back some shred of dignity, lifting his chin.*
"No one enters. **No one.** Not even Zahira, not even—"

*He cuts himself off. Because it occurs to him, with a cold slither in his stomach, that you have not actually explained **why** you are here.*