The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 39 🔻 Tamzi

"Tamzi, Nymandus."

"Yes, Your Majesty. Forgive me, but this is not the Heaven I was expecting."

"That is because it is not Heaven." Tamzi swept a hand across his kingdom. "When I was alive, we were promised a desert world of darkness and dust called Erṣetu that awaits us after we die. Imagine my surprise when my spirit rose into a realm of light. Aḫ-ḫur is something man-made, yet I think that makes it even more beautiful, no?"

Blackburne fixed the shorter man with an inquisitive gaze. "How long have you been here, Tamzi?"

"Oh. A very, very long time. Most of it spent alone." Tamzi pushed himself away from the painted railing and beckoned for the knight. "Come. Let me show you something."

The red-haired man let the king lead him to the entry hall of the palace, and he watched the king trace a jeweled finger across the mosaics lining the walls. "I was the first ghost here, you know? When I arrived here, there was nothing else. Just sand and sky."

"I...I had no idea."

"Hm," Tamzi hummed as he made his way to the very beginning of the hieroglyphs. His eyes were glassy as he examined the chained men. "I was not a king in life. I was a wardu. A slave. I still carry the scars, and I make no secret of this." He raised his branded arm to the knight, completely unobscured. "I want people to know where I came from."

Tamzi moved on, following along the wall. He and Blackburne were both unable to look away from the depictions of a city rising into existence.

"After my life ended, I followed a red light through the desert. And it led me here." He gave his companion a half-smile. "I was not making a joke when I said I built this palace. I built this entire kingdom, in fact, all by myself." He returned to the mural where a completed city full of ghosts beneath a red sun was depicted. "And eventually, other ghosts arrived, and together, we made this place a home. I do not ask anything of my people that I would not ask of myself. I am flattered that you say this place is unlike any back on Earth, because that is exactly what I want it to be." Something flashed in those bright amber eyes. "This is a place for everyone, regardless of status in life, to live on infinitely in peace. That is my dream."

Blackburne and I both leaned in closer to the wall and the knight touched his palm to the mural—a mural the depicted not the history of the kingdom of Aḫ-ḫur, but the history of its king.

Blackburne traced the colorful tiles that made up the illustrated Aḫ-ḫur. Then he stared at the black desert that the kingdom nestled in. "Tamzi. What else is out there beyond Aḫ-ḫur? Is there more out there?"

The man beside him gazed at him with sparkling eyes. "You are curious, Nymandus," he said. "As am I. It is how I found you out in the desert." He stood tall before the knight. "I have asked you here because I have a proposition. I am in need of a knight, you see."

"For what purpose?"

"I wish to journey into the desert. I want to see what else is out there, but I am no fighter." He gestured at his lean self. "It is a dangerous world, but I have so many questions in my head, and I believe out there—" He waved to the red light outside. "is where the answers lie."

"You need a bodyguard."

Exuberant nodding answered him.

Blackburne hummed to himself, stroking his cropped beard in consideration. He examined the mosaic of the city again, black eyes locking on the gleaming red sun hovering above it. "I, too, desire answers," he said, more to himself than to Tamzi. Again, he clutched at his chest. "I...I find myself full of questions and pain."