‘Lord’ of the Black Sand.

(O)

Poets speak of peaceful night. They speak of the restful cloak of the starry night sky being draped over the shoulders of the sleeping children, guiding them deeper into slumber. They speak of the hum of cicadas and the chirp of crickets. They speak of stars and of moons and of dreams.

Few poets dare venture into the Land of the Black Sand to find out if such things are truly universal.

They aren’t.

It is a dark place, in more ways than one. Centuries ago, it had been an area of heavy volcanic activity, which had produced the famed black sand. Fire had belched from the land day and night, and it glowed with the fires of the earth.

Not anymore. Now the only light came from the few candles and torches lit in the foreboding citadel that stood in the center of the bleak land. The land was dead, and only the dead dwelled there.

The dead, and the current Lord of the land.

Deep in the bowels of the Citadel, there is a room. A library, to be precise. On the shelves are contained many of the rarest texts on magic, philosophy, science, ethics, logic, mathematics, music, and all other manner of scholarly things. Many of them predated Destane’s reign over the Citadel, much less Mozenrath’s. It was all but impossible to read them all, although Mozenrath had tried.

In the middle of the library, there is a table. Carved of dark wood , polished to an oily sheen, the table rests on four clawed feet. In a moment of whimsy, Mozenrath had named it the dragon-desk; a name it had borne centuries before, in another land.

Mozenrath is slumped at this desk now, head pillowed in velvet-covered arms, black hair covering what face isn’t hidden by the arms. An open books lies next to Mozenrath, open to a spell for summoning a particularly nasty Abyssal elemental. The sorcerer isn’t really asleep, though. Instead, the Lord of the Black Sand is thinking deep thoughts.

Agrabah. Stars, but I want that place destroyed. How can it have stood against me for so long? It has no notable sorcerers, not since Jafar was destroyed!

Mozenrath never met Jafar, a fact that he greatly regrets. Destane’s reputation was so great that even the mightiest of sorcerers cowered at his name. Jafar might not have been a mighty sorcerer before the genie granted him the status of most powerful sorcerer in the world (he mostly relied on a succession of magical artifacts and a few useful bits of chemistry), but he had been a skilled scholar and a cunning adviser. As adviser to the fool Sultan, he had all but ruled Agrabah, and he had ruled well, other aims notwithstanding. There had been no civil wars, famines, or civil dissent when he had been the power behind the throne. An iron hand, perhaps, but it worked.

There are no gods that look on it with favor, or allies waiting to rescue them! It’s leaders are incompetent!

And the sorcerer has a right to such an opinion. Mozenrath may not command a realm of thousands of living citizens, but the sorcerer is positive one does not command such a mighty nation by sitting in the lap of luxury and playing with toy elephants! The Sultan is a bumbling idiot, in Mozenrath’s less-than-humble-opinion. Well-intentioned, perhaps, but there is no latitude in this world for one’s intentions. One suffers the consequences of stupidity regardless of whether one ‘meant well.’

A lesson Mozenrath learned very early on. When life throws a lesson at the sorcerer, it is learned.

And the princess… argh! She sits around and plays with her tiger, and still believes that she has a right to the power that was bequeathed to her by an accident of birth. All she cares about is her clothing and her jewelry. A ruler? A fool! She does nothing, earns none of her privileges, solves none of her own dilemmas. All she does is sit back and wait for her Prince Gallant to rescue her. A disgrace to her entire gender!

Yes, Agrabah is hardly ruled by the wise.

All it has is a second-rate genie and a street rat!

Mozenrath sneers at the thought of the street rat. Yes, the street rat. Such flair, but wasted on a man of no breeding or class. Honestly, patches and dirt, that’s all he wears.

Hmph. Lady luck must favor Agrabah to allow it to survive.

Luck is something Mozenrath truly despises. It lifts the unworthy above the worthy, the indolent up above the industrious, the small, banal people up over the great and wise. Mozenrath did not ascend to the lordship of the Land of the Black Sands by luck. It took sacrifice, courage, determination… all those things that, in Mozenrath’s opinion, the street rat lacks.

Ah, yes. My sacrifices. First- no. The first was nothing, cost me nothing. It was later that power began to demand it’s true price. I lost my parents, my siblings, my home… all after I asked to see them for a time. Destane had no patience for sentiment. He slaughtered them all, because I would rather have been eating cinnamon bread in my home than summoning demons.

Mozenrath’s hands clench in rage. The sorcerer makes a mental note; Destane’s rotting, undead corpse hadn’t been force to perform anywhere near enough humiliating tasks recently.

And then there was the gauntlet. Yes, the gauntlet. That glove that had, until Mozenrath had tasted of the Waters of Life, been eating away at the young mage’s life force. The gauntlet that had consumed the flesh of his arm. My life was pain before that draught, Mozenrath muses idly, taking off the gauntlet to gaze at the bare bone. Not that it doesn’t hurt to remove the cursed glove, but at least there is no more pain when I wear it. And I’m not dying anymore.

I don’t think.

And that was the greatest torment: not knowing. Was the glove still eating away at his life? Had the Water of Life healed him, or was his death still approaching?

Compared to that, Mozenrath muses, gazing at the ivory-colored bones, dressing as a boy to avoid Destane’s... attentions, shall we say, was nothing at all.

After all, the path of the Dark Sorcerer was difficult enough, without people sneering at you because you were a woman.