A Heart's Crucible
A Cost

A fierce sun reduced the shade to pockets.

Gasping Wind said, “Keep out of the shadows, you stupid blot of black!”

He watched as Kashm, in a lethargy, started picking blood clots off his net as he crawled onto the craggy ledge. He whetted the crusted red blobs with his parched tongue.

The whistling ghoul heard the Dev mumble, “what the frick was on the menu hereabouts apart from scorpions!”

The ghoul’s gnarled fingers lingered along his blowpipe. He scoffed, looking at Unbalanced Soul hustling on the sand, derisive of his fellow ghoul, frying his limited brains as he bashed scorpions. Small minds, he sneered, can only focus on one thing — no frickin ambition or big-picture thinking. Still, he needed to watch his back; Ahriman hadn’t sent help; he dispatched the one-eyed toady as a spy.

Gasping Wind surveyed their surroundings: sand and fantastical wind-blasted rock formations and, rising close, the canyons and caves of the Acacus Mountains. The fiend ignored the variation in the dune colour. Depending on the sunlight, the endless crests offered yellowish-buttery or tan-bronze contrasts against an azure sky.

The sea of desolation broke the vista of sand and the ghoul’s high vantage outcrop. A sea! More a cesspit of swill, an oversized rotund pool. Beelzebub exaggerated his incomplete tip-off garnered from a disloyal seer vassal. Geysers of hot oil spurted from the black sand. Ahead, Gasping Wind glanced at a small deserted isle encircled by a gooey tar-pitch moat. Around the trough of steamy black sludge, red scorpions circled — the size of wild boars with boa-length stinging tails. Gasping Wind compared the thickness of their armour to the skull of the half-wit, Unbalanced Soul.

The whistling ghoul checked his wineskin before his water bag — plenty for a few more days. He tracked the occupied one-eyed ghoul. The cynical oldie still possessed a fearsome strike. Whack! He belted another scorpion to the far dunes. Gasping Wind smirked as two creepy bugs marched forward to a slamming smash. He watched Unbalanced Soul rub his eye and empty socket. He rubbed his groin. Damn the gritty sand.

The story on the sea of desolation bored him. Beelzebub supplied the detail of a place unknown to humans in the deep Sahara. Scorpions left no survivors to tell strange tales. The fabled Timbuktu lay somewhere to the east, north, west, or south, but Gasping Wind didn’t care. He was not a pilgrim or a tourist. He snorted; the goddamn Peri were flying into a trap. Ants crawled on his leg.

He wondered what the frick the sprite’s quest required in this wasteland. He scanned the foreboding isle, secured by a quicksand moat. Three scraggy, silvery salt bushes sprouted there. Though once, as he sipped to conserve water, he glanced at the evidence; water flowed here. On the ledge behind him, an ochre painting of two-horned antelope butted. Gasping Wind, focused, perhaps the Peri quest required a sprig of saltbush for a potion, though who cared? The Peri’s fate lay sealed. The next few minutes he spent squishing ants.

Next to him, Kashm jumped and snarled. The Dev bloodhound sniffed, then relaxed.

Gasping Wind rose and slid a sleeping dart into his pipe.

Hands with a sizzle and sear clutched his shoulders with an ungiving firmness. He pictured Dying Embers’ blue fingers and his assassination. Then, he relaxed; he recognised a signet ring of Hell, the horned goat.

“Ah, too quick for you, friend, or should I say, fiend.”

Beelzebub’s black-spaded tail slapped Gasping Wind across his chops. After wiping the sting, he perceived Unbalanced Soul saw the new arrival but didn’t join them on the ledge. Instead, he lined up a pair of scorpions and clobbered them into the tar sea. Tough sons of a bitch, he pondered, as covered in pitch, they scuttled on the roasting surface with nimble legs.

His cheek flamed. Damn Beelzebub, but he held his tongue.

Kashm, the clever or dumb imp, the whistling ghoul couldn’t yet decide, seeing neither a change in diet nor a Peri, returned to picking at his net.

Gasping Wind’s shoulders ached. His rubbery skin developed a tightness as he noticed pocked blisters.

He acknowledged the demon’s arrival with a cagey bob.

“Satan himself commanded my attendance; he’s more impatient than Ahriman. What a boring place. Nothing to do but count scorpions.”

An arrogant spine-chilling laugh raised puffs of orange sand.

Gasping Wind offered a thumbs-up in preference to misconstrued words. He twigged. Satan dispatched extra help. An unfair fight would clinch success.

“Let’s play rock, paper, scissors, with a stinging slap,” Beelzebub’s eyes brooked no nay-saying.

The whistling ghoul started and lost the first round. He bit his lip, resigned to the game fiends and demons used to toughen themselves. The pair exchanged cutting cuffs for hours—ninety per cent favouring the prince from Hell. The clouting ceased at twilight when Beelzebub yawned and napped.

Gasping Wind sneaked below and collected dead scorpion poison. The twit Unbalanced Soul proved helpful. With furtive care and remembering not to whistle, he oozed a greenish venom into a black leather pouch. Toxic to Ahriman or anyone else, restricting his ambitions. After easing onto the ledge, he patted the pouch. Bide your time; he told himself — unlike Ahriman, who challenged God too early and wondered why heaven expelled him, pick the right moment. He wriggled into a snooze.

In the night’s silence, Gasping Wind awoke to hissing and scratching. Kashm annoyed him as his claws scoured into the rock ledge, defacing the ancient art. Whilst below, Unbalanced Soul, resting in a shadowed crevice of the outcrop, banged Slugger.

“By the speed of Satan’s ire,” said Beelzebub, “those pesky sprites move quick.”

Gasping Wind’s eyes stalked the dark. The demon swooshed high, chasing his tail! Hopeless, seeking Peri on an orb-less night. A task worse than hunting fireflies without a light. Still, he loaded his dart pipe and scanned for any hint of feather sparkle. Stars shone, but the sliver-thin crescent favoured the goddamn Peri! Where was the full moon when evil demanded?

He saw Kashm active, well, his net whirling in the black sea of air. The Dev appeared keen, and rogue plans, Gasping Wind, believed were a rigged winning dice.

Unbalanced Soul, and he raced towards the tar moat—the latter scattering scorpions blocking their path. The old ghoul raised a hand, focused his one eye and roared so loud the back of the nearest scorpion cracked.

“The Isle!”

A snap alerted Gasping Wind. The telltale second one. The Peri were on the island.

Fingers to his mouth, he wolf-whistled into the air and received back a coded roof whistle. He pictured Beelzebub circling the isle at mid-height in alternating directions because the Peri glided fast.

The ghoul of Abandon blew sleeping darts at random across the tar sea. The isle shaped small and flat, and he believed he would dispatch three Peri to Abandon at dawn. Cunning Kashm hovered the highest. Gasping Wind discerned the widespread net.

“In hell’s name, does luck seep from their buttocks?”

Beelzebub said as the night hid him like a black hole between stars.

Only his lashing tail shone to deliver a diabolical knock-out.

Gasping Wind caught his darts whistle as he aimed their whining screech. Targeted inches above the sea of pitch, in case the Peri cowered. No thud of a body hit greeted his ready ear. So he angled missiles into the air above the isle. The wenches perhaps hovered at random heights, seeking a swooshing getaway gap.

Suddenly, Unbalanced Soul loped away from the moat’s edge, heading beyond the outcrop.

Gasping Wind berated, “Stay and guard, you stupid fool!”

His following darts splattered wide towards the isle’s blackness.

Coordinated, evil fell apart as Kashm’s net plummeted. The whistling ghoul waved his pipe in disgust as he tracked green eyes in a retrieving dive.

∗ ∗ ∗

The crescent moon stayed indifferent to the chaos below as the salt bushes were to the mayhem in the sky.

Unseen by the vile hunters, Joq and her friends hovered, hoping for a mistake to aid a swift escape. Together they skimmed inches above darts passing beneath their feet. So close, the rushing air made their toes tickle. Joq found the sweep distracting. They removed their sandals to aid in soft padding steps. However, Perdy cracked a fallen salt bush branch. Her eyes feared scorpions, not where her feet trod.

Joq knew the hysterical story. Her redhead chum’s anxiety came from her youth. A desert predator in the harsh Atacama nested in Perdita’s wing tip overnight. As a young girl, she reeled in shock as the mini-beast plopped to the ground. Ever since, by habit, Joq knew the Scottish miss gave her wings a lusty morning shake.

Besides removing sandals, the Peri found aid for their assault on the isle. Perdy spotted a lizard earlier in the day when they rested at an oasis.

“Grab a couple of reptiles,” she said.

“Bait for the scorpions.”

The lizards proved tricky buggers to catch as they scampered under rocks.

The evening approached after they gathered two each. Joq led their night raid on the isle. The spiny-tailed critters worked a treat as they distracted any scorpions. So, the scuttling lizards allowed Joq to secure the scrap of silk tangled in the base of a saltbush.

The tricky part lay in their exit. Maintaining a quiet, fast flap proved exacting and sapping as they waited for a Dev error.

Joq’s keen steppe eyes saw the net fall.

“Go,” and she started a straight-lined, streamlined lift-off, three in a row.

∗ ∗ ∗

Unbalanced Soul returned to the tar sea carrying a tent pole. Gasping Wind kept ranting expletives in his direction. Finally, he stopped when the old ghoul dipped the picket, and the hot sludge ignited a flame lighting the night sky. Both ghouls became privy to an illuminated scene. Unbalanced Soul watched Gasping Wind jump in glee as Beelzebub dived faster than a wicked thought. He sagged as the demon misjudged the speeding Peri with his clutching claws. But as the prince of Hell’s tail clipped the third Peri, he started whistling, ‘hurts so good.’ Fack, that phrase irritated the one-eyed ghoul.

His functional eye tracked a Peri nosediving with a mournful scream. Straight into a surprised and fumbling Kashm’s re-opened net. The Dev zoomed low across the pitch and bowled the bound fairy with blue and purple wings at Gasping Wind’s feet. But the old ghoul’s eye scanned the night for the two escaping sprites.

The ruddy flare spluttered out, and Gasping Wind swore again. By the time Unbalanced Soul re-lit the pole, Beelzebub had stalled, ready to choose a random direction.

“East!”

He pointed.

“North,” Unbalanced Soul’s hoary voice.

The old ghoul saw the prince of Hell kiss both his rings, the one on his hand and contorting the one under his tail as he sped North.

“Poke her! Forget your nets and head south,” Gasping Wind instructed Kashm.

He chastised the Dev, who wasted time prodding and gloating over the tethered Peri.

The green-eyed imp followed Beelzebub.

Unbalanced Soul ignored Gasping Wind as he tossed the fainted Peri over his shoulder and headed for the crevice. A spot positioned to see the entire camp and every sly action.

Hours passed, and Gasping Wind fidgeted on the ledge, where he emptied the wineskin.

The one-eyed ghoul cocked an ear as Beelzebub returned to the ledge, and Kashm slinked behind him in the rocky fissure.

“His facking nose failed.”

The demon kicked the wineskin over the ledge’s edge.

“I branded the bastard on his haunches.”

Unbalanced Soul glanced at Kashm’s buttock welts.

From the ledge, Beelzebub’s harsh words echoed.

“Bloody dead camels. A maggot-ridden herd. Stung human corpses and rent tents and poles. And no flamin’ sprites! The Dev lost their trail.”

Beelzebub drained the remaining water whilst Gasping Wind cradled his blow gun and fondled his dark pouch.

The one-eyed ghoul rubbed his chin, aware of the poison stash. But redirecting his attention, the trussed Peri whimpered at his feet.