blindfold off his eyes.
Sun God save us, Zar thought, blinked in the sunset, and trembled.
They stood upon a mountain that rose from the desert: three haggard prisoners, bloodied and clad in rags; fifty soldiers in pale armor, golden suns upon their breastplates and their helms shaped as falcon heads; and a desert queen all in gold and platinum, twin sabres drawn in her hands. These soldiers of steel had tortured him, and this desert queen had ordered him broken, yet as night fell around them, Zar did not fear them. They were mere mortals. Before him it rose, a skeletal finger reaching into a crimson sky. The tower.
Zar had never before seen this place, not with his waking eyes. But he had dreamed of it countless times, then woke up in a cold sweat. He had seen it in his mind—when his grandmother whispered of its secrets, when his childhood friends bragged that they would climb it, and when Queen Solina's guards whipped him until the pain exploded into dreamscapes.
"The tower," he whispered, lips chapped and bleeding. "The place of the key."
Tarath Gehena rose knobby, black, and twisting like a melted candle of stone. The sun set behind it, spilling rivers of blood across the sky, the mountain, and the desert below. The tower's jagged crenellations rose like the crown of a demon king. At its base loomed a doorway, gaping and black like a cave. As the crimson clouds moved, the tower seemed to tilt. A shadow stirred between the battlements, and Zar's heart thrashed. He expected to see demons swarm toward him, but then the shadow vanished, leaving his heart racing and his clothes drenched with sweat.
Tarath Gehena, he thought. A shattered bone of the Abyss risen into the world.
Queen Solina walked forward, shoving her guards aside. Her eyes gleamed and a smile twitched across her lips, those lips twisted with an old scar. Despite the long march, she seemed unwearied, and little sand or dust clung to her breastplate and silken cloak. Her hair billowed, a pale banner.
"This is the place," she whispered, eyes alight and teeth bared in a grin. "This tower holds the key."
The sunset blazed against her, painting her blood-red, and madness shone in her eyes.
"You cannot open the door!" The words fled Zar's mouth, hoarse and shaking. "You will unleash something you cannot contai—"
A whip lashed his back, and a soldier kicked him, driving a steel-tipped boot into his side. Zar fell to his knees, gasping for breath. Tears budded in his eyes.
"Please," he whispered, trembling, remembering the stories his grandmother would tell: stories of demons peeling the skin off children, of reptiles writhing, of a horde of chaos with tarry wings and fangs to suck the souls of men. "Please, my queen, do not enter this tower. Do not take the key from within."
The soldiers raised whips and spears above him, and Zar winced, expecting the blows, but Solina held up her hand. The soldiers froze, weapons raised.
The Queen of Tiranor walked toward Zar, head tilted and lips still smiling, though no mirth filled her eyes, only cruelty like a scourge. She stood above him, a golden queen and him a wretched, bleeding shell of a man, wrists bound and body emaciated and broken. She spoke, voice soft and smooth like a morning breeze stirring the desert sands.
"You fear the tomb the key can unlock." She reached down and touched his forehead. Her hand was gloved in white moleskin, soft and warm. "You fear the creatures that dwell beyond the Iron Door."
Zar shivered on the ground. He feared this tower, this jagged sentinel; his stomach clenched and his skull seemed ready to crack. Yet this tower, for all its evil, merely contained a key.
But the door this key unlocks… The fortress it will allow her to enter…
He found himself weeping. "Please, my queen, please. Listen to the priests of the Sun God. Listen to the whispers of desert tribes, to the tales of grandmothers, to the horrors in old scrolls. Do not take this key."
Her face softened, the face of a woman seeing a wretched, kicked animal. She caressed his forehead, dirtying her gloves with his sweat and grime.
"Oh, dear miserable beast," she whispered. "I will not take the key from this tower. You and your friends will."
Sun God. Oh, Sun God, please no.
He flattened himself on the ground and kissed the dust at her feet. His body shook.
"Please, my queen, forgive me, I only… I only wanted to see my son,