Origins: Sphinxes

The Journal

~*~*~

Work in the Royal Library was a true blessing for Dune Sea. Not yet of-age, finding any source of employment was in and of itself a miracle.  Children were supposed to remain with family until they became of-age at twelve, supported solely by those relatives who were employed.  With no family, Dune Sea was a rare case in the normally close-knit society of Sphinxes.

Her sister had vanished months ago, leaving just before dawn to fetch water at the nearest oasis while Dune Sea slept.  Their parents had died many years before than, before Dune Sea could clearly remember.  It had always been Loess, her older sister, who cared for her.  Once she disappeared, though, Dune Sea had to abandon the small shack in the middle of nowhere and find civilization if she hoped to survive.

The journey across the desert had only taken her two nights, which was fortunate because any longer and she would have died of dehydration.  Even without the cursed sun shining rays directly upon her, the desert had ways of pulling the water from you.  A winged sphinx that Dune Sea had met along the way aided her in traveling in exchange for direction for he had gotten lost in the endless sea of sand.  Dune had known which way to go, and the two together made the last leg of the journey to Supplicium City.

Supplicium City! The capital of the Sphinx empire.  Where the Royal Majesty sat on the Lunar Throne, carved from moonrock and decorated with obsidian.  The home of a thousand Sphinxes where even the daylight could not stop the activity and work of the spirit of the Moon Queen.

Those were the stories and rumors, at least.  Dune Sea had learned first hand that being a lone child in Supplicium City was just as dangerous as being out in the desert.  On her first night in the capital she was attacked by three grown sphinxes who wanted whatever she had with her.  All she had, unfortunately, was a blanket that she had brought to keep the sun off of her during her time in the desert.

After roughing her up a bit and leaving the young sphinx with a few bruises and scratches, and of course taking her blanket, Dune Sea had to limp her way through the city to continue the search for her sister.  She spent many days sleeping between buildings and under shop awnings to stay out of the sun.  There was plentiful water in Supplicium City with its abundance of fountains and free wells that she did not go thirsty, but she was soon going hungry.

Odd jobs paid her in food and occasionally in shelter.  It was not until she was seen by the Royal Majesty's wife cleaning stones from the road her caravan was walking down that she was brought from the city streets and into the palace.  She was washed up and presented to the Royal Woman and offered a job in the palace.  With no real reason or option to refuse, Dune Sea was placed in the library where she was, quite simply, a 'gofer'.  The librarians sent her on minor errands all over the palace and the library, going to fetch things or deliver books and restock the books on the shelves.

As an Enchanted Sphinx, Dune Sea was taught to use her magic more conservatively and efficiently.  She learned how to levitate not just one book with ease and precision, but dozens.  Now, after a month and a half of working in the library, she was able to do her job in half the time.  With no other work to occupy her the other half of the time, she had taken to reading.

History was her favorite subject; she liked reading accounts of ancient times where legend and fact were twisted around the same tale.  Where proof of the greatness of a sphinx could be interpreted as fantasy with the same authority.

Tonight she had found a very old book. It was in the storage closet which she had spent the last few days cleaning out.  Covered in dust, the only insignia on the front was a pawprint.  The binding of the book was a dark, dark blue, almost as dark as the night sky, and the pawprint was the silvery blue of moonstone.  She gasped quietly as she touched it with her own paw.  That much moonstone was worth a fortune! She could pry it out of the book cover and afford her own house.  If she bought a small one she could also probably feed herself for a year.

Before she worked on that, however, she had a desire to know what was in such an old, valuable tome.  Carefully blowing the dust from it, her eyes glowed red and the book cover slowly opened.   The first words inside were:

The Personal Narrative of Plateau

The First Emperor of the Sphinxes and the first Sorcerer King

"Emperor Plateau?" she whispered to herself as she gazed down at the name.  She had not read a tenth of the history books in the library, true, but she had not read any mention of Emperor Plateau.  To her knowledge, the First Emperor's name was supposed to be Fang the Conqueror who united the Eight Tribes over six hundred years ago.  She decided that she was going to want to read more.

If you are reading this....

~*~*~

If you are reading this, then it means that my writings have been preserved in what my son has called a 'library'.  The concept is strange and foreign to me, but it is likely something you have grown used to, or are growing used to depending on just how much time has passed.  You, reader, may not remember well, if at all, but libraries did not exist in my time, or for most of it at least.  In fact, no solid structure existed.  Not for purposes of preserving knowledge, healing the sick, or even casual living.

I am a second generation Sphinx.  My parents, Starlight and Oa, were among the first of our kind to be willed into existence by our mistress, the Moon Queen.  I was a part of the first generation to be, as they say now, 'naturally born' in the Silver Sea.  You may not believe me, but the sands in which you now walk were once the most beautiful shades of silver, gray, and blue that the eye could have beheld.  Children would even pretend that they were on the moon itself while frollicking through the silvery sand.

Now, however, the truth is hidden behind horrible golden glare and the heat of the Solar Sovereign, our Moon Queen’s arch nemesis.  I hope one day that the Moon Queen will be freed  from her imprisonment on her own Moon.  Perhaps she is by your time.  Whether or not the world has returned to normal, let this first-paw account serve as a reminder and a guide should a similar fate befall our kind.

Back in the Silver Age of our kind, we traveled the silver desert in large packs of families.  We were nomadic and flourished by hunting the other creatures that dwelt in the desert.  My personal favorite is the grey snakes that seek us in our sleep for warmth.  Easy to catch, and delicious when cooked properly.

Prior to Moonfall I was a polecrafter.  We had little need for shelter beyond shielding us from bright moonlight when we wished to sleep and the occasional sand or rainstorm. Because we moved almost daily, the shelters we made were sheets woven from palm tree leaves or created from the sand itself and poles to hold them up.

I crafted the poles from sand and magic, shaping and solidifying the otherwise fluid-like grains into sturdy rods of varying lengths and widths for the pack to use for making simple shelter.  The poles lasted a few days so we used them whenever we made camp then just let them lay when we left; they broke up back into normal sand on their own if unmaintained.

Life was peaceful and easy.  My beloved wife, Dust, and myself had two children; our son Granule and our daughter Moon Beam.  They both took my dark eyes and their mother’s pale brown coat.  Both also had the black mane of Enchantment so I took more responsibility for them than my winged wife as I was better able to contain any sporadic bursts of magical energy they might display.

Time was rather static back then.  The Moon remained in the sky at all times.  It moved around and went through various stages of illumination, but it never vanished from the sky.  We had no concept of ‘days’ or ‘nights’ as it was all one, eternal, beautiful night.  Until the Dawn.

I remember that sunrise as clearly now as if it had just happened.  I was resting by an oasis with my wife.  Our pack had just settled into the area and our daughter was out with the other growing cubs with the hunters.  Our son remained with us, practicing his magical abilities. He wished to learn how to form sand constructs as I did, though he wanted to make sand sheets rather than the poles.

Granule was the first to see it.  A thin red line where the bluish black sky touched the silver ground.

“Hey daddy, what’s that?” he asked me.  I looked where his paw was pointed and looked curiously at the growing light in the distance.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, “Perhaps a fire?”  What could have caused such a large fire as to encompass nearly half of the horizon, however, was beyond me.  Over the next few seconds, though, we all knew it was not some sort of fire.  There was a definite bulge along the red line at one point, and the line was no longer a line . It expanded and widened, climbing higher into the sky, erasing the stars.  The moon was sinking opposite this rising red light.  None of us had ever seen this phenomenon and no one was ready.

“Daddy...what’s happening?” Granule asked.  Dust had come to stand with us and the rest of the pack that had not gone out hunting were now crowding together, everyone looking up at the sky.

Just as the moon vanished, the bulge on the horizon flashed a bright light over the land, and all of the silver ground began to take on various shades of red and purple.  This did not last long and the sand began to fade to gold and tan.

My heart was beating hard in my chest as I closed my eyes against the bright glare.  What was this bright light?  Looking down, I used my paw to shield my eyes and slowly opened them again.

As it had been moments ago, the entire land was now gold and brightly lit.  The sky was a pale blue with not a single star to be seen.  I could not look directly at the strange bright object in the sky, but I could tell it was not the moon.  Even as I stood there in fear and confusion I could feel a heat growing in the air around me and as that bright light beat down upon me.

“What is that thing?”

“Where is the moon?”

“It’s getting hot!”

“What’s going on?”

“Everyone stay calm!” I yelled while focusing on the sand.  “We need to make some shelters or that thing is going to burn us to a crisp.”  This was mostly an assumption, but as I stood there I could feel it getting hotter and hotter, so I felt it safer to find a way to hide from it than take a chance that could be fatal.  I was already concentrating on the sand, making tall and thick poles that would last a little longer than usual.  Some of the other enchanted sphinxes began to form poles and sheets out of the sand and within minutes we had several tents erected that kept the bright hot light off of us.  This was a temporary solution, and we all knew it, but it was all I could think to do at the time.

Our meager shelter did not help us for long.  The heat began to permeate the air itself and soon we were all laying down, our fur matted with sweat.  Our once plentiful stores of water began to noticeably drop as thirst became prominent.  Several members of the pack began to talk about rationing water but most were distracted with worry; the hunting party had not returned yet.

I opted to lead a search party to find the hunters.  I wanted to find my daughter; her absence in this strange phenomenon was more than unsettling.  I was beyond worried about her.  I told Dust to take Granule with the rest of the pack.  They were all to head to the oasis we had passed by during Low Moon; the phase of the moon we were accustomed to when it was lowest in the sky.

A small search party was formed- myself and four others- and we were given half of the pack’s remaining water stores so that when we found the hunters we could give them some; undoubtedly they were thirsty from this heat, and they did not take any water with them.  While the rest of the pack began to head back towards the oasis I bade my wife and son goodbye, promising them that I would find Moon Beam.

We set out into the blazing heat and light.  For a while, the five of us took turns, two at a time, to erect and levitate sheets of sand over our search party to help block out what will be called the ‘sun’ in coming years.  This expended our energy swiftly, however, and the air and sand itself were stifling with heat and burning our paws.  We gave up the attempt at hiding from the direct light and just accepted it as an unavoidable pain.

The pack had fixed patterns and rules for hunting because of how easy it was to get lost on the ever-changing landscape of the sand.  One short windstorm was always enough to hide tracks and shift entire dunes enough to make it impossible to know directions from visual cues alone.  The stars had been their guiding lights to train the young cubs in navigation, but over time memorization took hold and even now, with the stars gone, we knew which way to go.

Crossing the desert was easy for us, despite the heat.  Our paws knew how to tread the sands lightly and we could see soft sand before we walked in it.  Even with the heat and the new shades of gold and tan disguising what we were used to, the basic lessons held true.  We were not, however, prepared for the rapid increase in heat.

Since we had separated from the pack it continued to grow hotter.  The evil light in the rose ever higher, hovering over our heads and glaring angrily down at us, as if we were the ones causing misery.  There were no dune shadows to rest in from the intolerable heat and we had already gone through almost half of the water we had brought with us.

“Where are they?” one of the search party asked.  It was Gust, an old friend of mine.  He was not really a worrier, so when he voiced this thought I knew that everyone must have realized what I noticed long ago; the hunters were not where they belonged.

“We should have found them a demicycle ago,” Gust continued.

“They might have sought the oasis when that...that...thing replaced the moon.” I offered as I was not willing to give up hope.

“Then they would have come back the way we’ve been traveling.” Gust argued.

“Fine!” I barked, baring my teeth at him. We were all hot and angry and scared for our families and friends who were lost.  I could not speak for the others, but I was worried about my wife and son making it to the oasis.  It was hotter now than ever, and without him there someone else with a high temper might do to them.

“You can keep complaining,” I continued, “Or you can spread your damned wings and take another look from above!”  Gust was the only flier among the group and we had been sending him up to get a look around the area at semi-regular intervals; whenever we thought it was a good idea.  As he ascended, the rest of us formed a shelter out of the sand to block the direct sunlight.  As much as we may have desired to continue the search- as much as I wanted to find my daughter- we needed to rest or we would certainly succumb to this unnatural heat.

Gust shouted “I see something!” and we saw him fly a little further ahead of where we were traveling before coming back.  “Its them!” he called, circling around to go back that way.  The rest of us, excited, ran from the shelter and up over the dune that had concealed them.  We had been one dune away for the last few minutes.  How frustrating!

I was halfway down the dune when I noticed Gust bending over one of the others.  Then I noticed that all of the members of the hunting pack were laying down.  My heart froze and despite the heat I felt a chill run down my back.  No... I thought, No...it can’t be... but as I came near the first prone form- a member of the pack I knew by name but did not know very well- I knew it was not impossible.  He was dead.

My heart stopped for a moment.  I could not breathe.  I could scarcely think.  My mind was filled with a static haze because the only thought that formed was my daughter out here, one of the dead hunters and my mind could not cope with that reality.

“Plateau!” I heard a voice shout from a great distance, “Plateau! Moon Beam’s here! She’s alive!”

My head snapped in the direction of the voice.  It was Gust and he had flared his wing over one of the hunters laying on the ground, shading her.  I ran over, a new energy in my limbs.  My heart pounded and I felt water start to fill my eyes.

I slid to a stop beside them and knelt down.  My daughter!  She was breathing, but very faintly.  I touched her head with my paw and felt her to be as hot as the sand upon which she lay.  Urgently, my eyes flared with magic power and I removed one of the waterfilled canteens tied around my neck.  I splashed some on her face then turned her head gently with my paw to pour some into her mouth.

“Moon Beam,” I whispered, “Moon Beam can you speak?”  She did not say anything but she did swallow the water I slowly splashed in her mouth. She would live, but I knew I needed to cool her down.

“Are there any others?” I asked Gust as I began to magically form poles from the sand, fusing them into rigid structures.

“I’m checking,” Gust said as he walked over to another fallen sphinx.

“Form a shelter over any survivors!” I yelled to the other three who were walking from sphinx to sphinx, “Splash some water on them and pour slowly into their mouths.  They are severely dehydrated and overheated!”

I looked back down at my daughter as the shade provided by the sand sheet propped up by the poles protected her from the direct heat. Carefully, I splashed more water along her body to try and aid her in cooling down.  I pushed through her dense main to pour some water at her neck.  I needed to be very careful though; wasting what little water we had left would help nobody.  As it was, we were going to be hard pressed to make it to the oasis.

But Moon Beam was alive!  A great weight had been removed from my chest when I saw her breathing, but she was not out of harms way yet and I needed to stay focused.  Not just for her sake, but for everyone’s.  Of the two dozen hunters, only seven were still alive when we found them, and two more passed while we tried to cool them off.  We moved the five survivors together under shade and moved the dead together, laying them down in more honorable positions.  The desert would devour them in its own time.

As the sun moved through the sky we adjusted the shelter to keep the light from them and sparingly gave them more water, allowing ourselves to go thirsty for the time being.  Gust went back into the sky to check if there were any oases nearby, but returned to no avail.

A miracle came at a most unexpected time.  When the sun was at its lowest and the wall of sand we erected as keeping it’s light off of us and the slowly recovering survivors of the hunting party, I could see stars starting to twinkle in the sky on the opposite end of the sky.

“Look!” I said in an awed voice.  The stars were returning! And every minute that passed more became visible.

“The stars!”

“And the moon!”

“The moon!” We all shouted in delight as it rose from the opposite end of the sky.  Once it fully became visible the sun had fully vanished and all of its light had gone.  We could feel the air cooling as we gave great shouts of joy.  The moon was returning!  The hell we had all gone through was over!

“Wait, what’s that?” one of the others asked.  We looked at him and he was looking at the moon.  We looked back at the moon and for a moment I had no idea what he was talking about.  But then I saw the odd shadow across the once pure bright surface.  There was a figure upon the moon; a shadow.  Something rearing its head with a protrusion from one end.

It was the Moon Queen, or at least her profile.  I gaped at the image of our creator upon the moon, and at an impulse I bowed towards it.  I was not alone; all of us standing were bowing towards the moon.

“What is this omen?”

“A sign of fortune!  She is going to oversee our journey back to the pack!”

“Yes,” I agreed, “A good omen.  The moon and darkness returns and the Moon Queen has heralded it.  She banished the bright heat and saved us.”

“Not yet,” Gust said, “We are still low on water, and we will have a hard time making it back to the pack..”

Or what’s left of it. I thought grimly.

“Let’s go.  Our pack will be waiting at the oasis by now.  Gust, go back into the sky and keep an eye out for enemy packs or allies.  The rest of us will carry someone on our backs until they are strong enough to walk at pace.”

I lifted my daughter onto my back, comforted by the sound of her breathing and her occasional muttered words to me.  I told her to stay silent and conserve her strength.  Now that the air was cooling to normal temperatures she would recover sooner.  We all started back the way we had come.  The return of the stars was also a return of our ability to navigate, and we traveled much faster now that the sand was a familiar, comfortable silver.

It took hours for us to regain the distance traveled to find the hunters, and hours more to catch our first glimpse of our pack.  Moon Beam and the others had recovered enough to walk on their own about halfway back and we all split the last of the water we had with us.  Now we were all incredibly thirsty and in dire need of water, but the oasis was within sight and we knew our thirsts would soon be quenched by the fresh water of the oasis.

Or so I thought.

I found my wife and son sitting together with a few members of the pack.

“Where are the others?” I asked when I was close to them.  They both looked up at me with surprise and joy, but neither moved.  I saw they were both trembling.  I told them that Moon Beam was safe and resting before I asked my question again.

“They...they all...” Granule began to say.

“Only a few of us made it this far.” Dust finished.  I gaped at her.  I had thought they would have trouble without enough water, but for all save a half dozen of the pack to die on the way from dehydration?

“We were attacked,” My wife continued, as if reading my thoughts.  My surprised expression could only have grown more surprised.

“Attacked?” I asked.

“Yes.” she said.  “Another pack swarmed us.  They wanted our water and they killed everyone who tried to stop them.  Once they took all of our possessions they left. Those that were not dead were hurt more than we could help, and the heat made us keep moving without them.”  Her voice was weak and it hurt to hear her speak like this.  It almost sounded as though she had died in the attack; she seemed impassioned and distant.

“Then we got here,” My son entered the conversation.  He, at least, had feeling in his voice.  He was scared though, I could hear that very clearly.  “We weren’t the only pack to get here.  A large one, I-I think it’s Sand Storm’s pack, were here first a-and attacked anyone who tried to get too close.  They wouldn’t even let us in the shade of the trees.  Th-they said that w-with so many sphinxes coming, th-the water would be used up.”

“So you haven’t had a drink since you were attacked?” I asked.

“Before then, even,” Dust answered, “We were rationing as best we could manage.  Our turn was just after the attack.”

“Wait here.” I said, angry.  I was as thirsty as I had ever been in my life, but I would bite off my own tail before letting my family go thirsty.  I stalked towards the oasis, and as my son had said, I was stopped by two stout and powerfully built sphinxes.  I told them that my family needed water but they refused to let me go further.  I told them about my pack’s predicament but they did not care one bit.

I left them be; they were both bigger and stronger than I was, and they did not appear to be as near utter dehydration as me.  I could not take them alone, nor did I think the few able in my back could help me if those two had their friends come to their aide.  But everyone could.

I traveled around the oasis, speaking to every sphinx I could find, finding any pack leaders present who were sharing my pack’s problem.  I proposed to them all that I would travel to the other packs and form a joint force of all who were able to fight to remove Sand Storm’s pack from the oasis, and one by one they all agreed.

All of the fighters joined me on the north side of the oasis.  Without preamble, I charged forward and I heard the patter and hiss of paws moving across sand.  A small handful of guards emerged from the trees of the oasis but retreated once they saw our sheer numbers.  I breached the treeline and continued running to the water.

The fighting happened while I was unconscious.  A blow to the head from a massive paw I had not seen.  I came to to the sounds of roaring and shouting and screaming.  I saw bleeding bodies everywhere and sphinxes fighting each other in the sand and in the sky through the treetops.  But when I looked up through the leaves, winged sphinxes were not the only thing I saw.  I also saw the sky, and the absence of stars on one end.

“No...” I said, forcing myself to stand up.  My head throbbed from the effort and I felt a burning sensation on myside. I looked and saw blood; I had been bitten.  But I could not linger on that; I needed to get out of the trees.  I walked towards the starless side of the sky and emerged.  Those who were not fighting were standing around looking at me.  They heard the sounds of fighting from behind me, within the oasis, and saw my state and were afraid taht we were losing.  I honestly did not know.

I looked over and beyond them.  To the glowing red haze in the distance, and the small bulge of light that was growing.

“No...” I said again. The light was returning.  The darkness was fading.  I stared at it for minutes as the light became brighter and brighter.  Soon those who were looking at me noticed it and turned as well.  Cries of terror and rage sounded in the silence.

Silence?

“Plateau!” a voice called from behind me.  I turned and saw Gust limping towards me. “Plateau! We did it!  Sand Storm is dead and his pack has fled.  We've won!”

“No...” I said as light flared up behind me. I saw my shadow cast over his surprised expression.  “No, we didn’t.”

~*~*~

Dune Sea closed the book quickly and held her breath.  She’d heard someone walking by and did not want to be caught unawares.  The pawsteps passed and she breathed again.  This is a good book. she thought as she levitated it into her pack leaning against the wall.  She put her pack back on and left, not wanting to be found stealing library property.  It was a good book, but not worth having her paws chewed off by sandlions.