She who has no heart...

After some further walking with me trodding behind, almost running as the  large and  muscular soldiers marched ahead, marching after the soldiers that were on horseback,  we came to the sacred cave. The cave where the Oracle had been born. 

I gazed at the large ancient cave farther in the horizon. Mystic old and deserted, as if it was a place of death where the living would never dare to visit.

"Here we are boys! The prey awaits us on the other side of that stone cave!" The prince smirked arrogantly as he proceeded into the haunted and deserted land. It was the last smile he would ever make. "Come on," he commanded his commander and other soldiers to follow. Poor  me remained pasted on my spot. The sword in my hand was shaking;  the sweat on my face was vivid. The sun now lay low in the horizon.  Her rays were spilled on the warm sands illuminating them, toning them a beautiful golden brown which faded slowly into a grey ashy colour. She lay low sinking into the west until a few stars became visible, announcing the dawning of dusk. I took a few  further steps, My foot in it's metal coated boot sunk in the shallow sands of the ground. That's when I knew something was wrong. I was afraid for a reason. Something within me was warning me   of the awaited dangers that lay before us. Dangers of futures pasts, repeated. Fears of past people that had materialized into a reality after witnessing whatever me and my core soldiers were fated to  see on this very night.   Realities that had now become legendary lores foretold around fires in the evenings when families had their meals. Lores sung by priests to each other in a bid to find a solution to the infamous curse. 

 "Hey there!  You little scrawny one! Why do you just stand there? Have you somehow lost your composure in the face of courage?" One lead soldier  grunted at me  from a distance as the rest roared out in laughter. 

"If the legend is true, then that silly jinn, demon, dead spirit is no match for me,"  the prince began to say. The very last words he would ever utter; because in that moment a sandstorm rose and engulfed all that were before me. Leaving them lying on the ground. The horses fled the scene in every direction.

The ground roared, as if with rage. Something seemed to have collapsed beneath as it curved in. It became quicksand. The bodies of the soldiers began sinking into the sands. Their haunting screams, (although not louder than mine as I had been the one to witness the terror) would  forever be engraved in my memory, permanently.

I watched in horror as the sand burned into their skin, their bodies smoked and  glowed red in the moonlight. Some were engulfed in flames. I watched them quickly burn to skeletons. I was so horrified in

 that moment. The first thought that came to my mind was to help them, but my own fear and weakness became my weakness. I wanted to flee.  The people that once were, the people I had come marching alongside, the very people I had known for so many months had perished into nothing but hot ashes. I watched the prince and a few soldiers try to crawl away from the sinking lot. The prince's lower body had been totally burned off, legs and all.  Then the legend turned out to be true! She walked out of the storm that had calmed itself and there she was in the distance, but I could still perceive her full form vividly and her words. She looked around.  

"Oh, pathetic. One more load to my army of the non living." She said, then she  chucked afterwards. "They  call me the princess of   sandstorms! The Queen of fire. I am hell itself for no  man survives my punishment. Hear that you lousy  arrogant prince? " She said as  she walked towards him and held his cheeks with her long thin fingers. Her pointed nails dug into his skin. He lay there only mumbling nonsense and grunting. He was in utter pain. "Whhhho arrrre you!". He grunted in terror, in disbelief, in agony, weakly, his voice came out almost a whisper.

" They call me all those names, but who am I really?" She gazed at him thoughtfully. "I am Ramona the stone hearted, Ramona of the Kamuri desert. I will take your life; flesh and soul, for mine was taken from me unjustly." She said coldly.

"Save....me!" he uttered slowly.

"I could lessen your  pain," she said with a devious look on her face, as she circled him, her golden anklets ringing and sparkling in the moonlight. Her feet bare. "I could give you your form back, I could restore your lost integrity,  would you like that my dear prince?" She said as she stooped to his eye level. He nodded, while mumbling something and bubbles of smoke escaped his mouth. 

"No!" She said at last. He let out a last expression of desperation, his face went from red to pale as if all the blood had been drained from it. "Your heart carries a heavy bale, called sin;  vanity leads your life," She began as she once again circled him. I could feel her eyes poking at me from the corners of their sockets as soon as I came  into her view but something on that day prevented me from running at that moment. It's like a sort of heavy burden overtook me, as if boulders had been placed on my shoulders to drag me back and chains had been placed around my ankles to prevent me from walking. 

 "And arrogance  is within you and that, I despise  most, but  you shall become what you want to be, you will be an idol of molten rock." She continued to  say as he melted before my very eyes, mixed  with the sands in that spot. 

Suddenly, my body felt light, as if it was no longer bound by that heaviness. I ran as fast as I could going into the direction we had come from. There was nothing in sight that could shield me from her eyes.  Nothing except the barrenness of the land; bareness. I almost fell over my sword, which would have ended my life there and then but some force saved me from my accidental fate. 

 The sands had  roared again at the hand of her rage;aa a sandstorm lifting me up in the air at that very moment.   I was distraught. My time had come yet I was still young, only twenty five years old. I landed farther away, from where I had been initially standing.

"Tsk, tsk." She sounded nearer to me, almost behind me. How did she get to me so fast? "Such a waste, dying at your own hands, killed by your own fear, soldier." She said as her anklets rang in a mysterious way, as if they weren't even sounding from this realm. "You see, men are killed by their own fears, and lack of  courage and faith in their own survival,  us demons feed on that fear which makes us stronger. No wound can make one mortal. Too sad that only a few are  wise enough to know this truth.". She smiled at me. "What I did there, courageous soldier, was save you from wastage." She mocked me , poking fun at my cowardice,  as she knelt on the shaking ground without losing her balance; before me  on one knee  and offered me her beautiful hand. I cowered before her because all I could hear then was my voice begging for the very life I had almost taken.  "Spare me! please! I do not seek to kill you nor harm you." 

"Go on, take my hand!" She said, which I did out of fear. 

"Soldier, You think you can harm me?" She drew her face closer to mine. I did not  feel her breath as one would when having a closer encounter with another human being, I only felt a sort of nauseating feeling, as if the woman kneeling in front of me was something so surreal, so frightening. I could tell she smelled my fear. Her facial expressions were as if she could read my mind.  She felt my pain, she knew my weaknesses and from then on, I was victim to her mind games. My fate lay in her hands, whether she would keep me, kill me or let me go. After all, she had ruthlessly annihilated the army, and it's commander along with the prince. Why would she spare me?  Why had she kept me alive and had not killed me yet?  I knew from then that fate  might have tried a cruel joke on me but maybe destiny did not want me to perish along with those individuals. It was not yet my time. 

"How do you harm someone who has no physical form?" Her 

yes widened as  she helped me up with one hand, I felt it; the sensation of skin, and flesh but when attempting to pick up my weapon,   her    hand went through the sword, which now stood with the pointy part  pointing up at the  starry sky. How? 

"Tell me," she continued, "how do you kill she who bears no mortality?" She said coldly as I shuddered at the fact of hearing her tell  me she was dead. I was also stumbling as the sand-quake continued,  the ground was burning through my leather shoes. My armor was getting hot, I was sweating, profusely.  She just chuckled. 

"You love your life don't you? Is there maybe a reason for you to fear death this much, to not want to perish like other valiant men who die brave at war?" She had asked me to encircle her. I could smell her sinister plans for me, I did not like what was happening to me. "Tell me soldier, you love your life? Why do you wish to live? It's a test and if you don't answer correctly then i will deem you unworthy of your own life!" She said coldly and mercilessly and continued.

"I see you're confused. You and your army walked a demon's  turf and now you're the only prey left surrounded by the hunteress! I caught my prey, your life is mine now, prove to me that you don't deserve the same fate as your friends and the prince over there!" She said as she gazed in the spot where he had been. "Well down there!" She said, motioning her eyes   on the ground.

"I just follow orders miss." I stammered. I came here 

at the command of the king…" 

"Shut up!  Whom are you calling miss? I am the Princess of the desert, I am the maker of sandstorms, the Queen of hell fire!!" She screamed again as the winds blew stronger and the ground shook some more to the point that I felt the world was spinning. "Say my name mundane! Say my name." 

I repeated after her, chanting the names she had spit from her venomous mouth. 

"Please," I cowered at her feet," please make it stop!" 

She had a look of pleasure on her face. "You want it to stop? It's okay my love, I would but I'm not the one doing this," she walked towards me and whispered in my ear. "You see,  every being bears the power to control the spiritual forces of nature! You just have to b in touch with your inner self!" She said as she motioned her eyes at me.I was gazing into emerald dazzling eyes when she smiled and spoke as if she read my mind. "Shut yours!" I was scared of this demon I neither knew nor trusted. But she drew even closer and shut my eyes with her hand. "Now the desert is beneath your feet,  tell her storms  to calm." She said. I thought I did. I knew she was responsible for this but I just thought of the desert calm and it did calm. The raging sands settled. "See!" She continued.  " I like you, much, mundane!" I like you very much that why when I very first laid eyes on you I decided you would be  the only one out of three hundred to survive my rage. You remind me of a lover I once had but lost." She said as she caressed my cheek. "Don't ever tread these sands! Ever again!" That is how my life got saved on that very day. I had lived. My cowardice, my lack of courage, my love for life it's self  had saved my very own life. I remember her chanting, some romantic song that aroused love feelings within me and also increasing my fear because i thought I had been tricked. I would phase in and out of consciousness  for some time and I remember being in the actual cave,  surrounded by treasure, I remember her feeding me with rich foods that were only fit for a king. I would wake up in the  morning on  the outskirts of the city.

She  was not always this evil. The world made her what she was  today. She became what she was   because of the vain  and the greedy, the scornful and the unjust. Her reign of terror prevailed in the kingdom.   To know my story  of how I came to witness such things in only twenty five years of my life, you have to go back from the very  beginning...