The Knight and the Efreet Pt. 01

"Slay the Jade Knight and look what happens." He laughed.

Not only was Elyas dead now, but Alisaundre had no idea where he was even at.

Continuing his walk, he was somewhat startled when he saw the carcasses of animals strewn out, and this only made him want to get out of the desert even more than what he already wanted.

"I'd be better off removing my armor." He sighed.

But then he'd have to worry about an unexpected attack, and if he was without his armor, he'd be leaving himself wide open for his enemies and would no doubt be killed that way. Not a smart move to take off his protection.

He walked and he walked.

The sand truly did seem endless, because no matter how far he walked, there was only more sand to mock him and his fading hope to be out of the hot sands.

Coming to an end of the hill of red sand, Alisaundre, not being as careful as he should have, and his attention with his thoughts, which were flashing back and forth between Elyas, the ship, and King Arthus, fell down and rolled down the hill of red sand, tumbling on downward to more sand.

"Great.." He stared at the sky.

Alisaundre pushed himself up with the strength of his arms, shook the red sand off of his well-polished plate-mail, and took one step forward, only to realize, much to his own chagrin, that, ahead of him, was nothing but more mocking red sand, and still no sign of any type of city.

He continued on.

Alisaundre pressed on through the desert, and as he came towards a dead tree, he was about to continue on, when suddenly a startling sight unfolded before his own eyes.

Ahead of him, he saw the sands start to give shape, and the red sands were actually parting as if something was riding from them. The longer Alisaundre stared, the more he saw a dark shadow emerging from beneath the sand.

"What in the.."

Finally, something started to emerge.

As the sands continued to part, Alisaundre watched as a giant creature, a gold spider with red eyes, rose from the ground and stared straight on ahead at him. It was just as big as the sea monster that he and Elyas had fought back on the ship on their way to the Jade Knight...And looked twice as deadly and lethal.

"So...The beasts of the sands has come to test my strength." He quietly spoke to himself.

The spider crept near, and lunged two legs out at him, in an attempt to ensnare him.

Alisaundre swayed out of the way, but tripped over his own two feet, tumbling into the sand to the left while the giant gold spider crept quickly towards him, making a hissing sound while it closed the distance between them.

"If I don't stay on my toes.." Alisaundre rolled out of the way.

The spider's legs dug into the sand, pushing up sand into the air while turning its eery gaze back towards the knight who was drawing his sword from his scabbard and held it firmly in his hand while he rose back up to his feet, standing up straight.

Alisaundre slowly circled around the spider; clutching his sword tightly in his hand, and his dark brown eyes staring deeply into the yes of the golden spider while he prepared to strike back at the giant.

He ran towards the spider, kicking up sand while they both rushed towards one another, and just as the spider launched a huge web at him, moved towards the left, and struck at its front left leg; slicing a golden leg right off, causing the spider to let out a loud screech and lurch back; hissing again, opened its mouth, and shot out another powerful web.

Alisaundre rushed out of the way of the web, and then, preparing another attack, was knocked backwards with impressive force, and hit one of the mountains of blood red sand, dropping his sword as he went flying.

He hit the sand with an 'ungh', and rose up just as the golden spider started speedily drawing towards him; closing the gap between them.

"Even after losing a leg, you still persist." Alisaundre grabbed his shield from his side.

Webbing flew right towards him, but Alisaundre rose his silver, cross patterned shield up, and blocked the web as it came towards him, only to have the buckler ripped out of his hand and tossed aside into the sand, several inches away, where he would be unable to reach for it in time to block another attack.

The spider stood in front of him, and moved its face towards him, nearing its fangs towards him, but Alisaundre brought his sword up, and thrust it into the giant's throat, impaling it and drawing crimson as a result as the spider cried.

The spider transformed into a woman with rotting flesh; half of which had already fallen off her grayish face, and her hair was mostly missing, while a few white, stray strands hung from her scalp, and she was missing her left eye, while her right, although remaining intact, was completely colorless. She was dressed in a tattered brown dress that showed off parts of the curves of her rotting breasts, and was torn at the legs, shoulders and sides.

The hideous woman was missing her left arm, and was bleeding from her throat which had been impaled. After she gazed at Alisaundre for a few brief moments, she let out a deathly shriek that almost shook his nerves, then hobbled along into the red desert.

"What is this forsaken place?" Pondered an uneasy Alisaundre.

He noticed there was no longer any sunlight, and that it was in fact, night time. The stars and the moon were his only light now. It was all he had left to help him find his shield. And if there were anymore creatures like that out in the desert, he would surely he needing what little equipment he had.

After finding his shield, Alisaundre strapped the shield back to his side, then continued through the desert; sweat dropping down his armor even despite the sun being gone.

"I can't keep walking through this." He wiped his face with his gauntlet.

He was kicking up sand and pressing on, trying to stay optimistic, even though he was surely losing his patience, until he reached the and of another sand hill and just collapsed onto the ground. He let his face hit the blistering sands and pounded his fists into the grains; over and over punching it in a fit.

"WHY?" He burst; moving his eyes upward to the sky.

"Why have you forsaken ME?"

He let his face hit the sand again, and growled.

"I've done nothing but live by your word to the best of my ability! I've mistakes, but I'm only bloody human! Am I being punished?" His teeth clenched together while his volume rose.

"Curses! Bloody curses!"

Wandering the sands only to end up at a dead end.

The whole desert was doing nothing but pointing its fingers at him laughing with mockery at his misfortune.

"To think I'm to die here.." His time dropped

Dry laughter escaped his lips while he sunk his gauntlets into the sand and let the grains fall between his fingers. To think, even after all the fights he had fought, the wars he had battled, the heat and dehydration the desert was inflicting upon him was going to be his death.

"Curse this forsaken LAND!" He pounded harder into the sand.

"Curse it ALL!"

Alisaundre just shook his head; punching the sand again, again and again in a fit of rage and frustration over his current situation.

"What's the point?" He tonelessly murmured.

As he fell to his face in the sand; his breastplate meeting with the bright red sands, and his eyes stared driftingly ahead. As he stared ahead, abandoning all hope of ever getting out of the desert, his gaze took in the image of what appeared to be a town beautiful made out of shinning gold.

"Have I gone mad?" He pushed his hands against the sands.

Alisaundre forced himself up, and staggered towards the city at a slow pace.

Why would there be a town out I'm the middle of such a horrid place? No one could possibly hope to survive under such harsh conditions as what this place offered. So why would a town be waiting around the corners of such a place? It made no sense.

The battles he had been through, and the cruel trickery of the desert, had taken its toil on the knight, and by this point, it was a wonder Alisaundre could even move; given the clear signs his body was giving him that it had exhausted itself.

But if that really was a town, which he was positive that it was, a few days worth of rest at the local inn, and some bread and water, would do him plenty of good, as far as recovering his strength went.

Slowly, the sights of unblemished, perfectly polished gold came closer into view. He was almost there. He only had a little further to go.

He walked, walked and walked; forcing his nearly unresponsive legs to continue onward while he traveled through the desert; his eyes watching the town that was now only moments away from him.

He reached the city; now standing in front of it, but when he reached the town, about to take his first few steps into the city, Alisaundre watched as it transformed before his very eyes; going from a town of completely gold, to red like flame, and the ground went from being sand, to igneous rock and magma. Curiouser, however, was that the sky and clouds were red and orange; further added to the flame-like theme and almost made it look like the sky was on fire.

As he tried to remain calm and levelheaded, he noticed a series of fiery red, eerie, marble temples.

"Did I crossover into Hell?" He stared on ahead.

How was what he was seeing even possible?

He was just in the desert which he had shipwrecked into, and suddenly he stepped foot into the underworld? What was going on?

Any person would be terrified stiff if they were seeing this, or, rather, if they had seen HALF of what Alisaundre had seen. If it wasn't for the mental training he had gone through, which was the second most important training he had been in next to his training in combat and defense, Alisaundre would have broken by this point.

"What now?" He gazed around. "I can't turn back.."

If he did turn back, that surely be a death sentence, because if the desert's harsh environment didn't finish him off, that strange creature would, if she had survived.

And who was to say there wasn't more hideous creatures just like her, roaming the desert?

"I have no choice," he made his approach towards the cathedrals. "I must."

Survival in the desert was foolish to even think about.

But then, looking at the land before him, the hellish temples, hit magma and igneous, he had to really wonder; would survival be any different inside one of those temples? And why was there temples but not a single inn, shop or house?

Alisaundre went along; hobbling through the area and following a path of igneous rocks that led him straight towards the center temple, drawing away from the other two that was on his left and right. Once he had drawn near to the entrance, he quickly turned around as magma shot up from the ground, and sighed while he stared blankly at the magma.

Alisaundre averted his gaze from the magma, and continued towards the temple.

The temple was composed of three towers, with a total of fifty, fire red marble pillars holding it up, and inscriptions from a language that he didn't understand.

"Something about this place.." He stared at the temple, "just doesn't seem right."

The closer he got to the temple, the more eerie the air seemed to become.

Something was telling him to turn back, but then, what good would turning back do him? He had just came from an endless desert. He truly did have nowhere else to go by this point.

As he approached the temple, his dark brown eyes stared at a bronze door with the same inscriptions on the door that was on the walls of the temple.

Alisaundre reached for the door knocker, pulled on it, and, much to his surprise, it opened.

"This is ridiculous." He lowered his eyebrows.

As the doors noisily slid open, Alisaundre rested his his hand on his scabbard; already becoming cautious and suspicious of this absurdity.

He entered the temple.

Immediately upon entering, the door closed behind him with an even more obnoxious noise than when it had creaked open. He turned to look behind him, but it was too late; the door had closed and he doubted he could get it back open.

Alisaundre turned back around to gaze on ahead, and saw more inscriptions on the walls of the temple, and even a few strange drawings that he couldn't decipher what they were, or their meaning.

He continued deeper.

Sweat ran down his face and his shinning armor while he pushed on. Even though he had yet to see any fire inside of the temple that he was now wandering around in, aside from small lit torches, Alisaundre felt like he was being burned alive. It was even worse than when he was out in the desert.

The temple was fairly dark, but a few torches that had lit the way granted him enough light to see where he was going, and allowed him to see the fiery tint that the temple had.

The inscriptions on the walls only continued, and as they did, as Alisaundre went further into the temple and watched them, he saw more images on the walls, and soon he stopped when one of the drawings on the wall, the murals, caught his eye.

An image of a rather unattractive, and very much so ugly creature with all black skin, like coal, with wild, unkempt black hair, and hog-like tusks sticking out of its mouth. He assumed the creature on the mural was female, due for the fact it was naked with breasts, and to former support this, it was holding an equally ugly child up to its chest as if nurturing.

"What in the bleeding underworld is this?" His eyes hardened while he further narrowed his brows.

"Ever since I've arrived in this desert it's been NOTHING but nonsense!"

He turned away and started deeper into the cave.

As he drew deeper into the tunnel, the murals persisted, and more ugly female creatures were showing up on the wall.

"I don't understand." His frustration grew. "What does this mean?"

The pictures, they meant something, but what? He had never seen creatures like these, he didn't know what they were. Did the murals represent something?

Alisaundre resumed his walk into the temple.

The murals were only growing more startling, but he finally reached the end of the lengthily hall.

He arrived in what he could only assume was the 'main room'. He had only been in the temple for sixteen minutes, and already it went from agitating and queer, to downright disturbing.

There was pools of lava that looked more like blood than anything else, one on each side of him, with one on the right and one on the left.

There were strangely designed pillars that were the same shade as the blood-like lava, and the floor that he was on was hard and rough, with a deep burgundy color.

The ground split into four paths: And all except the one leading straight, led to the blood colored lava.

He took a few steps forward; and already the unsettling aura of the place was growing darker.

He noticed there was no ceiling, and there were a few places that looked like doors should be there, but didn't actually have any. He could see the red sky and clouds through where the sky should be.

He resumed exploring.

Alisaundre drew near the deep, pools, and upon further inspection, was horrified to find out, that wasn't lava at all! It was REAL blood!

"What kind of ungodly place is this?" He stare at the blood.

He started onward again; relieved that there was nothing else in the room but himself.

While he walked straight ahead towards another giant door, with this one bearing an engraving of a wicked looking spirit, he noticed a statue up above the door; high up towards the ceiling less sky.

"A demon?" He pondered.

It was a marble statue of a demon-like creature.

The statue looked far more scary than even the ones on the mural and its jaws were unhinged; with hundreds of rows of teeth hanging out, and six different eyes, with one eye being on its face as it rightfully should be, one set on the chest, and one set on the shoulders. And to complete the statue, the realistic sculpture had clawed feet, nails, and a pair of three inch bull horns.

Alisaundre wasn't sure whether to laugh, or actually be consumed with incurable fear.

He was starting to believe more and more that this was no ordinary temple, and that soon, soon he would be facing off the great, powerful and mighty Satan himself.

He averted his gaze from the statue and proceeded straight ahead towards the door.

Once he reached the door, he reached for the knocker and it opened automatically just like the first door that was leading right into the temple.

Alisaundre entered the next room, and the door behind him closed.

He was now in what looked like a dungeon. As he walked, he could see cells with shackles on the walls.

The floor was covered in pools of blood just like the other room he was just in, and even though they weren't so deep that his feet wouldn't touch the bottom, like the other room, the blood came up to the lower half of his shiny breastplate.

Pressing through the blood, he came towards a door that presumably led deeper into the dungeon.

"The only door in here is the one I just came through." He noted. "How in the world am I supposed to.." He laughed.

He came all this way just to reach a dead end.

By now, he was feeling shameful that the blood was starting to look good right about then.

If only he had drank from the oasis in the desert.

"What now?"

What now? It was a dead end. He had came all this way for nothing. He was about to give up, but then he remembered: A knight never gives up.

As he gazed around, he noticed glowing words appearing on the red walls of the bloody dungeon, and the words seemed to be speaking to him.

"If thou pulleth this from the sewer channel, thou shall surely findeth refuge."

He made his way towards the sewerage door, and sunk down into the blood, reached for the door, pulling on the bars of it, and pulled and pulled as hard as he could.

Still nothing.

"Pulleth harder!" The words appeared on the sewage door.

He pulled harder.

The sewage door came right off, and Alisaundre, holding it by the bars, threw it aside and headed into the dark tunnel; delving further into the room, heading into the sewer of the temple.

Dimly lit torches guided the way through the crimson of the sewer of the dungeon, and Alisaundre, who was feeling somewhat relieved of the heat until this point, was finding it becoming hot again.

Sweat was falling down his face while he sloshed through the blood, and for a moment, he was almost positive that he was seeing the walls starting to melt. But then they stopped melting.

He could see light from afar.

"At least I'll be our of here soon enough.." He half smiled.

He stopped his approach to the end of the tunnel when he was almost positive he heard something. He turned around to look behind him; nothing.

Alisaundre shrugged it off and resumed through the bloody sewer tunnel.

He heard the noise again; turned around to look, but still nothing. He turned back around and then just continued sloshing through the blood.

He heard the same sound again, and turned around to look, but once again saw nothing and just turned back around, continuing through the blood.

He walked and walked, and as the minutes ticked by, Alisaundre could see the end of the tunnel, and what awaited him on the other side was fire. There was nothing but fire on the other side of the tunnel.

He walked more; the two pillars that marked led to the wall of fire only a few feet away from him, but then he stopped when he heard that same sound from before again; coming from behind him. Alisaundre turned around, and as he did so, he watched as four strange creatures, each with faces that resembled sacks, spring up from the blood.

The creatures had small, miniature-sized teeth; and absurdly tiny eyes, which the blacks were mostly dominate over. Each one was naked, but was crotchless.