Malzahar Story: The Nothingness Gospel

"Brothers. Sisters. My flock. I see we have grown since last we spoke. This is wonderful. Welcome, you disheartened, you castaway, you forlorn. Welcome, those of you who yearn freedom from this cruel reality, whose tranquility has been shattered by the blinding otherness of existence.

Welcome..."

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"You're welcome," Al'zahar hissed painfully to that ungrateful younger brother, who had just kicked him in the shin for yanking him away from the rocky outcropping he had started climbing on. He had the vision this morning at breakfast, the sight of a vile serpent biting his brother, who would succumb to the poison. He had said nothing about it because he knew the moment he did, his brother would do everything in his power to prove him wrong.

"What is it THIS time?!" Hazzim cried out, frustration evident in his face. Six years old, eyes curled and wiry, skin bronzed by the desert sun. He would have died a hundred deaths already in the harsh wastes already.

"Snake," Al'zahar answered offhandedly as he struggles to keep the wriggling rebel under control. He eventually stops and slumps in defeat.

Hazzim begins crying. "You never let me do anything."

"Anything can get you killed."

"Well what if I want to? You might as well let me die, the way you treat me! It's not fair!"

"Don't you dare talk like that!" Al'zahar shouted, "You are far too young to be thinking such grim thoughts!"

"I've seen plenty of people die already. I'm old enough! It's just another thing you've kept me from doing!"

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"They've kept you leashed, haven't you? And you ran. You ran because it was too brutal. You ran because there was no winning. You ran, because to do otherwise is to be insane. Your countries trample over you, brutalize you, claim to care for you yet care only to claim you as theirs. They are a body that exists against your consent, one that intrudes on your lives at every turn. You came here now to learn that you-"

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"-alone," Fuad explains to his eldest son. "Plenty of people have undergone the Prophet's Testament."

"And all of those people are dead," Al'zahar complains bitterly. "Our tribe is dying, father! Let me live without the burden of this tradition."

"You will carry it," Fuad demands. "You will carry it as your mother did. You will carry it as your grandfather, and all your ancestors as far back as the forgotten homeland did. You will do this because it is our purpose, and because without this, we cannot hope to survive. The prophetic vision has pointed us to precious water, warded us away from dangers, and directed us toward our destiny, and you are the single most gifted seer I have ever heard of! By the sands, Al'zahar, you predicted your own mother's death!"

"And it robbed me of her affection. Should I tell you your fate, father?" Al'zahar snarls.

A backhanded slap. The stifling, choking silence.

"You will accept this," Fuad says, "or I will give it to someone who will."

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"They hear your anguish, you know. It is what they understand best. Their entirety is a constancy of agony. Imagine, a great wall of nails rubbing against your skin and no matter where you turn they only rub deeper and deeper. They want it to end. They want this to end. They want us to end... but if that thought fills you with dread, then you have either misunderstood your reason for coming here... or have made a very terrible mistake. Yes, I see you. WE SEE YOU. YOU INTRUDE UPON OUR HERALD. YOU THOUGHT TO HIDE FROM US. HUBRIS! TAKE THEM, OUR CHILDREN! TAKE THEM BEFORE THEY LEAVE! WE DEMAND-"

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"Sacrifice..." Al'zahar mumbles, his eyes flashing, trying to open yet failing at every turn. A fresh tattoo of a third eye bleeds over his forehead. The venom was wearing out. It was expected, of course. It had been diluted just enough to spare his life.

"You will thank me," Fuad says as he finishes the tattoo. "You will thank me when your second sight reveals the path. You will thank me when you save your brother and father from danger time and time again. You will thank me."

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"When the world is naught but ashes, you will thank me. When madness takes those who refused to bow, you will thank me. And when blissful oblivion finally takes you as it must all of us eventually, you will thank me then, too. This is what you wanted, after all. To end it. End it all. Properly. But it is not insanity. It is destined. It is fated. It is inevitable."

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"It was inevitable," Al'zahar remarks coldly, the dagger dripping blood in his hands. His father wheezes, clutching his chest.

"How... dare you..." Fuad snarls. "I am your father!"

"Wrong," Al'zahar responds. "You think you are my father, but you are not. I saw it. In a vision, I saw it. You sell me to slavers because you discover I am not your child. You find poems mother wrote, poems not meant for you. Poems wishing to be free of you."

Fuad's face is murderous rage, the face of a man who could not refute what he was told.

"You sell me to spite mother's memory and to line your pockets. You take Hazzim and vent your frustration on him through numerous, unnameable crimes. You force him to become your new prophet. He fails. He dies. You die. Alone."

Fuad shakes his head, his rage turning to disgust and then horror. "Lies... mad lies! Your visions have twisted you!"

Al'zahar stares in sheer disbelief. "Hypocrite," he whispers. "Hypocrite. You hypocrite. You believed in these powers and now, when the truth proves too much, you shy away and scream 'lies'! You think my visions false! SEE THEM FOR YOURSELF!"

He locks eyes on Fuad. The awful things he witnessed superimposed themselves over Fuad's senses. He wasn't in the tent anymore. He was outside, starving and drunk on fermented milk, his clothes tattered. He enters the tent. Sees his son. His real son. A distraction.

The sins this man witnesses himself do shatter him.

He screams, reaching for his eyeballs and plucking them out with fierce denial. It does nothing. The visions only sharpen. He has only shuttered the windows of the soul, and now he was trapped inside with it.

He runs from the tent, laughing and crying and whooping madly, ripping his clothes off as he made for the cold. midnight desert sand. Al'zahar quietly watches him go. Quietly, he goes to tell his brother what has happened. They can do things differently now.

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"They came to me then. They told me he had chased after the man who called himself my father. I chased after him, of course. He was all I had left. To this day, I have no inkling what happened to him. But I know he is dead."

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He must have been running for days on end with no food or water. He was lost. Had to be. The camel had died of exhaustion. The supplies had run out. He knew where his brother had gone. The visions told him so. There, on the sand, a sandal print just his size! Keep going.

He was all he had left.

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"He had gone there. He had gone to Icathia."

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All things he had perceived as normal and possible dissolved when he crested that dune. The warped, ravaged wound in the world that roiled with graceful violence. A writhing, undulating glow. The sky was blotted. No gods shone here. No laws ruled. Only chaos.

He is here. He has gone here.

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"I followed."

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AND THEN WE FOUND HIM. WE SHOWED HIM THE TRUTH. EVERYTHING HE HAD SEEN HAD LED HIM HERE TO US. EVERY PAIN, EVERY ANGUISH, EVERY JOY, EVERYTHING THAT WAS BORN OF THIS WORLD WAS AT FAULT. HIS REALITY WAS CRUEL. HIS FUTURE WAS CRUEL. WE SHOWED HIM THE DEATH OF EVERYTHING. AND THEN WE SHOWED HIM WHAT WOULD COME AFTER.

PEACE.

A UNIFORMITY. A HARMONY. THINGS AS THEY WERE AND AS THEY SHOULD BE AND AS THEY SHALL BE. THAT WHICH EXISTED BEFORE EXISTENCE. BLISSFUL OBLIVION.

THE VOID.

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"Hazzim. My father. My mother. My ancestry. Nothing mattered anymore. Nothing but what I had been shown. A universe where parents do not sell their children to slavery, where victims need not feel the whip of abuse, where the disparity of our wants and the expectations of others is as important as a fleeting dream. Those who know of me claim that it was the Void that twisted me. No. It was this world. This unnatural, angry, oppressive, self-loathing world. It is to blame for this. It is to blame for us. The Void will wipe it clean. So help us, brothers and sisters. Help us put this sad story to sleep. The Void is hungry, and we shall feed it."