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 NIRMALA  The Daytime Ruler, The Vampire Queen ♫
The sand flows slowly through the slender neck of the glass, each grain hitting the bottom one at a time. Slowly, so excruciatingly slowly they fall; counting down towards some faraway outcome that won’t show itself until years in the future. What outcome awaits her kingdom? Death? Ruin? Glorious rebirth?
She cannot know, so she keeps watching and waiting and wanting - more.
Perhaps if she turns the hourglass on its head, she’ll be back to where it began - where her life began.
Maybe… she needs to go further back.
Back to when she was but a hatchling, a bundle of joy that represented her parents’ hopes and dreams. Back then, when she was happy.
---
Born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she’s her parents’ pride and joy. They watch over her so very carefully, and she can hardly take a walk outside of the outskirts of their kingdom without a full retinue following in her footsteps. And yet, her curiosity drives her far across the border.
For each year that passes by, she wanders further away, until her excursions find her deep into foreign territory, far away from her parents’ domain. The cold is freezing, further exacerbated by the chill wind turned storm that ambushes her. She flees underground, where the air is freezing but still. She burrows far under the surface, seeking refuge in underground passages hollowed out by centuries of spring floods.
It’s here, in a carved out alcove in the rock wall, that she comes across the hourglass. It’s a fine little creation; bulbs of pale blue glass carried by a slender skeleton of wrought gold. It’s very pretty and she marvels at its existence.
So lovely, so elegant… and so very frail.
The current running deep beneath the alcove roars as the snowstorm high above brings it to life. Thin streams of water run along the walls, carving out the mountain grain by grain. She can feel the freezing cold burrow deep into her bones.
...What is something like this doing in such a place?
The question swirling in her mind, she touches the rind of the hourglass and flips it around. The sand inside the glass is brought into motion and starts trickling downwards, and every thought is wiped from her mind. Utterly transfixed by the sight, her wide eyes track the motion of every grain. She gasps in wonder when the grain hits the bottom, the tiny plink reverberating inside her head.
They settle behind her forehead, these tiny sounds, reverberating and accumulating until they have grown to a roaring waterfall. Nirmala feels as if her skull will split in two and tries to intervene. Desperately, she rushes forward to knock the hourglass aside.
It doesn’t even budge. The gold framework has rooted itself deep into the solid rock foundation.
Next, she tries to use raw force and crush the thing. The moment her talons touch the gold it grows thorns and pierces them.
She howls in terror and pain and retreats to a corner, nursing her wounds as she watches the hourglass with suspicion. The roar in her head hasn’t quieted down and the small voice in her head that begs her to leave, to return home and seek aid, is ignored.
She cannot leave, despite wanting to.
Instead, she sits down and waits.
And waits. And waits. And waits.
When she gets up, the sand rests peacefully at the bottom of the hourglass and the thunder in her skull has quieted down. Her limbs are heavy and weary, like she’s worked for a week straight. Utterly exhausted, she crawls to the hourglass and gently places her hands around it, fearing the worst.
Nothing.
No roots. No thorns. No pain.
She carefully lifts it. Nothing happens. She places it in her pack. She needs to return home, show her parents and kingdom what she has discovered.
It’s a shame what she returns to.
---
It’s ruin. The pine forest hiding her kingdom from the eyes of those who would do her people harm; an ashen field.
The sweet little hamlet that had encircled the castle like a mother’s kind embrace; scorched by flame.
Her subordinates; bodies lying broken in the streets.
The castle her parents had built; a crumbling wreck.
Her loving and protective father; his mutilated body deep in the rubble, pierced by a spear.
Her mother; nowhere to be seen.
There are enemy soldiers, plundering and crawling over her dying kingdom like ants over a carcass. They’re still here, in her kingdom, stripping it off its wealth and dignity. She watches in shock, the sight before her eyes incomprehensible. How? Why?
When the soldiers catch sight of her, they are angered and spit at her father’s corpse. “So that old fool was lying - you’re alive after all. Looks like he was just out for blood”, they sneer. When they tie her up, she doesn’t make an attempt at resisting, her eyes fixed squarely upon her father’s broken form.
---
When she’s brought before the castle of her enemies, she confronts the situation with her head held high, marching through their front gate.
In her head she carries accusations, questions, demands and terms, but not a single one of those are allowed to leave her lips. They take one look at her, the royal survivor of the calamity they brought upon her kingdom, and call for the gaolers.
When they bind her in chains, coarse iron things that cut into her flesh, she keeps her composure, the very picture of nobility.
When they throw her in jail, in a filthy cell so cramped she can hardly turn around, she doesn’t allow herself to be ruffled. Instead, she asks for water, so that she may quench her thirst after the long journey.
When they throw the water in her face, laughing and jeering as they do, she licks her lips and thanks them for their generosity. She asks for food, so that she may ease the gnawing of her hungry belly.
When they hurl the food at her feet, stale and sour as it is, she leaves it out for the rats. They come in great numbers, that they do, and feast upon the rotten leftovers. Later on, she coaxes the same rats into her cell and stabs through their necks with her claws. She does not starve that day, nor the next.
The hourglass is the only thing left on her person. She finds it melded into her chest, and somehow the discovery neither scares nor disturbs her. Gripping it, it leaves the safe confines of her ribcage, lets go of her bone and flesh, and materializes in her hand, as pristine as the day she first found it. Without further ado, she turns the thing and dips into the ensuing roar the grains create in her head.
Each grain is like a path; like dew on a spider’s web, she can view the path each grain would place her on. Paths where she was never trapped by the hourglass; where her father was never driven to folly; where her mother is safe and present. Every time she tries to grip a grain, steer herself onto a new path, she’s wrenched back to the present.
With nothing left to occupy her time, she makes every attempt she can, and every one of them ends up fruitless. She worries about her mother, too, and asks the guards, if they seem sympathetic to her plight, if they have perhaps seen or heard of her. None have anything useful to tell her. And after a while, they seem almost startled when she asks, like they hadn’t noticed she was there. How strange that the guards who have been watching her since the day she arrived are confused by the sight of her? Or is she simply that forgettable to them?
One, two, three weeks pass by, each weakening her further. Halfway through the fourth week, through the bars of her cell door she meets the sharp gaze of an elegant figure, who comes bearing fine garb and a tiny key. The key unlocks the door, and the figure promptly strides down the hallway, calling back to her in a gentle voice and asking her ever so politely if she will follow.
She does. Through narrow corridors and vast halls they wander, each and every one of them bereft of life. They wander deep beneath the cellars of food, past the sewers, until they have wandered so deep Nirmala feels she’ll never see sunlight again.
Then, they have reached their destination, a cold room filled with all sorts of tools and implements. The figure’s robe is shed and an introduction is given. She is the princess of this castle and this is her lab and Nirmala is her rat.
---
As a rat, Nirmala bids adieu to her composure, her self-respect, her humanity. As a rat, she does not worry about these things. She retreats deep into her mind, where fire and knives and shadows given material form cannot reach her.
Her captor carves and molds her body into the image of her choosing - that of a vampire. As a vampire, Nirmala’s mind grows hands and feet of its own. As a vampire, through her mind’s eyes she can watch her captor flitter back and forth in the room, watch where she keeps her tools, and where she keeps the key. Her mind’s limbs are long and slender; they creep silently through the bars of her cage, across the floor beneath her captor’s unseeing eyes, and up to where the key is hanging on the wall.
It’s a heavy, rusty thing, but just like the tiny key her captor carried, this one, too, frees her from her cage. Once her captor has left, she unlocks her cage and crawls onto the freezing floor and into the most well-hidden corner in the lab, giving her a clear view of the locked door leading outside.
The moment she steps outside the lab, she is met by a grotesque creature; once a living being, now a mutilated mass of scarred flesh. It howls when it sees her, a wretched thing that somehow makes her heart ache. She doesn’t understand, and promptly kills it.
---
As a vampire, Nirmala is an unending creature of shadow and smoke. Through her mind’s eyes, the hundreds of souls the castle houses are tiny pinpoints of light. It’s a question of duty and honour that makes her retaliate. She is fury reborn on her captor’s altar, brought back in this form and shape to bring justice upon her kingdom’s enemies. And so she does just that.
They are snuffed out; like a row of candles, their lives flicker out of existence just as easily. She spares none. … But something doesn’t seem quite right. There is an inkling of unease deep in her core when she meets the gaze of her enemies. What she sees there… doesn’t seem right. They don’t know her; there’s not a hint of recognition in their eyes. She, the princess of the kingdom of their enemies, is unknown to them. It’s like she’s been wiped from their memory… but perhaps she was never there. After all, apart from the few guards tasked with her imprisonment, as well as those who witnessed her arrival, who in this castle even knows of her existence?
Still, she cannot let that stop her. Like candles keeping an altar warm and inviting they have remained with this royal family. They, too, are guilty of their crime!
Servants, guards, retainers; all fall before her, until only the royal family itself remains. She descends upon them silently, smothers their lives like candle lights. Something is still wrong. The captor’s brother, the youngest of the bunch, begs her tearfully to spare his life, but there is no spark of recognition in his terrified eyes.
The captor’s mother doesn’t even care to beg, only thrusts a sharp sword through Nirmala’s throat. Nirmala flees the room, but not before she’s barricaded the ruler inside. Tendrils of shadow knitting the hole in her throat shut, she leaves her to suffocate.
The captor’s father rests in his chambers, breath quick and shallow as his body shines with the sweat of exhaustion and sickness. She tightens her phantom fist around his life's flame and squeezes, and he dies instantly.
The captor is nowhere to be found, but she can hear alarms ring in the distance. Fleeing upon the wind from the castle, she finds the princess outside the fortress in the barracks, rallying the guards. Nirmala doesn’t want to even look upon her, and engulfs the barracks in a shadow as dark and impenetrable as a moonless night. Through her mind’s eyes, she sees straight into the shadow and accidentally meets the eyes of her captor; for the first time this long, dreary night she sees recognition, but also weary resignation. She knows how it ends. The captor takes a deep breath and then she keels under the oppressive weight of the shadow and is gone.
She finds her way to the throne room, where the remaining servants are huddling, having barricaded themselves inside the fortified chamber. Like a tendril of smoke, she flows through the cracks in the doors and enters the room. Upon catching sight of her, some servants shriek and yell and try to flee. They don’t succeed. Others, the ones carrying the fervent flame of loyalty in their breasts, they rush to her, but she snuffs it out. The rest huddle together on the floor, holding onto each other and crying their hearts out. With a twinge in her own, she pulls the air out of their lungs.
One servant remains, a young lad named Fenix. His gaze is firmly fixed upon her; a strange, frightening fire burning in his eyes. Never letting go of her gaze, he lowers himself to the floor and begs. Begs to stay at her side. She lets him.
She seats herself on the throne, her new servant at her side, and closes her eyes for a moment of peace.
For that moment everything is tranquil. The servant the only light left in the castle. Then, the mob enters.
They amass in great numbers, swarm through the land like a colony of ants great enough to cover all the lands. The mob rushes the castle like a tidal wave, like a divine fist, their roars deafening. Vassals, soldiers, servants and peasants, the sound of their steps is thundering in the stillness of the castle. And they are armed. Not with pitchforks or weaponry in iron and bronze, but with fire. The fire, enchanted to be a hundred times more ravenous, eats through the thick castle doors like they were made of straw.
There must be some great mage among them, for all her spellcraft and shadowy talents only skim the very surface of the magical shield that’s been raised over the mob. They grab and bind both her and her servant.
They light a great fire in their honour - or perhaps in the honour of their dead masters. A great fire to trap the vampiric mistress for all eternity and consume her treacherous servant. Of course she struggles when they cast her bound on the pyre - of course she does. Through the howls and cries of her burning servant, through the mob’s chanting, she can pick up snippets of the incantations the mage speaks. Leashed to the pyre like a dog to a pole, she cries and gives into the fire.
The fire wipes away all her worries and fears, hopes and dreams, and reduces her to a thing. Barely alive, holding onto only the barest shred of life, she sustains herself. She feeds upon the flame that feeds upon her, and becomes one with it. She recreates herself in its image and her servant along with it. She takes the remnants of his soul trapped in the fire’s grasp and binds it to the flames itself. She molds them into the shape of a firebird, and finds it fitting for his name.
She steps out of the pyre, its new mistress and beneficiary. It seals her wounds shut and it’s like she’s been born anew. Well, apart from one thing. Her eyes are lost forever and when she escapes the pyre, she discovers she needs Fenix to show her the way.
He leads her to the people who burned them. Even without her eyes, she can still see the light of their souls and so she does away with them. There were many who watched the fire consume her and once she’s done with them she finds that even this new body can grow weary with exhaustion. Stretched out on the floor in the house of the mage who trapped her, trying to regain her breath, she doesn’t realize at first that Fenix is gone. When she does, she feels the blood in her veins chill and for one moment she panics. Then she regains some of her strength and he poofs into existence in a fiery blaze.
With Fenix back at her side, she returns to the castle and scours it carefully, searching for the slightest mention of her mother. She never finds her.
A smorgasbord of arcane and vampiric gifts at her disposal, she resolves to find a benefactor who can provide her with the funds and resources necessary to rebuild her kingdom. She finds such a benefactor in semi-divine Khamsin, a wealthy prince travelling through the sands of Dragonhome in search of a kingdom to call his own. One in dire need of what she has to offer.
---
When they meet, it’s in the dry wastes of Dragonhome, in the shadow of a once-great ruin. The prince is accompanied only by a small retinue of retainers and servants. He’s courteous, but there’s a strange glint in his eyes that materializes when she describes her wealth of gifts and talents.
Later that night, Nirmala tells him her story, tries as best she can to explain the circumstances that led her to him. Curled up around a lantern and bundled up in fine fabrics that comfort her in the desert cold, she finishes her story by offering him the hourglass. “Much pain and misery it has brought me, yet I can’t help but believe the solution exists here”, she whispers, frantically, eagerly, so grateful to finally be able to talk to someone that truly listens. Apprehension and greed alike shining out of his eyes, Khamsin takes the hourglass from her hand and turns it around.
Then everything goes downhill.
Something is wrong with Khamsin. Gasping for breath and covered in a sheen of sweat, he’s twitching like a marionette with broken strings. His claws jerk around the frail glass, and only the faint memory of the hourglass’ thorns keeps her from forcing him away. Instead, she carefully moves closer to him and places her hands above his.
“Breathe”, she whispers. “Calm breaths, or you’ll go into shock.”
His eyes roll back into his skull as he whimpers, and she can’t help the dreadful sensation that something has gone horribly wrong.
Yet, there’s nothing she can do but wait, and wait she does.
An hour later, the flow of the sand’s path is reversed. For a moment it stops, a hundred grains floating inside the glass, before it swoops upwards, into the upper bulb where they’re then laid to rest. The hourglass is at peace.
Not Khamsin, however. He’s shaking his head as he mutters over and over, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know this would happen. I’m the worst - the worst of fools. I let Them win.”
It’s only late at night he’s willing to confess to what has happened. Curled up by her side, shivering at the cold, he tells her:
In his bid for power, he underestimated the forces that already keep control of the seat of Heaven - Death - and the clever little servants that breathe on Its command.
Along the hourglass’ path he had fallen, watched each grain and the future it held, until he beheld the future he wanted. Tightening his grip around the frail glass, he had willed it to stop, to shift the present onto that future’s path.
He had failed.
The hourglass had struck back - hard - against his attempt to control it. The muted roar in his head had grown drastically, and struck downwards through his spine. The shock could have - must have - killed him, but Death, watching on Its throne, had seen what transpired and pulled his soul into limbo.
There, It had dangled Khamsin’s approaching death over his head like a headsman's axe, daring him to defy Death’s offer. A hundred souls of immortals for his own, each slaughtered in Death’s name. Could he do this he would be free, free to walk his own path anew. For now, however, he is to breathe and kill at Death’s command.
---
Death sends Its servants to pester and prod Khamsin, demons bearing the names of ANGEL and GOLIATH. They crawl into his head late at night, refusing to grant him peace until the sun rises and wipes them from his mind.
They gather together their fledgeling clan and flee into the desert. Far and further they wander, until they come across catacombs in the sands. Burned black by the sun, these structures jut out of the sand, rising high above their heads.
Seeking refuge from the scorching sun, they burrow deep underground, and come upon forgotten catacombs. Neltethas, says one alcove. Khamsin finds it fitting, and that is what this place is named.
---
As the prince’s consort and a mage of great power, she takes upon many duties as Neltethas is expanded.
Khamsin sleeps during the day, the sun in the sky his shield against the demons that would disturb his rest. She sits on the throne in his stead and watches the development of this newborn kingdom. A worryingly large number of the people joining them have been wounded by distant strife. One late afternoon, one of their healers asks for aid in tending to the wounded.
Her hands have murdered so many, would she even know how to ease their suffering? These are the thoughts that worry her so when she’s led into the sanatorium by an overworked healer.
She needn’t have worried. Her magic works wonders and her presence becomes a fixture at the sanatorium. It brings Nirmala comfort, in a way, to bring patients to good health. It serves as a reminder to what she should be. It feels good. It makes her feel grounded, like her soul is not going to suddenly unravel like strings on a cut loom.
Once, late at night, when the duty of watching over Neltethas has been given over to Khamsin, and she can focus on healing, a body is brought into the sanatorium. The patient's life hangs by a thread and the look on the faces of the other healers is resigned. They know there’s nothing that can be done for her. Nirmala, too, knows this, and yet… She moves closer to her and places her ear by the patient's mouth, where she can feel the barest hint of breath. She can barely hear her, perhaps she does not truly speak, and yet the words of her last wish reverberate deep in Nirmala's soul.
She is a lone traveler, one who’s travelled a great distance from her birthplace to Neltethas, her only goal in mind to serve Khamsin and his ilk. She pleads with Nirmala to make use of her, even in death. Then the patient's breath leaves her and Nirmala is left with a corpse and the barely-there flickering of a soul.
She captures the memory of the patient's soul and promises her that even in death she shall find purpose in Neltethas. Then her body is wheeled away and she never sees her again. At least, not like that.
---
Nirmala wonders whether the hourglass has had a positive effect on their relationship, because following Khamsin’s attempted - and failed - ascension, the two of them grow closer. Perhaps the losses and difficulties they have faced as a result of the wretched thing, have bound them together better than any wedding band could ever do?
Maybe that’s why when they finally get married, it feels like nothing but a formality. Perhaps, in truth, they have been married since she offered him the hourglass, the bane of her happy existence.
On the day of their wedding, she traps a sliver of the sun in a bottle of glass. It’s a fake, a facsimile of the real thing, but all the same the heat it carries reaches the very depths of her soul. It will be a comfort for Khamsin, a reminder of the sun-scorched future laying in wait right outside the catacombs. Nirmala takes this frail small thing - this memory of sunlight - and pours all of her skill and knowledge of the art of fire into it. She molds it in the shape of a dragon and with the soul of the patient she couldn’t save, she names it - her - Lucifer.
She is perfection.
When she gifts the creation to Khamsin, he takes her gingerly into his hands, so very unlike when he grabbed the hourglass, and the hard look in his eyes grows for a moment so much softer.
The ceremony ends and she walks out of the hall the Queen of Neltethas - its Daytime Ruler.
---
Nirmala's servants can’t remember her. It starts when they smile politely at her and ask how long she’s been with them.
“Pardon us, Sunshine Queen, but my memory is so dizzy. I must have forgotten. I really am getting old”, says one of them and laughs good-naturedly. She laughs along with him. Then more of them start asking, dragons that have known her since she joined Khamsin. When one of her closest friends inquires about her origin, voice sweet and melodious as she brushes Nirmala's mane, she can feel chills down her spine.
Something is horribly wrong.
Khamsin, only Khamsin can remember her first years in Neltethas. The rest seem confused, even distressed, when she asks. It must be the hourglass. What else could have erased her from their memories? She is reminded of the guards from her time in her enemies’ filthy jail cell and wonders if that’s when it started.
She doesn’t know how to solve this problem and she fears that if she starts seeking answers in the hourglass, she may one day be entirely forgotten.
A ghost of a thing, existing only in the mind of her king and love.
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» wife to Khamsin
» bisexual; she/her
» needs replacement ;/
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