Khalid continued to explore the darkness. He counted his steps back and forth across the crypt, reaching out ahead of him to touch the walls he could not see in the inky blackness. If he had to guess, his prison was about seven feet by seven by seven feet. It occurred to him that his brothers would not have had time to build the entire thing before he regained consciousness. Had it stood empty before they had thrown him in there? Was someone else previously buried within and recently removed? Was it maybe part of a larger structure? Or had he been out of it much longer than he had thought?

He wondered how his brothers had even managed to knock him out, considering he was immortal. He ran his fingers over his neck, and could feel the stickiness of dried blood all the way around. Had they attempted decapitation?

Had they succeeded?

Khalid sat on the floor of limestone and forced himself to focus. He wanted answers. He tried to remember everything. His brothers had been behind him, so he had not had a chance to look them in the eye. But he had heard them. He knew exactly who had shouted in horror at the sight of his father’s mangled body. Because he had not had a chance to look them in the eye, he could not gain control of them now, nor discover where he was entombed.  

But there were others out there. 

As he thought back to the myriad individuals he had controlled at one point or another, a strange sensation rushed over him. It was a birth. Asim’s birth. But not as Asim. He was being brought into the world as a little baby, thousands of miles away on an island. He was born again. A wave of happiness rushed over Khalid, and he cried in relief. Asim was not truly gone.

Once Khalid got out of there, he would find him. They would be together once more. Now it was time to focus. 

He thought back to a lady at the market, Layla. She was in her late thirties, and a mother of six. He had persuaded her to give them the extra baby goat for free when she had sold them their first two. She had found it too sickly, but Asim had insisted they could nurse it back to health. She had been adamant that it should be put down, that it was ordained by Allah, but Khalid had forced her to give it to them, and she had. 

He dove into her mind now. She was at the market, with her oldest daughter, selling goods. Khalid put the thought into her mind to head to his farm, giving her daughter an excuse about collecting goats milk. She did so immediately. Half an hour later, he saw through her eyes as she opened the door to the bloodbath in Asim and Khalid’s farm. All bodies and body parts were removed. There were stains where his father had sat, where Asim had lain, and where, Khalid assumed, something grizly had been done to him. 

They had taken Asim’s body. The thought made Khalid sick. He pressed Layla to look around, to find any hint of what they might have done with the bodies, with him. She searched, but the blood trail went cold. It was likely they had all been thrown in a cart. Unfortunately, there were too many wheel tracks criss-crossing every which way once she reached the road, and she lost the trail.

Khalid forced her to ask around about where his brothers had gone, if anyone had seen the cart, but no one knew anything about it. Apparently it had been a month since he had disappeared. People had been curious, but no one seemed to have seen a thing. His brothers must have left in the night. Layla asked about extensively, walking up and down several streets until her feet were beginning to bleed. Khalid finally let her rest back at his farm as he decided to change tactics. He made Layla the caretaker to his farm for now, to salvage what could be salvaged after such an extensive absence. Somehow, most of the animals had survived, though they were in a rough state. Layla and her daughters would be able to care for them well enough. 

Khalid found his way into another familiar mind, Adel. The young man that Khalid and Asim had hired onto their farm when the season called for it. Adel was staying further in the city now, working at a tavern. Khalid had once been forced to make Adel forget that he had walked in on Asim and Khalid in the throes of wild passionate sex. Adel had been about to run, to tell others in the city about their indiscretions, but Khalid had stopped him, had wiped the whole memory from his mind. 

Now, he dipped back into Adel’s mind. He was hard at work in the tavern, but Khalid made him start to throw up, to have an excuse to step away. There was no information in Adel’s mind about Khalid’s brothers, unfortunately. This likely meant that there was nothing to know, as Adel had a tendency to get into everyone’s business. He would have been giddy about sharing the news of Asim and Khalid’s disappearance. 

Khalid collected Adel’s mind, and several others, young men he had met in passing and needed something from. Some seeds here. Some furniture there. Tools for tilling soil. Khalid guided eight strong men on his whim, forcing them into two carts, and down the long stretch of road to the city where his brothers and their masters lived. 

Khalid lay on the floor of his tomb as he guided them, his eyes closed, his feet repeatedly kicking at the stone wall. He kicked and kicked, violently, repetitively, forcefully. He kicked until his feet were bleeding. He kicked until his toes and ankles broke. And he kept kicking. 

The limestone didn’t move. It didn’t budge an inch. He moved on to the next section and repeated the process, again and again as his mind guided those men to Aswan. 

Nothing moved. His cage was solid and unforgiving. He was trapped. He punched at the higher stones until all of his knuckles broke, but that action was just as useless. He could not reach the ceiling without jumping, and there was nothing to stand on to give him leverage. 

The men reached Aswan, exhausted. Khalid had hardly allowed them rest. He knew that Asim would have been upset with him, but Asim had never faced the prospect of eternity trapped within a dark tomb. Khalid was sure he would understand.

He guided the men to his brother’s home. They were there. They had not moved away in the fifteen years he had been gone. Likely, their masters would not have allowed it. He was surprised they had been allowed to travel so far north. 

Khalid used Adel as his mouthpiece. Adel jumped down off the cart, and strode up to the door of the house. He knocked on the door. It took a moment for Khalid’s brother Abasi to answer. He looked confused upon seeing Adel standing there, and even more surprised when he looked up and saw the two carts full of strong men. 

“What do you want?” Abasi asked. 

“Where did you imprison Khalid?” Adel demanded to know. 

Abasi’s eyes widened in shock. 

“What do you know of Khalid?” Abasi asked. 

“Where did you imprison Khalid?” Adel repeated on Khalid’s command. 

“What business is it of yours where Khalid is laid?” Abasi asked. 

At these words, Khalid forced the other seven men out of the carts. They walked up to the door, a menacing throng, all eyes on Abasi. 

In unison, they repeated, “Where did you imprison Khalid?”

The effect was clear on Abasi. He was terrified. His eyes wide, his body shaking. 

“Who are you?” Abasi asked, his voice barely above a whisper. 

“Answer the question.” They all said at once. 

“Leave this place!” Abasi ordered, stepping back to shut the door. Adel stepped forward and caught the door. Abasi shouted and attempted to shove Adel back, but Khalid would not allow Adel to retreat. 

“It is time for you to free Khalid. If you do not, the consequences will be severe. You saw what became of your father.” The eight men spoke again in unison. 

“Are you in a cult?” Abasi asked. “Is Khalid your leader?” 

“You know what is happening now, don’t you?” The men asked. 

Khalid was looking out of Adel’s eyes at his brother now, and his brother was looking right back. 

“Khalid?” Abasi whispered. “Is that you?”

“It is me. Where did you put me?” Khalid demanded, his words spoken through Adel’s lips. “Tell me, and I’ll spare your life.”

Abasi backed away into the house in silent terror as Adel followed him inside. 

“How are you doing this?” Abasi demanded. 

“Abasi, what…” 

Khalid turned Adel’s head toward his other brothers, who had just exclaimed in surprise at Abasi’s strange entrance into the house with this stranger. There they stood, Kosey and Donkor. Beside them were several children, Khalid’s nieces and nephews, staring at Adel in silent fear. The children’s mothers, the wives of Khalid’s brothers, pulled the children close, terrified at these strangers who were instilling fear in Abasi. Khalid’s stepmother was nowhere to be seen. He vaguely wondered if she had died, but decided he did not care. 

His brothers had been cruel to him when he was a child, following their father’s orders to take their anger and frustrations out on Khalid. Now they stood, fatherless, pathetic men. The seething hatred that Khalid had for them was matched only by his wish to be free of his tomb. 

“You are pathetic. Like him. Like your masters.” Khalid spoke through Adel. “You stay here, forced into marriages you do not want. Fucking out children you do not love. Forced to be soldiers for people who will only miss you as one would miss a horse. When you die, they will move on to the next slave. Why continue to work for them? Why stay in this waking nightmare? Why follow men who would abandon you given any opportunity?”

“It is about honor.” Said Kosey. “We are not just any slaves. We are the elite. The best fighters. The best farmers.”

“Slavery is not honorable.” Said Khalid. 

“So you claim, but spoken from the mouth of a man forced to do your bidding.” Said Donkor. “Does that not make you his master?”

“Where. Am. I. Imprisoned!?” Demanded Khalid. 

“What you are doing, what you are capable of, these are powers that no man should have.” Stated Abasi. “What you did to our father was ungodly.”

“It was very godly. A gift literally given to me by a god.” Khalid pointed out. “And I will use this gift to mummify you and your families alive right now if you do not tell me where I am so that I may be saved.”

“You would do worse if you got out.” Said Donkor. “Brother Khalid, I am truly sorry for the life you had, and the things we did to you. But what you have become is Infinitely worse. You have turned away from your humanity, and from Allah. You are unnatural. We removed your head from your body, and now you speak to us from the mouth of another. Can you not see how truly terrible that is?”

Back in his dark tomb, Khalid rubbed his fingers around his neck, tracing the sticky line of blood. So he had been decapitated. He had actually died and come back to life. He truly was immortal. And his brothers were so terrified of him that they were willing to die horribly rather than free him. 

“What city am I near? Am I in a crypt?” Khalid asked desperately, cursing himself for sounding weak. 

“You are deep underground in the desert, and you will never know where. Your limestone walls will hold you for eternity.” Said Kosey. “No being could break what we built to hold the creature that destroyed our father. Not without special tools.”

“I am not a creature!” Khalid snapped. “I am your brother! And I am giving you one last chance before my men rip out your brains with a hot poker. Where! Am! I!”

His brothers stood still, resolved, though he could tell that all three were terrified. But they were soldiers, who grew up with a monster of a father. They were trained, as Khalid had been, to withstand every type of pain and fear to be incredible soldiers should they be called into battle. Here and now, in their foolish little minds, they had made Khalid their enemy. 

They would not budge. They would not beg. They would take their deaths with as much dignity as they could muster. 

Khalid was going to make sure they broke by the end. 

*****

Hours of screaming, bleeding, begging, and praying later, and the three brothers were dead. As were their wives, and their little children. Khalid had spared no member on the branches of his diseased family tree. And just for good measure, he burned down their house, and the house of the masters, who were sleeping obliviously inside. 

Khalid watched his masters’ home burn, and felt nothing. This was a moment he had dreamed about since he was a very young child, spitting in the face of his slavers. But it felt empty. He was trapped. His brothers had not given up his whereabouts even under the deepest of torture. Even when their own children were killed in front of them. They feared him that much. 

He had learned though that his family had gotten word from a friend in the city who had traveled north that he had seen Khalid and Asim, and told Khalid’s family and their masters where to find him. The masters had given the family leave to bring Khalid and Asim back. Khalid’s father had apparently had other plans upon discovering how Khalid was living. 

And now Asim was dead. His body had been burned. He was reborn somewhere far away. Khalid was trapped underground in the desert. A prisoner in the darkness for eternity. 

The men returned to their carts and headed back home. The journey was long, but they all made it back in one piece, without being captured for the murders and fires. 

Khalid let most of them go back to their lives, their memories wiped of the last few days, replaced with the thought of having wandered into the desert after having a vision from Allah so that their families would have closure on their absences. 

Khalid held tight to Adel’s consciousness. He was not yet ready to be alone in the darkness, nor had he completely given up on being found. He sent Adel out into the desert to search.

For years, Adel did as he was forced, stealing food, water, and shelter as needed to continue along his journey to find Khalid. 

Trapped underground in his prison, Khalid prayed daily to his goddess, but she never answered. He begged for her help, promised that he would truly change into a righteous man, that he would make the world a better place once he found Asim again. There was not a whisper in response.

One day, he felt something, like a hot poker in his gut as he sensed Asim dying again. It had only been fourteen years since he had been reborn, and already he was lost once more. Khalid sobbed as he remembered his beloved while he sat on the hard stone floor of his prison. 

A month later, he felt incredible joy as Asim was reborn again several thousand miles from the island where he had died. Khalid wept tears of happiness. He was not quite sure how he knew it, but Khalid was certain that Asim had been reborn a girl in South America.

Throughout this time, Adel continued to search for Khalid, but it was no use. He scoured the deserts of Egypt for any sign of Khalid’s prison, but it was impossible to find. 

Khalid would occasionally return to Layla, to see how it was going on the farm. She was getting older now. Her daughters were helping her run things, and they were doing well for themselves. 

More time passed. Decades. Adel was an old man now, limping along with aching joints as he continued his fruitless search. On the day that Khalid felt Asim’s third death, nearly five decades after the last one, Adel too collapsed in the desert. He was weathered and worn, old and battered. His body simply gave out, unable to struggle through any longer in his eighties. 

Khalid sobbed on the floor of his prison, cursing his goddess, not for the first time. 

Adel was gone. Layla was gone. Most of the others that he had ever controlled were dead, or blind, or too infirm to move about now. 

When Asim was born again, on yet another continent, Khalid struggled to find happiness. The world was so dark now, but for the glimpses of light he could see in those through whom he viewed the world. Slowly, but surely, they all perished. 

One day, Khalid looked out, and all he saw was the infinite darkness of his prison. 

Chapter 32 – Get to Me