Deities of Deceit

Chapter Thirty-five

Iman Bashar | Thirty-five
A MISSION FOR A DREAM
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Two weeks ago

"Iman!" Nimah called out to me when the chariot began to throttle away. "You were right!"

"About what!"

"The dream!" He smiled, then signed, 'Thank you'.

"You are most welcome dearest friend!" With a smile, I slipped through the gates and made my way into the Abubakar residence.

The Night of The Veil was a night neither I nor anyone in the kingdom would come to forget with ease. The flaming chandeliers, the singing flutes, the grandeur attires that depicted the very epitome of elegance. But of all things majestic and starry about that night, my best friend, a white man, dancing with the Queen struck me the most. A significant memory all of Arjana would carry with them for the rest of their evening.

I smiled my way into the hallways of the main Abubakar residence, replaying the sight. In all my years knowing Nimah, I had never seen him glow with such glee and gaiety. His glow was worth every price I needed to pay.

Much had been asked of Nimah for years, eventually driving him to the gallows and the guilt tore through me like an axe through wood. Of course, I lost many who chose to fight beside me, and all their deaths hunted me. But, Nimah never wanted any of it, any of the danger, the lies, the constant fear. I asked and pressed him for it until it came to be. He was a man standing beside his friend, even if it meant breaking himself. Nimah deserved a night of beauty and dreaming. A night where he was not the victim, rather a victor, with the kingdom's eyes on him. When the opportunity presented itself to make this a reality, I took it.

I told Nimah the tale of an abandoned Oshun temple where an old oracle resided, and how she had gifted me the camouflage magic because I spared her life. It was a beautiful lie for a good cause. If I told him the truth of it, the bargain I had made. The camouflage magic for a suicide mission. He would never have gone to The Night of Veil, he would never have even considered it.

We did encounter an old Oshun oracle, but it was I who sought her out. Few oracles agreed to an audience with a white person, so I figured, why not the Goddess of the old? The one who blessed the arrival of white explorers on Arjania soil in the first place.

"I wish for a friend to attend the Night of The Veil as a prince. Name your price," I said to the old quivering oracle, sitting on the bare muddy floor of the run-down temple, mostly destroyed by the cruel hands of age.

It was to be my utmost apology to Nimah, fixing his wounded heart with a dream. A dream that will bring back the optimism in him, by showing him what the future could become.

"You know your way around the sword," the Oracle said, straining every word as she opened her palms, revealing two vials. "A mission for a dream."

The mission: Aidding in the escape of a prisoner of the mines. An almost impossible feat. Almost, because I had not yet tried.

The mines were built with powerful magic wards. No magic thrived there. Even the deities would walk the mines' darkness with little energy to draw from. And now, I had come, a woman who spent her whole life with a sword, and the oracle offered me this choice.

When I returned, I summoned all those who I knew had served time in the prison mines and demanded they tell me of it in great detail.

"Once you are in the caves, there is no light," one said.

"No one knows their way around the mines," another said. "It is just an ever-deepening hole."

"A river runs somewhere underneath, it is where dead bodies are thrown. But even that is searched, too," a young boy of eighteen who served five years in the mines as a cook said.