Malik couldn’t reappear in the public light just yet. The battle was still fresh in everyone’s minds.
The soldiers who had seen him fight—who had watched him tear through enemy ranks with his teeth—now recovering from their wounds, could find it suspicious.
Most probably wouldn’t, but he couldn’t take that chance.
He doubted they would see the correlation between the blood-soaked old devil in the ravine and the very Sultan of their world.
The sa went for Safira, who’d notice that the old man’s disappearance brought the reappearance of her Sultan.
Once was a coincidence, twice was... still a coincidence, thrice would be a pattern, giving him one more inconsequential mistake.
Still, he wanted to play it even safer. His disguise was thin. His luck was thinner. One wrong move and everything would unravel.
So, since he couldn’t go back to the palace, he needed a suitable excuse for his disappearance. Sothing that would give him ti to recover and figure out his next move.
What better excuse was there than for him to go to the West to et their main allies?
’Hm, sotis my... genius is frightening.’
Malik was being sarcastic.
The plan wasn’t genius; it was only adequate, present only because of re chance. But he found it to be a pretty clever solution for his little issue. Killing two Demons with one stone.
He would remove himself from Safira’s sight before she asked too many questions, and he would check on the western front at the sa ti.
Because, of course, the war wasn’t just happening in the Center and South. He was sure that the West had its own battles and its own struggles.
Isha flew through the evening sky, her wings cutting through the dying light. Below them, the landscape changed slowly, from the barren rock of the South to the rolling hills of the borderlands to the first hints of green.
It didn’t take them too long to reach the West.
Despite the massive distance they covered, Isha’s flight was swift and never not smooth.
The two Suns fully dipped below the horizon just as they crossed the final mountain range, painting the sky in shades of orange and subtle purple.
Malik was surprised by what he saw below.
Not by the speed of their travel—that made sense, given Isha’s lineage.
What surprised him was how peaceful the West seed.
Beyond the border and the many military underground bases, where green finally made its way across the land, he saw an entirely different sight.
Settlents dotted the region, so big, so small, so clustered together, so standing alone. Fields stretched between villages. Roads connected everything in a loose web of dirt and stone.
It wasn’t like the Center or the South.
Over there, everyone had converged to ensure survival.
Settlents had been abandoned. Villages had been emptied. The population had squeezed itself into fortified cities, kingdoms, and strongholds, hoping the walls would hold long enough for the Demons to lose interest.
Here, people spread out.
They fard, traded, and lived.
It seed that though Markaz had what they commonly called the Last Stronghold, that was the case for only the South, Center, and North of Devil’s Maw.
The West, aside from its borders, was virtually untouched by the Demons.
’So Demons only target . Well... my grave and my Golden Throne. Or maybe... maybe they target the Abyss itself, wanting to reach its depths. To reach the planet’s core... it’s Hell. I don’t know.’
He found that very interesting. The Demons seed to co for the Abyss, yes, and the sultanate was in their way, to the north of it, but even then...
’They can try to go around my sultanate.’
Instead of going from the East, straight to the Center and then South, they could go to the South first, and then North, going to the Abyss from below where there was no sultanate to stop them.
But, of course, they didn’t and simply wouldn’t do that.
It was only natural.
This was war.
The Entity wanted to utterly destroy Malik and everything he held close to his heart.
His land, his people, his image as their pillar... it was to be destroyed by Corruption.
That was why, relatively at least, the West remained safe.
The East was always a wasteland.
anwhile, the North was targeted since Huda’s Great Family, the Sword, ruled there, connecting them to the Sultan.
After they retreated to the Center, the South bore the brunt of every wave, which the people of the South weren’t hateful for.
At least not most of them.
Their being attacked ant they did as their Sultan had asked, carrying on his mantle even with him gone.
It also helped that their sacrifice enabled many mortal folk from other regions to migrate and establish new settlents in the West.
Displaced miners from the South, refugees from the North, and traders from the East who no longer rembered their lands of Corruption—all of them had found their way here.
They built hos and started families, trying to move on from what they had left behind.
The West welcod them with open arms. The treaty between Malik and the Western Empire was strong, thanks in large part to their empress, Scheherazade.
She was Malik’s apparent friend—though "friend" felt like the wrong word. Ally, maybe. Partner. Soone who had stood beside him when most would’ve turned away.
Scheherazade wasn’t the only one who held Malik in high regard. Most of the Western folk seed to love anything that ca from the South.
They wore Southern fabrics. They ate Southern spices. They decorated their hos with Southern art, and they adored the crimson owls.
As Isha flew over the settlents, people looked up and waved. Children scread and giggled, pointing at the sky.
So of them jumped up and down, trying to get the owl’s attention. Others ran alongside Isha’s shadow, chasing her across the fields.
Isha enjoyed being the center of attention.
She preened under the admiration, puffing out her chest and flapping her wings in dramatic arcs.
They pumped her up to the point that she suddenly decided to perform a little show for the audience—a sharp dive, turn, and loop that made Malik’s stomach drop.
"Little lady!"
Malik barely gripped her feathers in ti.
"Warn before you do that."
"Hehehe! Sorry, uncle!"
She wasn’t sorry at all.
The light faded as they flew deeper into the West. The Suns had fully set, leaving behind a sky painted in deep blues and purples, while the first stars appeared overhead.
That was when, for the first ti since his return, Malik spotted the Moons, and yes, ’Moons.’
Twelve of them hung high above, barely ford but unmistakably there. Thin crescents, their pale light washing over the landscape below.
"It’s so beautiful, isn’t it, uncle?!"
Malik chuckled at Isha’s excitent, with her craning her neck upward, her pink eyes wide with wonder.
"Yes, it is, little one."
Of course, he had seen a moon before, but never so many. Never from above, never while flying through the open sky.
From the ground, they were distant and small, but up here, they felt close enough to touch.
’...this is nice.’
They flew on.
The West’s capital appeared on the horizon.
Parsa, the very heart of the Western Empire.
It looked much like his own Last City, only smaller.
The walls were lower, the towers were fewer, and there were no golden dos that dotted the skyline. It was more rock and stone. A gigantic castle made to house a city.
Both cities shared the sa technology, the sa architecture, the sa infrastructure, and the sa innovations. Evidence of how much they had traded over the years.
But where Last City, or Markaz, was gold and sand, Parsa was stone and grass.
Malik looked down at his right hand.
The Stranger’s Ring sat on his middle finger, its jewel absorbing the moonlight.
He had been storing much of his Rukh in it during the flight, siphoning power from his core into the Holy Relic.
With that, he should have enough Rukh stored to maintain the disguise for a good amount of ti. Maybe a full day.
Malik couldn’t be more ready.
He pointed down at the tallest tower in Parsa.
"Little Isha, land there."
A slender spire that rose above the rest of the city, its peak disappearing into the clouds.
"You and I are going to et an Empress."
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