HABIB TREK INTO DARKNESS Chapter 1

 

Vol II HABIB TREK INTO DARKNESS

Chapter 1

The caravan had been riding for seventeen days when they found the oasis.

It appeared on the horizon like a fever dream—a smudge of green against the eternal gold, shimmering in the heat haze that rose from the dunes like the breath of some sleeping god. The camels, those stubborn, foul-tempered beasts that had carried them through sandstorms and mirages, perked up their heads and quickened their pace without any urging from their masters.

"Praise be to Allah," muttered Rashid, the caravan leader, a man whose face had been weathered by decades of desert travel into something resembling cracked leather. He squinted at the distant palms, his eyes narrow with suspicion even as relief flooded his features. "An oasis. A real one. Not another trick of the light."

The other six members of the caravan—thieves, all of them, though they called themselves "merchants of opportunity"—echoed his prayers with varying degrees of piety. They had been running low on water for three days, rationing the precious liquid like misers counting coins. The discovery of water meant survival. It meant they could push on to the coast, where a buyer waited with gold for the relics they'd stolen from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

All except one.

"Oasis, you say?" The voice came from the back of the caravan, reedy and thin, like the wheeze of a dying bellows. "I knew it. I had a dream last night. A palm tree told me. Very specific palm tree. Had a face, you know. Human face. Told me to bring my pipe."

Mahmoud. The old fool.

The other members of the caravan exchanged glances—the kind of glances that spoke volumes without a single word passing between them. Rashid's jaw tightened. Hassan, the muscle of the group, a brute with arms like oak branches and a brain to match, rolled his eyes so hard his whole head seemed to wobble. Farid, the youngest and most hot-headed, actually spat into the sand.

"The old man's talking again," muttered Kareem, the group's scout, a wiry man with the unsettling habit of appearing silently at your elbow. "Dreams. Palm trees with faces. The man's lost whatever few marbles he had left."

"Be fair," said Youssef, the group's forger and the closest thing they had to an intellectual. He adjusted the spectacles that were always slipping down his nose—a vanity, since he didn't actually need them, but he thought they made him look distinguished. "He's been like this for as long as we've known him. It's not getting worse. It's just... consistently terrible."

Mahmoud shuffled forward on his donkey—a creature so ancient and decrepit that it seemed to be moving purely out of spite, its bones creaking with every step. The old man himself was a vision of decrepitude: skin like wrinkled papyrus, a beard that looked like it had been home to several generations of small animals, and clothes that had once been white but were now the color of old sand. He clutched a water pipe to his chest—ornate, ancient, covered in symbols that none of the thieves could read.

"How many times do I have to tell you," Mahmoud continued, seemingly oblivious to the hostility radiating from his companions, "I'm not just some crazy bum who tags along. I'm a traveler. A seeker of wisdom. The universe speaks to me through dreams and... and the occasional piece of fruit."

"Fruit doesn't speak, Mahmoud," Rashid said flatly.

"Then you're not listening properly."

The caravan reached the oasis as the sun began its descent toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple that looked like a bruise on the face of heaven. The oasis was small but lush—a cluster of date palms surrounding a pool of water so clear it seemed to glow from within. Birds sang in the branches. A gentle breeze carried the scent of flowers that had no business blooming in such a harsh place.

It was, in short, a paradise.

And lying beside the pool, half-buried in the sand and tangled in the roots of an ancient palm, was the treasure.

They saw it at the same moment, all seven of them—well, six and Mahmoud, who was still muttering about his prophetic palm tree. Their thief's instincts, honed by years of looting tombs and raiding caravans, kicked in simultaneously. They dismounted their camels with the speed of men possessed, rushing toward the glittering hoard.

It was a staggering find. Gold coins from a dozen different dynasties, their faces worn smooth by time but still gleaming in the fading light. Jeweled daggers with hilts of lapis lazuli and carnelian. A chest overflowing with pearls and precious stones. Silk fabrics so fine they seemed to dissolve at the touch. And in the center of it all, a statue of some forgotten god—a figure with the head of a jackal and the body of a man, its eyes set with rubies that caught the sunset like drops of blood.

"By all the gods," breathed Farid, his hands trembling as he reached for a handful of gold. "We're rich. We're actually rich."

"Don't touch anything yet," Rashid commanded, his voice sharp with authority. "We don't know what protections might be on this. Could be cursed. Could be trapped."

"Protections?" Hassan laughed, a sound like rocks grinding together. "Look at this place. It's been buried for centuries. Whatever protections were here are long gone."

He reached down to pick up a golden cup, but Youssef caught his wrist.

"Wait." The forger knelt beside the hoard, his eyes narrowing. "Look at the symbols. These aren't just treasures. This is a burial cache. Someone important was laid to rest here. We need to be careful."

"Careful, careful," Mahmoud chimed in, finally dismounting from his donkey with a series of groans that suggested his joints had formed a union and gone on strike. He shuffled toward the treasure, his water pipe clutched to his chest like a beloved child. "Very important to be careful. I had a dream about this place. The palm tree—you remember the palm tree—"

"We remember, Mahmoud," Rashid said through gritted teeth.

"The palm tree told me there would be treasure. But it also told me..." The old man paused, his rheumy eyes scanning the hoard with sudden, surprising sharpness. "It told me not to touch the cups. Said they were for the thirsty. That we should only take what we need."

Farid snorted. "The old man's trying to tell us how to loot now? That's rich. That's actually rich." He grabbed a handful of gold coins, letting them trickle through his fingers like water. "We take everything. Everything. We've earned it. The desert nearly killed us."

"Earned it?" Kareem's voice was soft, dangerous. "We've been riding for seventeen days because you lost the map. We nearly died because of your incompetence. You've earned nothing but a beating."

"Gentlemen, please," Youssef interjected, his voice oily with diplomacy. "Let's not fight among ourselves. There's more than enough here for all of us."

He was right. The treasure was vast—enough to make each of them wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. Enough to buy land, and titles, and the kind of respect that could only be purchased with gold. Enough to leave their old lives behind forever.

They began to gather the treasure, packing it into saddlebags and crates with the efficiency of men who had done this many times before. The work was feverish, driven by greed and the fear that the oasis might vanish like a mirage if they didn't claim their prize quickly enough.

All except Mahmoud.

The old man had wandered away from the main hoard, his attention caught by something half-buried in the sand beneath the roots of the largest palm. He knelt—with considerable difficulty—and began to dig with his gnarled fingers, his movements slow but purposeful.

"What's he doing now?" Hassan muttered, not bothering to lower his voice.

"Probably found a talking rock," Farid sneered. "Or a singing date."

"Let him be," Rashid said. "He's not touching the main treasure. That's what matters."

They continued their work, filling bags and loading camels. The sun dipped lower, painting the oasis in shades of deep red and purple. The birds had stopped singing. A strange silence had fallen over the place, as if the very air was holding its breath.

"Rashid." Youssef's voice was low, urgent. The forger had stopped his work and was staring at the old man with an expression of growing alarm. "Rashid, you need to see this."

The caravan leader looked up. Mahmoud had unearthed something from beneath the palm—a pipe. But not just any pipe. This was a work of art, ancient and ornate, its bowl carved from a single massive ruby that seemed to glow with an inner fire. The stem was wrapped in gold filigree so fine it looked like lace, and the base was set with emeralds arranged in patterns that seemed to shift and writhe as you looked at them.

"Beautiful," Kareem breathed, his scout's eyes drinking in every detail. "That's worth more than everything else combined."

"He can't have it," Farid said immediately. "The old man can't have something that valuable. He'll lose it. Or break it. Or try to smoke it and burn the whole oasis down."

"Farid's right," Hassan agreed. "Look at him. He's already putting his mouth on it. He's going to try to smoke it."

Indeed, Mahmoud had produced a pouch of tobacco from somewhere in his voluminous robes and was carefully packing the bowl of the ancient pipe. His movements were reverent, almost ceremonial.

"No," Rashid said, rising to his feet. "Mahmoud, stop. Put that down. It's dangerous."

"Dangerous?" Mahmoud looked up, his expression one of childish innocence. "It's just a pipe, Rashid. A beautiful pipe. The palm tree told me about it. Said it would be a good smoke. Very relaxing. Good for the digestion."

"That pipe is clearly magical," Youssef said, his voice trembling slightly. "Look at the symbols. The way they move. That's not decorative. That pipe is holding something in."

"Or someone," Kareem added darkly.

Mahmoud ignored them. He had produced a flint and was striking it against a piece of steel, trying to light the tobacco in the bowl.

"Mahmoud, I'm warning you—" Rashid began.

"Warn, warn, warn," Mahmoud muttered, his eyes fixed on the pipe. "Always warning. Never listening. The palm tree said you'd be like this. Very controlling. Need to relax. Need to—"

A spark caught. The tobacco in the bowl flared to life, and Mahmoud took a long, deep drag.

For a moment, nothing happened. The old man's eyes closed in apparent ecstasy. The thieves watched him, frozen in a tableau of dread and irritation.

Then Mahmoud opened his eyes.

His expression was one of profound confusion. "Huh. That's different."

"Different how?" Rashid demanded.

"I don't know. It's just..." Mahmoud took another drag. "More. There's more to it. Like the smoke is... I don't know how to explain it. It's like the smoke is alive."

And then the smoke began to move.

It didn't dissipate as smoke should. Instead, it coiled and thickened, rising from the bowl of the pipe in a column that seemed to have a will of its own. The column grew, expanding into a billowing cloud that blotted out the stars beginning to appear in the darkening sky.

The thieves scrambled backward, abandoning their treasure in their sudden, overwhelming terror.

"Allahu akbar," Rashid breathed, his hands raised as if to ward off a blow.

"Run!" Farid screamed. "We have to run!"

They tried to run. But the smoke was faster. It coiled around them, trapping them in a circle of swirling darkness. And within the smoke, something was taking shape.

The form that emerged was vast—a towering figure of shadow and flame, with eyes like dying embers and a voice that seemed to vibrate in their very bones. It was a djinn. Not the romanticized, wish-granting genies of the stories they'd heard as children. This was something older. Something darker. Something that had been sleeping for a very, very long time.

"I AM NAQAD," the djinn boomed, its voice shaking the very air. "AND I. AM. FURIOUS."

The thieves screamed. They fell to their knees. Some wept. Others prayed. Hassan, the strongest of them, the one who had never shown fear in all the years they'd known him, fainted dead away.

Only Mahmoud remained upright. He was staring at the djinn with an expression of... recognition?

"Oh, hey," he said, his voice remarkably calm for a man facing an ancient, malevolent spirit of immense power. "Naqad. Almost didn't recognize you there. You've changed. Gotten... smokier. And the eyes. The eyes are new. Very dramatic."

The djinn's form flickered. Its attention, previously focused on the terrified thieves, snapped to the old man with laser-like intensity. The ember-eyes narrowed.

"YOU..." the djinn growled, its voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "YOU ARE... FAMILIAR."

"I should be," Mahmoud said, taking another leisurely drag from the pipe. "It's been a while. What are we talking? A few thousand years? Time flies when you're... well, when you're not really paying attention to the calendar."

The djinn's form seemed to ripple, like a reflection in disturbed water. It leaned closer to the old man, studying him with growing disbelief.

"MAHMOUD?" it said, the name rolling off its tongue like a question.

"Mahmoud?" The old man laughed—a wheezing, phlegmy sound that seemed deeply inappropriate given the circumstances. "Oh, that's not my name. That's just what they call me. I never bothered to correct them. It seemed rude, you know? They had their own ideas about who I was. Who was I to argue?"

"THEN WHO ARE YOU?"

The old man took another long drag from the pipe, letting the smoke curl around his face before exhaling slowly. When he spoke again, his voice was different—clearer, younger, with an edge of command that had been entirely absent moments before.

"Names change. That's the thing about living for thousands of years. You go through a lot of them. But the one you'd remember me by..." He paused, his eyes meeting the djinn's with a spark of ancient recognition. "Hari Potet. But these days, I prefer Habib. More modern, don't you think? Habib. It means 'beloved.' I thought it had a nice ring to it."

The djinn's form seemed to freeze mid-flicker. Its ember-eyes widened—an expression of shock that looked profoundly unnatural on its terrible face.

"HARI? HARI POTET? THE... THE HOMELESS STORYTELLER FROM CAIRO?"

"That's the one. Though I was never really homeless. I was just between homes. For a very long time." Habib—formerly Hari—grinned, showing teeth that were surprisingly white for a man of his apparent age. "You look good, Naqad. I mean, for a cosmic entity of pure annihilation. Very well-preserved."

The djinn's voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried more weight than its earlier booming. "YOU ARE... YOU ARE HUMAN. YOU SHOULD BE DEAD. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?"

"Ah. That." Habib scratched his beard thoughtfully. "Well, you see, there's a funny story behind that. It all started with a wish. Your wish, actually. In a cave. In the desert. Remember? I was dying. You were grumpy. We had a whole thing."

"I REMEMBER NOTHING OF THE SORT."

"Liar. You were there. You granted me a wish. Actually, you granted me two wishes, though you tried to cheat me out of the third because you said my nose was asymmetrical, which was frankly very rude and also objectively untrue—I have a very symmetrical nose."

The djinn's form pulsed with barely suppressed rage. "I DID NOT GRANT YOU IMMORTALITY. I WOULD HAVE REMEMBERED. I WOULD HAVE FELT THE BOND."

"No, no, you're right about that. You didn't grant me immortality. It was a much less dramatic wish, actually." Habib took another drag from the pipe, his eyes distant. "I wished for... what was it? Oh yes. I wished for 'strength to outlast those who wronged me.' Something like that. I was very dramatic back then. Very concerned with legacy and revenge."

"THAT WISH WOULD NOT GRANT IMMORTALITY. IT IS NOT HOW MY MAGIC WORKS."

"I know. That's the funny part." Habib laughed again, the sound lighter this time, almost joyful. "I didn't wish for immortality. I just wished to outlast my enemies. And then I got caught up in... everything. The throne. The dynasty. The chaos. And I kept wishing for more. More time. More strength. More resilience. Until one day, I realized I'd been alive for three hundred years and I still hadn't died."

"THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE."

"Apparently it is." Habib shrugged. "One wish at a time, I just... kept going. I didn't even notice at first. And then I thought, 'Well, this is convenient. I'll just keep this up forever.'"

"DID YOU NOT WISH FOR ETERNAL YOUTH?"

Habib's expression soured. "That was the kicker. I should have. I really, really should have. But I was young and stupid—no, wait, I was young and actually quite clever, but I was also very focused on other things. I didn't think about the long-term consequences. And now I'm..." He gestured at his ancient, wrinkled form. "This. I'm this."

The djinn stared at him for a long moment. Then, unexpectedly, it began to laugh. The sound was terrible—like rocks grinding together, like the earth itself was cracking open.

"YOU WISHED FOR IMMORTALITY WITHOUT WISHING FOR YOUTH. YOU ARE TRAPPED IN A PERPETUALLY AGING BODY. THAT IS... THAT IS MAGNIFICENT. THE IRONY IS DELICIOUS."

"Glad you're enjoying yourself," Habib muttered. "It's less funny when you're the one who can't get up without your knees making sounds like a dying camel."

"AND THESE?" The djinn gestured at the cowering thieves, who were still frozen in terror. "THESE ARE YOUR COMPANIONS?"

"Companions is a strong word. They tolerate me. Sometimes. Mostly they just put up with me because I showed up one day and wouldn't leave." Habib glanced at them with vague fondness. "They think I'm a crazy old man who tags along and doesn't contribute anything. Which, to be fair, is mostly accurate."

"THEY PLAN TO KILL YOU."

"I know. They're not very subtle about it. They plot behind my back, which is very rude of them, but also very predictable. I've heard them whispering about it. They don't want to share the treasure with me." Habib shrugged again. "It's fine. I was probably going to leave them soon anyway. They're not very good at the whole 'living forever' thing. Very short-term thinkers."

"HOW DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THEIR PLOT?"

"Because every so often, I have dreams about palm trees that tell me things. It's part of the curse. Or blessing. I haven't decided which." Habib took another drag from the pipe, his eyes going distant. "The palm trees are very helpful, actually. They told me about this oasis. They told me about the treasure. They even told me where to find your pipe."

"MY PIPE?"

"Your prison. Your home. Whatever you call it." Habib held up the ornate water pipe. "See? I recognized the symbols. I remembered you. I knew if I smoked from this, you'd come out. It was just a matter of timing."

The djinn's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "YOU SUMMONED ME ON PURPOSE?"

"Of course I summoned you on purpose. I've been looking for you for centuries." Habib's voice softened, losing some of its sardonic edge. "I need a favor."

"A FAVOR? YOU SUMMONED ME FROM MY SLUMBER, DRAGGED ME BACK TO THIS WRETCHED PLANE, AND NOW YOU WANT A FAVOR?"

"To be fair, your slumber was in a pipe that was buried under a tree. It wasn't exactly a restful vacation."

"THAT IS BESIDE THE POINT."

"The point is, I need your help. I need to make another wish." Habib's ancient eyes met the djinn's burning ones. "I'm tired, Naqad. I'm so tired. I've been alive for thousands of years, watching everyone I love die, watching empires rise and fall, watching the world change around me while I stay the same. It was fun at first. It was exciting. But now... now it's just exhausting."

The djinn's fury seemed to dim, replaced by something like curiosity. "YOU WANT TO DIE?"

"No. Yes. I don't know." Habib ran a hand through his graying hair. "I want to stop being this. This ancient, wrinkled, eternal monument to my own stupidity. I want to be young again. Or at least... less old. I want to be able to walk without groaning. To have a full night's sleep without waking up with a hundred aches and pains. To look in a mirror and see someone who could actually pass for alive."

"YOU WISH FOR ETERNAL YOUTH?"

Habib looked up at the djinn, and his expression was almost pleading. "Could you give me eternal youth, too? Please? I know I already got immortality, but that's like getting a chariot without wheels—it's technically still a chariot, but it's not very useful for actually going anywhere."

The djinn stared at him for a long, terrible moment. Its form shifted and pulsed with barely contained power, like a volcano on the verge of eruption.

Finally, it spoke.

"I HATE YOU."

Habib beamed. "Yes, I know. You've told me that before. But you're going to grant the wish anyway, aren't you?"

"I HATE YOU SO MUCH. SO, SO MUCH. YOU ARE THE MOST ANNOYING, OBNOXIOUS, INFURIATINGLY CHARMING MORTAL I HAVE EVER ENCOUNTERED. AND I HAVE ENCOUNTERED A LOT OF MORTALS. YOU ARE, WITHOUT QUESTION, THE WORST."

"That's very sweet of you to say. But about the wish—"

"YES. FINE. YES. I WILL GRANT YOUR STUPID WISH. BUT I WANT IT NOTED—PUBLICLY, FOR THE RECORD—THAT I HATE YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR."

"I'll be sure to record it in the official chronicles. 'Here lies Naqad the Djinn, who was very grumpy about granting a wish, but did it anyway because he secretly has a soft spot for old friends.'"

The djinn's roar of frustration was so loud it shook the oasis. The thieves, who had been paralyzed by fear, fainted en masse. Hassan, who had only just regained consciousness, fainted again.

"JUST MAKE THE WISH," Naqad bellowed.

Habib's smile was radiant. "I wish for eternal youth. I wish to stop aging. I wish to be young again—forever young, or at least until I decide I'm done being young, which I suspect will be never, because who would ever want to be old again?"

The air around them shimmered. The night sky seemed to twist and bend. The very fabric of reality groaned under the weight of a wish that had been millennia in the making.

And then, in a flash of light so bright it turned the oasis to day, the wish was granted.

ATILA