There is no road to Kazulu
There is no road to Kazulu.
Out here, the road is wherever it is that your feet take you. In every direction there is nothing. Only rock and sand and broken earth. The sand gets in your shoes and gnaws at your skin, and the rock cuts the palms of your hands when you fall, or the knee you take when you stop to rest. The sun above is unrelenting, and death follows in your footsteps.
It can feel like you’re walking in circles for days. The mountains will seem to drift farther and farther away, and hope abandons you. But that’s all part of Kazulu’s spell. Suddenly you look up and see it on the horizon. A tower made of stone so black it seems not of this world. Beyond the tower, somewhere, are the gates to a great fortress. A place as old as the mountains, at the edge of the world.
They say if the black tower of Kazulu doesn’t want you, it never reveals itself. The journey is the first test, and the way is marked by those who didn’t pass. A journey by foot, if you’re like me. Poor, and left with no other option but live and bear your shame, or die upon it.
To touch the tower with your hand is to make a contract.There is no turning back. If the desert was forgiving before, it will not be now, and the options are to die here, at the foot of the tower, or to walk through the gates that lie beyond. Gates that will only open for those who have touched the tower.
Out here, you die because death caught up to you. In there, you die a different way, but a version of you lives on. You will not remember the blood you bled, or the secrets you buried in the desert. When all you know is the hurt of living, it doesn’t seem like such a bad trade. A new life for the privilege of forgetting who you were.
They do dark things here. Experiment with abominable technologies, build mechanical demons, and even give mortal men the minds of machines. The rest of the world tries to pretend this place doesn’t exist, yet the most powerful among them come here looking for something. Or someone. Someone like me: broken, reshaped, and reborn.
Nobody chooses it. Kazulu calls. You can try to ignore the call, but from the moment you hear it it’s too late. There is nothing you can do. You’ve become a ghost to everyone who you ever loved, and you know this because they no longer look you in the eye and all their words are lies.
“Time will heal these wounds.”
“You are young; you will be forgiven.”
“You are not a villain.”
All lies.
Swim against the current all you’d like, the desert pulls you away like a riptide. People know better than to come searching for you. They dare not lay eyes on the phantom tower for fear that they will be forced to make the same choice: to touch the tower and become a demon, or to die along with your sins in the desert.
Kazulu will use my pain to shape me. It will take the blood that stains my hands, and turn it into strength. It will rewrite me, mind and body, and I will be a soldier, a mercenary, a protector. Someone with a purpose, which is more than most can hope for in life: to do something of value. I will live my life tied to someone else’s purpose, and only as human as I am allowed to be. And whatever life I lived before will be nothing more than a bad dream.
I do not know that I have the right to be sad for this loss of self. This is, after all, what I deserve, and the world has no place for me. I wonder how deep inside can Kazulu’s metallic gods reach to undo the full extent of my wrongs?
Blood does not wash away from one’s hands easily. But I will take my chances, and touch the tower.
