text: The sea of women descended on Saradyn like a snarling plague of field rats. He fell hard onto their bodies, buoyed by their strong arms, which reached out to rip him limb from limb – or so he believed – until he found himself carried aloft while they hissed and clicked around him. When he struggled, one of them bit his arm. Another twisted his leg. He felt the bone snap. Saradyn screamed, overcome with visions of being roasted and eaten alive by these creatures from some other world.
  
  They carried him across the corpse-ridden field, then down and down, through the long, twisting corridors of the ziggurat.
  
  When he saw them rip the gibbering body of the Dorinah legionnaire from the floor, Saradyn started screaming again, because he knew what they meant to do with him.
  
  The great twisted root that connected the throne to the wall had repaired itself. It pulsed now with an eerie green light that glimmered from the pool at his feet as well as the walls. The light shimmered across the throne, and made the women's snarling faces all the more horrifying.
  
  The women heaved him onto the great throne. It exerted a powerful force, pulling him into its grasp as they pushed him into it. His fingers gripped the arms of the throne of their own volition. He sat straight and tall, still screaming. A jolt of pain ran through him, and then there was darkness. Silence.
  
  And from the dark and the silence, a pinprick of light. A voice.
  
  "Saradyn, it has been too long."
  
  He knew the voice. Knew it as he knew his own. If he still had a body he could feel, he would tremble and curse and beg her to let him be. But he was nothing, now, just a wisp of consciousness propelled by some dark force.
  
  Saradyn gazed upon the Empress of Dorinah, her face peering into his awareness as if she peered into a mirror. Behind her was a stone wall capped by a shimmering red carpet of something organic, some living thing that was creeping toward her, slowly but relentlessly.
  
  "I knew you could not resist my legionnaires," she said. "I knew you could not resist following. You were always so curious. I'd hoped Storm and Zezili would lead my people, but Storm was not strong enough to reign here alone. You, though? Yes, you will do."
  
  He tried to speak, but he had no body. Yet he screamed at her, still, screamed as he had the day she cast him out of her bed and he went home to conquer his nation and prove his worth. I WON'T.
  
  She smiled. "Oh, you will."
  
  Saradyn surfaced from his fugue among the crowd of women. Were they women, even, or did he call them that only because they horrified him? He heard a great roaring above them, and high-pitched screaming from outside.
  
  "They are burning them," the Empress said, "all they can find. But you are safe here, with those who remain. The temple protects you. Have no fear. There are more of my people here, still slumbering. We will wake them together."
  
  Saradyn tried to claw his way off the throne. In control of his voice again, he said, "I serve no one!"
  
  A prickling pain rode along his spine. Words bloomed in his mind, "YOU SERVE ME."
  
  "No!"
  
  He found his fist in his mouth, but had no memory of putting it there. He began to gnaw at his knuckles. He tasted his own blood. The Empress's voice crowded out his thoughts.
  
  "Did you think you were hunting me? No, Saradyn. You are the only one who can put the people of Tordin to work for my women. You are the only one who can unite them to my purpose. And you will serve me."
  
  Saradyn toppled off the throne. He let out a tangled sob, but it was still muffled by his fist in his mouth. He lay on his side in the center of the green pool as the women stood around him in a silent circle. Saradyn wept as the Empress of Dorinah compelled him to gnaw off his own arm.