Ariadna, only eight years old, hurried along at a run. The dry air of the Persian desert was already beginning to feel like an omen, but in her childish mind everything wove itself into a dreadful tale she could not stop imagining. What if we fail? Well, very simple, she thought: five years of total and brutal drought, without a single drop of rain. The only means of survival would be the rivers and the wells, but the rivers would shrink into tiny trickles, like dry veins in cracked earth, and the wells would become harder to reach, the scarce water refusing to be obtained easily.
In her imagination, which flew like a bird over the vast empire, she saw famine spreading—at first invisible, but voracious. The crops, those golden fields of wheat and barley her father described to her in stories of abundance, withered beneath the relentless sun, turning into dust the wind carried like ghosts. The animals—the goats and cows that grazed on the plains—grew so thin their ribs stood out like the bars of a cage, and they died in herds, leaving only bones bleached by the heat. Thousands dead, her mind repeated, imagining lifeless bodies in the streets of Persepolis: children like herself with swollen bellies and sunken eyes, mothers weeping over makeshift graves.
The great Shah, from his throne in the capital, would order the rationing of grain from the royal silos, but soon nothing would remain, and hunger would bite like a wolf in every household.
But the worst thing, in Ariadna’s thoughts, was not hunger itself, but how it devoured the soul of the empire. It would make the empire dependent on its allies and protectorates, she told herself, recalling the maps her uncle showed her, with distant lands marked in red ink: Babylon, Egypt, the eastern satrapies. The king would send messengers on horseback, demanding extra tributes of food and water, squeezing those peoples like dry sponges. At first they would obey out of fear, sending caravans laden with dates, olives, and livestock from the fertile banks of the Nile or the Euphrates. But year after year, with the drought persisting like a curse from the gods, the allies would grow weary. Five years that would provoke wars, she imagined, seeing in her mind how the Egyptians—tired of watching their own children falter while sending their last supplies to Persia—would rise in rebellion. The local satraps, ambitious and opportunistic, would declare independence, raising armies with foreign mercenaries who had hated the empire since past wars.
Chaos would be unleashed like a sandstorm, blinding everything. Within the empire, internal rebellions would erupt first in the peripheral provinces, where hunger struck hardest. Internal rebellions, Ariadna thought, picturing with innocent vividness peasants turning sickles into weapons, marching against the nobles’ fortresses. In Media and Parthia, nomadic tribes would plunder weakened cities, while at the royal court eunuchs and viziers would conspire in alliances and counter-alliances, blaming the Shah for the wrath of the rukh. The allies, once loyal, would turn against Persia: the Babylonians would close their irrigation canals, denying vital water; the Lydians, rich through trade, would cut supply routes, allying with the Greeks to invade from the west. Allies rebelling, she repeated, seeing battles in her head like games with toy soldiers—armies clashing in the dust, arrows flying, cities burning beneath the eternal sun.
And the generalized chaos—oh, that was the greatest monster in Ariadna’s thoughts. During those first two years of famine—because in her vision the disaster accelerated, condensed into a whirlwind of horror—the empire would fragment like a shattered jar. Caravans of refugees would flee the parched lands, collapsing trade routes and spreading disease in makeshift camps. Thieves and bandits would proliferate along the roads, attacking the few aid convoys left. In the cities, bread riots would erupt daily, with royal guards massacred by enraged crowds. The Shah would order higher taxes and forced conscription, only for soldiers to desert, joining the rebels for a crust of bread. A visceral hatred of the empire, her childish mind concluded, imagining how that rancor seeped into every soul—from the starving child to the traitorous satrap—a poison corroding the bonds of loyalty forged by the royal dynasty.
After the five years ended and the rain returned, generous and redemptive, over all the territories of the empire, the Shah, from his throne, proclaimed victory over the drought, and heralds rode through the satrapies announcing that the Magnificent Sun God had forgiven the people. The empire, in appearance, rebuilt itself: caravans moved again, markets filled with voices and aromas, and the nobles reclaimed their palaces with feasts meant to erase the memory of hunger.
Rain heals the land, but not those years. The empire had survived, yes, but it had left much poison within. Hatred had taken deep root, like a weed the drought did not kill but strengthened. Anger burned in the eyes of peasants who had buried their children for lack of bread; losses were counted in widows still dressed in mourning, in orphans who had forgotten how to smile, in entire families reduced to ashes by revolts crushed with brutality.
Ariadna remembered—because she had been taken to many places with the young prince—how that poison now seeped into every crack of the empire. The internal allies, those satraps who had obeyed grudgingly during the famine, no longer bowed their heads with sincere loyalty. In Media, in Parthia, in the highlands of Armenia, nobles whispered in their nightly councils: Why should we send more tribute to a tyrant who let us starve? Some already conspired openly, arming their personal guards and delaying shipments of grain and gold, waiting for the right moment to declare independence or ally with external enemies.
The external allies, those peoples squeezed to the last drop—the Egyptians of the Nile, the Babylonians of the Euphrates, the Lydians of the wealthy coasts—did not forgive. Ariadna saw in her mind how the pharaohs of Egypt, who had sent ships laden with wheat while their own temples stood empty, now gathered armies and closed their ports. The Greeks, ever opportunistic, once more whispered promises of freedom to the coastal cities, recalling the privations of those five years as an open wound. Five years of privation, her thoughts repeated, and hatred is not extinguished by rain; it only cools, waits, turns into sharpened ice.
The Lich she had heard of—the great enemy from the west, the one her father called “the dead king” or “the plague of the Franks”—would take advantage of it all. And with that would come the betrayal of the empire, carried out by his legions of the dead, with the hidden hand of his new allies.
.
.
The prince running at his side had only one thought lodged in his mind like a dagger: ever since the rukh arrived, everything had turned into a nightmare of epic proportions.
He had been sitting on the throne, right beside his father, when it happened. In the blink of an eye, the entire court was blasted into the air, as if the palace were a paper circus. He, of course, did not even have time to scream. Three ministers—the fattest, the most pompous, the ones who looked as if they had been sculpted out of lard and grease—landed directly on top of him.
Three gigantic ministerial asses crushed him against the marble like a forgotten cushion. The air was forced from his lungs in an agonized groan that no one heard, because everyone was screaming at the same time. For a few eternal seconds, he served as a human armchair for the highest bureaucracy of the realm.
And the worst part… the unforgivable part: in the stampede, someone—probably the very minister who was smashing his face—spilled the entire bowl of his precious honey ice cream. That ice cream that took three days to prepare, that was served in carved crystal cups, that he defended as if it were a sacred relic… it spread across the floor, mixing with dust, rukh feathers, and the trampled dignity of the prince.
Five years. Five damned years went by without him tasting a single spoonful of honey ice cream. Every time he saw a bee, he felt as if the universe itself were mocking him.
And yet, as he now ran alongside his companion, the prince wondered silently, with a mix of self-admiration and retrospective disgust:
How in the hell did I endure that ignominy? How did I survive being used as a seat by three ministerial backsides for seven eternal seconds… and on top of that lose my ice cream?
Stolen novel; please report.
Because, deep down, what he loved most in the world… was ice cream. And he refused to lose his ice cream again.
“LET’S GO, ARDESHIR!” he shouted with the conviction of someone determined to prevent his favorite ice cream from disappearing for another five years.
.
.
The midday sun beat down mercilessly on the city’s central square, where an frenzied crowd had gathered as though for a macabre fair. The two friends descended from the luxurious carriage that had just rolled out of the palace’s imposing gates.
The elder prince stepped down with firm strides, wrapped in a deep blue silk tunic embroidered with gold and silver threads tracing intricate griffins. The embroidery gleamed in the sunlight, yet his pale face displayed a restrained mix of horror and surprise. His hands, clad in fine leather gloves, clenched at the sight of Wyrn’s condition. “My ice creams…,” he muttered through gritted teeth, almost inaudibly, as if the spectacle had stolen his breath.
Beside him, his friend—the second to alight from the carriage—descended more cautiously. She wore fitted dark brown wool trousers, practical and unadorned, a pristine white linen shirt tucked precisely, and an olive-green cloak falling to her knees, fastened with a bronze leaf-shaped brooch. Her short hair made her look almost like a boy. When her gaze fell on the crowd and the drenched hunchback, her eyes widened in pure horror. “The future economy of the empire…,” she whispered, her voice trembling with disbelief and revulsion, as though she saw in that gratuitous cruelty the seeds of the mighty Persian state’s internal destruction.
There, chained to a post in the center of the square, stood the hunchback. His twisted, humped back made him resemble a creature from children’s nightmares, and his face—marked by deformities—streamed with tears, only fueling the crowd’s contempt. The throng—a seething mass of peasants, merchants, and drunks—spared no creativity in humiliating him. At first they had begun with improvised balloons filled with hot urine, hurled with malicious precision again and again. Each burst splashed against his tattered clothes, soaking him in a nauseating stench that drew booming laughter. “Look how the monster shines!” one shouted, while another replied, “He looks like a king bathed in liquid gold!”
But the people were ingenious, and the humiliation quickly escalated. Now they hurled entire buckets of fresh excrement collected from nearby latrines, splattering his body and the ground around him. Rotten fruit flew through the air like projectiles, exploding into viscous pulp on his head and shoulders, drawing furious swarms of flies. Bolder ones approached to spit on him or throw broken eggs, while children ran in circles mimicking his awkward limp. The square had turned into an impromptu festival: street musicians played mocking tunes on flutes and drums, vendors hawked cakes and beer to spectators, and groups of women gossiped about tales of the “cursed hunchback,” unaware he was the son of a Rukh. They laughed heartily, applauding every fresh insult, as though Wyrn’s suffering were the kingdom’s finest entertainment. He, eyes fixed on the ground, made no sound; his shattered dignity was all he had left.
Meanwhile, in the shadows of a nearby building, Wyrn’s “Sages”—now negotiating quietly with the chief captor, who had found a profitable side business in letting people throw fruit or allowing experiments on the boy—spoke in low tones.
These mages, wrapped in tattered moss-green cloaks adorned with bones and vials of strange fluids, were specialists in the dark arts of bodily reconstruction and deformation. They were mad visionaries, creators of hybrid creatures that fused human and beast: chimeras with bat wings and wolf claws, or living-flesh golems that obeyed sadistic commands. Their techniques did not merely repair broken bodies; they twisted them into grotesque forms as cruel punishment, turning traitors into shambling abominations or enemies into deformed pets. “We can straighten that hump,” one organicist whispered, flashing a crooked smile that revealed sharp teeth, “or make it worse, if the price is right. Imagine: a hunchback with tentacles instead of arms—a perfect guardian for your dungeons.” The captors, eager for a deal that would give them leverage at court, haggled over gold and favors, ignoring the crowd’s shouts.
To them, the hunchback was nothing more than merchandise, a living canvas for these deranged flesh artisans. The negotiation continued, steeped in promises of power and horror, while the festival of humiliation roared on endlessly in the square.
The prince—the one who had first stepped from the carriage with firm stride and flowing cloak—suddenly raised his voice, slicing through the din like a sword blade. His boots rang against the cobblestones as he advanced forcefully, parting the reluctant crowd, who still hid stifled laughter and curious glances—until the sight of his royal guards, fearsome and unmistakable, made anyone who hadn’t noticed drop to their knees on the spot.
“Enough!” he thundered, his voice amplified by contained fury and the echo off the surrounding fa?ades. “Enough already!” Despite his young age, his voice carried tremendous power; the most serious days of training had strengthened his muscles and, to his own surprise, his lungs as well.
The shouting died in waves, as though the wind had shifted. Some hurled their last rotten fruits out of inertia, but most froze, buckets and improvised balloons still halfway raised. The stench of urine and excrement hung heavy in the hot air, mingling with the crowd’s sweat and the sickly-sweet rot of fermented fruit.
The prince planted himself before the post where Wyrn was chained, his hump soaked and dripping, his face hidden behind strands of golden water that fell like rain. For a moment, the hunchback lifted his gaze in surprise; his eyes, red from the silent tears he had tried to hide, met the noble’s. Fresh tears carved clean paths through the grime on his cheeks, but he made no sound.
The prince turned to the crowd, arms outstretched as if to embrace every soul present: ragged peasants, merchants with frozen smiles, children still clutching rotten eggs in small hands.
“What kind of citizens of the empire are you?” he asked, his tone now lower but laden with contempt and disappointment. “Do you not see that he is crying? Do you not see that he is suffering, and yet you find ever crueler ways to humiliate him? Urine balloons, buckets of excrement, rotten fruit… is this entertainment for a people who pride themselves on being civilized?”
A murmur rippled through the square: some lowered their eyes in shame; others crossed their arms defiantly. A drunk shouted something unintelligible from the back, only to be silenced by elbows from his companions.
“What has this man done to you?” the prince continued, gesturing broadly at the hunchback. “Can any of you confirm that he has eaten children? That he is a scourge from the heavens? That he is a human punished by the gods? Speak! Has any one of you seen with your own eyes that this hunchback is a demon, a soul-devouring monster? Or do you merely repeat convenient gossip to justify your cruelty?”
Silence. Only the buzzing of flies and the constant drip of filth onto the ground.
The prince drew a deep breath, his voice gaining strength once more, as though invoking the words etched into the imperial laws.
“Does not the empire of my father, the very Shah, proclaim that we open the doors of our realm to all who seek aid? Do we not declare that we help in their hour of need, regardless of blood, deformity, or lineage? This man is merely an unfortunate being born in that condition. And this is how you treat him? With public humiliation, with a festival of misery? This is not justice. This is cowardice disguised as entertainment. If you hate deformity so much, look in the mirror: what deformity festers in your hearts that you take pleasure in another’s suffering?”
The crowd began to disperse slowly, some muttering excuses, others casting sidelong glances at the hunchback. Street musicians packed away their instruments; vendors gathered their trays. The “festival” deflated like a punctured balloon.
In the shadows, the captors and organicists halted their negotiation. The moss-green-cloaked mage frowned, his eyes glinting with irritation. “It seems the show ended early,” one of them muttered.
“But where can we take the hunchback?” said the prince calmly, slipping back into his usual style of the spoiled youngest son, raised by an overprotective mother who had always shielded him far too much.
“We should take him to my house,” replied Ariadna with the same apparent calm, though a slight tremble in her fingers betrayed her unease. “Although I’m not sure if I can…” Now that she was a young woman, she understood better than ever how little her parents truly took her into account.
A tense silence stretched across the room, broken only by the rustle of curtains stirred by the desert wind.
“My princes…” interrupted a voice, soft yet firm, like silk brushing over sand.
From the shadows of the entrance arch emerged Natalie, the most powerful woman in the empire—at least in the world of commerce. She was known along every caravan route as the Fox of the Desert: cunning, merciless in negotiations, able to scent an opportunity—or a betrayal—from leagues away. Her long, silver hair, wavy like dunes beneath the moon, cascaded over her shoulders, framing a face of sharp beauty: amber eyes that gleamed with feline intelligence, lips painted deep red, and skin bronzed by years of travel under the scorching sun. She wore black silk panties embroidered with silver threads depicting foxes racing across dunes, and around her breasts hung a bra fashioned from pearls of the Southern Sea, spoils from her countless deals.
For years she had built her empire from nothing: orphaned from a nomadic desert clan, she had begun as a mere caravan guide, yet her sharp mind had propelled her to dominate the trade in spices, silks, and exotic gems. Nobles feared and courted her in equal measure; it was said she could ruin a merchant with a single whispered word in the bazaar, or enrich an ally with a secret shipment. But behind her infamous nickname “fox”—a title she herself had claimed with pride—lay a fierce loyalty toward those she considered her own.
Natalie was also renowned for her charity, a soft spot for the broken, the overlooked, and the abandoned. The hunchback had drawn her in because of the innocence in him that no one else had dared to see.
