It was the sun they lost first. Mozenrath could remember the day when suddenly the skies darkened with clouds and blackness while the moon rose to replace it. The people thought it was just a storm, but this was like no desert storm ever seen in the Black Sands.
Next it was the food. Without the sun, the plants withered and died, food became sparse and for whatever reason the wells went dry, as if the people of this once thriving kingdom were cursed. They prayed to their king, their Sultan, for help, but there came no reply. The people became bitter.
Slowly it became the people who began to disappear. There were whispers at first. They had not died, it was said, they had gone to work for the Sultan. But the Sultan was the first to disappear. The Sultan was the first to die on the day the moon rose into the sky. Very soon it became clear that these men and children would not be returning to their families. Mozenrath's father too, was lost in such a way.
Gangs rose along with violence and distrust, the bitter people became filled with hate that spread throughout the land like a sickness. People were willing to kill if it meant living or surviving another day. If only the change had been gradual, Mozenrath often thought, but all was in but a span of a mere few years.
Depression and disease took those who refused to change, those who kept kindness in their heart. Mozenrath often stood at his mother's bedside, gazing at her gentle face as she told him stories of the sun he only dreamt of in his sleep. Slowly the stories became shorter and shorter as the light dimmed from her face and the color drained. In a few short months, the glimmer of hope and the love of his mother was lost to Mozenrath.
With hope lost, Mozenrath began to harden with hate just as the people had. Rumors of a higher up were heard, and a name with no face, only Destane. But those who spoke the name were soon found dead or disappeared. Mozenrath never spoke the name out loud, but in his heart he ached and wailed for peace. He sought out first the gangs, as they were rumored to be trials.
The men had little faith in a starved boy with no hope. They underestimated how nimble and how fast he was. Only able to stay alive because a man would not see the face that put a knife through his neck.
He climbed and rose until he was a young man without a purpose, if only to serve the man who once never had a face. The vision of revenge long clouded from his eyes, eyes that sought destruction of all. Even the destruction of his master.
Obsessed with power, Mozenrath searched for an opportunity to take the blackened land as his own. He knew magic, he knew science, he studied all. All that he could, and all under the guise of apprenticeship. Destane relished his power for as long as he could. He told Mozenrath secrets, secrets of how The Land of The Black Sands was not the first, or the last. Secrets of how there was a thriving kingdom that would soon be his, with a princess that he would make his own.
Mozenrath was not interested in that which was beyond his reach. Until it was, he held little interest for what his master had to say.
At last, it was complete. All his preparations finished, the gauntlet that would secure his rulership over the land. Over Destane. The sorcerer would never realize what Mozenrath had become, what he had created in his greed for power. Very shortly his death and reanimation came. For Mozenrath had little need for a man rotting in the ground. Life after death was much more promising. Armies could not kill what was already dead.
All was in his reach, all that he wanted.
This would be his legacy, and this would be how he would be known.
Mozenrath had gained all that he wanted.
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