Ancient Magic, Modern Times

The Warlord smiled to himself, pleased with the work his people had done.

He wore his pride openly for them to see, letting it gleam in his dark eyes as he soaked in every detail that lay below and before him. He sat comfortably atop his camel on a dune towering over the burning campsite, watching his warriors recover what they could before the flaming tents collapsed and their contents were lost to them forever. With one less tribe in the region, his people would have more room to prosper.

His eyes flicked away and towards the setting sun, passively observing the last of the attack's survivors flee into the coming night. He had ordered his warriors to let them go; their flight would ultimately be to their advantage.

They would find other tribes and spread word of what happened to their people, and those tribes would learn to fear the Warlord, remembering how his band dealt with the last fool stupid enough to insult him. Let him think he was a bloodthirsty tyrant; he only cared about his tribe and scoffed at the idea of trade when violence proved to be a far more valuable currency than goodwill. In a best case scenario, they too would leave the region -- or at least the threat of this happening again would predispose them to placating any demands he might make of them.

The Warlord paused at the sound of someone scrabbling up the dune behind him and reached for his blade. Though he was certain every able man had been slain in the raid or driven off, it could easily have been a survivor, mad with grief and wanting to avenge their lost family and friends. When he looked over his shoulder, he relaxed. It was one of his tribemates, his sweaty face blackened with soot from the fires in the camp. In spite of that, he grinned at the Warlord, then planted his weight on his knees and panted to recover his breath.

"What is it?" the Warlord asked, lowering his hand from his weapon and looking back to his handiwork, committing the picture of it to his memory. The man was more than just another member of the tribe. His cousin, albeit his least favourite one, with a reputation for almost unilaterally being able to ruin anything he involved himself in. It wasn't an entirely fair reputation, because that ruin wasn't always his fault. Yet it was impossible to ignore that his presence was often the common link between the tribe's worst turns of luck.

"We've-- we've found something incredible," his cousin panted out, before pushing on his knees to straighten up, his grin only growing bolder and brighter. "You must come and take a look. Quickly, before someone does something stupid," he urged, waving his kin along while he turned and started to slide and stumble his way back down the steep and sandy slope. "Come, come!"

The Warlord watched him go, his brow creasing. Fair or not, he had a bad feeling about this, but he knew he'd never hear the end of it from his uncle if he ignored his less than lucky cousin now. Blowing out a breath that stopped just short of a sigh, he put his heels to his camel's flank and let it pick its way after his kin, following him through the chaos to an unexpected sight. His cousin led him to a small stretch of land that somehow eluded his sight atop his prior perch, improbably untouched by the chaos.

The tent at its center was, in a word, quaint. Perhaps he had seen it and simply brushed it off in disinterest, its diminutive size making it somehow unworthy of his attention. Yet now two of his tribemates stood at its entrance, spears kept pointed at its closed flap. His cousin loitered near them, waiting eagerly for the Warlord to join them. Finding his curiosity piqued, the Warlord rode closer and slid down from his mount. If not for the spears, he would have assumed this was where they hid their true treasures.

"Be careful," one of the spearmen whispered to him, clearly unnerved. "It's--"

"Look," his cousin exclaimed, reaching forward and grabbing the flap, pulling it back. "The only spoils of war in this wretched campsite worthy of you, my blood." Immediately, the Warlord could tell something was distinctly wrong with the tent's interior. It took him several seconds to put his finger on it; the tent was well-lit, yet he could see no candle, no torch, no lantern. He frowned but ducked inside anyway, glancing over the tent's sparse but opulent decorations.

Strange things decorated the building's walls, queer shapes of wrought silver encrusted with gems, serving no other purpose than to bear the weight of small silken bags and pouches that hung off them. The Warlord had to pause and do a double-take of the walls themselves. They were... solid stone? His cousin stayed outside the tent, and the Warlord had yet to fully enter it.

He took a step back out and glanced at its exterior, his brow creasing as his lips took on a heavy frown. It showed no evidence of the stone seemingly on its other side. The thin walls were patched and frayed. No longer trusting his sight, he reached out and trailed his fingers along it, certain he would feel the stone -- but no, he only felt the weathered material of the tent, pulled taut over its frame with just the barest amount of give.

"We should burn this here and now," the Warlord whispered, shaken and understanding now why the spearman warned him. "Fetch oil and a torch," he told the other spear-wielding warrior, the one who had yet to speak but was obviously as affected as his fellow. He lowered his weapon and trotted off wordlessly. Then the Warlord felt hands on his back, urging him back in towards the tent while he was flat-footed.

"Look, damn you," his cousin laughed, seemingly unaware of what seemed obvious to the other men. "At least take her out of the tent before you burn it." The Warlord reined in the immediate flare of his temper. Now that he was back inside the tent, he realized something else. It was far more spacious than it should have been, considering its comparatively quaint appearance from outside. He glanced back at his cousin, ready to bite out at him.

Someone inside the tent moaned before he could, making the Warlord swing his gaze towards them. His fingers fell towards his blade once more, ready to draw but faltering as he saw what made the noise; the moan was neither pain nor pleasure, but the bleary dismay of a heavy sleeper finally roused. "What...?"

He didn't notice the bed the first time he entered the tent, his dark, greedy eyes immediately caught by the glitter of precious metals and the shine of jewels that coated the walls. It must have been large enough for four if not five adults to comfortably lay on side-by-side. Plush rugs were spread over it, with a wild number of silken pillows strewn across them. The Warlord barely noticed the bed or its appointments now, only having eyes for the woman who laid upon it. She was, in a word, perfect. She was perfect in every sense of the word.

She was also very nude, though not to say without decoration. While she wore not a single stitch of thread on her body, she accentuated every line and curve of her body with the most beautiful golden jewelry the Warlord had ever seen. Each piece's lustre seemed to come to life when contrasted against her slightly darker skin, every inch of her flawless as though the harsh sun chose to dim itself rather than burn her flesh. Armlets showed off the soft tone of her biceps and bangles drew the eye to her slim wrists, while the rubies and emeralds embedded into her rings brought them to her graceful fingers.

Coins and bells decorated a chain that hugged the width of her motherly hips, the lowest trailing along her lean, smooth thighs. The Warlord felt his mouth go dry, his eyes following the length of her long legs until they bounced off her anklets. He already wanted to grab her legs and spread them; he wanted to sink his fingers into her thighs and squeeze them as he held them open. Slowly, he took a step forward, inspecting the rest of her, sweeping his eyes up her flat stomach. He had never seen a woman wear a piercing in her navel before, but he quite liked how the gold stud and its ruby looked.

He stopped right over the bed, feeling his cock stir to life as he gazed down at her heavy breasts. Though her body was mature, her skin was youthful and showed no sign of age; surely her breasts should have sagged and stretched, but they seemed as perky as a youth's tits. Small golden bars pierced her tight, erect nipples.

The Warlord's first instinct was to reach down and pinch them, to feel what those bars made them feel like, but his hands didn't move. His eyes continued their slow upward drag. Up the smooth column of her swan-like neck, only broken by her golden collar. A thin chain hung from it, like a leash. He soaked in the details of her face. Her lips were lush, as enticing as her breasts. And her eyes-- they were like warm amber, capable of capturing any man with their inner fire.

The woman's thick eyelashes slowly fanned over them as she blinked and then blinked again, careless in how they met the Warlord's dark gaze and held it. She gave a soft, feminine yawn and stretched, then slowly lifted her weight up on a single elbow, her sleepy haze fading. A woman like her was raw sexuality and sensuality, and he expected that to shine through when her lips parted to form words.

"Who are you?" she asked him, her impossibly long dark brown hair falling like a nimbus around her. Her tone was lazy, indolent, and by the way her eyes did a brief sweep of the Warlord's handsome face before returning to his eyes with mild disinterest, she was anything but impressed. In spite of all that, her voice was low and throaty, and he wanted nothing more than to hear her moan again, to hear what she would sound like once he drove her to breathless pleasure. No woman had ever complained about being bedded by the Warlord.

He had never stopped to consider why that was -- that it might have something to do with the threat and value of violence he loved so much, that even when he didn't mean to use it to his advantage, his reputation would always influence those around him. He did not, in that moment, become self-aware enough to reflect on that and reconsider the way he approached the desert vixen.

No, he just thought about how this was the camp's true treasure and how right his cousin was. This woman was his by right of conquest, and the only trophy worthy of him in the entire camp. He smiled down at her and leaned forward, his fingers scooping around the chain attached to her collar. "Your new master, little flower," he whispered to her as he took a step back and pulled. She shifted forward with the chain's tug, crawling toward him and the edge of the bed, all swaying breasts in front, her perfect ass swaying just the same behind her.

"Is that so?" his little flower seemed to purr, her eyes narrowing in catlike fashion as she got off the bed, her bare feet alighting on the floor. At her full height, she was several inches shorter than he was, but still a couple taller over the average woman. Her proportions were nothing short of perfect. Her hair should have been an unkempt mess with how long it was, thick and voluminous and going past the small of her back. Yet as she straightened, it almost looked perfectly kept and freshly brushed.

"Indeed," the Warlord grinned. He didn't want to wait, but the room still unnerved him in a way that her sheer presence couldn't quite shake."Come," he bid her, leading his new woman out into the night.

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A long, long time later:

Laila grinned, unable to contain her excitement. After what felt like forever, she was finally being given her head. She was finally unshackled, uncollared, unleashed, free to do as she'd like among the dimly-lit shelves and heavy cement walls that served as her underground prison for so long. For what had to be hundreds, if not thousands of years. "Alright," she whispered to herself, resisting the urge to rub her hands together and bounce on her heels.

Of course, hundreds of years was a gross exaggeration. Even a dozen years would be a gross exaggeration. If the museum's underground warehouse was any kind of prison to her, it was a gilded cage without a lock on its door, filled with an endless assortment of curios and toys for her to entertain herself with. It even had a break area and a kitchenette. The only thing keeping her from living down there was the lack of a proper bed, a hot shower and the spotty WiFi.

Just better WiFi would have been enough for her. She was a modern woman, after all. Access to streaming services wasn't a luxury to her generation, it was a basic need.

Laila loved working down there. The only thing she didn't love about it was that she was a grad student, doing work directed by other people. Even as a child she found the study of history and ancient cultures enthralling, leading her to pursue a career in archaeology, leading her to where she was right then and there.

She learned pretty quickly that she didn't like digsites. This warehouse, this archive, had become her happy place, even if her supervisor kept Laila far too busy with organization, cataloging, research and papers on this-and-that. Erin never gave her a chance to follow her nose or explore her personal interests. Laila knew it was deliberate. For one, the stern old woman clearly hated her.

And for two, well. Laila's medications kept her ADHD in check, but she was still prone to distractions. She needed to be kept busy. Keeping Laila run ragged was her own request, knowing exactly how unproductive she could be without her bullet journal in one hand and a clear goal ahead of her. Sometimes, she regretted being so upfront about that.

But Erin was out this week, gone across the country to meet her newest nephew. When she told Laila where she would be, Laila expected her to hand off a pile of work... but it seemed to have slipped Erin's mind entirely. Did Laila feel a little guilty about not asking for more work?

Just a little. Just that tiniest bit so she could tell herself she was, and feel good about feeling bad about something ultimately inconsequential. Laila blazed through what she did have for the week in the course of two days, and then -- freedom. Laila unchained. For seventy two hours and some change, she could do whatever she wanted. Within reason, of course.

She felt like a kid in a candy store.

For the first hour, she puttered around the shelves without aim, letting herself really soak in the scale of the facility for the first time and the sheer amount of history inside it. There was something from every age and every era, from every civilization and every continent. For the most part, Erin had kept Laila working on things related to American history, planning on an exhibit about the Founding Fathers that was about two years too late to capitalize on Hamilton's massive success.

It was interesting, sure, but one eventually gets tired of Benjamin Franklin's filthy letters and rustic artifacts after a time. For Laila, that time came quicker than she expected. The women occupying her neighboring offices were studying ancient Egypt and the Italian renaissance. Whenever she caught sight of them bringing in a carefully crated artifact or stack of documents, she had to force herself not to daydream about being in their shoes.

She was both disappointed and relieved to learn the museum wasn't hiding any stolen mummies or long-lost paintings.

As a grad student, the last thing Laila needed in her life was for her job to take a sudden turn towards resembling a Dan Brown novel, not that she could remember the plot of the Da Vinci Code for the life of her. All she could really recall was that it involved a lot of shenanigans in the Vatican. Modern mysteries were never really her bag; she loved science fiction and fantasy at heart.

Sometimes, she found herself wishing the magic she often read about was real. That was another thing that led her to archaeology. As a teenager, she dreamed of finding tangible proof of it, whether that proof was truly arcane or occult magic or simply some ancient piece of technology that obeyed Clarke's third law. As she grew older, that dream grew fainter and fainter, but it never quite went away. Though she didn't know it, that wisp of a dream that remained rooted in her heart was about to change her life.

As she began to wander further and further from the shelves she was most familiar with, Laila kept her eyes up high, scanning the labels for anything that might catch her eye or at least capture her imagination. She gave a sharp gasp when she stumbled over her destiny in literal fashion, her flailing arms barely saving her from a nasty spill that would have surely shattered her glasses.

Once she regained her balance, she drew in a deep breath and peeked down at what nearly rendered her blind. "Huh." The crate was far, far away from the museum's meager Arabic collection -- everything was alphabetical and Laila was standing in the 'N' aisle. Someone was being forgetful, if not lazy. But it wasn't just labeled for the Arabic collection. It was also labeled for the Bedouin and by the number on the box Laila knew right away that whatever was inside was the only Bedouin artifact in the warehouse.

Her dark brown eyes lit up with interest and excitement. What were the chances? She knew she had Bedouin blood through her mother, though she was never quite able to pin down how far back that blood went or even when her Arabic ancestors came to the United States of America. Beginning to smile, she scooped up the crate with all due care and started back down the aisle. She'd put it back in its proper place, after she took it back to her office and took a look at whatever was inside.

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An equally long, long time before:

The Warlord took a long, winding path through his camp. He wanted everyone in his tribe to get a good look at his prize, so beautiful and soft in her decorated nudity. When he began to lead her, he expected her to blush or shy away from the eyes that fell upon her. He expected her to use her unrestrained hands to cover her luscious breasts or the wet treasure between her thighs, but to his surprise, she remained exactly the way he found her: indolent.

She smiled her lazy smile at everyone she caught looking at her, doing nothing to deter their leers. Whomever owned her before he did must have trained her well. There was no doubt in the Warlord's mind that she was someone's prized possession, not 'garbed' as she was without a hint of hardship on her body. He had forgotten about the oddities of her tent, too enraptured, too horny to remember the distinct wrongness he felt inside it.

Or perhaps there was just something wrong with her mind and she had no concept of shame or humiliation. Whichever the case, the Warlord was simply pleased and increasingly proud of his acquisition, never even thinking to stop and ask her a single question about her. What her name was, why she was there. He just wanted to fuck her. The only reason he delayed was because he knew how much better her cunt would be, once he knew for certain that every man in the tribe was envious of what he had.

Not every man was. Some saw her perfection and realized she was too perfect. Those men avoided her eye, ducking their heads and walking away if the Warlord and his little flower were about to cross their paths. The Warlord took that for angry jealousy, finding it just as rich a treat as envy.

He never caught the way her lazy smile curled whenever she saw someone clue in on the inherent wrongness. The few that dared meet her eye even so were all given winks. On a woman like her, those winks should have been promising, flirty. Instead, it sent them hurrying away.