“It is not that I do not love you,” I swore, watching the color drain from poor Shukri’s face, “But that I promised myself to another.” \n\nArikh, my dearest love, had somehow found me. I had heard his voice call to me under the moonlight. It was quiet at first, and I feared it was merely an apparition, an artifact of my own guilt. But it was clear as day now. I would not leave him again. \n\nThe sands swirled around me in the blistering wind as I struggled to follow the call of his voice. I needed to see him. To embrace him. To know he had forgiven me so that I could forgive myself. I climbed to the top of a dune and shielded my eyes from the wind, staring off into the dark. He called my name again. Closer this time.\n

His voice

Arikh, Part 1

“Arikh!” I cried out with joy and desperation, running as best I could in the dim light of the stars.\n\nBut the fel beast before me had stolen the form of my beloved. Ice flowed through my veins as I gazed upon the cruel parody of his handsome face. It smiled at me, this phantom, this doppelganger. Its sallow lips pulled away from its gaunt cheeks, exposing a long, foul grin of cracked and pointed teeth. \n\nAs it stretched out its arms to embrace me I froze. I lost the will to run, the will to live! That's when I heard it—the cruelest sound I shall ever hear.\n\n“No!” came Shukri's voice, “Take me! Take me instead!” The creature turned its gaze past me into the dark. I collapsed, pulling my knees to my chest, too frightened even to breathe.

Its arms

Arikh, Part 2

After the apparition left, it was a long time before I dared to stir again. I sat, quivering in the darkness, knees pulled to my chest. When I at last dared to move, I saw Shukri, my brave beloved, lying prostrate in the dirt, flesh blue and mottled like a festering corpse. I hobbled to his side to confirm what I already knew.\n\nBut he moved. Horror overcame me and I wrenched myself free from his grasp, dashing off into the night. The last thing I heard was his soft, tender voice, imploring me not to abandon him.\n\nI hear his call now, every night, carried like a whisper on a soft wind, loving me endlessly. And when I hear him call my name, I ache with the knowledge that I dare not answer.

Shukri

The sandswept and sunscorched desert in the West, and the last known home of the Ancients

Dune Phantoms Chapter - NWGuide Database of Lore

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