The moonless night fell upon ancient Ur.

Tsa had been bathed in cool waters inside a dark stone temple. Strangely garbed women towelled her dry and combed her hair with shell combs. Faces and bodies aluminated by fire from the torch light. None of the women spoke to her, they simply led her through a dark gloomy passage back to the throne chamber.

Tsa was then clothed in unearthly silks and made to stand before the ivory throne. It was vacant, she was alone in the room. She wondered about Zull and what had become of her mate.

She looked up to see the Shama enter the chamber from a side tunnel. His gold serpent band keeping his silken headress in place. Infact all his jewellery gleamed in the soft torchlight.

He looked at her and then spoke, surprisingly Tsa could understand what he was telling her. The Shama told her that he was fully aware of the savages that dwelt in the caves to the north.

Tsa took advantage of this nice side. Until now these people of Ur were very unjust and brutal in their actions to her. She told the Shama about how she and Zull got lost from their people as babes, and then about how they ended up in the beautiful but now gone paradise garden.

The Shama sat on his ivory throne and dismissed of everything she was telling him. That all didn't matter because he had already decided that she would be his new bride. His new savage bride.

Tsa stared into the rulers ice cold eyes. She dared not refuse him because she got the impression that she didn't have a choice in the matter. This man was the king of ancient Ur. The ruler of the world.

He clapped his hands and two woman came out from the shadows and took an arm each. The Shama barked an order and they quickly pulled Tsa down a torchlit passage to a cool chamber.

There was a bed on the stone floor made from thick mammoth hair. Their giant metre long tusks were angled like a four poster. A mesh net over hung the tusks keeping out the biting insects at night.

When she was alone, she sunk down to the floor and wrapped herself beneath the warm mammoth fur. And as she closed her eyes and slept, the guardian voice came to her dreams. The voice told her to be brave, for the spirit of her kin would look after her.

The mysterious guardian voice spoke in Zull's dreams as well, telling him not to give up. He had been severely mistreated. He was chained to a stinking wall made up of human skulls that stretched from floor to ceiling of the dungeon.

Skeletons laid strewn over the soiled stone floor. Bones that had been broken up and crushed under foot. Skulls and bones of folk long lost and forgotten by the people of Ur.

When dawn came, he was unchained and stripped . He was then dragged up the stone steps that led out to the hot morning sunshine. The harsh sun was blinding him.

Crowds of citizens of Ur cheered. They lined the square looking at him, he was like an exhibit to gorp at. Zull felt shame and humiliation because of his ness.

Zull was surrounded by the warrior guards and each took it in turns to whip him harshly with leather straps, the crowds cheered and rejoiced. Zull was covered in lesions and welts, the cuts oozed blood that dripped to the sand at his feet.

He was now on all fours and in turn the leather whips lashed down on him. He looked up to see the crowds part and his mate Tsa was sat on the rump of a *Laden. The Shama of ancient Ur rode upon a second beast of burden. His animal was decorated with silks and colourful paints.

Courtier men with crowns of bronze blew into their horn shell trumpets and announced their rulers presence in the square.

The two great Ladens came to a halt and the Shama announced his plans to bond with the savage she from the caves.

Zull realised what was to become of his mate. The bronze age ruler was stealing his wife. Zull was in despair, he went to rise to his cut feet, but a sharp warriors sword threatened to behead him on the spot.

Zulls fate would see him be hurled into a pit of deadly vipers. And once the serpents had pumped his body full with their lethel venom, his lifeless body would be heaved out of the pit and taken to the beach where he would be tied to a stake and the vultures and carrion birds would devour him, until he was nothing but a rotten skeleton bleached by the sun.

Zull was hense thrown back to the dungeon to await that grisly fate to become a reality. He hung from the wrist cutting chains, the eyes of a thousand skulls staring back at him. He needed help, there was no way he could safe himself.

The guardian voice came to him. It told him that he and Tsa would be avenged for their mistreatment.

The wicked ruler of ancient Ur and his cruel peoples would be punished. This came to him as he slipped in and out of conciousness.

Ur would pay dearly for what it had done...

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* Laden is a mastodon, a type of elephant that lived before the last ice age.