From the Tomb of Lahmizzash Yak'reb, North Wall, Burial Chamber, Section 5E
"King Lahmizzash would dream an often dream. He would awake in cold sand below a black sky without stars. Standing, he found himself in midnight desert. Impelled, the awakened king would climb a dune. From on high, he would see a glorious sight: a great man, atop a shining pyramid, resplendent in golden light. King Settra! King Settra the Imperishable!"
Lahmizzash Yak'reb, King of Khemri, opened his eyes. Everything was black. He closed his eyes, felt them close. Blackness remained. He opened them again. Pitch black. Am I blind? Is this night? Am I dead? Scenarios and possibilities rushed through his mind. Is this the Realm of Souls? Am I trapped in the pits? No! I am a great king!
In an attempt to calm himself, he focused on his sense of hearing. But he heard only the echo of silence, roaring louder in his ears as a wave of anxiety surged through him.
Grinding stone cut through the silence, a glow of yellow light burst into Lahmizzash's dark world, a line at first, then widening enough to let light pour into… a stone box? He was inside a stone box. The texture was unmistakable. I was dead. This is my tomb. I'm alive. Settra has returned! His fear vanished into a roar of excitement and joy.
Lahmizzash thrust out with his arms, and the stone lid of his sarcophagus flew, shattering upon the stone floor. His tomb was illuminated by numerous torches held by robed and masked figures. The Mortuary Cult.
One of these stepped forward and bowed. "Lord Yak'reb, we greet you."
A sharp pain of offense shot through Lahmizzash. "King Yak'reb! Know your place." he barked.
The cultist bowed again. "Apologies, my Lord. But Settra is King in Nehekhara."
Lahmizzash paused in shock, a wave of indignation at this outrageous claim, then his mind turned and he remembered his recent joy. If Settra was returned, then naturally Settra would be the king. That was proper and must be accepted. He surveyed the cultists, who remained silent but obviously tense. They were waiting for his reaction.
Lahmizzash nodded sagely, theatrically. The cultists visibly relaxed. "Yes, of course. That is only right. My words were but a habit of time now long past… I assume? What year is it?"
The lead cultist bowed a third time, deeper than before. "One-thousand, six-hundred, and forty-eight years have passed since your tomb was sealed, Lord Yak'reb. I am Nekthop, of the Mortuary Cult. I was commanded by King Settra to awaken you in his service."
"I am honored to receive the command of that great King!" said Lahmizzash. He stood- leapt from his sarcophagus. The simply act of moving and jumping felt odd, as if his body did not quite remember how it was done. "I wish to see his golden kingdom! Long I dreamed of it."
Nekthop swept an arm, indicating they should walk from the tomb, up and out into the world again. The other cultists remained silent and moved out of their way. "Lord Yak'reb; first let me say how joyful I am in your quick acceptance of King Settra's throne. Many of the other kings of Nehekhara found their relative… demotion, unacceptable. There have been difficulties."
The cultists followed them up the grand gallery, silent, their torch light illuminating the finely sculpted and inscribed stones of King Lahmizzash's tomb.
"Hypocrites," said Lahmizzash, "My kingdom was full of them: lesser kings of lesser cities. They claimed to adore Settra. They publicly pined for his golden age, preached of its return, but all of it was demagoguery. Base populism that was aggravatingly effective. It is, was… a bane of my life. So few really believed. Though the White Pyramid stood over them all, proof and plain as day. But I knew the crown of Nehekhara rested on my head only because the glorious Settra still slept." He smiled to himself and unconsciously increased his pace, eager to exit the tomb.
Nekthop strode to match his pace. "The walls of your pyramid speak fervently of your wise reign, your strong authority, your admirable will. We have read them all. Your acceptance of King Settra as your sovereign lord proves the stones of your tomb are carved with truth! But I must warn you, there are a great many other surprises for you to overcome this day."
Lahmizzash stopped in his tracks. "Such as?"
Nekthop's face was indiscernible behind the traditional mask of his cult, but Lahmizzash sensed hesitation hiding there.
"Well? Speak!" he said, his tone of kingly authority in full force.
"Unexpected events occurred while you and King Settra slept. Unfortunate and disastrous events." Nekthop fidgeted under his robes. "The golden kingdom does not yet exist. Indeed, all of Nehekhara is ruin."
"What?!"
"The palaces destroyed. The rivers poisoned. The tombs buried beneath the sands. No man, woman, or child remains. Not even a palm, a date, a camel, or even a blade of grass now lives in the woeful Kingdom of Nehekhara."
Lahmizzash stared at the cultist, disbelief and shock warring within him. Finally he laughed nervously, "You jest, surely."
Nekthop shook his head slowly. "No, I do not jest. It is true and you shall soon see for yourself. But that is not the worst of it, Lord Yak'reb."
"Not the worst?"
Nekthop lifted his hands to his hood. "We are awakened, but we do not live. The Mortuary Cult's long quest for eternal life was successful, but… see for yourself." He pulled down his mask. He had the face of a corpse; boney sockets stared from a tattered, linen wrapped head.
Horror shot up Lahmizzash's throat, but he held it down, a pressure in his gut. He willed himself still, he wired his own mouth shut. The dead thing called Nekthop turned to the following hooded cultists, raising its arm to them.
"No," Lahmizzash gasped. "No, I don't need to see them, too."
"It's not just them. Its all of us. Even you. Even our great King Settra."
Lahmizzash's hands went for his face, he felt his palms slide over it, but his fingers felt cold bone. He twiddled his finger in front of his eye, it was bare bone. Disgust roiled in his gut. His gut? He looked down upon his robes, tattered after their long stay in the sarcophagus. Bony fingers, his boney fingers, ripped open the robes to reveal his belly- he saw a linen wrapped torso, wizened and paper like, clinging to bones. No guts in there. They were in a jar, back down the hallway probably. But he could still feel it! His balance wavered, he fell back against a stone wall. Its support kept him on his feet.
"Nauseated? Yes, we feel such things, but they are lies." said Nekthop, "Tricks of the mind. What senses we once had are dead and gone with our living flesh. You see, but you do not have eyes. You feel but your skin is long gone. You smell, but only after you see something that your mind thinks you should smell. Here, look at this."
Nekthop's gloved hand pulled out a small white orb. "What is this?"
"An egg?" said Lahmizzash.
"No, but it looks like a hen's egg, doesn't it? Here- take it. Feel it in your hands."
Lahmizzash took the sphere and watched it roll about his bony appendages, the fingers of his fleshless hand. "It feels like an egg. It has a smooth shell."
"Yes, now look at it. Very closely. Bring it close to your eyes."
Close inspection revealed that the sphere was anything but smooth like an egg. A forest of ragged projections were all over the surface. It looked like endless canyons in miniature.
"Roll it in your hands now."
The sphere felt entirely different, like a handful of jagged pebbles glued together.
Nekthop took back the sphere. "A simple display, but you begin to understand: a great deal of our existence is a construct of our own making. You feel only because your mind believes you should feel."
"What did your cult do to us?" asked Lahmizzash.
"An interesting question," said Nekthop, who replaced his hood in silence, then gestured to Lahmizzash to continue on with him. "But one to which I do not know the precise answer. Generations of Mortuary Cult advancements, experiments, all of them interacting with foreign magical influences… perversions and rites unknowable were performed over the centuries. I do not know the how or the why. It is best you try to ignore that question, as best you can."
The cultist and the tomb king walked together in silence for a time. A nagging thought was bothering Lahmizzash, certain words were itching at something in the back of his mind- perversions and rites unknowable… perversions and rites unknowable. There was something in that, something that sounded familiar and important, but whatever it was, he could not draw it out. If he had a tongue, he would say it was on the tip of it, but just out of reach.
They emerged into soft moonlight, a ring of cultists waiting outside the tomb parted for them. Moonlit dunes spread in every direction, a silver ocean frozen in place. Stone pillars, pointed spires, and other architectural shapes dotted the landscape, mostly submerged like wrecked and sunken ships hidden beneath still waves of sand. The White Pyramid rose before them in the distance, battered and worn by sandy winds, but still glorious, mighty.
"We have plenty of time to learn the answers to such questions," said Nekthop, "but for now, we must help King Settra rebuild our Nehekara."
Desolation. Endless desolation. The Nehekara of Lahmizzash's memory was a green, blooming place. This district which held his tomb was particularly verdant. He designed the irrigation system himself. But the gardens were gone, the city walls vanished. Even the river which had sparked and curved in the sunlight was nowhere to be found. Sand, all of it sand.
"How- how do we begin?" Lahmizzash mumbled. He was a whirl of emotions; horror, exaltation, excitement, dread, despair, frustration. He stared off into the desert without sight, without eyes.
Without eyes. He lifted a bony finger, stared at it as Nekthop droned on about Settra, the words a jumble of noise- meanwhile his own bone-bare finger…
Firming his resolve, he thrust his finger towards his own eye, directly at the center of his vision. It was in his eyeball, behind his eyeball, the offending digit abruptly severed as it passed beyond the limit of his field of vision. After a notable delay, he suddenly felt an alarming jab in his eye which did not exist. He dropped to his knees at the pain, boney knees making boney sounds on the bare stone, screaming. He removed the finger and the pain vanished, but Lahmizzash continued to scream, to let out the burning, aching pressure roaring throughout his body.
It was all gone. All gone! Lahmizzash's loved ones passed through his mind's eye, little snippets of memory, his son's face screwing up in concentration as he prepared to throw a ball, his wife's smile after a surprise, his grandmother's appraising, and slightly disapproving rise of her eyebrow, - all of them gone, dust, bone, sand. His kingdom, the promised immortality, his faith which sustained him through decades. Dust, bone, sand.
Lahmizzash realized he was still screaming, and it felt good, like urinating with an overfull bladder. He took in a shuddering breath, though he had no lungs to fill, no esophagus to shudder, but felt soothed by those feelings, familiar, living feelings. He gathered all these things and then screamed again- this time the panic was replaced by rage and frustration. Nekthop and his followers stepped back as Lahmizzash's voice carried over the sands, and his fleshless hands beat at the stone of his own tomb.
The tomb shuddered, sending thin layers of sand sliding down nearby dunes. The cultists were alarmed, glancing in all directions. "Lord Yak'reb!-" cried Nekthop, but a nearby dune exploded in sand, fragments of stone soaring through the air, black holes in the night sky. Some of those pieces drifted quickly in their direction. Lahmizzash's screams petered out as he instinctually tracked the debris trajectory, dazed. They were going to land near them, but he didn't care. One of them might crush me. That wouldn't be so bad.
The cultists were less passive, many letting out their own screams of alarm as they scattered in a desperate effort to be anywhere else but where they were. It was too late. The stones thundered in, four large boulders of broken masonry thudded loudly into the nearby sand, one hit Lahmizzash's tomb with a deafening crunch of stone- one of the cultists vanishing underneath- bone splinters bouncing off nearby stones.
From inside the dune rose a titanic figure, a massive jackal-headed man, easily 100 feet tall or more.
"A hierotitan!" said Nekthop. "You've called it to service, Lord Yak'reb!"
Lahmizzash watched, still in a daze, as the giant leveraged a massive staff, and with it, climbed from the hole in Lahmizzash's buried tomb and rose up- an ebony titan in silhouette, patterns of gemstones glittering in the moonlight.
"So you see, Lord Yak'reb!" exalted Nekthop. "Not all your Nehekara is gone! Our glorious works yet rise and answer the call! You exist! Your power is not destroyed but simply transformed- buried! King Settra shall reclaim it all, rebuild it all- nay, surpass it all! All memory of Nehekara shall be surpassed by what shall yet come to be!"
The giant turned its jackal snout towards them. Lahmizzash could feel it see him. It recognized him, he knew it. An enormous carved foot lifted and then sprayed sand when it came down near the cultists. Lahmizzash remembered this statue's construction. He saw again the kindly face of Pellon, a priest who had served his father, served as Lahmizzash's childhood tutor, and then advisor until age had turned him frail and sickly. The elderly man had been placed in the center of that statue, still half carved, the Mortuary Cultists busily swaying and chanting in their rites and spells. "I shall be here!" Pellon had called to Lahmizzash, his voice thin but fervent, as the Cultists sealed him up, "I shall await your call to serve again!"
The giant was still, staring down at him from on high. A massive weighing-scale swung idly in the statue's other hand, its clanking chain-work the only sound in the night. The cultists and Nekthop waited in silence.
"Pellon!" shouted Lahmizzash, "I am Lahmizzash Yak'reb, once king of Khemri! Will you serve me now, as you did in life?"
The heriotitan dropped to a knee, shaking the tomb, and bowed its head in genuflection.
"You have a mighty servant, Lord Yak'reb." said Nekthop, his excitement suddenly replaced by caution. "What will you now do?"
Lahmizzash turned to the priest. "We go to Khemri, and pledge our service to the great King Settra!"
Nekthap and his cultists bowed deeply. "So you say, so shall it be done. By Settra's will!"
