The Curse
AU River x Eleven
This story takes place some vague time in the future, on Earth.
Inspired by Josh Ritter's song The Curse
Chapter One
Many texts referenced a king—The Last of the Pharaohs—but no artifacts corroborating his reign existed. He was nameless, often referred to as "The Oncoming Storm" by his enemies in court and the peoples he vanquished. He is said to have believed in the dark powers and magics of his mystics—sometimes found in court, many hundreds of miles from their homelands. Sudanese shamans, Greek sibyls, Arabic prophets, and local astronomers all found a place within his court, sometimes at his right hand. He died under mysterious circumstances, no text matching another in any detail, even his age. The legends claim that he was interred in the largest pyramid ever built, and that he has lain undisturbed for the thousands of years since, surrounded by the splendors of his kingdom.
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"And they said the pyramids didn't hold any more secrets! They said that sonic scans from the inside would only serve to set in stone what has been known for ages. And here I am, at the brink of discovery: who lies in the hidden tomb?" River Song lay sprawled on her cot, writing in her journal. "The pyramid's not lonely, or morbid; it's imbued with such a sense of history that the hallways ring with stories. The stories are so thickly layered and so dense that they ooze from the walls like honey. Every story—from the slaves who labored on every brick to the Pharaohs (!) interred within. Archaeology survives because places like this grant everyone that sense of grand stories and intricate plotlines and untold fables that History holds. In the morning, the stories will come bleeding out into the light."
River closed her journal and rolled to her back. The night crept towards morning in fits and starts—like River's sleep. She tossed and turned, burning with an impatient desire. The moon rose and the stars wheeled through her small mesh window. They descended, in one of her waking dreams as the ancient gods, who walked past her, faces drawn, as if viewing a funeral. In another, a young, shining man careened into a glass building which then engulfed him. River felt a stake of fear thrust through her stomach. When dawn broke, River felt exhausted.
The morning light painted the Pyramids a rich gold. River dressed swiftly, into her rumpled, khaki everything. The burnt coffee scalded her tongue, but she suffered it for the sake of caffeine. Melody Williams, River's friend and partner-in-crime, swished her mug with a disgusted look on her face.
"The morning of discovery, eh?" Melody asked absently.
"Hopefully," River responded, her eyes fixed on the entrance of the Pyramid.
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The interior was cool, lit by warm-glowing incandescent bulbs. Just twenty meters inside the main entrance, Melody and River crouched, fingers searching the wall for the hidden catch. The secret door had been found by accident twenty years ago, but the revealed antechamber was empty, and devoid of hieroglyphs and paintings. A sonic scan of the room, however, revealed another hallway beyond the antechamber. The door opened smoothly, slowly revealing the bare room. Chalk notations on the far wall revealed the outline of the hallway. A string of lights pointed towards the wall.
Melody grinned manically as she handed River the stone-cutter.
"I believe you should do the honors."
"I think I've finally convinced you not to trust yourself with a power tool." Their grins reflected and magnified as River turned to the wall. She pressed one hand against it, trying to see what lay beyond, what was in store for her and Melody. Or what had happened to—maybe—the Oncoming Storm. River wasn't sure herself what she wanted to see. She pulled back and sunk the blade into the stone. The machine gasped and coughed but plunged through, a good twenty centimeters before encountering air. River eased the blade down, splinters of stone and dust flying every which way.
My hair's going to be amess, River thought, before grinning at her triviality. It took a good twenty minutes to carve out a window-like door into the hallway.
Melody and River pulled off their eyeglasses and face masks to regard their entry way. River quirked up an eyebrow.
"How are we supposed to get through?"
"Push it?"
"Absolutely not. We don't know what's behind this; we don't want to injure anything."
"Always doing things the hard way, River," Melody shrugged. "We'll pull it then."
The stone felt warm, almost as it was still vibrating as the pair started shifting the stone block towards them. They each jammed multiple fingers before figuring to twist the block as they eased it out. Disappointingly, the far side remained as blank as the antechamber's walls.
River pulled out her torch when the slab finally tumbled to the floor with a loud crack, and climbed through the hole. Melody followed closely into the musty air, adding another circle of light to the dark hallway.
"The sonic made it look like this hallway will go on for a while," Melody said. River nodded.
"We best get going, then."
This hallway's stone looked darker, more ominous, but it could've been a trick of the light. The lights from the antechamber were scarcely visible after ten minutes—the hallway was eerily straight. The walls remained blank, though they appeared to darken.
"Look," Melody's voice broke the rising silence. "A drawing."
It was subtle, a large thunderhead just darker than the wall.
"The Oncoming Storm," River breathed, her eyes wide. The drawing continued, roils in red and purple, growing in complexity. Lightning bolts descended. Charred houses staggered out of the ground. Empty fields sprouted. A drained river motif, complete with barges sunk into the bed appeared.
"There aren't any people, or words," River remarked.
Melody nodded. "It's freaky. Like a universal warning. Like what they're trying to do for nuclear waste. But, hey—what could ever bring down the two girl explorers?" River smiled at the memories: their shared childhood, digging up pirate treasure in the garden and discovering ancient empires in the park. The child's fantasies grew into teenage lust for glamor and adventure before maturing into the quiet love of history and fierce passion of archaeology they shared today.
The mural terminated along with the hallway; they had had their flashlights trained on the walls, and hadn't seen the end approaching.
"I don't see a door."
"Neither do I."
River sighed in frustration. "We can't have come all this way for a stupid painting!" She was surprised to find her voice thick with frustration and tears threatening to fall.
"Did we bring the sonic?" Melody asked quietly, her emotion evidenced by by her clenched hands and tight jaw.
"It's back in the antechamber," River's voice lifted with hope. "If it's like this hallway—sealed up, no door, we can still get in."
"The stone cutter," they murmured in unison, then grinned at each other.
The journey back down the hallway to retrieve the sonic and the blade seemed both faster and longer; no longer were they searching the walls for any deviation from dun, but the length was more noticeable. The end of the hallway seemed to surprise them again.
"It's strange," Melody remarked, "It's like the end of the hallway isn't there until we are."
River rolled her eyes. "If we're done with the fanciful, can we please move on the discovery?"
Melody grinned abashedly, "Yeah, I'm probably just too keyed up to really pay attention to anything at the mo."
They set the sonic up and retreated, let it work its science. The on-screen results revealed another hallway; running off the edge of the sonic's measurement capabilities. Melody sliced through the wall this time. River hung back and chewed at the skin next to her thumbnail. The window-door seemed to come out easier than the first one, but it could've been a manifestation of nerves. This hallway was also empty of artifacts, but the walls were covered with text and paintings.
Melody had stopped before the first panel, River continued forward, looking for another door or the end of this hallway.
"This history—tale—is one of a…what's this word? It's "god" and "man" overlapped," Melody began reading the wall, "…is one of a man who ruled the Nile from a young man to an old young man.
"What? That doesn't make any sort of sense," Melody continued more to herself than to River, who had continued down the hallway. Something stopped River in front of a large depiction of the afterlife's judgment, the heart on a scale. The heart hung down and a second one was gripped in Anubis' hand. River traced the image with a single fingertip.
She turned, and glanced a doorway.
"Melody!" River called down to her friend, "I've found a door."
"Go on and open it, I'm still reading."
River shrugged and pulled it open. The door swung easily out. She shined her torch in, and gasped.