A/N: A new one! I originally wanted to get all the way to the actual meeting with the first of the big cheeses, but I decided to stop once I neared 15,000 words.
Enjoy yourselves... or else!
Chapter 6: Journey to the Center of the World
"-. .-"
The desert was pristine.
People generally never got to realize just how wondrous a barren wasteland was. Not that he could blame them, Alexander supposed. Between blinding sunlight, heart-stopping heat and precious little water, not to mention the dust and sandstorms, the common man never really got the chance to even start contemplating the benefits of being away from civilization, if they survived more than a day to begin with. Little wonder that hermits only ever settled down in wood huts or caves. Or the occasional oasis. However, for those who lived by the adage of mind over matter there weren't many places better suited for meditation and ascetic contemplation than the wastes. Simply because the currents of misqualified emotion and thought clutter didn't exist there.
The astral plane was clean.
More importantly, the higher reflection of the endless expanse of sand dunes was far removed from the natural view. As he walked down the dune without disturbing even a single grain – an elementary task for someone who could fly – Alexander didn't bother to look where he was going. Or to pay too much mind to his companion who was all too humanly trudging through the shifting sand at his side. His closed eyelids instead allowed him to see a different landscape, a memory of different times not so long past. It was something to cherish, the sight of Africa-that-Was, a place of greenery, steppes and stone-wrought city-kingdoms not unlike the Aztec, Incan and Mayan peoples from beyond the ocean. For all that the "real" Sahara desert was vast and dry, arid beyond all hope of sustaining life save for a handful or oases and roughlands, it was so very young. It only predated the rise of the Mesopotamian people and old Egypt by a handful of centuries.
Sahara was a lush place once, none of which had survived the terrible cataclysm brought about by the seven headed dragon before it was slain by the prehistoric African king Makoma, "he who is greatest and without fear." Their terrible confrontation changed the face of the world in the most literal sense. It was a grim irony that the Ogdru Jahad employed the same thing used by the last Priests of the Flame to end the age of the Old Ones. A rain of lightning without clouds, just indiscriminate destruction that ground a fourth of Africa to nothing.
He still wondered how that even worked. The Vril wasn't something that such a creature should be able to even conceive of touching. Perhaps a temporal fold that allowed the final solution to exist in two points in time then? It would fit the nature of such creatures, to twist even the greatest works of mankind towards wretched purposes.
I am Time, the ruin of all things that live, land, sea and all flesh!
A lesser man would have shivered at the memory of the Beast as it boasted, before the statue of Anum came to life and destroyed the avatar along with most of Gorinium. Rashid hadn't been there for it, as the event predated his birth by two millennia, but one of the many people whose Quickenings he absorbed had been close enough to see and hear the climax of the confrontation.
Looking at it now, it was hard to imagine that Sahara had once been lush with greenery and animal life, and home to human cities and fortresses of wood and stone. Granted, humans lived all around the world even then, but central Africa was where the most advanced societies were located. It made the cataclysm even more tragic. Mankind was basically cut down in its infancy just as it was starting to climb back out of the hole it had crawled out of after the Ice Age. The Stone Age that archeologists later pinned down (would pin down) was actually the period following the catastrophe, when the remnants gathered in the Nile valley, or migrated to the north and east to piece what they could back together.
It was a common pattern in Alexander's life now, to find that many of the "facts" destined to be recorded by modern historians were just reflections of older times vanished without a trace. His battle that saw the end of the Triad's influence on that side of the Atlantic was one of the most blatant examples, for the simple fact that the temple was a mosque. Islam wasn't bound to emerge until the year 622 AD when Muhammad emigrated from Mecca, something Alexander only knew because it was one of many off-hand comments made by Giles during research sessions. It now turned out that Islam almost got to predate Christianity but was totally stamped out in its early stages by the demon agents and armies of the Wolf, Ram and Hart, with a fair bit of unknowing help from the Persians and Greek themselves thrown in for good measure.
Many in their order had been stunned into silence when they discovered how abhorrently successful the Circle of the Black Thorn had been in stomping out true prophets and schools of spirit. Only the religions that were already well entrenched during to the Age of Heroes were still going strong, which more or less negated the intended benefits of the Twilight of the Gods. The move to a more enlightened way of thought free of meddling busybodies like the Olympians had effectively been stopped in its tracks.
Alexander had some not at all flattering suspicions about the Greek gods, and gods in general. The timing of their initial active participation in the world of men was too odd – right as the Goa'uld were kicked off planet – and it was why he was on that journey of his. During the past fifteen odd years spent with his wife and raising his son he'd had a lot of time to think about everything he'd discovered since he was reborn in this era.
For one thing, he realized that his initial suspicion of why the Goa'uld lasted so long before being kicked off world might have been somewhat biased. He'd initially surmised that the active worship demanded by the aliens was beneficial to the real powers of the world, but in hindsight that couldn't be true. The people had real, living, visible figures to aim their devotion or fear at. Intent and attention were critical in the flow of energy, and emotions, thoughts and the spirit fell under that. So when men worshipped the Goa'uld as gods they did precisely that: worshipped them as gods. Their worship didn't actually flow to the real ones, even if they shared the same names.
There was also the bit about the aliens having spread all across the world as time went by, including places where the gods weren't assholes. And yet those gods only manifested properly in the world just after the rebellion's success became a foregone conclusion. They didn't actually start it. More like they helped with the last big push in the case of Hindu and Zoroastrian manifestations, or just showed up near the end to take the credit for it in the case of the Greek Pantheon.
It was an insidious pattern, Alexander realized. Humanity builds a great civilization, some idiot goddess invites destruction into the world and brings it all down. The last Priests and Immortals sacrifice themselves to give the world a chance to recover and move on? The world recovers from the ice age, only for some idiot to invite the Ogdru Jahad into the world, bringing the new civilization down. Probably by collaborating with or being manipulated by Ahriman the First Evil, whose real identity was Ilkin-Hem, firstborn of the Destroyer. Inasmuch as any of the Ogdru-Hem could be considered to have been born. Makoma sacrifices himself to kill the Dragon's avatar and give the world another chance to move on? Aliens come and masquerade as gods, using stolen power and terror to eliminate progress and suppress man's creativity. A successful rebellion ousts the Goa'uld and gives the world another chance to move on? Asshole gods like the Greek pantheon sweep in and take the credit, just so they can do the job of ruling and "guiding" the world properly. As if that wasn't bad enough, their loath-worthy system of control over the populace through "domains" twists and tears the astral and mental planes enough that the First Evil nearly brings the Ogdru Jahad into the world again. A demigod and a human woman end up having to clean up that mess as well, only for the gods to turn on them next, despite Dahak's defeat basically saving their collective asses. And when Hercules and the Warrior Princess kill the worst of the lot and give the world yet another chance to move on? A demon cartel systematically murders every following attempt at establishing a true religion or ascetic schools of thought over the next fifteen hundred years.
No wonder Tak'Ne looked fit to be tied when he returned from the Far East and got an unedited version of their findings. His disbelief at having missed the monumental events of the past few decades paled compared to how much Alexander's conjectures pissed him off. Tak'Ne and Lothar were (very) old acquaintances, the latter having mentored the former like he did many other immortals starting out. But while they'd been both involved in the anti-Goa'uld movement, Tak'Ne had a much greater stake in it – and the aftermath – by virtue of having effectively organized and led the whole damn thing. Well, him and Kon'Or, who unfortunately died in the final stages of the decades-spanning guerilla war. The two successfully coordinated hundreds of immortals and thousands of mortals from around the world towards ousting the alien bastards in one fell swoop. It was a shame that most of the big fish survived long enough to flee. As for the deities that took over afterwards, maybe the rapid rise in religious rituals and magical practices used during the rebellion, many of which called upon the "true" powers of the planet, were why the gods found a door into the world the way they did, at the end.
The former king wasn't sure that was it, though, which was why he had embarked on this trip through the Sahara sands.
Alexander Argead wanted facts.
He wanted facts and he had an idea of how to get them, courtesy of twelve emerald tablets he'd been guided towards by an old and tortured priest of Khem he found and freed during his time wiping the Tarakans and Black Thorn from the face of the known world. Tablets belonging to the single very high profile individual of ancient Hyperborea whose (non)disappearance no one ever managed to account for. A mystery that might, at last, be uncovered.
A hundred times ten have I descended the dark way that led into light, and as many times have I ascended from the darkness into the light, my strength and power renewed.
One of many stanzas etched on fourteen tablets created through mystical transmutation. Fourteen emerald tablets with fixed cellular structure, meaning that no change could take place in them, effectively violating the material law of ionization. It made them imperishable, resistant to all elements, corrosion and acids. Such was the wonder of true alchemy. Hoops of monoatomic gold suspended from a rod of the same material held the tablets in place, like a book.
He'd like to see Hyperborea's ancestors, the Alterans, try to replicate the properties of those tablets with technology alone.
Fat chance.
More importantly, the writing on them was the language used in Hyperborea. Lemurian. The Written Word. Characters that respond to the thought waves of the reader, releasing more wisdom and information than what was actually written there.
Great were my people in the ancient days, great beyond the conception of the little people now around me; knowing the wisdom of old, seeking far within the heart of infinity knowledge that belonged to Earth's youth.
The walk across the desert started off at Giza, following a westward direction only Alexander could sense, even without the help of his father. He would have gone alone, but while Aegus was in the village when he stated that part of the plan – getting some supplies for his own so-called coming of age journey – Roxana and Lothar teamed up against him when he said he'd go alone on his voyage. Alexander dodged the prospect of having to persuade Lothar not to come with him, since the man had agreed to go with Aegus instead, months earlier. Initially honored, the man had not been amused when he realized the trick, but he wasn't about to go back on his word. He and Alexander's wife did manage to nag him into letting Tak'Ne tag along though.
Well, Alexander mused wryly, going by what lay beyond the dune they were currently climbing, Tak'Ne was going to experience something that would make his little run-in with The Kurgan seem like an irrelevant part of his immortal life. The man said he felt like he needed to come along due to his stake in the history of that part of the world. The former king couldn't really begrudge him that, but the last leg of the journey would be Alexander's alone. He just wondered what he could possibly provide his companion with to pass the time in his absence, however long it would take.
His mind's eye looked ahead then, passing through the dune in front of them and seeing beyond, both in and out of the Astral plane. Alexander hummed. "Ask and ye shall receive."
"What?" Tak'Ne asked from just a couple paces behind. For someone who was putting considerable concentration into staying upright while his slide dug a trench in the sand, his words flowed well. "What do you see?"
Alexander spared him a glance as he continued on unabated. Of their kind, the man was probably the one who led the most successful pre-immortal life, at least as far as survival went. Despite not having been any stronger of mind and body than most others of their kind, his hair was grey-white, showing that he lived a long and full life even before he met his first death. Not that much of that was visible under the hood of the thick grey woolen cloak he wore, save for his short mustache and beard. The Quickening may heal fatigue as easily as anything else, but the heat was still beyond uncomfortable for anyone unable to control their bodies the way Alexander could.
Seemed like the time was coming to test the mettle of his mind and soul though. "We're about to have company," he finally answered the much older man. "Just over this dune."
Tak'Ne brought a hand up to slightly loosen the lace holding his cloak in place while his right settled on the hilt of his sword.
"Relax," Alexander told him. "Not that kind of company." Good thing too. As illogical as it sounded, the former king thought it was a real shame that Tak'Ne had to actually use that sword. The old Xander Harris would never have even thought of the possibility that he'd be within arm's reach of an authentic Masamune Katana, and one with an ivory handle no less. The legendary swordsmith definitely knew his wedding gifts.
Alexander's lips twitched into a half grin. Oh, how he'd have liked to rib the white-haired man about that. A lesser, unmarried person might even have felt envious of Tak'Ne's ability to actually score a real life fairytale of true love between himself and Masamune's daughter. Granted, they were different times, even in Japan, so marriages between (very) old men and young maidens were common, but he and Shakiko really did love each other. No arranged marriage for them.
The silver-tongued devil.
Shakiko's rather recent death of old age still affected the man, however, so Alexander was going to exercise tact for at least another year.
Giles would have been proud.
It took about fifteen minutes to climb to the top of the dune – it was a big one – and the sight beyond was of a huge, amorphous, very out of place olive-drab rock. It looked like a miniature mountain had been dumped at the spot between the following dune chain and the next. Alexander came to a halt and Tak'Ne came to stand at his left, scrutinizing the odd landmark ahead and looking for signs of raiders setting up an ambush. Curiously, there was no comment on his part about how odd it was that there had been no sign of the cliff when climbing over the preceding dunes, one of which was taller than the one they were on. A brief read provided the explanation: Tak'Ne had attributed it to a mirage.
"No one and nothing in sight," Alexander's grizzled companion said lowly with a touch of surprise.
As if on cue, the rock gave a grunt.
Alexander had expected this but Tak'Ne gave a start despite the forewarning. Sand was pushed away from the base of the cliff as the whole thing moved, cracks showing and dislodging sand mounds as the bottom part split into what looked suspiciously like limbs. Tak'Ne couldn't keep his mouth totally closed as he watched the miniature mountain in front of them push itself to stand on all fours and turn its dual-horned head in their direction. The air flickered all around it from the heat, light refracting off the creature and the sand floating around it like a cloud. It made the gigantic apparition seem even larger than it really was, with the hunch of its spine and the horns on its snout and forehead seemingly reaching all the way into the sky.
Tak'Ne's hand dropped limply off his sword hilt. "Holy heavens…" He breathed, unblinking stare riveted on the greenish brown colored giant rhino.
Alexander would have reacted the same way if his mind weren't so completely arrested by the flood of history that filled his mind as he laid physical and metaphysical eyes on the being ahead of them. Being that he could clearly see on more levels than one.
Being that saw him as just a nameless, insignificant man that it may as well not have seen him at all.
Instead, its eyes passed him over as though he wasn't even there and settled squarely on his companion. Tak'Ne's flash of nervous tension assaulted whatever attention Alexander still had on his surroundings and his mind emerged from the influx of history just in time to read what the being was about to do.
He was not fast enough to prevent the rumbling voice from speaking before he could. "Juan Sánchez Villa-Lobos Ramírez."
Tak'Ne cried out in pain and fell to both knees, hands shooting up to cradle his forehead as his past life spilled into his conscious mind. The memories locked in his Quickening erupted through his thoughts with all the grace of a battering ram. His hood was thrown back despite the way he bent forward, hands pressing against his eyes and fingers scratching at his scalp. He tried to choke back a second scream but failed to stop it.
Alexander dropped the concealing veil on his soul for the very first time, stepped in front of the creature's unblinking eyes and met its stare with the most searing glare he'd ever sent out. "That was NOT your call!" His voice carried over the intervening distance and further, making the being's head jerk in surprise. "Assault one of mine by use of their True Name again and I will do the same to you, ALKEBU-LAN."The Spirit of Africa reared back, stomping the ground where it stood as it turned to face him fully. Alexander may not have authority on the level of gods or higher, but the same couldn't be said for his father. "I would have expected this from one of the Olympian usurpers, not one of Gaea's true children!"
The whole world seemed to shudder as one true name was called right after the other. Alexander wasn't sure if Gaea was displeased with him and he didn't have time to ponder it. Behind him, Tak'Ne collapsed face-first into the sand as his physical mind faltered and died due to the surge of information, two thousand years' worth of memory having literally bashed into his head all at once. The man could have rolled down the dune side but instead came to a halt against the back of Alexander's feet.
The former king looked down for a long moment, then turned his frown back upon the personification of the land. The wonder inspired by the once-in-a-lifetime sight had well and truly been pushed aside. It had been Tak'Ne's decision not to dig up his past life, since the many centuries he'd lived through in this one had been complicated enough. There was no point in digging up those horrors, not yet, especially since the mastery over the Vril could be regained otherwise. The nightmares would, in fact, be detrimental to that goal. Alexander himself had refrained from revealing anything about Tak'Ne's personal life pre-cataclysm, the same as he'd done for all others who made the same choice, even though he knew all of the salient points through psychometry and from his own memories absorbed from the deaths of others. And now, a few short words had defeated the purpose of all that.
So much for free will.
"I could not see you." The giant rhino rumbled, unmoving. Sand clouds floated around and behind it like a veil. "Even now I know you not."
"You thought he was the seeker and me his inconsequential companion." Now that he could focus, he could read the truth and leave the abundant history alone. "You knew my companion and decided he should know himself the same way you knew him." His voice was as hard as he could make it. "Nevermind that the whole point of this journey would have been for him to find the fortitude needed to do just that without going mad!" And now this staredown was keeping him from trying to psychically help Tak'Ne through this unexpected clusterfubar.
He'd never felt so conflicted in his entire existence. On the one hand, Africa had more authority than anyone or anything when it came to the people and things walking its lands. Well, except Gaea and whoever ranked higher anyway. On the other hand, what had just happened was an act of unnecessary cruelty that didn't give the divine directives of free will and "do unto others" even a passing glance.
A higher being had just committed manslaughter upon a person passing by in what had to be the most extreme case of bullying ever.
What a screwed up world.
Whether because it reached the same conclusion or due to some other reason, the Spirit of Africa steadily backed away until its image faded into the veil of hovering sand behind. Soon it cloaked its entire body and, not long after, the gigantic rhinoceros disappeared completely, leaving only a sand bank that was steadily dissipating like fog.
Alexander wrapped his father's shroud around his spirit again and shook his head. Not just because of the mess itself but also the inconclusive end to that confrontation. One option was to consider the departure a silent acknowledgment of his point. The other option was to take into account that eerily floating fog-like sand cloud was going to cool the ground and air below it, making mirages more likely. It wouldn't work on him of course, but by all accounts it sounded like the being didn't know that and couldn't see anything relevant even when staring at him face-to-face.
He sighed and knelt next to Tak'Ne, though he should probably call him Ramirez now. Laying his palm on his head he looked beyond skin and bone to the nerves beneath and just had to grimace at the utter mess of neurons and chaotically firing synapses in spite of the body's status as dead. To think that a being that was all-seeing regarding everything and everyone walking its surface would do… this in full awareness of its actions. It was just so disappointing.
Numinous spirits should know better than to commit acts like this, shouldn't they?
One thing was certain: no way was he going to call them genius loci after this, no matter what philosophers and mystics decided in the centuries to come.
"Well, I guess this is our stop for today." Scooping the man up, Alexander started down the sand hill while his outer mind weaved the Vril into a large wave of fire that dove through the air and struck the ground near the base of the dune. Fire spread across the ground in a circle that became a dish, and soon the sand was melting into glass which grew and stretched into the shape of a building as he willed it, eventually taking a dome shape above the ground with one entrance to the south, away from the worst of the winds.
It looked like the bigger and see-through cousin of the igloo, but it would do until he helped Ramirez through his ordeal.
"-. .-"
Ramirez revived a whole day later and he was confused, to say the least. The memories of his life as Tak'Ne had well and truly been scrambled, leaving him in a bad way. He panicked almost as soon as he woke up to a stranger sitting over him inside a bizarre glass building and reacted violently, owing to the motherload of all post-traumatic stress disorders in the history of the Earth. It was a good thing Alexander had hidden the man's sword. To make matters worse, the chaos of "foreign" memories kept intruding on his "real" ones of the Hyperborea – Ogdru-Hem war. Add to that the "recent" memories of a mass hallucination he'd been victim of at the "hands" of the Old One Sephrilian and Alexander almost failed to reason with him. In the end, only the fact that Alexander removed the concealment on his Quickening got through to the man.
A serious irony, that.
It took hours to convince Ramirez there was no danger and the rest of the day to get him to consider that the war really might be long over and done with. The "foreign" memory flashes helped for once, especially those of the glowing-eyed alien overlords. No Old One was going to imagine humanoids as the top of the food chain even in a mass hallucination used to play with the minds of its victims. It was probably the only positive consequence of the Goa'uld occupation, Alexander thought morosely. It wasn't until after a couple more days of walking through the sandy wastes of Sahara that Alexander felt confident enough in Ramirez' approachability and crumbling aloofness to offer a "fix."
Much of that time had been spent by the former king internally beating himself up over not having done it in the beginning, before the revival. He didn't technically need permission even now, knowing the man would thank him even if he knocked him out, but after berating a numinous spirit for ignoring Tak'Ne's right to choose he wasn't going to go and do the same thing, even though the wait only inflicted mental suffering on his travel companion.
In the safety of another glass building, he had Ramirez lie down, laid his hands on his forehead and chest and reached out not with a tendril of Vril but his whole spirit.
I'll walk you through it, the third mind whispered.
It was the first time that his father showed him how to accomplish psychic and spiritual healing of that scale instead of doing it himself. First Alexander wiped away every memory, which was the easy part. Second came the past life recollections, which weren't that much more difficult to retrieve. They were always in the spirit and restoring them was just a matter of commanding the self to reflect the previous experiences, physically and otherwise. When that was done, he linked his psychometric readings to Tak'Ne's own life thread and practically made him relive his entire life since his re-embodiment, each moment of the Dream feeling as real as the original thing.
It totally ignored any notion of privacy and it took an entire week for the shared trance to do its job – Tak'Ne had lived a long time – but at the end of it the Immortal was himself again. A physically and mentally drained man, but himself nonetheless.
"Sleep well," Alexander murmured once he finally settled back into his body and opened his eyes. Ramirez looked tired and sallow, but for once his sleep was peaceful, in no small part due to Alexander's own active influence in the Astral Plane. Which begged the question of what kind of trainer Ramirez had way back when if he never learned to control his experiences during sleep. Just because he was one of the rare ones who managed to learn to use the Vril without that inner control didn't mean it was something to be skipped! Whenever the man's teacher decided to recover his past life memories, Alexander was going to have some serious words with him. He already knew who it was.
Still. A matter for another time.
Alexander sat back on his heels and sighed. His mind expanded beyond the shelter's walls, blanketing the area for miles around as had become the norm. "Seems I might have a recurring guest to face off with." Silently lifting to his feet, he stepped out into the night and looked up to meet the eyes of the giant rhino standing a few hundred yards away. The spirit had never really gone away, instead following them from just at the edge of the horizon. At least as much as a continent's soul could ever be said to follow anyone walking on its ground.
He supposed he shouldn't be the one to judge. Africa was a harsh land, something that naturally reflected in the way its superego manifested and acted. The life from jungles and savannahs mixed with the hot currents of the lifeless dune fields, which in turn blended with the thought waves of all the animals and men living within its bounds. Africa may have started out as the Mother of Humanity – Sahara was where the Garden of Eden had once been after all – but after the calamity of the seven-headed dragon that Makoma only barely averted, the enduring, hard side had become prevalent.
In a way, the Spirit of Africa was a miraculous thing, as it retained its sense of self in spite of everything that had been done to it. For all that, however, it wasn't human and couldn't be expected to think or feel like one. It was a rough, aloof existence, and the only way to be heard and acknowledged by it was to be the same. "Have you learned enough?"
The colossal rhino briefly looked at the glass dome, but met his gaze again soon after, not answering. Alexander didn't expect it to, though he did expect it to back away and fade into the sand winds like before. Africa instead settled down on the ground and let its chin rest on its thick forelegs, eyes blinking slowly as it just looked at him and the shelter he'd build from molten sand.
It's really learning, Alexander realized, resting his back against the grainy glass wall. It committed identity murder and knows it. Doesn't want to do it again. After a moment's consideration, the young immortal decided to drop his spiritual concealment for the second time and reached out with his mind and soul towards the personification of the land. He stopped short of actually making overt contact and waited.
Africa stared at him on several different levels for a time, but when it reciprocated there was no hesitance in the contact.
It was an indescribable feeling, to share minds and understanding with such a creature, and compared to the information he provided, his own experience was surreal. While what he showed of himself was selective, Africa's reciprocation was everything but. Africa just was. He got to see and live the history of the land, and the perspective was so unlike that of a human that his breath stalled. Everything that had ever happened in Africa since the land's spirit came into existence became Alexander's experience, but none of the conceptual relations between places, people and events were there. It was like he'd just seen every TV series in the world but instead of seeing the episodes in order he'd been shown the first scene of one series followed by the first scene of the second series and the first scene of the third and so on and on and on, thousands upon thousands of times. Then the second scenes, then the third and fourth and the next, from a woman giving birth to a leaf of grass blowing in the wind, and from an alien's glowing eyes to a yellow sand grain carried on the back of an ant. Even if he couldn't make heads or tails of most of it, everything was there.
Everything but him, save for two instances. The confrontation of days prior and the one of now.
Alexander withdrew from the blending and wrapped his father's shroud around himself again, opening physical eyes to behold the creature in front of him, still and silent even after that moment that had lasted most of the night. Africa knew of him now, and through him so did Gaea, but that was okay. They didn't know him, which was how he preferred it. Twice now had Gaea failed to prevent unseemly elements from taking root in the various pantheons around the world so he didn't trust her with himself in any measure, the same way he stayed clear of the so-called gods themselves, even when walking through the Dream of the World.
Whether or not that state of affairs was going to endure would depend on the outcome of the quest he was on. Quest that was going to be indefinitely postponed until he helped Ramirez get a full account of himself, however long it took. It wasn't like he was in a hurry.
"You do not need to reach your destination," the rhino slowly said. It made a passage from the second tablet flash through the forefront of the Immortal's mind.
He who by progress has grown from the darkness, lifted himself from the night into light, free is he made of the Halls of Amenti, free of the Flower of Light and of Life.
Alexander crossed his arms and pondered the prompt. He was already beyond death, and whatever enlightenment waited for man would be more surely and easily attained with his father's help than by the grace of anything in the world. So when he thought of what the ultimate goal of that quest was meant to be he could answer the implied question quite plainly. "Not for what it was originally built for, no."
Any further discussion had to be put on hold because Ramirez started to come out of his deep sleep. Alexander glanced at the red sheen that was painting the black night in the east and stepped back into the glass dome just as the grizzled man's eyes fluttered open. The younger Immortal met them briefly but didn't stop in his walk to his side pack. He dug out some dried beef and with just a bit of his focus multiplied it. He did the same to a piece of flatbread and handed Ramirez his breakfast. It had been strange and (the way people stared at him when he did it) miraculous to see it happen in the beginning, but the older man who was now sitting up was used to it by that point.
As Ramirez quietly ate, Alexander sat down cross-legged and pulled out two wooden goblets and set them on the ground in front of him. Then he brought his palms together and closed his eyes, looking inward and skyward with his inner eye until he found what he wanted to conjure into the world. The divine fire flowed and took substance, flecks of golden-white hoarfrost falling from the air in front of him like snow. They filled the glasses to near brim with a drink that gods called nectar and prophets called manna.
One he kept for himself and the other he held out to his companion who was looking at him stock-still. "Not quite on the same level as Moses," Alexander quipped. "And not the type that can be baked into cakes but it will do for this situation."
A startled laugh escaped Ramirez and the man hesitantly accepted the goblet. It was the first time he saw that happen and he looked like he wanted to say something but he was just as stuck on the right words as he'd been since waking up. Alexander didn't blame him so he removed the issue by drinking from his cup, which prompted Tak'Ne to do the same. The leftover tension in the former king left him when he saw the divine essence purify Ramirez' immaterial self. The chemical imbalances in his body would restore themselves soon and allow the Immortal to think and, more importantly, feel clearly again.
Good. Teaching him the mental arts was going to be difficult and time-intensive enough even without those pitfalls. "How do you feel?"
Tak'Ne considered the question and looked at his now empty cup. "… Young." He gave the young king a wry look. "In more ways than I'd like." He sobered and turned serious. "You really did have a good reason for wanting to go at this without tag-alongs, didn't you?"
"I wasn't being full of myself when I said it was best for me to go at it alone you mean." Alexander's lips twitched at the contrite look of his traveling companion. "Roxana and Lothar mean well, but there's a big difference between what I share with them and what they manage to perceive and understand from what I share with them. Surprisingly enough, my son is a lot better at accepting that in many things I really do know better than they do." No teenager rebellion there, interestingly enough.
There was silence for a while, then… "You would have reached your destination by now if I hadn't come along."
"Probably." He made it a point not to lie after all. "It's fine, though. At least we found out some issues in need of addressing. Besides, I wasn't going to be in any real rush for another two hundred years or so." Or three, since that was about how long he still had until the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, but Ramirez was giving him a weird enough look even without mentioning that.
"… That giant rhino is out there again, isn't it?"
Bless the poor man, he felt awkward enough to blatantly change the subject. "She," he decided to make a conscious effort to refer to her as a person, "is the Spirit of Africa."
The reaction that got out of the grey-haired man made sure they wouldn't be starting the self-mastery lessons for quite a few hours.
"-. .-"
In the end, it took nearly a year for Ramirez to gain full control over his dreams and the workings of his physical and non-physical self. Even with the principles of kendo and Tai-Chi he picked up in Japan he had his work cut out for him, since Alexander refused to move on from their spot in the middle of nowhere until he'd dealt with every single issue his subconscious latched onto, controlled dreamscape or no. It felt odd to Alexander to realize that he'd become a mystical psychiatrist of all things. Then again, he supposed that being a therapist was better than a lot of other professions.
Many a desert storm had been weathered in that impenetrable glass dome and they'd been buried under tons of sand repeatedly. It was an interesting side-project to observe how fluid the desert landscape actually was, when they weren't eating, sleeping, training or traveling through the astral reflection of the land.
All the while, the Spirit of Africa was nearby in some form or another, watching and waiting. Or just… being. Ramirez rarely sensed it, even near the end of that unscheduled pause in their journey. Journey which hadn't been even half as long as the pause itself. Alexander was always aware of watchers, however, no matter who or what they were. Fortunately, other than the numinous spirit of that particular continent no one and nothing came snooping around in the higher planes. Or the lower ones. Well, not counting Gaea's will which always pervaded the earth and touched everything living on it.
It was mid-through the month of September when they were finally ready to go on their way. Alexander was mentally prepared for another year's worth of travel, just to increase the odds that any surprise would be a positive one. He doubted the location of his ultimate destination mattered as much as the show of determination represented by the journey to get there. He wasn't certain the end of the journey even had a fixed location in space. Either way, Sahara was a big place, larger than the entirety of Europe by a fair bit, so he didn't expect to find what he wanted quickly, especially with Africa and Gaea thrown into the mix. He thought that all things related to the Children of Light superseded or at least matched Gaea's authority but he couldn't be certain and his father wasn't sure either.
It was mind-reeling, then, to feel the world shift around them. There was no visible evidence – indeed, Ramirez didn't notice a thing while he strapped his equipment on – but one moment they were buried deep in the sand and the next they were… still buried in the sand but at least one thousand miles westward of their previous location.
Alexander swayed and had to lean with both hands against the glass wall of their desert cell.
"What the-!" Ramirez was at his side in an instant, one hand on his arm. "I take it something's happened?"
Ladies and gentlemen, captain obvious.
The older Immortal shifted his sight to the higher ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum but couldn't see what Alexander did, or as far, especially through the glass and sand barrier that went on for dozens of meters in all directions.
"I'm okay… It was just disorienting." The former king straightened and bent down to pick up and pull his white suede coat over his similarly-colored leather pants and soft wool shirt. "We've moved."
"What?" the other man hissed.
Further conversation was delayed in favor of turning and staring through the translucent walls at the sand outside. It was shifting and flowing, sinking away. Sunlight not seen in over a week begun to filter from above through the topmost gap in the mound. Soon it was strong enough to make the conjured flame in the middle of the domed ceiling unnecessary, so Alexander dismissed it.
Not long after, the sand fell away from the mouth of the entrance and the former king wasted no time in leaving the confines of the small home. Sure, it had grown to include two rooms and separate cooking and sanitary quarters but they had both had more than enough of it over the past twelve months.
"Remarkable…" Ramirez whispered as he came out behind him.
Alexander had to agree, it was like watching rivers flow in spirals all around them, except they were made of sand and drifting away in all directions while reaching ever upwards, forming new dunes or joining those already there as the one they'd been under steadily diminished until there was nothing of it left. It was a spectacular view that went as far as the human eye could see, even with the sand banks floating all around them in the air, obscuring the sky and bending the sunrays.
The cloud-like grains wafted radially away from a point roughly a mile from their position, allowing their aloof and silent watcher to walk around them on muffled footsteps, never facing them but never looking completely away from them either. Such were the benefits of having eyes mounted sideways, Alexander thought with a small grin. But his mind was clear and his reach was as wide as ever, so the sight of the great being did not distract him from the great construct located several hundred feet behind them.
Drawn by the thought waves of a soul long since come and gone, he turned around and faced the other edge of the uncannily calm sandstorm in whose eye they stood. "It seems that we've just made up for the one-year delay."
As if on cue, the winds that kept the sand bank flying like a hurricane around them begun to slow down. Soon they were too weak to keep the grains afloat, especially at the height of a small mountain, and as the desert calmed down, the sight beyond the dying storm started to become clear and he finally had a good view of what was undeniably the true legacy of Atlantis."Well, the second city to be called Atlantis anyway…"
His murmur snapped Ramirez out of his unintended staredown with the giant rhino. "Sorry, I wasn't paying a… ttention…" The older man's words tapered out as an all too understandable speechlessness settled over him. The dispersal of the glass shelter that had been their home for a year went almost completely unnoticed.
Ahead of them, the Great Golden Pyramid of Ascending Soul Force stood tall, gleaming in the sun. Not a single grain of sand touched it or seemed to have come into contact with it in the many thousands of years since it was built, and the light upon it seemed more like it came from within instead of the sky above. There was some grim irony in the imagery, but Alexander knew that the Goa'uld's decision to use pyramids as their primary symbol of power had been a coincidence. After all, the pyramid was one of the most basic but also most important shapes in geometry so there was no way the Goa'uld would have just passed it over during their scientific development as a civilization, however skewed. If anything, the sight before him showed that ultimately the aliens had completely failed to touch upon the True Mysteries.
Finally, he'd found him.
If not for everything he'd seen and learned, the young king would have been overcome by reverence, not just from the majesty of the physical work but the resonance of the Great Pyramid throughout the planes, how they responded to each syllable of the Ancient Tongue. The pillar of golden light shone divinely from the tip of the pyramid, bright and glorious to his second sight. "I, Thoth, the Atlantean, master of mysteries, keeper of records, mighty king, magician, living from generation to generation, being about to pass into the halls of Amenti, set down for the guidance of those that are to come after, these records of the mighty wisdom of Great Atlantis." Word for word Alexander quoted from the emerald tablets he carried in his satchel. "Long time dwelt I in the land of Khem, doing great works by the wisdom within me. Upward grew into the light of knowledge the children of Khem, watered by the rains of my wisdom."
Deciding he'd spent enough time on tangents, Alexander set off on a calm stride towards the ultimate destination of his journey, destination that was finally in sight. Behind him, Ramirez warily followed at a small distance, and the Spirit of the Land slowly found her own way through the adjacent dunes. Both things the young king afforded only the smallest amount of attention. "Blasted I then a path to Amenti so that I might retain my powers, living from age to age a Sun of Atlantis, keeping the wisdom, preserving the records."
"I actually understand you now that I remember…" Ramirez said lowly from where he followed behind him. "It's in our language. Those tablets are written in our language. You're saying that Thoth might still be alive in there?" His eyes scanned the massive structure ahead and passed over the archway without seeing it. "That would mean he survived the war and everything that came after…"
There were some conflicting emotions there, Alexander noticed. There had been no small amount of resentment aimed at Thoth during the Ogdru-Hem war, especially in the later days when only operational security prevented the whole world from knowing that Thoth was alive in Atlantis. A city in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, built on the island of Undal where Thoth had spent his early years learning the mysteries from his father Thotme, keeper of the Great Temple. Atlantis had been built fairly late into the war, after the other cities had been overcome. The second to bear that name since the old ancestors of the Hyperboreans, the Alterans, took the original city by that name and flew it into deep space.
One of many things Alexander wanted information on.
Ramirez had died half-way through the conflict but apparently it had been late enough for some of the facts of the war's beginning and Thoth's perceived failures to become entrenched. "Whether Thoth is still around is part of what I'm here to discover," Alexander told him. "I'm pretty sure he was the main mind behind the final solution, though not the main power given what the tablets say." At Tak'Ne's questioning sound, the younger immortal's thoughts went to the tablets again. "Down through the ages I lived, seeing those around me taste of the cup of death and return again in the light of life. Gradually from the Kingdoms of Atlantis passed waves of consciousness that had been one with me, only to be replaced by spawn of a lower star." He turned his head to meet Ramirez' ponderous gaze. "The first part could refer to Immortals or reincarnation, or both, and the second likely describes how the thought waves of the Old Ones gradually but inevitably overcame our people's, even in the heart of the last city located the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. That, or they failed even without that influence hammering at their minds."
It was a sobering thought, even though it was something they both already suspected, in a manner of speaking. "So what exactly happened then?"
"I wasn't there and the tablets are both clear and vague on the events, but…" He tried to find the words but decided he needed a context, so the quotes again flowed from his tongue like sweet water. "In obedience to the law, the word of the Master grew into flower. Downward into the darkness turned the thoughts of the Atlanteans, until at last in this wrath arose from his Agwanti the Dweller, speaking The Word, calling the power."
"Agwanti!" Ramirez hissed. "That's the ultimate state of communion between Anum and the Soul of the World… for that state to be disturbed, a threat would have to…"
"Threaten and/or harm the Soul of the World directly." The Dragon and his spawn had harmed Gaea badly. It made the king wonder if her behavior, if the word even applied, in the time since the second rise of humankind could be explained by that.
"But the way you say it… it makes it sound like the problem followed after the final solution was implemented."
"It was after my death so I don't know exactly what the final solution ended up being. And the Emerald Tablets suggest that Atlantis sunk thousands of years ago, not millions. Somehow, the society survived through the Ice Age and half the Stone Age but wound up failing in every meaningful way as soon as humankind started to spread throughout the world again. The final straw was in conjunction with the end of the previous age, possibly indifference to the plight of the rest of the world and possibly something worse." Seeing Ramirez' confusion at his shifting train of thought, he explained. "There must have been a reason why a miracle child had to be born back in the Neolithic Stone Age and take care of the latest incarnation of the Ogdru-Jahad. As far as I've been able to discover, Makoma had only himself to rely on, an Iron Hammer, four giants he befriended by beating them to a pulp, and a cannibalistic power-transference ritual he was tricked into just before he faced the Beast. No higher learning, no Hyperborean magic-science, no mention of even fleeting guidance from a Priest of the Flame. Either Atlantis fell before the issue came up or they stood by and did nothing. Or worse, contributed to the Ogdru-Jahad's entrance into the world somehow."
The thought visibly chilled the grizzled man. It wouldn't have been the first time the Golden People screwed things up. Maybe they'd fallen in with Hecate somehow. Again.
"Whatever it was that caused Atlantis' fall from grace, Anum obviously considered it unacceptable." Alexander said with finality. He had the suspicion that the final solution wasn't supposed to be final for the remnants of the human race, however regressed and tribal they'd ended up by the end. Everything he'd learned in either life suggested that those works of magic-science that were being devised could have been more selective in directing the Eternal Fire. Could have directed the Vril accumulated in the sky towards destroying the Old Ones and everything twisted by them while leaving true life alone. If the Atlanteans decided that they were better off if everything and everyone in the world other than them died off…
"Pride comes before the fall," Ramirez said mostly to himself, echoing Alexander's realization.
"They should have known better. The True Mysteries are largely lost now, but they weren't then." Alexander sighed and grimly resumed his recitation. "Deep in Earth's heart, the sons of Amenti heard, and hearing, directed the changing of the flower of fire that burns eternally, changing and shifting, using the LOGOS, until that great fire changed its direction. Over the world then broke the great waters, drowning and sinking, changing Earth's balance until only the Temple of Light was left standing on the great mountain on Undal still rising out of the water." Clearly, the world had been torn and sick enough that the Great Flood had been not just useful but necessary. It didn't wipe out all land-based life, especially mountain tribes of men, but whatever civilizations and settlements still existed were just worm-infested houses of horrors by the time Makoma and the Dragon finally killed each other. The African king himself came across one of many such cities during his travels, where the people were trapped even in death, constantly devoured by plagues and insects with no hope of release. For all that it praised Noah and damned Sodom and Gomorrah, the Bible didn't even know half of it. "Some there were who were living, saved from the rush of the fountains. Called to me then the Master, saying: Gather you together my people. Take them by the arts you have learned of far across the waters, until you reach the land of the hairy barbarians, dwelling in caves of the desert. Follow there the plan that you know of."
"… Something about this history doesn't feel right," Ramirez floundered. "Not inaccurate, it just… it's suspicious. I'd call it staged but that wouldn't be totally accurate. I suppose a close enough term would be… unjustifiably bleak?"
"There were some promising segments though. Or at least there was one," Alexander amended. "Thoth ruled over Khem, old Egypt, for at least a thousand years before sending the other Priests to spread the light of Civilization elsewhere. It explains why Khem advanced so quickly and outpaced much older cultures like Sumer, and why those cultures then matched the pace of Khem even without actual contact between the peoples. The cultures advanced in different directions but they advanced, instead of dragging themselves forward like they'd been doing for the past half a million years."
"Not that it did much good," Ramirez said with some bitterness. "The damned space worms came along and ruined things just as the civilizations were getting their feet under them."
"Well, they're gone now." Alexander looked sideways at his companion and wrapped an arm around him. "It occurred to me that few people actually did this in the wake of the bastard Pantheons that swooped in to steal the credit, so let me say it: thank you for overthrowing them and saving the world." The man's bitter scowl shifted into a bittersweet smile. That and the memories Alexander reflexively retrieved of the man's life caused whatever was left of Alexander's mood to sour. "Sweet heavens, no one ever actually thanked you, did they? Even the people you led against the snakes fell for lies of the usurper Pantheons." Alexander couldn't help the disbelief in his tone. How had his head not made the connection? He'd been working with the man for a year non-stop. "You overthrew the head elements of a tyrannical galactic empire and nobody even knows."
The bitterness of before returned and came out in a laugh. "Most of the various peoples never actually found out that the problem extended beyond their own flimsy borders. I can tell you that the worms had a lot of laughs at their expense over that." Tak'ne reached up to lay his hand over the one Alexander had on his shoulder. "With the gods' ability to affect the world gradually growing over the course of the last two generations under Goa'uld rule, everyone came to think the success of the various rebellions were owed fully to them. Never mind that we had to use magic and stolen technology to manipulate and coordinate things so that the final push happened all at once worldwide. By then many of us Immortals were doing it for ourselves at least as much as for everyone else. Though there were a few like Enmerkar who managed to spit in the gods' faces. Gilgamesh was one of ours too and manipulated the people of Sumer into thinking he was divine, giving credit where it was due..." Ramirez gave the young king a shrewd look then. "Kind of like someone else we all know."
"I never claimed to be a son of Zeus," Alexander deadpanned, not pulling away as they walked on. "If people want to think I am, it's their right under the law of free will."
"Of course." Tak'Ne nodded drolly, but his good mood faded into a wan shadow of itself. "Thank you for the consideration all the same."
With a smile equally doleful, Alexander pat the other man on the shoulder and withdrew his arm. They were finally within a hundred paces of the west entrance to the pyramid anyway.
The two beheld the architectural miracle for a time. Ramirez looked for cracks or imperfections in the gold coating but found none, while Alexander delved into the history of the edifice, all the way to the beginning when Thoth imposed his will on reality and shaped it from the surrounding sands. Making those Emerald Tablets of his was probably a child's trick to him in comparison.
"Raised I high over the entrance a doorway, a gateway leading down to Amenti," Alexander said from memory. "Few there would be with courage to dare it, few pass the portal to dark Amenti. Raised over the passage, I, a mighty pyramid, using the power that overcomes Earth force." Which sounded a lot like he'd used only telekinesis to not just move earth and stone but to manipulate molecules and atomic composition, something Alexander had only considered in theory.
"I suppose this is it…" Ramirez eventually said quietly. "How do we get in?"
"I guess we'll take the front door," Alexander shrugged.
"Ah, it's one of those hidden passages then," Ramirez begun to nod but stopped at the brief confusion that the other man aimed at him.
"I meant that archway," he said, gesturing at the vaulted archway right ahead, one of four facing the cardinal points and located at the middle of each edge on the bottom level. A search with his higher sight revealed the problem. "You can't see it."
Ramirez blinked, shifted his eyesight through all the levels he could view and shook his head.
Alexander snorted. "Figures. It's one of those selective worthiness things that only sets people apart in terms of how much the one you're looking for likes you compared to your friends." He crossed his arms and glared at the offending entrance waiting innocently ahead of them. Unless he was mistaken it was made of unchanging platinum as molecularly fixed as the tablets and the rest of the pyramid itself.
"I suppose this is the world's latest way of saying we should have just let you come alone like you wanted to in the first place."
"Well, too bad." With a frown, Alexander mentally reached forward, found the weave of high magic that rendered the entrance indistinguishable from the rest of the outer wall and pulled it apart at the seams. The flare of pleased surprise at his side indicated he was successful. "It was meant to only reveal the entrance to those who knew exactly what they were going to find inside, which you didn't."
"And you do."
"Irem of a Thousand Pillars." That said he quickly walked forward until he was within arm's reach of the gold-covered angled wall. It was indescribably smooth to the touch.
"Now… now wait just a damned minute!" Ramirez shouted, hurrying after him. "Irem's a legend! And even if it's real, isn't it supposed to be in Arabia?"
"Rub al-Khali to be specific," Alexander answered absently. "The Arabian Desert. The Empty Quarter. In truth that's just one of four entrances. The others are in Antarctica, here and…" the surprise made his eyebrows almost hit his hairline. "El Dorado of all places."
"El Dorado?"
"Also known as Manoa, a golden city built by the Muisca people in South America, beyond the ocean to the west." That information… honestly surprised Alexander, not just in itself but the fact he managed to uncover it at all. He wondered if what he did even qualified as psychometry anymore. "Apparently the city was built by a king known as the Golden One."
The two immortals exchanged a glance full of meaning. The Golden People of Hyperborea literally had golden skin, occasionally inscribed with alabaster or blue symbols. Whoever established the Golden City was likely a Priest of the Flame or a reincarnated immortal who was doing his job right. It made Alexander wonder what would happen that would relegate the place and the king himself to an unproven myth by the twentieth century.
Alexander rewove the concealment enchantment on the entrance and was satisfied to see that Ramirez still saw it now that the last piece of the puzzle called "destination" had finally been added in his mind. "Well, I believe the spider said it best."
"I suppose I'm the fly?" Tak'Ne muttered but nonetheless followed.
Behind them, the Spirit of Africa settled on its haunches and forelegs and laid its chin on its front joints. Sand flowed flowed forth from all over, leveling in front and around the Pyramid until the Great Being was covered nearly all the way up to its spine.
It would not slumber yet, but it would wait.
"-. .-"
"By the Eternal Fire…"
Alexander agreed but he managed not to vocalize his astonishment upon finally coming to the end of that dark passage. Although it was not so much dark as lit with the kind of light that normal eyesight couldn't perceive. Light that Shone in Darkness. Unlike other pyramids this one didn't have any hollow sections, save for the straight, vertical shaft at the center that focused the light of the Sun and trans-physical levels of reality into a single, focused beam of Soul Force.
Built I the Great Pyramid, patterned after the pyramid of Earth force, burning eternally so that it, too, might remain through the ages. There in the apex set I the crystal, sending the ray into the "Time-Space," drawing the force from out of the ether, concentrating upon the gateway to Amenti.
The space they had emerged in was massive, enough that the top and sides couldn't be seen with the naked eye. Even their superior sight strained to reach the boundaries of the perfect frustum where the underground City of Pillars resided. Columns of white marble, alabaster, crystal and diamond rose from the stone floors and roads all the way to the flat top of the cavern, though it was a poor term to refer to it by.
The streets were arrayed radially, much like the Kutlesh Sun that Alexander had incorporated into his family crest, only with eighteen rays instead of sixteen. The roads were paved with colored stones in the pattern of the rainbow and all sprung from the central plaza, a perfect circle made of white stone that seemed to have been poured into that shape without ever having been cut or melted down. Side roads circled that square at regular intervals, turning what would otherwise be eighteen separate boulevards into a vast circuit of pathways. Homes and buildings of all sorts flanked the roads, each three meters apart from the other.
It was a wondrous cityscape made by a single man through the power of his authority and will, and at the same time it was a place as empty as it was magnificent.
The two Immortals just stood there for nigh an hour, simply looking. Ultimately, though, they reached the same conclusion.
"This is a sad place," Ramirez whispered, almost, eyes never wavering from the sight in front of them. "I'd be tempted to accuse the builder of hoarding his talents and craft but that wasn't the point, was it? There's not even any treasure here. Nothing material at any rate. No gold, no gems, no artefacts. Not even tomes. If I didn't know the mystical properties of gold I'd wonder why he bothered to coat the pyramid above in it." He fell quiet for a few moments, eyes studying the road ahead and the staircase leading down from the mouth of the passage they'd come through. Even that was pristinely clean, with not a speck of dust to be found. "Who would build such a place only to let it lie untouched and abandoned?"
"A man who mourns unburdened by grief," Alexander answered quietly. The farther he read into that place's history, the more that conclusion was enforced. "A man who knew his people were gone beyond any hope of rebuilding. A man who knew his people had used up their chances. This city was never meant to be lived in. It's a monument." Deciding he'd stalled enough, he set off down the stairs and spread his awareness far and wide, blanketing Irem in its entirety, instantly locating the Keys that Thoth had hidden and just as quickly confirming that he needed none of them, unlike previous pilgrims. Neither did he need to go through the Tests of Inner Revelation. "Four others preceded us here. The one before us was almost 1800 years ago now. A man whose name was… Melchizedek." That bit of information brought him to a halt in the middle of the road.
"Melchizedek," a wide-eyed Ramirez echoed dubiously. "King of Salem Melchizedek. Priest of El Elyon the God Most High Melchizedek. He who was, quote, without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, end quote, that Melchizedek."
"Yep." He stretched out the word to give himself time to internalize that revelation.
"… Okay."
"He wasn't one of us," it had to be said. That information came from his father not his readings, but he didn't bother telling Ramirez that. "What's odd is that the 'legend' of his origins makes it sound like he's an ascended who embodied or one of those Children of Light mentioned in the tablets, assuming they aren't the same thing. It makes me wonder why he even needed to come here though."
"Like you needed to come here?"
"Well, you've got me there." With redoubled focus he looked even farther back in time. "The person before Melchizedek was Zarathushtra." Since there was nothing to send his mind reeling this time, he resumed their walk.
The older immortal's eyebrows climbed higher than they usually rested but he wasn't quite as surprised this time. "That actually makes sense." The Priesthood of Ahura Mazda basically spread the same tenets as the Clerics of Hyperborea.
For his part, Alexander wondered when Ahriman managed to fool the members of that faith into believing there's such a thing as an antithesis to Ahura Mazda. For Ahriman to invent and pose as the concept of Angra Mainyu and actually cause enough destruction and dissent to twist one of the true religions and turn it from dichotomic to dualistic took a quite a bit of gall.
"So who's the third? Or is that second?" Ramirez prompted.
"Oh, that was-" Alexander suddenly came to a halt that was even more abrupt than the first one. "Okay, really?"
"What? What's wrong?"
Blinking out of his stupor, Alexander blandly answered. "Her name was Egeria."
"So? I can't imagine you'd react this way just because she's a woman-"
"Egeria was a Goa'uld."
That shut him up nicely indeed. For all of five seconds. "WHAT?" The shout sent the first echoes that ever sounded in that place since its creation and made the grizzled immortal cringe and look furtively around, then back at him. "You're joking." A beat. "You are joking, right?"
"I'm afraid not," Alexander said with superhuman calm. "… Was there ever any shred of evidence to suggest your rebellion had inside help?"
That made Tak'Ne wonder. "… I honestly have no idea."
The former king took a deep calming breath and slowly released it. "I'm almost afraid to look and see who the last one was."
"The first one you mean." Ramirez sighed too and rubbed his eyes. "We may as well find out."
Alexander had to look nearly all the way back to the time when the Pyramid was erected, but finally he had his answer. "Haraonos Emrys."
Both men took some time to wrack their minds for any hint that they'd ever heard of the name, but while Alexander did wonder if there was a relation to Merlin, Ramirez had nothing. "This is one I don't know."
"You should know about him. And so should I." The younger man slowly met Ramirez' questioning gaze. "He was one of us." His eyes unfocused as he gave that point in time further scrutiny. "And while he did come alone, at the same time he wasn't. Voices echoed unheard when he spoke and spirits walked where he walked."
Ramirez made the connection almost immediately. "Shaman." The word was spoken lowly and with a tinge of respect.
The two took a minute to wonder about the implications.
"I wonder what happened to him," Ramirez uttered eventually, rubbing his chin. "If he's still alive by some miracle he'll be the oldest of us by far."
Alexander's father was silent on the matter, which could mean one or more of several things. Including that maybe his answers were just ahead. "All this makes me wonder if I know what I'm getting into or if I'm in for more surprises."
The two reached an unspoken agreement to make no more small talk and traveled the rest of the way to the city center without further words. All the while, Alexander felt like he was taking his last steps in at least one sense. It made him think of how far he'd come since his days as Xander Harris, how different he acted and thought. Everything up to the nature and scope of his internal vocabulary had changed, even when taking into account the different language. Once Greek, now Lemurian, the closest anyone had ever gotten to vocalizing the Written Word, the language of thought waves. Though he supposed those were sounds in their own way. It all boiled down to vibration in the end.
The old Xander Harris would have been all over the innuendo and disregarded everything else within moments of hearing the words.
In the middle of the central plaza lay a domed building with a raised base and a double-door wide enough for ten men to stand in side by side. All of it was made of crystal that looked like it had been grown through and acquired the traits of alchemical gold. It was clear and glimmered with its own inner light and yet did not allow one to see inside. Alexander could see the light motes clearly, that they weren't just a refraction of the golden beam that streamed into the heart of the edifice through the circular gap at the top. The light actually looked like it streamed upward as much as it rained down.
Now that they were close, Alexander could see why his thought waves seemed like they stretched into eternity in that central spot near the roof. Instead of a magical light, a glowing crystal or even a miniature star, there was instead a gateway to Darkness. The Darkness of Light filled with stars that were not stars. "Raised I high over the entrance a doorway, a gateway leading down to Amenti…" The light from the crystal atop the pyramid sustained it from above and if he had his facts right...
With a flex of his will, Alexander undid the locks on the massive doors and walked through.
There it was. Thoth's sarcophagus, lying in the middle of the central dais on which the light of Soul Force shone. The stone coffin had that mighty, solid quality that all sarcophagi seemed to share, which made the Goa'uld modify their healing cubes until they had the same size and shape. Just one of many acts of propaganda they deluded themselves and everyone else with in their time. Still were deluding themselves and others beyond the stars.
One day he would figure out what to do about them.
The silence stretched for quite some time.
Ramirez' patience drained first. "Now what?" The words were voiced but somehow softer than any whisper he'd ever produced.
"He who in courage would dare the dark realms, let him be purified first by long fasting. Lie in the sarcophagus of stone in my chamber. Then reveal I to him the great mysteries. Soon shall he follow to where I shall meet him, even in the darkness of Earth shall I meet him, I, Thoth, Lord of Wisdom, meet him and hold him and dwell with him always."
The words rippled through space-time as the place they were in seemed to recognize them and who had spoken them in the early days of Khem, before the path had been blasted to the core of the Earth. "The first one is easy, since I haven't needed to eat in years. The rest, though…" Alexander scratched his chin for a few moments, then let his hand fall to his side and a cool serenity settled over him, reaching all the way to his core. "I already know the Great Mysteries." Without another glance in the direction of his companion, he strode forward and stepped into the light shining from above, stopping just at the foot of the sarcophagus but no further.
"… Should I hide somewhere?" Ramirez half-joked, internally awed at how the light played on the white figure.
"Do you know the meaning of life, Ramirez?" Alexander's fingers slid over the lid of the stone coffin as his Lemurian took on a rhythmic cant. "Why we exist? Why men are born, why they die and why they are reborn, again and again and again?" Even there at the heart of the ancient hall there was no dust to mark the passing of time. "Darkness and light are both of one nature, different only in seeming, for each arose from the source of all. Darkness is disorder. Light is Order. Darkness transmuted is light of the Light. This is our purpose in being: transmutation of darkness to light." His tone turned rueful. "Of course, I speak of Order, not the twisted interpretation of those who would impose draconic boundaries upon sentients for the sake of providing them with an illusion of control." He looked up through the opening in the roof, all the way to the Portal in space-time that waited up high to transport him to the Core of the Earth. "Those lights up there are the souls of men."
Ramirez didn't speak. He didn't feel he actually understood everything Alexander was relaying no matter how clear-cut it seemed on the surface. Or maybe he was just complicating things in his head.
The younger Immortal turned to face him with the look of someone who knew what thought had just passed through his mind. "This sarcophagus is here to make it easier for me to leave my body and journey to the center of all but…" He grinned. "Ultimately, what is the body?" With one mental push he dropped the veil concealing him from both the Light and Darkness and let his body and spirit fill to the brim with the fire and thunder always blazing in the center of his soul, waiting to be unleashed. "Mekut-El-Shab-El Hale-Sur-Ben-El-Zabrut Zin-Efrim-Quar-El. Edom-El-Ahim-Sabbert-Zur Adom."
Half-way through the chant his body was bright enough to force the older man to bring his palm up and shield his vision. By the end he had to look away to prevent his eyes from burning out, so instead of seeing the young king erupt into white light he looked in the other direction, which was the only reason he saw outside through the walls – walls that let one see out even if they prevented outsiders from looking in. Every part of Irem, from every pillar to every wall, shone, for an instant, as though it held within a sun of its own.
Then the light flared brighter than even he could make out and shot up through the gap in the ceiling, disappearing into the endless depths of the gateway above.
"-. .-"
Ramirez would have waited down there for a whole year if it came to it, but just six hours after he ascended into the Portal that led downwards (however strange that sounded), Alexander manifested in front of him as a spirit and told him that he was going to be a while. After briefly considering the option of trying to find the keys and completing the "path," the man decided against it. Maybe someday he would actually walk that path to the end, but he would do it properly from the start and only after he came to terms with everything he was and wasn't.
Which led him to his current dilemma: how was he going to get back to civilization? And which direction was civilization anyway? Assuming he even was in one of the parts of the world he knew, which was unlikely.
"Well," he muttered under his breath as he climbed the stairs leading topside. "Every journey starts with the first step."
Once he stepped through the archway he was met with the incongruous sight of a slumbering, buried-up-to-its-neck-in-the-sand giant rhino. A giant rhino that shook its head and lifted it to stare at him as soon as he was in view.
The Immortal stared.
The Spirit of Africa stared back. "Juan Sánchez Villa-Lobos Ramírez."
It felt to the man as if he'd just relived his whole life in a single flash, but this time nothing bad happened. "That's me. How do you do?"
The rhino stared at him, then blinked. The sand reaching nearly all the way up to its back shifted and folded until it resembled a footway with stairs at the farthest top-most end, stopping at the small of its neck. Tak'Ne boggled at the bizarre sight but couldn't help but take a stab at the giant force of nature that could squash or otherwise have its wicked way with him. "Don't think this leaves you off the hook!" As he waggled his finger at her, Ramirez asked himself if he'd gone insane or if he'd always been.
There wasn't an answer or even the barest hint of emotion.
Still befuddled but beyond numb to the shocks at that point, the Immortal checked to make sure he had all his possessions, up to water and food, or what was left anyway, then shrugged and climbed on the back of the gigantic creature. He never dreamed he'd get to go on a safari on the back of a rhino, let alone such a big rhino, but with how his life was going odds were good that even stranger things were going to happen to him soon.
A strange thought hit him when the creature pushed to its feet and started to lumber its way across its… well, other body: Tak'Ne had been a good name but it was about time he switched to a new moniker, and his real one was a mouthful. Ramirez sounded nice but also rather too Spaniard for that part of the world.
After some internal deliberation he settled on one of the names he'd employed during an incognito mission among the People of the Left Hand, back in the very old days. Allan was a fine name. Allan Quatermain.
Yes, it would serve him well for as long as he was on African soil, he was sure.
