M-Sama's Final Word: This is it. The end of everything. All you who stuck it out to the end, thank you. It has been an experience I shall never forget. I don't know if I'm going to write many more fanfics after this. This was something I don't know if I can top. All you who gave your support and encouraging words, I thank you. If you've had half as much fun reading this as I have had writing it, my job is done.
Epilogue
So that was it.
Sleepwalker king, reaching out to the shadows before me, I see you. You seek the ones you lost. You seek the ones you must stop. You seek…
His hands reach through the air. His searing violet eyes are blind to me.
Why do you move now, Shadow King? What mean you to the world? You, chained in the unreality, crowned still by that lightning crown…
You still have things to do…a destiny…
After the passing of the last Mentuhotep king, the country would have lapsed into another period of lawlessness had it not been for the rebellious High Priest, much changed since the Nexus at the pyramid. Lying on the ground amid the most powerful treasures in the world, he was the only one to be there that day and live. His ordeal left him with a weak heart (a short jog or a weak magic spell drained him utterly), and for once he wanted nothing more then to go back to his temple and re-build it. He could still work magic though, the last one who could, and eventually he took command of the anarchal nation, guiding it back towards reason and helping to re-build it's structure, now that the dueling stones were no more. He never smiled again.
Tèana left the palace: it was too full of memories. She re-joined her family and danced with them from time-to-time, and though her dances were beautiful, they were always slow and sad.
Jono helped Seto and did what he could for his nation, but a spark was gone from him. His warm brown eyes were deep now, smoldering with anger at fate.
Both Jono and Tèana died before their thirtieth birthdays: she from a tropical malady, he in a battle to save a woman from thieves. Seto was the only long-lived one of that group—he ruled unhappily as pharaoh for some thirty years before he finally followed the others.
All of them knew, the place they wanted to be was the future.
Champollion and his pupils left the strange dark library quickly. They could no longer stay. A force they didn't understand forced them out. Pale, red-eyed, half-dead from hunger and thirst and weariness they emerged from the darkness. The children had a wide-eyed silence, a grief-stricken shock that never faded for the rest of their lives. They grew up, and lived, but no matter how happy they got, the deep shadowy scar in their eyes was there. Alex returned to his family in America, took up archeology there and excavated Native American sites. Sarah returned to Paris, but found herself drawn to dancing schools rather then museums now, and quit academia for a modest career as a ballet dancer in small background roles.
Jean-Jacques Champollion returned to his job as curator of the Louver Egyptology exhibit. If he meant to do anything with his unusual discovery though, it was not to be—he died six months later, of a disease he had contacted in the shadowy tombs and heat of his dreamland. He was thirty-three.
The time will come, won't it? You see it. Your eyes are blind but you see, you feel…I felt an ache in my heart. You still hope…
He turned his head towards me. His eyes burned. He blinked.
He saw me. He saw me. He saw me!
Only for a moment. He will forget. I was just another passing shadow, but that deluded, stubborn, fiery young spirit did see me.
Words cannot express my confusion. Would be mockery of my linguistic prowess to try.
… It had been a long time since I had seen one, but I have a feeling I would have remembered this one even if he had been an anonymous face a crowd of his kind. Not that there ever are crowds of sleepers, or sleepwalkers. No, in actuality they are rare, so it's always an event when I come across one during my wanderings…
This one…the one who clings to hope and fights on, no matter what the odds, waiting for his time, never surrendering…
A golden box with golden pieces hidden. Eventually they would be found. Eventually they would be assembled. He believed it. He believed it.
Now I am the one with the wound in my heart. Could I…the way I've been living, the way I've been protecting myself…
Am I wrong?
The world of shadows has no space, no time, no sense. It continues.
Elsewhere, the time will come.
M-Sama: Until we meet again! This is M-sama, signing out. It's done!