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Chapter 179: The History of Kings
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Daniel, as it turned out, was quite adept at steering conversations away from subjects he didn't want to discuss. Almost disturbingly so, for someone who was so young. Heh could have forced the issue, of course, seeing through conversational gambits was child's play compared to seeing through time, but he wasn't in any special hurry. He would let Daniel avoid explaining who 'Dan' was. For now.
Instead, he asked about the next several ghost kings. He could rule out a good number of timelines, that way.
"Enki only ruled for about two hundred years, I think," Daniel was saying. In English, of course. Heh did not want the others to know too much about future events. "He faded when his family died out. Or he abdicated, and went to look for other descendants, but never came back, I don't really remember. Then Osiris and Isis did some kind of co-ruling thing. They were around for a while, but then Osiris, and he was still a Judge then- But being a Judge was different then in my time, so... I'm not really sure what happened there. Uh. Osiris and Seth did something, or Seth did something to Osiris, because Seth thought he had a good claim to the throne, and, either way, Osiris lost the right to rule, and went and retired. Isis stuck around for a while, but stuff got bad."
"Bad how?" prompted Heh when Daniel fell silent.
Daniel shrugged. "I'm not completely sure," he admitted. "All of the names of places have changed since then. Or will have changed. It was like four or five thousand years ago. I think some of the bigger islands broke up, and a river might have dried up, too." Daniel's eyebrows knit together in concentration. It was cute to watch, really. "And I think you said something about an ectoplasm shortage. Anyway, Isis retired too. A guy named Imhotep-" Daniel broke off, eyes wide.
"What is it?" asked Heh.
"Just, I think I might have met him. He was a doctor. I didn't realize it at the time." Daniel ran a hand through his hair. "Wow. Okay. I mean, I guess it could have been a different guy."
Daniel shook his head. "Anyway, Imhotep became king for a while, but it was pretty clear that he wasn't in it for the long term. He and a bunch of you guys agreed that he'd only serve until you found someone better, because he really didn't want to be king, and no one else was really thrilled with the idea, either. Neither was- Neither was Lady Ereshkigal."
"So, how long did he rule?"
"A couple of decades, maybe? He was really young, too, if I remember properly. There was a contest, I think. The Ancients had a set of trials, and to become king you had to pass all of them. The Falcon of the East won. He ruled for a while, I don't know how long, but then, um." Daniel looked up at the ceiling. "I'm pretty sure he's the one that got outright ended. Yeah. The Pretender took control of the government for a couple years, and kept you from picking a new king by kidnapping Neith. That sounds right."
Heh did his best not to look disturbed. That sounded disastrous. Even if he did like Daniel, and Heh found that he did, quite a bit, he would probably steer away from that future. A 'pretender' keeping a king from being named was something he couldn't allow. It was too great a risk to the continued existence of the worlds.
"Nergal had been replaced by Nuwa by then, ah..." Daniel trailed off, looking at the ceiling. "She was sponsoring Shihou too, and they lead the Army of Five Kingdoms against the Pretender, the rest of you snuck Neith out, but Shihou got tossed into a portal and lost, so you used your backup, who was Fuxi, her sorta-husband."
"The Emperor of the Land of Ten Thousand Flowers?"
"Yeah, that guy. I didn't think he was around yet, though."
"He isn't. Please go on."
Daniel took this in stride. "He ruled for a good long time. Kept changing his name, though. Can't remember what happened to him. Um. Then there was Queen of Stars. She was Ended, I'm not really sure how, but the Observants were blamed for it, I think, which is why Loxias, who wound up being her successor, forced them to take those noninterference oaths."
Heh's eyebrows went up. "Oh?" he said, interested in how the Observants might be brought low despite himself. He was grateful to them, he really was, but there were a few of them who grated against him. "How did they do that?"
"Um. Apparently, the Observants had a snake whose eyes they used to help them see the future, and Loxias Ended it, and took the eyes, and the oaths were a ransom for the eyes. I didn't really get that, because the way they see the future is by using your powers, isn't it?"
"They use a variety of methods, including using abilities inherent to themselves. If they did not have experience in controlling prophetic and divinatory powers, I would not have approached them to help me with my... problems. Did I not explain this to you, when I told you the story?"
"You might have, but I was pretty sick. I- Uh. I had the viral snake thing, and I wanted to hear stories where snakes got killed."
"The 'viral snake thing.'"
"Oh. You don't have that yet. I guess it isn't really important. Uhm. Loxias got some kind of disease that started affecting the Realms, so he lost the right to rule, so he took his main Realm, which was pretty infected, and quarantined it. By accelerating it away from everything else. I think you told me that his Realm was almost out of Solar System equivalent space by this point. By that point. When you told me. Not now."
"I understand."
"Then there was the Morgana, but she was interim, like Imhotep was. She'd adopted human daughters and a human husband, and made it pretty clear that if she wasn't released in a timely manner she'd do something to get herself evicted. I think she was Neverborn, though."
"And after her?"
"After her was Pariah Dark." Daniel paused. "I don't think he was called that at the time, but that's what he was always called, after. He started off okay, but after a while things got bad. He was a tyrant, and he would attack and conquer Realms that he felt were defying him so that he could control them directly, rather than through their rulers. He wanted to conquer the Earth, too. He was kind of like Inanna, but the other way around, I guess. But he stayed just this side of losing the right to rule, so you- well, not just you, but a lot of different people working together- made the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep, and you- the Ancients- stuck him in there. And that's it."
"That's it?"
"Mhm. That's all the Ghost Kings."
"Pariah Dark is still in the Sarcophagus?"
"Yep. Well, he escaped once, but I beat him up and put him back in." Daniel puffed himself up briefly, then deflated and sighed. "Okay, he did most of the 'beating up' part, but I got him back into the Sarcophagus."
"Ah." Heh was beginning to understand why Lady Ereshkigal was so interested in this child. What he was talking about was no mean feat. Heh rubbed his shoulder. The tension in his core was making it hurt.
He should probably ask him what had happened to Nergal. Even if Heh didn't particularly care for the brutish ghost, a loss of one of the Anunnaki was both something to be avoided and a significant timeline marker-
Daniel gasped. "Ohmigosh!"
"Is something the matter?"
"Inanna!"
Heh frowned. "She is safely disposed of. Nothing to worry about."
"Yes! No! I mean, I still have her stuff in me, her weapons!" Daniel was feeling frantically all over his body.
Heh felt compelled to seize Daniel's hands. "It is alright. Everything is fine. Calm down." He briefly considered telling the child to leave them in, and carry the problem of what to do with the remnants of the artifacts away. But that would be cruel. "You can take them out, slowly. Carefully."
"But what if they're stuck?"
"They aren't. It will be fine," repeated Heh.
Daniel nodded convulsively, holding tight to Heh's hands. "Okay," he said. He took a deep breath. "Okay." After a moment, he nodded again, and with obvious hesitance, let go of one of Heh's hands to reach inside himself.
He rummaged within his chest for a moment, then drew out a tattered length of pale cloth. He stared at it, then giggled.
"I guess I shouldn't try to store stuff inside myself," he said, fingering one of the holes. They were oddly threadbare, as if worn with rubbing.
"Hm," said Heh, looking at adjacent timelines and nearby futures and pasts. "I think that if your intention was to preserve this, it would have been fine." Heh rubbed the cloth between two of his fingers, and shook his head in wonder. Less than a day, and the child had rendered one of the most potent artifacts known to ghostkind all but unusable. "But it was not. You meant to remove it from Inanna's reach, and so you did."
A brief smile flitted over Daniel's features. "It was swallowing Aragon's amulet that gave me the idea," he said, poking the cloth. "Is it still, you know. Dangerous?"
"Perhaps," said Heh. "Nebet-Het," he said, switching to Sumerian, "could you take charge of this?"
"I could," said Nebet-Het, floating over and coming to rest by Daniel.
Daniel was unfazed by this, only offering Nebet-Het a faintly pleasant, if confused, smile. There was no fear there. Heh added another datum to his collection. Daniel must know Nebet-Het. How many other Anunnaki did he know?
… Of course, Heh could just ask Daniel about that. In this particular case, he had no need for subterfuge, or long stretches of fruitlessly watching time in the hopes that some new tidbit be dropped.
Nebet-Het was still talking. "Technically I have charge of them all, already."
"Because they are changing, Aun- Lady Nep- Lady Nebet-Het?" asked Daniel, managing to be polite despite stumbling horribly over Nebet-Het's name.
Nebet-Het looked surprised, but smiled. "Quite so. Do you know me in your time, little one? By a different name, perhaps?"
Heh suppressed a frown. How was it that she was always ahead of him, even though he was the one who could manipulate time. He gave himself a tiny shake of the head. It didn't matter.
"Yes," said Daniel. He looked a little uncomfortable. "I do." He frowned. "How come you didn't mention this?"
Nebet-Het shrugged, then sent a wicked look Heh's way. "It might have been that my brother Anunnaki swore me to secrecy. To protect the timeline, of course."
Daniel's face cleared, as if he thought that was a perfectly acceptable line of reasoning.
"Have you met me?" asked Zaqar.
Oh, dear, this was going to turn into a problem. Heh could just feel it.
"Maybe? You look a lot different, if it was you."
"What about me?" asked Nu, leaning over the other two.
"Uhm..." Daniel was leaning back into Heh, one hand clenching air that must seem to him to be Heh's 'other self's' clothing. Being so trusted was... oddly appealing.
"You should take the other artifacts out, now," said Heh, neatly interrupting the curious Anunnaki.
Daniel looked up at him, clearly grateful for the rescue. "Oh. Right. I am sorry I am being so distractable." He rubbed his thigh, made a face, then slipped his hand into it. He quickly pulled free Inanna's lapis rod, and put it to the side.
It, too, had suffered. The surface was crazed with cracks, and it was dusted with chalky white spots.
"Is that bone?" asked Daniel, surprised back into English. "Is that my bone?"
"I do not know," said Heh. It was also nice that Daniel did not give Heh strange, accusatory, looks when Heh admitted to not knowing something. Unlike some people. It probably helped that Daniel had two eyes, not one.
Daniel shuddered.
It took a while for Daniel to remove the other five of Inanna's weapons, and each one was more damaged than the last. He had to search for the beads from the necklaces individually, as the strings holding them together had snapped.
The crown, the last to be taken out, in particular sent Daniel into a panic. It had gone in as a great, golden piece that covered the head, almost a helmet really, to a thin, wavy band of silver-white metal. Daniel was not sanguine about the possibility of 'little metal bits floating around however they want' inside of him.
Heh did not believe this was the case, but looking for a future where that was proved or disproved conclusively would take time, and since Daniel could, as demonstrated earlier, move between the moments along with Heh, that was not an option he could pursue. Sadly. Instead, he simply let Daniel's panic exhaust itself.
When he was done, Daniel was shivering, and looked to be on the edge of collapse. His skin had turned quite pale.
"I think I'm in shock," he mumbled. "Emotional shock. Does that even make sense? Is that even a thing?" He shivered. "Is it like, really cold in here? I never get cold."
Heh knew, with a peek into the near future, that this would pass. He rather suspected it was simply a reaction to the removal of the objects. More accurately, that Daniel's body had been compensating for their presence, and had not yet caught up to the fact that they were gone. It was still troubling to witness.
Nu untied his cloak from around his shoulders, and draped it around Daniel's. "There, that should warm you up."
"I can't take this," started Daniel. "It's yours. It's too nice." Despite this proclamation, and despite a halting gesture offering the cloak back to Nu, Daniel had wrapped the cloak tightly around himself before he had even finished speaking. The consternation written all over his face showed that he recognized that fact.
Nu smiled broadly. "I am flattered that you like it, but it is an old thing, of no consequence."
That was a lie. It had been, and was, part of a long-running piece of sartorial rivalry between Nu and Zaqar. Each had spent significant effort on making the stars on their robes more realistic. The rivalry, as far as Heh was aware, was entirely benign, almost more of a joke than anything else. Still, it was clear from Zaqar's expression that Nu had managed to win this round before Zaqar had realized it had started.
Zaqar, therefore, felt the need to get some 'hits' in.
"I for my part would recommend that you be put to bed, but it seems that our Lord Heh does not have one."
Evidently, it did not matter to Zaqar that those hits were scored off of Heh.
Daniel looked away from Zaqar and Nu, back and Heh. "You don't have a bed? But where do you sleep?"
Blushing was a human conceit, and one Heh was glad he did not indulge in.
"I do not sleep," said Heh, more severely than was really warranted. He had enough to handle at all times without periodically putting himself under Zaqar's power by sleeping. Who had the time for that, anyway?
… Well, technically speaking, Heh had time to do anything he wanted, so that last was not a solid reason.
Daniel's face twisted in confusion. "Yes you do. I've seen you."
Heh opened his mouth, found he did not have anything to say, and closed it again. Then changed his mind. "Zaqar, perhaps you could fetch a bed for our guest. I am certain you have many, and know which would be best for a child of Daniel's age."
Zaqar looked like he wanted to object, and did. "My lair is a long ways off. By the time I return he will be awake again."
"I will take you," said Nu. "Then distance is no matter."
Zaqar could not object after that.
Heh shook his head as they left. They were some of the most powerful ghosts in the Infinite Realms, powerful in their persons, politically, and ritually, and here they were, reduced to ridiculous posturing over a child. Not that they couldn't stoop to ridiculous posturing all on their own.
By her smirk, Nebet-Het seemed to be thinking the same thoughts. She patted the bundle of ruined artifacts in her hands. "As long as they are gone, I think I ought to get these somewhere safe." She smiled, predatorily. "I will be back."
