Loki addressed Ammit, his voice succinct as he said, "I presume that your memories of the Necropolis will be sufficient to guide your companions to the Scales?"
Ammit arched a scaly brow ridge. "You're kidding me, right?"
"Shall I take that as a yes?" Loki replied.
"Filial piety will only take you so far, old man." Ammit snorted in amusement. "The day I can't navigate the halls of this place will come long after the Great End."
"Then we will wait for you at the Scales." Loki replied, snapping his fingers and whisking us away in beam of light. For the second time that day I found myself transported across time and space, to a palatial room that reminded me of Nekheb to a disturbing degree. I'd have been willing to bet anything that Heka had created his throne room in imitation of this place.
Loki's body shimmered, rippling as it reduced down to a tiny waif of a man with an oversized head. He seemed puny, too slight to even move under his own power, let alone to command the vast powers I knew were at his control. He hobbled forward, spindly legs seeming as though they might break at any second. "Come on then Dresden. We have a lot to talk about."
I sputtered in confusion. "What did you just call me?"
"Dresden - it's your name isn't it? I could call you "Harry" if you'd prefer, but I feel that we don't quite know each other well enough to be getting informal." The little man sat down on the stairs leading up to the palatial chamber's entrance, dangling them down as he watched the silent cityscape of the necropolis. He pulled out a glowing stone from god alone knew where, tossing it into the thin air where it hovered magnifying a swirling corona of air to display my compatriots as they made the long way to the pyramid.
"I am the Lord Warden - " I replied only for the little man to cut over me.
"Dre'su'den the Ha'ri, yes - I know. It's not even a particularly clever manipulation of your real name." The tiny norse god replied, tapping the shimmering air to display odd runes and icons as his stone examined the Russians as they woke, standing groggily as Kincaid, Thomas, and Muminah helped them to their feet. The tiny line of his mouth quirked up into a smile. "I do appreciate a certain degree of deviousness, Dresden, but if you try to lie to me I will leave without telling you what you wish to know."
"Who told you?" I sighed. "The Winter Queen? The Leanansidhe?"
"The computer attached to the sensors on my Asgard Battleship." The tiny creature replied glibly. "There was enough of you left in what you've become from your unascended body to run a DNA test against your past self. I've been monitoring the Russian Stargate since they took it from the bottom of the sea."
"Excuse me?" I replied, flabbergasted that my ruse had been undone by an ancient Norse god's understanding of modern forensics.
"You've only undergone the ritual of Necromantic Ascension once, you're just slightly more than what you used to be." Loki dismissed the rune, disappearing it with another burst of brilliant energy. "I used my existing file for your genetic profile and matched you to your past self."
"You have my DNA on file?"
"I keep track of Wizards, yes." The Norse godling kicked his little legs back and forth, seemingly enjoying cool breeze flowing through the vast cavern. "Yours and any other Wizard of interest. It is a matter of academic curiosity."
"I am more than just a curiosity." My eyes flashed unconsciously with red lightning, stormy pits smoldering at the indignity of being at this beings mercy. Loki was not a creature I wanted knowing my secrets.
"Certainly not an academic one, judging by your history of studies." The creature warbled, patting the open patch stairs next to him. "Sit, please. I would speak with you. One God of Mischief to another."
"I'm not a god of Mischief, Chaos, or anything else - I'm just me." I replied, sitting down next to the Asgardian. I rolled my staff between my gauntleted hands, running my armored fingers across the runes.
"As was I and as were countless other pantheons that have since slipped into time immemorial." The creature made a trilling noise that might have been laughter. "We don't create our own roles in this life, Dresden. They are created for us as we are forced to use our abilities. I would much rather be remembered for being the god of Fatherhood than Treachery, but I'll wager you knew of the venom dripped into my eyes long before you knew that I was more than a god of Chaos."
"Rumors of your imprisonment appear to have been greatly exaggerated." I looked at the creature, catching an unconscious wince of pain upon his face.
"They have not." The man replied coldly. "I - well one of what you would consider to be "me," is trapped in a perpetual hell of agony. Another sits next to you, still others labor elsewhere."
"There is more than one Loki?"
"Is there not more than one Harry?" The trickster's smile seemed more pained than it had a moment ago.
"Fair point." I conceded, giving the matter some thought. "So - you traveled in time as well?"
"Yes, no, and both." The creature's smile returned to a near giddy glee. "If you survive long enough you'll begin to understand."
"You aren't what I imagined you'd be like." I scratched my head, shaking shards of broken glass and debris from my hair.
"No, I'm much more handsome." The creature replied glibly. "That's why you like me Harry. I'm just so pretty."
I burst into laughter that the absurdity of it all. Here I was, sitting in a forgotten city with a Norse god discussing how pretty he was. I laughed until it hurt, letting manic tears run down my face. Hell's bells, it just felt good to be with someone who just treated me as Harry Dresden.
A little hand rested on my shoulder, too slight for me to feel the pressure through my armor though infinite in how comforting it felt. "It gets easier, Dresden. The pain, the responsibility, and even the loneliness."
"What do you want?" I croaked through my mirth and sorrow, wiping the tears clumsily off my face with my gauntlet fingers.
"I want what every father wants, Dresden. I want my children to stop hurting themselves. I want their sins to be forgiven. I want for them to prosper as they once did, before they committed all this madness." The little man's voice sounded nearly as choked up as my own. "I want the blood-children of Jörmungandr to be redeemed."
"The Goa'uld… you're… you're talking about the Goa'uld." I looked at the waifish little creature in befuddlement. "You're the progenitor of the entire species?"
"I am - or was - the father of the great Wyrm Jörmungandr. Thor took offense to my child, and wounded him grievously. Jörmungandr's blood enveloped the word from which the Jörmungandrsons evolved, shaping them into what you now know as Unas and Goa'uld."
"No offense, but you don't have what I would call a "striking" family resemblance." Jörmungandr was the sort of creature that generally came up in magical texts under "apocalypse - see end of all things" or "seriously, don't fuck with this thing." And I was sitting next to his daddy. Yay me.
"Do you look as you were even a year ago?" The creature joked back. "No, I am not as I was - that is the way of these things. Pantheons grow, create their roles, fulfil their duties, then fade back as they are no longer needed or are no longer wanted. The universe is littered with the bones of things that once made reality itself quake at their presence."
"That's kind of a fatalistic attitude towards power, dontcha think?" Though in truth it was hard to feel anything other than fatalistic in this place. The dead city was covered in the dust of ages, a remnant of the once powerful Goa'uld civilization that had ruled over Earth thousands of years ago. I could see rows of petrified trees within dead gardens full of bone dry fountains, things of beauty that had long since gone to ruin. There were empty markets full of stalls made from wood that looked as though it would dissolve the instant anyone touched them and advertisements carved into the rock-walls behind them for offers long since expired.
"Perhaps, is not fatalism the appropriate response to the inevitability of Entropy?" Inquired the little man.
"What, life ends so what's the point? We should all just roll up in a ball and die because we're going to die eventually? Pardon my french but fuck that." I snorted. "I'm not about to give up on life just because life is hard and death happens."
There was a long pause before the little man began his strange, trilling laughter. "Oh, he was right - I do like you. Well said, young one. And who better to battle entropy than two gods of chaos? I think that even as a mortal I would have endured your presence, young one."
"I thought you found out who I was for yourself." I replied, very much wondering who the "he" in question was.
"I wasn't alone at the time, dear boy." Loki scoffed. "I am exiled, not dead. I socialize."
"You were socializing about me - with whom?" I gritted my teeth, dreading the sort of thing that met for tea with a god of mischief.
"Kringle and I meet on occasion to discuss my scientific work." Loki replied. "My research is of supreme interest to him."
"You… and Santa?" I blinked.
"We operate within similar social circles." Replied Loki, the norse god of mischief.
"I didn't see Old Saint Nick as being the sort to go for that whole scientific stuff." I spoke, briefly imagining the barrel-chested fairy with a lab-coat and goggles.
"That's because - and understand that I say this with the best of intentions - you're an idiot." The creature waved away my offended look with a tiny finger. "By comparison, it's not to your discredit. You're starting at a disadvantage by by being born human. Don't get me wrong, you're closer to the Blood of Eden than most of your species, but you're still barely clever enough to understand the path you've begun or to where it might lead."
"Humans are dumber than you so they should just listen?" I scoffed.
"You are both dumber than I am, and no longer human. The faster you accept both of those facts the quicker we can stop you from potentially killing us all." Loki stood up and walked into the throne room, gesturing to the wide open space. The capacious hall was lined with forty-two small thrones encircling a wide plinth. At the center of the raised, stone circle was a large set of scales, carved from diorite. At either side of the scales were two massive thrones cast from bronze with symbols of jackals on the one and crocodiles on the other. "Do you recognize where we are, Dresden."
"I… I thought that it was a metaphor, not an actual - physical place." I'd read the Egyptian Book of the Dead before. It was basically required reading for both the budding wizard and the teenage loner, and I had been both. The forty-two seats surrounding me were presumably the seats in which souls to be judged confessed their sins to the pantheon, telling providing them with the negative affirmations that they had not been bad people in life. The remaining two were obviously those occupied by Ammit and Anubis. According to legend, when Egyptians died they would have to pass a series of trials before being judged by Ammit and Anubis, who would - after weighing the sins of a man's heart against a feather - either pass that soul along to Osiris to get it to Paradise or feed it to Ammit to annihilate it entirely.
"This place is not what it once was. The powers that fed it and made it are waning. Other gods and beings have taken up the roles that were once filled by Jörmungandrson and Jörmungandrdottir. Now this is little more than a room full of the ghosts of the past." He gestured to shapes moving at the edges of the room. "Some livelier than others."
I followed his gaze, watching as the shambling, mummified forms of hundreds of mummified Pharaohs and servants entered the room. They were ancient, even by the standards of ancient things, but necromancy only grew more powerful with time. The cold power of death seeped into the room as they came, eyes glowing with the shimmering power of a goa'uld hosts. They shambled eagerly into the space, their rasping voices no longer able to make words as they chanted some long-forgotten song.
The forty-two Pharaohs took their thrones, their necromantic bodies pulsing with the power of Naquadah from what I was certain were the mummified symbiotes within them. Their servants, wives, pets and attendants came with them in varying states of dessication. The oldest of them were little more than spirits borne along by dust, still carrying out their appointed duties.
"Do you know why the Jörmungandrson take hosts, Dresden?" Inquired Loki, looking around at the undead conclave of Pharaohs.
"Because they need bodies?" It seemed rather obvious.
"Because they need souls." Loki disagreed, his sadness palpable. "Jörmungandr is a creature of the purely material, a being of reality. When he dies, as when they die - they will cease. That is why they were useful to the Fairies. That is why they were chosen by the Ogdoad. Because you cannot corrupt the spirit of a being that has no spiritual weight of their own."
I blinked, looking at the elaborate processional to help souls along to the afterlife. "The Goa'uld were pretty obsessed with death for a species that didn't have a life after."
"They had to steal, cheat, fight, and do anything to earn their way into the hereafter that they could not, by themselves, earn." Loki waved to the conclave, staring at us with piercing, rotted eyes. "I promise you this, Dresden. Whatever injustices the gods do to you in life, know that they envy your death more than anything you could imagine."
"The Goa'uld want to die?"
"The Goa'uld want to matter. Whatever other choices they have made, know that more than anything else they desire a legacy beyond the void they know waits for them when all else passes." He pointed to the mummies. "These things you see are but the first of a series of choices they made in an effort to avoid the gaping nothing."
I shivered, trying to imagine knowing that there wasn't even the potential for life after life. Sure - I wasn't sure what happened next, nobody could be. But I at least had the hope. I knew there was something. I couldn't be sure what but I'd seen enough spirits to believe that there was something. It would be one thing if I were an atheist and believed that there wasn't life after death, but knowing that both there was life after death and that I wouldn't get to live it would be a deeply bitter pill to swallow.
Oh hell's bells. It very well might be a pill I had to swallow. "You're telling me that I will cease when I die, aren't you?"
"No, you have undergone the Ritual of Necromantic Ascension. You have bound what you are to what you were not, and become more than both." The mummies rasped agitatedly as he spoke, an envious lilt to their rasping whisper of a song. "You are more, and can become more as a result."
I wasn't sure I was going to like what happened to me after I died, but I liked having the chance a damn sight more than I liked having no chance at all. Which, now that I thought about it, explained a great deal of the cruelty and bitterness I'd seen out of the Goa'uld to their servants. "Is that the folly of Thoth then? Their aspiration to live on after death?"
"No, Thoth's folly was greater than you could imagine and more mundane than any could ever believe. Words - only words, but ideas are the most dangerous weapon you could imagine." Loki sighed, shimmering back into his human form as he ran a finger along the rim of the scales. "A single sentence - not the one the Goa'uld were allowed to remember, that would be madness. But to understand that, you must understand why the Goa'uld were allowed dominion over mortals."
"To protect them, right? From dangerous old things? The stuff they keep in prisons?" I replied.
"What do you know of the Outsiders?" As soon as Loki spoke the words the mummified conclave snarled in uniform contempt, their utter vitriol for the Outsiders palpale.
"Not much… knowing anything about them was pretty strictly forbidden by the White Council. They're evil, they're powerful, and they want in. More than that… I don't really know." I shrugged. "Other than that the Goa'uld were fighting them at some point."
"We have all been fighting them since first Folly, the one that came long before Thoth's mistake. Another battled them at the Gates. The Goa'uld fought the troops that escaped their siege." Loki gestured to the collected Pharaohs. "Goa'uld died in their endless war for time beyond your reconing. They grew in power until they finally had garnered dominion enough to feel they were not only able to survive against the forces of the foe, they believed they could prosper."
"They tried to ally with the Outsiders?" I scoffed. "Yeah, that will end well."
"No, young one. Fools have always tried to do that." Loki shook his head. "Seventeen words spoke in jest nearly ended the universe, "Since they cannot touch us let us invade their place of nightmares, let them bleed and tremble. "
"Invade? They tried to conquer the Outsiders." A single outsider was a potentially apocalyptic threat, the idea of attacking their homeland and strongholds was a preposterous notion. "But that's…"
"... Insane? Yes. Which is why I suppose nobody tried it till the Goa'uld." The creature's eyes shimmered black as he smiled a madman's grin. "Their allies didn't stop them because it seemed too absurd to even believe. And when their campaigns started to actually work they didn't dare stop them."
"You can't conquer outsiders." My voice most definitely didn't crack in a near girlish screech of petulance at the pure madness of it.
"Of course not." Loki's agreement was one of the most sorrowful things I'd ever heard. "Not without becoming something even more terrible than they. They fed upon the creatures they conquered as you fed upon one to become what you are now. Dagon was the first, but he was neither the last nor the most terrible of them. Old Gods and terrible things, all of the outside was not to be trusted."
"And you think that I'm going to go all Cujo and start eating Outsiders?" I gagged at the thought of it. "It's really not part of my plans."
"It wasn't part of Dagon's either and yet he lies exiled beyond the Gates." Loki's mismatched eyes changed colors, never once shifting in unison but glowing violently with rage. "Learn from history child, else relive tragedy."
I paused, considering what I'd been told. "How did they defeat them? I mean, if they were going over to the dark side, that had to mess up the whole flow of the war."
Loki touched the jackal headed chair wistfully. "Those still loyal to the Ogdoad hatched a scheme, forcing the Terms with the Sidhe while the greatest of them sought out a route to power greater than the necromantic rituals practiced by their people. They defeated the broken ones and their allies, but the doom already was."
"Did you bring me here to judge me?" I pointed to the scales. "Take out my heart? Weight it against a feather? I'm not the monsters they were."
Loki sighed exasperatedly. " Have you been listening to a word I've said Dresden? I brought you here precisely because they weren't monsters. Not at first. They were focused on justice and the preservation of life."
His black eyes glimmered with starlight, similar to my own. "I brought you here to remind you that even gods fall from grace."