"Why yes indeed, my boy - your logic remains sound. However, I've always been quite forgetful - indeed, it may one day prove to be my undoing."
"Of course! You told me this during our first meeting - and about some prophecy as well." Lee's frown deepened. "But that doesn't matter right now... please go on."
"Very well... the four of us had no idea what was about to befall us: that we were about to be marked forever, and that Alexander, well..."
Lee thought he saw a momentary look of shock on Kimmie's normally-inscrutable face, but he was too immersed in the story to give it much thought. Then, Lee realized something: "Wait... why four and not three?"
"Ah, you see... it wasn't always Mann, Wurst, and Finnwich. There was a fourth: Ping."
Lee was speechless for a moment. "Ping?"
"Specifically, your great-grandfather." Lee didn't say anything, so Finnwich continued: "Where was I? Ah, yes. The last eclipse was a century ago - well, 112 years, to be more precise. Holding mirrors, the four of us had positioned ourselves precisely in the path of the eclipse beam; sure enough, it arrived exactly on schedule. We sent the beam down to the pyramid, allowing Alexander to open the door with the keys. Unfortunately, what happened next was quite terrible indeed." Here Finnwich paused and sighed for a moment before continuing.
"I was positioned on the floor just above the pyramid, so I was unable to observe the entire sequence of events. However, when myself and Wurst came down to see what was happening, we saw, to our shock, that a creature had appeared inside the structure. A brief fight broke out between the creature and our principal, and in the fight, the lever to open the pyramid from the inside was broken. There was nothing we could do as Alexander was knocked out cold; even the red Tazelwurm only barely managed to escape, grabbing one of the keys just before leaving. Then, as the door was about to be sealed for another century, the creature came out. That was when the four of us became marked."
Lee was dumbfounded by these revelations. He asked: "So the monster gave you markings? But then... what about the tattoo?"
"That, my boy, came much later. The creature from the pyramid was determined to find a way to open it again. With that being's guidance, we formed this company, with the creature in continuous pursuit of acquiring every resource possible to further that goal. However, we did not know this at the time, for that being referred to us as friends and appeared eager to help us achieve great success in our young lives. Of the four of us young whippersnappers, your great-grandfather was the most suspicious of the true intentions of this enterprise. Eventually, he disappeared, and tattooed over his mark so that he was protected from us. We could not find him no matter what we tried."
"Yours doesn't quite match, does it? But it does match his..." Lee was suddenly remembering what the Serpent had said not long ago. "Your father added a tattoo to your birthmark, and you added the same protection to him, but not me!" Lee said, more to himself at first: "Of course! That's what he was talking about! But wait... what about the eclipse? What did they mean by you being able to make one?"
"My boy, I told you already - surely I, who waited for so long for the precise moment to recur, would not have done so had I been able to replicate the event!"
"So is there really no way to open the pyramid until the next one?"
Finnwich looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said: "Perhaps it is time that I told you some of my own past."
"Your own past?", Lee asked.
"Why, yes... my involvement with this company, with Cassandra's plans, with..." - here Finnwich paused before continuing - "with the pyramid."