We'd conquered Ay, but the price he extracted from the village of Gebelein was rather too high. Now we had bodies to bury, vampires to deal with, and a dead Rameses II to investigate.
The answers to our questions would be enlightening indeed...
18 HetHert, Inundation, Year 4 of the Reign of Rameses II (October 4th, 1275 BCE)
Gebelein
I led what little remains of my family out into the sunshine, and introduced them to my compatriots. After that, I slipped off to have a quick chat with the god that seems to have taken up residence in my head. Amunet came to find me, and together we went down into Imhotep's laboratory.
It was disconcerting to see someone who looked like Raam lying on the floor, dead. I passed him by to go look around the laboratory where we'd found Ay, where there were still scrolls to be looked at. Many useful things were found down there, which I divided out among my compatriots, as well as a note in Imhotep's handwriting that I wasn't certain what the import was of quite yet.
I was about to discover it, as Terik caused Ay to speak. He had evidently been using the souls he had harvested from the villagers--my family!--and had used them to bring the undead pharaohs back to life.
The note I held in my hand said:
It is an unjust world that allows the spirits of the hyena to invade the bodies of the dead to bring them back to life. It is an even greater injustice that they retain the powers of their necromantic lives even in that new life.
Now I understood. And I grieved. The pharaohs have been returned to life, but they have retained the power of the undead that they once were--and Ay used the souls of my family to accomplish this.
The back of my head was examined, and Amunet identified the needles that were still embedded there as having once held the soul of Ay, but now holding Imhotep. Imhotep added that it might not be wise to remove those, so I waved off Mayet when she looked as though she might want to try to dislodge them. I had the conviction, coming from not much of anywhere, that Imhotep wants me alive. He wouldn't have gone to quite this much trouble about me if he didn't, after all.
When Raam inspected the corpse of Raam/Rameses, he said that though the corpse had most of the scars he knew Rameses had, there was one missing--at the base of his head, usually covered by his hair. It was a clone--another one? In either case, we'd need to dispose of the body in a manner that it would never be discovered. An extra pharaoh's body was not something we wanted to be hanging around.
When Terik quizzed the corpse, his first question garnered an answer that we did not really believe, and I did a quick inspection of the corpse, finding magic glowing in his mouth. Terik fished out a small slimy thing that rolled itself up into a black marble in his hand. He didn't want it so I wrapped it up and stuck it in my pocket.
The next question that Terik answered, the corpse of Rameses answered truthfully--he'd spent his last days eating, drinking, and cavorting with pretty women. Not the real Rameses at all. The real one was off fighting a bloody battle, and was unlikely to be cavorting with women. He said that in his last days, he'd spoken with Menes, Cheops, and Reneb. Pepy said that Cheops and Reneb were once pharaohs, and we know Menes, of course.
At that point, a shout from the other room caught my attention. When I went to see what was wrong, I saw the most amazing thing--standing there, big as life, was a humanoid about five feet tall, covered in striped fur, with a flat, triangular head and angry eyes. I recognized him, blinking in startlement. It was Grrrbek, our village god. You know, the one I assumed didn't even exist?
I heard Usi and Isu laughing in my mind, and shrugged and joined them. Amunet had freed him from where he'd been frozen, and Grrrbek said that Ay had captured him before he'd killed almost everyone in the village.
There was much consternation. Terik made sort of a nuisance of himself, as evidently he can't quite cope with things he's never seen before. I mean, as far as I know there's only one Grrrbek in the world, but Terik kept on wanting to know what Grrrbek was. He's a god, of course.
We got everything sorted out, ending up with Raam grabbing Grrrbek by the scruff of the neck and requesting that he not kill Terik. Grrrbek grumbled but assented. It turned out that without many villagers left, Grrrbek was now somewhat homeless, and he, well, sort of joined us. (I'm not going to argue with a god. Another god. Why is it gods, all of a sudden?)
On our way out, we returned to the corpse of Rameses. Terik, curious, tried to touch the amulet around Rameses' neck. An invisible hand picked him up and threw him against the wall, hard. Raam laughed and laughed, but laughed harder when Terik got up, grabbed a stick, and poked the amulet with it--with the same results. I heard Grrrbek growl, "Oh, and I'm the one who's not too bright, eh?" behind me.
I was glad I hadn't picked up the amulet when I was looking at it, myself. I still really want to take a closer look at it, but I'll desist.
Raam removed the amulet from Rameses' neck with no harm coming to him. I dragged out the corpse of Rameses and called the local hyena pack to dispose of the body. After they were done, Usi and Isu came to me, each one with another of those small balls that Terik had found in Rameses' mouth--one colored gold, the other a sort of milky white. Amunet later identified it as a living creature--a symbiote that enhances the senses, making them very sharp indeed.
Evening was falling, and we were in no shape to deal with vampires. We brought all of my remaining family into the doorknob for the night. Eight people left--my daughters Senit and Nafrini, Mayet's younger sister and brother, and Nafrini's four children. I spoke to them, and both of my daughters said they wanted to stay and rebuild. My youngest grandchild--Nafrini's youngest boy, only three years old--fell asleep on my lap as we talked. I felt a strange twisting sensation on my chest as I looked down at him. He had seen the slaughter, but I didn't know if he understood.
I transferred the boy back to his mother's arms and wandered deep into the mansion inside the doorknob. I found a quiet place where I did not think noise would carry, curled up with Usi and Isu, and wept as the shock faded and the pain began. Being in contact with the hyenas helped, but they could not shield me from the full force of the grief. I'd told Imhotep that I'd thought this was going to hurt a lot when the shock faded, and I was right.
I eventually fell asleep curled up with the hyenas. When I woke, they were gone, and I made my way back to the others. If anyone saw my red eyes, they did not comment.
19 HetHert, Inundation, Year 4 of the Reign of Rameses II (October 5th, 1275 BCE)
Gebelein
About sunrise, we began to bury bodies.
I seemed to have mostly run out of tears, the familiar numbness that had gotten me through the day before settling over me as we quickly prepared the bodies of almost everyone I'd ever known to be settled into the earth. I set both my sons into the ground myself, handing the husks that had been their bodies as gently as I had when they were infants.
Then it was time to deal with the vampires. I was not about to leave here with the nest still around, and the others seemed to agree. We fanned out and located the nest, and Grrrbek dug a hole into it. Pepy and I dropped a pair of fireballs into the hole, and the others went in to kill the two that were left.
Once inside, we explored a bit--the place where the vampires had been nesting was part of a large warren of tunnels, some of them almost looking like dwarven work. Grrrbek said that the tunnels down here had been here as long as he'd been a god here.
We found what was evidently a new tunnel that the vampires had been digging. Grrrbek, evidently eager to prove his usefulness, said he'd dig through it, and requested that we all back away. We left the tunnel, and then heard him casting a spell, swearing, then casting another one. After *that* one, a blast of lightning, hail, and wind came swirling up through the hole, and we heard him calling, "It's open!"
We looked at each other doubtfully and headed down.
He'd blasted through the wall and was looking sort of cranky. I didn't ask.
On the other side of that wall was a very strange place. It was lined with crystal, looking much like the inside of a rock I once saw. But it was enormous, two miles across, buildings and edifices carved out of crystals. Everything was mildly magical, but it seemed to have something to do with repelling dust and keeping itself clean.
We found what had been a forge, with flame rocks that were still burning and a crystal that was used as a bellows. Pepy remembered that there had been rumors of a group of dwarven freedom fighters living in a place like this. They had been rounded up and bound to slavery about six hundred years ago.
The Unas said this place was sealed because there was a curse on it, but more likely the pharaoh who'd raided it didn't want anyone to find it again. We wandered until we found a library; on some stone tablets were mentioned a mage living among them who had disappeared a few days before the raid came. I raised my nose to the air and sniffed, finding a faintly musty smell in the air, as if there were mushrooms growing.
Grrrbek hollered, "Hey, is anyone here? Come out, we're friends!" His voice echoed in the city. A few minutes later, an old dwarf came stumping out from between a couple of buildings--it was the mage who had been living here when the city had been enslaved. We spent some time talking to him, briefing him on what was going on on the surface. He volunteered to let the people we were leaving behind stay in the city with him, as it was safer than the village--they could go out during the day to farm, but at night they could retreat into the crystal city.
He also decided to show us what he'd been hiding her and protecting all these years. We followed him farther back into the city, and we came to a crystal that was about six feet tall, with several facets facing us. He said, "You can name a person, or a place."
"Rameses II," said Raam instantly.
The image of Rameses appeared in one of the facets of the crystal. He was tied up, with a pair of Unas guarding him. He was in a tent in a desert, a sea in the distance. The dwarf studied the image. "If I had to guess, that's the Sinai peninsula." At our surprised looks, he said, "What, like I have anything much to do all day but look around the world? Anyone else you want to look at?"
"Ay," requested Terik.
Ay's mangled body showed up on one of the facets; on one next to it there was something that looked a lot like him, being twisted and tormented by someone who looked a lot like the pictures of Osiris.
The special place for very bad people, indeed. I was immensely cheered at the sight.
Menes was in a temple of Anubis, directing people. Horemheb was in Thebes, talking to someone. Imhotep was standing behind me; I glanced back and there he was, visible. He shrugged and disappeared again.
Seti I was dead, as was Rameses I.
Reneb was in Heliopolis, planting delayed-blast fireballs on people, and exploding them. I heard Amunet swear. Menkaure was doing the same thing in a place that looked much like Thebes. Nitiger was in the desert, a place that looked rather like it was near where Peribsen is.
The man who Rameses had appointed to protect the archives was dead in a shallow grave. Raam cursed.
The high priest that Pepy had raised to lead the temple of Sekhmet seemed like a man who had not had a full night's sleep in weeks--harassed and in over his head.
Eldritch was working for the temple of Hathor in Heliopolis.
And, finally, Sekath was shown. He was near Gebelein, and evidently tracking us.
The mage was more or less self-sufficient, but Amunet decided to start trying to sell him things anyway. He bought one of the burning rocks and the bellows off of him, and a shortsword for Terik. The dwarf mage asked us, "Is there anything else I can do for you?"
Raam, evidently remembering that we're currently short one pharaoh, asked, "Can you send us somewhere? A traveling spell?"
"Anywhere you want, really. But it's one-way."
Our first priority was to rescue Rameses. The walk back would be long, but what else are we doing for the next month, after all? After very little discussion, that was where we chose to go. I went to go talk to Senit; we were going to settle the Unas with the bad heart that we'd been carrying with us, but both Xeres and Amun elected to continue to travel with us.
I showed the dwarven mage the marbles I'd gotten from the false Rameses, and he told me that they didn't really have a name, but they were symbiotes. He confirmed what Amunet had said about the gold one, then said that the milky one showed things for how they truly were. The black one has many different uses, none of them very nice--it reverses everything, so pain is experienced as pleasure, poison can be eaten with no ill effect and regular food is poisonous, etc.
I slipped the milky one into my eye, Amunet claimed the gold one. I am keeping the black one for later--perhaps I'll destroy it, but perhaps not.
I also need to try to recruit some people to live in Gebelein; it's not that my daughters aren't perfectly competent, but there's enough work here for many people, and if we don't get some more people in here, the village will die.
Before we left, Sekath wandered in. He told us that he'd been doing as we'd asked with the Unas nuts, and because of this, the city of Abbodos has been taken over by Unas.
Raam looked disconcerted, asked whether they had discovered their mind powers (they have mind powers? Um.), and then said, "Well, at least it'll get Rameses' ass back here instead of off fighting the Hittites."
Sekath said he'd join us for a while, which I was quietly cheered by. I rather like Sekath, for some reason. I was growing rather fond of Grrrbek, as well. Finally, someone entirely straightforward!
We got ourselves organized midafternoon, then got the dwarven mage to send us off. It turned out that he could turn the crystal that was showing us things into a portal. One by one, we went through the crystal.
By the time I got there, the fight was well under way. I tossed out a lightning bolt at Cheops--and he reflected it right back at me and those I was standing next to. Ow. Raam glared at me briefly, and then the battle was well and truly engaged.
It turned out that Cheops had a pet blue dragon that he called Anubis. Amunet blinded it with a Deeper Darkness potion, which was good as it looked like it wanted to breathe on me. (Amunet also saved my life by catching the dragon's breath weapon with his energy conversion potion and sending it back at the dragon. Much as I hate to admit it, I owe him one. Must remember to save his skinny elven ass one of these days to even things out.)
The dragon blindly struck out at things, we killed Unas, Cheops helped with the dragon by evidently pulling life from it and using it to heal himself, and Tasha's Hideous Laughter finally worked on something--Cheops, believe it or not. We finally killed Cheops and then the dragon. I dealt the final blow on the latter. Considering that I was down to Magic Missile spells at that point, I have to say that I wasn't *much* help, but it did come down.
The one very sad thing was that before it died, the dragon caught Grrrbek in its breath weapon--completely obliterating our small god. When we went to look for his body, there was a Grrrbek-sized indentation in the earth, but no body.
Damnit. I liked him. Stupid dragon.
Stupid not-undead Ay, killing my entire village so that Grrrbek had to leave with us. And using the souls of my family to bring the undead pharaohs back to life.
Stupid Menes, deciding that the afterlife wasn't enough for him. Is he ever going to get a piece of my mind when we catch up with him! Preferably the piece of my mind that explodes things.
I listened to Raam and Rameses talking. Evidently, Raam was Rameses' teacher in fighting. A few more pieces began to fall into place about Raam--while I don't have the whole picture, I begin to see where the blank spots are. Rameses said that he'd gotten separated from his army and had been then taken prisoner.
I need to remember to get Raam to give me a quick outline of imperial etiquette. I'd hate to have Rameses order my execution because I said something wrong. Raam can breach etiquette all he wants, but he's special. The rest of us probably need to know the basics on when to bow, kneel, grovel, whatever. I might have a god in my head, but he's a pharaoh. I think he wins.
We rest here tonight, I think, and I will go hunting. And tomorrow, we start on the long journey home...
Quotes:
"You really don't care if it's gunpowder or cordite impelling the bullet at your head."
--Ray
"Goddamn it! I damn this!"
--Grrrbek.
"That's hard to pronounce. Is there anything else we can call you?"
"Uh, God? Revered One?"
"Revered One works."
--Raam, Grrrbek
"Oh revered rat..."
"I am not a rat! That god's five villages over."
--Raam, Grrrbek
"...I can't seem to touch it."
-Terik, about Rameses' amulet.
"What are they tunneling towards?"
"I could tell you, but that would ruin the surprise."
"You're a bastard."
--Sitefnut, Imhotep
"They left...because there was no door."
--Terik
"Just because he's a dwarf, that doesn't mean that he's good at making weapons. For all you know, he might be a couch potato."
"Racial profiling!"
--Raam, Mayet
"Well, at least they haven't learned to use their powers yet."
"...they have powers?"
"I think that's what we call a verbal slip where I'm from."
--Raam, Mayet, Amunet
"Flying boat? That's just wrong!"
"They made it to glorify you. It has your name on it!"
"Oh! Well...all right. Flying boat in my honor, eh? I approve!"
--Grrrbek, Raam
"They're reaching for weapons? Good, I get BIG!"
--Grrrbek
"Didn't I tell the mage I'd kill her if she ever lightning bolted me again?"
--Raam
"There's a ballet of death going on over there."
--Laura
"I give him a fireball...in his pants!"
--Sitefnut
"What the fuck?"
"We brought our pet god."
--Rameses, Raam
"And where were you when my father decided to keep me in the village and marry me off?"
"Did you ask me for help?"
*silence*
"I didn't think so."
--Sitefnut, Grrrbek
