by Chris Fox
31
First Born
Isis blurred through the Ark, passing through a seemingly endless array of dark stone corridors. She knew the place intimately, and arrived at the repository within seconds. The giant aquamarine dominating the valley below drew a pained breath from deep within her chest. The first virus had been concocted in a room just like this, so many millennia ago.
“I knew you’d come, Mother.” Horus’s voice came from behind her, smug and angry all at the same time.
She turned to face him. Emotion overcame Isis as she stared at her eldest son. It had been countless millennia since last she’d embraced him, but she still remembered his first tottering step. Still remembered how proud and amazed she’d been at the miracle of his birth. She and Osiris had labored for decades to change his physiology enough to have children, and Horus had been the fruit of that labor.
“We do not have to be at odds, Horus. Step aside. Allow me and my pack to leave,” she rumbled, assuming a defensive stance.
Horus merely watched her for long moments. His shaved skull still looked odd, as she remembered the thick mane of dark red hair he’d worn in his youth. His bronzed skin was the same, as were the tri-talons he wielded. She still remembered his discovery of the weapons, in the dark corners of Nubia.
“By invading the Cradle, you have placed us at odds,” Horus snarled, eyes narrowing. He took a threatening step forward. “You agreed to leave these lands forever, to stay on the jungle continent to the south. We’d have left you to it, if you abided by the oath you swore to uphold.”
“Things have changed, my son,” she said, softly. Isis took a step backwards, trying to appeal to his reason again. “The Well has been disconnected from the Nexus. We do not know who controls the First Ark, but whoever it is threatens us all. It may not be your father, whatever Sekhmet has told you. Even if that is not the case, you must surely have felt the surge of light that was broadcast from this place. Someone sent a signal to the Builders, and we need to learn the cause.”
Horus cocked his head, considering. Then his gaze hardened once more. “If these things are true, you should have parlayed with Ra, yet instead you are sneaking away. You came for your own reasons, as always. I do not know what your true goal is, but I have sworn to defend this place, and I will do it. Return to your quarters, or I will do as I must.”
“Oh, Horus,” she sighed, shifting into wolf form. She loomed over him, though she wasn’t foolish enough to believe her height provided much advantage to one with his peerless speed. “Please do not force a confrontation. I do not wish to hurt you.”
“Hurt me?” Horus laughed. “You think because you can assume this bestial form you frighten me? I battled Set when you and Father were powerless to stop him. I was accorded the mightiest warrior of the final age, as you well know. You are powerful, Mother, but don’t think your sorcerous tricks will avail you here. This will be a test of combat, and you know you will lose such a contest.”
“I am not the same woman you knew, Horus,” Isis said, the first pangs of anger stirring in her gut. She extended her left hand and commanded the staff to reveal itself. Gold flowed down her forearm, pooling as it extended into the Primary Access Key. “I have spent millennia fighting, since you last knew me. I am a stronger warrior than you or your father. As you are about to learn.”
Horus leapt skyward, transforming as he did so. Isis blurred, taking a single step backward toward the bronze railing as she readied her defenses. Her son was fast, perhaps the fastest being alive. But he was also predictable. He’d grown too used to surprising his enemies.
Feathers leapt from his skin, and there was a flash of gold as the tri-talons melded with skin. When the transformation was complete a massive falcon dived at her, six golden talons flexing as they sought flesh. She allowed them to find purchase on her shoulder—perhaps allowed was a generous term. She wasn’t fast enough to stop it, even blurring as she never had.
The talons dug into her flesh, as Isis shot out her free hand. She seized Horus by his feathered throat, slamming his body into the black marble walkway with as much force as she could muster. Bones broke in an explosion of feathers and blood. Isis did not relent. The fight had just begun, and her only chance was overwhelming force.
She swung the Primary Access Key down in a tight arc, the weapon humming through the air as it descended towards the falcon’s head. It struck stone as the bird hopped away, shifting back into a man on the third hop. Horus spun, circling her as his eyes narrowed.
“You’ve grown stronger, it’s true,” he said, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. His wounds were already healing. “Yet I am faster. Do not think the access key will save you. I will strip that lofty weapon from your corpse, Mother.”
Isis blinked in surprise. It was in that moment she finally understood the stakes. If she hoped to survive, she’d have to kill her first born. So be it. She concentrated, summoning power from the Ark through her staff. Horus blurred, launching an aerial attack. He came down with both tri-talons extended, and she knew there was no way she could dodge. So she didn’t.
Again, Isis allowed the weapons to find her flesh. They tore into her shoulders, biting deeply as they sought her heart. She ignored the pain, ignored the greater pain of what she was about to do. Isis summoned still more energy, pulling in as much as she could drink from the Ark. Then she released it in a blinding pulse of blue light. It exploded out from every pore, boiling away everything it touched. Flesh, stone, bronze—it all ceased to exist as the wave passed over it.
Horus gave a single scream, so like the falcon he’d come to resemble. Then the light finished its work, and he ceased to exist. Isis fell to her knees, sobbing bitterly.
Your pain is unendurable, Ka-Ken. Yet we have work to be about. We must wake the worm.
32
To War
Jordan slipped on his sunglasses as he emerged into the wall of heat. He’d spent a long time in the gulf, so Cairo’s oppressive sun wasn’t anything new. He still hated it though, and it shocked him that this was supposed to be the cradle of humanity. It was a damnably hot place to have set up the first city. Hot and dusty. His lips were dry and cracked, his skin continuously burning in the blistering sun.
“Come on. The army is departing soon,” Trevor said, starting towards a line of immense beasts clustered about fifty yards outside the Ark.
The leathery-skinned creatures looked a great deal like mammoths, but instead of shaggy fur they had something closer to the thick hide of an elephant. They were far, far too large to be that, though. They towered over him; their tusks were easily a dozen feet of dense ivory. Each had a huge brown wicker basket on its back, outfitted with palm fronds for shade. Each basket was large enough to hold maybe eight people, and a rope ladder dangled from the base.
Jordan started after Trevor, eyeing the sword now belted at the man’s side. It should have looked out of place, but it rode there like an extension of Trevor’s body. That wasn’t the only change, either. Trevor had abandoned his jeans and t-shirt, and now wore the strange flowing white garments favored by most of the gods in Ra’s pantheon. In short, the fucker had gone native.
Jordan had tried experimenting with the collar the night before, but any attempt to remove it resulted in an electric shock that left him twitching on the ground. He could move of his own accord, but the farther he got from Trevor the more pressure built up in his skull. Anything beyond a few hundred yards, and he developed a splitting migraine. Of course, that might actually be worth it to avoid the stench of elephant dung mixed with rotting flesh.
Trevor shimmied up the rope, pausing about halfway up. Jordan turned to see what had drawn Trevor’s attention, squinting at the glare even through his sunglasses. “Holy. Fuck.”
Thousands upon thousands of corpses stood in neat, even rows. They covered the entire plain, from the Ark all the way to the muddy waters of the Nile. If they were anything like a modern army, he’d guess a dozen regiments or more.
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He turned back to the elephant, when a plopping sound came from his right. The beast had just deposited a pile of shit roughly the size of a Subaru near Jordan. Lovely. He held his breath, climbing the rope after Trevor. They’d nearly reached the basket when Trevor stopped and turned again. Jordan followed his gaze, and suddenly understood why Trevor had paused. A dozen massive zombies towered over their smaller brethren. They were misshapen and ugly, not quite human shaped any longer. Their mouths were too large, their eyes too far apart. Their skin was a hodgepodge of colors, as if they’d been made from hundreds of different people all glued together.
“What the fuck are those?” Jordan muttered, mostly to himself.
He was surprised when Trevor paused, leaning down the ladder to face him. His eyes were the same muted green as Irakesh’s, his teeth just as horrendous as ever. “They’re called Anakim. You encountered one, though it was a lot smaller. Remember the giant zombie in Panama? Irakesh made it to slow you down. Ra’s been growing these things for a lot longer. Let’s hope Blair and Liz don’t end up having to fight them.”
Jordan didn’t answer, following as Trevor disappeared into the basket. It was interesting that Trevor was still thinking about Blair and Liz. That surprised him, at least a little. It didn’t change how he felt, though. Right now Trevor might be trying to stay normal, to be loyal to his friends. But Jordan had seen Stockholm syndrome. He’d watched troops gradually assimilate into foreign armies. It was a tactic Mohn had employed often. It might take time, but Trevor’s loyalty would shift to Ra.
Not that it mattered, really. Even if Trevor was completely loyal to their pack, it was unlikely he’d be able to do anything to help himself, much less Jordan. They were watched constantly, especially by the Jackal. On top of that, Irakesh clearly nursed a singular hatred for Trevor, which meant he and Steve were watching them at all times as well.
Take heart, Ka-Dun. Time flows on a scale you have yet to comprehend. Even if it takes years, you will have your freedom. The collar mutes your abilities, but it does not stop them entirely. You can shape, and the more you strain at your bonds the stronger you will grow.
That drew a grim smile from Jordan. He’d simply treat this like working out. The time would come for him to make his move, and when it did he’d be ready. It wouldn’t take years, either. He’d be free before he knew it.
33
Hades
“Holy. Shit,” Blair said, jaw dropping open as he gaped up at the sky. A torrent of competing thoughts rushed through his mind, because what he was seeing explained so much of the history of the western world.
“What the hell is that?” Liz asked, shading her eyes as she stepped up next to Blair along the trail. Each step sent up little puffs of dust, and Blair waved them away absently.
“That has to be Olympus,” he replied, studying the shimmering city high above. It flickered and danced in the sky, maybe a mile above the stunted hills around them. The fluted columns and heavy marble architecture would have been at home in Rome, though this was clearly beyond anything the ancient Romans had created. Clouds boiled all around the base, shot through with veins of pink, gold, and red. It reminded him of a sunrise, though this particular sunrise was created by the floating city.
He’d guess there were two or three dozen structures, ranging from temples to a colosseum. There were even houses—well, mansions, actually. If he were a god, this was definitely where he’d want to live. “How the hell is it hovering there?”
“You’re the shaper; you tell me. It’s like the frigging cloud city from Empire Strikes Back. What was it called? Bespin,” Liz replied, fishing her sunglasses from her pack and sliding them over her eyes. She added a green baseball cap a moment later, tucking her hair through the back in a simple ponytail. “Why does it keep shimmering like that? It’s like a mirage.”
“I don’t know,” Blair said, shaking his head slowly. He could feel something each time the city shimmered. It would disappear for a split second, and he would feel an absence. When it returned he could feel it, like the sunrise on his face. “A better question is: how are we going to get up there? I’m guessing that’s what Isis meant when she said Olympus.”
“I thought it was Mount Olympus. Where’s the mountain?” Liz asked.
“It is,” Blair said, starting up the trail. At the very least they could get to higher ground and get a look around them. A number of monuments had been unearthed and, given what he could see, Blair had a suspicion he knew exactly where they were. “The Greeks claimed their gods lived on Mount Olympus. It’s not even the highest mountain in Greece, but it is a real place. My guess is they created it in remembrance of this place. Their ancestors probably worshiped here.”
They made their way to the top of the hill, and by that time the sun had plastered their clothing to them in a thick layer of sweat. It was definitely over a hundred degrees. It might have been a hundred and ten.
“What’s that city?” Liz asked, pointing at a series of ruined buildings below them. None stood more than two stories, but the complex was massive. Far larger than man should have been able to construct before agriculture.
“That’s Göbekli Tepe,” Blair said, scrambling down the trail as he made his way toward the ruins. He slid down some gravel, catching himself as he made it to even ground. “These are, so far as we know, the oldest human ruins in the world. They’re from about nine thousand BCE, well before man had learned to farm or build permanent settlements. The anthropological community teaches that we were nothing more than hunter-gatherer tribes back then. It was the tail end of the Pleistocene, the last ice age.”
“Weren’t we cave men back then? Like the Cro-Magnon?” Liz asked, tucking her hat low to block the sun as she scanned the structures.
“That’s what universities teach, but this place proves that theory wrong,” Blair replied, starting towards a pillar just a few dozen yards ahead. “See these animals? There’s a fox, a cow…that’s probably a raven. There are a couple I don’t recognize that are likely extinct. This kind of iconography shouldn’t have been possible, but clearly it was.”
“So what do you think happened?” Liz asked, leaning close to examine the pillar.
“Well, so far as we know, this complex was used for about two thousand years. Then in about seven thousand BCE it was deliberately buried. We don’t know by who, and we haven’t the faintest idea why,” Blair explained, walking slowly around the pillar. “It’s a good thing, though. Otherwise this place would never have survived.”
“The fact that it sits right beneath a floating city certainly seems suggestive,” Liz said, peering back up at the shimmering city. “I’m not an anthropologist, but it doesn’t seem like the dates line up. From what we understand, the Arks submerged around eleven thousand BCE, right?”
“I can see where you’re going with this, and you’re right,” Blair said, peering up at the city himself. “If the dating is accurate, this place was built two millennia after the Arks disappeared. If that’s the case, maybe they could still see that city. That would definitely explain why they went through so much effort to build it here. Can you imagine what that place would have looked like to primitive cultures?”
Be wary Ka-Dun, we are no longer alone, the beast rumbled.
Blair spun, looking for whatever had alarmed it. A figure stepped from behind one of the buildings, a man with long white hair in dark blue robes. He wore golden slippers completely unsuited to the hot gravel, and leaned heavily on a gnarled wooden stick a little taller than he was. If he’d been wearing a hat he would have given Ian McKellen a run for the part of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings.
“You are the first to come here since the sky turned,” the man called in a quavering voice. He started down the path towards Blair, tottering like he might fall at any moment. “Judging by your companion’s hasty departure, I’m guessing you’re either of Isis’s bestial get, or perhaps that of Osiris. Am I correct?”
Blair realized for the first tim
e that Liz had disappeared. Good on her. She’d probably gotten into position to attack, which very well might save their lives. There was no way this was just some kindly old man. No god they’d run into was benevolent, not even Isis.
“We’re champions of Isis,” Blair said, shading his eyes as he moved to meet the man. He concentrated for a moment, feeling for the na-kopesh he’d taken from Irakesh when they’d beaten him. The weapon was there, melded with his body and waiting to be called. Blair didn’t really have much idea how to use it, but the sword still gave him comfort. “I’m Ka-Dun Blair. Who are you?”
“I am known by many names,” the man said, giving a gap-toothed smile. Every part of him looked harmless, except for the steely grey eyes. “You would know me as Hades, I think.”
Blair blinked a few times, considering the legends he’d heard. Supposedly Hades was bound to the underworld, though clearly that couldn’t be the case if he was standing before them. “Isis sent us to negotiate with you. We’re, uh, emissaries, I guess.”
“I see,” Hades said. He gestured weakly at a neighboring building that might once have been a temple. “Perhaps we could get out of this hot sun? I enjoy it no more than you do.”
That was an interesting tidbit. Deathless drew strength from the sun, and they didn’t sweat. Hades had a clear sheen across his brow, and seemed to be genuinely suffering in the heat.
“Of course,” Blair said, following the elderly man inside the temple. It was a single story adobe building. One corner of the roof had caved in, and whatever drawings had once adorned the walls were long stripped by time.
Hades stopped in a corner, sitting atop a large rock that had fallen from the roof. He propped his staff beside him, then wiped the sweat from his brow before finally turning his attention back to Blair. “So, you claim Isis sent you. Why did she not come herself?”