I choked, my lungs black and bloodied. My heart slowed and sagged. My fingers melted before me and my body burst like a spider egg sac. My essence blackened thick and scarlet, and as I became liquid without form, the sun blackened to me.
***
“We’ve come to the fourth hour; the waters of Osiris no longer carry us afloat. The river will run an even darker black and we must proceed into the maze that Sokar, the falcon god, stalks.” Hesiod threw his oar onto the boat for emphasis and jumped ashore. The sand here was black like that of Tartarus—black like the corruption staining my flesh.
I silently followed Hesiod ashore, trying not to grimace at the icy prodding of Sobek’s stains. It was as if something cold and dead were seeping into my blood. The serpents’ dark venom spreading through me no doubt made it all the worse. I shivered, clutching my arms to my body. Hesiod watched me with concern folding his face.
“We need to reach Ra. We cannot dally long in this maze. Perhaps Sokar will be willing to help us like Nefertem,” I said.
Hesiod nodded and I walked forward. The black sandscape before us spread out into a valley that had swaying reeds the size of mountains lining the sand and crisscrossing in every which way. The maze of Sokar. As we stepped up to the first path where the maze began, I gave a start and stopped as I realized this was no longer black sand ahead and within the walls of the maze. This was a black water so dark it appeared as if it were an empty abyss with no sign of movement on the surface—just a still nothingness.
“How are we supposed to get through this without our boat?” I asked, turning to Hesiod. His widened eyes were enough of an answer.
A serpent arose from the black depths of the water, swaying upwards as its body continuously extended out from the deep as if it would never cease. The serpent stretched itself so high up and right at the entrance, that it stood taller even than the mountain-sized reeds lining the maze. The serpent glittered yellow and its black eyes surveyed its surroundings slowly. It hissed, its pale-purple tongue flicking out like a flame. The serpent seemed not to notice us, but appeared to be awaiting something or someone else.
The sand beneath our feet shook and flashed orange as if on fire, and then the black turned to a burning tan like that of the Sahara. A dark blue falcon’s head arose from the sand behind us. Attached to the head was a mummified corpse riding atop a golden snake that was merely the same size as that snow serpent from Tartarus. Merely! The absurdity wasn’t lost on me, but that mountain of a serpent in front us made even the biggest monster I’d yet faced look infinitesimal.
“That is Apophis, traveler—the Chaos Serpent. Ra’s eternal adversary!” The falcon god cried out in a high chirp. Two blue wings burst free from the bonds of his mummified form. “I am Sokar and my maze has long been polluted by this serpent of doom. He turned the already black-pitched river into a deeper abyss of nothingness. The sands surrounding this once pure domain were of gold. Now, like so many of my kind, all we once were has been turned on its head and thrust into the cold of nonbeing.”
I glanced up at Apophis; the colossal serpent sat there coiled, his hissing like a violent downpour of rain. Yet, of all things the giant beast looked bored as if we weren’t a threat. As if it were looking for another foe. With my pride bruised and my honor challenged, I walked away from Apophis and hopped aboard the golden snake, sitting right behind Sokar.
“A wise choice. Apophis does not take notice of us; he only has eyes for Ra. He is called Lord of Chaos, enemy of Ra for good reason.”
“And where is Ra?” Hesiod asked, climbing stubbornly behind me, taking his time and clearly not pleased.
“Ra travels through the Duat just as you. He makes the journey every night. For where light shines, darkness follows. Thus, Apophis slithers in the shadows as the embodiment of evil. His only drive is to bring the world into his domain of chaos.”
“Why has he revealed himself?” I asked. “Why block the maze?”
“Probably because he sensed your solar spirit. But that mark of corruption made you unworthy in his sight. Still, there are more hours to be finished and your heart has yet to be judged,” Sokar said, turning to look at me.
“I’ll show him unworthy!” I growled.
“Do not be headstrong. We go and gather our own strength. There are places we must first pass and time we must first end. The hours. And then we can find Ra and we will finish this,” Sokar said.
The rumbling of Apophis’s movement shook the sands and he slowly collapsed back into the depths of his murky nothingness.
“Now we may pass,” Sokar said, his wings flexing as if he meant to fly away and leave us behind.
Instead, his golden snake raced forward, carving through the black water with ease. He turned this way and that, moving so rapidly I could barely stay seated. Sokar knew the paths of his maze and we tore through it with impeccable speed. If Hesiod and I had been left to navigate this on our own, we might well have died here from old age. Every turn looked the same and the paths forked in every direction, endlessly multiplying. Of course, it wasn’t as infinite as it seemed, and at last an opening bloomed out before us. A burning lake of red fire angrily torched the nearing horizon and a white pyramid towered out from the midst of the flames.
“Tell me we don’t have to go there,” Hesiod groaned.
“Unless you want to awaken Osiris, no. Though from the murmurs of this dying land, I’ve heard that he is no more. No more rebirth, no more anything. He went mad without any dead to judge. So, he judged himself instead, and he judged that he was unworthy. He threw himself into the lake of fire, and I don’t think even his being the god of rebirth could save him from that. Those flames are primordial and capable of killing all, even gods. Only one higher than us gods could walk through flames such as those. And without Osiris to heed, Isis and Nephthys clawed at each other in the air above the pyramid until each of them, bloodied and forsaken, tumbled into the flames. That pyramid is cursed. It used to be that Osiris’s body waited there to be awakened by Ra’s spirit.”
I narrowed my eyes and stepped off the snake as it coiled its body together now that we were back on black sand. There was something in that pyramid for me. There was something I had to do. I knew it. It drew me. It spoke to me. My spirit burned. An ancient ache anchored my will to eternity, and the pyramid held a key to unlock my multiplied being. My powerful past slumbered, but this walk through death was awakening it. The fire surrounding the pyramid would burn away those cobwebs of unclarity that still trapped my awareness in the finite. It was as if I had been Osiris buried there. It felt like it should have been my home. I stepped away from the snake and stared, the flames billowing high, but in all their fury they were incapable of blotting out the brilliant glow of the white pyramid.
The flames cannot harm the truly mad.
The strange whisper chuckled, folding in on itself and echoing in the back of my mind. I rubbed my head as if to quiet the laughter, but it remained resounding, hollow and broken. The roaring of the flames hummed, their crackling cacophony bringing a smile to my face as I traced a melody within them.
Embrace the song that can’t be heard
Unless you sing that all’s absurd
The fire hides what shines with night
The sun dances chaos into right
A rite that only the yes can bring
A light that lonely stress can sing
With open eyes a man must laugh
A drunken order that carries chaff
And so my whispers beckon you forth
Few souls believe in the journey north
You and I, we born of suns at heart
You and I, wheat torn from chaff apart
Sometimes the chaff is worth chewing.
The whispering voice snuffed out like a blown candle and the throbbing in my mind ceased. I stared hungrily at the flames and sped forward towards their burning glow. My hearing closed itself to the outside and listened only to the subtle creak of my joints ground against a
ncient bones. My bones. Their bones. My bones. A strand of silk dipping out from the center, my soul tied to those before and those to come. The web would unravel if I gave in, but it would spin onward to spread its strands like the sun its rays, if only I moved forth. A spider’s web bathed in the blaze of morning light—that was the closest a mortal man could come to understanding the sun. I walked to the flames. I drew inward so as to be only myself in the present and the future. The infinite. I listened to my rushing blood, my singing heart.
The lake of fire parted into a path, the flames bowing down and swirling outward as I walked. They leapt back together behind me to close off a turning back. The heat of the flames billowed over me and I embraced the blaze pumping into my heart. The bed of the fiery lake sloped down and its bottom was of cracked black brimstone that burned the soles of my bare feet. I walked onward and reveled in the pain, the bubbling blisters of my feet the result of the required refinement of my sick self.
The white pyramid, pure and pristine, stood above the rest of the soot-soaked landscape around me. It was a beacon of something more, something for me. Whatever had happened to Osiris did not concern me. What mattered was that this tomb was necessary. Maybe Osiris hadn’t been truly mad as the voice had said. The flames parted for me, but they still burnt. Was I truly mad? It was hard to say. I’d earned my scars in these nether lands. I’d felt the power of my solar blood. It was real. I was no mere Roman any longer; East or West, it did not matter. I was an amalgamation of great peoples past, a pyramid of sorts, with the triumphs of my kin building me up. And I refused to be the last brick upon the foundations of my blood.
I wanted to take this call to found a great people, to build upon my soul. My vengeance melted in the glow of the pure pyramid as its light reflected my own inner pyramid deep within my spirit. I would be a stepping stone as my fathers were to me; a stepping stone for greater sons to stand on, and greater ones from them until we stepped into the sun, always building up. What god could stop my descendants? No Zeus, no Ra, no myth. I was a walking myth myself now, and my kin, my unborn heroes would one day become their own myths. I smiled and the pyramid glowed as I approached. A soft light surrounded it like a morning mist mingled with the waking sun.
With my mind aglow and my body ablaze with life and power, I walked forward, ignoring my raw and peeling feet. With a vigor fueled by my ancestors’ past and descendants’ future, I stepped to the pyramid, knowing it would welcome me. The pyramid itself was pure white and sleek without any sign of masonry or brick laying. The pyramid hummed as I stood before it, and the base of it spread open its doors, sliding and pulling back like nothing I’d ever seen before. The base of the pyramid pulled itself open by forming into crystalline pillars that shivered and moved like rippling water while maintaining a solid and perfect geometric form. In the opening, a slow, icy-blue light pulsed on and off, filling the darkness only to be consumed by it and then spat out again. I stepped through the opening and the pyramid closed its maw and I was enveloped in its dreary bowels.
With each tremor of pale blue, I was able to see more of the empty room. The pyramid was hollow. The room was wide and vacant, and it spread so far that I could only just make out the distant wall. The roof sloped steeply up, meeting at a sharp point. I took guarded steps towards the middle of the room, my eyes sweeping the dusty interior in all directions.
Did the old corrupter of youth say no?
Did the impious one say yes by choosing no?
The whisperer was back, only this time they were not whispers. A strong and slurred voice now spoke, sounding as though it belonged to a man lost in madness.
Madness. Are you mad?
It is not proper to never be angry.
But proper anger is that which laughs with glee.
He giggled as his words reverberated in the hollow tomb, amplifying and crescendoing into three voices speaking as one. His speech tremored and creaked, and I couldn’t tell if it was from insanity or if it had rusted from a lack of use.
He drank that cup of death with glee
Poison swallowed infinity
Not thanking a god for freedom from life
Not mere denial, but accepted sacrifice
His debt was a crowless rooster still
Paid in tyrannizing his flesh and will
Not relief at a weak flight from life
Not belief in a peek at an after strife
The strange prodding poem stopped and he inhaled, breathing sharply as his tenor scratched against the walls. He softly said, “To dominate the body and mind is to deify it—exalt the mortal frame with force of will. His offering was a thanks for a life worthy of death. Socrates says yes to life and death as one. He loved both me and my brother, gold and grape.”
“Dionysus, you wine guzzler! I should have known. Come out from your darkness!” I said, searching the still stuttering light for a silhouette. “Only the mad god would live in a tomb belonging to another mythology.”
“Belong? Belong?” His voice rose and crashed back down, vibrating with an overcharged energy. He rushed to release his words, yelling, “To belong is to be loved for nature and spirit. These gods here have neither nature nor spirit. They combine and mix, taking elements from one god and attaching it to the next. Sobek-Ra is a lie. There is no spirit, for these gods are beasts.” His voice stopped as he choked and coughed.
“You could probably use some more drink,” I said with a smirk. “And do not disrespect Ra. He is worthy.” I nodded to myself. There were still good ones here, however few.
He ignored my remark and continued. “My essence is all that remains. And this last essence of mine has been reduced to this laboring light you see here beating: my freezing heart.”
“Why wax poetic on Socrates of all people? Why call me forth?” I said, watching the push and pull between the blue light and dark.
“Because I want you to act like Socrates and say yes to life and death, but especially death. My maenads grow hungry. It has been oh so long since we devoured Osiris’s cooked carcass.”
I frowned and raised my arms. Purring hummed out from the shadows, interspersed with playful meows. As the light pushed back the darkness, six figures now stood around me in one of those circles that I was growing all too familiar with. The six women purred louder, surrounding me in a slowly tightening circle. They carried strange wooden staffs with pinecones adorning the tops. They wore robes dotted with the spots of a leopard. The animal skin hung loose and open enough on the sides that their tanned breasts were mostly exposed. Each maenad was savagely beautiful with wild black hair and matching dark, frenzied eyes. They licked their lips as the moved closer, their purring increasing to a growl. And as they neared, they started to wail and moan as if in the throes of intercourse. I couldn’t bring myself to do it—to destroy them. Was this another ritual? Was this ravenous death I faced of necessity. Why was I brought here? I closed myself to the maenads’ deadly approach and listened inward. Silence. A beat of my heart. The sear of my burnt feet. No. No! I couldn’t let them win. Or was I supposed to? No ritual! This was danger. This was death. I opened myself back to their snarling spin.
I raised my arms higher up, anticipating their mighty glowing power, but nothing happened. My holy marks appeared only as scars; no light nor sacredness imbued in them. I winced as my blackened shoulder bubbled, burning and boiling with Sobek’s sin. My blood was slow and heavy. My blistered feet suddenly became too much to stand and I collapsed to the ground. Bone showed through my peeled soles like a split peach exposing its stone. I sat there and did not resist; my only method of manhood was to not cry out in despair. The maenads danced, and with the overpowering scent of skin soaked with wine, they pounced, clawing at my face and tearing at my body with teeth and hands. I tried to ward them off, but their frenzied strength of madness beat my weakened state away with ease. Teeth ripped off my nose. Chunks of my skin were chewed and swallowed, my body gnawed and torn like a half-eaten apple. The blackness that enveloped me was
a welcome change. I smiled and my lips peeled back, mostly eaten away. Blood coated my body with a gory glow. Then I was no more.
But no... no! The darkness that came was pulled back—sheets torn from a bed that one had just fallen into at last to get blissful rest. My rest would not be allowed. I watched my body below be eaten, a red hunk of meat now, a bag of gushing gore. Now, I was as a cloud, light and incapable of solidity. And in that high-pitched roof of the pyramid, with my body being eaten below, I felt a presence of pure will embrace me. Ecstasy tore at my soul. I would have screamed if I could. But silently I rode the wave of divinity and when it subsided, my vaporous form ascended through the ceiling to hover above the pyramid at its peak. Dionysus stood there before me while I was still without body. The god of drink appeared whole, and he balanced with casual and calm indifference on top of the pyramid as I merely hovered there beside him.
He had the appearance of a young, handsome man with a well-groomed beard and trim, curly black hair. He stood there naked, his body lithe and lean, a fit and healthy form with olive skin gleaming as if just oiled. His violet eyes jumped about violently and without apparent reason. His tremoring smile flicked the corners of his lips upwards while his face twitched unstable. This was surely a god long since gone mad.
“How do you taste?” he asked me, his voice a full-throated roar as he shouted the question, flinging it through my vaporous form.
“Ask your maenads, you freak. Now am I truly dead? Now is my body forever lost?” I spat the words out as if I still had a mouth. Sadly, my voice slowly drifted as thoughts to his brain, though the way he winced I could tell he’d felt my venom.
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