“Your body? Your body? You walk amongst immortals in mortality and have the gall to presume such a thing. Why, you’re mad!”
“Do not insult me.” I clenched my absent fists and grunted with fury. I was useless as I was now. “My blood is my own and it belongs to those who helped it bloom. You are no gardener. You snip the grapes and pull the vine.”
“But you aren’t divine!” he laughed, clapping his hands.
“Why did you call me here? Why set your dogs upon me?”
“Felines, my friend.” His face flashed with a sudden seriousness and his skin tightened as he lowered his brows. “I myself was torn apart and eaten by the Titans, long ago. I was an infant! A baby fed to the old guard by that whore, Hera. Unworthy wife she always was, who could fault Zeus for fleeing such a paltry vulture? He was weak to never put her down like the rabid dog she was. But I digress, this is a grave matter for both you and I were torn and thrown into the graves of ravenous stomachs.”
“You did this to me!” I said.
He frowned at my interruption and held out his hand in disgust as if to push me away. “Do not profane this all with your ignorance,” he muttered under his breath, his gaze darting, and he irritably raked his feminine fingers through his black beard. “My mother was the queen of death herself, fair Persephone. Well, one mother. Depends on the bard! I suppose death was breathed into me from the start, regardless of my godhood. But what do you know… I was spared an end, as my heart was saved by great Athena, and from this I was reborn, resurrected as I am today. It is funny, there are other myths that would say I came from Zeus’s thigh. But who can trust what? Maybe I’m both. Or maybe, there’s a strand connecting them. I ramble.” He laughed, bending over and yanking his hair before standing up completely serious again. “In the right myths, my enemy was Semele, my mother who most would consider to be true. She was my enemy for forever having failed at birthing me as a mother should. Yet I rescued her from the dead and made her a goddess! Is it not expected for a mad god to save those whom he’s mad at? What of the enemies that are those hungry Titans? They burned under the wrath of Zeus, under his glory. And from their ashes, you were born.”
“Me? I was born from my loving parents in Constantinople. Not in two separate ancient myths that you cannot seem to straighten out.”
“No, no!” He hopped up and down on one foot and pulled his beard. “Those ashes, those ashes! Not then, but now. Now! Don’t you see? To truly live you have to be reborn every day in ashes. That is the way of life. You emerge from the ashes of divinity, those lovely embers that burn your weakness with a madness that sings in the power of glory. Do you see? You already were of those ashes. I wanted you to come and see that you lived this truth and that you must pursue it further—to its final, true end!”
“If I already was as you say and on this path of ash, then why have me be eaten alive?” I tried to yell, but my thoughts—involuntarily serene—drifted at Dionysus who leapt from foot to foot with his arms flailing happily like a dancing jester.
“To taste death not merely as one tethered to Tartarus like a forgotten Titan... no, but to taste death that life itself tastes, this circular tasting is the feast that must be swallowed whole. By coming here, by suffering those burnt soles, by suffering the death of your flesh, your ashes are no longer that of mere burnt-out flame. No, no my dear brother in madness, your ashes are the coals that light the flame for the rest of the burning ones. Your rebirth now is for your people. Hyperborea sings in the smoke billowing out from your soul.” Still dancing, he stretched out his finger and stuck it directly into my invisible chest, and my entire spirit burned.
My cloud-self flew over the pyramid and gathered together directly above Dionysus as he grew so distant his dancing jig made him look like a hopping flea. I looked ahead of me at the bruised sky and smiled at the impossible power thundering my way. A bull, wide and glowing white, boomed through the air. An emerald serpent shining like a green star slithered alongside the bull. And there beside the two glorious beasts were three wild felines together: one a bronze tiger with a sullen glow, the other a panther as black as the surrounding night, yet with glowing yellow eyes rivaling the intensity of the sun’s blaze, and the last of the big cats a leopard with gold spots burning out from a coat of snow-white fur.
I bowed my essence as if I still had a head and in reverence surrendered myself to the five majestic animals, welcoming their piercing charge as I felt a sudden pull, like my soul was draining downwards into a powerful sinkhole. My being poured, my surging self like grains of sand bursting out from an hourglass, shattering time into a moment of eternity. And again, I stood as me—Rangabes made whole. But more than whole. I was more now. I was the fire that would set the world aflame. The maenads lay prostrate before me. I ignored them, for they were pawns in a game that I had already won. They belonged to the mad god. I belonged to me and my own. And so, I returned, the pyramid opening its mouth to vomit me forth, unable to stomach my power.
Not waiting for the flames to part, I strode through them triumphant, their flickering forms nuzzling my body like an affectionate cat. The flames did not burn or cool; they simply had no temperature compared to the burning of my life-giving, celebratory madness. Emerging from my comforting forest of flame, I walked ashore. Hesiod collapsed in shock while Sokar bent to one knee, folded his wings and lowered his gaze. His golden serpent covered its face with its tail, tremoring in fear. Apophis would acknowledge me now. It would have to, or face destruction. I was lord of its chaos, and my order would bring the blasphemous snake to a humble end. I was its eternal sun now.
“You have the aura of a god—no, of something more. A feel of power, of purpose,” Hesiod said, at last recovering from his fall and dusting himself off as he tried to act as if everything was as it had been. “Whatever happened in that pyramid, you’re certainly... different.”
I chuckled at such an understatement, but got serious as I said, “Osiris wasn’t there. Dionysus set his whores upon me. I was reborn in a sense. I am unsure how, but I feel it in my bones. An assurance of something higher. An ascension that will take place, already has, yet still currently is.”
“You sound as mad as him. I wonder why he’d hide here,” Hesiod said.
Sokar raised his head but remained bowed on his knee. “Isis or Aphrodite. Osiris and Dionysus. Their myths are more similar than you might guess. Perhaps in the breaking apart of our worlds, this bleeding together that you hasten has revealed the synchronicity behind it all. A synergy, a synthesis. We gods are as each other, all stemming from the Source. What light do you carry forth?” Sokar let his wings unfold and his beady black eyes blinked at me. His pale-yellow beak was bent so dreadfully that it looked like a drooping weed, dying and weak. This mummified falcon-god was a decaying companion of death—the perfect guide for this nether realm.
“Let us move on and not waste time pondering. I want to have my heart weighed so I can leave this world behind.” I winced at the sudden pain in my shoulder. The black taint remained. Yet my blood was better. The snake’s dark venom was apparently gone. I’d bought some time; it’d only cost me my flesh. I loathed this place. I held up my still black palms and said, “You animal gods are beneath my kind.”
“There are animals in you,” Sokar answered, at last standing to his feet.
I frowned but did not respond. The sky beasts’ power boomed through my bones. Yet, despite my rebirth, healed feet, cleansed blood, and newfound strength, my hands remained stained black, and the festering shoulder wound still stung. The lingering light of whatever had occurred in the pyramid was diffusing, and its afterglow revealed that there was still much to be done.
“Perhaps the animal is needed. But I would not be a man if I let it stampede my soul. The strength of the wild is required to make the world tame to your will. Yes.” I nodded, picturing the five beasts that had pierced my disembodied self. “We must go. I need Ra to cleanse this dark with whatever light he still holds.” I climbed onto t
he golden snake as it shivered, uncoiling itself at my touch.
Hesiod and Sokar followed, the both of them deferring and sitting behind me. Whatever substance that had been added to me in my rebirth had the both of them subdued, as if they weren’t sure that I wasn’t mad like the god who’d murdered me. While I felt strong and filled with purpose, I wasn’t so sure anything had changed. I was still me, with the same ritual gifts along with the corrupting stains. There were no new powers gained from that painful suffering. There had to be more to it. How was I coal and ash? Where was the smoke from my spirit?
Sokar, his snake, and even Hesiod were all submissive and guarded towards me now, so there had to be something more in me. I had to find out on my own. To ask them would be to make the advantage disappear at my acknowledging I was still as clueless as before. Even the fool sounds wise with silence. I felt the fool as the snake soared through sand, gliding so smoothly that it seemed as though we’d taken flight.
Now far past the lake of fire and its strange shore, we once more came upon water that was a deep and healthy blue. The snake slithered over the water and continued its unnatural soaring, skimming through the sea as if over immaterial clouds. These waters were an expanse as wide as the sky above, and we flew through it at the speed of a falling star. An ocean of blue spread out in all directions and the soft purple clouds pushed out from the dull black sky and down from above, onto the horizon. The salty smell was singed with sulfur, the ever-present reminder that we were still in the underworld. The always-stale air, windless despite our wicked speed. In our silent flight onward, the only sound was the slick slosh of dead water sliding under the snake’s belly.
“Have you forgotten how to speak, Hesiod? I never knew you, my verbose poet friend, to not attempt to share your wanting wisdom and whimsical words whenever a fleeting moment of silence comes.” I meant for the words to sound as light as the snake made us feel, but they came out sounding weary and dry, as if in insult and not in jest. I was met with silence. I glanced behind to make sure he was still there, and the both of them were staring at me as if I’d grown another head. “What is it then?” I shouted.
“Your eyes,” Sokar said. He leaned back as if his admission put him in grave danger.
I grew cold as I rubbed them. My eyes? Were they not still the same dark granite green they’d always been? “What of them?” I asked.
“They move about, dancing as if insane.” Hesiod stopped, letting his words sink in. My heart slowed as I recalled the frenzied look of Dionysus. Had I too gone mad? “First when you emerged from the flames they merely danced. But now... their color, their size. Your right iris is red, a deep amber like that of a rising sun.”
“The eye of Ra,” Sokar murmured. The snake hissed, its body shivering and shaking in tremors, all the while still sliding over the endless waters.
“And what of my other eye?”
“A midnight blue, the dark violet of a moonlit sky. Its silvery hue drips down as an eternal tear forever staining the single spot of your flesh.” He pointed his finger right under his eye. I felt under my own eye and recoiled as I touched something frigid and liquid, like a living tattoo. Sokar continued, “The lunar eye of Horus. He offered it once to Osiris. I fear what it might signify. To be joined with Ra’s eye in one person... they both are beacons of power and when unleashed, their power has destroyed not only gods, but worlds.” Sokar pressed himself back, his wings pulled close as if trying to tuck themselves back into the tatters of his mummified corpse. The snake convulsed once more.
I squinted, focusing on the two scared souls before me. I felt my eyeballs dance to the tune of power, an insane leap to those stuck in the ways of the weak. My vision pranced and I pressed my finger again to where Horus’s tear gathered so proud. I shivered ecstatic and closed my eyes, holding my finger on the tear and letting it fill me with the light of the moon. I howled, the Hyperborean wolves of flame roaring within me, the icy snake surging through my veins. The white bull thundered in my chest, glowing like the sun. The emerald serpent from the heavens had redeemed my blood, and its healing hold was wrapped around my heart, stabbing my spirit with burning electricity. I closed my eyes tighter and the light increased, pressing my eyelids, and there the three big cats prowled. The bronze tiger leapt in my mind and the dark panther greeted its leap, already deep within my consciousness. The tiger’s eyes were orange and aflame, and the panther met its gaze with glowing eyes like beacons of a lighthouse in an eternal stormy black. And there in that ocean, the leopard swam. It swam in my soul with its white coat twinkling like a distant star and its gold spots a living constellation. This chaos was my own, and I could order it or unorder it as I saw fit.
With a gasp, I opened my eyes and smiled, unfurling my body from its ecstasy and sitting calmly, watching Hesiod and Sokar as a potter looks at his clay. “I stare with the eyes of Horus and Ra. Moon submitted to Sun and harmonized in ascension; my beams aglow with a conflicted, yet balanced and fulfilled radiance. A battle rages within me for the Hyperborean soul to emerge from these stained windows. Silver moonlight intermingled with amber rays of the rising sun. I see you as you are. I see you, flickering souls of a dying breed. Your candle is almost at its end. You, the poet of untruth, and you, the falcon god of death. I am an eagle carrying a star. My wings are the air you breathe and my lungs the womb of becoming. What are you but crumbling facades over a ruined bridge that hid its nature as a fraying rope? Don’t look down at the chasm we traverse. I won’t drop you, but if you squirm, perhaps the sinking sky is meant for you."
My eyesight flew into the heavens and I could see all. The threads of the universe revealed themselves to me; I could see strands pulsing everywhere like threads of silk connected to some cosmic spider’s infinite web. The strands pulsed, veins of meaning and power, differing in size and noteworthiness depending on where they stretched. My soul soared into eternity and I gazed down from above and saw the teeming masses crawling over the earth like bees busying themselves in their hive. The strands sang, reverberating and glowing for only a select few. From the masses, most of the strands clumped together as if they were all of one mind and being, lacking the worth to have their own piece. Could they break free? Was it only up to a select few? Without finding an answer in the web, I descended suddenly, returning to myself and blinking. And then I heard a familiar whisper inside my soul.
Make the madness your own.
I understood. I lifted my Hyperborean arms and with them glowing, shoved them into my eye sockets. The pain was sweet and rapturous. I tore the eyes out and threw them into the ocean. I blinked as my normal eyes returned. To see the fabric of the universe with those eyes was well and good—and I would use what I saw to surge forward with my own silk thread the greatest of them all—but those eyes were borrowed and not my own. They helped me see, but their sight was a process to be overcome, to be superseded. And reborn as myself, I claimed this power, this mind, and this soul as my own.
“You are a good poet,” I said, smiling at Hesiod, and returned to the humility of the present as my eternity within remained. “I thank you both for your help.”
Still wary and shying away from me, the two of them at the very least recognized that I had won and returned whole. They shuffled forward and Hesiod said, “Thank you.” He watched me with kindness softening his sight.
Sokar nodded and slid further forward. “We near Ra, which means we near the end. Apophis awaits.”
I nodded back and swiveled to face forward. The purple-bruised sky ahead was yellowing. At the nearing horizon, an orb of light, baptized in the water, was beginning to ascend.
“Ra,” Sokar whispered.
“We’ve followed the path of the Amduat, but already we’ve gone awry. Rangabes, wherever you walk you awaken the new.” Hesiod’s voice was calm, as if Ra’s emergence from the horizon was expected. Then again, Hesiod had been the guide here; with or without Sokar’s assistance, he seemed to know all. I grinned, glad that the poet was my companion and
that I could see him as such once more.
“What must we do?” I asked Sokar.
Sokar’s golden snake stopped moving and we floated there as the orb of light increased in size and continued to slowly rise from the sea. Sokar simply pointed at it. The orb had risen completely out of the water and in its midst a golden silhouette of a man hung. The orb of light burst and the silhouette hovered there alone. Ra, the Egyptian sun god immaculate and glowing, the solar made flesh. His body was dark and tan, his head that of the falcon—not all too different from Sokar, only Ra’s body was free from deathly binding, yet he was missing his eyes. The Eye of Horus and the Eye of Ra shot out from the depths of the sea like blazing comets and leapt into his empty eye sockets and scorched bright, their now golden glow sending out a light that overtook the already effulgent god.
Ra extended his strong arms as his muscles and tendons bulged out like roots of a tree. A staff appeared in one hand and an ankh in the other. The pretender Sobek had wielded similar weapons, though I doubted corruption or any darkness could exude from such a pure being. Ra wore a robe of glimmering golden cloth, and his belt was made of shimmering gems like that of the celestial spheres.
“If Isis is no more, then who stops Apophis?” Hesiod asked with his hand holding Sokar’s blue-feathered shoulder.
“This is the last rise of Ra’s sun. A setting of sorts. We all knew it to be inevitable. The real question was: would Apophis succeed or would another sun ascend?” Sokar swallowed and turned to me. His eyes blinked and his beak opened and closed. Swallowing again, he tilted his head back and forth. “Rangabes. You are that sun.”
I nodded, knowing as much. I scoured the horizon, watching and waiting for Apophis to emerge, and then at last he arose from the deep. His giant maw opened from out of the water, an abyss of swallowing darkness, as he leapt from the sea and snapped his jaws at Ra’s form. Ra flashed out of the way. Apophis leapt out again like a shark attacking a floating gull, but Ra once more blinked out of the air and reappeared safely away from harm. The ancient serpent extended his infinite form up and up, higher and higher until not even we were out of his reach. His head whipped through the air, chasing after Ra.
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