Tomb of the Sun God

[ItsaRandomUsername]

This one's going to be an almost purely OC based experience with only a few nods to Nasuverse canon characters, and thus will probably end up being the best and least popular thing I write.

At the rate this is going I can see this prophesy coming true. Bloble is here to save the Type-MOON fandom and it won't ever realize it has.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

He is the hero we deserve, but not the one we know of right now.

[Asdfghl]

Nice chapter. I'm guessing that housekeeper is Waver's grandmother?

[Nacho the Doritosedge]

We still don't know his fucking naaaaaame

“Your refusal is foolish, so I’ve elected to disregard it.

best character

completely in charge

true magus

[Bloble]

We still don't know his fucking naaaaaame

Pick one:

1. I never tell you.

2. It's Adolf von Hitlerstein.

[Mattias]

Pick one:

1. I never tell you.

2. It's Adolf von Hitlerstein.

Option 2. Especially during WWII.

[Grant]

Pretty fun to read.

[warellis]

Keep it going!

[NewAgeOfPower]

Broble, this isn't AU, is it?

[Bloble]

Broble, this isn't AU, is it?

Why would it be?

[NewAgeOfPower]

Why would it be?

Excellent. I look forwards to your work.

[Garlak]

Awesome story. Looking forward to more.

[Bloble]

I hate sand.

I fucking hate sand.

Yes, I’m aware that this is a journal and there’s no need to write it twice, but I’ll do it anyway. In fact, I’ll do it again just for emphasis:

I hate the very idea of a bunch of different rocks being ground up until they’re fine enough to slip through anything, and then spread out over an entire fucking continent. It is as abhorrent to me as pedophilia or bestiality would be to an ordinary man with ordinary morals. If I could have the Holy Grail in my hands now, I’d wish to reach the Root, but my second wish would definitely be to get rid of all this stupid, bloody sand.

Okay. Anger is over. Can’t crumple the paper now. No more vulgarity, you’re a professional. Back to business.

In any case, a great many things happened today. I wouldn’t call them all positive developments, but when taken as a whole they’ve left me feeling rather sunny. So sunny, in fact, that I wish I could just see a single damn cloud. All day this sun has been bearing down on me, with only some temporary shade to stave off the dull heat.

It’s enough to drive a man mad, and I’m not making a figure of speech here, though I wish I was. There’ve been stories of people brought to the brink by that ever burning disk. Tales of blinded men claiming that they saw the Root of the world in the center of the sky, of those who found themselves in oases while approaching death. The vast majority are just that, tales, but I’ve no doubt that a few approach the edge of truth. I just hope I never have to find out first hand which aren’t false.

After a night of wandering aimlessly and eating some decidedly not cheap shawarmas, I went back to the dwelling and caught some shut-eye on a mattress as thin as the rug in front of my office door. I woke up far too soon for my liking, with no one warming my rather uncomfortable bed. My wakeup call was Archie’s baritone yell, and I barely had enough time to scarf down a breakfast of crackers that tasted like cardboard before we were off to our next destination.

In this case, we only had to walk a short distance before we came to an oddly-shaped jeep that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the army. In fact, upon looking at the multitude of scratches in the shape of the Balkenkreuz on each door and the tire strapped to the front instead of the back, all reservations as to what its origins were vanished completely. On the bright side, it had a roof.

The little lady spoke to the turbaned man watching the car in Arabic while Archie and I waited by the jeep. He frowned as he noticed the scratches.

“What’s wrong, chief? Don’t want to use a vehicle designed by the enemy?”

He didn’t reply immediately, and when he did it was in a manner I didn’t expect. “No,” he said. “Actually, I’m quite relieved.”

“Relieved? Where’s all the patriotism? This little jeep is part of the reason we’re losing the war.”

“We are not losing,” he snapped at me. “You read the letter. The course of the war will shift towards our victory in the next few days. It’s already been three years. If the Axis wanted to win, they should have captured England before the end of the second.” He looked at the jeep again, and his gaze softened and hardened simultaneously. I don’t really know how to describe it.

He looked at me with that same, searching expression. “Tell me, what would you trust more: A weapon created by your ally, or a weapon created by your enemy?”

It caught me off guard, and I didn’t have enough time to come up with a good answer. “The one made by my pal, I suppose,” I said.

“Then you would be wrong,” Archie sniffed. “Your friend created this weapon to help you. The effort he can put into making that weapon is limited to the amount of value your life holds in his eyes. Your enemy, however, is making this weapon to kill you, or rather, to save his own life. In that case it is obvious which will be superior. You can be sure that your enemy will put everything he has into that weapon so that he may live to see the next day. That difference in belief will lead to your demise. Any competent magus would tell you the same thing.”

He turned away again. “So that, Scribe, is why I am relieved. This machine contains the desperate will of someone who has been pushed against the wall and forced to outdo himself to survive. It is the most suitable vehicle for us.”

Strange guy. Well, at least he’s a better talker than the last one who hired me.

I walked over to Moriah, who was in the middle of negotiating with the turbaned man. When I arrived, he was sweating bullets and had completely lost his cool. Spotting me, he smiled like he’d seen a goddess and rushed to my side.

“Customer!” he said in broken English. “Yes, good, good! I have best deals for you! Please buy!”

“We’re looking to rent, actually,” I said.

“Yes, rent, very good! You get Kübelwagen, it take you anywhere! Please give good price! Not like thief girl! Trust me, not her, yes! I will not rob your corpse!”

I shot a desperate glance at Moriah. The man was even shorter than her and half my size, but he had a vice grip on my hands and I didn’t want to reinforce myself to get out.

She pried his hand off my wrist and spoke firmly to the man in Arabic once more. He looked at me, then back to her, and seemed to deflate as he realized we were travelling together.

Moriah reached into the sheaf of bills that Archie had given us, and removed three, placing the rest in… well, I’m not sure where. Her clothes didn’t really seem like they would be able to have pockets. The salesman barely reacted when she pressed the bills into his hand. We walked off with me confused.

“What did you do to him?” I asked.

She allowed herself a small smile. “It was foretold that I would win us a 75% price drop from this man. It was also foretold that he would go to sleep today in a very bad mood.”

So, after packing all of our things and extra gas, who do you think booted up the jeep and drove it out into a road barely indistinguishable from the desert surrounding it? Was it me, who’s covered enough distance through car chases to ride from one side of London to the other? Was it Archie, the man with enough pride to boil a cup of water simply by commanding it?

Moriah let out a little laugh as the jeep leapt over a dune, getting almost a second of air time before landing as softly as a kitten on carpet. She gave the wheel only the lightest of taps and the car changed direction, moving us so the sun was behind instead of to our right. That damnable sand flew every which way, blown about by the winds and getting into everything except the jeep itself. Archie, who had protested until told that this would be the fastest way, put another biscuit in his mouth and chewed, not in the least impressed by the stunts we were pulling. I could tell he was aching to give out a reprimand, but he wasn’t in his element. The Guide is responsible for transportation and all matters of the destination. All the Magus has to do is boss everyone around.

I’ll admit it. The ride was fun. Moriah had said our trip would be uneventful, and she was right. We didn’t see a single soul during the entire drive. Several seemingly random shifts in direction took us around army patrols, other groups of magi, and hidden minefields, each one gleefully predicted by our young Guide before they even showed up. This was probably the real her, unfettered by her Atlas training or knowledge of the future.

Eventually the crystal blue Nile came into view, followed by our destination.

“This is it,” Archie said as he stumbled from the jeep, kept upright only by willpower and his jewelled cane. “Welcome to the Valley of Kings.”

I mentioned the town from earlier being almost entirely carved from rock and mud. This was that town a thousand years later, abandoned by its inhabitants and slowly swallowed up by the desert. Stone buildings stood half buried in the stand, while others could be mistaken for dunes until approached and revealed to be buried tombs, their entrances only barely visible. Trails led from one major site to another. Some tombs had been fully uncovered, some were still buried, and others were in a state between, as if frozen in the process of being unearthed.

There were obvious traces of campfires here and there, and other evidence that revealed just how quickly the war had vacated the valley. A metal cup found at the entrance of one tomb. A hastily scrawled map fluttering in the wind. Even the torn up letter I found crushed under a rock told a story of archaeologists franticly running while trying to take all their knowledge with them, to the point of sacrificing basic necessities.

I was having doubts, however. “Say Archie, why are we at this valley and not the Pyramids? Didn’t the letter say the event would take place there and not here?”

“…Archie?”

“Merely a slip of the tongue. Still, why here and not there?”

He looked at me suspiciously for a few moments before answering. “The letter indicated that besides the event in Giza, there would be a spike of prana some hours before, occurring here. If you look at it objectively, it’s obvious that this would be where the actual event occurs. What happens at the Pyramids would only be the symptom.”

“That’s still a big assumption to make, isn’t it?”

“It is, but he is correct,” Moriah spoke up. “There is a greater chance of this being the important site. Besides, the other location will be flooded by magi. The likelihood of us being overwhelmed and killed before being stripped of our possessions is fairly high in that region. Here, however, it is almost empty. We will be facing less competition.”

Well, that’s more than good enough for me, thank you very much.

“Now then,” Archie said, looking at the countless tombs just waiting to be raided. “I think it’s time for you two to earn your keep.”

The plan was that we would peruse each tomb’s inscriptions, searching for something out of the ordinary, most likely a secret passage of some sort. It wasn’t mentioned in the letter, but we all agreed it could be nothing else. The Valley has been looted heavily for centuries, with our own archaeologists finishing the job decades ago. If there’s anything dangerous here, it would have survived all those years undetected and unmoved, and the only way for that to happen would be if there was a tomb so secret, so hidden, that no thief could find it.

To make a long story short: There was progress. Not much, but it’s definitely something we can look at and be reasonably proud of. At the end of the day, we still have a good week until our time runs out, and Archie is certain that we’ll be done in five days, no doubt because he’s imagining spending the other two drinking tea and being smug about getting that reward. Cleopatra says it’ll be a miracle if we finish an hour before the time limit, but I say bollocks to that. She just enjoys being pessimistic and prophesising doom to anyone who’ll listen. Personally I think most of her predictions are more like educated guesses. In her case, really educated guesses.

Me? I have no idea, but at least I’m being honest about it.

As for the progress itself, it’s nothing to write home about, though I’ll nonetheless record it. We managed to narrow down the likely location of the hidden passage from the entire Valley to just a few tombs, though the rout we took to arrive at that conclusion was circuitous at best, and sheer coincidence at worst. Little Nefertiti says the trick isn’t finding the entrance, but figuring out how to get it open. We obviously can’t just have Archie blast everything, as much as I’d love that, so we’re banking on the hope that the magi behind it put more effort into hiding the entrance than they did into securing it. I hope they at least had the decency to put up a ward against sand. I don’t think I’d be able to take a full week of the stuff without capping myself.

Not that it’d even work. Sand has jammed all of the magazine based guns, and it’s gotten into Miss Jane too. I spent several hours cleaning out each magazine by hand and I still only got through a half dozen. If push comes to shove they’ll still work, but I’m just as likely to end up with a melted lump of steel and a mass of shrapnel in my hand as I am to actually get a shot off, and with magic guns, I really don’t want to take that kind of risk. The grenades are fine, and Miss Daisy is holding up surprisingly well, so I’m not completely without my armory, only most of the heavy stuff. Sand just makes everything that much more tedious.

Even the ‘progress’ was tedious. It was mostly just our little alchemist wandering over to various tombs, looking at hieroglyphs, and translating them while I wrote down everything she said. And she said some very strange things, many of which I suspect were added much later than the original hieroglyphs. A few of the glyphs have been completely worn away by the passage of time, and only a handful had any sort of protection to keep them intact, in addition to all the awkwardly placed ones stuck on the ceiling. Giving a girl of barely 19 a ride on your back while she tries to read something from a language she scarcely understands is not my idea of a picnic. I don’t even want to mention the dozens of symbols that had been added by grave robbers over the years as graffiti. Actually, I do. They were hilarious. Here’s one of the more memorable exchanges:

“This king sleeps like the dead, so his possessions are mine to take.”

“Your mother sleeps like the dead, so your life is mine to take.”

“She wasn’t sleeping like the dead last night, you cowpat licker.”

“Aye, because you were fooling around with her corpse. May Ra curse thee!”

Yes, it seems even 4000 years ago, insults were still as dumb as they are now.

There was also one incident that I figure is worth writing down. I won’t put it into evidence, but this is my personal journal, and I’m not omitting anything even if Archie complains. He hired me, so he has to put up with the rules of the contract. Two journals. One for me, one for him.

The barrier put up around the site is supposed to keep away mundanes and make sure soldiers don’t get close enough to be a bother, but it’s purposefully made to be useless against anyone with the slightest amount of training in magecraft. Luckily, Archie set it up so that it would let him sense any intruders immediately. This helped when twelve or so fellows just waltzed on through without warning.

The Guide and I were on the opposite end of the Valley looking at the outsides of several empty tombs when it happened. Thanks to the linked spell we all sensed it, along with the fact that our benefactor was closest to the intruders. I’d say it was karmic relief for sitting around doing nothing all day, but really it was because he’d be next to useless for the kind of work we were doing. In any case, we promptly forgot about translations and rushed to him. If Archie bit the dust, so did our payment. Well, my payment. Moriah (I only really know two female Egyptian names, so the nicknames are done) never did say what he was offering her.

It only took a minute of running over that blasted sand before we reached Archie and our ‘guests’. He sat on his folding chair with his umbrella positioned to blot out the sun, while a semicircle of eleven rather ratty people surrounded him, with, of all things, a nun leading them, heavy dark clothes and all. Even wearing light clothing and staying in the shade all day had left me simultaneously dehydrated and soaked, but I couldn’t even begin to guess how much worse it would be in her place. Of course, she looked fine. Must be a rich person thing. Even Moriah was sweating in the sun, but Archie and the nun didn’t have a hair out of place.

“Are these the ones you mentioned?” she asked my employer, not even bothering to try and disguise her French accent. “Two is not a powerful number in these parts.”

“Yes,” he replied smoothly, pausing to take a sip of tea before continuing. “But three is one of the most powerful numbers in the world, and always will be. Unlike some people, a magus does not base the number of people in his retinue on an arbitrary number. Twelve? Really? Do you think you can manage that many underlings, Sister?”

As a side note, while it’s impossible to convey the exact intricacies of Lord Lysander Octavius Archibald’s accent through text, and I’ve no wish to attempt such a Herculean task, know that it is very, very, very British.

“A baker’s dozen is no mere number. It is the number of bread rolls one buys, bread being the most basic of foods. The son of the Lord could feed the world with that many loaves.”

“And you can feed an orphanage, I’m sure,” Archibald sneered. He lowered the cup of tea to the small table at his side and rose to his feet. Of course he wore a formal suit in the middle of the desert. When it comes to magi common sense doesn’t really apply. He tapped the cane in his hands against the dirt three times. “But enough about trivialities. Why are you here? And why have you brought this … motley crew of people with you?”

One of the men, probably a native, spoke up. I don’t speak a lick of Arabic, but he sounded pretty angry. He made a few gestures and pointed at us half a dozen times.

From my left, Moriah replied in the same language. In quick, clipped tones she delivered her message, and the man’s face turned red in anger. He started yelling again, this time at her.

My hand grasped the butt of Miss Daisy, and I saw Archibald’s hand tighten on his cane. If this got bad…

“Enough, Abdul,” the Sister hushed him. “We have no business with these people, just as they have no business with us. There shall be no questioning, on either side.”

But he wasn’t about to back down. Something had angered him. He yelled at Moriah again, and she repeated the last part of her previous sentence.

“What is he saying?” I whispered to her.

She whispered back, “he is angry that Lord Archibald insulted the Lady. The man demands an apology.”

“Tell him it isn’t happening.”

She did, and it only angered him more. In seconds he had drawn forth a ceremonial knife and was about to slash with it.

A sharp crack and a moment later his neatly severed hand fell to the floor, where the earth opened up and swallowed the limb while his knife spun circles through the air. The man dropped to his knees, gripping the stump of his forearm tightly and evidently doing his best not to scream. Beside me, Moriah’s fingers folded shut, and I glimpsed a glimmer folding into her palm out of the corner of my eye. I replaced my revolver in its holster. The twisted mess of a bullet I had fired landed softly next to my sandals.

“He would not have attacked,” the Sister said. She didn’t sound angry, though. More like disappointed. In us, or her ally? I’m not sure. Her companions looked more incensed, but unlike Abdul, they didn’t make any aggressive moves.

“He still drew his Mystic Code,” Archibald replied. “As a magus, he should have been prepared for this outcome. You should be thanking us for our mercy in sparing your man’s life. Or will you waste more of your men on us? You do need those… natives to tell you where your destination is, as well as actually digging once you get there, so I’d argue that you should treasure them more.”

The Sister frowned. I saw the anger warring for attention underneath the surface of that beautiful face, but it quickly disappeared. You don’t get to a position like hers by letting your vices control you. “I shall take your advice into account,” was all she said. “In return, I’ll give you some of my own. You were not the first to come here. Several groups have already passed through this area.”

As one, the group marched past us. A few, Abdul included, shot us dirty glares, but only I responded in kind. I can’t help myself, really. A guy looks at you funny, you look at him even funnier until he laughs or backs off. There are guys who make a living on looking scary. Granted, I’m not one of them, but it never hurts to get some practice in. Within minutes they disappeared over the horizon, heading deeper into the Valley while we remained camped near the edge of the Nile.

“Should we follow them?” I asked once I was sure we weren’t being spied upon.

Archibald shook his head. “No, let them go. They know even less than us, despite many having grown up in these parts. If years of local living couldn’t find what we’re looking for, then those years were wasted. We shall let the Church chase its own tail for now.” He sat down on his chair again, adjusting the umbrella after a moment to account for the setting sun.

Moriah took it as a sign for her to report. “We’ve narrowed it down,” she said, pulling out a map of the Valley. Most of the tombs were covered in crosses, signifying probable hiding spots. Only a section near the tomb of Amenhotep IV and some of the West Valley (the part with fewer tombs) was left untouched. “First, we can confirm the Sister’s claim that others were here. We found several tracks and used them to narrow down the search. Almost all of the tombs we visited had been searched, except…” She pointed to the blank area. “We checked it earlier, and we can confirm that this place doesn’t have what we’re looking for. We can safely discard it.”

My turn. “No one’s been there, so there’s no reason for us to take a look. We should focus on the tombs that have seen more traffic, since they’re more likely to contain what we’re looking for.”

Archie took a sip of his drink. “Are you two sane?” he asked.

Moriah and I exchanged a look. “Nothing but. You hired us, remember?”

“Really. Because it seems to me that you two are acting in a most illogical manner.” He rose, tapping his cane on the ground a few times as he did so. “Tell me, what would you say if I were to tell you we were going to be focusing all of our attention on this ‘useless area’?” He pointed the tip of the cane at the area of the map completely free of marks.

“Don’t,” I said, in complete sync with Moriah. “There’s nothing there.”

Archie nodded. “Of course.”

In a single moment, the ground became quicksand. I sank almost a meter into the suddenly fluid floor, and in seconds was covered up to the waist in sand and dirt, my hands pinned to my sides. I glanced to my right to see Moriah in a similar situation.

“Archie, what the hell is wrong with you!?”

“Do not call me that,” he said. Archibald nudged my chin up with his foot, looking me in the eye with that irritating gaze of his. “I expected better from you. The girl, I can understand, but you should have been able to avoid such a trap.”

Was he insane? Had the heat gotten to him, snapped his mind somehow? I tried to reach my gun, but my hand might as well have been pushing against solid rock. I couldn’t do anything.

“Hold still,” Archibald commanded. “And be thankful for my presence here. Without it, you two would have been trapped in that ridiculous trick for the rest of your lives.”

His cane struck my forehead with the force of a bullet. I felt colours invert and my stomach bloating with bile and blood before the world returned to normal suddenly. Incredibly dizzy, I barely controlled the sudden urge to vomit onto the ground.

The ground pushed me up until I was on my knees. I heard another dull thud, and Moriah was sprawled next to me a few seconds later.

“Now,” Archie said after returning to his seat. “What do you think of that area?”

“It’s suspicious. Too suspicious,” I said after catching my breath. And it was. What had I been thinking? We needed to look everywhere, even if the probability of us finding what we needed was low. What had gotten into me?

“The passage must be there,” Moriah gasped. “That trap… did you release us from the spell?”

“Yes,” Archie said. “A clever trap, I’ll admit. Rather than announcing its presence it simply plants a suggestion into the minds of those investigating, telling them to leave and go somewhere else. You two didn’t even have your circuits active, I assume?”

I couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Of course.” He sighed. “Well, the damage is done. At least we’re aware of it now. Can I assume you won’t be trapped again?”

We nodded.

“Good. Now, tell me what you found. There should be more than this.”

Moriah spoke first while I got to my feet and started wiping sand from my clothes. “Based on… firsthand evidence, it’s highly likely that the hidden passage is in this tomb and covered by a layered ward with several separate effects, including some that will passively shift others away from it and more that clear away anything that would make it look out of place. The ward would draw from the Nile’s major ley line, thus being able to sustain itself for thousands of years without trouble. This also explains how previous magical expeditions here failed to find anything significant.”

Archibald nodded. “Can you break the ward?”

Moriah paused. I’m fairly sure that whenever she does that she’s really just doing that one crazy thing she can do. Something about partitions or dividing the brain processes. In any case, it’s usually over quickly, but this time it took her ten whole seconds to come up with an answer.

“Yes,” she finally said. “I should be able to, if I know where it is and am sure of its existence. But it will take most of the night. I recommend you get some sleep. We can enter tomorrow. I will work on it now, as… an apology.”

Archie nodded, accepting it. He looked to me and I shook my head. No way, pal. Not saying sorry to you, even if you did save my ass.

He frowned and said nothing. Taking it as permission to leave, I began to set up our camp site on top of the ruins of an old one.

This is it, I suppose. The last night breathing outside air. As bad as the sand out here is, I’m betting it’ll be even worse in there. Cramped, dark, crawling with bugs and all sorts of disgusting creatures… it’s the stuff of nightmares, it is. If there are more spells like the one we just encountered… I don’t want to think about it. Just going into the tombs made me feel like I was chocking, but this’ll be about a hundred times worse. Or maybe the ancient Egyptian magi were nice enough to make a spell to keep the air fresh. I can always hope.

Several hours later, when the sun had long since sunk underneath the ground and I’d finally managed to clear the last grains of sand from my boots, Lord Archie issued his royal decree.

“Go away,” he told me. “Go to the tombs. Go take a bath in the river. Just stay away from the camp site. I refuse to have to suffer through your continuous attempts to render me insomniac. If you wish to clean those bullets of yours as noisily as possible, go do it somewhere else!”

I looked up from the partially disassembled gun in my hands. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious!” Looks like I’ve finally found his weakness. You can put Archie through anything and he’ll be fine, but take away from his beauty sleep and you’ve got a cranky old chap to deal with instead. “Go, go! Perhaps you can keep that native company so she doesn’t steal everything that isn’t tied down.”

Sometimes I feel good when I can successfully predict how much of an asshole a person is before I even get the chance to talk to him. With old Archie? It’s just tiring, even though ‘tiring’ is what pays my bills these days.

Making my way to the site of our supposed secret entrance, I was stopped momentarily as several dull booms snaked their way through the air. For a moment I thought the Sister had lied, and was ambushing me, but it only took me a second to figure out what it was. Artillery. The Allies and Axis were shelling each other hundreds of kilometres away, with Egypt stuck in the crossfire. I don’t count myself as one of those infected by the Egyptology fever, but walking along the hastily abandoned excavation site must’ve rubbed off on me, because the thought of priceless history being destroyed by people trying to kill each other just doesn’t seem right.

What I noticed next, though, was most definitely not shelling.

By the faint light of my torch I barely saw it. At first I mistook it for the flickering shadows called forth by the flames, but after a minute or two of walking it began to make itself known to me. There was a certain artificial nature to the movements. A stiffened limb here, a sharp crack that could have been burning wood but instead sounded more like old bone, and thousand year old cloth fluttering in the lightest breeze. Something was here, by my side. Above? Below? Behind? Or perhaps right in front of me, completely invisible to my inferior vision.

I heard a dusty laugh and words whispered in a language I couldn’t understand.

I whirled. I reinforced my vision, wincing at the pain from the inexpert spell, and swung my torch from side to side, but saw nothing, heard nothing, and felt nothing. By all accounts, it was most likely a hallucination, caused by tension or fear. I slowly calmed down, my heart rate slowing as I rationally explained away my fear.

Then the hand grabbed my foot.

I didn’t scream, though I came quite close. The hand poking out of the sand grasped my leg with the strength of a dying man, almost crushing my ankle. I lifted my leg, but the hand wasn’t attached to an arm and easily popped out of the sand. My other leg came up and went down, stomping on the offending limb with all the desperation of someone who doesn’t know what the hell is going on.

In moments, the hand was a mess. I’d broken a dozen bones, leaving it looking more like an alien limb than something a human could have. Breathing hard, I was about to return and report when I realized just what it was.

Abdul’s hand. The one Moriah sliced off. The one Archibald had swallowed up into the earth.

Never mind. He’s not an asshole. He’s a vengeful asshole. And if he thinks he’s getting an apology for saving me, he’s got another thing coming. So here’s your apology, Archie. But it’s in here, where you’ll never get a chance to read it.

I’ve figured out the hand, but there’s something still bugging me about what I heard before it. That voice earlier… it was a hallucination, right?

No, it wasn’t. I know what I saw, or rather, I know that what I saw was real, even if I cannot say what it is. As I write this, I’m debating whether or not to go back and erase this event from my journal. I cannot call it anything concrete despite this feeling, and the possibility that I was hallucinating still exists. Yet this journal is my truth. If nothing else, it holds my feelings and important memories. If this is important enough for me to write it down, then it can’t be nothing. Tomorrow I’ll ask Moriah. Perhaps she’ll know of some legend or scripture that explains this.

Speaking of Moriah, by the time I finally got to the secret entrance (after punting that damned hand into the stratosphere) I spotted her leaning against the chiselled wall with her head hanging down, snoring lightly. A burning torch lay on the ground a short distance away and I saw several sheets of paper scattered about, patterns of hieroglyphs scrawled all over.

Poor kid. Probably never been on a real expedition before. In a job like this, sleep is a luxury.

After I woke Moriah up she apologized and went right back to work on deciphering the wards. That cold attitude of hers is surprisingly sturdy, even if I saw her blush a few times when glancing in my direction every few minutes. She was probably thankful for some company. Even I was on edge, so for her it must have been even worse. (I’m not mentioning Archie, because he’s probably still drinking that damn tea of his, and I hope he chokes on it.)

I positioned myself against a wall a few meters away from Moriah and got out this journal. Tonight I’m writing everything down manually, but I won’t be able to do that once we go underground. From tomorrow, I’m activating the passive Scribing spell. It’s going to be a drain on my prana, but one I’ll be able to afford if I’m careful with the rest.

A minute passed without conversation, only the silent scratches of us writing our respective reports. A minute too long, I think.

“So,” I began. The sound of Moriah’s writing stopped. I looked up to see her staring back at me with those strange eyes of hers. “What do you think of this whole expedition? I know that fucker is thrilled even though he tries to hide it, but I haven’t been able to get a bead on you.” I wanted to ask why she'd been hired despite an entire collection of older, likely more experienced alchemists available right next door, but I figure it would be better to ask Archie once I no longer want to punch him in the face.

She did her thought partition thing again before replying. “I think of it as atonement,” she said at least. “For something my family has done. This will erase that sin.”

“Kind of a strange motivation for an alchemist, isn’t it? Aren’t you supposed to be more logical than that?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “This is logical. These feelings of mine will not go away through numbers or calculations. For an illogical problem, you need an illogical solution. You are logical, and I like that. A service provided for money. It’s simple, easy to understand.”

“I wish. Being broke is a bit too simple, I think.” Then again, it’s not my fault that half my employers end up biting the dust before they can pay me. It comes with the job.

“Hm.” Looks like she didn’t have a response to that. There was more silence for a few moments before she spoke again. “How many is in a dozen?”

I… what? “Twelve,” I said. “Why?”

“The nun. There were twelve of them in total, but… she said a baker’s dozen.”

I frowned and folded up my journal. “So?”

Moriah bit her lip. I could tell she was debating internally whether to speak and possibly look like a fool, or keep it to herself and retain some semblance of pride. In the end, curiosity won out. “A baker’s dozen refers to thirteen. It is named for the extra loaf of bread sold to people in order to ensure there are no complaints.”

My blood ran cold. We both understood the implication. A thirteenth member of her party, one that none of us had detected. The Sister had been the merciful one, not us. If she wanted to, she could have slit our throats from behind without us ever realizing a thing.

“Forget about it,” I said, my voice only a little dry. “We don’t have to worry about that. Let’s just get this ward broken.” She nodded and went back to work, only the periodic glances into the dark night remaining as a sign of her apprehension.

I would like to talk to her more, but it can’t be done. She has to focus completely on her job, and I…

I’ll spend tonight staring into the empty valley, looking at sand and darkness.

[Hymn of Ragnarok]

I'm flashing back to Postnuptial Agreements. Fantastic update schedule, awesome Archibald.....wonderful. Simply wonderful.

He looked at me with that same, searching expression. “Tell me, what would you trust more: A weapon created by your ally, or a weapon created by your enemy?”

It caught me off guard, and I didn’t have enough time to come up with a good answer. “The one made by my pal, I suppose,” I said.

“Then you would be wrong,” Archie sniffed. “Your friend created this weapon to help you. The effort he can put into making that weapon is limited to the amount of value your life holds in his eyes. Your enemy, however, is making this weapon to kill you, or rather, to save his own life. In that case it is obvious which will be superior. You can be sure that your enemy will put everything he has into that weapon so that he may live to see the next day. That difference in belief will lead to your demise. Any competent magus would tell you the same thing.”

He turned away again. “So that, Scribe, is why I am relieved. This machine contains the desperate will of someone who has been pushed against the wall and forced to outdo himself to survive. It is the most suitable vehicle for us.”

I like this man can we keep him?

Seriously the banter in this story is simply excellent. And from all OCs too! It's a breath of fresh air to read a TM story and not already have the characters' measure walking in. I love it. I'd praise you more if I weren't drifting into sleep.

[Grant]

Good work at making all of them competent in their own way.

[Phearo]

Ah yes, british men and their snarky tendencies.

[Fafnir]

I'll echo everything Hymn said; you're doing an excellent job here, Bloble. Lysander is a true Archibald through and through.

Moriah so moe~

[Bloble]

I'm flashing back to Postnuptial Agreements. Fantastic update schedule, awesome Archibald.....wonderful. Simply wonderful.

Postnuptial Agreements is actually what inspired me to make the Magus an Archibald. Few other families we've seen have that perfect blend of snark, ruthlessness, power, and sheer smug.

[Grant]

Personally I have to say that I prefer this to that one.

[Hymn of Ragnarok]

Postnuptial Agreements is actually what inspired me to make the Magus an Archibald. Few other families we've seen have that perfect blend of snark, ruthlessness, power, and sheer smug.

Well played.




Actually, a point to being up. The mind-whammying of magi. I recall it being very, very difficult for a magi to be whammied at all and this is just shrugged off.

Now, ancient magic. I'm willing to give it a pass on affecting unprepared magi because older is better, their magic is just that good. I kinda felt like Archie shrugged that trap off a bit too much though. But maybe I'm just misremembering the mechanics or how magi identify and force out foreign prana. I mean I figured they'd notice sooner or later, but....

Basically, you sure you got that right? I keep feeling like Archie should either be giving the spell crafters more credit, or something. Maybe instead of it being the main defense it's more like a, "Get past this mental ward to prove you are not a total scrub. In other words, you're a magi because no normal person can get past this. And now the next layer of traps are specifically designed to exploit magi and their blind spots. Have fun~"

Okay I let that get away from me. Hopefully my point is getting across. Make sure the mechanics for mentally screwing a person with magic circuits jives, and possibly consider whether this ward is more deserving of praise or acknowledgement this is just the most rudimentary of defenses.

But really, if this ward has successfully baffled magi for millennia, either the magi are just extraordinarily unlucky and foolish or this is an amazing spell rather than a cheap trick.