Tomb of the Sun God

[Bloble]

Well, that is a valid question, and I'll try to answer it as succinctly as possible.

First, one of the reasons Archie had no trouble with the ward is that he never actually experienced it. While Moriah and the Scribe were exploring tombs, our Magus was sitting under an umbrella and sipping on tea like a boss. He merely saw the symptoms, which were really just an irrational urge to avoid the area being warded. From there, he deduced that they'd fallen into a trap, and guessed correctly. It's not unusual. Similar wards exist and are commonly used even in modern times. Now, breaking the effect of the ward is much easier than getting past the ward itself, sort of like how it's theoretically simple to break out of illusions in Naruto (simply cycle chakra through your system) but much harder to actually create them. It's even easier in this case to break the effect as an outside observer, hence why Archie was able to free the two so easily.

Second, the reason they were affected in the first place is pretty much because they weren't expecting it, coupled with the ancient magic being awesome enough to get past any passive shielding most magi have against such a trap. For reference, look at how Caster remotely controls Shirou in UBW despite him having magic resistance as a magus. This is a similar phenomenon. If they had active shielding and were expecting it, even the age of the trap wouldn't be enough to let it work, but in this case it did because they were caught unaware.

And, of course, the passive ward is just as you guessed, merely the first layer. It would have been less than effective a few thousand years ago, but here even that small cautionary measure is enough to almost divert the team from their goal. You can think of it as the difference between Ancient Egypt's magi and a modern magus.

EDIT: TL;DR, Ancient Egyptian magi are even more ancient than that old grannie Caster and can pull off some hax shit. Scribe got cocky, and Archie made a lucky guess.

[NewAgeOfPower]

Delicious.

[Hymn of Ragnarok]

Well, that is a valid question, and I'll try to answer it as succinctly as possible.

First, one of the reasons Archie had no trouble with the ward is that he never actually experienced it. While Moriah and the Scribe were exploring tombs, our Magus was sitting under an umbrella and sipping on tea like a boss. He merely saw the symptoms, which were really just an irrational urge to avoid the area being warded. From there, he deduced that they'd fallen into a trap, and guessed correctly. It's not unusual. Similar wards exist and are commonly used even in modern times. Now, breaking the effect of the ward is much easier than getting past the ward itself, sort of like how it's theoretically simple to break out of illusions in Naruto (simply cycle chakra through your system) but much harder to actually create them. It's even easier in this case to break the effect as an outside observer, hence why Archie was able to free the two so easily.

Second, the reason they were affected in the first place is pretty much because they weren't expecting it, coupled with the ancient magic being awesome enough to get past any passive shielding most magi have against such a trap. For reference, look at how Caster remotely controls Shirou in UBW despite him having magic resistance as a magus. This is a similar phenomenon. If they had active shielding and were expecting it, even the age of the trap wouldn't be enough to let it work, but in this case it did because they were caught unaware.

And, of course, the passive ward is just as you guessed, merely the first layer. It would have been less than effective a few thousand years ago, but here even that small cautionary measure is enough to almost divert the team from their goal. You can think of it as the difference between Ancient Egypt's magi and a modern magus.

EDIT: TL;DR, Ancient Egyptian magi are even more ancient than that old grannie Caster and can pull off some hax shit. Scribe got cocky, and Archie made a lucky guess.

That is extremely well thought out and rationalized. This pleases me. The nature and complexity of the Nasuverse's magecraft is honestly more interesting than (most) of the super-duper Noble Phantasms and I enjoy seeing it even its due credit.

My main nitpick is your citation of Caster remotely controlling Shirou. IIRC, at that point Shirou hadn't opened any of his magic circuits which makes him about as easy to control as any other muggle in the Nasuverse. The reason magi are so damned hard to control is that they can just cycle prana/od in their circuits and body, thus making it difficult for mental magic to find purchase.

Or so I recall. Geez it's been such a long time.

Still, I think I can kinda sorta rationalize it. Caster's mental magic just bypassed Shirou's circuits entirely, I think, which made it unlike any other modern magic which would pretty much have to target the circuits. So maybe the lack of intrusion meant that instead of getting a heads-up like they would against any modern magus, it essentially bypassed picking the lock/forcing the front gate open in favor of just vaulting over the wall.

So I'm mostly completely okay with this explanation, just small nitpicks that hang me up until I get past them. For the most part, "Ancient magic ye mere mortals cannot comprehend" works as a satisfactory explanation.

Huh, come to think of it's kind of ironic that I love the scientific aspects of modern magi magic, but am still fine with ancient magic which is pretty much carte blanche for any author the further you get back.

Nasu's "Mystery powers everything," is a total cop-out for "It's magic, I don't have to explain shit, bitch!"

Talk about having your cake and eating it. He gets to technobabble all he wants about the world been when something he doesn't want explained comes out he gets to say, "It's a mystery! That's why it's so awesome!" And then once it is explained said explained mystery is free to get chumped by some other unknown or out of context problem and...

Oh my God Nasuverse magic runs on tropes. It's like the Unspoken Plan Guarantee, write large and set as the basis for the fundamental laws of the universe. How did I not realize this sooner.

[Bloble]

Today I woke up with a scorpion on my crotch.

A strange way to begin an entry, isn’t it? A bit racy, some might say, or just downright inappropriate. Perhaps, but I feel that of everything that happened today, that one sentence perfectly describes the entire experience. Today was like waking up and realizing there’s something terrifying about to hit you where it hurts.

The first sight I witnessed upon opening my eyes today was a yellow-green arthropod perched precariously on my utensils. I can say with certainty that a scream did not pass through my lips, but I might have let out a rather unmanly squeak. The creature’s beady little eyes looked up, and I swear they met my own for a moment.

A bang echoed throughout the entrance of the tomb. The scorpion flew off my body and splattered against the wall behind it. I scrambled to my feet, pocketing Miss Daisy and sweating, not because of the heat this time. Thanks, Daisy. I’m fairly sure this is the second time you’ve saved me from getting eunuch’d, although I can’t really recall the first at the moment. You and hours of training my quick draw as if I’m some kind of cowboy.

A few meters away, Moriah poked her head out from within the tomb. “Is there a problem?” she asked.

“Uh, no, nothing.”

“I heard a gunshot.”

“Works better than coffee if you want to wake up fast.” It really does. The only problem is that you’ll end up deafening yourself if you keep it up. Then again, compared to those poor soldiers a few hundred kilometres away, I have it easy. Them? They sleep, eat, and shit while having to put up with the constant rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire, with the whistles and pops of artillery livening up the discordant harmony. At the same time, one cannot discount the fact that my eardrums will certainly be suffering for the next few hours.

“I am finished with my analysis,” she said. “Could you fetch Lord Archibald?”

“Of course. Just sit tight.” I threw the spent casing of the bullet at another scorpion that quickly hissed and scarpered around a wall, before loading another one into Miss Daisy. This had absolutely nothing to do with me needing to deal with Archie again. Not one bit.

I worked out the kinks in my back, arms, and neck on the way to the campsite. When I arrived, I found the tent I’d set up last night covered with enough wards to incinerate an elephant.

I won’t record how I managed to wake Archie up, only that it involved what’s well on its way to becoming the most traumatic experience of my life that I can still remember at the moment. He was grumpy, as usual, but the news was enough to put him in a good mood. Sometimes, magi are ridiculously complicated and make no sense. Sometimes, though, they enjoy simple things.

On the way back to the tomb, I broached a question that had been on my mind ever since our arrival in Egypt.

“So, why did you hire me specifically, sir?”

The polite language did little to soften his mood. “It certainly was not to ask questions,” he replied. “If you want to keep our relation strictly one of business, you would do well to refrain from pointless probes concerning the circumstances of your hiring.”

The first one had been merely a ploy, though. It was the second question that I was really curious about. “Fair enough, but I’ll ask one more anyway. Why Moriah?”

“Who?”

“The Guide.” Of course he wouldn’t have bothered remembering her name.

“Oh yes, the native. What about her?”

“Why did you hire her? She’s barely out of her teens. I’m not going to insult her abilities, but there’s no denying that she’s young, too young even. If you’re a fool, you hire two complete rookies. If you’re smart, then it’s an experienced Scribe and a Guide who’s seen her fair share of expeditions. Instead, you took a novice and a veteran. It doesn’t fit.”

He was silent for a few moments, and I’d call his reply unclear at best. “For posterity,” he said. “Besides, you more than make up for her relative lack of empirical knowledge, and her pedigree is rather impressive from a liberal point of view. I do my research, Scribe. Perhaps you should as well. It would certainly help with your annoying habit of needling.”

When we arrived at the tomb, Moriah presented Archie with a list of findings while she explained how the wards worked. I will not pretend that I could comprehend everything she said, but Archie certainly seemed to understand it well enough. From what I can gather, there were several layered wards, each keyed into an underlying system that observed outside stimuli and activated certain functions in response to various actions. Wards for illusions, compulsions, and even some that would materialize a few metric tons of sandstone on top of the offending intruder made up the bulk of it, with other, more esoteric ones beyond even our Guide’s comprehension.

“With our skills, breaking through these bounded fields will take weeks, if it’s even possible,” she explained. “They are simply too well built, and the age difference is not going to help us here. I would recommend that we instead bypass them altogether.”

“Bypass?” Archie asked. “Is that even possible? I don’t believe the magi that built this place would be foolish enough to leave an obvious flaw in their work.”

“Not a flaw, but rather a system to deactivate the wards. A back door, if you will. There must be a way to get inside without having to go through the tedious process of breaking down and building up all these wards. I’ve already determined that they aren’t keyed into any one person’s magic signature or a corporeal object, so it’s only logical that there is a certain stimulus which will ‘open the door’, so to speak.”

“A password,” I chimed in. “Gotta be verbal. Even with these hieroglyphs, people back then were big on passing on information through spoken words. That way, even illiterate peasants could participate.” Oral tradition. It’s nice, but I still prefer a nice handwritten journal to devour.

“Prayer as well,” Moriah continued, not missing a beat. “The reign of Amhotep IV was marked by a sudden attempt to shift the thousand year old religion to a new one that worshipped one god exclusively. Perhaps…”

“Perhaps we have it,” Archie said. “Here, read this.” He took a sheaf of papers from his satchel after pocketing the one Moriah had given him. It was well worn, with markers every few pages and dog-ears everywhere. He fished a single page from the mess and handed it to Moriah. I spotted a sentence outlined in red ink (I hope it was ink) halfway down, but in a foreign language that looked like a very simplified form of the hieroglyphs we’d been looking at all day.

“Where did you-?”

“A certain thesis,” he said. “That is all. Hurry up. We’re on a tight schedule.”

She read it. I won’t pretend to understand what the phrase meant, but it certainly sounded important. Evidently, the person who’d set up the wards thousands of years ago must’ve agreed with me, because as soon as the last syllable escaped our Guide’s lips, the entire tomb started rumbling. Sand and dust rained down, making me glad that I hadn’t entered that cramped, badly lit place. I felt something shift under my feet, and the air took on a distinctive tang indicating the presence of powerful magic. The spell wove itself, driven by countless other spells in a system that would take any modern magus years to decipher.

Then, the inside of the tomb vanished.

Perhaps that was an inaccurate statement. It didn’t vanish, but when we looked through the small doorway, it no longer led to a cramped, dark area that would barely hold a half dozen people and one empty sarcophagus. Instead, it was as if we’d stumbled into the entrance to a palace. I saw an endless hallway of sandstone with branches every dozen meters. Fresh carvings that had never known wind or wear painted the walls, while inset gemstones of blue and red gave off a feeling of royalty that the other tombs never had. Oh, and it was large enough to fit a Spitfire height and length-wise with room to spare, indicating a substantial amount of space manipulation.

Archie didn’t even try to hide his smug grin.

We packed our bags and set off without a fuss. I think Archie was too excited at the thought of plumbing the secret passage’s depths to argue or make ridiculous demands. Moriah didn’t even wait for us. She just stepped through after giving us fifteen minutes until the opening closed, and started examining the wall carvings with the fervor of a magus in her element. I suppose this makes me the only one not looking forward to this expedition.

A few minutes later I lugged in our bags, with Archie bringing up the rear. He set up wards of his own in front of the entrance, presumably for keeping other explorers out of his discovery. Minutes later, the way inside closed, turning our entrance and exit into a blank wall, although Moriah assured us she could open it again at any time using the same pass phrase. The sudden disappearance of the ever present compulsion trying to affect my mind was very welcome, nonetheless.

As I set up torches to keep the area lit (I wasn’t going to be wasting any prana on this), I asked Moriah to repeat the sentence that had opened the wards.

“Why?” she asked. “You cannot speak the language, much less understand it.”

“Perhaps, but there’s no harm in humouring me.”

She did. Her words were just as incomprehensible as they had been the first time, but I was ready for them. I’ve written down a transcript here, and I’ll be able to use it later if we ever lose our Guide to a trap or one of those Church folk and I need to make a quick escape. We’ve got the jeep hidden under Archie’s wards and spelled to only be visible to one of the group, so I can always grab it and hope there’s enough extra gas to take me back to the village, assuming I can find the way back through a featureless desert.

Not exactly the best fallback plan, but it’ll do in a pinch.

“By the way, what does it mean?”

“The phrase? Something along the lines of: Praise the sun, praise the life it gives, praise Aten the omnipotent who rids us of the night’s terrors.”

Creepy bastards, those Ancient Egyptians.

After we sorted out the unimportant things, all that remained was the dull work of deciphering the wall carvings and proceeding along the seemingly endless maze of halls in search of whatever it is we’re looking for. Unfortunately, this isn’t some small temple or a simple tomb that even mundane could rob. We were in the sanctum of a magus, or worse… a god.

“We stay here for the time being,” Archie said, sitting in that folding chair and poring over Moriah’s notes. “I’ve made some familiars of the local wildlife, so there’s no need to risk our lives exploring blindly.” I’m not sure what was more surprising, the idea that he’d actually done something actively, or the fact that this is the first time a Magus has ever had the perfectly reasonable idea of sending in a familiar before going himself.

A scorpion crawled over my foot, and I resisted the urge to squash it and a tiny piece of Archie’s soul into paste. Seconds later a mixed menagerie of small desert creatures had made its way past us, swiftly disappearing down the dark hall and its numerous branches. I spotted snakes, lizards, a few small foxes with large ears, and at least ten more scorpions, one dragging its body forward on half the legs it should have had.

It was a good idea, I’ll admit.

It was also a boring one.

The next few hours were spent much like the previous day, except in a much more cramped area. The hieroglyphs turned out to be worthless in every way imaginable and lacked even crude graffiti to liven things up. I was too wary of curses to grab any of the inset gemstones for myself, even after Moriah insisted that there would be none.

According to her, the Egyptians never put damnations or cursed on their tombs, instead preferring more corporeal methods of defense. I think she’s just biased. Everyone’s heard of King Tut’s curse, even me. Besides, dead Kings might not be vengeful, but magi are, and whoever came up with those wards didn’t seem like the type to let their precious belongings be pillaged without a fight.

Soon enough, I was proved right.

“Scribe, I’ve lost the connection with one of my familiars. Investigate.”

I let Moriah off my shoulders. “Should I accompany him?” she asked.

“No. He is expendable. You are not.”

“How pragmatic of you.” I muttered under my breath, just loud enough for him to hear.

He ignored my quip. “I’ll be sending one of my spare familiars with you. It will tell you where to go. Try not to get lost. From what I’ve gathered, this place is much bigger on the inside. I haven’t detected any traps or bounded fields, but tread carefully nonetheless.”

I waved off his concerns. Truth be told, I was glad for the change of pace. There’s a certain feeling one can capture only when alone in the depths of a long dead culture’s history, when the air is dusty and the darkness surrounds you, and all you hear is the crackle of the fire in your hands, the dull footsteps you leave behind, and your heart trying to beat its way out of your chest.

I love that feeling.

I set off down the hall with a torch in one hand and Miss Daisy in the other. The light and relative safety afforded to me by out small encampment quickly faded, leaving only me and the dark halls of the dead. A small desert mouse perched on my shoulder and squeaked directions into my ear, quickly confusing me. Left, right, left, left… at least a dozen turnings passed me by without incident, each one that much more painful to take.

The carvings changed. At the entrance it had been mostly hieroglyphs and some generic illustrations, but the deeper I went, the stranger they became. Men climbing a pyramid, prostrating themselves before a disk in the sky, and eventually warring on each other while the disk watched. The disk itself became less of a crude shape and more of an all-seeing eye, watching my every movement without blinking once, even as the scenes surrounding it became more and more graphic.

A solid half hour into my trek, the torch had burnt down to almost nothing right after the latest left turn. I had just extinguished it and was about to reach into my bag for another when I heard the voices.

I froze, and reinforced my hearing as far as I dared to. It wasn’t enough. I caught murmurs and half formed words. Only slightly more than the breath of air the initial sounds had been. A spell, most likely, to mute noise, but it must’ve been badly done if I’d noticed.

The mouse on my shoulder gave a small squeak, barely visible in the darkness even with reinforced eyesight.

“What?” I hissed as quietly as I dared to.

It opened its mouth wide, farther than it would normally go, and I heard something other than squeaking.

“…insane. You’re a loony, I say.” The first voice coming from the little creature’s mouth was much deeper than its vocal chords could produce.

“Loony? You’re the one that wants to leave the boss behind! What about the contract?” The reply, while slightly higher in pitch, was nonetheless biologically impossible. Archie must’ve done some work on his familiars to make them more suited for exploration and spying, if it had managed to pierce the spell so easily. Now the furry little thing was reproducing the conversation for me in the midst of overhearing it.

“Forget the contract, Harry! If we go back there we’ll be six hundred feet under and no one’s getting paid for anything. I’d rather be a living loony than a dead one.”

“I oughta smack some sense into you. Who got us in here, huh? If it weren’t for Al, we’d still be two deadbeats stuck selling our juice to the Tower. We can’t leave him.”

“I say we can. We were doing fine before. All we’re doing here is running around like headless chickens. You remember where the exit is, right? Let’s just get out of here and think of something else. Preferably something that doesn’t involve working for a fucking Nazi.”

A Nazi. I’ll admit it got me. I’m not exactly up to date with the War’s progress, but as far as I can tell, this part of Egypt is square under the Allies’ control. A living, breathing, Hitler-loving Nationalsozialist was the last kind of person I’d expected to run into down here (to be fair, said Nazi might not actually be living or breathing at the moment). In hindsight, that was a foolish expectation. The results of this expedition will change the very course of the Second World War. It's practically a guarantee that at least a few Nazis will show up.

“There ain’t nothing else, Joe! We can’t get out without Al, and even if we do, we’re stuck in the middle of the desert with no way out. He has all the money and the map.”

“He’s also got all the dead, and we will too if we go after him. You remember what that thing did to him, don’t you? I’ll take my chances in the desert.”

“I say you won’t. Besides, I don’t remember that well. I think we just got spooked by a little wind and ran off after he tripped.”

“Nah, he got his leg smashed under this giant rock and you skedaddled because you thought there’d be more, remember? I said we should stay but you started screaming something about the mummy’s curse.”

“I don’t remember any giant rock, and I didn’t mention no mummies. Must’ve been Al. Point is, we need to go back. It ain’t like we’ll get lost on the way there.”

“You don’t think that’s strange? That the place is straight down the hall? None of these branches have led us to a damned thing.”

“It’s not strange. If you died, you’d want your tomb to have some grandeur, right? Not be squirreled off in the corner of god knows where. It’s perfectly normal.”

“You’re talking nonsense. I’m leaving.” Joe struck me as a whiner. They’re common among those who aren’t used to expeditions, and usually either toughen up or get killed off quickly. Harry, on the other hand, had his head on straighter, if only slightly. He seemed like the kind of guy who’d keep walking with a bullet in his gut if it meant getting through the day.

“Get back here, you yellow-bellied bastard! Don’t make me come after you!” At the same time, patience was evidently not one of his strong suits.

There was no reply, but I heard the sounds of footsteps, this time from in front of me, not the mouse. I made to get away, but Archie had different ideas.

“Capture them,” his voice, slightly higher pitched than usual, came from the mouse. “They’ve gone further than us, and we need that information.”

“You’ll get me killed, you bastard.”

There was no reply.

Fuck you, Archie.

The steps quickened. The mouse had gone silent, and I heard the two men, one older and one younger, yelling. A second pair of footsteps joined the first, both heading towards me, but still very faint. Now that escape was no longer an option, I was left with no choice but to follow my superior’s orders in hopes of matching those unrealistic expectations of his.

I gently placed a small hand mirror tied to a string on the ground next to my foot and nudged it into position, giving me vision of the hall’s expanse without having to turn the corner to peek. Nothing yet, but they would arrive soon. In the mean time, I became a statue, quieting my circuits temporarily and going perfectly still. Even the reinforcement had to go. If they caught one whiff of my prana, I’d be up against two magi of unknown strength, with no surprise on my side and the nearest ally at least ten minutes away. “Archie,” I said as quietly as I dared to. “Get the other one. A second is enough.”

I thought I felt the small bundle of warmth on my shoulder give a nod. Its feet tightened on my shirt.

Darkness is a terrifying thing. Most folks have experienced it enough as a child that they learn to avoid it whenever they can. In the city, it’s rare to see real darkness. The street lights keep it at bay, burning all day to make sure no one has to suffer through complete visual deprivation. Here, however, there was no such luxury, especially when I had to dim those lights myself.

With my reinforcement gone, darkness was all too close. Black in every direction, oppressive merely by existing. I’d have closed my eyes, but I couldn’t. The mirror’s location was etched into my mind, and I stared at the spot where it was, waiting to see something appear from nothing. There was no guarantee that they’d be using torches, but I had to bank on the stinginess of magi. If they had decided to reinforce their vision instead, I would have to rely completely on sound.

People have different reactions to darkness. Some withdraw, curling up into a ball and falling into their own mind for comfort and safety. Others lash out, running and acting and doing anything they can to banish the silence with their own noise. A rare few embrace the darkness, accepting it as part of them. Those that survive tend to be different afterwards, even if it’s only slightly noticeable.

Me? I get tense. I freeze, tightening my whole body and going completely still. With every second that passes I turn to stone, winding up my body like a spring that will be released the moment it detects some kind of stimulus. To this day I don’t know what will happen if I go too far and snap.

The footsteps approached, and I silenced my breathing. All that remained was the beating of my heart to remind me that I wasn’t a statue. There was nothing I could do about that, though.

The yelling was clearly audible now. It had descended into incomprehensible slurs that I won’t even bother recording. I saw a point of light appear in the mirror, and with a twitch of a finger the string yanked the mirror back before the magi could see the reflection themselves.

I could see the light now, illuminating the hall ever so slightly. The footsteps were almost here. One was about fifty feet behind the other, which would be enough.

A moment before the first one reached the corner I calmly stepped out from behind it, coming face to face with a gaunt man coated in sand, dust, and dried blood. Joe’s eyes widened and he tried to stop his momentum, but it wasn’t enough. He’d been running full pelt, and it would take him a few seconds to come to a stop.

He literally ran right into my fist, helped along only by a judicious application of torque and rotation learned that I must have learned from a boxer at one point. I felt his jaw move up, and his closed mouth wasn’t enough to muffle the sound of teeth breaking on each other.

As the first one fell to his knees in before me, I saw the second one a fair distance away from the first. He was halfway through an aria when a shrieking mass of fur and teeth landed on his nose and bit down, hard. Some people possess the mental faculties and discipline necessary to keep chanting even in such trying circumstances. Evidently, he wasn’t one of those people.

Harry tore the mouse away from his face just in time for me to introduce him to a left straight I picked up in Berlin. I felt a few of the bones in my fist crack. It was literally like punching a brick wall. Only brick walls don’t light your hand on fire in retaliation. Perhaps he was one of those people after all.

I was already backing off when he kicked me. The force must’ve been blunted by my backwards momentum. It’s the only explanation I have for how it didn’t blow a hole through me.

As I flew through the air I twisted, my flaming hand leaving a dizzying trail of light behind. Joe was just getting up when I crashed into him, knocking the poor sod back down again. We tumbled in the sand for a few moments before I got my bearings and reinforced myself to keep from puking my guts out.

He must’ve landed ass-first on his torch, because my combusting arm was suddenly the only source of light, and he screamed like a little girl. Well, a little girl with no teeth and a substance abuse problem.

I got to my knees, dragging the catatonic bastard up with me. I didn’t care that my broken hand was starting to smell like barbecue, or that the man’s grubby coat was soaking up the flames like a cat licking up milk. All I knew was that I had Miss Daisy in my right hand, and that she was pressed against his temple.

“Hold-“ I coughed, feeling some blood rushing up from my stomach. “Hold still, or Joe gets some ventilation in that empty skull of his.”

Harry paused, about to throw a glob of fire at me. He lowered his hand, drops of liquid flames falling to the sand and sizzling away. “Fuck,” he spat. I won’t lie, I was pleased to see a tooth and a few drops of blood hit the floor, even if he wasn’t making a big deal of it.

“Get rid of the fire,” I said. “Unless you’re in the mood for roasted buds.”

“Ain’t no friend of mine,” he retorted. I felt the fire crawl up my arm. It was up to the elbow now, and apart from the searing pain I was getting a serious case of déjà vu.

I cocked the hammer. Harry flinched at the audible click.

“Not asking again,” I told him, barely keeping the pain out of my voice. Just to make sure he got the message, I forced my left hand to unfold two burning fingers, holding them in front of the catatonic man’s eyeballs. “I don’t think this ‘not friend’ of yours would be amenable to walking back home without his eyes.”

He folded. The fire on my arm and the hostage’s jacket disappeared, leaving only charred flesh from the shoulder down. I’ll be feeling that one in the morning.

“Good. See, isn’t it much easier to negotiate when you aren’t trying to roast the other party alive?”

He growled, “if you don’t quit it with the fancy talk, I’ll turn you and that bastard into barbecue, buddy or not. I’m not responsible for his incompetence.” The flame on Harry’s hand (incidentally the only thing left lighting up the hall) flared with his words, drops of it falling onto the sand and sizzling softly.

“Yeah,” I nodded, shifting my gun slightly to make it more comfortable. “That would be Al, wouldn’t it?” He stiffened, and I pressed my advantage. “He must not be very smart if he hired a guy who can’t even reinforce himself in time to take a single punch. But I’m sure he hit the mark with you, pal. Am I right?”

Harry growled more threats to hide his fear, but I wasn’t worried. The hardest part had been getting him to drop the fire. The first concession is always the trickiest, but once you back down once, you’ll be doing it again and again.

“Which one of you is the Scribe?” I asked.

He said nothing.

“So it’s this idiot, then.” I rummaged through my hostage’s burnt leather jacket with my burnt leather arm, quickly finding a tightly bound hardcover journal. Joe groaned a bit, but a whack with the butt of my pistol put a quick end to any chances of him waking up at an inopportune moment.

“Do you think you can take me?” the smarter man asked as I pocketed the Scribe’s journal. “I know your type. Relying on your fists like that, you’re probably first generation with no real circuits to speak of. I’m betting that gun of yours is enchanted because you’ve got no spells of your own to throw at me. In a straight fight, I’d roast you.”

“I make a habit of avoiding straight fights. Now tell me what you saw back there and I’ll let you two go.”

“Just like that?” He was suspicious, of course. As someone who’d been on at least two expeditions before this one, he had all the right to be.

I nodded. “Just like that. I’ll even give this guy an apology for ruining his winning smile.”

“I don’t believe you. You ain’t bleeding me dry and then leaving me to die.”

“I know.” Dropping my hostage to the ground, but still keeping my gun pointed at the back of his head, I retrieved a rolled up scroll from within my satchel. The movement of my broken and burnt hand was clunky and painful, but I’ve been through worse. “Here.” I tossed it to him. The man caught it with his free hand, expertly opening it and reading the words written there, making sure to glance at me every few seconds.

I could tell when he was done because his face turned red. “Are you insane?” he asked. “Did you come up with this idea from the beginning?”

“Not at all,” I said. My useless magecraft happens to be fairly adaptable. “Read it again if you’re still unsure. The contract is binding. Take it or leave it.”

He read it again. This time he didn’t even bother looking up. The mage’s toothless companion groaned a few more times, but I refrained from any more violence to avoid giving him brain damage.

When the mage finished reading the scroll for the second time, I saw upon him the face of a man who has resigned himself. “How will you enforce it?” He asked. “If you’re first generation…”

“I have a Crest.” I activated it, showing the magi the green thorns travelling into my scalp and along my shoulders. “If I break the contract, I won’t just lose my magecraft; my brain would be porridge.”

I saw him hesitating, needing just a single push to sign the contract and submit to its will. “By the way,” I added. “We have about five minutes until my employer gets here, and he won’t be as merciful as me. Does the name ‘Archibald’ sound familiar to you?”

Harry nodded. He finally had something worth fearing without losing his pride. It would make all the difference. Better to be afraid of a Lord than some nobody. The fact that I was being merciful likely helped speed the decision along. Most magi wouldn’t even have offered a way out, much less a geas-contract guaranteeing it. I know for a fact that Archie would have resorted to physical torture if he thought it would help him get ahead.

“You’re a weird one,” the magus grumbled as he relit his partner’s torch with a finger and wedged it into a crack in the wall. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Much too often.”

“Fucking crazy first gens. You get loonier every day, I swear to God.” He skipped straight to the end of the contract, to the spot I’d left open for his signature, with mine right above it. To this day, most people I’ve foisted contracts upon wonder how I manage to prepare such intricate, specific conditions in such a short time. They’re not going to find out any time soon.

By the way, this is the part where I realize there’s a scorpion on my crotch. It’s here that the analogy begins to rear its ugly head. Up until now, everything was going about as well as could be expected, most things considered. Yes, one of my arms resembled thrice fried jerky, and I was gambling my life on a razor’s edge, but that wasn’t exactly an unusual condition to be in. You could even call it the norm in many competitive expeditions. It’s one of my mantras: If you aren’t one unlucky decision away from death at all times, you aren’t taking enough risks.

Sometimes I wonder what I’d been drinking when I came up with that shitty excuse for a sentence.

As Harry was about to touch the tip of the quill to the vellum, I saw a glimmer of light. It was a small thing, akin to an expensive watch momentarily reflecting the light of the sun, or the spark of a failed attempt to light a match. Were it as inconsequential as those examples, I’d have paid it no mind. Sadly, I’m not that lucky.

The tip of the quill fell to the floor, spreading a dot of ink among the sands. A moment later, the man’s hands followed suit, dropping lifelessly with the contract still clutched in their grip. I saw him react to the events in slow motion. First, bewilderment, followed by alarm, and finally, incomprehensible rage. All of the man’s muscles tensed at once. He roared, leaping upwards and pushing blindly towards me, all of his sanity gone.

Harry's head slid from his shoulders as his body collapsed, rolling to a stop near my foot.

“He should not have taken the Lord’s name in vain.” A familiar voice caressed my earlobe, telling me exactly how close its owner was. At the same time, I felt something sharp prick the small of my back. “Shall you repeat his mistake, grave robber?”

“…you?”

“Myself.” The sharpness subsided, giving me permission to turn around. I came face to face with the Sister, looking slightly flushed but otherwise triumphant. She was flanked by two of her goons, each one a bit green even by the light of their torches. “Greetings, Scribe. It is a surprise to see you. I didn’t think you would be able to enter this tomb so easily.” There was no sign of any weapons on her person.

“You… you got in?”

“Of course. With some guidance from above, we were able to enter this heretical place. You can holster your weapon, by the way. It’s of no use to you against us.”

I glanced down. My hostage had stopped groaning, though only because there was a coin-sized hole in his forehead. I hadn’t even noticed. Sorry, Joe.

When I returned my gaze to the Sister, I felt a blade at my neck, but saw nothing of the sort. None of her flunkies had moved, and her hands were both clasped together as if in prayer, but the sharp object almost cutting into my skin was definitely solid. The Sister smiled at my surprise. “I am favoured,” she said. “You, however, are not.”

“Oh?” I forced myself to grin. “What about those flunkies of yours? How many did you have to sacrifice just to open the way for yourself?”

“They are probing this temple as we speak,” she said. “Looking for the rest of your trinity, as well as the resting place of this tomb’s occupant.”

“You’re bluffing. I didn’t run into anybody on the way here.”

She chuckled, a soft sound that I’d almost call elegant. “Because I chose to let you through. Who do you think was responsible for stomping out that Archibald’s familiar? It’s merely a logical conclusion that he would send you to investigate. To use the words of a humble fisherman: This small bait was more than enough. Thanks to your actions, I not only have new information, but two sets of magi at my mercy.” The Sister closed her eyes, whispering a prayer. "And we thank Him for this plentiful bounty."

I raised my gun, firing off a shot at point blank range towards her forehead, while simultaneously throwing myself back. The blade shifted, and had I been slightly slower it would have taken my head off. Instead, I felt a line open up on my flesh, bleeding a small waterfall that wouldn’t be killing me any time soon.

When I came to my feet, it was to observe that none of my assailants had moved at all. Both of the Sister’s companions were in the exact same place, and she hadn’t even flinched as my bullet went through her forehead.

In hindsight, that was an incorrect conclusion. The bullet hadn’t gone through her head, or even touched her. Instead, it floated just millimeters from the Sister’s skin, already twisted into an unidentifiable lump. I saw it flatten before my eyes into something thinner than a sheet of paper, and slowly float to the floor. Her eyes followed its path before coming to rest on my own.

“Thank you,” she said.

[Dullahan]

ITT, Bloble saves Christmas.

[Bloble]

I don’t consider myself a believer. Few, if any magi are, when the largest and most powerful religious organization in the civilized world wants most of them dead. Although the Church seldom lets us forget its hatred, you’ll occasionally find a strange magus that truly believes. However, if miracles exist, then God hasn’t been granting any of them to me.

When I considered escape, as was the obvious course of action, I found my way blocked. In addition to the invincible Sister before me, I heard steps from behind, and saw the glint of three guns pointed at my back.

“That’s just cruel,” I grumbled, surrounded by enemies on all sides. “Aren’t you supposed to abhor magecraft?” I shifted slightly to move my left arm into a more comfortable position, and the barrels of two rifles followed me. The two men stood less than 50 feet away at the T-shaped intersection; more than enough to hit me if they had any skill. The Sister stood between them, still proudly displaying that irritating smile of hers. There would be at least three more men down the other side of the hall, to make sure I didn’t run. I watched numbly as two of the Sister’s henchmen dragged off Harry and Joe, likely to loot and then burn their bodies. In all likelihood, I would be next.

“This ability is something that could never be granted to one such as you,” the Sister said, spreading her arms wide as if expecting a hug from no one in particular. “You insult Him by comparing it to your machinations and tricks.”

“Oh, my mistake then. Of course this invisible pal of yours isn’t using any sorts of magecraft,” I replied loudly, while continuing to amend my position. My gun arm was free again. I could fire and shoot both of the flunkies in less than a second, but there was nothing to be done against an invisible opponent in my situation. “An artifact, then? One of those holy rocks or pieces of junk you treasure so much? Some poor dead bastard’s pillaged Mystic Code?”

From the look she gave me, the Sister was definitely not fooled. “Following His example,” she continued. “I have granted you mercy twice. A third time will not follow if you decide to attack my companions. Your life was spared on a whim, so I can take it away just as easily.”

Real nice mercy, lady. If I’d been an inch off when dodging, I’d be watering the sand with my blood right now. The true mercy would be if you kept on extending your monologue like that.

In this kind of situation, though, there wasn’t much I could do on my own, at least not without stalling. It’s times like this that force people to make difficult decisions. “Alright, fine. I surrender.” I made a show of putting Miss Daisy on the ground and moving to my knees. “I can’t keep acting like this. Risking my life only has meaning if there’s a chance of victory in the first place. You won’t kill me, right?”

“Huh?” I saw it clear as water. For a second, the Sister was surprised. Of course she hid it nicely, and unless I’d been watching for it (which I was), it wouldn’t have been noticeable. “O-of course. I honour my word. Well then, since you are now my prisoner, I command you to give me your journal. Don’t stand, or my men will shoot.”

“Hm,” I shook my head, keeping one knee on the ground. “So you know of a Scribe’s role? If that’s so, then you should also know that I’ve signed a contract preventing me from doing so. You’ll have to take it by force.”

“Break the contract, then.”

“Not a chance,” I said. None of my enemies were especially powerful magi. The two mooks were using guns, meaning Abdul must’ve been the only decent one of the lot, and Church boys typically don’t use magecraft at all. As I spoke, I ran prana through my wounded hand, slowly forcing the broken bones to knit together while leaving my burnt skin untouched. “It would kill me. If I’m going to die, I might as well do it while inconveniencing you.” No reaction. So they couldn’t sense my forming a spell. “Although,” I added with a raunchy grin. “I wouldn’t mind being searched by a doll like you, miss.”

“Why you disgusting little-!” The Sister was still for a moment before she spoke again, her words tightly controlled. Her brows furrowed as she came to the only logical conclusion that could result from my words. A single lock of blonde hair slipped down from her habit before she brushed it aside and forced aside the anger I’d been trying to stir up. “Fine,” she said, abandoning her hatred for me as easily as one would toss aside a spent cigar. “Sallah, search him, forcibly. I’ll make sure no harm comes to you.”

One of them men, fatter and more bearded than the other, lowered his rifle. He took several tentative steps forward, brandishing a torch as if it was a shield against the danger of nearing an unarmed prisoner. He kicked away Miss Daisy, grinning as he spotted my glare in the torchlight. At the same time, the Sister too ventured closer, though she stopped around thirty feet from me. There was pressure around my wrists, holding them in a steel grip. At the same time, I could see nothing of my captor, even as indentations formed on my skin. My arms were wrenched apart and held together behind my back. I felt one of my shoulders come close to popping out of its socket, and held back a hiss of pain.

She hadn’t given any orders to the invisible one. Either they could communicate non-verbally, or it was less of a person and more of an ability of hers. Or perhaps she possessed some sort of hidden artifact that afforded her control over the wind… no, that wasn’t even touching the tip of this pyramid of possibilities. I needed more information.

“Nice job, invisible man,” I said. “I suppose this is your thirteenth member? Really, the whole ‘Baker’s Dozen’ bit was rather foolish. You didn’t have to drop a hint just so we could figure it out.” She didn’t reply, but I saw her lips tense before Sallah blocked my view. “Can’t tell you where it is,” I told him. “I’d be cautious if I were in your place. Do try not to set off any of the traps. I actually like this coat.”

He glanced back to the Sister, obviously worried. “He’s bluffing,” she said. “It must be on one of the inner pockets. Believe in our Lord. He won’t allow harm to come to you.” The man didn’t seem to be nearly as faithful as his lady, but he wasn’t about to disobey her orders.

Didn’t matter. He was afraid. Be it a little, be it a lot, he had the fear in him. So did the Sister, but her abnormal amount of faith was enough to keep it from affecting her. But good old Sallah’s hands shook as he tentatively probed my outer pockets first, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t get his finger chopped off by god knows what. To him, I was a cornered rat who hadn’t tried to bite, and it set off all of the alarm bells and then some. He probably knew just enough about magecraft to imagine all the different kinds of tortures I could inflict upon him from this position, and too little to realize just how limited my arsenal was. Under his breath, whispered Arabic emerged, likely some kind of prayer.

“Tell me, Scribe,” the Sister spoke, not nearly as afraid as her follower. “Why are you here?” It was the first question she’d asked that I couldn’t laugh off or use to insult her.

“For my paycheck,” I grunted. “You should know enough that I don’t need to tell you that.”

“Is that all?” I think I detected a hint of disappointment in her voice. “Have you given no thought to the significance of what will take place here?”

“Should I have?” Archie’s the one who hired me. Let him work things out. My only purpose here is to record his story and mine, so that they might be passed on when the time comes.

The Sister was silent for a time, as Sallah rummaged through my pockets. I could do nothing but wait for my chance, even if it never came. Eventually, though, she could not keep herself from speaking. Another flaw of the zealous. They either don’t say a word, or never stop talking. “If you were to continue,” she said. “If you were to find whatever it is you are looking for, what would you do with it? Are you prepared for what sleeps in these halls, Scribe? That employer of yours is. He knows what awaits him, but your knowledge is limited. We have our seven, but an old heretic once named ignorance as the greatest sin among your kind. Certainly, you can hide behind that philosophy of yours, but I do not wish to speak to a mere recording tool.”

“…oi, watch it. You may be a lady, but if you keep accusing me like that, I might just get upset.”

“Please do. Shying away from the Truth would be an ultimate act of hypocrisy. Seeing a magus abandon his beliefs like that could bring me nothing but joy.”

She got me. One victory to her in our pointless game.

Sallah withdrew a piece of paper from a pocket and unfolded it. The pilot’s contact information. “Go ahead,” I said, glad to be able to talk at someone who wouldn’t bite back. “Keep it. You might need a quick flight out of Egypt very soon. There’s plagues here you can only get treatment for in the Clock Tower’s dungeons.”

He angrily kicked me in the stomach before roughly replacing the paper, muttering curses in Arabic under his breath. I didn’t dare risk a reinforcement, so that morning’s weak breakfast met and mingled with the sand at his feet in no time at all. At the same time, I felt a tiny prick in my burnt, all too sensitive hand. A thin, barely noticeable string crawled up my index finger and poked my palm. My hiss of pain was masked by my attempts to keep my stomach down.

I looked at the Sister as the string began tracing familiar shapes on my charred skin. “Not being very true to your beliefs, are you, lady?” I coughed, retching up some blood. “You ain’t an Executor, that’s certain. But definitely not from the Burial Agency either. Those people aren’t nearly as faithful as you, but they’d never work with magi so easily.”

She ignored my part-insult part-inquiry. “You are a scoundrel and a thug, Scribe. Have you no sense of shame?”

“Ah, sorry. Lost that when I decided to learn magecraft. We tend to be a wonderfully pragmatic bunch when our lives are on the line.” R, the string traced. E, A, and a D followed by a Y. “Don’t misunderstand, though,” I told the Sister. “We don’t lose everything. See, my Record tells me my parents were praying folk.”

She stilled. Sallah was leafing through my inner pockets, seconds away from discovering the journal. The invisible manacles on my hands tightened painfully. I’d gotten to her. The string on my palm traced the number 3, followed by a 2, counting down.

“There was this one verse from the good book I enjoyed quite a bit as a child. I can almost remember it now. Genesis 1:3, I think it was.”

I saw her eyes widen. Too late, lady. Too late.

The string traced a 1, and then jammed itself into my skin.

“And God said: Let there be light!”

A curious fact about a spell’s aria is that it can be practically anything as long as it involves language of some kind. Most magi go for Latin, German, or an obscure dialect when inventing their chants. A few of the more refined ones use poetry, either homebrewed or shamelessly taken from a famous dead guy. I once worked for a magus who intentionally deafened himself, and then substituted sign language for the spoken variety, with favorable results. In general, though, the more complicated the spell, the more complicated the aria. Following this supposition, a small gesture can be set off by a simple sentence or phrase, allowing for remarkable amounts of variety that’s rarely utilized to its fullest extent.

On a side note, I write these words completely aware of my own hypocrisy in the matter. I can’t know what I was thinking when I dreamed up my chants, but I’ve found that, invariably, they tend towards the blasphemous, for both magi and believer. Really, Bible quotes of all things? For what purpose?

After my proclamation, a series of things happened in quick succession. First, the less than effective enchanted bullet that I’d fired earlier activated its effect in response to my aria. The spell Miss Daisy had engraved on its innards activated, burning the chunk of metal’s mass to become a flare that lit up the room and blinded that man standing right in front of it, conveniently taking his gun out of commission. For a split second the Sister became the centre of a solar eclipse, the halo of brightness around her illuminating the carvings upon the walls and lengthening her shadow immensely. I heard a cry of pain from Sallah, who had turned towards her to inquire about something.

Second, the tiny sphere of light that I’d been forming in my clenched hands the entire time rose above my head and did the same thing the bullet did, burning itself out in a single moment to blind my aggressor from the other side, all while leaving me the only one in the hall with working vision for the some precious seconds.

Not the most well planned escape, I’ll admit, but it had to be then, before the Sister’s desire to keep me alive vanished. Despite all of my supposed bravado, I do not want to know the details of what happens to magi captured by the Church. I recorded a horror story told to me by my teacher, once, of those poor souls. It still chills me to this day.

The manacles around my wrists remained as the final barrier to my flight, and they weren’t about to disappear just from the Sister’s blindness. On the contrary, they tightened, and with several audible cracks I heard rather than felt the reinforced bones in my wrists shatter into several tiny pieces, leaving me unable to lift a finger and barely restraining myself from screaming like a young boy finding out firsthand what it feels like to fight someone who kicks low.

It was then that our Guide decided to enact her part of the rescue. Although I couldn’t see them, I am told that several metal strings, in addition to the one that had served as my warning, wrapped around the spectre’s invisible arms and pulled with the force of what she later told me was several tons, achieved through creative use of the wall’s carvings as hooks and makeshift pulleys.

I do know that nothing happened. She might as well have been struggling against an unmovable object. In response, the fingers squeezed again, sending a fresh wave of pain into my brain. Through the haze I saw Sallah flailing wildly with his gun, pointing every which way. Yells started up. The Sister screamed for her men to do something, anything to punish my disobedience. Sallah’s replies and those of his brothers promised me death in a language I could barely understand.

“Get the woman away!” I roared. “She’s controlling it!”

Sallah whirled in my direction, his gun coming up aimed directly at my forehead. He may have been blind, but he wasn’t deaf. As his finger tightened on the trigger I did the only thing I could and lunged forward, stretching and cracking more bones in my arms, but successfully getting my teeth clamped lengthwise around the long barrel of the rifle. I jerked to the left as he fired, and the bullet near deafened me as it exited, but I felt only the heat of parting air, ringing in my ear, and numbness in my mouth instead of oblivion, meaning it had missed.

At the same time, I felt the pressure on my hands disappear as suddenly as it had shown up. I was free.

Of course, it wasn’t because of some heroic breakthrough on my part. Rather, it was a simple confirmation of my earlier theory. The Sister’s cries had been muffled, and she struggled futilely against a string that had wrapped itself around her throat and tightened. Somehow, she hadn’t been decapitated instantly. Despite the noise, I could hear her choking and sputtering as she tried to get air into her lungs. Unable to kill her, the makeshift noose dragged her backwards, away from me.

Sallah, blinking away the spots in his vision, cursed and yanked his gun from my mouth. He swung it like a club, and I barely ducked out of the way as it whooshed over my head. The one closer to the Sister was rushing to her aid, leaving only this man as the last obstacle I had to overcome.

As he raised his weapon to smash it down on his near defenceless opponent, the gun jumped from Sallah’s hand, pulled along by more of Moriah’s string. He looked at his empty palms for a second, one I took and used to give him a well deserved knee to the one part of the human body you can never reinforce enough. He crumpled like a wet newspaper.

“This way.” Among the yells and sounds of people choking, I heard a familiar accented voice behind me. Rising to my feet, I turned and ran towards it as well as I could, wincing as the movement jostled the mess my wrists had become. I only paused to flip Miss Daisy up into the air with my foot before awkwardly grabbing onto her barrel with my mouth.

The main reason I’d surrendered instead of just legging it was ostensibly to gather information from my captors, but that hadn’t gone through. The Sister, while definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed, was smart enough to keep her mouth shut about anything that could be important, settling for ridiculously horrible interrogations, dropping obvious hints, and philosophising. The second was the presence of Church men in the halls, specifically the two standing directly in my way. Even if I ran from the Sister, I’d likely be shot full of bullets almost instantly.

The third was because I knew backup would be arriving shortly.

I won’t deny that I felt a sick feeling of giddiness as I saw two fallen men in my way, splayed about limp on the ground. A third was slumped against a wall with his eyes empty and a thin stream of blood running from his mouth, with only the slight rise and fall of his chest to signify his continued survival.

At that point I was beginning to feel the strain of overusing my circuits, but I still spared enough prana to reinforce my eyes again, in lieu of lighting a highly visible torch. The yells from behind me grew louder, and with a sharp bang, I felt something shoot past my shoulder, followed by more bullets that went from bouncing off the walls to nicking my clothes.

I lowered my head and surged forward, knowing that I’d be feeling the strain hours later. The bullets continued, and I passed two more bodies before I came to another four way intersection. As soon as I stepped into the open area, a hand reached out and unceremoniously yanked me into the left turn.

“We go straight,” Moriah said, panting lightly. “Two more lefts, one right, and they’ll lose the trail.”

No more words needed to be said. We ran, pursued by ever fainter yells and the Sister’s unspoken promise of vengeance. True to the Guide’s word, the sounds completely faded after the last turn, where we stopped to catch our breath. Moriah lit a torch and wedged it into a space in the wall, letting me see her face without having to squint.

I spat out the gun in my mouth as she sank against the wall, but couldn’t do the same for the sand that had gotten stuck on it. “You’ve got blood on you,” I observed, between bouts of hacking and coughing.

She idly reached up and tried to wipe a blot of red from her cheek, only succeeding in smudging it. “It will wash off.”

I took a seat across from her, taking care not to move my hands in any capacity. They were well broken, certainly requiring an investment to get into working condition. Running the numbers in my head only made things worse. I’d be able to heal, but it would leave me functionally drained for a day. I’d barely have enough juice to maintain my Crest, let alone record and retrieve anything.

“Archibald is angry,” Moriah said eventually. She stared at one spot on the ground, not moving to meet my searching gaze. “When we return, there’s a 65% chance of you and him getting into a serious argument, approximately.”

“How serious?”

And then came the flood of numbers. “Odds heavily favour it going to violence. There’s a 63% chance of him inflicting a lethal injury, and a 7% chance of you doing the same to him. The chances of you both surviving are less than desirable.” It sounded less like an explanation and more like she was reading it off a sheet of paper, but the words themselves weren’t pleasant at all.

I don’t know where she gets those predictions from. Those from Atlas usually never say. They’ll claim to fight for the world’s survival at heart, but it doesn’t stop them from hoarding more secret weapons than most of the Clock Tower and being generally tight-lipped. It’s why tensions have been growing all this time. An associate of mine once claimed that only the fact that they technically swear fealty to the Association keeps the Tower from mounting a forcible take-over. That, and the fact that most magi are too prideful to admit that they might lose should it come to war. He didn’t have to tell me the second part.

I switched topics. “Why did we run, earlier?” I asked her. “From what I can tell, you had the situation well under control. We could have gone on the offensive easily enough.”

“Appearances can be deceiving. Had we stayed, there was a large chance that… well, we likely would have both ended up dead.” I thought I saw Moriah shuddering for a moment in the dim light, but it must’ve just been the torchlight flickering over her face. She’s too young to be saying this kind of stuff without flinching, but the divide between age and skill is rapidly shrinking these days. Soon we’ll have youngsters outperforming people with decades over them.

“The Sister?”

“I couldn’t ascertain her abilities fully. It could be anything from wind manipulation to spiritual projection. We are fortunate that it possesses a limited effective range. Of our group, Sir Archibald is the only one with favourable odds in a direct confrontation.”

She must’ve seen the look on my face, because she quickly tried to amend her statement. “What I mean to say is that you are simply unsuited to fighting her, not that you aren’t skilled.”

“It’s fine.”

She was a sceptic. “You seem irritated.”

“That’s because my wrists are a mess of bloody splinters.”

“Do you need medical help?”

“No. Just get on with it.”

She explained herself. The rescue had been planned as soon as I’d been captured. Archie’s hardly little mouse saw the whole thing, and they’d worked out what to do quickly enough after some encouraging statistics from our resident seer. Moriah wasn’t too thrilled about having been sent to save me on her own, but that’s just what Clock Tower magi are like. Why risk your own life when you can have someone else risk theirs?

Archibald would join us in a half hour. We waited in silence for the first fifteen minutes, her reading the journal I’d pilfered from the recently deceased Joe and me doing my best not to slice an artery by breathing too hard. Then the torch burnt down. I moved to replace it, remembering too late that my arms were little more than dead weight.

“Allow me.” Moriah deftly lit another torch and wedged it into a wall socket, once more illuminating the foreboding carvings and bringing a semblance of order to my pain-addled mind.

“This place makes no sense,” I grumbled. “What use are these halls? There are no traps, no treasure, just a pointless maze that shouldn’t exist. There’s no guarantee that there exists here something that could kill a million people in an instant, yet we are risking our lives to search for it. ”

“There were traps,” Moriah said. “And people.” She traced over a mural next to my head with a delicate finger. “Fourteen hundred years ago, a would-be robber made it to this wall. Once he stepped past the threshold, his body was compacted into an area smaller than an eyeball. Two hundred years later, one of the magi assigned to investigate this discovery triggered a secondary trap that deposited the mass of the first magus into the second’s cranium. The slave who cleaned up their remains made it to the next intersection before her soul was forcibly extracted and her body turned to sand.”

She looked at me, her gaze hardened, silently judging me. “The only reason we still live is because of the countless predecessors who died in our place. This tomb has stood for millennia, and only now, after its weapons have been exhausted, do we have a chance to penetrate to its deepest parts. There was a price paid for our progress. We have the fortune of not being the ones to bear its burden, but we are obliged to finish what they began.”

“To finish what? Dying in vain? Leaving behind kids, family, all for greed? Just look at Archibald. I'd bet my eyes that he's here just to try and prove his crackpot uncle's theories correct and get rid of the stain on his family name. There are better uses for a life.”

Her mouth tightened. “There are also worse. You should know that.”

I usually consider myself a relatively balanced person. Though I cannot boast of any great accomplishments or discoveries (barring personal ones that have no place in this journal), my name is known to many in my field, and I feel comfortable in saying that I am satisfied with my current life style. In rare occasions, however, I find myself overcome with great anger, which I cannot explain away. It is a seemingly random urge to find the most beautiful, masterful thing I can see and destroy it. To tear down a work of art, desecrate a palace, and smear mud over a well written paper. In response to the girl’s words, that anger surfaced once more, and with it, a desire to show an upstart child exactly what I knew.

Cooler minds prevailed, of course. Had I displayed my tantrum I would be nothing more than a child unable to control his own irrational urges. Even our juvenile Guide has grasped that much, perhaps slightly too well for my tastes. It worries me, though. My Record has no trace of that emotion’s origin, and I cannot place its start in my timeline. Yet it persists where others would fade, only to vanish suddenly minutes or hours later, unlike true dislike or hatred, as if it was some kind of remnant of something I cannot remember.

On a side note, the original record of this short period of time was indisputably obscene and had to be removed. One of the flaws with a passive recording method is that the entries will usually be much less organized than those written later from memory, thanks to emotions staining words and sentences. Such articles frequently require editing to be legible, this being one such case. Something written while in the throes of anger will rarely be readable.

It was to my fortune, however twisted, that Archibald decided to show up at that moment, sparing me the necessity of responding to Moriah’s implication. Judging from how close together he had brought those bushy eyebrows, he wasn’t amused.

“One hour,” he sneered, tapping his cane on the walls. “I give you one hour without me and you wind up near dead. I doubt you’ll be able to fulfill your contract if your brain has ceased operating, Scribe. Or has it already done so? Certainly it would explain your gross incompetence thus far.”

7%, she said. Judging from the look on Moriah’s face, that number had just gone up. Perhaps her prediction method had failed to take into account her own contribution, because at that moment I was ready to kill the man who dared to lecture me like a child. Just one word away from snapping, I stood, my arms limp at my sides.

“Your orders were faulty,” I said, with the most even tone I could manage. “Expecting me to handle two unknown magi was foolish. I’m a scribe, not a fighter.”

Not even enough. In the dim light I saw the corners of his lips turn up. “If you are saying the sword is only as powerful as its master, then I will have to refuse your offer. Outside of this contract, you’ve yet to give me a single reason to keep you even as the lowliest of slaves.”

“I did what you asked.”

“You should have refused.”

I couldn’t have, and he knew it. “I succeeded, even with the Church showing up despite your insistence that they wouldn’t. If you wanted me dead, you could have killed me days ago and saved me the trouble of having to come all the way here." Meaning he was lying about being referred to me by an associate. So he did have ulterior motives, as the Sister said. Terrific. This situation couldn’t possibly get worse, I thought to myself, not knowing of how this world enjoys its irony.

“Hmph. You aren’t as stupid as you look.” With those words, Archie apparently decided that the conversation was over, because he turned away from me and towards Moriah. “Girl, I will assume that you managed to tear your eyes away from this frippery on the walls long enough to plot our route to the center. We must be off as soon as possible.”

I could have punched him. My arms were useless, but I could have socked that smug bastard in the face, even if recalling a whole arm burnt me out completely. I could have blown his head off, burnt it to a crisp with one pyrophoric fist, as easily as remembering an old address. The only reason I didn’t was the fact that I knew it would be exactly what he wanted, and that it would kill me. On the bright side, I was no longer mad at our alchemist.

We set off with little fanfare. I’d like to say that I got a good blow in, but Archie isn’t the kind of person who cares for the opinions of those below him. Moriah gave him a few simple directions and he set off, not slowing down for the rest of us. He sent several returning familiars forward and led the way with torch and cane in hand. Moriah and I brought up the rear. Any chance of good conversation was buried when she returned to looking at that blasted journal, leaving me to try and interest myself with my surroundings.

The walls stood out even more-so than they had when I ventured forth on my own. The depictions had gained realism unseen in similarly ancient civilizations, depicting beating hearts, chanting hordes, and that ever present disk in the sky seeing everything with its unblinking gaze. It was almost as if the carving was watching us as well, more interested in the real world than a false image of slaughter. Moriah didn’t bother to explain any of it. She didn’t even give any predictions, likely because her ability is the kind that can only take into account known variables when coming up with a number. Judging from her tight lipped determination, though, said number wasn’t likely to be in our favour.

We didn’t run into anyone. For that small mercy I am thankful. Perhaps it was our initiative that had given us that. With almost a week until our deadline, the other magi itching to investigate would still be behind us, barring a few clever hopefuls and the angry Church crew. As we walked, the only concession Archibald made was not forcing me to hold a torch, though he refused to slow down at all. My hands recovered slowly but surely. After half an hour of silent, painful walking, I could move my fingers properly, albeit with every twitch accompanied by a symphony of searing pain. Continuing at that rate, I’d be done in an hour, and so would my circuit, leaving barely enough to keep my Crest going.

Whether for better or for worse, we arrived at our destination before that.

There’s a certain pattern that you go through when shamelessly pillaging ancient, crumbling ruins, even if said ruins haven’t quite reached the crumbling phase. The initial difficulty lies in finding the entrance and dealing with any other tomb robbers that might be competing with you for the prize. After that, you must make your way through the usually sprawling maze of traps and tunnels. This particular mission was disappointing on that note, but I’m not complaining. Continuing, the third and likely most important part is finding said treasure, artifact, or sealed abomination of terrible destruction once inside the place.

Of course, the treasures are never hidden very well. On the contrary, people tend to put them out in the open as if they’re being displayed for the whole world to see, many times building the entire structure around a large, open room housing said treasure. It’s illogical, but the trend is disturbingly constant. The best hypothesis most explorers can agree on is that people from the Age of Gods were simply very, very vain, and lacking in more than a little common sense, which is strange, considering how even ordinary folk caught on to the idea well enough after a few dozen dead and buried pharaohs found their tombs being ransacked by thieves.

For one moment we were trudging along an endless, sandy corridor, and in the next I took a step into a room of pure white marble, lit by pulsing green flames set into a wall that stretched up into endless darkness. The room itself was circular as a jarring contrast to the rest of the tomb. Its radius must’ve been at least equal to the width of the hallways we’d trudged through, and the single continuous wall (with no visible entrances or exits, including the one I’d stepped through) was covered with murals that made those we’d passed by earlier look like the scribbles of a child, depicting everything from that disk again, to complex mathematical formulae I’d need hours to decipher. The floor was no longer sand and rough stone, but evenly spaced tiles put together so well that they could’ve been one solid slab of smooth rock. A glance down confirmed my guess: It too, was a canvas for a deranged artist.

Were we in any other position, I would likely be writing about the disorientation I felt as I entered the room, or perhaps commenting on the unusual architecture while guessing its purpose. Sadly, that isn’t the case. This brief description is what I took in during my initial glance at the room. The rest of my attention was from then on focused only on the center of the chamber, and nowhere else.

A single beam of light shone down onto a structure in the middle of the room, one that I can only describe as a series of marble pillars loosely arranged in a circle with their tops linked together, but spaced out enough for a man of my size to slip through the gaps between easily enough. I’d have called it a gazebo if there had been a roof of any kind. Instead, it was more of a fence for the piercing beam of light that speared through the structure from the unseen ceiling, perfectly bathing the interior in gold without spilling out into the surroundings.

Also, coincidentally, making it extremely obvious what the interior contained. In this case an elaborate sarcophagus, and the limp body of a man draped over it.

Archie wasn’t happy about that. Not the desecration of the temple, but the fact that we hadn’t gotten there first. “Investigate, Scribe,” he said, but Moriah was already running towards the chain of pillars. I stuck a foot in front of her legs, letting gravity do the rest of the work. She flailed awkwardly in the air with a picturesque expression of surprise on her face before hitting marble.

“Not a good idea,” I said as she picked herself up off the ground, rubbing her reddened nose and glaring at me accusatorily. “There could be all kinds of traps just waiting for us to trigger them, or he could be alive and waiting for us to come closer before he attacks. Let the familiars go first.”

Surprisingly, Archie was bereft of protests. He sent a quarter of the smaller creatures under his command to approach the circle from all sides. They reached the pillars without incident, though none entered, in case they would be breaking the perimeter of a trap. We followed, getting a closer look at the body in the circle.

It wasn’t particularly surprising, but the revelation still had a bit of an impact. The familiar black and white of the Balkenkreuz was poorly hidden on the man’s shoulder, and his military uniform told the story of a low ranking officer who had somehow found himself far, far away from his battle lines. The soldier’s face was indistinguishable as he lay on his stomach, and we couldn’t simply cross the line to turn it over. Moriah, who had seemed abnormally stressed the moment she had glimpsed the body, insisted that it was a magic circle, and neither I nor Archie had any reason to disagree with her. She asked for time to decipher some of the wall murals, and we replied in the affirmative.

That affirmative only lasted until a loud grinding noise emanated from the circle of pillars. Three pairs of human eyes and countless more inhuman ones immediately looked towards the body, finding that the body was a body no longer; our mystery man had woken.

The grinding was the lid of the sarcophagus being pushed from its resting place by the man’s shifting weight. Unaware of the noise, our soldier raised his head, revealing limp blond hair, darkened circles under his eyes, and an unhealthy pallor to his skin.

I was closest, so he noticed me first through a gap in the stone. His dead eyes fixed on mine and I could no more move them that I could my hands. His face fell at some terrifying conclusion he’d evidently arrived at, and with desperation he spoke, pushing himself off the sarcophagus and standing on two legs.

“Leave,” he groaned in slurred German, staggering as close to me as he could without exiting the perimeter. His accent was noticeably more modern than Master’s had been, so I found little difficulty in understanding it. “Brother, you cannot stay here. It was a trap, all of it. This entire place is just a feeding ground for the sleeping one,” his eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed, falling on his side this time. “And we were the harvest.”

Perhaps I could have prevented what happened next. I don’t think so. I feel that, whatever the case, it would have happened anyway. We were merely unfortunate enough to arrive at the worst, or best possible time to witness it.

The grinding noise didn’t stop. I saw for the first time the intricate paint on the sarcophagus, depicting a man with the head of a jackal, and the crimson blood that had bled from the man’s pierced stomach and into the coffin through holes in the top. I saw the pillars crack, an angry red glare overpowering the warm glow of sunlight. The noise intensified, and the cracks spread from the pillars to the floor, emanating both outwards and inwards, scarring the pure marble with ugly fissures that widened quickly. As if time had slowed, I perceived the cracks reach the coffin and spread to it as well, moving along carvings and jagged lines until they were woven around the thing like an intricate net.

I saw Archibald raise his cane, an aria on his lips.

I saw Moriah thrusting her palm towards the circle, strings jumping to life from her fingertips.

I saw a bloody hand wrapped in yellow cloth burst from the center of the coffin, reaching towards the light even as its coverings hissed and blackened.

I felt the ground shift under my feet and then lurch, sending me careening towards the center of the room, which was now noticeably lower than the rest.

I heard a scream as the ground crumbled beneath my legs, sending me spiralling into darkness.

[shiningphoenix]

Update! Yay!

[NewAgeOfPower]

another cliffhanger. How long till next chapter?

great chpter btw. Love the sion expy.

[Bloble]

another cliffhanger. How long till next chapter?

great chpter btw. Love the sion expy.

You can expect it in around a month, barring unforeseen circumstances. Classes are somewhat difficult to deal with.

On another note, glad you liked Moriah. She'll be getting more fleshed out next chapter, so hopefully she'll seem less like a complete expy by then.

[Five_X]

Yay, I managed to catch up at last!

Scribe gonna tap dat Egyptian ass, yeaaaaah.

[Mattias]

I feel kinda stupid for just now realizing that the sun god in the title is Ra.

[Rafflesiac]

I like, I like, I very much like. And all of these descriptions of people praying to a sun/eye/circle-thing in the sky remind me of Seihai-kun. With the end of the chapter though, now I suspect Dead Apostle Pharaoh trying to activate ancient Egyptian Giza superweapon.

[Tiresias]

This is fun.

[NewAgeOfPower]

Yay, I managed to catch up at last!

Scribe gonna tap dat Egyptian ass, yeaaaaah.

He'll have accumulate land and pay 5 mana first.

[Rafflesiac]

He'll have accumulate land and pay 5 mana first.

Pay 5 to tap? Jesus, that's gotta be one hell of an effect...

[shiningphoenix]

Pay 5 to tap? Jesus, that's gotta be one hell of an effect...

Maybe it just gets repeatable card advantage. That's the kind of effect that tends to cost a lot.

[Vigilantia]

I like, I like, I very much like. And all of these descriptions of people praying to a sun/eye/circle-thing in the sky remind me of Seihai-kun. With the end of the chapter though, now I suspect Dead Apostle Pharaoh trying to activate ancient Egyptian Giza superweapon.

Goa'uld Mothership and Stargate?

[GigansOrtus]

Mattias,

I dunno. The Egyptians had a lot of solar deities.

I associate the jackal with Anubis, who I don't recall hearing claims of being a solar deity.

Wiki says that the Egyptian Jackal is actually a wolf, so I'm rethinking the sort of things I can do with that.

Rafflesiac,

Solar symbols can match a bunch of things in Ancient Egyptian mythologies, some of them associated with Pharohs.

On the one hand, blood seems to have been the final wake up. On the other, this thing seems to have or developed very strong heat and fire aspects. On the gripping hand, certain Meso American Solar/Fire deities. Start with the pyramids, assume that Spanish descriptions of the Mexica are correct, and extrapolate backwards on the assumption that Maya, Olmec and so forth were fairly similar.

It may be plausible that something started working in Meso American, and came to Egypt to build the tomb to hibernate in, leaving behind cults and artifacts in both locations.

[NewAgeOfPower]

Pay 5 to tap? Jesus, that's gotta be one hell of an effect...

You wouldn't pay 5 to tap Sion...?



IIRC, arashi had a really good pic of her without the hat.

[Rafflesiac]

You wouldn't pay 5 to tap Sion...?

Like I said - one hell of an effect. Just gotta get my Signets first...