Amonkhet Past
(Intended as an alternative method for Samut to learn of Nicol Bolas’s true nature. Set at the end of the official Magic story Trespass: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/trespass-2017-05-10)
Samut grunts a final time as the heavy stone slab of a door grinds open. She pauses a moment for breath before pulling her torch from the sconce outside the darkened chamber and stepping inside. Within, Samut can feel the stale taste of years - No one has entered here in decades. She looks around, at low tables she recognizes as embalming stations, similar yet different from other chambers in Bontu’s monument.
As she tries to put her finger on why this particular chamber seems off, she sees it. Instantly she recognizes the glyph that brings her back to years ago, to the tortured squawks of her dying friend, to the horrors beyond the Hekma. The ubiquitous horns of the presumed God-Pharaoh, above the harshly etched “trespasser.”
Understanding floods Samut as the tides fill the shores of the Luxa. It was not we who trespassed beyond the Hekma. It was the God-Pharaoh, who trespassed into this world. From beyond, a conqueror who erased all that came before. All, except these hidden places.
Even in her revelation, Samut’s senses notice as a breeze causes the torch to flicker. A breeze four stories underground… Samut whirls around, readying a spell of quickness as she half-draws her sword. Even in this place of troubling truth, she is unprepared for what she finds.
A man stands before her, his edges misty and fuzzy, like a body viewed through the Hekma, but as Samut watches the stranger solidifies, the strange wind ceasing. The man is old, older than anyone Samut has ever known, at least thirty, with a body all warriors would admire, but long hair that Samut cannot help but think would be detrimental in a fight.
The man’s outlandish, scale covered garb and strange bone-like staff take a moment longer to process before Samut has fully drawn her sword. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The man’s eyes open, a distant red sheen in them dimming as he looks around the chamber, completely ignoring her questions. Samut finds herself enthralled, unable to attack, unwilling to retreat, anxiously waiting for this odd person to act first. Samut hates waiting.
Finally, the man speaks. “I do not believe we have much time. This world - your world - is about to face a fate it barely survived the last time.” Samut watches as his eyes flicker to the horns carved in the wall. “This plane has been blinded for decades, and finally I’ve found one who can handle the truth.”
“You mean about the God-Pharaoh?” Samut fights the urge to finish the blessing. “What do you mean?” And again, “Who are you?”
Samut sees the crimson light flash in the stranger’s eyes again, and braces herself as he bursts out, “He is no god! He is destruction, and poison, and ruin for all he touches! I have seen too many planes sundered by his greed, too many held enthralled under his dominion!” His eyes dim again, and Samut sees his head drop. “Too many blinded by his promises.”
Samut waits again, and just as she is about to try to get his attention, the strange man locks eyes with her. “The time is short. My name is Sarkhan Vol. This God-Pharaoh is not like your gods. He cares not for you, or this plane.” Sarkhan gestures at himself. “He is like me, a traveler among worlds. He schemes and plots for power, and leaves entire ways of life to die behind him. He is returning here, to Amonkhet, to fulfill some plan he put in place before I was even born.” He fixes Samut with the steely gaze of a warrior, one who fights not for honor or the glory of the afterlife. In Sarkhan, Samut sees the primal struggle of survival, of a man who bent himself against total annihilation and prevailed. Samut thinks back to her training, to the spectacle of the Trials, and cannot help but feel childish.
“What can I do?” she asks, feeling for all the world like a child again, first experiencing the presence of her gods.
Sarkhan nods. “Watch. Learn. Hopefully something in this world’s past can aid you against the terror that is to come.”
Before Samut can voice the thousand thousand questions dancing around her mind, the stranger - Sarkhan - reaches out to place a calloused hand over her forehead, and as his eyes begin to burn with a new fire, blue as lazotep, Samut feels her consciousness be thrown back, out of the stream of time. As her eyes roll back, she sees the traveller step back, and begin to fade from her view as the chamber goes dark.
Four figures walked along the darkened hall, deep beneath the shifting sands of Amonkhet. A small child, still a toddler, strode forward at the head of the strange ensemble. As it progressed, it would look from side to side, glancing up into the pitch darkness at the unreadable torsos of the huge statues that lined the catacomb. Where normal eyes would find blackness, the child’s eyes seemed to find confirmation of something it already knew was there, and the big head would bob and nod as it checked each alcove.
Trailing behind the other three, the crocodile-headed giant finally broke the silence. “If we could know what we’re training for, I could ensure our initiates are prepared better. Just tell me what it is you see-” The giant was cut off her sentence as the pudgy little hand of the child rose.
The figure to the child’s right, the size of a normal mortal, addressed the outburst. “We have seen many dangers beyond this world, Bontu. The Luxa flows in mystifying circles, and one does not always see the same scrap of wood twice during the tide.” The sound of Bontu’s grating teeth made the vast room rumble.
“Leave the riddles for your sphinxes, Sut. I deserve answers.”
The golden human head of Sut returned facing forward, not dignifying Bontu with a response. Instead, the figure to the child’s left slowly turned. Bontu felt uneasiness, as she always did when Naktamun addressed her. The golden halo encircled a nothingness that was all too similar to the horrors that strode on the edges of civilization. As always, that eyeless sight pierced through to her core.
“Have I not supplied sufficient challenges for you to overcome, my sister? Do you wish to place those in your care in danger in order to prove yourself further?”
A quick shake of the huge crocodilian head, and a puffing of her breast in pride. “I have proven myself worthy countless times. I have striven above my brothers and sisters. You owe me an-”
“Do we?” All three fell silent and felt their heads bowed, as the deep booming voice of a plane reverberated in their very beings, and the child turned at last.
“Who gave you life, dear Bontu?” Without awaiting a response, the child continued. “Who has secured our lands so that your people may flourish? Who has kept the darkness in my world at bay, so that only those who go seeking for it will find their struggles for survival? Who has plucked the souls of every mortal to perish, and kept them safe and ready for the nights to come? Have you done this, my daughter?”
Bontu was ashamed. “No, Amonkhet, I only desired-”
“I know what you desire, my daughter. Did I not create you? Did I not pluck your from my very bosom, shape you to be the highest reaching of my children? Oketra calls the mortals to herself, teaches them of unity, the unity we shall need when our world comes under attack. Rhonas teaches strength, the power needed to protect this home. Kefnet spreads his wisdom, honing the crafts the mortals bring him.”
“And Hazoret?” Bontu spat. “What of your favorite daughter?”
The child smiled, a grin that again put Bontu to shame. “Hazoret is my love for you all. Hers is the fervor with which I look after my own. The hearth which I light each night to keep you all safe from the darkness. Her heart is steadfast and willing to run into danger, for any of our people.”
Bontu was silent a moment. “And me?” she finally rumbled.
Sut and Naktamun parted as the child walked back. It placed a small hand on Bontu’s ankle, as high as it could reach. “You, daughter, shall defend us all. While Hazoret leads our warriors into battle, you give them something to strive for. You are what each of our people attempts to be, to live up to. You have journeyed further into the wastes than any other, you have conquered countless of Naktamun’s brood. Why, then, do you require more?”
Bontu remained silent, and soon the child avatar of the plane resumed its inspection of the catacomb. After a moment, Sut, keeper of Life and Death, followed. When both had passed further into the darkened chamber, Naktamun, tamer of horrors, spoke up.
“You feel in your bones that something is coming.” It was not a question. Bontu hesitated, then nodded her huge head.
“Each of us shall face many difficulties in the coming days. I wonder… Will your ambition be our salvation, or our fall?” With that, the faceless deity walked on, and Bontu was left to ponder its words.
Bontu strode from the relative safety of the outposts, saluting the warriors that stood on the parapets, almost at her eye-level. At her recognition, they stood a little taller, eyes turned, a little sharper, back to the dizzying sandstorm beyond this limit of civilization.
Naktamun, created by Amonkhet to keep the horrors of the world at bay, deterred the faceless beings from getting too close to the growing cities and centers of population in the harsh desert. Most of the time. Infrequently, a shambling horror would emerge on the horizon, and Amonkhet’s gods, the keepers of its people, would appear to defend those they had been created to protect.
Bontu herself had been known to take down horrors twice her size, on her own, though Hazoret could claim this as well. Bontu, though, would go traversing the harsh dunes in search of danger, returning with heads the size of buildings to show her followers and prove to them that, when one strives for greatness, anything is possible.
It was with this goal that Bontu headed out that day, striding proudly against the sandstorm in the direction the last horror assault had come from. For hours she walked, eyes scanning the horizon for the spindly figure of a horror. Bontu came across a gathering of sandwurms as the sun reached its pinnacle, but they felt her presence and averted their course. Soon, only a handful of buzzards were Bontu’s company.
Buzzards… In a motion, Bontu was sprinting, huge pillars of sand sent skyward as her sandalled feet pushed through countless dunes. As she approached the buzzards, what she had assumed was another dune shifted. A vast dragon lay in the desert, the sandstorm quickly covering up a partially revealed wing, a flank. The sands could not seem to cover up, however, two great horns emerging regally from the dragon’s head.
He was unlike any dragon Bontu had ever seen, gigantic, easily twice her size. As she approached, he stirred again, and after a moment’s hesitation, Bontu laid her hand on the beast.
Immediately, Bontu felt a force on her mind, unlike she had ever felt before. She imagined this must be what it was like to stand before herself as a mortal, mind lain bare, intentions naked. Beyond this, she felt her strength draining, and she stumbled to her knees, glancing about for the perpetrator - until she watched as the dragon began to rise.
He was larger than she estimated, towering over her as he unfurled his wings and stretched his long neck skyward. Bontu watched, transfixed, as his horns cradled the setting sun.
With a lurch, Bontu pulled herself to her feet, knowing now the danger facing Amonkhet. The dragon seemed to not have noticed her, and appeared to still be rejuvenating himself after his vampiric assault on her mind. Bontu glanced back the way she had come. She could still run. Make it back to Amonkhet and Naktamun and Sut, to her brothers and sisters. Surely this was not a fight she could win.
When one strives for greatness, anything is possible. Her own words echoed in her mind, and she turned back to the trespasser, clearly not of this world. Here was her chance, here was the victory that would earn her a seat with her creator, and the two eldest beings on the plane.
Bontu unslung her staff from her back, and sent a psychic attack back at the now glowing dragon. Instantly, Bontu regretted her decision. With a snap, the dragon’s head bent down, and his large, black eyes bored straight into her soul. With a mental shrug, her attack was disarmed, and again Bontu felt her own mind under assault, stronger and more direct than before.
It was not only her mind that was attacked, however. Bontu felt the dragon’s recognition of what she was, and faced a chilling realization that this, this thing, had faced something like her before.
And apparently had won.
Bontu felt her very being, the mana that comprised her, be picked apart like the guts of an antelope, felt her essence be laid bare and scrutinized, and realized in an instant that, with a wave of his claw, this dragon could end her existence. She was stunned, then, when she continued to think, continued to feel the wracking pain and terror of the dragon’s examination. Her horror grew as she felt his mind prodding her soul, pulling it apart and rearranging it. Within her mind she felt, more than heard, a deep, malevolent grumble. Her last cohesive thought was the recognition that it was his laughter.