Before the After by DiscoDanLives/Neshmet Lyra Khaemset Dan
The antechamber is a deep grey, speckled with strange fossils, carved from the bedrock of the planet eons ago by an alien race whose name was forgotten even before Earth arrived in the sector. Its original purpose, and the cathedral-like cavern beyond, could only be guessed at by the Tehuti scholars and Pyxis rangers who discovered it. The memory of the cavern was of course taken and buried deep within the rangers’ limbic systems.
At the current moment, three figures in black robes, sleeves pushed back to reveal pale arms streaked and stained with ink, or ash, crouch over the body of a young person, stretched out on a pallet in the center of the room.
The tallest of the three, their skin so translucent as to reflect the light from the brass glow-globes floating near the ceiling, reaches out a spider-like hand to stroke the corpse’s equally pale cheek.
“This one was a wonderful flutist, you know. I once heard them play the Aria of the Nebula Prince straight through, all 66 movements.”
One of the other two, their eyes hidden in pits of dark, swirling kohl, nods at their companion. The tall figure stands to his full height - the attendants will swear later they heard his bones whine with age - and motions for the pallet to be lifted and carried into the maw of the cathedral beyond.
The brass glow-globes drift after the trio as they make their silent procession through the door, the gentle yellow light catching suddenly on a cacophony of byzantine brass tubing. The cathedral ceiling and walls are covered in pipes, blown glass bulbs, valves of every shape and size, all ornately decorated with M’jii symbols by the finest Meret craftspeople, and all leading towards a series of stone slabs.
Two of the slabs are already occupied, cables and tubes planted in nude forms like macabre fauna. The flutist’s body is transferred, with the careful supervision of the tall figure, to the third slab. The attendants, bowing, light sticks of incense and place them in a black jar at the foot of the body.
Later, when the attendants relax with cups of bonewine - so-called because of its milky quality - they will share a shiver at the intense way the tall figure spoke the ritual oaths, at the determined manner in which they drove tubes into the skull, and opened channels of blood from veins. They had served the tall figure for a month now, and they weren’t certain they would ever fully feel relaxed around them. Not the way their classmates felt relaxed around their Neshmets. This one was different from the others. They were of an older breed, and rumor around the coffeehouses, late into the evening, when only a few students were awake and the PRISM network had run its final broadcast, was that they and their older colleagues conducted modified versions of the Joining Ritual in secret. That if the Amun were not so busy with the death of the Emperor, something would be done about it.
That would be later though. Now, the tall figure is removing the cap of the flutist’s skull, grey matter glistening in the golden light. They motion to one of the two attendants, they can never tell them apart, and never call them by name, and point at the smaller slab laid with an array of pre-tech and primitive low-tech implements.
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