He slid in behind a ten-foot-tall wall, just outside the entrance to what appeared to be a common area — a courtyard. The monument to Anubis was on the other side, waiting to be glorified. Khaliq planned to kneel beneath it and silently praise his ancestor for paving the way. Khaliq felt a bond with Anubis. They weren’t so different. Both would do anything to get what they wanted. Though thousands of years apart, their methodology was nearly identical in practice. Perfection demanded experimentation.
Khaliq tried catching his breath before moving again. The air was thick with sulfurous gas, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe. His head swam. Khaliq snapped his head back and bashed his own skull into the igneous barricade. The sharp pain of his skin breaking, and the leaking plasma refocused him. The sting of the wound took his attention off that which clouded his mind.
He stood, and entered the courtyard, smiling manically. His eyes opened, and he saw something he had not expected. There, built directly into the foot of the edifice, was a throne. It sat on a stepped, half-moon platform. The throne itself was easily fifteen feet tall. But the seat of power was only a small piece of what held his attention. What truly awed Khaliq was the fact that there was a ragged corpse sitting within it.
Khaliq’s face fell. “Anubis?”
He sprinted toward the foot of the grand monument. A clearing of a hundred feet separated the throne from the city behind him. Khaliq’s mind raced faster than his feet could move. His trek to Anubis slowed as the body count rose. Similar to the ancient laboratory, there were also hundreds of bodies lying about.
All of them had died on their knees in adoration to their king. Khaliq slid to a stop and pictured the intricately cut artwork in the trap room. The people there had been shown in the same posture. They, too, had been worshipping Anubis. He had been right to assume that Anubis had experimented on his own people.
Khaliq zeroed in on one of the dead men, or rather, his skin. It was dry and leathery, though still somewhat preserved by the arid atmosphere. Khaliq needed to know for sure. He knelt and examined the man’s left arm and saw what he dreaded. There, tattooed into the corpse’s forearm, was the symbol for the Scales of Anubis. It perfectly matched the one on Khaliq’s own arm. Not only were these people his test subjects, and prisoners, but they had also been his most loyal followers.
They had been Anubian disciples, just like Khaliq and his family before him.
“Why would you want this?” Khaliq asked, picturing his ancestors. “Why would you want this after what he did to us?”
He knew why. Khaliq and Anubis were truly one and the same. Khaliq had done exactly the same thing to so many people over the years. His lineage had been raised to believe that they were born to complete what Anubis had failed to do, to wipe out the unworthy.
But he had succeeded, though the plague was not what anyone had thought. Khaliq imagined his father seeing this — seeing what had become of Anubis’ most loyal followers. Much of them would have been related to the Ayads.
The bile in Khaliq’s stomach rose, and he vomited where he stood.
The act helped clear his mind some, bringing an all-important thought to the forefront of his faltering, cracking mind. If Anubis was still here — and dead — then it meant one thing.
Khaliq coughed, heaving for air as his vision narrowed and his world crumbled.
He fell to his knees, joining his brethren.
Anubis had just been a genocidal maniac.
Through tear-filled eyes, Khaliq spotted something on the ground next to Anubis’ feet. The thin cylindrical shape matched that of the Book of the Dead. Was it, yet another, version of the scroll, or maybe the one Khaliq possessed was, in reality, a copy of this one?
Khaliq growled and pushed himself to his feet. Whatever it was, he would be the one to see what the false god had left behind.
The crowd below began to clear. The Damned were showing more interest in the noise further ahead. Zahra had been as quiet as a church mouse since scaling the structure, hoping her inaction would confuse — and eventually bore — her mindless attackers.
Zahra unclipped her grappling hook.
