“It is loaded, but with only one bullet.” He gazed past the foursome. “I’d hate to waste it on any of you.”
“Bullshit,” Baahir countered.
“If you’ll humor me, I’ll show you why.”
At first, no one moved. But Zahra sensed he wasn’t bluffing. Khaliq was alone, and the status quo had changed. The four of them could easily overrun Khaliq and kill him with their bare hands.
And they were all, save for Baahir, armed with a knife.
No one advanced on the man.
“Tell us,” Zahra said, holding her ground. She was curious about what the man had to offer. Khaliq wasn’t an idiot — whatever was going on, it was bigger than she could imagine.
His entire attitude had softened as if his entire world had been deflated.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
He faced her. His eyes said it all. Khaliq Ayad was scared. “I see now that I’ve been misguided ever since I was a boy.” He sighed. “My family… My father and grandfather believed in something that I now know is false.”
The cavern went silent — all except the sound of hundreds of footsteps. Zahra turned and saw what was coming.
“Come,” Khaliq said, “they will not follow.”
Rabia spoke up. “How do you—”
“Because he said so,” Khaliq replied.
“Who did?” Zahra asked.
Khaliq turned but looked over his shoulder before stepping away. “Anubis.”
Zahra wanted nothing more than to shoot the man where he stood, but they required answers, and if Khaliq did have a change of heart, even if it was only to save his own skin, then they needed to hear him out. Any information about what was going on here was vital to their survival.
Zahra was the first to move. She was quickly followed by Baahir and Rabia. Ali hung back for a moment, but eventually scampered off as the Damned closed in. Zahra looked back several times and was flabbergasted to see that Khaliq had been right. The Damned did not enter the courtyard at the foot of the giant statue of Anubis.
“What did you mean when you said, ‘they remember?’”
They all slowed down, and then Zahra entered the strangest mass grave she had ever seen.
“The infected retained their memories,” Khaliq replied, “though, their personalities were lost forever. This will all make sense soon.”
Rabia glanced at Zahra. “I seriously doubt that…”
Fewer things in her life had made Zahra more uneasy than the sea of corpses. They were eerily similar to the ones she encountered up in the trap room. That realization sent a chill down her sweaty spine. Zahra reckoned that they had been placed there, postmortem, as sort of a strange totem.
Then, she saw him.
Zahra had been so focused on the morbid phenomena that was the kneeling bodies that she hadn’t yet noticed the dead man sitting on the black throne. His crown said it all. It was gold and held a pair of iconic jackal ears aloft. He wore very little in the way of clothing. The only garb Zahra spotted was a gilded shendyt. She knew why. It was too damn hot down here to wear anything, other than something like a shendyt, for long periods of time.
“Anubis.” Zahra couldn’t hide her shock. “He was real…”
“Yes, he was,” Khaliq said, turning, “and he was so much worse than any of us could have ever imagined.”
Based on the looks on everyone’s faces, none of them quite understood what Khaliq meant. Thankfully, he was in the mood to share intel. He stepped aside and motioned to something laying at the foot of the dead god-king.
“I give you…the diary of Anubis.”
Like everything else here, the scroll had been impressively preserved. Two stone tubes pinned either end of the unrolled parchment down. It was identical to the
The latter contained both written words and crudely sketched drawings. Zahra was too far away, and honestly way too tired, to read what had been penned. But they had Khaliq to communicate what he had already read.
“We — my family — were mistaken.” They listened and waited. “I had been taught from a young age that we, the Ayad clan, were
“What does the diary say?” Zahra asked, voice soft.
Khaliq looked at her, unblinking. “Anubis admits what he was
