No, that doesn’t make much sense. Why would someone go through all the trouble of lining up hundreds of bodies like this?
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 Book of the Dead based on the way Baahir had so vividly described it. Still, his in-depth account of the relic hadn’t done it justice. The casing was magnificent to look at, as was the scroll itself.
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 special — that we had been born for a very specific purpose. Yes, we are immune to the effects of the hellstone, but that didn’t stop Anubis from using us in his early trials.” Khaliq looked off into the void. “We were supposed to cleanse this world of the unworthy. I grew up believing it. Why else would we be immune?”
“What does the diary say?” Zahra asked, voice soft.
Khaliq looked at her, unblinking. “Anubis admits what he was really planning. Anubis, or whoever he truly was, first discovered the virus after it killed his wife. After that, he dedicated the rest of his life to finding a cure for what had taken her.”
“The plague?” Rabia asked, speaking for the first time in a while.
Khaliq shook his head. “No. He hoped to cure death itself. Whatever this is — the hellstone — he thought he could use it to become immortal. He thought it would turn him into a god.” He looked away from the group. “I looked up to him as a child, but now… now, I see him for what he truly was.” He looked at Zahra. “A broken man with nothing to live for.”
“The Damned… the people here,” Zahra said, “who were they?”
Real-life tears fell down Khaliq’s dirty face. Zahra didn’t think the man was capable of emotions on that side of the spectrum. He seemed genuinely hurt, broken. He placed a hand on his chest. “They were me. When Anubis ran out of test subjects — the bodies upstairs — he turned his sights on his most loyal disciples.”
“The Scales of Anubis,” Ali said, unapologetic. “They followed him until it cost them their own lives.” He jabbed a finger at Khaliq. “After all these years, how many people have shared the same fate as a result of blindly following you?”
Khaliq turned away, facing the throne. “Many.”
He ruffled through his front pants pocket and pulled out something small and cylindrical. He faced Zahra and the others and held the object up. “Which is why I intend to right my wrongs with this. I will cleanse the world of everything here.”
Zahra took a few steps back.
Khaliq was holding a remote detonator.
Chapter 104
Zahra
The cave was still. No one breathed. Zahra waited for Khaliq to blast them all into oblivion, which was still the better option. It was either that or dying horrifically at the hands of the Damned. Everyone lifted their hands simultaneously as if Khaliq were pointing a gun at them. He was, in reality. He was holding a very big gun.
“Easy there,” Zahra said, keeping her words smooth and soft. “There are other ways to handle this.”
Khaliq’s face portrayed an array of emotions and expressions: anger, guilt, excitement, shock, awe. There was no stopping him. He, honestly, seemed to believe that this was the only way he could fix everything. There was no redemption on the horizon for Khaliq. His fate had been sealed with every death caused by his disjointed moral compass.
And now, he was willing to kill everyone — Zahra, Baahir, Rabia, Ali, and himself — in an attempt to set things right.
Zahra clutched her brother’s shirt, not intending to leave his side again. After all this, she would make sure Baahir was coming home… alive.
She slowly backpedaled away from Khaliq, palms up. “Easy, cousin.”
His tear-streaked face fell, and his eyes closed.
Then he turned back toward Anubis.
“Khaliq, no!”
Everyone took off running as the earth shook.
A fireball ignited at the base of the Anubis statue, throwing the fleeing group to the courtyard floor. The concussive blast made Zahra sick to her stomach, but it was the impact with the ground as she rolled over that made her want to die.
Khaliq had used enough explosives to remove the lower half of the hundred-foot-tall monument. Anubis’ throne had simply ceased to exist.
As did Khaliq. The stepped platform was reduced to chunks of igneous rock, and the first few rows of kneeling corpses had been wiped away.
Zahra came to a stop, dust and debris falling around her head. She held her arms over her face, protecting it, and waited for it to end.
Finally, she tested her scrapes and cuts, bones, and body. Everything seemed to be in working order. Exhausted, and bruised to the core, but working.
“Everyone okay?” Zahra asked, barely able to hear herself speak. Her ears rang, and her head pounded. The best way to describe the way she felt was hungover.
Rabia sat up and gave Zahra a half-hearted wave.
Zahra moved in slow motion, and stood on wobbly legs. Baahir got to his feet, and the siblings held on to one another for support. Rabia helped Ali up, and the team regrouped.
Crack!
No longer was Zahra solely focused on their wellbeing. The noise sent a chill down her spine, and her concern shifted to that of the structural integrity of the cavern itself. She craned her head up and watched as an enormous crack spread its way skyward, further decimating the ten-story-tall Anubis carving. Chunks broke off and fell like car-sized bombs.
A piece the size of a single-family home came free from Anubis’ chest. Zahra dragged her awestruck brother back, Rabia and Ali followed closely behind.
When the boulder hit the cavern floor, it flattened what remained of the stepped platform, bursting through what Zahra now saw was just a thin layer of rock. A wave of intense heat immediately washed over Zahra, stinging her eyes. The others had the same reaction and shielded their faces with their hands.
She looked back and saw that the Damned had completely surrounded the courtyard.
The floor succumbed to the newfound stress of the fracturing rock, and began to plummet into the ever-growing pool of magma. Zahra led the retreat, pausing when she was within fifty feet of the exit. There was no way through the throng of the Damned. They were about to die terrible deaths of one form or another.