The Eye of Anubis: Book Eleven

[DocBeard]

Sweat rolls down the back of Tomas's neck...

He shouldn't have tried. But his reluctance to use his powers got them in trouble one time too many. He can see the meathooks, hear the rasping of sharpening knives, smell the septic cleanliness of the surgical room, taste the cotton in his mouth sucking up every drop of moisture, touch the cruelly cold metal!

Have, Tomas thinks, to keep myself calm. For Otto's sake, if nothing else. This feels voyeuristic enough as it is...

[NeoTiamat]

The Tomb of Menetnashte
August 29th, 761, 10:12 PM; Day 165 of the Menetnashte Expedition
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The boy began to smile again as Otto recounted the tale, a sad expression tempered by the tears he was holding in check. "It's really you," he whispered, still a little uncertain, as if it was impossible to believe. The ghosty apparition approached his father, more restrained, this time. Kemal didn't reach out to hug Otto again.

"What happened to you, Papa?" Kemal asked, still smiling faintly. "Is that some... sort of... spontaneous shift in pigments due to... something? External environmental... stuff?"

The smile faded away. "It's... been a while," Kemal said, bowing his head and turning his eyes. "I... thought someone might come for me, show me where to go, but... after a while, I just started walking. I didn't know where I was going, nothing looked right. There was no one else but me for the longest time. I thought... I saw you once, but then you were gone. There was a dog I found, but it whimpered when I pet it... I didn't want to hurt it. I just walked until I ended up here... I don't know how to get out. I don't even know how I got in."

"H-how..." the boy paused for a moment, trying not to look into his father's face, for fear of breaking down entirely. "How did you get here? How did you find me here?"

[The Whistler]

"What happened to you, Papa?" Kemal asked, still smiling faintly. "Is that some... sort of... spontaneous shift in pigments due to... something? External environmental... stuff?"

“Heh—or something.” Otto scratched the back of his head. “It’s a long story…”

Explaining to one’s dead son that one was not, in fact, a werewolf was also something that Otto had not planned for.

"H-how..." the boy paused for a moment, trying not to look into his father's face, for fear of breaking down entirely. "How did you get here? How did you find me here?"

“I…I saw you too, that time. I didn’t know whether to believe it, but…”

Pause.

“I think I might’ve been the dog, also—symbolically, I mean, in some way. I’ve sort of had a…liking for dogs, lately…”

The two of them stood, facing each other.

The gunsmith sighed raggedly. “After you…left… You made me think a lot about how I see the world, do you know that? So your mom stayed home, and I went to Port-a-Lucine to study…”

He never told you about his talents, until the end—and we’re not going to think of the end. Leave the discipline unsaid…

“...One thing led to another. These people are on an academic expedition with me. We made it out to the Amber Wastes, looking for artifacts to bring back home…and we found our way here, on our way. I don’t understand it…”

Otto put his hand to his forehead. “…I don’t understand anything. I think it’s a place where we meet people who are meaningful to us; who’ve shaped who we are. Where we face the people we’ve been looking for; where we have to, before we can move forward.”

“I guess…I’ve really been looking for you all this time.” Closed his eyes, tight; opened them. “I…I’m not sure that I know how to move forward.”

[NeoTiamat]

The Tomb of Menetnashte
August 29th, 761, 10:12 PM; Day 165 of the Menetnashte Expedition
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"I... I don't either."

The boy stared at the ground, no longer forcing his tears back. The were gone, replaced by a deep, forlorn expression. "I don't belong here," he said, quietly. He meant more than the tomb itself.

"But I... I don't know where to go, or what to do, I tried to figure it out but..." the ghost trailed off, miserably. "I just don't know."

"Maybe I was looking for you too," Kemal continued, awkwardly fidgeting, in the way all teens do when trying to express something heartfelt to their parents. "When I was... lost... before, you and mom found me. I don't know where we are now, but I know... you made it here. I know you can figure anything out, Papa."

Kemal managed a small, fragile little smile. "Maybe we can figure it out together?"

[Rock of the Fraternity]

"Forgive me," Lia speaks, "for intruding. I might be able to help. Then again, I might not, but if I do not speak, who knows?" The Mordentishwoman removes the garish fox/hyena-mask and reveals the far simpler oval of grey felt. The stained fabric forms an almost jarring contrast against the smooth black robes Lia adopted in Kermansha ...

Holding the ebon mask under her arm, Lia raises a gloved hand to Otto and Kemal. "Otto, my friend ... We have Wepwawet, the opener of the way here. It seems a bit too appropriate to be an accident. If we can somehow have the way opened to your son, perhaps all that is needed for it to be the right way is for someone at Kemal's proper destination to stand waiting for him, and call him hence.

Otto, please recall Madame Camolomescro, your son's and Madame Florica's grandmother. The sorrow over Kemal's loss hastened her to her grave. Is hers not a soul that might call kindly to your son and guide him to rest among his ancestors?"

[yalenusveler]

"Lia raises an excellent point.." Andre said, after allowing Otto time with his son. "And he was originally associated with Wolves..so it is rather fitting."

Andre then thought for a moment, settling into one of his thinking stationary paces. "But the question is, do we require a full opening of the mouth ceremony...and do you want more time?" Andre asked his last question with all the gravitas that a parent who has shared the same pain can muster, which in this case..is quite a bit.

[DocBeard]

Tomas looks like he wants to say something, and even starts a few times.

Ultimately he lights his pipe, hands shaking a little with nerves. Eisenwald takes a few puffs, forcing his racing heart to slow down a little before letting out a ring of smoke. It's some kind of fancy Zen, see.

[The Whistler]

"When I was... lost... before, you and mom found me. I don't know where we are now, but I know... you made it here. I know you can figure anything out, Papa."

Kemal managed a small, fragile little smile. "Maybe we can figure it out together?"

It was considerably more difficult to consider how best to progress through a tomb when one was trying desperately not to cry.

"...I think I'd like that."

"Oh--remiss of me." Otto rubbed the corner of his eye, turning to the group behind him. "You really should meet these guys properly."

There followed a minute or two of personal introductions, in mixed Lamordian and Mordentish--rather surreal, given the context, but the gunsmith took refuge in the politeness. Besides, it really wouldn't have been proper otherwise.

"...And I suppose that all of you are knowing my boy, by now. Say hello, Kemal."

"But the question is, do we require a full opening of the mouth ceremony...and do you want more time?"

Otto had recovered a bit of his composure by now; though this question didn't help any, it was a necessary one.

He sighed, resigned. "I...I would not permit the boy to remain lost, if it is not to be desired...a selfish thing, this. However...I *would* like to know what would be required in such a procedure...before I am deciding."

[Kaitou Kage]

Kuzan shook his head.

"It is not this god's duty to lead Kemal onward. Nor is it Florica's." He turned his gold eyes to rest on Otto and stood up, clutching Lia's cloak close. "It's your duty. You are here to guide your son to his next life. That is why this room exists."

[The Whistler]

Otto stood, motionless, for a moment.

I'm a Deist. I'm a Lamordian. There is no possible way that I am qualified for what I am about to do.

Bull. You can turn into a lupine spirit guide twice a day...and you're his father.

...I know.

The gunsmith inhaled deeply.

"Very well."

Placed his spectacles in his vest pocket; turned toward his son. Kneeled down.

"Listen: Kemal. It would take too long to explain, but...my field of study was a bit esoteric. I guess I owe that to you... In any case, I've got a theory we can work from, but it'll take a few...unconventional techniques."

"You're going to have to trust me on this. Turn around; face the wall. Count to ten, slowly. Then, you can turn back around. After that...follow the dog."

The gunsmith stood up; took a few steps backward. "And if I don't get another chance to say it in person...I love you, son."

OOC: Aspect of the Wolf-ing it once Kemal isn't looking; if he presses the point for whatever reason, I'm obviously not transforming, though.

[NeoTiamat]

The Tomb of Menetnashte
August 29th, 761, 10:16 PM; Day 165 of the Menetnashte Expedition
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"I love you too, Papa," Kemal replied. The boy was a little frightened now. Still, he turned and looked away, counting slowly to ten under his breath. Whatever secrets his father may have had seemed reluctantly shared, so just as Otto hadn't pressured him on his own past, Kemal didn't pry.

When the boy turned around, his father was gone, a large, grey wolf in his place. The boy didn't seem afraid of it. Perhaps he recognized those intelligent, yellow eyes, as a small smile began to form on his lips - but if he did, he didn't say anything. Kemal walked over to the dog, hesitantly stopping himself from petting it.

"Hello," he said to the wolf. "I feel like we've met before." He took one final look around the cold, bleak, room, and at all of you, before looking back down at the wolf. "Where are we going?"

===============================================

To a wolf's eyes, the snow-strewn room looked different. It was greyer than before, and in its own strange way it was even more bleak than before, nothing but stone and snow.

There were differences though. Behind Kemal two doors arose from the ground, between the snow-capped sarcophagi. Crafted of the same featureless grey rock as the statues of Wepwawet and the sarcophagi.

One had inlays of lapis lazuli, pale blue inset in the featureless grey. The other was set with slivers of black jet, dark and grim in the free-standing door of stone.

A door of life... and a door of death...

[The Whistler]

...Well. This is a pickle.

You said it, brother. We take the blue door, and the rest of the pack gets through without a scratch, but your pup doesn't do the whole "living" thing so hot.

Please don't say that.

Sorry. Anyway, he gets held up at the gate, spends the rest of his existence freezing his tail off in limbo...this, we don't want.

You are the least comforting summarizer I have ever shared a brain with.

Thank you. Now, we take the jet door, and we--

Die. I figured.

Wrong! We risk dying. I smell danger from behind there, sure, but if we carry things off successfully, we'll get to the next room just as well as if we'd taken the blue door--and Small, Dark, and Transparent gets a free pass to the big forest in the sky.

...There's really only one choice, then, isn't there?

Bingo.

While doing so might've helped him to communicate his findings more thoroughly to the group as a whole, Otto definitely didn't feel comfortable transforming back right in front of his son. Still, if the Hazlan incident had indicated anything, it was that they would probably make the same decision that he was about to...

...Which means they're going to have to trust you, too. Who's up for charades?

The "dog" padded over to the Expedition, and, one by one, gently nudged their sheathed weapons with his nose, a look of concern in his eyes. Then, slowly, and with a marked air of apprehension, he nudged the jet door open. Looked back at the party, bristling with caution. Barked once.

While he has the option to do so, I don't think Otto *would* go human in this situation given the choice; you guys know the situation, though, so if anyone would want to take the blue door and/or talk it over, totally say so.

[DocBeard]

Tomas crosses his arms, in the manner of his people, and continues to smoke his pipe. The look on his face is one of, 'You should know what I'm going to do by now, Otto.', which is oddly specific for a look but not uncommon when the cold of Lamordia gets too bitter to allow for verbal communication.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Charles has not been able to watch Otto and Kemal's conversation; he's afraid he would break down and cry, which would shock everyone. Including himself. Father and son...he can't stop thinking of his own father, Jean-Jacque August Martel, marquis of Lac-claire, bibulous, squat and gouty, silver-tongued, clever and cruel in his conversation, infernally proud and all but incapable of demonstrating affection to anything but his horses; he gets along badly with all his sons, but worst with Charles, who takes so much after his mother.

And yet...when he handed Charles Kejser's reins in the paddock below the manoir; a flash of something in those keen eyes as Charles describes the trip in store for them (which has, of course, been nothing like he imagined it then). Could it have been affection?

Or even...love?

Which is why Charles is looking the other way when Otto approaches, as a wolf. After the first startlement, it's not too hard to guess what's on Otto's mind when he nudges Shadowfinger.

Drawing, Charles nods. "Very well. It seems we should be prepared for the worst...aux armes, mes braves!" So saying, he steps to the black door, ready to follow Otto and Kemal through.

Inspire courage

[The Whistler]

Otto nosed the door open, and…

***

A room, perfectly cylindrical; the size of a banquet hall or a parade ground. Floor and ceiling nonexistent, walls extending upward and downward into the mists, or into infinity. An iron catwalk, ringing it, bolted to the stone, where the group of you all stood. And beneath that catwalk: the world.

It was as if the orrery of Ivor Stahlrheim had been replicated for a cloud giant’s parlor, an impossibly complex masterwork of stone, steel, and glass. The Core sat in the center, slightly offset, a tremendous disk suspended in the firmament, every corner alive with moving cogs and cables: tiny aluminum carriages whirring from city to city on preset pathways; perpetually undulating ripples of cold blue adamantium standing in for ocean waves, cresting in and out with each tide; steel-wool cloud patterns ferried from country to country on skeins of silver wire. Ringing it, the Clusters and Islands: an endlessly repeating naval battle acted out in miniature off the coast of Sri Raji; Zherisia’s infinitesimal clock tower buzzing like a quartz hummingbird, smaller than any pocket watch. Suspended overhead, attached to the disk in eternally rotating arcs, a gaslight sun and a chrome moon, eternal flame stars…

…And an impossible network of paired rails, bolted with iron scaffolding to the disk below, and branching and recombining in madcap traceries above you. There were intersections, there were switchbacks…there were people. Transparent, all, and each encased in a perfect, glass sphere, rolling along their own predetermined route in a synchronized cosmic ballet.

There were many routes, but one terminus. Every track eventually pointed downward at a sharp angle near the center of the room, spitting its rider into a sort of tremendous basin, which was supported with steel pylons some fifty feet over the Shadow Rift. There were two holes in the basin, that you noticed. One pointed horizontally, extending in the direction of a small landing just above the edge of the disc; you could see the outline of a door there, from this angle.

The other pointed downward.

The Shadow Rift was a crevasse in the center of the disk. Below it…was nothing.

And as you watched one of the souls come careening into the basin, at the precise, irreproducible angle mandated by his own individual path through the course, you saw the whole Core tilt at the impact (for everything is connected to everything else, and suspended in the firmament), shift back and forth, and after a few agonizing seconds, let the glass ball plummet inevitably downward into the black expanse. And you noticed that a single, rail-thin lever extended from the edge of the entire colossal apparatus, held at the fulcrum by an immense carved-obsidian hand…

The statue of Anubis must have been ten stories high.

At the other end of the lever, held in place by a dizzying series of counterweights and springs, was a single, glass bell jar, containing a single, golden feather. Enough to balance the universe, and everybody in it.

Otto was in human form, again. Everyone was standing on the catwalk, except Kemal. Where was Kemal?

—TAK TAK-TAK TAK TAK-TAK-TAK TAK KA-CHINK—

In an alcove ninety degrees around the circle, something stamped out a series of letters on an endlessly spooling newspaper roll of papyrus: something resembling the misguided hybridization of an abacus, a printing press, and a harpsichord. But the long, silver print-head, bent ninety degrees in the middle and coming to a sharp, ink-tipped point, looked uncannily like the slender head of an ibis…

The papyrus read as follows:

Subject: Kemal Schultheiss
b. 5 May 745
d. 7 Jul. 760

“Papa!”

The voice was coming from very, very high up.

Otto looked, and blanched. Some two hundred feet up, a tremendous hopper, and among the countless glass balls within it, one in particular that held a very familiar figure. Stationary—for now.

“Kemal! By the—are you all right?”

“I’m okay! I’m okay… I just… I can’t…”

The gunsmith cursed once, under his breath, and cast his gaze about for a way up. There. The door marked “Ne Pas Déranger - Empleados Unicamente - Employees Only – Bitte Nicht Berühen - 禁止駛入.” Beyond it, a wrought-iron platform, and a ladder.

“Okay, just hold on, keep calm—keep listening. I’m coming up there to help you.”

Grimacing, Otto shouldered in the door—suffering a nasty electric shock in the bargain—and jumped onto the rungs, climbing two at a time. Talking all the while:

“Listen: this is all symbolism. They’re modeling a deterministic universe, here: I’ve told you about the Great Clockwork.”

“…Um…yeah! I remember that…about how everything’s predestined based on natural…something. Right?” As it turned out, metaphysical discussion could in fact distract someone from being trapped in a person-sized transparent sphere.

“Exactly. If you think about it, free will doesn’t precisely exist if humans are subject to the same physical laws as everybody else: we act upon the world and the world acts on us, but we really don’t have any say in how our lives unfold. If you could measure everything in the universe somehow, our existences would be totally predictable from beginning to end—hence the rails, I think.”

“Aah!” The hopper disgorged the bottom-most glass balls, sending Kemal sliding a few yards closer to the bottom.

“Stay with me!”

“Okay…okay…but…if everything is predictable…then I don’t control what happens to me here! It’s all just physics: I could move on, I could…not move on, but it was never my choice! What are we supposed to—”

Otto dismounted the ladder on a landing high above the scales, nearly level with the hopper. “Our first day in the workshop: what’s the first thing I taught you?”

“..Th…There’s always a work-around.”

The gunsmith nodded, once. “Exactly.”

And Kemal was rolling.

The gunsmith sprinted along the network of catwalks buttressing the rails, drawing a mental map as fast as he was able. “Kemal! Can you still hear me?”

“—I’m here! What do I do?” Despite the rotation of the ball, the teenager somehow stayed perfectly upright as he careered through the course, hovering in the center of the glass. His expression was uncertain, a little green—yet, suddenly, focused.

“I need you to pay attention to the path you’re taking. Pick out any intersections you’re going to pass through, and call them out in advance—”

“—I see one! Sixty meters ahead, the right part curls around in a spiral, and the left—”

“—Lean left!”

The track swooped downward and to the left as Kemal put his ghostly shoulder to the glass, dipping narrowly below a mass of wrought-iron buttresses. “—Another!” Kemal gasped. “—Coming up in two hundred! This one has a switch by the side, I think it’s going to force me to the—”

Otto squinted anxiously into the tangle of rails. “Wrong way! It’s going to shunt you in at the wrong angle; we’ve got to—”

“—I know! But I won’t be able to reach it from—”

—KRAK—

The bullet caromed off of the switch; a glancing blow, but enough.

“Thanks, Dad!”

“For you, anything.” Otto grinned, despite himself, waving the smoke away from his face. “Hold on, I’ve just lost track of you; where—”

“…Um...we have a problem.”

The track that Kemal had been shifted onto was a straight shot into the central basin, angled perfectly toward the safe exit hole: there would have been no possible way for the teenager to miss it.

This, quite possibly, was why a portion of that track was missing entirely, rusted away into nothingness. After all, even the purest soul doesn’t deserve a straight shot to Elysium.

“This is bad… Oh, this is very bad…” Kemal was suddenly (and justifiably) on the verge of panic.

Otto wasn’t doing much better. “Hang on…hang on…I’ll think of—”

And then, in a flash of inspiration, he was sprinting from girder to girder, screeching to a halt directly under the rotted-out rails, unfurling his rope, harnessing once twice three times around his waist, tossing the grappling hook end upward and the weighted end downward, clicking his heels—

—WHA-BAMF—

Two straight, hundred-foot rails, welded (until recently) to another section of track several meters below the gunsmith, suddenly found themselves bridging a gap several meters above him.

It was a perfect fit.

And as the glass ball rocketed through the basin and into the exit hole without once touching metal, and careened outward in a straight shot through the door in the wall (opened now, to something very bright and very distant), Otto counted the seconds in slow motion. Maybe it was the boots; maybe it was the nature of the room; maybe it was something else. A look of pure gratitude, on his son’s face.

I will never be able to say, truly, how proud I am of you. There are not enough words.

It was over.

Otto collapsed in a heap on the catwalks, utterly spent.

—TAK TAK-TAK TAK KA-CHINK—

The gunsmith looked up. The ibis-head, tapping out the coda to Kemal’s entry:

Subject: Kemal Schultheiss
b. 5 May 745
d. 7 Jul. 760
Judgment: Positive

Otto sighed with relief. That was good. That was—

—TAK-TAK TAK-TAK TAK TAK-TAK-TAK TAK KA-CHINK—

…Odd. It was still going. The gunsmith craned his head, pushing his spectacles low down on his nose for a better view. At this distance, he could just barely see the new entry—

Subject: Otto Schultheiss
b. 14 Sep. 728
d. 29 Aug. 761

Funny thing. Down a few stories, just in front of the opened service door—the one with all the snapped electrical wires sprouting from the frame—there lay what appeared to be a large pile of clothes. There appeared to be a body in it. Parts of it were still sparking.

Apparently, in order to act as a spirit guide, one rather needed to be a spirit, first.

“Oh bother,” said Otto.