Play@YSDC

August 21st, 1880, Past Sundown, the Great Pyramid of Cairo

The air was cooler, the heavy sting of heat broken. Fortune smiled on Burton tonight, for even the stars where dim, a thin cover of cloud over the skies. The Moon was, regrettably, full

Mr Singh's burly frame approached Burton, his silhouette easily identified by his large frame and turban.

Together, they faced the Great Pyramid.

"It is an impressive sight, Sir, although I confess I don't like caves and tunnels..." conceded the Indian Manservant, checking his torch. His height was, admittedly, less than ideal for such conditions.

"Noted Munshi," said Burton, "but I need you here--I find this tomb a little creepy myself, which is why we're going inside, experience is everything! as you well know from our 'work' over the years."

"Bah. Bite the bullet then, and into the dark!" proclaimed Singh, clutching the knife by his belt and striding forward, holding his lantern high.

The Great pyramid was of course guarded, by a sleepy short man with a low slung rifle, who waved Burton through on account of their visit with Sidhom a few mere hours ago. A stroke of luck for Captain Burton and his manservant.

Unsurprisingly, the interior had not changed. Singh bumped his head once or twice and stooped, annoyed at the bruises on his forehead that mushroomed.

The Queens chamber was there, as before, with the cracks in the walls and the secret chamber containing the silvery dust that Burton had collected.

"Hold the lantern for me as I read," he said to Singh. Burton cracked open his notebook, and read aloud the Sidhom fragments he had copied down and the laboriously practiced Arabic syllables.

"جوقة أبرشية طرابلس والكورة وتوابعهما للروم الأرثوذكس"

There was little to note, at first, bar a chill that was not a chill, running down the two men's spine. The air grew crisp.

Then, a smell of ozone, or burning, unpleasant and noxious without any smoke or fire.

The cracks split asunder, but in a screaming, incomprehensible way. The gate it opened was not formed merely of three dimensions, its angles and form did not comply with human conceptions of angles and space. Singh and Burton felt sucked in, as if falling or drawn by invisible forces; or perhaps their legs had lost their will, and conspired to drag them in foot by foot; whatever malign gravity was at work, it was nauseating and horrible...

...and then, as they spun through the gate, they were in the hidden chamber, a small space with a dizzying height. One did not look upwards lightly, for the angles of the walls seem to converge in a cobweb that made no sense. No, rather one had to look around the chamber, where an ancient stone sarcophagus leant on one wall, where strange heiroglyphics and symbols were etched into the walls.

And in the middle, five large stone tablets, elegantly engraved beyond the scratchings on the walls. Beautiful and heavy, the tablets had masterful heiroglyphics engraved upon them, of a form that would do any calligrapher proud.

Burton shot a glance upwards at the confusing cobweb of angles.

"I feel like shit," he croaked.

"I dare not look up," replied Singh, his eyes trembling and a confused, halting strain in his speech. He began mumbling a prayer in Punjabi.

"The stone tablets," stated an awestruck Burton. Ignoring the stricken Singh he knelt beside the tablets, tore a page from his notebook, and with a pencil began to make rubbings of the masterful hieroglyphics.

The gate back to the Queens chamber seemed to throb in the periphery of their vision, equally difficult to look at.

Singh clutched his copy of the Guru Granth Sahib, muttering holy words.

"Mr Burton, Sir, this room is...wrong...it is not meant for you and I. Perhaps it was sealed away from our world for a reason? to keep us out?"

He looked at the sarcophagus.

"Or keep something in?"

"No doubt," grinned Burton. He went over to the sarcophagus, one finger tip stirring the Dust of Sulemain inside his pocket, and examined it thoroughly.

The Sarcophagus was heavy, but not large. It could certainly hold a man inside, although it would not have held Singh. One could only estinate that Kotep, if it was indeed his tomb, was a small man.

The Sarcophagus was full of dust and had writing on it, of a curious and undecipherable nature.

Dust peeled off its stone with the brush of a hand.

The lid was not attached by any visible means. A strong man could slide it open.

"Come on man," demanded Burton, "help me remove this lid," and he added in a conciliatory tone, "I'll procure you a crate of cherry brandy, Munshi."

"Now you are talking, Sir!" smiled the bug man, putting away his holy book and setting his body to task.

The sacra phobia list heavy, but even one of the two men could have slid it away. With both of them exerting sinew, the lid slid off with ease.

Inside, predictably, was a mummy. An old, shrivelled thing, dusty and rotten, but a mummy all the same.

Singh and Burton suckled air from their exertion
The mummy did not move, although a faint wheeze or groan could be heard. Surely just the unsettling of air and their own panting.

Surely.

He drew the Bowie Knife. Burton used it to sever the linen wrapping in his search for amulets and, hopefully, the Isis Knot.

The first few incisions went silent and smooth, the cloth weak from age, parting to the sharp knife.

Then there was a groan, a real one, unquestionable this time

Singh took a step back in alarm, and then started screaming, his eyes wide. He drew his curved sword and set his muscles to work slashing around his feet! "The cracks! They are everywhere! EVERYWHERE! RUN! RUN!" he screamed in terror, hacking at non-existent horrors around him.

Burton was not fast enough. Like a spring, one of the mummy's whipped up, rigid like a rod of iron, and grapsed Burton by the throat, holding him their with a prestigious strength. It did not squeeze or throttle, and bar the arm, the rest of the mummy stood deathly still.

Burton could feel another mind seep into his. The sorcerer Kotep!

You are not my son...nor my grandson...nor any of my offspring...I have dreamed of him, and him of me...where is he? where is he? I will rise again!

The questioning in his head was in Egyptian, words he did not understand - and yet understood at the same time, with the crazed Egyptian Sorcerer behind them, with his mind trying to overcome Burton's own. It was horrible, terrifying experience, and yet Burton, at some level, was also able to peer into the insane mind of Kotep as he did so...

Visions of Egypt, of sorcery, or crazed tyrants and mad cults, of a giant Toad from the Southern Jungles, eyes alive with malice and intelligence, of men in crocodile skins, of the black priest who was Nyarlothep..

..and of Kotep himself, inscribing his horrible spells on the stone tablets that were surely the ones that lay with him in the secret chamber where they stood...

Burton intuits that he must answer, and posit a question in its mind about himself, he thought: "I am a son of the White Queen, and have come to raise you, mighty Kotep."

"The white queen? Who is this sorceress?"

A series of images and half-words cut into Burton's mind, in an invasive, grasping way. Kotep was dissecting his brain.

...Kotep refused death. In this mummy, in this hidden tomb, he preserved his body and spirit...Spells and rituals learned from Nyarlothep, the black priest of Set...

...He would live again in the flesh of his descendent...grasp them...take their bodies...

...The ritual to reanimate him...laid down in texts and songs, imparted through vivid nightmares...passed down from generation to generation...

...Each haunted by dreams...

...And his last descendant....Fareed Sidhom!

"The Mistress across the sea, ruler of many lands and many people," answers Burton in his mind. "I know of Fareed Sidhom, and can bring him to you, Kotep. You will walk upon this earth. Life! But I have a price--I desire some of your power so that Nyarlathotep and the Toad god will know me as an ally."

Kotep squirmed and burrowed in Burton's head.

"Nyarlothep and the Toad King know no allies...but...the Toad King still lives? I had thought we had driven him and his cult to ruin, burned the jungles of the south...."

The mummy, inanimate, tightened its grip around Burton's neck, enough to bring pain and a choking sensation.

"Fareed...Sidhom...I want his body....if you bring him to me...I will share my power!" he twisted back.

Burton began to choke. "I bargain with this," a clenched fist beside his own face and above Kotep's, "I hold the Dust of Suleiman, first, I demand that you give me some power, and in return I will bring you Fareed Sidhom."

For a moment, the mummified hand tightened like a garrotte around Burton's neck, clenching him to the point of unconsciousness.

Then, release.

"Very well, dog! I see you have the dust - that I myself created - which would shrivel my corpse further!"

A flood of power entered Burton's mind, visions, words, horrible rituals of sacrifice, strange and dangerous ingredients, the foul memories of Kotep.

The senses kept pounding Burton, driving into his head like a sledgehammer...the feeling of his cranium cracking under the pressure...

More! MORE! screamed Kotep in his head, as Burton felt his own personality and memories seeping out...the more Kotep pushed into his brain, the less space there was for him..he felt himself slipping out of his body....

"Enough, ENOUGH!" cried Burton silently, and tried to break free.

With great effort, Burton forced the sorcerer out of his head, back to...well, wherever he had come from. He could still feel the odious remnants of the wizard, flashbacks of rituals and horrors from ages gone.

"Sir! They are coming! Everywhere! Everywhere!" Yelled Singh, who had a look off pure terror in his face. He smashed the floor below him with his sabre, and thrust into the walls. In a moment of almost coherence, he saw Burton being strangled by the mummy's stiff hand, and swung his sabre with full force.

The hand that grabbed Burton flexed and shook. Singh had taken the mummy's arm clean off with his blade; for although preserved well, it was nothing more than brittle bone, old flesh, and linen. There was a cracking sound as the humerus splintered asunder.

The hand around Burton twitched, and the severed arm fell to the floor, as lifeless as the rest of the mummy.

"Munshi, God bless you!" shouted a shaken Burton, collapsing to one knee, a hand to his throat. He grabbed hold of Singh and, arm in arm, they both staggered towards the Gate, back to the Queen's Chamber.

There was another spinning of angles, and sense of depth and height sideways, and the two men stood in the Queens chamber. The horrible yawning gate collapsed behind them, with a wheezing rotten sigh.

Even in the relative normality of the Queens Chamber, Singh was alive with terror, his eyes darting from wall to wall.

"The cracks! The CRACKS! we must be away from here Sir! away! away!" he yelled, slashing at the floor and the walls. His poor sabre was looking dented and chipped from the mighty blows he had reigned down on unyielding masonry.

"Yes, yes, let's get out of this tomb," said Burton. Leading the poor Singh along the passages he headed for the exit. Outside the Great Pyramid they scrambled aboard their hobbled donkeys, and mercilessly jockeying the beasts race back to their hotel, and bed. They will both share a room: Singh the bed, Burton an armchair from where he can watch on, a prodigious tumbler, full of brandy, to hand.