There was a great temple. Pillars that couldn't be encircled by a dozen men linking arms supported a ceiling higher than the tallest sycamore. Each column was intricately decorated with incised and painted figures six khet tall. Every available space in-between the immense reliefs was inscribed with writing almost too small to read. Despite the tiny size of the characters, each was rendered perfectly, with crisp lines, flowing curves, and covered in vibrant paint. Iruhotep walked through the gargantuan forest of stone, feeling the carvings as he passed by the soaring supports. Every glyph glowed slightly when his finger made contact with it. As they came to life, each character projected its intent, its Wa's, into Iruhotep's consciousness. He saw it when he closed his eyes, the decontextualized information forming images that interacted like actors in a play.
In this line, an articulate commoner pleads a case before a magistrate. Iruhotep could smell the perfumed chamber: lotus and sandalwood. He could see a smirk of amusement form on the magistrate's face, surprised that a low-born farmer could speak so eloquently.
Iruhotep's hand jumped to a new register on the same column. Now he was now next to a large field, shaded by a line of stout palms. He could feel the heat of the afternoon sun just beyond the shelter of the trees. Cattle walked slowly throughout the field. A beleaguered elf in scribal robes made tally marks with chalk upon a ceramic palette. A pair of children, khenra pups, ran at a cow, spooking it. It trotted off to a different section of the field, away from the little annoyances, causing several other animals to move themselves in random directions. When the scribe looked up from his tallies, he no could not identify which animals had already been counted. With a heavy sigh, he scratched off his previous work and began again as the twins continued to laugh and play in the field.
Iruhotep lifted his hand from the column and inspected the cattle count glyphs. They glowed green. He looked back at the section with the courtroom. The glyphs glowed red. He turned around and could see lights of all colors, blues, purples, yellows, and everything in between, extending back through miles of corridors. Iruhotep looked forward and saw infinitely more pillars yet to be illuminated. He smiled.
Before he could continue his journey, Iruhotep heard a crash behind him. He wheeled around, looking for whatever had made the noise. In the distance, he saw a great barque. Even from where he stood, he could recognize the magnificence of the thing. Large enough to accommodate a full cohort of 60 sailors, a polished bronze cap gleamed with the radiance of the sun, and its sails sported gold embroidery identifying its owner as Djadjaemankh. It was flanked on either side by great waterfalls, extending past the ceiling, propelling the vessel forward. The torrential downpour destroyed pillars as the barque passed them, extinguishing glowing glyphs as the stone broke and toppled over.
Iruhotep looked on in horror, trying to remember what was recorded on each pillar so that he might re-record the information when he was able. However, try as he might, he could not recall any information written on any of the destroyed supports. Not knowing what to do, only that he must stop this destruction of knowledge, he ran straight for the boat.
"Stop the barge!" He yelled, but he couldn't even hear himself over the raging waterfalls.
"You must stop the barge!" he yelled again, louder, but to no avail.
"STOP!" He called out, infusing his words with his Wa's in the hope that somebody on board might hear him and have the power to halt the erasure of the temple, but there was no effect. Iruhotep continued running straight forward screaming and waving his arms. When he was so close that his fur had become matted from mist and spray, he knew why his protestations had failed. There was nobody onboard. There was no preserving the toppled pillars. Neither could he escape; he was far too close. Iruhotep stopped moving forward. His face and shoulders sagged in defeat. He closed his eyes to let the barque take him to whatever lies beyond. The cold waters swept him off his feet and he toppled over like one of the pillars.
"STOP!" He called out, infusing his words with his Wa's in the hope that somebody on board might hear him and have the power to halt the erasure of the temple, but there was no effect. Iruhotep continued running straight forward screaming and waving his arms. When he was so close that his fur had become matted from mist and spray, he knew why his protestations had failed. There was nobody onboard. There was no preserving the toppled pillars. Neither could he escape; he was far too close. Iruhotep stopped moving forward. His face and shoulders sagged in defeat. He closed his eyes to let the barque take him to whatever lies beyond. The cold waters swept him off his feet and he toppled over like one of the pillars.
Down he swept, roiling and turning. Chaos enveloped his entire being, pushing and pulling at some unseen whim. Iruhotep realized he had closed his eyes at some point during the turmoil. He opened them.
Suddenly, there was calm. Iruhotep found himself standing, completely dry, in the same temple from before.
"No, not the same," he told himself, "just very, very similar." He looked up and could see he was now standing beneath the first temple. The ceiling here was the floor from before. Djadjaemankh's boat had scoured a deep furlough through the plane, allowing one to see between floors. Magnificent, decorated pillars still abounded, but there were fewer than above. Iruhotep could see that several of the columns continued straight upward into the first temple, but some stopped abruptly in the chamber. However, many, many columns began rising in the upper chamber with no support from below.
Tilting his head back to a more natural position, Iruhotep approached a nearby column. It appeared decorated in the same manner as those above. Epic figures stood in relief with tiny neat writing filling all available space. However, these images were left unpainted, presented only in bare gray stone and leaving the color up to the imagination.
Were these pillars the same in other respects? Iruhotep nervously reached out a hand to a glyph, gingerly tapping it with a single finger. It dully glowed with a deep sapphire light and he found himself watching a brother fleeing under cover of darkness from criminals he could not defy. But the scene was blurry and colorless, as if he were watching through a layer of cloudy water. He reached out to clear some of the muck away and found himself back in the temple.
His hand was still tracing glyphs along the pillar and he could see several now exuded the same faint light as the first one he touched, but the one next to him now shone significantly brighter. Iruhotep brought his hand closer to his face to examine. There was a thick, gray, dusty residue on the pads of his fingers. With a spark of realization, he began to retrace the earlier glyphs, removing millennia of dirt from the inscription and allowing the light beneath to shine through. Encouraged with every small restoration, Iruhotep tried wiping one of the figures. Dust smudged off of a foot that was as long as Iruhotep was tall, revealing paint! Dark ochre skin contrasted against sandals colored with brilliant white gypsum. He gladly cleaned away the grim, wiping his dirty hands on his robes when necessary.
Iruhotep could have continued indefinitely, but he felt a tug on his belt from behind. He turned around to see absolutely nothing, only another obscured pillar not too far away. His eyes narrowed, focusing on the structure. It had the same general decorations as the one he was restoring, but it appeared this one had already had some work done; sections close to the bottom were at least partially clear of dust, as if someone had begun cleaning the thing long ago but was interrupted. He looked to the left, at another nearby pillar. This one also had the same telltale signs of having been partially restored. Iruhotep began to examine each column, and almost all of them had some inconsistency in the level of accumulated grime.
"What happened to the others?" He asked aloud.
"What happened to the others?" He had only whispered the question, but it echoed back all the same.
"What happened to the others?" Another echo. Was it louder this time?
"What happened to the others?" This wasn't his voice.
"What happened to the others?" But it was a familiar voice.
"What happened to the others?" It sounded closer, as if the source were right behind him.
Iruhotep quickly turned to find his nose a finger's length away from a mirror image of himself. No, it wasn't him, but a shadow. It held his likeness, but was different.
"What happened to the others, Ho?" it queried coldly in a deadpan facsimile of his brother's voice.
Iruhotep tried to take a step backwards, but was prevented by the pillar he had been cleaning. His mind racing, searching for some answer, he asked the question out loud himself.
"What happened to the others?"
Dark fur began to fall from his shadow's face, revealing black skin beneath. When there was no longer any hair left, the flesh began to slough off. First the skin detached, coming off in sheets, leaving behind viscous mucus on the tissues below. Then the muscles unraveled from their attachment points, revealing the bones beneath. The process continued on the rest of the shadow's body until only the skeleton remained. With nothing to keep the frame held together, the bones disarticulated, jaw detaching from cranium, ribs from spine, phalanges from carpals.
The rot continued to the floor, causing mortar to turn to dust before allowing the great stones of the foundation to fall away revealing yet another, deeper level to the temple. Iruhotep was swallowed by the dark void, falling indefinitely. All sensation stopped. He drifted through blind nothingness for an eternity. Then, a soft voice whispered back.
