The OP Lich is a Returnee, Chapter 147 (Patreon)

Chapter 147 – Underground

The next morning, Safar met me at the hotel after breakfast. Just the two of us set out for the site. The others stayed behind. The volunteers needed to practice for the ritual, and I had expressly forbidden the mortals from coming along. Out of all the seals, I expected this one to be the most hostile to the living, after all.

Safar’s driver brought the car to a stop just outside the cordon keeping people away from the Sphinx. Getting out of the car, I could tell immediately that they were right about this being the entrance to the seal. Death mana was in the air, clearly visible to my magesight.

Turning to Safar, I said, “I do not know how long this will take. It may be hours, it may be days. If I am forced to fight one necromancer against another, our hordes battling it out between us, then it may be quite some time. I will send word to the hotel when I have made the path safe for mortals.”

Safar just nodded. “Then I will leave you to it. One of my people will be at the hotel, along with your ‘entourage’, if I am not there, myself. I just ask that you wait before conducting the ritual, so that I can witness it for my government.”

“Of course. When someone asks respectfully for something, I am always inclined to do what I can. Thankfully, I don’t foresee any situation that would cause me to have to rush the unsealing. Indeed, I would not be surprised if, after the fight is done, I need to take a bit of time to recover before attempting the rite. Especially if it is one of those battles that lasts for days.”

“In that case, your Majesty, I will be off. I need to make sure that some of the local mosques send people to the new temple, so that the teaching can begin. I expect some of them will need more encouragement than others.”

I smiled, and nodded to the man. “Indeed. I can tell you that the rites can be done with the images of any faith, so they need not worry about that. I suggest leading with the fact that this is so that they can protect the dead, and ensure that they lie in peace.”

“Yes, but people are rarely so sensible, so I am afraid that I must ensure that they are… properly enlightened and understand why they must get along with the new neighbors. Honestly, sometimes it is like dealing with children. Only children have being young to excuse their misbehavior.”

I chuckled as Safar returned to his car, making a joke of his complaints. Once he was heading off, I opened my pocket dimension, and summoned one of my servants. Indyana J’ones had helped me uncover the secrets of the Seal of Shadow, and now I hoped that he would do the same here at the Seal of Death.

“We meet again, your Majesty! What exploration do we have today?”

I smiled at the undead elf, and pointed to the Sphinx behind him. “Between the stone beast’s paws lies the entrance to another seal, J’ones. Be wary, for this land is ancient, and the tombs here were known to be filled with sophisticated traps, even before magic was released to the world. Expect both physical and magical threats ahead.”

“I see. Very well, your Majesty! Forewarned is forearmed, and all that. Let us see what this J’ones can do!”

With that, the explorer and tomb raider turned his attention to the Sphinx. Moving slowly, he examined the ground, and the paws of the statue itself. As he examined the right paw, he frowned, and then brushed aside a bit of sand that had covered the stone near the base. I saw the magic of glowing runes shine out, though they were invisible to any whose eyes could not see mana directly.

“Tricky, tricky! The sand would naturally pile here, too low for people cleaning and maintaining the statue to bother with sweeping away all the time. And one needs altered sight to even notice the letters, even so. Very clever. But I do not know this language.”

I moved forward to look at it. “Hieroglyphs, as I expected. The written tongue of the people in this land was done in images, rather than letters, which were not introduced until later on. Thankfully, one of the boons from my summoning allows me to translate.”

“Very useful, your Majesty. I can’t tell you the number of times I could have used such an ability in life. There are spells to translate things, of course, but the easiest ones are for the spoken word, reading the intent of what the speaker says, and conveying that to the caster. Ones that translate written text require some knowledge of the language to begin with, making them essentially a memory aid, or else a Holy or Unholy caster channeling their god’s power to make things clear.”

“Yes, well, one can hardly expect kidnapped schoolchildren to go off and fight wars if they can’t even understand the local language, no? At any rate, this claims that there are two buttons, one on either paw, which must be pressed simultaneously to open the way forward.”

“Easy enough. Though I expect that the true trouble will come after. And here is the button, I presume,” the explorer said, pointing to an indentation only visible with magesight. “If you will ready yourself to press the button, then I will look for the one on the other side.”

I nodded my assent, and so J’ones made his way to the other paw, purposefully circling around to avoid the area between the two paws, where we expected the entrance to be. Some might think it pointless caution, but we had both seen enough in the other world to know that it was not. There were plenty of ways one could trap a doorway using magic, after all, and being undead did not save you from being teleported into a pool of magma, or other, less pleasant, possibilities.

After a few moments of searching, now that he knew what to look for, J’ones called out, “Ah, here we go. Are you ready, your Majesty?”

“Yes. On your count, J’ones.”

“Very well, then. On three. One. Two. Three.”

As one, we pressed our buttons. There was a flash of magic from the two paws, but they perfectly cancelled each other out, right in the center. The magic canceling each other caused a ripple in the mana in the immediate area, which then served as a trigger for the entrance itself. The sound of stone grinding on stone filled the air and the sand shifted as stairs sank down into the ground. The entrance was open.

With J’ones leading the way, we made our way down the stairs. Only about five meters down, we came to a small room. The way forward was blocked by a stone door, with an obvious lever next to it.

“It can’t be that simple, right?”

“I believe it is, your Majesty. I’ve seen setups like this before. I expect that, when we pull this lever, the way before us will open, while the way behind will seal itself shut. And, if they’ve done their work properly, and the wards haven’t faded by the ravages of time, I expect that teleportation out will be blocked as well. And I doubt things will be pleasant past the door for any living creatures caught there when the door closes. There might not even be a way to open it from the other side.”

“Meaning that you cannot get an army in here, unless you are someone like myself. An effective means of limiting how many people might challenge the Seal’s defenses at once. Well, nothing for it, then. Pull the lever, J’ones.”

With a nod, the skeletal explorer pulled the lever. As he guessed, the stairs behind us began rising up with the sound of stone against stone, while the door in front sunk down, into the floor. We passed the threshold, and were not surprised when there was no sign of a matching lever on this side of the door. The designers of this crypt had made a simple, yet effective, means of ensuring that most people could not cheat their way through whatever trials lay ahead.

There was more writing on the wall, also in hieroglyphs. However, unlike the ones above, these words were made with gold inlaid upon the stone. I translated the text for J’ones to decipher.

Only the Worthy may approach the Seal.

Three trials shall test them.

Against the Breath of Death,

Only the penitent man will pass.

By the Word of He who rules the Underworld,

Only in the footsteps of God will he proceed.

Upon the Path of God,

Only in the leap from the lion’s head shall he prove his worth.

“Interesting. Given the wording, and the iconography, I would guess that these would be some sort of religious trials. Likely involving the local God of Death. Unfortunately, I know nothing of this world’s gods.”

“The ancient Egyptians had several gods governing Death, but if we’re talking about the ruler of the Underworld, then that would be Osiris, if I’m not mistaken. However, I do not know the glyphs that made up his name.”

“That is probably important.”

I pulled out my cell phone. Even underground and behind wards, it still had three bars of signal. Of course, this model was able to tap into the user’s magic to boost the signal, so the fact that I only had three bars was telling. “Fortunately, technology can help us with that. Give me one moment.”

A quick internet search gave us three glyph patterns that were used to refer to the god. 𓁹𓊨𓀭 was the most common, but 𓇬𓈖𓈖𓄤𓀭 and 𓊩𓁹 were also used. I used magic to copy the symbols onto sheets of paper so that J’ones and I could each carry a copy, just in case, before putting the phone away.

That settled, we looked back to the tunnel we were in. It was straight, and angled downward, roughly thirty degrees or so. If my senses were right, it undoubtedly led down, beneath the Great Pyramid itself. The only light was from an everburning torches we both took out of storage. While neither of us needed light to see, picking out details in the area was easier when there was light, especially if there were nonmagical aspects to them.

Magic was a powerful tool, but too many of the most powerful magic-users became too reliant on it, to the point where it became a crutch, and their other skills grew lax. Thus, mundane traps were sometimes the most effective against mages, because the lack of magic in them made them effectively invisible to a mage relying solely on mana senses. Neither J’ones or I were foolish enough to fall into that trap, naturally, so we made use of magical lights when we knew there were traps about.

A breath of air blew towards us. It had a stale, sickly smell to it, like the stench of death. “Breath of Death?” I muttered to myself. It was just a quiet murmur, but J’ones easily heard it in the silent passage.

He stiffened, and then cried out, “DOWN!” I followed his lead as we both dove for the floor. That turned out to be a smart plan, since a bronze blade clad so heavily in Unholy mana that it was like looking into a spotlight scythed through the air, just about at neck height. If we had been standing, there is a good chance that it would have taken our heads off.

J’ones was already in motion as I watched to see if there was another blade coming. Or, more likely, the same blade circling back around. Just as it started a second pass, J’ones wrapped his hand in mana, and punched through one part of the stone wall. The blade shuddered, and then stopped, and did not move again, still burning with Unholy mana.

“It should be safe now,” J’ones said, pulling away from the wall. His arm was destroyed from the midpoint of his forearm downward, which told me exactly what he’d done to stop the trap. Even though he was not a Death mage, he’d pushed Death mana out, through his hand, like a spell, causing whatever machinery was in the wall to age into uselessness. But a nonmage doing something like that was as dangerous as a mage trying to pull off a warrior’s tricks.

Fortunately, I could play healer for the undead easily enough. I cast a spell, and he was as good as new. “Well done, J’ones. Both with recognizing the threat, and dealing with it.”

“Thank you, your Majesty. Though, if these are what awaits us before we even get to the Guardian…”

“Yes,” I nodded. “It will likely be a duel between necromancers, as I feared. I just hope that it doesn’t drag on too long.”