The First Ark: Deathless Prequel (3 page)

The construct shifted back to a replica of the rejuvenation chamber. The Ken turned slowly to face Ka, eyes wide and mouth open. "You
are
a god. Can you bring the dead back to life?"

Ka was taken aback by the question. The existing host had demonstrated attachment to its kin, so the idea of love didn't surprise it. But when the host lost a brother or a mate it simply accepted the fact and moved on. It lacked the ability to conceptualize, to envision its mate being alive again. This new hominid clearly possessed that ability, which might mean that she could become a shaper if her helixes were properly modified.

"I cannot intervene directly, " Ka said, considering her approach. This must be handled delicately, must be done of the host's own free will. "However, I can give the power to do as you ask. It will require pain, but you will gain the strength to save your Dun."

"Dun?" the Ken asked, blinking away unshed tears.
 

"Your mate. Your word would be male," Ka explained. The Ken had language, but some concepts did not translate even in a mental construct.

"I can save Osiris?" she asked, straightening.
 

"Yes," Ka said.

"What must I do?" the Ken asked, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"My current host will guide you to the central chamber, far below where your body now stands. He will give you the staff he carries," Ka explained, shifting the construct to show the path even as she spoke. "You will enter the very heart of the Ark. If you are worthy, your body will be transformed. You will be gifted with the ability to shape, which you can use to mend the damage to your Dun's body."

"And if I am not worthy?" the Ken asked. A shrewd question, one that Ka had no choice but to answer truthfully.

"Then you will die painfully, the forces you seek to harness tearing apart the molecular bonds holding you together," Ka answered.
 

The Ken was silent for a long moment, and Ka did not prod. This would be a difficult decision, one that she could not influence.

"Why would you give me this gift?" the Ken asked, again taking Ka by surprise. She would never have expected the hominid to question her motivations. It had been so long since she had conversed with a creature that could reason.

"Doing so will gift you with great power, but the nature of the power benefits me," Ka explained. "A shard of my existence will be bonded to you and in so doing I will finally be able to leave the Ark. I will be able to influence the world in a way I have been denied since the builders departed."

The Ken was silent for a long time. She studied Ka, her expression unreadable. Finally, she spoke. "Very well, I accept this bargain. Give me this gift, that I might save my Dun."

Chapter 5- The Conduit

The world lurched as Isis returned to her body from whatever strange place the god had whisked her. She staggered, catching herself against one of the strange clear blocks. It was warm to the touch and she focused on that as she struggled to make sense of what had just happened.

"Isis?" Sekhmet asked, laying a hand on her shoulder. "You've gone pale. Are you all right?"

"I...yes I think so," she said, straightening and turning to face her near sister. Sekhmet's red hair had been tied in a tight braid, a nervous habit. How long had she been gone? "The god of this place summoned me. It explained much. It has offered power and it claims I can save Osiris."

"Osiris is beyond saving. We watched him die, near sister," Sekhmet said, face twisted with pain.

"Unnnh," the stranger said, urgently. He offered his golden staff to Isis.
 

She took it without hesitation, the metal hot to the touch though not unpleasantly so. "This god clearly has great power. Who knows what it can and cannot do?"
 

The stranger started for the doorway, back into the chamber with the spires. Isis followed. She was aware of Sekhmet behind her, the taller woman hesitated then followed as well.

"Isis, wait. What price does this god demand?" her near sister asked.

"Does it matter?" Isis asked, rounding on her. "I will pay any price to save him and count myself fortunate in the paying of it. Stay here with Sobek. Set could return at any time. Be ready."

She recognized the concern playing across Sekhmet's features, but had no time to indulge it. Osiris might yet be saved, if she acted quickly. Isis turned and followed the stranger into the central chamber. He waited near the largest obelisk, gesturing urgently at its base.

Isis approached, unsure what he was asking her to do. She studied the ground near the base of the obelisk, a flat black rock that drank in light. It took her several long moments to notice the small gold ring set into the stone, just large enough for the base of the staff she now carried. Was it that simple?

She gripped the staff in both hands, planting the base in the ring. Brilliant light surged from the staff, pure and warm as the rarest summer day. The ground rumbled and then began to change, shifting into steps that descended into the darkness. The stranger started down them without hesitation, beckoning for her to follow.

Isis withdrew the staff from the ring, worried for a moment that it might cause the stairway to disappear. It did not, and she carried the staff with her as she followed the stranger. The golden artifact now glowed continuously with a soft inner light, enough to banish the darkness as she continued down.

Time lost all meaning as they continued ever downward, the stairs spiraling deeper and deeper into the heart of the earth. A sliver of fear worked its way into her gut as she remembered her grandmother's stories of the underworld. Surely they must have entered it, or soon would.

"Unnh," the stranger called. He turned to face a wall, banging on it with his fist. Then he turned back to her, pointing at the wall.
 

She made her way down to the platform where he stood, a small area as long as two men laying head to foot where the stairs paused before continuing into the darkness. Isis looked for another ring, but could find none. She knelt next to the wall, resting the staff against it as she searched. The moment metal touched stone the wall began to ripple like water disturbed by a thrown pebble.
 

It flowed away from the metal, revealing a passage that ended in a cavern a small distance away. Faint blue light came from the cavern, a shade she'd never seen before. Isis picked up the staff and started down the passage. She paused when she realized the stranger wasn't following.

"Aren't you coming?" she asked, turning to face him. The stranger shook his head, then waved her forward with both hands. Clearly he intended for her to enter, but why didn't he follow?

Isis turned back to the cavern and made her way up the passage. The blue light grew stronger as she crept forward, eventually reaching a room of indescribable beauty. A walkway circled a valley as wide as the one that held the Black Mountain. It was massive. The ceiling vaulted high above, the distant parts difficult to make out even though they were lit by the blue light.

Every wall was covered in tiny crystals, the source of the glow. In the center of the valley below lay an enormous crystal the size of a small mountain. It began to pulse as she entered the room, and Isis realized in shock that it mimicked her own heartbeat. She rested a hand on the railing circling the walkway, which was all that stood between her and a fall to her death at the base of the giant crystal.

She lacked words to describe what she was seeing, had no understanding of what this place was or what she was expected to do. Surely the stranger would not have led her here if there wasn't something obvious to be puzzled out. Isis took a deep breath and studied the walkway, since that was the only part of the chamber she could readily reach.

A few hundred paces away a platform jutted from the walkway, extending over the valley. It was empty save for a single blue crystal roughly the size of a man. That must be it. Isis hurried in that direction, darting nervous glances at the railing as she did. Heights did not give her the crippling fear it did some, but only a fool would walk that close to death without at least being aware of it.

Eventually, she reached the platform, which lacked the railing the walkway provided. Isis took a cautious step onto it, prepared to leap backwards should it fail to support her weight. It neither moved nor creaked as she stepped atop it, so she took another step toward the strange crystal. A gold ring was set into the base at an angle.

"I hope you aren't some trickster god," she muttered, slotting the base of the staff into the ring as she had above. There was another flash of light, this one not from the staff but rather from the crystal. Clear blue brilliance bathed her, both from the crystal before her and from every other in the room. The giant crystal below was the brightest of all, so powerful she could no longer look directly at it.
 

It began to thrum with a low vibration like the purring of some great cat. Then a figure flickered into existence, the strange god she had seen in the other place. It towered over the giant crystal, though it appeared the same as before in all ways save size.

Large black eyes peered down at her, so different from those of a man. There was no white to those eyes, just pools of unreadable black. The creature lacked hair, and its neck was too long and thin to be a man. Its skin was a soft green, not so dark as pine needles. More like grass near the end of summer.

"You have done well, Ken," the voice rumbled through the room. The god's mouth did not move, and she couldn't say for sure where the voice had issued. "Full access to the repository is granted."

"Your words are strange," she replied, brow furrowing. "What must I do to save Osiris?"

"This chamber was created to enable the greatest feats of shaping," the god explained, though its face remained eerily still. "Many of the species that now roam your world were first created here. You must tap into that power to shape your own helixes. First, you must open a conduit so that I might aid you."

"How do I do that?" she asked. The words made no sense, but if the god was telling the truth, she didn't need to understand. Only trust.

"Grip the staff tightly in both hands and close your eyes," the god instructed. She did so. "Now envision a great river of blue light flowing from the crystal, up the staff, and into your body. Discard your fear, your pain. There is only the river of light and you must allow it to fill you up if you wish to save your Dun."

Isis struggled to do as the god asked, picturing a wide flowing river like that she'd grown up next to. She imagined it full of the strange blue light, all flowing directly into her. The staff grew hotter, painful to the touch. Her body demanded she release it, but she refused. Doing so would deny her the power to save Osiris.

She stood fast, a rock against the flow of the mighty torrent. Power filled her to bursting, searing every nerve as it raced through her body. On and on it went, leaving her a panting, confused wreck.

Well done, Ka-Ken
, the god said, but its voice had changed. No longer did it echo through the vast cavern. Now it sounded inside her head, just as if it were one of her own thoughts.
You have established the conduit.
We are one now, and you may draw upon my power and guidance
.

Blackness overtook her.

Chapter 6- The Mutagen

Ka considered carefully as the new Ka-Ken collapsed. She had the time it took the hominid to recover in order to craft the mutagen's structure, then she must guide the Ka-Ken through the act of creation. But what to create?
 

Only three creatures had possessed the ability to restart cellular mitosis once it had stopped, in essence bringing life to the dead. Two of those were simplistic proto-mammals and their method couldn't sustain the complex structure of the hominid brain. If Ka used their helixes, the Dun's body could be reanimated, but he would possess none of the intelligence or memories he had in life.

There was a third option, though it was heretical to even consider. Ka could use the structure of the builders themselves. Their ability to process signals allowed constant genetic repair, making them effectively immortal. If it combined the methodology of the proto-mammals with the builder's ability to control and receive signals that would restore the Dun to life and could, in theory, preserve most of the brain's complex neural structure.

Still that was not enough. Creating such a life form would be magnificent, but how would it reproduce? Sexual reproduction would be impossible. Ka leafed through a thousand, thousand species faster than thought before she found the answer. A virus had plagued early hominids around the time their ancestors had split off from the great apes and lesser primates. That virus could be tailored as an effective delivery mechanism. It could be transmitted through blood or semen or saliva. Any bodily fluid. Then it would jump hosts, infecting others with the same mutagen. This ensured that Ka's new creation would propagate, spreading across the globe until all seven Arks were once again occupied.

What would the builders think of such a creation? Did that even matter? They had been gone for eons and it seemed unlikely they would ever return. This was Ka's one chance to create a species in their image, one that might reclaim the Arks and restore intelligent life to a world that had become nothing more than a large garden.