Hannah was more interested in the name ‘Empyrea’ and started searching for it. She rummaged scroll after scroll, but as there wasn’t any alphabetical order or any other order maintained in the library, she found it extremely difficult to find the answer. Instead of Empyrea, she stumbled upon the scrolls of Aethiopia, Nataska, Lankapuri, and Hastinapura, and those were considered the most important scrolls because they belonged to the years before Christ was born. But all that mattered to Hannah was Empyrea, so, without wasting another minute with these newly found scrolls, she continued her search.
On an individual rack, she discovered a bunch of scrolls about Empyrea housed in the earthen jars. Some were good, but some were partially damaged. She started reading the scrolls one by one.
“A deadly disease affected our Kemet and even as a pharaoh, I wasn’t able to help my remetch en kermet”, Hannah read the 1st line of the Egyptian papyrus, and assumed it was the scroll written by the king himself.
(From the words of the King)
A deadly disease affected our Kemet. People died every day, the disease started with a deformity of the hands and legs and this deformity spread to other parts of the body and eventually people led to death by bleeding from their nose and ears. The number of deaths increased consistently, none of the medicines worked. Young children were the most affected and infants died within a few days. As I saw so many people die, I grew desperate, and my chancellors hadn’t the faintest idea to help our countrymen. My medical chancellors experimented with many herbs like acacia, coriander, fenugreek, caraway, henna, and many other country herbs but to no avail. It seemed like there just wasn’t a cure.
At that time, a bizarre man came to our Kemet riding on a horse with a horn. He looked evil, green skinned, elongated forehead, dreadlocks, and a long beard. He was wearing something made out of wolf skin and held a strange bladed scepter in his hand. One look at him and we immediately pinned the reason for the disease on him and so, the first thing we did was to drive him away from our black land.
In the meantime, preventive measures for stopping the disease spreading were in full swing. The dead ones were buried near the river. The people who were affected were wrapped in strips of linen and dropped in the river. We had no other choice but to save them from their misery and the remaining from getting affected. Even with all this, the disease continued to strike and spread rapidly turning worse than before. People died to get sudden epilepsy. The newborn babies, born with the disease had to go through the same treatment along with the mother, wrapped and buried inside the same hole. It was a dreadful sight.
One child with a deformity on her right leg was one of my chancellor’s kid, and her name was Cleopatra. She was the most beautiful girl in our Kemet and she is a very special child because she was born at the time when all the planets in the universe stood at the straight line. Now her mother could not bear to leave her and wouldn’t let us wrap her. But my chancellor loved the Kemet more than his child. So, he somehow managed to control his wife, wrapped his beautiful girl and dropped her in the river. All this to control the disease and for love, he had for the Kemet.
The next day even before the sunrise, I went to take in what was left off my Kemet and to address the ones affected. At that time, I saw my chancellor’s wife uncontrollably wailing, unable to forget what had happened to her girl.
It's was a miserable sight to see my people suffer and die like this. And, while seeing the hawks and vultures hovering in the sky, I feared the death rate will increase. They were waiting for their meat by making that low keek keek sound as if screaming food!! food!!
I assumed the greenish elongated skull man would be the reason for these sudden weird happenings, so I ordered my men to find and kill him. But all of sudden, from nowhere, this greenish elongated skull man walked into our Kemet. The rising orange fury sun at his back silhouetted him like he was coming out from it. Every one of them was fuming with anger, and all they wanted was him gone forever. So, they approached him with spears, maces and daggers, the weapons targeting his elongated skull. Even the women raced to kill him. There was heated competition because I added 5000 gold coins as a reward for the one who could slay him and get his head rolling.
But all of a sudden, the atmosphere changed, a sweet breeze swept the place. The hawks and vultures took off and replaced by butterflies & white pigeons. There was calmness among the people as well, they saw a group of silhouettes coming out from the sun and immediately they dropped their weapons and ran towards the skull man filled with love on their faces. The reason was, it turned out that the skull man miraculously brought back all the people who had been thrown into the river. The surprising part was they no longer suffered from the deadly disease. They had been completely cured and looked like a new leaf. My chancellor’s child, Cleopatra eagerly came running towards her mother, her deformity is completely cured, she jumped and hugged her mother with full of love & affection.
My countrymen immediately reported the incident and narrated what had happened. When we threw the people in the river, the elongated skull man saw them drowning and rescued every person, unwrapped them and treated them with some medicines that he had made. On hearing this, one of my chancellors said it was his devious plan to make the people sick so that he could steal the gold on the pretext of saving their lives. But, the ones who were saved and restored back to their normal lives objected stating, “Doubting such a person is equal to doubting God.”
At once, one of the chancellors rudely demanded, ‘If you are truly a god, why don’t you bring down rain to our black land. It’s been over a decade now since the last rainfall in our Kemet. The land had become dry without water. At one point in time, our “black land” was a fertile land on the banks of the Nile. We used this land to grow crops. This was the only land in our Kemet that could be farmed because a new layer of rich black silt would be deposited every year after the Nile flood. On the other side was the “red land” which was the barren desert. But now without the rainfall, there wasn’t any difference between the red land and the black land.
The skull man with a smile on his face calmly but firmly held onto his scepter and looked at the sky, he expelled a breeze blowing towards the sky, and had a contented look as though he had delivered the needed. But there was no sign of any rain. The sun continued to beat down. My chancellors started to mock and poke fun at him. Soon the rest of the people joined in too laughing at the elongated skull man. But the laughing didn’t last for long. A thunderous noise broke the laughing, and there was silence and along with it came the surprise. All of us looked towards the sky witnessing the miracle right in front of our eyes. Our Kemet was pounded by the dark clouds hovering above, and huge pelts of raindrops fell on us. Soon, all of us were drenched, and our black land experienced rain like never before.
Everyone was awestruck, and they didn’t have words to express their joy after witnessing such a miracle. The kids jumped up and down dancing in the rain, and everyone else joined them. After almost ten years, I saw my people reveling in the rain. Without wasting another moment, I stepped down from the stairs and went towards the elongated skull man and bowed down before him asking for forgiveness. Moved by my gesture, he simply smiled and lifted me up. He introduced himself as Osiris Mysterio, The Emperor of Empyrea, and said the babies of Nataska requested him to help out the people who were suffering in Kemet.
Back to the present, Hannah was voraciously reading the scroll about Nataska, that she found earlier during his search for Empyrea.
Nataska was an interstellar cloud placed outside our galaxy in the Milky Way. Nataska was the birthplace of the stars and the place of time portal. There were different types of Nataska outside our galaxy. At present, it is referred to as Nebula.
(Hannah continued the scroll of Empyrea)
The babies of Nataska were none other than the stars. I realized his power and gave him the respect he rightfully deserved and invited him to the palace. He gracefully accepted and honored me by accompanying
me to the palace.
I requested him to teach us the medical treatments for curing the disease. He chuckled and said that he had already passed on his medical kit to our people. When I heard Mysterio saying the word, “our people” than “your people” I truly believed him to be our savior, our God.
I was exuberant and to celebrate this joyous occasion I hosted a grand feast in my palace, and the people of my Kemet prepared a wide variety of fruits, veggies, meats, fishes and tastier desserts and beverages.
Mysterio took in everything but only helped himself to the bread, milk, and honey and said, “I am a vegetarian. I believe we don’t have the right to take another life”. At that moment, I truly felt Mysterio was the greatest ascetic and a symbol of peace and kindness, a benevolent and soulful person.
As the days went by, we were in for many more surprises and in awe of Mysterio’s speeches and his attitude. We saw ‘the lord of love,' in him. In spite of his sheer magnetism, he was still humble and genuine.
Next day, he began to teach us some harvesting techniques for a better and healthier life. He also gave us some seeds to harvest in our fields, which was most useful for many medical treatments. After this, he suddenly announced that he had to leave the Kemet, everyone gathered to send him off. Mysterio kissed Cleopatra on her forehead and started to set off. After mounting his horned horse, he invited us for a friendly visit to Empyrea. The white horse began a slow trot and then started galloping, out came the wings from its body, and it flew up into the sky. Such a lovely sight to behold and then we realized it was a Pegasus.
We had no idea about Empyrea, and in our excitement didn’t ask him where it was but my hope was that I would see him again. The sun rose and set, the moon waxed and waned, and the tide flowed and ebbed. Seasons changed, seeds germinated, plants bloomed and withered, animals migrated and reproduced as passion and purpose gave way to the rhythm of life, but we still couldn’t find Empyrea.
One day, Mysterio returned to our Kemet in a chariot for taking us to Empyrea, the chariot was tied to 10 lovely Pegasus’s.
I along with Imhotep and other chancellors began our journey to Empyrea. Emperor Mysterio asked Cleopatra to join with us, so we took her with us for the trip to Empyrea. We were highly excited about the journey ahead, the Pegasus’s trotted and then started galloping and slowly lifted upwards, for the first time we experienced flying in the sky, we had a shiver run to our spines but it was thrilling, and it was an incredible feeling.
The journey to Empyrea was incredible. Every moment was eventful. When we started, we assumed Empyrea would be somewhere close by to our Kemet. Instead, Mysterio took us out of the earth, so at once we believed that it would be on another planet in our galaxy, but that was not the case. We entered a black hole, and he took us out of the galaxy. We traveled against the cold infinity of stars gliding in an interstellar space. At one point, we crossed the Nataska (nebula) too, I had heard about Nataska, but that was the first time I saw it so close. Some of it looked like eagles, some like pelicans, some like crabs, some like the word omega, a few like a rose and some others stood like pillars.
My chancellors on the other side noticed different shapes, somewhere in the shape of an eye, some rectangular, few others spider shaped and some ring shaped. Cleopatra was counting the interstellar clouds one by one, but she was more scared of Dark horse Nataska, it looked terrifying, even my chancellors and I were on edge literally biting our nails out of fear, because Dark horse Nataska was known to be the darkest empire filled with evil people.
At last, we entered the Andromeda galaxy, and it looked majestic. Witnessing the sheer beauty of it, I told Mysterio that it was rightly named Andromeda. Mysterio was curious as he didn’t know much about Andromeda, he requested me to tell me about it. My grandfather used to tell these stories in my childhood, so I started narrating and began with Princess Andromeda.
Andromeda was the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, the king and queen of Aethiopia. Her mother Cassiopeia boasted that her daughter was more beautiful than the Nereids, the nymph-daughters of the sea god. To punish the queen Cassiopeia for her arrogance, Poseidon, the brother of Zeus and god of the sea sent a sea monster named Cetus to destroy the coast of Aethiopia including the kingdom of the vain queen. The desperate king consulted the oracle of Apollo, who announced that no respite would be found until the king sacrifices his daughter Andromeda to the monster. Andromeda was chained to rock on the coast at the port city of Jaffa. But, Andromeda was rescued by traveler Perseus. He approached Cetus the sea monster invisible by wearing the Hade's helm and killed it. He set Andromeda free and married her. After that, they blissfully set sail around the world. They had seven sons and two daughters. After Andromeda's death, the goddess placed her among the constellations in the northern sky, as the constellation Andromeda.
Once I was done with the story, I said to Mysterio that I didn’t quite believe these stories, but I loved it for the fantasy. Mysterio smiled and asked me why I did not believe it? I said, well, for one, there is nothing called as a monster especially in the sea, and two, I don’t believe the story of people turning as a god in the real world, it just couldn’t happen. Mysterio merely chuckled and went to the other side of the chariot, his chuckle seemed like there was something more to it and like he was hiding something from me.
Soon we entered the planet called Vathura. It was the fourth planet from the Sun in the Andromeda galaxy. The Planet Vathura is home to millions of species. Over 90% of Vathura’s surface was covered with water, and the remaining consisted of continents and islands which together had many lakes and other sources of water that contributed to the hydrosphere. Vathura’s poles were mostly covered with ice. Everything was nearly the same as that on earth. Even the sun and the moon looked the same, but the difference was the sun did not seem to rise in the east. It rose in the west and set in the east. The reason being planet Vathura did not revolve anti-clockwise, it rotated clockwise. And the daily hours weren’t 12hours in a day, and 12 hours in the night like earth, planet Vathura had 13hours during the day and 14hours at night.
The Pegasus chariot drifted over a spectacular vista, on the sapphire seas and unfamiliar continents of Vathura. Flying over a landscape of massive cliffs and towering masses carpeted to Empyrea, great scarves of cloud swirled around the mesa tops, and the primeval landscape looked vast and forbidding.
Mysterio shouted, "get ready to see the miracle". The things we saw were indescribable. The Empyrea was a small continent which was a little larger than an island. Once we entered Empyrea, the blue whales in the lovely Empyrean ocean welcomed us by showering water and dolphins made mind-blowing breaching moves in the dazzling blue Empyrean Ocean.
Empyrea by itself was like a fairy-tale garden, an ocean of flowers and exotic trees. Its beaches were covered with soft golden sands. While talking about the beaches, cannot miss out on its sea’s and oceans. The Gulf of Empyrea had stunning color variations. It was the place where the Empyrean Ocean and the Zambvia Sea came together. Though the oceans did blend they displayed distinct colors, it was truly an astounding environmental display seeing different blues.
If the oceans weren’t surprising enough, the rivers were another sight to behold. The river that flowed all over Empyrea was the river Isis. It was 1100 feet deep, and the major attraction of this river was its purity, it was so clear that it seemed like boats were not flowing on water, and looked more like they were flying in the air.
Empyrea had two stunning temples, and these temples were built for the sun and the moon of Empyrea, which were considered as their gods. The sun was called as Emra and the moon as Emla in their language. Both the temples faced each other but from different sides of the Empyrea.
Emra was situated on the western side and Emla on the eastern side of the Empyrea. One special thing to note about these temples were that they had been carved out of a single rock. These beautifully carved temples marked the Empyrean architecture.
When the sun rose, it looked li
ke it came out of Emra temple like a gorgeous butterfly coming out from its larva and it set behind Emla temple like a honey bee sucking the flower. Both these aesthetic scenes made us feel like we were in heaven, it was truly paradise.
At that time, it was the season of flowers in Empyrea, the whole of Empyrea was filled with lovely Emplica flowers, it was a deep red and brown cosmos. The pungent smell of the flower Emplica had a cocoa odor. It was used for many medical treatments. I got to know that even Mysterio used this same flower for saving the people of our Kemet. The specialty of this flower was that it bloomed only once in 5000years and that surprised us.
The Emperor Mysterio’s family welcomed us in the coasts along with the chancellors of Empyrea. They all greeted us with the same love and reverence like Mysterio. Once our chariot landed in Empyrea, Mysterio introduced his family to us. He began with his elder brother Tyrant Seth, who had a son named Pitheceus Babi and a daughter named Kraity Wadjet. And then, Osiris Mysterio introduced his son named Horus Osiris. He also introduced some of his chancellors to us. Except Mysterio and his family, everyone was speaking in Empii, the official language of Empyrea.
Meanwhile, Cleo was playing with one of the Pegasus which was tied to the chariot, and she was softly touching the wings of it. Seeing this, Mysterio went up to her and asked if she needed a ride on the Pegasus, without any hesitation, Cleo nodded her head saying yes but she was afraid to ride alone. Mysterio unchained a lovely white Pegasus from the chariot, lifted the girl and made her sit on the Pegasus. He also accompanied her on the same Pegasus and invited every one of us to join in for a good ride over Empyrea.
Scepters of Empyrea Page 3
