A Game of Gods: The End is Only the Beginning (The Anunnaki Chronicles Book 1)

by Kumar, K. Hari

  He noticed three dead bodies of American soldiers, near the entrance. His stomach kicked him from the inside. He wanted to throw up, so he turned around to step out of the crashed chopper. Just then, he heard some movement from the right hand corner, there were two huge holes in the walls of the chopper and right in between he saw another white marine, a dead white marine. However, he noticed that this person’s body was showing slight movement.

  Why the fuck is the dead man moving? He thought.

  He lit his cellphone’s flashlight and focused on the American marine. It was not just him; he was holding another person tightly, as if to protect that person from the explosion. He closed in and shined the light on the person’s face.

  ‘Pakhi?’ he said in a repugnant tone.

  The woman moved slowly, as if she did not have much left in her. Indeed, she did not have much left in her. She slowly opened her eyes, a mild stroke of disbelief faded in and out of her eyes.

  ‘Ma… Maa…na…V…’ she chanted with a broken soul.

  ‘Yes… P…P… Pakhi…’ his eyes had filled up to the brim.

  ‘I…. I… thi… think…’ she tried to speak with lot of difficulty.

  ‘Tell me…’ Manav tried to pull her out of the dead man’s clutches. All the memories of yore haunted him at that instant.

  ‘I think… I am in…’ she inhaled a deep puff of warm air and said, ‘Heaven…’ and her head fell lifeless on the floor of the chopper.

  ‘Nooooo!!!’ Manav cried aloud, pulling his hair off its root. All those moments that he had spent with her in the past, all those memories that he had with her, came flashing like a red light beacon in his mind. He did not know how she reached here, nor will he ever know. Nor will she ever know that he had cried for her…

  A drop of tear fell from his eye on her cheek. Too sad that she would never feel it.

  ‘Kun-Ha!’ he yelled like a mad man as he shook his dead ex-girlfriend off the clutches of the other dead man.

  ‘You should not be so much emotional.’ Said Kun-Ha from behind.

  Manav turned and looked at Kun-Ha with eyes filled up like a baby who had lost its most precious teddy. He gathered his rage and asked, ‘Why? Why did you let this happen?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ The angel said as it floated at a good six feet above the floor.

  ‘You know what I mean. You could have stopped this.’ He stood up and looked into the eyes of the angel and questioned, ‘Where was your fucking god, eh? Where was he? Or was this part of his plan too?’

  ‘You chose this path, and it was part of your destiny.’ Kun-Ha replied calmly.

  Manav dropped more tears on the floor and his feet. His eyes and face turned red with pain and anger, ‘Why should I fucking serve this almighty god, if he wanted to kill the one person who was dearest to me, huh… why?’ He asked.

  ‘Perhaps the facts that you had been strangling your soul for not letting it find closure. You always loved this woman, but your ego had an upper hand. You hurt this woman whom you loved and you also hurt your soul. For years you did not, you suppressed your feeling and it was taking its toll on you. She became a burden on your soul. On this path of destiny, your soul must be free from burden.’

  ‘She was not a burden!’ Manav spoke with clenched teeth.

  ‘Then why didn’t you ever call her back into your life, and when finally she came into your life yesterday… you shooed her away like an insecure beggar drives away a stray dog. Why my child… why?’

  Manav could not respond to the angel’s question. He looked away.

  ‘You do not have to answer me. Just accept this as the will of the Almighty. Your soul’s burden has been reduced, it will feel the Almighty more efficiently now. Look out for signs.’ Kun-Ha suggested like a prophet’s archangel and turned around to move outside.

  Manav took a step forward to catch hold of the angel’s wing when he heard a sound, of metal or plastic cracking under his right foot, or maybe it was glass. Something had dropped off Pakhi’s dead hands when Manav had shaken her body. He bent and picked it up. It was a digital tablet, still functional; he saw a paused video on the screen. Curiosity drove him into pressing the play button on the screen.

  The video played from it was paused, ‘… Mesha Mes-en Saret are carrying out extra-terrestrial transmission on a daily basis since last month. Every day they are sending some sort of signals which we are not able to decipher, only detectable in traces by the limited resources we have. Our brilliant technology seems primitive compared to theirs…’

  Manav was intrigued by the video; he used the time bar to rewind it. He yelled again, ‘Kun-Ha!’

  The angel appeared next to the destined man and whispered with pride, ‘It is written for those who choose the right path… Everything is written…’

  Manav played the video from the beginning.

  34

  Early Morning

  Near the Pyramid of Khufu

  Captain Cristiano Hernandez had the longest stride among his crewmembers. He could easily cover a little over six feet while walking on a day that was not rainy. He made use of his long strides to chase down the crusaders in black who had kidnapped the woman he had saved without having to run. Running on the treacherous sand would have resulted fumbles and would have attracted the attention of the men he was after.

  The men stopped and went to the back of the Great Pyramid. One of them unloaded the unconscious woman and carried her on his right shoulder. The others followed him towards the intersection point between the Pyramid of Khufu and the Great Sphinx. They stood in a circle with the man with the woman in the center. They chanted something and together the men forming the circle swished their hands clockwise. A burst of smoke filled the area around them and Hernandez, who was watching them from a distance, could only see effervescent smoke. When the smoke subsided, nobody was to be seen. They had all vanished in thin air. Carefully, he moved towards the spot where he had seen the men form the circle. A thick rush of wind blew bathing his skin with gritty pieces of dirt. Although the early signs of sun’s light started changing the hue of the sky, however what frightened him was the presence of thick grey clouds exclusively over the pyramid of Khufu and the Sphinx. As he moved nearer to the spot, he could feel a certain dip in temperature, as if the clouds were emitting cold waves.

  ‘Dios! Qué es esto?’ God! What is this, he asked himself as he looked down at the spot. It was a hole, rather a gateway with a ladder leading downwards.

  Hernandez did not waste much time in contemplating whether or not to go inside, instead he went in and descended into the unknown. He had no idea where he was going, and he could not see or hear anything, although he was completely inside the hole. A pungent smell entered his nostrils and hit his tarred lung sacks, tarred by all the cigarettes he had smoked in life. As he moved further down, he realized that he was angularly displacing himself; in fact, the stairs were becoming gradually spiral in structure. With every inch of depth, he would hear more of silence and less of the wind blowing on the outside. What was more startling was the fact that not even a single particle of sand fell through the opening, as if something was keeping it out of the underground shaft. But where was this leading to? Was there an abyss of some sort? The pungency of air kept getting unbearable for the man of the sea. The smell was of Sulfur Dioxide and Methanol mixture or something like that.

  He was well below sixty feet when he took a step and his right foot hit hard ground. He had found ground, and that relaxed him for a small fraction of a second. The surface was not as cold as it was outside; it was rather unexpectedly warm and pleasant except for the smell. He pulled out his cellular phone and used its flashlight to look around. As he had deduced while coming down, he was inside a cylindrical shaft, and there were three doorways at the base. Two of them were closed but the third one was open, and in fact, he could see a small pixel of a light source through the third doorway. He walked in.

  35

  The device switched off automati
cally after the video finished playing. Manav’s eyes were as red as thick blood dissolved in a transparent solvent and thoughts of rage fumed out of his mind.

  ‘You knew all this, didn’t you?’ He asked Kun-Ha angrily.

  ‘This was her destiny… to come as your messenger…’ the angel replied.

  The affirmation pumped a riot within Manav’s soul and he rose from the floor and shouted at the guardian angel, ‘Then why didn’t you tell me? ’

  ‘I am following orders…’

  ‘… of course, the orders of that super personality who thought it would be better if this information came at the cost of a woman’s life, right?’

  Kun-Ha did not reply.

  ‘This is the exact reason why I do not believe in god, because if there was a god, he would not have let so many people suffer. If there is power in prayers, then the billions who are praying… their suffering would have been ceased by your almighty. But instead he only makes them more miserable and needy…’

  ‘If he granted everything, there would be no more prayers.’ Kun-Ha responded calmly.

  ‘Oh yes, when people do not pray, the god loses importance. So it is all about maintaining his supremacy, right?’

  ‘Justice… it is all about maintaining justice.’ The angel took a decisive breath and spoke slowly, ‘The good should be equally balanced with the bad, and that is justice to maintain the balance. Do not let her death go in vain.’ Kun-Ha said and flew out of the crashed aircraft.

  Manav looked at the angel, and then looked down at his ex-lover. Lifeless as she lay there under his feet, he felt his rage rushing through his veins like the lava about to erupt from a volcanic mountain. He broke into tears, all those years of pain and ego battered with a ram that would eventually set him free from the bondage of emotions that was holding him back.

  If this was all meant to be… then I will not give up.

  ‘I am sorry Pakhi, all these years I could not let go off my ego, I had loved you and I… I…’ with a head shivering with rage he sulked in his tears and vowed, ‘I will not let your death go in vain…’ and He kissed her lifeless forehead and walked outside.

  Kun-Ha looked at his ward with pride, for it knew that the chosen one was stronger than the greatest of angels.

  Kun-Ha remembered what his great Master had said about The Chosen One…

  His eyes shall speak of the dead one, His lips shall sing of the grieving one… When He walks, the sky shall run into turmoil, the earth shall raise an army of sand… For He is the Chosen One… He is the Son of Adam…

  37

  As he walked inwards, the walls of the passage became more and more visible. Although, dim yet Captain Hernandez could easily see the hieroglyphics marked on the wall. He could not deduce any of them, for him they were just randomly strewn pictures that did not make any sense. There were some recurring images as well, and most of them involved men performing different kinds of actions and a woman lying on her back on a raised platform. The set of images recurred on the alternate walls after every feet, but each time the men performed a different action while the woman remained dormant.

  After walking for another fifteen minutes he started hearing chants at a very low decibel, and it was coming from the end of the passage, which seemed too long to end. The chant was a harmonic progression that altered between two pitches. It was not anything like a Gregorian one, rather it sounded mystic and less haunting. He felt as if he was in a Ridley Scott movie, and was about to hit the climax, or maybe he was. The chants got louder as he neared the end of the tunnel, so did the illumination and twenty minutes later he was there.

  With the next breath, he ventured his head out of the edge of the tunnel’s opening and looked at the great chamber where he was led by curiosity. A huge chamber lit by something that aped daylight perfectly, but unlike what he had expected, he saw no lanterns or ancient torches fuelled by oil. He scanned all the walls, but could not find any source of illumination, and then there was no ceiling. The walls tapered slightly, and it was possible that they met each other forming a pointed top, miles above- A Pyramid!

  His view could only track the height of the chamber only up to a few feet after which there was a blinding light- the source of illumination. And then he looked at the base, unlike the tunnel, the floor of the chamber was not covered with sand, instead it was made out of polished granite. At the center of the chamber, he saw the men clad in black, whom he had followed from El-Salam Hospital. They were standing in a circle, holding hands in prayer and chanting in a language that he had never heard before.

  Pata-tu Pata-ti Pata-m Dio-vah pata-tu pata-ti pata-nam

  In the middle of the circle was a shining platform made of silver metal and on top of the metal was the woman he had found in the Mediterranean Sea; clothes stripped off, forehead covered with a vermilion powder. He felt pity for the woman, fear for confronting the insane men, and above all sad for his own heart, that was vaguely attracted to the woman. He noticed that there was not one but more areas covered with the weird vermilion powder- her breasts, pubic region and her feet. As they chanted, the source of illumination grew brighter as if they were invoking some Pagan energy.

  Pata-si Push-u-pam Pata-si Dev-ah-am Pata-tu Pata-ti

  He felt the ground tremble slowly, but the magnitude grew by the second. The rest of the chamber was empty and so were the walls. The men were extremely devoted to the ritual, all five of them.

  Wait! Five? I followed six men. Where is the…? He thought and before he could contemplate on that he felt a heavy hand drumming on his back. He fought for his next breath as he felt himself being lifted off the ground and thrown into the chamber. His bottom hit the granite, the impact crushed his hip. He tried to see what had manhandled him as he writhed in pain. He saw it- the sixth man, but there was another one, a shorter one.

  A Seventh Man.

  38

  Outside the Pyramid of Khufu

  The sky was a swiveling commotion of red, gray, and bright yellow matter as if someone with a great spoon had whisked blood, ash and fire in a celestial bowl, the fire being at the exact center forming a looping vortex of sorts. As Manav walked towards the Sphinx, he observed a swarm of sand rising from the earth around him, rising to the vortex formed in the sky. The formation was right above the Pyramid of Khufu, the center of the bright yellow area was exactly above the tip of the Pyramid’s top.

  Amidst the floating sand particles that had almost blanketed him, Gandhi turned around and upon not finding the guardian angel, he panicked a little. After making a quick 360, he looked straight up. There it was, just a couple of feet above him, guarding him from the bashfulness of the heartless dust storm with its great wings that seemed to have grown in size.

  ‘Fear… and I cannot co-exist in your world. You chose me, so do not fear anything, for I shall guard you till the end…’ Kun-Ha spoke with great command, as an aura formed around the angel, which extended itself to cover Gandhi’s body till his feet. The sand particles bounced off the aura, keeping them protected from the atrocities of the earth. And it said, ‘… Never forget… that The End is Only The Beginning…’

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You will know… You have been patient, and you are being guided by a superior force, to which I have surrendered, and I have faith in Him.’

  ‘I am just following what I have learnt from that video. They, The American Army, spoke about an opening to the underworld, somewhere between the Pyramid of Khufu and the Sphinx.’

  ‘How do you know which one is the Pyramid of Khufu?’

  ‘I have read about the Pyramids, I know the largest one is the pyramid of Khufu. So, following what my eyes are showing me, the largest one among the rest. I have one question for you.’

  ‘Go ahead; ask me although I know that already.’

  ‘If everything that has happened was part of this great plan, then why you did have to appear in front of me, you know, as a talking being. Couldn’t you just let thin
gs happen; eventually I would have ended up here.’

  ‘You would have, but you were slipping into the realm of dreamlessness, it was important to keep your soul away from such a situation. Your soul has been in the state of perfect Tu-riya for ages, and any deviation from that state would create a series of irregularities in the Amighty’s plan.’

  ‘Tu-Riya? Dreamlessness? What are we talking about? Did you just turn into an Adwaithist monk?’

  The angel chuckled at the allegation. ‘Tu-Riya has been there long before time, even Adi Shankara had remarked that the state of all being had existed before him and shall continue to do so after him. You humans gave it a founder, and a name to recognize it.’

  ‘Of course, Buddha never called himself a prophet unlike others.’

  ‘None of them did, my child. It was humans who made them what they are today. When we gave them the knowledge of the Absolute One, they did what they were asked to, however, humans are used to limiting themselves to their tribes and traditions, and could never understand the broader picture and they ended up entangled in different religions.’

  ‘Well, I cannot agree less. Now, what about the dreamlessness?’ Manav asked as he slowed down his pace. The sky seemed as if it was about to explode.

  ‘Well, the soul has three states of being, the first one is the state of wakefulness when you are aware of the body and consider it as the ultimate reality. The second one is the state of dream, this happens when you are asleep and you see an alternate reality which is dismissed as an illusion when you re-enter the state of wakefulness. It is this state that the soul creates infinite entities in the human mind. Those who lead most of their time in this state are creative in nature.