Magi Saga 1: Epic Calling

by Andrew Dobell

  Diary of Shannon O’Leary

  Egypt

  Dark Sands

  Egypt

  March, 2 months ago

  Amy picked up the Kettle from the table and poured herself a steaming cup of coffee. She took a deep lung full of the warm aromas rising from the dark liquid and savoured their nutty smell. There really wasn’t anything quite like a mug of coffee to wake you up in the morning, especially out here in the middle of nowhere. Even the grains of sand that inevitably got into anything you consumed couldn’t spoil it.

  Opening her eyes, Amy eyed herself in the mirror. At about five foot four, slim with chocolate hair and pleasant features that were soft and feminine, most girls would be at least satisfied with their appearance. But Amy looked forward to the day she would be powerful enough to be able to use her Magic to change her features, to improve what she saw as a distinctly average looking face.

  She sighed, turned away and looked over at the table that sat at the opposite side of the tent to her bed. The wide portable table took up nearly one whole side of the tent, and upon its surface were the main finds of the dig. Each find lay on tissue paper with a few photos and a little tag next to it that documented the finds time and location. The star find so far sat right in the middle of the table, while notes and photos of the artefact and the hidden recess it was found in surrounded it.

  The Artefact looked like a slab of sandstone, roughly the dimensions of a large book, and intricately carved with ancient scenes and symbols. Amy had been working on this find for about a week now, doing her best to decipher the text on it and make sense of the designs. She felt that it must be a Magi artefact from the esoteric nature of the carvings, but she could sense no Magic coming from the slab. She would have to let Yasmin have it before long, but she wanted time to try and work on it herself, to show some initiative to her Mentor.

  As she stood there, silently gazing at the finds, she suddenly became aware that the camp seemed terribly quiet. There would normally be the sounds of movement from the other team members, but this morning there were none.

  The team had finished up late last night and were finally ready to open up the last room. They had wanted to open it up there and then, but Amy had objected and stopped them despite the fact that she knew many of them hated her for it.

  Amy stepped out into the slowly brightening morning and looked over the silent camp site. The desert winds whipped over the dunes of the Sahara Desert, kicking up little eddies of sand and dirt into the air making ghostly shapes in the desolate landscape. As far as the eye could see beyond the camp it was just sand and sky. Egypt’s ancient landscape, dotted with the ruins of long lost civilisations held an aura of magic and mystery that the world’s population seemed to find continually fascinating.

  Around her the camp lay still, and she knew they were in that tomb right now. Her anger rose up within her and she threw the plain white mug onto the sand at her feet and dived back into the tent to pull on her boots before she hurried back out through the camp.

  She had been out here in the Sahara for several weeks now with this team of archaeologists and she had had enough of it after just a few days. Amy had found that many of the archaeologists simply rubbed her up the wrong way. Stephanie annoyed her first with her stuck up self-importance, and headed Amy’s list to have some fun with when the time came. She had been day dreaming of that moment for weeks now, how she would walk up to Stephanie’s front door, force her way inside and indulge herself a little bit. She thought she’d start by slowly peeling off the woman’s skin, strip by strip.

  Meanwhile Jonathon the team leader did nothing but undermine her authority while his partner in crime Chris sneered at Amy the whole time like the chauvinist pig he was. She had some rather special things planned for Chris, post dig.

  Amy thought very highly of her mentor Yasmin, but also held an element of disdain for her as well, this trip had not helped that view in any way. Although grateful to Yasmin for everything she had done for her, she had started to see flaws in Yasmin’s actions in recent months. Things she believed she could do better than Yasmin, given the time to reach a higher power. Amy would ride on the coat tails of Yasmin for the time being, until the time came when she would rip those very same coat tails off of her mentor and take her rightful place as Yasmin’s successor.

  The Tomb lay nearby the camp on a rocky plateau, cut down into the stone in an Egyptian style, it looked to be about six chambers big. Unlike many of the tombs in places like the Valley of the Kings, this one had been left untouched by looters and everything seemed to still be in place.

  The tomb sat in the centre of a Dead Magic Zone meaning any Magi who might normally just use their Magic to Teleport inside, couldn’t. Dead Magic Zones were areas where, as their name suggested, no Magic worked. There weren’t many of them in the world, and they were usually small, but sometimes they had something within them that had been put there for a reason, usually to hide or protect it from curious Magi.

  Amy knew Yasmin to be on the lookout for Magical Artefacts of particular power, and from what Amy knew, Yasmin had tracked one such Artefact to this hidden tomb. But upon finding it protected by a Dead Magic Zone, Yasmin decided that things needed to be done the old fashioned way, with sweat and shovels.

  So Yasmin had backed off and sent in the team of scientists instead, watched over by Amy every step of the way.

  Amy didn’t like the tomb; she didn’t like it from the moment she had arrived here. Dead Magic Zones were weird for Magi to be in or around, an area where their powers failed tended to be pretty freaky for most Magi like Amy. She had been having bad feelings about this dig for weeks, and it served to make her more than a little cautious. She had held the team back from day one, advising caution. But there were no curses, no mummies shambling from tombs, nothing to make the team see Amy’s point of view, and their tempers were wearing thin. They should have been finished over a week ago, and they were now missing their family and friends, all due to Amy’s timidity and ridiculous superstitions.

  The team had wanted to enter the sixth and final chamber last night but Amy had stopped them, now it looked like they had risen early to enter that final room without her.

  Soon the site came into view and sure enough she saw some of the team outside the entrance to the tomb. Amy cursed again and stormed past them into the gaping black hole. The two men outside didn’t meet her gaze, but slowly followed her inside to see the fireworks that were no doubt about to erupt. Amy strode through four chambers lit by Electric lamps set on the floor connected to the generator outside. Ahead she could see the fifth chamber, lit from within by more lamps and torches that cast shadows on the walls as people carried them about. She could hear the team’s voices up ahead too, echoing through the rooms.

  In her head she concocted all sorts of tortures she could inflict on Jonathon, the team leader. He had defied her all along and done his own thing. The fact that Yasmin seemed to put up with this man’s disrespect infuriated her, but she wasn’t about to upset Yasmin, so she knew she had to let it slide, for now.

  In the fourth chamber she pulled up short and stepped off to one side, she looked down at her feet in the harsh illumination of a nearby lamp as the dust settled around her. She took several deep breaths with her hands on her hips and did her best to calm herself down.

  Then the two men from outside walked into the chamber behind her, when they saw that Amy had stepped off to one side and not gone straight into the fifth chamber they hesitated, Amy smiled to herself and turned away from them. Yep, she would have given them all a nice little show if she had gone in there in a rage, something she knew they all wanted to see. Well, she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction, not today, today she would be measured and respectful. She took one more deep breath and wandered into the fifth chamber as if she had ordered them to start the dig so early.

  The team were hard at work; three of them were gathered around the entrance to the final chamber while the rest fulfilled var
ious tasks or waited for the big moment. Jonathon stood a short distance from Amy and eyed her carefully as she entered. Amy smiled serenely at him and ambled over to his side.

  ‘We thought we’d get an early start,’ he said.

  ‘I’d hoped you would.’

  ‘So, you don’t mind? Only we wanted to give this one our full attention, we thought it best not to disturb you.’

  Amy smiled. ‘Of course, you did the right thing, I appreciate the thought,’ you smug bastard she thought to herself.

  ‘But, you’re here now and not a moment too soon it seems.’

  ‘What?’ Amy said, slightly confused.

  Jonathon pointed at the entrance to the final chamber where several of the team laboured, the huge slab of stone that blocked the entrance had already been eased out somewhat. Dust and sand spilled from it to the floor making the team members closest to the door cough.

  ‘But, hold on John, it’s too soon, I didn’t think you would be this quick. You don’t know what’s in there!’ she blurted out. She couldn’t help it, she had to say something, but she knew she’d sounded like a crazy person, so she bit her lip.

  Jonathon looked at Amy and raised one eyebrow, as if he were looking at a fly that had just landed in his soup.

  ‘Amy, firstly, it’s Professor Hughes to you, and secondly, what on earth do you think is going to be in there, some kind of ancient Mummy from a cheap B-Movie? We’re scientists Miss Bergman, we don’t believe in curses and things that go bump in the night. Get a grip!’

  ‘G-g-get a grip?!?!’ Amy stammered in anger, desperate to show him just how big a bump things in the darkness could make. ‘I’ll…’

  But she never finished that statement and whatever she said after that first word became lost in the ear-shattering boom that rang through the chamber as the stone slab slammed to the floor like a drawbridge. Everyone’s hands immediately shot to their ears as the echo subsided and the plume of dust slowly settled to the floor. Silence filled the room. All eyes were fixed on the gaping black entrance, where once there’d been a wall. A stale musk rose from the dark chamber, the seal must have been air tight, or very close to it. People began holding their noses, and covering their mouths with tissues to protect against the foul smell of a room that hadn’t had anyone inside for thousands of years.

  Slowly the team began to move forward, torches and lamps where held out in front of them. With whispered comments of ‘Careful,’ and ‘Watch your step,’ the group edged towards the tomb. Amy watched a moment as the first of the team stepped up onto the foot thick slab and moved into the final chamber, his torch barely penetrating the gloom within.

  As a couple more entered, and Jonathon moved forward as well, Amy sighed, grabbed the nearest lamp and followed everyone else. As she neared that foreboding entrance, she got that feeling again, the feeling of impending doom, but she couldn’t help it, she had to see it for herself, Yasmin would need a report after all. What would she say if she didn’t go in? ‘Sorry Yasmin, I was too scared to enter the dark room.’ Yasmin would kill her on the spot.

  She stepped up onto the slab and down again into the room.

  There were plenty of torches and a couple of lamps in here now, but the shadows seemed reluctant to give up their hold of this room, the light just didn’t seem to penetrate the darkness quite so easily in here. As she watched the team move around, she saw a couple of them jumping at shadows or seeing something out of the corner of their eye that made them gasp. Amy had the same feeling, as if nothing could be trusted in here. Up wasn’t up and down wasn’t down, the walls seemed solid one moment and paper thin the next, the whole room felt wrong.

  Amy knew the feeling well, it was the feeling you got when strong Magic was at work, Magi learned to use this feeling, to recognise it and to let it inform them. She wasn’t about to run out of there, but she proceeded much more carefully now because something felt wrong. They were in the middle of a Dead Magic Zone, Magic should be impossible, and yet she felt sure she could feel it all around her.

  Amy wondered if the Dead Magic Zone could be a shell, so that once inside she would be able to use her Magic? The thought had never crossed her mind as she still felt disconnected to the flow of Magical energy. Curiosity getting the better of her, she tried to call upon her Magic, but nothing happened, disproving her theory. Amy didn’t understand it; it broke all the known laws of Magic. Looking out over the room once more, she felt way out of her depth here.

  The largest room in the Tomb Complex, quite deep with a high ceiling, the room had a grandeur to it that the others lacked. The walls were covered in Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics of a highly detailed nature, similar to the ones on the huge sarcophagus or altar in the centre of the room that a couple of the team were examining. This huge edifice clearly fascinated some of the group with its sheer size, at least three times too big for just one person to be inside. The covering stone slab alone would be extremely difficult to move given its probable weight, but it would have to be done.

  Amy steeled herself and walked into the chamber, around to the left, away from where most of the team were. She ran her fingers over the wall markings as she gazed at its intricacy. Without a doubt it would easily prove to be the best-preserved chamber in whole complex. She gazed at the markings and the script itself, she had become quite adept at picking out the odd word here and there and did her best to read it.

  However, the seventh word her eyes landed on wasn’t in hieroglyphs, it was in English, carved into the wall over the top of the markings that had been there for thousands of years.

  Amy stared incredulously at what she was seeing, it was unbelievable. She stepped back a little and slowly ran her finger along the carved passage of writing trying to make it out. The passage wasn’t recent, clearly this was done a good few hundred years ago, and after several tries at reading it, she finally succeeded and reached the end of inscription. There were two short sentences, nothing more. It read;

  Do not lift the Slab. Horlack lies within.

  Amy stared, bemused and staggered at what she’d seen, so she read it a few more times to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. She quickly realised that someone had obviously beaten them into the tomb. Amy and her team weren’t the first ones in here since it had first been sealed, someone had been in here and with a sharp implement scraped this text into the wall, but why do that and nothing else?

  The rest of the tomb complex had lain undisturbed; in fact the research the team had done had supported the hypothesis that they were the first inside it. The original seals were intact, no one could have got in here, well, no normal person at least. Which pointed to a Magi, and if that were the case, then the Magic that filled this final room started to make some kind of sense, if you ignored the Dead Magic Zone.

  She traced her fingers over the text once more. The way the text had been written, its form, suggested a modern origin, someone who’d been in here not too long ago, but the carving looked much older. Time Travel maybe?

  This discovery changed things for the rest of the team, if they saw this then things wouldn’t add up, after all, how did someone get in here, write this, and not disturb anything else? They would begin asking awkward questions which would need an answer.

  Amy looked at the passage again and read it through. Who or what was Horlack? Clearly someone worth defacing this ancient tomb over, but this didn’t make much sense either. Why break in to this final room and write it here? Surely the thing to do would be to write this on an outer tomb, or on the main entrance into the complex itself?

  For some reason she doubted that the name Horlack would be written anywhere else in here. Anyway, it wasn’t even an Egyptian name, it didn’t sound like any name she had ever heard of before. But if a Magi had written this, then maybe someone somewhere would have heard of Horlack, and if any Magi would know, Yasmin would. This needed to go back to Yasmin before they did anything else.

  Her mind made up, Amy turned to the room just in time to see two groups o
f two lending their weight to crow bars to lever open the Slab on the Sarcophagus. The crow bars were inserted into the crack around the edge of the Tomb on the side closest to Amy and the four men where levering open the huge lid.

  Amy’s eyes widened in horror and she lunged forward. ‘NO!’ She shouted as the slab lifted slightly with the four men’s weight.

  Suddenly, something seemed to snap in the air around them. It wasn’t a sound, nor could they see it, but they all felt it. It felt as though something in their minds, like elastic pulled too tight suddenly gave way and snapped back. The Magic that had been so pervasive in the room only moments before, had disappeared, the lifting of the Slab seemed to have stretched it too much..

  Everyone noticed something shift in the room, including it seemed, the thing in the Tomb.

  Suddenly an ear splitting roar came from within the great stone sarcophagus, a huge, blood-curdling noise, and with that sound came a feeling that humans seldom experience, the feeling of being something else’s dinner.

  BOOM!

  The great slab on top of the tomb exploded up and outwards as the huge black shape within came to its feet like a rocket. Great chunks of stone flew across the room with tremendous force, slamming into the walls and exploding again. A couple of the team where unlucky enough to be caught by some of these missiles, they screamed in pain as they were hit.

  One of the men who had been levering open the slab caught one massive piece in the chest, it lifted him bodily from the floor, slamming him into the wall right next to Amy. The stone flattened his torso, crushing his rib cage killing him instantly. Amy twisted from the impact covering her face with her arm to protect it from the flying stone, but a small pebble sized stone struck her on the head dazing her momentarily.