Music: The Alexandrian Pleiad - Assassin’s Creed Origins

When Mariline was ten years old her father come and told her:

“Mariline. It is time…”

“Uh? What? Time for what?”

“It is time for you to know, you have ten years now. You are not a child anymore”

What is he talking about?.. I am still a child… I am ten years old physically… normally that should count as “child”...

“Know about what?”

“About the labyrinth, and its importance to the family. I want you to prepare for a fight, pick only one of the spirits and follow me”

Dad is serious.. this must be important

Which one should I pick? A Crocodile of Sobek that fights in melee and with water manipulation and can shed scales that become fishes? A Falcon of Horus that throws Lightning? An Antelope of Satis that is very dexterous? A Hawk of Isis that heals? A Leopard of Sekhmet? Or a Jackal of Anubis?

She looked at her father and he was getting a Jackal

..then perhaps a spirit to complement him? One of the birds that can fly...A falcon is then!

I also want a water manipulation spell, even if I can't use it with precision because of not being my element it is a good combination with Lightning.. and also a healing spell.

She got the first on a wooden rod and the second on a papyrus sheet to make the complete scroll.

Ah! Almost forgot... I am gonna need easy-to-move clothes…

She changed her clothes…

“Dad! I am ready!” I proudly told him

She was there, with the big scroll and the falcon at her side.

Her father was looking at her… evaluating her.. and put his hand under his chin...

“Mmmm.. it is gonna be a challenge…very well, let’s go”

At that time, she didn’t understand, she believed that her father wanted her to fight something with him.

So they went into the labyrinth and one of the lateral portal puzzle doors inside the labyrinth.

It opened into a cave tunnel that seemed to go deeper and deeper underground, it had twice the height of an adult person. They started to walk until the tunnel opened to reveal a big cave.

They were on a ledge of a small ridge with stalagmites to the right and a path downwards towards the floor of the cave, where a small campsite was there.

Why does it feel familiar..? I am sure I have never been here..Osiris

There were some golden decorations and what looked like a path to the right deeper into the cave with mud bricks and painted walls, funerary paintings of Osiris, she recognized.

So.. to the right, there is a small tomb?

“Here should be a good place” dad told me while he started rearranging some things in the camp.

“We are going to fight something here?” she asked

“Correct, my esteemed daughter, you are going to fight here”

Wait..”you” are going to fight? I am not fighting with him?!

Her father put himself on the other side of the camp with the Jackal in front of him.

The falcon put himself in front of her

Two persons facing each other.. with their animals in the middle...Is this a frigging pokemon battle?

“Mariline, are you ready?”

We are totally gonna have a pokemon battle!

“Uh?! Ye-yes, I am ready!”

“Then let’s start”

Her father looked to his Jackal, it looked him back

“Do it as planned!” he told me.

The jackal looked at the falcon and seemed to concentrate...

And in that moment.. the falcon she bought with her turned around to face her

“Fly high! Keep out of its range and attack it with lightning!” I ordered it

But the falcon didn’t move from the ground, instead, it screeched loudly and then proceeded to take flight away from her, it charged lightning and shot it at Mariline.

“WHAT?!”

Mariline evaded it by jumping back.

“Stupid falcon! The other way! Don’t shoot lightning at me!”

But it was dead on focused on her…

“Mariline! In the dungeons and mazes in the labyrinth, more than once it will find a way to use your own power or spirits against you! Now! Fight!”

She looked at her father in disbelief.

“You gotta be kidding me”

The spirit I had to choose was the one I was gonna fight... What is this bullshit?!

And I forgot to prepare curses on me! Dammit!

And so the falcon decided to dive down clad in lightning

“Ffu-”

And it impacted Mariline in the right shoulder electrocuting her

She fell down

That hurts like hell!

Mariline’s right arm was partially numb because of the electrocution.

The falcon took position and started to shoot lightning again while it started creating clouds to make it rain.

You are not gonna throw water on me so you can electrocute me twice!

“If this is how it is gonna be!”

She took the scroll hanging from her belt, sent magical energy to it and concentrated over where the falcon was creating the storm, and focused on making it cold and more solid to create ice spikes.

It screeched, charged lightning, and threw it at Mariline, which she evaded.

“No way in hell you’re gonna hit me with that obvious telegraphed attack!”

I need to concentrate more.. focus…my body is nothing more than a cog in a machine that would produce a mystery… a machine to produce mysteries…

Using water which is not her element was hard, but she could use it without precision.

Fortunately for her, the falcon was creating a rain cloud over itself...

And so the water on it started to become colder and heavier, falling over the falcon...

Which screeched in surprise when the hail and water hit him instead and made him go down.

Just in time for Mariline to kick it with her reinforced leg to the wall of the cave.

And she kicked it, over, over, over and over again until it died.

“huff.. huff… huff.. stupid bird.. this is over... I have won the fight Dad…”

Her father didn’t move nor make any comment

She was tired and partially electrocuted, the falcon had electrocuted the leg that she used to kick it.

My right shoulder hurts... I need to heal... Uh?!

Where is it? Where is the healing papyrus?!

She noticed that the papyrus scroll she was having in her hand had fallen to the ground and only the wooden rod stayed in her hand, so she crouched to pick it up.

At that moment strong jaws reached the back of her neck and closed over her neck.

“Wh-What! It hurts! Get off me! Get off!”

She tried to get up but the jackal's jaws where locked in her neck and pushed pushed his body weight over her back

So Mariline reinforced her legs to push harder and try to reverse it and put her weight over him instead.

The jackal let go and instead went after the wooden rod in Mariline’s hand, pulled it off her hand and started chewing on it while looking at her.

“Dad! What the fuck was that!? Why is that jackal attacking me?!! I already won against the falcon!!”

Her father frowned, his face showed disapproval.

“There were still enemies in the area and you gave them your back... Were this a real fight you will be dead… The dungeons are not gonna be as nice to give you time to rest... You are alone, hurt, and tired but there is still an enemy ahead of you. Fight!”

You have to be kidding me!

And the Jackal put some distance and put himself in a stalking pose slightly to her right, ready to jump at any moment...

When she turned to face the jackal directly it moved more to the right...

What is it doing?...

Mariline turned again and it moved more to the right...

It thinks it is better to attack me from the right?… Why?... Oh! I haven’t used my right arm since the attack on my shoulder since it hurts... But I can move it…

And a wicked grin appeared on Mariline’s face...

She didn’t turn nor move, instead she used her left hand to grip her right arm pretending it hurt a lot.

The jackal jumped from Mariline’s right.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Mariline side-stepped to the left while turning left, hiding her right arm and adjusting her footing.

When the jackal was in mid-air and couldn’t adjust its course, he was met with a reinforced right hook, directly under its left ear, which stunned it and made it land badly.

The fight was decided

The jackal was at Mariline’s mercy and was stomped on the head over and over until it died and disappeared.

Fucking.. finally!

“huff.. huff… huff…”

“Well done Mariline..”

Her father was crossing his arms

She moved closely to the healing papyrus scroll.. and before reaching it she checked her surroundings…

“That is the correct attitude. Always be vigilant, always careful, and patient… This will be a lesson that you will remember...”

Fuck this lesson!

You could have just talked about this and I would remember it!

All of this was completely unnecessary!

She concentrated and sent magical energy to the spell so she could start healing herself...

“In the labyrinth, you need to think of everything. It is gonna use any power you have against yourself. Do you carry a big number of spirits with you? They could be taken over and controlled against you. You should only take with you what you can kill fast. Do you use dead bodies as mummies instead? Mix them? Do you apply curses to yourself at the risk of needing to get hurt to activate the curses? Do you reserve your magical energy for spells at the risk it can be stolen from you? What weapons do you use and what weaknesses do you have for others to exploit?”

They can WHAT?!!

“Come, my esteemed daughter, I will show you”

I am not liking this! Not liking this at all!

And so her father took her again through the shortcuts to the end of the labyrinth, to that hall where she opened her circuits...

She was very paranoid of everything and each portal they passed on.

Her father seemed pleased at her attitude…

“Mariline, see all these red tally marks? And remember those in the rest of the labyrinth?”

Tally..marks?

Where is dad going with this?

“Each of these red tally marks was made with blood.. and represents all the family members that have died in each of these dungeons and mazes… each door has its own count”

And the room was filled with hundreds of them

“Wait! Wait! Are you telling me that hundreds of people died behind THAT door?!” I shouted pointing at the door.

In the white marble ceremonial hall was the last white marble door of the labyrinth, like the others it had the same puzzle where you need to put your entire hand and then two fingers to open, but it was the only one that had a big mark on it.. a circle made with blood… with many points distributed inside.. and another smaller circle.. forming a ring.. a ring of blood…

“That, my esteemed daughter, is the ultimate challenge that our family has inherited and our number one priority. Nobody that has ever crossed that door has ever come back”

“What?...”

I am confused

“Listen, our family has been tasked with the mission to conquer all the dungeons and mazes in the labyrinth that our ancestors have left behind. And they are very dangerous, the tally marks are a way to identify how difficult each one of these is, the more tally marks, the more family members have died trying to conquer it“

“Wh-Why do we need to do this if they are so dangerous?”

“Because we were tasked with this mission, it is what our ancestors have been trying to do for generations. We need to give meaning to the number of deaths of the people in our family, otherwise, their sacrifices are for nothing!... also for revenge.. and to know why... Why did it matter to our ancestors so much to conquer it that they risked their lives? As a family we need to know and reclaim what is there, reclaim our lost grace”

This is SO stupid!

Did they build dungeons and mazes as a form of challenge? To kill their future family members?

No... there must be some other deeper reason… but my family doesn’t know about it…

This is the type of magi family bullshit that I didn’t want to deal with.

“B-but people are dying to this! We have been doing this for how many generations? Weren’t there people that didn’t want or couldn’t fight?”

“*sigh* the records said that the labyrinth challenge existed since the time of Sobekneferu, so.. almost four thousand years…”

Four thousand years?! They have been trying for four thousand years to conquer this fucking labyrinth and they keep dying over and over?

What is this Dark Souls bullshit?!

“And regarding those that couldn't fight... If at least one member of the family isn't going into the labyrinth dungeons and mazes once in a while, the labyrinth will call you with a mark appearing on your body, the same red ring mark drawn on that door, and if you don't challenge the last door, then you disappear. Not even a body is left behind”

“...you are joking, right? Please, dad, tell me it is a joke..”

“*sigh* We don't know how it happens, we have written registries of people that tried to do things to cheat it and nothing has worked”

FUCK!!

That is not a “mission” that’s a fucking curse that our family has!

“So, because of that, we are going to start with your training”

And her father was dead serious about this

~~~~~~~

Music: Fire in the Duat - Assassin’s Creed Origins

I was now open to the more dangerous and dark sides of my family, starting with how to fight.. with a staff... with a Sekhem scepter, a symbol of power, authority, and control, made of gold and wood to write curses on it and since it was associated with Sekhmet it could empower curses with Sekhmet as a focus.

Dad was dead serious and engraved into me to always react fast, recover and continue fighting no matter what, otherwise you’re dead.

The first rule of fighting for my family is: “Don’t”

Don’t fight if you can avoid it, you’re risking your life and we have disposable spirits that we can send to fight instead.

That’s why we should focus on strategy, and support of spirits, and traps.

A really weird thing is that my family doesn’t have nor inherit a magic crest over generations, the only big thing that is “inherited” is the labyrinth... which is weird… Could a magic crest be a labyrinth in itself? No…no way that can work.

I also quickly realize that my family's magecraft encourages evil… just think of the set: disposable spirit minions, curse spells, lair construction, definitely is more oriented towards the bad guys than the heroes of any story…

It quickly became clear that the family motto is to “Use what power others have against them”

Regarding our curses, I learned that the key to a curser’s power is the degradation of the target, which made the target morally inferior to the user, and so made the curser morally superior.

Degradation allowed the spell to function, and the consequences to happen.

And the more degraded, the stronger the curse is.

And also I started to learn about Monument Curses, which are the ones typically written in famous Egyptian Tombs like the ones in Tutankhamun’s tomb, which are much more flexible in the triggers and normally affect the area and the people inside the tomb.

Regarding the spirits of the family... they are called AKH (a spirit with intelligence) that formed after reuniting the KA (the magical energy and the vital essence of a living being, also considered the part of the soul that makes something alive) and the BA (the personality, the person or animal itself), and for this ritual to happen the KHET (physical body, corpse) needs to be mummified… that means buying animals to kill, mummify, do the ritual to reunite the KA and BA so they become an AKH and finally transform them into Demon Beasts with magical abilities in a death and rebirth ritual with spells that describe the Egyptian deity that is associated with the animal you want to transform, for example, Sobek for crocodiles, Anubis for jackals and so on... Most of them recite part of their myths…

And also related to the AKHs, I learned that the Jackals can control the dead (including spirits) and have take-over abilities..and the Crocodiles and Sobek itself have a vampiric aspect since they take away your KA with each bite…

Now the gigantic blood-red statue of Sobek has a very different meaning... not only are we a family of necromancers but one which has vampiric roots…

One part of me was horrified about all this and another was very curious…like... How does that realistically works? What are the ins and out? I was intrigued…

We also had some Egyptian Black magic spells and Egyptian White magic spells... It seems dad has gotten them from tombs in the dungeons.

Our family has made tombs in the dungeons and put treasures and spells there... The question is: Why?

The things that are less evil that we currently have are White magic spells for protection and healing or Water manipulation but we can’t control it with precision since our element is Hollow and there is no point since you can ask a crocodile to do what you need and it will do it better than you.

~~~~~~~

I took my time to think and we have been fighting this dungeon for four thousand years right? So we must have some crazy ways to cheat it by now…

“Dad! I want to know something about the dungeons that you were fighting in!. We are Abyssinians and we can create and collapse portals and pocket dimensions, can we use that to mess up the dungeons and the enemies there? I mean, who can resist being cut in half?“

“Mariline, it is not that simple, because the dungeons normally have tombs in the deepest part and inside the inner sanctuary of those they have written Monument Curses to establish the rules, so you cannot cheat. If you try to break the rules you get cursed, and let me tell you that they are not pretty. In fact, you are not allowed to use Abyss spells at all”

They made tombs in the dungeons.. to put curses there… to further increase the difficulty of them?! What the fuck were they thinking?!!

“B-But there should be a way to make them less deadly right? Our family has been fighting in them for 4000 years right? We should have learned lots of tricks by now, right? And what is this thing about going alone in them, can’t we team together?”

Dad frowned and looked at me

“And put 2 members of the family at risk?! If something happens 2 members of the family die the same day! You need to think of continuing our lineage”

“Then why don't we contract mercenaries or something? They can go with us”

“No! This is a challenge from our family to ourselves, we shouldn’t involve outsiders”

My dad is super set on keeping using the traditional ways… that keep killing us...This is so stupid!! Stupid magi traditionalist thinking!!

~~~~~~~

So... I decided to start thinking of patterns and analyze the labyrinth without going inside the dungeons.. which is pretty big actually! No wonder my family uses shortcuts to get to the center of the labyrinth.. It is also a good idea that I memorize and become familiar with it…

Among other things I counted the tally marks of the majority of the doors and they are around two thousands… a lot of members of my family died there…

I thought a lot about the labyrinth and the dungeons and I think I got a theory why so many members of my family died.

We are supposedly descendants of Sobekneferu, which reigned in the twelfth dynasty… which is around 1800 BCE.

That means that whatever is in the center of the labyrinth, was put there in the Age of Gods and for most modern magi, even more, for a literally dying family like us is unbeatable since it is an older mystery.

That also explains why some doors have so many tally marks, they should contain old phantasmal beasts or curses, like imagine a dungeon filled with Sphinxes, there is no way we can beat that.

Or from Ozymandias’ noble phantasm I know that some temples and tombs did have insta-kill poison curses.

And Phantasmal Beasts of the Millennium rank (those that lived a thousand years) are equal to true magic and transcend normal magecraft… and the labyrinth is almost four thousands years old…

So I think the trick is to identify the level of the dungeon quickly and get out if it is from the Age of Gods, and only try the unconquered ones with fewer tally marks since they have the best chance of being the easiest ones.

Though… they could also be deadly and just were tried fewer times…

Also, there is another big problem: the number of beatable dungeons has been going down a lot over time and eventually only the unbeatables will be left.

When that happens our family is done for! That means that in the beatable ones we need to learn what is in the center of the labyrinth and how to beat it somehow… there should be clues around right? I hope so…

This should be a much better method than what my family uses until now: “A dungeon that you enter is a challenge that you must finish, you can go in and out but you should focus on one at a time until completion”

That is a stupid inflexible method! What if with your abilities you can’t beat it?

Using my method is safer.

~~~~~~~

Music: Chthonic Invasion - Assassin’s Creed Origins

When I was fifteen years old my dad returned from the dungeon and it almost got him…

“Mari Mari, dad has just come back from the labyrinth! And he almost lost an arm!” my brother barge into the room running

“He WHAT?! Where is he?!”

I hastily picked up my bag with an imaginary pocket dimension where I keep a lot of things.

“I can take you there!”

We ran from the temple to the left to where the labyrinth is, and we found dad in a very bad shape, his right arm twisted, his body with a lot of cuts, with a trail of blood going into the lake... He seemed to have crawled back home…

“Dad!” I yelled

And I got to his side

“Maril-bleugh” and he vomited blood

“Dad! Stay with us!”

I started taking out the wooden rod healing spells and passed a few to my brother and we put ourselves to work.

“Dad! What did this to you? What happened?”

“Sph-Sphinx... It was too strong“

He tried to fight a Sphinx?!

“Dad! Conserve your energy, we talk later when you are better” I told him

I took out the first aid kit, bandages, disinfectants, a big thick blanket, and healing ritual tools.

“Seb Seb help me move dad to the blanket”

“One, two, three!”

We keep giving him first aid, disinfecting him and then I took a vessel in the shape of Taweret, the protective hippopotamus goddess, filled with healing water made on a ritual with a stele of Horus, and started pouring it over dad and then giving the water to him to drink.

“Mari Mari, I think he is stable now, we should seal him until mom and grandma come back”

“I know! I know!”

And so I took out a golden SHEN ring (a circle with a line tangent to it), which as a hieroglyph means “encircle” and represents the eternal protection of Shu, the god of emptiness. And with another inscribed wooden rod I made a circle around dad cutting the space and moving him to a pocket dimension with the coordinates relative to the ring.

Now, dad was safe, frozen in the time capsule and we could wait for mom and grandma to come back to prepare and treat him correctly.

This is it! This is where I draw the line! Things need to change! Otherwise, he will go back to the same dungeon and dad will try to fight that damn Sphinx again…

I have kept my mouth shut because dad was doing a good job in the labyrinth and always comes back unscratched or with minor damage, But this is it!

I am gonna need to start going into the dungeons myself!