Chapter Text
The last mechanism crashes upon the floor, letting out a sad wiring noise before falling definitely silent. The lump of metal joins the sad pile of his brothers on the ground.
If Alhaitham was one of those people who could see poetry in the small things of life, he might have had a thought for those machines that spend centuries in this lost temple, forgotten by man and God, but still keeping to their duty until their final breath.
Glad he isn’t.
He puts his sword back and goes to inspect the monument in front of him. Like the rest of the building, it is made from granite and riddled with golden inscriptions in an ancient language found in most abandoned desert temples like this one. To be perfectly honest, Alhaitham isn’t sure what he was looking at.
As a Haravat scholar, his work centers around languages. In his specific case, ancient ones, the older the better. He is somewhat always dodging and flirting with the sin of words’ origins for his own entertainment. Had he been of any ambition he is not sure he wouldn’t be in a Matra cell today.
That said, a rule doesn’t appear for no reason, and since he had a face-to-face with the reality of forbidden knowledge, he is less inclined to dodge God-made rules. If not for respect or devotion, at the very least for self-preservation’s sake.
He heard of findings emerging from a sandstorm from eremites conversations at a bar near the Wall of Samiel; it was apparently discovered by local tribes who tends to keep those kinds of discoveries to themselves and far away from the greedy Akademiya scholars.
A little governmental house cleaning does not erase centuries of enmity, after all, this specific greedy Akadmiya scholar does not care much for that.
He has his interests, his curiosity, and a very good information network to feed both.
“I should buy some more of Ahmed's wares, I owe him for the recommendations about the bar. I’ll pass by Port Ormos next time I have some time,” Alhaitham thought, “He does have some of those funny little wood sculptures, and I'm pretty sure there’s some space on the hall counter…”
One thing leads to another and here he is, on a well-deserved “vacation” he forced the current administration to accept by simply putting it in the “accepted” pile and not showing up to work for the past 2 days. Despite the workload and responsibilities and overall terrible hours of the job, being Grand Sage can have its perks.
He could technically have been more upfront about it: nobody would deny him anything, first because he is now one of this nation's “heroes” [“Stop scoffing about that, you are a hero, we all are, enjoy the popularity and the free drinks for a while Alhaitham”, Dehya said before downing the entire content of her wooden mug. Alhaitham raised an eyebrow, “With the way you go about drinking, the morning paper will be about the hero ending in a lake after exceeding reasonable alcohol intake recommendations” “Shut up, you smug bastard, we’ll see who ends up in a lake!”]
Second, because he has been working for a month now in this position he truly does not enjoy, and thirdly, because half of his cabinet is scared shitless of him while the other half would see his head on a spike any day.
[“Grand Sag-” “ Acting Grand sage, and I am out of this office at 6 so you better be fast about this” “But sir, there’s only 2 minutes left and these applications are about the new appointment of Matra officers!” “Send this to the General Mahamatra, isn’t he supposed to deal with this?” “Yes, however, the General hasn't been in his office for a week, he is on a case and-” “Don’t care. Put it on his desk and stop bothering me about this. Well, it’s 6, I’m out” “Sir-”]
Both were probably hoping he would run in some trouble, keel over, and die.
In their defense most of them are barely graduates who made the unfortunate decision to take the opportunity that were the vacant Mahamata' sits due to the Akademiya-wide pest control the General Mahamatra has been doing. You cannot catch rats better than with an enraged dog.
[“It’s a jackal, Alhaitham. A jackal.” “You do go fetch when people send you on a mission.” “...if I kill you, will this be considered treason or just an extension of Sumeru liberation?”]
These vacation days allowed him to go on discovering a secret submerged temple that recently reemerged, and is now only hidden behind a few walls and classic defensive mechanisms. The fact that he is the first one to enter into it - as would suggest the number of machines he had to slay while working his way through the ruins - is a true wonder. Mysteries like these rarely go unsolved in a land of scholars.
Terribly nosy bunch, scholars.
He is also rather certain any researcher who might have learned of this place would have to build an expedition, rent sumpter beasts, a carriage, and most likely eremites mercenaries, whose services don’t come cheap. These ruins crawl with machines scorpions and other possible traps that would be very dangerous for the average Sumerian scholar.
If anyone dares to ask Alhaitham - which outside of Kaveh is not many, cowardly lot - he would say a fully accomplished scholar should be able to use his knowledge just as much as his blade to achieve his goals. The lack of adaptability and preparedness of his fellows surprise him sometimes: you would think their desire for those sweet, sweet funds would motivate them to get off their asses and not spend half of it simply for their safety.
This was one of these very few points where the architect and he seemed to be of a common mind:
[“I am not saying that everyone should be an accomplished warrior, but I do believe in a country where you can get easily attacked by simple things like Shroomkins or Rishboland tigers just by leaving the city, learning to defend yourself should be part of the curriculum! …Especially with the number of Dryosh going out in the world and finding themselves in compromising situations”, Kaveh took a swig out of the bottle they had been sharing for half an hour now, “I have talked a little with the Traveller about the ones they met, and while I haven’t looked it up, I am now certain the Akademiya has a body count of them! The greatest minds of Teyvat! Vanquished by a water slime!”}
Alhaitham's lips moved upward despite himself. Dwelling on useless matters will not help him right now in pursuing his ruins exploration. The monument in front of him - that he has now the time to take a good look at - was in what seemed to be the biggest room in the place. Behind it, facing the door he just came from was another door.
This temple really wasn’t big compared to most of the others known and studied.
It seems to be composed of three chambers established in a line. One was the entrance hall, the second (the one he was in) the main room and was too empty to guess its original use: maybe a place for the devotees to practice rituals -everything is ritual-related in Vahumana when they lack better guess - maybe a mess hall, who knows. The third one, just in front of him, doesn’t seem to hide any other secret room due to the rather small size of the temple.
Alhaitham crosses the, surprisingly low, door frame by lowering his head. He then raised it to look properly and still.
There is a chair.
Well, it is probably more of a throne, or something similar to one. It is…small, the size of a comfortable sofa maybe. It is also startling in its simplicity and its small size in comparison to all other thrones of King Deshret found in ruins for decades.
The room feels strangely intimate, cozy as Kaveh would say. One would not assume it would be used to revere such a grandiose God. The room is also very well preserved: the colors of the walls are still going strong on the paintings in comparison to the previous rooms. It seems to have been locked in time, just after it was made. He could nearly smell the pigments on the walls, shining like they had been put on fresh yesterday.
Looking at the ground, he noticed a surprising lack of sand for a place that had been buried for centuries. Same thing after wiping a finger on the wall that comes back perfectly clean, with no dirt, no grim, nothing.
Which was, for lack of better words, really really weird.
At first, due to the visual abnormality of the room, Alhaitham assumes he made a misjudgment and that it is, instead, one dedicated to a lesser-known God who might have also perished 500 years ago. From what he heard, Liyue is littered with their corpses, and cities are built on their graves. It wouldn’t be far-fetched for Sumeru's impenetrable desert to be the same.
However, the inscriptions and symbols on the figures in the paintings told another story.
It is a temple dedicated to King Deshert.
Even more importantly, it is a mausoleum.
His mausoleum.
Alhaitham is now truly confused because there is already an enormous mausoleum in the middle of the desert. A mausoleum to the Sand King. THE mausoleum. You do not build two tombs for a man, nor do you for a god. If one of these is true, then the other must be false. And wouldn’t that be a discovery?
He feels his heartbeat rise a little under the hypothesis, what a salivating notion, to discover something unknown to others. Better yet, proving so many people wrong.
[“Calm your temper would you, I can see you bouncing like a young child since she started speaking. I know you want to interrupt her but this is a conference, not a debate, wait for the public question part at the end” “But she is so wrong senior, how could I allow everyone and myself to have to keep listening to stupidities when I could correct her?” Alhaitham whined -as Kaveh would say- looking at the Haravatat speaker explaining her theory, “Don’t ask me to stay silent when idiots speak”]
The murals on the walls are the main attraction of the room, they are vibrant with reds, golds, and blues. The work is professional and resembles in style the one that can be found in other desert structures and artworks.
The characters’ representation in the mural is probably the most interesting part: it depicts the tale of a man, rather than a god. A man who bears a crown and a book. He recognizes the green of Lord Kusanali, in a much bigger form than her current one, and the violet of flowers he assumes to be Paradisarah, which went famously extinct as they used to be and linked to their creator, the Lord of Flowers.
Nearly every frame is of them, of all three of them, rarely is the god of Sand alone in the pictures, sitting and drinking and thinking with them. Those are not representations of enemies.
While Alhaitham - due to his unfortunate quest to save Sumeru, which landed him with more paperwork than he anticipated - already knew that Nahida, or Nahida before she lost her memories, worked closely with the God-king. The memories of Kasala were clear, especially by the end of his life in a desperate attempt to seal the forbidden knowledge. But the depth of the relationship between those three gods seems to have been seriously understated.
Well, he is due to write a paper sooner or later, and he is in God’s good graces. She probably wouldn’t be too mad if he went dig a little into her personal life.
Is it still her personal life when she has no knowledge of it herself? Alhaitham imagines he wouldn’t have any hang-up about someone displaying his past-self personal life - would he have been reincarnated from a man rather than a cat like Kaveh seems to think - but who is he to assume that someone would think like him, they never seem to do.
…If she didn’t like it, she could always ask him to not do it. What is he going to do? Say no to God?
-
After an hour of taking pictures of the painting with his travel Kamera and rewriting and translating a few inscriptions, Alhaitham decides he has had enough of the walls. He can set camp in the bigger room and stay here for a few days, he has time to go over all of them. After putting back his material, he goes to pay attention to the only furniture in the room.
The throne is quite simple truly, especially if it was to be compared to other thrones of the Sand God: wood, of amazing manufacture -for the little he knows about it from his Kshahrewar roommate- lines are surprisingly symmetrical, the details are precise and the grain is smooth to the touch.
All of it is covered in thin and elegant golden scriptures. Completely covered in them, it is like someone spent hours upon hours engraving this throne by hand. Painstakingly graving and then going back with either gold powder or gold sheets to fill every crevasse.
The strangest part is how random these graving seems to be: they are going up and down in a haphazard way, turning around the whole thing to write again over the previous lines. If this didn’t result in beautiful decorations Alhaitham would have thought someone wrote them after taking a few too many bottles.
To be perfectly honest he has seen Kaveh make the patron of a whole building drunk out of his mind without measurements and for it to completely work afterwards. He is still not sure if the palace of Alcazarzaray didn’t come out from a similar night. In any case, he refuses to underestimate the ability of drunk craftsmen.
The patterns seem rhythmic, moving gold snakes slithering all over the chair, touching and brushing each other, with neither start nor end. The words are there in their body but the way they slide over one another and meet again in intentional patterns and complicated hymns make the words seem irrelevant.
It makes him want to touch the lines, and caress the wood to hear its secrets.
They are hypnotizing.
That should have been his first clue.
Any scholar who frequently investigates old mausoleums, tombs, temples, and other ancient buildings such as this one has been warned and warned again of old magic and God-made curses that linger in these places, just as much as functioning mechanisms. He isn’t as knowledgeable about energy and ley lines as is a Spantamad but he’s aware those level of energy festering in ancient or cursed places tends to disrupt them. Some are even purposefully built upon them.
In insight, that might explain the level of preservation of this buried temple.
Insights are a faraway thought when Alhaitham puts his hands on the throne, trying to read the written lines as they blur themselves out the moment he gets closer to them like they are trying to escape him. Letters lose meaning and form the moment his eyes focus to reappear whole on the corner of his sight.
He only hears what he thought to be a stray wind current at first. Very thin, very soft, but it seems to slowly grow in murmurs like someone speaking very close to his ear in the softest voice they can muster.
The lines start to take meaning under those unintelligible sentences, what is not seen is known and what is unreadable is understood. At that point he should be freaking out, he probably is in a faraway part of his brain, the one who still has some level of neurons and self-preservation to stay the fuck away from this place and whatever curse it is under.
But the voice keeps on going and going, getting stronger slowly, and Alhaitham can not resist it.
It is calling him.
He doesn’t understand how he knows it is calling him because he still cannot comprehend what the voice is saying but he feels it, he knows without knowing, with a certainty that would have been frightening in any other situation.
The voice wants him to sit on the chair.
.
.
.
Some, describe dying as going to sleep and never waking up again.
This feeling Alhaitham has, when he raises himself slightly and turns, back to the throne, like the softness of a slow death, without truly noticing but intrinsically knowing.
The moment his back touches the headboard the mumbling of the voice starts to take shapes of actual words and sounds, ones he hears clearly.
It is the voice of a man.
“...left the desert throne to the Lord of Verdure in the hope of a better world without the curse of knowledge and the curse of greed. I hope my ultimate demise serves my people a lesson, and that my mistakes are sung again and again to the ones who dare defy the rules that govern this world.
Let my blood be the source of the spring that spreads wisdom, understanding, and reconciliation. I leave heavy with guilt but lightened by joy for I am to join back the Primordial Oasis of this world. Let my soul meet the ley lines in a new cycle in the river of life, for I, Al-Ahmar…”
Before he loses consciousness, Alhaitham thinks a last time of Kaveh, hoping that he won’t worry too much after this momentary absence.
His last thoughts of red eyes are swallowed by the dark.
—----------------
When Alhaitham wakes up, the first thing he notices is that he isn’t in the mausoleum anymore.
The fresh clean smell of the sheets he is laying under reminds him of the times he got new official Akademiya clothes and sheets when he started to live in the dorms as a student. That and the vague smell of antiseptic and murmur of the street outside told him he was at the Bimarstan.
The second thing he notices is the raging headache that makes him clench his teeth a little and the main reason he hasn’t opened his eyes yet. He’s had enough migraines to know the effect of light right now.
His thoughts must have been heard somehow because the cold and refreshing feeling of a wet towel put on his head, quiet the pain a little.
“...think he’s going to wake soon. His vitals seem to be perfectly well so it should be soon enough. He should just keep hydrated and rest out of the sun in the next few days to recover well.”
“Thank you, doctor, I’ll see that he does. Pig-headed man he is.”
That voice, he knows that voice.
He would know that voice was deaf and blind. He would know those steps that come to him on the door of death and call to them.
He knows him.
“...Kaveh?”
His voice is hoarse from the dryness and barely audible. His eyes are still closed and he feels more than he sees the hands that put themselves on his.
“So you are awake now are you? Would you mind explaining what was this all about?”
He opens his mouth to speak again and ask for water but his needs are preemptively met by a cold glass that touches his lips.
He drank slowly while his roommate kept babbling.
“…found you in the desert 2 days later. You can be lucky the caravan way was moved due to the sandstorm and they passed upon what would have been your rotting corpse otherwise.”
Kaveh fiddles with a hair strand that unusually sits outside of his perfectly combed hair.
“What were you trying to do exactly? You are generally much more careful than that! By the way, the auntie down the street keeps giving me fruits for you so you keep hydrated during your recovery, it’s been a whole week and some of them are starting to rot while I keep trying to find people to give them to. I think my students are starting to have a Pavlovian response when I put my hand in my bag. They look like Desert foxes that see prey with their ears all perky like that. I will make you eat the fruits by the way, this is a threat, the three watermelons are not gonna be eaten by me alone…”
While Kaveh goes about complaining and worrying and complaining again, Alhaitham tries to slowly open his eyes, wincing a little and then opening them again wider to be faced with curious and worried red eyes. He looks tired, eyebags prominent but not more than a few late nights of work do to him. He frowns looking at Alhaitham again.
“Why are you all silent like that? You generally stop me from speaking by that point when you don’t wear your headphones. Did the sand do more damage to your brain than anticipated? Hopefully, it will polish your temper a little so your words become smoother and nicer”
Alhaitham looks at the red eyes again and prepares to answer him in the negative when another voice speaks before he can.
Is that your beloved?
This would have been fine in theory, if the voice wasn’t coming directly from his head.
This is truly fascinating, is this what Sumeru became after my death? The medicinal practice really did evolve around here. Such a fresh smell.
Alhaitham wouldn’t call himself someone who is easily surprised. All the contrary truly. One advantage of the gregarious reader is that they are scarcely taken aback. You can only be as surprised as there are situations you didn’t either read about or at the very least entertained in idle thoughts.
And Alhaitham makes a point to be as idle as possible.
During his time at the Akademiya, there has only been a handful of times where he has truly been surprised. His ever-bored and wandering spirit makes him unflappable. From quoting Kaveh in a drunk rant his face is “made from marble and just as expressive as rock”.
It was evidently pursued by comments made by Alhaitham in regard to how appreciative Kaveh seemed to be of the rock face he has going on to compare it to marble which earned him a very satisfying and blustering “You being beautiful isn’t a celebration, it’s an annoyance due to the poor personality you got it paired with!”
Ah, well being beautiful doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things but it does please one’s eye. What a pretty man you have chosen to have at your bedrest my samsara.
Alhaitham isn’t one for swearing excessively but he thinks the situation calls for it.
“What", he said in a very monotonous voice, "the fuck.”
Kaveh looked at him, shocked.
“... I didn’t think the situation of our pantry mattered to you that much.”
He looks at Alhaitham suspiciously and puts a hand on his head to check for some kind of fever.
He sent Kaveh a deadpan look “I am fine.”
The look Kaveh sent him was even more suspicious if possible, he was, after all, one of the few people who truly knew Alhaitham as a person, and not just some guy with a Mahamata hat and terrible opening hours. And well, now Grand Sage he guesses.
Grand Sage, that is a good position that Grand Sage. ( 1) I am glad to see I didn’t lose my ambitions by going through the cycle.
“It’s Acting Grand Sage, I don’t intend to stay.”
“...Alhaitham? What are you talking about, are you okay? I am going to call for the doctor, you are losing it.”
Ah, he talked out loud.
“Wait Kaveh, don’t call the doctor call for…” For who? Who do you call when you have a voice in your head that talks to you like this is some random Thursday?
Alhaitham likes to think he is sensible enough to know about what should be normal and what should be weird. Whatever others say about his decisions and character, he is pretty certain one doesn’t develop a second personality who can interact while the other is awake like that. His family doesn’t have a history of psychosis of any kind and he doesn’t think he has a contusion.
One cannot develop a new personality out of dehydration alone, can’t they?
…well, this is embarrassing. I think you should call for the Lord of Verdure, she would probably explain things much better, and you are her Grand Sage, she must be able to see you.
Alhaitham grumbled an “acting” before remembering Kaveh was still in the room, looking at Alhaitham like he grew a second head - which is, in this case not far from the truth - and waiting to know who he should call.
Alhaitham scraped his throat and asked “...could you call for Lord Kusanali. Tell her to come when she is free.”
“You want me to call God? Are you dying, do you need your last rites or something?” Kaveh looked slightly panicked “I didn’t know you were religious!”
Alhaitham coughed again, “It’s fine, I am in perfect health, it’s just something she should know about, no need to rush her”
Kaveh continued to stare him down with that slightly panicked, slightly suspicious look and then sighted, aggravated as always by everything Alhaitham seemed to say and do as though those were direct attacks against him: “ Well then die for all I care, I will be able to throw out all those books that clutter every part of the house. With you gone I won’t ever have to worry about falling over during the night ever again”
While his words were harsh, Kaveh delicately replenished the glass with the clear jug of water next to his table and brought it slowly to his mouth again. Probably some way to make him shut up that Alhaitham gladly took.
“I need to go, some of us have work they can’t afford to dump on others while they take dangerous vacations. I’ll go talk to Lord Kusanali. Be glad if she can free some time for you and your self-inflicted injuries.” he put back the chair next to his bed back to the desk it belonged to, “I’ll be back this evening, there’s a book or two on the table to entertain this dangerous brain of yours, be nice with the doctors or I’ll tell them to put you under a liquid diet.”
And on those terrible, and slightly infantilizing words, Kaveh left the room, red coat flying behind him like a cape and closing the door very slowly behind him.
Leaving Alhaitham alone in the empty room of the Birmastan. Alone with his squatter.
What a caring partner you found for us, he does have beautiful eyes. Always did love red.
“We are not partners, this is Kaveh my roommate, and who are you?”
You do not need to talk out loud, I can hear you perfectly in your head.
…that does make sense. He assumes he would have guessed that much earlier if it wasn’t for the headache and dehydration thing he has going on.
The voice in his head seems amused by his struggles, he has a thought for those small monkeys entertainers made to juggle with things in the bazaar. He feels like one of them who played a clever trick with an indulgent and admirative public.
‘What a bother’, he thought.
The voice must have felt the vague of annoyance from the cushy seat it took in his head and relented to answer his questions:
My name might have been forgotten today, I do not know how long it has been since my death but if you found me then I know what I did was worth it, even if only a few years have passed.
I am Al-Ahmar, I used to be a God next to the Lord of Verdure but I met my demise through my own choices. My servants call me King Deshret.
Alhaitham shouldn’t be surprised, after everything that happened to him, Sumeru fake God, toppling a government, becoming drinking buddies with the Flame-mane and the General Mahamatra, and his unwarranted job change, he really shouldn’t be surprised anymore. But still:
“What.”