Guardians of the Gates - Part 3, The Osiris Gate by Jeff Schanz (best book club books for discussion .TXT) 📖

place they were currently making camp. He found temporary shelter for the night, then set back out for “camp” the next day. Passing a familiar landmark, he was relieved to know he was only a half day’s walk back to camp. However, while passing another landmark, he noticed something odd to his right. He had been in Egypt’s desert all his life, and had seen his share or mirages and heat-induced fantasies, so at first, he assumed that’s what he was seeing. But after a moment to focus, he was sure it was nothing he had ever seen before. There was a craggy mound of earth and rock (hard to tell which was more prominent) that shimmered and warbled in and out of clarity like it was a reflection in a pool of disturbed water. Not heat radiation. Not a mirage. And he was not delirious since he was decently rested and still had a little bit of water in his waterskin. This was something else.

Ptahhomhet steeled himself and approached the mirage-like scene. As he approached, the shimmering waves of thick air did not recede. No heat illusion survived closer scrutiny. This was something magical. He walked forward, ready to defend himself against either evil or benevolent gods should they notice him entering their realm unbidden. But no being of any demeanor accosted him. He walked through what seemed like a nearly invisible waterfall, and suddenly the sand no longer felt hot. The sky seemed dimmer. Nothing made sense. One moment the image of the rock formation was in front of him, and then it was to his side, and something else was in its place. A cave? A night sky? A river? Some kind of den of creatures? He could swear that he saw beings moving around, but the moment he tried to determine what he was seeing, they were gone and the rock structure was there. It was like he was standing inside someone else’s dream. His feet no longer felt tired, and didn’t feel the pressure of his weight standing on them. He was flying without moving. The rock structure beckoned like it was a street vendor with a wonderful product to sell. There appeared to be a different sky through that cave tunnel. Ptahhomhet felt it as certain as he was alive that this was an invitation to another realm. Perhaps a realm of the gods themselves. The priest took a deep breath and resisted the temptation to run into Ra’s arms. Or perhaps Osiris. It made more sense that he had found the entrance to the underworld, which was ruled by Osiris. Whatever it was, it was real. Ptahhomhet hesitated to venture further, believing this place was not his own to accept or deny. He made up his mind to show his fellow priests and let the group decide.

Exiting the strange dream bubble was as easy as walking in. Like walking through a gust of cool air. He passed through the immaterial membrane and found himself near the same lump of hardened dirt he had stood near when he had decided to enter the strange shimmering bubble. Finding his way back to camp, he told his fellow priests what he had seen. Though many were skeptical, most of them thought they had little to lose by making the half-day journey to see for themselves.

The next day they all set out. With almost no trouble at all, the shimmering spectacle was exactly where the young priest said it was. They had brought all their gear with them, some hoping that they would be traveling across a true passage to another world, others figuring that even if it was a delusion, they would be able to find somewhere more favorable nearby to remake camp.

The small band of exhausted, starving, and desperate priests were from a world where earth had not seen Jesus yet, had not discovered electricity, or gunpowder, and the Egyptian pharaohs were the most powerful beings in the known universe. They all passed through the bubble and entered the cave. For a few brief steps, everything melted away and they found themselves walking across an invisible floor surrounded by what seemed like night sky both above and below them. Confused, but determined to trust the gods’ guidance, they continued moving forward. Eventually, their feet touched dry earth again. They pressed forward through a narrow, dark tunnel that left them no room to turn around. When they finally emerged into light, they were in a rock cavern that had been likely carved by a fast flow of water. The rock walls had red, orange, and brown striations like a continuous linear painting. Though dampness lingered in the air and the cavern walls, no water was immediately visible. After a short rest to light torches, they found their way through a myriad of low-ceilinged, winding passageways, finding one that led to the surface. They were back in the desert sun, though a very different desert. A short walk brought them to a cliff, with a long, sheer drop down and no visible way back up. It was part of a crevasse-like valley being cut by a rapidly moving river.

The wide and opaque river that flowed directly beneath them was vast enough to travel on by boat. Though muddy, they could capture and filter it enough to possibly drink. The opposing cliffside was similarly steep to the side they were on. The sun shone bright above them, just like the place they had left, but the desert flavor was different. Wherever they were, it was no longer in the same world they had walked from, and yet their journey to it had been no more than forty or fifty feet.

Unbeknownst to them, they had not only traveled thousands of miles in that simple walk, but thousands of years. They had no way of understanding that they were in an entirely different reality than the one they had left. To the priests, they had entered the afterlife: a version of the underworld that had been granted to them for their survival so that they may remain faithful priests of Ra. And now would also have to honor Osiris.

The priests agreed they had come to the end of their journey. Whatever this new world offered, they would accept it, and allow whatever gods had brought them here to guide them however the gods wished. The only concession they gave themselves was that they needed to find a more comfortable shelter that they could come and go from easier. The cave-like tunnels they had been in were so narrow in places that they needed to crawl, and the access to the surface was difficult at best. They waded along the river’s edge until they found a nearly hidden entrance to a cave that had been covered in a dense tangle of bushes. But a little group effort cleared the brush and showed them an interior area that seemed to have unfathomable depth. Inside were many separated caverns, numerous enough to make a room for every priest.

They settled in. Small desert creatures were plentiful enough for their meager band to capture and eat. They collected and filtered the river water. Though they were not accomplished artists, and did not have good references to work from, new idols were made to honor both Ra and the god Osiris, who they assumed had presented this section of his underworld for them. They worshipped and lived in quiet acceptance that this simple existence was their salvation from the wrath of the usurping pharaoh. The water level receded, the shoreline deteriorated, and their cave became harder to get in and out of, so they made fewer trips outside, stored larger sums of food, and stayed in their isolated caverns alone. The small band of priests grew old, sought no mates, and denied themselves contact with any other human-like beings that may exist in this plane. Osiris had offered them refuge, and it was not their place to overstep their bounds and try to be anyone’s friend or enemy. Many of them believed they had found Duat, the Egyptian version of the afterlife. The priests were happy to live out their lives in solitude and obscurity.

All except for one. Young Ptahhomhet was more curious than the others. He never forgot the initial wonder of passing through Osiris’ veil, across the in-between place, and into the underworld. Perhaps the other priests believed this was Duat and ignored everything leading to it, but Ptahhomhet had been fascinated by what he saw floating around them as they crossed over the invisible bridge. Creatures, beings, other gods, and places that defied explanation had flowed around them like light dancing on the walls of a reflecting pool. If the gods wished him dead for seeing such things, they would’ve killed him already. And if they did not want him to see them, they would not have allowed it. So, what was the harm in viewing these places and things again?

Ptahhomhet saw no reason not to explore further. He made many trips back to the gate they had originally entered, standing in front of a crack in a rock that seemed banal by most standards, except if one stood still and stared, one would notice the slight shimmering and pulsing of the air in front of it. Like it was both alive and not there at the same time. When he reached out for the surface of the rock, there was nothing to touch. The closer he got, the surface of the rock seemed to be different, the crack wider, becoming a tunnel which was blacker than any corner of hell. Walking through it, he once again entered the strange space where he couldn’t see any ground in front of him and the forms of countless visions danced around him. Some were vistas, some had beings, strange creatures which stared at Ptahhomhet, enticing investigation. All the floating visions seemed like passageways to things he did not understand. But he was careful not to venture too far into the center of that space. It pulled at him to come further, like a steady gust of wind. He kept his feet on what felt like a cliff, with a length of rope he had tied around his waist and attached to a boulder back in the cave he had come from. He watched, listened, felt, and remembered. Then he made his way back to his new home where he recorded his observations. He carved all the stories of his journey, from Pharaoh’s wrath, to his eventual settling of the strange god-given land, to his experiences in the tween world. He carved them on slabs of rock he had found and carefully prepared. Ptahhomhet had no idea what he was witnessing inside what he called the tween world, but it was more amazing than any amount of punishment he could receive. His obsession with it continued until one day when his narrative simply stopped. No hint of illness, or trouble. It was as if the world swallowed up Ptahhomhet and left behind only his meager possessions and carved records.

The other priests barely communicated with each other as they got older, preferring to meditate and worship in silence. Ptahhomhet’s carved journal ignored them entirely once he began visiting the tween world. None of them, including Ptahhomhet, understood where they really were, or what they had done. And they died remaining in that ignorance.

Unbeknownst to all of them, the priests had found a rift so rare it defied explanation even among the most knowledgeable rift scholars. It was a gateway to another reality, a time-space overlap that served as a kind of bridge that would, over time, withdraw its stability like the melted ice bridge that once connected North America and Asia. By many accounts, it could be called magical, and science would have a hard time disputing it.

The priests’ new home was a very real place, not an underworld god’s plot of real estate. It was a