His Birthright

Brought before an extravagant structure, the air fell hush. Toyo and Lugal's eyes danced around the gilded details that graced the scene before them. Carvings of flowers lining wooden beams shimmered in painted gold, with moss-covered stones blending the crafted touch of human hands with a quiet serenity. Water funneled from the mountainside and flowed like a touch of majesty around its perimeter. As they stood in awe, the world around them was so still it almost felt timeless.

A few feet from the mausoleum’s doors stood an unusual statue; its design harkening back to what Toyo had found lurking in the shrine behind the old temple in Kanmu-mori.

“The spirit that rests here,” Toyo lured the warden, “can you tell me more about her?”

“Kaeku-no-Mai,” he replied, “She is a representation of reincarnation. Rising to this world from the dead and bestowing it with knowledge. Repeatedly bearing the sins of our failures numerous times over with each death and resurrection, until we were blessed with the world we have now.”

Toyo found the warden’s words alluring yet conflicting. “You make it seem like she’s a god, but death, birth… reincarnation. Shouldn’t a god be above all of that?”

“When have I ever mentioned the word god? Look around you,” the warden implored, “Miracles in the form of scripts occur on the regular by our own very hands. Is it that unacceptable to you to think that we cannot elevate ourselves high enough that we exceed the mere label of man?”

Toyo began to see that she was misguided in believing that her way of thinking applied to everyone. Perhaps she needed to open up her mind to what the world had to offer. Yet even then, the thought that someone could die and live again, was a concept that she struggled to cope with. Her mother, after all, remained dead...

“Do you have the relic?” Lugal asked Toyo, breaking the chilled atmosphere. “Zida took it,” Toyo exclaimed.

When Lugal suggested they return for it, Toyo, mindful that going back would only rouse the warden’s frustration, moved to assuage Lugal’s concerns. “It’s fine, I’ll know what we’re looking for once I see it.”

She then began running her finger into a section of fine gravel that lined the edges of the walkway below. “But just so you know, anything with a text that resembles something similar to this is important.”

Lugal nodded his head, and they turned to the warden hoping to be allowed further passage throughout the mausoleum grounds.

“You shouldn’t mark sacred land like that. It will disturb the balance of the atmosphere and prevent the deceased from sleeping quietly.”

The thinning voice creaked like a loose floorboard, drawing Toyo and Lugal’s attention to a frail looking old man standing at the center of the pathway.

“Ohr, I am indebted to you,” The warden greeted. The man returned a warm smile, his body rickety and waving back and forth as he barely held his thin frame of a body together. “Come with me you two,” he then ordered, walking away from the mausoleum.

Though confused, with the warden moving forward, Toyo and Lugal were sure not to be left behind. They followed the old man to a location someways further up the mountain where he presented them a single home seated off to the side of a patch of open land.

“I am Ohr of Ontsu, the groundskeeper of the Enmai Mausoleum for the past 155 years.”

The casual references to extremely long spans of time still rifled Toyo’s grasp on the world. Meanwhile, Lugal was busy tracing his eyes over the façade of the home.

“I’ve seen this house before,” he uttered with his eyes spread open like book. “In paintings from my great-great-grandfather.”

Ohr then turned to him, his stare firm with perception. “Well… the home is the property of your family.”

Lugal’s eyes wavered, his skin turning cold. Even the warden’s subtle shift in his stance whispered of his own shock.

Back at the mausoleum gate, the Zida and the rest sat idly, waiting for Lugal and Toyo’s return. AT least everyone except for Daku and Nertu, who were busy bickering with one another about the steps to the dance Toyo had just performed. With the heat from their argument reaching a boiling point, Zida’s patience wore thin with placing himself directly between the two siblings.

“Shut up!”

Dake and Nertu instantly proceeded to attack and berate him for raising his voice at them. With their differences no longer existent and their chemistry suddenly in sync once again.

Peering down from their posts, one guard distastefully chimed, “The world outside is so strange,” with the other adding, “The title of royalty has fallen.” The third guard simply shook his head, pitying Zida.

“I wasn’t aware my family oversaw the mausoleum.”

The groundskeeper tipped his head to the side, “Hmm. It must’ve been your great-grandfather. Yes. Yes. He was the one.”

“What do you mean?”

“That ash grey hair and angled eyes of yours, it’s like I’m staring that ancient lunatic right in the face.”

Fanning his hand, the groundskeeper refocused himself, walking over towards the far end of the house before gesturing towards Lugal to follow along.

As they approached his side, he pointed Toyo and Lugal in the direction of a strange marking in the ground. At first site it reminded Toyo of a crop circle; nothing but a laughable hoax that only someone like Akari would be excited to see, but in this world, it had become clear that nothing was ever off the table.

“That was where he found it,” Ohr surprisingly pointed out, “At least from what my father told me.” Walking up closer to the odd marking, he continued, “Apparently a number of items with writings like the one you drew by the mausoleum were recovered from that very spot.”

They hadn’t mentioned anything about the relics to the groundskeeper, yet he carried himself as though he had been waiting until the day that someone would show up looking for answers. That’s when it dawned on Toyo, that whatever this mausoleum was, it was probably concealing something important.