worship he who rejoices within the horizon, living forever and ever
And so at last, they came to the end.
Standing upon the banks of this empty place, the boy who became king who became a god rested between the strands of time and space. The names that he had been given, the names that he had claimed now made up his whole, creating a being that waited for the arrival of another, long anticipated.
The man he had once called father. Akhenaten, ascended.
He had been born Tutankhaten, the name which the cosmic being now lumbering towards him with rage had once bestowed upon him with such pride. The Image of the Living Aten. His heir and legacy, his hope for the future. He had grown by his father's side, watching as the pharaoh had dismantled the temples, cast out the priests, insisting that all worship Aten alone, for only one god was worthy of Egypt's devotion.
The boy had been told that this was the only way forward, that his father's guidance could be trusted.
He could also see the way that the people feared their king now, breaking down their home shrines in terror that they might be singled out as impious and vanish in the night, as their neighbors sometimes now did. The boy heard the whispers of a new temple being built, that the palace would move soon to its location as the King needed to serve Aten exclusively, the sole priest for this new faith that all must follow. He could see the fanaticism grow in his father's eyes, day by day.
And the boy was afraid.
when you go forth, every eye is upon you
On that terrible day so many eons past, Tutankhamen, a boy of only nine, had been awoken before the dawn to find the Great Royal Wife Nefertiti, his mother in all but blood, by his bedside to warn him of what Akhenaten would attempt that very morning, the apex of his ambitions realized, to become the vessel of the Aten himself. The ritual that she had been gifted so many years before was not merely a way to communicate with a deity, but a way to invoke and merge with its presence completely.
By the time they arrived, it was too late. Father, Mother, and Son stood fixed as time shattered around them.
Tutankhamen had been too young to fully understand what he saw, but having lived for thousands of thousands of years with a crown of godhood hadn't helped his ability to express it. Even now, here as he faced the monstrosity that had been his father in the space between worlds he felt as green as a child, staring at a man gone mad. They had been cradled in some sort of bubble, translucent but impenetrable as unknown energies swirled and consumed and crackled for what felt like an eternity before subsiding, leaving visible thousands upon thousands of timelines before them.
From the center, like spokes of a wheel from its axle, he watched his father die a thousand times, the ritual ripping the flesh from his bones, leaving a husk behind that could not be properly mummified. His own ascension to Pharaoh and the reclaiming of his name and gods for Egypt as a whole, ending in an early death and glorious funeral. Over and over this played out, radiating from the center of where they three were held by magic beyond understanding —
— before being flung, as if from a chariot, into three different directions, changing the lines forward completely.
yet you are alone, rising in your manifestations
None of the three were mortals any longer, but divine didn't feel correct either. Ascension to godhood had never been his own plan, and likely not the reason that Akhenaten had started down this terrible path either. Gods required intention, dominion, and they lacked that entirely for all that they had achieved some level of divinity. Apotheosis for its own sake was lonely, although Tutankhamen doubted that it would have stopped Akhenaten even if he'd realized it before the terrible ritual that had sundered them from their own humanity.
Tutankhamen, his chosen name echoing in the memory of so many people after Carter's discovery of his tomb, did not court worship or power or glory. He knew of the horrible works of what Akhenaten had become, for he could see them from his place aloft, ascended above the race of man. He had lost sight of his mother, for it seemed that she did the same as he and hid in the shadows divinity afforded when it was divorced from ambition.
Until one day, she arrived, and all the chaos that inevitably followed in her wake.
The guilt and reality of what they had done, what they were now capable of had driven his bright, brilliant mother to the edge of madness, causing her to wander through time as if it were a stream, rippling behind her with a destructive wake, shattering to pieces the bonds that held reality at its seams. She fell before Tutankhamen, crying tears tinged with madness itself as she begged him to end her suffering. To stop her, but most importantly, to stop him, with the only manner that might stop one who had ascended to power they barely understood.
All it would take was a push, like casting off the mooring of a boat along the river.
Some might have called it a mercy, but when Tutankhamen watched the shadow of Nefertiti fade into the abyssal void between the stars, all he could feel was alone.
you have made a distant heaven to observe all you have made, for you are alone
For centuries, he waited. Watching from the edges of what he could perceive for a chance to put an end to his father's gluttony for power, for praise, for worship. The dance that had brought Nefertiti to Tutankhamen's lands played out again and again as Aten, the name his father had given himself, could never be satisfied by a single reality, letting those that he left behind unravel like linen after moths had consumed all but a few fibers.
A glimmer caught both their eye at the same moment, a doorway into a timeline that for once, Tutankhamen was able to claim first.
It was in the echo of one of humanity's countless wars that he was fortunate enough to see an opening, a crack in the collective consciousness that Akhenaten was exploiting to try and spread enough of his lies in order to conquer yet another world and consume in mindless excess. It was rather like drawing symbols in the sand and hoping that the mice in the dunes might understand, but unlike Aten, Tut knew perfectly well those mice were much smarter than given credit for. Some were watching for such things, could understand the world was greater than the mundane first glance might allow.
And they helped him grow strong enough in their own consciousness, the flash of celebrity after Carter's discovery of his earthly tomb parlayed into near global awareness of Tutankhamen —
— and dismissive, inaccurate awareness of the Pharaoh Akhenaten and his attempt at monotheism.
Which returned them to this bank of the end of everything, the void swirling around the feet of two gods that should have never existed, one furious that at last his son had found a way to thwart his ambitions, the other at peace with oblivion, if only to protect countless trillions. The way that divinity fought against itself was nothing like the way mortals warred, but it had a simple beauty in its ultimate finale.
All it took was a push.
the land is silent, for he who had made them is at rest beneath the horizon
For so long, there was nothing.
Then there was Light.
"I think he's finally coming to."
"That's the third time that you've said that."
"Yeah, but I'm right this time. Look!"
"Hush. Remember, it's a long journey. Ah! Here he is at last. Welcome."
There was a smile, before there was light and faces above him, around him. He had expected nothing, to be nothing, and yet here he was. Something else now, something higher and not alone, greeted as a friend and he felt as if he had known her, known all three of those before him for longer than his own life, for all that they were meeting for the first time.
Another step in a journey he scarcely knew he was on.
"You must have so many questions. Let's get started."