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Sekhet Aaru, or the Field of Rushes

The paradise that was the afterlife, and the final destination of the journey through the underworld.

Usually placed in the east, where the Sun rose, it was described as eternal reed fields;

and those deceased who, after judgment, were allowed to reside there,

were often called

the eternally living.

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I

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It all began with a strange, disconcerting dream.

In the darkness of a stone-walled chamber, flickering torchlight marked the outline of a man. With a raised hand, he held a ceremonial dagger over an altar, and chanted, chanted slowly, deeply, monotonously, a string of words in an obscure, stunted language.

A figure with great wings was engraved on the stone behind the altar; and all over the chamber where the torchlight touched the stone, ritual scenes seemed to be painted on the walls.

At first you let this dream pass off as that, a mere dream. But as it became more and more recurrent, it began to occupy your thoughts oftener until you felt you'd go insane from coming into that dreadful chamber every time you went to sleep. And when you woke up, the images lingered with you the whole day, so much that, eventually, you found out that the paintings and engravings on the walls were done in the style of the Ancient Egyptians.

Internet told you that there was this Museum of Ancient History in Domino city, and made you think that it could be helpful to go and take a look. Maybe you'd find something on Egypt that would ease your overworked subconscious.

It was about 7 pm on a Tuesday when you grabbed a coat, your keys, and headed to the Museum. While you were walking down the street, you thought about how odd it was that, though you'd never really cared much about Ancient Egypt, you were being so troubled by a dream related to it.

Lost in thought, you were soon at the Museum's entrance. It was a large building, very modern, of straight lines and large glass windows, and painted in light sandy hues. You went in, with mild determination, nodding at the guard at the entrance as you came past him, and immediately noticed how empty and still the place was. It was a weekday, granted, not many people had time to have an escapade to the Museum (of all places!), but it was still almost surreal that everything would be so... dead. Some of the lights were already off in some exhibitions, and following the instructions on a large map of the place in the main hall, you easily made your way to the Ancient Egypt area –

-–which was closed, to your dismay. The entrance to the exhibition was a gloomy set of stairs that descended into the darkness, and across it hung a notice that read; "New Kingdom under reconstruction. DO NOT ENTER". However, and as your eyes gradually got accustomed to the dark, you distinguished the faint flickering of a torch, down the steps.

You weren't really sure of when you made your decision, but the next thing you knew was that you were going down the steps; carefully, because you couldn't see much, and because you wanted to be as silent as possible- it would not do to get caught trespassing.

As you descended slowly, the faint amber light of the torch swept you into a deja vu of the dream that had been haunting you for so long now: in the distant, surreal chamber that was engraved unto mind's eye, the man of the dagger chanted a spell, or a curse, or something to some unholy effect.

His voice, deep and foreign, seemed to drift out of your memory of your dream and into your present situation where you, already at the bottom of the staircase, felt like you could perhaps make out what he was saying, notwithstanding that he spoke in another tongue and sounded very distant. As you forced yourself to find your bearing, the last words he spoke lingered inside your head:

Please hear my cry, envelope the desert with your glow. Winged Dragon of Ra...

Confused, you advanced through a narrow passage that seemed to recreate the ways within the ancient tombs of the pharaohs, to be greeted by a preternatural sight. The exhibition was lit by torches fastened to the stone walls, and all around you, the shifting shadows of the objects in display projected a macabre dance. The eerie feeling it gave you became unbearably oppressive when your ears caught again the faint tones of a human voice in a slow, deep, monotonous chant, that came from an adjacent chamber to your left.

You tiptoed to its entrance, and, hidden behind the threshold, you gathered your bravery and peeped at the scene inside.

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Author's note

Well... This story has been alive for… too many years now. I originally published it in Quizilla under the name "Your encounter with Yami Malik". I found it lurking in my PC some time ago, and decided to revamp it and repost it here, with a much nicer format and reader-friendly environment :P I changed its name to 'Story of an Encounter', but decided to change it again to accompany the story's increasingly darker and history-oriented tone of the coming chapters.

I hope you enjoy this (I dare say, interesting) reading experience J