Consumption of Amonkhet

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((written by Razas))

See with my eyes, and see what I have seen.

Feel what I have felt.

Know what I have known.

Witness what I have witnessed, so that you may know what comes.

WITNESS.

A tendril of sparkling dark energy stabs through my chest, curling around my heart and tearing at my very soul. I feel the coldness spreading throughout my body, the searing pain as nerve endings shriek and then dissolve. Every iota of me categorized into information, recorded slowly, agonizingly so as my soul is torn from my body, every memory flashing before me. Stupefied by the impossibility of this situation, my claws grasp the tendril of eldritch night, and feel them begin to dissolve in searing agony as well.

I am drawn into the Pyramid at blinding speed, and up, and up. I am the Pyramid. And I see the end.

It is not a fast process. Magic spills out from Adinzar in controlled, almost lazily beautiful waves as it begins the collection. First the workers, shrieking and screaming as everything that they are and were and will be become part of the pyramids organization. Their knowledge is added, and I can feel it expanding.

The engineers are next, and the planners. My friends. My rivals. Consumed. Some try to shield themselves, protect themselves with magic or earth or steel. The ever precise, almost invisible tendrils spreading from the pyramid as more and more knowledge, the knowledge of hundreds are added to the pyramid. The rush of information is more than my mind can handle. The pain is excruciating, and yet, I feel the controlled, calculating hunger of the Maze. It wants more. It needs it, more than I needed food or water. It is an all consuming, controlled emptiness that yearns for fulfillment, but only grows more ravenous with each meal.

And in a silent flash of lightning, the jackal headed goddess of zeal appears before Adinzar, brandishing her spear, rage written on her lupine face. My soul prays to her, the fury of religious fervor driving her strikes into the Pyramid’s side. The divine power shears into the black wall, and bright sparks erupt from it. And then the tendrils of twilight energy lash at her, she spins her spear at unbelievable speed. Too fast for the eyes to watch; too fast for my mind to comprehend. But Adinzar does. Each tendril of energy is calculated at the most difficult spot to defend, at the optimum speed. Probing for a weakness. She is fully on the defensive almost immediately against the energy, defending at the same godlike speed of her first strikes. She risks a hit from the black energy to make another strike against Adinzar. The spear strikes the Maze… but the pyramid’s construction was too well made, the blow only shallowly digging into the lazotep. Too strong, even against a god’s strike. And the energy swarms around her, and part of her shoulder is just gone. Then her thigh. Her elbow, her nose. Devoured, piece by piece. She shrieks at the agony of being dissolved, and falls to her knees, and then the pyramid opens slightly. Grasping her divine soul and adding it to the Maze. My heart falls to despair.

The reaping continues, for an hour. An hour that feels stretched into agonizing, horrifying weeks. Every moment is terror. Some fight, splashing fire against the pyramid, but might as well have been a light rain for all the effect it had on the Maze. There is no sense of concern for itself, as it systematically eliminates all threats to it, however minimal. Nothing is beneath its notice. I see heroes break beneath the onslaught. I see cowards break and run from the massacre. I see the greatest of what the people of Amonkhet had to offer, and the worst, fall. Screaming, their lives, minds, and souls added to Adinzar. Catalogued. Sorted. Filed away for further study later. I am sick in my mind, sick in my soul. I feel something breaking, and then forced back together. Not even madness will be respite for me. I pray the other gods may come and defeat this horror, but something in the back of my mind tells me that it is futile.

Finally, it begins to move. I do not understand the reason why. Perhaps it needed something else. Nor do I understand why I am still conscious and aware. Something went wrong with the construction, perhaps. It does not matter. Whatever I try to do, to affect the world outside the Pyramid, is blocked. Any attempt to alter what the Pyramid is doing now, from the inside, is thwarted by an implacable, ironclad will.

I cannot shut my eyes from the horror, nor my ears from the screams. But hope, guttering and faltering, flames anew for a brief moment.

The other gods finally stir, appearing in our world in silent lightning, bringing forth blinding magic on a scale that I have never seen, a torrent of divine rage and destruction. They work in unison, the combination of their work and might, it is greater than what should be possible from merely adding what their respective powers combined. They saw what happened to their sister, and must have prepared accordingly. A far too logical thought regarding the horror that I’ve witnessed so far.

The pieces of my mind are forced to bear witness to what no mortal should be able to comprehend. The earth is scoured and broken as their assault on the Pyramid begins. I feel only… smooth mechanical calculation as it surveys the new threats, like perfectly fitting gears working together in a greater machine. There is no fear of being defeated. I am unsure if Adinzar can even feel fear, but for myself, I feel a moment of hope. Surely, our gods, our protectors and masters, can defeat this foe. Hope is just a consistent but reconcilable defect with mortals in general, whispers a cold voice. My voice.

But Adinzar withstands. It finds the slight imperfections in the magics, delaying, defeating even the spells of the divine, deflecting the worst, nullifying what may harm it.

Soon, far too soon, they stop, needing to verify that they have destroyed the invader, the divine fire flickering to an ember. Adinzar asserts itself once more, the north most side opening to reveal a goddess, changed. Her jackal head is now forged in stars and darkness, the outline of her skin, the cosmic rays of a bleak, unforgiving sun.

She opens her hands, and together with Adinzar, four more gods are bound in darkness and starlight, screaming in divine fury and terror. They are consumed, crocodile, ibis, serpent, falcon, and their divinity added to the Unholy Processing. Analyzed, and made part of the Endless Maze, their knowledge and power subsumed. The Star Jackal Goddess moves with the Pyramid, and the end continues.

Only when the I/Adinizar reaches the palace of the Great Pharaoh, as with the strange sensation Adinzar knows, that I know, that the Pharaoh is a liar. A premonition, of sorts, perhaps, as a great dragon, massive beyond almost comprehension, pulls itself out of the destroyed palace, dwarfing even the Black Pyramid.I hear a distant scream that its creation shall not be its end, and the battle ensues.

Here is where my mind stops, and memory falters. Something about this moment, this battle, is blackened from my mind. Adinzar itself does not want me to see, or perhaps the forces that were harnessed were too powerful for me to understand, even with my stolen and gifted comprehension from the Pyramid. Even an enhanced mortal mind will break before the fury of Titans.

The next thing that this fractured piece recalls is the great dragon being drawn into the pyramid on great tendrils of oblivion, screaming epithets, curses, and defiance in the face of inevitability.. A shining shield blankets the great dragon, even as it is drawn into the pyramid, swallowed whole. Gods made of stars and empty night stand watching the imprisonment of the False King. There are dead gods lying at the foot of the pyramid, ones that I do not recognize, torn apart, even as the Lying Pharoah is swallowed. Empty reinforcements, I surmise, before the will of Adinzar washes over me.

There is no concern, or worry. Only certainty that even the Dragon, Nicol Bolas, shall fall to it. All it needs is time. And even Time will bow to it, soon enough, mechanical certainty cutting through me like a guillotine’s blade.

Bitterly, I cast what remaining senses outwards, trying to avoid the thought of the horrific cold precision that laps at our mind. The landscape around the pyramid itself is shattered beyond recognition, and reality bleeds into physical impossibilities. The battle was beyond mortals, beyond even gods. The Astral Sea washes upon this realm, a tide beginning to devour the sand, and even creatures of the Far Realms begin to take notice, madness leaking across the edges of reality.

The quiet, mechanically precise, unfeeling voice within my mind whispers that I will recognize everything soon enough, even the impossible madness of what had occurred previously. The Black Pyramid swells with a swirling mass of energy, the very lines of the pyramid humming, the lazotep vibrating with potential. All things shall be added to the collection. And the world begins to dissolve, slowly, coalescing and being drawn into the capstone. This is the end. My world, sorted, catalogued and slowly erased save for a memory. And yet, I continue, unwillingly, bodiless, trapped.

Too soon, Amonkhet is no more. There is only the Black Pyramid.

Only the Endless Maze, a black triangle against a grand vista of emptiness and cold, purple stars.

You have seen what I have seen. You felt what I had felt. You know of my failings, and what is coming.

You are Witnesses of Amonkhet.

Be warned.

ADINZAR IS COMING.