Short Fiction: Mom*nkm nen's Tomb

 MOM*NKM NEN'S TOMB

"It could not be helped." Valan Fal patted the bruised and bloodied Arcanis on the shoulder before turning and walking away from the sight of the burning Tavern. "The bastards had it coming."
"Yeah." Poul coughed up blood into a hand and looked at it. "Fuck."
"So..." Valan looked over his shoulder at the Arcanist. "Where to now?"
"Some place..." Poul the Arcanist kicked over a rock on the ground noticing a rune scratched on it. "...not here?"

Poul the Arcanist felt mildly nauseated as his surroundings became liquid, before stabilizing quickly in the form of a circular chamber carved from stone similar if not identical to the rock with the rune scratched in it. It was poorly lit by an amber glow from large crystals sitting loosly in various stone bowls against the wall of the circular chamber.

"Val?" His eyes adjusting to the reality of his situation, Poul looked about the chamber. Other than the illumination crystals, it was empty of everything but him and maybe the air he bought in with him. "Shit."

Poul touched and then satisfied that he wasnt going to immediatly perish, picked up an illumination crystal and eamined the remaining crystals in the bowl. They appeared to be some kind of quartz though their quality was far higher than any he had ever seen. The bowl itself seemed to have been cobbed from stone identical to the chamber walls using another stone.
Poul explored each of the other bowls around the edge of the chamber, finding them similar, with variation in the illumination crystals.

A subterranean chamber. With limited air. Probably perpetual illumination given quartz didnt naturally glow with an amber light. It was basically a tomb. Waiting for an occupant. Poul felt his ribs. They still hurt from the Tavern brawl. He spat into his hand. There was still some blood, though the amber light of the crystal in his other hand wasnt ideal for identifying it. He wasnt in the afterlife. That was supposed to be full of globes- the souls of Arcanist's past floating in a black void. Not a carved room of stone bowls filled with quarts crystals with an illuminating amber glow.

"Hello?" Poul looked at the quartz crystal in his hand hoping for a reply. "Anyone in there?"

"Of course not you dolt." Poul dropped the crystal back in its bowl and sat with his back to the hewn wall. "You are trapped in an actual tomb."

Eventually he would just go to sleep. Poul shook off the unexpected Drowsiness. Not yet though. Valen would come looking for him. He would solve the riddle of this trap.

He needed to stand up. This was just Miner's sleep taking effect.

Poul emptied the first bowl upside down spilling its crystals. He sought the second bowl, and the third, and fourth and fifth, pulling them to the same edge of the chamber stacking them one on top of the other to form a stool high stack against the wall and sat down finding it instantly uncomfortable.

After a long while the crystals went dark revealing a bejeweled ceiling glowing in the shapes of constellations, some familiar, others not. (630)
"Wow." Poul fumbled in the dark at his feet for a nearby crystal and began engraving the unfamiliar constellations into the wall behind him, feeling the surface to replicate the symbols precise as he could.

Complete, Poul removed a bowl and returned crystals to it. They began to illuminate the room and the stars faded leaving him with a wall of unfamiliar symbols.
"Lets see..." Poul cut into his palm with a crystal point and began finger painting an unfamiliar symbol in blood. "You lined up with the Mother."
"You liked up with Death." The second symbol painted in blood, Poul applied blood to the third. "And you lined up with...what was it called?"
"The flower-bearer." The illumination crystals in the bowl flickered as he formed the whole word. "MOM*NKM NEN."



****

"Poul?" Valen Fal watched the Arcanist become a blur, the living man was replaced by a pile of ancient rags, bones, and various funerary objects. Valen looked around wondering what had just happened to his companion. There didn't seem to be anyone in sight. "Poul?"

"Poul?" Valen slowly closed the distance, weary that he would somehow share his companion's fate. "You dropped your... stuff."

"I'm..." Valeb Fal pulled a dagger and prodded the skeletal remains. The remnants of an ancient shroud, most of it rotted away with the corpse, came away as dust. "Pretty sure Poul wasnt wearing a shroud."
"Who the hell are you?" Valen stuck his dagger in the remains of an ornamental box spilling its collection of several hundred Diamonds. "Huh."
Valen Fal slowly scavenged the remains coming away with a sack of gems, an ivory bottle with a bone stopper, and a wooden staff, twisted and gnarled.
"I guess I'm rich now." The stars in the flickered and went dark and the moon began bleeding. Behind him an old skeleton struggled to its feet at the sound of his name spoken for the first time in five thousand years.

"NKM." Valan Fal died instantly at the word.