Chapter 10
The Awakening of the Shadow Guardians
The atmosphere inside the monumental black granite chamber changed the instant Alejandro took his first step toward the pyramid. The air, once icy and laden with ancient dust, suddenly grew dense and suffocating, like a blast from a foundry furnace.
Atop the structure, the bronze box ornamented with the Rings of Sheba pulsed with golden light. The moonbeam entering through the ceiling distorted, refracting into tones of an unearthly violet-blue.
"Get away from the altar!" Samira's voice rang out, not with fear, but with the reverential dread of one who knew the desert's legends.
She stepped back, raising her two scimitars.
"This isn't the mechanics of men, captain... they're Ghoul, the guardians King Solomon sealed in the rock before he died!"
The dust floor around the pyramid began to swirl without any wind. From the cracks in the sandstone, a dense black smoke began to rise, gathering with the sand on the floor. Before the group's stunned eyes, the shadows cast by the torches on the walls detached from the stone relief.
In seconds, four colossal silhouettes rose. They were faceless warriors, in armor made of pure compacted volcanic ash, with eyes that burned like embers of molten metal. In their hands rose scimitars made of blue fire, hissing as they cut through the rarefied air of the chamber.
"By the blood of Christ..." murmured Father Bartolomeu, falling to his knees and raising the silver crucifix, his hands shaking violently. "The Vatican's scriptures were right. They guard the secret with the mystical life of the fallen!"
"Less praying and more gunpowder, Father!" shouted Lieutenant Vance, losing his British composure. He dropped the French disguise, raised his long-range Enfield rifle, and fired at the chest of the nearest guardian.
The musket shot's roar echoed like thunder in the chamber. The lead ball pierced the creature's ash chest, opening a perfect hole, but the projectile simply melted and fell to the floor as liquid lead. The hole in the monster's body closed instantly with a flow of burning sand.
"Lead has no effect!" Vance cursed, retreating as the creature advanced, raising its blue fire sword to cut him in half.
Before the Englishman was struck, a blade of true steel collided with the fire. Don Luiz leapt forward, intercepting the blow with his heavy Spanish rapier. The impact sent blue sparks flying across the hall, and the veteran colonel's arm shook under the guardian's herculean strength.
"Alejandro!" Don Luiz roared, teeth clenched as he pushed the magical blade away from his face. "Our science of war is useless here! Find the breaking point of this mystical engineering! Everything that's built has a key!"
Alejandro did not panic. His analytical mind, forced through his Academy years to read the hidden lines of structures, isolated the chaos of combat and focused on the black granite pyramid.
He noticed that with every movement the guardians made, the hieroglyphs at the base of the altar glowed in the same rhythm.
It wasn't chaotic magic; it was a circuit.
An alchemical engineering that channeled the energy from the bronze box itself to give the shadows form.
"Mateo! Samira! Keep the creatures away from the top!" Alejandro ordered, running toward the steps of the pyramid.
Mateo, using his feline agility, slipped between the ash creatures' legs, cutting the sand joints with his Albacete daggers, destabilizing the monsters for a few seconds before they regenerated.
Samira floated through the hall like a desert specter, her scimitars cutting the blue fire with the precision of a war dancer.
Alejandro climbed the granite steps under the infernal heat radiating from the top. Reaching the bronze box, the golden glow nearly blinded him. The box had a mystical lock: three concentric gold discs bearing inscriptions in ancient Hebrew and demotic Egyptian script.
"Father Bartolomeu!" Alejandro called, his voice failing from the heat. "The discs! What is Solomon's word that seals the fire?"
The Jesuit, still on his knees, looked up at the pyramid, pulling the ancient leather codex from his robes. He flipped desperately through the yellowed pages as one of the guardians delivered a blow that shattered the stone column just above his head.
"The name of the Archangel who governs the elements!" the priest shouted, his voice hoarse with terror. "MI-KHA-EL! Turn the discs to align the letters of breath, of earth, and of fire!"
Alejandro grasped the first golden disc.
The metal burned his hand through the leather glove, but he did not let go.
With millimetric precision, ignoring Vance's shouts and the clash of Don Luiz's steel against the shadows below, Alejandro turned the first ring, aligning the character of earth. The temple shuddered.
One of the guardians raised his fire sword behind Alejandro, ready to run the engineer through.
"Quick, captain!" shouted Mateo, hurling one of his daggers at the monster's head, exploding the ash for a brief second to buy time.
Alejandro turned the second disc. Then the third. The ancient gears inside the bronze box clicked with a pure, musical sound.
In the split second the third disc aligned, a flash of white, violent light exploded from the altar, sweeping the entire circular chamber.
The shockwave threw Alejandro backward, sending him sliding down the granite steps.
Silence returned abruptly to the temple.
The four guardians of ash and fire froze mid-motion.
Their dark, sandy bodies demystified, collapsing to the ground as harmless dust, and the blue flames extinguished instantly, leaving only the smell of ozone in the air.
Don Luiz leaned on his sword, breathing heavily, sweat clearing the soot from his face. Vance stared at his own rifle, incredulous.
Alejandro rose slowly, brushing off his engineer's uniform.
He looked toward the top of the pyramid.
The bronze box now stood open. Inside it, resting on velvet cloth that had crumbled to dust centuries ago, lay the Rings of Sheba: two hoops of an unknown metal, neither gold nor silver, that captured the light with an almost living intensity.
They had defeated the guardians. But the calm did not last long.
Up above, from the ceiling of the chamber, came the rhythmic, violent sound of pickaxes and iron drills. Napoleon's Frenchmen had finally begun boring into the rock directly above them. Time had run out.
The ceiling of the monumental chamber of Taposiris Magna shuddered with the force of an artificial thunder.
Deep cracks began to serpentine through the ancient reliefs, showering the group with suffocating dust and gravel.
The French above had abandoned patience and begun using light explosives to tear through the sandstone.
"The ceiling isn't going to hold!" shouted Lieutenant Vance, sheltering behind one of the immense lotus columns while reloading his rifle. "French infantry scouts are already coming down the ropes from the secondary ventilation shaft! We're surrounded!"
The echo of voices in French and the metallic click of dozens of bayonets being fixed began to fill the upper access points of the gallery. Oil lanterns carried by Napoleon's soldiers cut through the darkness of the circular hall, illuminating the Spanish group.
"Rendez-vous! (Surrender)" roared the voice of a French officer from atop the galleries. "You are surrounded by the Army of the Republic! Hand over the relics!"
Don Luiz drew his rapier and planted himself on the black granite pyramid's stairway, blocking the ascent with his own body.
"A Spanish soldier never surrenders to an invader," the colonel murmured, eyes fixed on the smoke descending. "Alejandro, change our luck! Now!"
Atop the altar, isolated by heat and shadow, Alejandro de La Vega faced the newly opened bronze box. Inside it gleamed ten rings of an unknown metal, capturing the light with an almost living intensity.
The pickaxes and French shouts signaled the temple could collapse at any second.
Time was scarce, but the engineer's mind worked cold as steel.
In a frighteningly quick and subtle move — taking advantage of the dust and chaos blinding Mateo, Vance, and the French soldiers themselves — Alejandro slid two rings into the sleeve of his uniform, hiding them safely in his breast pocket.
He shut the lid of the bronze box with a metallic clang, leaving the other eight rings inside, intact.
To the world, the relic remained whole. If Bonaparte's troops seized that box, they would find an apparently complete treasure.
No one would ever suspect that the true key to the power had already been divided.
"Alejandro!" bellowed Mateo, dodging a shard of stone. "They're coming down! Find the way out!"
Alejandro ran down the pyramid's steps, holding the bronze box visibly aloft to draw the attention of the French sentries above.
His brown eyes scanned the granite panels at the base of the structure.
Where the French saw only dead decoration, the engineer saw gears.
Around the altar were four deep channels that descended and vanished into the stone floor of the hall.
He reached into his pouch and pulled out the flask of dense oil he used to lubricate his measuring instruments, pouring the liquid into the grooves to clear centuries of accumulated sand.
"Samira! The water! Where's the water-table duct you mentioned?" shouted Alejandro, forcing the pommel of his rapier like a lever into the central keystone.
"Under the east side of the altar!" she answered, firing her short rifle at the first line of French infantry trying to leap down to the lower floor. "But push hard, or the mechanism won't turn!"
Vance and Don Luiz positioned themselves side by side at the base, firing and crossing swords against the French scouts trying to advance through the haze.
In the split second the first of Napoleon's soldiers touched the floor of the hall with fixed bayonets, Alejandro's engineering beat the clock. With a herculean effort, he pushed the lubricated granite block into the altar's core.