Chapter 497 Hotanzi The Tyrant
Alright.
Lieutenant Harvey had his hands in a crossed position, his left hand distanced forward and away from his chest holding a glow stick, while his right hand hung above his left with his gun in hand.
Harvey was in charge of leading the team safely.
"Dr Ashaku, everyone... follow closely."
Tapping his earpiece, he quickly communicated with the outside team. "This is T-00 calling in. Can you all hear and see what we are seeing?"
[Yes! It's all clear and good! Keep going, you're doing great.] The voice on the other end affirmed.
Everyone outside was now crowding the monitors, watching the feed with relish.
Placing his feet exactly where Harvey and his men stepped, Ashaku dared not do otherwise, seeing as the heaps of sand above the site, was now flooding the space, almost covering the stairway.
If he or anyone else should miss a step, who knows how they will come rolling and tumbling down?
"Caution. Move with caution, exactly as we do." Ashaku hastily warned the locals in their language."
Looking down Ashaku didn't know how far they would have to travel before they reached the bottom of the stairway.
Honestly, it looked like an abyss from where they stood.
'It can't be the same as a lost city buried underneath, right?'
Curiouser and curiouser...
Ashaku's mind was spending the deeper they traveled.
But it wasn't just his mind churning, as even his body began feeling the drooling temperatures replaced with damp and moist scents.
"Everyone, wait!" Ashaku bellowed, causing Harvey to look back in confusion.
"Doc, what's the problem?"
"Quickly, look at the walls!"
Murrells!
More and more murrells!
"This... this is remarkable." Ashaku blurted, with his fingers already brushing over the many symbols diligently carved by the ancients.
The light revealed the walls loomed not just with murrells but hieroglyphs and detailed depictions involving the tomb's owner -- Hotanzi.
The vibrant colors seemed untouched by time as they shone beautifully after a few dustings from Ashaku.
.
Murrells?
Harvey, who had witnessed the importance of such symbols and signs earlier, did not get angry at for Ashaku stopping them.
Rather, he feared that if they went forward without examining these, they might miss a very important clue that might help them out later.
Before he could ask what it all meant, Ashaku and the others outside were already in a heated discussion, all of which he could hear from his mic.
They were all on the same frequency band for easy communication.
"Look! It starts here, revealing the life of Hotanzi! But all that is shown here is his birth."
[Ashaku, you are right. It seems the deeper you go, the more we will get about his life.]
[I think so too. Everything depicted here is the same as what we know in the history books.]
"Yes. " Ashaku nodded though something above puzzled him.
"Maybe I'm getting old, but there is a symbol I just can't make out. What about you? Have any of you seen this symbol before?"
Outside, everyone shook their heads, very confused as well.
Why the hell is that?
In all their lives, they have never seen such a bizarre symbol before.
What did it mean? Could it be from some hidden ancient symbol of writing lost through time?
How do they decipher this, and does this play any relevant role in later findings?
How odd... how very odd...
"Doc, this unknown symbol won't come back to bite us in the butt right?"
Ashaku shook his head sideways. "Probably not. This
Part of his life only talks about his birth. Everything here, we know. So there shouldn't be any more puzzles or riddles that will stump us. Rather, we should be careful of traps Hotanzi had his people make when building the tomb."
With that, Ashaku pointed at the last words on the murrell carved just after the hieroglyphs.
"--Death awaits those who enter. Be warned. Go back now and never disturb our slumber. --- That's what it says."
Death?
(×_×)
____
For this threat, everyone felt Hotanzi was talking about them dying from the many traps he set out.
What slumber? Once dead, always dead.
This was the first time they had seen a tomb owner calling his death a slumbering sleep.
Why? Do you think you'll one day rise again and wall the sands of the desert when you feel like it?
"When he says, we, he is talking about his beloved concubine, right? The rumored woman he could give the world to for her love?"
"Yes." Ashaku nodded, retelling the texts in the many old historical texts he and many others found.
"History says, Hotanzi was a bright young man, a ruthless man, whose cruelty was unmatched by any other. First, he killed his mother at the age of 7, throwing her into a pit of snakes when she refused him the throne."
"People say his fury was put up because since birth, his mother only had his father, the ruling Pharaoh in her eyes. He never received love from his parents and no one, not even them servants would talk to him normally since they were all beneath his rank and title."
"Hotanzi was alone, and in desperate need of a friend. And at the age of 6, it seems he finally found such a person, a strange slave boy called Beezle."
Everyone frowned. "Why call the slave boy strange?"
"Because believe it or not, even the history books can't find out where he came from. It was a although he popped out from the ground like a daisy. There is no information about this mysterious friend called Beezle."
"It's said that even the ruling pharaoh at the time with all his powers, couldn't find the boy's past or where he came from. So if such a person isn't strange and suspicious, then I don't know what else to say."
Twisting his lips, Harvey nodded heavily in agreement.
If such a person popped out of nowhere and wanted to befriend him, Harvey would always feel uneasy, using all his connections to find out just who the mysterious person was.
But to Hotanzi who was in desperate need of attention and love, his new friend was a heavenly answer to his wants.
"Now, don't get me wrong, Hotanzi has always been cruel, since at the age of 4, he threw 200 slave girls in a pool of crocodiles for his amusement. In his own words, he wanted something that didn't put him to sleep."
"No music, no dancing, get the screams of weak girls fighting for their lives. He feared if he added a boy inside the boy would be strong enough to survive, that's why he chose women. In the end, they all died."
Tsk.
Many felt his cruelty just by listening to Ashaku's tales, wondering how such a madman deserved to find true love.
Sure enough, the world isn't fair.
The good ones are still single and the bad ones get to pick all the women for themselves.
_____
"Hotanzi has always been vicious, but his cruelty seemed to be magnified after coming in contact with his newfound friend, Beezle. In the end, he not only killed his siblings, but also killed his mother, his father's other concubines, and finally finished the job by kicking his Father into a pool of gathered snakes, crocodiles and all sorts of wild creatures."
"Hotanzi watched in joy, watching his father get torn apart limb from limb. Thus, by the age of 12, he successfully killed all his family members, be they half-blood or direct. Even his cousins were not spared, and he did this all with the help of Beezle."
What a friend... many thought, smelling a conspiracy underneath it all.
Yes. Why would somebody appear just like that to help you when you don't even know them?
Sure, there are good people in the world. But why do they feel that this Beezle fellow is very cunning?
Slave boy, my ass!
These were not the sorts of powers slave boys could have or handle.
Or could it be that Beezle was the child of the dethroned pharaoh lineage kicked out before Hotanzi's great-great-great grandfather took over?
Well, you never know.
In the end, doesn't it often boil down to the ultimate fight for the throne?
(~^~)
"Anyway, he ruled Cygypt with a tyrant's fist until he met the daughter of a rebel army --- Celcilita. Although he knew she was the enemy, he fell in love at first sight. But she didn't feel the same for him. Long story short, he fought his way to win her heart." Ashaku paused.
"The story should've had a happy ending, but out of nowhere, she starts getting so ill it is estimated she won't live past a few years. Hotanzi is heartbroken, and desperate to find a cure. In comes his friend again who gives him a healing potion."
"She takes it, she gets well, but somehow Hotanzi turns crazy, ordering people to start hastily building this tomb for both of them."
"And when the tomb is finally complete, she dies, and he chooses to lock himself here with her for all eternity. That's it."
There was a collective silence across the space, as everyone felt there were too many pieces of the puzzle missing in the ending parts of the story.
"Does anyone else think it's too odd that the moment she gets well he starts preparing for her death?" "And what happened to the Beezle guy? Did he end up taking the throne or something?"
"No," Ashaku replied. "He disappeared, never to be found again.
"So I guess he was truly a friend?" Someone asked, causing Harvey to raise his brows in a low chuckle.
"Friend indeed... such a friend should be shot at first glance."
He would rather be lonely than have a snake like Beezle crawling around him.
_____
"Alright... It seems now that we have been warned of imminent death awaiting, we should expect the worst from here on out!"
Taking a weighty stone from one of his subordinates, Harvey calmly rolled it down the stairways.
"Well, here goes nothing."
Thup! Thup! Thup!
A massive fleet of arrows pierced the air in a flash.
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