Chapter 8: November 26th, 1932

The Australian mountain range radiated its heat in late November. While most of the world had their winters, Australia was going through the beginning of its summer. At temperatures of around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, the day was calm, with only the light wind that permeated the area. It was a bright day in the middle of virtually nowhere. In the distance was the vast Flinders mountain range. The ground was a large bright orange color from the sands and almost barely noticeable shrub. Plants like the Cazneaux tree, Cyprus pine, and black oak dotted some of the semi-arid landscape. Wildlife such as the wallaby and the kangaroo would occasionally show up and leave. The mountains were vast, with some reaching a height of 1,100 meters. Located over 200 miles from the capital of Adelaide, this mountain range was one of the most glorious in Southern Australia.

In one small area, there was the continuous sound of the didgeridoo. This simple wind instrument would produce the deep harmonic sound that resonated with the sand where an aboriginal man sat and played. He had a dark complexion and almost black hair. He wore a simple red bandana and a red undergarment on him as he continued to play his music. Like a continuous sound, he never stopped playing as he kept up the harmonic play. His eyes were closed as he would keep continuous breathing and release to keep the music going. Occasionally he would fluctuate his lips to alter the sound a little bit and help produce harmony to it.

His hands held the instrument as he sat cross-legged. He would keep his eyes closed most of the time when he played, but occasionally he would open his eyes to look at the environment. He tried to keep himself calm as he would watch a kangaroo hopping around in the distance.

Behind him, from a distance, a man approached him. With relatively lighter skin, he strolled observing the scene that he saw. Wearing a white shawl that did not cover his bare chest and a usekh, he walked barefoot on the sandy ground. His hair was long, and he had a pair of eyes of two different colors of brown and green. In all aspects, the man had Egyptian features on his face. One eye was green, and the other was brown. He had a long thin black beard under his chin and wore a small headdress that went behind and up from his head. He walked with a wooden staff as it poked the ground.

The stranger of the man listened to the sounds of the didgeridoo. The musical sound drowned out the stranger’s footsteps until he was within ten feet behind the player. He decided to let himself be known finally.

“It is good to...” were the stranger’s only words when the music player dropped his instrument and slammed his fist into the dirt.

“How dare you interrupt my playing!” he said as he turned his head and body to look at the man behind him.

“You didn’t answer my question, old friend. How are you today?” the man with the staff asked.

“Err ... next time come in front of me, Nehebkau,” he replied angrily as he picked up his didgeridoo again. He used one of his hands to wave him off. “I am fine.”

Nehebkau looked at him and lowered his head. “I am sorry to come and bother you Adnor but...”

“It is Adnoartina!” the aboriginal man said. “And no, I am not going to help the Coalition of Deities for awhile. I am not helping them in that stupid fucking war that is going on here in Australia. It’s not even a war for fuck’s sakes! It’s a bunch of Australians trying to kill emu.”

“Adnoartina, the Coalition of Deities is not asking your help in the Great Emu War. Even they know of your situation.”

“Then why the hell are you here?” he asked him. He looked around him. There was nobody else within miles and miles around them.

“We don’t have to be in our human forms,” Nehebkau said as he lifted his staff in the air. He closed his eyes as a bright light emitted from his form.

Adnoartina nodded as he closed his eyes and emitted a bright light from his body. The bright lights from their bodies faded quickly as the two human men were no longer mortal looking but something else. Adnoartina was the eight-foot gecko that was sitting upright looking at his supposed friend Nehebkau.

The Egyptian god Nehebkau was no longer human but an eight-foot-tall reptilian creature. He had one long snake body where he stood upright. He had two arms, with one holding a different staff than the wooden staff he formerly had. It was a long white staff or cane that depicted a head of a snake on top of it with a blue gem in the center of it. He still wore the same shawl that covered his lower extremities. One noticeable thing was above his neck. He had not one but two serpent heads that jutted from his neck. Each head was that of a cobra with one having brown eyes and the other head having green eyes. His scales gave off a brown, gray, and green color. He did not have the beard as before on either face. He had a bare chest that connected to his neck that led down to a stomach and a crotch, but it all attached to an elongated snake frame that stretched to about 14 feet long. The lower portion of his tail and up was what pushed his body up into a standing position.

“There ... much better,” Nehebkau said with both mouths at the same time. “I sssaw you in human form out here ssso I figured that it would be better to be human jussst in cassse.”

Nehebkau’s dual faces would send out a tongue to taste the air. His voice, while having the Egyptian accent, had a snake-like delay in his s sounds, much like the other snake deities had. The gecko god waved his hand at him. “Why are you here? Why do you disturb my peace?”

“We have a sssituation that we need to talk to you about.”

Adnoartina had a look of disgust and disinterest in his face. “I am not helping out on anything. I want my peace.”

“It isss about Marindi...”

This caused the gecko god to pause for a while. He turned his head to eye him firmly in the face. His anger disappeared, and a look of curiosity appeared on his face.

“What about him?” Adnoartina asked.

“Mind if I sssit down nexxxt to you?”

The gecko god waved his hand for him. Nehebkau stabbed his staff into the dirt as he went and coiled his body up and rested down closer to the ground to be eye level with him. He placed his hands on his coiled body.

“We found thisss...” the snake god waved his hand to him. Smoke emitted from his hand as a small crystal materialized in his open palm. The smoke quickly dissipated as Nehebkau tossed the gem to Adnoartina.

The gecko deity snatched it into the air and looked at it. He used his soft, scaly finger to tap the crystal. He waited, and nothing happened. He touched it again, and nothing happened. He displayed annoyance.

“This doesn’t work... , “ he said.

“Try to focusss,” one of the heads said. “Thisss crystal is dead.”

The gecko then closed his eyes. There was a slight amount of light the crystal began to give off before he opened his eyes. He then dropped the gem to the ground.

“It can’t be ... for a second I saw him ... Marindi is dead! I fucking killed him.”

“We thought that would get your attentttion...”

“Where did you find this?” he said as he looked at the crystal.

“Uluru, the placcce gave off the magic that we picked up, but the cryssstal wasss near dead. My partner and I were going to exxxplore it more, but I needed to talk to you about it.”

The gecko took a deep breath as he filled his nostrils. He would try to keep himself composed as the snake god would watch him closely.

“Talk to me, old friend,” Nehebkau said with his voice trying to keep him calm. “I know that thingsss have been hard for you sssinccce Lowanna passsssed on. I wouldn’t have bothered on thisss if it weren’t that important. We wanted to let you have your time to mourn for her.”

The gecko slammed his palm into the dirt as he grabbed a handful of soil and held it. “I lost her ... mortals and their old age. It’s like a curse. There are none like me, so I take on a human mate. She is wonderful and beautiful. She can handle my rage on the dirt as I let it out on her. She remained stoic and unyielding with me. Her power and resilience were greater than my own as she told me that she loved me...” he dropped the soil slowly to the dirt. “Now, she is no more. She has returned to the Dreamtime.”

“We know that thingsss has been hard. You are my friend. It is natural to grieve in thisss way. We all go through it. Have you consssidered trying to find another mate to replaccce her?”

“I have been mourning her death for three months now!” he yelled at him. “I can’t get her out my head. She won’t leave. She sits there ... I play my music, and she is next to me. I can’t move on.”

“I think you ssshould. The only way for usss isss to find another and be with them. It isss better than living a life of lonelinesssss.”

“You know what my issue is, Neheb. For hundreds of years, I have watched the Australians take my people and move them out of their land. I watch as the ... aborigine as they are called now, be forced into reservations. Their way of life is destroyed. Lowanna was untainted from this. She was born and raised where she was never taken from. She knew the land and how they operated. She was glorious ... now anyone that I meet wouldn’t be the same. As time progresses, my story will be lost, even without the Coalition’s rules, I could just throw my true form in front of them, and they wouldn’t know me. I would be ... a ghost.”

“It isss no different than me, my friend,” Nehebkau said as both his tongues tasted the air before coming back into his mouths. “We are relicsss of the passst.”

“I miss the simple life. I live a life for so long and speak to the spirits. I almost forgot about Marindi.”

“You never ssspoke much about him. Tell me about the ssstory.”

Adnoartina picked up a handful of dirt and looked at it. There was a look of intensity in his eyes. “I remember it as a story. Thousands upon thousands of years ago, Marindi and I never got along. Our arguments became fierce. He and I hunted in the same areas. He used the land as he saw fit. When you go and raid a turtle nest for eggs to eat, you take half and leave the other half in its place. That way, the turtles continue, and you have food in the end. You thank the turtle for her gracious offering. Marindi ... he never fucking cared. Just like the dingoes, he would eat the land and leave nothing behind. He was a demon that I hated. Nonetheless ... I held my composure. Just like the dingoes, they are a part of Australia.”

“What happened then?”

He snarled as he thought about it. “At the time, I had a wife. She might not have been like Lowanna, but I remember her face. I loved her so well. I remember we separated when we went hunting. She was so good at her painting. The paintings that depict me, those were hers,” he paused as he let the soil fall to the ground. “I found her dead. At first, I thought it was some wild predator. I found the bites of a dingo, but I knew this was no ordinary dingo. They wouldn’t go after humans. This one was special. It was Marindi. He saw that she was hunting on the same grounds as I was, and he wanted to send a message to me,” he said as he cringed his teeth. “He fucking killed her! I made it my vow that I got the message, and I was going to lay the worst kind of vengeance that the world would ever see! No justice, no morals, this was a war that I would throw all my rage on. He was going to die, and he was going to die a slow, agonizing death. My wife was what held me together, and without her, my anger was released.”

Nehebkau put one of his hands to one of his chins as he thought about his words.

“I found him. It took me a month, but I found the piece of shit standing on top of the mountain of Uluru. I crafted my own weapons to kill him. I was ready, and so was he. I challenged him to a fight. I hacked and slashed at him. He fought well; the bastard wouldn’t give up. We fought for hours until my blade finally struck him on the side. Staggered, I jumped on him and bit him the back of the neck, but he managed to break free and ran. He was slightly faster than me. He kept running as he bled all over the mountain top. I watched as the tan-colored mountain turned to red as he kept bleeding. I would never stop. I was going to kill him! I didn’t care if the fight lasted for minutes or hours or days. Marindi was going to die.”

“Then what happened?”

Adnoartina, for once, displayed some satisfaction on his face. “Finally it seemed that the demon began to bleed out and he knew it. An entire day had passed when he finally turned around and lifted his weapon at me again. I faced off with him, and we were at it again. The fight lasted for a few minutes. He was weakened from his bleeding, and he wanted one last try at me. Finally, I grabbed him again and bit him on the throat. I remember I kept screaming at him to die. With one good grab and twist, I ended his life ... ho...” he began to chuckle. “It didn’t end there. I wanted to do one last thing. I wanted to keep my promise that nothing that I kill goes to waste. I ate the fucker! Skin, fur, bones, all of it! I remember climbing the mountain top of Uluru and screamed my name. I killed the bastard, and I could live on. Anyone that dared climb the mountain would find me!”

“Then Cataclysssm happened...”

The gecko god lowered his hand to the ground. “Then that happened. Everything changed. Us and the Australian ... mythics ... that wasn’t what we were called. We were the spirits, the ancestors, the deities ... all of us were pulled to fight in a stupid fucking battle against something that came from the heavens! What you called space, it was the heavens ... It made my fight with Marindi seem like it was nothing. I choose to volunteer along with those damned dragons, and that stupid tortoise sent us to the wrong place!”

“I know thisss ssstory Adnoartina,” Nebebkau told him.

“Ugh ... it’s shit, you know,” he replied as he slammed his fist in the dirt. “You know what is pure shit, and even you don’t know this. Ptah and that cow woman...”

“Ariadne.”

“Yeah, her.”

“And the othersss there,” the snake god added.

“I ended up hearing that Ptah tried to do the Dreamtime Solution during the whole Cataclysm fight. It was a damn good plan, and I should have been a part of it. Me, Minawara, and the other aborigine mythics should have been in that ... it would have worked better than it would have.”

“You need to keep your hope on thisss,” Nebebkau pointed to him. “There were many sssleeper templesss, and we haven’t found them all. The Australian mythics are there sssafely asssleep waiting to be found.”

“Yeah, and how long will that take? Days? Months? Years? This century? They are asleep, but they may never wake up. Instead, there are just a few of us...”

“What about Minawara? When wasss the lasss time you were with him?”

“That kangaroo hopper? I haven’t seen him since he met that human woman in the United States. She has dark skin, but she is no aborigine.”

“Yet he had a child with her and named it after hisss brother Multultu.”

“I know that damn it ... That has what has happened to us. I have to marry mortals now. And now, Lowanna...”

“What do you think that ssshe wantsss?”

His gaze went straight to Nebebkau’s faces. There was a look of anger but surprise at the same time. “What?”

“Did Lowanna know what you were?”

“Yes ... I remember telling her the truth, and she let me make love to her as much as I want. It was her way of helping my desire and anger towards everything. She was ... incredible.”

“Then you have nothing to fear, my friend. You were doing everything you could to be with your wife. Ssshe died happily am I right?” Nebebkau said as his tongues flicked the air and went back in his mouth.

“Yes.”

“And would ssshe want you to be ssstuck here getting upssset over the natural and mundane process that death isss?”

“No ... she wouldn’t.”