The Seven Swords of Diya: An Indiana Jones Fan Fiction - Part 2

Chapter 280: Kamchatka Wilderness, Soviet Union, 1960

Kamchatka Wilderness

Soviet Union

1960

Emily sat up, feeling immense pain. An apkallu sat at her fire. She screamed. The creature sneered. "I am going to haunt you forever. You will always be marked by my hands. They could have been lover's hands - but instead you chose rebellion!"

Lizavet swung her sword. "Be gone!"

The apkallu sneered. "You're next, Lizavet."

She stood her ground. "You know your place. And it will never be beside me!"

The apkallu vanished.

Emily wheezed, sucking in the cold and dusty air. Her eyes were wild. "Was it here?"

"It was here," Lizavet answered.

"When do we get to kill them?" Emily shuddered, staring at the swords. "They act like they're afraid of the swords and when we cut into them to defend ourselves, the apkallu multiply!"

"I do not know. I suspect we will be able to injure them only on their turf."

Emily looked at Lizavet, frustration building at her serenity. "Why doesn't the Treasure Guardian just completely destroy them?!"

Lizavet paused, kneeling on the ground with some of her fresh cut herbals. "I believe it has something to do with some strange timing."

"Timing?"

Lizavet nodded, sorting the roots and the stems. "The wandering stars are supposed to mark time. Time is a boundary. Time is holy. Time is for healing." She thought for a moment. "When humanity learns to manipulate time... then... then they will be at a place when the Treasure Guardian must intervene."

"Why?"

Lizavet stared at the sky, thinking. "Because that will be desecrating the mirror of heaven." She blinked. "The apkallu may have told the KBG how. And that knowledge would have been shared with the Nazis. I have... I have found things in the KBG records that speak of the magi knowing the apkallu better than anyone. These magi had an amulet of a strange blue stone."

Emily sat for a moment, thinking over her adventures as teen. She pinched and fiddled with the cuff of her multipocketed leather jacket made from an extinct animal which had tried to kill her. "If the magi knew the apkallu better than anyone... why weren't they released then?"

Lizavet looked at Emily. "The magi were infiltrated by the exiled Hebrews. They witnessed things that made them turn to different powers... You know history better than I." She studied Emily's expression. "I think you know, somehow... that what I speak is true."

"We found you, by looking at the Mirror of Heaven," Emily explained. "It hung in Solomon's Temple... and was..." she stared in shock. "...taken to Babylon... with the rest of the Temple treasures and Belshazzar one of the Babylonian kings used the sacred Temple articles for silverware at a party... and his kingdom fell, after a hand came down and wrote, 'Mene, Mene Tekel Upharsin.' I... I saw the apkallu drinking from what looked like a Solomon Temple artifact just before it injured me."

"For my people, the Mirror of Heaven was the sky," Lizavet explained. She took a canteen from her bag and poured some water into her small clay pot. "Spit in this."

"What?"

"It is how we make a healing poultice. Your body knows how to heal you. It just needs some extra help. Your spit will break down the plant chemicals and mix your healing abilities with the herbs that I have prepared."

Emily took the small bowl and spat in it, looking oddly at Lizavet.

"More," she coached gently. "You have seven wounds that need healing, and I only have a little water."