Sunlight was something of a distant acquaintance these days. Eviction once had made sure of that years ago, a form of banishment just a step above being sent to flash-freeze and be fried by Al Shira's unfiltered blue. If you wanted to find a foothold when slipping down the socioeconomic ladder, you either threw it all away to homestead on a not-quite-habitable irradiated rock—a worthless gamble for those who only knew hope's delusional side—or you moved to the inner districts. Antonakis had made the sensible move, packing up for a brief life on the streets of Arazzim's dusk district while trying to look for another job. It wasn't going to be all bad, as the week of notice before his jobless ass was hurled out and his apartment was sold to someone else was all the prep time someone raised in Sirius needed.
Oseirot aristocrats were just about the only people with a truly stable idea of "households", even centuries into the Pharaoate. Having a whole week to scout out alleys to sleep in and sell non-essential junk to secure the next place's deposit money was honestly a streak of good luck for Arazzim's working class, which was nearly everyone. The landlords hired their security and administrated from the "Estate Specialist" Heliakrion Raffar. Okay, maybe those circles also had something of a persistent household to live in, the leeches.
Today in the new hole where the sun barely shone at all, Antonakis did his damnedest to log the new assets. You had to haggle these things to make any real money. Once you hit pure night district with nothing else to fall back on, the sweepers who called themselves "Guild Recruiters" would take you. He shuddered at the thought, a life on sunblasted Batroun wearing the coffin-suit of thirty previous miners. So he counted the purchase price of his curios and slightly modified third-hand machines. What little cleaning and modification could be done to flip them for cash to get back out into the districts with a proper day/night cycle? Some crack-mending and extra breaking to the coffee pot to make it look artsy and intentional, a bit of polishing on someone's second-hand broom, which the previous owner had already whittled to be more ornate to eke out a few more blue numbers pushing the lira up in their national bank registry. Each little thing had to be resold for more, more, more. It was never about the objects themselves. They were simply a storage of investments.
The new job paid well enough, or at least it offered to before his address officially changed. In a complete mirror to Oseiros' pyramid of economic power, Arazzim seemed intent on making its wealth concentrate towards the outer edge. A stupid idea, really. All your poors in the district with the least area and the most vital buildings. And so sure, his new wage about a fifth of what it otherwise would have been, but it took them a whole three weeks to get it through the transmission stations around the sun to the banks' headquarters. Three weeks of wages that would be more effort to reclaim legally than one street-cleaner was worth. They had plenty of other schemes to attend to. Lucky him.
Antonakis' family had long gone out to Abydos' moons, mining metals to construct more of the same half-conic cities in the interplanetary safe zones. And here he was, operating an electric machine no more glorious than the broom he intended to resell once he could move up to a brighter place. The job meant spending a lot of time traveling between the districts, which gave him more opportunity to see Al Shira's blazing blue than most people working in Arazzim's dusk. It was a good mobile job, with lots of chances for networking enhanced by the hastily-scribed char-graffiti in the alleyways he spent much of his time cleaning.
One such marking caught his eye today, written in arc-welded melt damage (not his job to fix, but a cool 5,000 lira reward for reporting it helped) on the side of a cooling unit. Beneath a large dot-in-circle icon of Sol and some sort of glyph ended off on the right by a moon, two short sentences and a set of coordinates were engraved, written in Aseirion Greek but with the wrong script.
"Ⲙⲡⲟⲣⲉⲓ̀ⲥ ⲛⲁ ⲡⲁⲥ ⲡⲓⲟ ⲃⲁⲑⲓⲁ̀ ⲁⲡⲟ̀ ⲧⲏ Ⲛⲩ̀ⲭⲧⲁ. Ⲁⲡⲟⲣⲣⲓ̀ⲯⲉ ⲧⲟⲩⲥ Ⲏ̀ⲗⲓⲟⲓ." , the message said. The dual "Ⲏ̀ⲗⲓⲟⲓ" obviously meant Sirius, but the universal symbol for Sol confounded him. Perhaps the other glyph represented whatever group put up the sign. It was unnerving, looking at the thing etched and warped into the metal siding. The Sol carving felt almost like it was watching him. Reluctantly, he gave into curiosity and scanned in the graffiti, filing the report with the image but hesitating before sending. Something was off. Without knowing the meaning behind it, some part of Antonakis' instincts told him it would be a bad idea to divulge. The alley was notorious for being cramped enough to give the sweeping buggies trouble and uncomfortable enough that nobody would be sleeping here unless the dusk district really got packed, which likely wouldn't happen until the next generation of Sothiat terrorists invaded during the pup star's approach in forty years and caused a war recession.
This message could have been nothing, written in such an insignificant footpath. But the kinds of people to use Coptic writing for Greek were not random. Not Sol loyalists, they would have written it left to right to reject Aseirion culture. Not the Pharaoh's esotericist lackeys; "Ⲁⲡⲟⲣⲣⲓ̀ⲯⲉ ⲧⲟⲩⲥ Ⲏ̀ⲗⲓⲟⲓ." made that clear. "Reject the (two) suns". Not the Keserwanni exodants... they were usually much too quiet before they attacked.
Antonakis had learned a few things about cryptography from his sister before she went to mine on Abydos. As he did his job, admittedly mostly just supervising the slow-moving vehicle and occasionally unclogging its vacuums, he tried every bit of text and iconography to uncover something. Anything. He wasn't one for propaganda or whatever political underground advertised itself by burning sigils into metal, but this one was too inobvious to let slip. It haunted him just a little. The blaring and obnoxious messages could be ignored easily.
"Damn thing... just lemme forget it already." But his sister's voice told him that this was a juicy one. Abydos wouldn't have line-of-sight private communication for months, not that it was really private or that Antonakis could afford a message with images attached. They charged by the byte. But she would have liked the mystery of it all, and imagining her tearing into it gave him a little curiosity his pragmatic self otherwise wouldn't have followed through on.
This mystery was an alleyway with too many corners to hide behind.
Ignoring the text for now, the symbology was strange. Twelve lines radiating out from Sol like arms. Not the Thirteen of the great human exodus, and "Reject [Sirius]" might connect to that. Another piece. The sweeper buggy bumped into a curb, and Antonakis came back to his senses and redirected it briefly. Up in the twilight district now. About half the daylight of a proper day leaked into the streets. Fortunately, only a few people saw his blunder. He didn't think any of them would care to report it.
The symbol below Sol, the constellation-dots and three-crossed lines and the filled-in crescent on the end, fully evaded him. Whatever it was, it was new or obscure enough that the average person wouldn't know. Only the initiated, then? Some kind of group? To find out, he would have to attend whatever rally they were calling for. The numerals at the bottom, coordinates probably, gave him the most trouble of anything. Hundreds and tens placed in odd locations, the cross-referencing with the letter-numeral system that had been supplanted millennia ago. About seven different coordinates could be made out, not that coordinates had any meaning in a heliakrion.
As he passed an alleyway, a flash of a shimmering silver robe caught the corner of his vision. He turned, but the person had already left. He thought not much of it, except that someone with that kind of money shouldn't be flaunting it in the more dangerous areas.
Antonakis saw a few other instances of vandalism and reported them. Nothing noteworthy, just a few "down with the Pharaoh" and "New Türkiye will rise" type things. One pornographic depiction of the currently elected head of bioengineering, which Antonakis censored in the report. No creativity among these people.
Another brief flash of that silver robe, this time out in the more crowded streets. Disappeared just as quickly too, and nobody seemed keen on stabbing the guy or noticing at all. He raised his suspicion from nothing to a slight amount. The Sol glyph felt more ominous now. But the work day was almost done, so he made way for the depot-office to turn in the vehicle and walk home.
The trip back was uneventful, which almost felt worse than if some event had assailed him. In the door, up the stairs to the fifth floor, locked away. Safe as could be in the dusk district. And yet Antonakis felt sleep evade him for hours. Nothing so insulting as a puzzle clearly meant to recruit people being too clever to solve. For those hours he lay awake, he tried to think about the coordinates. Mapping out the various locations where they could be on different systems, accounting for flips and reversals. Hundreds of potential locations on Arazzim alone. Antonakis was no investigator; he was barely even employed for a mostly-automated job.
But when looking at the various dots from all the potential locations, one moved. Jittered. Another as well. Slight motion. The one nearest his apartment, which mapped to a laundromat, flickered. Outside his window, he could have sworn something changed. When he looked back at his tablet, some of the streets were wrong. Rearranged into something resembling a word. "Νυχτοσφορος" . The artifacts righted themselves when he blinked. Frustrated and probably a little delirious, he threw the tablet into the laundry pile and shut his eyes. Work was the priority, not this bullshit.
The next day was brought in only by the timed home lighting and automated alarm. Allegedly the one seventy-secondth of Al Shira's light was noticeable after a few months, but his body hadn't adapted to it yet. Antonakis, being up later than normal, had to rush to get to the depot on time for his shift. That silver cloak appeared four times on his way, but he ignored it. Seeming mad about his dismissal of the phenomenon, it appeared closer in the crowd each time. And each time, it remained unseen to all but him. Taunting him, probably. But wannabe specters in the dark weren't going to cost him his wages today.
During the day, he received the pocket-change bonuses for his vandalism reports, set out for the day's cleaning routes, and thought. The outer six potential locations were not far enough off the route that detouring would cut his pay.
Nothing there.
The next day of work, three of the locations further in were near enough to detour to.
Nothing there.
The day after that, his route home had one of the more interesting candidate locations.
Something was there.
Sol within Sol, the burning-eye dot in circle scraped thousands of times into every surface of the warehouse. Shredded curtains of gleaming silver hung from the rafters. The air was cold, enough to evoke images of Harsiess and definitely below regulation. Antonakis took a dozen pictures in a few seconds, turning to run out the door. Forty-two years old, and still running down the hall after turning off the lights like a child.
Wait, the hall? There wasn't a hallway.
And truly, there hadn't been a hallway before. But now there was, one that stretched out into an alley with too many corners and unlocked doors. From blocks over, a strange music began to play. The silver scraps on the floor entered a corner. Antonakis ran past them and ignored it, having no weapon to defend himself with if confronted. Had he taken a wrong turn to leave? No, he couldn't possibly. The signal for Arazzim's intranet and the wider Pharoate's internet were both shot, his screen carrying odd chromatic noise now. Blue, gold, crimson.
Running in that straight direction, he found himself back towards the scraps of fabric. As if he had doubled back, it seemed reversed. The music, he noted, played in a slower tempo. The buildings seemed taller. The air rattled against his lungs and his breath carried fog. He turned another corner and ran, finding himself back at the intersection. He ran down the path into the warehouse and found himself back at the intersection. Every way he went, mapping in his mind the pathways, brought him back like a sphere a third the size of the night district. "Deeper than Night" came to mind.
Clues, clues. Fucking anything to get out of this place without going down the carefully laid out path. If there were only euclidean geometry at play, this structure would need to be immense. But if not, and this really is the same path... something beyond all spatial logic was at work. Right-angle corners couldn't do that reversal of direction on a straight path. The music, the chromatic aberration. Spectroscopically analyzing both came up with nothing. The air got colder every second. Antonakis leaned against the wall, feeling deformations in the metal. Holding up his device's light to it, it read the same word over and over.
ⲚⲨ̀☉ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦ☉ⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪ☉ⲞⲢⲞⲤ☉☉ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ☉ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ☉ ☉ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞ☉ⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ☉ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪ☉ⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ ⲚⲨ̀ⲬⲦⲞⲤⲪⲞⲢⲞⲤ☉☉☉
Panicked, Antonakis rushed into the pathing with the silver shreds of fabric, immediately finding himself blasted by a dry heat he'd never felt before. The fabric scraps became larger, more connected as he ran, the Sol symbology gone, and before he knew it he stood out in a dark plain with the fabric beneath him now an ocean of silver sand. No stars illuminated the endless open black. His senses betrayed him. A combination of adrenaline and an airborne psychostimulant likely created this scene. But he ran still, the one-track labyrinth behind him.
A minute passed, or possibly a thousand years.
At the top of a dune far over, a little gold and blue glint became apparent. Having nothing else to do and beginning to feel parched, Antonakis shuffled his way over to it. The sand seemed illuminated by nothing, the sky showing nothing. His explanations for the happenings became slimmer and slimmer. There was no wind, but the faintest dust clouds had begun on the horizon.
The glint was from a small necklace, far too ornate to have been made here. Brought in from somewhere else, maybe? Its designs were... tactlessly syncretic. Inscriptions on its beetle pendant in various scripts, the greek eta atop the sun disk. Whoever had bought this... thing, and laced its hiding place like this had a real sweet tooth for old Rashaadi philosophy. Wind suddenly picked up, and assuming it was now fully a substance-riddled dream (what the fuck else could it be?), Antonakis allowed the words to scrawl themselves into the sand, this time neatly in Arabic.
On the left, الشمسان, Ash-Shamsan, the Two Suns. Sirius. Home. On the right, ليلة ابدية, Laylat Abdiah, Eternal Night. The organization's mystery, the path they called "Nyctosphoros".
If this were a metaphysical trip, a vision, one would assume that Ash-Shamsan would reawaken him and send him home. And so he reached for that pile of sand, and his hand burst into blue flame. It scorched for seconds before the pain began to register, nerves curling in on themselves and blood vaporizing before it could hit the dunes. He fell backward onto the inscription for the Night, and fell through. Darkness, then pinpricks of light. His burning hand sputtered out and scattered into the stars, his lungs emptied into vacuum. Sound still. No need for breath.
A river of light flowed above, encircling a blue and green globe. A river of darkness ran alongside it. Words formed before he heard them. Nonsense of this group's design. He shut them out, but they resounded from within his head. Retake Sol. Reconquer Sol. Supplant the King. Become the King. Bullshit about Ra and Helios and the old cultures that pretended they still mattered under the subjugation of the Sol King or pretended to still exist out here beyond Earth.
In his mind, he formed a rejection, hurling the necklace away. The skies seemed to follow it, pulling themselves into it before bursting into light.
Antonakis reawoke in the alleyway outside the warehouse, suddenly aware of the searing pain in his left hand. What looked like chemical burns ran up through it, the flesh charred almost as black-blue as Heruer's seas. The necklace dangled in front of him, worn by a cloth-bound corpse who towered over him.
He kicked the thing away, adrenaline returning enough to fuel him to run. Everywhere he looked seemed to carry that blue-gold glint, the lapis and ruby in gold. But the paths could not twist as they did. He ran home, tended to what he could with bandages he'd still carried, and wrote up the official report.
"Graffiti found in alley on side of cooling unit off of Charaktes Street. Sol invasion propaganda. Coordinates lead to drug house in Dusk District. Investigate with caution; airborne psychoactives may be in use." Not for the bonus, not for the satisfaction. Whatever happened to the investigators wasn't his problem. He just needed to see something soon about a raid on that place. He just needed to get Nyctosphoros away.
A bandage loosened and fell onto the floor. It wasn't his bloody red-white, but a semi-metallic silver.