Doctor Fate: In the Dungeon of the Damned

Chapter 3 - The Temple of the Annunaki

Doctor Fate stood alone on the deserted arid plain. It was the dead of night here, and the stars overhead seemed far fewer than when he was a boy. Even here, he thought. Light pollution. It sounded like a kind of heretical oxymoron, like "plague of compassion." But then, as Nabu had long ago instructed him, too much of anything, even goodness, can be a bad thing. It may have been Nabu's own "plague of compassion" that had left Nergal unchecked to terrorize the world, after all.

With a wave of his hand a foot of dirt was swept away from the ground in front of him, uncovering a stone hatch two metres wide. Gesturing again, the massive stone slab rose up and to the side, revealing a staircase leading down into darkness. Torches on the wall were suddenly lit by cold flame emanating from the fist-sized jewels they held. "Ember," Nabu had called the magic golden gems. They looked like amber, held light – hence, ember. In later years, Kent Nelson would mentally refer to the old mage as "Nabukov" whenever he thought of the ridiculous puns and neologisms made by his beloved teacher in the many new languages he mastered with unrivalled ease.

He descended the steps and soon arrived at the towering bronze door where he and his father had once – fatefully – stood. Before everything changed forever.

Fate had materialized outside the temple instead of arriving inside because he had detected a protective force field surrounding the temple compound – everywhere except this very door. He didn't know whether he could penetrate that field – Nergal's power was truly formidable – but even if he could, it would just alert his enemy all the sooner, and likely leave Fate himself depleted by the effort. This was one trap that the mouse couldn't outwit simply by choosing a different door.

But he didn't open the door in the expected way, either; instead, he dematerialized and passed through it. There were spells to dematerialize by means of sorcery, of course, but they would immediately signal anyone on alert for magic. Fate instead used the advanced Cilian science of matter and energy control that he alone of all non-Cilians knew. This knowledge, this skill, was one of the few cards Fate had up his sleeve with which to confront Nergal, but it was a powerful one.

Inside the temple it was as bright as daylight. He recalled how learning to dim the ember was the first spell Nabu taught him, and how pleased both teacher and student had been when he mastered it on his first try.

Unexpectedly, the temple was not, as his tower had been, demolished. In fact, it was in exactly the pristine condition in which Fate had himself last left it. All trace of Nergal – and Inza – was gone, as if the wretched death-god had never been there.

And yet, his helmet was nagging him to be on alert, and Fate's own sensitivity to magic informed him that powerful spells had recently been cast here. Whether this was simply residue of Nergal's battle of wills with Fate over the Eye of Merlin, or some other wicked mischief, he would simply have to wait to determine.

But he didn't have to wait long. A grating noise, like stone grinding stone, arose from all directions save the door behind him – from the galleries where the statues of the Annunaki stood, to be specific, and from the front of the temple, the area that would be called the chancel were it a Christian cathedral, where the statue of Enlil stood alone, signifying his position as leader (if only nominally) of the pantheon. With his extraordinary vision, Fate quickly surmised that the statues of the Annunaki were moving – stirring, as it were, slowly, as if from a long sleep.

Suddenly, so suddenly that he had no time to react, from behind Doctor Fate on his left the grinding sounded like a small avalanche and he was struck from behind with such force that he was driven like a missile into a column, which shattered and collapsed, with part of the ceiling and earth above it, on top of Earth's greatest sorcerer. "Down you go, demon!" a deep voice boomed as Fate was covered in several tonnes of stone and dirt.