Akasha summons Marius from the desert

Akasha summons Marius from the desert at the moment when he senses a watcher and considers whether to turn toward it. The call transforms suspicion into encounter: a commanding Egyptian queen appears, tells him to take her and Enkil out of Egypt, and draws him from the city into the darkness where Enkil is kept.

The appearance in Marius’s room

Marius feels that someone is watching him and thinks that turning his head would give him an advantage over the Elder. He even imagines taunting the Elder for emerging from loneliness and disillusionment, though he says he would not actually speak those words. The watcher does not leave. When Marius finally turns his eyes toward the door, he sees not the Elder but a magnificent bronze-skinned Egyptian woman, dressed and jeweled like the old queens. Fine pleated linen and gold-braided black hair make her appearance at once regal and specific, while the immense, invisible force emanating from her seems to occupy the whole small room.

As Marius sits up and moves back the curtains, the lamps go out. He sees their smoke rising in gray wisps before vanishing, while the remaining light catches the woman’s expressionless face, necklace, and large almond-shaped eyes. The extinguished lamps mark the encounter as more than an ordinary visit: she dominates the room without explanation or visible action, and Marius’s attention is fixed on her presence rather than on the darkness around him.

The command and its effect

Akasha speaks silently, giving Marius a direct instruction: “Marius, take us out of Egypt.” She then disappears. The brevity of the command sharpens its force. It identifies both the task and its two beneficiaries, making clear that Marius is not merely witnessing an apparition but being called to act for Akasha and Enkil.

Marius’s heart beats uncontrollably. He goes into the garden to look for her, leaps over the wall, and listens alone in the empty, unpaved street. He runs toward the old quarter where he had found the door, intending to descend into the underground temple, find the Elder, and demand that the Elder take him to the woman he has just seen. In Marius’s first response, the Elder remains the apparent route to the truth; the urgency of the call soon makes that route unnecessary.

The journey into the sand

Before reaching the door, Marius knows that he does not need to go below to find Akasha. He understands instead that he can find her by leaving the city and entering the sands, and that she is already leading him toward her. The knowledge converts the summons into movement: he abandons his plan to seek the Elder and follows the direction the encounter has opened.

During the hour that follows, Marius recalls the strength and speed he had known in the forests of Gaul but had not used since. He leaves the city under the stars, walks to a ruined temple, and digs in the sand until he uncovers a trapdoor. Where mortals would have needed several hours to find it, he discovers it quickly and lifts it with strength they could not match. The sequence makes the summons tangible through what Marius can do: the queen’s call sends him into a buried place, and the physical capacities of his altered body help him cross its threshold.

Into the darkness

Marius follows unlit, twisting stairs and corridors and curses himself for failing to bring a candle. He has rushed after Akasha as if he were in love, swept onward by the sight of her. The image conveys his emotional surrender without making the summons a romantic exchange: what moves him is the overwhelming encounter and the conviction that she is leading him.

In the blackness, he whispers for Akasha and stretches out his hands, trying not to feel the mortal fear of being blind as an ordinary man. His hands first touch something hard. As he moves them over it, he feels what seems to be a human figure’s chest, shoulders, and arms, but the material is more resilient than stone. Its lips are only slightly softer than the rest. Marius draws back, his heart still beating, and feels humiliated by his own cowardice; he cannot bring himself to say Akasha’s name. He recognizes that the form he has touched is male: it is Enkil.

Narrative significance

The summons begins as a silent, concentrated encounter and unfolds into a quest through successive thresholds: the room, the garden, the city’s edge, the ruined temple, the hidden trapdoor, and the unlit corridors. Each change of setting follows from Marius’s growing certainty about where Akasha is leading him. The call therefore does not simply deliver information; it redirects his actions away from the Elder and toward the buried chamber.

The scene also holds command and fear together. Marius moves with remembered supernatural strength and speed, yet in the dark he reaches out blindly, experiences mortal fear, and recoils from the body he finds. The queen’s authority has brought him to Enkil, but the final recognition does not erase his vulnerability. Akasha’s brief instruction thus opens a decisive course of action while leaving Marius to confront, by touch and in darkness, the figure at its center.