Marius removes Akasha and Enkil from Egypt

Marius’s removal of Akasha and Enkil from their Egyptian crypt is a turning point in his history as their guardian: he takes the Mother and Father out of the desert, conceals them beneath his garden in Alexandria, and makes plans to carry them toward Antioch. The decision is driven by immediate fear, but the visions and historical understanding he gains through an exchange of blood also deepen his curiosity into something close to devotion.

The decision to remove them

After returning to Alexandria, Marius breaks into a shop dealing in antiquities and steals two painted, gold-plated mummy cases, along with a large supply of linen. He brings these materials back to the desert crypt, intending to disguise Akasha and Enkil as the dead Egyptians whose painted faces and burial instructions decorate their new containers.

The plan grows out of both necessity and a changed understanding of the pair. Marius recognizes that Akasha will permit him to act, while Enkil could still overpower him; nevertheless, he approaches them and begins preparing them for removal. His admission that he would have taken them simply to survive sits alongside a new, more reverent interest in their place within Egypt’s history.

Egypt as memory and revelation

During the exchange of blood with the burned being, Marius has visions and dreams that connect him to Egypt’s immense historical continuity. He sees a land in which language, religion, and art have changed little over four thousand years, and this makes Akasha and Enkil seem to him like relics of that country, as enduringly bound to its past as the pyramids.

The revelation changes the emotional character of the undertaking without removing its practical urgency. Marius’s curiosity becomes closer to devotion, while his sense of Egypt expands beyond what he had learned from books: he imagines the Nile overflowing its banks, the mountains enclosing the valley, and a span of history older than Greece’s familiar world or Rome’s. The move of the pair is thus framed not only as an escape from danger but as an effort to carry living witnesses to an ancient civilization.

The removal and concealment

Akasha and Enkil allow Marius to wrap them in linen and place them in the wooden cases. The cases bear painted faces and extensive hieroglyphic instructions for the dead, turning the pair’s passage out of the crypt into a deliberate disguise as Egyptian mummies. Marius takes one case beneath each arm and leaves the desert crypt with them.

In Alexandria, he hires men to transport the coffins to his house, judging that this is a more fitting way to move them through the city. He then buries them deep beneath his garden. As he hides them, he tells Akasha and Enkil aloud that they will not remain underground for long, making the burial a temporary safeguard rather than an intended resting place.

Flight and the approaching Elder

Marius is terrified to leave them on the following night. He hunts close to his garden gate, then sends his slaves to buy horses and a wagon and prepare for a journey along the coast to Antioch, a city he knows and believes will offer safety. His arrangements reveal the immediate consequence of the removal: concealing Akasha and Enkil in Alexandria is not enough, and Marius plans to move them again before their pursuer can find them.

The Elder soon appears, and Marius is waiting in a shadowed bedroom, seated with a Roman poem and a lamp. Unsure whether the Elder can sense where Akasha and Enkil are hidden, Marius deliberately imagines that he has shut them inside the Great Pyramid, attempting to misdirect him. The episode ends with their location concealed beneath Marius’s garden and a further escape being prepared, while the Elder’s arrival makes clear that the danger has followed them out of the desert.