Where is Manar?
Book One: The Twin Star
Chapter 15: When Physics Resigns
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[Inside the Barrier]
It didn't matter how or where. Only one thing mattered: getting away from that cursed temple.
Maytham ran carefully, his eyes scanning every corner. His gut whispered that tonight would drown in blood.
"Damn that dog... What kind of hell did he drag me into?" he muttered bitterly. After everything he'd seen, his hope of finding any treasure or getting out safely had shrunk to nothing. His only goal now was escape.
He suddenly changed direction, sprinting with all the strength his legs could muster, hiding behind shadows, moving laterally to reduce the chance of being spotted. Then the blood froze in his veins as he glimpsed car lights approaching in the distance.
"Damn! I'm in an open field with no backup!" he screamed internally. Before he could find cover, a sharp sound cut through the silence:
Woooosh... Woooosh... Woooosh!
Bullets sliced through the air beside him like angry birds.
"Sons of whores! Damn you, Dajja the frog!" he screamed, hitting the ground. He thanked God they didn't have a professional sniper. He had no choice now — his only option was to charge toward the temple.
Maytham summoned every last bit of energy and started running like a madman, zigzagging to make himself a harder target while the desert sand flew behind him with every stray bullet.
He dodged the gunfire with agility, twisting his body skillfully and firing bursts from his weapon now and then to deter the attackers. With every step, his breath grew shorter until it nearly stopped — but relief came from an unexpected quarter: a new group of gunmen stormed into the firefight, scrambling the situation entirely.
What any normal person would see as a disaster, Maytham saw as his last and only chance for survival.
BANG... BANG... BANG!
Bullets exploded from every direction like rain. Within seconds, a third group joined the chaos. Maytham seized the moment of mass hysteria and crossfire, running with all his might until he threw himself behind a small sand dune.
Huff... huff... huff... huff... huff!
He lay flat on his stomach, chest heaving violently, sweat mixing with the dust of Babylon. "I barely made it," he thought bitterly. "But hell isn't over yet... Will I die today? Damn it — if I get out of here alive, I'll wipe out half the frogs of Basra!"
The battlefield grew more intense as new groups arrived every minute, turning the ground into a boiling cauldron of war.
FWOOOSH! THUD... THUD... THUD! RAT-TAT-TAT!
Maytham didn't know if he was legendarily lucky or uniquely unlucky to have come alone. In the middle of this chaos, no one noticed him — everyone was too busy eliminating each other. No allies here. Everyone was everyone else's enemy.
Maytham breathed deeply, trying to calm his heartbeat, then pulled out his radio with a slight tremor and pressed the button to call Dajja.
"Hey Dajja... Do you have a mother, or just a she-wolf?" he shouted mockingly.
Dajja's voice came through the radio, laughing with a coarse growl: "Hahaha! I knew you were a dog, son of a dog — bullets don't kill you easily. Spill it, pup. Did you manage to break in?"
"No. Things are still burning like hell here. I don't know if I'll make it or end up as shreds."
"Then why did you call? You know I can't come to you or send a single bullet for backup." Dajja barked sharply.
"I know, Dajja. But there's a secret in my heart weighing me down. I wanted to tell you before I die." Maytham replied with a fake dramatic tone.
"Pup... Do you think I'm your mother? Damn you. Don't bother me with your nonsense unless it's worth it!"
"I swear it's worth it! I sent it to your phone on WhatsApp. Open the message — you won't lose anything. Consider it my last wish."
"Fine... I'll see what garbage you sent." Dajja said, then silence.
A full minute passed. Maytham waited, his smile widening. No reply came — just suspicious silence. Maytham burst into hysterical laughter, forgetting the bullets whistling around him:
"Hahahaha! Hey frog... Did you like the video? Isn't the surprise beautiful?"
Suddenly, a soft female voice — carrying a terrifying rasp — came through the radio:
"Hahaha! Hello, boy... What did you send that pup? He exploded with rage and is now tearing the bald pup apart. The scene is truly entertaining!"
Maytham froze for a second. "Who's this?" he wondered. "I didn't see any girl with them when I left."
"Hello, miss... Excuse me, I haven't had the pleasure, but I'm glad you enjoyed the show. I also love entertaining performances. Sorry I can't see what's happening now."
"I like you, boy... I'm just a temporary guest. Call me Emma. Or you can call me Sister Emma. I love good food and entertaining shows... Tell me, what did you send that pup?"
Maytham paused, analyzing her tone. She wasn't speaking from a position of weakness before Dajja. She spoke like a superior entity. He realized this sister either matched the pack's power or was the real beast leading them from behind the curtain.
"Well, Sister Emma. You may not know this, but Dajja lives near my area, and I know most of the residents there. The best part is — news comes to me on silver platters. This video was taken by an acquaintance of mine, documenting the moments Dajja leaves his house. Suddenly, this bald pup appears... Guess what happens next?"
"Hahahaha! You're truly entertaining! So you call the bald pup 'helmet-head'? And what happens after that?"
"When helmet-head lurks near the house, Dajja's wife comes out shortly after and takes his car... I think he takes her to the gym, hahaha! Yes, definitely the gym. And I don't think Dajja knew about her workout schedule — judging by his violent reaction you described!"
"Hahaha! Yes, things are getting very entertaining here, and it's all thanks to you. What's your name?"
"Maytham. Pleasure to meet you, Sister Emma. If fate wills that I survive this chaos today, lunch is on me."
"I like you more and more, Maytham... Try to survive so we can meet... Ciao ciao."
"Ciao ciao..." Maytham muttered, then cut the line.
He leaned back against the sand dune and thought: "Thanks to me, Dajja now knows Munaf is betraying him with his wife. Even if I breathe my last here, I've taken my revenge for his stinginess. And if I survive, I doubt Dajja will be the same friendly old frog."
He wiped the dust from his face with a cold smile: "I'll show you how Uncle Maytham doesn't break."
Little did Maytham know that with this act, he hadn't just enraged Dajja — he'd caught the attention of an entity he'd one day wish he'd never met. If he'd known that Emma wasn't just a girl but the nightmare even werewolves feared, he'd never have dared invite her for a plate of bajeh.*
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In this life, you'll learn everything alone — except cruelty. For that, there's always a generous "volunteer" to teach it to you for free.
I've always felt this wisdom was my shadow, never leaving me. My brother Sami — that tireless preaching dog — used to crack my head with his warnings about "Dajja." I'd laugh and say: "I'm too smart to fall into Dajja's trap."
The "Chief Frog" dragged me into a massive mess. And when I say massive, I'm not exaggerating. It was the biggest "death party" I'd ever attended since I learned to carry a weapon.
At first, things were hot. The clashes never stopped. But most groups fell, and after that, things got truly dangerous. Only the professionals survived. I crawled and moved with difficulty.
Two hours ago, I was over a kilometer from the cursed temple. I used the darkness, the absence of lights, and moved somehow until I reached the temple's edge.
Near the temple, there were some trees and ancient structures. I hid behind them and continued.
I crept toward the gate of the "Ninmakh" Temple — what a ridiculous name. Just sophistry. I think cursed Nimrod must have been on something when he came up with this ugly name.¹ Probably sitting with his advisors saying: "Men, we need a name that combines terror, mystery, and the feeling that you're sneezing when you say it." They applauded, thinking about their salaries.
I crawled so slowly the wind itself would have apologized for breathing. I didn't care about the history packed into these stones. All that occupied my mind were sight lines and securing the entrances.
The temple from the outside exuded heavy awe. Towering mud-brick walls that, in the darkness of night, looked like an impenetrable dam separating our world from something else we didn't want to know.
And this "something else," by the way — we would get to know it later in a way no one wished for, no one asked for, and if there'd been a prior survey, I'd have written in the comments section: No thanks, I'll pass.
"Cursed place... Even the dust here feels like it's watching you," I told myself, gripping my rifle.
Exactly thirty seconds later, it turned out the dust wasn't watching me alone.
The moment I reached the massive gate, the silence shattered with hellfire.
BANG... BANG... BANG!
No time to think. I felt burning heat pierce my left leg, and a weight like a hammer strike my chest. Three shots: two on the vest, one in the thigh.
The two on the vest? Painful as childbirth — and I've never given birth, but I think the comparison is accurate right now. As for the third in my thigh, it entered from the front and exited from the back, like it was in a hurry and didn't want to stay in my body longer than necessary. Thanks for the short visit, sweetheart. Feel free to return — in someone else's body.
I dragged myself to a dark corner. The walls were covered in Babylonian carvings that, in the flash of gunfire, seemed to laugh at my situation. I think they actually were laughing. Three thousand years of silence and stillness, and finally a human worth mocking appears.
I pulled out my first aid kit, tore my pants with my knife, and started bandaging the wound. The antiseptic burned like someone putting a lit candle directly on the wound, but I swallowed the scream because circumstances don't allow unnecessary drama — the necessary drama would come later in abundant quantities.
Looks like I was lucky — no artery hit, or I'd have been screwed. After finishing first aid in under a minute, I pulled out three grenades: one smoke, two flashbangs. All the grenades I had.
Bang bang bang.
"Sons of dogs."
The fight began inside the temple. People above, people at the doors — everyone shooting everyone in true democracy. Bullets don't discriminate.
I threw the smoke grenade. The place filled. I changed my magazine.
From above the wall, someone was cursing me in a very refined literary manner — indicating his parents raised him well despite his career choice.
"Aghhh, son of a bitch!"
"Aghhh. Damn your cultured aunt!"
I threw the flashbang and hit the guy above the wall.
"You're welcome. No need to thank me," I said with genuine happiness, rarely found in a work environment.
And since the victor's rights are sacred, I cursed him back in a carefully constructed manner:
"You deserve it, son of a cultured woman."
I know this sentence makes no logical sense. But in the heat of battle, logic is a luxury.
After a quarter of an hour, the fighting died down. I stayed watching, and when I felt an opportunity to escape — FWOOSH! — I threw the last flashbang and ran toward the exit.
Who said I came for the treasure? Survival first. The treasure is for tourists.
But — and this damned 'but' that changes every story — I saw someone running toward the well in the temple's center and throwing something into it.
Damn damn damn. What have you done, by the dolphins, you son of filth?
The moment that thing fell into the well, everything stopped.
No explosion. No blast. Just... absolute silence for one second, like the universe took a deep breath before sneezing.
Then colors started behaving inappropriately. I first noticed that the blood on my hand had turned a color no one had invented yet — not red, not purple, something in between that makes your eyes apologize to your brain.
Then I noticed that the soldier shooting beside me — the sound of his rifle lagged behind its muzzle flash by a full second.
This is wrong.
I mean, physically, this is a grave error.
"I think something—" I started to say.
I didn't finish because the aforementioned soldier began to change. When the laws of physics started resigning, the soldier began stretching. Like someone grabbed his feet and head and pulled in opposite directions with clear professional interest. I saw his face elongating, his expression unchanged — complete panic — but stretched over a larger area than a human face should occupy.
Then, in complete silence, he disappeared.
He didn't explode. Didn't evaporate. Disappeared. Like he was just an idea and the universe decided it didn't need him.
I turned to see the second soldier undergoing the same process, but he was screaming in a way that suggested he didn't find the situation as interesting as I did.
The walls started breathing. Not metaphorically — literally breathing. Expanding and contracting in a regular rhythm, like the entire temple was one giant lung that decided to live.
Stranger still: the Babylonian carvings on the walls? The ones that laughed at me earlier? They started moving. Slowly, lazily — like employees on their last day before vacation.
Three thousand years of stillness, and you choose now to wake up? Your timing is excellent.
Then the universe decided to stop pretending.
I heard a sound no human ear had ever heard before — a sound that deafened me at the same moment it pierced my bone marrow. It wasn't a blast. It was the scream of time tearing itself apart.
Suddenly, the ancient walls around us shot outward at the speed of light. Yes, I saw the stones transform into lines of white energy, and the whole place began spinning like a mad cosmic tornado.
The people who were on top of the walls? They didn't fall... They vaporized in the blink of an eye. I saw their bodies scatter into atoms, their blood turning into shimmering red dust in the air before being swallowed by the spatial void.
And I heard one of them screaming that he needed new pants.
And... honestly, I needed a pair too.
I felt my soul being pulled from my throat, like an invisible hand was gripping my inner being and squeezing it to expel it — and it would have succeeded if it had squeezed harder... Is this how insects feel?
The ground beneath my feet was no longer ground. It became waves of vibrational frequencies that shattered my vision into a thousand pieces.
Everything moved at superhuman speed. Lights began exploding around us like dying stars. Gravity completely vanished, then returned to hit me with a hundred times its force.
AAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH!!
I tried to scream, but my voice transformed into electrical frequencies. I felt immense pressure on my skull, like the whole world was trying to cram itself inside my head. In the middle of that chaos of light and earthquakes that nearly dismantled the atoms of my body, I saw the place distorting.
We hadn't moved to another place — rather, the place itself was being reforged around us with terrifying power. Twisted buildings sprouted from nothing at lightning speed. Red mist exploded like bombs in every corner.
We were no longer in Babylon... No longer on Earth...
We had been hurled with a force that made our human existence seem like a mistake in the universe's system. I fell onto the strange ground, feeling that the atoms of my body were still trying to catch up with me from the sheer speed of the transition, my mind screaming from the horror it had witnessed in those mythical seconds.
— End of Chapter 15 —
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Author's Notes:
* Bajeh:
A traditional Iraqi dish made from slow-cooked sheep's trotters. A Basra staple — and apparently Maytham's idea of a fine dining invitation.
¹ Ninmakh:
An ancient Mesopotamian goddess. The Temple of Ninmakh in Babylon was dedicated to her. Maytham, in typical fashion, is unimpressed by millennia of history.