"I have so many questions but I feel you brought me here to ask questions of your own."
Tafari smiled and pushed the book on the desk more towards her as if dismissing what she said. "Go ahead, take it. It's yours. I was able to collect all the pages and restore everything before you got here. Even when you wake up you will find that the book will be in your possession."
"What is it exactly?"
"The book of Thoth. A very important book and it belongs to you."
"Belongs to me?" Ramuna asked, confused, picking up the thick leather book. It was now more sturdy then she had remembered and filled with more pages. As she opened it to the first page she was dumbfounded to see that not only were all the pages there that she saw in the book the Jackal gave her but it was all in her handwriting and her own language that she could understand fluently.
Among the pages were everything she needed to learn Heka magic properly and on a level that she could not even fathom but somehow she understood. The book she held was the secret on how to become a god. A book many throughout history tried to find and some even died trying to read the contents of the thing she now held. The longer she held it the more her questions were answered. It was almost as if she did not even need to read any of its contents for it was feeding her information just by touch.
Somewhere in the back of her mind almost as if she was reminded of a memory she forgot she had she saw herself sitting by the river in the lush green field she constantly dreamt of writing into the book with a quill and ink.
"I-" Ramuna could barely speak. "I wrote this. A long time ago."
Tafari held out his hands and smiled even wider. "You taught me everything in it as well. I am so glad we finally got to meet again. I am saddened to say that we will have to meet for the first time one last time soon as well."
Ramuna was now even more baffled. "We have to remeet for the first time again but for the last time when that time comes? Is that what you are saying?"
"I know you have learned science recently. Well when I say recently I mean as in the past fifthteen years and you specialize in chemistry and physics but tell me how do you feel about time travel and time loops?" Tafari asked curiously, leaning over the desk as if leaning in to tell her a secret no one else was allowed to hear.
"It's a thing of science fiction. It's a possibility to be real but just a theory right now. Most things of science fiction have turned out to be true but I doubt I will see it in my era."
"I find it interesting you say that when you have been capable of doing it for so long."
Ramuna was now overwhelmed with all this information. Including the book she held. She put it back on the desk for now hoping some of the weight she felt in her mind would lift but to her dismay the heavy weight she felt still was there and it was getting heavier by the second. She felt like someone who was just coming over amnesia.
"Have I blown up Atann before?"
"No. You in fact have never attempted to travel back. In fact this is the second time we have ever met. We met in 1924 and throughout the time you taught me everything I needed to know you warned me about what was to come. You saw the complete future yet you said if you failed at trying to make things better than the fate that time was to give us that we were to go back only one time to fix everything and that when we go back the future would no longer exist. Everything would be made from scratch once more, the only difference is that I and others would be there with you."
Another memory came to her mind. A memory that made no sense. Almost as if it was a fever dream. Of her shielding a child in an underground tunnel standing between the child and the man she could never see in her repetitive dream that was on the porch of the white house. Her supposed husband. She still was unable to see his face even with learning more information about herself.
The child she had been shielding was her own. How did that have to do with what Tafari was saying though? The answer hit her before she could even ask him. It was simply because that had been the moment she jumped time and went into the future and ran into Tafari while she was trying to escape her husband.
Ramuna never once was reincarnated. She remembered now. She remembered everything. She had jumped time to escape her husband. Whoever he had been. Between the time she escaped him and 1924 she had never existed. That's how everything must have gone wrong. Right? Why were so many of her memories missing? Someone else has to be ten steps ahead of her. Whoever her husband is perhaps?
"Can you tell me? How did we get here?" Ramuna realized it was a very vague question but deep down she knew Tafari had the right answer for her.
"We were meant to get here to this very moment so we can go back. Go back and actually be involved and to fix everything."
"Everything my husband did?"
"This is way deeper than just what he did."
"Can you explain it to me then? Who was he? Why can't I see his face?" Ramuna asked, she realized the desperation in her voice. The more she thought of her recurring dreams she had over the years the more she realized the truth in them and the moment she was in now with Tafari.
"God of chaos and violence. At least that is what humans believe. You met him in a time where he was already split in two and imprisoned his other self. He was beyond powerful and he had tricked you into thinking he was what he once was and as you reached in me in my time period of 1924 you warned me that he had cursed you for running and that the memory of him would fade from you so you would not be able to stop any of his plans no matter what you tried to attempt.
As time went by and you started teaching me Heka it was almost like I was watching a loved one experience dementia. You slowly forgot who you were and why you were teaching me Heka and soon you forgot how to make magic yourself. An immortal god who was trapped to continuously live a human life with no power. So you would not go mad I also put a Hex on you that every so many years I would come around and give you a new life story. A new background. This life I gave you, the one you are experiencing now is the one where he finally caught up to us."
Ramuna felt dizzy. Her life as a chemist. It was a simulation in a way. One that Tafari had created. What was worse?...
"General Seth Phisler." Even as she spoke her ex fiance's name she already knew it was not a question but a statement. He was the man she could never see in the dreams and the reason she could never see him in her dreams was so that she wouldn't know it was a warning that the God of chaos and violence was him.
"Yes. Yet he is not the only problem. His marionette has been missing. I have not been able to locate him ever since learning about him. For all I know Seth has killed his other self."
"His marionette?"
"Yes. He created another version of himself. The self that reminded him of his past and his birth, anything that was human about him he made a body for almost as if he created a human being to be a sort of time capsule and basically locked that person up and threw away the key. Yet I have no idea if that person is even alive for all I know he killed him."
"Wouldn't that person now be the original him since that person contains all of his original memories before he became the lord of chaos?" Ramuna asked curiously.
"Yes and no. In fact neither of them are the original since they are split into two now. It's hard to explain. Best way to put it is like ying and yang. You can't have one without the other otherwise there is no balance. You split the two and that's what you get is discord on both sides."
"So our only hope to save Atann is to go back to a time where he had not split himself up into another piece yet?"
"That's what you told me, yes. You also told me if he found you and things went south and you could not fix things to come get you so we could go back so here we are." Tafari said excitedly standing up.
Ramuna still could barely comprehend how upside down her world had just become and here she thought passing out in the sand after making a nuclear weapon go off and waking up in Kemet was the craziest experience yet.
Yet this was a chance to make things right. Regardless of who she truly was she owed it to give Atann a chance at life. A chance she took away completely. Even if this meant that second chance was starting completely over from the very beginning.
"How do we do this?"