[Illusion of Memory] Lord of Storms
May. 29th, 2006 04:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreInformation on the relevant mythology here. A pylon is a gate, which I decided to interpret as big doorways, because the description was somewhat vague. Promenades (of sphynxes!) = buildings, always. Big fancy ones, usually, like temples or palaces. Or funerary complexes, but we aren't messing around with any of those in this installment!
Also: I will be continuing this. Just not at this moment. :P
. . .
The sun was a garnet sliver upon the horizon, and the limestone rubble of the old road from Ghephri shimmered as if gilded and cast its reflected glow upon the walls of the old riverbed. It was an old scar on the land indeed if a road of Egyptian make paved its floor, but Judas could gather no clues from the face of the rocks, though he had tried many times in the past. They were worn smooth and polished, by age or perhaps magic, he could not tell which.
Judas emerged from the shelter of a fallen rocks when the sunlight grew dim, Raeger in tow and the ferret scampering over the gravel on the far side of the road. It raced ahead when his companion tried to catch it and he waved her off so she wouldn't waste her energy; there were no predators to endanger the rat, wish though he might.
He saw her dubious look at the corner of his vision. "He might get--"
"He won't." Judas squinted against the glare of the stones. Shadows blurred ahead, still too far away for him to make out what they were, and the road had taken a slight upward grade since they started. "We might be near the end. Don't waste your energy."
Raeger sighed, the sound much put-upon. "Right." She let him stride ahead and took her place just behind him. "Whaddya mean 'might'? I thought you knew where we're going."
"Not really." Judas shrugged the question off and quickened his pace. The strip of sun had disappeared, and the sky darkened slowly from blue to gold, and then to mauve. Stars twinkled in the sky behind them when he looked back.
Of course he knew where they were going - in theory. He knew of most places in Egypt, or at least where they had once stood according to the inventory of maps on the walls of the pharoah's tomb. Perhaps trusting them was something of a folly; it wasn't common practice, that he knew of, to paint such things in a place of worship. But there was so little he knew for sure, and so much more that one could only guess at. And he would never find the truth for himself unless he followed the old roads to see for himself.
Pharoah's tomb was a shadow on his mind. Judas wondered after what he'd learned in traveling the ruins if it wouldn't be better to abandon his quest to awaken Akhenaten and help himself instead. His choice would have been clear in the ancient days, but there were no gods in Egypt any longer. They were left to fend for themselves.
Night fell before their path brought them up from the old river highway to level ground. Sand covered the limestone paving, choked with dry weeds and dead wood, and the shadow silhoetted against the sunset became a thick copse of trees a little way off. He veered away from the ruins of the highway wall and approached the trees cautiously, loosening his sword in its sheath, motioning for Raeger to stay at his back.
"Stop a minute," Judas breathed softly, catching her shoulder and pressing a thumb over her lips to hush the inevitable question.
Wind gusted in fits. The dry grass crackled and snapped in the current, palm fronds rustled above, and the tallest of the trees swayed, merely dark shapes against a sky lit only by a few bright stars. And beyond the gritty tumble of sand drifts and the din of dead vegetation was a sound he had not heard for some time, even in his travels in the northern country: water. Not the chaos of the ocean, from which they had traveled far to the south, but the smooth, silken sound of a calm and steady current. Even the air he breathed felt thicker, as if the very presence of water was enough to bring life back to it.
//The Nile.// He released his hold on Raeger's chin and pulled her along by the wrist, forgetting to ready his sword or prepare a spell in his haste to reach the shore. It was still a way off, and the girl was not as light on her feet as he was. He slowed reluctantly to let her catch her breath, and the reason for her silent cooperation - strange enough in its own right, he supposed, though she'd grown better at doing as she was told - was clear: she looked terrible even by his standard. The wan light left her looking almost as pale as he was, but for the dark smudges beneath her eyes.
They'd been walking a long time - he hadn't realized. Night seemed to revitalize his muscles, but she never slept well even at the best of times, and the heat was only more intense with the advent of summer. And yes, he noticed it well enough himself at the height of day.
Rather than apologizing, he glanced again at the trees, tall enough now to blot out the sky unless he craned his neck upward, and said, "We're almost there. I'll find us a safe place to rest once we're under cover." Three hundred yards at best, though when he looked at her again, he wasn't sure she was up to it.
Shaking his head, Judas trudged on, and heard her follow after a moment. She would have to endure. There would be time to rest soon enough.
The sand sloped downward in a pale curve from their vantage point, ending choked with grass and tangles of dead weeds a few yards from the treeline. He nudged a clump of dry brush, tapping the hilt of his sword idly with his fingers as he waited for his companion to catch up. Grass didn't clump like that - not when it should be weighed down by sand. Something hard jarred his toe, and he bent down for a closer look, drawing his sword to cut the weeds away.
"You know, it wouldn't /kill/ you to--AH!"
Judas spun at her cry, sword at ready, only to sigh and let his arm fall when he saw she'd fallen face-first into the sand. "We'd move a lot faster if you'd learn how to stay on your feet."
Raeger sat up with apparent effort and glanced back, not looking any better for the sand sifting out of her hair. "If things would stop tripping me it wouldn't be a problem," she grumbled.
"What can there be to /trip/ you out here?" He sheathed his sword with a snap and strode over quickly to pull her up, ignoring her protest. "It's just--" He paused. "--sand." She'd tripped over a rock from the look of it, something of odd shape jutting from the ground.
A whispered spell and a wave of his hand stirred the sand and thrust it away from the stone in a glittering arc, like a splash of water. And though the shape revealed was worn smooth by many years of erosion, it resembled its original form enough to send his eyebrows flying up, and heedless of the girl clinging to his arm, he turned abruptly to return to the rubble he'd been examining before she fell. Raeger stumbled along with sharp gasps, and fell to her knees beside the broken masonry. It too was worn, and in pieces, but recognizable.
"It's a promenade," he said, trying to pierce the shadows with his glance to find other statues. Another weed-choked mound was visible a few feet away, though the other side, where his companion stumbled, was mostly buried in sand.
"So close to the water?" Raeger asked hoarsely.
"Not that close." He glanced to the west, where a glimmer of starlight on the surface of the river was just visible. He longed to dip his hands in the cool expanse. It might be painful, but he had not done so since he was a small child, receiving his blessing from Isis. She would turn her back on him now. "A normal flood would not reach where we stand now, I would think. This is still high ground."
She sighed. "That's good, I guess."
"Are you hurt?" Judas tried not to sound concerned. "Did you twist your ankle?"
"Something snapped when I fell," she replied, prodding her foot gingerly. "Dunno how much farther I can walk-- it hurts, but I can."
He swallowed a few choice curses and helped her up. "Best not to walk at all then, if we can help it. Here--" He pulled her arm around his neck and scooped her up. One good thing could be said about her, at least - she was light. More so after months of travel. She probably wasn't eating well enough, but what did he know about such things?
"Err-- look, I can--" She squirmed. "I can walk--"
"You're not going to walk," he snapped, and tightened his hold until she stopped moving. "We've found a temple - I'll carry you as far as the front hall. Just keep still and don't strangle me."
Judas tried not to look at her as he navigated his way past the first line of trees, careful to avoid anything that looked like it might cause him to stumble. His footing was more stable once they were well and truly beneath the shelter of the canopy. Dirt became stone, worn almost to one piece in some places and broken by roots in others. The outside wall of what he presumed was a temple was crumbled and buckled inward where seeds had fallen to give birth to trees near the base. He hesitated at the threshold, as was proper, but there was no ward on the doorway. When he passed the pylon to step inside, nothing untoward happened to them. Only a slight tingle in his toes, at the tips of his fingers, and a stirring of his hair - the remnant of an old spell, perhaps.
The roof of the first chamber was open to the sky, but the shape of the pillars suggested that had not always been the case. The stretched up several storeys and flared at the top in the likeness of lotus blossoms, some still supporting slabs of darkness. He had to halt a moment and stare, tracing the jagged outline of the sky above with his eyes, and remained there until the silver sliver of the moon appeared over the edge and reminded him that time was passing. Dimly outlined in the shadows were chunks of stone that might have been the ceiling, and rubble was scattered across his path, making the way difficult and awkward with Raeger in his arms. She was still as ordered, but he could see in his peripheral vision that she was craning her neck around to look at their surroundings.
"Fine," he muttered to himself to break the silence. "Second chamber." Shifting his burden carefully, he picked his way to the inner door and paused again to search for spells, without success.
The absence of wards - even old, crumbling spells - was more than a little strange. A temple was supposed to be blessed by its god, and while he was not foolish enough to believe every one of Egypt's eighty-something deities were real, he'd thought it fairly reasonable to assume their priests were proficient in magic. The dumbest acolyte should have the ability to cast and dispel protection wards and locking cantrips to perform his duty. A magnificent temple like this - for it was grand, if the entry hall was anything to judge by - would surely have treasure houses and storerooms packed with valuable offerings.
Like the first pylon, this one passed with only a tingle, but his skin tried to crawl anyway to make up for the lack of substantial resistence. The hall echoed as it should have, its ceiling fully intact and the way dark as pitch. The space felt empty on either side. He knew it must be broken by pillars, and tried to walk in what he gauged was a straight line from the door, which should lead to another if it was like the other great temples he'd studied. He couldn't help wishing just for a moment, however, that they had reached this place closer to dawn, so daylight could follow them in.
"Can we have a light?" Raeger asked. The darkness seemed to swallow her voice, where his footsteps echoed ever more loudly the deeper he went.
"Do you remember the spell?" he asked softly, glancing up into the darkness.
"I think so," she said after a moment. "Um, what kind...?"
"Elliptical. The word is 'khezad'." She repeated it slowly and he nodded, forgetting that she couldn't see him. "Don't be afraid to draw the last syllable out more. You need to be very clear about what you want." Memory of her last failed attempt at magic prompted him to add, "Maybe you should go over it once to be sure."
Whether she listened or not he couldn't tell in the dark; he only felt the passage of the next few moments as what seemed like an eternity, before she whispered the spell and lifted her hand from his shoulder. A pale orb flickered to life above them and forced Judas to squeeze his eyes shut. The afterimage it left was red as the sunset.
"Good." When he opened his eyes the door ahead was lit in stark relief, and pillars were now visible to either side, etched with hieroglyphs that seemed deeply chiseled in her light. "You can bring your arm down. It should follow us as long as you stay focused."
She nodded curtly, and he felt a little more confident when he crossed the threshold into the great hall. Her spell was too weak to illuminate the entire chamber, so the pillars far on either side were merely a ghostly presence, passing at the edge of his vision, and bandying the echo of his steps back and forth across the intervening space. It felt like an impossibly long walk to the other side.
"Benches." Raeger pointed, and he followed her directive to the wall adjacent to the inner door, where indeed there were slabs of stone carved in a design he didn't know, low enough to serve as seats. He set her on her feet and helped her to sit.
"Will these do well enough?" he asked, taking the spell from her control and fixing it to the pillar behind him. Her shoulders drooped in relief, but she nodded and shrugged her pack off. Judas did the same. "I'm going to keep looking around. Call if there's a problem."
He felt his way along the wall to the door and he sensed, upon entering, that the chamber was smaller, though the darkness made it feel more formidable. Sensing no spells as before, Judas risked bringing his own light into being, holding it close to his hand as he would a crystal ball. It burned red at the edges.
Doorways gaped open to the right and left, but the chambers were small enough that he could see the back wall even in the weak illumination. Storerooms, he thought, or perhaps cells. Whatever the doors had been made of was rotted away. Only dust was left, scattered over the dull stone floor. Sand crunched beneath his boots as he left them behind. He started to shake his robes out, and then thought better of it; such a gesture might be considered disrespectful, and he had not ruled out the possibility that this temple, though it welcomed him without a fight, might still be sacred to something. One learned to respect the ruins of this place, or one did not live to depart.
Crimson flashed in the third chamber and he ducked back behind the casing reflexively, the hand holding his light aloft shaking. But nothing followed him. He sent the light ahead and peered around the corner to be met with the same red glint, and the shape in which they were set. A statue, he thought, but could not tell much else. It took a moment to steady his hands and convince himself to enter the chamber and confront the thing.
It stood on a pedestal, whatever it was, sculpted of black stone and polished until it was smooth as glass, and it stood taller than he did, holding a ceremonial staff in its right hand. An old cloth was knotted about its broad shoulders, faded into shades of gray and brown and ragged where it brushed the floor. The head that rose from its folds was like none other he could remember seeing before, either in the realm of sacred statuary or in painted reliefs. It might have been a jackal, but for the elongated snout - thus not Anubis, which was one of the few gods he could name with any certainty.
A chill, uncomfortable feeling crept down his spine, and his light dimmed to something resembling blood. There was a door at the far side of the chamber that promised deeper secrets, but Judas was not willing to turn his back on this creature now that he had seen it. Gems glittered in its eyes, and he saw hieroglyphs etched into its chest, and others along the line of its arms, mostly obscured by the cloth. He didn't want to touch the thing and destroy it, as so often happened with such ancient textiles. So he steeled himself and edged closer, holding the light up to read the front carvings.
'Sutekh, supreme one, lord of storms, pillar of the dazzling night.'
"Sutekh," he repeated under his breath, drawing back. "I've heard of you. I'm sure of it."
So many years had passed since his childhood that the memories were as dim as the light he struggled to maintain in his hand. They might have been mirages for all the substance they had. But the name struck something deep, something that choked him up and shriveled his tongue until he couldn't have spoken if his life depended on it. It hung there, heavy in his throat, until it came to him: the lord of storms, enemy to Her children, foe and murderer-- a /murderer/, a false king. Set, enemy of the children of Isis.
The light winked out. For the first time in his long sojourn among the ruins of Egypt, Judas turned and ran.
*
Current word count: 3065
Also: I will be continuing this. Just not at this moment. :P
. . .
The sun was a garnet sliver upon the horizon, and the limestone rubble of the old road from Ghephri shimmered as if gilded and cast its reflected glow upon the walls of the old riverbed. It was an old scar on the land indeed if a road of Egyptian make paved its floor, but Judas could gather no clues from the face of the rocks, though he had tried many times in the past. They were worn smooth and polished, by age or perhaps magic, he could not tell which.
Judas emerged from the shelter of a fallen rocks when the sunlight grew dim, Raeger in tow and the ferret scampering over the gravel on the far side of the road. It raced ahead when his companion tried to catch it and he waved her off so she wouldn't waste her energy; there were no predators to endanger the rat, wish though he might.
He saw her dubious look at the corner of his vision. "He might get--"
"He won't." Judas squinted against the glare of the stones. Shadows blurred ahead, still too far away for him to make out what they were, and the road had taken a slight upward grade since they started. "We might be near the end. Don't waste your energy."
Raeger sighed, the sound much put-upon. "Right." She let him stride ahead and took her place just behind him. "Whaddya mean 'might'? I thought you knew where we're going."
"Not really." Judas shrugged the question off and quickened his pace. The strip of sun had disappeared, and the sky darkened slowly from blue to gold, and then to mauve. Stars twinkled in the sky behind them when he looked back.
Of course he knew where they were going - in theory. He knew of most places in Egypt, or at least where they had once stood according to the inventory of maps on the walls of the pharoah's tomb. Perhaps trusting them was something of a folly; it wasn't common practice, that he knew of, to paint such things in a place of worship. But there was so little he knew for sure, and so much more that one could only guess at. And he would never find the truth for himself unless he followed the old roads to see for himself.
Pharoah's tomb was a shadow on his mind. Judas wondered after what he'd learned in traveling the ruins if it wouldn't be better to abandon his quest to awaken Akhenaten and help himself instead. His choice would have been clear in the ancient days, but there were no gods in Egypt any longer. They were left to fend for themselves.
Night fell before their path brought them up from the old river highway to level ground. Sand covered the limestone paving, choked with dry weeds and dead wood, and the shadow silhoetted against the sunset became a thick copse of trees a little way off. He veered away from the ruins of the highway wall and approached the trees cautiously, loosening his sword in its sheath, motioning for Raeger to stay at his back.
"Stop a minute," Judas breathed softly, catching her shoulder and pressing a thumb over her lips to hush the inevitable question.
Wind gusted in fits. The dry grass crackled and snapped in the current, palm fronds rustled above, and the tallest of the trees swayed, merely dark shapes against a sky lit only by a few bright stars. And beyond the gritty tumble of sand drifts and the din of dead vegetation was a sound he had not heard for some time, even in his travels in the northern country: water. Not the chaos of the ocean, from which they had traveled far to the south, but the smooth, silken sound of a calm and steady current. Even the air he breathed felt thicker, as if the very presence of water was enough to bring life back to it.
//The Nile.// He released his hold on Raeger's chin and pulled her along by the wrist, forgetting to ready his sword or prepare a spell in his haste to reach the shore. It was still a way off, and the girl was not as light on her feet as he was. He slowed reluctantly to let her catch her breath, and the reason for her silent cooperation - strange enough in its own right, he supposed, though she'd grown better at doing as she was told - was clear: she looked terrible even by his standard. The wan light left her looking almost as pale as he was, but for the dark smudges beneath her eyes.
They'd been walking a long time - he hadn't realized. Night seemed to revitalize his muscles, but she never slept well even at the best of times, and the heat was only more intense with the advent of summer. And yes, he noticed it well enough himself at the height of day.
Rather than apologizing, he glanced again at the trees, tall enough now to blot out the sky unless he craned his neck upward, and said, "We're almost there. I'll find us a safe place to rest once we're under cover." Three hundred yards at best, though when he looked at her again, he wasn't sure she was up to it.
Shaking his head, Judas trudged on, and heard her follow after a moment. She would have to endure. There would be time to rest soon enough.
The sand sloped downward in a pale curve from their vantage point, ending choked with grass and tangles of dead weeds a few yards from the treeline. He nudged a clump of dry brush, tapping the hilt of his sword idly with his fingers as he waited for his companion to catch up. Grass didn't clump like that - not when it should be weighed down by sand. Something hard jarred his toe, and he bent down for a closer look, drawing his sword to cut the weeds away.
"You know, it wouldn't /kill/ you to--AH!"
Judas spun at her cry, sword at ready, only to sigh and let his arm fall when he saw she'd fallen face-first into the sand. "We'd move a lot faster if you'd learn how to stay on your feet."
Raeger sat up with apparent effort and glanced back, not looking any better for the sand sifting out of her hair. "If things would stop tripping me it wouldn't be a problem," she grumbled.
"What can there be to /trip/ you out here?" He sheathed his sword with a snap and strode over quickly to pull her up, ignoring her protest. "It's just--" He paused. "--sand." She'd tripped over a rock from the look of it, something of odd shape jutting from the ground.
A whispered spell and a wave of his hand stirred the sand and thrust it away from the stone in a glittering arc, like a splash of water. And though the shape revealed was worn smooth by many years of erosion, it resembled its original form enough to send his eyebrows flying up, and heedless of the girl clinging to his arm, he turned abruptly to return to the rubble he'd been examining before she fell. Raeger stumbled along with sharp gasps, and fell to her knees beside the broken masonry. It too was worn, and in pieces, but recognizable.
"It's a promenade," he said, trying to pierce the shadows with his glance to find other statues. Another weed-choked mound was visible a few feet away, though the other side, where his companion stumbled, was mostly buried in sand.
"So close to the water?" Raeger asked hoarsely.
"Not that close." He glanced to the west, where a glimmer of starlight on the surface of the river was just visible. He longed to dip his hands in the cool expanse. It might be painful, but he had not done so since he was a small child, receiving his blessing from Isis. She would turn her back on him now. "A normal flood would not reach where we stand now, I would think. This is still high ground."
She sighed. "That's good, I guess."
"Are you hurt?" Judas tried not to sound concerned. "Did you twist your ankle?"
"Something snapped when I fell," she replied, prodding her foot gingerly. "Dunno how much farther I can walk-- it hurts, but I can."
He swallowed a few choice curses and helped her up. "Best not to walk at all then, if we can help it. Here--" He pulled her arm around his neck and scooped her up. One good thing could be said about her, at least - she was light. More so after months of travel. She probably wasn't eating well enough, but what did he know about such things?
"Err-- look, I can--" She squirmed. "I can walk--"
"You're not going to walk," he snapped, and tightened his hold until she stopped moving. "We've found a temple - I'll carry you as far as the front hall. Just keep still and don't strangle me."
Judas tried not to look at her as he navigated his way past the first line of trees, careful to avoid anything that looked like it might cause him to stumble. His footing was more stable once they were well and truly beneath the shelter of the canopy. Dirt became stone, worn almost to one piece in some places and broken by roots in others. The outside wall of what he presumed was a temple was crumbled and buckled inward where seeds had fallen to give birth to trees near the base. He hesitated at the threshold, as was proper, but there was no ward on the doorway. When he passed the pylon to step inside, nothing untoward happened to them. Only a slight tingle in his toes, at the tips of his fingers, and a stirring of his hair - the remnant of an old spell, perhaps.
The roof of the first chamber was open to the sky, but the shape of the pillars suggested that had not always been the case. The stretched up several storeys and flared at the top in the likeness of lotus blossoms, some still supporting slabs of darkness. He had to halt a moment and stare, tracing the jagged outline of the sky above with his eyes, and remained there until the silver sliver of the moon appeared over the edge and reminded him that time was passing. Dimly outlined in the shadows were chunks of stone that might have been the ceiling, and rubble was scattered across his path, making the way difficult and awkward with Raeger in his arms. She was still as ordered, but he could see in his peripheral vision that she was craning her neck around to look at their surroundings.
"Fine," he muttered to himself to break the silence. "Second chamber." Shifting his burden carefully, he picked his way to the inner door and paused again to search for spells, without success.
The absence of wards - even old, crumbling spells - was more than a little strange. A temple was supposed to be blessed by its god, and while he was not foolish enough to believe every one of Egypt's eighty-something deities were real, he'd thought it fairly reasonable to assume their priests were proficient in magic. The dumbest acolyte should have the ability to cast and dispel protection wards and locking cantrips to perform his duty. A magnificent temple like this - for it was grand, if the entry hall was anything to judge by - would surely have treasure houses and storerooms packed with valuable offerings.
Like the first pylon, this one passed with only a tingle, but his skin tried to crawl anyway to make up for the lack of substantial resistence. The hall echoed as it should have, its ceiling fully intact and the way dark as pitch. The space felt empty on either side. He knew it must be broken by pillars, and tried to walk in what he gauged was a straight line from the door, which should lead to another if it was like the other great temples he'd studied. He couldn't help wishing just for a moment, however, that they had reached this place closer to dawn, so daylight could follow them in.
"Can we have a light?" Raeger asked. The darkness seemed to swallow her voice, where his footsteps echoed ever more loudly the deeper he went.
"Do you remember the spell?" he asked softly, glancing up into the darkness.
"I think so," she said after a moment. "Um, what kind...?"
"Elliptical. The word is 'khezad'." She repeated it slowly and he nodded, forgetting that she couldn't see him. "Don't be afraid to draw the last syllable out more. You need to be very clear about what you want." Memory of her last failed attempt at magic prompted him to add, "Maybe you should go over it once to be sure."
Whether she listened or not he couldn't tell in the dark; he only felt the passage of the next few moments as what seemed like an eternity, before she whispered the spell and lifted her hand from his shoulder. A pale orb flickered to life above them and forced Judas to squeeze his eyes shut. The afterimage it left was red as the sunset.
"Good." When he opened his eyes the door ahead was lit in stark relief, and pillars were now visible to either side, etched with hieroglyphs that seemed deeply chiseled in her light. "You can bring your arm down. It should follow us as long as you stay focused."
She nodded curtly, and he felt a little more confident when he crossed the threshold into the great hall. Her spell was too weak to illuminate the entire chamber, so the pillars far on either side were merely a ghostly presence, passing at the edge of his vision, and bandying the echo of his steps back and forth across the intervening space. It felt like an impossibly long walk to the other side.
"Benches." Raeger pointed, and he followed her directive to the wall adjacent to the inner door, where indeed there were slabs of stone carved in a design he didn't know, low enough to serve as seats. He set her on her feet and helped her to sit.
"Will these do well enough?" he asked, taking the spell from her control and fixing it to the pillar behind him. Her shoulders drooped in relief, but she nodded and shrugged her pack off. Judas did the same. "I'm going to keep looking around. Call if there's a problem."
He felt his way along the wall to the door and he sensed, upon entering, that the chamber was smaller, though the darkness made it feel more formidable. Sensing no spells as before, Judas risked bringing his own light into being, holding it close to his hand as he would a crystal ball. It burned red at the edges.
Doorways gaped open to the right and left, but the chambers were small enough that he could see the back wall even in the weak illumination. Storerooms, he thought, or perhaps cells. Whatever the doors had been made of was rotted away. Only dust was left, scattered over the dull stone floor. Sand crunched beneath his boots as he left them behind. He started to shake his robes out, and then thought better of it; such a gesture might be considered disrespectful, and he had not ruled out the possibility that this temple, though it welcomed him without a fight, might still be sacred to something. One learned to respect the ruins of this place, or one did not live to depart.
Crimson flashed in the third chamber and he ducked back behind the casing reflexively, the hand holding his light aloft shaking. But nothing followed him. He sent the light ahead and peered around the corner to be met with the same red glint, and the shape in which they were set. A statue, he thought, but could not tell much else. It took a moment to steady his hands and convince himself to enter the chamber and confront the thing.
It stood on a pedestal, whatever it was, sculpted of black stone and polished until it was smooth as glass, and it stood taller than he did, holding a ceremonial staff in its right hand. An old cloth was knotted about its broad shoulders, faded into shades of gray and brown and ragged where it brushed the floor. The head that rose from its folds was like none other he could remember seeing before, either in the realm of sacred statuary or in painted reliefs. It might have been a jackal, but for the elongated snout - thus not Anubis, which was one of the few gods he could name with any certainty.
A chill, uncomfortable feeling crept down his spine, and his light dimmed to something resembling blood. There was a door at the far side of the chamber that promised deeper secrets, but Judas was not willing to turn his back on this creature now that he had seen it. Gems glittered in its eyes, and he saw hieroglyphs etched into its chest, and others along the line of its arms, mostly obscured by the cloth. He didn't want to touch the thing and destroy it, as so often happened with such ancient textiles. So he steeled himself and edged closer, holding the light up to read the front carvings.
'Sutekh, supreme one, lord of storms, pillar of the dazzling night.'
"Sutekh," he repeated under his breath, drawing back. "I've heard of you. I'm sure of it."
So many years had passed since his childhood that the memories were as dim as the light he struggled to maintain in his hand. They might have been mirages for all the substance they had. But the name struck something deep, something that choked him up and shriveled his tongue until he couldn't have spoken if his life depended on it. It hung there, heavy in his throat, until it came to him: the lord of storms, enemy to Her children, foe and murderer-- a /murderer/, a false king. Set, enemy of the children of Isis.
The light winked out. For the first time in his long sojourn among the ruins of Egypt, Judas turned and ran.
*
Current word count: 3065
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-29 01:53 pm (UTC)I love this snippet to itty-bitty pieces, and I just know I'm going to die before the next installment hits. XD I'm awful like that. But I did ask you to post it, so.
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention is that you've got the pylons pretty much correct, though my memory's a bit fuzzy. Pylons can be freestanding too, sort of; think of the stonehenge structures where a rock is set horizontally across the tops of two vertically set rocks, and that's the gist of it, although pylons are of course much fancier-looking. But they're just as huge and impressive. :0
"Err-- look, I can--" She squirmed. "I can walk--"
"You're not going to walk," he snapped, and tightened his hold until she stopped moving.
I need to draw fanart of this sometime, once my art skills miraculously return to me.
It's too mindbendingly cute not to.I bet Raeger feels more squishy towards Judas than she'd like to analyze, herself. :D She'll win his shrivelled little heart over yet.I'm almost tempted to write what she's doing while Judas is having his freakout moment, but I'll leave you to write the rest first. XD
no subject
Date: 2006-06-04 10:20 am (UTC)I do have plans though, and I'll get to them eventually!