Chapter 5 The Warrior
Chapter five
The Warrior
MERYT
Nakht.
Nakht…
Nakht!
“I’m right here, silly.”
I startled as if I had been dreaming.
Had I been saying his name out loud?
I looked at him where we sat together on my bed. He was so beautiful. That had always been true. But as we’d grown older, only a few short years from being given as more than entertainment to Pharaoh and those others he offered us to, it had become clear to me that I wanted Nakht as my own.
I loved him. We had been friends for so long now, but I had finally admitted to myself that I felt more, I wanted more, and I had been drumming up the courage to tell him for weeks. To kiss him and confess everything.
I remembered now. That was why I had asked him in here. I was going to tell him, to blurt it all out finally, come what may afterward. Then, now, just as I was about to do it…
Nakht kissed me.
I gasped. I had never been kissed before.
I had never wanted anyone to kiss me. It was just a simple press of lips, and most of our peers could be found dallying in corners whenever they had a spare moment lately, but I had wanted to save it for someone whose lips I truly yearned for.
Not just to satiate arousal, but for all of that want to center around a single person who wanted me just as much in return.
Now Nakht’s lips were on mine, and I wanted nothing more than to draw him closer, to cling and claw and pull him in against me until we were one.
His tentative tongue told me this was his first kiss too.
How unhurried he was, exploring, and sinking into my desperate clutching.
I forgot to breathe, and just when I needed to gasp away, Nakht did so first, pausing for air that reminded me to take a breath too, before he returned to kiss me deeper, knocking me prone upon the pillows.
I must have twitched against his thigh because Nakht bucked into me, just as tellingly feverish, but then lurched upright with the darkest crimson in his cheeks I had ever seen.
“Sorry! I’ve just… really been wanting to do that.”
He looked even more beautiful to me now, bent over me, embarrassed and flushed. I wanted to lick back between his wetted lips. “Even after I burned you?” I asked.
“Burned me?” His brow crinkled.
No. That wasn’t right. That hadn’t happened.
Not yet.
“Never mind,” I said and pulled Nakht down to kiss him again, just for a little while, allowing myself to enjoy this memory.
The fog of my thoughts was clearing. I wasn’t the young whelp I appeared to be.
I had grown beyond these years long ago.
It seemed clarity was coming to me faster each time, and I knew Nakht was watching.
The real Nakht. I could feel him. Sense him.
But I knew I couldn’t reach him. I was reliving a life that was over, and my beloved was doing everything in his power—including facing the gods in all their wondrous brilliance—to win me back.
I continued to kiss the Nakht from my past, enjoying our beginning that I knew would quickly escalate and bind us together forever.
As I did, I reached out toward where I sensed the Nakht from my present and thought that this time, I felt the brush of his fingers against mine before my journey into the past swept me into the light again.
NAKHT
“No!”
I was so close. So close.
I had felt Meryt, our fingertips grazing each other’s in a desperate grasp. I knew I had to be patient, to keep persevering through these trials, but how could I endure when they kept showing him to me, almost but never quite close enough to keep?
But I had touched him this time. I had.
“Move, you fool!”
I blinked, remembering where I had been before witnessing Meryt’s memory—on Ra’s night boat with Apophis about to eat me!
I rolled like before, just as narrowly escaping another piercing of the giant snake’s fangs. They once again buried deep into Ra’s daybed as I managed to scramble away onto the deck of the boat.
We were docked, or at least as much as a floating boat could dock, unmoving against a cliffside that veered around a bend to somewhere unseen, much like when Ra had first appeared to me.
Here there was an entrance off the boat, a large archway into the rockface with torchlight illuminating a corridor inside, though what else lay beyond, I couldn’t quite see.
It didn’t match the tomb entrances from earlier but seemed more crudely carved.
Where was Ra? That had not been his voice that spoke.
“Move! Get inside! Now!”
I looked up, for this time, the voice had sounded from above me.
An acrobatic figure vaulted through the air, wielding a spear. He was magnificent, almost floating as he descended upon Apophis. He wore even more elaborate armor than Ra had, fittingly, as he was playing the role of warrior, and Ra need only protect himself if Seth failed.
Seth, one of our most prominent figures, and yet also a greatly contested one.
From the Old Kingdom to the New, we had lost the truth behind his depictions.
He was drawn with an animal head no one knew the source of.
What was he? But as I took in his figure, it was so clear, seeing him in full dimension instead of etched or painted on flat surfaces.
He had medium-dark skin, a red and gold wrist cuff with the symbol of his animal on it, which had a long nose and tall ears, somewhere between an aardvark and a jackal.
In truth, he wore a headdress like many of his brethren but with a mask attached made entirely out of bone, the skull of an antelope with its tall horns, which in shadow looked very much like the Seth animal argued about.
From beneath the bottom of the headdress spilled long, wild red hair, as long as Ra’s had been but like the reddest part of the sands at sunset.
As Seth came crashing down upon the giant coiled body of Apophis that had infiltrated Ra’s boat, he stabbed the end of his spear into the beast’s side and sliced deep along its tail, causing several large scales to dislodge and clatter to the boat deck.
The scales were dark, black where they connected to Apophis’s flesh, but red along their edges as if dipped in blood.
“Go!” Seth yelled at me as actual blood began to pour from Apophis’s wound, and the great snake rose up again, snapping its teeth and readying to attack.
I turned and leapt from the boat as sense at last returned to me, racing through the entrance into the rockface and down the corridor.
As I went, the illumination inside made it easier to see that I escaped into a home, for I could see chairs, a table, a daybed, and household items, including a burning hearth.
I whipped around once I had reached the safety within, staring back down the corridor to the docked boat and ensuing battle.
Apophis snapped at Seth again and again, truly massive in size and greatly dwarfing the god, while he continued to leap and flip through the air like some hero out of an epic, weightless and thrilling to witness.
Relentless as he was, however, I could already see some of the places where he had torn into Apophis starting to heal and stitch back together.
Any damage done to the beast was temporary, and Seth had to stay ahead of its healing, enough to force it into submission until the next dawn.
For that was Seth’s punishment, an endless loop of fending off Apophis’s chaos.
Once, Ra had fought the beast each morning on his own, but it was Seth’s job now to protect the sun god and ensure his day boat reached the sky as penance for having slain his brother, Osiris, and later losing to Osiris’s avenging son.
It was one of the most famous of the gods’ stories, for Osiris was a very special god, son of Geb and sent to earth to guide humanity as Kemet’s first king.
Some stories gave that title to Ra, but his supposed rule on earth and ascent to the skies was mostly one of our stories used to explain the rising and setting of the sun.
Osiris was the true king, the one who had brought civilization to Kemet.
But Seth had been jealous of his brother, believing it should be him who reigned.
He murdered and dismembered Osiris and took over the kingdom, ruling with an iron fist and sewing chaos over Osiris’s peace.
Osiris’s wife, Isis, retrieved his scattered remains and rebuilt him, resurrecting him with the power of her devotion, but it was still only a partial rebirth.
He became ruler of the Underworld instead of a king of men.
His reunion with Isis also birthed Horus, Seth’s nephew, who immediately sought to avenge his father and challenged Seth for the throne.
Uncle and nephew were called to face each other in a number of challenges.
Who truly won each round was much debated, and the details were.
.. odd, to say the least. But one thing was certain: Seth eventually lost, Horus was made king, and Seth's punishment from then after was decided.
In our history, he had gone from being a necessary chaos, much like Apophis itself, to a cosmic villain, sometimes even reviled.
But to witness him defend against the snake, feinting, twirling out of harm’s reach, and flying through the air to get in strike after strike was like watching my fellow dancers. Mesmerizing and mighty.
What made Seth’s attire even more elaborate than the other gods’ was that it was in shades of red more than gold, with intermittent blues, as well as scales that adorned it all, clearly taken as trophies from Apophis and mixed with the bones from other kills.
Or so I assumed. The bones were too small to have also been from Apophis.
I just hoped none of them were from humans.
As Seth finally lodged his spear into the snake’s eye, Apophis roared—definitely the sound I had been hearing—shook its head in frustration and panic, and dove over the side of the boat to the depths below. It would slither off into hiding to heal and return again before the next night ended.