by Wall, Nathan
He released a heavy sigh, shaking his head. Set stepped out of the Spear and went invisible. He arrived back in front of the other Assassins.
“What did you find?” Hermes asked.
“Return home, Tunrida,” Set insisted. She sprang to her feet and ran. He removed the crystal. “We get one shot. Let’s make use of it.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Isis III
A jostling yanked Isis awake. The rush of what seemed like a dozen spikes sliding into her head made her eyes feel like they were going to pop from their sockets. Again, her surroundings rumbled. Everything was hazy. One of her eyes couldn’t focus. The other didn’t work at all.
A female voice spoke to her, but everything was jumbled. The woman continued to squawk. Isis couldn’t think of a reason why the faceless voice would be so agitated with her. It didn’t make sense. Nothing seemed right. Where the hell am I? The main concern in her heart was Horus’ wellbeing.
Isis slowly tuned into Bastet’s voice. She was grabbed and jerked from her resting position. “I hate asking twice,” Bastet said, voice raised. Isis still couldn’t see her.
“Forgive me. My head…” Isis stuttered. “It hurts.”
“I could end your suffering,” Bastet growled.
“That is not what master ordered,” Taweret chided. At least that was who the lumbering voice sounded like. She was a rather masculine woman.
“Bastet, please. She’s not to blame,” Hathor pleaded. Someone delicately stroked the back of Isis’ head. She assumed it was Amun’s daughter.
The floor wasn’t rumbling. It vibrated with a dissonant hum. She could smell those around her, suggesting cramped conditions; were they in a chariot? If they were on a shuttle then where was the Armada cruiser?
“Where are we?” Isis asked, panicking.
“The better question: where are we going?” Hathor whispered to Isis.
She didn’t know? It was hard to believe Amun hadn’t told his daughter of their destination.
Isis finally processed a sliver of light, seeing outlines but not much more. There were five other individuals in the chariot with her. Bastet, Hathor, and Taweret were three of them. Who were the other two? The way Bastet and Taweret spoke, it was unlikely Amun was with them. However, if Hathor was among the group then the two other silhouettes were probably Amun’s wife and son.
“So Amun didn’t completely leave you to ruin?” Isis mocked Sekhmet, who was well aware of her husband’s lustful affections for Isis. Just how much wasn’t clear. Even still, Amun was a hard man on his family. It pleased Isis to prod Sekhmet, if only to comfort herself. “Is your son still a drooling mess? I can’t see him, but I hear a murmuring retard. Served him right.”
Isis, of course, referred to the time Anubis beat Hapy to a pulp. The battering was so intense that Hapy’s eye-sockets were crushed, his skull was fractured, and his brain swelled to twice its normal size. Many of his cognitive abilities never recovered. It was widely known Hapy deserved what he got, having tricked Anubis into a compromising sexual position with an animal, a jackal.
“You’ve no retort?” Isis asked. Sekhmet’s silence wasn’t surprising. Amun had savagely trained her to know her place. “Just as well. No telling where or how he’d stick you for speaking up. Well, the how wouldn’t be hard to ascertain.”
“Enough of your words,” Taweret yelled from the pilot’s seat. “Bastet, come.” She sounded concerned. Were they lost?
“I’ve always held a certain fondness for you, Hathor,” Isis whispered, taking the Angel-born by the hand. “Do tell, where are we headed?”
“I was hoping you would know,” she replied tepidly.
“Quiet, you two, or we’ll launch you in the chute,” Bastet yelled.
“If that were true, Bastet my dear, you’d not have hauled me along for the ride.” Isis giggled, resting her hands behind her head. Her eyesight slowly progressed.
“That one upset her.” Hathor continued stroking Isis’ head while it was on her lap.
After a few hours of blindly cruising through the cold of space, Isis regained her vision. It was well-timed and fortunate because her captors had grown increasingly anxious with the prospect of being abandoned and left for dead. She was frequently on the receiving end of nasty snarls and evil glares, and had to be able to defend herself. Even if Horus was in possession of her starstone, her ability to move quickly in close confines enabled the use of the surroundings to her benefit. One such strategy could be to pull the release for the back hatch and kill everyone. The fact that Isis had a way to ensure mutual destruction kept Bastet and Taweret in check for the sake of self preservation.
Chirping noise from the shuttle’s relay beacons alerted them of familiar tech nearby. Isis was overcome with hope and trepidation. On one hand, she had a way out of this space coffin. At least being with Amun meant her body and their relationship afforded her a tiny bit of clout. Then again, if Amun had orchestrated the destruction of her Corner and set up a throne elsewhere among the stars, what need would he have for her other than as a sex slave? Perhaps death would be a better fate.
“There’s nothing but emptiness out there,” Bastet groaned.
Isis leaned forward to catch a glimpse of the monitors. There was a section in space void of any light. The stars on the black canvas dared not venture there, yet were sporadically placed along the perimeter of the darkness.
“What we seek is there in the void,” Isis said. Bastet motioned to throw her back into the seat, but Taweret steadied her friend. Isis leaned into the cockpit. “The Giver of Day,” she said softly, as if cold realization was overcoming her.
“The one father spoke of?” Hathor asked, joining Isis hand-in-hand. “The Burned man’s realm?”
“The Architect.” Isis nodded. She reached for the controls, but the others pushed her away. “You lot are crazy. You know not what you do.” She turned and frantically crawled for the rear hatch. Suffocating in space and having her body explode and rupture from within was a far better fate than what was in store if they continued on this path.
Just as her hand touched the hatch lock, a club struck her and knocked her out.
***
Isis sat up. What was this place? Was she blind again or were the lights off? Her clothes were different, that much she could feel: a lacy dress made of soft fabric. Remnants of a time long abandoned on a planet once called home, crafted by those seeking her guidance.
She slid along the stone floor. She hadn’t felt something of this composition in ages. It was as if it’d been super-heated then slowly cooled and smoothed to perfection. Gaining traction was impossible.
Where the hell am I crawling? She moved in a random direction. There was no telling if her guess was correct. Something had to be done. Anything. Inaction was the wrong action.
Sounds of life, echoing through the black, encouraged her. Her head bumped into a wall. A dead end. Yet sounds of others talking through the stone encouraged her to pound the wall until her flesh broke raw.
It was useless. The good news was her eyes probably worked. The bad news was imprisonment for the foreseeable future. Exhaustion soon set in. Suddenly the wall lifted and she fell onto her side. The light was blinding. The extended stay in the darkness had warped her eyes. A hand lowered and she took it, not seeing much of a choice. It was Amun. His musk was unmistakable.
“My lovely Isis,” he said, kissing her hand. “I’ve longed to see your face.”
“I didn’t get that impression when you bashed my head into the floor, stealing that girl away.” Isis doused her words with sarcasm, but only drew a chuckle from Amun. “Where is the child?”
“Making herself comfortable among her new surroundings.”
Amun escorted her into a brig of sorts. Carved into the rock were several inlets barely the size of her closet. A radiant barrier of black fire blocked any escape from the inlets. The prisoners were all children—none older than a teenager. Boys were to the left and girls to the rig
ht. Isis understood. The kids were like trophies rather than prisoners. Each was well maintained and didn’t lack creature comforts such as chocolates or toys, though none were free. She finally saw Rashini. A clearer picture took form. All the children had to be like her. But what was that? How did it coordinate with Amun and Ra?
“Are you OK, child?” Isis asked Rashini. The girl sulked into the corner, continuing to comb her doll’s hair. “Precious little one, all will be OK.”
“You make promises you cannot keep.” Amun’s large hands wrapped around her shoulders and massaged. He breathed down her neck. “I wish you didn’t make it so difficult for the two of us. Things could’ve been simpler.”
Isis looked down the corridor. The empty cells far outnumbered the occupied by at least four to one. Whatever Ra and Amun were planning, it was still new.
“Tell me, Amun, why Ra? What do you get out of this alliance?” She turned, pressed her chest against his, and stroked his frizzy beard. He seemed pleased with her posture. “Did you come to him before or after my refusal to marry? Was our arrangement never sufficient?”
“It’d be a lie to say you didn’t satisfy certain desires, nevertheless I always yearned for more.” He pulled her along, walking past the empty cells. Isis tried to keep count, but there were too many and their pace was too quick. “The idea of the Architects intrigued me long ago. The seed planted in my head during the Pride Rebellion. Before Osiris’ death, I ventured to find these beings… to consult with them and consolidate power. What I found was the startling truth that we’d all been lied to, Isis, from the beginning. Lucifer had more justification than previously thought.”
“Lucifer, a hero?” Isis scoffed. The sickening twist in her gut worried her—maybe it was true. A lot was adding up to that conclusion. The memories in her mind she swore weren’t hers. The lies about infertility of angels. The rage and massacre of the Angel-born. Why would God go to such lengths to stifle freewill for her kind? Were they really second class to the humans?
“I know the wheels are spinning in your mind…”
“Why Ra?”
“The power at the center of our starstones—the glowing gem which fuels our energy and regenerates our alloy—was his design.” Amun pushed through a gate and out onto a terrace overlooking nothing but blue sky above and clouds below. They were inside a mountain, but where? “They say angels are born of light and forever linked with the stars, and when ours fade, collapse in the cold, unrelenting embrace of space, so does our life force. Where do we go? Nowhere. We cease to be because we’ve not a soul capable of transcending space-time. Ra reinvigorated my starstone. Ra is the sun of our solar system. We revolve around his true power. I deliver what he wants, in this case specific children, and he gifts me with more power.”
“Why doesn’t he just take the children for himself, or use his own powers to fight against God and unite with the other Architects? Yes, I know there are many.”
“The Architects are not warriors, nor do their powers last long beyond their realm.” Amun gazed at the multitude of suns in the sky with reverence. “He and I shall unite our lineage and become one: Amun-Ra. When the galaxies align and tribulation nears its end, passage between realms will no longer weaken our power. We will keep tribulation from happening.”
“Then what, when you’ve stopped the end?” she asked, already knowing the answer. One tyrant would be replaced by another. Hordes of innocent lives would be enslaved in the name of vengeance, or slaughtered. She remembered the words of her sweet Osiris: hope lay with the Angel-born.
Hope was a fine concept, though it seemed all of it had dried up.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Anubis III
Clank-Clank-Clank
Anubis opened his good eye, pulled from his sleep by the noise. His torso burned as if ropes of steel wool were yanking his bones in opposite directions.
Clank-Clank-Clank
Blood dripped from a fresh opening in his mouth and formed a puddle between his legs. Teeth collected like a small chain of islands in the sea of red at his feet. His head swayed like a pendulum. A plethora of footsteps hammered around him. Pee dripped down the man’s leg to his right, forming a rival ocean next to the blood.
Clank-Clank-KaClunk-Psshtt.
Chains rattled. A steel cage opened. It took four men to drag Anubis behind the group of prisoners. Skanda cracked a whip.
At first the scintillating light blurred his vision. The surroundings took shape as his eyes adjusted. A mess hall of gold, silver, and fine gems greeted him. Jade carvings melded into the gold floor resembled lotus flowers, waterfalls and constellations. Marble columns of cream and salmon were adorned with large, gleaming sapphires, emeralds, and rubies, all carved to resemble stars. Ginger and cinnamon incense made Anubis lethargic and numb. His face no longer felt like shattered glass.
All prisoners were commanded to halt and face a throne atop a pyramid of golden steps. Seated above for all to see was a hooded figure, gangly and misshapen. The man’s frilly purple and white robe covered all portions of his body except for his lace dressed hands. Shadows blanketed his face.
“Lord Vishnu is so majestic,” Anubis overheard one of the girls behind him swoon.
He looked at this supposed Vishnu. The odd sight was not what he’d expected, especially given the way those in his Corner talked about him.
A group of five teenage dancers—boys and girls—performed to the rhythm of tambourines, hand drums, and bamboo sticks, and the melodic mix of sitar, sarangi, and tambura. Their graceful jumps and arm waves were exact like a crane. Their routine was evocative of a martial arts exercise, yet it was open and accepting like a mating ritual.
They danced in a line, curving between one another, gyrating their hips, bending backwards to reveal their intimate parts, disrobing and fondling each other during the sleek movements. Despite the sleazy and pleased expressions of the many subservient angels under Vishnu’s command, the Archangel himself remained still and relatively unimpressed. He nodded with his index finger, as if saying ‘move on with it.’
“Welcome to Swarga Loka. Today, we honor our god, Lord Vishnu, the supreme purveyor of truth, the light of destiny, and fulfiller of wisdom and prayers,” the attractive woman to Vishnu’s right proclaimed. Anubis recalled his lessons. She must’ve been Lakshmi, Vishnu’s primary consort. She stepped forward and blew through a conch shell. Those below touched the ground with their foreheads. She chanted quietly, building up into a thundering roar. “Om Vishnave Namah.”
The group followed suit. The crowd tapped their hands on the floor, sounding like a frenetic snare drum. Vishnu nodded. Lakshmi took his Gada and pounded the floor five times. The crowd went silent as if no one dared breathe.
Vishnu stood and Lakshmi disrobed him, revealing his bare form. His skin was a combination of dark brown and a sickly looking pale blue. Many scars and lesions littered his body. Calloused boils formed rough patches over his back, stomach, legs, and bald head.
His original arms were mismatched. One was muscular and sleek; the other thin and miniature, almost as if it were cut from a tinier individual and sewn on. It grew from a mangled mesh of skin just above the bicep. Nearly a dozen other limbs grew from nubs along his ribs and thighs, even along the base of his groin.
The five teenagers formed a semi-circle at the bottom of the steps. They knelt, rigid and motionless, with their eyes lowered. Their upper bodies were bare. Vishnu walked among them, groping the breasts of the girls and rubbing against the boys. He made them stand. Lakshmi removed their skirts, revealing their freshly trimmed and waxed figures. She bent the first girl over for inspection.
Vishnu groped the girl’s buttocks, at which point Anubis turned away. Skanda forced his head around, but Anubis closed his eyes. The girl groaned. Anubis glanced as Vishnu slid his hand out of the girl and moved onto the next teenager. The boy grimaced and bit his lip to suppress his grunting. Vishnu shook his head. The boy knelt and the process was repeated for each dan
cer. Finally, the second boy met Vishnu’s approval. The others dressed and backed away slowly.
Shiva and one of his lieutenants carried a chaise lounge into the middle of the floor. The crowd swayed left and right. The women hummed and the men chanted. Lakshmi escorted the chipper teenager over to the chaise and bent him over with his ass raised. He called out for his parents, and they returned his seemingly happy words with cheerful applause of their own. Lakshmi poured a liquid into the boy’s mouth and he immediately went limp, but still cognizant.
“What the fuck is this?” Sobek murmured. Anubis turned left. His uncle knelt not far away.
“Shut your mouth old fool or I’ll have your head,” Skanda whispered, spitting into Sobek’s ear.
A few servants powdered Vishnu and massaged his body. He nodded and they stopped. He circled the boy. Only the teenager’s eyes moved in acknowledgement. Lakshmi spit on her hand and stroked Vishnu until he was aroused.
Anubis couldn’t bear to watch, on the verge of tears. He just wanted to go home. The cold and inhospitable surroundings of Amun’s Armada cruiser were far more welcoming than whatever this was. For several minutes he scrunched his eyes shut, listening to the boy groan in pain while Vishnu wheezed and hacked.
Finally, Vishnu decompressed with an elaborate moan. Thinking the ordeal over, Anubis looked up only to find Lakshmi slice into the boy’s skin and choke him with a garrote wire.
Vishnu conjured a starstone. The boy’s soul left his body and merged with Vishnu’s starstone. His skin illuminated with a pale blue glow, drowning out his natural dark pigment, and split apart while his sores oozed. He moaned with delight. Shiva dragged the chaise away with the dead boy on it.
The wounds and gashes on Vishnu sealed. Several of his nubs elongated. One sprouted a hand with three fingers. The crowd rejoiced.
“Your worship and the boy’s sacrifice honor Lord Vishnu. The galaxy rewards our faithfulness,” Lakshmi proclaimed. She clapped while servants dressed Vishnu and escorted him up the steps, supporting him as he walked. Lakshmi spoke again, “What is the word from the Southern Corner? Shiva, what have you before us?”