Chasing Orion
Chapter 1: Gods and Men

The morning started as it did most other mornings in Giza. My father left early to go work on the quarry slope, and my mother and my sister were busy in the kitchen working on food for the night’s dinner. For me it was a special day because I was starting a real job, or at least considered a real job.

Here on our end of the city, kids mostly helped their parents until they became old enough to withstand the amount of physical labor and summer temperatures up on the slope of the rock quarry. The captain thought I was ready enough now and informed my parents last night that I would be reporting to him at the main pyramid for duties.

My mother naturally objected. What was she to do really? This was for the Pharaoh. I was just barely beyond the age of seventeen now and eager to help in something so grand. I grabbed a handful of food and ran out the door toward the build site. The spring sun was rising just behind the Pyramid of Khufu, which they had just finished building when I was born, with its silver surface reflecting the blue of the sky behind me. The brightness of the sun made the edges of the pyramids glow as if they were part of the sun itself. They were both majestic and colossal, and now I would get to help work on them.

I was excited for this new opportunity. One end of the village was working on the Sphinx and the gods’ complex the Pharaoh was building for when Ra and Osiris came down to inspect our progress. The other end was building the alignment pyramids to help in the navigation for arriving Sah’Memphi supply ships. During this part of the building phase of Khafre’s Pyramid, the Sah, as we called them, liked to mingle amongst us and oversee the building operations of their platforms. Every few lunar cycles a new ship would arrive to deposit a new gold supply into the construction site and stay on the ground for a few days for inspection of our progress.

Sometimes they would police the labor pool rounding up thieves that had stolen gold to sell to neighboring cities. The Sah’s gold was vastly more clean and pure than gold we mined for ourselves which made its value incredible. No one ever knew what happened to thieves they caught, only that they ended up back on the supply ship and never seen again. Most of the time, the Sah were mostly tame and did not pay much attention to what we were doing.

Every now and then though, someone would think they were having a bad day, and try to take it out on one of the overseers. The result I can only compare to that of a full-grown tiger attacking a small child. It was swift, violent and brutal. It was only during those times that we could see them for what they really were.

They had to change to attack. Blink and you would miss it. One moment there would be a man at arms, and the next moment an unimaginable wail would echo off the walls, the Sah would flicker then pieces of the man would be falling to the ground.

An incredible sight to say the least, but the Sah were not men. Not like us. They all resembled statues with lifeless features, adorned in a grey metallic suit that served as armor for them. Each of the guards also carried a long axe type weapon that had a long blade arcing across its precipice. Their faces held a stone like mask that completely engulfed their faces, which had an eerie resemblance to us. If they did not move, you almost would not notice them being there. The Sah, however, served the gods like slaves, to whatever the gods demanded.

We very rarely saw the gods come down, but maybe once or twice a season. They made their arrival and presence known but dealt only with Khafre, the Pharaoh, personally. Unlike the other Sah, the gods took a less formal approach when dealing with Khafre as if they were on a friend level.

Rumor had it that Khafre himself was related to the gods through his father. Our teachings told us that our kings were gods themselves, but in the presence of Osiris, or when Horus would make his appearance, clearly, he was just a man. Powerful, but a man nevertheless. The gods were like Sah in appearance, but eccentrically adorned in gold and gems.

My father shared a story once from his early teenage years about when Anubis came down with Ra to develop the layout for the first platform. He knew Khafre as a child from his mother’s position within one of the temples of Amon. Ra had returned to his ship, but Anubis stayed behind to plunder the stock of young girls he craved at the temple. To what end is also unknown, they too never returned.

Unlike the other gods, Anubis was always the negative. Never pleased with progress, and always demanding more. Calling him cruel was probably unfair; he was just difficult and commanding. The other gods just mostly seemed to ignore his charades. Sometimes, however, he would instigate a conflict, and deliberately take a daughter from her father’s clutching arms just to antagonize him. Khafre was the same type.

He was newly married to a young girl and drunk with lust. He was visiting his new wife at the temple during Anubis’s arrival. Anubis could see this and enticed Khafre to fight by claiming her for himself and grabbing hold of her. Khafre planned for this however and caught Anubis off-guard while he was taking pleasure in watching the girl struggle.

He managed to get in one clean strike to the face of Anubis with a golden dagger, slicing the god across his jawbone. Everyone in the temple was silent and stunned in place from the shock of not only that the slash on Anubis immediately healed itself with no blood, but also that Khafre was able to land the attack in the first place. How was this teenage boy able to land a blow on one of the gods? The gods themselves are the only other beings to rival the speed and ferocity of the Sah.

They were untouchable, and rightly so. They were gods. If they can take damage, then they can die. Anubis knew this. The secret was out to everyone that was watching. Therefore, the fury of Anubis unleashed itself. Khafre knew what he had done, and he knew how bad of a decision he made.

A deep and piercing growl emanated from the god, and people began to flee. A few moments later, the brightest flash of light imaginable burst from within Anubis engulfing everyone except Khafre and vaporizing them into ash.

When the flash subsided all that remained was Anubis and Khafre. His wife and my grandmother were gone as their remains slowly drifted down onto the temple floor.

Knowing what he had just done, Khafre dropped to his knees and bowed in defeat to Anubis. As quickly as the flash of light faded into the horizon, Ra returned to Anubis’s side in the temple and prevented the death of Khafre.

They took him back aboard their ship, and a few days later he emerged, but he had changed. His appearance was the best you could ever expect to see in a man, and he had aged several years. His brother had also died of unknown causes the night prior to his arrival.

Khafre was king, and no one was aware of what really happened that day in the temple, other than Anubis slaughtered over two-hundred people, and made Khafre king. It was only later that Khafre himself told the story of what happened to one of his wives who in turn told the story to my father and others after Khafre cast her out of the palace.

She tried to ruin his name and turn people against him, but the Sah quickly silenced her and left my father with a story.

Personally, I have never seen any of the gods, just the Sah’Memphi. Now that I will be working with the second pyramid directly, chances are I will get to see one.

I made my way through the streets and up to the base of the hill where the captain of the main worker pool was on station. Judgingly, he watched me with skepticism and I clumsily ran up the hill.

I will admit that I got to the top of the hill a little more winded than I would have liked for a first impression for labor assignments. If I appeared to weak or frail, they would not allow me to work with the pyramid and the assignment of water duty which is carrying a bucket around to the real workers who were thirsty and earning their position within the town. Worse yet, they would dismiss me to go back home with my sisters and mother. I reported in and the captain looked me over.

“Courier,” he said quickly

It was not as bad as it could have been. Turns out, I ran up that hill a little too well. The captain thought I would make a perfect runner of documents and status updates that needed passed around the construction site or from one side of the pyramid to the other.

This also meant I had to interact directly with the Sah overseers giving them the progress reports or requisitions for supplies. My first few deliveries were nothing too grand, just communications among the builders from one side to the other. A feat that was tiring with running dozens of miles back and forth all day.

It was late in the afternoon and the sun was starting to approach the horizon, when I was handed a progress report to deliver to the high priest of the king within the palace itself.

I had never been to the palace, or ever seen it for that matter. It was on the other side of the city and the guards forbid loitering around the compound in which it was residing. I latched down the papers and made my way through town stopping to let my mother know that I would most likely not be back until dark.

I made my way around to the Sphinx and through the arches of kings into the compound. The compound itself was almost another city and housed the palace of the king, his wives’ residences, the king’s elite guard, a special liaison post for the Sah’Memphi command, and the high priests of our people.

The guards immediately stopped me backed up by a small lance of Sah shock troops. I showed them my documents bearing the captains seal and they let me pass. Two Sah troops escorted me toward the main priest’s ziggurat. The priests had their own way of doing things and in a way functioned separate from the king.

They had their own guards, slaves, followed different rules and laws, commanded by the high priest himself, who in turn had a partnership with the king.

The priests were not just storytellers or religious fanatics as history might portray them. They were the ones that the gods first contacted and whom the gods shared information. No one was certain as to what the priests shared with the gods, but wondrous and amazing technologies began to appear from within the priests’ temples.

Medicines, advanced metallurgy, electricity, cutting tools, mathematics, and sciences, all came from the priests. The king let them operate as they wished and in return, the king could share in the spoils shared from the gods. The king’s power came from the people who believed him to be one of the gods. He gave them technologies and in return, they worshipped him as such.

As we approached the priest’s ziggurat, it was crawling with Sah and the king’s elite guard. We barely made it into the courtyard of the complex before we were immediately swarmed by flickering Sah. My escort exchanged words with the guards and they pushed us away just as fast.

I demanded that I needed to deliver this document but they refused to let me pass. Well, I was not about to fail on my first day. Fortunately, while the guards begun to usher us away from the area, a Sah vessel seemed to have suffered some type of failure and was having a rough time going straight.

It clipped one of the guard towers along the compound wall and tumbled off into the sand dunes. Half of the Sah focused their attention to the crash allowing me to slip past the remaining elite guards and head into the ziggurat.

Inside, the halls of the ziggurat were nothing I could have ever imagined. Every surface had gold hieroglyphics and gems I had never seen before lined the base of the hallways and had a faint blue glow, which illuminated everything.

Also, to my surprise, there was no one inside. I expected to see priests and their oracles roaming about or at least a few guards, but there was nothing. Around one of the bends there was an archway and a staircase leading down underground. I could faintly hear voices coming from within and decided to head down to see.

Before I could take in the massive chamber that the stairs opened into, I found myself mere inches behind a set of guards. I had never seen their type before but based on their appearance I could only assume they were Sah.

I took in the surroundings ensuring not to remain unseen and noticed the high priest at the end of the corridor surrounded by four or five dozen other priests. They were kneeling and listening intently to the high priest who was reading from a book that appeared made of diamond or something that resembled diamond as it was mostly transparent except for a dim blue glow that was outlining the edges.

I slowly and carefully moved off the stairway as silently as I could and positioned myself alongside one of the massive columns supporting the ceiling. I noticed now that there was a pool of liquid in a crescent moon shape that ran the entire width of the chamber and lying directly behind the high priest.

The liquid was shimmering like an oil slick and emitting a faint blue glow like that of the gems in the hallway upstairs and the book from which he was reading. Every few seconds a wave of white light would dart through the liquid and leave a wake of every color in the rainbow.

Beyond the pool was another series of steps leading upward to a wall of blackness. After the third step, the light just seemed to stop. At first, I did not think much into it.

There were several shadows and abstract light castings all over the room from golden torches on each of the columns that lit the rest of the chamber. I crouched down on my hands and knees and snuck over behind the next column closer to the priests giving me a better view of the high priest and the pool.

The kneeling priests all lowered their heads, as the high priest kneeled and joined them facing toward the pool. An eerie silence fell over the chamber silencing even the crackle of the torches. A wave of light began to pulsate in the pool, and I noticed two things simultaneously.

A faint hum accompanied the wave of light, and the blackness at the steps looked like it started moving. It was almost breathing, oscillating in and out. It had the texture of a dense fog and churned like water in a gentle boil.

I was both stunned and intrigued at what I was seeing. The sound of a deep breath pierced through the silence and the priests all lowered their heads closer to the ground as if by fear. In the blink of an eye, a dark grey hand emerged from the blackness swiping across it.

The hand was unlike anything I had seen before. It was not human, and it was not even like the other Sah. The skin was a mixture of very dark grey with a bluish tint and the texture like that of necrotic skin with only four fingers.

The palm itself was normal in size but its fingers were almost twice the length of normal humans. At the end of each finger was a silver dagger like nail.

The high priests clearly distraught by this took a generous crawl backward in line with the other priests and lowered their heads, touching them to the ground. The priest’s reaction sent a chill down my spine as I began to imagine what monstrous entity was behind the veil of that black cloud.

A very deep and guttural voice emerged from within it speaking in a language unfamiliar to me. The priests seemed to react to what the voice was saying and not in a good way. I started to become uneasy too knowing that whatever was going to happen I was pretty much in it as well.

Just as quickly as the voice started it ended and the black cloud swelled and then exploded instantaneously through the room. As the cloud began to dissipate, six figures began to become visible where the blackness was. The stairs now took shape into a throne with four seats.

Four of the figures sat motionless with the other two standing behind them like statues. The chairs themselves were a gray metallic color, shaped like a teardrop and seemed to be hovering in place without any supports. A light blue fabric lined each chair with a brightly glowing circle at their peak a few inches in diameter.

None of the revealed figures had any resemblance to the hand that I saw come from the blackness. These figures looked like the Sah’Memphi just more elaborate and wealthy. They had the same lifeless statuesque features laced in gold and bright colors like a very intricately assembled suit of armor.

The two middle seated figures wore a dark shimmering cloak that draped around them loosely and adorned in various gems that pulsed different colors. The two figures in the back were slenderer than the others, feminine in their physique, and carried long staves made of the similar metal as the seats. The tops of the staves each had a claw-like fixture grasping onto a massive colored orb that was pulsating the same blue color as everything else.

One of the cloaked figures arose and gracefully walked toward the pool studying it intensely.

The figure made a gesture toward the high priest and levitated the book from his arms. It slowly glided over to the figure who calmly grasped hold of it repositioning himself in front of the pool. The high priest begged for forgiveness for whatever he had done referring to the figure as Lord Anubis.

When I heard that my throat sunk into my feet as the reality of the situation became clear. These were the gods, or at the very least some of them. Anubis and Osiris, I assumed were the cloaked figures, with Ra and Horus making up the others seated. If the two standing behind were in fact females than it could only be Isis and Hathor.

Suffice it to say this was a bad place to be sneaking around. Of all the days this could have happened, today is the day to deliver a message to the high priest who was engaged in clearly covert interactions with not just one god, but the entire higher court. The decision I made next would turn out to be the one that changed my life forever.

It was time to leave this chamber and quickly. It sounded easy in my head. I could deliver these papers tomorrow, if I ever get to see tomorrow.

If the gods caught me down here, I was certain that my life would end before I even realized that they discovered my trespass. In my distraction in watching the gods, I did not notice the Sah change positions behind me nearly creating a battle formation and wall at the exit through which I arrived.

I sunk back into the shadow of the column I was hiding at and looked around for another way to get out. One of the females joined Anubis and forced him to submit to her positioning. She knelt next to the pool holding her hand up to it and in the deep guttural voice chanted something into the liquid using the same language I heard before.

The wave of light began to dance around underneath the surface before centering underneath her hand.

She stood back up turning to Anubis and barked a word to him showing signs of disappointment and anger. The priests also now seemed distraught, almost as if in pain and trembling. She pushed past Anubis and settled next to the other cloaked figure placing her hand on his shoulder.

He stood up acknowledging her and moved toward the pool. Anubis coward ever so slightly and yielded backward giving him ample space. The god’s hands became engulfed in black and blue smoke that crept up his arms and eventually engulfed him. He knelt submerging his hands inside of the pool.

A low growl began to emanate from him and a burst of the black smoke launched outward from him extinguishing the torches. For a moment, it was pitch black, then I could barely make out the light from the glowing orbs from the female’s staves, the glow in the liquid at the point where his arms penetrated the surface, and more blue gems lining a corridor on the other side of the pool.

The priests began to panic as I could hear them scuffling amongst themselves. Shortly afterwards the chamber filled with the cries and screams of the priests. I took the opportunity to try to make my escape. I knew the priests were ahead of me and the gods were to my right. I sprinted straight across to the other wall hoping to avoid contact with anything.

I slammed into the wall on the other side nearly falling, and felt my way along it, moving toward the other hall. The screams of the priests started to become fainter. Not, from them calming down, but from becoming silenced.

A flash of the hand I saw entered my mind and my imagination took over to what was happening behind me to the helpless worshipers. The glow of the gems started to come into view and I thought all was going to be ok.

The gods began to chatter in their guttural language sounding like they were right by me. My fear finally took over my curiosity and I bolted for the blue light.

It felt as if I was running faster than I ever had before, kicking up sand in my wake. The cloud began to dissipate revealing the pathway in front of me now illuminated by the glowing gems. I stopped in my tracks and dropped to my knees.

To my despair, the corridor had no exit or means of escape. Another second or two and I would have slammed headfirst into the stone wall that was blocking my escape. I slapped my hand into the wall accepting my failure. The disappointment quickly dissipated, replaced by now realizing that I was in plain view of the gods that were now looking at me smacking a massive stone block.

Everything was silent. It was like a tomb ironically enough. Rather fitting for my current predicament, I remember mumbling to myself. A very cold draft of air passed me from behind and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Someone was coming up behind me. But, who or what, in this case?

They say that right before you die your life passes in front of your eyes. Well, that did not happen. Maybe I was not going to die then. I sighed to myself and slowly got to my feet and looked to the ceiling. I could see my shadow on the ceiling faintly cast from the glow of the orbs around my feet.

A few moments later, a blue glow came up from behind me, and I knew someone was there. It was dead silent in the chamber now; whoever came up behind me did so without making a sound. My own heartbeat pounding in my chest was almost deafening in comparison. Accepting my defeat, I slowly turned around to face inevitability. To my surprise, it was not Anubis or Osiris standing in front of me, but one of the females.

Her appearance was different from before and now had human like features to her. Flawless features, but not like the statues they portrayed. Her skin looked like stone but had a very faint bluish gray tint about it. She raised her hand to the side of my face cradling it in her palm.

Her touch had a numbing icy cold feel to it, like millions of tiny needles piercing my skin then immediately subsiding into a pleasurable chill.

I felt completely enthralled by her, unable to control my own body. I tried to move or speak but I could not. My eyes locked onto hers as if coerced to do so. If the rest of her was not already perfect, her eyes held all the keys. It was like staring into the heart of a galaxy, shifting and swirling in colors.

A sensation fell over me that I could only imagine was like the pure and intense sensation of true love. I felt like everything in the world had no purpose anymore and was gone. It was just her. She smirked ever so slightly and in the most delicate calming voice imaginable said,

“I’m Isis. Please. Come.”

She effortlessly began to move backwards towards where the others were waiting by the pool, and I slowly began to follow. I noticed now that the rest of the gods had also changed into a more human appearance, but with different tints to their skin amongst each other.

Anubis had a much darker shade of gray than the others with a purple hue to his skin.

The other male was still sitting and his features seemed only partially changed, namely just his head which was pulsing a reddish orange glow. He also had a type of tiara that accented his forehead with a symbol representing the blazing sun. That had to be Ra and standing over the pool was the other cloaked figure looking at me with an angry curiosity.

Behind him was the other female and other male god with her arm woven in amongst his and her body pressed slightly against him. Ra shifted in his chair and mumbled something in their language as Isis passed by him joining the cloaked god at the pool.

She ran her fingertips across his chest leaving a faint trail of blue shimmering light from her fingertips and settled at his side.

My childhood schooling flooded my mind as I tried to grasp their identities. Given the affection of Isis toward the cloaked god, and his commanding presence, he had to be Osiris. The male behind them sharing their complexion had to be Horus, making the other female his wife, Hathor.

Osiris, Anubis, Ra, Isis, Horus, and Hathor.

“This could not be real,” I said to myself repeatedly.

Ra mumbled something again which clearly displeased Osiris. He barked back at him with a booming fierce voice, and in the blink of an eye, Ra condensed into a beam of light and shot up through the ceiling leaving a glowing ring on the ceiling like on heated metal.

Osiris snapped his head back toward me growling softly. He looked down at his feet and my eyes followed. Overwhelmed with the vision of seeing all the gods, I had not even noticed the body lying on the ground.

Reality snapped back in for a moment and I quickly surveyed the room. The walls that were once gold and shining brightly were dripping with blood, undoubtedly the priests. The blood was gathering on the floor and slowly flowing into the crescent shaped pool that was now void of the black liquid replaced with blood.

All the Sah guards, and the stairway that I came down through was now gone, with a wall replacing it. I stopped a few feet in front of Osiris who appeared to be staring through me again. I looked down at the body on the floor that was now starting to stir with life.

It was human looking and covered head to toe in what looked like ashes and tar as if it had burned in a fire. It stretched its head back and bayed an otherworldly howl. It was not human.

It had the body of a man, but its skin was like that of a snake, with tightly layered scales. It struggled to get to its hands and knees and reared back roaring again.

Its face was slightly elongated, with raised bone ridges along its cheeks and eye sockets. As it roared menacingly, it curled back its lips revealing teeth that were like that of the great cats but coated in silver. It sniffed the air and snapped its head to face me.

I met its glowing red eyes, which had what looked like small red flames escaping around the corners of them.

The gods took a few steps back from it and grinned. Osiris told something to the others then down to the creature that was looking up at him now in a crouched position. The creature turned and leaned down extending its long black tongue into the pool of blood. It lapped at the blood like a wild starving dog.

I felt control return to my body and had the thought enter my mind to try and run back down the hallway, hoping it was now open. I slowly started to back up hoping that no one would notice me. However, after my first step, the creature snapped its focus back toward me, blood dripping from its mouth. Anubis clearly amused by this let out a quiet snicker.

The creature snarled at me trembling ever so slightly then lunged with godly speed sinking in its teeth deeply around my throat.

I am not completely certain what happened after that, just that I woke up a few days later. It took a few moments for my vision to clear and my head to stop spinning. My mind was racing and chaotic, and I could not focus my thoughts.

A thousand voices were screaming inside my head as if time had paused and then suddenly fast-forwarded the last few days in a couple seconds. I struggled to get to my feet and wandered aimlessly around in circles trying to get my head under control.

Eventually the voices subsided and I could focus on where I was, except I had no idea where I was. The room I was in looked like black volcanic rock but was smooth to the touch with a metallic quality. The table I was laying on looked like the seats that the gods were sitting in with the same color lining and texture, hovering a few feet above the ground.

A blue strip of light ran along the top of the walls that ever so slightly pulsed brighter. The floor felt cold and seemed to soften under my feet when I took a step. I also noticed that I was not wearing any clothes.

I sat back down on the table and tried to sort through my memories to figure out what had happened. I remembered Anubis engulfing the room in a black cloud, then running down the corridor, and Isis touching her hand to my face, then the creature lunging at my throat.

Quickly I felt my throat and neck to check for any damage, but to my surprise there was none, and my skin felt hard and cold now. I surveyed the rest of my body checking for wounds and changes but to my relief found none.

To my right was another hovering table that had a gold colored belt and a pendant collar necklace with a large charm shaped like a pyramid. A female voice entered my head interrupting my own thoughts and told me to put them on. Without hesitation, I went to the table and put on the belt and necklace. To my amazement, they had literally no weight and I could not even feel that I was wearing them.

A few seconds later, a stream of glowing particles shot out from the belt and covered my entire body up to my neck and dimmed as quickly as it appeared leaving behind a form fitting skin like what the gods had.

It was soft to the touch but turned incredibly rigid when I tried to manipulate it. The voice washed over my mind again and told me to go to the door. This skin suit had me enamored, tugging and pulling at it to find a weakness, but I complied with the voices command.

The door, or what I assumed was the door, was flush to the rest of the walls and had no visible means I could see of opening it. Two seams ran down the walls from the ceiling about the width of a door, which was the only basis for my assumption.

“Prepare your mind for what lies ahead and do not be afraid. You are born anew,” the voice whispered in my mind.

The seams going down the wall began to glow with blue light and the door turned transparent. I could barely see the surface of the wall gently rippling in the light, but otherwise it was transparent. Around twenty feet away on the other side of the entryway stood Isis and Ra.

Ra was still in his full ceremonial armor. A massive sun disk headdress with the head of a hawk, covered his face. Traditional to say the least. Isis was the complete opposite. She dressed down for lack of a better word.

Still godly in her appearance, a semi reflective silver gown wrapped with precision around her body, which itself was perfect. Her face was almost identical to that of humans, with larger almond shaped eyes that tilted slightly upward.

The irises of her eyes were light purple with a dark blue halo around them. Whatever she was, she was very attractive. Various types of jewelry and gems made of material I had never seen, adorned her dress that kept changing in the light and glowing different colors.

On both arms, she had black bracers each with different arrangements of holographic screens and lights. She keyed a button on her wrist and the bracers turned off as she motioned for me to approach her. I cautiously passed through the translucent barrier where the door was and looked around the corridor outside while slowly making my way towards her.

Everything else was the same as my room. The surface appeared to be a dark volcanic metal that would jitter every few seconds as if it were alive. The corridor opened into three different paths. Two heading left into a fork and one on my right that look like it went upward and curved.

At the mouth of each of the passages stood two Sah guards in similar appearance to what I was familiar with, but these were darker in color. About twice the size, carrying weapons like a long rifle, and what I assumed were swords strung across their backs. They each wore a mask like what Ra was wearing but of a Jackal instead of a hawk.

A small patrol of about six of them walked passed the fork as I neared the middle of the corridor. Ra said something to Isis in that mysterious language of theirs and took a mild defensive position in front of her with the side of his shoulder facing me. His gaze locked on me.

His hand posed into a claw shape resting at his side engulfed in a faint blue flame. When I noticed this, I shifted slightly to my right and his gaze never faltered tilting his head slightly with an animalistic quality.

His change in demeanor toward me had me a little concerned for my own safety but confused at the same time as to why he would need to be defensive. The power either of them had could easily subdue a thousand people in a matter of seconds. It was now that I noticed I was growling. It was a deep rumbling coming from within my chest.

My jaw clenched down tight, and I exposed my teeth, which my incisors had become long and sharp like the creatures had been. My body had repositioned into a form of a half crouch as lions and tigers do when stalking prey. My hands had also locked into a claw shape with my fingernails protruding about an inch past my fingers and sharpened to a point. I could feel the ridges on my face stretching out my skin, which felt hot now as if it was near a flame.

My body itself had perfected muscularly to appear as if I had been strength training my entire life. My focus changed to Isis and I could see the outlines of her veins under her skin glowing and throbbing with her heartbeat that I could also now hear. Glancing back to Ra I could see nothing. His armor must have been shielding him from whatever was happening to me.

It was now that it clicked to what they were doing. It was a lesson into my new abilities in a controlled environment. It took Ra’s defensive posture to trigger my aggression response to what I perceived as a territorial claim toward Isis. I was running on pure instinct.

They wanted to show me this without endangering anyone. Was I a danger though? What in the hell did they do to me? I focused back to Isis and moved closer towards her. I could smell her now. Her scent was very strong and the information poured into my mind about certain physiological traits. I knew specifically it was hers and not Ra’s or one of the guards.

The smell was intoxicating and slightly erotic to me, it was like becoming drunk for the first time. An overwhelming urge to lunge at her washed over me and I became blind to everything else in the room. Ra took a step-in front of her and his body engulfed in black flames.

“Calm your mind. Focus,” he whispered, but sounded like he yelled it directly into my ears. “You will hurt her.”

Even though I heard him say it, my mind still fixated on Isis and I could not think of anything else. Ra began to growl in counter my own rumble and took a step towards me.

“Guards!” Ra roared while taking another step toward me. “He’s going to lunge at Isis, get her out of here, this failed.”

The guards started to run towards me and everything in that instant started to move in extreme slow motion. I reared back dropping to a full crouch preparing to attack. Isis slowly blinked and disappointment fell over her face. She started to turn toward the passage heading upward exposing her neck toward me. I surged and lunged.

Ra very quickly spun and kicked me square in the chest. In the same instant, I took a swipe at his leg ripping through his armor with my nails and slashing his skin open. Black blood erupted from his leg and splattered on the floor and me. He began to yell in pain as I hurled backward through the air.

I could focus on everything so clearly. Only a couple seconds ticked past to what felt like twenty minutes. Isis had only taken a single step toward the passageway, and the guards had barely processed Ra’s command. Then the doorway to my room was passing by me and Ra was closing distance on me. I slammed into the wall in the back of my room and everything sped back up to normal as I collapsed to the floor. Ra poised in the doorway leaning against it hanging his leg that was pouring out blood to the floor.

I felt my body cool down and my senses slowed down to a dull roar. The guards ran up behind Ra and helped prop him up.

“The Queen!” He barked to the guards who ran off toward where Isis was running.

Fear overcame me now, being able to focus my thoughts. I was not afraid of Ra, I was afraid of myself. In a brief and extremely uncontrolled attack, I managed to cripple one of the gods badly. Ra was bleeding terribly and struggling to maintain his composure. The rage flooded back into my mind at the sight of all the blood, and I could smell it directly.

It was different from the scent of Isis, which I again picked up in the air. The only way I can really describe it would be to imagine being able to smell where oxygen was while you were suffocating, and the requirement and drive to have it knowing that you will die without it.

I clawed at the ground pulling myself toward it and trying to get on my feet at the same time. I was blind to everything else again. Ra collapsed to his knees struggling to grasp the doorway to stay up and engulfing his other arm in flames again preparing for my assault.

I knew deep down inside me, that he was about to die, but not from his injury, but from me. If I got ahold of him, I would shred him apart. I did not want to do any of this, but the drive was so strong inside me it was irresistible.

Before I knew it, I was flying again directly toward him, skin boiling and nails extended. Ra dropped his head accepting defeat and slumped backwards onto the floor. One more blink of the eye and it would be over.

This is what I had become. I was a monster created by the gods that was uncontrolled and overflowing with aggression. Surely, they could not have planned for this outcome, knowing that I would be a threat to them, and more specifically exposing me to their queen. That concept seemed reckless to me coming from a god.

The moment I reached the doorway there was a flash of light, and a red barrier appeared in front of me. My face smashed into the barrier sending a ripple across it like a rock in a pond. I crumbled to the floor and blacked out.

As I began to emerge from my unconsciousness, everything flooded back into my mind and I sat up abruptly taking a gasp of air. I was back in my room again on the table. My head was throbbing in pain on a level I had never experienced before.

To my surprise, once I recognized the pain it subsided. I stretched and cracked my neck and rubbed the side of my face where I collided with barrier. It was mildly numb and tingling.

“I would advise not doing that again,” Osiris said as I looked up to notice him standing against the wall in full armor, as Ra had been. Silvery metallic feathers and a white crown accented his mask. “That barrier has enough energy running through it to vaporize a human,” he said boastingly.

Enough energy to vaporize a human I thought to myself. A human? I hit that thing hard and it barely damaged me.

“Then why am I not vaporized?” I replied stumbling to my feet.

He paused for a moment and looked over to the barrier then back at me. He took a step off from the wall and began to walk over to the smaller table. His armor started to change and seemed to roll off him and into his belt. Underneath was a very formal looking tunic and pants. They were like what Isis had been wearing but had far more sheen to them. In addition, when the fabric touched his skin as he walked, it would ever so slightly illuminate as if it was reacting to his touch. His mask collapsed back in the front revealing his face, which like Isis was flawless in human perfection.

His skin was a very dark grey, but slowly brightened up to a normal tan color over a few seconds. He waved his hand on the wall just above the table and a holographic screen appeared with dozens of pictograms and small screens within themselves rushing across the image. He keyed a few of the pictograms and it retracted back into the wall.

The lights in the room dimmed down rapidly and a beam of light circled the room and ran down the walls to the floor. Holographic images of me appeared, re-enacting what I did. I stared at it in amazement to what I was watching.

I only remembered small parts of what had happened, but I knew now that I did not want it to happen again, or at least not like that.

The images stopped and the lights returned to normal. I sat back down on the table fighting to understand it all. Osiris walked back over to the barrier and tapped a button on his bracer turning it back into the translucent doorway it was before.

He motioned for me to follow him and I obeyed. A small army of guards met us in the hallway that quickly surrounded me and escorted us up the single passageway in formation.

“What am I?” I asked Osiris, having the images play repeatedly in my mind. He paused for a moment and turned to me looking as if he was searching for the right words. “You’ve ascended.”

We continued up the passageway in silence. I think he knew that my mind was trying to decipher what his statement meant. To my people, reaching a point of ascension was to leave our natural body and travel to the afterlife to watch over the rest of our people still alive. It was not an after effect of death, it was a reward given by the gods to serve them as a higher being with no physical form.

Was this it? Most of it fit the concept seeing how I was having a casual conversation with a god after nearly killing two other ones. In the moment of that thought Isis flashed into my mind, and I remembered what I had felt when I attacked her.

“Isis!” I shouted out excitedly startling the guards.

“She was untouched,” Osiris replied turning back to me with a very controlled smile.

I heard a few of the guards take deep breaths, I think in relief that I did not just kill them. As we went further up the passageway, the hallway gradually started to fill with bright light and then opened into a large hall with a very high ceiling.

On both sides lining the walls were massive openings running from the top to the bottom. They were windows, or at least posing as windows, with the same texture as the translucence of the door in my room. After my mind processed the windows, I froze in place, stunned to what was on the other side of the windows.

I think I was scared, curious, overwhelmed, and disbelieving all at the same time. The guards took up a more relaxed formation along the walls as Osiris walked over to one of the openings. I stood there for I do not know how long gawking at what I was looking at.

It was a giant blue ball covered with different shades of browns and greens, and white patches here and there. Outside of it was blackness with...stars. I recognized the stars immediately, but wondered as to what were they doing there?

“What is this?” I forced out while slowly approaching the opening by Osiris. He linked his arms behind his back and took a breath.

“This is your home. It is called Earth. It is a massive body called a planet, drifting through space around your sun. Try not to dwell on it making sense to you; there is plenty of time for you to learn the truth about everything. Like the birds, we are flying high up above it, far higher than anything you can imagine. We are looking down upon it, just as you would your city from the top of a mountain.”

I stared in wonder down on what I was seeing still trying to understand it. He continued,

“My people come from a place very very far away from here in what you call Sah, hence the name for our overseers. Sah is a region of space inhabited by about seven hundred different species of beings living on over four thousand planets like your own. Some of them like mine, have existed for millions of years, and in that time, have both seen and done wondrous things, and have seen and done atrocities to each other for power, greed, and out of pure cruelty.

Among all the species we have ever encountered not even one of them has been able to fully discover the state of death.”

He turned and started to walk slowly along the openings toward the other end of the hall where another passageway was waiting.

“Every species inherently dies in some fashion or another, and they all have some belief into what happens to their minds, souls, essence, or body afterwards. The majority have based a good portion of their existence to believing these things without ever knowing the absolute truth.

As my species is one of the oldest in our known galaxy, we have devoted a great deal of time in trying to find out just what that is. Some races transform into different states of being, turning from solid to energy and back into solid. Others simply stop living and decay with time.

We have come up with many theories as to what happens with ourselves, but very limited evidence to support it. In time, we changed our approach into studying, and forgive me, less complex and less evolved species around the galaxy.” Osiris stopped, turning, and motioning behind me.

I turned to see Horus and Ra coming up the hall, wearing full armor that looked designed for combat. I took a moment to look over Ra, who did not seem to be missing any limbs or showing any signs of injury at all for that matter.

“We heal very quickly.” Osiris whispered quietly as the two approached.

I felt a little bit afraid at this point given that I doubt Ra was very pleased with what I had done to him and given his status I can only imagine as to what punishment he could inflict on me.

“So, this is the Ut’ari that almost killed Ra?” Horus said mockingly.

Ra grasped his sidearm tightly and the two began to argue in their language.

“What’s an Ut’ari?” I asked curiously.

Osiris growled something sharply to both and they snapped to attention.

“Come,” he said continuing toward the other passage.

“The last time we visited here when our species itself was in the early stages of its research, your world was inhabited by monstrous colossal creatures from the reptilian line of evolution. They had not evolved yet into more civilized higher intelligence as you are beginning to now.

They were just animals, so we abandoned our research here. It was not until we shared information with another species that had visited your world that we learned that a new line of evolution had taken root and you had evolved. So, we returned. By this time, we had become aware of a few things that relate to death.

The main one being that the existence of parallel dimensions harbored a completely unknown number of literal universes and in kind, species. One such species had the ability to siphon the life force from one creature into itself. We called them the Ut’ari, which in our language means essentially ‘life thief’.”

We entered the next passage and began to head downward. Osiris waved off the guard escort most likely with the presence of Horus and Ra. Ra let Horus lead keeping a safe distance back from me, still nervous from our last encounter I assumed.

The passageway was shorter than the last and opened into a smaller hall lined with various corridors and doorways leading off into many directions. It filled with a varying mixture of Sah, guards, and humans, each heading off on their own duties. We broke through the center of the crowd, which seemed to stop moving as we made our way for one of the doorways.

Everyone stared at me with both fear and intrigue as we passed through, chattering amongst themselves. I was beginning to get the impression that whatever had changed in me was not something good. I had fleeting instincts to lash out at some of them as we passed by them with thoughts that I never had before.

Violent and chaotic urges that now felt normal to me. Osiris waved his hand over a small section of the doorway and it turned translucent. Ra and Horus nodded to him and blended into the flow of traffic leaving us.

We entered the room that I immediately could only recognize as a library. It had endless rows of tall cabinets that filled with pulsing lights in cascading and repetitive order like books.

“We made it a goal in our research to learn how to communicate with the Ut’ari,” he motioned for me to sit down at a console in front of one of the cabinets.

He picked up a bright red metallic ring from the table and placed it over my head.

“After several years of trying, we were unable to make any type of connection with their side of the dimension to communicate. We instead began to focus on copying their methods to siphon them over to someone on our side.”

He keyed a few pictograms on the console and a high pitch noise began to spool up.

“We chose your species as the host for that experiment due to your incredibly short life span compared to ours, and that your bodies are very easy to repair from damage. We knew that given how often your species perished the chances of having them target you was greater than our own species. Over several hundred years of trial and error, we managed in a way to get what we were looking for.”

Osiris keyed more buttons on the console and a stream of information flickered across the console.

It appeared to be loading information regarding all the different types of sciences that the Orionak had gathered over the years. He continued,

“Instead of communicating with them, we learned that they existed in a state of energy like lightning or static. We developed a means to kidnap them in a sense and pull them into our dimension. Once on our side, they solidified into the blackened creature that attacked you, which for what it is worth, was unintentional.”

Hearing those words angered me. I felt my skin become flush and start to heat up. Scenarios ran through my head quickly as to how I could attack Osiris. After all, he was the one who made it happen.

Why should he not be accountable? They lured me to come over to that thing lying on the ground. They very well could have just killed me. Isis! Her name echoed through my mind again. My senses reached out trying to detect her scent, or some form of her presence.

In that moment, I learned two very important things about Osiris. The first, that he had the ability to subdue me at any time as he touched the top of my head paralyzing me. That led to the second discovery that he had the ability to know what I was thinking.

“Very good,” he said letting go of my head sending a wave of feeling back through my limbs.

“You must learn to control your rage for the sake of everyone. In this proximity, I have the advantage over you, but if you truly meant me harm, or had an overwhelming surge of uncontrolled anger, I would be no contest to what you can do.

The Ut’ari is unable to function as you or I do in this dimension. Made of energy, they only have at most one physical action before their energy becomes depleted. We learned that they would use this one action to attack someone and in trade possess him or her with their consciousness and energy. In a sense, you become part of them, and they become part of you.

The effect changes depending on the species they possess, and in the case of humans, we found that your bodies combine in an odd way that makes you incredibly powerful. Agility, strength, heightened sense, mental capacity, vision; the joining enhances all.

Some of our scientists decided they wanted to study this transformation to adapt it to our own physiology.

The results to say the least were catastrophic. The amalgamations we created murdered thousands of us, and nearly destroyed your species. They managed to reproduce at an alarming rate through just a single bite, which transmitted a type of viral infection of energy, turning their victims into a monstrous hybrid of their own species.

The bitten creations were not nearly as strong as the pureblood, but carried the same aggression, which spread like a plague across the land. Within only a few days your entire species had been transformed into wild uncontrollable monsters with the need for blood.”

He waved his hand over the console and the chair I was sitting in changed and sprouted restraints that constricted around me pinning me to the chair.

The chair began to hum and vibrate slightly and I again became paralyzed. Osiris took a few steps back from the console and keyed his bracer. The console began to spool up again much higher pitched this time.

“We spent the better part of a century at war with the Ut’ari trying to prevent them from spreading further, or worse, mixing with another species. Eventually we were victorious by purging your world of humans except for small populations that we relocated to several different places on your planet spread as far apart as possible.

Our leaders outlawed the practice of the merging, due to the danger it presented and we abandoned the project. Your transgressions in the temple gave a rebirth to a creature we worked very hard to eliminate and prevent from rising again.

That was some time ago and some of us are curious if we can tame you and teach you to control what you are. This device on your head will implant all the knowledge about this universe that you will require.”

He pressed a button on his wrist and the halo began to glow red illuminating the area around me. I felt my mind pull away from my control and everything flashed over white.

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