Ch 1

~~~

The pair stood before the ruins of Unkah.

The walls had long been torn down, and the foundations worn down by aeons of sand and wind. The tombs were now hollow, treasures long stripped, as no guardians remained to protect their offerings. The Sphinxes, charged with duty by old gods, had fled with their charges, when the valley of queens was stripped of their aforementioned, and the people followed the rains. Nor the golems formed from earth and desert clay and imbued with the breath of life by the desert rabbi, which had fallen still and mute, their joints locked with the ever-biting sand until their bodies were worn to dust and carried away by the ever-tearing wind.

It would have been a testament to a great city reclaimed by nature after millennia of uninhabitance, if not for the stench of blood and cloud of flies. They had followed the assassins’ trail here across the sea of sand, and the new lanterns still sitting on vintage plinths like tiny lighthouses confirmed they had made the right guess. The cobalt-blue flames contained therein, bright like the lava of Karuulm and visible even in daylight, confirmed the identity of their quarry. The darts, venom-coated from the fang of a great zul-serpent of the poison waste, littered the ground like playground mulch.

Already dark from the grave, Ophius’s skin was growing even darker after a week in the harsh sun. It was taking a faint purplish cast, like the vintage of deep red wine – evidently some relic of blood blighted by the rite of anastasis that had summoned their spirit back into materium.

“I didn’t have a very long rest.”

Theophania stopped scanning the ruins and looked down at her companion. “Fifteen years. Longer than mortals get.”

Once upon a time, Ophius towered over the girl, and could have picked her up and carried her like a sack over their back. If Ophius was bothered by the fact that she seemed to have sprung up in the blink of an eye, it didn’t show. “When you’ve lived as long as long I have, you’ll wish you had more than fifteen years to sleep. Where did you even get this body?” If Ophius resented the new form they were inhabiting, it showed a little.

“My great-grandfather’s court shaman. Bellerophon the Majestic, holder of the Sacred Mirror of Devirt’Noc, Heir to the Holy Rings of, uh, I don’t remember. I was with you when you had to harvest new flesh after your old burnt out. You were always saying only strong bones could carry your power, not just any meat vessel would do. Thought I’d keep it in the family when I needed you again.” Thia shrugged.

“And why me?”

“Don’t you ever get tired of asking that?”

“Don’t repeat my own words back to me.” Ophius glared.

Thia grinned, impishly. “I took your words to heart. Went home after you died. Reclaimed the throne, like you said I should. Sealed the Dragon-God away, like the fortune-tellers said I must. And no, I wouldn’t really have trusted anyone else to do it, just like you said.”

“And why me? Didn’t trust anyone else? Your cultmates who helped raise me? Your underlings who are back home running the kingdom now?”

Thia exhaled shortly. “Trust? Maybe only when I’m watching them, and in view of the palace. Rely on? A little. He wasn’t working alone. Someone let him to steal what he was looking for, without raising alarm before someone noticed it was missing, and I didn’t have time to try to figure out who. I could trust a stranger, or someone I know for sure wasn’t involved.”

“Because I was dead.”

“Because you were dead.”

~~~