Henri
“Where is he?” I demanded of the scheming shadowborn. I stood with Orcus at the precipice of a desert plateau, and even with the mists now cleared, you were nowhere in sight. Orcus pointed in the distance to a massive Egyptian temple flanked by a trio of pyramids. The acute angles of the structures simulated sunrays as the embodiment of Ra himself, and I realized then the identity of your abductress.
“Bastet took him?” I asked as my rage gathered around me in a rust-red fog. “Did you orchestrate this?”
“I cannot influence the wishes of the queen of the under realms,” Orcus said in his typically oblique way.
“But you knew this might happen?” The knuckles that gripped my dagger paled to a snow-white.
“Why don’t we venture closer and see if we can get an audience with the queen?” Orcus said. His everlasting calm only infuriated me more.
We drifted closer to the temple, and I made out depictions of both ceremony and daily life of the ancient Egyptians etched in stone with Bastet and Ra’s half-bestial representations dominating the tableau. I scoured the environs for signs of you—footprints, impressions, a scent on the wind—but there was nothing. We reached the entry to the temple, a long thoroughfare bordered on both sides by columns that dwarfed us in size. I was ready to forge ahead when Orcus stopped me.
“Let me summon her. It’s best not to storm into her temple, uninvited.” Orcus lowered his head and called for Bastet in the ancient tongue of the shadowborn—a rasping, guttural chant. After a time, the queen herself materialized, and by her side, the same handmaiden who’d been sent to spy on you since your youth, Spooky.
I wasn’t familiar with the customs of the sunborn, so I figured it best to be direct. “I’ve come to collect Vincent.”
The handmaiden whispered in Bastet’s ear, and the goddess studied me with a probing intensity, not unlike Lena. “This is the bloodborn warrior I’ve heard so much about?” she said with some mixture of curiosity and disdain. “The one with so much pride and arrogance that he makes demands of a queen without any veneration. Without even an introduction.”
I dropped to one knee and announced myself formally. “Henri Cherusci of the bloodborn tribe, your majesty.”
“Your attempt at reverence is unnecessary, for the child of Ra is where he belongs, with his own kind.”
I stood and stared at her fiercely. “Vincent belongs with me.”
Her feline eyes widened in surprise. “You are his master in the earthen realm?”
“Not master but… companion.” Lover, worshipper, protector, I was all of those things to you and more, but Bastet clearly felt she had a claim on your soul as well, and I did not think it wise to dispute her.
“You, who would deliver his mortal soul to the Angel of Death, allow him to be tortured and deprived of sunlight, then thrust into a holy war with the Order of Angels?”
“I take responsibility for all of it but know that he is very headstrong.”
“He is sunborn,” she said with certain arrogance. “Born to rule. But the earthen realm was not kind to our people or our gods, and it will not be kind to him either.”
I couldn’t argue with her, but if there was one thing I’d learned from my dealings with Lena over the years, was that gods and demi-gods alike fed on worship and praise.
“Vincent is needed in the earthen realm to lead this revolution,” I said, using whatever powers of seduction I might be able to invoke in this realm. “Only a sunborn can do it. Only a sunborn isworthy.”
Bastet’s dark eyes narrowed, and her head tilted with interest. Her handmaiden mimicked the gesture in a strange choreography. Bastet then motioned me to follow her. “Come with me, bloodborn. But not you, soul eater.” She turned her back on Orcus, and he did not attempt to follow.
“Wait here until I return,” I told the shadowborn. I’d be damned if I was going to let him abandon us in this godforsaken place.
“Thirran’s soul…” Orcus began as his spirit faded into the surrounding mists.
I followed Bastet along the sunbaked sandstone walkway and passed under the pylon which demarcated the entrance to her temple. Inside the courtyard, the light was brighter and poured, uninhibited, into the open arena. The vast space teemed with figures dressed in ancient Egyptian garb, the white fabric so sheer that the spirits’ former physical forms could be glimpsed underneath. Jewelry of all shapes and sizes festooned their wrists, throats, and ankles. It was a bustling slice of life where people lounged, cat-like, in the sunlight, traded idle gossip, and partook in dining, trade, and sport. I assumed it to be an idyllic recreation of when Bastet was at the height of her power and influence in the earthen realm, worshipped by her subjects on all horizons. Equal parts devotion and delusion, it reminded me of the elysian dreamscape Lena had conjured for you as a child.
“Where is he?” I asked, for I could not pick you out among so many in similar dress and coloring.
Bastet motioned to a young man lounging on a lavish woven rug, mostly observing the activity surrounding him. My spirit jolted from the sudden urge to ferry you away from this place.
“You would steal him from his tribe to satisfy your own selfish desires?” Bastet asked, interpreting my covetous energy.
“We are of the same tribe and soul-bound, besides. We belong to each other, and his work in the earthen realm will chart the course of history.” I attempted again to appeal to her vanity. “He flies the sunborn banner in all of our negotiations and wears your aten crest with pride. He will bring great honor and renown to the sunborn in the earthen realm, and even the Order of Angels will be forced to acknowledge the strength of the sunborn spirit.”
“Your words are seductive, bloodborn,” she said, “surely a gift from your mother.”
I lowered my head in humility, though I doubted it was a compliment. Lenahadtaught me to appeal to my subject’s deepest desires.
