Chapter Text
Amity groaned as she adjusted her position against the palm tree she was lying against. She looked up into the starry night sky as she shivered from the cold, The leather grip of the artifact she found felt cool in her hand. The trace amounts of blood on her shirt made the fabric sticky against her skin. The sounds of sticks snapping brought her attention back to the girl in front of her.
The girl was crouched down, trying to start a fire. Her clothing choice reminded Amity of something she saw on the wall of a temple or in class. The girl was wearing leather sandals as well as metal greaves and bracers; her skirt was reminiscent of the clothing ancient Egyptians wore. The most curious thing was on the girl’s leather chest piece: the symbol of a hawk with its wings spread stamped into the leather.
“Allaena! You know what, screw it.” The girl's words drew Amity back to reality as what happened next floored her. The girl tossed the sticks she was holding to the side before holding her hand up with her palm open. “Khet” was all the strange girl said as a soft gold symbol burned itself into the air. It was floating an inch above her palm, the symbol looked like a simple drawing of a candle in its holder with a long wick trailing off the side.
The girl curled her fingers over the symbol and when she uncurled them, there was now a ball of fire. The girl nonchalantly tossed the ball into the pile of sticks which almost immediately ignited.
“Ok, what the hell was that?!” Amity asked in disbelief as she shifted against the tree again. The girl looked up at her with her two toned eyes, one eye was a silvery blue while the other a blazing bronze.
“That was Khet , or Brazier. The hieroglyph for fire, that should keep you warm for a bit. My name is Luz by the way.” she said as she sat down cross-legged. She seemed to finally notice the weapon in Amity's hand and the amulet around her neck. “I have not seen those in a long time. How did you find those?” Luz asked
“That’s-that’s a long story.” Amity said as she set the Artifact aside so she could prop herself up.
“Well I have all the time in the world.” Luz said as she leaned in to listen.
Amity sighed before speaking “I guess it all happened today.”
Earlier That Day
Amity wiped sweat from her brow as she took a break from dusting off the section of wall she was working on. She took a few steps back to look at what she had gotten so far. She had spent the morning uncovering a mural of Horus in a newly discovered underground temple, and the strange thing was that the figure looked rather feminine. Not only that, but one of the arms was slightly raised off the wall, so the Khopesh in its hand was at an angle and seemed to be pointing at something.
There was something else that caught her eye. There were Hieroglyphs along the bottom of the mural.
“ The sun rides over the waters . Huh, what could that mean?” she asked herself as she looked at the decorative Hieroglyphs on the bottom of the mural.
There was a sun that was next to the Hieroglyph for water or waves. There was also a long divot extending from the sun that went above the water Hieroglyph.
“Huh, I wonder.” Amity said as she grabbed the sun lightly and slowly slid it along the divot. As she slid it a loud grinding noise was heard as stone moved against stone. SHe looked up to see that the arm of the statue had moved out of the wall and was now pointing to some point on the opposing wall.
Amity then aligned herself so she was facing the same way as the arm and looked at where the tip of the sword was facing. On the wall it was pointing at there was a glint of light among the dust.
“Huh, I didn't see that before.I wonder what it is.” She said as she walked over to the glinting object. It was maybe half a foot above her head so she wiped it off as well as the surrounding text which she began to read. “The Golden Scarab covers the hidden path. Interesting, golden scarab….cover”
She wiped away more of the dust on the glittery object to reveal a golden scarab that was a bit bigger than her hand.”The Golden Scarab covers the way.” Almost on instinct her hand wrapped around the scarab as she tried to pull it off the wall. It resisted quite a bit due to age so she pulled harder until it came off the wall.
The scarab had a decent weight to it and on the underside was an inscription. Amity decided to put it in her bag for later study, right after she got it situated a rumbling noise echoed out from the wall as a triangular shaped panel started to slide down into the floor and revealed a dark corridor.
“It looks like the top of the triangle panel lined up with the hole the scarab was in, removing it caused the wall to open.” she said as she reached to her belt and pulled off a flashlight before turning it on and pointing it down the corridor.
The beam of light only lit up a bit of the hallway, it almost seemed like the darkness was a thick liquid that the light pushed back a bit. She slowly approached the entrance before stopping at the darkness. “It's almost alive weirdly.” she said as she took a few steps into the corridor.
It wasn't a tight corridor but it also wasn't the widest. The walls were lined with images and murals of Ancient Egyptian warriors and gods locked in battles of great magnitude or going about their lives, strangely some of the gods seemed different than they were usually shown.
The darkness seemed to linger for a sec before quickly moving out of the path of the light. It seemed to pool in behind her as she moved forward. A glint of light drew her eye to the wall,so she pointed her flashlight at the wall so she could get a better look at the image. The image was a set of golden armor with jewels and intricate patterns that almost seemed to glow.
“Huh, never seen something like that before, wonder what it was for.” she said to herself as she reached out and touched the wall. The image of the armor felt warm to the touch, she removed her hand and placed it on a different section of the wall and it felt cold. “Huh, now that is weird. There's nothing here to keep this section warm.”
She reached into her bag and pulled out her journal and opened it to the first empty pages. “I'm gonna sketch this for later review.” she said before she drew a quick sketch of the image followed by a few notes about the image. “That should be enough for now while I wait for the excavation team to arrive.” She said as she put her journal away.
“Time to continue on.” Amity said as she started to walk down the hallway silently again. She looked from wall to wall occasionally while she contemplated why she was here. Her parents had pressured her into an archeology major, so it was a good thing she liked it, but they always compared her to her siblings and other family. The Blights have always been great archeologists who have been credited with major finds in history, but Amity knew the truth.
She knew that most of those major finds that the blights were credited for were stolen from the excavation and discovery teams. That's the reason all of her family had found those big finds so early on. She vowed she would break free from the Blight family past and find her own marvel with her own merits.
So when she got word of an underground temple whose entrance was recently unearthed she immediately got herself signed onto the team and got herself to egypt, she was now waiting for the rest of her team to get there so she decided to explore a bit, And given how it was going so far she figured that she made the right choice.
She was shaken out of her thoughts as she approached the end of the corridor. She had entered a room just about as large as her bedroom or kitchen. There was a life sized statue of a person with a hawk head, it was the hawk god horus. Yet again the body seemed more feminine for some reason, it had the same design as the wall mural earlier in the main room.
There was a dais with a podium in front of the statue that held two items on it, as she stepped into the area to get a better look, fires lit up on the walls where torches were “Okay, that's a little weird, but not totally unexplainable.” she said as she walked towards the podium to inspect the items.
The first was a gold amulet of the eye of horus, strangely while everything else was covered in layers of dust the amulet was glittering and shiny. The next item was leaning against the podium, Amity picked it up to discover it was a silver bladed khopesh with a black handle that had silver accents. Something drew her back to the amulet and as she looked at it she felt the need to put it on. Before she knew what she was doing the eye of horus was laying against her chest at heart level.
The amulet left a tingling sensation where it touched her and she was suddenly very nauseous. Her head was full of fog as she staggered when she tried to make her way back to the door. The darkness seemed more threatening then when she entered, as if it was trying to keep something inside the room.
“I've gotta get out of here, the team is probably already here and wondering where I am.” She said as she forged her way into the darkness and tried to speed back through it, but the hallway seemed longer than before. She screamed out in frustration but she barely heard it as if the darkness was muffling it.
She leaned against the wall for a second as she collected her swirling thoughts, her mind felt like it was on fire. Her arms felt heavy and her legs felt like they were encased in lead. “I gotta get out of here. I gotta find the team.” She said as she pushed herself off the wall and began to move as fast as she could with how tired she suddenly felt.
Suddenly the darkness around her felt less suffocating as she suddenly felt like she was closer to her goal. She started to pick up speed as she felt herself become more energized and felt less heavy, some of the fog in her head cleared as she suddenly was wrapped in light when she left the corridor and fell onto her hands and knees coughing.
“Well well well, If it isn't the princess Blight.” a voice called out on her right. She tried to stop her coughing as she sat on her legs and tried to see who it was. Her gaze was met with a man wearing beige pants and a white shirt with a black cloth wrapped around his head that only showed his eyes.
“Wh-who are you?” She said before she coughed. She struggled to stand up as her head was full of fog again. “Well little blight, who I am is not important,however what I do is important. Normally me and my crew would steal objects of value from places like this, and it looks like you might already be doing that. But this time around, well, someone paid us a large sum of money to make sure you stay down here, so I hope you like spending time here.” The man said as he turned and walked out the temple door towards the surface.
Suddenly her mind was clear as she realized what he was saying. “WAIT, Yo-You can't leave me here, please don't do thi--” Her plea was cut short as the pillar laying in front of her exploded and something heavy hit her in the chest. She felt herself fall against the wall as something warm and wet started to cover her chest. Her eyes began to feel heavy as she turned her head to see the entrance.
The man was outside the temple and kicked something that caused piles of dirt and rubble to pile on top of each other. She slowly turned her head to look at the picture of horus on the wall and a smile came to her face, the picture seemed to walk towards her and lean down right as her eyes closed and she slipped out of consciousness.