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“Marc?” Layla asks cautiously. A brief pause. “Steven?”
When the man’s eyes open, they’re glowing white. Layla doubles back in shock.
“Marc Spector is unable to wake at this moment,” the man speaks, commanding and grandiose. “Neither is Steven Grant. The limits of this body have been broken. I can keep it on its last legs for now, but not for long.”
Layla’s stance relaxes, though she maintains her distance. “Khonshu.”
“Child,” Khonshu greets, and Layla watches the body of her husband rise swiftly, surveying her with those ghostly white eyes.
A whisper of growls slips past the peripheral of their hearing, drawing both their heads towards the darkness of the cavern behind them. A staff materializes in her husband’s hand, a regalia made of bone with a head carved into the shape of a crescent moon, striking a jackal in the throat as it leaps into the light.
He latches onto a window of time to slip through the cracks in Marc’s mind. He finds himself in a tomb, three sarcophagi lining the inner wall. The one furthest in the darkness is too far to reach, but the one nearest to him is dusty and ancient and stirs old memories, while its twin next to it is adequately polished, like it was lifted out of a museum exhibit. Carved onto the lid of each sarcophagus is the same unmistakable face, with its hooded eyes and square jaw.
Khonshu catches the faint sound of breathing coming from the second sarcophagus and shifts the lid aside.
It’s the worm. “I can’t hear him,” he mumbles distantly, confusion the only lilt to his voice. “I can’t hear Marc.”
“Marc is resting. And so should you.” Khonshu rests a hand in Steven’s hair, coaxing him back to sleep. “The woman you care for and I will be here when you wake.”
Steven obediently lets his eyes slip shut.
“Pleasant dreams, my knight,” Khonshu whispers.
He covers the sarcophagus, and the tomb melts away into the light of the real world.
“My knight shall not be disturbed,” Khonshu decrees. A flash of moonlight licks down the length of the staff, and within seconds the beasts are writhing and spasming, whimpering like dogs.
He meets Layla’s gaze. There’s a regal air to the way Khonshu holds himself, with a weight on his shoulders, but with his head held high. He speaks to her with her husband's voice.
“Take us to where my knight can be safe.”