《Daughter of Stars and Blood》


 Birth and Heartbreak

    1990 B.C. Waset, Egypt.


    My father was the head Mage in the Pharaoh''s court, among other things aside from being related. My father''s sister was the Pharaoh''s Queen. My mother was a freed slave from parts unknown to me for the longest time. No one ever told me. I had two older twin brothers, who were four years older than my sister and I, and we are also twins. My brothers both looked like our father, while my sister and I looked like our mother. The only difference was that my sister had my father''s lilac eyes, while I had my mother''s emerald green ones.


    I was born first, then my sister, before dawn of the twenty-first day of the eighth month in the annual cycle. Now I must explain that I was born in a time before there were twelve months in a year, and the eighth month was not August, but October. July and August were not added to the calendar until Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire. Though I am not here to tell of the Roman history, but my own.


    I was told that the morning of my birth was clear as crystal, Ra riding up the sky like a golden orb. It was the growing season, after the Nile flooded so that farms were fertile with silt, but not yet dry. Because of my father''s position in his brother in law''s court, we lived in the palace of the capital of the Upper Kingdom; Waset. It wasn''t moved to Cairo until a couple thousand years later.


    As I grew into a toddler, I was smarter than my siblings and already getting into mischief. I ''washed'' my sister''s hair with clay, threw clods of dirt at her. She first got me back when we were two, by getting my dress stuck in a thorn bush near the river where we were playing with a few of the guards and our mother. My brothers just laughed, being six and us two. My sister wobblingly ran away to hide behind my brothers as one of the guards came up.


    I was scratched, my dress torn and stuck in the thorns. The guard came up and dislodged me without a word before picking me up. Even now I remember that he had the most beautiful pair of indigo colored eyes I ever saw. He handed me over to my mother and gave a small bow before going back to where he had been with the other two guards that were with us.


    As I grew older I stopped with the obvious pranks, I spent time with my mother, wanting to be just like her when I grew up, especially where I looked just like her. Blood red hair and emerald eyes and pale skin. I didn''t know then that my mother was not Egyptian, I just thought her and the indigo eyed guard were the most beautiful people I had ever seen, because they were different from everyone else that had black hair and brown eyes.


    It wasn''t until I was four that things began to go downhill and spiral out of control. I would hear low voices talking among the guards when I would go by. My parents seemed to be angry with each other, the reason for which I found out not long after.


    * * *


    There came a night in the growing season where I was with my mother in my parents rooms. I was small, but I liked to brush my mother''s hair and imagine what I would be like when I grew up. She smiled at me through the mirror. There were sounds outside in the halls, and when I put down the brush and asked my mother if something was wrong she said not to worry. She got up and left the smaller dressing room for the bedroom to go check on what might be happening and I fell off the stool when I heard the crash of the door being slammed open. The guards said horrible things to my mother that I didn''t understand the concept of, being only four years old at the time, but their tones sent shivers of fear down my spine.


    I didn''t leave the dressing room, but hid behind curtains when I heard my mother yelling for help and the guards were doing I didn''t know what to her and laughing, calling her names I didn''t understand.


    It was a long time before total silence fell, and still I stayed behind the curtains, too afraid to even move or make a sound, and too afraid to go and see what had happened to my mother. I got tired, and made no sound as I sat down behind the curtains with my knees pulled to my chest. I don''t know how much time passed before I fell asleep from fear and exhaustion, but I woke suddenly to the sound of something falling over in the bedroom where my mother was. I didn''t know if it was my mother, or the guards come back. Too scared to stand up again I huddled behind the curtains trembling uncontrollably as I heard footsteps come into the room and the lamp that had gone out was lit again. I closed my eyes and put my face to my knees, trying not to cry, only to let out a terrified and strangled sob.


    The footsteps immediately came closer and the curtain was whipped back. My head shot up to look at who was there. It was the guard with the indigo eyes. I stared up at him while he looked surprised to see me there. He cast a glance back toward the bedroom where my mother was before he looked back at me and bent down.


    He picked me up while I kicked and pounded my tiny fists on his arms, afraid that whatever had happened to my mother would be happening to me next. He just spoke softly that he wasn''t going to hurt me, that I was going to be alright, he would bring me to my father. When I realized he was telling the truth I stopped fighting him and he brought me close, stroking my hair. Being safe, I was finally able to relax a little, and I broke down crying, asking what had happened to my mother and hugging my arms around his neck tight as he brought me from the dressing room to the bedroom.


    He tried covering my face so I didn''t see anything, but it didn''t work. My mother was lying on the floor, bruised and bloodied with her clothes torn half off her body. I only cried harder and pressed my face into his shoulder so I wouldn''t have to see my beautiful mother in such a state, knowing somehow that she had gone to Osiris and I would never see her again.


    The indigo-eyed guard brought me to my father''s study while I still trembled in shock and cried for my mother. I was held by the guard while he spoke to my father, telling him what had happened and how he had found me. The guards that had ''raped and beaten'' my mother to death. He had heard talking about what they had done and he had gone to investigate, he told my father.


    The entire time they talked I clung to the guard''s neck tight. I didn''t want to see what must be my father''s stricken face. I couldn''t stop shaking, and though my tears had run out, my face was puffy and red and tear stained. I was afraid what had happened to my mother would happen to me and I clung tighter to the indigo eyed guard when my father tried to take me from him, making a strangled sobbing sound as my father pried me from the guard without a word and took me to my room and put me to bed. He said only that I would not soon have the time to be afraid or mourn my mother before he left.


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    * * *


    It was three days after my mother''s funeral pyre that I found out what my father had meant. The day after, my cousin, the Pharaoh, held a Court where my father announced that I would become his heir as the Head Mage of the Court instead of my eldest brother as was tradition. I would be the first female to be such. I would learn to read and to write and to use the potential for magic that my father said I had in abundance. Such things were unheard of for females in that time period.


    Everything in my life changed. I was no longer allowed to spend time with my brothers and sister. From right after the morning meal, until the evening one, various mages and scribes of the Court, my father included, would be teaching me the intricacies of magic, reading and writing that I must confess I had absolutely no interest in whatsoever.


    Days went by and turned themselves into weeks where I did not get to go outside, or leave the room where I was sat amongst the dusty and disorganized scrolls of papyrus and tablets of sandstone. My sister and my brothers were to forget they had another sibling, my father said once, as I was better than they were and did not have the need to be around riffraff. My father had grand plans, he said, though he never went into detail of what those plans were.


    I learned of the hieroglyph language and how to write it in ways that were articulate rather than staring at them and not knowing what they said like before. It wasn''t easy, but my father expected me to pick things up quickly without exception, and if I didn''t, my lessons would last deep into the night hours until I did get it. And if I fell asleep from exhaustion from the long hours, I could expect either a whipping or a switching when I was found.


    It wasn''t until I turned six that I got fed up with the strict schedules and isolation from the rest of the world. I snuck out to where my sister and brothers were all playing different things. My sister had a handmade doll that looked brand new with it''s white cotton and fresh straw.


    I felt out of place in approaching them all, it had been over a year since my mother died and I had been taken into the archives. My brothers looked at me like I was the one who had killed our mother and before I could get too close, my brothers were throwing mud clods at me while my sister sat by the side and neither said nor did anything. But instead of getting sad and running away, I got angry and picked up handfuls of clay. They had better aim than I did and I mostly missed them, all the while my sister looked on horrified and finally ran, calling for the guard because I had given up throwing mud and rushed my two ten year old brothers. They called me names, a thief for taking away their birthright for one of them to become the heir of our father''s legacy, whatever that was.


    I got my hair pulled to the point their fists were coming away with it, they scratched my face and arms and bite me when I tried to make them stop. They hit me with their sticks that they had been using to bat around clods of mud before my arrival. My lip split, I bit my tongue, I yelled and screamed and spat blood in their faces. They had shoes, while my small feet were dirty and bare like my clothes and hair.


    They had been well cared for while my skin paled more in the dim light, sometimes the food made me sick, and I dulled in the dark. They on the other hand seemed to be lavished with good things, like my sister''s new doll, and my brothers'' shoes, and they all had new clothes and healthy looks about them.


    Suddenly someone pulled the three of us apart angrily. It was my father. I had a couple of spots where my hair was missing, my lips were swollen and bleeding, and one of my eyes was swollen mostly shut from getting kicked. I was dirty from the dust and soot of the archives as well as from the mud that had been thrown at me. I reached for my father and began to cry finally. These were my siblings, what did I do??


    Seeking solace from my father was like poking a cobra with a hot stick from the fire. He brought me by my arm back up to the palace where he berated me for leaving my lessons and what was I thinking I could play with lesser children?? When I tried to ask why I could no longer play with my own siblings my father slapped me across the face. One guard came up and was ordered to give me twelve lashes with his whip for disobeying the rules and for talking back. I glared tearily at my father''s back as he left me alone to my punishment that I did not feel I deserved.


    * * *


    I had been excused from the rest of the day''s lessons. I had spent the afternoon crying by myself. I had not been given the midday meal and not only was I hurting as the torches were lit, but I was hungry, hurt and confused along with physically beaten.


    Someone came into my room while I cried on my bed and set down beside me with a bowl of what smelled like steaming water. I lifted my head a little bit, trying to hide the black eye my brothers had given me.


    He didn''t say anything to me this time, but he torn open the mess of muddy shreds that the back of my dress had become and took some clean linen to the hot water. I wasn''t used to gentle guards, so the tenderness with which he seemed to clean the welts and bloodied splits in my flesh where a rock clod had cut me or where the whip had been rougher than necessary for a six year old.


    The hot water stung on the welts on my back, but I didn''t flinch or make a sound the entire time that the guard cleaned me of the mud and blood. After some time it seemed that he had finished, but then just as I was about to look up to make sure he had gone, I felt something touching my tangled and muddy hair. I hid my face to hide the tears. It had been months since I had been allowed to wash, or to have anyone near me who wasn''t drilling some sort of information into my head. It was my belief at the time that I was either hated, or had been forgotten. So to have someone carefully tending not only my wounds, but also to the filth my own father had allowed to accumulate by not allowing me to have the comfort that my ''lesser'' siblings so obviously got was tear inducing.


    It hurt to cry, but I made no sound as the mud was washed from my hair and finally, whomever it was actually spent the time to take a horsehair brush to my hair and brushed out the tangles and the knots. This kindness that I was being shown for what seemed like no reason simply was too much for my heartbroken six year old self. The detangling of my very knotted hair was painful, but I said nothing.


    Finally the strokes of the horse hair brush were smooth and I found that my hair had grown almost a foot in the two years since my mother had died, judging by how long it felt. I still hid my bruised face and blackened eye, but a familiar voice asked me to sit up. I did as told, not knowing if the Indigo Guard, as I had begun calling him to myself, was prone to anger at being disobeyed like my father was.


    It was painful to sit up because of the whipping I had taken, but not as painful as it had been before, the man having tended to the bloody and mud caked welts. I could only see out of my right eye, as my brothers had kicked the left; it had an ugly blackness and was swollen shut. My cheeks were tear stained, and my usable eye was red rimmed from tears.


    My eye must have been worse than I thought, because the Indigo Guard stood up without a word and went to speak with one of the guards my father had put outside my room when I had been brought back earlier in the day. He spoke to the other guard too low for me to hear, but a few minutes later he returned to me with a cup of what looked like pink-ish red tea, which he handed to me and said I needed to drink the entire thing and crossed his arms in expectation.


    It didn''t taste like tea. And it was cold as well. He didn''t tell me what it was when I asked, simply said to drink it. That it would make me feel better. I scrutinized the liquid for a moment before drinking the contents of the small clay cup, and the man uncrossed his arms. I coughed heavily, as the liquid hadn''t tasted like anything I had had before and it was unpleasant to me.


    The sensation that went through me was an entirely different story. It was as if all of the sharpness of the pain disappeared in an instant. The welts on my back tingled under the bandages that had been wrapped over them. And my eye..my eye suddenly was able to open. I reached up to gingerly touch it and found that all of the swelling had gone away, though I could see that my skin was still darkly bruised.


    ''What did you give me?'' I asked him as he knelt down to inspect my eye himself.


    ''Never mind.'' Was the only answer I got.


    I looked down at my grey-brown, filthy and now destroyed dress and wondered how it was that I was supposed to wear it any longer, as I didn''t have any other things to wear. The Indigo Guard turned my face to the left then, and on the bed beside me was a new dress laid out of white cotton. He stood up.


    ''Your hair will not get so knotted if you braid it. You are going to have to learn to do more than one thing at once. Bring your brush to the archives, brush while you read, and then braid. When you have your meals, save some water and carry a cloth to wash with while you read. No one is going to take care of you. You have to do it.''


    All I could do was nod silently and then watch him leave without another word. When the door had closed and the footsteps had faded down the hall, I got up, no longer in nearly as much pain as I had been. I turned to pick up the dress, and when I did I found that there was what was very obviously fresh, still steaming bread, and when I looked around I noticed a small water pitcher on a table.

 Determination

    years came in with steaming water and another came in with a washtub like I had not had since I was very small.


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    I couldn''t understand what was going on, and the Indigo Guard stood several feet behind and to the side of me. I knew enough from my lessons that I was not to speak unless spoken to, and so to not incur the wrath of my father, I remained silent, biting the questions on my tongue.


    outside if I wanted to. It was in this time I really began to enjoy the ability of reading. I read about math, magic, philosophy, I read records.

 Darkest Night

    I reached the age of twenty in much the same manner as the rest of my years had passed. I still saw my father weekly, so that he could take apart the meetings I attended. Praise was scarce from him, but if I made any kind of mistake I was reamed for hours into the night. I didn''t care much though. My father wasn''t the power he used to be; I was now. He still looked like the same evil old man that he had always been, but I could see it. He was more tired that he once was. He would pause in his rants at me just to take a breath, and the few times he had raised his hand to me, I hadn''t backed down. He seemed to understand by the look on my face that I wouldn''t be treated like a disobedient child any longer and did not hit me again after that.


    I had taken to taking long walks after dark when I had turned nineteen. My father had once more told me that I could not marry and that no one would ever want a female of my ilk, and I had found that the walks calmed me and brought a sense of tranquility I had never known, not since that last time so long ago when I brushed my mother''s hair and dreamed of being like her. But I wasn''t like her, and I never would be no matter how much I tried. Instead I was the second most powerful person in the Upper Kingdom and now had a bigger voice in the council than most other members.


    The kingdom had grown with my suggestions. War when need be, negotiation where necessary. People had begun to say that I was greater than my father had ever been, even the sticklers of the council had come around. In front of my father, my cousin had declared me the greatest mage the Upper Kingdom had ever seen. I stood prouder than even my brothers did with their promotions through the ranks. My sister still was a mere shadow, and yet was everything I wished I could be. Instead I grew colder inside, even the Indigo Guard did not have the same effect that he usually had. I suddenly didn''t wake up and look forward to his being outside the door to haunt my steps throughout the day.


    I had everything, but I had nothing. Nothing but a growing sense of cold pride and a drive to be the best and put my father''s light to shame and make him be forgotten. I stopped seeing him weekly. No longer needing his advice or his words. I was smarter than he was. I had more power than he did in his prime. The only thing was that thus far I had not spoken with the Gods, though it was obvious to people that I was favored in the gifts of power, sense, and according to some people I chose to ignore, beauty.


    By now I had begun to believe what my father had said about no man wishing to marry a woman who was elevated above her station. I always felt cold inside now. Only the long moonlit walks in the deep of night ever brought any warmth to me anymore. The moon was more friendly than any person had ever been to me, and during my walks I would talk to the Gods even if they did not answer back. I felt a better sense of familiarity to the Gods than I felt to any living person.


    * * *


    Now, the Indigo Guard would sometimes follow me on these walks, at a distance, other times I was utterly alone and by myself. And it was on one of those lonelier nights that was the worst of my life. It topped the night my mother was killed and would change absolutely everything. It was during the small hours of the morning. That time before dawn when it was silent, when not even animals stirred. I walked the roads of the city with a leisure that was not to be had during the daylight hours.


    I had no sandals, as I enjoyed the feel of the cool sand beneath my feet as I walked back from the river, and so my feet made no sound. I turned down a narrow back street where the moonlight didn''t shine on my way back to the palace where four of what seemed to be palace guards stood.


    This was my usual path back on these nights, and so it didn''t surprise me that it was me they were looking for. I thought perhaps something had happened or that someone needed me for something. But no one said anything, nor would they let me pass. I knew something was wrong when nothing was said, but I tried keeping calm, even when two of the guards flanked me so I could not go back the way I had come.


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    When weapons were set aside while the soldiers had sickening smirks on their faces, I tried making a rush through the two in front of me, towards the end of the narrow street and towards home. Where before I had been reveling in the solitude of not having the Indigo Guard following me, I suddenly wished he had been. My rush was caught by my being shoved at the shoulders so hard that I was knocked off my feet and landed on my back on the ground. Before I could actually get up or orient myself, the two soldiers behind me pinned me down by the arms.


    The fear I had had since I had been a child reared up. I now knew the fear my mother had felt, and it brought strength I didn''t normally have. I managed to knock the teeth out of one''s grinning face, and nearly broke free of the two who held me pinned. I bit, and scratched, kicked, cursed and spat in the eyes of any of them who didn''t quite get close enough for me to sink my teeth into.


    The result was a beating the likes of which I had never endured, until there was no sound coming from me and I couldn''t move even to lift a finger against my assailants any longer. I could do nothing while the four used and violated me, only now finding out anything about the word ''rape'', sixteen years after my mother had been killed. It was one subject that hadn''t been in my many lessons.


    I don''t know how long it was until I was left in the narrow street alone, beaten with broken bones, bleeding in places I had been struck with whatever the four could find. I don''t even know all of the damage they had done. When they had accosted me, the moon had still been low in the sky, now it shone into the narrow street of Waset. Not able to move, I passed in and out of awareness every few minutes, not quite able to lose consciousness, but not coherent either.


    I don''t know how long I was lying there in the street when I heard the sound of heavy running footsteps. Into my blurred vision came a dark figure from the direction of the palace. They slowed down and stopped before kneeling by my side and I turned my head just a little, trying to see through the fog who it was that seemed to be taking something off.


    My eyes couldn''t focus, but I apparently made some sort of fearful sound, and then I knew that voice as I was covered with the Indigo Guard''s red cloak, saying that I was safe. I''d never been treated so gently in my life as when he picked me up from the ground. I had been beaten so severely that I couldn''t even feel any pain or my body at all.


    Being carried back to the palace was slow at first, but the Indigo Guard seemed to suddenly sense something while I struggled in the fog that threatened to consume me, and I can only guess that he began to run, because his stride wasn''t smooth anymore. All I wanted was to go to sleep, but the Indigo Guard said I must stay awake, in a tone I had never heard from a person before.


    After I don''t know how long, I heard an impossible bang that made the fog recede just a little bit and I could see the blurred shape of the Indigo Guard had kicked in a door and the sound of my father''s angry voice filled my ears, though I didn''t actually hear what he said through the buzzing in my ears now.


    I couldn''t understand what was being said because I could only hear the sound of voices through the fog and buzzing that was getting thicker and louder. I was moving again, and the Indigo Guard spoke sharply in my ear to stay awake. To not close my eyes. I couldn''t even make a sound to acknowledge that I understood. It got dark suddenly, though by then the sun should have been rising.


    Then there were torches being lit and I was being gently set on a flat space that was freezing cold even though I already felt cold. I couldn''t tell anything that was happening, struggling as I was now to not sink into the dark that beckoned like the kind of friend I had never had.


    Just when I could not hear for the buzzing in my ears and the fog finally came up to swallow me, my nerve lit like fire and the buzzing went away entirely to be replaced with a dull roar, almost like the sound a bonfire makes. My entire body certainly felt like it had been lit on fire. I didn''t even realize that I had lifted from what turned out to be a stone table until I landed on it once more with a thud that knocked the air out of me.


    The stone table was cold as ice, and when I was able to open my eyes finally, I found I could see more clearly than I ever had before. The room was mostly dark but for a few torches, but I could see clear as if I were standing in broad daylight. Against one wall stood the Indigo Guard, and at the side of the table on the floor was my father. I got off the table, but there was an undefined knowledge that there wasn''t anything I was capable of doing that would save that old man''s life.


    The only thing he said was to make him proud, but there was no emotion in me to be able to really register that he was gone until his body greyed and crumbled to ash inside his robes. I knelt down and picked up the pendant that he had worn for as long as I could remember. When I straightened up, holding the red cloak to cover my torn clothes, I caught the eyes of the Indigo Guard. I looked at him for a short moment before I simply turned and left what I now recognized as one of the ritual chambers.


    I didn''t know what my now dead father had done, but I knew somehow that in saving my life, he had in fact made me more powerful than any human ever would be. I was soon to find out that I was no longer even human.

 Ancient

    In the coming months after my father''s death, I read all of his private scrolls and tomes and tablets. In doing so, I found the spell with which he had saved my life. Finding out what he had done and what he had made me into, I hated him more than I ever had. I would never die, all of my senses were enhanced, magic ability was enhanced and expanded. I no longer needed to pray to perform rituals.


    After reading the spell and the accompanying writings, I set out to learn what I could do. I found that I was physically stronger than twenty of the palace''s finest guards. I was faster than I could imagine, a mile wasn''t even a minute anymore, where before I could not even run a mile at all. I pushed my limits and boundaries, physically, magically, mentally.


    I was now the head of my family as well. Being my father''s heir made that my right. I now controlled everything; money, guards, I even found out that there was a house up river that was mine that I had never known existed. I also controlled the life of my unmarried twin sister, and still had a hand in my married brothers lives. I knew they resented me, hated me, and my sister feared me. But by now I no longer cared. I felt cold inside, I felt like emotion had died with my human life. I went through my days without the kind of loneliness or sadness I had before. I suppose I thought it as some kind of blessing.


    I no longer longed for the things I could not have, and now I believed my father right that no man would want a female of my temperament or ability. Now I no longer cared. I sat in on meetings, gave the same sound advice that I always had. Only now I added myself into plans because of what I could do. It wasn''t long before I was doing things no female human would ever be allowed to do. Battle became something I did when it was necessary, my cousin knowing the extent of what I could do as I had found out.


    Winning over the armies as a female I think was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to try doing. It took years of toiling against the kind of hate and abuse men were free to deal in those days. I dealt with it the only way I knew how; cold grace and stoicism. Angry voices were met with soft spoken words that chilled the bones and instilled fear and respect into anyone under my command.


    I essentially threw myself into the only thing that I did understand, that being magic and the betterment or my country. Of course there were those who didn''t listen to me, and I would spend years of a Pharaoh''s reign with being denied and my advice discarded simply because I was female.


    But I am getting ahead of myself a little. In the first year after my father had died and I had been made into what I took to calling an Ancient, and once I had learned some of the extent of what I could do, I went down a dark road.


    I wished for punishment of the group of men who had ruined my entire life and taken from me something that I now would never have. I had seen the faces of the men who had attacked me in the darkened street that night, before they had attacked me. I could hear more sharply than a human could. And in the nights when I was wakened screaming, because the old terrors of my mother had returned, only now I had the same face as my mother once did, and the dreams took on a whole new terror.


    I eventually was able to find, one at a time, each of the guards who had brought this misery on me. And when I appeared to them, they saw my face before I took them even from their beds and wives in the night. I brought them into the dark of the ritual room where I had been changed. They were shackled to the stone table to which my life had been changed and taken from me by the guards that I now had under my command, including the Indigo Guard, who seemed particularly rough and silent in these instances. The guards were stripped of their armor and clothes forcibly while I stood and watched. I ordered on each occasion that the guard be dressed in the simplest of white.


    I could have done all of these things myself, having the strength that I did, but I thought to bring them the same kind of terror that they had brought me. Once prepared, and the candles and oils and incense lit, I performed a ritual sacrifice of each of them to Anubis, that they be judged on what they had done and be accorded appropriate action.


    When finally the last of the four had been given to the Gods for their crimes, and I washed the blood from my hands, feeling that same numb feeling that had plagued me in the year that had now passed. I was glad that my revenge was over and justice served so that I could move on and finally accept what had happened, but it didn''t feel that way. I still could not have the life that my sister was accorded. I essentially had no family, and I had never in my life had a friend. In twenty-one years. What was worse, I no longer wanted such either. I might mourn for what I could not have, but I also no longer wanted it, and that hurt as well .


    * * *


    A few months after I had turned twenty-one, after sunset, when I had retired now to my rooms to watch the moon, there came an urgent sounding knock on my door. When I opened it, the Indigo Guard stood with my sister in his arms. She was unconscious, and both of her legs were at odd angles, telling me they were both broken. He told me that he had found her at the bottom of the city wall. It was like to the night he had brought me to my father.


    It was surreal, and I remember thinking that I must have fallen asleep. There were only three reasons my sister could have been found broken and unconscious at the bottom of the walls around the city; that she had either been pushed, she had fallen, or she had jumped. I lead the way, as my father had, to the ritual room, and had the Indigo Guard lay my sister on the table while I got what I needed. My sister was my Twin, and the only difference was that she had our father''s eyes like my brothers did, and so it was as if I were looking at my own face. I kept wishing that I would wake to find that it had in fact been just another terror, but no such thing happened. Same as my father had over a year before, I performed the same ritual he had on me in order to save my Twin''s life before the heartbeat I could hear stopped.


    I saw her body rise as mine had done, and heard the horrible cracking as her broken bones snapped themselves seamlessly back together and healed and any internal damage became nonexistent, her heartbeat becoming stronger until it sounded with mine. I thought that the same thing would happen to me that had happened to my father, and I was prepared for it. I saw it as a release from my own mind and misery. I almost welcomed it. And when my sister''s body returned back down to the table, healed and new and she woke. I saw her look at me, and for a moment before she had realized that she hadn''t died, she smiled at me. Then, when she realized what I had done, her expression turned and before everything went black for me, I knew she hated me as much as I had hated our father.


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    * * *


    When next I woke, I was surprised to actually be alive. Why had I not turned to ash as my father had? Was my sister alright? I realize I had wanted to die. My sister could live a normal life out from my shadow of the fear I knew she had of me, and my brother''s would no longer have to suffer the shame of the ''greatness'' they had been robbed of their birthright in being our father''s heir. And when I woke to the sun after saving my sister''s life, I wept on realizing this. I had not wanted any of this, and now my sister''s fear had turned to hate as well.


    I knew that I could not help my sister, that she wouldn''t accept it. Why should I bother when I was hated as I was? And I had a meeting with my cousin that day. So I went to that, and offered my service in helping to quell skirmishes on the borders of the kingdom, since my cousin knew what I could do. And so I was sent, with ten other soldiers and the Indigo Guard as well, whom I had actually forgotten was assigned strictly to me.


    We traveled by horse, and camped each night. The soldiers didn''t think I should be there. Battle was no business for women they said. They were for the hearth, home and bed they said. They were to be protected. And from my spot lying by the horses by a tree rather than with the group around the fire, I snorted to myself. These soldiers had not heard my name or known who I was. I found it amusing that they thought I was asleep or couldn''t hear them when I could hear them as if they were sitting right beside me or closer. I found the Indigo Guard not agreeing, or even really saying much, which I found curious, but I heard something off in the distance and got up and went around the horses to look in that direction.


    The sound had come from miles off, but it was steadily getting louder, but I wasn''t the only person who heard it. The Indigo Guard saw my movement and had come up beside me. Now, it was not uncommon for people to not age very much before they died in this time period. However, the Indigo Guard had not aged in nineteen years. And from my understanding, he had been in service to my father before even then. Not being stupid like the rest of my company were, I asked if he could see them as well, if he could hear them. He merely nodded.


    ''There are two options.'' He replied, low enough that the other ten could not hear, but that I could hear clear as crystal. ''We could warn them, or we could wait until they are scrambling and then act.''


    ''Wouldn''t it be a better idea to warn them so that we are not caught unprepared?'' They might have made remarks about me, but I preferred to not have the men unjustly caught unawares. The only response the Indigo Guard made was to gesture towards the fire where the men sat for me to go on ahead and warn them while he leaned against a tree, a look on his face that was almost infuriating. So I glared at him and went to the fire.


    When I did I knew why the Indigo Guard had had the expression he did. When I told the men what I had seen and heard, one or two of them looked in the direction I said, but neither of them could see or hear the group coming towards us. Because of that the rest of them discounted me, said I was seeing things, hearing things. They reiterated the earlier thought that I shouldn''t be there, that women were only good for the home, and this wasn''t a home. They said that they should have been lead by another male, not some female who was out of her mind and probably not what she said she was, head mage or not, and they would never live down the shame among the other soldiers.


    I turned and stomped back over to the horses and picked up my khopesh, and stood once more beside the Indigo Guard, who I could have hit for the expression on his face. He looked like he was laughing at me with those eyes, and I glared at him, though I was shorter and smaller than he was.


    ''They didn''t listen.''


    ''Did you think they would?'' His words laughed at me.


    ''I''m used to people listening in the councils. Those men are idiots.''


    ''This isn''t the council. For now just be ready yourself, there''s twice as many of them as there are of us.''


    I turned back to look to where I could see the small cloud of dust and figures of the incoming enemies. I saw that he was right, and I gripped my khopesh while the rest of the company laughed and drank by the fire. Twenty minutes later they finally heard the sound of approaching horses, but it was too late. In their panick and rush to run and grab their weapons, the group came upon us all, though I had jump up into the tree by the horses and was not seen as they ambushed our camp.


    I surprised the enemy warriors when I came down behind them from the tree while my company was scrambling, cut off from the horses where their weapons were. I didn''t hesitate to slash the two intruders nearest me with one fast, fluid motion of my arm that sent the two screaming to the ground, somewhere to my right I saw the Indigo Guard snap the neck of another and his body dropped like a rock. My men had not listened to me, and now were at a loss, pinioned without a way to get to their weapons. They had to resort to hand to hand combat against the weapons of their enemies while I cut a path through the group.


    Someone caught me off guard because one of my own had let out a yell and my khopesh was knocked from my hand and away. The enemy only saw an unarmed woman now, but the first person who tried to take a swing at me I ducked the swing and in the same motion struck under with my hands hard enough to break ribs and knock the male feet away from me. I saw one of my own struggling against another and before the enemy knew what was going on I had come up behind him, and using a little more force than necessary while snapping the male''s neck, nearly took his head clean off as his flesh ripped and I got splattered in the face with the male''s blood. I took one moment to look at the warrior I had saved before moving on.


    Within minutes and in no small part because of myself and the Indigo Guard, the entire group of nineteen were dead in our campsite. I was surprised, I hadn''t even thought twice about what needed to be done. There were nearly twenty bodies littering our campsite now, and nearly half of them had been left by me, and there in the quiet with just the fire crackling I saw the bodies lying there, some in pools of their own blood, others who hadn''t bled. One of the rest of my company was wounded, and I went to him with my blood spattered hands and set them to the wound. I had learned that I could heal others, and so now I healed this male within moments without a word.


    The rest of my company were now staring at me as if I had suddenly sprouted two more heads. It''s obvious that they hadn''t believed me and that they were astonished that I had been capable of what I had done minutes before. I stood straighter than I had even when my father had died in making me the abomination that I now was, facing these men''s gazes without faltering before I bent and picked up a bleeding corpse in each hand and began dragging them away to burn a good distance away from the camp so that the smell wouldn''t wrinkle their delicate little noses.


    I wasn''t sure why I felt so angry, I felt like skinning all of them alive, those men. Had they listened to me, I would not be covered in blood and grime and sweat and dragging body parts into a pile a mile off in order to save their sorry hides. And men like that would be the very last to ever admit that they should have followed a woman''s direction.


    I was throwing a body on the fire I had built, followed by the body''s dismembered arm, when another body hits the pile. It was the Indigo Guard. I don''t know why he was helping, the other ten men in the company weren''t helping. I had nothing to say, and simply turned to head back to the camp to grab my completely bloody hands onto a couple of the last corpses. The sun was not yet rising, but the beginnings of dawn weren''t far off. The Indigo Guard said nothing either, but helped without a word. It was oddly refreshing to not be doubted, scorned, or entirely dismissed.


    When all of the bodies were piled and blazing finally, the sky was beginning to get a little lighter. For some reason, that I simply assumed was because of the personal assignment to me, the Indigo Guard was still there, an arm''s length away. He hadn''t said a word the entire time, and neither had I. In the distance, less than a mile away, I could hear the beginnings of breakfast in the camp. Those men had even gone to sleep while I stayed up dragging bodies. At one point I had been tempted to beat them with a dismembered arm or leg. It was the beginning of my hate for people, men in particular. The only one I didn''t resent or hate was the Indigo Guard, though that I thought bordered on indifference. My silent shadow. At least one person didn''t hate or underestimate me.


    I looked at my hands, almost black from being completely covered in blood and dirt, and sighed almost silently and let my hands fall to my sides as I gave a last look at the pyre that was built of the bodies of my enemies. I turned away from the fire, back toward camp, and my shadow came with me without a word.


    When I got to camp, breakfast was mostly finished, and surprise surprise, they had saved food for the Indigo Guard, but none for myself. At that point I didn''t care. I tended to picking up my untouched space for sleeping and saddling my horse. I was angry once more, and this time I wrapped myself in it like a blanket, bury the hollow feeling. Why not bury the anger and everything else while I''m at it? If I''m cold, nothing matters and nothing hurts. Better for logic and an ability to do my job in my place than to be angry or unhappy and let that cloud my judgment and make the mistake that I just knew everyone was waiting for me to make.

 Monotony and Indifference

    Over the years that passed, each of my siblings, as well as cousins, met with untimely accidents or wounds of battle. And each time, they were brought to me to save. And each time, I sought my death in the spell that my father had cast and died with. And each time, I woke to find myself in my rooms, still alive, still breathing, still physically whole. And each time I cursed it. I wanted to know why the spell that had killed my father would not kill me. I spent hours in temples of Gods, asking why. No answer ever came.


    For ten years, I didn''t age, while my older cousin, the Pharaoh, died and his son ascended the throne. My second cousin was not so trusting of my word as his father was. However it only took one instance of what I said would happen, to actually happen, for my young cousin to treat my word as if it came from the Gods themselves. He was even going to disband the council and take only my word, but I advised against it. If anything should happen, he would not wish to alienate those who could help him.


    Every time I saved one of my relatives, I didn''t see them thereafter. My brothers, who had hated me for most of my life, while stayed in their posts, would not even acknowledge my existence. My sister hated me, my brothers pretended I didn''t exist. My cousins left the city. At one point, I honestly thought that perhaps all they had wanted was to be able to do what I could. Except for my sister, I had a strong inclination to believe that she had thrown herself from the walls. It was the only way I could justify her hate of me now, where she had feared me before then.


    As years passed in relative monotony, I didn''t notice that I grew colder and more distant, taking less and less notice of the actual people around me. I was the permanent head mage, being that I didn''t age. I went out with companies of those abominable male warriors, where nearly no one would listen to me until something would happen, as it had the first time I had gone. By the end of a decade, there wasn''t a person in the region who didn''t know my name or the stories that came with my name. I was oblivious to the respect and fear that came with everything I had done.


    I never wore the same clothing as other people. I wore the type of clothing that my mother had worn, always wore my mother''s jewelry, even when I went out with the soldiers I wore no armor, partially due to the fact that there wasn''t an armory anywhere would could even make armor for a woman. I occasionally got wounded, but I healed quicker than a human did, though not instantly.


    At some point at the end of the first decade, the Indigo Guard disappeared, and someone new was assigned to be my shadow. He didn''t last long. I think I may have gone through about a dozen personal guards before I simply told the cousin Pharaoh to not bother with it. No one was strong enough to do the job. Half the time when I got wounded, it was due to saving the sorry hide of the man who was supposed to save mine. It wasn''t worth the hassle and finally I was entirely alone. I spoke only when needed, as there was no one to speak to, no one I wished to speak to.


    Such went on. And on. And on. For centuries. I heard nothing from the people who were supposed to be family. I heard of them, but not from them. And by then it didn''t even matter to me anymore. I cared not what anyone thought of me, I did my job, and that was all I did.


    Somewhere along the lines, when I was not quite a thousand years old, a very distant cousin decided that he was smarter than me simply because of the fact that he was male, and he decided against my advice. He was egotistical and his head was swollen in his power of believing that he was in fact a God born in human form. He decided he would conquer another land. I warned against it, I said it would not bode well for the empire I had helped to build for around eight hundred years. But of course, this cousin would not listen to me, determined as he was to prove me wrong, swell his ego and let his greed get away with him.


    Needless to say, this was finally a last straw for me, and I left the council chambers with harsh words hiding in a polite tone. I noticed that without my guidance, these men were senseless in their greed and this war to conquer another country stressed and strained and drained the country of money and people and resources. I could have stopped it, but as spiteful as I was, I would let my cousin destroy himself. And he did, as this senseless war began the decline of the people and the empire and left us open and vulnerable.


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    * * *


    It was only around two hundred years later that Egypt was conquered themselves, and I and my relatives were forced into hiding and out of the lives we had been accustomed to. For the first time, the strangers that I was related to were actually looking for me. One of my brothers had heard people talking about me and the rest of us. What we could do. My brother had come to me only minutes before it was found that the temples, my chambers and my usual spaces were searched for me.


    I had hidden with my brother and when they''d gone I grabbed what I needed and what I wished to save. We all gathered in the dark, even the cousins that had left the city. Everyone had brought their horses laden with what they were taking with them and provisions for living on the run. And living on the run in that time meant you slept under the stars and hadn''t any of the comforts of living with society. When I was sure that these invaders would not come upon us or hear us, I mounted my horse and the rest of the family that seemed to suddenly wish to follow my direction followed and we left the city under cover of night.


    * * *


    So began the long years in which we were hunted, mainly by Romans. I could never enter a town, nor could my sister, as we didn''t look like ordinary Egyptians with our red hair and pale skin. So, for six hundred years my brothers would have to go into whatever town we were near to get things that I and my sister needed. I refused to wear the heavy chest jewelry that was so common for my sister, and I often had to modify a secondary skirt into something that I could wear as a shirt of sorts. They brought me thread though, so it wasn''t too bad. My cousins both looked Egyptian, and so went into town themselves. We never stuck around or got too near to a town with our camps.


    My sister had the hardest time of things, she had never slept on a bedroll, or slept outside, or much ridden a horse, and she often would cry at the state of our lives. Far be it from me though to try to help or comfort her as best I knew how. She would yank away from me and glare through her tears. I knew she blamed me for everything.


    Being around these people so much brought a little bit of humanity back to me. My sister''s hate I found hurt, though I didn''t let her or anyone else see it. Everyone was stressed, worked up and afraid that we would be caught and killed, or worse, tortured or imprisoned.


    There was one day where my sister''s hate came into the words she spoke to me through her tears and I stood rooted to the spot while my sister stormed away. I suddenly spun on my heel and headed out of camp as well towards the river we were camped near. For the first time since I had been a child I was crying. I sat on the bank of the river, not caring if I was seen for once, though I had a spare swath of cloth to cover my head. I put my sore feet in the river and I just watched the water pass, silent tears falling down my face.


    I felt a male hand on my shoulder and I twisted around, pulling a long dagger at the same time. It was my eldest brother. I turned away, hoping he hadn''t seen my face, and tucked my dagger away once more and asked what he wanted. He asked me if I was alright. It was the first time in my life that he had really troubled himself about me. Needless to say I looked at him as if he had sprouted a second head for a moment before saying that I was fine. That I was always fine.


    I turned away from him again and didn''t look at him a third time. Finally he sighed and went away. And I hadn''t noticed that my body was ramrod straight and more tense than I remembered being in a long time. I was the head of the family, I had to be fine and unbothered by the hate of my siblings.


    I don''t know if my brother had finally seen that they actually needed my direction to survive, or if he had seen finally that I was treated unfairly, or if maybe he had changed his mind and no longer hated me as he had my entire life. No matter the situation or opinion, it was my job to make sure that my family survived. That was it. I would do my job and no more. I didn''t need them, though I had to remind myself of such things; to be as cold to them as they had always been to me and keep a clear head in order to do my job.


    * * *


    This kind of living, or surviving, went on in the same manner for six hundred years. My sister and cousins began disappearing at times, sometimes just for a few hours, at other times for several days to over a week. No one said anything about where they went or what they did. My brothers had been going into town now and then for new clothes and supplies. We had no money, so my brothers learned the art of theft. Horses, clothing, supplies, food, blankets. Whatever it was we needed. It wasn''t an easy life by far, but we got by.


    Those years went by mostly in a blur of monotony. Nothing stood out. Every now and then we had moments where we were almost caught, and we had to kill people, but for the most part, everything was bland, like Wonderbread I guess you could say. It wasn''t until the end of those first six hundred years of running, that things changed so drastically that I''ve never been the same since.

 Capture

    It was mid-afternoon, and we, my two older brothers, two cousins and I, had made camp for the midday meal. My sister was missing again, but she often disappeared for days at a time, so no one thought anything of it.


    The horses were tied to a nearby tree to graze while we ate. In the distance I heard the sounds of more than one horse, knew it could not be my sister, and warned the rest of my family. We left our meal and untied the horses as a squad of Roman Legionnaires came into view. Knowing they''d seen us, we took off, hoping to lose them in the forest we could see about a mile past the gorge we were in. Their horses were faster, as no matter how hard we pushed ours, the Romans hunting us gained distance, and we weren''t out of the gorge. The twelve of them closed in, and we had nowhere to turn or hide.


    It was my responsibility to protect my family, but regardless of anything I sent at them, they either dodged it, or somehow deflected it or sent it right back at us. One shot hit my second brother''s horse and instantly killed it. My brother went down as the horse buckled and I grabbed his hand and helped him swing up onto my horse behind me as the squad of Romans closed in even further. One of the Romans jabbed their spear into the flank of my horse and it went down, sending my brother and I over its head as it screamed, tumbling into the dirt with screams and yells.


    I knew the rest of my family was smart enough to not stop for us. They got away into the forest while the Romans surrounded us and dismounted from their horses.


    My brother picked me up off the ground and stood in front of me, drawing his blade. One of the Romans called out in Latin for us to surrender ourselves and that they would make our deaths quick. I stepped forward and set the male on fire with a subtle flick of a finger. I am the head of my family; I should be protecting them, not the other way around.


    Angry Roman hands grabbed hold of me, and my brother decapitated one and severed another''s arm while I set another two to flames amidst screams and the smell of burning flesh. We started to think that we would come out of this victorious as we had in the past, what with five soldiers dead already. The remaining seven closed in, and one moment my brother was laughing in their faces, and the next, he had a blade through his gut and he had a mouth full of blood. I saw him hit his knees out of the corner of my eye and the Roman who had run him through swung and my brother''s head thudded as it hit the ground and rolled.


    Seeing my brother die when I should have helped him made guilt and grief filled rage rise in me. The Roman who killed my brother didn''t even know what happened. I ripped his heart from his chest with my bare hands and watched his body drop like a rock and twitch spasmodically. The last six tried to get their hands on me, and two more were either set aflame or I shoved my arm through his chest cavity. The last four grabbed me and forced me down onto my knees where I glared up at them a moment before I felt the cold, hard, cleaving effect of steel prying apart my rib cage. I choked, blood spattering from my lips as I gagged on it. The blade was pulled sharply from my body and I sagged in the painful grip of the Roman Legionnaires. They thought I would die then, so did I, but I heard as mall male voice in my head. The sound was gentle, soothing, the tone kind and loving. For a moment I thought it was my father, but my father''s voice was not as deep as this.


    This voice, only I could hear it, and as I bled out it spoke to me. It said, ''Fret not my child. You are not meant to die. I have a job for you, and you cannot do it dead.''


    The sound of the voice brought tears to my eyes more than the very strange feeling that my ribs and innards fusing back together brought me. The Romans saw this and looked amongst themselves as I gasped for breath. The next moment I felt myself being lifted and jostled, tossed over a horse while still disoriented from my wound. Once I did regain my senses I began to kick and fight to be released, which only resulted in getting my head bashed in with the butt of a sword.


    * * *


    When I woke, I was tied to a tree and it was pitch dark. My hair was matted with blood from the blow to the head, though the wound had already healed and closed like the other one had. I kept my head down so that the four of them would not notice that I was conscious. Through my blood clotted hair, I could see that the soldiers were sitting around the campfire I could now see as well as hear. They were talking, and I knew enough Latin at the time to know what they were saying.


    They were talking of what to do with me; a sharp-tongued female who couldn''t be killed. They had been given orders to kill any of us that they caught, yet I couldn''t be killed. And they had tried many different things to end my life. I could tell by the amount of blood on my clothes and skin and by how hazed my mind was, how weak my body felt even though I was sitting on the ground. I couldn''t have moved if I tried to.


    My arm twitched, and a small involuntary pained sound escaped me before I could stop it. The Roman closest to me heard and he said something to the other three that I was awake. He came over to me after getting up, and I found my face being lifted by an almost gentle hand that was holding my chin, making me look at him. I must have looked awful, because he took one look at me, sighed, and gave me some pleasantly cold water. My eyes rolled a little bit as he took the waterskin away and I groaned faintly.


    My sight was hazy, so my memory of this Roman''s face is not completely solid.


    Dark blue eyes looked at me with an expression that, to me, seemed to be almost concern. Sharp features, dark hair that even in the night I could tell was kept a little longer than a typical Roman male, and those dark blue eyes that were nearly purple didn''t seem to be able to hold any specific age.


    His face got close to mine, and he asked my name in a low, deep voice that both soothed and made my blood run cold at the same time. That face and voice I could tell had made many a person weak in the knees and follow instructions blindly. But I had my brother''s death fresh in my mind, and I was sitting down. I spit in his face as I glared weakly up at him. I felt self-satisfied as he sighed and started to turn away. Without warning, as his hand came away from where I had spit in his eye, the back of his hand cracked sharply as it connected with my face. The whiplash sent my head back against the tree I was tied to with such force and, once more, everything went black.


    Three days passed before I awoke once more. I was not pleased to awaken choking on water, no matter how frigid and refreshing it was. My eyes opened, and met with those same hypnotic blues from the night of my capture. It was bright, just past noon by the sun''s position in the sky, and though still weak, my mind was clear as crystal. Only my wrists were bound now, but I realized we were on the move. I was riding astride this odd male''s horse, set in front of him so I could not jump or ''fall'' off. He kept one hand on the reins, and the other held the freshly replenished waterskin, offered out to me not he was I was awake. I looked from him to the waterskin for a moment before I snatched it from him with my bound hands. The next second it was gone from my hands. I looked up, and the waterskin was being held by this Roman who was now scowling down at me, to which I scowled right back. I wanted that water. I refused to speak Latin, so I croaked out a demand for the waterskin in my native tongue.


    I was thoroughly surprised when he leaned down to my ear and spoke my own language back to me. "Behave like an animal and you will be treated like one."


    Being treated like a child and reminded of my manners in my own tongue shocked me enough that I could say nothing at all for a moment before I simply held out my bound hands for the water skin. I refused to speak now, however, since now I knew this Roman could understand everything I might say. Since I was no longer being exactly rude, the Roman handed me the water skin once more. An almost silent sigh of relief escaped me as the almost frigid water ran down my parched throat. I was still so thirsty when he took the skin from me I could have cried, my pride and stubbornness being the only thing that kept my eyes dry.


    I stared straight ahead of me on the jet black horse as the hours slid by and dusk set in. The sun dipped behind the tree line and the male behind me barked out an order to make camp in Latin. The other three dismounted and started to go about doing just that. My captor dismounted himself and reached up to pull me down beside him. He turned to his horse for his saddle bags and I bolted, running faster than any human possibly could back the way we had come. I didn''t even look back to see if anyone was coming after me or not, until I didn''t hear any hoof beats or running. The silence was unnerving, so I looked back for a split second, saw only three Romans watching, and promptly ran full tilt into something solid.


    As soon as I hit him his big hands grabbed a too tight grip on my upper arms, my wrists still bound. My head swung around to look up at him in shock. I hadn''t even heard him move. I fought him, trying to wrench my arms from his grip, which only succeeded in that grip tightening and nearly breaking the bones until he ever so easily cut my legs out from under me and threw me to the ground, his own body pinning mine to the ground.


    I kicked out at him, trying to get my bare foot to where I might be able to push him off me while trying to get my hands free. I swore at him viciously in my own native language. He only laughed at me and said, "Go ahead and keep struggling. I''m enjoying it~"


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    Sure enough, I could tell he was, considering he was poking at my stomach, which he was sitting on. I felt my eyes widen, and my fighting stopped instantly, to which he laughed, clearly intensely amused. I growled, glaring daggers up at him, and demanded that he let me up, to which he only chuckled more. He leaned down so his nose was barely an inch from my own, that amused and teasing smirk on his face.


    ''I do not believe you are in any kind of position to be making demands. Do you~?"


    For four days I had been captive, and though I had not been wounded since the first day, I was still covered in blood. My hair was matted and caked together, with the addition of sand, and my simple Egyptian clothes were stained with blood, as was my skin, which was flaking the dried blood off slowly. I was filthy, and here I was making my demands like the royalty I was while I looked like an abused slave.


    I huffed, turning my head away from this male whose logic I blatantly denied with the gesture, closing my eyes in disgust as my hair crackled a little from being so blood clogged.


    He chuckled at my denial of his perfectly sane logic, standing up and pulling me with him as he did so. He shifted his grip from my wrists to my upper arms and forced my feet forward, back towards the camp. When we got there he marched me right past the other three soldiers, only pausing to grab up his red cloak. One of them said something snide, and I made to rip his tongue out with a growl, but the grip on my arm turned painful and stopped me before I could.


    This male was so odd, looking angry as he shoved me out of the camp site and to a spot where the nearby river curled in an inlet pool. Roughly letting go of me with a shove, he pushed me to the edge of the water.


    ''Bathe. Don''t take forever. And don''t even think about running off again.''


    I glared at him. Had he no common sense? Of course I was thinking of running the first chance I got. I DID want a bath first however, and stepped into the water, still fully clothed, and the male huffed at me. ''Are you daft? You can''t bathe in your clothes.''


    I looked back at him, staring indignantly before I growled and stripped off my bloodied clothing and threw it at him, then turned and waded my way into the cool water while he chuckled behind me. I got into the water quickly, knowing full well that he was watching me, and I let the gentle current wash over my bruised and beaten body. I didn''t pay any attention to the dark haired male sitting on a fallen tree trunk behind me, wading into the water until it reached my shoulders and I ducked beneath the surface to get the dried and matted blood out of my hair. When clean, and after I knew I''d annoyed the male by taking my sweet time without even giving him a show, I stood. My clean hair hung down to thankfully cover me as far as my waist and the water covered everything else. I held out my hand.


    ''Give me my clothes,'' I said.


    He only smirked darkly at me. ''And so it speaks~!''


    He strode directly into the water, and I held my ground as he stopped in front of me. I moved, trying to take my clothes from him, but he reached out and grabbed my throat in a grip that almost frightened me, and I took a step back. I glared up at his smirking face, my toes feeling the sharp jagged edge of a large rock I stepped on. My hands gripped his forearm as my toes curled around and picked up the dagger-like rock. He was saying something, I could see his lips moving, hear his gloating voice in my ears, but my concentration was on my leg swinging up. The sharp rock was clasped in my toes and I expertly and viciously slit his throat with it. I flinched as his blood spurted and a little splattered on my face. His voice gurgled with the blood, his vocal chords damaged. But I could tell he was laughing at me.


    THAT frightened me. I snatched my clothes from him as his body splashed ungracefully in the water that was tinted red with his blood. I all but jumped into my clothes before grabbing up the red cloak he had brought. I bolted back to the camp. A fire was going and the other three Legionnaires very quickly met their own deaths as I stuck to the shadows under the trees. I wiped the blood from myself as I ran to the horses. I don''t know why I was in a rush with all my captors dead, but I had a bad feeling, a knot of apprehension in the pit of my stomach. And as I leapt up to mount the huge black stallion it was revealed why.


    A hand grabbed my wet hair and yanked me to the ground where I was pinned by a heavy body and harsh hands. I stared up at my captor in horror. He held no evidence that I had slit his throat at the river whatsoever.


    ''Not possible...'' was the only thing I could manage, and as he chuckled darkly I started to struggle. The best my strength got me, and only with intense effort ,was that I was able to lift my hands a few inches from the ground, and only fora few seconds. Twenty minutes later I was gasping for breath, sweating, and exhausted. The odd Roman hadn''t even broken a sweat. I glared up at him, my chest heaving with the strain and futile effort I''d wasted.


    ''Are you through?'' He arched an eyebrow at me as I glared and gasped for breath. It was too easy for him to keep me pinned down. I was stronger than any human being, and yet this male was seemingly infinitely more so. I lay there in the grass glaring, refusing to say anything even to answer him. I wasn''t going to getaway from him it seemed. Not if he survived having his throat slit and seemed to be faster and stronger than I was. I hated him in that moment as he finally yanked me up and tied my wrists together as well as my ankles, making sure I would not be able to run again, and put me down by the fire before he proceeded to ignore me, and I him.


    * * *


    Weeks passed in the same manner as they had right after my attempted escape from captivity. I remained tied at the wrists and ankles, and I remained silent as the grave. Nights were spent around a fire, during which time I tried to think of some way I might get free and get away. I would spend hours thinking, pretending to sleep so that my captor would lower his guard and do the same, but he never did. I tried throwing myself off the horse when crossing a river, and it resulted in my ankles being tied to the stirrups and my hands to the pommel of the saddle every morning. I slipped my ropes, he tied them tighter. I''d break silence to sneer and set fire to him, I got my head bashed in. One morning I completely disregarded the ropes around my wrists and shoved both hands right through his chest, grabbed his spine and yanked.


    Blood all over me for the I don''t know what time, I snapped my ropes and leapt up onto his horse and took off from the camp at a full gallop. I made sure to not go either back the way we had come, nor did I take easy paths, intent as I was on losing him and knowing that I really didn''t have much time to do so. I''d already killed him four times, and attempted it more times than I could count. The man just would not stay dead.


    I crossed rivers and streams, keeping to heavily forested areas to keep out of sight, though I kept glancing back over my shoulder with the feeling of being watched or followed. I wasn''t sure if it was just paranoia or if I hadn''t managed to lose the odd Roman and that he was already closing in on me. The trees scratched my skin and left me looking like I''d gotten into a fight with an angry cat, but I didn''t stop, even when night fell. I''d stolen his red cloak again, like I had the first time I''d attempted to escape, and when it got cold when the sun went down I wrapped it around myself for warmth.


    I stopped when dawn started to light the sky, and only because the horse needed to rest as I had pushed the beast to the max for almost and entire day. I tied him to a tree near a little stream where there was plenty of grass to graze and water within reach, and I myself climbed up into the tree to keep out of sight. I was twenty feet up into the huge maple tree, and I reached up to grasp the next branch, only my hand grabbed hold of something that wasn''t wood. I looked up to see an ankle wrapped in my hand. My eyes turned up further to see HIM smirking down at me and looking like I had not ripped his spine out through his chest and I think my heart stopped for a moment. His relaxation and good humor was only on the surface. I let go of his ankle and his smirk turned dark.


    ''Looking for me~??''


    That dark purr sent my blood cold as ice and I felt ever bit of color drain out of my face right down to my toes. I couldn''t move, that is, until he did, starting down the tree at me. I lost my death grip on the branch I''d been holding and my bare foot slipped on some moss and out of the tree I fell. Down twenty feet to land on my back over a gnarled fallen branch, a large knot hitting on my spine and snapping it as I screamed in agony before sliding onto the soft bedding of dead leaves at the foot of the tree. My spine, like my skull and the more severe wounds I had received since being set upon what seemed like ages ago now, pieced back together slowly, healing without a trace as I lay paralyzed, my entire body numb and agonized and limp as a result.


    I wasn''t even done healing when I was picked up roughly, which earned another agonized and blood curdling scream to tear from my throat and leave me completely breathless, The shattered pieces of my spine pressed against and aggravated as I screamed until I had no voice left. I was thrown down like a saddlebag and I just lay there, trying to breathe through my now sore from screaming throat. I watched him bring his horse into the small camp with pain glazed eyes as my spine snapped and pieced back together. He said nothing, but sat down and just looked at me like I was a child, or some bug he might like to squash. Worse, he looked almost sympathetic at the same time. Like he wished he could put me out of my misery.


    We stayed in the camp all day. I wasn''t tied up, but he didn''t leave eye shot either. I could only lay there, paralyzed and numb and barely able to breath. My throat was raw and dry from screaming and gasping for breath and becoming painful as the day wore on. When I started to have trouble breathing, choking on air, I was given water, which I choked on as well but managed to get down.


    The day wore on into night, and a fire was lit near enough to me that I was kept warm with the addition of the red cloak, which was put over me like a blanket. I still had not moved, and my spine was still snapping periodically as it pieced back together slowly and my nerves repaired themselves painfully. He had said nothing at all since startling me out of the tree, and I could not, nor did I want to, carry on any form of conversation with the man. I wanted him to just stay dead.


    In the morning he picked me up, put me in front of him on the horse, and once again tied my ankles to the stirrups and my hands to the pommel of the saddle before mounting up behind me and starting off at a walk. I was still limp and unable to move for the most part, my nerves and muscles still healing the damage from a fall that would have killed a human being in that day and age. Sitting up was agony for me, and the horse''s gait only made things worse. By the time night settled in I was gasping again for breath. I was set down in soft grass, surprisingly gently and not what I had expected, and once more given water to sooth my parched throat.


    He moved his cloak, which had been kept wrapped around me during the day, and made to apparently check my back, where there was a mottled black and blood blistered bruise where the branch knot had shattered my spine. He placed a finger on it and my body jerked painfully, both because his skin was hotter than my own, and because he had touched a damaged nerve. He lay me on my stomach and covered me with the cloak once more before making a fire. We had passed several small towns this day, and apparently I had only aided in getting to Rome, as he said that we would get there the next day before dusk.


    And so we did. By mid-afternoon we passed through the gates into the busy thoroughfare. He kept me completely covered with his cloak when outside of the military''s headquarters so that I was not seen. I still had no voice from the pain I had suffered, but I was now able to move and my spine, though still bruised and sore, was no longer broken or damaged. He stopped his horse outside of a building that was strange, it was small, and inside the doorway was pitch black aside from a single torch that was set in a sconce just inside the door.


    He untied me from the saddle and set me on the ground. I didn''t even bother to run now; it was much too late for that with people and Legionnaires every way I turned. He made to grab my upper arm and though I flinched to do so, I ripped out of his grip. ''I can walk.'' The statement had no substance, sounding more like a vehement whisper than the venomous defiance I felt. It was still hard, but I walked ahead of him. The little building held only a set of stairs leading down, and the male took the torch from its sconce and told me to go down.


    Each and every step was agony for me. My brother was dead, my family was scattered to the four winds, and I was in Rome, the last place on the planet I wanted to be. The Romans had hunted us for years. Now, for me, the hunt was over. Like a tiger in a cage I walked the steps down into the underground prison, where two guards immediately tried to grab hold of me because I was unbound. I killed them both and sagged from the effort and energy it took. My captor grabbed the back of my neck and half dragged me to some room in the very back that had an iron door with no windows or anything other than a couple of air shafts up to the surface. He pushed me into the room, removing his cloak from me as he did so, and shut the door. A moment later I heard the bang of an iron timber being slid into place to bolt the door.

 Imprisoned

    In those first few decades that I was imprisoned in the underground Roman prison, things went as normal for me as a prisoner as was possible. They tried to execute me twelve times in twelve different ways and failed. Any time anyone came into my cell for any reason I killed them, after a while they started to send more than just a single Legionnaire or two because I kept getting out of my cell. Food was sparse and stale or rotten, only the water was fresh. After forty years of my killing a handful of Legionnaires every day, whomever was in charge at the time was smart enough to have me chained up to the back wall of my cell.


    When they did, it was the first time since the day he had brought me in that I saw that awful, strange Roman who had brought me in. He hadn''t aged or changed even the tiniest bit in forty years, just as I hadn''t. Twelve Legionnaires stood outside the door and bolted it once he was inside my cell to make sure that if I killed him I would not get out again. I fought him when he grabbed me, but because of the bad food that I had stopped eating, I was not nearly as strong as I had been when he''d brought me in. I was stronger than the humans, but this male I was no match for now. The chains were deep set into the stone back wall of my cell, and he forced my hands into them and shackled me. I was able to move well enough, but I could not get within five feet of the cell door.


    I spent another ten years in such a condition, slowly weakening from lack of good food and light and fresh air until another General came into power and when learning of me and how long I had been there and that nothing could kill or really harm me, told those in his command that I should be put to use and kept a complete secret. I heard this from the first that came into my cell that over powered me, having to hit my head on the wall to stop me from fighting him before he used me.


    The public had forgotten my existence already, and the Legionnaires that ''put me to use'' never said anything to anyone else. I was beaten daily then, because I fought them but was too weak by then to really do much damage.


    Sixty more years went by as such as I let my mind slip into a state of non-awareness, a detachment from the pain I felt in my body from these callous men shoving rotten and stale food down my throat to force meager nourishment into me so that they might abuse me further. I wished I could die and be rid of the misery that my life had become. The only relief I found was rarely, and only now that my mind has cleared of all haze and fog over this time do I know what, or rather who it was that provided this relief. Each day, as I slipped further away from any sort of physical feeling or mental awareness, I would vaguely hear my cell door open and close again, they never bothered bolting it anymore, though I remained chained to the wall, and I would hear as if through a fog, the sound of a cloth being rung out into a bowl. The sound alone would bring a flood of relief into my being.


    My clothes, you see, had been ruined and torn away from me a long time before, and nothing had been provided for me since. This sense of relief was tied to the presence of the person they sent in, and the cold, wet cloth that was drawn over my bruised, abrased and sometimes bleeding flesh at first made me want to cry. When it first started and I was still aware of things, though I had forgotten after a time, was that the person they always sent in with this blissful cool fresh water was the very male who was responsible for me being locked in this cell and being put through this agony and torture and ruin.


    I had expected the same of him that he had always given and what the other Legionnaires doled out; harsh treatment, rough, crude and condescending words, selfish thought of themselves and no care at all that I was a person. I turned out to be very wrong. This male I could no more predict than I could the weather or the color of the sky I could not see. The cloth was soft on my tender and sore skin, washing away the blood, dirt, grime and bodily fluids of others that I did not have the strength any longer to use the dirt of the floor to get off myself. The motions were slow, gentle in nature and seemed almost caring.


    He never said anything, I do not even know if he ever looked at me really, my eyes after a measure of time became unfocused and blind in my increasingly catatonic state. In the beginning, I would beg that I be released and set free of the torture and ruin and shame I was being subjected to, or that he kill me. He never answered me, never said anything. At first to me it seemed to be cruel, the silence, and it would make me cry when I was alone again. But as time went on and even the nights were not left to me to recover, this was the only silence I received, and it became a blessing to me and in later years, it was the only solace I had, when this male came in to silently care for my wounds and clean me away of the day''s filth.


    * * *


    Years went by as I became increasingly catatonic, unaware of what was happening around me. I remained chained to the wall, though I no longer fought the Legionnaires that came in and beat me, used me, and shoved rotting meat and bread down my throat. The only thing I seemed to be aware of was that presence that came over me daily; that quiet, soothing feeling of relief that would come over me that coincided with the silence that came when that strange male would come to wash me every evening when everyone had gone.


    However, there was one year that I came out of my catatonic state for a few months. The constant use and abuse I went through daily, the lack of care and the drugging, chained to a wall naked for the entertainment and use of the higher ranking had taken my sense of self. I knew nothing of what had begun, I don''t think I even noticed when the abuse became more violent and mean spirited. I just know it happened. Through the haze of drug sedation and mindlessness that had become my days uncounted for about a hundred years, I began to feel strange. I was too drugged and careless to be able to figure out anything.


    I remember speaking to that male who came each evening, but I know not anything that I said. The ''food'' came a little more often afterwards however, and the chains on the wall were taken away so that I could lie down on the soft dirt floor of the cell I was kept in. I laid there between times of being force fed and used, beaten and, once more a few soldiers tried to kill me.


    An indeterminable amount of time later, a great deal of pain shook me from my mindless catatonic state. Though I was still drugged daily and I knew not why I was in such pain, as I could not see very well through the haze, the pain cleared my mind just enough.


    For three days I screamed, though no one came. No water, not even the rotted meat and stale bread was brought to me. All I had was this pain and pressure that had me screaming and writhing. I thought perhaps that I had been poisoned. This pain was similar to the pain of when I had been poisoned before. The dirt floor was soaked in I didn''t know what. The longer no one came into my cell, the clearer my mind became. I slowly became aware of someone outside my cell door, keeping anyone and everyone away. My screams for release from this pain went unanswered.


    Finally, in the deep of night of the third day of this agony and unto a clear mind,small screams that were not my own echoed in my cell. I was drenched in sweat, blood and bodily fluids of an unidentified sort, but in my weakened arms I held a very small little boy; the source of the new noise.


    Finally the cell door opened and I looked up to see the male that had put me here in this cell a hundred years ago. He had not changed or aged a day from then. He held cloths and a basin of warm water as he used his foot to close the cell door. He cleaned my legs, the same sort of gentleness that had come daily to me in my mindlessness. I stared at him, holding my son close to me and not letting him touch my child. Even when he moved to clean the blood and mucus off the baby I would not, baring my teeth and backing away from him. The male sighed and held out a clean cloth to me. I looked at it for a moment before slowly reaching out to take it. I cleaned off my son, that male kneeling as he watched me. I knew nothing of how long ago or who it was that had gotten me pregnant, and to me it didn''t matter.


    As I cleaned him, my son opened eyes that were a milky shade of my own emerald. My child was blind. Why?? I did not know. And I truly did not care. Not the circumstances that he had been born in, nor the defection of his sight could make me think the less of this, my child.


    It was the only thing I had really ever wanted in my life; to have a family of my own. Being hunted and being a higher being than that of the rest of the world had made that impossible. I had given up on having a husband or a family. If I was to rot the rest of my life in this cell, at least I now had one of the two things that I had wanted since I was a child.


    I had not noticed the tears running down my face, or the fact that I was holding my son close, nor that that strange male was still there watching me cry in happiness over a child of rape. I looked up, flinching back a little bit with my son as the male stood up, picked up the soiled cloths and the pink tinted basin of water and leave the cell, bolting the lock behind him once again and leaving me alone with my son. There were a couple of dry and clean cloths left on the dirt floor, and I picked them up and wrapped my son in them to keep him warm.


    Thankfully the baby would not go hungry, even if I did, and I fed him, leaning against one of the walls of the cell, where the both of us fell asleep, I cradling my son in my arms with the light of a single torch coming through the small opening in the cell door that allowed someone to look in.


    Some time after I had fallen asleep, I vaguely heard the cell door open again. I woke to the feeling of something being gently taken out of my arms. I opened my eyes to see that male, fully dressed and with a torch in hand, lifting my son into his arms as he stood once more. He made the mistake of turning his back on me. I lurched to my feet with a weak snarl and lunged at him. I wasn''t going to let my child be taken from me too, not when everything else had been.


    The hand that held the torch hit the side of my head and knocked me back against the wall, but I wasn''t going to give up. I growled more fiercely and lunged once more. I made it out of the cell this time as he walked away with my son. He yelled one word in Latin and four guards came out of seemingly nowhere and grabbed me. I managed to kill two of them and break free of the other two, yelling now, for the first time in Latin since I had been captured, for my son to be returned to me.


    More guards appeared from the barracks above ground and grabbed me as I screamed, begged and pleaded for my son to be given back. The male never even looked at me, never turned back to make eye contact with me as I cried and struggled against the guards, weak from neglect, drugs, abuse and child birth, unable to break free now as I cried and begged for my child. I struggled until I heard the door to the city above bang shut and be bolted. When it did, I fell to my knees, tears streaming down my face as I gave up and was dragged back to my cell and thrown to the floor. The chains were put on me once more, and I could no longer lie down. My head hung down, and when I was drugged again, I did not fight it.


    There was nothing to fight for any longer. My brother was dead this past hundred years, and the rest of my family was in hiding, possibly dead, or captured as I was somewhere else. I would spend the rest of my life in this cell.


    Things returned to their former form of normalcy the next day. I would be drugged, force fed, beaten and used with no thought to my well-being. To these men, I was no more than a beast, a freak of nature to do with as they pleased when they pleased. Weeks turned into months, which turned to years, and I slowly fell back into a catatonic state as I hung limp against the wall of my cell, my only solace once more being the evenings when I would be washed gently by that presence that had no face or voice, only that soothing gentility that, now, made me cry, even catatonic as I was.


    * * *


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    Time went by the same as it had since I had had my son taken from me the night he was born. I was used, beaten, and drugged to keep me complacent and weak. Then suddenly there was no one coming. In eighty five years, there had been someone, or multiple someones using me daily.


    I had now been imprisoned for a hundred thirty-five years, and another new General had come into command of the Roman armies. Even now I do not know what his name was, I simply call him ¡®The Roman¡¯. He was a cruel male, and the things he did to me made me long for the abuse and use of former days.


    For days, no one came to my cell, no drugs, no food, no water, not even that male who washed me came. A week passed by before the door opened and the chains were harshly taken off me and I was dragged from the cell that I had resigned myself into calling my home. I was taken above ground for the first time since I had been imprisoned, and the bright sunlight was painful for my eyes now only accustomed to torchlight. I was taken only a very short distance by the two Legionnaires that held me, into what looked like a stone house, but was really the General¡¯s office. It was bright, the windows flooded in sunshine that hurt my eyes.


    I was thrown to the floor of the office in front of the desk of the Roman.


    ¡°Go.¡± Said a voice I had never heard as I tried weakly to push myself up onto my elbows on the dirt floor. I heard the door close as my eyes slowly adjusted to the light, and I heard someone get up. The swish of a heavy roman cloak and the thump of those sandals told me that this male was coming around the big desk. A few seconds later I saw feet and the end of the blood red cloak.


    The male knelt down and grabbed my chin harshly in his big hand, yanking my head up so he would see my sunken face in the light. I haven¡¯t any idea what I looked like to him. He let go of me and called a name. A moment later the office door opened and a familiar scent washed over me. I looked up from the floor as the General stood once more and saw that male. He still had not aged a single day since my capture.


    I tried to get up, a low growl on my lips, remembering how he had stolen my son from me a few years ago. I was surprised to find the General shoving me back down onto the floor with his foot. It was hard, his heel purposefully dug into my spine, and after everything I had been through, I was too weak even without drugs to fight him off.


    ¡°I don¡¯t want this drugged anymore.¡± He spoke in Latin. ¡°And no one is to touch it anymore either. It¡¯s mine.¡±


    For a moment I was relieved, I thought perhaps that I would be moved out of the prison and given good food and be brought back to health before being released finally. But nothing of the sort was said, and then the General said I was his, and the words sent a chill through my blood. He didn¡¯t even refer to me as a person, but rather like I was a beast with no feelings or soul. The male who had stolen my son, there was a flash behind his eyes for a split moment that looked quite like rage, but was gone before I could identify it. He acquiesced to the General''s orders and again when placed as guard to my cell. My care was placed in his hands as well, and I had a feeling that my state would decrease further now.


    I was picked up harshly by the male when the General took his foot off my spine and was no longer holding me down. I was no match to even try to get away, I couldn¡¯t even really walk very well. The door closed behind us and I was on my way back to my cell.


    ¡°Can¡¯t you just let me go?? I can disappear¡­Just get me out of the city..¡± My voice was barely audible from lack of use, and it took a great deal out of me to speak. But I wasted my breath as I stumbled along with this ever so strange Roman who was not a Roman. He ignored me.


    I was brought back into the dark of the underground prison and back to where my cell was in the very back. He opened the door and I spoke again. ¡°Just kill me then.. I know you can¡­ That would be better than this living death..¡± There were tears in my near nonexistent voice now. I didn¡¯t want to go back into that dark, dank cell.


    The male turned me roughly around to face him, a strange expression on his face, almost like it pained him to see me, begging for death. But again it was gone before I could really identify it, and he shoved me into my cell and swung the door shut with a loud bang as I landed hard on the floor. I looked up at the door, hearing the muffled voices of orders being given. I was alone, and I would not be given a release from this torture and pain. I cried. I had lost absolutely everything; my family, my dignity, my strength, my son, I had become no more than a shell of a being who could not die. I dragged myself into a corner of my cell, where the dirt was softest, and curled up on the floor to pass out.


    Several hours later, I didn¡¯t hear the cell door open, or hear the tin plate being set down, or the ceramic pitcher with it. I didn¡¯t hear the door close once more. I awoke, with a clear mind, to find a torch lit in my cell to give me light for once, and there was fresh fruit and water sitting on the floor near me. For me to eat. At my own pace. Bright colors. The bread was almost fresh. And I was afraid to eat it. The food I had been forced to eat up until then had been sick and full of the sedation drugs. I slowly moved towards the plate and pitcher. Everything smelled fresh, and the water was clean and clear in the light of the torch.


    I tried to determine whether or not to eat it, I had never been given good food before in this place, why start now?? But then I remembered the General¡¯s orders. No more drugs. The bread was soft when I picked it up. There were grapes and a small chunk of cheese along with the bread and water, not a speck of rotted meat anywhere. Taking one bite lead to another, and to another. It was heaven compared to the food I had been forced to eat before, it made me hungry but satisfied at the same time.


    When it was all gone, I took what was left of the water into my softer corner, away from the chains I was not in, and sat in the corner. I fell asleep once more, afraid it was a one time thing.


    I woke the next morning, surprised to have been bathed in the night. The pitcher of water was gone from my side, but there was a new plate and a new pitcher in my cell. On it was a bright red apple, bread and cheese, all fresh. I ate all of it.


    This went on for days, and there was always something new and fresh for me to eat when the food came, always brought by that male himself, the one who was now in charge of me. No one came to beat me, drug me, use me, or force feed me. My spirits lifted a little bit as this went on for months as I healed from the bruises and injuries and broken bones of the Legionnaires.


    These good things were for an ulterior motive however, as I found out. I was eating a bit of melon with my bread and cheese on this day, it was the midday meal. My cell door opened, no longer bolted due to a guard being there constantly that I could not match. While good food had revived my spirits a little, I was not strong.


    In the torch lit doorway was the General. Never had any previous general come to my cell. I didn¡¯t like this male. Less than I liked the ones who had beaten and used me. Behind him stood the male he had put in charge of me.


    The Roman strode into my cell and knelt down, taking my slice of melon away and tossing it away into the dirt. Once again he grabbed my chin harshly and forced me to look at him.


    ¡°It¡¯s making progress. Good. For now I want to assess it. Take it up to my office. Then leave and we are not to be disturbed.¡± The Roman stood and strode out of my cell, leaving my guard to come in and pull me to my feet to follow behind.


    Assess?? I didn¡¯t like this. I had a very bad feeling.


    Left alone with the Roman in his office with the door bolted from the inside, I was made to stand before him, his grip on my arm was hard and bruising. He forced me to turn, like I was some piece of game to be inspected before roasting. I tried to pull out of his grip, croaking out that he was hurting me, and I was shoved into the stone wall of the office between two windows. I couldn¡¯t yell. The next moment he was pressed up against me and pressing my back hard into the uneven stone wall.


    ¡°You say nothing. You are nothing. You are a toy, made for no more than my pleasure. To do with as I please.¡±


    Later, my guard, that male who first brought me to the prison, had to carry me back and bathe me. He was gentle, I was bruised and had small cuts from where I was hit. He cleaned away the Roman¡¯s fluids from my legs, along with the blood that was my own. When he finished, he walked out, leaving the door open. I couldn¡¯t move to get away. He came back, the fresh food, a pitcher of what smelled like ice cold water, and surprisingly a blanket in his arms. I lay on my side in my soft corner, just watching him as he set the plate with two pears, a slightly larger chunk of cheese, and slightly steaming bread, along with the pitcher of water, down on the floor in front of me before he shook out the blanket and covered me with it. He said nothing, as always, and left, closing the door behind him.


    This was to become the norm for me. I was taken to the Roman¡¯s office every afternoon, where he would whisper foul things into my ear while he abused and used me. Then I would be carried back to my cell, cleaned and fed. The good food and water and now the blanket were the price I paid for this new and worse torture. To know I was being kept well just to be abused.


    * * *


    For fifteen years I endured this new General. Daily whispers of my worthlessness washed away what little hope I had had until I was nothing but a husk. I still would scream in pain or beg to be killed, release was only in death now, but I gave up trying to fight back. I resigned to it, there was nothing I could do and no one who would help me, and so I simply let it happen.


    Even when I stopped fighting back, the abuse didn¡¯t stop, it only got more violent. And the words whispered became ever crueler.


    I ate because if I didn¡¯t I was beaten, I slept because if I didn¡¯t I was in pain from the beatings. My insides hurt constantly, more than they had when I had been in a drugged stupor trying to deliver my lost son. I was ruined. I got weaker the longer I was in this circumstance, until my guard had to help me eat so I would not be abused for that. There was almost always that pained and enraged expression on his face, and I thought that it was because I was a nuisance. I wished he would just let me die, maybe if I didn¡¯t eat long enough the Roman would beat me to death and I would be free.


    Fifteen years went by in this manner.


    There was one night that after being carried back to my cell, bathed and fed, I was lying there, staring into the torch lit wall with unfocused eyes. I heard something outside my cell door. It didn¡¯t matter to me any longer what it might be. After what was and indeterminable amount of time, my cell door opened slowly and I shifted my eyes to look up at what I thought was my guard.


    The familiar silhouette was not my guard, or any Roman for that matter. It was my eldest brother. The one who had not died when I was captured a hundred fifty years prior. I had been found. It was dead silent outside my cell now as I weakly lifted my head to look at him better as I spoke his name. I didn¡¯t believe it was really him. He heard me, and came into the cell to kneel beside me, ripping off his cloak to wrap me in so that my bare, bruised and cut body was covered better.


    ¡°Gods! What have they done to you¡­ Come on. We¡¯re getting out of here now.¡±


    He helped me stand, and it began to sink in that my guard was nowhere to be found, and that every other Legionnaire in the prison was lying dead on the floor. I was going to be free!


    Suddenly I was more able to stand. I felt stronger. I followed beside my brother out of my cell and through the prison, stepping over several dead guards lying in pools of their own blood. I took a chord from one of them to tie my brother¡¯s cloak around my waist and ripped up the one side so that my legs were free. At the above ground entrance to the prison I took the sword of one of the dead sentry guards. Looking at the blade I felt most of my strength flood into me. I was really going to be free. I looked at my brother.


    ¡°I¡¯ll meet you at dawn outside the city. I have some unfinished business to take care of.¡± I spoke my home language, my tone was low, steady, and dark. My brother seemed to understand, and he nodded before disappearing in the dark.


    And I was alone. The wind was cool and gentle on my pale face and rustled the leaves on the trees nearby. I closed my eyes and turned my face into it. It was a heavenly experience. It had been one hundred-fifty years since I had felt the wind on my face.


    After a quiet moment, I opened my eyes and slunk down a filthy alley, a torch in one hand and my stolen sword in the other. I would have my revenge.


    Any Legionnaire I found on patrol was gutted, decapitated, run through, slain unceremoniously where he stood and left lying on the street. As I passed, I told any and all people to leave the city and set fire to their homes, each and every one of them. Rome would remember me. I would raise it to the ground and destroy it. As it had destroyed me.


    I spent hours doing this. It was hot, and the streets became lit as if by daylight, a garish horror that was more satisfying than anything I had felt in all my life. The fires lit my way to the main gate of the city, and when I got there a figure barred my path.


    I came to a slow stop perhaps fifteen feet away from him, the sword in my hand relaxed with the tip in the dirt. It was the General. He was standing there in the gateway without anything covering his chest. He was smiling at me. The very same smile that he had used when whispering in my ear all the times he used, beat and ruined me for the past fifteen years.


    I didn¡¯t move. I stared back at him, an expression of wary hate in my eyes and an immovable set to my face. I wasn¡¯t going to back down. I was covered in dirt, soot, sweat and blood. I had superficial cuts on my arms and a couple on my legs. I could feel my muscles coiling to spring and I let go of the sword in my hands as I leapt forward with a yell. I would kill him with my bare hands. I wanted to feel the life¡¯s breath drain out of him and see that smile fall from his face. I didn¡¯t see the sword in his hand until I was upon him. My hands went to close around his throat and I instead screamed as the blade cut across my lower abdomen.


    This wasn¡¯t anything superficial. It was deep and it bled a great deal. I stumbled backwards several steps, hunching over and holding my stomach. I stared at him as he stepped slowly towards me in a circular motion, like a predator taking its time with its prey.


    ¡°So,¡± he said, sounding amused. ¡°Who let you out? That bleeding heart that feeds you?¡± He chuckled, like he found this all highly amusing. I stood standing there, holding my wound and saying nothing. I watched his every move as he circled me.


    ¡°Are you going to just stand there panting like a whore or are you going to come at me already? I¡¯m tired of you, you¡¯ve outlived your value.¡±


    I snarled at him then. I was sick and tired of hearing him tell me how worthless I was and that the only thing I was good for was to be used and tossed aside.


    I bent down and picked up the sword in the dirt at my feet, adrenaline keeping the pain of my wound from hurting very much. I looked down at it, covered in blood, grit and dirt, the metal shining with the light of the many spreading fires behind me. Anger the likes of which I had never known in my life welled up inside me as I heard the fires blazing behind me. My grip tightened on the sword handle and I slowly lifted my face to look at the Roman. He was no more than a cruel, pitiful human.


    He laughed at me, and my anger sparked heavy. I was against him, my stolen sword through his gut almost before I knew it, and certainly before he did. A dark, thoroughly satisfied smirk spread across my face at the look of surprise on his now slightly wrinkled face.


    ¡°You are the one who is worthless.¡± I said to him in a low, dark voice before I yanked the sword up, cutting through the bottom of his rib cage so that he was slit from navel all the way up through his heart. I pulled the sword slowly from his body as his blood got on my hands, arms and my brother¡¯s cloak that I was wearing.


    Letting him drop, I looked down at him, dying at my feet. I stepped over him and stopped walking just outside the gate, looking back at the chaos and destruction that I had wrought. Rome would remember me. I walked away, limping only slightly, as the pain from my wound was now kicking in.


    In the dark, smoke filled light of dawn, I met my brother by the ridge where he had a horse waiting for me. I told him nothing of my wound or how I¡¯d gotten it and said nothing as I swung painfully up into the saddle of my horse. The magnificent black stallion, my brother said, was given to him when the fires started by the prison for him to get out of the city.


    I listened to him speak, describing the male in a tattered cloak, having an odd sort of accent, and not seeming to care that the entire city was going up in flames. I found this odd as my brother swung up into his horse beside me.


    Something clicked in my head and I looked around as my brother started off at a trot, away from the carnage that I had created. I heard a snorting sound and looked up to the top of the ridge. Sitting on a horse, wrapped in a tattered brown cloak, was that same un-aging male that had been my caretaker.


    I stared up at him, knowing that it would be useless to try and kill him, but also not entirely wanting to. I knew that the horse I sat on was his while he stared back down at me. He gave a single nod in acknowledgment, before turning his horse and riding away from the edge of the ridge. I watched him go, even after he¡¯d disappeared, as there was something highly familiar, but my brother calling my name broke my train of thought. I kicked the male¡¯s horse, and set off to catch up to my brother who waited for me a little way ahead.


    We set off together finally, and I didn¡¯t look back at the city that had destroyed everything for me. I was free, and I would never go back.

 Freedom and Purpose

    When we got to a place that seemed safe to camp, my brother got me off the gifted stallion. We seemed to be near a little village miles away from Rome, though one could still see the fires in the mid-morning sky and smell the smoke of the burning city. He''d noticed my pallor and my tight expression from effort not to grimace every time the horse took a step. He made a fire, and left me beside it to go into town.


    I must have fallen asleep after I laid down beside the fire an hour after he left, because I woke to him shaking me, and a concerned expression on his darker face. He looked so like our father in so many ways that I slapped him away before my sleep fogged mind could remember that my father had been dead for well over a thousand years now. I sat up, with difficulty, and apologized. He''d brought back supplies that were already unloaded form his horse; food, bandages, clothes for me rather than the tattered red cloak and rope holding it to my wounded body, herb''s to soak the bandages in that would help with healing. I might heal faster than a human, but it seemed only wounds that would cause instantaneous death warranted instant healing from the Gods.


    With my time in Rome, I didn''t want male hands within a hundred paces of me, not even helping ones, and when my brother came over after boiling water and putting the herbs in it, followed by bandages, to untie the rope holding his cloak in place and I knocked him over. I knew he was just trying to help, but with everything that I had been through in the last hundred-fifty years, I just could not willingly let anyone near me. He tried again, saying he needed to see so he could help, and I fought him, to the point he had to pin me down while I still struggled. He was stronger than I was currently because of my wounded state leaving me weaker than I had been the night before.


    My brother pinned my legs with his and forced my arms up with one hand, making me yell with pain as it stretched out the gash in my abdomen. I was too weak to use any abilities to get him off me, and it hurt too much to struggle, so my brother untied the rope, that he only then noticed was slashed and darker in the area around the hole. He opened the cloak and the hand that gripped my wrists lessened its grip before letting go entirely, getting up off me as well.


    Stretching me out hurt so badly I could barely breathe, but my brother was much gentler at seeing how serious I was injured. I hadn''t even thought it was as bad as it really was. I hadn''t looked at it, hadn''t been able to take the time, intent on getting as far away as I could as quickly as I could. I stayed on my back, unable to sit up at the moment, and my brother went to the piles of supplies he''d brought back from the village and came back to me with needle and thread and a bottle of honey. For anyone who doesn''t know, in those days, we used honey for wound treatment.


    My brother threaded the needle, but got up again and came back with both a waterskin as well as a bottle of drink. He sat down beside me again and pulled away the dirty, tattered cloak I''d been using for clothing since the night before. I was still bleeding, though it wasn''t abundantly, more like a slow oozing than anything else, what with the riding keeping the wound from closing.


    I laid still as I could, and didn''t once look at what he was doing. That was worse than looking at the giant gash in my abdomen, seeing him fixing it as he was. I could feel him making the small stitches and pulling my flesh back together again, though at some point I lost consciousness, because the next thing I knew, he was done with it, and was shaking me and softly calling my name. He had stitched me up fully and wrapped my abdomen in the fresh bandages and I could tell he''d put honey and herbs on it after he had stitched the wound shut.


    My brother was trying to wake me, not only to check on me, but to help me into clothes as well. He got me sat up, and I was likely whiter than a sheet the pain was so terrible. I wondered why other wounds had healed almost instantly while this one was not. Was it because it wasn''t life threatening? It made no sense to me in the least. I knew nothing about what I was then, even after almost two thousand years of being alive.


    Once I''d been helped into the clothes my brother had brought, he handed me an entire loaf of honeyed bread that had been fresh when he''d bought it. He went to stoke up the fire for cooking and I leaned back against a saddle while he did, and picked at the bread until he brought me over some of the hot food for me to eat.


    * * *


    It took weeks for my wound to heal, during which I stayed with my brother, who helped when he could about keeping bandages clean and checking his stitch work. I healed quicker than a human ever could, but still much slower than I had with the death blows I had received so many times at the hands of now dead Romans. News of the burning of Rome spread as quickly as the fire I''d set, and I found out that the fires had burned for six days. But it wasn''t truth that was being told. Who would believe that a single, weak non human female could have brought the capital of the greatest empire in the world to its knees? No one. Romans who had survived were saying that either the current emperor Nero, others said it was the Christians who had set the fires. And with how many Legionnaires had died, and the extent of the destruction, it was the easiest thing to believe. So my revenge was covered up.


    The good thing, was that it had been so long since my capture that no one could tell that I was someone of interest. I could go into towns again. I no longer had to hide myself in the wilds, though I had to hide what I was in order to stay safe. I no longer had to bath in the frigid waters or sleep on the ground. I hadn''t slept in a bed for almost six hundred years, and once I was settled comfortably in a room at an inn in a random town, settled in comfort for the first time in ages and by myself, I cried.


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    The loss of my brother, whom I had been supposed to protect, my sister I hadn''t heard from who hated me, my cousins were gone who knew where, the theft of my blind son, the abuse of the Roman general I had killed. Numbness crept over me after a while. I can''t say that it was just a lack of emotion, but I can''t say that I could feel anything either. My brother brought food up from the common room downstairs, but he mostly let me alone. He seemed to know that I needed it. He was the same as me after all. I''d made him an Ancient after he had come back from battle dying.


    * * *


    That night, I was sitting in the window of my room at the inn, and dosing as best I could. I still hadn''t gotten used to sleeping in a bed again. It was too soft, and I found I couldn''t sleep. So I slept in the windows or on the floor.


    This night, in my light, fitful sleep, it wasn''t the usual visions of fire or reliving the torture of the last two centuries, but odd, foggy visions of an island I''d never been to before, and a temple on the island. Inside the temple that I wandered through was a tall, too tall to be human, man with brown hair and golden eyes. He smiled at me, and when he spoke I knew his voice as the very same one who had spoken to me the day of my capture.


    ''You have a job to do child. Come to Pilak. To my mother''s temple. We will find you there.''


    I had to ask someone in the morning where exactly I was, as I hadn''t been paying attention to where we had been going for the last several weeks. My brother had been taking me out of Rome and headed North, so I continued that route to get out of the peninsula to head East towards what was my land of birth and hadn''t seen in almost five hundred years.


    It took me months, and it was odd being able to go into towns again. I still had to steal food and clothes, but it was more effective to steal coin so that I could buy what I needed. I was hearing news of Rome still, and how the city was trying to rebuild with the empire, but I also knew that the ''empire'' would never be the same after what I''d done.


    I was a calm person, though I still had trouble sleeping, and was still having the visions of Pilak, though now they seemed to just be reminders of what I was supposed to be doing now. I would wake calm, and it was better than the night terrors I had of my son being stolen and the torture and use I went through. I headed east through Europe, and through part of Asia, and took a ship across and back into Egypt.


    Nothing was the same. Romans were everywhere now. I was relieved to find that the religion had survived, it was busier than I remembered though. Once in Egypt I took my stallion and headed south toward Pilak in the Upper Kingdom that I had helped to acquire before the Romans had taken over. Towns were more frequent and busier than the last time that I had seen these places. I had no reason to rush, but I didn''t simply sight see either. I stayed in inns to keep care for the horse and for the quiet and niceness of being able to have a real meal myself rather than simple bread and cheese on the road.


    People saw me, dressed as I did, with my red hair and pale skin, and I got stopped often by Romans demanding my identity. I would lie and talk my way out of who I was. And by the time I got to southern Egypt I was hearing rumors of myself at the inns told of some foreign dignitary, even royalty. And the description of me was so accurate that I began to get recognized. I no longer had to steal money to pay for the inn or for my food or for my horse, it was simply given.


    Having people of my homeland treat me as I had originally been treated once my father had let me out of the archives was refreshing, but I didn''t expect it, nor did I expect it to last. And I think things were given to me because of my face. One day when I had bathed from hot water that had been brought to me, I looked in a mirror and saw that I had a perpetually dark, murderous, wary look in my expression, and a hunted look in my eyes. I looked like a caged and abused animal. I was too thin, though I had gained weight and strength since my escape from Rome and I could only imagine what I had looked like to my brother.


    I continued south toward the temple island of Pilak, which would be known in modern times as Philae as the Greeks called it. It was the time of year when the Nile was high, before the dry season when the drying river would expose the silt that grew the crops. I stopped in the town closest, and decided to wait until night when there wouldn''t be anyone but the priests there at the temple, so I got myself a meal at an inn and put my horse into a stable for the night.


    After the city around the temple grew quiet, I got up and left my room in the inn and headed silently through the mostly empty streets towards the river. There was no way for me to have taken my horse across, and I would have to swim it and hope crocodiles were sleeping and not hunting this time of day. I had known people in the past who had made that mistake and lost their lives.


    The river was still, not even a boat gliding on the water. I could just see the temple on the island in the middle of the river, torches burning and lighting everything, but it was going to be a long swim. I waded into the water up to my waist, keeping my eyes out for anything moving in the water. I bent my knees and pushed forward so that there would be no splash, but to just begin to glide my way into the deeper waters.


    I kept an eye out for anything, especially when I stopped moving to tread water and take a rest. It was a long way to the island. Now and then I caught sight of something moving lazily in the water, ripples that weren''t my own, but they always moved away when I stopped and simply floated where I was.


    I finally got within several yards of the shore when I stopped the last time. There was just fifty more feet to go. I stopped to tread water and catch my breath, looking around as I have been to make sure that I was safe. There was a huge movement in the water, and I stopped moving, floating in place, and I hoped it was just another crocodile and that it hadn''t noticed me. But what happened was very, very different and should have been impossible to happen. I saw what looked like an odd triangle come up out of the water, and then another, quite a bit of distance away. Both were moving in sync, and both were coming towards me.


    There had never been an instance of a shark in the Nile, not this far away from the sea. And here I was, nearly to the shore of my destination, and suddenly there was one, immense in size, coming towards me and gaining speed. I shot into movement, trying to make it to shore, but fish swim much faster than people do, and this one was bigger than any I had ever heard of. It rose up as it got to me, and I planted one foot on each lip as it tried to get my legs in its mouth, and it pushed me through the water, though my feet did catch on stray teeth and I came all too close to losing the bottom half of my body to this beast''s mission of a meal. Luckily for me, he was pushing me toward the shore, and I hit the bottom as it rose up to make the shallows at the shore of the island. The enormous shark flipped me up and out of the water entirely and beached itself with me just out of reach while it thrashed and flopped it''s way backwards to try and get back into the river.


    I was shaking all over and couldn''t move from where I was while the shark tore up the sand and made noise while I lay just out of reach. The beast somehow managed to get itself back into the river before it drowned, and silence fell so that all I could hear was the river lapping at the shore. I could hear whispers that didn''t seem to come from any one place, and I could feel the power this place held. After so many months of travel and near death experiences, I had finally made it to the temple island of Pilak.

 Pilak(Philae)

    I lay on the beach on the island, exhausted and slowly healing from the tears on my feet from the shark''s teeth, and listened to the river and the wind. I don''t know how long I lay there for, it felt like hours. I thought I heard my name, and I groaned as I rolled onto my side towards the temple and the torchlight.


    I saw two forms, one taller than the other. I knew somehow that they were waiting for me, and I moved, getting up slowly from the energy I''d spent swimming the river and dealing with nearly being eaten by a shark that should have never been there. I managed to make it to my feet, the sand cutting and grating on the tooth slashes on my feet, but I didn''t really notice it as I headed up the beach and towards the temple that was always lit by torches.


    I was still catching my breath when I passed the first columns inside the high door. I saw no one around, my clothes dripping on the stone floor that was smooth and cool for my hurting feet. I left bloody footprints behind me as I headed further into the temple, towards the spaces that were used for worship of Isis, the Mother.


    I could feel the presence of humans, priests and priestesses, but I could also feel the power here, and I could also tell that there was more than first met the eye. I could feel a pull, and headed in the direction it came from. Further into the temple I went, knowing I wasn''t technically supposed to be in the inner sanctums, but at the same time as I thought that, heavy doors opened for me as I came to them, opened by priests who seemed to recognize me and were expecting me. I said nothing as I passed them, nor did they speak, but we shared a glance, and I knew somehow they knew more than I did about why I was there.


    The doors closed behind me, and before me was a large, well lit room with lit vats of oil burning, and torches along the walls line with stories and writings. Felt like I was at home here for the first time in almost a thousand years, surrounded by familiar things as I was. I felt someone heart-breakingly familiar near me and turned around to see a beautiful woman, just an inch or two shorter than I was, with the same blood red hair as mine, the same emerald green eyes as mine. The same face, the same features. The same smile and gentility I had once dreamed of having when I was very small.


    Looking into the face of my long dead mother, I couldn''t say a word. I was dirty, I was wet, I was bleeding, my clothes, so similar to her own, were torn. I had never wanted my mother to see me looking like this. She had always been clean, and she had tried to teach my sister and I the same. She even smelled the way I remembered her, always smelling of roses.


    ''My Mother..'' was the only thing I could get out. She smiled at me as she had in her mirror the night she had died, and when she spoke, it was the voice I knew so well from the only actually happy days I''d ever had.


    ''Don''t think that I''m not proud of you, or be ashamed to look at me. You''ve been through so much..''


    My mother stopped talking, and she looked as if she were trying not to cry. I couldn''t imagine what she might know, or what she had seen. She came up to me and wrapped her arms around me. She was solid, as if she had never died and been burned away. I could feel myself shaking, and my mother let me go, smiling, before looking up over me as another, much bigger hand set gently on my shoulder.


    I turned around, blinking my eyes clear, to see a man much taller than I''d ever seen towering over me. He had long black hair, golden eyes, and you could tell that the lean build was deceptive. Religion taught stories, and if I had been human, I would have still known who he was even without being able to feel the power and presence.


    He must have stood around eight feet tall, with long black hair and metallic golden eyes that had flecks of crystal blue in them. He wore the heavy jewelry that Egyptians of my childhood had worn, around the neck and around the waist that held up the soft Egyptian linen. He had golden wristbands and arm bands, as well as ankle bands and gold on his sandals. I felt like a homeless street urchin standing before him, which, looking back, I was. I had been without a home for a thousand years.


    Slender hands like my own reached over my head holding a pendant made of Lapis Lazuli that I recognized and thought I had lost forever. My mother fastened her own jewelry to me slowly, armbands, ankle bands, the pendant I had been given when I''d come of age, her gold and Lapis jewelry I had worn around my waist for hundreds of years, and clean, dry, modern styled Egyptian linen, held up by a piece of the age old neck jewelry that is so well known of Egyptians in this day and age. My mother fastened everything while the male watched silently, wrapping a gold and blue sash around my waist under the gold and Lapis of the jewelry.


    I looked down to find that I somehow was clean, though my hair was damp still from my long swim across to the island. My mother finished with her self appointed task and stood before me and smiled, setting a hand on my cheek before she stepped back and seemed to fade into nothing once more. I startled, reaching out for her, but she was gone, and only Horus remained before me.


    I looked up at him, having to tilt my head father than I had ever had to before to meet those golden eyes, a tearful glare in my own green. ''That is a cruel thing to do. To bring my Mother from the Halls to dress me. For what purpose?''


    I was angry, and I hurt. My physical injuries were nothing to the heartache I felt. The one person I had loved more than anything. Punishment be damned, I could have beaten on that man until my fists bled for bringing my mother. It had been like looking in a mirror while she had clad me in the trappings of a high priestess and her lost jewelry. I swore I would never lose the pieces again.


    Horus was most often depicted as having a falcon head, but standing before me he hadn''t a single feather. He stood tall, and when he spoke, it was that same voice I had heard in my dream vision that had summoned me here, and even before that, on the day of my capture by the Romans that had told me I had a job to do and would not die.


    ''She requested to come child. She wished you to know that the thoughts you have had these centuries were not the truth.'' He paused a moment as I grew angrier, but not at him, at myself. It didn''t have a coherent reason, my anger. I glared at the essential King of Gods, my anger masking my heartache. ''Why did you summon me? What do you want?''


    The tower of a man smiled in a way that nearly set me at ease despite my anger and hurt. ''I brought you here because I have a job for you, if you remember.'' He looked at me and I jerked my head down in a nod as I looked at him, feeling defiant and as angry as ever.


    He continued. ''You will be one whom this world needs. A protector, a guide. My Mother will teach you. I will teach you. You will study from the Archives of Creation, which you will guard and protect also until such a time as it is deemed necessary.''


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I listened, shocked, surprised and dumbfounded. I was going to be a guardian of this planet? Was that what that old pigeon was getting at? To be taught by Gods, and to be put in such a place after everything that I had been through and done, I didn''t know how to feel about this.


    ''Why? For what reason? Don''t you already have enough priests and priestesses to choose from? I haven''t done anything of note except let my family be destroyed.''


    Again he smiled at me, and I felt like I could have hit him almost. ''You are much more than you think. No mere human could do this. None of your other family that has become what you are have the strength of will to do this job. Just you. With what you have survived and overcome..''


    ''You left me in Rome. It was your voice I heard when I was captured, when I nearly died. You could have freed me if I was so damned important! You didn''t! And don''t give me that whole ''reason for everything'' shit! There was NO reason for ANY of that!'' I knew I was yelling, I was livid. He made claims, gave jobs, but had left me to torture and misery for a hundred fifty years. I had lost the last of my patience, and he simply let me rail at him until I was out of breath and my temper spent, panting and in tears while he simply stood calmly and without any change in demeanor. I hated him, thinking that letting my mother come would lessen my rage at what I had lost in that dungeon. I hated him most for the loss of my blind son, who was most certainly dead. The only things I had ever wanted I could never have.


    But I had no more to say without repeating myself, so I stood before him, glaring at this God who was three feet taller than me and could end my life in an instant without lifting a finger if he wanted to. And he didn''t. I had treated him with the utmost disrespect, this king of gods. And it seemed as though I would not be stricken down, in fact he wasn''t even angry. And I hated him all the more for it.


    Finally, I felt my shoulders slump. ''Fine..''


    I felt defeated, tired. I felt as if he had known from the start that I would agree, and had allowed my anger just because he knew it was there, that burning Rome hadn''t burned me out.


    ''Close your eyes child. I wish to show you something.'' He finally broke the silence, and I hadn''t the gumption to do naught but as he said. I closed my eyes, and I felt his hand on my shoulder, and suddenly I felt mild, fresh air with a slight breeze against my face. It smelled of roses and lilacs, and there was the steady roar of what sounded like water.


    I opened my eyes before he said I could as the most peaceful feeling washed over me. Gone was Pilak, and instead I was standing on a great flat stone of the clearest quartz in the middle of a small cove. The water of the cove was clear as the quartz, and if not for the fact that the flat stone was a few inches higher than the water level, one wouldn''t have even known there was anything but water. The water was only maybe three to four feet deep, and lining the bottom were what looked like smooth semi precious stones.


    It was night, but clearer than any night you may have ever seen, and the biggest full moon I had ever seen rose above the cliff where the waterfall I had heard cascaded down. The moon was odd though, this night it was a bright, bright blue. Not neon, but more jewel bright, like an aquamarine. There were flowering trees all around the little cove, white, soft pinks, even blues. And I suspected that these trees couldn''t be found anywhere in the world, as it was very obvious that I was no longer in the same dimension.


    Out from behind the waterfall came running a tiny tiger cub, who ran straight up to me and jumped up on my legs with a tiny little roar up at me. A sound on the smooth surface of the water made me look up, and I could see a tiny little crocodile swimming up at what seemed as fast as he could go. The sound of a huge bird in one of the trees made me look up to see an enormous falcon in one of the blue petaled trees beside the water fall.


    Horus stepped off of the flat Quartz and onto the water, barely making a ripple and not sinking into the pool in the least. I didn''t think that I would be able to do the same, but tried anyway. As I thought, my toes dipped directly into the water and there was an immediate sense of physical relief. I dipped my foot in entirely and the relief was indescribable. The water was healing! All of the lacerations and cuts on my feet from that misplaced shark in the river simply disappeared within seconds. I pulled out the one foot and shoved the other in, to the same effect. I could simply feel that there wasn''t even a hint besides the slight red smudges on the Quartz rock that I had been injured at all.


    Now I hopped off the Quartz and went around the pool rather than trying to walk on the water to follow Horus as he crossed and went towards the waterfall with the little tiger cub on his heels. When he got there he waited for me by what looked like a sold wall of moss growing. He stood slightly to my left, in front of the moss, and when I reached him he reached out and pulled what turned out to be a curtain of moss aside, revealing a cave behind the waterfall. I preceded him through into the torch lit cave.


    Once inside I looked around. The cave was absolutely enormous, and I wasn''t entirely sure it had an end to it. The walls were carved into with shelves that held thousands of tomes made of what looked like solid gold. There were other things as well; objects of unknown purpose, jars, scrolls, stones, even plants that shouldn''t have been able to grow there. I was overwhelmed at the amount of things that were behind the waterfall.


    ''These are the Archives of Creation,'' Horus'' voice broke the silence from behind me. ''All of the knowledge and magic of the people since the beginning of our time is in this cave. Here you may learn and create safely without harming anyone. Pilak will be home to you when you are not in here. There will be those of us who will come to teach you. The creatures here are gifts from us, companions, guardians.''


    I couldn''t help but stare up at him with everything he was saying. I was to be taught by them? By the Gods themselves? I had a home again? I couldn''t believe it. I was actually a little skeptical that he wasn''t just joking with me. He seemed able to read my thoughts, which didn''t surprise me, and smiled at me as if he had known I didn''t take him at his word. Why should I? Not a soul but my mother had ever been honest with me in my life.


    He led me back out of the cavern and around to the other side of the cove where there was a foot path and told me it led to the Realm, as he called it. The place where the Gods resided and that while I could not go there unless under certain circumstances, I should know where it lay.


    Here he stopped and turned to me once more. He said that to get home, all I had to do was follow the path he''d brought me down, and speak to the spot where the path doesn''t allow me to go any further with certain words, and a door back to the human plane would open for me. And he told me that wherever I live, this door will follow on it''s own, as it''s tied to me and not to a location, and that only me or the blood of my womb would ever be able to open the door. And since I had no children living, and my time in Rome had destroyed me, I would be the only one ever to open the door.


    With that Horus left me in the Cove, and the little tiger cub came up to me slowly, looking at me with big blue eyes. I knew I needed names for them all, but that would take a little time to think of them.


    For now, I had been traveling for months, swam across the Nile, nearly been eaten by an enormous shark that oughtn''t have there, and been thrown into a job I hadn''t asked for after seeing my long dead mother. I wasn''t touching those books despite my curiosity until I recovered physically from everything. I had healed from my wound gotten when I killed the Roman, but there was still exhaustion, both physical and mental. So I instead of going back into the cavern behind the waterfall, I bent down, pet the little tiger cub on the head, and headed back down the path that he had brought me down that would return me back to the temple at Pilak.


    When I couldn''t walk along the path any longer, though the path looked to go on forever, I spoke the spell Horus had given that, as predicted, opened a heavy stone door completely engraved in colored hieroglyphs, and on the other side was the room in the temple that I had been dressed by my mother in; the inner temple chambers. I stepped through the door back into the world I knew and the stone door closed and the lines of the door itself faded into the wall and became a simple inscription.


    I turned my back and headed towards the door that had been closed behind me when I''d gotten there, and once more as I approached it the metal and stone doors creaked as they were pulled open from the outside as I got near. The priestesses had been waiting for me to come back out it seemed. I cannot describe the expressions on their faces. They had seen the condition in which I had gone into the room, and coming out again looking as if I had never been dirty or wet or ragged and wounded just confirmed for them that I wasn''t an ordinary person and those not handling the heavy doors bowed as if I were royalty.


    It had been well over a thousand years since I had been treated courteously, and now it felt strange, as if it weren''t for me. I kept my feeling to myself though. Showing emotion of my uneasiness to anyone was impossible for me. My expression was neutral, and as the female who seemed to be the high priestess stood and smiled at me, welcoming me with my name as if she knew me already, I hid my surprise and the sudden flare of anger that came up in me.


    These people were happy to see me, happy to have me in their temple, the fortunate favored of the Gods. And all I could feel was anger at these people''s smiles and their happiness. They couldn''t tell such, as I was polite and courteous myself, but I didn''t return their smiles, didn''t share their excitement. I was grateful no one asked me any questions however, as I didn''t want to answer any. It was assumed with how far I''d come that I was tired, and the high priestess led me out of the main temple and to one of the surrounding buildings.


    I was shown to what looked like a newly constructed building, and the priestess told me that they had had the house built specifically for me when they had been told of my coming. The curtain was held aside and I ducked slightly as I entered the house. It was comfortably furnished, almost like my home had been when I had still been in the palace with my family as head mage and adviser to my now very distant royal cousins who had ruled the country. It was welcoming.

 Peace and Purpose

    I turned to the priestess and thanked her, who smiled and bowed herself out, saying that I would be let alone to rest. I stood by myself in the house for several minutes, just staring around at the familiar looking furnishings and after a moment I went slowly to touch things, running my fingers over the bed, the tables, the chairs, the wooden tub. There was a brightly colored woven rug on the floor under and around the bed that extended into the living area of the room. There was a second room, and that held actual amenities for me to cook and to store food and eat. I lifted the lid of a box to find fresh bread, and a small barrel held all sorts of produce in it as well as another small barrel that held fresh clean water in it.


    I went through the entire room to find everything that had been provided for me. I found apples and pears and berries, plums, grapes and oranges and papaya. There was honey and beer and water. The bread was soft as if it had been baked that day. There was cheese, both soft and spreadable and hard to slice or just to bite into. There were eggs, cold cooked meats, which the sight of churned my stomach unpleasantly, and all sorts of vegetables, some of which I didn''t know what they were.


    Seeing and smelling the fruits and the bread made my long empty stomach growl angrily, so I found myself a plate of sorts, and I pulled out bread, cheese, a few fruits, and found myself a sort of mug and filled it with the water. I went to sit on the bed with my fare, not bothering to care whether someone were to come and see me eating as such, and put butter and honey on the bread, which was rich and soft. I took my time to enjoy the food as I hadn''t done so in about a thousand years.


    The fresh fruit and cheese, clean water and bread filled me up, and finally I set aside the plate on a nearby bedside table, and finished my water. The sun was beginning to rise, the dark sky lightening in the distance that I could see through the window of what felt as close to a home that I''d had in well over a thousand years now. And what made it unlike any home I''d ever had was that people actually seemed to like me for the first time.


    I lay down, imagining what living in this place might be like. It was the first time I could remember actually having a little hope, and I was so disconnected from the emotion that I couldn''t even identify it at the time. I just knew I felt strangely, and much lighter than I had in two thousand years for the most part. It was a feeling I could only associate with my mother. As the sun rose up over the Nile, I fell asleep, exhaustion taking me finally.


    * * *


    It was late morning when I woke suddenly to the presence of a person in my little house. I bolted upright in the bed I hadn''t even meant to fall asleep in and got off the bed, padding in my healed bare feet toward the next room where the unknown person was located. When I got to the doorway, I could see a female in priestess'' attire standing in the living area with her back to me. She was blonde, as now that Romans had found their way into Egypt it wasn''t uncommon any longer for there to be people with hair color different from black.


    I cleared my throat and the young human female turned around and smiled at me and bowed slightly. She said that I was needed in the temple main before stepping out of the little house without waiting for an answer. I didn''t know what I could possibly be needed or wanted for. I quickly ran the provided brush through my hair and straightened my mother''s pendant around my neck before I stepped out into the sunlight and headed toward the main temple. The grounds were busy now that it was daylight, and the sounds of people and carts and animals made everything feel like things had before I''d had to go on the run when I''d been young.


    The temple doors were open wide now, and people were going in and out to pray or give offerings to the Mother. Painted carvings lined the pillars and walls, lit now by sunlight through the windows as well as the torches that lines the walls. I was admitted to the inner temple where only the priestesses were allowed, and I found that the high priestess waited for me with a warm smile and a slight bow as I approached her.


    It had been a long time since I had heard my own native tongue that I actually had to hide choking up a little when she spoke and gave me her name; Ahnesh. She asked me if the house that had been provided was to my liking, and I told her that it indeed was, thanked her, and asked if that was the reason she had asked for me. She told me no it wasn''t.


    We walked side by side as people passed us, and she gave blessings to those who asked on behalf of the Mother. Once we were once more outside the temple main and walking the grounds of the island she spoke.


    ''You are a very unique being, as we have guessed from the dreams the Mother sent us of your coming. It would be a great asset to the temple if you would agree to become its High Priestess in my place. I''m not sure where you''ve come to us from, but your presence alone is compelling and commanding. I''m sure that the people would love you.''


    I listened in a stunned silence. This female was asking me to take her own place in the temple, and I couldn''t believe it. We walked together in silence for a few long moments.


    ''I can''t,'' I said. ''I have been given a job that will take up much of my time. I am not able to assume the responsibilities that come with being High Priestess..''


    The other female looked disappointed, her expression falling a little bit. But she accepted my answer, and asked if I would mind if they honored me as a chosen daughter of the Gods. This I had no idea how to respond, as no such thing had ever been said to me. My centuries as the head mage of the Pharaoh and adviser were long gone, and I really had no desire to return to them. Seeing my expression, Ahnesh went on to explain that I didn''t have to do anything but one day in a month where I could let the people come to see just me, give offerings to the Gods, and join in with the temple''s festival that day. I told her that I wanted to think about it. That I really wasn''t sure that I would have the time where I was going to be occupied for lengthy periods of time in a place that had no concept of time.


    Ahnesh seemed disappointed, but she accepted my answer with the grace befitting a high priestess, for which I was thankful. She knew that duty to the Gods came first for people like us, so she smiled and said that she would wait for my answer, and that I should use the next few days to rest and recuperate and learn my way around the temple and grounds before beginning the job that I had been given. She gave a small bow and smiled, leaving me to think and to explore on my own.


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    I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering and exploring the entire island, greeting people as they passed, some of the priestesses of the temple bowing as I passed. I hadn''t experienced this in centuries and no longer really knew how to handle it. I no longer had the horrible spite that my father had instilled in me that had made me hate everything. I was cold and more emotionless than I liked. The sky didn''t even seem blue to me. I wondered a little if I were the same person who had cried over her mother in the small hours of the morning when I had arrived on the island. But then, I wore my mother''s clothes and my mother''s jewelry, and I felt that same lump form in my throat that had been the night before and remembered that I wasn''t entirely icy on the inside.


    Once or twice in my wanderings during the day I thought I caught sight of a familiar face, but it was gone before I could really look, but I felt as if I were being watched somehow. It didn''t make sense to me, my brother wouldn''t have bothered to follow me when I had left him in that nameless town. My brother also didn''t have dark hair nor was he as tall as this implacable face. But every time I tried to get a better look it was as if he had been merely my imagination.


    The day was spent much the same as that, and at dusk I found my way back to the little house that had been provided me. There was fresh bread once again, it was even still warm, and as I hadn''t eaten since before dawn, I didn''t think to waste any time. I had half of the loaf of bread, with cheese and fruit and honey, with water from the barrel to drink. It was such a simple thing, to have good food that I wanted to eat rather than eating to keep from being beaten. I felt better afterward, and I went to sit on the bench outside to watch the dusk become night, listening to the temple quieting and listening to the things around me. I once more felt as if I were being watched, but there wasn''t a sound in the vicinity of my little house.


    A servant to the temple came around lighting the torches, and the presence seemed to vanish. The girl saw me sitting and she bowed as if I were Queen, lit the torches around my little house and scurried off as though she were embarrassed or nervous. I didn''t read too much into it since the girl was just a child yet, and I sat back once more to watch the sky get darker and the fires from the torches dancing against the dusk.


    I don''t know when I fell asleep, but I did. The air cooled, and at some point I was vaguely aware of someone near me, but I was still asleep, thinking I was dreaming, as I had begun to do so often, of things that seemed real, or were memories relived in the nights. It seemed as though that presence that had been watching me periodically during the day picked me up, and how I didn''t wake I couldn''t say, as I didn''t sleep very deeply anymore. It felt like I was being carried somewhere the chill of the night air didn''t reach, and I thought I could hear a fire crackling somewhere nearby. A moment later I thought I was set down on something soft, and I thought I heard a quiet male voice saying something in a language I had never heard before and didn''t understand.


    I opened my eyes a little, and as tired as I was I thought I saw that implacable familiar face once more as it turned away and left my little house. I woke up fully and sat up, hurrying to get off my bed, but when I got to the doorway to the outside there wasn''t a soul about in the dark. I stood holding onto the edges of the doorway looking all over for the strange male who had apparently put me to bed not only without waking me but also without harming me. But with no one in sight and no way to prove it wasn''t my imagination or just a dream, I went back into my little house and climbed into the bed once more to try and sleep.


    * * *


    There was fire everywhere, the smoke of burning flesh and burning buildings was choking. I stood at the gates of Rome with the general before me. I was bleeding heavily, I could smell it. And he stood laughing at me. I had no weapon, which was strange because I thought that I had had one. The Roman had a sword though, and I clutched at my side and belly that was sticky with my own blood. The Roman said something, but I couldn''t hear it over the roaring in my ears and the explosive flames. He rushed me, the tip of his blade aimed for my body and...


    * * *


    I bolted upright in the soft bed, drenched in sweat and shaking like a leaf in high wind. The fire in the hearth had burned down to embers, but in the dark, with the dream, I didn''t know where I was for several long moments. I felt my skin under the damp linen and found no gash as I had had when I had actually burned Rome to the ground. I''d been having repeats of the same two dreams for months, since my mind had become clear and I had gained my freedom. One was of the fire, the other I woke from screaming for my stolen son who was long dead now. I constantly relived memories from the last fifteen years in Rome, the time I had been kept drugged was a complete blank, and I only knew that a hundred fifty years had passed since my capture. I was coming up on a year of freedom in a few months, and it felt like nothing had changed.


    I got up from my bed and with shaking hands got some water from the barrel in my little pantry store room. I don''t know why I continued to dream that the Roman hadn''t died that night. I knew full well that I had killed him and left him there on the ground amongst the fires at the gates of the city. I drank my water, and set down the ladle again. I knew I wouldn''t sleep anymore that night, so I headed towards the temple main. Not a soul was near, but I once again felt like I was being watched. I wasn''t sure how I felt about this feeling, especially when there had been someone who put me into bed just a couple of hours ago.


    I headed into the inner temple, towards the door that was there against the wall and blended in with the carvings there, painted in bright colors with golden lettering. I went up to it, and whispered the phrase that Horus had taught me the night before, and the line that separated the door from the wall appeared and the stone swung open silently, and moonlight spilled onto the darkened floor before I stepped through the doorway.


    The stone door shut behind me as quietly as it had opened. I walked along the flowering tree lined path towards the Cove. I could hear the waterfall as I walked along the moss path in my bare feet. The moonlight was bright, and the full mood rose over the waterfall almost perfectly centered. The odd thing was that the moonlight was so bright it was almost like daylight rather than night.


    The little tiger cub came to meet me at the edge of the water while I looked up at the sight before me, alone this time, and able to take a real look at things. Across the water came the tiny crocodile hatchling, swimming as fast as his tiny legs would allow, and I reached down to scoop it up into my hands from the water. He chattered at me a little, and it made me smile slightly, a name coming to me in the sound; Zephyr. I said it out loud, and the tiny reptile blinked at me and seemed to be smiling at me. The tiger cub rubbed up against me, making her little crackling cub purr while she rubbed against my legs and I sat down with the hatchling in my hands still so that perhaps the cub''s name would come to me as well. I stroked the tiger with one hand while the other held Zephyr before he jumped out of my hand and scurried off back into the water, and the cub climbed straight into my lap and put her head on my thigh and purred.


    I leaned my head down onto her side and listened to the sound, waiting for a name to come to me. Living in several different countries and cultures had given me a wider range of vocabulary. I had liked traveling through Greece, and I made something up along those lines. I would call her Kyah. As soon as I thought of it her purrs became louder and I smiled against her fur. I heard a rustle of feathers and down came two different birds to perch in front of me. One was the falcon I saw the night before, the other was a female snowy owl, which I didn''t know at the time, but I am much more informed in my old age.


    I looked at them as they looked at me, and like Kyah and Zephyr, seemed to be silently sentient. It was as if they had come down for their names as well. The snowy owl I felt almost immediately and she became Hera. Once more I looked at the falcon, and it might have been unoriginal, but I decided on calling him Horus.


    With everyone with names finally, I sat with them for a while in the quiet and now and then I would feel light raindrops, though the sky never clouded and it never got actually dark. Time didn''t seem to pass at all in this place, the now normal full moon staying in the exact same place over the waterfall as it had been even the night before.


    Eventually my curiosity overcame me and I got up to head into the cave behind the waterfall where all the tomes and scrolls were for me to read and learn from. I walked along the stone carved shelves and picked a random gold tome from the shelf to look at.

 Temple Festival

    I spent unmeasured amounts of time in the Cove with the animals and the books, reading the hours away. When I did leave because I noticed I was tired or I was hungry, days had passed in between. I decided to take up on Ahnesh''s proposal for the festivals each month, it couldn''t do any harm and it got me a break between all of the reading I was doing. So far I had gone through a number of tomes and scrolls in the Cove, and so far Isis had not yet shown up to teach me healing, but I wasn''t complaining, I had been doing plenty of learning in the meantime so I wasn''t disappointed.


    The day of the first festival Ahnesh sent two priestesses to my little house early in the morning with buckets of steaming water and I had the kind of bath I hadn''t had since I came of age and I was no longer confined to the Archives by my father. Once I was clean and smelling of the roses that had been in the water the two helped me dress in my mother''s jewelry and clean clothing that had been made for me. They brushed my hair, braided little string braids with golden ribbon and left the rest of my hair loose and hanging down my back past my hips.


    When they were all done they led me out of my little house and up to the temple main as the sun rose over and lit everything up in that slow way that made me feel quiet and at peace for the first time in a great while. Despite the early hour, the temple was buzzing with life. Every torch was lit even though the sun had come up, and there were long tables with food and flowers in piles on platters with candles lit. There were people talking, and in looking down the river I could see boats coming, some with colors and marking high born people, others shabby and plain. I remembered that festivals were for everyone, and it made me smile that it was that way still after so many centuries.


    I had no idea what in the world I was supposed to do here, but it seemed that saying hello might be a good start, and as I passed people they said hello, to which I returned and hoped they enjoyed the festival. Some people bowed, seeming to know who I was, and I smiled, remembering that bowing back wasn''t what I myself was supposed to do, only to those of higher rank. And while I was not the high priestess, I was apparently still considered of a higher rank than Ahnesh was.


    It was a long but enjoyable day, music and food and dance and drink. It seemed the people were happy to have something to celebrate, and while I didn''t join in with the dancing, I wasn''t sure I yet had the strength, I watched, I enjoyed the music, I even managed to eat a little, and only fresh breads and fruits, as I still could not look at meat without becoming sick to my stomach.


    As the day wore on, I greeted anyone and everyone who stopped to see me, the temple received offerings in my honor, some people gave me gifts, unable to refuse them without being rude. By the time the sun had set and the bonfires were lit up I had that feeling of being watched again, as if someone I knew were nearby keeping an eye on me.


    Things were beginning to wind down, the fires burning, but half of the crowds had dispersed and I did not think that I would be missed so I headed toward my little house, tired of socializing and longing for my bed. I heard something behind me and turned to see a rather drunken festival goer who was following me, and I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.


    I was instantly on my guard as the rather unsteady male made his way towards me, obviously intent on catching up to me. I caught sight of the knife at his hip, but he didn''t seem intent on using it. I called out, asking if he needed help, and my stomach churned when he answered that I most certainly could help him. It was the tone he used, that made it quite obvious what he meant, that made me sick to my stomach. I had no desire to lay with a drunken stranger just because he wanted to. I had no desire to share my bed with anyone after Rome.


    I told him I was sorry, but I could not help him in such a way and he had better go back to the festival and perhaps he could find someone willing to spend the night with him there. I turned around and took a few steps toward my house when the male caught my wrist and pulled me around. He stank of drink and sweat, and from his expression he was not happy with my rejection. I got tense as he asked if I thought I was too good, being chosen of the Gods, to sleep with him. His words were slurred, and accusing. I told him no, that I simply had no desire to and that he had better unhand me.


    ''You''re just some high born woman who needs a lesson in respect for men.'' My eyes narrowed and I yanked my hand out of his grasp, throwing politeness to the wind.


    ''Take your drunken self back to the festival. I want nothing to do with you.''


    I should have remembered the knife, but I didn''t, and I turned to leave him behind a second time, only to feel the bite of the blade a short moment later, a slurred remark from the male about seeing just how chosen I was by the Gods now. I whipped around, which wrenched the knife out of his hand, and before he knew it my own hand was around his throat while I snarled at him through the blood in my mouth.


    I debated on whether to bring him forcibly back to the festival to have Ahnesh send him packing, not having a desire to kill as the male had tried to do to me. The male looked positively frightened, and his dirty hands were trying to pry away my grip around his throat. I narrowed my eyes and half dragged him back towards the burning fires where there was singing and laughter while he fought me, kicking at me and tugging at my arm the entire walk. The knife was still in my side, and as I walked I pulled it out carefully while I walked, my strength apparently having returned because the male weighed near nothing to me. I spat blood on the ground before I came into the circle of fire, people looking at me and noticing the knife in my hand and the blood running down the back of my clothes. Someone ran to get Ahnesh as I threw the male onto the ground as she came hurrying up and demanding to know what happened.


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    I showed her mentally and without words, throwing the knife with my own blood coating it into the ground beside the male who had attacked me. My chest was heaving with pain, the wound still bleeding from just above my right hip. Ahnesh motioned and two male servants of some highborn festival goer came forward and picked up the male, and the high priestess told them to secure the male for his crime and attack and that she would be accompanying them when they left in the morning to deliver the male to the city guard on the mainland. Ahnesh looked at me with apology in her expression as the male was dragged away, and two of the priestesses came forward to help me into the temple so that I might have my wound tended.


    I could hear people talking behind me as I walked away, my jaw clenched and my spine rigid. People wondered what had happened and why the male had attacked me, and talking about how drinking to excess, even on special occasions, was in bad taste. I didn''t look back as I went into the still open temple, I couldn''t breathe very well, and I could feel that I was still bleeding. I was led into a small side chamber and sat in a chair with my back accessible. Someone else brought in a bowl of steaming water and linens.


    I was helped to peel the top of my dress down off my shoulders and pulled down low on my hips, and I winced as it was peeled away from the stab wound. My innards were painful, and felt like they were moving around somehow, like snakes, and I coughed up more blood. The priestess undressing me looked at me with obvious concern.


    ''You are bleeding internally Lady..'' I knew she thought I was dying. Any human would have been dying, so I didn''t fault her in her assessment. I probably was bleeding internally, and probably badly. But again, I could feel my innards moving around, and I think that it was one of those instances where the fatal part of things was healing itself quickly. I wasn''t allowed to die after all, I had that job to do still.


    ''Just patch me up please. I will be fine.'' I spoke quietly, and she obviously didn''t believe me, but she nodded her head all the same and bent over me to clean the still bleeding wound. The cloth was abrasive to me, though it was just linen, my flesh was on fire, and it felt like the only thing that helped was the water. I was tense as could be, with the water being so hot, and the linen that felt like sand on my skin. The priestess cleaned me up, and then proceeded to wrap my wound with strips of clean, dry linen to stem the bleeding. I sat still the entire time, not moving, not speaking.


    ''That is all that I can do for you, I''m sorry..'' She obviously still was convinced that I was dying. My innards were still quivering like a pit of snakes, and I knew I must be quite pale, but I stood up, turned and gave the concerned priestess a small smile.


    ''I have survived much worse than this, I will be fine.'' I didn''t go into detail, but I reassured the slightly shorter female. She was still seemingly unconvinced, but she nodded before helping me get my dress back up where it belonged. I gave her one last smile and headed back out.


    By now the bonfires were burning down, and most people had either left or fallen asleep where they sat as I went by. I once again felt that I was being watched, and I never got used to it, but I was too exhausted and now that I had been patched up and my attacker hauled away, now that the danger was over, I felt weak from the blood loss and the pain. I headed once more towards my little house, thinking of the barrel of cool water that I could drink.


    As I walked, that feeling of eyes in the back of my head stayed with me, and I turned around quickly, thinking perhaps again there was someone following me, but no one was there, like all the other times before. Spinning around had been a bad idea though with as much blood as I had lost, because a second after I did, my head rushed, and the sky spun the wrong way and the ground came out from under me as my sight went black.


    I thought I heard footsteps, and a quiet, soft male voice that sounded oddly amused, scolding me. It felt like I was being lifted, and my head rushed again, my sight dark and blurred. My body wouldn''t obey me, but stayed limp, I kept my eyes closed through the dizziness, but an oddly comforting, very familiar smell came to me from the stranger who seemed to know where I lived, because he didn''t ask me, and yet a short time later I was surrounded by the familiar scent of my little house and I was being set down gently on what seemed to be my bed.


    The footsteps retreated a way, but the presence was still in my home, and I rolled onto my side. It was the side I had been stabbed in however, and pain shot through my body as I rolled and took my breath away. I fell back onto my back, gasping for breath as the footsteps returned. The pain, and the fact I had caused myself more bleeding in my weakened stupidity, caused me to once more black out.


    I vaguely remember the same male pulling me out of my bloodied clothes, and I was oddly not alarmed by it, and I felt the new bandages being taken off of me, and I thought perhaps I had bled through them. I groaned as I felt myself rolled onto my stomach, gently as it was, and this time the linen was cold, and the water was cold, and it soothed.


    The stranger told me to hold still, and a feeling of trepidation came over me. He held me down, and I didn''t have the strength then to fight him as my head swam, and suddenly there was a horrid, unbearable burning, stabbing pain burst through my back and abdomen, causing my body to convulse violently while I had no breath to even scream. I don''t know what he did, but a few minutes later the pain vanished completely, and my innards had stopped their painful dance, and my body went limp once more.


    As I gasped for breath, the stranger sat me up, put my arms around his neck and told me to hold on. Something was so familiar I think I asked him who he was, that I knew him, but he didn''t answer me. He just rewrapped my wound that didn''t even hurt anymore, and put fresh clothes on me. I worried for a short moment that he might steal my mother''s jewelry, but I heard the items being put in their box and the lid closing. My sight had cleared by the time I opened my eyes again, and I did not recognize the male, though I was still certain that I knew him somehow.


    He brought me a clay mug of the water I had been thinking about, and I accepted it gratefully, feeling my strength beginning to come back to me. I asked him what he did, but he didn''t answer me, instead he simply looked at me a moment, indigo eyes seeming to be deep into thought, as if he were debating something, but then he simply left the room, and left my house before his presence just disappeared altogether.


    I had never in my life before that point wished for someone to stay with me like I did then, but I knew that the stranger was gone, like a wisp of smoke from the fires at the temple. I realized too, that this stranger had been the source of the feeling I had had of being watched. Had it been him every time? To what purpose? How in the world did I know this man?


    As I thought, I got a powerful itching feeling where I had been stabbed for just a few seconds before it vanished as the stranger had. I stood up, pulled the top of my dress down and unwound the new, clean bandages and twisted painlessly to look. There wasn''t a mark on me, no trace that I had ever been stabbed in the first place. I pulled up my dress again, more thoughts racing through my mind as I sat on my bed. The sky was beginning to lighten a little bit now, and I realized I was exhausted. I lied down, mind full, and fell asleep quicker than I had been able to since leaving Rome.

 Strange Familiarity

    After the night of the festival, I slept for two days. On the third day I woke feeling the presence of someone in my house. It was Ahnesh, come to see if I was alive upon her return from the mainland. I sat up as she entered my little bedroom and she looked relieved. The priestess who had seen to my wounds that night had informed her that I hadn''t woken since, and they feared I was gone to see Osiris. They seemed to be unused to the idea that I was not a simple human like they were.


    Ahnesh asked to see my wound and offered to help me change the dressings. I told her it wasn''t necessary, there was no longer a wound to dress. She looked astonished, and I smiled. I said nothing of the male who had been there, I felt as if it was only something I should know. He seemed to not want himself to be known, so I kept the knowledge to myself. It wasn''t as if I were lying when I told her that I healed quicker than a human did, that the job I had to do did not allow for me to die. I told her of the way my insides had felt, and about the horrible itching at the very end, but everything in between I kept to myself.


    It was bright outside, and after Ahnesh left me to rest and regain my strength, I took a walk. The moment I stepped out of my home I had that feeling. I could feel eyes on me, and this time I knew, sort of, who it was. I headed for an area where there were no people around, near the banks of the water but away from the docks, knowing I was being followed. I sat in the sand and dug my toes into their coolness a few inches down. I waited.


    Several minutes went by, the feeling didn''t go away, and I spoke quietly. ''I know you are nearby, why not just come out instead?''


    A moment later I head those same footsteps, and I didn''t move or turn to look at him until he stopped.


    ''Thank you'', I said quietly, looking at him standing behind me as if intent on blocking me from anyone else''s view.


    He was dressed high born, but foreign, with boots and cloak and clean, high quality clothes. He had jet black hair that was somehow familiar, and those indigo eyes that I somehow knew, but I couldn''t place where I knew him. He was tall, at least a head taller than I was, which I realized when I stood up to face him.


    ''You know how I know you, don''t you?'' I walked up to him, and he didn''t move. He still hadn''t said anything, though he had been scolding me for being stupid the other night. His answer now just seemed to be a small smile that made my chest feel like it was being crushed. I''d never felt anything like it since I was a child. And then it clicked. I knew this man. I''d known him my whole life. How was he still alive? He must be similar to me. Only older, because he had been a man of the same face since I had been a baby. He must have seen the recognition in my expression because his smile widened.


    It made sense now why he felt the way he did, and why his presence wasn''t alarming and didn''t put me on my guard. He had been the only male in all my life who didn''t harm me. At least that I could remember. There were memories that were a fog or missing altogether. He looked down at me, and I felt very small, like I hadn''t felt before, and it seemed like there was barely a breath of space between us, and I was both aware of it and not at the same time. He smelled of wind and summer and fresh washed linens, and I closed my eyes a moment to enjoy it.


    I don''t know when he leaned down, I don''t know what prompted it or his thought process, but a couple of seconds after I closed my eyes I felt his hand wrap around the back of my neck, and I opened my eyes to find his only an inch or two from mine. Believe it or not I actually didn''t know what he was going to do until he did it, and I can''t believe I ever forgot it. His lips met mine and they were warm, like the sun at the start of the harvest season. I was surprised a moment, but my eyes closed and I could sense satisfaction from him.


    I unconsciously followed the guidance from him, and I will admit to losing track of time, and I don''t remember when he pulled me against him. I didn''t think, and I experienced something I had never experienced before; both peace and pleasure, from a simple kiss.


    He left me breathless after an indeterminable amount of time, and I realized I could taste him still on my tongue as I opened my eyes and looked at him. He looked at me in a way I didn''t recognize, and it was both frightening and not at the same time. He kissed me again, but this time not for long, before he pulled away and straightened up.


    ''Goodbye.'' It was the only thing he had said so far, and I opened my mouth to speak, but he was suddenly gone. Simply not there anymore, and if not for his boot prints in the sand and the taste on my tongue, he might have been entirely my imagination.


    * * *


    In the two days following the day I woke up and met the stranger who was not a stranger after all, there was not a single glimpse or the feeling or presence that had followed me since my arrival at Philae. After taking the two days to rest, dreaming of that male at night and scanning for him during the day, I returned to the temple, and back to the Cove where my animal companions once more were my only company. I returned to where I had left off in the books that were in the enormous cave behind the waterfall. And I didn''t come out. I poured over tome after tome, keeping busy and keeping my mind where it belonged. It wasn''t easy though.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Sometime after the male had left, I was in the Cove, sitting in the fire lit cave with a golden tome in my lap and a growing Kyah beside me asleep, a tall woman appeared, with long black hair and a golden glow about her. I looked up, knowing her immediately as The Mother; Isis, the Patron Goddess of Philae Temple and the one to teach me healing.


    * * *


    I was able to take my mind off the outside world then, and threw myself entirely into learning absolutely everything that the Goddess had to teach me. I occasionally had to leave the Cove in order to eat or sleep or make sure that the temple priestesses knew that I was still alive and well. But months went by, I missed the next festival, though Ahnesh understood, I lost track of how much time was passing while I absorbed every nuance of this woman as well as every word she spoke. And by the time a few years had gone by and I had forgotten my first kiss as well as the person who had given it, I had learned all I could from Isis.


    I was given a break then, being told that I would learn fighting from Horus, and that he would come to me when it was time. So I went back to my little house at the temple. The people had changed a little, but Ahnesh was still there, though she was noticeably a decade older than when I had last actually resided. She was happy to see me, and I was introduced to the newest priestesses that had come to the temple in the last couple of years since I had last come out of the Cove. I found I was ravenous and I had not felt a natural breeze on my skin for the better part of a decade. I decided to go to my little house and have a meal and sleep. Ahnesh had kept my house for me for all this time, and my belongings were still there when I went to look.


    There was fresh food, and I ate my fill of bread and cheese and fruit that was in season, along with fresh water from a new barrel. I took a walk after, wandering the temple grounds and re-familiarizing myself with them and with the people. When the day''s light waned, I returned to my home and sat outside watching the sun set as the surroundings became less bustling. There were always people who stayed at the temple overnight, but unless it was festival time then it was mostly quiet.


    After the night settled in and the stars burst through the sky, I went inside, and had a small meal of my own, lighting the torches mentally as I had long ago learned to do. And after eating I laid down on my bed on my side, just listening and thinking without thinking. I was jittery, not being used to relaxation. I was always active, overly so, and the downtime didn''t feel right. I didn''t know what to do with myself and it kept me from sleep.


    I got up and went to sit outside again, and I wandered aimlessly through the grounds. The years that had passed made things feel foreign to me, and I wanted to go back and learn, but there was nothing left to learn at that moment. I tried to think of what might fill my now empty time until Horus came to teach me.


    As I walked I could hear a sort of commotion going on near the docks, and I headed in that direction. Coming up to the docks I saw a couple of people hurrying to try and carry someone on a makeshift stretcher. I approached and asked what was the matter. The person on the stretcher was a child who looked on the brink of death. The two people were the child''s parents come to pray to the Goddess Isis and to try the medicines that the priestesses at the temple were known to use.


    I helped the couple bring their son fully onto the beach and set him down on the ground. I knelt to look at the boy, and they told me he had come down deathly ill suddenly and they were told only the priestesses at the Temple Island of Philae could help them, so they had made the trip from the lower part of the kingdom in hopes that their son might be cured. Almost immediately I could see that the trip alone had brought the child closer to Osiris than to health. I examined the child, who appeared to be around ten or so, and I didn''t think that Ahnesh could help him. I thought about how to tell the couple, when there was a sort of nagging feeling in the back of my mind for a moment before it clicked.


    I picked up the child, burning with fever, in my arms and half ran back towards my own house rather than the temple itself, the couple trying to keep up. I didn''t stop for them at my doorway, but went right inside, assuming correctly that they would follow on my heels. I laid the sick boy on my bed, ignoring their questions about going to see the high priestess. I hadn''t actually tried my new skills on a human yet, as everything had been done with the animals in the Cove, but I was sure of myself.


    I told them to be quiet and I set my palms, one over the little boy''s heart, the other on his forehead. He was burning with fever and his skin was clammy. I closed my eyes and pulled, concentrating. My palms heated up, and I vaguely heard one of the boy''s parents exclaim that they were glowing. I said nothing, reaching out to the unconscious child mentally and let energy spill forth while still controlling how much. Too much could kill the child rather than heal and cure him.


    Minutes ticked by with not a sound in my house, and still I worked. Finally, after I don''t know how long, I sat back heavily on the floor, the palms of my hands looking burned and my breathing heavy, as if I had run for miles without stopping. The couple both knelt down beside me asking if I was alright, but a small sound caught all of our attention., they looked up towards my bed, where their son was waking up for the first time in days. The woman dissolved into tears of joy, but I caught the male''s attention and told him to get water from the other room for the boy. He would need to drink.


    I felt drained, as if I hadn''t slept in months though I had slept just the night before for a few hours. The time of night that it was meant that there was no one to take the couple and their healed son up to one of the temple''s guest quarters, and I was in no condition to do so either, I couldn''t even get off my floor. It meant that I would be giving up my bed to this family. I could not, in any circumstance be seen as weak, so I forced myself off the floor, said that they should sleep, especially the boy. I told them there was food in the next room and left them, leaving my own home entirely. I kept on my feet by sheer force of will, and made it to the edge of the water where a decade before I had finally seen the face of the presence that had followed me for so long. I sat down under the tree there, and the next thing that I knew one of the young priestesses was gently shaking my shoulder to wake me. It was obviously well into the afternoon, and I had fallen asleep under the tree.


    When I woke, the young female said that Ahnesh wished to see me in the temple and had been looking for me all day. I was stiff as I stood, not used to sleeping sitting up, and followed the young one to the temple where she brought me to Ahnesh in the main temple where she stood with the couple from the middle of the night. Their son stood with them and as soon as he saw me he ran to me and hugged me. All I could do was stand in shock while the boy thanked me tearfully and his parents said that he had insisted on seeing me before they left to travel home again. The boy let go of me and I gave a small smile as I looked down at him. I didn''t know what to say, but I didn''t think what I''d done deserved thanks. It was what I was supposed to be doing, I didn''t deserve appreciation like this, and had never received such in the past, and could not understand why now I was being thanked.

 Change

    Things changed after that event for me. Word spread, and people seemed to make special trips to the temple in hopes of finding ''the healer'' of the temple. Officially that was not me. But people were coming in hopes of the things I could do. I found a sort of contentment in it, though it was taxing on my mind, body and soul. I thought this was the sort of thing I was supposed to do. This was my job. People brought their children, their sick relatives, sought help with bad crops. Anything and everything that had to do with healing of anything they brought to me to help with.


    I no longer remember how many lives I saved, or the remedies I made, or the herbs I taught people about. I started to teach minor things to the temple priestesses so that they could do things as well. Herb mixing and poultices and what to soak bandages in, those kinds of things. We worked together, and for a full decade I found that I was content, though I held to one personal rule; I would not help a Roman. I turned away more than one wounded Legionnaire with no explanation. I would not even say anything to those who brought them to me. I could not bring myself to help someone I saw as part of what had happened to me for so long even if I couldn''t remember most of what had happened.


    I was occasionally asked why I never smiled by a new priestess or person come to the temple. I don''t think I knew how to, even if I was happy or content or in a good mood. I never answered when asked why. It was no one''s business.


    The only person at the temple I felt I considered a friend was Ahnesh, and I watched her grow wiser in the twenty years since I had turned up on the shores of Philae in rags to meet Horus and my mother. What I found frustrating is that Isis had told me that Horus would be coming to teach me as well, and in ten years there had been not a single word, no sign, no omen, no message from him.


    * * *


    There came a day when one of the priestesses came hurrying to find me and said that I must come at once. I thought that perhaps it was Horus come finally to teach me what he would, and I excused myself from the group of people who had come asking for potions for rudimentary things. Another priestess could take care of it at this point, and I went with the girl to find out what was going on. But I wasn''t brought to the temple main, or to the inner chambers that Ahnesh and the other priestesses and I had exclusive access too.


    Instead I was brought to a little room in a part of the temple I had never bothered to visit. The young priestess ushered me inside and I was surprised, almost shocked. In the bed in one corner was Ahnesh, who was near fifty now, older than most of the people of the time lived thanks to the things I had learned. But it wasn''t the woman I knew and was fond of.


    I had not actually seen her in months, and she had wasted away. She was so thin I was surprised that she was still alive. This couldn''t have been something new, a person didn''t waste away like that overnight, and I found myself angry that no one had come to me about this sooner. I sat on the edge of the bed and my friend looked at me with sad eyes from her place propped up on a few pillows. By now she knew me well enough to know the expression on my face. I asked her why she did not come to me sooner, when she had become ill, rather than waiting until I was not sure I could save her.


    ''Because I do not want you to save me.'' How she said it with a smile I don''t know. How someone could want to waste away and die I couldn''t fathom. The spirit this woman had, even as she could no longer walk or get out of bed, was something I had taken a little comfort in secretly for years. It is what you would call today an ''indomitable spirit''. She was unwavering in her kindness, and she was a gentle woman, though firm. As a person she reminded me a little of my mother, though they looked absolutely nothing alike. And now my friend was dying.


    I could see it before my eyes, and I knew there was no room this time for argument with her. At over fifty, she was older than most people lived, and she had suffered with joint pain and limited movement the last seven years that she had come to me for remedies to ease the pain, as well as for the strange cough that she had developed the last two years. She hadn''t let me cure her either time, telling me that she believed that people couldn''t be saved from everything, and she was an old woman by standards of the time. I assumed she would just say the same now, so I didn''t try to argue with her.


    She smiled, the same smile she had greeted me with twenty one years before when I had come to the island and she had been expecting me, and she took my hand in her own thin ones.


    ''Our time here is coming to a close, you and I. You..you will live on to heal people, but not here. Your destiny is not to live on this island forever as the priestesses do.'' She paused, coughing just a little before continuing.


    ''There is someone waiting for you, though they don''t know it yet. A person beyond the likes of which you have ever known. Not a God, but no human either. Someone who will be kin to you one day, and who will teach you everything she knows. You are strong now, but with her help, you will become so much more.''


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    I listened until she fell to coughing once more. Ahnesh was known for having visions among our little community. Outside those who lived at the temple, it was unknown. Here though, I knew she''d seen. I waited patiently for her coughing to subside before I asked her who this person was.


    ''You will know her when you meet her. You know the feeling I speak of. Follow that and you''ll find her. Leave before dawn, but tell no one. You needn''t have anyone follow you or try to tell you not to leave the temple. You do not owe anyone here anything, and I will be gone before dawn myself, so there is nothing to tie you here. Promise me you will go.''


    I could only give her my word, not about to refuse her dying wish. She smiled again, and released my hands, telling me to go back to my little house and not to come back to the temple at all no matter what or who might tried to summon me. She told me to take the bag of coin on her night table, that it would last me for some time.


    I got up and picked up the drawstring bag, pausing to thank her for everything. I wanted to save her, but she had said she would not allow it, and I had to leave the room abruptly before I disregarded her wishes as I had done with my sister and save her anyway.


    I didn''t stop to speak to anyone, though I think I heard my name called by more than one person as I walked, keeping my eyes forward and not looking at anyone. I didn''t stop until I got to my little house where I had now lived for more than two decades. It was the first time since I had been a human child that I wept, the first time since I had hardened under my father''s treatment that I felt any sort of emotional pain.


    People came to see me, but I turned them all away. Let the priestesses deal with them. As the sun set, I knew that Ahnesh was leaving, as she had said. There was a different feel to the air, an emptiness where she had been that stuck out like a sore thumb, and I knew she''d gone.


    I could have spent a river of tears for my friend, but none now came, as if my body would not allow it. I stood from my bed and went to the room where food and water had been kept for me for twenty years. I had several water skins, and filled each one with water from the barrel. I then started putting things into the sack I had found folded in a corner. I took my few belongings and packed them, put on my mother''s jewelry, braided my hair so that it would be out of the way, and filled the rest of the sack with food that would last. I took potatoes and bread and dried fruits and cheeses. I hadn''t touched meat even once since the day I left Rome, and didn''t pack any now.


    Now, one of the things that Isis had taught me was to instantaneously teleport, which I called ''blinking'' and she simply called traveling. And I mention this now because I could have just blinked to any location I wanted instantly, and I decided not to. I decided I would take the long road as any human would, and I went out of my house on foot with the bag of gold Ahnesh had given me under a fold of fabric of my skirt. I waited until it was fully dark before leaving my house. No one was around, presumably because of Ahnesh''s passing, and I walked with my purpose in my hands to the docks, my bare feet not making any kind of sound in the sand. I got into one of the boats, heedless of whose it was aside from making sure it was empty, and I set my things down and took up the oars.


    When I got to the mainland after a long boat ride, though it was exponentially better than the swim I had had to get to Philae in the first place, I docked the boat and took my things, asking where I could buy a horse to take me north where I could catch a ship going across the sea. I could have gone south, but I wanted to visit Karnak and go to Alexandria before heading across the sea.


    In the closest town, at dawn, I bought a jet black stallion and everything I needed to take care of him. I loaded everything I owned into the saddlebags and patted the beast on the neck before mounting up. I tossed an extra coin to the handler before heading off at a trot. I had not, and refused to, look back towards the first home I had had in over a thousand years. I sat straight and tall in my saddle, an expensive sword on my hip along with my mother''s jewelry. I found that the people saw me and knew me from those I had healed on Philae. My looks were still outlandish in Egypt, where most people were dark haired. And those who weren''t were often either light skinned but dark haired or golden headed. And the few people who might have red hair did not have the same bloody hue as mine.


    People who didn''t know of me thought I was royalty, I don''t know if it was my mother''s jewelry that I wore at all times, or if it was how I carried myself, but people moved out of my horse''s way, sometimes bowing as I went by. Those who had heard of me, often called me a Goddess in the flesh because of what I could do. And my name only spread, as I healed and helped people as I traveled. Nights I stopped in towns or would buy a bed or pile of hay in someone''s barn for the night. I was able, but didn''t want, to sleep on the ground. Twenty years of having a good bed had spoiled me, and I liked my comfort.


    Months it took me to get to the Delta, and I was honestly devastated to find that the Romans had burned the one place I had always wanted to go to; the library at Alexandria, hundreds of years prior, before my capture at their hands when my family and I had been in hiding being hunted. Sure, I had read every book in the Archives Horus had entrusted to me, but I had wanted to visit the greatest library in the world all the same. It was one thing to see and read the library of the Gods, which was of course massive, but it was as expected. The library at Alexandria was made and collected by humans and was the greatest place of knowledge anywhere. And I arrived four and a half centuries late. To this day I still mourn the lost opportunity, more than two thousand years later.


    As a result, I promptly booked myself passage on a ship, planning to take my horse with me. I no longer wanted to stay, but would take the trip straight to Greece, leaving in the morning. I stayed on the ship rather than an inn where people might bother me. Here there were only the crew getting ready to sail at dawn, and I would not be disturbed. I settled in the little room with all the supplies I had gotten earlier in the day, set to wait until dawn for setting sail.


    Waiting on the ship meant that I didn''t have to socialize, which I was in no mood to do. I took my time getting my horse settled below deck, brushing him, putting straw down, feeding him. I was content to simply talk to the horse and take the kind of care as I had with any other horse like him. I somehow didn''t seem to like anything but jet black stallions in the last twenty years. Aside from the people I worked with and healed, I tended to stay by myself and liked the animals more than I did people.


    I went to my little room after I finished getting my horse settled in and taken care of for the night. It was and wasn''t quiet on the ship. Below deck was silent where I was, but I could hear the crew loading supplies and shouting to one another above me and in the back of the ship where everything was being packed.


    I didn''t leave my room until the sun started to lighten the sky. I went up to the deck and faced the sun, the wharf was silent for the moment. The wind was in my face and I closed my eyes to feel it and greet the day. I watched the sunrise, and as it did people started to emerge from their nooks and those crossing the sea came to board the ship. I paid no one any mind for the moment, and thankfully no one came near me, too busy with their own business to interrupt me.


    It wasn''t much longer before the ship set sail and finally moved away from the docks. The wind had shifted to the North rather than the East, and the sails were full. I left Egypt finally then, and to this day I have never been back.

 Athens

    The long voyage back to Greece was uneventful. I fed my horse and brushed him daily, even brought him up on deck to get some fresh air instead of just keeping him below where it was dusty and smelled of manure from the livestock aside horses that was housed on the ship for food or for transport. I kept to myself mostly, unless someone really needed me and my skill set I spoke to no one.


    A month passed on the ship and finally we docked in Athens. The docks were busier than anywhere I had been before. I rode my horse down the gangplank, and people were looking at me. I didn''t slouch, but sat tall on my unsaddled black stallion, identical to the horse I had had when I left Rome decades earlier. A few people passing by pointed at me as my horse stepped off the ship''s gangplank. He was loaded with what little I had for personal belongings. I wore my mother''s jewelry, and a clean set of clothes that seemed to be similar to the clothes the women wore here.


    I maneuvered my horse through the crowds, people moved out of my way more often than not, and I thought I even heard my name spoken a few times by people walking by. I was trying to head to the marketplace and have a little time to explore at the same time. I also needed to find a place to live, and I was considering living right there in the city as long as I had space for my horse and didn''t have to share housing with anyone. I had no desire to live with other people. Even in Philae, people were close, but I had had my own little house.


    Philae seemed like a million years in the past already, and it had really been less than a year. The days had blurred together on the ship, and it felt like years rather than months since I had been on dry land. My horse, whom I called Indigo, seemed excited at the new smells and kept making his happy noises and tossing his head and even prancing a little at one point, and it made me laugh. Animals were more genuine than people were.


    It took me some time to find the market, and when I did I got down and walked my horse, looking through the stalls at clothes, jewelry, food, pottery, and a whole variety of different things. My gold that Ahnesh had given me I had not touched, and I decided to stop at a jewelry stall, and I bought a Silver box to keep my mother''s jewelry in when I wasn''t wearing it. Just a small gift from the first friend I had ever had to myself.


    I went to a livery stall and bought Indigo silver for his bridle with my own gold that I had saved from working as a healer. I put the new bridle on him and he tossed his head. It seemed to me that any animal I had for a long period of time seemed to get more intelligent, and seemed to understand anything and everything that went on or was said. I admit that I''ve always found it a fantastic side effect of residual magic energy.


    While I was in the marketplace, I asked around about how to find permanent lodging where I could store my horse and have some space to myself without being separated from town. There was an abandoned gated house not all that far from the market, someone told me, and it was a little run down, but it had room to move and it have space for a horse and a private courtyard. I was admittedly excited. I went to where I had been directed, and when I got there I saw that ''a little run down'' meant that it was very much in disrepair. Luckily for me, I knew what I could do with it.


    There were fallen pillars and walls that were beginning to crumble a little, and part of the roof had fallen in. It looked like no one had lived there for decades, and from what I gathered, no one had lived there in a century. No one would miss it if I took it and made it my own. I went inside to look around, leaving Indigo inside the closed gate but still outside. It was dirty and falling apart, but one could still tell that it had been a beautiful place in its prime, and I intended to being it back to that. And I didn''t even need to hire anyone to do it.


    I went out into the enclosed courtyard and sat at the edge of the fountain that was dried up and overgrown with weeds and vines. I closed my eyes, putting mental feelers out to everything around me. I had never tried this before, but I was somehow certain that it would work. I could feel the sun warm stone, the dryness of the overgrowth of the weeds on the fountain, the cracked stones, the fallen pillars, the holes in the room, the dirt and dust and grime inside the house. It was as if I was seeing it all without seeing it physically. I heard Indigo snort out by the rusted gate with the chipping metal.


    Once I was as connected to everything as it was possible for me to be, I set my hands flat on the warm stone and used the energy I had. There was a sound like a rock slide, and a crackling and shuffling as things shifted around me. The ground shook as I heated up and there were a few yells I could hear from people passing by in the front. After a few minutes silence fell aside from the excited voices out front. There were more people there now than when I had first started. I took an extra second before I opened my eyes, and there was the sound of water behind me suddenly. I smiled, opened my eyes, and gazed at my own handiwork.


    The courtyard was no longer overgrown, but neatly kept as if done professionally, the stones of the paths and around the fountain were no longer weather worn and cracked, but flat and smooth and in one piece. The gate, which was where the people were that I could now see, was no longer rusted, but looked brand new, and the vines and weeds that had grown there were gone. The fallen pillars were whole and new once more, there were no more holes in the roof, and I knew that if I went inside it would look as I had imagined it to be and the way I wanted. The people were looking at me, whispering in aw, and I heard someone say that I looked like the Egyptian woman who was a healer, and my name was mentioned.


    I hadn''t thought my name had reached this far away from Philae, but it didn''t bother me much that it had. I did have a job to do after all, and it was something that made me feel better. I smiled at the person who had said my name and stood up. I walked up to stand beside Indigo and stroked his neck. I asked the people there if they were in need of something, stroking my horse''s neck as I did and he leaned his head against my shoulder and huffed at me.


    The people that were on the other side of the gate didn''t seem to have words. They stared at me, but before I could let it get awkward I broke the silence.


    ''If anyone needs help with something, a loved one is ill or injured, my gate is always open, no matter the time of day.''


    The people in front of me smiled. My name seemed to have definitely preceded me, and I knew that word would spread that I was in Athens. I didn''t think that there would be any lack of work for me. Once my house was set up, I would begin acquiring the needed supplies to sell medicines and protections and such things. I never charged a family who came to me in dire need, though I wouldn''t insult someone who insisted on giving me something.


    * * *


    After the small crowd had dispersed from my gate, I brought my horse back into the courtyard that was now neat and clean and fresh. He would be able to roam and graze and drink from the fountain as he wished. It was a large area, and it was open to the sky.


    I left Indigo in the courtyard and went inside. It looked new in comparison to how it had looked before. The floors were smooth and polished marble, the pillars were whole and no longer chipped and white once more instead of grey. The walls were no longer chipped, cracked or crumbling, but whole and clean. The dirt and dust and leaves and cobwebs were all gone. It looked as if it were a brand new home. It obviously had been a house for the wealthy once upon a time, I could tell by looking at it. I had lucked out. I just needed to have furniture and food and things to fill the house up so that it was livable.


    The gold that Ahnesh gave to me when she died would furnish the house, along with the gold I had saved from working with people the last several years. I hadn''t needed to buy anything while I had been in Philae, so I had quite a bit of money saved. Enough to be considered wealthy. I decided to go back out and get Indigo, and I headed out the gate and back towards the market. I needed to get things situated so that I could soon live in my house.


    I found a woodworker and asked him to build me a list of furniture that I needed; a bed, chests of drawers, shelving, tables, chairs, two single person beds, wardrobes. I asked him if he had a bed already made that could be brought to my house that day so that I could at least sleep off of the floor. He said he had a few things ready made that were on my list and he could have them brought that afternoon. I paid him in full for all of the things he could bring that day and told him where they should be brought. He looked at me a bit strangely and I just smiled and said not to worry about it, to just bring the items.


    After the woodworker, I went to the food stalls and bought all sorts of breads, cheeses, fruits and vegetables, all to be delivered to the house that was beginning to be talked about. Someone living in the old abandoned house in unlivable disrepair. Wouldn''t they be surprised.


    I can hear much better than a human, and I could hear people talking throughout the market about me, who I was and who I might be, people talking about the house and how someone claimed to have seen me fix the house without touching it in mere minutes. Some people spoke my name, wondering if that was who I was and if so, my moving to Athens was a blessing from their Gods. I was flattered, which was an odd feeling for me because it wasn''t something I had ever generally felt before.


    I returned to my new home a few hours later, no one had arrived as of yet, but it was still early. I brought Indigo into the courtyard again and left him loose to do as he pleased as he had been cooped up on the ship for a month on the journey from Philae. I sat on the edge of the fountain and relaxed. I liked this place, it felt welcoming. I thought about staying for quite some time.


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    After another hour I heard the approach of a wagon and men talking. I got up and went to the gate and it was the woodworker with a wagon full of furniture and three other men with him. They saw me and their conversation stopped. Seemed that the men hadn''t believed their boss when he had told them the person they were delivering to. They stared at me as I walked up, my horse following a few feet behind for whatever reason.


    I opened the gate and greeted the men, if a little stiffly. I didn''t like the staring. The woodworker I had spoken to shook my hand and said that they had brought many items that I needed to comfortably furnish my new home. I smiled a little warmer at him since he was being a normal person. I invited him in to take a look at the house before he brought things in and he agreed. I brought him through the house, and the woodworker was astounded at how it looked. He had been through before I had come to town. He told me that the city had abandoned it as well, finding it not worth repairing and not worth knocking down, so I shouldn''t have any problems.


    We went back outside and he and the other three men starting to unload the wagon, one piece of furniture at a time, and bringing it inside where it was put in the spots that made sense. I didn''t have to tell anyone anything, they just sort of did things, and as I went through, I found I didn''t have any problems with the placements, and if I did I could move it without touching it anyhow.


    Before they finished bringing everything in, the vendor I had bought all my food from arrived with barrels full of everything I had ordered. There was one other man with him, and I showed them to the room that would be the pantry, which was attached to the obvious kitchen, and then let them bring everything in.


    The house was beginning to look a little bit like a home. It needed a few personal touches, but it wasn''t something I was worried about right then. Once I got everything else in that I needed then I could worry about everything else. I had a bed to sleep in that night, though I would have to go back to the market and buy some bedding for it, at least that was what I thought until the woodworker surprised me with a gift of soft bedding that his wife had made.


    I had to ask if it was really alright if he gave me these, and he insisted. He had talked to his wife about it and she had been the one to send them with him. All I could do was thank him and send thanks to his wife for the kindness. I was liking Greece more and more, though I kept that to myself. I didn''t share my feelings with anyone. Keep things to myself like I was supposed to. I saw the vendor off when he and his associate were finished bringing in all the food items, and it took a few more hours for the woodworker and his men to finish everything, having left and come back with a second wagon of things.


    I spent the time letting them work brushing down Indigo and feeding him and putting him up for the night in the little stable attached to the house. The woodworker, whose name I now cannot remember, came outside to get me as the sun was setting to tell me they were done and to come and take a look and see how I liked what they had done. I followed, asking how much I still needed and what I would owe him, and I realized when I got into the house, that he had provided much more than what he had said he could. I obviously already owed him money.


    His men had already left, and for that I was grateful, they had been looking at me strangely all afternoon. The woodworker led me through room after room of my home, showing me what they had done and I couldn''t have been happier. Everything looked new, and everything was placed in good spots. He opened the door to the biggest bedroom and he showed me that he had put a large four poster bed with all the bedding and hangings his wife had given me and I smiled. I asked him what I owed him for all the things he had brought that were extra.


    He didn''t want my gold. He told me that his daughter was ill. She was just a child, and she had been bedridden for weeks and that doctors didn''t know what to do, and that he had gone to the temple and prayed to his Gods to send him a miracle for his daughter. He told me that he had had a dream of a woman with hair like blood would come to Athens, and that she would have the power to heal his daughter. I was astonished, and I wasn''t about to refuse. I told him to go home and bring his daughter back here to my house. The man looked like he might cry in relief. He said he would be back within the hour and ran down the stairs and out of the house, got into his wagon and shook the reins so that his horse took off at a quick trot or a slow canter.


    I looked at the wall in my room, and it seemed to have changed. The door that once had been in the temple at Philae now resided on the wall of the bedroom. I had not forgotten that it would always follow me wherever I might go. I opened the door and brought out into the house what books in the Archives I might need. They were made of solid gold, but they would be protected because I was the only one who could access the door that lead to them all. I also brought out some of the herbs I had stock piled in Philae over the years. Depending on the child''s illness and how severe it was, I might need to simply use my energy as I had done with wounds in the past.


    I bought my supplies into one of the spare rooms with the smaller beds and set them all down before hearing a horse''s hoof steps coming close quickly. I went outside to the gate. It was dark by now, and the woodworker had returned with his daughter and wife in the wagon. I opened the gate and went out to the wagon and took the little girl from her mother and carried her into the house while the couple followed close on my heels. I went to the room I had prepared and laid the child on the bed.


    As I had carried her, I noticed that she was burning up wit h fever, which explained why she was in and out of consciousness and why she was so lethargic when I set her down on the unmade bed. The parents stayed with their daughter while I went and got a pitcher of cold water and a clothe, which I hadn''t had before but that the woodworker had supplied that afternoon for me. I returned to the little girl and sat down beside the bed and put the cold clothe on her head. The little moan was unsurprising to me as I knew it would shock her system a little bit where she was so warm.


    I asked the woodworker''s wife when this had started and what her symptoms were aside the fever. I spoke Greek, having been fluent in it for at least a century. They told me that there were no other symptoms, that one day a weeks earlier that she had just suddenly come down with the fever and collapsed while playing outside. They told me that two doctors had seen her in the last week, and neither of them could do anything, neither could tell them what was wrong, and neither of them could heal the child in front of me.


    I told them I was no doctor, that I didn''t know what was wrong either, and their faces fell. I continued by saying that I was a healer, and despite not knowing what was wrong, I could fix it and make their child well. The girl''s mother had been beginning to weep, but when I finished speaking she was sobbing in relief and her husband''s face had lit up.


    I turned away from them and focused my attention on the little girl. I didn''t know what was wrong, but I moved from the chair to sit on the edge of the bed so that I could work and set a hand over her heart and I felt out into her body. The child was in pain even in her sleep, and there it was. The child had gotten some kind of infection and it was killing the girl. I set my other hand on the girl''s stomach, just below where her ribs ended.


    My hands heated up, and they lit, and I could sort of secondarily hear the girl''s parents gasp in surprise. I didn''t say anything, focusing as I was on healing both the infection as well and whatever had caused it. It turned out the girl had stomach ulcers and something had gotten stuck and rotted in her belly. I could sense what was going on as I worked. I was silent, and after a few minutes the child''s body relaxed and she fell into sleep rather than unconsciousness. I made sure that I had taken care of everything before I stopped.


    I sat up straight once more, thirsty and a little tired, and smiled at the woodworker and his wife. Before they could ask, I told them that she was fine now, that she just needed some sleep. I also told them what I had found, and that I had seen it before, and that if she ever complained of a stomach ache that was very bad, that they should bring her to me immediately in the future. That her stomach somehow got holes in it and that was what had made her sick. I could supply herbs to drink as a tea that would help once I was settled in to the house and had everything I needed, but that it could still happen now and then and that it would never be something that would go away completely. But it was manageable as long as they stayed on top of it and aware that it was a possibility. The little girl could have a normal, full life and I could teach her how to handle her condition as well since I had seen it so often before.


    I finished up, went to my own bedroom and brought back the blanket that the woodworker''s wife had given me and put it over the little girl. I told them that she needed some sleep now to recuperate, and that they could stay with her and take her home in the morning. They thanked me profusely, and the woodworker said that if I ever needed his services that he would provide them at no cost in return for the debt he felt they owed me. I thanked him, and said that they could sleep in my own room if they wished, but they decided that they would stay with their daughter. I nodded, and left the small family to rest. I went to the kitchen to have some water and something to eat, as I had not eaten since the night before. I had a bit of bread and cheese and some grapes and a great deal of water as I was more thirsty than I was hungry.


    I felt better after eating, if a little tired, and I went outside. I left the house and headed out to the woods, leaving the city. I knew that the little girl would be fine and wouldn''t wake until morning at least, so I went out to gather herbs, a little basket on my arm so that I could collect them easily. I was surprised at the many different things that I found in the dark that would be of use in treating mild injuries or sicknesses. And in a few hours I had a full basket and started my way back to the city.


    When I got back to the house I looked in on the little girl. Her parents had fallen asleep in the chairs, sitting up, and the child hadn''t woken. A went and put my basket on the table in the kitchen and made a mental note to go to the market in the morning to buy glass and pottery jars to hold my herbs and supplies. When the sun started to rise I went in to check on the little girl again and remove the clothe from her forehead. Her fever was completely gone, her skin cool and her color back. She was no longer clammy, and seemed to be sleeping peacefully and I was pleased. I took the clothe and the pitcher out of the room, and refilled the pitcher with fresh water and took the ladle from the barrel and brought it back to the room that they were all in.


    The woodworker woke up as I came back in, and I told him in quiet tones that his daughter was fine, just sleeping, and that I had gathered some herbs to make her a tea that morning, that I just needed to start a fire. He extricated himself from his wife without waking her and said he could get the fire going for me. I thanked him and went to make the mixture of herbs for his daughter.


    Twenty minutes later the woodworker found me in the kitchen grinding herbs down with rocks as a makeshift mortar and pestle, and he told me that the fire was ready. I carefully poured the powdered herbs into a cup and wondered how I would heat the water since I didn''t have any pots or kettles or anything. And then I remembered, I poured the water into the mug and wrapped my hands around it and focused. In a minute the mug was hot and steaming and the powdered herbs were dissolved. I had forgotten that I could heat things simply with my hands from my energy. I went back to the room where the little family was and the mother had woken up and was sitting beside her daughter on the bed. When I came into the room she looked up and stood upon seeing that I had a steaming cup in my hands.


    I moved and went to take the other woman''s place on the edge of the bed. I held the cup with one hand and gently woke the little girl. She was groggy and a little weak, but when she opened her eyes she was no longer glossed over with delirium. I helped her sit up and told her that she needed to drink what I had made so that she wouldn''t get sick again. She took the cup from me and started to sip at it. I had made sure that it was warm but not too hot for the child to drink.


    While she did, I explained to her and her mother what had been wrong and that the medicine I had the child drinking was needed every day to prevent it from happening. I explained everything I had told the woodworker, and told them I would supply them with the powder every month, give them a month''s worth at a time, and since the woodworker had already promised his craft to me without charge for life I wasn''t going to charge them for the herbs.


    Both parents were overjoyed, and I took the cup from the little girl when she finished the entire mixture. I said that they could add honey to it to make it sweeter for her so it was easier to drink every day. The little girl, who I later found was called Elena, asked if she could go home. I told her she could, but that today she should rest and sleep as much as she could and that she should eat lightly, no meat for a few days. Her parents nodded and I got up and out of the way for the woodworker to pick her up to take her home. They both thanked me again profusely, and I told them to some back the next day and I would have a month''s worth of her powder for them.


    The little family left, little Elena waving over her father''s shoulder as he carried her out to the wagon before they loaded up and left to go home. Much as I wanted to sleep once they had gone from my line of sight, I had to go back to the market and get myself dishes and pots and other things I needed to function in my new home. I put Indigo''s new bridle on him and rode into the market bareback.


    Hours later I returned, another day to wait for people to bring what I bought and set up my new home. One thing I had brought home myself was a mortar and pestle and a saddlebag slightly overflowing with herbs of every different sort for many different needs. I sat in my kitchen and got to work separating them and putting them into the jars and cups and bowls I had gotten the day before to put on my shelves in the front room. I knew my name was going to spread like wildfire now that I had saved Elena''s life, and I didn''t want to be caught unprepared when more people came to see me. I felt like Greece would be pleasantly busy.

 Returning Familiarity And Contentment

    A few weeks after I arrived in Athens my house was finally in complete living order and I had everything I could possibly need to help and heal people. I went about daily life, but kept a feeler out in case the next teacher showed themselves. Isis had said that Horus wasn''t going to teach me himself, which to me made no sense, but the gods have always had a sick sense of humor.


    In the first week after healing little Elena of her severe stomach ulcer and infection, my name had been spread all throughout Athens it seemed. The Healer of Philae had come to live in their city. I was busy. And I seemed to have a little healer in training as well. Elena came to visit and help me almost every day. So I started to teach her some of what I knew of herbs and taught her how to use the mortar and pestle. One day she told me that she wanted to be a healer just like me. I asked what her parents thought about that, and her mother''s voice rang out from my open doorway that she thought it was wonderful her little girl wanted to help people.


    I looked up from the powder I was pouring into a glass bottle and smiled at the woman. I told her I would be happy to teach her all I could pass on and take the child under wing. I finished with the dried green powder and covered the top of the bottle and handed it to the woman. It was Elena''s herbs for her stomach. She tried to pass me coin, but I held up my hand. I wasn''t going to take money from that family under any circumstances.


    Elena was excited to be my apprentice, and to be honest, I was a little bit myself. I had never been asked to pass on knowledge or to teach anyone anything. In Philae it just had been expected by the other priestesses, and not one of them had ever shown a fraction of the enthusiasm that Elena showed as just a child of ten years.


    I took her out with me to gather herbs, showing her what each herb was, what it was called, and what it could be used for. Every day, I taught her a new herb, and asked her before she went home every day what she had learned. Several months went by and I was teaching her which herbs to mix with what and how much to mix. I spent weeks on each with her until she could make it from memory without messing up or forgetting an ingredient. Some days I gave her a list of what herbs I needed and sent her to gather for me while I either went to the market or took care of Indigo or bathed or helped someone who came to see me for help.


    And the reasons people came to see me were endless. Headaches, bruises, wounds, powders to sleep, ointments, creams, skin care, hair care. Children came to me with splinters in their hands or scrapes on their knees and elbows. One person came in the middle of the day once after accidentally having amputated his thumb even.


    Training Elena, who was the student I had been to Isis, was a pleasure. I looked forward to the girl''s presence every day, watching her enthusiasm, watching her grow and flourish. Now and then though she would stay home, having trouble with her condition. On those days I went to see her, taking with me something for her to drink that was stronger than what she took every day.


    People didn''t hunt me for what I was. Five years went by and not a single bang on my door, not a single fire set to my home, my horse wasn''t disemboweled in my yard. No one hunted me, no one feared me. I was welcome, magic and all. And there came a day where I actually stopped in the middle of the market and looked up at the sky. I couldn''t understand the emotion I felt.


    Rome was like a badly remembered nightmare. I knew it happened. I knew it had been horrible there. But my memory was mostly suppressed by then, and it allowed me to function as I never had. My father''s expectations weren''t on me here like they had been at home in Egypt. No one looked at me with contempt or fear or abjection or envy. Here, I was met with welcome and warmth and kindness the likes of which I had never experienced before in my life.


    And on the day I stopped suddenly and looked at the sky and felt an emotion I never had before, I realized I was happy. So that is what that felt like. I thought something was very wrong with me, but I remembered vaguely a time before when I was small where I felt that feeling, and it felt as if my mother were standing with me in the square. Of course she wasn''t, but I could feel her all the same.


    I realized that I had been standing still doing nothing for several minutes now and turned back to the busy market around me. I had a basket of bread and cheeses and fruits for my meals, and enough to share with Elena as well. I had not touched meat of any kind since leaving Rome. I couldn''t stomach the sight of it or any expectation that I actually consume it. I stuck to the watered down wine, water, milk, and the juice of apples, which I had begun to make for myself recently just out of curiosity. I''m sure other people knew about it, but I hadn''t. I didn''t need meat to thrive anyhow, the fruits and bread and cheeses and other such things were plenty and of variation. I didn''t get bored. And there were foods here that were made of fruit that we hadn''t had in Egypt and I enjoyed those as well.


    I hefted what normally would have been a heavy basket when a man took it away from me. I was ready to fight for my purchases, but the male wasn''t stealing them. He offered to carry my things home for me. He was tall, with dark hair and eyes like midnight. I thought there was something familiar about him, but I couldn''t quite place it. I thanked him and pointed in the direction of my home before I started to walk. I thought this male might be someone who needed my help, but he didn''t ask for anything while he walked. He was silent, though it wasn''t an awkward silence. I couldn''t place the feeling.


    He made no indication that the basket was heavy, and I knew for a fact it had to weigh at least fifty pounds. I was stronger than normal humans anyhow, and most of the people around that knew me had seen me carry things that weighed the same as people did under one arm. So this male either was quite strong as some men tended to be, or he wasn''t human.


    I had the distinct feeling he wasn''t human. But he didn''t seem threatening or anything other than familiar to me. Indigo was sticking his head over the gate to my house and whinnying a welcome to me since I had been gone several hours. I opened the gate and Indigo nudged me in the chest while I stroked his neck and mane. I pushed Indigo out of the way so that the male could get past him with my basket. I led the way into the house, leaving Indigo to wander the yards freely as always.


    I shut the door after the male entered the entryway. I told him the kitchen was this way. I called out to see if Elena was back from gathering the day''s herbs yet, but there was no answer. I had given her quite a long list that day as we were running low on some of the more rare herbs and leaves.


    I led the way into the kitchen and asked him to set the basket down on the table and thanked him again for deciding to carry it. I was surprised he hadn''t had any trouble, and had carried it even easier than I did. He set the basket down and I went to reach for the basket he grabbed my wrist and pulled me around the table and against him. It was oddly familiar, and somehow I didn''t feel as though I were in danger, even though at the same time I was in a lot of it. But it was different from the kind of danger I had been in in the past.


    I looked up at him, a little more closely than before, trying to put my finger on how I knew him. I knew I had seen this man before. He smelled like the woods and of horse. Then it clicked. This was the same person who in Philae had followed me, and who had left me breathless without even giving me a name. Now he was in front of me with a grip on my wrist and around my waist that both frightened and thrilled me.


    He seemed to see that I recognized him even though it had been nearly thirty years, and the little smile that crept up his face might have sent someone running, and I admit that it sent a shiver up my spine. He leaned down and whispered in my ear in Greek that he had heard I was in Athens and he''d thought to drop in on me. I didn''t realize I was holding my breath until I breathed in again.


    I remembered how I had felt when he had kissed me twenty five years prior, and I had not since experienced anything similar. I also hadn''t looked for it either. It was obvious what his intentions were, and I wasn''t sure if I could let it happen. I had only ever had forced encounters. He held me against him and another shiver went up my spine that followed his hand as it trailed up and into my hair, and when he leaned down this time it was to kiss me.


    He had hardly said anything aside from offering to carry the basket for me, just as last time he had said nothing, and I deemed him a male of few words. I had not expected to ever see him again, but it seemed that he was keeping tabs on me. I felt like I had known him for eons, but I knew it couldn''t be so.


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    He grasped my hair, just enough to use it as a way of steering and tilted my head back as he kissed me with the same enthusiasm he had the last time. He let go of my wrist and wrapped his arm around my back, and with my hands free now they seemed to wrap around his neck all on their own, possibly to keep myself upright. I forgot that Elena could be back any moment, or that I was in my kitchen.


    He backed me up into a wall and winded me, but he didn''t relent, and I heard what sounded like a growl come out of him. It probably should have frightened me, but it had the opposite effect entirely. He let go of my hair and brought his hands to grasp mine and remove them from him, and I wondered why until I felt him pulling the shoulders of my dress down and I would be bare from the waist up aside from my mother''s pendant that I never took off.


    It had been years since I had had any sort of real modesty, and this didn''t really phase me, though I was self conscious even though I couldn''t understand why. He finally relented his assault on my mouth and let me breathe. I gasped for air, leaning against the wall with him pressed up against my entire body. I looked up at him but he was eyeing me as if I were a rich man''s meal. I had never been looked at as if there was nothing else around.


    He leaned down again, but this time his kiss was quick but fiery before he tilted my head back again. I closed my eyes at the soft feel of his mouth on my throat and a little sound escaped me at the sudden warmth of his hand on my breast. His hands were rough feeling, but soft at the same time, and they didn''t hesitate in their attentions. His thumb pressed on a spot beneath my ear and it made me lightheaded as his mouth trailed its way down to my collarbone and below and I held my breath once more, not knowing what he was going to actually do but having an inkling.


    My guess was correct, and it was the strangest sensation I had ever experienced. In all the times I had been raped I had not been touched in any way other than violently. His mouth latched onto me and my back arched involuntarily as a gasp of surprise escaped me. He seemed to not be concerned about it though and continued. My head fell back against the wall he had pushed me up against and a soft moan came out of me. I don''t think I had ever had such a sound come out of me up until that point. Something about everything felt volatile, urgent.


    I didn''t notice he had slipped a hand under the skirt of my dress until I felt his hand sliding up my thigh and drawing my dress up to my hip with it. His mouth released me and he leaned back up to kiss me again, distracting me while his hand slipped between my legs. My body jolted back against the wall with a pronounced thud without instruction from me, and I didn''t know if it was from sensation or if it was my body trying to get away.


    He didn''t let me get away though, and it wasn''t the painful feeling I thought it would be when he slipped a digit into me. All I had known was pain in this area of things, and with everything he was doing I was learning something much, much different and better than anything I had known. He repeated the motion of removing his finger almost entirely from me before pressing it back in up to the knuckle, and the moans that escaped me into his mouth were so strange to me, but it seemed to be what he wanted to hear, because I heard him make that growling sound again, and it sounded self satisfied while his actions got quicker, though not rougher.


    My legs trembled, I was breathless and clinging to him just to stay upright. He added another digit and I thought I was going to actually faint. There was a pressure in my belly and it built from his attentions until my body seemed to explode, my cries rang out in my kitchen.


    He stopped finally, and I leaned against the wall to try and catch my breath, and I thought he was through with me, but after a short moment he was picking me up so that my legs wrapped around him. I yelped, surprised, and wrapped my arms around hick neck for stability. He pressed my back into the wall, and my dress was around my hips, his hands holding my rear.


    This time I didn''t need to guess what he was going to do. My body tensed, anticipating pain as his length pressed against me before the head of him slipped past my entrance. He told me to relax, the first words he had spoken since the marketplace, he said that if I relaxed it wouldn''t be painful. Somehow, I trusted his word and tried to relax as he said. As I calmed down and relaxed little by little, he pressed more of himself into me. He was uncomfortable, but I can''t describe the sensation as pain.


    I was entirely out of breath when he seemed to not be able to press any further into me, and as he started to pull back out, a moan escaped me before I knew it had. I had never imagined that this could be pleasurable. And while my memories of Rome had been repressed until I couldn''t remember anything, I did still remember what my first experience with sex had been, and it had nearly caused my death.


    But this, this was so vastly different. He pressed back into me more firmly, and this time it wasn''t uncomfortable. My body had relaxed aside from my arms and legs being wrapped around him. I don''t know when he had removed his shirt, but it was sometime before he had picked me up. His skin was warm against me, and he was firm. There was nothing soft about him. His movements within me were measured, and while not rough, not gentle either, and my body was trembling again, more than before.


    I felt lost in all of it. I didn''t know what volume of sound was coming out of me, I couldn''t think of anything. All I could do was feel what he was doing and then that unfamiliar pressure built once more until I almost literally saw stars as me body seemed to shake and spasm around the length of him. He didn''t stop this time either, and the sensations running rampant simply intensified. I didn''t realize until later on that I had raked my nails over the tops of his shoulders so sharply that I had drawn blood, and a short indeterminable time later he shoved himself into me in such a way that it hurt a little, and I could feel him pulsing as warmth filled me.


    He was still now, me entirely out of breath and visibly trembling all over and he, he was still and while not gasping for breath as I was, he was breathing a little heavily. I had never thought that sex could be like that up to that point, and I admit that that single experience changed my life.


    Slowly he removed himself from me, but he didn''t set me down. He carried me up my stairs and found my bedroom and brought me inside. I was surprised, but he set me on my bed and drew me a bath, and I noticed that, like me, he could heat the water without fire. He returned to me and removed my dress entirely before giving me a hand into the steaming tub. The hot water was like heaven to my aching body as always. He left me then, and I thought he was leaving the house entirely. But I was wrong.


    A few minutes later he returned, fully dressed, to inform me that Elena had only just returned with the herbs I had asked her for. I started to get up but he put a hand on my shoulder to stop me. I looked at him confused, but he just smiled a little and left the room, telling me not to worry about it. I felt strange. I wasn''t used to that kind of treatment from people. True, everyone I met or spoke to was kind and welcoming, but this was different, and I couldn''t understand why.


    I soaked in the bath, washed, and stepped out and wrapped in a linen to dry myself with. I got out a clean dress and put it on, braided my hair, and magically evaporated the water in my tub in my bedroom before going downstairs again. Elena had gone home it seemed, but the basket she had brought with her was empty and when I looked at the stock on my shelves, everything was full. I remembered my groceries in the kitchen, and went there to put them away. That basket too was empty on the table and my things put away. But there wasn''t another soul in the house. I went out to the yard in the setting sun and saw him.


    He was brushing down Indigo, and I went in my bare feet to join him. His eyes looked black in the lighting, but I knew they weren''t. I asked him what he was doing here, and his answer shocked me. He said he came to see me since he had heard I left Philae finally. Athens wasn''t as boring as a temple of sequestered priestesses and minimal living. I was surprised. Was that why he had left the way he did? I couldn''t begin to guess. But somehow this seemed different. He was calmly brushing my horse, and talking with me companionably. Men didn''t really do that with me, never had.


    I realized that I was hungrier than usual after putting Indigo in his stall for the night. I thought that now he was going to leave since the sun had all but disappeared, but he seemed intent on staying. I wasn''t sure what to do. I had never been in that situation before in my life, and I didn''t know how to handle it.


    He seemed to. He walked in front of me to the door into the kitchen and sent me in before him. I didn''t know what he could want from me that he hadn''t already gotten, but he seemed intent on pulling out food. I didn''t know how to word the many thoughts and confusion rushing through my head as I watched him. He asked if I was going to sit down or stay by the door, and I moved to sit at the table.


    There was not a speck of meat in the house, as I could not stomach the sight or smell of it, nevermind the taste. There were fruits and vegetables and bread and cheese and eggs and things, but no meat or fish. He said something under his breath about not being surprised about that. I asked him what he meant by that, but he didn''t answer me. He pulled out eggs and bread and cheese and fruit and I realized that he was going to actually cook. I started to get up to take over for him but he gave me a look so stern I didn''t even get halfway out of my chair before I sat down again.


    I was entirely out of my comfort zone. I hadn''t been treated like this by someone before who wasn''t a servant. He got the fire going to cook just as quickly as I always did, and he started boiling some of the eggs while he set out the rest on the table, obviously intent on eating with me.


    The rest of the evening was strange but pleasant. I was used to being alone at night, but every time I thought he was going to leave he didn''t. It was by far the most pleasant night I had ever had, and when it became obvious that he was planning to stay the night I was surprised. He took me by the wrist and led me up to my bedroom, fully undressed me before shedding his own clothes and took me to bed, inflicting the same pleasures he had that afternoon and new ones that left me feeling euphoric. I don''t think I slept so well in my entire life as I did that night with him beside me and feeling real contentment.

 New Places, New Mentor

    Every time I thought he was going to leave, he didn''t. I woke up the next morning and my bed was empty, but when I went downstairs he was sitting with Elena, giving her pointers on a poultice she was making. I didn''t know how to feel. I didn''t understand how I felt. Happy was so foreign to me I thought something was very wrong. Content was one thing. So was being comfortable with how things were. But happy I just couldn''t fathom. I went to the kitchen and found food laid out for me. I was surprised. Maybe Elena had done that for me, but somehow I knew it had been him.


    I still didn''t know his name, nor had I asked either. I knew I should, but I felt that if I asked, he would disappear again. And I didn''t want that. I wanted him to stay. I wanted to have him around.


    Days went by, and at times he did leave the house, but he always came back. Sometimes he brought food, sometimes he brought me the rare herbs that Elena couldn''t find, he brought pottery and tapestries for my house, clothes for me even. I couldn''t believe it. And he never asked a copper from me either.


    And every night, as I had never done before, I had someone to sleep beside after he made me practically scream in pleasure. Days turned into weeks, weeks became months. Eventually, I told Elena that she had learned everything I could teach her, and I was proud that she had been my apprentice. And now she could open her own shop if she wished, or she could stay and do as she had been. And even if she went her own way she and her family were always welcome and always would be. She chose to open her own shop to be able to help more people, and she was getting married as well, and was moving to another part of the city.


    After Elena married and left to heal others in her own shop, it was just the two of us. I had plenty of work to do, as people came to see me daily and I was often busy. But he would help me and work with me. The months went into years and before I had known it it had been ten years since he had arrived to sweep me off my feet. Neither of us aged. I had watched Elena grow up, get married, have her own children. Indigo died of old age, and one day while I was working I heard my name called.


    I went outside, and my Indigo eyed lover had brought me a horse identical to Indigo, with a temperament sweet as could be, and I realized it was my birthday. How this man knew I don''t know, I had never celebrated my birthday, and I don''t believe I had ever told him. But here he was, on the twenty-first of October, with a jet black stallion for me.


    To learn of kindness, after so much unkindness was monumental for me. My demeanor changed, I smiled more, I even laughed. I hadn''t even known how to laugh until it happened randomly when my lover had said something. I thought something was wrong with me, but there wasn''t. For once, there wasn''t anything wrong with me. I was twenty-six hundred years old, and I finally had a good life. I enjoyed Greece. We went to the festivals that I hadn''t gone to before. Parties that I had not accepted invitations to before I went to now with him.


    We spent centuries living like this in Athens. Eventually, the human customs changed, and while I still owned the house in Athens, I had to move on then, because I didn''t want to have what happened before happen again. I didn''t want to be hunted. When things changed in Greece, my lover and I ended up going our own ways. I traveled by horse drawn wagon to another country. I ended up in what is now Romania, and I could not tell you what happened to him or where he went.


    I was sad to lose him, but I was glad of the change. I felt ready for a fresh start. Things were different, and now there were new religions, and I had stopped healing by magic a long time before in order to protect myself. I was an herbalist, though that often now was also considered magic, but it wasn''t hunted or outlawed. I was three thousand years old just about. I ended up in a city called Tomis, now known as Constanta. Another coastal town, which seemed to be my preference.


    The city was old by human standards at four hundred years old, but it was new and young compared to some places I had been. I found myself a house, and like last time I took the time to get myself set up and in working order. I brought many of my things from Greece. Things that I deemed irreplaceable. The tapestries, gifts my lover had given me, my mother''s jewelry, which I still wore often. People thought I was royalty, but I tried to keep more to myself in new places.


    I got my shop open within a week, secretly using my abilities to make things go more quickly. I set things in motion the same way I had in Athens. And after a few years in Tomis, I was working steadily. I didn''t expect to see my indigo eyed lover again, and decided that waiting for something that might never come was a waste of my life. I didn''t go looking purposefully, but I wasn''t closed off to it anymore either. But it would come to be that nothing lasting would happen.


    I worked tirelessly, now and then having free time, and because I wasn''t working magic, I closed my shop a half day of the week. It was on a day, a holiday for the people, when all shops were closed for the entire day, that I ran into someone unusual.


    I took a walk in the morning out to the coast with the kitten I had recently been given by a child who had been so happy that I had flowers in one spot in my house. I had let the girl take them, and the next day she had returned and given me this fluffy little ball that liked to sit on my shoulder. The kitten was all grey, and I took her everywhere. And this day was no different. I went to the shores just outside of the main town, and I sat on a grassy sand dune and watched and listened to the waves. I saw someone down the shore walking in my direction, and somehow I got the feeling this person was there to see me


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    My little kitten was purring in my ear while she burrowed in my hair. I stayed sitting on the dune where I was, and as the figure came closer I saw that it was a white haired, but young looking woman. There was no doubt now that she was there to find me, but I wondered why for a moment. But I had a feeling in the depths of my belly that whoever this woman was, she was the person I had been waiting on for five centuries.


    I waited without moving as the young looking woman with silver hair came up and stopped a few feet away from me. The kitten on my shoulder was sniffing excited in the woman''s direction, and I wondered if I should say something or not, but I didn''t have to wait long for the answer.


    ''Are you ready to train? You may bring the kitten.''


    How she knew I had been waiting to train I still don''t know to this day. I wonder if Horus had given her a vision as he had to me to bring me to Philae. I nodded. I stood up from the dune and walked down to stand near her. She was around my height as well, which was more equal in combat training that it would have been if Horus was doing it since he was more than two feet taller than me. But that didn''t mean it wouldn''t be as grueling, or I hoped it wouldn''t mean it would be less grueling. No one could say I didn''t work hard, no one could say I slacked off.


    I nodded, yes I was ready. I had been waiting centuries since Isis had taught me all she knew and told me that I should look for the one who would train me in magic and combat. I asked where we were going, what I should call her, and told her that I would be happy to let her stay in one of the spare rooms in my house. She said I should call her Storm, which seemed a little strange to me but I could understand the need for privacy. She also said that we would be training there on the beach and she would accept a room in my house. I told her that I was happy to share anything I had.


    I asked her when we could start, that I would like to begin right then if I could. She smiled at me and said I had initiative. Yes we would start then. I should take my kitten and hand her over for the moment. She wanted to see what I could do before we began. I handed over my little ball of fluff and Storm held her just as tenderly as I had been, stroking her tiny head. I asked what she wanted to see and she told me everything.


    I ran through my entire repertoire of abilities, which took quite some time considering. The only thing I could not show her was my healing, as I was not about to harm something, just to heal it, I found that cruel. But I needn''t have shown her that anyhow, because my reputation far preceded me. She sat on the dune I had sat on, holding and stroking my kitten''s fur while she watched me, taking in all the information being given her.


    Finally, I was through, and stood before her with my toes in the sand. I hadn''t even broken a sweat. I said nothing, waiting for my new teacher''s assessment of my abilities. I wondered how far she would push me, how much I would improve, how much I would learn. I looked forward to it. She was looking at my little kitten and I could feel her thinking, though I wasn''t so rude as to look and see just what it was specifically.


    Finally she looked up at me and spoke. ''Not bad. You''re obviously not new, but you could stand to learn a bit more.''


    ''I''d like to know whatever you will teach me. I''ve been waiting more than five hundred years for this.''


    She smiled at me, and I instantly knew that this woman would be a wonderful teacher, and become a great friend, and it made me smile in return. I had not felt such warmth from another person since Ahnesh. Elena was warm, but she had worshiped the ground I had walked on. This was different.


    I asked what I should do first, and Storm set me to sitting back down on the dune facing her. We both closed our eyes, and she told me to listen to the ocean and the wind around us. To connect to it, to everything I could sense with my enhanced senses. I opened my mind, taking the time to open myself to anything. I felt a brush and slight mix with her energy, and was shocked. Phoenicians had been an interest of mine in the Archives as a child. Now my long awaited teacher happened to be one? I didn''t believe in coincidence.


    My body jolted with the knowledge. I could hear her mind, and it was clearer than mine, listening as I was supposed to be. I focused and opened myself the rest of the way. I could hear and feel the ocean and those that lived in it, the insects and critters that lived in the sand. I could feel their lives, I could feel heartbeats, almost see them behind my eyes. I could smell the salt in the air so keenly. I could feel the ebb and pull of the ocean tides and the waves driving them. I could feel the clouds above, and could smell the coming rain. I could hear the wisps of grass and weeds rustling in the wind, I could hear the sand blowing around.


    I felt my heartbeat slow and seemed to sync with Storm''s, my breathing deep and even. I forgot my body and felt as if I were just a mind in tune with the rest of the world. I had never felt such a thing in my life. I could tell in town who was suffering and who was happy. I could feel their souls as they went about their days. Outside of town it was quiet, as peaceful as the beach was aside from a few older children playing.


    ''Good,'' came the voice of my new teacher, from her mind to mine. I smiled. I was a quick study. ''Feel the ebb and flow of the world around you. Really feel it, like you never have before. Feel the sun and the energy it brings. Feel the ocean and the life it holds and creates, feel the tides and the waves. Feel the animals and insects, feel their movements as they go about their lives. Connect with them. You can draw energy from anywhere. Choosing not to is what defines us.''


    I listened to her voice in my mind, and she knew I was capable of doing anything she might want me to do. My mind opened wider than I had ever tried to open it before. I had an inkling of the old fear of being found, but the only things I felt were non human beings. Storm. Me. Insects and animals. The humans in town who could not know that I was listening to and feeling them. The ocean seemed to have a voice of her own that was so soothing I knew in that moment I could listen to her for hours on end and not be bored. Listening to the ocean brought me a peace I have never known in any other situation in my life.


    I could hear Storm talking quietly to me mentally as I listened, saying that awareness was everything, and if I was aware, that there wasn''t anything I could fail at. Especially if I were as calm as I was right then. I think she could tell that it was the effect of the ocean on me that made me so calm. She didn''t know me, but I was never tranquil, even if I seemed so. But there was no hiding from a teacher. You can''t teach if you don''t know everything. I listened to the ocean, and she sifted through my mind and memories, pulling them up in my mind while I tried my best to be aware of it and not at the same time since she was pulling up pain and hardship.


    We spent hours on the beach that first day with her learning about me at her leisure while I absorbed all of the world around me without sifting through her mind in return. Somehow I knew it would have been a very bad idea, and I wanted her to teach me.


    It was dark before she told me that that had been enough for the day, and I came back to myself. I was disoriented at first, having felt as though I was outside of myself for most of the day. My limbs were heavy, and I felt a fatigue I had not felt in centuries. Storm told me that I should eat heartily, and then sleep, and to meet her back at the same spot in the morning during high tide.

 Routine and Hard Work

    Training went on in much the same way every day. I would meet Storm on the beach at dawn, snow, rain or shine. We would start with the expansion of my mind in meditation before moving into other things. Combat started with hand to hand without any sort of weapons. There were many bruises, broken fingers, wrists, black eyes and anything else. But it was invigorating, I felt I had a purpose again that was bigger than just healing the sick. I could finally do the job I had been appointed to in a real way.


    Storm was an excellent teacher, and I absorbed everything she tried to impart on me like a sponge. She was a Phoenician, and that meant that I was learning from one of the most skilled warriors on the planet and beyond it. She taught me how an unarmed, petite person such as myself could disarm a soldier without using magic. She taught me to use my size to my advantage, as well as how to mentally throw my opponent off with my appearance. I was single minded in my tutelage, determined to learn everything that I could. There had been a time for a magic using healer, but in this age of fear and corruption it was time for a warrior, an assassin even.


    After a year Storm started me on weapons. She brought me sacred Phoenician weapons to practice with, not wooden weapons or dull ones. She said I should practice with things that could hurt me, to learn how to use them properly without hurting myself. I learned to use a spear, what she called a flail, a scimitar, daggers, short swords, long swords, claymores, dual swords. There were weapons I had never seen before. There were weapons this world had never seen before. I took the time to learn and master them all, though some were easier than others. Becoming a master of a particular weapon didn''t take nearly as long to do as unarmed had, because there weren''t as many things to learn. I spent about six months on each weapon, until Storm told me I could learn no more about it.


    I loved weapons training, to put it simply. Yes, I would always cut myself, and badly, at first, but my healing ability took care of the worst of that within moments. Storm would give me a day''s break if she thought that I had lost too much blood on these days, and would set me to listening to the world or practicing weaponless in what she called Tai Chi. I had never heard of such a thing, but I enjoyed it, especially in the sand with the ocean to listen to, and Storm would do it with me. She wasn''t the kind of teacher who just barked orders and stood and watched. She was very hands on and would help with correcting mistakes instead of just leaving me to bumble through it like an idiot.


    Throughout this training we grew close and became fast friends, something I had not had since I had left Philae. Storm saw me for what I was and saw my potential, and I thanked the Gods that they had chosen her as my teacher. I still had a knee-jerk reaction towards being given orders from when I had been young and my father had been my teacher, and I still feared a beating if I got something wrong, but my friend was patient with me, even though she would sound impatient when she would quip that she wasn''t going to smack me around and that I needed to chill out or we''d be done for the day. She knew how I craved knowledge, and threatening to stop the lesson was enough to put me back in my place. I didn''t want to quit for the day. Often I would end up practicing by the seaside long after dark, whether it be weapon stances or doing Tai Chi.


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    During this time, I also became less wary of men as I gained the confidence that I could truly defend myself if need be without killing someone. I didn''t like killing, regardless of the things I had done in the past during my time in Egypt or what I had done to Rome in revenge. I abhorred killing. I was a healer, and a defender, and a guardian, not a villain. With the things Storm taught me I could defend myself without shedding blood, or much of it at least, as I did break a few noses. But at the same time, I was able to venture out now and then to mingle with the humans in the town I lived in. I joined their festivals and their rowdy inns. I was a renowned herbalist in the town as well, and people came to me for healing and to buy herbs and things that I gathered to sell to make a living. There were times where I didn''t actually sleep.


    There just wasn''t enough time in a day to be able to do everything that I needed to do. I couldn''t live without making some sort of income, so the herbs and things I made and sold were essential. Yes, I had quite a bit of money from my time in Greece, but I didn''t want to go through all of it and end up a pauper by the end of my training. I never wanted to have to live hand to mouth again. I wanted a choice.


    In those days no one visited beaches to swim, humans were afraid of it back then. Afraid of what was in it. I couldn''t really blame them either to be honest. I had not recovered from the strange shark that had chased me when I was trying to get to Philae. So Storm and I had the beach all to ourselves day in and day out. And to this day I prefer it that way. A quiet stretch of rainy sand with high tide crashing in rhythm with my breathing.


    Storm at one point advised me that I needed to either hire someone to run my little shop or close it, because she noticed that I was running thin, and in order to train properly, I needed to be at my best. So she gave me a break from training to get things in order, and I hired a young girl just as I had in Greece, and I paid her well to gather the right herbs and run the shop for me. Of course she knew where she could find me if something happened or there was an urgent customer.


    This freed me to focus on my training undividedly, and managed to get some sleep in between as well. I was immersed, eager, and a quick student. I moved from weapon to weapon, year to year. Each time I mastered a weapon, Storm would have us put it in the sub-dimension that Horus had provided me, where the Archives were stored. She said that it was the safest place for them.


    People hunted Phoenicians, you see, and they were almost extinct by this time. Storm was the last of the race''s royalty, and the weapons she taught me with, they were the only ones left that hadn''t been destroyed or stolen and lost. I cannot express how honored I was when she told me that when we went our separate ways that she would be leaving the weapons in my possession to keep safe. For her to trust me in such a way was a little foreign to me, but it pleased me immensely nonetheless.

 The End of an Era

    Twenty years passed in this manner. The town I lived in had changed, but I hadn''t. And in those days, the majority of people lived in the same town their entire lives. It was time to leave, move to another region or another country, and start over again. I spoke to Storm about this, and she agreed that it was time to move on before people became too suspicious of my agelessness. I was sad, because it meant that my training was finished and my friend and I would be going our separate ways now. At the same time, I was also happy to have mastered my training in its entirety after so many centuries of waiting.


    Storm and I went to the local inn that evening to have some fun on our last night before leaving the town. Music played, food and ale flowed freely, it was noisy and boisterous and merry. It was difficult to be sad in such an environment, and both of us got caught up in the flow of things. I danced, I flirted, I ate and I drank, which was something I didn''t really do back then. Storm and I stayed until quite late, and at one point I think she left without me, without saying anything. Though I couldn''t blame her since I had ended up being picked up by someone during the night, she probably had wanted to let me have a night of fun and not interrupt me.


    He wasn''t much taller than me, since men in those days weren''t as tall as they are now. After finding out that Storm had left, the male expressed sympathy for being left by my companion and that he would be happy to keep me company instead. Since I had been drinking the ale for a change, and I had been enjoying myself thus far, I accepted the offer. I spent another two hours drinking, talking, and enjoying myself with the human male, listening to the music, and listening to the hubbub and noise around us.


    My companion asked me if he could walk me home. He knew who I was, being the best herbalist in the whole town and all, and my shop was once more in the front room of my house. I wasn''t worried about being harmed, I could easily handle a human, mildly drunk or not. So I smiled and accepted his hand to help me up. He must have been wealthy, because he paid the tab for my drinks and things from after Storm left.


    I leaned comfortably on his arm as we walked along the dark streets towards my home. He was warm in the chill of the salty night air of Autumn, and we talked and flirted the entire walk to my front door. When we did get there I had a small moment of hesitation. I had not been with anyone since Greece, and I wasn''t sure if I could do it. But the man saw my expression and took the risk for me. He leaned down and kissed me before I could think on it too much. He wrapped a hand around the back of my neck and delved into my mouth. It had been decades since I had been kissed, and between that and the ale in my system, my hesitation disappeared entirely.


    I returned his kisses, sliding my arms up and around his neck at the same time he slid an arm around my waist and pulled me against him. The tiny sound I made was swallowed up by the kiss, but he still seemed to notice it and broke the kiss finally, leaving me breathless. He kept his arm around my waist as he went in the always unlocked front door. I told him where to go and he led us to my bedchamber.


    He kicked the door shut behind us and then pushed me up against it roughly. It startled me, and I thought for a moment that I might be in danger, but all he did was kiss me again, more enthusiastically than he had outside the house. His body pinned mine to the door, and he kissed me in such a way it left me moaning into his mouth breathlessly. It felt familiar, but I had never met this man before and it confused me a little. Not enough to make him stop though. I didn''t want him to stop. I wrapped my arms around his neck while he explored my mouth and his hands roamed over my sides and hips through my dress.


    He broke the kiss and slowly knelt before me, and he slipped his hands up under my dress and ran his hands all the way from my ankles up, pulling my dress up along the way. I stood still, letting him lift my dress and expose my bare body beneath. He lifted the dress up and over my head, and dropped the dress on the floor without taking his eyes off of me. I stood before him, not having any modesty. The look on his face was familiar to me, on top of him looking as if he wished to devour me whole.


    He suddenly pressed against me again, pressing me back into the door, and kissed me with even more fervor than before. His hands roamed my skin, and his clothing was rough against my skin but only managed to arouse me more. His hands were warm, and calloused, and against my soft skin it made me shiver. His ardent kisses and groping hands left me breathless and moaning into his mouth. The door against my back was cold and hard, and he was pressed so tightly against me, warm and solid but soft at the same time.


    My hands slid up under his tunic, undoing the belt at his waist and letting it drop to the floor with a careless thud. My own hands were well cared for and soft, and he seemed to flinch a little bit when my hands touched the warm toned skin of his waistline. I let out a sound of pleasure when I touched him, and I let my hands slide up his abdomen. He broke the kiss just long enough to quickly remove the tunic entirely before sliding his hands down my back to grip my bare rear and pull me tight against him, his already hard length pressing against my lower abdomen.


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    He suddenly picked me up, and I wrapped my arms and legs around him so I wouldn''t fall. He turned around and walked away from my bedroom door and went and deposited the two of us onto my feather tick bed. Taking my hands from around his neck, he pinned them above my head and leaned down to kiss me once more, his free hand curling over one of my breasts and kneading. Since there was no fire lit, the air was chill, but his hands were warm, and he tasted of ale. He let go of my wrists at the same time he broke the kiss. ¡°Don''t move,¡± he said, in a tone that seemed deeper than before and made my breath catch all on its own.


    It was familiar, but I couldn''t place it because the entire visage was completely different. Brown eyes, honey brown hair, quite attractive but not devastatingly so like the person he reminded me of was. But the expression in his eyes was the same, and I seemed to react just as intensely to him. I dared not move, barely dared to even breathe as he lowered his head slowly, hot breath ghosting over my skin and making me shiver, until I felt his mouth around one of my nipples.


    I felt like I had been scalded, and my back arched as I let out a little cry. It took every ounce of my control to keep my arms above my head when I wanted to tangle my fingers into his hair and press against him. He held me down as he teased me, which made me feel desperate. My hands moved of their own volition finally and tangled into his hair as I moaned. He stopped, and removed my hands, pinning them back above my head.


    He slid his hands all the way from my wrists down my arms, over my breasts, my ribs, belly and finally stopped at my thighs as he parted them. My chest heaved in anticipation, wondering what he would choose to do. I lay with my head against my bed and kept my eyes closed, almost panting the longer he sat still and didn''t move. But just as I was going to open my eyes and look at him I felt him oh, so slightly stroking my flesh with one of his fingertips. I lifted my hips in invitation but he seemed to ignore it. He seemed to want to torment me. I bent my leg to give him ample access to me, and I could actually feel him smirking at me. My hands had twisted into my blankets above my head, but my mind was pinpointed wherever his finger touched.


    Finally he pressed his fingertip to my clit, and I couldn''t help but moan after all his torment of me. He, effortlessly it seemed, slipped two fingers into me, and my hips lifted once more as I cried out. He started to stroke my walls now, slowly at first, while another finger pressed itself to my clit and rubbed it. My body felt hot, and my body moved on its own to meet his digits every time he slid them back into me. And every time, it elicited a soft pleasured sound out of me.


    I could feel myself tightening around his fingers, those digits increasing in pace as well as force. He leaned up over me and kissed me again without stopping, and I ended up moaning into his mouth. He was unrelenting, assaulting every one of my senses without mercy. It felt like my body was going to explode, and a moment later it did. I could feel my walls spasming around him as I cried out over and again until he finally stopped and gently removed his fingers from me. I watched him with heavily lidded eyes as he licked his fingers.


    It wasn''t until now that I realized that he was still wearing his pants, though they were visibly tight now. He stepped from the bed as I caught my breath and divested himself of them before returning to the bed to kiss me again. He pulled up my legs and hooked them over his hips as he settled between my legs, and this time when I moved my hands to run them over his torso he didn''t pin me back down again. He just let me run my hands along his heated flesh and explore every ripple of muscle.


    I wrapped my arms around his neck as he kissed me and I felt him press against my entrance and then into me with a single fluid motion, a cry ripping from me at the assault on my still tender nerves. I stretched around him, and my chest heaved with the effort and from the pressure of having him within me.


    He pulled back out until nothing but the head of him remained inside before thrusting back into me, causing me to moan. He repeated the motion, making me think that he was going to withdraw from me fully and then sliding back into me, over and again, slowly increasing his pace until my body rocked slightly beneath him.


    Breathless and moaning, I clung to him. I had not been with anyone in the entire time I had been in this town. And it had been decades. I didn''t care about the rising ''morality'' of only sleeping with one''s spouse, and I was leaving town that next morning anyway. With pleasure coursing through my entire body as he took me and growled in my ear possessively, I knew that if he wanted, he could have me straight through until morning.


    My hips lifted to meet him thrust for thrust as I cried out, and it didn''t stop even when my body started to spasm around him in a second orgasm. My nerves were tender and frayed, and it didn''t take very much for me to reach a third release, almost screaming as my body arched and moved with him in abandon. His hands moved and grasped my rear to hold me in place as he relentlessly took me now as he pulsed within me and finally stopped, buried to the hilt in me, and reached what felt to me like an intense release as he groaned in pleasure in my ear.


    * * *


    He kept me up the entire night, as if he couldn''t get enough of me. I finally fell asleep just before dawn, and I ended up sleeping far later than I intended. It was midday when I woke, and the man was gone, though I could still smell his scent in the room, as well as the scent of sex. I was sore all over, there were marks all over my body, and as I climbed out of my bed I realized I needed a bath. I washed in the pond in my courtyard, the walls around my home high enough that no one would see me bathing naked in such a manner.


    When I went back inside I dried my entire body and brushed and braided my hair down my back in a single plait before putting on traveling clothes of soft leather. Most women a thousand years ago wore dresses all of the time, but I only wore them if they wouldn''t get in my way. It was considered immodest by then for a woman to wear pants, but I didn''t care. I saddled my horse and mounted up, bedroll and saddlebags in place. I steered my jet black stallion out of my home, and through town. Outside of town I stopped and looked back for one last look. I knew I wouldn''t come back.

 The Stake

    I wanted to stay near the sea in choosing a new place to settle down to live, but I also had to move where no one would know me. I traveled almost aimlessly, staying in taverns and inns when I found a town and sleeping on the ground when I didn''t. When I reached the sea again I took a ship heading west that would land in Portugal. I figured that there would be as good a place as any to start over.


    It took six months to get there, and once more I set up shop. I slowly stopped being wary of men as much as I had been before. Though at the same time there were some bad experiences where I was violated, sometimes violently. But at the same time, there were some very pleasurable experiences as well. I became the herbalist I always did, and I was busy. Now and then I wondered about the male I had spent my life in Greece with, and I wondered about my stolen son.


    In all of the years since I had left Rome, I had never had another conception of a child. In Greece, in five hundred years of a very healthy and active sex life, I hadn''t once conceived. At one point, I had gone to see Isis, and found out that I would never have children. Rome and the birth of my son had destroyed my body. It broke my heart, but at the same time it sent me into a spiral of random encounters with no regard to anything except my own pleasure. There weren''t any consequences, so why bother being careful?


    It was freeing, and at one point I decided to open an inn in a town I traveled to to settle in. I lived in the inn, that way I was able to help guests who arrived late in the night. But it also allowed for me to come across many people of all sorts of types and classes. The inn made me wealthier than I had ever been running the herbalist''s shop. It wasn''t the goal, but it was a perk. And I was able to help people as well because I still gathered herbs and put them into the food that was served. Owning the inn also allowed me to come across a multitude of lovers, most of which were just passing through, so my reputation within the town didn''t tarnish.


    Decades turned to centuries in this manner. I''d find a town and move countries after a couple of decades, criss-crossing the continents, purposefully skipping returning to Italy as it was now called. I would never set foot in that country again. France, Spain, Ireland, England, Poland, Scandinavia. Small countries, large ones, towns, villages, big cities. I went everywhere. I learned new languages and cultures. I met countless people and lived in a way I never had when I had been young.


    I always wondered when I moved to a new place if the man I had spent my time in Greece with would somehow pop up again. And once in a while it felt as if he had. There would be nights where I would find a particularly good looking stranger to go home with and it would feel like a fever dream.


    I never conceived again. Rome had ruined my body for bearing children. I didn''t even bother trying to prevent it either. There were times when I brought home someone new on a nightly basis. Every town I lived in I would open a new inn, but as time passed and things changed everywhere, I had to stop healing people, and herbalists lost their place to be replaced by doctors and modern medicine. I stuck to running inns, feeling as though giving people comfortable spaces, jobs and good food and rest was still helping, though I knew somehow that I had fallen out of the job I had been given.


    Eventually, I gave up on inns as they turned into hotels and opened taverns when I moved. I still lived on sight, and I continued my path of bedding half the people that came through the doors. Looking back now as I write this, I know it was because I had lost my purpose and I was spiraling. I was drinking enough to kill a dozen men as well, but I never suffered even a hangover. In hindsight, I was lost. I didn''t know what to do with myself. I was not able to get close to anyone for fear of being discovered. After hearing what the Christians had done to ''witches'' not long before, I was terrified.


    And that was when something happened. During the time I was running inns somewhere in the fifteenth century, when I was living in Scotland again. I was in Dunbar, running an inn and living quietly. It was a terrifying time for women, as witch hunts were a very common thing at that time. Innocents were hung and burned for no reason. The lack of sense in the humans at that time was staggering. Confessions were obtained through torture. I myself didn''t have much to do with the townspeople out of fear. They thought I was just an abnormally beautiful woman past marrying age. I had come to the town at the wrong time it seemed, because the fact that no one knew anything of my background frightened them.


    A friendly, beautiful woman, running her own business who never went to church but was successful in her business. Women didn''t work in those days, spinsters were cared for by their families, and there weren''t many of them to begin with. I was cordial with the townspeople, but I was still taking travelers to my bed whenever the opportunity arose. This was frowned on, but the people of the town didn''t know what I was doing. But part of the reason I was so successful was because word of mouth among young, unmarried men and merchants alike spread. But it had it''s drawbacks, because my reputation reached the ears of the townspeople. At first no one believed it because they knew me to be something else entirely. But as time went on, and word spread, people started to think something was funny. I didn''t know how word was getting so twisted. There was someone else new in town, whom I had bedded, and it seemed that he was the one talking. He claimed I had bewitched him somehow.


    The fact was, he had approached me, and it had been that same old familiarity that I periodically encountered with different men. They never looked the same, but the way that things went was always the same. And I hadn''t been able to resist him even if I had wanted to, despite knowing he intended to settle in the town. This man came to me more than once. He lived alone, was new to town. I didn''t think anything of it and took him to bed several times a month because it was the kind of pleasure that I didn''t seem to have the power to resist.


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    I should have stuck to my rule and not done so though. I knew bedding someone who lived in town was a bad idea. The townspeople started to avoid the inn and me personally. I had only been in the town for five years, but it was already looking as though it was getting near the time to move on again.


    It happened in the winter. The inn was suffering due to the lack of travelers and the townspeople avoiding the place. I awoke one morning after spending the night with that man in my bed to him being gone as usual. But what was different was the pounding on my door. I quickly dressed with magic to make myself presentable and went to the door to find many townspeople there, including the magistrate.


    I was arrested for witchcraft and being a slut, which was against the law at the time. Unmarried women were celibate, and I certainly wasn''t. I was taken to the prison and shackled to the wall. But at least the place was above ground and had windows, albeit barred ones. The shackled chains were long enough for me to sit semi comfortably, but not long enough for me to reach the cell door.


    I could have gotten out in the blink of an eye, but I hoped to prove that I at least wasn''t a danger to the townspeople and I hadn''t bewitched anyone, so I stayed. I should have done the smart thing and fled when I had the chance, because a few weeks later when my ''trial'' was held, the man I had been sleeping with testified to his ''bewitchment'' and I was convicted without any defense at all. Sentenced to burn. I was frightened. I planned to wait until the town was asleep since my burning was one week hence, and leave. I wasn''t about to let them burn me at the stake just because some man had decided that he didn''t want to have sex with me anymore, or that he''d been caught talking of me, or something.


    Night fell, and I was waiting for the town to be silent. I had already opened my shackles by magic when I knew there would be no one else coming by for the rest of the night. I occasionally looked out the barred window to see if lights were on in the houses and if people were on the streets. At first it seemed as though everything was fine, but just as I was magically opening the lock on my cell door the key rattled in the lock and the door yanked open.


    My former lover had a torch in his hands, and he was smiling maliciously at my pale face. His eyes were crimson for a moment, and I knew he was neither human nor bewitched as he had said. His eyes turned brown again, but he grabbed me, and my strength was no match for his somehow.


    He half dragged me out of the prison and yelled that he''d caught me free in my cell trying to escape. That was when I saw the small crowd of townspeople. The stake had been set up after my trial, and there were men putting straw and wood at the bottom in bundles. I was so stunned and frightened by the sight I forgot that I should have just blinked as far away as I could get. My hands were bound with rope behind my back and my lover and another townsman manhandled me up to the platform and tied me to the stake. I was going to burn right then and there.


    No matter what I had endured in my life, I had always survived. I had never died. Death frightened me. I pleaded with the people not to do this, I had not bewitched anyone. Had I not lived quietly in peace for five years? Why would I do something now if I were a witch? I was lying obviously, as I am in fact a magic user and not even human at that time. But I wanted to save my life.


    The man who had accused me, the one with the disguised red eyes, spun some sort of tale where I had been using magic to get visitors into my bed. That I was some sort of demon who used sex as a way to kill men and that was why male visitors passed in and out of town at such an alarming rate. I actually laughed at how ridiculous it was. If I was killing the men I bedded then why was he not dead when he had been sleeping with me since his arrival in town nine months prior. At that point even a few of the townspeople murmured doubt in the face of my logic.


    I was honest now, hoping to save my life by telling the truth. I had been using my inn to bed travelers since I had come to town. I didn''t generally sleep with the townspeople out of fear of being branded a pariah and losing my livelihood. The men I took to my bed were unmarried and just passing through town and agreed to keep the encounter quiet so that I could keep my reputation. The people surrounding the stake I was tied to were murmuring among themselves. Maybe I should just be cast out of town for my immorality. It didn''t sound as if I had done anything except be a monumental slut. I wasn''t married so the death penalty for adultery didn''t apply to me. At most I would be banished from the town and my inn taken away.


    But just as I was beginning to get my hopes up the man I''d been sleeping with piped up again that he''d found me free in my cell and the shackles were open. How had I gotten free if not by magic? Thankfully I had pockets on my dress, and I manifested a pin into my pocket without anyone seeing. Something that could pick locks easily enough. I told the nearest townsperson to go into my pocket and he would know how I''d gotten free. The man cautiously did so, and pulled the pin out of my pocket while I stood tied to the stake.


    It looked as though I was going to be freed for a few minutes while the people talked in rushed whispers. Even the judge who had convicted me of witchcraft was no longer convinced I was anything more than a beautiful woman who had no morals. Which wasn''t a death sentence. I could hear them all talking, but suddenly I could smell something. Something burning. The man with red eyes had gone behind me and set fire to the bundles of straw in several places before he came back around the front, yelling that a witch needed to burn, and threw his torch in the bundles of kindling and straw at my feet. He was inhuman, I could see his red eyes, and the moment I thought to blink and flee, the flames suddenly exploded as if by magic. I tried to blink. I couldn''t. To this day I don''t know how I could not blink. But somehow I knew it was the red eyed man. The fire was so hot it burned my lungs. I couldn''t scream, I couldn''t breathe, and the fire moved far too fast for normal fire. No one was trying to help me. My hair burned, my dress burned and so burned my flesh. My body was trying to heal, but the fire was too hot and too unnatural. I could smell my flesh cooking, and if you''ve never smelled burning flesh count yourself lucky. It''s a foul, acrid smell.


    My lungs singed, my flesh cooked, and the people stood there just watching. I was consumed by darkness. The pain ended, though somehow I remained mentally aware even though I knew that I had died. I couldn''t feel anything, it''s was as if I was trapped in a body that didn''t exist anymore. I couldn''t hear, or see, or smell. I don''t know how long it lasted. I knew I had died, but I didn''t leave my body like I was supposed to. I wondered if I would be trapped in a burned out husk for eternity.

 Recovery

    It wasn''t to be though. I very slowly became aware of an excruciating pain the likes of which I had never known. I suddenly could feel my burned body again, and as I gained feeling again the pain increased until darkness took me again. I didn''t have eyes, the fire had melted them, but as I became aware again after who knew how long, it felt as though I were still on fire, and it felt like my flesh was bubbling. I couldn''t make a sound, and I couldn''t move an inch. My mind was fogged, I couldn''t think. I was a mass of pain. Blind, deaf, mute and mindless.


    Whenever the pain became too much I lost consciousness again, which usually happened when it suddenly became a color behind my empty eye sockets. It felt like being immersed in flowing lava every time, and I couldn''t scream.


    I have no idea how long I was in such a state, but slowly my eyes seemed to regrow, though I was still blind. My flesh still felt as if I were on fire all the time, but slowly my burned lungs healed and it became a little easier to take a breath after beginning to breathe at all. One day when that awful burning feeling came over me again, it felt suddenly as though something was poured on me, and I felt my body seize, moving instinctively in convulsions that caused more pain. I felt something touch my burned body, and what I didn''t know was my mouth was pulled open, and something was poured down my throat. I couldn''t taste it, I had no tongue, but my body didn''t seem able to get it down just the same. I don''t know what happened, but I lost consciousness again.


    When I awoke next, the pain was marginally less, my tongue had regrown, and while it was very quiet, I seemed to have a voice again, raspy, croaking, but a voice all the same. A groan came out of me, and there was a bright light across my vision where very faint shadows moved now and then. I still couldn''t move my body, but it seemed that I had healed a great deal in the time I had been out. There was more awareness as well, as if my brain had healed as well and was no longer cooked in my skull. I could think, and emotions came back in a rush. I panicked, remembering vividly the fire, and a croaked scream came out of me. I felt firm hands push my arching, writhing body back down on the flat surface I could suddenly feel beneath my pained body. Some of my nerve endings seemed to have restored as well.


    I was afraid. I couldn''t see who was touching me, I had no idea where or even when I was. Something familiar came over me, a soothing calm that I instinctively fought against. I had no idea what was going on, but as I tried to fight the familiar calm that certainly wasn''t coming from me, it grew stronger, washing over me like waves of the ocean I loved so much. I couldn''t fight for long, and I felt as if I were enveloped in calm, still waters, and I fell back into unconsciousness.


    I woke again, and the shadows in my eyes were darker, and beginning to take shape. It seemed I had woken because I could feel cold water on my skin. Even the linen cloth hurt, but the water was so soothing that had my tear ducts still been functional I would have cried. Someone was slowly healing me. Someone was tenderly caring for my burnt and broken body. I felt so thirsty suddenly for the first time since burning. I didn''t know which language this person spoke, but I couldn''t remember any but my native language and whispered for water.


    To my great surprise the person brought something to my mouth after lifting my head up, and I felt cold water slide down my throat and it was so nice I heard myself groan. There was a slight strange taste to it though, as if something sweet and metallic had been put in it. My stomach churned, but the water stayed down. The calming feeling coming off of the familiar presence started to make me sink back into darkness, and I thought I must have heard him wrong. It was quiet, and I thought I was hearing things.


    ¡°I set you on fire and now you''re mine again.¡± The voice was male, but the emotion that it elicited in me was realization and a longing that almost choked me. I knew that voice. I hadn''t heard it since leaving Greece. And the voice spoke my native language. He was back, he''d saved me. The fact I thought I heard him say he had been the one to set me on fire was lost as I fell into an almost painless sleep.


    When I woke yet again, I found I had eyelids and had to open my eyes. My vision was blurry, but I could see colors again, and shapes. There was no presence in the vicinity, and I groaned as I forced myself to sit up. My skin hurt, and since I couldn''t see it well enough to inspect with my eyes, I reached a hand to feel instead. My flesh was sticky, flaky, bubbled and hard all at the same time. It felt like what we now call third degree burns, and I couldn''t imagine what I had looked like before.


    As I felt my hand along my pained flesh, I realize that my breasts were practically gone, and I had no hair whatsoever. No eyebrows, lashes, no hair on my head, nothing. Any loose skin; lips, ears, my breasts, my nose; all of it was gone. My eyes had regrown, and I had lashless lids, and my nose was beginning to grow back, as were my lips and ears. Suddenly I was glad that I was mostly blind so I couldn''t see myself.


    I heard a door open, and a shape appeared in my blurred vision as it opened and a figure came through it. ¡°You shouldn''t be sitting up.¡± It was that man''s voice again in my native language. Had I been able to cry I would have. I asked in a scratchy, croaking voice how he found me, where were we, why did he leave for so, so long. He pushed me gently back down onto the flat surface, and he didn''t answer any of my questions. He helped me lift my head again, and held the clay cup to my mouth to drink the cold, odd tasting water. This time, aside from what unfortunately spilled, I was able to drink the entire cup.


    I immediately felt my skin bubble, as if it was boiling water, and my innards writhed. A hoarse scream came out of me, and the indigo-eyed man held me down as my body seemed to have a seizure. There was definitely something in the water. I could taste it now. My body was entirely out of my control as it writhed inside and out, hoarse screams coming out of me as more of my body seemed to light on fire and I became aware of more of my body parts. Something was put in my mouth and somehow I knew it was to keep me from biting my new tongue and choking on my own blood.


    It was several minutes before the pain dulled to a constant, moderate ache. I was gasping for breath, but the pain hadn''t made me faint this time for more than a few seconds at a time. My body was tended to, where my skin had split and was oozing blood and something foul smelling, I felt a cold, damp cloth gently wipe everything away. The stick that had been shoved between my teeth was removed when the seizure ended, and a soft, deep, quiet voice so familiar to me told old stories while he cleaned my sickened, healing body.


    They were the stories my mother used to tell me when I had been very small. My body jerked now and then as it was wiped down, and my eyes burned as if I were trying to cry but couldn''t. I closed them, listening to the soothing sound of his voice and hoped that he would stay with me this time.


    It took weeks for me to heal in this manner. I would be given the altered water every day. It caused seizures and eventually vomiting, but it somehow sped up my healing exponentially. My voice returned as I healed, though I still didn''t say much. When I had healed enough I was moved to a soft surface that quite honestly felt like clouds. My vision was blurry, but I was regaining it steadily as well. I was so weak and in pain that sitting up was agony. It took what seemed like months for my body to heal enough that I had some semblance of normal sensation. I had not been able to eat a morsel in all that time, and by the time I healed to the point my hair could start growing again, I was skin and bones.


    As my sight returned fully, I was able to see the place I was in. I didn''t recognize anything at all. The walls were stone, and the bed I was in was so soft I was certain that no such material was within the capabilities of humans in the 1600s. It was the most comfortable four poster bed I had been in in my entire life. The sheer hangings were drawn back so that I could see the rest of the room. There was furniture the likes of which I had never seen. Everything was polished, rich wood, intricately and elegantly carved as if by hand. It looked both new and incredibly old at the same time. There was a large, plush, intricately patterned area rug on the marble floor. Where on earth was I?


    I was not permitted to leave the bed except for the washroom. I saw no other people aside from the indigo-eyed man, who saw to my care more diligently than I ever could have. He even began bringing a cream for growing my hair that was tinted a strange pink color. Soon enough, I had a great deal of red fuzz on my head, in just a matter of days.


    After I was permitted to sit up in the enormous bed, I began to see other people. But they weren''t like any servants I had ever seen before. Some wore strange clothing, while others wore clothing of time periods long past. Some people had pitch black skin, while others were bronzed or pale. I''d never seen people living in one place with such a spectrum and it baffled me. Only women tended to me aside from him. He still took time to bring medicine and treat by burns himself, but the servants he sent now took over bathing me gently, bringing me small, light meals.


    I still, after all this time, did not eat meat. The bread was different here, it wasn''t as dense, not as hard, and the way it tasted was unlike anything I had ever tasted. I ate it with every meal, I couldn''t get enough of it. The types of dishes that were cooked and brought to me were different too. I had never seen such a thick stew full of vegetables before. I didn''t know how they thickened the broth without meat. A servant one day told me when I couldn''t bear it anymore and I asked. Flour they said. A little flour like what they used for the bread. I was astonished. The vegetable stew became a favorite of mine, and it helped to increase my appetite slowly until I was eating more than I had in decades.


    One day I asked where I was, and the two women who were helping me step into my first normal bath in who knew how long looked at one another and told me that that was a question for the master to answer. I assumed they were talking about the indigo-eyed man. So when he came to gently massage a strange red colored oil into my rapidly growing hair, I asked.


    ¡°We are in my Home.¡± I asked what he meant by that, but he didn''t answer. So instead I asked how long it had been since he had found me and brought me there. I was shocked that it had been a full year.. He told me that I had been so badly burned that I had died repeatedly over the first six months as he healed me. It had been a year and my skin had only just lost it''s shriveled, dry, cracked and blistered texture. I was still reddened and even brown in some places where I had not fully healed yet. My hair was only a couple of inches long, and that was growing so rapidly that one of the servant women actually said at one point she could visibly see it growing.


    Even after a year, I still could not walk well, even with assistance, but it seemed to be one of the things that the indigo-eyed man seemed to take it upon himself to work on with me. Some of the women who tended to me sometimes quietly remarked that they thought that their master had finally found a mate to take. They wondered if I would be their queen. I was always only half awake when I heard them, and by the time I woke again, I couldn''t remember exactly what was said to ask about it. I remember being confused because there was no way I would become any sort of queen any longer. Egypt had a new government entirely, pharaohs had died out long ago because of the Romans. That was the only throne I had claim to. My native language was gone even. With the rise of Islam, people spoke Arabic, not Egyptian. I was part of history. There was nothing but ruins left of my entire people and culture.


    Whenever I asked questions the women tending to me looked at one another but always told me that I had to ask the indigo-eyed man. And when I did ask him, he was always cryptic with his answers, which left me more confused and curious than ever. Eventually I was allowed to sit on the balcony that was attached to the room I was in. The first time the curtains were opened and the doors flung wide for the fresh air, I actually fell on the floor in shock. The sky was purple, and there were two suns!


    I was so shocked that the attendants ran to get their master while leaving someone with me to try and help me up from the marble floor that was always strangely warm. I didn''t have enough strength in my legs yet to be able to get up on my own, or even with assistance from so low a spot, and the woman with me didn''t have the strength to lift me. She stayed with me, grabbing a blanket to keep me warm while the other fled to get the indigo-eyed man. I should probably at this point give him some sort of name, but at the time I didn''t know his name even after knowing him from my infancy.


    This was the same man who had been my personal guard, the same man who had freed me from Rome, stolen my child, found me when my mother was murdered, the man I had spent five hundred years with in Greece. And he had still never told me his name. Though in the past I had always called him by the name he had used in Egypt. Osirek. I knew he had gone by other names since then, but I had always called him by that name.


    It took my shock at a purple sky and bruising my newly healed legs in my fall for me to get some answers. When he returned with my half panicked attendant some time later, he scooped me up and I shouted in pain even though he was gentle. My skin was bleeding in a couple of spot because it was so fragile and new still that it was like crepe paper it was so delicate. My cuts were addressed, and I demanded to know where I was. Why were there two suns? Why was the sky purple? Why were the people here so silent about my questions? I was glaring at him, but his expression was impassive as he checked my new bruises from the marble floor.


    I was still rapid firing questions at him even though he was ignoring my words it seemed, when suddenly he silenced me with a kiss. It was the kind he had given me in Philae when he had left me there. And he did it right in front of his servants no less, who merely made themselves busy with making me something to eat to have on the balcony.


    It was the same fire I remembered, but when I reached for him he held me back and broke the kiss. ¡°You are not well enough yet.¡± He called out to the two women to bring lunch for two. It seemed he was going to join me. I think that he thought that I had forgotten about my questions, but while he left me quite breathless, I had not forgotten, and I didn''t intend to let the matter rest either. I let him carry me to the table on the balcony, infinitely grateful for the fresh air even if the view was both astonishingly beautiful and bizarre are the same time.


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    The balcony was several stories up, and everywhere you looked was a vast green landscape, with towns or villages dotting here and there, snaking roads going from one to the other, an ocean nearby and a lake in the distance in the bowl of rolling green hills. It wasn''t winter here either, but the air smelled fresh, like mid Spring does when flowers are blooming in earnest. As I said, the sky was purple, but it wasn''t a deep purple, but a very pale lavender, almost pastel in tone, and there were two suns in different spots in the sky, though it wasn''t any brighter than our dimension is.


    That was the only explanation. I had been to different dimensions before when I went to the Cove for my training of course, but this was different. There weren''t Gods living here these were ordinary people. The lunch was brought to us and it was heartier than normal, and I was glad because I was famished. I had been famished constantly as my body healed and I began to move around again. The food in this place was excellent, there was never anything I didn''t like, and no one ever tried to give me meat.


    I dug into the savory stew, and the fresh bread and cheese also, but I told Osirek I wanted my questions answered still. He sighed, clearly hoping he had successfully distracted me from my curiosity. But he knew by now after having lived with me for five hundred years in the past that no such thing ever happened.


    He told me this was his home, a different dimension from the Earth I knew. He told me that he had found my body badly burned but my heart still beating periodically. He refused to answer me how he found me. He told me he brought me here to his home dimension to get me away from the widespread witch hunts in Europe, to let me heal and to give me some peace where I wouldn''t have to hide what I was. He ruled the planet, he said, and I would be treated with respect for as long as I resided there.


    I asked him why his servants were talking among themselves about me being a queen. I wasn''t royalty anymore. To my surprise, he told me because I was his. That I had always been and always would be his. I was astonished, and I couldn''t help but smile. For now my questions ceased, and we finished lunch with him telling me that once I was strong enough I could leave my chambers, escorted of course, and go wherever I pleased. Clearly, he intended for me to stay. I didn''t argue since I wanted to stay with him. I finished my meal for a change without even noticing it.


    He started having lunch and dinner with me daily since it seemed to be good for my health and my appetite. He spent time teaching me the language every day, and so did the attendants that had been assigned to me. I picked up the language easily in the following weeks. I gained weight from all of the rich food as well. I had been shriveled skin and bones, and after months since I had begun to regain consciousness I was finally beginning to fill out again. My hair was growing so rapidly with Osirek''s treatments that it was nearly to my shoulders already and the maidservants were beginning to do things with it. Most often it was small, thin braids spaced throughout loose hair.


    My vision returned to normal quickly, and the pain in my body also quickly faded once I reached a certain point. I steadily felt better, my energy returned, I was able to move more, and within a couple of weeks I was able to walk short distances without assistance. I started being hungry constantly. I was always ravenous. Osirek was having meals sent to me six or more times a day, and I was rapidly gaining weight again.


    Sleeping was an issue. I often woke screaming, dreams of fire and pain and a cruel man with red eyes. There were times the terrors were so bad that I accidentally hurt myself before I was wakened, and I would end up hurting the maidservants who would try to wake me. After it was clear that it was a real issue, it was him who woke me. I couldn''t hurt him. And once I was well enough, he started to sleep beside me, and I would fall asleep easier and more peacefully in his arms. He was gentle with me, tender in a way I wasn''t used to. Sometimes I would catch him looking at me with what looked like guilt in his eyes, but I assumed I was wrong, because the moment he caught my eyes on him the expression disappeared entirely.


    As my health improved, Osirek would take me out of the palace and down to the shore. At first he had to carry me most of the way, but as time went on I was able to walk farther and farther until I was able to walk the entire distance. The ocean here was magnificent. It was bio-luminescent at night, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I started to spend a great deal of time on the shore or in the vast library. Sometimes I would take a book down to the shore and read all day until someone came to fetch me for a meal.


    One evening I went down to the shore I found that a space had been made for me, with a comfortable lounge chair and a magic torch that couldn''t be blown out by the wind so that I could see. I found a small scroll tied to the arm of the lounge that had a light blanket draped over the back of it. It was from Osirek. I don''t remember now what it said, but I remember how it made me smile. He had thought of me, my comfort and how much I enjoyed the sea that here glowed red and blue, as if someone had taken glowing paint and splotched it all over. The waves turned purple sometimes as the algae mixed.


    As my strength gained, which at once point started to return in leaps and bounds rather than slowly, I was able to take walks along the beach, or the palace gardens. One day one of my attendants brought an enormous armful of various flowers from the gardens, most of which you wouldn''t find here in this dimension. She told me they were from her master and that he wanted to have dinner with me that night. Now, we had dinner together almost every night, the exception being when something came up and he could not join me. So for him to specifically say that we would have dinner, I knew it had to mean something more. Especially with the presence of the flowers that I asked to be put into a vase on a small table in the room.


    I had finally fully regained my former appearance, and it had been almost a year since I had regained myself and consciousness. So it had in total been two years since I had been burned at the stake. My hair was fuller than ever, and my maidservants were always doing intricate things with it now. I had gotten used to the deferential treatment I was given by now, and being bathed meticulously, my skin cared for with minute dedication, my hair brushed for me until it gleamed; I was used to all of it. That''s not to say I wasn''t grateful for their hard work, but at the same time, I have to admit that I enjoyed a life of leisure finally.


    I dressed in whatever clothes suited me, I didn''t care what time period they were from, but I most often wore clothes from the past. Belted dresses that flattered my returned figure and dragged the floor, and if I wore shoes at all, they were flat ones that slipped on easily. This evening they dressed me in a dress of midnight blue with golden embroidery in the pattern of vines along the hem and sleeves, and pinned up my hair in an intricately braided type of bun that had strands of sapphires and diamonds wound all through it so that my red hair sparked with light now and then.


    Catching sight of myself in a modern mirror that didn''t exist on Earth yet, I was shocked. I hadn''t looked so good in so long I was a little overwhelmed to be myself once more. It had taken two years for my body to heal and regain strength. The maidservants were clearly satisfied with what they''d done, complimenting my appearance. I felt strange to be genuinely smiling for the first time in years. One of the butler''s whom I had seen now and then came to announce that dinner was ready, and escorted me to a room I hadn''t been in yet. It was a small dining room. The table had probably twelve chairs to it, but only two places were set, the head of the table and the first seat to the left. I knew from old fashioned culture that a master of the estates wife or fianc¨¦e was set in that place when dining formally like that. I felt my chest constrict at the sight of that and of Osirek standing from his chair as I entered the room. He smiled at me in a way I had never seen before, and the expression in those indigo eyes that matched my dress made me shiver. He hadn''t looked at me like that since Greece.


    He acted the part of a perfect gentleman all through dinner. My preference to not eat meat was, as always, kept in mind. While he had some sort of steak and vegetables, my dishes were of hearty vegetarian foods. There was a small egg pie with greens mixed in it, a salad of greens and fruits that had become a favorite of mine, and a thick broccoli cheddar soup served in a bowl made of bread. Because my appetite here had skyrocketed, I managed to eat all of my food. Fire had increased my metabolism and eating like a bird actually made me sick now, and Osirek seemed pleased by this. An apple pie with cream was brought to us after even all of that, and I wasn''t able to finish all of the piece that time, but I felt as if I had eaten enough for two people.


    With dinner finished Osirek suggested a walk in the gardens. It was a clear night, warm, and all four moons were out in different stages. It was bright as we walked, talking amicably. When I asked what the occasion was for such an evening, he said that it was to celebrate my finally being healed. I found myself smiling again. I was so unused to such a thing I found myself looking at the ground and trying to hide my face. It felt foreign to smile and my face felt strange. He stopped me from continuing to walk and made me look at him. I should probably mention that he was so much taller in this world than he was in mine. I barely reached his chest, he had to be near, if not over, seven feet tall here.


    ¡°Do not hide from me,¡± he said. I knew he meant trying to hide the fact he had made me smile. Even after all this time he was still the only person I had ever felt this way for. The way he was looking at me took my breath away. The next moment his lips were on mine and my mouth automatically opened for him.


    I felt like I had come home somehow. It had been so long since I had been kissed by this man I felt like I couldn''t stand it. That familiar feeling I sometimes got washed over me, and I wrapped my arms around his neck. I forgot we were in the gardens where anyone could see us. His kisses always had left me completely breathless, and now was no exception. By the time he pulled away from me I was gasping. Osirek didn''t seem to have the patience to let me walk back into the palace, and he scooped me up into his arms without any warning. We passed servants on the way back up to our chambers, and I caught sight of concerned expressions.


    He ordered the maidservants out of the room and told them not to disturb us and they shut the door as they left, glancing at one another. I was deposited onto the bed once the door was shut and Osirek loomed over me for a moment before he leaned down to kiss me again. His hands were bigger here as well, and feeling them moving over my body made my back arch. A soft moan escaped me this time as he stole my breath away, and I could feel his hot hands sliding up my legs from my ankles, pulling the skirt of my dress up as he went along. It sent a shiver down my spine.


    My dress ended up bunched around my waist, and my own hands had been undoing the buttons of his shirt to get to the warm, firm flesh underneath. The growl that came out of him into my mouth made me shiver, and he yanked my skirts higher. That searing kiss was broken when he slid a finger into me and my head tipped back as a cry escaped me. I was already melting in his grasp, but when he added a second digit my back arched, and I knew I''d be putty in his hands as always.


    His fingers moved in and out of me, and he muffled my moans with yet another of his burning kisses. My body seemed to only respond this way to him, and it didn''t feel like it was very long before my walls were spasming around those two fingers. The satisfied smile on his face as he removed them from me made me break out in goosebumps. I knew he was far from done with me, but he did something I didn''t expect. He leaned down and bit me. I hadn''t known he had fangs before that moment, and I felt them actually sink into my neck like he was a vampire.


    He didn''t drink my blood though, it felt as if something was entering me instead. My entire body immediately got hot, and by the time he pulled back I was gasping for air. I had never felt anything like it before in my life. An overwhelming need came over me. I felt as though I had a raging fever, and yet the only thing I wanted was the man above me, as if he was the only thing that could make it better. I reached for him, but he caught my hands in one of his and pulled them above my head. He pulled off my dress entirely, and pulled my arms back above my head so that I was stretched out bare beneath him, my back arched and my chest heaving in need and reaction.


    I barely noticed that he actually tied my hands to the bedpost. I heard him say that he was going to enjoy having me to himself again. He rained biting kisses over every inch of my body, leaving countless marks all over me, the teasing making my body actually writhe as I moaned. I didn''t seem to have any kind of restraint, and everything seemed more intense than I had ever experienced before. He didn''t sink his fangs into me again, but he nipped, bit, sucked on and kissed possibly every inch of my body as if he was trying to learn me all over after so long, or as if he were putting a claim on me he hadn''t before.


    His hands slid along my thighs firmly towards my waist and my head fell to the side as even another moan came out of me in the form of his name. I couldn''t stand it. I felt feverish. I was trembling as if I were freezing cold. His head dipped to wrap his lips around one of my nipples and my entire body arched up as I cried out. I heard him chuckle against my skin as my legs wrapped around his waist. I realized that he was still half dressed then, with his open shirt still half tucked in. I needed him in a way I''d never known, and I needed to feel his skin against mine. But my hands were quite literally tied and Osirek had every bit of control.


    He reinserted his fingers into my depths and my body writhed of its own accord. He was tortuously slow as his mouth trailed down my body as well, leaving behind a trail of searing kisses as his fingers moved achingly slow within me. I felt as if I couldn''t breath, but he had me moaning at the same time. His mouth trailed lower and lower, and my breath caught as I realized what he intended to do. ¡°Oh please...!¡± I couldn''t help it as I cried out. His only answer was that low, deep chuckle that set my skin tingling before I felt his mouth latch onto my clit at the same time that he shoved his fingers into me with enough force that the combined sensations immediately sent me reeling into a second orgasm that had me almost screaming.


    And he didn''t stop. He dragged out my release for as long as he could, until he had me begging for him. His fingers weren''t enough despite the intensity of the orgasm that ripped through my entire body. I needed him. I had no idea how his clothes disappeared but suddenly he was as bare as I was as he once more removed his fingers from my body and loomed over me with an expression on his face that looked both smug as well as something I couldn''t identify.


    He leaned down and kissed me while his hands lifted my legs to expose me to him. The moment I felt him pressed against my entrance I knew that his height wasn''t the only thing that was bigger in this world, and I wasn''t entirely sure I could take him, but it was a vague, subconscious worry because I needed him so badly I didn''t care if he split me in half and I spent another year healing from it.


    My eyes closed as he started to work his way into me. His hands almost touched as he held me around the waist, holding my arching body still to take me. I tried to reach to grasp his shoulders as he split me, but I was still tied to the bed. Osirek was gentler with me here than he had ever been, tortuously slow as he filled my body with his own to the hilt. My legs at least were able to wrap around him, and he leaned down and bit my neck again, this time without breaking skin. I could hear a low growl coming out of him, feel it against my heated skin as he started to move within me.


    Every nerve ending in my body felt like it was on fire with pleasure, and I''m sure that he was able to feel my body trembling in his grasp and I couldn''t in the least quiet the moans that came out of me. I''d never felt anything like it, and I didn''t want it to stop. It wasn''t long before yet another orgasm ripped through me that had me screaming his name again. And at some point he released my hands, which clawed and scratched at him as I tried to get closer to him than I already was or ever could be.


    His pace increased, and his force did as well. I was left screaming in a mix of pain and pleasure as yet another orgasm tore through me and made me see white because of how intense it was. They seemed to get more and more intense every one that ripped through me. I was just a mass of nerves and sensation, screaming his name as my body writhed beneath him. And it didn''t stop. He seemed to be nowhere near close to release himself, and he was relentless. He felt so good, my body moved to meet him thrust for thrust on its own.


    I felt overheated, and out of my mind with need. I found myself pleading, begging for something that I didn''t even know what it was. He chuckled lowly in my ear, and I don''t remember what he said to me, but his tone made me shiver.


    He kept me on edge, and he forced orgasm after orgasm through me. My nails had blood under them from tearing at his back. My body was giving and more responsive than I''d ever felt in my life. Finally a low growl came out of him as he slammed into me relentlessly and his own release felt searing hot and made my body arch up against him.


    He kept me up all night long. It was the grey light of dawn when he finally seemed satisfied and I fell asleep. And it was midday when I awoke, positively covered in bite marks and hickeys all over my body from my neck to my ankles. I was sore all over, and as I rolled over onto my stomach a groan came out of me.


    My attendants came into the room and promptly drew me a bath. I think that they had long gotten used to me not having any kind of modesty, but even they were visibly surprised at the amount of dark spots on my normally pale body. There also seemed to be a couple of puncture marks on the hollow of my neck where it meets my shoulder, not dissimilar to how a vampire''s bite is described.


    The hot bath was heavenly and eased the aches in my body, and the scented oils and rose scented soap made me feel refreshed as the two women scrubbed every inch of me. I had long gotten used to the deferential treatment, and let my body relax as they did the work of applying a rose scented cream to my skin that made me feel so soft.


    Once all of my hygienic care was done I chose a dress in my preferred style. For a minute I thought that they would suggest a high necked dress instead, but they just smiled. They knew I hated anything that was close on the neck to begin with, but they seemed to be happy that I wasn''t intent on hiding the clear connection that I had with Osirek. It was the exact opposite of my own dimension where such a thing was frowned on, discouraged and hidden at all cost.


    When I saw Osirek for lunch he seemed pleased to see me, more so than usual. I ached, but I was in high spirits and seeing him smiling at me across the small table made me indescribably happy. There was something in those eyes that I didn''t know how to identify, I''d never seen it before except fleetingly in Greece when we had been together. All I knew was that the way he looked at me made me feel as though my heart had stopped and my chest tightened.

 Empress

    After that, the days became so pleasant. The only days where I didn''t see Osirek were days when he had to leave the palace to go to another region on the planet. I learned that he ruled the entire planet on his own for the most part. He had vassals, but there was no other true ruler. For someone as busy as he was I saw him often. Whenever he was home he would dine with me for lunch and dinner, and at night he would make my body sing in ways I didn''t know were possible.


    Months passed in this way, and I have to admit things felt like paradise to me. I''d never been so happy in my entire life. I was treated better than I had ever been in my life, and I seemed to finally have everything that I had ever wanted. The life that my mother had wanted for me.


    About six months after my full recovery Osirek told me that he would be holding an event in the palace to introduce me to his vassals and the high society of this dimension. I was surprised, since no such thing had ever happened to me. I asked him what brought on such an idea and he simply said that I would find out at the ball. A ball. I''d never heard of such a thing. A tailor came to see me to take my measurements and choose a pattern for a new dress specifically for the event. I was told that ''his Imperial Majesty'' insisted I be the most breathtaking woman in the room and so my dress must be of the highest quality and design.


    Things became a flurry of activity in the palace, the servants were excited and I caught them whispering excitedly together as they went about their work. The entire place was polished and cleaned, the ballroom and banquet hall were spotless and decorated with my favorite colors, somehow Osirek must have found out. There were blue and yellow flowers, and decorations in blue and gold. Matching china of deep blue with golden filigree, flatware of pure gold, and crystal so clear it was literally magic. Instructions rang out in a slightly hollow voice that came from the air itself, and I hadn''t heard such a thing before that a servant stopped to ask me what was wrong. I was informed it was the palace''s artificial intelligence that aided the head maid and the steward in their jobs.


    I had never heard of such a thing, and as the maid scurried away with her arms laden with linen, I turned to the attendant with me to ask what in the world was an ''artificial intelligence''. I was entirely confused by her explanation. I didn''t know what a computer was, I didn''t know what electronic meant. I knew that there was technology in this dimension that didn''t exist in mine, but it baffled me. I only knew magic, that was the only education I had ever had. I had learned money, but that had been essential to my survival after I left Philae. I knew nothing else. I could read and write of course, but I knew nothing of practical education. And it was clear to the maidservant that I couldn''t understand what she was talking about. So she suggested that I ask Osirek instead.


    When I did ask him at dinner that evening he put it in terms of magic for me, and I was able to understand better. He also told me that I would need to begin being tutored. He knew that I didn''t like to not understand things, he knew I liked to learn. I didn''t know he had another purpose for educating me, but I was happy all the same. And he had already found a tutor for me who would teach me to read the language and teach me the culture, science, and technology. I had to admit I was excited.


    I was wakened by the maidservants earlier than usual the next morning to bathe and dress to meet my tutor. The people in this world were naturally taller than I was accustomed to, even my attendants were at least six feet tall or more, and my new tutor was no exception. He seemed to be almost seven feet tall, but he had a friendly disposition and face and I immediately liked him. Osirek was well aware of how my education had been when I was a child, and he knew I didn''t learn well that way. So when I met Hamid I was relieved.


    He asked questions to assess my knowledge and to see what I needed to learn and what I didn''t. I was well versed in formal etiquette, I was already fluent in speaking the language, though I still had some to learn, and I couldn''t read it at all yet. My science was nonexistent, culture, and for some reason I had to learn matters of state as well, and when I asked why I was told it was an order from Osirek. I wondered at that.


    During the days I spent a lot of time learning from Hamid in the days leading up to the ball that Osirek was throwing me. My etiquette was flawless when Hamid did a demonstrative assessment and he was so pleased that I felt like I could have flown. I have to admit that Hamid was an excellent tutor, but I admit that I did sometimes get a little distracted. The man was beautiful. The people in this world were all gorgeous that I had seen. None quite so much as Osirek, but there was a great deal of temptation for me because of my habits in my own dimension. I didn''t put my hands on a soul though. I had no need because Osirek kept me on my toes and there were times where if he simply caught me looking at him a certain way I was done for.


    The ball inched closer, my dress was delivered by the tailor the week before in case it needed any adjustments, but of course it didn''t. Matching shoes the likes of which I had never seen before were brought with it. I usually either went barefoot or wore flat shoes, I wasn''t sure if I would be able to walk in these, the heels were so high that I would have to walk and dance on my toes. But oh they were beautiful. A royal blue that matched the dress, with pure golden vines accenting them and wrapped around the stem of the heel and a rounded toe.


    Osirek took it upon himself to teach me to dance, since he knew very well that I had never danced in my life. He was patient as I learned with him in the evenings after dinner when he had downtime. For a planet ruling emperor he always made time to spend with me if he wasn''t in another location. I picked up dancing quickly, and by the time my dress arrived I was no longer stepping on his toes and no longer counting steps or looking down or getting blisters from the practice heels.


    The day of the ball itself finally arrived, but guests from far off on the planet had begun arriving a couple of days prior. The palace was more alive than I had ever seen it. I was no longer used to this much hustle and bustle that I mainly took to the gardens during the morning.


    There was no time to have lunch with Osirek that day, and I had a small, quick meal while my attendants, Erin and Ara, made sure they had everything they would need to turn me into an empress, to use their own words. They were always saying those kinds of things because I was Osirek''s favorite and they seemed as if they wished I really was the official mate of their master. I didn''t think such a thing would really happen though. In over three thousand years that I had known him, and after five hundred years together in Greece I had still been left. I didn''t think he intended much more than what we already had when he hadn''t done so in five hundred years in Greece.


    I was bathed, with rose scented soaps and oils that had become my absolute favorite, and Erin and Ara did something elaborate with my hair, curling it but also leaving half of it hanging free past my hips. It was brushed until it gleamed before they started braiding and curling and making the most elaborate hairstyle I had ever seen in my life.


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    I was so glad that corsets were not a thing here when it came to putting on my dress, especially where I had such a small waist as it was. When the dress was buttoned it fit like it was supposed to. It had been made specifically for me, and it fit better than anything I had ever worn. I stepped into the elegant shoes as the sun was setting. Erin was helping me with jewelry when Ara came over with Osirek, who held a box in his hands and a smile on his face that I couldn''t identify.


    He opened the box, and inside was a matching pair of earrings and necklace that shot shards of light in every direction. The jewels were blue and white set in mithril. It was a simple necklace, but the stones were as big as my thumb nail and seemed to shine with an inner light of their own rather than refracting light that landed on them. I looked up at Osirek, I was astonished. He''d given me gifts before, but this wasn''t a day dress or something small, these would cost more than a fortune.


    He didn''t wait for me to say anything or to question him, he put the stones around my neck and hung from my ears. I looked into the cheval glass and I didn''t even recognize myself. I had never been dressed in such a way in my long life. My alabaster skin was radiant, my green eyes were bright, and my hair was so well cared for that not a strand of it was out of place. Truthfully I didn''t even recognize myself. The person in the mirror wasn''t someone I had ever seen before and I was shocked.


    The smile on Osirek''s face was somewhat smug in the mirror''s reflection, and he ran his fingertips over the necklace he had put on me. ¡°You wear this every day. They don''t come off.¡±


    I nodded, though I didn''t understand why specifically. But the item felt as though it had its own heartbeat, as if it was full of life of its own, and it was warmer than metal usually was. He stepped out from behind me and leaned down to kiss me, careful not to mess up Erin and Ara''s hard work with my hair.


    He escorted me downstairs, and we were announced into the ballroom. Osirek led us in and I had never seen so many people in one place. Nor had a seen a room as big as this. It was the size of the entire town back in Scotland that I had last lived in. There were hundreds of nobility, and it felt like every single pair of eyes was on me. The way things had been decorated and set up to match the blue and gold of my dress had made things quite clear that I was the reason for such a big event.


    I felt self conscious of all the eyes on me as Osirek welcomed the nobility with me beside him. Erin had told me to expect the unexpected during the ball, knowing something that I didn''t was clear. But no matter what, I couldn''t have expected the announcement that he made next.


    I don''t remember his exact words, but he introduced me, and named me his mate and empress. I was speechless, but Osirek was smiling, albeit a little smugly, as the palace steward appeared at his side with a cushion in his hands that held a pristine and delicate crown set with red and blue jewels in platinum. I stared at it, slightly panicked, until I heard Osirek tell me to kneel down in a quiet voice that I think only I could hear. It might even have been in my head.


    I knelt down, still in disbelief that this was even real, my back straight and my head still raised. I had seen coronations before, I just had never thought an actual crown would ever be put on my head. It was surprisingly light, and yet I felt its weight all the same as Osirek put it on my head. There was silence for the moment in the entire ball room, though at first there had been a bit of an uproar at the sudden announcement.


    I was certain that I was hearing him in my mind now when he told me to rise, because his mouth didn''t move. Slowly I rose to my feet, such a thing on my head made me feel as though it would fall off. What another shock to me was that when I rose, every person below the balcony in the ball room knelt almost in unison. I had never expected such a thing. When everyone rose once more Osirek turned to face me again and he pulled me in to kiss me, and the entire room burst as if the bubble of silence had been popped with a needle because I heard uproarious cheers and applause.


    When he pulled back again, he was smiling in a way I hadn''t seen before except fleetingly, and those indigo hues seemed brighter than usual. I finally realized the emotion on his face and it struck me like a ten ton weight in the chest. Love. He seemed to notice the light bulb go on over my head because he chuckled as he drew my arm through his and he announced the ball to officially begin.


    The night was a whirlwind. I was greeted by possibly every single person there, danced with Osirek, ate, and drank until dawn broke the sky with the first sun. Every time I was introduced to someone it was clear that they were thrilled that their ruler had found a mate, and I got the impression that he hadn''t taken a mate before, these people were overjoyed. I had ruled before, but from the sidelines, from the shadows. This was going to be very, very different now from what I knew.


    When the guests had all returned to their quarters for what remained of the night, just the two of us remained in the ballroom, the musicians having gone as well. The only other people were servants who were cleaning up and covertly watching us because Osirek was dancing with me to the silence. He had been by my side all night, and now that we were essentially alone his affectionate expression turned to something more like hunger, an expression I knew well by now. He stopped dancing and leaned down to kiss me, and the half growl that came out of him turned me to jelly, and a soft answering moan escaped me before I could stop it.


    Suddenly we were in our chambers, Osirek had blinked us to the rooms we shared, and his hands were already pulling pins from my hair to let it tumble free in curls and braids, the crown he had placed on my head somewhere on a table nearby. He could have magically removed my clothes, but he took his time undoing the tiny buttons on the back of my dress while he left biting kisses and red marks along my neck and shoulders. He let the dress fall in a puddle on the floor and I was bare beneath it as always. He picked me up and brought me to the bed we shared, and those shoes fell off my feet when he did. The only thing left on my body was the necklace that he had given me that evening and told me to never take off.


    We spent several further hours in our bed, and it was noontime when he left my arms to go and see to his work. He sent Erin and Ara in to attend me and bring me a meal. Being called ''Your Majesty'' was very different for me. It was a title I never expected to have. I was bathed, and dressed in light fabric with my feet bare to recover from wearing those shoes the night before. After dressing I was brought a meal consisting of a hearty vegetable stew and bread and the most fragrant wine. Erin started to explain the duties of Empress to me while I ate, telling me about running the household and organizing events, playing hostess. I wouldn''t have to do it all by myself, but it felt daunting just the same. This was a bigger household than I was used to running, but if Osirek had faith I could handle it then I knew that I could do it. Though I worried about screwing up.


    I would be starting the next day since the night had been long for me and they knew that I had not slept. I would be working with some of the female nobility, or rather, they would be working for me. Everything seemed to be different in such a good way. In the coming days I heard of celebrations going on in towns and villages all over the planet as people heard the announcement that their emperor had taken a mate. I learned what was expected of me as empress, and I found that it was easier than what I had been doing in Egypt when I was still the head mage working for my family for centuries.


    Everything felt like a breeze compared to anything else I had ever done. I ran the palace, I organized events, festivals. I handled anything that didn''t have outright to do with politics and matters of state. I entertained the ''nobles'' when they came to visit, their mates. I have to admit that I enjoyed the role immensely. When Osirek had to travel to other parts of the planet for one reason or another, he left me in charge of his own duties. He knew of the training I had had when I was a child, he knew that I had been the one actually ruling Egypt from the shadows. Things always went smoothly, though I missed him terribly when he was gone.


    He always returned with some sort of gift though, be it a gem to be made into jewelry, fabric for a new dress in my preferred style, food I had never tried, and sometimes even a strange creature to me to keep as a pet and raise. Our nights were always filled tangled up in one another. I had never in my life experienced such pleasure as I did with him. I didn''t seem to ever be satiated when it came to Osirek. The only thing that made me sad was that I could never give him any children. Years went by without so much as a flicker of such a thing. I don''t even know how long it had been anymore since I had been there. They say that time flies when you are happy, and I can tell you that it''s true.

 Impossible Reality

    Time passes differently in the dimension I now resided in. While it was possible that a thousand years had passed with Osirek, only two hundred had passed on Earth. There came a time in my life as Empress that I found myself wishing more than ever that I could give Osirek an heir. But my body had been ruined in the birth of my stolen son in Rome. There was nothing I knew of that could fix it.


    I hid how I felt as well as I could, but I think Osirek noticed something regardless. The Bond we shared as mates made it possible for him to look into my mind at will, and vice versa. I never invaded his mind except to communicate when he was away from the palace. Time passed indeterminately. Seasons were a little different, and I could never figure out when my birthday was in all the time I spent there. Osirek never had a celebration either, not for a birthday at least.


    It was some time after I had started wishing for a child I could not have that something changed. Osirek decided that the both of us should take a holiday together. So, we packed up and went to another region on the planet entirely to a villa in the mountains on a crystal clear lake. My two personal maids, Erin and Ara, came with us, as well as Osirek''s personal manservant and assistant who went with him everywhere.


    The lake was crystal clear, and mirrored the surrounding mountains and forest like glass. The air was crisp and clearer than I was used to, always having the salted scent of the sea in my nose, this clear mountain air was foreign but so refreshing. It was Autumn in this region, and the colors were vibrant and beautiful.


    The villa was lavish and elegant, and the servants were lined up in the main hall to greet us as we entered. There was sunlight everywhere from high crystal glass windows that were immaculate. Osirek led the way to the bedchamber we''d be sharing. Normally people took separate quarters, but to an outside person the fact that we always slept in the same room was something of how favored I was and how loved I was. It made me happy when I heard the servants whispering among themselves about it. Osirek and I never said those words, but it was always clear through the way we acted.


    We spent our days in leisure, Osirek only attending to urgent matters of state while the person who had been left in charge took care of the small things. I have to admit that it was very nice to spend so much time with him, doing nothing and just enjoying each others company, and we stayed at the villa for several months like that.


    * * *


    As time went on I got used to everything, but I started to forget other things as well. I no longer remembered a lot of my time before I came to live in that dimension. I lost track of how long I had been there, I lost track of almost everything except for the way things were. Later on I found out that two and a half centuries on Earth passed, though it was much, much longer in that dimension. Servants changed, humans died, though their lifespans were much longer than those of humans on Earth. It was only difficult because the nobles started to whisper and their wives began to ask about when there would be additions to the imperial family. Children. Something I could not have. I couldn''t tell them that I was not capable of bearing a child. An empress not capable of bearing children was frowned on, and her position could become less stable. All I could do was to smile and say that that was a matter for me and Osirek.


    Osirek must have been hearing the same from his council, because one night he actually mentioned it to me about what I would think of the two of us having a child. Thus far I had been able to keep my shameful secret from him. Now though I was faced with having to come clean, and I feared seeing an angry, or worse, disappointed expression on his face. He knew what had happened to me in Rome. He had been the one to tear my son from my arms.


    ¡°I..¡± I had to take a breath again before I could say anything. ¡°I am not able to bear children after what happened in Rome. You know this. You were there. And you killed the only child I will ever have had.¡±


    I absolutely still blamed him for what he had done. I never knew otherwise that my son had not been thrown into the river to drown as unwanted babies often were. I couldn''t meet his gaze, so I missed the expression that flashed across his face for a moment. And for a minute he was silent, pulling me into his embrace and holding my slightly stiff body against his relaxed one.


    ¡°Is that what you think? That you can''t have anymore children because you were destroyed in that place?¡±


    ¡°I don''t think. I know. I spent five hundred years with you, and then I stopped bothering being good and bedded hundreds of men in a short time and I have never gotten pregnant again.¡± My voice was tense and angry and I didn''t know why I felt so defensive.


    He only chuckled with his head above mine out of my line of sight. ¡°We shall see about that..¡±


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    I didn''t understand it, but I couldn''t help feeling a little bit of hope. He had, after all, brought me back to health when I had been burned at the stake. Maybe he could somehow fix the issue. But I could not bring myself to ask him. I didn''t want to get my hopes up only to be let down. I didn''t think I could handle such a disappointment.


    I couldn''t sleep that night, not even a wink. I couldn''t get my mind off of the childbearing ''issue''. And every night afterwards I dreamed of a child, or of being pregnant even though I didn''t remember what it was like. I was obsessed, though I never said anything to anyone about it. Not a soul heard anything about it. Osirek didn''t mention it again after that first night, but nothing had changed between us, he didn''t grow cold, or leave me because I was barren. If anything, he seemed even more enamored, more enthusiastic at night in our chambers to the point where one morning I could not actually get out of bed my body was so satisfyingly sore.


    I felt different somehow that morning, and I couldn''t place it. I wore soft clothing that day, light weight fabric with my hair free down my back. Osirek was busier than usual, so I dined alone for lunch that day. It sometimes happened, but I knew I would see him that evening and it didn''t bother me.


    That odd feeling I''d had since waking wouldn''t go away though, as if something was different and I couldn''t place it. That was what was driving me out of my mind. I was sore all over, and it felt like I had a sour belly the whole day, as if I had eaten something that didn''t agree with me. I mentioned these things to my mate when he came to dine with me for dinner and our usual walk in the gardens afterwards. He told me I should take a couple of days to rest and take it easy. There was something in those indigo eyes as he spoke, as if he knew something he wasn''t telling me.


    ¡°It feels like you aren''t telling me something. What are you hiding from me?¡±


    Osirek laughed, the sound echoing in the quiet garden. ¡°If I was hiding something from you you would know it. Don''t forget, the Bond we share works both ways.¡±


    I begrudgingly accepted it, but the feeling that he knew something I didn''t wouldn''t go away. He could tell I wasn''t satisfied with that answer, but he didn''t say more. He simply brought me back to our chambers and kept me up until dawn.


    In the next week I started to feel off even more than I had before. I was hot, uncomfortable, and I felt a strange, insatiable need for Osirek that would not go away no matter what I tried. He seemed to know that I needed him though, and he didn''t leave my side, most of the time spent in our bed aside from bathing.


    That unbearable need lasted two weeks without letting up. I had never experienced such a thing in my entire life, and I was relieved to my core when it finally went away. For a few days I was able to return to my normal activity, though I felt a little off in a different way periodically throughout the day. My appetite was all over the place, if I didn''t eat, I would end up sick to my stomach, but I was sick to my stomach anyway and so I didn''t want to eat for fear of vomiting. My body didn''t like what I was eating anymore either, and all I could stomach was bread and cheese. I was suddenly wanting the meat I could smell cooking at times, but at the same time the smell still made my stomach churn and the sight of meat in any form started to make me ill.


    I had no idea what on earth was going on, and my attendants finally sent for a doctor to see me when just the sight of food spontaneously made me vomit one morning. But instead of a doctor, Osirek came to see me even though he had a meeting that morning. He got into the bed with me and pulled me over to lie on his chest with his arms around me. He was quiet for a long moment before he said something I could not and dared not believe.


    ¡°You are pregnant,¡± he said simply. I looked up at him with what even I knew was disbelief.


    ¡°That''s impossible. I can''t have children anymore. My insides were destroyed.¡±


    ¡°You died, and I healed your charred body into the woman you see in the mirror every day. Why is it impossible for you to be pregnant when I can bring you back from that with a little time?¡± He smiled down at my incredulous face.


    ¡°But--¡± I couldn''t truly argue with him. I couldn''t believe him either. I wasn''t watching his face, but I could feel him smiling at my disbelief. ¡°How could you even know?¡±


    ¡°Because I can smell you, and when you had that insatiable need not very long ago, that is a pregnancy induced heat. You are pregnant my Empress. Get used to the idea.¡±


    Osirek stayed with me until my stomach settled and I could eat something before returning to his duties. I was stunned, but I still wasn''t sure that he was right. I just couldn''t believe that after everything I had been through, that I would have a child that wouldn''t be stolen from me and murdered.


    I was ill every single morning, and if I ate something strange, it was always a very bad idea. I seemed to want meat, but the sight and smell of it made me ill. Even Osirek stopped eating it in the same room as me. I continued my duties as Empress, I just wasn''t able to work in the mornings anymore. As time went by, it was difficult to continue denying what was clearly the truth. There was no other reason for me being ill, or for both the aversion to food as well as the craving of those same foods I couldn''t be near.


    Secretly, I went to see the palace physician one day. I wound up fainting because with the doctor''s examination he confirmed what Osirek had said. I was actually pregnant. Osirek found out about seeing the doctor because my attendants informed him that I had fainted with the man. I woke to find myself in my bedchamber with my head resting on something warm, the sound of a heartbeat in my ear. I knew it was Osirek before I even opened my eyes. And he knew I was awake before I opened them as well.


    ¡°You need to be more careful. You should not stress yourself so much. The doctor said you are to remain in bed for a couple of days after such a shock.¡±


    I felt sheepish. I hadn''t been able to believe him, and now it was confirmed and official that I was with child. Shock was putting it lightly. And as it truly sank in, I started to cry. My whole body shook and trembled in reaction. This being had given me absolutely everything that I had ever wanted, and I was so blissfully happy that it bubbled out in uncontrolled tears. Osirek wrapped his arms around me and said nothing more.


    It took me some time to settled down again, spent against him both physically and mentally after everything. I drifted off to sleep with Osirek''s heartbeat still in my ear, exhausted but happier than I had ever been in my entire life.

 New Birth

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