The moment the words left his lips, he was diving towards the trees to his left, Maatkare doing the same. The crowd reacted with mixed speed, though none were slow. Many were faster than Heshtat, but none were fast enough.

  The ground shook as a dozens of explosions ripped through the camps lining the lake, Hefatiti’s and Khaemwaset’s most notably, but none of the small camps seemed to be spared from the blasts. While the Medjay and dignitaries were turning in shock to survey the wreckage of their camps, the assassins were quicker off the mark, already flitting towards Heshtat in flicker-fast streaks of scarlet shadow.

  Before they could meet him, the mysterious woman was there, stepping into their path and cleaving their flickering forms from shadow to light. Their bodies appeared, carved apart by the graceful arc of her strangely straight sword to fall to the ground in a shower of blood.

  “Go!” she shouted down at him, and then her sword was darting out again to knock aside a plume of raging fire sent their way, the blade flashing green as it interfaced with the magic. Heshtat had no time to consider the bizarre weapon, or the bizarre woman for that matter, because Harsiese was suddenly there above him, bellowing like an ox as he waded past Heshtat into the fray with his moon-bladed axe swinging in lethal patterns through the air.

  Heshtat clambered to his feet, sprinting toward the treeline nearby. He cursed as something hit him hard in the side, but a quick glance down showed it to be only a broken buckle dislodged and flung his way in the fallout of some mighty swing. The wound bled, but it wasn’t deep, and he put the cut from his mind as he ran with all the speed Bestat had blessed him with.

  He turned, some latent instinct shooting a warning up his spine, just in time to cut a knife from the air that had been whistling towards his unprotected head. He should really get himself a helmet if he was determined to put himself in chaotic situations like this. ‘Only a fool enters a battle unhelmed’. Old Seti again, sending him recriminations from the past.

  Looking back as he ducked through the first line of vine-swamped trees, Heshtat indeed saw a battle. The priests had formed a loose alliance as they called miracles from the sky, weaving the magic of their aspects into creeping shadows, twisting tongues of flame and ice that lashed out at any that came near, and stranger sights besides. The Medjay roared and struck about them like enraged camels railing against their yoke-masters, and Heshtat was shocked to see that strange cook holding his own, frying pan battered and dented but somehow able to deflect the brutal strikes of the war-pick wielding warrior.

  Bright eyes met him as he crashed into the jungle proper, and he recognised Neferu’s hungry grin. “Come,” she beckoned, and he followed her.

  It was surprising to note that he had no trouble keeping up as she weaved around trees, leapt over fallen logs and manoeuvred around boulders framed by vibrant plant life. His cultivation nearly matched her own now. Heshtat heard Maatkare’s heavy breathing behind but had no time to look back—all his attention was consumed trying to follow Neferu’s exact path.

  His enhanced eyesight had caught the gleam of a tripwire as he’d entered, and he saw other mechanisms hidden as they sprinted through the forest. Not many, but he had no doubt that for each tripwire and garrot he spotted, there were a dozen more hidden away just out of sight. Neferu had likely had days to work her mundane magic here.

  Still, he wasn’t sure it was enough. Already he could hear signs of pursuit. While they may have survived that first encounter, there were more powerful cultivators on this island than the dozen they’d met already. He just hoped they could survive until whatever strange calamity that was building above the temple was released. He’d felt the braiding and twisting of essence being pulled to its tip as they’d fled down the central pyramid, but now he could feel it even in the air around them.

  A tension, as if the world was holding its breath.

  “Where’s the priest?” Heshtat asked as they slid beneath a particularly nasty set of thin metal wires rigged between a tight grouping of trees at neck height.

  “Buying us time,” Neferu shouted over her shoulder. “He said he’d meet us at the beach, if all goes well.”

  Heshtat grimaced. All did not usually go well in situations like this, in his experience. Still, the mission took priority, and it was too late to change things now. “And Harsiese?”

  “Determined to die fighting in a blaze of glory,” Neferu hissed angrily. “Stupid man.”

  Heshtat smiled despite himself. He knew what she was feeling, but he could also well imagine the Tomb Guard’s response. He’d grown up a fisherman, expecting to ply the waters like his father. To die in service of one’s queen was already an honour—to be such an integral part of a fated endeavour was legendary in the truest sense.

  “Let us make his sacrifice worth something, then,” Maatkare muttered from behind. Heshtat found comfort in that, at least. It wasn’t the first time he’d watched comrades die, but it was never easy.

  The earth beneath their feet soon steepened, and they reached the top of the low hill ringing the lake shortly after. They looked down to the camps below, seeing smoke curling into the sky and strange magics still occasionally lighting up the air. It had been a fireplace, fully stocked with ample fuel, and their return with the Eye had simply added the flame—now it burned merrily away.

  Ahhotep then added a veritable forest of logs to the fire as they watched. Heshtat couldn’t see the mad priest, but he felt his power; shadow blanketed the world in an instant, swallowing the lake and the camps and filling the depression that they stood above. It was as if a spiteful god had reached through the Final Door and blown out the single candle that lit the world, plunging it into darkness. Except it wasn’t a room in a little hovel lit by a flickering flame, it was a natural basin nearly a mile wide, and the sun beat down above with unrelenting fury. Ahhotep’s shadow endured though, suffocating the basin below in choking shadow, muffling the sounds of violence and obscuring the scene from their view.

  Neferu cackled. “So that’s what the old bastard was up to!”

  Heshtat sighed. “This was not what I intended. When I told each of you to use your skills to safeguard our exit, I was envisioning something a little more… understated.”

  “Then you were a fool,” Maatkare muttered at his side.

  Neferu turned her gleeful expression their way, and Heshtat nearly took a step back. Her smile was wide, and her teeth flashed in the sun. Gods, Maatkare was right—she was insane.

  “You can’t deny the thrill though,” she laughed.

  Heshtat clicked his tongue. “Come then, to the beach.”

  They turned and fled, skittering over rocks and clambering down steep embankments, until they stood once more at the little cove at the bottom of the tear-drop island. The waters of the Nikea rushed past, looking strangely swollen.

  “Are they higher than usual?” Maatkare asked, reading his thoughts.

  Neferu cast a discerning eye over the river and the rapids in the distance. “Yes.

  “Let me guess,” Maatkare began. “You spent a summer as a deckhand—”

  “No time,” Heshtat cut in. “Something’s brewing, I can feel it. Something big.”

  Maatkare looked like he might crack a joke, but the seriousness of the situation held him back, for which Heshtat was eternally grateful. Between the handsome man’s levity and Neferu’s bright-eyed grin, Heshtat was starting to feel he was the only sensible one left.

  Heshtat focused for a moment, feeling the billowing currents of essence in the air with his newly awakened spiritual senses. He was no awakened of Akh to gain natural affinity and understanding of the eddying patterns of essence throughout the world, nor even an awakened of Jb to feel intuitively how the spiritual and physical coexisted. But such was the magnitude of whatever emerging phenomena was brewing at the centre of the island that he could feel it all the same with his paltry senses.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The veil was quaking. A soft ripple at the edge of his senses, a shiver in the air that made Heshtat think of a spider’s web bouncing after a disturbance. The Waking and the Other were always close to one another, but now they felt practically layered. Perhaps it was simply an artifact of spending so long in a strange in-between realm as he had in the temple, or maybe it was the blessing of He Who Travels lending him greater sensitivity. Either way, Heshtat knew something his companions didn’t seem to pick up.

  “You prepared a raft as I asked?” Heshtat asked of Neferu.

  “Yes, stashed around the corner. Come.”

  They soon stood with the cool waters of the Nikea bathing their lower legs, pushing a rectangular raft of lashed-together logs out into the surf. It was barely big enough for the three of them, and they had another two that Heshtat hoped would still make it. The logs were little more than trees cut and halved, lashed together with sturdy ropes, though Harsiese had very helpfully left some thicker branches pointing upwards to the sky to give them something to cling onto.

  “How do we steer it?” Maatkare asked, giving the contraption a sceptical look.

  “You don’t—it’s a raft. You go where the river wills it.” Neferu was busy checking knots and gazing out at the river. Her expression didn’t look hopeful to Heshtat.

  “Oh, is that sass, my deranged student? How lovely to hear it once more. How do you intend for us to make shore if we cannot steer?”

  “Quiet!” Neferu snapped, quite unlike her. Gone was the shining eager gaze, and in its place was a frown of consternation. “I cannot read the tides. Something strange is happening…”

  “Can we make it?” Heshtat asked, gesturing at the nearly thousand feet stretch of choppy water lined with jagged rocks that trailed from the island’s end. Once they emerged into the river proper, the flow of the water would stabilise and they’d be dragged along with it downstream, but this first stretch was a mess of cross-waves and currents that was as likely to capsize and dash them on the volcanic reefs as it was to usher them out to safety.

  “Not sure. Give me time.”

  “Understood. Come, Maatkare, let us hold this beach. Should Harsiese and Ahhotep make it, we shall be ready.”

  They trudged back out of the water to stand on the shoreline, waiting for their companions or their enemies. Whichever came first.

  Counter to Heshtat’s predictions, both appeared at once. A tree atop the cliff some twenty feet above them shattered, Harsiese’ body flung through it and catapulting to the beach below to land at their feet in a shower of sand.

  Simultaneously, an arrow whistled its way towards Maatkare’s chest, and a seam of shadow split the air behind him. Heshtat reacted to the arrow first, cutting it from the air and shoving his friend aside. A Medjay followed soon after, leaping from the cliff and barrelling through the air, war-scythe held aloft by two arms bulging with muscle and ponderous with power.

  Heshtat jumped to meet him, obsidian blade gleaming with essence that he funnelled from his awakened soul. He flipped in the air like a cat, cutting through those muscle-bound arms with consummate ease to land a few dozen feet away in time to hear the screaming begin. Maatkare’s funerary fire silenced the man, his head still burning where it rolled on the black sand.

  A second Medjay appeared on the cliff above, huge bow drawn back and arrow already straining against the supernaturally tough string. With a twang far deeper than it had any right to be, the arrow screamed through the air towards Maatkare, magic shining bright from its barbed head. Heshtat knew he would have no time to intercede, and Harsiese was just getting to his feet and shaking off the fall.

  And then a portal of darkness swallowed Maatkare, winking out of existence as the arrow slammed into the beach where he had been and carved a deep furrow into the earth. Maatkare then appeared in another shadowy portal a few feet to Heshtat’s left, stumbling out confused and shaking with cold. Icicles clung to his eyebrows, and his lustrous brown curls were now brittle and shot through with frost.

  Heshtat couldn’t keep up, spinning back to the cliff in time to see a maw of shadow—black teeth and writhing tongue somehow visible against the backdrop of the even darker throat—swallow the Medjay whole. Ahhotep then came hobbling into view, his crooked staff gripped in one skeletal hand and a strained look on his face. He was missing a shoe, and Heshtat caught the glimpse of a foot beneath the robe, flensed of all flesh and muscle, articulating strangely as the priest hurried their way.

  Heshtat was shocked to see both his companions arrive more or less simultaneously—and in such dramatic fashion—but he knew time was of the essence, and they weren’t yet safe. “To the raft!” he called, pointing towards Neferu where she stood waist-deep in the water, frantically lashing a roughly chiselled straight board to the underside of the raft even as it bobbed about in the water upside-down.

  Ahhotep startled hobbling faster, but it was a pitiful attempt and Heshtat cursed in frustration. “Get the priest!” he shouted at Maatkare, then sprinted to Harsiese.

  “Leave me, brother,” Harseise said as he turned to face the cliff, great axe held out to one side. He cut an imposing figure, Heshtat had to admit, with his caramel skin contrasting against the white robes. Blood stained some of the gold armour he wore, but that only added to the image of a noble warrior ready for the final sacrifice. Indeed, Harseise seemed to think the same way. “Let me secure this victory for you. Go!”

  Heshtat disagreed though. “No. Come with us, there is space on the raft and we have need of your skills. Come, before the choice is taken from us.”

  He could hear the pounding of feet now from above and knew they had mere moments before more enemies reached them. Neferu’s traps and Ahhotep’s ritual spells would no doubt have thinned the numbers and spread confusion through the camps, but their opponents weren’t fools. Soon, they would appear in such numbers and strength that Heshtat’s small team would be swiftly overpowered.

  “I have already made my choice,” the Tomb Guard said. “Tell Queen Cleosiris what I did this day, I trust her to see my family cared for.” He looked over to Heshtat, a small smile gracing his face before he bowed his head. “It has been an honour to serve by your side, captain.”

  Heshtat thrummed with impatience. He saw Maatkare reach the old man out of the corner of his eye, but instead of throwing the skeletal priest over one shoulder and sprinting to the raft, his friend—and the priest—disappeared into a yawning portal of darkness, reappearing on the raft almost instantly. He turned back to Harsiese as the man readied himself for the final glorious sacrifice he had always dreamed of.

  Fuck this. As the big man’s head rose once more, smile proud and expression serene in his choice, Heshtat slapped him hard. It rocked his head back, and the Tomb guard grunted in surprise. “Get your meaty ass back to the raft, Harsiese. That’s an order!”

  Then he turned, pulling the man behind him as he sprinted back over black sand, trees crashing behind them as their foes drew near. By the time he reached the water’s edge, Harsiese had stopped being a burden and started to overtake him, though Heshtat was pleased to note he wasn’t much slower than the bigger man any longer.

  Neferu was waiting for them as they reached the raft, and with a few quick instructions from her, he and Harsiese were each grabbing ropes and forging through the water on either side of the raft. Heshtat climbed his way out of the water and onto the nearby embankment, then, seeing Harsiese in position opposite, he sprinted his way down the rocky path, pulling for all he was worth on the rope.

  Combined with Harsiese’s more considerable strength, the raft shot through the water, creating a bow wave from the sheer speed of its movement, and as he reached the end of the rocky outcropping, Heshtat leaped down onto a partially submerged rock. He had barely a second to steady himself before he jumped from that onto the raft as it sailed past, and then he was clattering onto the sodden planks. He nearly pitched off the side when Harsiese’s bulk slammed into the raft from the other side, but soon enough he’d righted himself and gazed back at the retreating beach.

  An arrow fizzed into the surf only a few feet from where he sat panting and a rock to one side of them exploded in a pillar of flame that turned the water nearby into a hissing, bubbling mess. More and more people were emerging onto the cliff above the beach, some leaping down to continue the chase, but others were readying any ranged attacks they could. They were a good few hundred feet away by now and only getting further, and the raft was bobbing about unpredictably in the choppy waters, for which Heshtat was eternally grateful.

  Just as he was beginning to worry over their momentum receding, Neferu stood and slammed a thick stick into a nearby rock to propel them on. Heshtat worried that it wouldn’t be enough to see them much further, his enhanced eyesight tracking the various projectiles headed their way. He turned back to watch as she did it again, and was about to order Harsiese to help, when they emerged from the narrow rock-lined strip of water out into the Nikea proper.

  The river bloomed to either side of them, and quickly the current caught them, Neferu casting aside her stick to grasp the proto tiller she’d lashed together and pitting her strength against that of the river. They spun a few times, but eventually she wrangled them into direction, and the current caught them in its watery fist and flung them downstream.

  Heshtat watched the island retreat behind him and sighed. They weren’t safe yet, not by a long shot, but their chances of surviving had just increased dramatically.

  “What will you do when all of this is over?” Neferu asked quietly. It seems the earlier excitement had cooled, for her at least.

  “Ask me when we’re not fleeing for our lives,” Heshtat replied, though privately he couldn’t stop his thoughts from following the question into the future. A future where he stood before the throne, presenting their prize. A future where he redeemed himself for all of his mistakes, committed himself to earning the love he’d once had. A future, perhaps, where Cleo looked at him with that same burning intensity he felt in his chest with every waking moment.

  He saw his goal, and finally admitted to himself his desperate need for it. For her. They just had to survive.