Immortal Reunion

It was a warm summer day and I was enjoying a refreshing drink at a restaurant when a young woman walked up to me and sat at my table.

“Remember me?” she asked, glancing over with her hazel eyes.

 

“No, I don’t,” I replied.

 

“Egypt, 1802. We met at an excavation site.”

“Athezas?”

“Hello again, Imosia.”

“You’ve changed your appearance quite a bit over the past two centuries. What brings you to Mexico?”

“The ziggurats, same as you.”

“Are you sure it’s not for any hidden treasures? I remember now that King Tut’s ring was stolen back when we met. It was unpleasant for me since I was forcefully searched.”

“I’m sorry about that. I needed money at the time and had to sell the ring on the black market. But I actually got it back recently.”

Athezas placed the ring on the table and slid it over to me. “Here, take it as an apology.”

I was confused. The ring was far too valuable a peace offering, and someone like her who stole it before wouldn’t present it to me like this unless she had some ulterior motives. I didn’t reach out for the ring.

“Take it, please. It suits you,” she insisted. There was a hint of desperation in her voice.

I agreed to help Athezas with an excavation she had planned for the following week, but I put my foot down and said there will be no stealing of artefacts. She agreed, albeit with some reluctance. The excavation went smoothly and Athezas kept her promise. She then invited me to another excavation, this time in Egypt, which was scheduled for the following week. Since she kept her promise at the time, I accepted her offer.

We flew to Egypt two days later and she invited me to her home. It was more of a mansion than a house. I wondered whether it was from her family or from all the possible black market sales she had been making over the centuries. She insisted it was the former.

When Athezas gave me a tour of the mansion, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Furniture, jewellery, and clothes… The mansion was bathed in relics from the time of King Tut. For even an immortal such as I, artefacts such as those were things lost to history.

“How did you find these?” I asked.

“I told you: they are ancestral.”

“Wait, you… You’re related to Tut?”

Athezas said nothing, she only smiled.

On the third floor, Athezas led me to a room larger than all the others—its walls etched with hieroglyphs and its sides adorned with two giant statues of Osiris and Anubis. On the other end of the room was what seemed to be a sarcophagus standing against the wall. It couldn’t be…

“Is that the true tomb?”

Athezas’ lips stretched with glee. “Yes,” she said, leading me towards the sarcophagus.

Over the sarcophagus was a colourful mural of Ma’at with her wings outstretched and her gaze facing down, as if focusing on the tomb placed before her. As Athezas and I approached the sarcophagus, however, I felt as if something were amiss. For a moment there, I could have sworn that the statues of Osiris and Anubis had moved.

“Did you see that?” I asked.

“See what?” Athezas replied.

“The statues… I think they moved.”

Athezas giggled. “You must be more tired than I thought. You can have a long nap right after this.”

I was unsure of what was happening, but I still decided to follow her. The moment we stood before the tomb of Tut, however, four shackles spring from the walls and latched on to my limbs.

“What’s the meaning of this?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, but this is the only way. I need your soul to make our immortal reunion come true.”

She was insane. I struggled to break free, but my efforts were to no avail. Then, suddenly, I heard a voice in my head: “Fear not, for you are just in my eyes.”

I looked ahead and saw the eyes of Ma’at glowing green. Then there were two more voices from behind me. “The dead shan’t suffer the will of the living; all life flows in a single course.”

Four vortices ripped through the very fabric of the space around us, bringing forth four more chains that shackled Athezas. “What—”

“You have been ignorant, child.” Ma’at’s voice now resonated through the entire room, rattling the air around us.

“But I only wish to be reunited with the man I love!”

“And so you shall,” the three voices echoed in unison. A fifth portal opened just above Athezas, and from it billowed a plume of black feathers that spiralled downward to surround her, their numbers growing so great it was as if she was engulfed in a deep shadow. Then the feathers began to recede, leaving behind but a husk of what was once an immortal. Athezas was stripped to her bones.

The black plumage rose back into the air once more and disappeared from all sight as the portal closed. The four other portals from which the chains emerged then melded together to form one large vortex, which then proceeded to swallow Athezas’ remains into its dark maws. My shackles came undone the moment her skeleton disappeared.

“Go, child. You are free,” Ma’at said.

I thanked her, Anubis, and Osiris and left the mansion immediately.