Remember when I said I suspected there was another reason we
were traveling with the group of Psedjet Scions that we hadn’t quite been told?
Remember when I said that sometimes I hated being right?
As soon as Cindy parted the waters of the lake, and revealed
a barque with the canopic jars on it, it was obvious that we were traveling to
Duat to find Imhotep instead of simply going through his tomb. Claire insisted on steering the thing,
completely disregarding my point that it should probably be done by a Psedjet,
or at the very least by someone with a connection to Death. And I won’t lie, that she was so dismissive
of my concerns made it rather satisfying when some sort of light cluster arose
from the barque itself and refused to let her take the helm. She was not at all happy to be relegated to
the rails.
But that, of course, isn’t the reason I hated being right
(again). While it’s by no means easy,
there are more ways to get to an underworld than most people would probably
expect. By far the most dangerous is to
go through the funerary practices of the ancient cultures that revered a
pantheon at the peak of their worship.
It’ll definitely get you to the appropriate underworld realm easily
enough. But if you take that route and
absolutely everything isn’t done
absolutely perfectly you don’t get to
come back. So guess what the six Psedjet
heroes have to do to get us all to Duat?
It fell to me to read the spells of Going Forth by Day, as I’m easily the most closely associated with
Death of anyone in the band. It seemed
to be the most grave, solemn, thing that I’ve ever done. I mean…I’ve put my own life on the line time
and time again. But never before have
the lives of other been so inextricably and immediately dependent upon me being
absolutely flawless. But I will be a
Death God, heir to an Underworld. It’s
my heritage, something I’m finally at peace with after a quarter century. I wouldn’t allow myself to be anything but
perfect. So that’s what I was, under
Andrew’s watchful gaze. The gods of the
canopic jars emerged to prepare the six souls.
They even bowed to me. Gods,
bowed to me….that still stands out as incredible even amongst everything else
that was going on.
And then we were in Duat, an endless river covered in
endless darkness. Except for the Solar
Barque itself, since we’d arrived at night.
And that’s a craft you can’t help but see; the figures of Horus, Set,
and Ra apparent upon it at a glance.
Truly a majestic sight. But one
that has to be pushed from the mind for now.
I’ll be speaking to Horus eventually, it seems. For now my task is to find Imhotep, and to
ensure that the multi-part souls of six Psedjet heroes are able to return to
Midgard. So with Andrew’s hand on the
tiller we set off across the waters of Duat…
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