Chapter 4: Healing Hands

The Apartment

“What happened to Marc?!” Khonshu bellowed, witnessing the sight of his avatar, stiffened and every pore on his face coated in beads of sweat mixed with blood.

“He got bit, look I’ll explain everything but right now he’s going to die if I don’t do something! Now move!” Eliza barked at Khonshu, shoving past the god while still gripping onto Marc’s arm tightly.

Khonshu, offended by Eliza’s brashness, scoffed at her, “Serket, are you going to let your little bug speak to me in such regard?”

Serket huffed at him, “By the sands, Khonshu, not now! We must save your avatar, so either help us or stay out of the way.”

Eliza mustering all of her strength, placed Marc on top her bed. Blood flowing from his bite wound stained his stark white armor, his breathing became more rapid, as if he were choking on his own oxygen. Retracting her clawed fingertips, Eliza gently cupped his face, softly lulling to him, “Marc? Marc? Can you hear me? We’re going to help you, I’m going to help you.” But to Marc, Eliza’s sweet voice sounded distorted, like a nightmarish siren. Unbeknownst to everyone, Marc, Steven and Jake were experiencing horrifying hallucinations.

Trapped inside the cave, Marc could hear the drowned cries of his brother, Randall. He called out to him, trying to move between the tight crevices of the cave.

Poor Steven believed he was back in the cold sands of the Duat. He was stuck frozen, unable to move, unable to cry out for Marc to help him. All Steven could feel in his hallucinations was the icy cold that painfully chilled his body.

Jake believed he was back in the sarcophagus that trapped him in the Duat. His knuckles cracked from his repeated punches against the marbled coffin. Warm blood coated his bruised fists as he cried out for Marc and Steven to find him. Emerging within the darkness, a multitude of cold, rotten hands began to pull at Jake’s limbs. Panic surged through him as the corpses hands clutched themselves around him, dragging him further into the sarcophagus. He screamed one last time before he was effectively silenced by one of the corpse’s hand.

Khonshu had made several attempts to heal Marc, but the venom from the bite was too resistant to his powers. “Impossible!” He gasped out angrily. Serket immediately took charge of the situation, “Khonshu, Eliza can save him. We need to look at his wound, command his suit away. Eliza and I need to see what we’re dealing with.”

Summoning away the suit, Eliza immediately tore away Marc’s blood soaked shirt. Uncovering his chest, she gasped at the sight of the bite. The gaping wound that the beast left on Marc began to show signs of necrosis. Oozing with blood and quickly blackening flesh on his shoulder, traveled on the entirety of his arm.

“Eliza, grab the book and your antidotes. He doesn’t have much time.” Serket urgently commanded. Eliza nodded silently, rushing towards her small makeshift lab, grabbing the book Serket gave to her for healing spells and the various antidotes that Eliza concocted over the years.

Eliza knelt beside the dying Marc, traversing the ancient pages with reverence, seeking the perfect spell to heal Marc. “That one.” Serket pointed at the page. Eliza exhaling a shaky breath, “Do not be nervous, daughter. You can do this..” Serket whispered reassuringly to her. Eliza gazing up at her goddess, nodding to her with a renewed confidence. Grabbing a metal syringe from her drawer, chanting the Khemetic words as she prepared the antidote.

“By Serket’s healing hand, you shall live.

By my healing hand, you shall return to me.

Let this antidote ward off the evil that consumes your flesh.

May it destroy the venom that seeks to wreak havoc upon you.

By the hands that heal you,

You will live again,

You will breathe again.”

Eliza injected the antidote into Marc’s vein, chanting the words over and over again. Once the syringe emptied, Eliza placed her bare hands over Marc’s wound, chanting the final words of the spell.

“By my will,

By Serket’s will,

You shall breathe once more,

By our hands,

You shan’t face the death until it calls to you.

By our will,

You shall be healed.”

The necrosis that ate away at Marc’s flesh, faded back into his perfectly bronzed skin. Eliza, Serket, and Khonshu watched in astonishment as his wound healed. Marc’s breathing returned to a steady rhythm rather than a choked, rapid pace. Even his face gradually grew more relaxed than pained.

Still unconscious, all three of the men’s hallucinations faded away into nothingness. Marc heard Eliza’s voice, calling to him in a calming lull, pulling him away from the terrors of his tortured mind. Steven no longer felt the icy cold but rather a sweet warmth enveloping his body. Jake no longer was trapped in the dark tomb feeling the cold, dead hands touching him. Warm, soft, phantom hands caressed his face, filling him with a serenity he’d never felt before.

After the healing spell and antidote worked its magic, Marc rested peacefully and pain free in Eliza’s satin sheets. Eliza, Serket, and Khonshu breathed a collective sigh of relief. Eliza remaining kneeled beside Marc, moving her eyes attentively, gazing at him as if he were living art. Strange how the man she locked eyes with that very morning slept so serenely in her bed, she started to feel guilty about how those circumstances came to be. Her gaze dropped down to his chest, reveling at the sight of his defined yet soft like appearance.

Lying at the center of his chest was a gold Star of David pendant, Eliza softly grinned to herself when she discovered it. “Just like me.” She pondered in her mind. Over on the side of his heart were two healed over scars. Eliza’s brow furrowed when she noticed the perfectly circular blemishes. Tilting her head to examine the marks more closely, they resembled that of bullet holes. Sympathy washed over Eliza when she came to the conclusion that he had been shot. A temptation to caress his scars filled within her veins, perhaps she just wanted another excuse to feel his skin beneath her fingertips. Hovering her hand over the marks, she quickly balled her hand into a fist, pulling it back to the edge of the bed. “Get a grip of yourself,” she quietly scolded herself.

“Eliza?” Serket called to her. Eliza stilled for a moment before forcing herself to pay attention to the gods who stood in her apartment. Khonshu and Serket pulled away to talk amongst themselves after Marc had been healed.

“We have much to discuss about the events of tonight.” Khonshu said as he approached Eliza.

Nodding her head in agreement, she rose up to her feet. At the end of her bed, she pulled the velour blanket over Marc, making sure he stayed warm whilst he slept.

“Alright what do you want to know?” Eliza said once she faced her body towards Khonshu and Serket.

Somewhere along the River Thames

Up above in his penthouse, Oliver paced back to and fro in his at home lab. He kept downing a bottle of gin, inebriating his anger at Eliza further. He hoped his creature devoured her, shredding her body limb from limb. Oh how he wished he could’ve seen it. His imagination gradually became a vivid bloodbath, picturing Eliza screaming out in agony as he watched her be gruesomely torn apart. It was revenge for taking his arm and his eye, for making him a stumbling mess at the gala made for him.

“That f-fucking cunt.” He drunkenly muttered to himself. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, looking through his good eye, he saw the now empty socket of where is right eye would’ve been. In a fit of rage, he threw the gin bottle at the mirror, shattering the reflective glass with a loud clanging. Stumbling back into his office chair, he pathetically sunk in it.

He never hated Eliza more than tonight. He hated how she lived again, how she came back to steal his spotlight. He hated her smug little smile when she interrupted him, he wanted to slap her in that moment. In his rage drunken state, he found himself getting off on the idea of killing Eliza again. Unzipping his pants to free his erected length, he spat in his hand and began to palm himself to his dark and twisted fantasy. In the fantasy, he pushed Eliza to the ground, putting his entire weight on her, pinning her down so she couldn’t escape. Oliver repeatedly punched Eliza in the face until her makeup and blood stained his knuckles. Then, using the dagger Apep gifted him, Oliver used it to tear away at the slutty wine colored dress, stripping her bare. In a weak voice, she begged for mercy but her desperate pleas would go unheard by him.

“Whores like you deserved to punished for thinking you could do better than me.” Oliver chillingly spat.

In a fury, he pierced into Eliza’s flesh, over, and over, and over again. He bit the tender plushness of her breasts, leaving a gnashing bite wound. He grew harder at her anguished cries from his torture, palming himself faster and groaning deeply from the sickening imagination. At the height of his climax, Oliver pictured digging his fingers into the wounds of Eliza. Coating his digits in her blood to use as a lubricant to assault her. There was no mercy, no kindness, no love, only hatred as Oliver brutally assaulted her. He wanted to take her dignity, humiliate her and leave her violated body marred, bloody and covered in his come.

“What are you doing?!” Apep hissed. His scaly face contorted in disgust at the sight of his avatar pleasuring himself.

Oliver had reached his climax, making a startled mess in his hand. “Fucking hell! Don’t you ever knock?” He exclaimed as he struggled to pull his pants with one arm.

Apep simply rolled his eyes, “I’ve merely come to tell you that you failed me again. It appears that little bug took some things of yours.” He said highly displeased.

Oliver sank to his knees, lowering his head, shame and anger coiled over in his body. He knew he had failed his master, everything that he sacrificed to accomplish his goals had failed.

“Get off the ground, you pathetic imp.” Apep commanded. Oliver rose to his feet, struggling with his one arm. Apep spoke a few words in his ancient language, green light formed from within Oliver, out from his amputated arm grew an entirely new bone. Nerves trailed down the skeletal arm, veins and muscle painted themselves over the nerves. Soon, the new arm was completely regenerated, looking as if it had never been severed.

Flexing his digits, turning his wrist, merely just testing the movement of his new limb. He cheerfully grinned at the sight but Apep’s voice boomed, “Focus you fool!”

“Right, of course, my lord.” Oliver responded.

“Now, since you failed me again, I will not heal your eye. You may get that once those avatars are dead.”

“I understand, I thought for certain that first soldier would kill her and Khonshu’s avatar.”

“Clearly that one was too weak to fight, but what of the others?”

“The others may be perfectly capable to take care of Serket’s and Khonshu’s avatars.” Oliver then pointed to one of the creatures that slept in it’s enclosure, “This one here, has the bite force of an anaconda and the combined venom of an eastern brown snake, a diamond back rattlesnake, and Deathstalker scorpion venom.” Oliver proudly showed off his unholy creation, “But this one, you’ll like the most I’m sure.” He said with a twisted glint in his eye.

“This one is the most aggressive and the biggest. Combining the DNA of a black mamba, king cobra, a gaboon viper, and a Burmese python, you have your strongest soldier yet.” Oliver gleefully boasted. Apep looked at the creature in the enclosure, lulling it awake to approach the glass barrier.

The creature arose from its slumber, standing up to 10 feet tall, eyes the color of amber, its scales glistening under the contrasted lighting, highlighting its various hues of black, purple and green. Resembling that of the components it was made from. Apep looked at the creature approvingly, “Save this one for lethal measures,” he spoke, “The others shall prove themselves against those two avatars. Send three of them out to cause chaos on the third evening. I want to see what damage they’ll do to a large population.” Apep sinisterly coaxed.

Oliver bore a similar grin on his lips when given his next command. “I know just the place to test them out.”

Back to the Apartment

“So tell me, little bug, how did Marc get bit?” Khonshu queried, titling his hollowed skull to look down upon me.

“He pushed me out of the way. I was the target for the creature and he took the bite that was meant for me,” I explained, secretly reeling in guilt from the incident, “The creature in question was some kind of mutated snake that my ex had created for Apep, whom I’m guessing is some sort of snake god?”

“He is a demon god of chaos and destruction,” Serket interjected, “he takes the form of a giant serpent and since the beginning of time, he has sought to bring about his desire for chaos unto the world, plunging it into darkness.”

“For eons, Ra traveled nightly into the underworld to fight off Apep. The last time those two battled was 3,000 years ago…” Khonshu’s tone had grown eerily solemn. Serket lowered her gaze from me with an anguished expression.

Studying the shift in moods between the gods, it struck to me that something incredibly awful took place all those years ago . “What happened?” I asked with cautious curiosity.

Serket looked to Khonshu, his hollowed skull turning to meet her saddened gaze, I don’t think I had ever seen Serket this vulnerable before. Placing his bandaged hand on top of her shoulder with soft reverence, she placed her clawed hand over his. My eyes narrowed at the sight, were they a couple?

“Eliza, what I’m about to tell you may not be easy to hear, but there is more to why I chose you to be my avatar and why Khonshu sought you out.”

Serket’s Tale 🦂

In the times of old, the first born son of pharaoh would inherit the title of not only ruler of all Egypt, but as the avatar of Ra. However, Ra would soon learn a lesson he would never forget. A lesson that would haunt all of us for the rest of our eternal lives.

3,000 years ago in Thebes, two sons were born. Khafre, the first son was born in the midday, already beloved by Ra. Ahmose was born on the midnight hour, a child destined to be the fist of Khonshu. Two sons represented by the sun and the moon, destined to bring balance in the kingdom would perish under the eye of chaos.

As the boys grew, Khafre trained closely alongside his father to be the next avatar of Ra and to be pharaoh while Ahmose trained amongst the Medjay. A group of elite warriors who protected the palace and its people. The time came for when their father left the waking world to be judged by the Ma’at in the afterlife, leaving his two sons behind. Khafre was now pharaoh and the avatar of Ra. Ahmose remained prince regent and took his position as leader of the Medjay and of course, becoming Khonshu’s avatar.

Khafre would accompany Ra on his journey to the underworld, fighting side by side with him in the daily defeat of Apep. Ahmose watched over the palace and the city at night, protecting it from enemies that laid outside the city’s boarders. But what he didn’t know, the enemy hid inside the very walls of his home.

Asenath, the palace priestess and physician, was my avatar. From the moment she was born into this world, I knew she was truly remarkable. Compassionate, protective, gentle but mighty. That was Asenath. She often treated Ahmose’s soldiers, fixing their injuries from sparring to battling with outside invaders. Gifting them amulets to protect themselves from the stings of scorpions and the bites of snakes whenever they marched through the vast sands.

A secret bond blossomed between Asenath and Ahmose, unbeknownst to the pair, Khafre had his eye on her. He desired to possess her all to himself, his ego as the eldest could not withstand the thought of his younger brother doing better than him. Slowly, the veil of chaos began to fall, jealousy and a dangerous thirst for more power consumed Khafre’s heart.

When Khafre joined Ra on his barge to travel to the underworld to fight Apep, he fell into the gaze of the demon. Ra’s avatars were trained extensively to never fall victim to Apep’s paralyzing gaze, however Ra through the fault of his own hubris, never saw the corruption that eroded from within Khafre.

In their shared gaze, Apep showed Khafre a vision. A vision that promised all of Khafre his desires, a king with unlimited power and glory with Asenath by his side and with his brother’s head displayed on a spike.

Seduced by Apep’s vision, Khafre planned his deception. After returning from his nightly voyage, he stumbled upon Ahmose’s quarters, the large door was half opened. Curiosity tugged at him when he heard noises of passion echoing from within his brother’s room. Watching through the veiled curtains, the red sun rising west shadowed the movements of Asenath and Ahmose. In furious envy, he darkly stared at the lovers in their most intimate sin.

Over the next few weeks, Ahmose noticed the stark changes his brother displayed. He was angrier, crueler than ever before. Of course, Khafre was known for having an enlarged ego but this was different. Khafre then forbade Asenath from attending to the Medjay and Ahmose. He decreed that if any other man had touched her would be punished by death.

Asenath and Ahmose came to Khonshu and I, begging for us to speak with Ra. They explained Khafre’s behaviors to us, telling us how much crueler and erratic he had become.

“Ra, listen to us. We come only out of concern for Khafre.” Khonshu reasoned with him.

“He is supposed to be a fair leader and he has been nothing but cruel to his family and to all that serve him. I fear this will cause a great unbalance.” I spoke urgently.

But Ra would hear none of it. “Khafre has already explained to me why he’s keeping Asenath close, Serket. He plans to marry her. There is nothing to worry about. Khafre is just merely extending his power.”

“Extending his power? So he extends his power by isolating his priestess from her duties to serve only him? Explain how that makes any sense-“

“Silence! I will not hear any more of this slander! You and Khonshu are dismissed.”

“Ra-“

“I said dismissed!”

“Khonshu, you must have Ahmose guard Asenath with his life. I fear for her safety.”

“Do not worry, Asenath can handle herself and Ahmose will protect her. I promise.”

But that promise would be short lived, for the nightmare that threatened to come to fruition had arrived.

On the barge, we bore witness to Khafre’s betrayal to his patron god, ascending to be the chaos lord’s servant. Ahmose and Asenath were abroad the barge, fighting against Khafre whilst I, Khonshu and Ra fought Apep.

The battle was brutal, Apep overpowered all three of us, so much so that Earth above and the Duat below shook. Khafre and Ahmose fought violently, brother against brother, but Khafre was stronger and weakened his brother. At the end of the barge, Khafre dragged Ahmose to face Apep. With his enlarged fangs bared, his eyes glowing a murderous green, he was ready to devour Ahmose.

Then as Apep lunged for Ahmose, Asenath surged from behind, pushing Ahmose out of the way. Ahmose cried out to her before she was captured by the jaws of Apep, he devoured her, ending her entire existence. For once Apep got ahold of a soul, they would never enter the afterlife.

I don’t remember much of what happened after that night, just that Khafre along with Apep were hacked to pieces and forever tethered to the primordial void.

Grief consumed me, at one point I merely believed grief was only an emotion that belonged to the human race. It festered into anger, I blamed Khonshu, Ra, and Ahmose for Asenath’s death. My relationship to Khonshu turned horribly bitter. In my bereaved mind, I forced Khonshu to never see me again. I became more reclusive in my palace, never once taking another avatar or speaking to my fellow gods again.