As Kurou walked on, worried about the abomination coming after him even though he is seemingly immortal, he felt inclined to stay clear of the cities, all full with scrutinizing eyes and curiosity he wasn't really ready to put up with.
Other than that, there was some kind of instinctive force pulling him towards the desert area. Like he was supposed to find something there, but he had no idea what that could be.
He walked for a couple of hours, in the middle of the night, until he spotted a rather small figure. Closing in, he identified the figure as an animal, feeding on a carcass. It was a jackal, doing what he could to get a meal out of what seemed to be a very much dead wildebeest.
Kurou was fond of canines, so he approached the jackal subtly so as to avoid startling it. The jackal took notice quite quickly though, raising his head and ears, staring Kurou in the eye in a stand-off that seemed to last forever.
"Who's a good boy?", Kurou asked. "Who's a good booooy, FUCK!", he screamed as the jackal swiftly leaped on top of him and sunk his teeth into his throat, ripping off a big chunk of his flesh.
Kurou tumbled around screaming in pain, as the jackal chewed on his flesh like some tasty barbecue.
"God dammit, you little mutt! You could have killed me, you know that? BAD BOY! YOU'RE A BAD BOY, YOU HEAR ME?".
The animal finished eating Kurou's flesh and just stood there, not showing any more signs of aggression.
"Now what? Wanna another piece of me? Give it a go, I can regenerate as many times as I need", Kurou said, opening his arms defiantly.
The animal looked at him with a blank expression, as if wondering how stupid Kurou could be for trying to get into a brawl with a wild jackal.
"Okay, so I guess you were just hungry, right? That carcass was pretty much flesh and bones, and rotten ones at that. I'll let it slide this time, but don't try to attack me again, alright? I made someone a promise not to hurt animals but I never said I would abandon my right to self-defense", Kurou said and kept walking, leaving the jackal behind.
He was surprised to note the jackal was walking right after him.
"What? You want to take a stroll around with me? No, not gonna happen. You're gonna feel hungry again and I don't feel like losing another chunk of my neck, even if I get it back a couple seconds later. It's painful, you know? And I'm soaked in blood, to boot".
The jackal let out a crying sound that reminded him of an overgrown puppy.
"For fuck's sake...I'm about to adopt a jackal. Of all the crazy stuff I've done with my life till now, I guess this is top tier for sure", Kurou mumbled.
"So, what name am I going to give you?", Kurou asked his slender, pointy-eared, black-backed new friend.
The jackal looked around and found an obelisk, containing a series of hieroglyphs carved onto its surface.
There were many different hieroglyphs carved onto the obelisk, and the jackal intelligently landed his paw on a few of them. Images of a four-legged canine, a woman sitting down with a feather atop her head and an ankh, and looked at Kurou expecting him to understand.
"Looky here, little buddy. I can't read hieroglyphs. All I see are a jackal, a woman and an ankh. To me it's just a riddle I can't solve", Kurou said.
Kurou raised his eyebrows.
"Riddle. I like the sound of that", he said to himself. "What about I call you Riddle?"
The jackal snarled at him.
"Now now, be a good boy, right Riddle?", Kurou mocked.
Looking defeated by Kurou's lack of sense, Riddle snorted, but ultimately accepted his new name.
"Okay Riddle, I need to find Inpu, do you happen to know something about him?", Kurou asked, not expecting an answer.
Riddle let out a vigorous and high-pitched bark, and ran towards the desert.
"Where are you going, doggy? Come back here!", Kurou shouted, to no avail.
Riddle entered a tomb that could only be described as marvelous.
The burial chamber was small, but the walls were painted with large images of what seemed to be a Pharaoh, with a woman carrying ankhs on both hands by his right side, and a man dressed with a jackal mask by his left. Several baboons were painted on the other wall, and a figure being embalmed could be seen on a third wall.
But what really called his, and Riddle's, attention the most was the fact that four people, two men and two women, dressed in white robes, were lying on the ground, motionless. A young man was lying on top of a large stone slab, dressed in fine white clothes, where a sarcophagus was supposed to be.
Kurou checked every one of them's pulse. The four people lying on the floor were cold dead. The young man was alive and breathing.
Kurou poked him in the cheek, and the boy jumped as if awaken from a bad dream.
"What? Where am I? What's going on? Who are you?", the boy asked him, not giving Kurou any time to answer.
"Hold on, boy. I have the same questions as you do. Why are these people dead and you are alive? What happened here?", Kurou asked.
"I don't know. As far as I'm concerned, I was dead. Since a long time ago...", the boy said, shifting his gaze towards the walls.
"Egypt is so full of surprises, isn't it?", Kurou said. "I should be running from this place as fast as I can, but I am really curious to know if what you're telling me is true. Riddle here thinks so too, don't ya, furry face?", and Riddle barked loudly.
Seeing as the boy was about to get up, Riddle walked around the corpses lying on the floor and grabbed a cane with his mouth, bringing it up to the boy.
"A jackal? You're walking around with a jackal? And how does it know I have trouble walking?", the boy asked.
"No idea. He's no ordinary jackal, I tell ya. Keep that cane close to your face, in case he gets hungry".
The boy shuddered a little at the thought of being attacked by the jackal, but Riddle seemed quite mild-mannered around him.
"Okay now, I don't know what you're going to do, but I have a quest of my own to pursue. See you around!", Kurou said, dismissively, walking towards the exit.
"Wait", the boy said. "Let me go with you".
"You just said you can't walk properly", Kurou said, harshly. "I can't waste any more of my time".
"Believe me, I won't waste your time, sir. I...I can't remember much about myself, but I know I'm someone important, or else I wouldn't be here. There must be a reason why you found me, or better said, Riddle found me".
"I'm not into that fate/destiny crap, buddy. It's just coincidence to me until you prove otherwise, and to sum it up, there are four corpses inside that tomb and I don't want to deal with whatever or whomever killed them".
"They were sacrifices", the boy said in a grave tone. Kurou halted immediately. "Did you just say sacrifices?".
"Y...yes. They were voluntary sacrifices in a ritual to bring me back", the boy said.
"Voluntary sacrifices, huh...smells fishy", Kurou said, looking at the boy suspiciously.
"I don't know what you mean, but I'm telling the truth!", the boy answered.
"You just said you couldn't remember a damn thing, and now you can. Care to explain?", Kurou said.
"My mind is foggy, but I'm pretty sure I was brought back to life through a ritual. Those people willingly gave up on their lives so I could return", the boy said.
"You must really be someone important if people are willing to die for you", Kurou said.
"This place...this tomb, this desert. All of this feel too familiar. Even the language I'm speaking...how can you understand me, by the way? You don't look remotely Egyptian. And what about those red eyes? You look like you just came out of a horror story", the boy said, between scared and goofy.
"Funny brat. I am living a horror story, you got that right. And I'm not Egyptian, as you surmised. How we are able to communicate is a good question. There were only a few people I could talk to, in this country, and I never learned Egyptian or any other African languages in my life. I still haven't figured that out. By the way, my red eyes are a gift.
"A gift?"
"Yes, probably to make me stand out, since everyone else looks like shit", Kurou said, with a smirk.
"You are surely a strange man, sir", the boy said.
"Just call me Kurou", he said. "If you want. If you don't, then don't. I don't care either way".
"All right, I'm going to call you Kurou", the boy said. "Quite an uncommon name, you have. Where is it from?".
"My parents were kinda crazy, so they thought something about the black color", Kurou said. "Enough questioning, already. You're already slowing me down, boy!".
"Tut."
"What was that?", Kurou asked.
"Call me Tut", the boy said.
"Tut as in Tuthankamon?", Kurou asked, tilting his head in disbelief.
"Yes. I am Tuthankamon. That speech about your parents being crazy. I remember now. My parents were crazy too. And they were the king and queen of this country. I was a pharaoh in my time, Kurou. I am the owner of that tomb over there, and I was resurrected by my followers".
"That's a whole lot to swallow, Tut. Wow. I have my issues, but this is wholly unprecedented. Resurrection ritual, can you believe it?", Kurou rubbed his face with his hands, taking his time to digest what he would find absolutely impossible just a couple of days ago.
Many supernatural events happened since the airplane crash, and the ressurection of a human being could no longer be put off the table for Kurou. He survived the crash, the unforgiving heat of the desert, got punched in the face, tried to drown himself to no avail, talked with foreigners without learning their language, talked to Ramses II and even the God Horus. He could fucking see in the dark. Not to mention he was going without food or water for days now.
He had no choice but to accept that the concept of impossible has changed now. Impossible is the new possible now.
"But orange will never be the new black", Kurou said with a laugh.
"What is that?", Tut asked with a riddled face.
"All right Tut, don't mind me. I was just lost in thought", Kurou said. "I'll consider your situation acceptable due to the circumstances we're in right now and due to the things I've seen in the last couple of days, but if it wasn't for that I'd probably be banging my head against the wall right now. I have a lot of questions you might be able to answer if you can remember everything about this place."
Kurou looked at the jackal as to see his reaction. Riddle was looking at Tut very attentively.
"Riddle seems interested in you, I guess. It seems you're not lying to us, after all", Kurou said.
"Thanks, Kurou. You're a good companion, and I appreciate your trust. I promise you a great reward if you stay by my side until I finish everything I need to do here", Tut said.
"I wouldn't count on that, Tut. I mean, you being a pharaoh is cool and all, but I'm past all that fame and fortune thing. All I want is to find answers as to why I'm here".
"And I will help you", Tut said. "Let's get going then. I know where to find money. And we're gonna need it, even if you say otherwise".