*Warning - This chapter contains dark themes.*
[???/Neferet's POV]
She was walking around in a dungeon, five floors under the ground.
Even though it was too dark to see them, she knew the corridors were carved with great details and the bluestone floors were clean and smooth. A fact she was glad for, seeing that they would have ruined her slippers and dress a long time ago if they hadn't been.
But she knew that, even though it was clean, it was a very dangerous place where only the most dangerous of criminals were stored that couldn't be killed for some reason or another.
While she should have been scared just because this place was so dangerous, the only thing that truly scared her was loosing control of herself. It had always been a struggle to keep her ever-changing body under control, but it was so much worse now that she was nervous.
Careful to stay inconspicuous, she pulled the hood of her cloak further over her head to cover more of her face.
A sigh of relief escaped her when she finally saw her destination; the only prison cell in the whole dungeon where a guard was placed in front of the heavy wooden door.
A small lantern was glowing at the guard's belt. It succeeded in illuminating the small circle surrounding the guard, but equally emphasised the darkness of everything beyond its reach. In other words; The guard hadn't seen her yet.
She stepped into the small circle of light, which finally alerted the guard, who immediately pointed his spear straight at her. She walked through it, her body morphing around the weapon like a golden cloud of glitter. Because of this, the guard knew who she was.
"M-m-my Lady? Thank Heavens, it's you! You scared me," the guard stuttered as he tried to recover from his fright. The point of his spear was visibly shaking and his metal shoulder plates rattled silently as he released a shuddering breath to calm himself.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to," she replied softly and moved in the direction of the heavy prison door.
"I received strict orders to keep everybody away from here. Especially you," the guard said dutiful as he obstructed her path and straightening up ever so slightly, but slumped the same amount again when she didn't react. Even though this guard was top of the rank, the best of the best, he knew he wouldn't be able to stop her. "Please, my lady. If she discovers you were here..."
His words faded into the silence. She felt slightly hurt by his lack of trust. Was this really the extent of the faith these people could muster for her? And to think she had shared her life force with them.
Then again, it couldn't be helped, since they were afraid of the same person.
"Then don't tell her," she said as she pushed the guard aside and pulled herself up at the barred window of the prison door to look inside.
There he was; the prisoner she was looking for, chained and blindfolded. He smiled in her direction when he noticed her presence and she felt her heart skip a beat.
"I can't get distracted now! I need to talk to him first," she thought to herself.
But talk about what?
And who was he to begin with?
Where was she, and how did she get here?
She couldn't remember...
Had she been dreaming?
Soon, everything around her returned to darkness. It took the memory of the prisoner with it and the overwhelming sensation of sorrow and regret, was replaced with a comfort that soothed her soul.
"So this is what it feels like to be dead?" Neferet thought as her consciousness had cleared enough for her to remember herself.
Life had been kind to her. Ok, her mother had died when she was born, but her father had always been there for her. She'd been his pride and joy and he supported her with every step she took.
Even when people started requesting her as a professional entertainer, her dad hadn't been surprised. He knew she loved to sing and dance and had even encouraged her to do what she loved most.
At the age of 14 she'd mastered playing the lute and double flute. By the age of 16 she'd gathered her very own khener; a group of extremely talented men and woman who followed her everywhere. They'd earned themselves a good reputation and were asked to play at big houses and festivities all over Egypt.
It wasn't until she'd turned 18 that things had started to change. People started saying that she was getting old and that it was strange that she hadn't married yet. At first it hadn't bother her. She'd expected it to blow over. But it hadn't.
"Do you think I'm strange, papa?" she'd asked her father.
"Strange? My beautiful daughter strange? Of course not! Why would you ask that?" he'd uttered with a horrified expression.
"It's what people say. That I'm strange because I haven't married anyone yet," she explained, unable to hide her worries.
"Ah," her father said as if he hadn't realised there was a problem before that moment. "It is true that your mother was fourteen when she married me. She died not long after too. I know I would have liked a few more years with her. You might be diverting from the expected path, but I guess it means we haven't found the right man for you yet."
Looking back at it now, her father had meant to console her. That he accepted her whatever she did. But that's not how she'd interpreted his words at the time. She thought he'd judged her for being picky. So she jumped at the first marriage proposal she got.
"Are you certain you want to marry this man?" her father had asked.
"Yes, papa. He said he fell in love with me at first sight. I think that's a good place to start."
"You're making a mistake, Neferet," Sapar, the male lute player of her khener had said. "I don't trust him. There's something strange about him."
She'd blown all their worries and warnings to the wind, but her husband was indeed ill at mind and heavy at heart.
During the short time she'd been with him, he'd fallen into the routine of child making at night and locking her up during the day. And when there was no sign of a pregnancy after six months, he'd lost interest all together. She was left with the choice of starving to death or running away.
Coincidentally, the opportunity to run away came before she'd managed to starve herself to death. One day, the door to her prison had not been locked.
Maybe someone had forgotten to lock the door after checking on the living skeleton she'd become. Maybe someone had opened the door out of pity. Or maybe someone had deliberately set her free. She didn't know why the door had been unlocked, nor would she ever, because she'd ran out of the door without looking back and just kept running.
Predictably, an unprepared escape like that into the dessert didn't go well, and that's how she ended up in her sandy grave.
She had to admit; she was liking it better than she thought she would. The smouldering hot sand was so comfortable and reassuring.
When she'd been alive, she had always avoided long periods in the sun. She simply couldn't afford a blemished skin in her line of work. She'd seen enough people with scars from burns to know it wasn't something partygoers wanted to see. Had she known that the feeling of the warm sun was this delightful, she might have risked a scar or two.
Honestly, she had pictured her journey through Duat quite differently; more horrible monsters and more life- or rather soul- threatening situations, but so far she hadn't seen anything or anyone.
Did that mean the use of a "Book Of The Dead" was overrated? Not that she'd be able to afford something that was so costly that you almost needed to be the Pharaoh himself to get your hands on it.
Yet, if she ever made it to the hall of Ma'at, she'd have a difficult time telling each one of the 42 assessor gods "a sins she did not commit".
But she'd get through that, just like how she got through everything else life threw at her.
Her only true regret was that her dear father would never know what had become of her. He didn't know her husband had mistreated her. He didn't know she'd ran away. He didn't know she had died and that the chances of him finding her body were almost non-existent.
Her mad husband had cut all ties with her khener the very second the deal had been sealed, saying all of them were a bad influence on his wife for discrediting him behind his back.
Of course, he'd done so without Neferet's knowing. It was only after he'd locked her up permanently that one of the servants had told her.
That servant had told her a lot of other things too. It's what made her realise that her husband was the problem and not she herself.
Either way, she wasn't planning on drowning herself in the feeling of self-pity anymore.
Something moved besides her. Just the slightest. She might have missed it if she hadn't wrapped her arms and legs around it. She'd felt it move, more than she'd perceived it.
"I felt it?" Neferet thought. "I thought the body was left behind once the soul moved on? Can the soul feel too? Or am I still alive?"
She decided to test it by slowly opening her eyes and sure enough, the pitch black darkness was obliterated by burning light. The only problem was that the light was burning so brightly that she couldn't see anything. It took her eyes what felt like an eternity to adjust to the bright light flooding into the room.
The first thing she saw once her eyes had finally adjusted, was the source of the delicious warmth she found herself clinging to.
It was a man. Definitely a man. A very well-build and suntanned man, but a man.
Shock and fear flooded her system. Had her husband managed to find her? Was she back at the side of that nightmare of a man?
Distance! She needed as much distance between herself and him in an as short as possible amount of time!
She scrambled away from him, not looking were she was going. She didn't get far though. The second she scrambled away from him, she fell out of bed with a loud thud and when she tried to stand on her feet to run, it felt as if she was standing on a thousand needles. No need to say, she fell again, this time sending a bunch of pots and baskets flying.
That had been the last drop, her body refused to move anymore. Her whole body trembled as she willed it to try again. It shook with the effort, but she still couldn't get up.
"What are you doing?" a deep and slightly raspy voice asked.
The (very male) source of heat she had been cuddling moments ago, was sitting up in the bed and stared at her sleepily. Dear Isis, was he hot!
Neferet was relieved to see that it wasn't her husband, though. Her husband had been beautiful in a delicate and clean way, but this man had a sort of roughness to him, all manliness and testosterone.
She could see a shadow of a beard on his jaw and could picture him hunting or striking someone down with a sword. For a second, she thought that if she didn't move or made a sound, he would fall back asleep. But no such luck. She saw realisation dawn on his face and within seconds, he was standing besides her.
"Have you completely lost your mind?" he asked angrily as he gently scooped her up in his arms, carrying her like a precious, vulnerable, little baby. His close proximity made her blush. He didn't seem to notice as he continued: "You are still healing! Your feet were raw when we found you! You're lucky to be a-"
"NOOOO! DON'T TOUCH ME! GET AWAY FROM ME!" Neferet screamed on top of her lungs, kicking and trashing as hard as she could muster. He looked at her in surprise, but didn't drop her.
It looked like her trashing was just a minor annoyance to him, but she wasn't going to quit. And so, one of her flailing limbs hit him square in the face, when he was trying to put her down gently on the bed.
"Stop it," he growled annoyed. "I get it already, I'll leave you alone. But don't you dare leave that bed until the priest tells me you're healed or I'll hunt you to the ends of the world and tie you to it! Understood?"
She nodded wordlessly, her eyes wide with fear. He looked a little surprised that his threat had actually worked.
"What are you going to do to me?" she asked, annoyed to hear that her voice was trembling.
"Do to you?" he asked surprised. "I wasn't p-"
He was interrupted by the door bursting open and a man came rushing through. He looked a little like the man she'd found sleeping next to her, but less dangerous and completely clean with an expensive looking wig on his head.
"Oh thank heavens!" he cried out as he smothered the rough man with a hug.
"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!" he yelled/asked angrily. "You've been missing for the past TWO days! Vanished without a trace! Do you have any idea how worried I've been?!"
The rough man frowned and seemed surprised himself.
"I'm fine," he finally said, reluctant to answer. "I had some questions that needed to be answered, needed to clear my head. I hadn't realised so much time had passed."
The clean man looked like he wanted to ask more, but the rough man cleverly distracted him by pointing at her.
"Hmm?" he hummed as he looked up and his eyes widened comically when he saw her. "Oh! The beautiful one has finally woken up!"
"Do I know you?" Neferet asked confused.
He answered her confused frown with one of his own.
"I don't think so, no. Why do you ask?"
"Then how did you know my name?"
"Your name?" the clean one asked even more confused now.
"Her name is Neferet, Merenre," the rough one chuckled, resolving the clean one's confusion. Then he turned to her. "He guessed right. You have a very fitting name."
This made Neferet blush. She swallowed and allowed herself to look at her body for the first time since her husband had discarded her. She was all skin and bones, no trace of her once beautiful curves left.
"You are easy to please," she said, "you should have seen me a year ago. I was famed far and wide for my beauty."
The low standards of these men annoyed her, but her annoyance quickly vanished when she saw the rough man swallow. His Adam's apple bobbing up and down spoke book-parts to her: He though she was already beautiful, even in the neglected state she was in, but he could imagine her full curves perfectly.
The look in his eyes spoke of the distress of being faced with such a gorgeous woman and not being allowed to touch her. He'd try, though. He'd respect her. She could see it.
She felt her cheeks heat up again.
"Well, all the more reason to get you fully healed, Neferet," Merenre said, breaking her and the rough guy both out of their trance.
"I'm going," the rough guy said as he seemed to have realised his thoughts were clearly visible to everybody in the room.
"Where are you going?!" Merenre asked as the rough guy closed the door behind him.
"OUT!" he yelled from behind it and left.
Merenre chuckled.
"Never gets old," he mumbled to himself and then turned to her. "How are you feeling? Are you hungry? Is there something you would like to eat?"
Neferet didn't know what to say. She was still working out her feelings. Some part of her was sad that the rough guy had left, but a bigger part was relieved that he was out of the room. Then there was the part that couldn't believe that this clean guy was being so nice to her and lastly there was the part that was freaking confused!
"Who was that?" she finally asked.
"That was my brother, Amon. This is his house and that is his bed you're sleeping in."
A rough guy like him owning a limestone house? How strange. Well, her husband could afford one too, but he was a high ranking scribe. Maybe this Amon-guy was a high ranking military officer?
"Any more questions?" Merenre asked, an eternal grin playing around his lips.
"Who are you?" she deadpanned, not in the mood to be his source of amusement. He chuckled anyway.
"I'm Merenre. I used to be the high-priest of Abydos, serving Osiris at the temple there. But I've recently relocated to Waset to help with a little project in Deir el-Bahari my father started."
"High-priest of Osiris?!" Neferet asked in surprise, her voice shriller then she would have liked. "Why is such a high ranking official here?"
"Because... my brother asked me to?" Merenre answered deliberately slowly, searching her face for a reaction. "He's the one who found you in the dessert and asked me to nurse you back to health."
"You must be a busy man... You'd do such a thing for your brother?" she asked doubtfully.
"Of course! There's nothing I wouldn't do for my family," he said with a proud grin. "Don't you have family?"
"Family?" she asked quietly, testing the word. "I used to have them..."
She looked down to were Merenre had gently put his hand over hers and had given it a gentle squeeze. When she looked up to face him, she saw eyes full of sympathy. "Can I ask you what happened?"
"What happened?" she echoed his words as she thought about it. Where to start, really? The more she thought about it the more difficult it became. She felt tears burning at the corners of her eyes.
"It's ok, take your time. Now, if you don't mind, I actually came here to do a routine check and change your bandages."
Neferet frowned but nodded slowly, allowing him to touch her sore feat. She didn't sense any ill-will from this man. But then again, she hadn't from her husband either.