"Yipe!" Xantheaa screeched, in a voice a trite more shrill the second time around. She quickly leapt into the void, where Thrall formerly stood, nearly throwing both of them to the floor in her hurry. He swiftly wrapped his arms about her, in enfeebled consolation, almost dropping the sword in the confusion.
"It's okay, I'm here. I'm here. Don't worry, I've got you." He repeated, almost as if to remind himself that he wasn't alone. In truth, he was more terrified than her.
Never had he imagined that a presence could rival the authority of God. This sword was the last thing he had faith in. If anything, he could always slash his way out of the situation. Now, he was truly at the deity's mercy, same as he ever was.
"That's better," the voice remarked, and a creaking noise filled the space around them, like the wooden beams of a house settling under the weight of a tractor parked on its second floor. "Your harsh oranges and reds don't match the ambience of this place. It breaks my concentration. Sorry, I could not allow His light to overwhelm my own."
'Aswad was the first to speak up, after all. He hopped off of Thrall's shoulders, and kowtowed before the throne of his god, needlessly closing his eyes to complete the gesture. Even though no one could see him do it, he did not mind. It just felt right. "Thank you, Neter, for withholding your vengeance upon our simple existences. We are not worthy of such a gift."
"Now, there is a loyal servant, if ever I have seen one. You all would do well to learn from his example. Your faith is repaid in kind, Ghurab 'Aswad, steward of Nephthys." he leaned down, and pressed his finger against the crown of the bird's head, carefully.
The crow gasped, and before he could exalt in the glory of what had been revealed, his voice was cut out and he disappeared from the air before them.
Then, all was silent.
"'Aswad?" Xantheaa ventured, nervously. "A-are you okay?" All she had heard was a sharp intake of breath, and then a whoosh, as if a torch ignited the oil in a lamp at once. Nonetheless, she was as blind as the day she was born, within this place. She couldn't see the gesture he had taken, nor how he had surely vanished before them.
When she didn't hear back from him, she began to fear that something had happened to their small feathery companion. "'Aswad! Say something! Did something happen to you?!" She lightly panicked, casting Thrall's reassuring embrace aside, and throwing herself onto the ground where his voice had disappeared from. There was no body.
"Hey! Wait!" Thrall shouted, reaching after her form disappeared from his grasp. "We don't know how—"
"Almost," encouraged the voice. Then, soon it was all she could hear. Thrall ran his hands across the ground, where she just was; phasing right through the space she occupied.
"What...?" She wondered, hearing Thrall's words snuff out just the same that the bird's had. "Thrall? What did you do to him?!" she shouted at the heavens, as is her natural assumption, when it came to the powers that be.
"Nothing. Nothing, at all. That is the wrong question, you know. You should be asking what it is that I have done to you."
She furrowed her brow, and listened closer than ever, but it was no use. She couldn't even hear a whisper of him in this place. Yet, she found that she had more senses than the six of mortal men. Her innate longing to hold and be held in turn was absolutely sated.
It told her that Thoth was telling the truth. Thrall had, in fact, not gone anywhere. In fact, she somehow felt closer to him than ever she had, before!
"Oh, please. I have no need to tell lies, my dear. It is unbecoming for someone of my stature. Now, do as I say, so we can move along with this little rendezvous, shall we?" He crooned, an air of dignity overcoming their frightful exchange.
Xantheaa remembered the advice Thrall had given her before entering the sanctuary. Namely, to be completely at the mercy of another being was a demeaning thing. Still that humility was natural in the face of overwhelming divinity.
"We were created to serve," he echoed, inside her mind. So, serve she would.
She lowered her head, and resigned herself into his mercy. "Ve~ry good! You are a natural. One might think that you were trained in our customs. Now, close your eyes, and behold upon me."
She didn't fully understand his request, but she followed as best as she could, regardless. "As you wish, your worship." She closed her eyes, and focused on the word "behold."
What else could he mean? How does one behold a person, without eyes?
Then, it clicked. She had "witnessed" Elektra's presence on her world for her entire life. The sun shining on a cloudless day, the pleasing breeze upon the air, the comforting sheen of the water's reflection across the lilting horizon—all were evidence of this massive unfathomable grace.
Except, it was never real. Electra had never spared a single moment of thought toward the harpies who lived on the Strophades. She had imagined it all, in faith, and aspiration. She must, again, believe.
Then, an image began to appear in her mind, almost as if unbidden. She imagined a small, rectangular space, with glowing lesions along its walls, and an iridescent relief along the floor that appeared almost like the wake of a canoe in still waters. The glowing path trailed across the floor, from her feet to the same door that she had seen moments before the lights went out.
Beyond this door stood a blinding light that put her former impressions of Olympus to shame. The glow was nearly blinding when compared to the darkness where she currently stood. She gazed around at the scene, drinking in the sights of her surroundings, when she saw something that she didn't expect.
She pictured Thrall standing within her, his legs piercing through her stomach and down through her thighs, and his feet sharing the same space as her kneecaps. She yelped, and flailed backwards, searching her body for the gaping cavity that his body would have occupied, but the light had again gone out. She couldn't feel anything abnormal about her body.
"Oh..." Thoth tutted. "and you were so close, too." No longer suffice to bludgeon her from every direction, sounds now seemed to come from the room just beyond. The voice hadn't changed, it was only Xantheaa who now thoroughly believed whom it belonged to.
"What? What was that? Thrall? You are still here!"
"I am afraid that he can't hear you, just yet. 'Let every man be convinced in his own mind.' I believe that was how Thrall's God put it. It's alarming that he hasn't remembered this, himself." Thoth spake.
"Thrall!" she cried out, closing her eyes again, as hurriedly as she could. He was standing there with his sword pointed skyward, same as she had. He seemed to be shouting—arguing, really. His normal decorum was so rampantly undressed in the presence of this higher power.
"Thrall, you need only kneel and close your eyes!" She yelled, but it truly did not appear to affect him. He continued wailing, and flailing his blade, futilely, into the air about himself. The harpy climbed to her talons, and rushed over with her eyes closed, to wrap her arms around his offending limb, but it simply phased right through her wings as if she were made of smoke.
She stumbled forward, a few paces more, due to her momentum failing to meet the opposing mass that she was expecting. She looked at her body, unsullied by the experience. "I-I can't help him?"
But it was not so simple. Look, there, on her right secondaries! There was a clear line of decapitated feathers, sliced cleanly off at their very tips. The sword, Xantheaa found, was not under Thoth's jurisdiction. She scowled at the marring of her plumage, but sighed knowing that the Lahat Chereb could have just as easily severed her limb—or worse, her head.
Suddenly, Thrall's wide gesticulation with the blade seemed a lot more menacing. She lowered back to her knees again, too afraid to approach a second time.
"Very good, harpy." Thoth congratulated, " You have shown great deference. I reward your sacrifice, as you know as well as I that he will have to find the truth on his own accord, or he will remain forever lost. You may enter." and his arm lowered from the ceiling, much to Xantheaa's surprise.
Not to her shock, it seemed, for she lunged at the hand with all her gusto. The momentum was enough to send him reeling across the room, and into the forehead of her friend; who vanished in a burst of moonlight swallowed by the shadow of of a torch's flame.
Thrall appeared, mid-sentence, in a well-lit concourse with a library of scrolls surrounding a tremendous man with an Ibis head. On the table was a map with a model of the temple, which he currently had his arm, elbow deep, inside. He glanced over to the left. Ghurab 'Aswad was lounging on the dais, feasting on a pomegranate as he waited. He blinked confusedly at the bird, and the bird blinked back. Then, without saying a word, he resumed eating.
"Hah! I knew it!" She shouted, in exultation. She had figured that 'Aswad would have had to be teleported away through some mechanism, but she hadn't expected the god to extend his literal hand down, in order to do it.
"What is this that you have done?!" Thoth grumbled, not used to being outsmarted in his own domain. "He was not made worthy to become welcomed into my presence. You had proven yourself laudable, so why would you allow my blessing to pass to another man?"
"That is where you are wrong, exalted one. Thrall is an extension of my body, and I will neither ascend without, nor abandon him."