"Then, you have brought this on yourself," Thoth murmured. "The night is long, and the breeze whistles between reeds. It is time to rest."
A terrible pulse shook her to her core, and the room swirled around her as her legs gave out beneath; sending her reeling to the floor below. Her eyes opened in confusion, and she was plunged back into that inky void outside her mind. She lay in that expanse of darkness, unable to move, or even stitch two thoughts together, entirely.
It didn't make sense. She didn't hear him rhyme, there was no spell cast. But still, the power overwhelming her was undeniably the manifestation of a hex. Paralyzed, from head to toe, she sighed out the final dregs of resistance from her body, and settled into a posture of complete resignation. He had completely overtaken her by surprise, with a form of poetry that had yet to appear within her world.
Back in the legendary library of the god of wisdom, Thoth slowly drew his arm from the scale model of the temple, and turned to face the shell shocked seraph as he stood with eyes wide open. He was regarding the magnitude of knowledge on display.
The shelves of scrolls upon scrolls containing every hidden scrap of knowledge that had entered into the figment of a man who dared to believe in the gods of Egypt, or even imagine that such a being as Thoth existed. For, if one stares into an abyss as deep as the idea of omniscience, it surely stares back into you.
The room was a circle about half a mile in diameter, and the rows upon rows of bound up parchment ascended on top of them high into the sky above. His eyes could no longer follow the trend of the impossible tower. It continued to climb ever higher until it was swallowed by the light in the heavens above.
It was wide enough to fit an entire village inside, if not a small town. Even a pyramid would be reduced to a triangle the size of a folded handkerchief, were it to stand against the far wall from his vantage point. He'd appeared along the edge of one of the walls, close to where his friend was reclining on the soft platform of the foliage underfoot.
The ground below was like a small terrarium with all manner of flora blossoming with gleeful abandon. Rivers flowed between small outcroppings of different species from all across the world Moss flourished underfoot, and vines clawed their way up the sides of the massive wooden structures, for miles and miles overhead. They never dared to cover the surface of a cubicle, for fear of their god's displeasure at being barred access to his books for even a second.
He was stricken speechless my the implication of the sheer scale of information that such a space housed. All the answers to every question ever asked would surely be housed in this repository. If Thoth did not have the knowledge, it could be said not to exist anywhere at all.
It was the tell-tale sound of decadent slurping that drew him out of it. 'Aswad did not allow shame to inhibit his natural desire to feast, one bit. The god had grown the pomegranate tree just for him to enjoy, and that fruit was his favorite. That was all the reason he needed, to stuff his face. Noisily, he stuffed his face with the juicy seed pods, dribbling bloody nectar all over his beak and the ground below. "Really?" Thrall asked, leaning on the hilt of his sword.
"What? I'm hungry."
"We were out there, fighting for our very lives. We didn't know if you were alive, or dead. Xantheaa was beside herself with worry once you disappeared, you know. So, imagine how I feel to find you here blissfully stuffing your face, without a care in the world!"
"I don't see why that is my fault. You were never in any danger, so long as you bowed your head like we said you would. Every denizen knows that."
"Well, what if I were to tell you that I was neither consort, nor denizen?"
'Aswad looked him up and down, and slowly turned back to his feast. "I think I would tell you how little I think that mattered." He ignored the mystery, and turned back into the fleshy material before him, slopping it down greedily.
Thrall reared back a furious kick, powerful enough to break every bone in the small bird's body, and atomized the fruit right under his beak. "Hey!" the crow shouted, incredulously infuriated. "What is your issue?!"
"Xantheaa is still out there, trapped for whoever knows how long, and forced to do whomever knows what! You are my issue! Did you not come here on a mission, for vengeance? Have you forgotten why we are here?! I came to help you, not the other way around!"
"Yeah, but that was before it was made plain to me how woefully hopeless you are, in a fight. Your mighty word magic has no chance of standing against the power of even the least of my god's powers." He flew up into the branches of the tree, and returned shortly thereafter with another red globe of a fruit in his beak. "Ptooey! Our only hope for finding the spider lives in the hope of the favor of the gods. Which, mind you, I already have."
He tore open the skin with his beak, and set about unveiling the great treasure buried therein. Thrall had ruined nothing. All his rage had accomplished was a minor waste of the crow's time.
"I can't believe what I'm hearing. You never thought much about us to begin with, did you? Were we all just tools for you to accomplish this goal?"
"I don't see it as that much of a problem. You were simply using me to reach the Dendera Lights yourself, weren't you?" and he finally locked eyes with the surprised face of Thrall who was suddenly speechless.
"I... I hadn't-"
"Oh, I wasn't supposed to know about that, was I?" The small creature pressed. "Simple little Ghurab 'Aswad, with his tiny little bird brain. He could never understand the scale of what I am trying to accomplish. I might as well just drag him all across the face of Egypt, and use him as a flashlight for all the dark voids of knowledge within this world. He won't ever figure out that we are using him. He'll surely imagine it is all for his own benefit, because he is so stupid!"
He began shouting, near the end of the admission. Thrall's silence was enough to confirm what he had already suspected. "...and there you have it; proof that I need obey my gods, and not some charlatan from another world who only hopes to become one day."
Thrall coughed, inhaling a bit of saliva in his shock. "What the hell did you just say about me, you little-?!"
"You heard me, mister big-shot daemon. Thoth told me everything!"
"Thoth is trying to cause discord within our ranks. He split us up for his own purposes, don't you see that?!"
"I don't care. You never saw me as more than a tool to be used, and manipulated me with the things you thought I wanted, to bring you to where you wanted to be. Well, now I am right where I want to be, and I don't need you, or your harpy woman. Good day, 'friend.'"
"Hey, listen here, you don't-!"
"I said good day!" 'Aswad only shouted, cutting him off once again, by turning back to his feast.
Thrall silently fumed, but plod away all the same to find the body of his jackal. It was only after he disappeared behind the fronds of a fig tree, that 'Aswad's eye twitched. Immediately, he could tell that something was wrong.
He looked up, and cawed in surprise at what was leering above. A heavily accented voice chuckled gleefully at the events just witnessed. "Hee hee hee! Gotcha!" then, before another word could leave Aswad's mouth, it was stopped up by a familiar wire, and he was dragged up by the beak into the canopy, miles overhead.
Thrall continued wandering through the waist-high grasses, following the faintest signs of burning in the earth. It had only been minutes since it had passed through, but the power of the god was so strong that the scenery was already rapidly stitching itself back together.
"Well, that was difficult to watch," Thoth whispered in his ear. "Do you feel a little bit exposed, perhaps?"
"I do not wish to talk to you, Lord. Not until you release Xantheaa."
"I don't believe I will be doing that," he sighed. "She has made her decision, but you... you have yet to make up your mind."
Thrall stopped walking. "What do you mean?"
"Prove to me, your faith, first; by saving him, instead."