The party smirked at his simple, and obvious request. Thrall even had the nerve to chuckle aloud at his genuine, open-hearted expression. "See, this is why I was glad to keep you around."
"What?!" the small bird squawked in response, fluffing out his chest in embarrassment at their pitiable reactions. "Isn't that what everyone here wants?! It's all I have wanted for the entire time that I have been involved with your accursed group! Harpy, please explain to this—" he began, but was captured by surprise as she leaped bodily toward him; hugging him close to her breast, and crooning tearfully.
"Oh, 'Aswad. I was so terribly worried. I was so terrified to never see you again, after you had disappeared within the temple. You should neither dare nor accidentally endeavor to put me in such a fretful state over you!" she cried; the tears running openly over her availed cheeks, and she kissed the top of his darkly crested head with neither shame nor apprehension.
If a crow could blush, then now would be the time for one to manifest the possibility through sheer force of will. Instead of responding, though, the bird suddenly grew stark silent within her embrace.
Xantheaa immediately released the bird, for fear and confusion over the events preceding, and shouted. "Oh, goddesses above! I am so sorry, 'Aswad! Did I squeeze you too hard?! I-I am just unaccustomed to my new strength, and I didn't mean to—" but Thrall cut her off with a warm pat to the top of her head and a bright grin.
"No, just look at him." He gestured to the dazed, comatose state of the body resting on the pillow of her feathery arms. His legs kicked involuntarily as if in a post-ecstatic release. "I think that your appearance was just a little too much for him!"
Now, it was her turn to blush. She politely placed him back onto the ground below, and walked to the other side of Thrall's thin-limbed body in hopes to hide in escape from her shame.
Ma'at furrowed her brow at what had just transpired. These frail, incredulous beings with such openly availed, boisterous emotions had somehow pushed her to the state where she had to obey their orders for a time. Had the Egyptian pantheon so little strength, in truth? But it was not her power that concerned the full might of Kemet. Yes, she could always rely on those most faithful servants to guard the borders of her land from these desperate interlopers.
She could always call upon the Sphinxes, to succeed where her own powers had openly failed. "Khafre, come." she bade, with full confidence in her overpowered charges to rectify this spurious situation that she had haphazardly fallen into, and was similarly overcome with terror at their response.
The sphinxes could not respond to her call, as they knew the task she would order them was to defraud a binding contract that had already been formed. Such actions were impossible for a sphinx; even if ordered by the very goddess they served.
This was ingrained into their nature from the very moment of their creation for fear that this mighty race might one day become tools of war instead of the great protectors of the natural order as they were intended to be. That some rueful god would use his resident guardian to massacre the other arms of the pantheon was a fear so grand that it gave necessity to this flaw in design that Anansi was able to so cleverly exploit.
He had struck a deal before Thrall and Xantheaa had even arrived, to grant him great powers of manipulation to escape even their almighty powers if need be, in exchange for information that might allow them to entrap the life energy of an immortal soul.
The spider, it seemed, was untouchable to the powers that be constrained to application of a hex as a source of their strength! "Moxxu Gazma!" she howled, slamming her fist onto the atomized earth. Thoth and 'Aswad looked outraged that she would say such a thing, but it was clear that the stakes have grown to be in such a state that required such colorful language.
"By the procession of the stars, woman! Hold your tongue!" Thoth screamed, completely humiliated at the sudden lack of decorum that she, a goddess on the same caliber of himself, would display in the presence of these insect-like denizens. "Have you no shame at all?!"
'Aswad looked almost at the verge of tears, hearing someone he so plainly worshiped be reduced to such a sordid state. She responded, "No, you don't understand... I just conferred, with the Sphinxes, to fulfill the request most expeditiously to the satisfaction of our small servant's innocent request. They cannot fulfill it!"
"What?!" he too, shouted in terror. "How is this possible?! I have given them every authority within my land, to act with full impunity chiefly to prevent such a thing from being possible! They even possess a fragment of my interminable wisdom, to aid in their understanding of the lands despite their internment within the earth."
"It appears," she answered to his dismay, "That again, we have been completely outfoxed. Before we even met the creature, he was already fomenting his escape... because he knew that we would discover his subterfuge, eventually!"
'Aswad didn't have any clue what a fox was, but it sounded bad, so he had to ask. "So... What of my request?!" A small fear had entered his mind once they spoke in such urgent tones. "You said, 'anything that is within my power.' Is this task beyond even your great powers, my Neter—Thoth?"
The expression on Thoth's great Ibis head lot most color in its complexion, but eventually he had to admit the truth. "I am afraid so. Even a figure as great as myself is bound within the rules set by the Pharaoh, Horus." and then he tapped his chin, as he considered his options before him.
"But your companions...!" he continued, gesturing to the forms of the two individuals that he had acted as sole guide and informant throughout their entire journey so far. "They exist without the binding of cosmic order, as they originate from a place even beyond the cosmos. They can succeed where I have been proven woefully incompetent."
The bird's mouth hung agape at the suggestion that Thoth was giving. These pathetic creatures were being fully endorsed by the god of Wisdom! If anyone would know this fact to be true, it would be him—and not only were they regaled as equals, he had gone as far as to acknowledge them as his indisputable superior!
"Please, My Neter. Tell me that you jest! I do not wish to believe such a thing is possible!" His faith was being shaken by the syllable, as the conversation went on. He laughed, "This cannot be—my god! Why would you tell me such a thing?!"
Thoth only frowned. He could not lie to his loyal servants, even if it was one who belonged to another goddess. His pride was only worth so much, if he did not serve his citizens to the full capacity of his status. Ma'at chimed in, to spare him further indignity. "Tell us, if there is anything else that we can do for you, little one."
Tears delicately welled up in his dark circular eyes, as he continued to laugh in disbelief. "If it is true, then I would like to be released back to my goddess's care. I no longer wish to be in the service of such pitiful things as you gods."
Thoth's expression darkened, as he understood the crow's true meaning.
And he raised his fist aloft as if to squash his entire body to a meaty paste. He couldn't bear to give him the dishonor of destroying his body with the power of a hex. "No!" Ma'at cried, seconds too late to stop his actions as her understanding of her husband's intentions didn't register until he'd already smote.
Thrall acted quickly, moving through the orders of the magnitude of heaven to find a form that would defend from such a powerful blow. A Dominion was enough, it seemed, as his arm grew wide and flat to cover the space over Ghurab's body. The bird trembled as the sight confirmed what he already dreaded to be true. His mighty strike had hardly bruised the flesh of the daemon's broad forearm, that curved into a shape almost like a dome over his head.
"Hah! So I see..." Thrall smiled. His new form was a choir in the middle magnitude of the three, and so was given even greater perceptive skills than the lower order he had formerly occupied. The skin of the arm allowed some of Thoth's wisdom to pass through it, and inject a response back into the other's hand, almost instantly. Within those scant moments, they had nearly exchanged a full conversation's worth of information.