"What you two had witnessed is extraordinaire! Do you realize the role you two played tonight!"
Ramuna and Ramesses both could not stand how excited Tafari sounded when they got back to the pub and explained themselves.
There was no one inside the lower floor of the pub besides the three and the pub owner; who had handed Ramesses a whiskey that had a strong scent of cinnamon the moment he entered the pub and walked towards the bar as if this was routine every night.
Ramuna also observed how freely Ramesses talked in front of the pub owner. As if he knew everyone's secrets and that it did not matter what they said in front of the older man.
Tafari had answered most of Ramuna's curiosity just from his excited rant. Apparently the thing Ramesses had been fighting was Apep, some form of a God of Chaos like Set and that the legends were indeed true that if Apep was not killed every night the world would be destroyed.
Which also meant to her horror that that's what Ramesses always wandered off to do every night.
"How long have you been fighting Apep?" She finally asked curiously, interrupting Tafari's rant.
"Thousands."
Years is what he had left out.
"That's impossible! Ra and Set are the ones who have fended off that deity or so that's what the myth says," Tafari said exasperated.
"Yeah and where are they? Why don't you call them up?" Ramesses retorted back which made Tafari go into another loud history lecture.
They all were huddled up at the table Ramuna and Ramesses always sat at. Tafari was sipping on a huge mug of tea that the pub owner brought out to him and the man had completely given up on going back and forth to Ramesses with shots that he just decided upon dropping two bottles of whiskey onto the table as if calling it a night and left them alone on the first floor.
Ramesses had made a shot glass appear and kept pouring Ramuna a shot every time she finished and to her disgust with the same bottle he had been sipping out of.
Shut the hell up, Ramuna, you were just cuddled up with my own blood and mucus this is not the dirtiest thing of mine you've touched.
To her horror he gave her a piece of memory she had long lost amongst her constant amnesia states that was way too intimate. Invading her thoughts with his own.
In the memory they were standing under what looked like a wooden structure in the form of what could have been called a gazebo that was right on a very long river that led out deep into the desert. Torches lit up the entrance way to the shaded area and down the path in the far off distance was dimmed lit city in the night.
As far as Ramuna could tell they had been the only two around on the river and Ramesses was holding her from behind and she could see some of his black armored uniform on the ground in front of her.
Ramuna blocked out what he was showing her and without hesitation once more committed a violent act towards him in front of Tafari and splashed the whiskey she had remaining in her glass right into his eyes.
Ramuna heard Tafari's laughter at the same time she heard a painful hiss and a large amount of cursing in a tongue that only could have been Atann's language spew out of Ramesses's mouth.
The night kept on without anymore of Ramesses's abrasive behavior and Ramuna learned more about the myths behind Ra and Set. She was mesmerized by how much Tafari had studied and learned throughout his time of earning immortality. She was sure an old deity of Atann would still call him young since he was only close to being a hundred and fifty years old.
To her surprise Tafari had left them after a few more hours of talking, growing tired and needing sleep, Ramesses offered his room to Tafari and he went without argument. How was it that he needed sleep but her and Ramesses spent almost a whole two months here and did not sleep at all?
The answer you are seeking is that his full physical body is here. Of course he would be tired.
"Why don't you just speak out loud, it's only us now." Ramuna responded to the intrusive comment he telepathically sent her.
"It is fun messing with you. Besides, you need to start learning to do that as well. It is going to come in handy if you and Tafari are going to turn back the times, am I wrong?"
"You say it as if you are not going to be there as well."
Ramesses gave her a small weak smile. Somehow he had drunk both bottles of whiskey but did not seem the slightest bit different. Maybe he was still in pain from his fight with Apep and this was his way at night to balance everything. Regardless he did not seem even a bit buzzed compared to Ramuna who had felt drunk just off one of the drinks he had provided her.
Ramesses lit the hookah and took a hit; to her notice it was neither the cinnamon shisha he loved nor was it tobacco but gave off a very funny smell.
"It's opium, please do not hit this after me there is no drug or drink in this world or the next that can make me incoherent. If you must know I am in fact in immense pain not just physically but emotionally. I feel you only discovered my nightly ventures because you had decided to try and fix what had happened earlier. Truthfully Ramuna I know you seek nothing but honesty and now I shall give it to you now that I have relaxed my nerves enough to provide my vulnerability. Just know you are not going to like what I have to say and that is why I have lied to you countless times."
The way he used his words made Ramuna unsettled. She was not used to men speaking at all in this manner. Maybe only in novels and movies but she knew it was because this man was possibly as old as earth itself and that he spent most of his time as either royalty or as a soldier.
"You and I are just vessels, Ramuna. In fact these intimate memories we share aren't even ours nor were they ever ours. They were never our lives nor were we ever reincarnated. You and I are just cursed and unfortunate and pawns in a game that even the gods could not handle."
Ramuna was confused by what he was saying. How could they share all these memories, have all these moments of things way past their time and it not be theirs? Did that make them delusional? If they were not her memories why did she feel like they were her own and all the emotions that came with them?
"You need to explain more because you make me feel like I am going mad. How can any of these memories not be ours? What do you mean by vessel?"
Ramesses stared off past her as if focusing on something that was not there. She noticed his eyes had become a bit watery as if he was trying hard not to cry.
"I am not Ramesses. I once was but I became that person because that was what Atann needed most and it is what was promised to Ra that if anything were to happen where the gods could no longer help I was to step in. I have been many kings and I have been many generals all under different names but who I once was? Who was I when I was born? I do not remember."
Ramesses was quiet for a moment till he spoke again it looked as if he was struggling to say anymore than he already did.
"He was born to be a disciple to Ra and at the time Set and Ra were worshiped equally and as Tafari explained earlier worked hand in hand on keeping things balanced. Yet Ra vanished completely as quickly as he arrived to help the people of Atann. He was only nineteen years old at the time. Since there were no longer disciples needed they executed them. Except him. Set kept him and said if he wanted to live he would provide his wife with a son. So in a way he went from being trained as a soldier who can infuse his teachings on the battlefield with Heka to just a bed warmer unwillingly if he wanted to live. In the end you know how the rest goes. Set discovered you carried a girl as well and well… he wasn't so happy so he killed you and your concubine and then massacred all those people you loved in that field. Ramuna, I do not know who you truly are. I have no idea where you came from and what time period but all you are is the host to what remains of the god Thoth but you are not Thoth and the person I was is the remains of a young prince who was selected to be a disciple. Remnants of the gods once they are slain just go to the closest living thing they can find and possess it, that prince had the last bit of Ra's power in him so it came to me, that's who we are and that's why we have these memories and just so happen to be immortal and sometimes we even confuse them with our own memories. So we lose ourselves and just become the parasite that infected us."
Ramuna was too in shock and mortified by everything he had just said. None of it even made sense! So that meant they had just been normal people living their daily lives and because the gods started to slay each other and no longer had a mortal body they were the ones who had gotten possessed because they just happened to be nearby!?
That also meant another horrifying thing. One Ramuna was scared to ask but had to. She desperately needed to know the answer.
"If we go back… and we stop Set from slaying everyone there. That means we won't remember each other because Thoth and the prince's memories you have will be intact again? We just go back to whatever our mortal lives once were in that time period without even knowing what we had just done?"
Ramesses looked at her with sad eyes and took her hand and held it tight as if to give some form of comfort.
"Yes, it will also mean all the lives I have lived will never have existed. Even as Ramesses the third. Something new will take its place but I will not be there to see it for I will be mortal and die long before it comes to happen."