Tag: Into the Dead Fall

I know I’ve been promising a lore post, and I decided it would be fun to share some of the myths for Tak and Iyaren’s home world, especially since Tak and Iyaren would routinely tell their children bedtime stories about myths from their home world in my Into the Dead Fall series, and though I mentioned them doing this, I never shared any details of those myths in the books. Both myths tell a similar story but in distinctly different ways that reflect their cultures and perspectives.

The events of these fictional mythologies are inspired by the Osiris myth, just as Tak and Iyaren and their deities and even their homelands were inspired by Ancient Egyptian myth and legend. I also drew a lot of inspiration from Greek and Roman myths and legends, and the Ancient Aliens theory, of course. 😀

These stories aren’t meant to be taken as literal historical recountings for Tak and Iyaren’s people, though certain events take place that actually did happen for their fictional world, but they are told from the perspective of a primitive species attempting to comprehend what they were seeing at that time and then embellishing the story further throughout the generations. This is what I love about myths! They are often improbable, if not impossible, and are metaphorical, and they can be used as object lessons.

I had a lot of fun writing these, and I love to write the oral histories and myths of the different alien species in my books, as I think the stories we tell to each other reveal so much about who we are as a people and how we’ve changed throughout history. Most of these stories never make it into my books. I think I only shared the origins of the dragon gods in my fantasy novels, and maybe the origin of the umbrose and adurians, thought that could have been in a draft that I later cut out, come to think of it.

So, here on my blog, I’ll share the origin myths for the Histri’i (HISS-try) lizardmen, and the Sari’i (SAH-rye) lion-men species from Into the Dead Fall.

This will be a long one, as I wanted to include both tales. I love how they contrast with each other and reveal how the two enemy species regard each other.

I hope fans of my Dead Fall series really enjoy these little deeper looks into the fictional worlds I’ve created. Thank you as always for following my blog, and if the Dead Fall series isn’t one you’re interested in, I have plans to share lore and more from all my other series in time.

The Origin of Life as told to Tak of Clan Et, by the Clan Storytellers

First, there was the endless sprawl of sand and dark water shrouded by the icy chill of a black sky. No life grew, and no people lived and laughed, for there was nothing in this land but cold and darkness.

Then, within the dark water a vortex began to spin, and out of that vortex rose a pyramid made of gleaming gold that pierced the empty sky as it rose higher and higher, until it hovered above the land. From that pyramid, three beams of light—the first ever seen in the land—speared down to form bright circles upon the sand below. Where those beams touched, three divine beings formed.

The first to appear was Siriss, who was all muscle and divine strength, a peerless warrior who could strike down the stars from the night sky to scatter them upon the endless sands. He stood as tall as the oldest sungess tree, and just as broad as her widest branches, and his steps shook the earth when he walked. His golden scales were the most beautiful of any scaled creature, and he was the handsomest of Histri’i, the very first Histri’i who would ever grace the land.

The second to appear was Issas, who was as graceful and flexible as the hisso vines, and she had magic in her touch and could coax the stars back up into the night sky again with just a wiggle of her fingers. She stood nearly as tall as her husband, Siriss, but where he was all brawn, she was as slender as a river ssylph, with silver scales so fine and delicate that they were nearly invisible unless the light flashed upon them.

The third and last being to appear from the pyramid’s light was Ssetess, a dark storm-bringer with a heart formed from blackened stone. He could raise a vortex of winds to sweep the sands into a flurry with just a wave of one clawed hand. He was almost as tall as his brother, Siriss, but he was nearly as slender as his sister, Issas. He had fur as red as blood and eyes as shadowed as the darkest waters from whence they had all arisen.

Once their pyramid settled to become their home, Sset quickly grew jealous of the beautiful scales of Siriss and hated that his Histri’i brother was much handsomer than him. He challenged his brother to a duel right there on the sands before their sacred pyramid, and Siriss, certain he would prevail with his superior strength, raised all four of his sword arms, each holding a tekess blade of such fine craftmanship that the edges were sharp enough to slice the world into two.

For forty years, they battled before the pyramid, while Issas looked upon the fray with growing concern, for her cruel brother, Sset, was not defeated as easily as either she or Siriss had expected. In fact, Sset was using the wind and the sand to blind his brother, and at the end of those forty years, he raised such a fierce storm that it formed the sand into blades to slash his brother into many pieces.

As those pieces of Siriss’s scaled flesh rained down upon the sand, Issas screamed in horror, but thinking quickly, she formed a funeral jar from the sand at her feet and lifted it to catch the rain of Siriss’s blood.

Sset claimed a piece of Siriss’s flesh, his fertility, and spirited it away so he could use Siriss’s divine seed to breed a demesne of monsters. For he knew that Issas would use her husband’s blood to bring life back into his flesh, and Sset would need an army to face down his wrath.

Issas wept bitter tears and named the sands where her husband’s divine flesh had scattered the Land of Endless Sorrows. She would not give up on resurrecting him, but she did not have the strength to do it alone. After setting the funeral jar carefully at her feet, she pulled a scale from her own divine flesh and set it next to the jar. Then she wriggled her magical fingers, and the scale grew into the god, Ss’bek, who rose to stand in his two-legged form before her. Seeing her glory, he bowed to one knee and asked how he might serve her, his queen. His mother.

She replied, “Carve a path through the fallen flesh of Siriss to make a channel for his blood to flow and be certain that path touches every part of him, for his body has been spread far and wide across the sands because of Ssetess’s foul winds.”

Ss’bek did not hesitate to obey. He took the form of a might Crocoet and began his journey over the sands, using his huge body to dig the channels linking every part of Siriss. Once his task was done, Issas poured the contents of the funeral jar into the beginning of the channel at her feet, there at the base of the sacred pyramid where her beloved Siriss had been defeated.

Though his blood spread to all the parts of his body, Siriss’s flesh did not live again, and Issas again mourned for many years. Then, she realized that her own heart had nearly frozen from the chill in the air, and she had an idea of what to do to bring her beloved back to life.

She summoned Ss’bek to her side again, and as he once again knelt before her, she withdrew a shard of fire from her heart—the last of her burning love for her husband—and pushed it into his chest. “This flame will bring light and warmth to the sands and make Siriss’s blood flow again. Spread this light across the Land of Endless Sorrows to bring my beloved back to life.”

And so, Ss’bek became Ss’bek Ssa, keeper of the life flame, and he did as his queen had bade him and spread his new light across the entire world, bearing it across the sky for the long day before letting it die down to an ember in his chest at night when he grew so tired he had no choice but to rest.

This finally worked, and Siriss’s flesh returned to life again, but it still lay scattered across the sands. Yet new life spawned from his fallen flesh wherever his divine blood touched it, and that life spread, and prospered, and on Ss’bek’s journeys across the sky, he would look down upon that life with pride and growing curiosity.

Then during one day of traveling, he looked down upon a creature that was pleasing to his eye, another Crocoet, the largest and most beautiful of scale that he’d ever seen, and he coveted her. Thus, instead of continuing his journey, he traveled down to the Crocoet and lay with her on the banks of the Siriss River, causing the very first Dark During Daytime to occur.

Issas was very displeased by his dereliction, and summoned him to her side to reprimand him, but his transgression had already resulted in many divine children being born from the Crocoet. Each of them coveted a demesne of their own, and Issas relented, realizing they could be caretakers of her beloved’s body, granting each of them a portion of it to guard over, protect, and rule the new lives that were forming upon it.

But for Ss’bek Ssa, she had to punish him for what he’d done, and make certain he couldn’t disrupt the cycle of light and heat again, because she could see that he had taken so much pleasure in laying with the Crocoet and felt so much pride in the creation of their children, that he would be tempted to do this again. Thus, she made it so that Ss’bek would have to spit up his fire each dawning to send it across the sky, then make the long journey to the other end of the Land of Endless Sorrows to swallow it again so the land could sleep, and he could bring it back to the beginning, and only then, would he have his own rest.

Ss’bek knew this was a small punishment indeed and was thankful for Issas’s mercy. But he still can’t resist spreading his seed to those beautiful creatures he comes across on his journeys, so sometimes, it takes him longer to reach the other end of the Land of Endless Sorrows, and that’s why some days are longer than others.

Then sometimes, he is very impatient to rest, so he hurries to the end of his daily journey, and that’s why some days are so short.

And so, the days passed for many years, but Sset had not forgotten his desire to destroy his brother. With his brother’s stolen fertility, he sowed the ground with divine seed, corrupted by his dark magics, and monsters grew wherever it fell. Once he’d grown an army, Ssetess ordered his creatures to fall upon the thriving flesh of Siriss and rend it all asunder, then drink up all the blood of the river that had been given his divine name.

Sset and his armies became a dark shroud upon the Land of Endless Sorrows, and many creatures died, and many demesnes were burned to ash to sink once again into the eternal sands, but Ss’bek Ssa and his children would not stand by and allow such sacrilege to his father’s flesh. With his oldest daughter Sekhmet at his side, her warrior heart fierce with rage because her demesne was one that had burned, leaving her nothing to rule over but the empty sands, Ss’bek raised an army of his own. Then they marched to the Demesne of Wailing Winds and Weeping Shadows to quell Sset’s armies and confront Ssetess at the heart of his demesne.

The battle raged for many hundreds of years, but finally the monstrous armies of Sset were pushed back to his demesne. But Ss’bek and his children were exhausted, and he still had to spit out the sun every day and chase it down by nighttime to swallow it again, and for a long period, he could no longer make the journey, and the sun was lost in the distant sands, burning them so thoroughly that they lost their color and turned white, and the seas that surrounded them boiled away, leaving nothing behind but their salt, and thus came the season when Dark Lasts All Day.

Issas saw that Ss’bek and his children were worn from the endless battle against Sset, and her brother was unrelenting in his determination to destroy her beloved Siriss. She knew it fell to her to put an end to his invasion, since none of the others had been able to take him on in his own monster-infested demesne.

So Issas traveled to the boundary land between the other demesnes and Sset’s corrupted land of black sands and oily rivers of blood. Looking upon the nightmarish Demesne of Wailing Winds and Weeping Shadows, she wept a dozen tears of her own that fell upon the sands at her feet and hardened to magical crystals. Unbeknownst to anyone, Sekhmet collected those crystals and stole them away from her grandmother.

Issas was too distracted to notice the goddess taking some of her magic. In her grief and anger, she pulled a rib from inside her chest, where it had failed to protect her broken heart, and used it to form a wall of bone between Sset’s demesne and all the others. Then she laid herself down in front of that barrier to link her own flesh with the blood of the River Siriss, and thus she became the last demesne, the Land of Devotion and Sacrifice, an empty wasteland where even Sset’s winds tiptoe to avoid making a sound that might awaken the giant, angry worms that burrowed into her flesh and feasted upon it, rising from the sands to eat anything that attempted to cross the wasteland.

Ss’bek’s children finally returned to their lands to take up rule over their own demesnes again, and for a time, Sekhmet contented herself with ruling over the endless sands that were all that remained of her destroyed demesne.

Ss’bek Ssa went on a journey to retrieve the sun so that he might begin the day again, and when he found it and spit it across the sky, he sent it flying so high that the sun took many months to come down, and thus came the season of Light That Remains Unswallowed.

Then he reclaimed the sun again and brought the days back to normal, but he kept the two seasons that had been created from the war so that none of the people would ever forget his importance.

And then all was good and right in the Land of Endless Sorrows, but unbeknownst to Ss’bek, his daughter Sekhmet still harbored war in her heart, and the peace of the land chafed upon her like sand beneath the skirt. With the twelve crystals of her grandmother’s magic, Sekhmet gave her mortal daughters the power to control the elements, even the dark power of Sset himself, and then she trained an army of incomparable swordsmen to protect and guard her priestesses, and thus began the era of the Kanta Sari’i (SAH-rye), who marched across the Lands, invading and conquering demesne after demesne because Sekhmet coveted those rich lands that she herself no longer ruled over.

The cries of Ss’bek’s other children drew his attention from the task of keeping the day, and he saw what his daughter was doing and grew enraged, but she was still his daughter, and thus he couldn’t bring himself to destroy her. Instead, he carved out his own demesne, creating a channel in the sand to link his land to the Siriss River. He then spilled his own blood into that river to mix with his father’s, and thus he created the Ama Sar Et river, or Make War for Peace. Then he tore off the tip of his tail, leaving the end blunted, so that he could form his own demesne, one rich with life and growth. So green was his demesne that even the light from his own flame of Ssa could not pierce some of the jungle canopies, creating dark and cool places in the humid lands.

Once he had a land of his own, Ss’bek got to work creating his own mortal children, and this time, he did not lay with others to make them, knowing that would only create more gods and goddesses. Instead, he pulled scales from his own body to form his many different peoples, and since his scales were different shapes and sizes, so too, are his peoples.

He gave each of his new peoples a special gift. To the Ssylph, he gave the ability to breathe the air and water and to live on both land and in the rivers. To the Oteri’i, he gave the ability to excrete toxins from their skin that is so deadly it can kill some creatures on contact.

But to the Histri’i, the most beloved of all his peoples, because they were formed to be like his father, Siriss, he gave the gift of his fire, pressing it into their chests like his mother had once pressed her heart flame into his.

But the other peoples of Ss’bek looked upon this favoritism towards the Histri’i with much jealousy, and they came together to destroy the Histri’i, instead of turning their focus towards stopping the warlike Kanta Sari’i. As Ss’bek’s own jealous children made war upon the Histri’i, our people unleashed our flames to defend ourselves, and like the sun itself, those flames burned the land when they grew too big, instead of warming it.

Ss’bek saw that his new lands were turning to ash, and he knew he had to give the Histri’i gifts that would help them defend themselves without destroying everything around them.

So Ss’bek gave us a resistance to poison, so the Oteri’i could not harm us. Then he gave us the shifting scales so the strongest Crocoet could not see us to strike before we could strike them. Then he gave us the secret of changing our scent, so even the most talented hunter Nahass would not be able to find us as they slither their way through our jungles.

So gifted were the Histri’i by then that even Ss’bek himself began to fear that his favored people would become too prideful, and so he gave us one last gift. He gave the Histri’i the gift of humility that we hold in our hearts, warmed by our flames.

It is this gift, young one, that we must tend as closely as we tend the flames in our chests, to forever honor our god Ss’bek’s generosity to us. We shall never grow too prideful, like the aggressive Kanta Sari’i, or too jealous, like Ss’bek’s other mortal children, if we always remember to honor our god’s final gift to us.   

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The Origin of Life, as told to Iyaren by the Temple Priestesses of Sekhmet

In the beginning, nothing existed but the dark sands and the frozen seas. The empty sky reflected that infinite darkness. As it was, so had it always been.

Then a pinprick of light appeared in the sky, and was reflected in the ice of the sea, and along the slopes of the sand dunes. That light grew and grew until it rivaled our sun today, and it emitted from the Sacred Golden Pyramid that was approaching from a distant place far beyond the Land Long Forgotten. Once the Pyramid hovered above the sands, three divine beings strode down from the base of it on beams of golden light.

The first of those beings to set paw upon the sand was a Sari’i of such grace and beauty that none could look upon her without becoming enraptured beyond sense. She was called Isari, the very first Sari’i. She possessed magics beyond compare, and none could best her sorcery. Her pelt was formed of the thickest golden fur to match the slopes of the Sacred Pyramid, and her twenty foreclaws were all sharp as blades and as fine and gleaming as her fangs and the many golden hoops in her ears. She had twenty tails that whipped behind her, stirring up the sands to swirl around her feet.

The second of those divine beings was the very first warrior of the Kanta code. He who served the goddess Isari, he was known as Kanta Siru, who carved the codes of Kanta into his pelt so his granddaughter, our great goddess Sekhmet, could record them and give them to her children. Thus, all the sorceresses would have loyal warriors who understood the code to guard their flanks as they cast their spells. Kanta Siru wielded the four finest blades in all creation, the Sacred Mesi Sar, Bloody Claws of War, that are sharp enough to cut the stars down from the sky. He had a mane as full as the moon and as silken as the finest of robes. Ten tails whipped behind his body, stirring up the dark sand at his feet.

The third divine being to leave his beam of light and step paw upon the sands was the dark sorcerer, Setet, who had always been jealous of his sister, Isari, for her great magics, and thus hoarded the knowledge of the winds to himself. He had fur of vile red, like dried blood, and eyes as black as the ice of the sea, and he had no tail, for he swept the sand with his magic winds instead.

Noting that he defiled the land with his raging storms, Isari sought a way to combat them, and commanded him to give her the secret to his magic. When he again refused, as he had so many times before, she ordered Kanta Siru to strike down her treacherous brother. Like all honorable Kanta, Siru served his bonded one loyally and fiercely, and so he raised the Mesi Sar against his brother, Setet, to strike him down.

But evil-hearted Setet, though physically much weaker than his warrior brother, was a clever and cunning beast. He had no intention of losing the battle, even to the mightiest of Kanta warriors. After forty years of battle, he summoned the winds to form swords made of sand. Then he slashed the honorable Kanta into many pieces with the windborne blades.

But when he turned upon Isari, she forced him back with her magics. She raised the sun into the sky to burn him, and caused the sea to melt so she could drown him, then she made the earth quake so she could bury him in the sands. Once he was vanquished, Isari collected the blood of her Kanta Siru into a funeral jar and poured it out at her feet, then formed a channel with her magics so it would flow to all the pieces of Siru’s flesh to bring them back to life. For Isari knew that she would perish if her bonded Kanta died, just as he would perish if she were to die. Thus, she resurrected him and made his flesh into the land over which she would rule for many years.

Over the years, she grew very lonely, for Siru had lost the ability to speak, even though his flesh grew and flourished wherever the river of his blood, now named the Siru River, touched it. She would have welcomed the company of even her cruel and evil brother Setet, but he remained in a slumber after his defeat. Before she had buried him, he had stolen Siru’s mighty staff and all his fertility with it, so Isari could not even form a child of Siru’s seed to keep her company.

Not to be dissuaded, she decided to create a child from her own fur and give it life with lifeblood from Siru’s river. After plucking the fur from her body and sprinkling it into the river, she purred in pleasure to see a form rise out of the depths. But when she went to shape that new fleshy form into another Sari’i, a wicked wind sent by the dreaming Setet suddenly swept in and blew all the fur away, leaving a form with nothing to protect its flesh from the fire of the sun. Thinking quickly, Isari waved her hands over the creature, and the flesh of its body hardened into rough, green scales.

It was an ugly creature, the child she’d created with her flesh and Siru’s blood, but still it was their child, the only one they had ever made together, so she gave it a name—Sobek. But her new child could not speak his own name without a hiss, and thus, he became Ss’bek to all, from the moment of his first attempt to speak.

Isari took pity on her malformed son and gave him the gift of the sun to keep in his chest so that he might always keep his body warm even in the coldest waters, for he could not move in the cold and his blood threatened to freeze. The only thing she asked in return for this priceless gift was that Ss’bek Sa travel across the sky each day with his chest aglow to keep the Land of Bitter Loss warm, so her Kanta Siru’s flesh remained alive.

For many years, Ss’bek Sa did as commanded, but he was a selfish creature and prone to disobedience. One day, during his journey, he spotted another creature much like him in his animal form, and he lusted after the beast. Instead of doing his duty and repaying the blessing of his mother’s gift, he shirked his responsibilities and left the sky early to lay with the crocoet.

This caused great consequences as the Day Without Light became known as the time when Setet reawakened from his own slumber beneath the cooling sands, and with Siru’s mighty fertility staff in hand, he began to form his army of monsters in the Land of Waking Nightmares.

So severe were the consequences of Ss’bek’s dereliction of his duty that Isari punished him harshly, forcing him to vomit up the sun each morning to shoot it across the sky, then race to the other end of the Lands to swallow it again so that he could bring it back for the next day’s journey.

But Ss’bek was not easily dissuaded from his lustful indiscretions and often laid with creatures he found along the banks of the River Siru, and his delay in reclaiming the sun caused the days to grow longer.

But sometimes, he grew impatient for his journey to end so he could rest for the night, and he would hurry to catch the sun, swallowing it much sooner, and so the days would grow shorter.

Many gods and goddesses were born of Ss’bek’s unapproved unions with the creatures along the banks, but the only one who had the favor and approval of Isari was Ss’bek’s first child, for she was born a Sari’i, nearly as beautiful as her grandmother, despite having a crocoet as her mother, and Ss’bek as her father. Her appearance had come from her grandmother’s and grandfather’s flesh remaining true, despite the corruption of Ss’bek.

Sekhmet was a powerful sorceress in her own right, but she was also highly skilled at war, as her father, Ss’bek, was filled with the fire of aggression that came from carrying the sun, and he had passed some of that aggression on to her. Because of this, she had no need for a Kanta, though she deciphered the Kanta code from her grandfather’s skinned pelt that made up her demesne of many waving grasses. She had the words chiseled into gold plates to place into her sacred temples, so that all her children would know them.  

Peace is never a long-term state for the Land of Bitter Loss, and this is good, for Sekhmet craves war. When Setet spread his monstrous army over the lands, conquering one demesne after another, she was eager to meet him in battle.

But Setet has no honor, and while his armies engaged her in defending the demesnes of her brothers and sisters, he sent some of his minions to burn down all her grasslands, until nothing but empty sand remained of her own demesne.

Heartbroken, enraged, and eager for vengeance, Sekhmet went to her father where he rested at night after swallowing the sun and carrying it back to the beginning of the Lands. She struck him awake and demanded he do something about Setet. He begrudgingly stirred his lazy scales and agreed to raise an army of his children and their servants. Sekhmet was the first to volunteer to lead Ss’bek’s army and seeing the wisdom of putting his wisest and most skilled child in charge, he quickly agreed.

Sekhmet fought the fiercest of battles for a hundred years without tiring, but her father, Ss’bek, was weak and lazy and grew tired quickly. Especially when he forgot to collect the sun at the end of one day, and his body grew cold while the heat of its blaze bleached distant sands at the end of the Lands and boiled the seas until only salt remained.

And so, the season of Darkness began.

Sekhmet had to leave the battle against Setet and his forces long enough to retrieve the sun in a golden basket to carry it safely back to her father. Once he swallowed it again, the tide of the battle turned, because Ss’bek leapt into the sky and let his sun blaze all day and all night without rest so that Setet’s shadows were burned to ash.

And so, the season of Never-Dark began.

Once Set’s monsters were weakened, Sekhmet led her siblings to push Setet and his minions back to his own demesne, the Land of Waking Nightmares, and she held him there for many more hundreds of years and could have kept him there forever if she’d had to, but Isari decided that Setet and his monsters had done too much damage to her Kanta Siru’s flesh, and they were risking killing him.

Thus, she made her way to the boundary between Setet’s demesne and the rest of the Land of Bitter Loss and pulled a rib from her body to lay it down upon the ground. With her magic, she formed it into a barrier of bone that rose hundreds of carriage lengths high into the sky. Then she laid her body down upon the sands and fell into a deep slumber, using her magic to grow mighty sand worms that would burst from the sands that swept over her flesh to eat anything that tried to cross her body, which became the last demesne, the Land of the Forbidden Crossing.

Heartbroken by the loss of her grandmother, but filled with joy over the defeat of Setet, Sekhmet returned home to her demesne with her warriors, but her beautiful grasslands formed from the pelt of her grandfather Siru had all been burned to nothing.

She made the most of her lands, and even gave of her own blood and tears to create the oases dotted among the dunes, but only the lands that still touched the River Siru thrived, and her people could not grow and expand when so restricted. She saw all her brothers and sisters greedily taking their lands for granted, wasting endless resources on decadence and hedonism, while her own people had to live with austerity and great discipline. She realized that her siblings didn’t deserve their blessings and were casting them back in the faces of their grandmother and grandfather by taking them for such granted.

So, with righteous war in her heart, filled with the desire to grant her people the wealth and plenty that they deserved for their loyal worship, she raised a new army to march upon the lands of the corrupt, conquering them one by one, her priestess sorceresses undefeatable with the Kanta warriors at their sides.

But instead of meeting her and her armies in honorable battle, her siblings went to her father with crocoet tears in their eyes and begged him to intervene to stop her.

Though Sekhmet was not a disloyal daughter, she knew that her father was as dissolute as her siblings, perhaps even more so—for he was still losing the sun every season of Darkness, and then allowing it to blaze too long every season of Never-Dark.

Because she knew her father to be lazy, Sekhmet was not at first concerned that he would ever join the battle. Yet, in a surprising response to his whining children, he carved his own demesne and tore off part of his tail to create the richest of all lands, as if to mock Sekhmet for having only sands left where her fertile demesne had once stood. Infuriated by this cruel and heartless taunt that showed how little he cared about her, Sekhmet righteously marched upon the demesne of Ss’bek.

Her wily father had not stopped with only creating his decadent lands though. He’d also formed many new peoples from his scales, giving each of them special divine gifts that should never be granted to mortal flesh. Had her grandmother been awake, her father would have been severely punished, but because Isari remained dormant, forever guarding the Land of Bitter Loss from Setet and his evil, it fell to Sekhmet to punish Ss’bek’s many transgressions.      

To this day, our goddess continues to bring her righteous wrath upon the people of Ss’bek’s demesne. Our warriors and priestesses will never falter in our holy mission, though even the Histri’i, who were usually peaceful because their anger had burned their lands when Ss’bek first granted them the fire of Sa, have joined the battle, bringing many gifts into the fight that Ss’bek should never have given them.

But we, the servants of Sekhmet, are the mightiest of all warriors and the most powerful of all sorceresses in all the Land of Bitter Loss. We will prevail, and Ss’bek’s demesne will be ours, and then our brothers and sisters will feast upon the decadent riches that his people have greedily hoarded to themselves for so long.

Copyright © 2022 Susan Trombley