Chapter Text
The man is adorned in splendor. A golden pendant hangs around his neck. Matching earrings pierce his ears. Gold braces circle his wrists and ankles. You can tell at a glance that he is royalty.
You can also tell that he is dying.
His once white robes have been darkened with a mixture of desert sand and blood. His once clear eyes are cloudy with pain. His right leg is bent at a strange angle. Gashes ooze blood down bronze skin. He ought to be unconscious or at least laying down. Instead, he kneels and stretches out a shaking hand. He begins to trace an image in the sand. In the distance, screams of terror pierce the night, but he pays them no heed. He is already doing all that he can to save them.
Tears pour down his cheeks, but his voice is unwavering as he fashions the spell, "Take my ren as an offering and, in so doing, strike it from all records, both known and hidden. May all who once spoke it have it wiped from their ib, for it shall be both key and-"
The words break off as the ground quakes beneath his bent knees. Pain shoots through his broken body, strong enough that his vision darkens, but he does not need his sight for this. The words are not being read from some priest's carefully crafted scroll. Instead, they are his own desperate creation. A work of magic never before seen.
With a deep breath, he pushes past the pain and continues, "-it shall be both key and treasure. Seal it in the labyrinth's heart and take my shuyet as its guardian. I task it to wander the pathways for all eternity, ensuring that the enemy does not escape. I give it a will to protect the innocent above all else."
The pharaoh continues on, offering every piece of himself to the magic as he traces the image of two cartouches in the sand. He fills the first with the hieroglyphs that form his secret name. The second holds the name of the enemy. A circle enwraps both, binding them together. When the image is done, he slashes his hand across it, breaking the cartouches in half, but leaving the names intact. Then he wraps his hand around his pyramid-shaped pendant and pulls it from his neck. He takes the pendant and places it between the two cartouches as he finishes the spell, saying, "All this I offer so that my foe might be vanquished. Trap him within my prison and keep him there for as long as my soul endures."
With this, the spell is cast. All that he can do now is wait in silence for a sign. Anything to show that his sacrifice has been accepted. Please accept it. Please! Do not let my innocent people suffer for the sins of my bloodline. Let the punishment be mine and mine alone.
Suddenly, the pendant rises to hover in the air. Light blasts from it and a new kind of pain shoots through him. In the distance, a roar pierces the night forming a perfect harmony with the pharaoh's tortured gasps.
He collapses to the ground, gulping for air that will not come. It is suffering as he's never known, but there is a sweetness in this agony. The spell has worked. His people will be spared. A smile graces blood-stained lips and his soul is at peace as it is torn apart.
The spell completes. The far-off roar cuts off. Silence falls across the land. In the cavern where the pharaoh once knelt, a tinkling sound can be heard echoing off the walls. It is the sound of the pendant falling to the ground, but it is a pendant no longer. Like its bearer, it has shattered. The golden shards lay scattered across the sand, the only indication that anyone was once here.