#seth is named after the egyptian god | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

antiquitiesandlabyrinths · 1 month

Note

. . .Osiris

Osiris (Great and Beautiful is He) is the God of the Underworld; its King and Pharaoh ruling over the Duat. He is pictured here on the far left, His skin green and His body in mummiform. This is commonly how He is depicted; as a green-skinned, mummified man.

Son of Nut, the Sky Goddess, and Geb, the Earth God, Osiris was the first King of Egypt in accordance with Kemetic mythology, although there are stories that recount Geb, His father, being King before Him. There are a great deal of myths and stories that surround and involve Osiris, and I suppose it is important to at least skim over them before discussing hard facts about Him, as it gives some reference as to who He is and what the culture surrounding Him is like.

Osiris Myth

After the world was created, the Demiurge (who changes according to myth, and can be Neith, Ra, Amun, Ptah, or others) produces children; in the most popular form of this creation story, it is usually Ra who births the first Gods. They are Shu and Tefnut, Air and Moisture. Shu and Tefnut then form a union and birth two children of Their own: Nut and Geb, Sky and Earth. Nut and Geb were very much in love and refused to separate from each other, which, of course, caused a problem, because if the sky and the earth are eternally in contact, there is no space for anything to live and walk upon the earth. Ra made it so Nut and Geb were forever separated, by having Shu, air, stand atop Geb and hold Nut up as the sky. But Nut was already pregnant. When Ra discovered this, He was enraged, and forbade Nut from ever giving birth on any day of the year.

Nut cried to Djehuty (Thoth), and Thoth devised a plan. He went to Khonsu, God of the Moon, and set up a gamble, saying that every round of the game Senet Khonsu lost, He would have to give Nut some of His moonlight. Khonsu ended up losing so many times that Nut had enough moonlight for five days––five days that weren't in the calendar. This allowed Her to give birth on those five days, and on each day She had a different child; Ausir (Osiris), Wr-Heru (Horus the Elder), Sutekh (Set, Seth), Auset (Isis), and Nebet-Het (Nephthys). Nut and Geb were still forever separated by atmosphere (Shu), but the five Gods were birthed, and Osiris, as the eldest son, became King of the Living World.

As a side note, all Gods do have ancient Egyptian names which are different from Their Greek and now modern names. For convenience's sake, and to avoid confusion, I will use the names They are most known by; Their Greek/modern names. And as another side note, there are a lot of variations on this story. I will be piecing together a lot of different ideas but I will be leaving some things out for the sake of cohesion.

When Osiris came to Egypt, He found the people there to be chaotic and lawless. As King, He instituted laws and spread ma'at, which is truth, justice, harmony, and order. Egypt flourished under His rule and the people were incredibly happy, as all were equal, and with the fertility of the God-King, the crops were always bountiful and food was plenty. He brought not only law and prosperity, but also the right way to worship, and the teachings of agriculture.

Set, God of chaos, confusion, the desert, and of foreigners, and the youngest brother of the Ennead, grew to be quite jealous of His older brother. There are many variations and the most popular variation of this story comes from the end of the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BC), where Set fashions a fabulous coffin in the perfect measurements of Osiris, throws a party, and tells the party-goers that whomever the coffin fits may have the coffin as a gift. When Osiris fits perfectly, Set quickly shuts and bolts the coffin and throws it in the Nile (this version of the myth gives an origin to the idea that people who drowned in the Nile were holy). His coffin drifts downstream and into the Mediterranean, where it washes ashore in Phoenicia, in Byblos. The coffin wedges itself into a growing tamarisk tree, a tree which envelops the coffin. Eventually the tree is cut down and used as a pillar in the palace in Byblos.

Isis, Osiris' wife and sister, searched far and wide for Her husband, and did eventually find Herself in Byblos. The story is quite long and complicated, but in the end She convinced the King to give Her the pillar, and when she returned to Egypt, She hid Osiris in a swampy area of the Nile delta, and bade Her sister, Nephthys, to watch over Him while She went in search of healing herbs. But Seth heard that Osiris was back, and so after interrogating His sister-wife, Nephthys, He found Osiris, cut His body into pieces, and threw them into the Nile.

Isis was horrified at what transpired in Her absence, but She immediately set to work on finding the many pieces of Her husband with the help of Her sister, Nephthys. They managed to find every piece of His body except His phallus, which had been eaten by an oxyrhyncus fish, a fish that was thus forbidden to eat.

With the pieces of Osiris reassembled, and the healing powers of Isis in full power, Osiris was brought back to life, but incomplete. Isis assumed the form of a kite, and from above drew out the seed of Osiris, impregnating Herself with Their child: Horus the Younger. But Osiris, still incomplete, could not properly rule over the land of the living any longer.

This is why He is the ruler of the dead––He was once the king of the living, was killed, and was resurrected, and this is what every ancient Egyptian expected and hoped would happen to them: that they would die and be resurrected. In tombs and mortuary temples you will always see Pharaohs associating themselves with Osiris.

But this long myth I have just told you is not the only version of the story, and in my opinion, it is definitely the longest version of the story. Back in the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom there were several different versions; for example, Set's motive is different, ranging from revenge for Osiris kicking him, to revenge for Nephthys (Seth's sister-wife) sleeping with Osiris (which eventually births Anubis). Some texts claim that Seth took on the form of a wild animal, such as a crocodile or a hippopotamus, and killed Osiris that way. In others, Osiris is drowned. In some, the steps surrounding the coffin are skipped, and Osiris is simply cut up, and His pieces scattered around Egypt; a version which explains the many cult centers of Osiris claiming to be a place where Osiris is buried. Osiris' resurrection is also often helped along by other Gods such as Thoth (God of wisdom) and Anubis (God of embalming). In some versions, Set is killed for His actions. In most He is simply defeated and driven from the land, as chaos is necessary for balance and harmony, and thus cannot be killed. And the story that I have told is from the Late Period, recorded by Plutarch, and does not really go along with many Egyptian accounts, which often find Osiris' penis intact.

So that is the Osiris myth with all of its' intricacies and changing rhythms over the course of 4,000 years of Egyptian history. It embodies a huge amount of cultural practices and religious ideas within ancient Egypt, including the idea of truth, harmony, and justice, as well as resurrection, the afterlife, healing, and the workings of the cosmos. I've decided to leave out the later parts involving Osiris' son, Horus, and His fight with Set, for now because this does not directly involve Osiris, and that is our topic for this post.

Tradition, History, and Culture

Worship of Osiris dates back to the Old Kingdom, but the idea of Osiris is likely older than this. Before Osiris was actually Khentiamenti, an agricultural God centered in Abydos, a city which would later become the cult center of Osiris. Khentiamenti means 'Foremost of the Westerners', a title for the ruler of the dead, as the dead resided in the west, where the sun set each day. But Osiris Himself is not found mentioned in any texts or carvings until the 5th Dynasty, where He is depicted as a man wearing a divine wig. Later on He would take on the form we know Him best in––wrapped in a white mummy shroud, wearing an atef crown with ostrich plumes on the sides.

The mummy shroud He is depicted in forever associates Him with death and with the essential story behind Him, which is why I found it so important to start off with the Osiris Myth. This myth is also why He consumed and took the place of Khentiamenti; the name Khentiamenti, Foremost of the Westerners, instead became a title for Osiris as the King of the blessed dead. Another common epithet/name of Osiris is Wennefer (Omnophris), meaning 'The Beautiful One', 'The Beneficent One', and more archaically, 'One Whose Body Did Not Decay'. Among these names He was also called 'The Lord of Love', 'The King of Living', and 'The Eternal Lord'. From the Early Dynastic Period up until the end of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, when Rome conquered Egypt, Osiris was one of the most highly worshipped and revered Gods of Egypt.

Osiris was associated with the Nile river, with its' renewal and life-giving abilities, as one of Osiris' domains and powers was fertility, as well as rebirth. Another of His duties, evidence of which originates in the New Kingdom, was to act as judge of the dead; being King, He sat on the tribunal with the 42 Judges in the famous Weighing of the Heart ceremony. In this ceremony, which took place in the afterlife, the deceased would have to stand before the court and place their soul up for judgement. If it weighed lighter than the feather of Ma'at, representing all justice, truth, and harmony, then the heart acted well in life and would be allowed eternal happiness in the Field of Reeds. If not, the heart, and thus the person, would be consumed by Ammit and committed to nothingness. So Osiris would sit in on this tribunal and judge who entered His kingdom, as it was His domain. In this role, and in His role as King of the Living, as well, He was the embodiment of harmony, law, and justice.

"Most of his appeal was based on his embodiment of the cosmic harmony. The rising Nile was his insignia, and the moon’s constant state of renewal symbolized his bestowal of eternal happiness in the lands beyond the grave. In this capacity he also became the model of human endeavors and virtues..." (The Complete Gods And Goddesses Of Ancient Egypt, p.307)

As I mentioned earlier, Abydos became His cult center, as it was the cult center of the God who came before Him, whose traits He subsumed. It became a very popular burial site, as legends would say that Abydos was where Osiris was truly buried, and the people wanted to be buried as close as possible to Osiris. At one point they believed an ancient tomb there––which was actually the tomb of an Early Dynastic King––to be the tomb of Osiris, which they much revered, and left so many offerings in clay pots that Arabs would later call the site 'Umm el Qa'ab'; Mother of Pots. But this was not the only burial site of Osiris; since many variations of the myth include Set chopping up and dismembering Osiris into many parts, ranging from 14 to 42 different parts. These parts were scattered across Egypt, so many cities and nomes could claim that they had a part of Osiris buried in their domain. For example, far in the south, the island of Bigah claimed to be the burial site of Osiris' left leg, and thus the source for the yearly Nile inundation.

Going back to the Osiris Myth, after Osiris died and became the ruler of the dead, His son took His place as King of the Living: the falcon God, Horus (Heru the Younger). After the brief bout of chaos brought about under Set's rule, Horus took over (after much deliberation from the Gods) and order was restored. Because of this story, Pharaohs would not only associate themselves with Osiris in death, but with Horus in life. Each Pharaoh, as they came to the throne, would become the living embodiment of Horus on earth, the son of Osiris. In this way, Isis was also the mother of every Pharaoh, and their protector. And, to added extent, each Pharaoh would have a personal name, and then a Horus name granted to them when they ascended to the throne.

"It is for this reason that Osiris is so often depicted as a mummified pharaoh; because pharaohs were mummified to resemble Osiris. The image of the great mummified god preceeded the practice of preparing the royal body to look like Osiris... The king's appearance as modeled after Osiris' extended throughout his reign; the famous flail and shepherd's staff, synonymous with Egyptian pharaohs, were first Osiris' symbols as the flail represented the fertility of his land while the crook symbolized the authority of his rule." (Osiris, World History Encyclopedia, Joshua J. Mark)

Osiris can also be represented by a number of physical symbols, such as the crook and flail that He carries in almost all representations of His earthly form. The crook, which is the striped hook He carries, represents power/authority, and is a symbol of the Pharaoh. The flail, which is the instrument in His other hand, represents the fertility of the Nile, and as an extension, the fertility of Osiris Himself. But the crook and flail, though both seen typically as symbols of Pharaonic power, are actually the tools of a shepherd. There is reasonable evidence, thusly, to suggest that the physical origins of the idea of Osiris may not be that of a great King, but of a ruler of a shepherd tribe in the Nile Delta, whose rule was so beneficent that it led to him being worshipped as a God. For Egyptologists, this theory comes from His association with Andjety, a predynastic God-King worshipped in the Delta who also bore the crook and flail as His symbols. This, however, has not and likely cannot be fully proven. But the postulation is still interesting nonetheless!

Osiris' ba soul had its' own culture of worship, a practice of soul-worship that is prevalent in the cults of several other Gods, such as Hathor (HwtHer). In this form, Osiris was known as Banebdjedet, meaning 'The Ba of the Lord of the Djed,' which in English terms means 'The Soul of the Lord of the Pillar of Continuity', as ba means soul, and djed is the symbol for a pillar, which represented the backbone of Osiris. Interestingly, the name Banebdjedet is feminine, as the letter t denotes a feminine word or name in ancient Egyptian; although there are also variations on this name that exclude the t in favour of the alternative, Banebdjed. Banebdjedet, Osiris' ba soul, was worshipped mainly in Mendes, a city in Lower Egypt, in the Delta.

This leads to an interesting point concerning the androgyny of Osiris, a subject I found while researching for this post. Osiris' fertility comes from His castration and then being healed by the mother Goddess, Isis. Not only that, but both men and women identified themselves with Osiris in death. Then the name for His ba personified as another God is feminine, although representations of Banebdjedet are overwhelmingly male. Before anyone attacks me, I am not claiming that Osiris is a genderless God or King––just that He has some traits of androgyny, which I find interesting and love to study in ancient cultures, and I thought it would be good to mention for anyone else similarly interested.

Worship, Festivals, and Cult Activities

When it comes to the practices surrounding Osiris' cult, we actually know a good deal of information regarding the activities of worshippers and priests. Osiris' cult and worship was so widespread and lasted long enough that it could be recorded by the earliest Greek historians, and remained carved in temple walls for thousands of years. Among the most well-known cultic tradition is the Osiris Bed.

The Osiris Bed is rather well documented, as it was an object placed in tombs. It was not a bed for the deceased to lie in, but instead a box made of wood or clay, moulded into the shape of Osiris, in which the fertile Nile soil was placed and seeds were planted. These boxes were then wrapped in white mummy linens, and the seeds sprouted through, representing the resurrection and fertility of Osiris, and the crops that grew each year in cycles. One of the most famous of these beds was found in King Djer's tomb, a King from the Early Dynastic Period; the 2nd King ever of the unified Egypt. Coincidentally (or, perhaps, not so coincidentally) King Djer's tomb was the tomb which pilgrims believed to be Osiris' burial site.

While the Osiris Bed is far from the only practice and tradition of the Osiris cult, it does show the rich cultural practices and symbolism present in His worship. Let's look at some other examples of the practices of Osiris' cult.

Similar to the Osiris bed were Osiris gardens, which were essentially the same concept; fertile soil was planted inside a vessel shaped into the form of Osiris, and seeds were settled within to grow. These beds were tended to during festivals instead of being buried in a tomb.

There were a great many festivals, and each of them quite popular according to their time period, dedicated to the story and symbolism of Osiris. Some festivals started with recounting the mournings of Isis and Nephthys, Osiris' sister-wife and sister, in the form of a drama acted out in a call-and-response format. Another drama acted out for the glory of Osiris was more in the form of an actual fight that anyone could participate in; it was modelled after The Contendings of Horus and Set, which I briefly mentioned as a long and drawn-out argument between Horus and Set over who deserved Osiris' vacant throne after He had died. On this occasion, people would battle out and reenact the events of the story until the side of Horus finally won and victory was achieved. Afterwards, the celebrations commenced in honoring the restoration of order, and the gold-encased shAwyt-nTr (the Holy Statue) of Osiris would be taken out and lavished with offerings. Osiris, in the form of this statue, would be paraded throughout the city of Abydos before being placed in a shrine outside, where He could participate fully in the festivities, and be admired by the commoners who would usually never behold the face of Osiris. This emergence of Osiris from the dark temple's inner sanctuary to the light of the city resembled and represented His resurrection from death into life again. Although this particular festival was celebrated mainly in Osiris cult center of Abydos, it was also celebrated in other cities such as Bubastis in the Delta, Busiris, Memphis, and Thebes, in Upper Egypt.

The Mysteries of Osiris was a series of plays performed annually, and in dramatic, passionate form. It was one of the most popular observances of worshippers, and it told the story that I first told to you––of Osiris' life, His death at the hands of His brother, His resurrection at the hands of His sister-wife, and His ascension into the role we now know Him for. The roles in this reenactments were often taken up by high-ranking officials, and afterwards, the Contendings of Horus and Set would take place, which I just mentioned. These plays would take place over several days.

One festival was called The Fall of the Nile. During this time, the waters of the Nile would recede, and the worshippers of Osiris would go into mourning. One of Osiris' representation on earth was the Nile, and the Nile represented His fertility and life.

Another festival was celebrated on the 19th day of Pakhons, one of the months in the Egyptian calendar, which is roughly equivalent to May in our Gregorian calendar. On this day, the followers of Osiris would go to the river with shrines containing vessels of gold and metal, and would pour water into the Nile, exclaiming, "Osiris is found!" Mud and spices were mixed and moulded into the shape of Osiris, as well, to celebrate His return. Another festival similar to this one was called The Night of the Tear, and took place during modern-day June.

The last festival pertaining to Osiris that I will mention is the Djed pillar festival, held in modern-day January. The Pharaonic court and family would participate, raising djed pillars to welcome Osiris and the harvests that coincided with His return.

One last and interesting tradition that may seem familiar to Christians, at least in a small way, was the baking of bread in the shape of Osiris; bread as the flesh of the God, a sort of predecessor of communion wafers. But in reality the traditions of the Osiris cakes are completely different, and there were several different ways of going about it, depending on which nome you were from. In Dendera, wheat-paste models were made in the shape of each of the 16 dismembered parts of Osirs, and each model was sent out to the town where each respective part of Osiris was found by Isis. In Mendes, figures of Osiris were made of wheat and paste. On the day of the murder, they were placed in a trough, followed by water being added each day for several days. Afterwards, this mixture was kneaded into a dough, put into a mold of Osiris, and buried on the temple grounds.

Conclusion

This has been a somewhat brief glimpse into the cult, history, and traditions surrounding the Great God, The Beautiful Lord Osiris. If I can clarify anything please let me know and I will do my best!

#Osiris #ancient egypt #egyptian mythology #egyptian gods #Kemetic #ancient history #egyptology #Kemeticism

96 notes · View notes

januaryembrs · 11 months

Text

LAST KNIGHT IN SOHO | Steven Grant/Marc Spector x Reader [2]

description: She wakes up with a killer headache and a million questions when she realises two things: 1. the man in her room is not infact Steven Grant and 2. her body no longer belongs to her but to the God of Death. [Last Night in Soho inspired]

word count: 9.6k

trigger warnings: GORE, blood, very briefly Reader/Dove has worries of SA but absolutely none happens nor was there the intention of it happening and it is only implied, swearing, talks of infidelity (we love Layla el Faouly in this house so she will stay in the story but not as a romantic partner for Marc/Steven)

main masterlist | series masterlist

authors note: so as promised this is now an avatar!reader series. all the Ancient Egyptian facts mentioned are simply researched off google and some books I have on Egyptian mythology so someone please correct me! Also to avoid confusion Seth goes by many names eg Set/Seth/Setekh and is only really known as God of Death in the marvel comics, not in real mythology! Again, my knowledge of DID is purely researched so if anyone is upset with my phrasing or what I have written please tell me!

Please reblog and comment for your authors!

Marc cradled her wounds harshly, guilty chipping at him when he heard her whimper at the sheer force he was putting on the lacerations.

“Konshu!” Marc hissed over his shoulder where he felt the bird poking at the Jackal’s dead body. He had arrived five minutes too late, barely just pulling the monster off her before it could set its teeth into her leg and start feasting. The dark haired man had been quick to snap its neck, throwing the carcass behind him and tend to where she twitched and writhed on the floor.

It was bad. Her thick blood smeared all over the ceremonial armour that would somehow clean itself of the stains like it did with the blood of the others he’d killed.

He’d had blood on his hands before, but not like this. Not an innocent woman that slipped away under his touch, the eyes he’d seen from inside the body batting up at Steven with golden innocence.

He knew how Steven felt about her, the way his heart, well their heart, would pick up when the two of them got even the slightest bit closer. The way doubt ate away at his quiet counterpart, doubt that someone her age would find a man ten years older than her even the slightest bit attractive. She had dozens of men after her, he saw how their eyes trailed up and down her figure when she would be so much as stood minding her business and stacking shelves.

Marc knew despite Steven never admitting to his feelings, despite the fact he’d tried helping him get over his crush by asking his other gorgeous co-worker on a date for him, he knew Steven would be devastated if anything happened to her.

The two of them shared a friendship first and foremost. She was possibly the only person Steven had to rely on that he found comfort in, the only real friend he’d got. And she was good, Gods above Marc could see even when he was on the inside that she was good to him. When she would leave him notes to remind him to wake up on time, bring Steven little trinkets she’d found that reminded her of him. She hadn’t batted a single eyelid of judgement when she’d seen the sand around his bed, or the foot cuff. In fact she’d made a joke about his unique tastes in the bedroom and then asked if he would like to buy mugs together.

She was pure, and kind, and good. It was Marc’s job to deliver vengeance to those worthy of it, and she was the furthest thing from it. And it was his conflict with Harrow that had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

He couldn’t let her be taken from Steven, not like this.

“KONSHU?” Marc called, louder this time to get the God’s attention, “Will you quit poking that thing and get over here?”

The skeletal figure paused, his staff still half way through prodding the corpse out of intrigue as he took note of the pitiful little human dying on the floor.

“She’s a lost cause, Marc. The worm can make more friends. We have work to do,” Came Konshu’s booming voice, the figure walking towards where the blood pooled on the floor messily.

“That is not an option, what happened to protecting ‘the travellers of the night’?” Marc seethed back, compressing the wound harder. But it was no use. He felt the liquid seeping through his clothed fingers, how it pumped out of her rapidly. His heart dropped sadly when he saw she was looking right at him, her eyes wide and wet with fear.

“Steve-” She started. Even so close to death she was worried about him.

Marc’s chest constricted with sadness. Steven would never get over this if she were to die like this, calling for him, clinging to his alter for dear life. It was his job to protect Steven at all costs from the tough realities of life, and watching her die would torment his alter in a way he just couldn’t allow.

“He’s here, he’s okay. It’s gonna be okay,” Marc shushed her, eyes narrowing on the way blood dribbled out her mouth and he heard her chest rattle with a clogged airway.

She didn’t have long left.

“Konshu, do something!” Marc yelled, his hand cradling her neck gently, trying to tip her head up far enough that she could breathe still. “We need to do something now!”

“There is nothing to do, Marc Spector.” Konshu said simply, yet his boned beak snapped to the plinth the two humans rested on, his concave eyes trailing up to the monument that watched over them, “Unless…”

“Unless what? Just do something, she’s going to bleed out any minute now,” Marc rushed, a hand coming to hold her head up more as she started choking on herself.

He had seen gruesome things before, done gruesome things. But this was heart wrenching, watching the one person his alter cared for die so horrifically. Slow. Messy. Painfully.

“I cannot do anything to help the little runt,” Konshu snapped, raising his staff to the behemoth, looming figure behind the two humans clinging on to one another, “But he can,”

Marc’s head whipped to where the bird-faced demon was gesturing, the man’s near black eyes trailing up to the statue of the god watching over the three of them. “Who is that? Anubis? Ra?”

“Seth. God of Chaos, Storms and Foreign lands.” Konshu spoke of his old friend fondly. Marc’s eyes squinted in suspicion at the admiration in his voice. “Sometimes seen as the God of Death.”

If there was anyone who loved vengeance and all things violent as much as the moon deity, it was the one who created it all.

Spector’s heart squoze in fear at the idea of throwing her to a life of servitude like the one he had been forced into. But there was no way of healing her deep wounds in any other way than giving her up to a god that would find use in her survival.

“God of Death?” Marc asked, “Is there no one else who would take her?” Nothing about Seth screamed out that he would be gentle to her. Konshu was bad enough, and he was merely the God of the Moon, let alone the embodiment of violence.

“None that would accept a vessel so weak.” Konshu said darkly, kneeling down behind Marc and calling upon his dear friend in arms, “She is bleeding onto his monolith as if she’s given herself up to him as a sacrifice, he’ll like that,”

“No, wait-” Marc wasn’t sure he liked the sound of a deity so dark taking control of her, but he hadn’t the time to protest any further before his own God’s voice rattled the shards of glass laying on the floor with its volume.

“Seth! Old friend, we have a gift for you,” Konshu bellowed, his head lowering as a sign of respect to his superior. The god killer. The brother slayer. The evil serpent of the Ennead. Konshu could only revere in the footsteps of such a god equally, perhaps moreso, hated by the higher council.

Konshu’s avatar opened his mouth to protest when a snake-like hiss rolled over his back and every hair on his body stood on end. It was like nothing he’d ever heard before, everything warm inside of Marc’s body being robbed at the very sound of it, his breath included.

It was neither man, nor animal, nor monster. A mix between a snarl and a spit of anger from being woken from a deep slumber.

Death overcame the room.

“Konshu,” An ancient voice came from above. For the first time in Marc’s servitude to Konshu, he was afraid to see where the sound came from. What had made such a noise.

What Death looked like when you stared him in the face.

“It is good to see your face, shadow dweller,” The voice of Death spoke, every scratching syllable running through Spector’s body like a fear he’d never known.

He couldn’t face the thing that caused such a feeling, and kept his head down as a result. Down to where she was. Still looking at him with such desperation, oblivious to the unholy conversation happening around her.

The light in her eyes was dimming, the tears slithering into her hairline pitifully. She hadn’t got long left. He’d failed her. He’d fail her if Seth couldn’t get to her in time. Yet the selfish part of him didn’t want him to, wanted to keep her pure and untainted by such a cruel being.

But this was for Steven, he thought. Keep her alive for Steven’s sake.

“We have a body for you, dark one,” Konshu said, gesturing to the girl’s weak body that his pathetic avatar clung to fiercely.

“To see through the afterlife?” Seth questioned, the lights in the museum hall flickering as if indicating he was in every atom of the room with them.

“To have as a vessel, Seth,” The Moon god prompted, his staff gesturing to the pool of blood the two humans sat in, Marc’s arms by now drenched in it. “See how she bleeds for you. I know you feel it as I do, the darkness in her heart, the chaos-”

“Oh,” Seth’s aged voice hummed in delight, “Oh, how her corrupted heart sings to me. You have done well, Konshu,”

That had Marc gripping her body just that bit tighter. What had he done? The god seemed so thirsty for her blood, for her body.

But it was too late now. Death had taken a fascination to her. Two long tendrils of pure, cold darkness emerged from the shadows and wrapped around where her weak state was slipping away from Marc’s arms. Hands that had trusted him to keep her safe fell from his bicep, falling slowly into her lap as the blackness took her.

“Be gentle,” Came from Marc’s mouth before he could help it, not wanting to make himself known to the old god. Her body was raised into the air before the statue, her head limp as it sagged over her shoulders, heavy and lifeless. Shadows wrapped around her limbs, crawling up her nose and under her closed lids like an infection, spreading, consuming, digesting.

“Gentle?” The hoarse voice rumbled with laughter, “She is going to be my most prized possession,”

There was something so peaceful about the way she slept despite the trauma of the last couple days. Marc had flown the two of them back to her apartment, figuring it was a much easier way than getting on public transport with a sleeping woman in his arms. He knew it would garner too much attention, even with the way he’d wrapped her in Steven’s jacket to cover the sight of the blood from the security cameras.

He’d laid her in her soft bed, slipping her shoes off and draping the soft duvet over her body, the whole time she’d not murmured one bit. He would have almost been concerned that Seth hadn’t healed her in time had he not seen the two gods emerging from the dark corners of her bedroom like the boogeymen they were.

If Konshu was nerving to look at, then Seth was something straight out of a child’s nightmare.

Unlike Konshu, he was not bones. He had the body of a goliath man, arms taught with dark muscles, and a small piece of cloth to cover his dignity. Gold chest armour rested over his shoulders and wound around his thick arms. Hair lined his arms and chest in thick mounds, and he held a staff similar enough to Marc’s own god that he could see Seth’s was much more intricate than his counterpart. It had dark hieroglyphs running down the sides, a pointed skull of a jackal atop the weapon with a gold headpiece weaving its way over the animal's forehead neatly.

But that wasn’t what scared Marc. It was the beast’s head that sent chills down his spine. His head was that of a lithe dog, like a Doberman on steroids, ears and snout thin and long as it stared down at him. A predator if ever he saw one. Seth’s eyes were black, brimming with menace and plague, his jaws lined with what seemed like hundreds of teeth sharper than any blade Marc had ever seen.

The insidious smile plastered on the demonic jaws was what got him. As if Seth knew the fear he instilled in him. As if he saw how much he regretted listening to Konshu already.

Seth was every awful feeling you had in your gut before something terrible happened. He was the last breath a person takes as their soul leaves their body, a cold hand of a corpse. A dark shadow in the corner of your eye. A premonition of death. He was every ounce of pain, burden and agony any being had ever felt in the thousands of years they had existed in this small corner of the universe. He was torture and misery hailing down upon the world straight from purgatory.

And she was his now. His to ruin and vanquish as he pleased.

The two gods stood on either side of her bed, staring down at her in fascination as Marc sat on the chair at her desk, his dark eyes flicking between the monstrous creatures.

“Do you need to watch her like that? I thought we had work to do,” He prompted, hoping to take their attention off her vulnerable body.

“Harrow was onto something with this one, Marc Spector,” Konshu chuckled, taking a seat on the window sill to watch Seth caress her head, his hands gentle yet Marc sensed there was nothing kind about the gesture. As if on cue, her face scrunched up, still riddled with sleep, and she twisted in mental torment. His touch alone had given her a night terror, he was the king of chaos after all, “If you saw the yearning for vengeance in that girl’s heart, you’d find her fascinating too,”

“She’s not evil, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marc’s jaw clenched harshly as she whimpered and tried to roll away from the hand that poisoned her dreams. His eyes darkened at the sound of Seth laughing to himself at his cruel trick.

“She’s not what you think, runt. She will do well as my avatar,”

Marc finally set his gaze on the unholy deity, the slim, mutt like face staring down at him with inky black slits. He couldn’t hold the stare for long, the creeping feeling of unease that washed over him the moment he met Seth’s eyes was enough to knock the wind out of him.

Tugging on his collar to free some space for breath, he turned away.

“What will you make her do?” He asked quietly, sparing a quick, pitiful glance to her face that had now smoothed out in peace once more.

“Nothing she doesn’t already want to,”

She felt the uncomfortable scratch of jeans against bed sheets before anything else. The detergent, that was almost unscented from the countless years she’d used it, was homely against her nose and she stretched out under the covers to pop the joints that had been curled into the foetal position for however many hours she’d been asleep.

There were about ten seconds between waking up and remembering whatever the fuck happened last night where she remained in a beautiful state of blissful peace. There is a virtue in remaining ignorant, she realised. Remaining unaware. In fact, she would go on to cherish those ten seconds when her eyes took in the same plain wall that had always been next to her bed, when her head was not loud and the air was not tight in her chest.

Ten revered seconds when things didn’t hurt.

Yet by the eleventh second, the whole evening came flooding back to her, ripping through her synapses with the feeling of dread.

The man in the museum that had grabbed her and Steven. The dogs, the running. The creature tackling her, its teeth, oh god, its teeth and claws, the way she’d been thrown through the glass like it was child’s play.

Sitting bolt upright in bed, the early morning sun illuminated the room enough that she barely took note of the figure sat opposite her. Throwing the duvet off herself frantically, she scanned every inch of her body for anything that hurt, that was bleeding and needed immediate attention.

But, as was a recurring theme in her life these days, there was nothing there.

Not a single scratch, or scab, or scar in sight. Her shirt was ripped to shreds, dark red and spattered with something lumpy that she didn’t want to even consider what it was. That would need to be thrown away. But lifting up the torn fabric to reveal her bare stomach, there truly was nothing there that indicated what had happened was real. Were it not for the evidence on her shirt she wouldn’t even believe it had happened.

What the fuck was going on?

As if on cue, she raised her fuzzy head the slightest bit and caught the man sitting at her desk, looking straight at her with cold, brown hues. The short, dry yelp she let out had her lungs wincing, her hands raising in front of her to protect herself from any oncoming attack, before it clicked in her head that it was Steven.

Ofcourse it was. Ofcourse, Steven had gotten her home safely last night.

“Oh my god, Steven!” She rushed out of bed as he stood, though the dead expression hadn’t yet left his face as he stood to meet her.

Marc had barely opened his mouth to explain when he was tackled around his waist by her open arms. She was strong now, strong enough to hug him tightly and have his ribs jitter painfully, no doubt a side effect from becoming an avatar.

The older man had just about talked Konshu and Seth into leaving him to explain to her what was happening, knowing how terrified he was when he first started hearing the God of the Moon addressing him. He knew for anyone so soft to the world, hearing voices and seeing giant creatures ordering you to do their bidding would mean a one way ticket to a hospital ward.

“Steven, I’ve been so worried about you! What on earth happened, what were those things- wait!” She pulled away quickly and checked him over for wounds himself, searching him up and down until she was satisfied he was okay.

Marc would have laughed snidely at her concern, knowing he was more than capable of taking care of himself, had she been anyone else. But it was endearing how her first thought was for his alter’s safety.

Now came the hard part.

“I’m fine, everyone’s fine. How are you feeling?” He saw her gaze snap to his, brows drawing down into a frown at his accent.

“I’m-” She paused for a moment, and he watched as her eyes took in his whole demeanour. He knew he behaved differently to Steven, even by voice alone it was clear, but she seemed to be catching every small manner that he differed from him within seconds. “I’m fine, I could have sworn-” Eyes trailed over his face again as if to confirm her suspicions. She stepped back, shaking her head and bringing her hand to her temple, walking over to her mirror to check for any bruising. “Did I hit my head?”

He could have lied then and there. Marc could have washed his hands of her and convinced her she’d just had an awful fall, that nothing that happened last night was real. But Seth was coming to collect his dues, there was no stopping that now. Marc knew it was already his fault that she was in shit’s creek waist deep, it wasn’t fair of him to just up and run like he did with everything else in his life.

She deserved the truth. As so many people in his life deserved the truth; Layla, Steven. He had brought trouble to their doors and buried his head in the sand the moment he saw consequences. He’d ran away, denied, denied, denied until he started believing it himself in the hopes the guilt so familiar to him would let go of his chest.

But this was different. Dove was the only thing Steven had in his odd little life, the only person who cared for him. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself knowing he wasn’t only fucking up his own life but now Steven’s too, Steven who he had always tried to protect. Nurture. Perhaps he would have left her to the wolves were she his friend. But she wasn’t. She was Steven’s girl. His dove.

“Listen, you-” Her ears pricked at the sound of his new voice again. Marc saw how her posture straightened alertly, and her eyes snapped to look at him in her peripheral vision. Not necessarily panicked, but wary. As if trying to not give away her awareness of his change. A reflex, as if she’d done this before; hidden her fight, flight or freeze response. But Marc being the skilled mercenary he was, was one step behind her, clocking her reaction immediately. “You did hit your head pretty hard last night so I think you should sit down for this, princess.”

She turned slowly to look at him with wide eyes and he almost winced. She knew something was off, wrong. Princess? That was certainly new. Practically a million miles away from the nicknames he’d already established for her. She carefully sized him up with her cautious eyes, looking him head to toe as if to find the flaw that gave him away, the exact thing that made her feel the uncanny effect.

Truthfully, she had been able to tell just from the way he had hugged her. The barely there hand on her sides, the way his body went ironing board stiff in her arms, the way his head was held far away from her as if she were a bad smell instead of falling into the open space her shoulder provided like Steven normally would.

He was looking at her as if she were a wild animal on the side of the road, lame and ready to succumb to a terrible fate any second now. As if he was sorry, as if he’d been the driver knocking her down and had to be the one to see her shrivel pathetically on the pavement.

His voice was colder than Steven’s had ever been, formal. Everything about him screamed unfamiliar in the worst way despite being the double of him. But the way his face seemed tired, not in the way Steven was always tired but like he was tired of everything around him, tense, forlorn. Sorrowful. The way he stood straighter than Steven’s usually slumped over figure, he seemed immediately bigger and broader than her friend ever had because of it.

Whoever was looking at her was not her friend. Foe? She didn’t know, but she knew this man was not Steven Grant.

The next thought struck her harder than the glass wall had. What if it was? What if this was Steven, and their whole friendship over the past year had been an act to get her weak and vulnerable, cowering in her bedroom like a deer at the end of a rifle barrel.

“Who are you?” She murmured quietly, as if she were afraid to approach the clear fact he was not the man she’d known for the past few months.

The stranger took a sigh, raising his hands up to calm her as if to approach a spooked animal. “Look, I can explain everything, but would you please just sit-”

“Are you twins?” She asked, taking a step away from him. Please be twins. Please let me keep Steven, the only one who was ever good to me. Marc stopped in his place, realising his presence was scaring her. She looked pitiful, the warm eyes that had seemed so relieved to see Steven were now on high alert, nothing about her shrunken body seemed relaxed. Her eyes drifted past him to the door, and Marc was quick to realise she was gauging if they were in her apartment alone. “Is Steven here?”

One single beat.

“Yes.” She’d already caught him in his lie. He was hoping to get by on the technicality of his words, but his hesitancy to answer had her eyes snapping back to him in fear, “It’s difficult to explain. He’s here, he can’t talk right now,”

That did nothing to reassure her. In fact, it made it sound like Marc had hurt the one person she’d hoped to get her out of this situation. The man chided himself for his cold demeanour, but he couldn’t help but wince at the onslaught of information that was to come.

For this to make sense, he would need to tell her alot.

He saw it in her eyes. The way her body gave away her next moves, her slight, gentle step towards the door. Her chest puffed out as if she was building false confidence in herself for her next move. To run.

It didn’t matter that he looked like Steven, that he was wearing his clothes. That was not him. Had something happened to him with the invisible dogs? Or the white figure that had haunted her dreams that had held her as she had fallen into that cold darkness? Or was she truly going so far down the rabbit hole she was losing all sense of reality?

Either way, this man was a stranger. And he was in her room. Alone. Unbothered by the blood and gore on her shirt. And he wouldn’t let her see Steven, wherever he was.

A walking red flag.

Another single beat of silence passed between the two of them, before she bolted for the exit.

Maybe it was his military experience, or the fact her innocent face had made it so easy for her to read. But Marc was quick to catch her by the waist, tackling her to the floor and pinning her easily.

The scream she let out was awful. Her newfound strength and sheer terror made it a little more difficult to reach a hand over her mouth but the way she thrashed as if fighting for life clutched at Marc’s chest heavily. A free swipe of her arms, the blood and dirt still buried deep under her fingernails, came up to push his cheek, scratching deep into his skin enough to cause three red marks on his olive complexion and have him hiss in pain.

“Please, STEVEN- Please just let me go- Don’t- STEVEN” She yelled, her legs kicking up to try fight him off. Her eyes welled up as she screamed more, her throat audibly going raw from the sheer effort.

“Shhh. I’m not gonna hurt you, just please calm down,” Marc begged as he put his hand over her mouth. He saw the fear in her eyes that told him all he needed to know. He was a stranger to her, a stranger in her room that had pinned her to the floor.

Of fucking course she was terrified.

Her cries for help were only muffled by his large fingers as his eyes peered down at her in sorrow, “He’s here, I promise. Steven’s here, just please let me explain.”

Her eyes stared up at him through glassy, fat tears. The voice, that voice. The way he held her so gently despite having the strength to hold her in place. The stranger, the same stranger that held her last night was - what? Steven’s twin brother?

Marc watched the moment she recognised him, somewhat. Alteast recognising him out of the suit. It felt too reminiscent of the moment he’d watched her die. Call him selfish but he preferred when she’d held on to him in a fleeting moment of trust than the fear that she gazed at him with now.

“I saved you and Steven last night, from those things, remember me?” Marc asked sternly. Her eyes remained wide and frightened, but she seemed to give up struggling. Her face was the picture of confusion, conflicted whether to trust a familiar stranger or keep throwing her entire weight into fighting him off. “Yeah, see? Now I’m gonna let go of you but you’re gonna need to trust me for all of five minutes. Your life is in a lot more danger than those things that attacked you, and I’m not gonna be able to help you if you don’t listen to me. You got it?”

He felt her body relax the slightest amount, before she nodded helplessly. Marc checked over her face one last time for any immediate signs of fleeing. When he found none he let go, leaning back to stand, rubbing a hand over his stinging cheek. Not bleeding, but raised and hot with impact.

“Who are you?” She whispered, still laying on the floor in shock, her chest heaving with a nausea that had washed over her the moment he had gotten on top of her. Call it a reflex, but the idea of a man who wore her best friend’s face invoking such a power over her curdled her stomach to its very core.

Marc looked down at her, her eyes neither trusting nor looking for a reason to run. She needed to know, he repeated to himself, were it not so important he would have left with no query. No traumatic incidents needed.

But Death was around the corner. Sooner or later he’d appear to her, ask her for things Marc could only dread.

He owed her an explanation at the least.

Sticking out a hand, the same hand that had stopped her squeals for help, he offered her help up off the floor. Her eyes flicked from the tawny digits to his stiff expression in caution. “I’m Marc Spector. Nice to meet you,”

She sipped her tea silently. She liked it strong, unbearably sweet and piping hot. Sometimes she joked with Steven it was how she liked her men too. But she was in no joking manner now, and Steven wasn’t here anymore.

Well he was, and wasn’t at the same time.

They shared a body, that’s what Marc had said. She’d read about stuff like that, seen it in movies, but funnily enough the phenomenon of two people in one body wasn’t even what had her jaw clenched in disbelief.

Egyptian gods walked among them. Lived with them, had their own societies and laws, puppeteering random strangers to do their bidding.

And one, perhaps the worst one she could think of, had her in his clutches.

Of course she’d heard of Seth. She stacked around fifty of his statues a day in the back of the gift shop, his wolf-like face not nearly as friendly looking as one would hope if they’d learnt he was now their master.

If Marc was telling the truth, then that’s essentially what Seth was to her now. A puppet master, a dictator, a tyrant pulling the strings on her every move for the inevitable future.

He was the body of everything chaotic. Nefarious. Evil. Violent. And yet she couldn’t help but sigh at the dramatic irony that she expected nothing less from an ancient god that had taken an interest in her soul. It saw in her what she knew had always grown. What that Harrow guy knew immediately, supposedly the gift of his own god, to see the disruption inside people's hearts. What Steven and now Marc were so blind to.

Seth had seen the pollution that cursed her down to her marrow and licked his lips in glee.

“Are you okay?” Marc’s American accent met her ears. They sat in her kitchen, the small breakfast counter being the only thing holding her up as she rested her elbows on it, barely feeling the way the scalding hot tea slid past her silent lips.

“Mhm,” She murmured, hands wrapping delicately around her clean mug. She’d given Marc Steven’s mug, mindlessly making him a tea the way Steven loved his cuppas, only to have the new man wince and spit the liquid back out.

More of a black coffee guy, he’d said apologetically as she visually sank in realisation they were truly completely different people.

“I know it’s a lot to process, I know I freaked out the first time I spoke to Konshu.” Marc explained, his tea going cold with his lack of interest in the drink. He watched her expression meticulously, as if trying to pick over every tiny change in her face as to any hint how she was feeling.

She stared at the white table deep in thought. Blank and empty as the surface itself.

“What will he want from me?” She asked quietly, meeting his eyes for the first time since he confessed he was the other half of her best friend that happened to share a headspace with him.

Marc looked at her blankly. “I don’t know,” He answered honestly. He would love to tell her Seth would be kind and graceful, gentle as he’d put it. He’d love to take it back, dig her out of this mess in any other way than offering her as a sacrifice, a mess he’d made by listening to his own God’s orders.

Marc would love to leave her and Steven in peace to pining and mixed feelings and words unsaid, but he couldn’t. She was in the gates of Hell now, deep in the Underworld. And there was no point of return. No do over, or waking up and pretending the whole thing was a silly dream like he’d been pulling over Steven.

This was out of his hands now.

“He wouldn’t make me-” She paused, taking a deep breath and putting her mug onto the counter to stabilise her shaking hands, “He won’t get me to-” Kill was the word she kept silent, but Marc understood nonetheless. Seth was the god of death and violence and all things lawless. There wasn’t anything Marc could promise wouldn’t be coming her way. His expression must have been grave enough to warrant her to let out a rattled sigh, tucking her hands into her lap to pick at her dirty fingertips. “Oh,” She said simply.

“Look, once I’ve stopped Harrow from raising Ammit, then I can worry about how to get him to release you, okay?” Marc said shortly, running a weathered hand over his tired face.

It was odd, seeing a man look so much like the sweetest guy she’d ever met brush her off as if she were a minor inconvenience. Which she was. She knew he felt guilty for letting his god give her up to the higher being, but he seemed tired of this whole situation by now, reaching his limit on being tender with her.

Marc didn’t have time for this. He was trying to help the poor girl, but the best way he could think to fix their problem was to clear his plate of his own agenda first. Which meant leaving as soon as he could to get the scarab somewhere hidden and Harrow off his back.

Her eyes steeled over at his words, furrowing her brows. “Once we’ve stopped Harrow, you mean?”

“What?” Marc said with a huff, looking at his tea as if it poisoned him, wishing it were a black drip coffee she hadn’t got the money for.

“We can stop him, right?” She asked, an edge to her tone that she’d never used on Steven. Everything reserved for him was purely saccharine sweet and gentle, loving beyond what friends should be.

“We?” Marc bit with a scoff.

“Yes-”

“We?”

“Yes we, what, do you have a French man living in there too?” She barked, slamming the mug down with a blaze in her eye at the disdain he looked at her with, “Now look, I know it’s a little unavoidable for you and Steven, but I’m not one to have people fix my problems for me,”

“Yeah, you seemed to have it completely under control last night when you were bleeding out,” The man snapped, watching her jaw tense with an anger he’d never seen from his time watching her through Steven’s eyes.

They glared at each other for a moment, the red welts on his cheek staring back at her as if to remind her of her new strength. She needed him. Her body felt cold, as if she were carrying a corpse around not her own limbs, her every breath tasted of smoke and rot. She felt like she had bugs crawling over her spine, the hair on her arms never laying still with the goosebumps that dotted her skin. She felt dead. Casket, buried and six feet under. Then again, she sort of was.

“I’d like to speak to Steven, please,” She said quietly, polite despite the fact she was angry.

“I told you, you can’t talk to him right now,” Marc replied, stepping away from the kitchen and heading towards the front door to her apartment, “Look it was nice to meet you but I have work to do. You just stay here-”

She stood up, nearly knocking the mug over as she pursued him, grabbing his arm with a jolt.

Marc could have sworn she nearly ripped his arm out his socket with the unknown vigour she had. He made a small yelp that he choked down as she yanked him back to face her.

“You are not leaving me to deal with a God of Death alone, are you kidding me?” She seethed, unaware of how tight she was grabbing him. She was gonna leave one hell of a bruise, Marc thought, but the desperation in her voice was clear as a bell. “I don’t care if I have to stalk you myself, we both know you can stop this Harrow guy a lot faster if there’s two of us,”

“I won’t be stopping anyone if I only have one arm so would you please let go and stop mauling me, I’m trying to help you here, princess,” Marc retorted, as if to snap her out of her rage. Her eyes fell to where she was gripping him harshly, her hand alone turning the bottom half of his arm red with lack of circulation.

Her face visibly drew back in shock, letting go of him quickly. “Sorry,” She muttered, sheepishly.

Well, that was new.

Marc sighed, looking down at her crestfallen expression. She was scared, he knew she was, but putting her into the line of fire was exactly the last thing he wanted to do after already watching her suffer enough for his mistakes.

But she was persistent. And smart too, he knew she was right in saying they could figure out how to push back against Harrow a lot faster with two brains. At least if she was with him, he could keep an eye on how Seth was treating her.

If he was being much too greedy and insidious, which is what Marc expected from him, then maybe he could ask more of the Gods to step in. Or even the God of the Dead could help them find a way to stop Ammit from being resurrected. What was the point in conjuring chaos if another god was going to end everyone who had it in them?

“Alright,” She perked up instantly, those wide eyes looking at him with elation that he was going to stop being difficult and pushing her away, “You can help, only if you promise to do exactly what I ask of you. We can’t have you going rogue, that will make my whole plan just messy, okay?”

“Aye, aye, captain,” She said smoothly, flashing him a toothy smile, “Thankyou, Marc. Really.”

“Alright,” He nodded, reaching for the door, “Get some more sleep, I’ll call you when I need you,”

The smile dropped from her face as fast as it had come. That phrase was not comforting in the slightest. How would she know he was honest, that he meant his word? Steven always meant his word. Steven she could trust with her life.

This man was not Steven.

She knew it was childish, but she was quick to grab his hand again, gentle this time, not nearly as forceful as before. His empty brown eyes snapped to meet her gaze, the hair on his arms standing to attention as if he'd been electrocuted by her touch alone.

“Promise me?” She asked, eyes wide and imploring him to understand how desperate she was, “Promise me you won’t leave me alone?”

He took a moment to look her in the eyes, her lashes framing the pure anguish held in her sweet face, batting up at him with woeful hope.

He could see why Steven liked her. She was the embodiment of everything good, everything that needed protecting in the world, that needed cherishing and kept safe. He felt her small hand squeeze him in need. Having someone so kind and so blatantly enchanting to look at essentially begging for his refuge awoke something primal in him, something caveman that said I would never let a hair on her head be harmed. Something not even sexual, just purely carnal that overcame his senses as he imagined it did Steven’s, that had him nodding on instinct.

“I promise,” Marc said calmly, squeezing her hand back, before he shut the door coldly and left her flat.

She did not in fact wait for Marc to call her. In fact, by the time she’d woken up she had two missed calls from Steven and a flurry of messages had filled her screen all from one of her four contacts in her phone.

Steven

Are you okay, Dove?

Please respond A S A P

I don’t know what’s happening, they’ve said I’ve destroyed the loos

They said I carried you out of the building but I don’t remember seeing you after we got split up

Oh god don’t be dead

That would make me a proper maniac who killed the only bloody friend I’ve ever had

Please don’t be dead

Dove please message as soon as you can I need to know you’re okay

She huffed a breath of relief. Steven was back. Anxious and worried for her life, but he was back. She had barely a few hours of sleep since she’d seen Marc leave her apartment around 5 am that morning, but by now it was well into the afternoon.

Talk about being dead asleep. No, that’s not funny, she chided her brain.

Rubbing aching hands over her eyes to remove the last remnants of exhaustion from her face, her hands floated over the keys to reply to him.

Yet she could think of no way to tell him just how she felt; as though she were both relieved and dreading the idea that she could now talk to him about everything that happened, that she wouldn’t be alone with his stern counterpart in fixing the situation she had found herself in.

Yet the thought settled deep in her stomach. What if he ran from the very sight of her? It was obvious Seth wanted her out of interest, not just convenience. How he lusted for the cruelty and anguish in her bones. The venom that bubbled under her skin, infecting her brain and thoughts, the part of her that made her a disease, contagious to everyone around her.

Steven could take one look at the woman she truly was and wish for nothing more to do with her. Then what? The loneliness she had always known awaited her? The feeling of being left to the darkest corners of herself she knew waited for a moment of weakness to strike. Is that what she was to be subdued to?

She couldn’t say she was surprised. But she had to see him. Even if to beg for forgiveness of the bitterness that lay inside her, get on her knees and ask him to stay for her.

Words on a screen simply wouldn’t do. Wouldn’t redeem her enough to keep him like she wanted, if she could ever repent at all, that is. She needed to see Steven.

“Let’s just get this over with. You sent these papers but you never signed them.” Layla sighed as she yanked the thick wad of documents out her bag. She had no idea what Marc was playing at, perhaps creating a new identity was his way of running from responsibility again. He was always good at that.

“Did I? Uh-” Steven fumbled for his reading glasses as the vibrant woman shoved the files under his nose.

“This is what you wanted,” The woman, Layla, the only person who could help him understand what it was this Marc guy had plunged him into, said to him with an unmistakable bite to her words.

“Let’s have a look here,” His coffee ground eyes scrunched in confusion as he read over the papers. He brought them closer to his face as if in disbelief as to what he was reading.

“After everything, you told me that we needed to move on,” Layla seemed to have calmed slightly, bitter still but more heavy than anything as she watched him look at her in astonishment.

‘Divorce/dissolution/judicial separation petition’ stared back at Steven, an offer to end a relationship he knew nothing about with a woman who frankly scared him. Yet he could see the pain in her dark eyes as she avoided his glance. The way she’d swallowed her pride to come after this Marc guy to get the papers signed once and for all, though by the sounds of it it was his idea completely.

This little American man seemed to like starting fires and not waiting to find out if they burnt. If people got hurt. Which they did.

Steven was still waiting for Dove to message him back. If Marc had hurt her in any way he swore he would hand himself over then and there, particularly after finding a bloody handgun in his storage locker listed under his name. A gun? A wife? His best friend’s body? Who knows what else this Marc was hiding?

“Divorce?” Steven asked, looking at Layla in confusion, “You- We? I don’t know- You two were married?”

“Yeah, we doing this or not?” Layla snapped, though the gloomy look on her face told Steven all he needed to know. She was hurting. She hated every second of this as much as he did.

He flicked through the pages a few times, clearing his mind on the matter. He felt he had no right to meddle or sign away anyone else's relationship yet this woman looked at him expectantly in a way that had him curling over in near fear. He opened his mouth to ask her more about this Marc guy she was so angry with when a pounding on his door met his ears.

“Steven,” It was her, “Steven, are you home?”

Oh, thank the heavens and every cloud in them. The tension that had grabbed him by the throat and laced it with emotion all morning melted away at the melody of her words. So eager to hear her voice, to convince himself she really was safe, he dropped the papers onto the nearest table and rushed to the sound of her knocking frantically once more.

“Who is that?” Layla asked, annoyed that the papers she’d dragged across the globe had been discarded without a second thought. But her question fell on deaf ears as Steven swung the heavy door open.

The two of them stared at each other for a brief moment, both of them looking equally as shocked, confused and exhausted by the events, yet still not quite believing that they were seeing each other alive again.

“Oh my god- Love-” Steven heaved as she bolted into his arms for the second time that day. Though this time he hugged her back just as strongly as she’d expected. His body soft, gentle, warm with the way he encompassed her figure with his entire being. Not like how Marc held her in the slightest. He squeezed her tight, as if letting go of her again was the last thing on his mind, his hands flat on her spine and his head burrowing into her sweet smelling collar.

God he was so relieved to feel her again. Her face was smashed into his chest, her new found strength bringing him as close to her as physically possible, hoping to everything he wasn’t going to leave her the second he knew about her new, um, condition.

“Steven, oh my god, I thought it was you, the guy in my room- and last night! I was so worried about you- how do you feel, are you okay?” She rushed, unaware of the way she was being watched by two enraged brown eyes.

She had been so enamoured with Steven holding her so close, she hadn’t even seen the stunning woman stood a metre away with an aghast expression.

“Dove, I was so worried, Marc said I had to give the body to him so he could help you, I-” Steven’s voice was clogged with guilty and sorrow as he drew back from her, watching her expression scrunch into concern, entirely focused on his every word, “I couldn’t help you, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, love-”

“Hey, look. I’m okay, see?” She reassured, squeezing his waist lightly, wishing to soothe away the tears building in his waterline, “Marc got to me in time. I’m okay-”

“You met him?” Steven said the same time a new voice met her ears.

“I’m sorry, who are you?”

Her head snapped to her left to where a woman stood, her fists clenched and full lips pursed into a sneer of disgust at her presence. She was gorgeous. Perhaps the most gorgeous woman she’d ever seen. The type of face you’d see on a billboard, effortless and striking, the kind that had even her fawning over her rare beauty.

The woman looked all the more annoyed at her gawking expression.

Layla’s head cut to Steven’s flustered face, looking between the two women in surprise.

“This is-”

“Is this why you wanted a divorce, Marc?” Layla barked, the two embracing each other immediately pulling apart at the accusation that came crashing down on the two of them. “Is this your girlfriend?”

Divorce. The word echoed in her head like a stab to the chest. He was married. Steven, well Marc technically but Steven’s body was married. To the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. It only made sense. No matter which way he was packaged, whether he was Steven or Marc, he was a god among men even without Konshu.

And she currently looked like a mistress.

“No!” They chorused, Steven turning away from her and leaving her standing in the doorway confused.

“No, she’s my-” Steven paused as the younger woman spoke over him in just as much panic this woman would get the wrong idea.

“We work together,” She rushed, walking towards the woman with her arms up in surrender. Of course this looked bad. Awful. The guilt of falling head over heels for someone else's husband churned in her stomach.

“Me and her work at the museum, well worked I suppose,” Steven said, shutting the door behind her, hoping Layla didn’t start shouting like she had done a few times already. He was as tired of taking Marc’s shit as she seemed, but he supposed it was just as confusing for her to be married to someone who claimed he was someone else.

He just hoped the woman he was enamoured with entirely didn’t get the wrong idea also.

“I’m so sorry, I suppose I should introduce myself,” The younger woman attempted a friendly smile, which was entirely shut down by Layla glaring at her and snarling at her pleasant tone.

“You’re supposed to introduce yourself to a woman before you fuck her husband,” The woman said, leaning over the woman intimidatingly before turning to Steven’s scared mouse expression with a growl.

“I’m not sleeping with Marc,” Dove piped up, though her chest was rattling with the furious nut-brown gaze that met her the second she opened her mouth. If looks could kill, she’d be clinging to the shreds of life that she had left all over again. She saw Steven look at her with reddening cheeks at the inference of her words, “Or Steven! I’m not sleeping with either of them,”

Layla scoffed, looking her up and down, “What? So you’re just his young, pretty co-worker who just so happens to give them fat fucking heart eyes the minute she sees him?”

It was her turn to become flustered now. She felt the embarrassment hail down on her in waves, heat crawling over her cheeks as she stared at the woman who had managed to see her feelings for her husband within seconds. Women had sixth senses for things like that. Which wouldn’t be a bother, except Layla was married to him. Not Steven himself, but his body yes.

This was all so complicated for the half-dead girl’s already mithered head.

Her mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, hoping to god that Steven had somehow miraculously become deaf for five seconds and he truly hadn’t heard what his alter’s wife had just said.

“Exactly,” Layla huffed, reaching to grab her backpack and leave her husband and his mistress to their little roleplay where he was an English, ex-gift shoppist and she was his young co-worker too innocent to so much as tell him how she felt. What a joke.

“Wait, please,” The girl tried to slow her down, as she headed for the door, “Please, I can explain.”

A new knock on the door stopped Layla in her tracks.

“Steven Grant? Can we have a word?”

A female voice. Unfamiliar to either of them.

“DC Fitzgerald and DC Kennedy. We’re here about the disappearance of your co-worker,” The young woman’s face scrunched up in confusion as they said her name. Her full, legal name.

Steven and Layla simultaneously turned to look at her.

“You’re missing now?” Steven whispered, to which she shook her head.

“I spoke to the police on the way over here. Donna gave them my number when they saw you carrying me out of the museum,” She said back in a hushed tone, “I told them I was safe, that I fainted and you took me home.”

Layla’s eyes flicked between the two of them, her mind clicking as the voice on the other side of the door continued more forcefully, “They’re not real police officers,” She hummed quietly.

Steven and Dove looked at eachother. A look of panic passed between them as they shared the same thought; Shit.

“Marc said Harrow had connections all over,” She whispered back, watching as Steven reached for the multitude of locks slowly, if not to stop the fake officer from battering his door then to seem as though he were co operating.

“What are they looking for?” Layla asked, a moment of clarity snapping in Steven’s eyes as he reached into the gym bag he’d dragged from Marc’s storage locker. His hand emerged with the scarab, the same jewel he could have sworn had been plucked from his dream. Layla’s eyes widened, then narrowed at the man in question. “The scarab? What we fought side by side for? So this whole act was so you could run away with your mistress and keep it for yourself?”

“I am not-” The younger of the two started in a tone loud enough to have the officers stop their barrage on the door. Fearing they’d heard her, she huffed and started again, snatching the scarab out of Steven’s hands and turning to Layla, “I am not sleeping with your husband,” She breathed, “But the three of us are in serious trouble if they catch us with this, that’s what Marc said-”

“Yeah, I know,” Layla snapped, glaring at the woman who stared back with a now annoyed expression, “You might be new around here, but I know all about my own husband and his messes, thankyou,”

With the final growl, Layla wrapped a surprisingly strong hand around the girl’s forearm, dragging her to the open window.

“Woah! Woah- I know some things were said but throwing me out a window is a bit heavy, don’t you think?” She exclaimed, her feet sluggishly tripping over themselves as she followed the woman obediently.

Layla sucked her teeth, flashing her a death stare, “I’m not going to kill you, though I’ll wring your neck if you keep talking,” She snipped, pointing onto the ledge the roof offered as a place for them to hide, “Get out, they suspect something already, we’ll see where they take him and go from there,”

Flicking Steven, one last glance, he nodded for her to listen as he called to the ‘Detectives’ that he was complying with their orders.

Be careful, she wanted to say, please just be careful. Please don’t leave me alone.

I love you.

I spent all night worrying about you. Dreaming about you. I want you more than I wanted life again. I want you to know Seth can never have my soul no matter if I am his avatar because it’s not mine anymore, it's entirely yours. My heart that rots and withers beats for you. Not even to sustain this carcass I’m in, just for you.

Please don’t leave me.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t say a word less she’d risk their safety. Risk the scarab.

So she simply nodded back, and climbed out onto the slanted tiles.

drop a comment if you’d like to be added to the taglist! PERMANENT TAG LIST

@greeneyedblondie444 @liadamerondjarin @pedrosgirlx @andy-rocks @musicartmayheminmyheart @howlerwolfmax @ciarra–mae

MCU

@blackcat420

LAST KNIGHT IN SOHO TAGLIST

@shirukitsune @s-u-t

453 notes · View notes

definitelynotamhafan · 9 months

Text

Punishment (Darkness pt. 1)

“Hurting someone is easy…..But healing? You wouldn’t know about that, now would you?”

Alone. That’s what you first felt when you entered the world. When the first winds produced by the primordial goddess sent you to the Egyptian dunes scorched over by her light, when your eyes had opened for the first time, when the only thing shielding your eyes from the fiery ball of madness in the sky was the sun goddess herself.

Am-Heh, that was the name spoken in fear by many, even by Ra herself. Once a goddess which you trusted, which had suddenly banished you to the underworld.

Devourer of millions, Eater of enternity, The One in the Dark. As much as these titles swelled you with honor, as much hurt and pain they stabbed in your heart.

But now, those times of sorrow and pain are now over. Trapped in the underworld as you were, you didn’t have much to complain. You sat in your lake of fire and scorching lava, watching the bubbles blow from time to time, chatting your days away with whatever poor soul you could find, which had maybe gotten lost from the field of reeds, or escaped Osiris’s watchful eye. Your boredom however, was increasing moon by moon. And trust me, the dark confines of the land of the dead were really starting to piss you off. That was, of course, until you heard a scream.

Screams here were rare, since there were only dead people, who had nothing more to fear. Well, that was except for the newcomers who failed the weighing of the soul test. But of course, they never let out screams that loud.

You grabbed your headdress, pulling on your black shendyt, as you dried the lava off yourself. You tiptoed towards Osiris’s chambers, not knowing what the incredibly evil pea-looking bastard was up to. He wasn’t there.

I wonder why…

Your eyes gazed towards a hole in the sky, well, what you would call the sky of the underworld. There it was. After millennia of being stuck here. An exit. You crawled out, dragging your whip with you, which you managed to recover from a chest under Osiris’s bed, which hadn’t been hidden quite well.

The stars. You hadn’t seen them in ages. They looked even more beautiful than you remembered.

——— It has been at least a moon or two since you had escaped from the underworld, your betraying lover’s scorching eye searching restlessly for you each day.

“Honestly Ra, give me a break.” You mumbled to yourself, pushing back your grown out hair out of you face.

You groaned to yourself as you pulled the veil over your nose and mouth, preventing the specks of golden sand to creep where they shouldn’t be. Just as you were about to walk over to the Foreign God and complain about the poor condition of the tent which he had you in, you noticed a red haired beauty laying on his bed. If it wasn’t for red hair, you wouldn’t have recognized him in the first place, and yet….. how could you? You barely were there for Nut’s birth, let alone his.

You had only heard rumors, of course. Of the Great Seth, who Osiris was pretty much simping for. Every minute you would spend in your lava bath, casually trying to enjoy your exile as an ex-god, Osiris would strut in, waving his hips like a schoolgirl and twirling his nonexistent hair as he rambled on about how perfect Seth was. Damn. Now you could see why he was so obsessed with him. No wonder he acted like that.

Your thoughts were interrupted by a whistle from behind you, and a friendly shoulder pat.

“Well well, Am-heh. Like what you see?” The Foreign God asked.

“Shut it.” You elbowed him in the ribs. “The tent you gave me is ripped!”

“Awwwww, can’t you handle a little wind?” He teased, his hand tracing your shendyt.

“Paws off, this fine ass belongs to someone else.” You retorted. “And no. Sand has gotten in places I didn’t even know I had in the first place!”

“Alright, alright. You can sleep in my tent tonight, if you’re so insistent.” He winked suggestively.

“You smooth fucker.” You mumbled as you entered the tent, dragging the little luggage you had, only to be interrupted by a groan.

the red haired sleeping beauty was waking up, and he wasn’t exactly pleased.

“What the hell? Don’t you know how to keep quiet for at least half a-“ He stopped himself as soon as his red eyes landed on yours. They widened in horror as he realized what you were, grabbing the nearest object and throwing it in your direction, which happened to be a pillow.

You caught the pillow in one hand, effortlessly before chuckling.

“And who might you be? FG’s little boyfriend?” You teased. “What? You act like you’ve never seen a god before.”

“Y-you…..Y-You!” He stammered out. “You’re him! Am-heh!” He pointed at you, shivering.

“Relax, kid. I’m not gonna hurt you.” You chuckled, reaching to tuck out a red strand of hair which had gotten in Seth’s face.

He pulled away as if he had just been bitten by a venomous snake. He backed up against the wall, staying as far away from you as possible.

“I know about you! I read the scrolls-! And the hieroglyphs on the temple walls! And-“ he raised his voice.

“I know….I know…” you tried to calm him down, putting your hands out in a protective manner. “See? I’m harmless! I can’t do anything.” You showed him you hand, which was marked by a curse.

Its black veins molded in with your skin, the ink-like substance making your very existence a pain in the ass. The little flakes and specks of silver and gold, which had been your only map to the sky in your exile to the underworld. His Ruby red eyes stared at your open palm, his own cursed one reaching out to examine it, only to pull back away.

“I don’t trust you.” He hissed.

“I know.”

#Ennead #ennead manhwa #ennead seth #ennead mojito #egyptian mythology #egyptian gods #seth ennead #foreign god ennead #Foreign god #seth #Ra #x reader #fanfic #fanfiction #EgyptianGod!reader

208 notes · View notes

xenonmoon · 11 months

Text

The Contendings of Horus and Set (and homosexuality in Ancient Egypt)

(The image is the Chester Beatty Papyrus I, written in hieratic, containing the mentioned story)

In my last post I (affectionately) called Set "the Gay Uncle of the Egyptian Pantheon" and promised to elaborate more on it in another post.

(CW: sexuality talk, bits of violence and- lettuce. No strong language)

First, a "little" foreword on homosexuality in Ancient Egypt: this is a very complicated subject as I gathered since, well- we don't know very much about it. The few accounts that survived are either disputed or offer little information on the general attitude towards same-sex relationship outside the single case.

It's also difficult to talk about heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality in ancient times at all since the way we know them is a relatively modern concept (the word homosexuality is first attested in 1868 on a letter to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs by Karl-Maria Kertbeny) and before christianity became mainstream the biggest concerns were at best pointed towards the practices (mostly, Taking It™).

For everything else, relationships were just relationships.

The best known example of a same-sex couple were these guys, since it's likely the earliest recorded in history:

They're Khnumhotep (ẖnm.w-ḥtp(.w)) and Niankhkhnum (nj-ꜥnḫ-ẖnm.w), two royal servants and confidants who had the prestigious task to be the king's head manicurists. In their mastaba tomb in Saqqara are depicted in poses traditionally reserved for couples - like holding hands, embracing and kissing.

However, both of them had wives (Khenut and Khentikawes) and 6 children each.

Ancient Egyptians were very passionate about fertility - which is understandable considering how easily people could die any day for any reason back then. The more children you had and the more the chances that at least one of them survived to adulthood and could carry on jobs and duties.

So as long as you were a (re)productive member of society, it wasn't a big deal that you enjoyed / preferred the company of an individual of your same sex.

The big deal was, as I mentioned, Taking It™ for two main reasons:

Power dynamics. Assuming an active role during the intercourse meant at the same time asserting your dominance and/or humiliating the person on the receiving end of it

Something that I understood as "guy takes up the role of a woman during the intercourse but with none of her reproductive power" which considering how massively important being fertile was to them... well. Makes it a practice as sterile as the desert

And guess who was the god of deserts? our guy Set

(and also storm, disorder and violence to be precise)

His name was written either stš, swtḫ, swtj or stẖ depending on the time period (the Greeks just went with Seth)

He also loved eating this particular vegetable a normal amount (keep it in mind, we'll need that later):

Set was one of the children of Geb (the god of the Earth) and Nut (goddess of the sky) along with Osiris, Isis and Nephthys - who he was married to.

Osiris was king at the time and upheld the rule of ma'at (ideal natural order, fundamental concept of AE culture) along with Isis, his wife-sister.

At some point Set murdered Osiris, tore his body into pieces and scattered them all around Egypt. Reasons for this act may have been:

Osiris kicked him

Osiris had an affair with Nephthys

Isis and Nephthys in the form of either a falcon or a kite searched for all pieces and with the help of Anubis put them all together in what is considered the first mummy in Egyptian tradition. Isis uses her wings to briefly fan new life in Osiris' body and the two conceive a child, Horus.

Osiris' resurrection was not permanent and after his time was out he became ruler of the Duat (the realm of the dead), while Isis raises Horus in secret until he was old enough to come back to challenge Set for his throne.

The dispute took the form of a series of competitions (like racing with boats or fighting each other in the form of hippopotami) and legal judgement before the assembled council of gods, the Ennead.

During one of the competitions Isis tried to help her son while he was locked in combat with Set but accidentally spears Horus - he got FURIOUS and beheaded his mother. Then tried to fix it by sticking on the body a head of a cow. No one will ever notice, amright? (This gives the mythological origin of the cow horn headdress Isis sometimes is depicted wearing)

Horus repeatedly defeats Set in the various competitions and is largely favoured by the the other gods, but the head of the Ennead was Geb and Geb liked Set so they were stuck in this limbo situation of tie for years.

and then - brace yourself. Now it comes the key moment of this story.

Set and Horus have sex.

I'm serious

The details of this obviously varied from account to account (as most of myths in Ancient Egypt, it was almost expected to have different variations of it depending on the time period and place)

According to one account, it was deliberately only to humiliate him

According to another, he genuinely wanted to bang his nephew other than the act of dominance / humiliation thing, he didn't take no as an answer and got him drunk

According to another one again it was consensual, Horus agreed on condition that Set would've given him part of his strength (my fave)

But Horus was a smart birb and he either caught Set's seed with his hands (don't ask me how) or removed it in secret, so to make Set believe the act was successful. Horus tells his mom about what happened and the morning after they plan something.

Horus wanks on some lettuce and Isis serves it to a clueless Set.

Who eats it all.

The next time the Ennead were called to judgement, Set mentions having laid with Horus as a mean to demonstrate he has asserted his dominance over him so he had the right to claim the throne for himself. Horus disagrees. Geb verifies who of the two had the other's seed in his body and-

Set did.

Horus thus won the dispute

They eventually reconcile with each other and shared the lands to rule (which might have been fertile lands of the Nile to Horus and foreign deserts to Set, or one had the land and the other the sky, or the two traditional halves of the country). With this reconciliation, the dualities they represent are also reconciled into a united whole restoring order after the conflict.

(according to other accounts Geb played the bitch and gave sole reign to Horus, to other much later when Egypt was a bit in a bad place Set was utterly defeated, exiled and/or destroyed)

Funny thing is that Set actually got pregnant from the tainted lettuce and gave birth to either:

A golden disk on his forehead

Thot

Thot's moon disk (in versions where Thot is present during the dispute)

Well ancient Egyptian mythology sure is something huh

#ancient egypt #ancient egyptian lore #ancient egyptian mythology #mythology #contendings of horus and set #moon knight #set #seth #horus #osiris #q tag #sexuality #ancient egyptian sexuality #homosexuality

146 notes · View notes

platinumrosetail · 7 months

Note

Thanks for having me, I think I'm a regular customer here now.

Yandere Seth x reader.

This came to me after watching Saint Seiya if you know me.

Notice: fem Reader, a young woman who is fascinated by stories of any mythology. Spend time listening to or reading myths. One day there is an Egyptian myth that tells a sad story about how Seth, god of war and the desert, falls in love with the eldest daughter of Osiris, the goddess of dawn. She was his second marriage, however for some reason she was murdered and Seth was left alone, condemned to wait for her for eternity. The reader loved this story and it made her sad. Some time later he goes to an Egyptology museum and the area of the Egyptian gods. Each one seems strangely familiar to him just as they are: Isis, Osiris, Anubis, Nephthys, Horus. When she sees the figure or images of Seth, she feels an inexplicable feeling of great affection, which almost makes her touch a wall with the image of Seth. She ignores all that and continues walking around the place. Then, for some reason, she feels watched. What will Seth do after finally finding his love?

Context: She is the reincarnation of Seth's wife.Extra detail: she doesn't remember anything about her past life (obviously hehe) and refuses to believe Seth, even wanting to escape, if you describe their encounter.

(Sorry for putting a lot of text, I think it's to give you more details and give you an idea, but if you want to add more things that come to mind, that's fine)Once again I thank you for serving me again.

Oooooh interesting! And you’re fine 😁

Warning: noob author, female reader, yandere romantic characters, and others.

Character: Seth.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You’re a female that is mythologist that specializes in Egypt mythology along with other myths but you have more interest in Egypt’s myth as you feel a strange familiarity with it like you’ve been through it before even though you weren’t even born at the time of when gods were more out and about.

You recently found something about the god of war and another goddess; goddess of dawn to be specific, who married each other after Nephthys and Seth broken up, apparently this goddess was the daughter of Isis and Osiris, and was eldsest of their kids, the goddess and Seth both fell in love and married but a tragedy happened and the goddess died, so the god of war waited for eternity for death to reunite with his love.

You also found this strangely familiar and sad which made you go into a deep dive into finding out more about the two but there wasn’t much for some reason even the name of the goddess isn’t anywhere to be found though probably isn’t a surprise as this is all back in ancient Egypt so some things could’ve been lost, stolen, or destroyed but you’re glad that you found this as you can look for it on your trip to a Egypt museum that you had planned for some time now so hopefully you can find at least something mentioning it there.

The time for you to go on that trip to the Egypt museum has finally come once you had everything you needed and wanted to bring with you so now you’re off to your destination, not noticing the look your driver was giving you as you were to busy looking out the window and looking at your phone time to time.

You have arrived to the hotel you’ll be staying and had everything delivered to your room you’d be staying in before deciding to just walk to the museum with the things you have in your bag.

You met up with the curator of the museum who was a young man about around your age who has red hair and red eyes, you were surprised that a man around your age would be a museum curator but you didn’t judge, you felt attracted to him and somehow get the feeling he’s someone you used to know but you knew you would’ve remembered someone with that red hair and those red eyes, you decided to ignore the feeling anyway as it could’ve been from seeing him on tv or something like that.

The young man left you alone after a few words and so you were off to the mythology section of the Egyptian museum. You encountered a wall depicting Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Seth, the mysterious goddess of dawn, Horus, and Anubis. You stopped at where Seth is before gaining the feeling of wanting to put your hand on his part of the wall but decided against as you remembered that some museums if not all doesn’t allow people to touch the artifacts.

You started to get the feeling of being watched so you decided to move on to more of the sights in the museum, what you didn’t notice is that the curator had followed you and was hoping for you to touch the wall depicting Seth as that would’ve let you gain the past memories of your past life. Seth, who was previously disguised as your driver and is now disguised as the museum’s curator was opening to have you touch the wall depicting him and the others so you could have your past memories but now needs to find another way to do that as you decided to not do it in the end. Now that he has you he won’t let you go even if you now don’t feel the same and try to escape, he won’t let you not again, after all this time you won’t get murdered by your jealous father again cause he and the others are now dead because of him.

(A/n: hope you like it and what I decided to add in!! 😁 I had fun making this plus while writing this all I thought about was the movie ‘night at the museum’ lol 😂, anyway hope y’all have a wonderful day/evening/night!!)

#anime #anime x reader #various x reader #x reader stories #yandere x reader #ennead mojito #ennead x reader #ennead manhwa #ennead #ennead seth #seth ennead #x female reader #female!reader #x female y/n #x fem!reader #fem!reader

88 notes · View notes

justataurussoul · 11 months

Text

Egyptian Zodiac ✨

Like western astrology, Egyptian zodiac consists of 12 signs and they assigned certain days of the month to each sign. They named their zodiac signs after their gods and goddesses. The character of the god or goddess was believed to determine the character of a person born under a certain sign.

The Nile: January 1-7, June 19-28, September 1-7, November 18-26

Amon-Ra: January 8-21, February 1-11

Mut: January 22-31, September 8-22

Geb: February 12-29, August 20-31

Osiris: March 1-10, November 27-December 18

Isis: March 11-31, October 18-29, December 19-31

Thoth: April 1 - 19, November 8 - 17

Horus: April 20-May 7, August 12-19

Anubis: May 8-27, June 29-July 13

Seth: May 28-June 18, September 28-October 2

Bastet: July 14-28, September 23-27, October 3-17

Sekhmet: July 29-August 11,October30-November7

Will post the description of each sign in the next post ✨😅

#astrology #astro community #astro notes #astro posts #history #gods of egypt #ancient egypt #zodiac society #zodiac #horoscope #egyptian astrology #egyptian zodiac

84 notes · View notes

mask131 · 9 months

Text

Egyptian gods: Hathor

Bastet might be a very famous Egyptian goddess today, but in Ancient Egypt she was definitively not as popular as the great goddess Hathor. This goddess was so famous, so popular and so beloved that, with time, she fused with many other goddesses – for example, she shares numerous attributes and domains with her “sister” Bastet, and she also ended up absorbing inside her the figure of Wadjet. I explained before how Isis took several attributes of Hathor, but in return Hathor also took the place of Isis in many ways. In fact, during the New Kingdom, the two “universal goddesses” were depicted in identical ways, and they could only be differentiated if their name was written alongside their portrait! Finally, Hathor was considered by many to be the “appeased” side of Sekhmet, instead of Bastet. In this alternate version of the Sekhmet myth, Hathor-Sekhmet originally came from Nubia, and after the almost-genocide of humanity and the “let’s get her drunk” episode, Ra decided that Hathor would live in Egypt rather than Nubia, ordering Shu and Thoth to bring Hathor to the country and help her settle down in her sanctuary of Dendera.

Hathor is the goddess of love, dance, music, sexuality and beauty. She was the cow-goddess who appeared sometimes as a woman with cow horns (and between said horns, a solar disk), other times as a cow covered in stars, and other times as a cow-headed woman. Her celebrations were all done in frenetic dancing, incessant music and joyful laughter: her iconic musical instrument was the sistrum, that often had in its handle the carving of a woman’s face with cow ears in her honor – it was believed that through its sounds, she could keep away wicked genies. Hathor was for a good portion of Ancient Egypt’s history the wife of Horus, and thus queen of the heavens and the gods alongside him – who had one son, to complete their triad, Ihy the god of music. Every year, Egyptians celebrated a religious holiday to commemorate the “beautiful meeting” or “beautiful encounter” – the wedding of Hathor and Horus, which ensured the fertility of the land. During this celebration people sang and danced to celebrate the beauty and joyfulness of Hathor, and she was offered a LOT of alcohol – as with Bastet, that I described before, a prominent element of the cult of Hathor was to keep her drunk so that Sekhmet would not wake up. However, what is truly interesting with Hathor’s relationship to Horus is that in the beginning of the Egyptian religion, in the oldest Egyptian myths, she wasn’t at all his wife… she was his mother. This is why her name actually means “House of Horus” – it was only later that Isis took her place as Horus’ mother, and she went down one level in the family tree, becoming his wife.

Nicknamed “The Golden One”, Hathor was a goddess of fertility, of life and of motherhood. She protected women and weddings, and she was the one girls prayed to in order to find a husband. She helped women by easing the pains of the labor, and she protected the newborns by banishing away the evil spirts that could threaten them. A very common motif in Hathor’s depictions is the “seven Hathors” – Hathor was said to have seven daughters, who all looked like her and shared her name, and their role was to be present at every human’s birth, and around the baby’s cradle tell those present what they knew about the fate and destiny of the newborn. Yep, exactly like fairy godmothers in fairytales! Hathor was also a nursing figure – as a motherhood deity and a cow-goddess, Hathor was considered to be the nurse of the pharaohs themselves, not only being depicted shielding them from above with her cow body, but also letting them drink her milk to feed them her divine power.

Hathor had a secondary role to play during the endless fights between Horus and Seth. At first, during the endless trials and debates concerning Horus’s right to the throne: when some of the gods became tired of Ra’s constant siding with Seth and his dragging of the trial, a deity named Baba insulted the sun-god by claiming his sanctuaries were empty, nobody worshiped him anymore and mankind had forgotten about him. Ra left the court and the company of gods, and isolated himself to sulk. Since without Ra nothing could be going on anymore, Hathor decided to give him back his good disposition and make him return among his peers – she went to him, and suddenly lifted up her dress, showing him her genital organs. This sudden display of exhibitionism made Ra laugh out loud, and this brought back joy in his heart, convincing him to forget the insult and return to the divine court. Later, when Seth removed the eyes of Horus as a punishment for him beheading his own mother Isis, it was Hathor that healed his wound and eased his suffering, by using either gazelle’s milk, or her own cow-milk.

The reason why Hathor is sometimes depicted as a cow covered in stars is because she became a sky goddess, and thus fused with Nut, the feminine embodiment of the sky who was also said to transform into a cow from time to time. Her star-covered belly became the sky through which Ra, the Sun itself, travelled during the day, making her somehow the “creator goddess” of the world, since she literally “gave birth” to the Sun every day. Her role as a sky deity also played in her function as the “House of Horus”, since Horus was a heavenly and solar deity – so his house/wife/mother would of course be the sky in which the sun resided. Hathor was thought to be the guardian of the four cardinal directions (East, West, North, South), and when depicted as the “celestial cow”, her four hooves were placed in these four directions. This role as a “cardinal goddess” resulted in her being depicted many times as a four-part goddess, with each cardinal direction having a different “animal” or “avatar” of the goddess: the lioness-Hathor that embodied the Eye of Ra destroying the enemies of the sun (a la Sekhmet), the cow-Hathor that embodied love and rebirth, the cat-Hathor that protected homes and was the royal nurse breast-feeding baby pharaohs (a la Bastet), and the cobra-Hathor who personified beauty and youth. Later in her cult, she received a role that was until now given to the goddess Tefnut – the role of the mistress of far-away country, of the goddess of foreign lands. She was thought to be the patron of the Land of Put, of Byblos, of the Sinai… This notably tied in her title of “Lady of the Turquoises”, since she was thought to protect the miners that dug the turquoise stone out of the Sinai.

Hathor’s final role in Egyptian mythology is, without a doubt, a funeral one. This aspect of her appeared on the left rive of the Nile, between Thebes and Memphis: she became the patron of the Mountain of the Dead. Hathor was thought to stand on top of this mountain, at the frontier between the world of the living and the world of the dead, to welcome with care and compassion all the newly deceased before they entered the Underworld. It was only upon her orders that the stone of the mountain would open up, so that the deceased could begin their travels – all the while being escorted by Hathor, that fed and encouraged them all the way to the court of the dead. A dead that knew the proper prayers and incantations to convince Hathor to carry them on her cow-back would be protected from all the dangers of the Underworld. This is why she, as the “Queen of the West”, often had statues of her in the various necropolises, so as to bring safety and peace to the dead. Hathor was also thought to give back to the deceased the ability to feel a sexual desire – and the texts describe how, for the deceased to reach eternal life and thus be “reborn”, he (because of course this applies to only men here) will need to impregnate the goddess using his returned sexual power…

This all is however more tied to the Theban cult of the dead, since it was the Theban necropolis that focused a lot on the Mountain of the Dead. In other parts of Egypt, her funeral role was rather the one of the “Lady of the Sycamore Tree” – this tree that often grew at the border of the desert was thought to be where the dead rested before entering the Underworld, and the plant from which Hathor emerged to welcome the dead. Again, if the proper prayers and religious formulas are pronounced, Hathor will offer the dead bread and water, which will allow them to receive a place alongside the gods in the afterlife – because accepting the food of Hathor means being a friend of the gods, and accepting to follow them everywhere, without ever returning to the human world. Though, very interestingly, the same way Hathor has a whole fusion and confusion with other goddesses in her role of “music, dance and joy” goddess or as the “divine mother/nurse”, her funeral role as the Queen of the West is also shared (or taken over) by various other female goddesses: Nut the sky-goddess, as I mentioned, but also Maat, Neith, or Imentet. But of all these goddesses, Hathor represented the best the idea of the renewal of life, of finding back hope and joy after death, of pleasure and beauty being given back to the one that lost their body and was about to travel a world filled with demons and monsters.

Some final notes. When the Ancient Greeks decided to make correspondences between Egyptian and Greek gods, they decided that Hathor was the Egyptian Aphrodite. The current temple of Hathor in Dendera we see today was actually built by the last Ptolemaic pharaohs, and seems to date from the Roman era of Egypt – but, according to the text, the place the temple was built on has been a sanctuary of Hathor for a much older time than that. Indeed, the temple we see today was apparently built according to plans and architectural indications that date back to the Old Kingdom, under the rules of Cheops and Pepi the First. And a last trivia: Hathor is considered to be one of the oldest Egyptian goddesses we know of, since her name appears in the oldest text in the history of Egypt (at least at the time of my sources) – the Narmer Tablet, a document that describes how the two kingdoms of Egypt (Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt) were united by Narmer, first pharaoh of the first dynasty. Hathor appears on this text as the patron-goddess, protectress and mother-figure above the pharaoh – which makes sense since, if you recall, in these early times Hathor was seen as the mother of Horus (more specifically of Horus the Young, Horus the Child), and thus, since the pharaoh was Horus embodied as a human, Hathor was the pharaoh’s mother.

#egyptian goddess #egyptian gods #hathor #egyptian mythology

65 notes · View notes

god-of-my-world · 1 year

Text

Everything you need to know about Hello Charlotte: Delirium!

I played delirium ages ago and, between the short length and non-canonical status, forgot about it :( It definitely has less to offer than the other main games in the series, but there is absolutely some worthwhile stuff in it.

Firstly: Delirium was released in 2017, right between ep2 and ep3. It does not exist within the main timeline, and is instead an AU, where Seth (and puppeteers as a whole) does not exist. It takes place shortly after the events of ep1, and follows a Charlotte who lacks her usual morality and kindness.

Just like the first game, this one is a little tricky to analyze in the main continuity because of it’s AU status. However, looking at the time it was released, it’s safe to assume ep3 was in development and that this is at least mostly in-line with the world and mechanics of ep3 and all it entails (in regards to Charles, mother, etc etc)

I’ll point out the most important takeaways here, but keep an eye out for future posts where I will comment on some specific lines/screenshots :)

As far as we can tell, all of the same rules of the House apply in this world. While it’s never specified, I would read this as a random channel, spotlighting one of the many Charlottes made by Mother. She’s likely a defective vessel, like Q84, and for that reason doesn’t have a puppeteer.

She probably also doesn’t have the parasite, as she (again, like q84) shows no inclination to fit the expected proper behavior. (Once again, a lot of speculation. Sadly, that's the brunt of what I’ll have to say on this game.)

What we do know is that:

the tenants exist (unlike in ep2, where Scarlotte made them into delusions) and Charlotte is on good terms with them.

Charlotte has the oracle, and unlike Scarlotte, does not seem to have trouble using its power.

Charlotte has the best relationship with Anri (they’re dating!) and interestingly, Anri’s design is the most different from her true realm design, even though the other characters look relatively the same.

Charlotte has some level of self-awareness in regards to Scarlett, the endless/repeating nature of the House and the “god of this world”. more on this later.

As mentioned above that Charlotte has the Oracle’s power, she uses this to transport to “another world”. For now, I would picture this as a different channel, like the ones Charlotte goes through in the first episode.

Charlotte is either functionally or completely immortal. She shows no averse reaction to both being experimented on by the workers, nor by losing her hand, which immediately grows back. (It’s interesting that she heals rather than switching to new bodies like Q84, but I don’t know if that actually has any significance.) I assume she can’t die until her story in “finished”.

We have a new character to the series, in Osiris. He doesn’t appear in any other game (due to Charlotte finding him in in the new world) and liek many other characters, has a symbolic name. Osiris is the Egyptian god of the underworld. I currently haven’t found any significance for the choice of name except that at the end of the game he controls and destroys the mechanical network, reminiscent of a reaper-like figure.

This Charlotte cannot rewind- most likely due to the absence of Seth, but it also raises questions as to whether or not she has a soul cube. In it’s place as the save file is “memory”. This probably ties to the earlier point about her immortality!

Like most of ane’s games, it dips into commentary about consumption, technology, and capitalism. This game the most out of the three brings technology into the discussion, especially with Osiris who is an AI and the constant presence of Binary as the main language in the other world. This is definitely a concept that will earn a post of it’s own, but the world constant unsuccessful attempts at creating life that ends up being little more than moving meat is definitely connected to an important theme of HC; creation, godhood, and the meaning of sentience and souls. (Think about Felix, Vincent, basically everything in the house.)

Sadly, I couldn’t find any more books in delirium to add to my list, but it was worth the replay. I recommend giving it a go! It’s pay-what-you-want on itch.io!!

#hello charlotte #charlotte wiltshire #hc delirium #hc #meta

70 notes · View notes

lgbtqmanga · 5 months

Text

New Releases Nov. 21, 2023

Anti-Romance vol. 2 by Shoko Hidaka

FINAL VOLUME

Suou and Ryou have been friends since childhood. The hairstylist and writer have lived together for six years now and, though they definitely aren’t dating, their close relationship is hard to define. Will they ever move beyond the nebulous territory of “more than friends” or will they keep living in a stalemate forever?

Delinquent Daddy and Tender Teacher vol. 2: Basking in Sunlight by Tama Mizuki

In high school, studious Hitsuji had a secret crush on one of his guy friends--a friendly delinquent named Hatoyama--but never confessed. Years later, Hitsuji is a slightly anxious but responsible adult who found his calling as an elementary school teacher. One of his young students is upset with a sloppy and nonconformist dad--who turns out to be Hatoyama! When Hitsuji learns that Hatoyama is struggling to raise his son as a single parent, Hitsuji helps him out, first as a teacher and then as a friend who can teach Hatoyama how to clean his home and cook actual vegetables. As the men grow closer, some of Hitsuji's anxieties begin to melt around the welcoming (and grateful) Hatoyama. What will become of the feelings Hitsuji used to harbor for his first love?

Ennead vol. 1 by Mojito

The full-color Boys’ Love webtoon/comic hit inspired by ancient Egyptian mythology!

Nine powerful gods of ancient Egypt form the Ennead. When the god of war, Seth, kills his brother Osiris and takes over Egypt, he ushers in an era of chaos and cruelty. Centuries later, a new challenger appears: Horus, the child of Isis. Horus is not yet a full god, but he has the support of other deities to dethrone Seth. The conflict between Seth and Horus that begins as a series of trials warps into a complex web of deceit, obsession…and desire.

This hit Boys’ Love webtoon–a dramatic fantasy epic–is a reimagining of one of the oldest myths in human civilization. Already available in multiple languages to fans around the world, this is the very first time the graphic novel series will be printed in English, presented in beautiful full-color editions in an oversized trim! Seven Seas will release two versions of the series, which were originally drawn for different audiences: a paperback version rated Older Teen, and a deluxe hardcover version rated Mature. (Each version is standalone but has alternate depictions of some adult material.)

Kase-san and Yamada vol. 3 by Hiromi Takashima

After the events of the first five Kase-san and… manga volumes, Kase-san and Yamada are now university students. Yamada’s working diligently in her horticulture program, while Kase-san is training hard at her university. There might be a long train ride between their schools and hectic new schedules to plan around, but they’ll always make time for each other!

Kiss the Scars of the Girls vol. 1 by Aya Haruhana

Deep within a dense forest stands an academy for girls, whose students share a secret—they’re all vampires. To learn to hunt without attracting human attention, the maidens forge bloody bonds of sisterhood, but what fate will their ties bring…?

School Zone Girls vol. 5 features story and art by Ningiyau

Rei and Kei’s “friendship” is evolving at last. Could they really, finally be taking the first steps forward in their relationship? And they aren’t the only ones! Everyone in their eclectic group of friends seems to be leveling up their relationships. When the sky is falling, you know the School Zone Girls are falling in love!

Shonen Note: Boy Soprano vol. 6 features story and art by Yuhki Kamatani

Vladimir’s voice has begun to change, and he is losing the ability to sing in the soprano style he so loves. Anatoly takes him to Kawami in the hopes that Yutaka can help him. Meanwhile, the residents of Kawami are troubled to find their city has approved the construction of an industrial waste disposal facility...

The Two of Them Are Pretty Much Like This vol. 4 by Takashi Ikeda

FINAL VOLUME

Thirty-year-old Eri and twenty-year-old Wako are "roommates." Eri is a professional writer, and Wako's a voice actor who's building up her reel. Having worked together and now living together, these two women in love have a nice little life for themselves! Follow this comfortable couple in a heartwarming manga tale about the everyday humor, stressors, and joys of a life shared together.

You Can Have My Back vol. 2 (novel) by Minami Kotsuna and Hitomi Hitoyo

Leorino, the fourth son of a margrave, retains the memories from his past life as the knight Ionia and love for Prince Gravis. Leorino is unaware that he has come under the prince’s protection. Prince Gravis’ decision results in backlash against Leorino, and interaction with a jealous colleague ends in Leorino falling down a flight of stairs.  

#new releases #manga #queer manga #lgbt manga #light novels

9 notes · View notes

stevenspector · 1 year

Text

Happy Moon Knight Thursday! Did y'all like episode 4? I sure did! I especially liked that Steven got to use his knowledge for Egyptian history and mythology! And that we got to see so many cool details and nods to said history and mythology! Which, of course, led me to do another deep dive and research into topics. Have fun with more Moon Knight rambles about the details in episode 4

Starting with: "The Eyes of Horus"

First off, this scene begs the question of just how many times Steven has drawn the eye? Because his movements were smooth and that eye looked great. Now onto the eye of Horus. It stems from the conflict between Horus and his uncle Seth who were rivalling about who would be the successor to the title of "King of Gods" after Seth killed the former King, Osiris; his brother and Horus’ father. It’s one of my favourite stories and I could get into all of it, but I won’t. I'll just say that it’s both very interesting and very entertaining. During their conflict, they had a fight in which Seth took out Horus’ eyes in order to defeat him and make him unable to take the title. Now, this is where it gets interesting for the plot. Horus gets his eyes back with the help of another deity. Who that is tho is up for different interpretations and retellings of the story. Some say it was Hathor who healed him and gave him another pair of eyes. That would be a cool connection since we have met Hathors avatar! And they helped Marc and Khonshu previously. Other retellings on the other hand have Thoth replace his eyes. Thoth himself is known to be associated with the moon which would fit with, well, Moon Knight. We also see an ibis statue in the tomb later on, next to the sarcophagus, which could potentially represent Thoth as well since he is often depicted with an ibis head. In general, the eye of Horus itself represents healing and regenerative properties which is why it was chosen for the shape of the tomb, as Steven states. Additionally, the eye is connected to the moon as well. It is said that one of his eyes represents the moon and the other the sun. So we have another nod to the moon (knight). If you wanna get a nice rundown of the story, I can recommend The History of Egypt Podcast

Secondly: "The Heka Priests and a God™"

Heka was the god of magic and medicine. His most devoted followers often were doctors. In the scene were the Heka priests are introduced however, we also see this drawing on the wall. There’s another god next to them and yes, i did look into who that could be for WAY too long. My conclusion is that it could be Khnum. The only thing not fitting is him being depicted with a disc above his head, yet everything else matches up. Khnum is the god of cataracts, pottery and creativity, but he started out as the guardian of the source of the Nile River. Fun Fact perhaps: The full name of Khufu, a pharao of the fourth dynasty, who commissioned the Great Pyramid of Giza (or at least is widely accepted to have done that) is Khnum-Khufwy or "Khnum is my Protector". Do with that info what you will. And lastly: "The Tomb of Alexander the Great"

In general, I really loved the tomb scene. For one, because of how excited Steven is to see all the relics and then he also finds out it’s the lost tomb of Alexander the Great? That's an interesting twist! Another fun fact perhaps: the tomb and dig site in the show are in the Siwa-Desert which is also where Alexander’s tomb was supposedly found. Egyptian officials claimed to have identified his tomb at the Siwa Oasis in 2021. But from what i’ve read it’s not actually completely confirmed. Alexander having been Ammit’s avatar could even make sense if you look at his life and “accomplishments”. He started and fought many battles and wars, conquered many lands, killed many people and believed he was in the right to do so. It would fit in with what Harrow wants to do. Which is to kill people for a cause he believes to be good and righteous.

So in conclusion: I love Moon Knight and it's details

#moon knight #moon knight rambles #more moon knight rambles #mcu moon knight #so many thoughts #marvel moon knight #moon knight 2022 #moon knight series #i love steven grant so much #steven grant #moon knight thursday #moon knight thoughts

28 notes · View notes

blueiskewl · 1 year

Photo

Underground Tunnel Found Beneath Egyptian Temple May Lead to Cleopatra

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities have announced the incredible discovery of a rock-cut tunnel deep below ground in the area of the Taposiris Magna Temple, west of Alexandria in Egypt. The massive tunnel, which has been described as a ‘geometric miracle’ stretches over 1,300 meters (4,265 feet). The area has been under investigation in the search for the long-lost tomb of Queen Cleopatra .

The tunnel was discovered 13 meters (43 feet) underground by the Egyptian Dominican archaeological mission of the University of San Domingo, headed by Dr. Kathleen Martinez. During the excavations and archaeological survey of the tunnel a number of ceramic vessels and pots were found under mud sediment, as well as a rectangular block of limestone. Two heads made of alabaster were also found near the temple, one of which dates to the Ptolemaic period.

Part of the tunnel was found to be submerged underwater and this supports the theory that foundations of the Taposiris Magna Temple are also underwater. At least 23 earthquakes hit the Egyptian coast between 320 and 1303 AD, which would explain the collapse and submergence of part of the Taposiris Magna Temple.

The architectural design of the newly discovered tunnel resembles the magnificent Tunnel of Eupalinos on the Greek Island of Samos, which is considered one of the most important engineering achievements of the Classical world.

Taposiris Magna, The Great Tomb of Osiris

Taposiris Magna, which is a name meaning “great tomb of Osiris”, is an ancient city established by the pharaoh Ptolemy II between 280 and 270 BC. After Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BC and established Alexandria, the city of Taposiris Magna became a center for the religious festival of Khoiak. The Khoiak festival revolves around the legend of the god Osiris, who was murdered by his brother Seth, and revived by his sister-wife Isis, who conceived their son Horus.

The temple at Taposiris Magna was dedicated to Osiris, who was worshipped by Greek leaders in Egypt who honored the old traditions.

The Final Resting Place of Cleopatra?

For the past 14 years, Dr. Kathleen Martínez has been the head of excavations at Taposiris Magna. The discoveries made during that time have made her more and more certain that she is close to the long-lost tomb of Cleopatra VII and her lover Mark Antony . The famous ancient Egyptian queen’s proposed ties to the site has brought it to international headlines as new and intriguing finds and documentaries are made about the site every few years.

There have been many notable discoveries during the excavations. For example, in 2010, a huge headless granite statue of a Ptolemaic king was unearthed. Dr. Zahi Hawass believes that it probably belonged to Ptolemy IV and was dedicated to the god Osiris, stressing the link between the ancient site and the well-known ancient Egyptian god. Martinez said that the excavations have also found a beautiful statue head of Cleopatra, along with 22 coins bearing her image.

Behind the temple, a necropolis was discovered, containing many Greco-Roman style mummies who were buried with their faces turned towards the temple. This means it is likely the temple contained the burial of a significant royal personality, like Cleopatra.

Could the newly found underground tunnel lead archaeologists closer towards the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Antony? Only time will tell!

By Joanna Gillan.

#Underground Tunnel Found Beneath Egyptian Temple May Lead to Cleopatra #Taposiris Magna Temple #Dr. Kathleen Martinez #Taposiris Magna #The Great Tomb of Osiris #Mark Anthony #archeology #archeolgst #ancient artifacts #history #history news #ancient history #ancient civilizations #ancient egypt #egyptian history

56 notes · View notes

blackrainbowblade · 6 months

Text

THE POWER OF PAIRS

One of the grounding principles of Ancient Egyptian thought was the idea of dualities. They conceived of the world existing as a series of complementary or, at times, opposing pairs. Even Egypt itself was known as the Two Lands (Tawy), which can refer to both the duality of Upper (southern) and Lower (northern) Egypt, and to the duality of the black land (Kemet - the fertile land around the Nile and delta) and the red land (desheret - the desert). The known world was made up of earth and sky (personified in the gods, Geb and Nut). Even the next life had a dual existence, sometimes described in celestial terms as an assent to the sky, and sometimes depicted as a journey through a chthonic underworld. Symmetry and complementarity pervades Egyptian art.

To the Egyptians, time itself was a duality. It did not exist in a linear fashion, which is how we often conceive of it, but instead, there were two kinds of time: eternity (djet) and perpetuity (enheh or neheh). 'Eternity' was considered a kind of stasis. It was the time in which stone monuments existed, static and unchanging. Of the two ideas, djet, is perhaps closer to our modern one, a continuing existence, stretching off towards forever. In contrast, enheh is cyclical time. It is time that repeats, yearly, monthly or even daily. The epitome of cyclical time is the cycle of the sun, its rising and setting every day. The repeated cycle of the seasons is also part of enheh.

It's understandably hard to get our heads around this. One way of looking at is is that the fact that we have such things as days or years, these are unchanging facts; they exist in djet time. But the individual events, the sunrises and sunsets, winters and springs, these exist in enheh time. Enheh sees constant change, death and rebirth. Djet, in contrast, is eternally unchanging.

This painting, in the tomb of Horemheb, shows Ra (in the form of Khepri, the scarab beetle) sitting back to back with his counterpart, Osiris. These two gods personify the dual aspects of time. Ra-Khepri represents enheh: he is the sun, constantly circling, always moving and always changing. (Even the name, Khepri, means 'becoming'). He is the king of the living world, which, simply by being alive, is caught in the cycle of life and death. Osiris represents djet: he is a good who was murdered and, in death, he became eternal and unchanging; he is the king of the dead.

When pairs with opposing characteristics, like this, are brought together, they represent completeness. Egypt's myths are defined by themes of separation and return. After his father's death, Horus is exiled to the wilderness; harmony is only returned to the world after he himself returns, claims his birthright and unites the Two Lands. In the myth of Sekhmet, chaos reigns when she leaves behind her father, Ra, and roams about the world, slaughtering mankind. Harmony is restored when she returns to her father. In the Book of the Dead, the journey of the sun is characterised as one full of hazards, where he daily risks his boat being run ashore on a sandbank or being consumed by the serpent, Apophis, in the western horizon. When Ra returns to the western horizon and, in the night, is united with Osiris, he is at last rejuvenated and reborn again.

Separation and union.

Separation and union were at the centre of Egyptian consciousness. In so many temples, you will see the symbol of unification. Here it is shown centrally with the cartouche of Ramesses above. It is usually flanked by a pair of gods. Here, both gods are Hapi, the personification of the Nile, but elsewhere, you will often see Horus juxtaposed with Seth. Such scenes reference an end to their fighting and the restoration of justice and stability to Egypt. In other versions of the motif, Thoth stands in for Seth. Thoth was a 'safe' option, since Seth was, at times, considered too dangerous a deity to depict. However, Thoth also forms a complementary pair with Horus because Thoth is a moon-god and Horus, a sun-god.

The idea at the heart of all these depictions is the union of opposing forces, resulting in the restoration of order and harmony (in Egyptian, 'maat').

#Egypt #egyptology #egyptian pharaoh #egyptian #ancient history #ancient egypt #pharaoh #Ra #Osiris #Khepri #Hapi #Kemet #Kemetic #Kemeticism #valley of the kings #Luxor temple #egyptian temple #tutankhamun #Ankhesenamun

7 notes · View notes

januaryembrs · 10 months

Text

LAST KNIGHT IN SOHO | Steven Grant/Marc Spector x Reader [3]

description: With Marc and Steven captured by Harrow's men, Layla has no choice but to work with her ex-husbands mistress to get them and the scarab to safety. But things take a turn when Seth comes to reap his reward. word count: 9.4k trigger warnings: GORE, blood, Dove absolutely wrecks the jackals I won't lie. Very explicit imagery used for their deaths. Swearing. Layla thinks Dove is the mistress and is angry, talks of dove not owning her body anymore, talks of having bodily autonomy taken away. Quick hint at Dove's dark past. main masterlist | series masterlist

authors note: I hate writing action scenes so if this seems rushed or bad I'm sorry, action is not my strongest point!

Please reblog and comment for your authors!

She watched as Steven was led in cuffs to the black BMW that gave away no hint at being a real police car, eager to scramble back into his apartment from off the moss covered rooftop that had her second death of the week written all over it.

Layla was quick to hop back inside behind her, nearly shoving her out the way to get to her backpack.

“They wouldn’t kill him, would they? Marc said-” The younger woman started, trailing after Layla like a lost dog. This was way out of her depth. The way Marc had described it made it seem like he had it under control. About as under control as Egyptian Gods and resurrecting dead people goes, that is. He had said nothing about his ex-wife showing up or Steven being taken hostage by police impersonators.

Layla stopped at the sound of her husband’s name leaving the girl’s lips.

“Mention Marc one more time and you are walking to wherever Harrow is taking him, you hear me?” Layla seethed, looking at her with eyes cold as ice despite being a beautiful, warm brown.

Dove choked on her words for a moment, swallowing whatever she was going to come back with and instead choosing to nod once.

“Yes- Sorry-”

“Good,” The woman hissed, turning on her heel and heading for the front door. “And remember what I said about talking,”

“Gotcha- right,” She stammered in reply. Layla was more intimidating than Marc had been, more than Donna even. He was annoyed when they’d spoken, sure. Cold? Absolutely. But to Layla, she was actively a pest. A bug. A rodent that had crawled into her marriage bed and weaselled her way into her husband’s life. Which wasn’t true of course. But she understood that Layla had more than enough reason to be upset with her.

Heading after the woman, hot on her heels, she bit her tongue the entire minute they spent in the elevator, neither of them willing to start a conversation with the other. Whether it be pride (Layla) or sheer wanting to avoid getting punched in the stomach (Dove), the two women stayed silent until the metal box dinged and released them from the horribly tense atmosphere.

Layla set off for her moped that she’d parked on the road, unlatching the red leather seat upwards to reveal a spare helmet in the cubby. Shoving the smooth, maroon hard hat into the younger woman’s arms, Layla strapped her own onto her head and swung a leg over the caboose.

Dove followed suit, hopping onto the back, her arms faltering slightly as she looked for some kind of handle to hold onto.

“What now?” The driver’s annoyed voice snapped as she caught on to the fussing from behind her.

“Where do I put my arms?” Said a quiet tone, hating the helplessness in her voice yet the embarrassment was too much for her to have asked otherwise. Layla rolled her eyes, grabbing the woman’s hands and bringing them around her waist.

“Just hold on,” She ordered, a hum of energy blasting into the engine as she kicked off the curb and set off. The motor jumped to life, and the two women were speeding after the fraudulent fed car in no time. She clutched onto the front woman for dear life; she had always hated amusement park rides, and she was sure Layla was at least somewhat tempted to stage an accident with the way their morning had gone.

“I’m really not sleeping with Marc, you know,” She braved to speak, gripping tighter in fear the single comment would tip her counterpart over the edge.

“What did I say about-”

“I know! I know!” She called, loud enough for Layla to hear her over the bustle of London traffic, “I just wanted you to believe me. You’re more than right to be unhappy with him. Truth be told, the one time I’ve met him, he’s not exactly been a charmer.”

That seemed to perk up his ex wife’s ears. “You’ve only met once?”

“Yes. Like I said, I work with Steven at the museum. I only met Marc this morning when he told me-” She cut herself off, unsure of just how much he would want Layla knowing. How much she already knew. She didn’t even know he had a dissociative disorder, it wouldn’t be wrong for her to assume his wife wasn’t privy to other things too.

Maybe that was why they were divorcing? But that was none of her business.

“Told you what?” Layla pushed, which only caused the girl at the rear to sigh heavily. Layla didn’t need to know much. And besides, it was her burden to bear now, not Marc’s. She could tell her if she wished. Hell, perhaps Layla could even help her seeing as she already knew so much about the scarab.

“He told me,” She paused, coming to terms with how insane she was about to sound if Layla didn’t know much about her husband’s second, well third, life. “He said I died being chased by one of Harrow’s jackals, and the only way for him to save me was to give my body up to Setekh in exchange for becoming his avatar,”

Layla was quiet for a moment, the car Steven was in not too far ahead of them as she hung back to avoid suspicion.

And then, after a few seconds, she laughed.

Loud and bitter, but laughed at her nonetheless.

“I just told you I fucking died, and you’re laughing?” Her passenger asked, aghast, which only made Layla laugh again. “Well, fuck you too,”

“No, sorry, it’s just,” The woman shook her head, taking a semi sharp right in order to stay on their tail, “Trust Marc to meddle in someone’s life and end up keeping her around because he feels guilty,”

Her face warmed. So Layla really did know her husband then.

“His meddling saved my life,” She tried to protest, the image of Marc’s eyes softening slightly when she’d grabbed his hand that same morning flashing in her mind. Without Marc, she wouldn’t be here. She tried to pretend the idea he was only keeping her around because he felt responsible for her now didn’t sting.

At least Steven wanted her around. For now, that is.

“Did it?” Layla asked, all remnants of humour gone, replaced with a cold seriousness. Not mean like she had been all day, moreso a sobering tone of reality, “My father told me every story there was about Seth.”

“He’s a historian?” Dove asked, curiosity winning over her bitterness that the woman had laughed at her. She thought now maybe it was out of disbelief, maybe even pessimism at hearing the nefarious god’s name.

“No, an archeologist,” Layla replied, “He said Setekh was once worshipped as a way of protecting crops and villages from the storms he created. He said it was thought because he was the god of foreigners he was responsible for all the oppressors attacking the people. He became the one who caused all the bloodshed, the evil, the barbarity. Every bit of chaos and violence was down to his hand,” The woman said, speaking with a passion for her country it was clear she had lived, slept and breathed everything her father taught her, “It was said while Anubis was the first God of the Dead, Osiris took the role during the later centuries. And when his brother, Seth, slaughtered him and scattered him in pieces around the world, he took on the title of God of the Dead,”

“Glad I’m not invited to that family reunion, then,” The other girl muttered from her place at the rear of the bike. Layla smirked to herself, not willing to let the younger woman know she’d drawn a small smile from her.

“They were always at each other's throats. And when they weren’t, they were usually marrying their sisters.” To which Dove recoiled in horror. The BMW started slowing down ahead of them, which they were both quick to notice as it took a right hand turn into a less populated area. The sky had been quick to overcast shadows, the April air turning cold and darker fast. As if someone up there knew what was coming.

“Lovely,” She mused, “Well, my family doesn’t talk to me anymore so I’m sure we’ll be okay as far as incest marriages go,”

Layla’s expression faltered. She hadn’t expected the quiet mouse of a girl to drop something so heavy, yet it was clear from her widened gaze she didn’t quite mean to say that so bluntly. To set off such a bomb on their already awkward ride. The striking woman wheeled up onto a curb around the corner from the narrow street the car had pulled into, trying to avoid the gazes of the few people they saw communing there.

Cutting the engine and hopping off the seat, Layla held the bike steady as the other woman did the same, all but falling off the back of the moped with a newborn fawn-like grace.

The two women looked at one another, the younger one handing the helmet over sheepishly. “Look, I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot,” Dove murmured, unable to quite meet the beautiful woman’s eyes, Layla’s lips neither drawn into a sneer nor a smile. More a mix between pity and as if she were still weighing up the girl who picked at the loose skin around her nails anxiously.

“It’s alright,” Layla said with a long huff, swinging her bag over her shoulder, “Marc tends to leave people to deal with the shit he gets them into,”

The girl bit her tongue, pleased that she didn’t seem to be on Layla’s hit list anymore. They had bigger things to worry about now, like the fact Steven was essentially kidnapped or that they had yet to find somewhere to keep the scarab hidden.

She felt it burning in her pocket, as if it were buzzing with the glory of being what everyone had their sights set on; of being such a harbinger of trouble.

“Maybe so,” She said, handing the jewelled bug over to Layla to keep it safe, “But trusting him is the only hope I’ve got right now. Marc said Seth will be coming for me any day now,”

Layla looked at her for a moment, dark eyes raking over her forlorn figure some few years younger than her. The girl's eyes were soft, new to the world and the shit storm that was about to hit her, but her hands were what gave away her condition. The slightest touch of her fingers to her own where she handed her the scarab and Layla was able to feel just how cold her skin had become. Dead. Corpse like. As if the life truly had been drained out of her ten times over.

She wondered how her younger accomplice would fare as an avatar. Though Layla had swore that once those papers were signed this was not her fight anymore, she couldn’t help worrying just how badly her ex had seemed to mess up this young girl’s life in the space of one evening.

Seth was not a god you wanted to upset. Nor was he one you wanted to be of interest to. If everything that Abdallah El-Faouly had told his sweet daughter was correct, then that girl, barely mid twenties as she was, was in for a lifetime of torment and pain.

“Well, if that’s true, I hate to be the one to tell you to run and hide as soon as you can,” Layla said, her voice empty of emotion but her eyes genuine, “If Seth is the one looking for you, I can guarantee you’ll wish Marc had left you for the jackals,”

“Where is the scarab?” Harrow and his followers cornered Steven, still as lost and dazed as he had been all day. He just hoped that wherever Dove was, she was safe and far away from this mess that his other self had dragged her into.

“We have it.” Steven’s head whipped around at the sound of Layla’s voice, clear and commanding and filling the abandoned building.

And sure enough, his sweet friend stood next to her, eyes wide and clearly thrown off by the El-Faouly woman’s plan to draw attention to them.

“What the hell are you doing?” She whisper-yelled as the two women trailed through the crowd of Ammit’s followers, both of them watching carefully for anyone getting ready to attack them.

“I’m drawing their attention, Marc will deal with them easily,” Layla replied under her breath as they neared the two men in the centre of the room. It seemed Harrow and his followers had renovated some kind of church or antique building to become a communal hall. Community food lay out on tables around, a projector playing an old documentary on the dusty wall.

Harrow’s followers didn’t seem to have anything particularly off about them. In fact, they seemed like regular citizens you would see around the streets of London. Nothing about them screamed evil, yet that only served to make them more menacing. They could be anyone, anywhere.

Dove knew all too well villains and monsters didn’t look like Ancient Egyptian mummies or jackals. They looked like regular people, like the man sitting next to you on the train. Like your family friend. Like your milkman. Or your school teacher. Or the shop clerk. Or young, female gift-shoppists that had a hopeless crush on their seemingly married co-worker.

It didn’t matter who they were, what they looked like, they were tainted to their core.

“That’s a great plan, except he’s not Marc, he’s Steven,” The young girl hissed, as Harrow stared at her with a smug twinkle in his eye, holding out his rough hand to Layla.

“You couldn’t possibly understand the value of what you’re holding. Let me have that, I’ll keep it safe,” Harrow asked calmly, though it was clear with the way his focus trained on the jewel that he wasn’t quite so relaxed as he was making believe.

He was clever with his words, manipulative. Making himself seem honest and responsible to anyone who didn’t understand the scarab. But Layla did. She wasn’t like the ordinary woman Harrow took her for. She was smart beyond belief, and knew more about the legends than Arthur could ever learn from seeing into people’s souls.

“Summon the suit,” Layla ordered under her breath as they reached Steven’s shaken figure. Her almond eyes scoured around the building for the nearest way out as her younger accomplice shook her head in despair and picked at her nails with furrowed brows.

“Sorry what?” Steven asked, just as Dove had suspected. He had no clue what any of this meant.

Layla’s brown gaze cut to his, chagrin mixed with a hint of fear boiling up in her expression. “Summon the suit,” She said again, stepping closer to the man who gawked at her with a lost look.

“‘Summon the soup’? What are you saying?”

“The suit,” She said again, shoving the scarab into his chest, before turning to where Harrow was reaching for his staff. “And keep this safe,”

“So be it,” Harrow said tiredly. Deciding they were in too thick to continue this little joke of Marc’s, she reached behind her for the younger woman, dragging her towards the only available exit she saw.

Layla’s frantic brain caught sight of a flight of stairs that led to the first floor: a wide ledge that overlooked the rest of the room and had tiny archways where passageways wove into the sandstone walls, scaffolding and more of the plastic tarp scattered over and around the steps.

A quick loop around the top of the stairs took them to a second set of steps that led only to an upper ledge and a large arched hallway with natural light coming from the end of it. A fire escape maybe? An open window? Bingo.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” Layla hurried, grabbing Steven on the way as one of the men lunged at her. She was quick to rip his hand off her arm, shoving him into a table so hard he went tumbling over the edge and knocking into another of his men.

Forcing Dove ahead of her, Layla directed the young girl towards the first flight of stairs, ducking around the scaffolding that lead to the first floor seemingly still mid-renovation. Steven trailed behind them quickly with a gasp as he dodged another of Harrow’s men.

Practically swinging around the railing on one hand, Dove felt her tired legs ache as she ascended quickly, the only thing keeping her from stopping being the two people behind her breathing down her neck, relying on her to keep going. The temporary staircase wobbled for a moment as the floor shook, small chunks of brick crumbling free from the delicate wall at the movement. A flash of amethyst purple light reflected around the building, filling the space with something odd; something tense that crawled up her spine, like a foreboding that cut her right through her gut.

Reaching the first level, she was quick to stop in her tracks as a man ducked out from one of the tiny corridors woven into the stone walls, and lunged for her. She felt Layla dart behind her and start scaling the second flight of stairs to the open door that hopefully spelled freedom. The man was quick enough to grab her wrists, but Steven's arm was swiftly wrapped around her waist, holding her from being thrown off the edge of the barrierless ledge.

She kicked at the man a few times, desperate for him to let her go. That is until she got one of her hands free and was able to grab him by the collar of his coat.

Remembering how tightly she had been able to grip Marc’s arm that morning, she found it unnaturally easy enough to lift the man a solid few inches off the ground, the stitches of his clothes ready to give way at his body weight. The menacing look on his face dropped when he realised with a cold slap to the face that no amount of holding onto her arms could do anything seeing as she had him scruffed and held like a little dog that was misbehaving.

He let out a sharp squeal as she threw him with ease over the edge and down the ten foot drop, not enough to kill but enough to hear a loud crack from his ribs and legs.

“How on earth did you do that?” Steven asked, his baffled breath rolling over her neck in a way that had her stomach churning up a storm. His arm still held her tight to him as he guided her the way Layla had taken off to, the warmth of his hand alone seeping through her top and onto her bare skin underneath that was still as cold as a cadaver.

His touch gave her a taste of life again, of humanity. Like she didn’t exist again in this world until he touched her. As if his hand alone could find her in the afterlife and pluck her back to mortality.

Which technically he had.

“Come on,” She brushed off his question, urging him towards where Layla was now pummeling the shit out of another assailant that had tried to make a grab for her. She made equally quick work of the attacker, shoving him off the same way the other woman had and sending him flying off the building frame and into a pile of wood that cracked easily with his weight.

Grabbing both their arms, Layla led the two stunned watchers through the open archway that luckily expanded into a long corridor. Tarp lay around the bottom of the huge windows, moonlight filtering in through the surprisingly clear glass panes being the only thing allowing them to see their way.

The three sets of footsteps pounded down the stone hallway, Harrow’s chants chasing them through an echo, spoken in Coptic the younger woman had surmised. It seemed her degree in Ancient Languages wasn’t entirely a waste. She was able to grasp at bits and pieces of what he was saying despite the rushing of blood in her ears from her running.

Something about Ammit’s wrath, eradicating enemies. Calling on the ancient goddess to help him carry out her justice.

Then came the shriek. Familiar at this point, the vengeful growl that reverberated down the hall and harmonising with Harrow’s hex.

Summoning pure evil. She caught that part easily as they skidded around the corner awaiting them at the end of the hallway, coming to a set of huge, varnished wood doors. She threw her shoulder into the left one, hearing it give a small creak of protest before it gave way and slowly swung open.

Her heart dropped as she quickly realised they were at a dead end. It felt almost de ja vu like as they entered the room, her eyes frantic to take in any way out as Layla and Steven rushed to block the entrance off. A thick, brick wall complete with an old fireplace on the right, and two huge windows in front and to her left. By all means it was a beautiful room, but it was an enclosure. A trap. A casket.

“Here. Bolt the door,” Layla ordered, heaving a metal bar through the handles to give them some sort of protection of whatever it was Harrow was conjuring.

More tarp over the floors and piles of bricks, dust and building tools, the windows reaching higher than even the ceiling to the museum. Sarcophaguses piled around the room, some fake but most seeming authentic, as ancient as the exhibits she walked past regularly at work, yet they were just thrown to the sides of the abandoned room as if they were not priceless objects.

A dirty mirror lay to her right leaning against the fireplace, white plastic wrap draped over half of the looking glass, ridden with dust and a deep crack that made it unusable, no doubt why it was dumped here with the rest of the pieces of history they deemed rubbish.

Layla and her rushed to the windows, Layla taking the one on the left and her heading for the one opposite the door, each attempting to jiggle the bottom of the panes, looking for a latch they could flick open to give them an escape. But the glass was thick. Taking up an entire wall, meant only to let light in and keep air firmly out. Meaning there was no movement from any of the panes. The lit up buildings across the street laughed at her attempts in a silent mocking, the block of flats watching the desperate women struggle.

“Oh my god,” Steven said with a tone of utter despair, “I’m going to die in an evil magician’s man cave,”

She would have laughed. Any other day and his words would have cracked her up. But she barely heard him over the desperate way she tugged at the white, chipped frames, urging the damn thing to come loose, her nails splinting painfully at the force she used to try peel the rusted metal from their seals.

It would be no use anyway, she realised. Looking down she realised they were up high, on the third floor to be exact, and the only way down was a long fall onto solid concrete. Seeing Layla turn away from the other window, she guessed she had no luck with that either, and cursed under her breath.

Layla stalked towards Steven’s piteous frame, grabbing him roughly by the arms. “No-no. Hey, listen to me,” She started in a panicked voice, though it was clear she was attempting to be kind to him. The three of them turned to the door as the sound of scratching signalled that something big was out there, waiting for them. Long, sharp knife-like claws raked down the old wood, carving out channels in the barrier, the pieces of timber creaking with the weight of it, like a dog begging to come into the sitting room.

A moment of silence, before the doors began shaking in their hinges with loud thumps. The animal threw itself against the doors, the metal bar jittering in its place at the sheer weight of it.

“Your name is Marc,” Layla said calmly, holding onto his shoulders to keep his attention on her, “There’s a suit, I’ve seen you use it. You bring it out,” Her dark eyes pierced him with something cold and scared hidden in them, as his face flustered and his breathing picked up.

“No,” He mumbled, shaking his head that dripped with sweat, feeling his chest constricting as she grabbed him harder.

“Where are you? We need you to fight!” She yelled, shaking him now as if to hope to snap him back into his senses.

“Let me in, Steven!” Marc’s voice came from the abandoned mirror, his reflection twisted into a cruel sneer as Marc watched him freeze in place, Steven’s bright eyes lost and scared.

It was too much for Steven. He was expected to be something, someone, that he had no idea existed until a few days ago. This was no longer about waking up late or funny dreams, or sand around his bed and tape on his door. This was real. Real consequences. Two very real women depending on him to become this hero and save the day.

They needed him to be Marc. But he wasn’t. He was Steven Grant. And that was all he’d ever be.

“No, I can’t please. Stop it both of you,” Steven’s voice snapped Dove out of her focus on the outside, her fingers sore with where they gripped the window frames distraughtly.

She saw his overwhelmed figure. The way Layla held him in an iron grip, her voice raising in distress as she kept asking him to snap out of it, to bring out ‘the suit’. She saw the way Steven’s eyes flicked between the woman and the mirror, his voice clogging up with unshed tears.

Finally giving up on the windows as an option, she stormed over to where the two of them stood, grabbing Steven by the shoulder and pulling his arms away from Layla’s desperate grip.

“Cut it out, you’re scaring him,” She growled, feeling Steven make a grab for her hand as she confronted the woman.

“He should be scared! If he doesn’t get the suit the three of us are going to die, do you not get that?” Layla’s voice raised, but even the younger woman could see her face was rigid with fear. It was fear causing her to be so harsh, not malice. Layla was only human after all. The memory of that thing that had chased her through the museum resurfaced painfully, a phantom stab blooming over her stomach that seemed entirely healed, as if it hadn’t practically ripped her guts through her soft flesh and spilled them onto the marble floor.

“Shouting at him isn’t going to fix that, it’s not his fault. We just find another way out, okay?” Dove snipped, shutting down any other argument Layla could give her, and turned to Steven with a soft expression, “Okay?” She asked gently.

Steven stayed quiet, but he nodded, tears welled in his eyes, his face just as scared as she felt inside. She was shitting herself, her muscles tensing up with every grunt that came from the creature on the other side of the door. But cornering Steven and asking so much of him when neither of them truly understood what was happening was only doing harm.

“Alright,” Layla mumbled in defeat, her lush brows drawn into a frown, despair lingering in her hazelnut eyes as she headed back to the smaller, side window and peered out to the building below, “I can see a fire escape on this roof-”

But no sooner had the woman come to terms with the fact there was no hero coming to save them from this mess, the barricade had given way with a loud pop as the metal bar split clean in two.

A single breath, a moment of pure silence where Layla’s head whipped from her fraught attempt at seeking an escape route, where Steven and Dove clutched onto each other just that bit tighter. The doors swung wide on their hinges, smacking into the walls with the force and crumbling the bricks into piles of red dust on the already dirty floors.

A figure stood in the entrance. She could only think to describe it as a tall man trying to wear a dog’s body. Its limbs were gangly, skinny, mottled and rotted skin stretching thinly over them. Four feet at the end of boney elbows carried dagger like claws, thin wisps of white hairs poking from its spine. Its face was that of a possessed wolf, skeletal and gaunt, its mouth opening into a roaring snarl with two yellow-green eyes staring back at them with a haunting glow.

The air escaped Dove’s lungs the second it let out a familiar hum of hunger. This was the thing that had attacked her. That had killed her last night. This was the thing that had plunged its hand into her stomach with no remorse, tearing her organs to shreds in a single swipe.

The creature, the jackal, looked ahead at the two of them, holding onto each other for damn near life, her nails digging into his toned arm at her sheer trepidation. Its jaws fell open, saliva dripping from its dead lips as it gathered its legs up and prepared to lunge.

“Jackal, J-JACKAL” Steven yelled, his hands beginning to shake as he pointed at the creature.

“Oh my god- Oh my-” His friend could barely get out her words, panic constricting around her heart that thudded through her ribs hard enough to have her choking on her sentence and stay quiet, mouth agape in disbelief at the sight of the thing.

She much preferred when she couldn’t see the damn thing.

The Jackal took a breath, and the girl set in its sights could have sworn she heard it laugh, before it bolted at them.

The two of them screamed, Steven shoving her to the floor as its lithe body made contact and sent both their bodies flying through the glass, falling, falling, falling down all three levels and onto the hard concrete.

“Oh my GOD!” Layla shrieked, her eyes trained on the huge gap in the wall where her ex-husband had been thrown through by some invisible force, before they lowered to where his not-mistress was cowering on the floor after being manhandled away from the danger. She caressed her scraped elbow silently, her gaze also locked on the broken glass.

Realising the girl was in shock, Layla leaned down to a pile of bricks, grabbing one and promptly raising it above her head, bringing it down onto the side window harshly. The glass cracked slightly, before she hit it again a few more times and it gave way completely, scattering across the tiled roof on the other side. Throwing her jacket over the broken glass, she hopped over the window ledge and onto the slanted roof, careful not to skid on the smooth stone. Whipping back to the girl that had seemed to come to her senses and was now looking at her bewildered, Layla yelled a single “Come on!” through the gap in the window, before turning and heading towards the fire escape alone.

Steven. Not Steven, please not him. Steven’s gone. Steven’s dead, or at least he will be soon, no doubt his body crumpled on the floor, practically laid out as a buffet for that monster.

He’d thrown her out of the way, given his own life for one so undeserving as her own.

A man so kind and gentle, good, shouldn’t have rescued her, someone entirely not that.

Being dragged out of her daze at Layla’s yell, her head snapped to where she’d managed to create an escape, the woman looking at her expectantly before she turned and headed towards the edge of the roof.

Steven could still be alive, she told herself, he could be okay.

Holding that hope close to her chest, she pushed herself to her feet and ran towards the exit Layla had taken.

Please be okay. Please be okay. I’ll give every life I have to give if it means you’re safe.

Her hand was seconds from gracing Layla’s jacket when she heard it. Another growl.

No, not a growl. A chuckle. Dark, deep and rolling, an amused laugh from a thick chest that was loud enough to fill the entire room with its timbre.

And she knew. She didn’t understand how, but she knew. She knew who waited for her to turn around. To meet his black, inky gaze with fright.

But she was frozen. Despite her body being cold for the past day, the chill that ran through her spine was enough to have every single one of her hairs stand on end. Her voice was gone, her chest tight, her throat closed up.

“I know you’ve been waiting for me, my little monster,”

His voice was a rumble, though a smile laced his words. His every syllable sent a thrum of horror through her veins, her body going numb. As if she weren’t here. She was watching a movie through her eyes, and the villain was coming, the story was ending. The credits were about to start rolling.

She said nothing. Didn’t dare move an inch, praying to anyone listening that she could become as invisible as that jackal had been. Yet she felt him getting closer. His feet made no sound, but she felt him draw near. The same way a person feels they’re not alone in a haunted house. Like seeing shadows in the corner of your eye. Like feeling something watching you from the darkness when you wake from a nightmare.

A hand trailed down her loose hair, running long, slim fingers through her locks, he gave a growl of praise. “I’ve been waiting for you too,”

She started crying. Her face got hot, her eyes stinging as she tried to hold the tears back, only for them to scorch her cheeks as they rolled down, her expression pulling into an ugly whimper.

Closing her eyes, she told herself if she couldn’t see him he was just a voice in her head. If she didn’t look him in the eye he had no control over her. It was just a bad dream. A side effect of the stress. An auditory halluc-

“Oh, don’t cry,” A cold knuckle dragged over her cheek, swiping away a tear. His finger alone took up half her jaw. “I’m here to help you. I’m here to save you, little beasty,” His voice was dark, but gentle. As if he cared. As if he didn’t want her afraid. “Think of what we could do to Harrow, together,”

She didn’t doubt he had ideas for what torture he wanted to rain down on the man. But that wasn’t her. She didn’t want to be feared, or to hurt people, or to kill. She didn’t want to be bad. Or to feel even more so that there was something crawling out of her soul, a demon that showed everyone just who she really was. What she really was.

“No,” She whispered, shaking her head and taking a small step away from him.

“No?” He asked, a deadly calm washing over his voice. “People have taken from you your whole life. Taken and taken for their own selfish needs,” Seth cooed, circling her with his behemoth frame as more tears flowed over her cheeks, her eyes squeezed shut with a frown, “I see your anger, your need for vengeance. To make them hurt the way they hurt you-”

“NO,” She yelled this time, her hands coming up to grab at her hair, her body giving in to his words. He knew her. He knew her like an old friend, like he knew himself. Like she knew him. Like he’d been there for every bad thing that had happened to her. Like he was there for the whole of that time, he was there that day.

That day. That body. What she’d done to him.

“You hurt, little beasty,” Seth said, coming to stand in front of her. She felt his two huge hands hold onto her shoulders, one coming to her chin to tip it up to his face.

If she opened her eyes now she’d see his sable black eyes looking down at her in an aching hunger. As if he revelled in the fact she was so pliant to his touch, that he could snap her neck within a flick of his finger and she could do nothing about it. She clamped her eyes shut harder, desperate to not fall for his gentle words, or the familiarity that came with his touch. No, he wanted this, he wanted her to concede, to trust him. To give into him.

No. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.

“I see the way you hurt. I see the fear in you that came long before I did. That they’ll all see you as I do,” He said, caressing her jaw with his sharp claws, a single ounce of pressure too much and her skin would be slashed open.

“Stop,” She begged, her face wet with tears, her throat closing with a sob that drew out her request like a child.

“Stop?” Seth’s voice was different now. The semblance of kindness that had been there in a fleeting moment was gone, replaced again with a thunderclap of a laugh, “You poor sweet morning lamb. We’ve not even begun,”

Her eyes opened for a split second when she felt her body tense up, the feeling as close to rigour mortis as she could imagine, as a dark flash of movement, a row of sharp teeth, and insidious black eyes were all she saw as he took over every part of her body.

Death took her body for the second time, though this time she felt everything.

Layla watched its jaws open as its head flicked to her, its deep grunt of annoyance echoing through the empty street, before it's long, slim arms were thrust outwards and grabbed the two of them by the jugular, boney, rough fingers wrapping around their throats and squeezing.

Steven was lifted off the ground, Layla suffering the same fate after she had thrown an empty beer bottle at the demon’s head, the tiny shards of refracted light bouncing off the glass like a mirrorball and outlining the head of a monstrous creature.

Layla felt the brick smack harshly against her spine as the thing threw her to the wall, the same way Steven was tossed against a parked car, the passenger window cracking from the pressure and the alarm wailing in protest.

They both stood up again immediately, Layla’s eyes scanning the floor for anything to use as a weapon, before her almond eyes fell on the neck of the bottle she’d thrown, the jagged edge of broken glass sharp and fatal. Diving for the shiv, she swiped at the area she thought the creature could be stood, though her attempt only proved futile as her wrist was grabbed almost too easily and the weapon was ripped out of her hands.

The woman made a sound somewhere between a yelp and a cry as she was tossed to the hard ground like a ragdoll, Steven being thrown next to her as he made a move to grab the monster as well.

The two of them gasped as the hands seemed to swipe them to the ground harshly, like a cat toying with its meal, dragging the torture out as long as possible before they gave up and submitted to being ravaged. The two of them looked at each other in alarm, Steven’s eyes a bright white behind the suit, as they felt the jackal grab their ankles and drag. Their bodies scraped against the pavement, the two of them kicking and squealing, writhing to get out of the monster's grip, only to be yanked into the air once more, the blood rushing to their skulls the second they were pulled from the concrete earth.

“Steven, do something!” Layla wailed, her cheeks pooling a purple colour the longer they were held, though she never relented in her hits, her arms and free leg waving around for any soft tissue she could get at.

“Marc’s the one who fights these shits, not me!” Steven called back, trying desperately to reach for his batons to inflict any damage he could.

Layla felt her head building with pressure, her eyes becoming painful to shut as she blinked slowly, the darkened streets turned upside down in her mind. Her thick, dark brows furrowed, her eyes locking in on a figure standing at the other end of the wide street, unrecognisable to her dazed eyesight.

“Steven?” Layla murmured drunkenly, her hand coming up to grab his arm that was still flailing around.

“What?”

“Who is that?” The woman asked, pointing to the dark silhouette that stood and watched them.

Steven’s illuminated eyes followed her finger to see the figure still with statue-like grace, silent yet never relenting their dark stare.

His eyes trailed from their body, muscled and in a wide, casual stance, their arms resting at their sides. Their entire body seemed to be in some kind of black, chestplated one piece suit, pads of armour on their vulnerable parts, thin spindles of gold wrapping around the suit in a skeletal fashion. The armour spread over the backs of their hands, opening out into golden claw-like razors at the tips of their fingers that didn’t so much as twitch with fright at the sight of two strangers suspended in the mid air.

A black muzzle wound its way over their mouth just above where the suit ended at their jaw, their hair falling over the back of their shoulders to reveal more of the golden weaves that fell around their neck and over their breastplate, accentuating the woman’s curves whilst also giving off the look they were wearing a set of bones on their armour.

Two six-inch shells of armour protruded from their headpiece, curved yet in lithe points, like long dog ears, like a Whippet’s, high and alert.

“I-I don’t know,” Steven murmured, though he found himself unable to take his eyes off the shadowed figure. He wasn’t even sure they were breathing at the way they were frozen solid, their head tilted slightly as if intrigued by the scene in front of them.

It was then that it seemed the Jackal realised they had company. But this jackal wasn’t alone. It had brought friends too.

The figure seemed to cut out of their daze as another of the behemoth beasts came stalking out of the darkness, as if to have been waiting for the scraps of the kill. But it had prey of its own now. This mystery woman.

Steven’s heart fell into his mouth, which wasn’t too hard seeing as he was still being held upside down by the creature.

“Run!” Steven called to her, though she seemed to take no notice of his cries, “Get out of here!”

But the woman stood still, head snapping to where the jackal walked forward, slowly and with a hungry grin on its face as a deep growl rumbled from deep within its chest. This thing was going to rip her to pieces, Steven thought numbly. And it was going to be all his fault for not giving the body back to Marc.

“Marc,” Steven said with a panic as the thing stepped closer to her still, her head tilting more at the sound of its approach, though that was the only inch she moved, “Marc- take the body- Marc- MARC-”

But he was too late. Steven winced as the jackal lunged towards her, jaws wide open and large enough to swallow her entire skull with one bite. He wanted to look away but his eyes couldn’t tear themselves off the scene, though he knew a blood bath was coming. He felt the bile rise already at the idea of it, though maybe that was the gravity talking.

But Steven’s heart practically stopped when his eyes caught another slight flicker of movement from the woman and he realised exactly what he was seeing.

The Jackal’s jaws were pried open, stuck in the moment the creature had leapt forward. It took Steven a second to realise the woman’s hands were the ones holding them ajar, her sharp nails latching into its snout and chin, blood already running down her hands at the sheer vigour at which she held onto the dead flesh. The beast gave a whine, its body jolting forward as it tried to overpower her, only to have no luck. She didn’t budge a single hair's width.

Steven’s eyes widened, the beams of light engrossed with the scene before his eyes. Who on earth was that? How could she see the jackals like he could, let alone wrestle one?

“Steven, give me the body,” Marc demanded from inside his head, though Steven caught the trace of nerves that rang at his voice like a church bell on a silent morning.

“Who is that, Marc?” Steven asked, his eyes widening when he saw the figure forcing the jackal to back down a step as she forced herself towards the creature, clearly stronger than the monster twice her size.

“Steven, I will explain everything later, just please give me the body or she’s gonna get hurt,” Marc said with the same edge to his voice that he had before. The way Marc dodged his question had sirens wailing in Steven’s chest, louder than anything else the American man inside him had said.

Steven’s voice cut out when he watched the figure grab the beast's jaws even tighter, yanking them apart with a sickening crunch as the joints popped out of their place. She didn’t stop there, not even as the creature gagged and squirmed, a yawp of pain echoing around the street as it scrambled to get out of her grip. But she was relentless. She tugged apart the lower mandible even wider, wider than could ever be natural, and a gut wrenching rip came next.

The creature stopped moving. Stopped crying. Stopped everything. It slumped to the ground in defeat, the woman standing over its body with no mercy as she held the wad of flesh in her hand, blood running from her fingertips as smooth as water.

The creature's lower jaw was thrown to the ground, its face a mush of exposed muscle, its throat torn cleanly open. It was then her gaze set onto the other jackal with a slow turn of her head and a low growl echoed through Steven’s bones.

It took him a second to realise it wasn’t the creature that held him that was making the sound. It was coming from her.

Layla and Steven were dropped to the ground as she approached the creature, the two of them gasping for air, their heads spinning with the blood crashing around their brains.

The jackal set its sights on her too, eager to avenge its fallen companion, the two of them circling one another for a moment. She made the first move, her black boots near silent against the cobbled street as she leapt with cat-like grace to tackle it to the ground.

She was able to get her arms around its neck as it met her in the air, her muscled arms quick to begin choking the thing, squeezing until they heard the sound of its shoulder popping out of place. The jackal gave a yelp similar to the other one, only it dragged out into an angry snarl as its huge clawed hand grabbed onto her by the scruff of her neck.

It threw her away from itself, desperate to get her strong hands off its body, and tossed her a good ten feet away, into the middle of a busy road where she bounced over the bonnet of a car and smashed its left headlight in.

Steven was quick to jump to his feet as the monster’s head flicked away from the woman, back to where he and Layla stood.

“Steven, you’re being dumb. Don’t do this, you can’t do this-” Marc protested, though Steven felt whatever bravery he had left collecting together as he clenched his hand together in a tight fist.

“I think- I think I can,” He replied, the Jackal stalking closer to him with its three good legs. It stepped forward, its confidence shaken by the woman that was now getting back up and pacing her way over to the two of them much too calmly for someone who had been thrown so harshly. “You want some more do you, you mangy, Macedonian mutt?” Steven tried to taunt, though he could feel the tinge of fear still quelling at his chest at the sheer brute size of the thing even when wounded.

The creature roared in response, gathering its hind legs up to lunge again, as Steven drew back his arm to swing.

But he was too late. The woman had returned with a silent agility. Steven saw nothing but a flash of black and gold as she dived for the jackal’s throat, clawing and snarling at its chest as she took the thing down with her in one swoop. Steven watched with an agape jaw as she lifted the creature up as if it were nothing more than a sack of grain, and threw the jackal into the same parked car already cracked from where Steven had hit it, the opposite window getting the brunt of the attack as it smashed and the door caved easily.

The creature lay still for a while, giving Steven time to confront the woman who had helped him, and hopefully answer the questions that Marc had dodged.

“Oh my god,” Steven started, approaching the woman from behind where she was stood, barely out of breath for what had just occurred, “Excuse me, who exactly are you, you’re just bloody amazing-”

Raising his hand to touch the woman's shoulder gently, Steven practically had the wind knocked out of him as she turned on her heel in less than a blink of his two white eyes, and threw him to the ground as easily as she had the creature. Kneeling over him, his body mushy underneath her sadistic strength, he felt his knees go weak as she grabbed him by his collar and brought him to her face where her eyes trailed over his own face, a horrifically deep snarl emanated from her chest, shaking his lungs with its power.

“WOAH, Woah wait. I’m not going to hurt you, though I supposed I should be more worried about you hurting me-” It was then that he actually took in what he could see of her face.

The colour of the hair that fell around her face as she leant over him, the shape of her face that wasn’t covered by the black muzzle that wrapped around her mouth and over her nose, thin and metallic and yet making her sounds all the more terrifying. Her eyes, the iris gone and replaced by inky black pits of darkness that blinked down at him with famine.

But that face. He would know that face anywhere, he would know it in the thickest of fogs, the darkest of Winters. He could find her in any crowd, in any life. And if he was to go blind by morning, he’d know her by the way she breathed alone.

And he did. Despite the fact her breath was laden with grunts, he knew her. He knew her.

“Dove?” Steven muttered, hands coming to hold her face gently, his brows furrowed with confusion, “Dove, what happened to you-”

His hand had all but brushed her cheek, a gentle action that normally would have had her preening to his touch, had her snapping at the bit, and Steven was sure she would have taken his hand clean off had she not been muzzled like a rabid dog.

Steven jumped back as she came closer to him, an even louder rumble of fury damn near bursting his ear drums as she warned him off of touching her. She was not his dove. Not the girl he knew. Not the girl he loved. She was a feral beast untamed and wild, eager to hurt him as much as she had attacked the jackal were he to get too close.

“Dove?” Steven asked one more time, though he kept his hands in surrender as she manhandled him, pushing him to the floor more as she pinned him down, her black eyes empty and raw as she stared at him, “It’s me, Steven. Your Steven,”

Nothing. He gained no reaction from her, not so much as a blink. This was not her. This was a savage creature that knew no such thing as gentle touches and loving words.

She did nothing but stare at him, waiting for him to make a move out of line so she could tear him to shreds. And yet, Steven lay there as if to submit his body to her if she wanted to do such a thing. He couldn’t hurt her, couldn’t fight back. Could never lay an unkind hand on her even if it came to his last moments on the earth. He could die by her hands and he would still consider himself lucky to have been touched by such a creature.

She raised a clawed hand up to bring down on his masked face, a strength in the hit strong enough to tear clean through the ceremonial armour and likely leave him disfigured, if not cleave his skull in two on the spot. But she didn’t get a chance to strike. No sooner had she raised herself up to end it all, the Jackal launched its beaten body at her crouching form, the two of them tumbling away from Steven’s shaking body and rolling amongst one another in a flurry of wails and growls.

She flew off him spitting and yowling like a feral street cat, a sound no normal human should make as the creature bit down on her arm hard.

Steven felt two arms dragging him upwards and away from the scene, Layla could only imagine what was going on as the mystery woman’s arm sprayed her own blood over the concrete with every swipe of her claws.

“What is that?” Layla asked breathlessly, practically yanking Steven away as he trembled under her hands. She froze when Steven said her name, her name, the name of the girl she had left in that room to make her own way out. “What? Is this Harrow’s doing? Turning her into some crazy dog-woman?”

“I don’t know,” Steven said with a defeated tone, his chest aching at the way she had looked at him with no recognition of who he was. “I think…” Steven thought for a moment, “I think Marc will know how to help her,”

Layla nodded at him, her eyes taking in his broken expression, patting him on the arm gently, “Okay. Okay, bring him out,”

Steven turned away from her, sparing a small glance to the woman who held his life so closely in her hands, who had been seconds away from ending it, who he gave himself to entirely were it to be that he saw her in his last few moments of living. She scrapped with the jackal, two wild beasts gaining on eachother, drawing blood whenever and wherever they could.

“Marc,” Steven said, his eyes never leaving her blank face, spots of blood now sprayed over her nose like freckles. He felt his alter perk up at the name, his body already tensing up as Marc clawed at the reigns to take over now.

“Yeah, buddy?” Marc asked, though he could see everything Steven was seeing, and his heart already sunk at the unrecognisable thousand mile stare she had.

This was it. Seth had her now. “Save her,”

authors note: I used an AI to create what I think Dove looks like in her suit and-

These are the vibes we’re going for! Please feel free to imagine her as ANY shape, ANY ethnicity and ANY height however, these were just what the AI generated!

PERMANENT TAG LIST:

@greeneyedblondie44 @liadamerondjarin @pedrosgirlx @andy-rocks @musicartmayheminmyheart @howlerwolfmax @ciarra–mae @lou-la-lou

MCU

@blackcat420

LAST KNIGHT IN SOHO TAGLIST

@shirukitsune @s-u-t @ahookedheroespureheart @willowseason @imonmykneessir @acceptedbyace @broadwaytraaaaash @mythicalmo @stevenknightmarc @avery88 @fandombrackets @thelostlovedone @raythecomputerart @unknownduck0 @emily-roberts @nyctophile-moon-child

#marc spector x reader #steven grant x reader #marc spector fanfiction #marc spector imagine #marc spector #steven grant fanfiction #steven grant imagine #moonknight x reader #moon knight imagine #moonknight imagine #moon knight x reader #khonshu #jake lockley x reader #jake lockely fanfiction #jake lockely x you #angst #fluff #layla el faouly

342 notes · View notes