Ancient Egypt:
The training pit was filled with the sounds of combat, wood smacking against wood, grunts of exertion coupling with quick footsteps on the packed sand.
Hefzi was training new priestesses.
"Wonder how many bruises they'll have when she's done with them," Yaseha murmured to Senak, the two women sitting on the edge of the pit, watching the proceedings.
"Probably too many to count," Senak replied, her feet dangling over the edge, swaying in the empty air.
"Again," Hefzi commanded.
Three battle cries sounded, and the older woman, with decades of combat experience and honed skills, easily handled the oncoming trio. One was whacked on the head with the practice sword, another was tripped up, and the third was kicked over the second one. All three ended up in a heap on the ground.
Yaseha and Senak could not hold back their giggles.
"Do you two wish to come down here?" Hefzi asked them, a disapproving look on her face.
They quieted, still grinning but unwilling to provoke the older woman.
As good as I am,
Senak thought,
I still wouldn't want to fight the Lioness.
"Again," Hefzi said to the training trio.
"Senak," came a voice from behind them.
She turned to see Hanas, the high priestess, backed by two attendants.
"Come," the high priestess bade her, "we must discuss the details of our trip."
"Of course," Senak said, nodding a good-bye to Yaseha, quickly standing and following the three as they walked away from the training pit.
The two attendants were new. Senak recognized one as Enet, the older brother of Arhekh, a priestess who had been inducted into the ranks the previous year.
"Can you go find Shaya and Tehi?" Hanas asked her.
"Of course," she said, heading off to search for the two other priestess.
"Meet us at the Grand Fountain," Hanas said.
Senak nodded back as she walked away.
The four priestesses, several attendants, and a few warriors were leaving in three days to visit one of Enkartep's new subject cities. The transition from ruling themselves to being ruled had been difficult for the elite of the city, so their master wanted them there to make everything smoother.
Around the next corner, Senak passed two warriors on watch, their canine characteristics by now familiar to her, arousing a heat in her loins instead of the terror it might provoke in one unfamiliar to them. She had spent many hours entangled with warriors.
The warriors were conversing in their guttural tongue; they nodded at her as she passed.
A few paces past them, the conversation ceased, as if it had never been.
Senak turned back to see empty space where the warriors were.
What?
She strode over, confusion reigning in her mind, reaching out to touch the empty space.
From around the corner she had just turned came a cry.
Senak sprinted towards the sound, rounding the corner to see the two attendants standing over Hanas' corpse, each one holding a bloody knife.
"No!" she cried, the two attendants spotting her, heading towards her with an obvious intent.
She ducked back behind the corner, managing to push the confusion and anger back, summoning the coldly logical mindset that Hefzi had instilled in all her trainees.
The first attendant came around the corner boldly, his rashness costing him his life as Senak struck her palm into his throat, grabbing the dagger from his loosened hold, plunging it into his chest.
The second followed straight after, so Senak kicked his gurgling compatriot at him. The several seconds he spent stumbling back from the momentum allowed her to approach swiftly and slash the blade across his neck.
She threw the dagger to the ground and ran towards Hanas, already knowing that the high priestess was dead. Deep furrows ran across the older woman's chest and stomach, blood oozing slowly from the wounds, a painfully ignominious end for this respected and powerful woman. Tears brimmed at Senak's eyes as she closed the dead priestess'.
From a few other parts of the compound came barely audible cries of anger and pain.
Senak picked up the daggers the attendants had wielded, and made for the training pit, her mind filled with images of Hefzi holding off attackers, marshalling the other women to action.
Instead, she arrived at the training pit to witness the conclusion of a bloodbath.
Archers had taken up positions around the pit, and in short order had killed all but one person. The Lioness was crawling towards the doorway in the wall of the pit, one of the main entrances and exits that the priestesses used. Her body was riddled with arrows, her progress to potential safety marked by the trails of blood she left behind on the packed sand. The fact that she was even moving seemed a minor miracle. She was mere feet from the doorway, when another archer emerged from it. Her defiant snarl was cut off when his arrow plunged into one of her eyes.
Senak screamed in impotent rage, already turning to flee even as the desire for revenge gripped her. Her scream had drawn the attention of the archers, who sent arrows towards her as she raced away, a few flying very close to her. Tears streamed down her cheeks, blurring her vision, the priestess throwing an arm up to clear her eyes.
Less than a minute later, she rounded a corner, another group of the archers in front of her, several yards away, presumably patrolling for priestesses to kill.
They spotted her immediately, and nocked their arrows.
She snarled, and brandished the two daggers.
Motion registered from the bushes behind the archers.
A cry of 'For Enkartep!' pierced the air. The archers turned, only to be hacked quickly to pieces by Arizi, Sesehet, and Mahar.
"Get the bows," Senak told them, gesturing back towards the archers she could hear running after her, "there're more coming."
The three priestesses quickly took up the dropped bows, Senak joining them, the quartet aiming, waiting for the onrushing archers from the pit to appear.
They did, moments later, and were treated to their own deaths, riddled with arrows in the same way as their victims.
"What is going on?!" Senak asked once the archers were all slain.
"We have been betrayed," Sesehet snarled.
"How could Master let this happen?!" Mahar wailed.
"Something must have happened to him," Arizi said, waving for the others to keep moving.
"We must find him!" Senak exclaimed.
"No," Arizi said quickly, "we must find and protect the broken."
"Of course," Sesehet said.
The quartet headed deeper into the compound, seeking those whose minds had been wrecked by their master's desires, those who existed only for pleasure.
At the foot of the staircase that led up to the dormitories, the quartet was met by two more priestesses, Saqqeh and Ruhul. The two women were splattered with blood, grim expressions etched across their tear-streaked faces.
"What happened?" Sesehet asked.
"Rea and Akeneb," Saqqeh murmured dully, "they were hacked to pieces."
"They were helpless things," Ruhul lamented, "who could do that to them?"
Arizi growled.
"Now we find Master," she said.
The six of them headed back into the grounds, skulking around, occasionally running into several attendants or soldiers, easily overwhelming and killing them. A more worrisome sight was the numerous corpses lying around, many of their fellow priestesses.
"Sisters!" came a voice from behind them at one point.
They turned to see Eqqeh, Saqqeh's biological sister, wiping a bloody dagger on her robes as she approached.
"I know where Master is," she told them hurriedly, "one of our betrayers told me."
"It could be a trap or a lie," Arizi warned.
"He did not give the information freely," Eqqeh replied darkly, "I had to cut it out of him."
"So we go help Master," Sesehet said.
They set off, Eqqeh leading the way.
She brought them to the temple, the entrance to the venerable building guarded by more soldiers; on the ground around them were several corpses, more priestesses who had sought to help their Master.
"They said he was inside, in the sacred chamber," Eqqeh told them.
"What do we do?" Ruhul asked nobody in particular.
