Hey, y'all! Dakota here with a new chapter in my smut-laden series about a guy who teams up with a few sexy supernatural beings to do battle with ancient gods. It's been a year since I embarked on this journey, and the response from the Lit community has been phenomenal. Seriously, guys, your comments, ratings, and emails keep me going. I'm frankly in disbelief at how many of you have been reading my dorky series. Without you, this story would have stalled out a while ago.
This is essentially a serialized novel, so I recommend starting at the beginning to avoid unnecessary confusion.
Returning readers, hello! I'm so excited to finally get to share this chapter as I'd been planning it for a while. Here we're going to learn a lot more about the mechanics of this universe and answer a ton of questions about it. This chapter is going to expand on several characters we've only seen glimpses of, including getting real intimate with a certain slithering deity.
Okay, without further ado, let's visit . . .
Somewhere Else
Edward wandered the afterlife.
It was supposed to be heaven, or so he was told.
After weighing his heart, Anubis wasn't much interested in answering his questions. His assistant, Ammit, terrible in her amalgamated animal form, transformed again. She became human, or something close to it. Shiny green scales and the fur of a lioness fought human skin for real estate over a well-endowed body.
"Not what I would have predicted for you," she said. Her smile dripped with disdain but she no longer looked at him like a hungry predator. "Welcome to Sekhet-Aaru."
"Better than oblivion, I guess."
"Indeed. Maybe I'll see you later . . ."
"In a while, crocodile."
Sekhet-Aaru—The Field of Reeds—was a bit of a misnomer. A great river, its current calm and steady, cut through a large valley and Edward wondered about the convenience that the Egyptian afterlife featured the Nile running through it.
The afterlife had its perks though. He felt great, for one. He no longer suffered from hunger or thirst, and still, drinking from the river was refreshing. It was warm, and the sun bore down on him with steady heat but never became oppressive nor did it burn him. He didn't sweat, nor did he need to urinate or defecate. He walked without fatigue, occasionally stopping to lie down on the riverbank, watching the stars move across the sky at night.
Days came and went and Edward walked.
After a time, he wasn't sure how long, he came upon a farmhouse, set back from the river's edge. It was made of mudbrick and, oddly enough, was rather humble.
A man worked in the field next to the river. A woman, presumably his wife, walked with a basket on her head, gathering reeds.
Edward approached them cautiously.
"Greetings," he called. "Nice day, isn't it?"
The man regarded him for a moment in confusion. He looked up at the clear sky.
"It is."
"You speak English?"
"That your tongue, eh? No. You're speaking mine. To me at least. And I am speaking mine to you. That's how it is here. It's not perfect but you'll get used to it."
"I guess I've revealed my newness. I'm a bit embarrassed to ask but I'm not sure what I should be doing."
The man, barefoot, was covered in mud to his knees. He wore a simple wrap of undyed fabric around his waist and had been working the land with a simple hoe. But he was fit and healthy-looking. He flashed a broad, white smile.
"That's the trouble with eternity," the man said. "What to do with all that time?" He turned to his wife, who'd set the basket down and came to meet the stranger. She was beautiful, with angular features and straight black hair that framed her face. "I met my wife only briefly when we were alive. Circumstances didn't allow us to be together then but we found each other here. I vowed to spend eternity being worthy of her love."
"You've always been worthy, my husband," she said, her smile genuine.
"So you spend eternity farming?" Edward asked.
The man smiled, leaning against his hoe. "It's something I was unable to pursue in life. Bringing life from the soil. Seems quaint but it suits us just fine."
Edward regarded their modest plot of land and their simple home next to the great sweep of the river. "It's nice here. What did you do in life?"
"Politics, mostly. But it's no longer important. Would you like to sup with us? There's plenty to eat."
Edward almost said no automatically. He hadn't eaten anything since he arrived as he didn't feel hungry. But the idea of food was enticing nonetheless.
His host led him to a small cooking fire near the house and he was directed to sit on a rough-spun mat while the wife ladled a delicious-smelling stew into wooden bowls for them. She sat with her own bowl next to her husband.
"How about you?" the farmer asked. "What were you in life?"
"I was an apprentice to a druidess."
"A what?"
"A witch. Although she hated to be called that."
The man nodded. "Is she here?"
Edward shook his head. "No. It's just me."
"You're the first new soul we've seen in a long time," the wife added. "No one is holy enough anymore. What happened?"
Edward shrugged. "Things changed, I gather. Thousands of years have passed. People forgot. They moved on."
"But not you? You believed."
Edward thought about his fight with Anubis. About his participation in what he now understood was a ritualistic orgy. "I believed what I saw."
The stew was full of vegetables and barley, and they ate it with a dense black bread. It was, without a doubt, the best meal Edward had ever had. He recognized that, if he wanted to, he could eat that stew continuously for all of eternity. He'd never get full just as he'd never starve. To a poor English kid who spent his childhood two missed meals from starvation, this really was heaven.
"I expected the afterlife to be more crowded," he said, thinking out loud. "I'm not sure when I arrived. Time is strange here. But you're the first people I've met."
"You'll get used to how days work here," his host said. "And you are right to observe that this place seems empty."
"It is empty," the wife agreed. "I miss the children."
"Children?"
"Children, especially the very young ones, arrive here easily. Nothing to weigh the heart down, you see. That's what we did, my Ani and I. We watched over the children while they waited here."
"There would be laughter all up and down the river," Ani added. "They would romp and frolic the way children are supposed to. Many of them did not have pleasant lives on Earth. They died young, obviously. But here they could just be children."
"What happened to them?"
"They left," the farmer said matter-of-factly. "Reincarnated for another life, their soul a little brighter for the time they spent with us."
"Some returned to us again," his wife explained. "They'd visit us as adults after living full lives. The soul remembers, you see. But over the eons less and less did. Then none did."
"So heaven is empty?" Edward asked. He found the idea of an empty afterlife depressing.
The farmer shook his head. "Of course not. Many choose to stay. And this isn't the only heaven. Of that, I'm convinced."
"My husband thinks that souls ascend higher and higher. That this is just one afterlife among many."
Edward nodded, agreeing that it made sense. "So you can choose to leave this place whenever you wish? How?"
"Of course," the man said. "You simply build a boat and let the river take you to the end."
Edward had never built a boat, nor did the prospect of that entice him.
"Why do you stay?"
The farmer's shoulders slumped as if he'd been dreading that question. He gazed upriver. "I had enough of life on Earth. I sent too many to their own afterlife. No. I like it here just fine."
"You were a warrior?"
His wife grinned and stifled a laugh. "Tell him, darling. Maybe he's heard of you."
The farmer shot his wife an annoyed look. "They called me Ramesses, second of his name. My father was Seti. For a time, I was Pharaoh."
Edward's mouth dropped open. Though he had never had formal schooling, his mistress taught him to read and write and gave him an in-depth education on classical history. Rightly so, as his mistress had lived through much of that history.
"You're Ramesses the Second?"
"So you've heard of him?" his wife asked, a glint in her eyes. "Even after an eternity they still speak your name, dear! The universe is strange indeed!" She threw up her hands with a laugh.
"Some call you the greatest ruler of the ancient world. Most agree you were the greatest pharaoh Egypt ever had."
"Bah!" the farmer scoffed, tossing his bowl down. "Who says that? Only fools and liars would call what I did great."
Edward backpedaled. "I've upset you. My apologies. That wasn't my intention. It's just that people have studied your rule for thousands of years now."
"And Ammit didn't eat your heart, dear," Ani said, soothingly. "She wasn't wrong about you. Nor was I."
Rameses grumbled. "Maybe so. But they call rulers great for the wars they wage. For the battles they win and the cities they siege. Sorry for being cross. Others have come before you to bow at my feet as if I were some god."
"Remember that Cleopatra woman?" Ani added. "New soul and a nice enough girl. Claimed to be a distant relation of some such, but she would not leave him alone! Followed him everywhere like a puppy. She insisted he was a god himself."
"I could see that becoming tiresome pretty quickly."
Ramesses nodded. "Let's just say I was thankful when she chose rebirth."
"Where are the others?" Edward asked. "The souls that stayed, I mean."
"They're around. Many are in the Golden City. Some, like us, stay in the wilderness for the quiet."
