Adrian slowly descended the steps to the hole in the ground he'd discovered, every step slow and gentle. He stepped with purpose; beyond the illuminating beam of his flashlight, he could barely see a thing in the darkness beyond. It was like it swallowed the light, the world dropping off just a few feet in front of them.
He could hardly believe what he'd found; an Egyptian temple. An honest-to-God Egyptian temple, completely untouched by time, and buried under the sands.
Almost buried. He'd had to kick away some of the sand and push aside a stone covering to get inside, but that hardly mattered now. An actual Egyptian temple! In his whole career, he never thought he'd find one; not a new one, anyway. Just old ones, their secrets already long revealed, their treasures sitting in museums half a world away.
After what seemed the longest descent imaginable, Adrian finally reached the bottom, his boots touching down on the hard stone. With a quick sweep around, he scanned the walls, passing his beam of light over the ancient writing that lined them.
Hieroglyphs. The pictographs of an extinct people, telling the stories and rituals of a religion long since dead, and deities long since relegated to nothing more than myth. But once upon a time, they were alive; alive like any reigning king, watching over the lands of Egypt in an eternal vigil.
But those days were gone. Gone and buried just like the temple he found himself in; even with a cursory reading of the hieroglyphs, he wasn't entirely sure who the temple was dedicated to. He decided to venture further inside The central room he'd stepped down into led to several chambers, and as luck would have it, his flashlight passed over something in the corner of the room, squat and legged.
A torch. An actual torch, unlit and dark. On a lark, he walked up to it, pulling out his lighter and holding it close to the millennia-old dark liquid that sat inside the bowl, expecting a whole lot of nothing to happen. Instead, the second the flame from his lighter touched the black liquid, a flame shot forward from the point of contact. Adrian jumped backward, surprised that there'd been a reaction at all.
He'd found a temple. With working torches. That wasn't something he'd expected when he woke up that morning. He moved into the next room, finding two more standing bowls of dark liquid flanking the entrance. They lit up as well as the first, filling the room with a gentle, orange light.
Inside, he saw more hieroglyphs, even more well-preserved than the ones lining the entrance to the temple. He could hardly believe his eyes when he saw some of the original white paint lining the walls, some of the characters on the hewn stone still colored with dyes.
And along the walls, the same character kept showing up. A nude goddess, standing above a line, a crown with a sun embedded on it.
He recognized it, and his jaw went agape.
Qetesh.
He'd found a temple to Qetesh.
That he wasn't expecting. It would take months to translate the murals coating the walls, but her continued re-appearance made the building's dedication all too obvious. Qetesh, the Egyptian goddess of sacred ecstasy and sexual pleasure. A popular goddess in her heyday; not quite as well known as Anubis or Isis, but a goddess all the same.
And in the room were treasures dedicated to her glory. Golden statues of amazing detail, thatched boats unworn by time, golden wheels and small treasures chests and urns, all intricately detailed and stacked neatly.
A perhaps the most significant treasure of all sat in the middle of the room, reflecting the light of the two torches at the entrance. Something round and shiny. Adrian walked up to it, and as he approached, he realized what it was. A bronze mirror, polished so finely it reflected nearly as well as smooth glass.
He leaned in, rubbing his chin, taking a moment to observe himself in the ancient reflect surface. Tall, fair-skinned, with piercing blue eyes and a strong jaw lined with dark stubble that matched his short, dark hair. Slightly tall, strong but lean.
Thoroughly Greek. It made him feel a strange familiarity with the land he studied, like the history of his own people gave him a connection to it. But those were just feelings; he was thousands of years removed from antiquity, just like modern Egypt was from the time of the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms.
In this age, sometimes traveling by yourself in Egypt was just a little bit ill-advised. While he traveled light, a tan vest and dark pants being most of what he wore, a holstered gun also prominently sat upon his hip. Just in case. Especially when getting a find like this; he'd been utterly unprepared to find this place, and if someone less than honest came by while he was exploring...well, hopefully it wouldn't come to that. And, he thought with dark humor, at least he knew a few of those Egyptian spells that would allegedly ferry his soul safely to the afterlife.
He decided to check the other rooms. More treasures, more hieroglyphs; what Adrian found most surprising were the statues of the goddess, rendered in a detail he'd never seen before. Some of what appeared to be plated in gold, others in smooth black stone, all of them carrying an eye of Horus on her right eye. Some sitting, some standing.
All of them, showing a goddess completely nude, a perfect shapely figure with firm breasts and an attractive face that reminded him of a blend of some idealized women he'd seen on similar statues, and the features of an extremely attractive Nubian woman.
Against his better judgment, he reached out to one of the statues, poking the breast of it with the tip of his finger. When he pulled away, he rubbed the tips of his fingers together.
"That's weird," he muttered. "No dust."
Still one more room to check. He left the one he was in; if not out of curiosity of what was left to explore, if only because the nudity of the statues was just making him ever so slightly hot and bothered. Making his way into the central room and into the last side-room that remained unexplored, lighting the torches revealed what was inside.
Nothing more or less than a life-sized statue of the goddess, an Ankh held in one hand, still completely devoid of clothes, a variety of offerings laid at her feet, piles of small treasures that looked like they'd been undisturbed for thousands of years.
He crept forward, his every step light as he could allow. Not out of fear of traps, but out of simple distrust for the structure he found himself in. It was a mystery to him; a central chamber, three rooms, and that seemed to be it. There may be hidden doors beyond; it wasn't unlike the ancient Egyptians to wall up entire complexes inside great tombs, but what he seemed to have stumbled upon was very modest.
Modest in comparison, at least. The treasures he'd discovered would probably propel his career by lightyears; his progress in the world of academia had been slow, and many of his expeditions he'd had to fund himself, but it looked like all of that was just about to pay off.
He walked up towards the statue, gazing upon its glory. Etched in completely black stone, gold jewelry sitting on its body. An ankh necklace, and golden net rings. Gold bands around the arms and ankles in the shape of twisting snakes, and gold rings around the fingers and a few of the toes. Even their hair had gold; bits of it braided in gold bands, circling the golden circular earrings the statue wore, a crown with a small amber circle flanked by horns sitting upon her head.
As with the smaller statues he'd seen, the same attractive face and figure. And even through the blackness of the stone, he could see a tight slit between her legs, petals just barely peeking out of the folds.
Whoever made it had a very specific vision in mind. Adrian almost chuckled at the image of him coming across this discovery during the Victorian Era; heavens, they'd seal up this tomb and never tell anyone!
A quick thud sounded outside, from beyond the temple walls. The sound of a car door being slammed, followed by another. Adrian's eyes went wide as he rushed out of the room, ascending the stairs back up to the world outside. When he reached the top, the first thing he felt was wind; harsh and cold, the gusts made his shirt flap wildly as he looked ahead to the source of the sound.
It had been two men, both carrying rifles, now walking away from the jeep parked in the sand in front of the entrance to the temple.
"Um," Adrian murmured. "Can I...help you gentlemen?"
