1 Death and Judgement

Have you ever felt your heart being crushed to pieces?

That is how I felt when I was laying down on my bed in my dorm room, I was studying the Book of Dead for my coming EGPT 4213 Egyptology course final exam. I suddenly felt my heart breathing erratically and it started spasming as if it is being crushed due to its excessive pumping.

I admit I have too many fats on my body to be called healthy but still I was a twenty years old young man who did not have any chronic diseases, yet I still fell in what appeared to be a stroke till I breathed my last breath in excruciating pain.

I felt my soul leaving my body behind and I blanked out, I remembered my whole life, my childhood in Upper Egypt, my youth in Luxor amid the temples, tombs, and museums, my short adult life in Cairo studying the history that I breathed along with oxygen.

Growing up I was quite an eccentric kid. I abandoned the science that my family adored as I grew up in a doctor's family with most of my family studying different fields of medicine, especially my father who was one of the most accomplished doctors in the country. I left all of that behind for my love of history as I delved deeper into it since childhood and read whatever I could find. The two major concentrations of my studies are mythology and warfare.

All children adore myths and the fantasy elements of those stories, and I also particularly liked historical warfare as it had all the glamour and glory to appeal to my mind. The idea that you can be whomever you want as long as you can swing your blade hard enough. You can reach the zenith of power by standing on enough corpses. Battled used to have much life to it in the olden ages. It depended on either the strength, the numbers, the tactics, the training, or even the logistics, all of which had human aspects that controlled their quality. Modern warfare was void of this quality just the side with higher technology blasts the hell out of their enemy.

I lamented the cruel fate that took my life before I studied all the books I wanted before I ate all the foods I craved before I fucked all the women I desired. Hell, I died and I never touched a woman yet.

I woke up from my recollection as I noticed I suddenly warped into the front of a huge hall as big as a stadium with hundreds of pillars that look just like the ones in Karnak I found a circular area in this hall surrounded by forty-two pillars in front of them stood forty-two solemn men in weird clothing, an obscenely tall man with an African Wolf head holding a queer scale and on its two pans was one human heart and on the other was a feather of some bird. I quivered in fear as I just realized what happened, the wolf-headed man opened his hands wide and a growling deep voice came out of saying: "Welcome to Duat"

I knew I was fucked! Did I have to study the freakin Book of the Dead tonight? I am in Duat the realm of the dead of ancient Egyptian Mythology! I am so dead….

I understood what is happening. I am in the realm of the dead and I will be judged now, This is definitely my heart being judged on the scale against a feather of Maat to judge whether one followed the Ma'at, a set of commandments to follow to be righteous. I faced the 42 solemn men, who are the hidden Maati gods representing the forty-two sectors of Egypt, and then a sudden epiphany showed me the way probably motivated by the growls of Ammit standing at the back of the hall. I just need to read the Negative Confession. I need to confess that I did not commit the sins and if I do not lie in this confession then I should not be devoured by Ammit who devoured the evil souls and end their existence totally with no chance of an afterlife. Some scholars even suggested that the knowledge of the Negative Confession itself is like a code to get the approval of the 42 judges, so basically, the knowledge of the Book is what purifies your sins by confessing.

If my theories are correct then the so-called afterlife might just be something like reincarnation in a divine realm. I raised my head and looked into the minor deities eyes and confessed honestly with my hand on my heart:

I have not committed sin.

I have not committed robbery with violence.

I have not stolen.

I have not slain men and women.

I have not stolen grain.

I have not purloined offerings.

I have not stolen the property of the gods.

I have not uttered lies.

I have not carried away food.

I have not uttered curses.

I have not committed adultery, I have not lain with men.

I have made none to weep.

I have not eaten the heart [i.e., I have not grieved uselessly, or felt remorse].

I have not attacked any man.

I am not a man of deceit.

I have not stolen cultivated land.

I have not been an eavesdropper.

I have slandered no man.

I have not been angry without just cause.

I have not debauched the wife of any man.

I have not debauched the wife of any man (repeats the previous affirmation but addressed to a different god).

I have not polluted myself.

I have terrorized none.

I have not transgressed the Law.

I have not been wroth.

I have not shut my ears to the words of truth.

I have not blasphemed.

I am not a man of violence.

I am not a stirrer-up of strife.

I have not acted with undue haste.

I have not pried into matters.

I have not multiplied my words in speaking.

I have wronged none, I have done no evil.

I have not worked witchcraft against the King (or blasphemed against the King).

I have never stopped the flow of water.

I have never raised my voice (spoken arrogantly, or in anger).

I have not cursed or blasphemed god.

I have not acted with evil rage.

I have not stolen the bread of the gods.

I have not carried away the khenfu cakes from the spirits of the dead.

I have not snatched away the bread of the child, nor treated with contempt the god of my city.

I have not slain the cattle belonging to the god.

I passed it safely as I did not have any time to commit such atrocities, I mentally heaved a sigh seeing Ammit that savage crocodile faced fat lion stayed in his place and did not attack me, then I saw my heart in the pan was balanced with the feather on the scale so I was saved and judged righteous.

I looked at Anubis with a questioning look, as he gazed deeply at me in silence the whole time since my recital of the confession.

His deep sonorous voice sounded slightly surprised: "It has been a few millennia since I received someone like you, this sounds interesting, the only mortal in thousands of years to pass the confession as they forgot about the book and their tombs no longer had it inscribed in to remind them of its content."

I was deeply shaken by the whole ordeal and looked deeply at the wolf head in front of me and asked shakily "What is going to happen now?"

He simply said "You will reincarnate in another world"

I felt a paradox of jubilant feelings as well as deep fear as some worlds were not human-friendly at all. I asked humbly "O mighty Anubis, can I know which world is it?"

"Game of Thrones", he said.

I thought inwardly "This is a sick world where lives are as worthless as grass and heads keep rolling off shoulders. I need to plan this carefully to survive."

"Do I have any boons like a system or to choose a timeline?", I asked carefully.

He looked at me tiredly and said: " There is no such thing however since you lived righteously I will allow you to have one wish but it has to be related to me and I will allow some minor choices in your birth status and looks."

"What do you mean by 'minor' ?"

"It means since you will be connected to me you have to be a Stark as they are the only family with some minuscule divine wolf bloodline, and for looks, you can not have non-existent looks like being an elf-like handsome man with green hair. You need to have local roots for your looks."

I thought for a few moments then finally decided: " I want to have the ability of the strongest among Taha Aki's descendants of Qiuleute Wolves. I want to include a special alpha ability to induce phasing of others instead of needing the threat of the cold ones to initiate the phasing and to be able to imprint on different women. For my birth, I wish to be born to a Stark of the line of Torrhen Stark's son, who refused to bend the knee to Aegon I and left to Essos to create the Company of the Rose, and a woman of pure Valyrian blood. I would like to be born in 273 AC. For my looks, I want to grow up looking like Henry Cavill's Witcher but with blue eyes"

Anubis looked at me quietly for a moment then he whispered "Farewell young man." and everything darkened suddenly.