Chapter 17: An Unexpected Situation

The body she was in trembled, Mya wasn't sure if it was due to fear or nervousness.

"Why do you always seem to attract danger to yourself?" Came the voice again, only then did Maaike realize that she could understand what it was saying.

The voice was a bit different from what she remembered, but she could tell that it was Isis's voice. Her tone was so gentle that it was hard to picture it as the same person in her mind.

The incoherent words came from Tayet again, Isis sighed exasperated at the fear she seemed to exude with every word.

"I must leave soon, it's almost time for Horus to ascend…I will leave things in your capable hands."

It was silent for a while, then the water in the basin shook, a drop flew upward landing in Tayet's left eye. The drop didn't stop there but sunk deeper till it got to where Maaike's consciousness lay hidden, it swirled around her, leaving a fragment of itself on her before moving on to its destination.

There was a flash and Maaike was thrown out of the timeline and back to the valley of portals. She shook her head to clear the fog, looking about she realized she was alone, the seer was nowhere to be found.

Her head spun as she tried to think of possible reasons why she wasn't there; Maybe she was stabilizing the place, she was old, so it made sense that she'd need a break, or maybe she was working for someone else and had left her in there as part of the job.

By the time she stopped her panic, she had been drawn infinitely closer to one of the wilder portals, she turned to run away but was sucked in immediately.

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A sharp pain pierced through her head, she tried to open her eyes, but it only seemed to aggravate the pain. Resigning to keep her eyes close, she reached out for her cell phone to stop the ringing sound.

As she felt around, she touched cloth moving her hand upward slowly, she traced along feeling fingers, a wrist. It was a body wrapped in cloth, forcing her eyes open despite the pain, she let out a garbled sound tightening them shut again.

Lifting her hands, she clenched her head only to feel the same fabric wrapped around her head. She gently caressed her face soon realizing that it was fully wrapped as well, she wasn't sure if she was at a hospital or not, but the thought terrified her.

She tried to think back to what had happened, but she could not focus as the pain strengthened. She couldn't remember without it hurting, it was as though there was a thick barrier between her and her memories.

Trying to take her mind off the pain, she carefully searched for the part where her head wrappings started, she pulled and started to unwrap it.

Not sure if it was easing or growing the pain, she could feel a throbbing in her head as she unwrapped her head, soon she got to the last layer that lay directly on her skin. It felt as though it was glued onto her skin with some gelatine like substance, she carefully peeled the cloth strips off her skin.

She was terrified that she might peel her skin off in the process, stopping every few moments to calm down and continue until she got to her eye part. She understood why it hurt to open it now, it was so tight around her eyebrows and under her eyes, it was bound to hurt.

Now that she thought about it, she realized that she probably wasn't in a hospital, there was no way their bindings would be so easy to take off. She focused on getting everything off her head and face, and when she opened her eyes again, she let out a silent scream.

There was no way to describe the horror she felt, she seemed to be in a tomb, an Egyptian tomb. It looked like it was supposed to be dark, but there was light bouncing off the walls, there was a mummy lying right beside her, the one she had touched.

She was a mummy, a real-life mummy, she wasn't sure how, but she was still moving and breathing.

She moved to sit up, edging away from her mummy companion, she slowly slid off the bed she was placed on. There was a throbbing in her feet as she put her weight on them, she shuffled forward, swallowing down groans of pain.

Straining to see through the pain she was experiencing, she finally got to the closest entrance. Her fingers gripped onto the angled walls, supporting herself as she shuffled through the halls of the mausoleum.

After a long agonizing walk, she soon got to a place completely covered in hieroglyphs, depicting the story of those within the tomb. They were strange stories, but she seemed to understand them, they told of how Osiris had died, and how Tayet was given the duty over his burial rites.

It told of how his wife Isis was to be buried with him, how Isis took the body from Tayet with her knowledge in order to resurrect him. How Tayet had to preventing the other gods and the Scales of Judgement from stopping the resurrection ritual.

It was then that Mya remembered who she was, she was in the past, so Tayet was saved by Isis after she lost her powers in the battle. The story was not very new to Maaike, but she had never known there was more to the story, how much had been sacrificed to resurrect Osiris.

She slid to the ground exhausted, it was a baffling tale to her, she was honestly glad she had taken Illyan's history lessons, or she wouldn't have understood the story. If she was sure about anything, it was that Tayet was the ancestor of the Heorte family. However, there was a question that bothered her most, why then did Isis label the Heorte family as traitors?

Despite her confusion, she slowly slipped out of consciousness. Despite her desperate efforts to hold on and try to find out more, she found herself once again in the valley of time, everything was gone. It seemed like a completely different place, the light faded away, leaving the place looking grey and dull.

The golden sand was no longer bright, and the warm desert was now humid, she found it hard to breathe, all the sand portals had collapsed into nothing. Maaike pursed her lips and hugged herself, realizing that she was no longer in her original training clothes but now in a dull grey dress.

She let out a shuddering breath and looked up at the hill where the seer was when they first arrived, right there she caught sight of a glamorously wrapped mummy.