Author's Note: Alright, so this story is set after The Mummy Returns. It will feature the O'Connells and all our favourite characters. I do not own the Mummy or any such thing. However, the original characters are mine and I'd love to get feedback on them; mostly Vivienne as she does play a large role in this story. That's about all I have to say. I hope you enjoy reading this and please review when you're finished.

/Dani/

The Oath of Sekhmet; Mistress of Destruction

Chapter One

The sun was beating down harshly on Peter's back, making him wonder if it were possible to contract sunburn through the light cotton shirt he wore. Wiping his sweaty brow, Peter wondered why he had ever signed up for this ridiculous trip. Extra credit in Lambert's class aside, this was a stupid idea. It wasn't like a bunch of amateur student archaeologists were going to find anything. Peter heard a cough break the near-death silence of the excavation site and sharply looked to his left. Marianne Martin, the prettiest girl in the entire world, was covering her mouth politely while she nearly coughed up a lung. Peter tossed his shovel aside and approached the vivacious Irish girl.

"You alright sunshine?" he asked, trying to inconspicuously smooth his hair back. Marianne cleared her throat deeply and nodded appreciatively. She straightened out the sunhat that had become askew on the top of her curls.

"I've started to detest the sand," she mumbled, throwing her pick to the side and taking a sip out of her water flask. "Darn, nearly empty. I hope we get to turn in soon."

"Same," Peter nodded, "But if you need any more water, you can have some of mine." He pulled his own flask from his belt and handed it to her. Marianne smiled sweetly but shook her head.

"I'm not that desperate," she giggled. Peter's shoulders slumped at her words and for a moment Marianne looked confused. Then, the fact of what she had said seemed to sink in. "Oh, Pete," she laughed, "I didn't mean like that. I just don't want to see you dehydrate to death." The two laughed at the misunderstanding, their laughter eventually subsiding back into the deep silence that was the norm on the dig site. Marianne sighed and lay back, placing her head in Peter's lap. She was thankful that he had signed up for this dumb trip as well. In her opinion, Egypt was too hot. She missed the cool rainy days in London. Not to mention, there were far too many foreign bugs for her liking here. In the last hour she had managed to dig into the paths of four scorpions. Marianne felt Peter's strong hands running through her hair and couldn't help but to smile. She secretly found him very attractive and hoped that they would be able to get some alone time one night, just so she'd have an interesting story to tell the girls back home.

"Professor Lambert! Professor Wright! Come quick, I think I've found something!" The calming silence was broken by a boy's gleeful shouts. Marianne sat bolt upright and looked in the direction that everyone was running in. She quickly got to her feet and held out her hand to pull Peter to his.

"Come on," she urged, "I want to see what's going on." Peter looked annoyed, but stood up anyways and the two merged with the group of running students until they reached a boy with dark hair who stood looking at the ground with great pride.

"Excuse me, careful there, nobody touch anything." Marianne felt someone pushing through the crowd and turned to see the excited faces of her Professors, Vivienne Lambert and James Wright. Professor Wright had been the one shouting the orders and doing the pushing, while Professor Lambert just followed behind, carrying a bag full of tools and rolling her eyes. Admittedly, when Marianne had first started at Oxford she had heard rumours that the two were secretly bedding each other, but after her first day in Lambert's class on Ancient Greece, Marianne knew that the rumours held absolutely no truth. She was quite certain that Lambert hated Wright, and with good reason too. He was a pompous man who knew how attractive he was and wasn't afraid to boast his good looks. However, they did work well together when it came to unearthing history; both were focused and determined; at least when to came to proving themselves better than the other.

"Vivienne, what has young Charlie here discovered?" Wright stood in the middle of the crowd with the dark haired boy at his side while Vivienne was examining the area of ground he had been all excited over. Marianne craned her neck for a better view and saw that underneath the sand was a solid object that was something other than dirt. To Marianne, with her limited knowledge of geology, it appeared to be limestone. And she definitely didn't need to be a geologist to see that there were carvings in the stone.

"This is interesting," Professor Lambert mumbled, mostly to herself as she dusted away the sand from the carvings. She toiled away, making the dig look effortless and in less than ten minutes, had a four by four square of limestone engravings. "This is definitely interesting."

"Can you decipher what it says?" Wright asked, watching with greedy eyes as Lambert placed her tools back in her bag, shaking her head. His expression fell at her answer.

"I'm not very good when it comes to Egyptian," she said, "We've only just begun offering it at the University and this is my first expedition here." She flicked a stray strand of hair away from her face. "Perhaps I'll ride into town and see if I can find someone to help us."

"Yes, yes very well," Wright sighed, "Everyone else, take a break." The crowd began to disperse as everyone went their own separate ways. Marianne took one last look at the limestone patch before hurrying to catch up with Peter, hoping they could spend some more quality time together. Soon, it was just James and Vivienne standing over their student's discovery.

"How long do you think it'll take you to find help?" James questioned. Vivienne inhaled deeply, her eyes fixated on the tiny square she had just dug up. Her eyes were narrowed and full of concern. James knew there was something wrong with his colleague. He took a step forward.

"Are you alright Vivienne?"

"I'm not going to find someone," Vivienne said, shaking her head in response to James' question, "We're not digging this tomb up."

"What are you talking about?" James hissed, making Vivienne's shoulders tense with anger. "This is the big break we've been waiting for Viv and you're going to give it up? What's gotten into you?"

"I lied James," she confessed, "I lied about not being able to read the inscription."

"What? Why?" James was looking at Vivienne with genuinely confused eyes. His companion wiped sweat from the bridge of her nose with shaky hands.

"It's cursed," she replied, smoothing out her shirt, "I don't know who the tomb belongs to but I do know that it's cursed. We can't go in there."

"Are you kidding me?" James laughed heartily at Vivienne's reasoning, "You're actually buying into this curse nonsense. You're going to give up the find of a lifetime over some silly Egyptian myth?"

"James, please…" Vivienne's voice was pleading.

"What did it say?" he cut her off harshly.

"Excuse me?"

"What did the inscription say?" James asked with a hard tone. Vivienne looked down at the limestone square once more, reading over the hieroglyphics, making sure she had not made an error in her first translation. No, no, she was sure of it.

"He who rests here protected during his life and will be protected in his death. Doom to those…and well, it ends there."

"Ridiculous," James huffed, "We have to continue to excavate."

"Please don't," Vivienne urged him, "We can't put the students in such danger. There are probably booby traps in there. Someone could get very badly hurt." Silence fell over the pair as James looked out over their campsite, his eyes resting briefly on every student. As difficult as he made his classes, he certainly loved being a teacher and his students were important to him.

"Very well," he said finally, "We'll dig somewhere else. There's bound to be some artefacts buried around here somewhere."

"Definitely," Vivienne nodded enthusiastically.

"Do me a favour though, will you?"

"Of course."

"Would you mind riding into Cairo and doing a little bit of research on whose tomb this could possibly be?"

"Not at all," Vivienne smiled, "I'll be back in a few days. Good luck and keep safe." She and James shook hands before she walked over to where their group kept the camels tethered. She found hers and hopped on, urging him away from the dig site. Vivienne rode for a few minutes before she stopped and looked back at her students, all relaxing and laughing in the shadows between the Great Sphinx and the monstrous pyramid of the Pharaoh Khafra. A pulse of fear passed through her body, but was quickly forgotten as she continued on her way to Cairo. Of course, the great city was not her final destination. She knew she was supposed to be doing research on whose tomb they had unearthed and she would certainly do so, but the information she needed was a little further away than Cairo. She was sure that no one would miss her being gone a few extra days. Now, all she needed was an airplane.

--x

So, what did you think? Please review! Constructive criticism is welcome.