The collision of a hefty pile of scrolls being dropped onto the desk threw up a fog of dust, along with the rasping of ancient papyrus unfurling. Mahaad woke with a start, suddenly coughing on the cloud of rancid library dust. Peering through the grey haze, he saw a dour face looking down on him, blue eyes drifting slowly from his own face to the scrolls on the table.
"Found those scrolls you were looking for." Seto inclined his head towards the papyrus, looking as though he were trying to frown even harder. Mahaad simply let out a yawn, reaching across and picking up the stack of sheets, thumbing through them.
"You don't seem happy about having to look for them. Couldn't you have had one of your underlings do it for you?" The magician responded, stifling a second yawn.
"I don't seem happy because I was looking through the contents of those scrolls."
"Prying into my business are you Seto? Tsk tsk, that doesn't seem like you at all."
"If you didn't want me looking at them, then you should have fetched them yourself."
Mahaad simply murmured and bobbed his head in weak agreement, not raising his eye-level from the pages in front of him.
"Just what are you thinking?" Seto demanded, slamming his hand flat across the top sheet, trying to force Mahaad to look up. "Do you have any idea just how serious this is? Do you realise what sort of forces you could be tampering with here?"
Mahaad did lift his gaze, one eyebrow raised as though Seto had grown a third eye right in the middle of the conversation. "You are aware that I, like you, am a High Priest." He said, calm and level.
"That doesn't mean that-"
"And that I am a senior court magician set to become perhaps the most powerful sorcerer in the entirety of Egypt, if not the world."
"None of which matters if anything were to-"
"It would be ridiculous to expect me to ignore any avenues of investigation into this subject. Think of the possible uses of such research!"
"What I'm thinking about, Mahaad, is the possibility that a fellow priest might get in over his head and end up shattering his own spirit into an unrecognisable mess. To say nothing of the effects it might have on the rest of the world."
"All of which has been taken into account."
"And you're still going ahead with it?"
Mahaad nodded, gently pulling the papyrus sheets from under Seto's hand. Stillness hung in the air, the dust finally settling back into place, a few stray sparks in the evening sunlight that pierced through the window. Seto pulled out a stool from under the wooden desk, sitting opposite the magician.
"Talk to me Mahaad. What is this about? What are you trying to do?"
"If you have taken such offence to my research without knowing what it's for, then any effort I make to explain myself will only serve to cement your position."
"Just try me. Convince me that you're not going to cause some kind of spiritual cataclysm with raining blood and animals speaking in tongues and statues turning into fish."
"You wouldn't want Statue-fish? Shame. That's why I got into this job in the first place." Mahaad grinned, knowing his peer's sense of humour was strained, even at the best of times. Seto said nothing, but one finger tapped nervously against the desk. Mahaad sighed. "Fine. I'm looking for a way to combine parts of the soul into one self-controlled, self-regulating form. If what I've researched so far is any indication, it might be possible for someone to fuse their Ba and Ka together. The independence and power of the Ka, but sustaining itself through its connection to the Ba."
"And that would accomplish exactly what for the person involved?"
"Life after death Seto. A tangible, visible existence. At the point of death, if the subject fused their Ba and Ka, then they would remain on earth, able to affect the world around them, albeit to a diminished degree. If I can find the right methods, then there is a possibility that any of us would be able to protect the Pharaoh even after we have thrown down our very lives for him."
That same still silence filled the atmosphere again. Seto stared into Mahaad's eyes, feeling his heart sink as he saw the clarity there. The magician knew what he was talking about. There was no madness, no trickery there. He truly, honestly needed this research to extend his service to the Pharaoh…
"But why, Mahaad?" He asked, "What has you searching for such a power? You're still a young man, you can't possibly be expecting to require a spiritual fusion like this any time soon are you?"
"Sooner than you might think, Seto." He turned his head, looking out onto the dunes in the distance. The sunset had bathed all of Egypt in the reds of blood and wine. Somewhere beyond the reach of the human eye, past the expanses of desert and forbidding stone, the sun set on the Valley of the Kings too. "Sooner than you might think…"