The alter smoked with potent smelling incense that filled the prayer room with a light haze. The walls were adorned with golden tapestries and rich fabrics and the floor was a swirl of cold, hard marble. A girl knelt in the center of it all, head bowed, or rather hanging with emotional defeat. Her linen dress fell around her in a mess of cream and turquoise waves and it hugged her shoulders, exposing her dainty, tanned collar bone but flowed down her arms into a bell as if to modestly cover her array of golden bracelets. She took a deep breath and lifted her gaze to the candles flickering before her. They bathed er face in warm light that danced across her feminine features and sandy blonde hair. The flame lost itself in her deep lapis lazuli orbs that struggled to fight back tears. One hand clawed at the floor, another gripped the left side of her chest. A pain inside her held tight to her heart.
A figure silently snuck up behind her. "Don't you think it is a little late to be repenting your sins, thief?" the voice seethed. A lengthy shadow stretched over the girl, slithering into her view.
She growled, blinking back her tears. She blew out the candles and watched the last bit of inscense burn before she stood. "I'm hardly looking for forgiveness, Seth." She spun on her bare feet to face who was the high priest standing before her. He stared down at you, his blue eyes meeting hers. His large stature belittled her small frame, but not her spirit. Bowing her head briefly, she continued on her way brushing passed him. His long beige and purple robes billowed as she went by, or it could have been when he twisted to catch her shoulder in a tight grip. Giving his hand a rough nudge, she shook him off and stormed out of the prayer room.
"Nuri Kanika, you seem troubled," a priestess stopped her, seeming concerned. She smiled at Kanika nicely and she kept her gaze to the floor.
"It is nothing," she reassured her. She took up her quick pace again and turned a sharp corner, disappearing from the sight of holiness.
The high priest Seth re-emerged from the room looking frustrated. He tightened the hold he had on the golden rod in his hand until his knuckles went white. The girl angered him; she was the secret the Temple of Ra hid from the world under the grand building itself. The priest before him took a risk by taking her in many years ago for if the pharaoh found out it would surely be both their heads . . .
She followed a long hallway to a heavy stone door she pushed open on its ancient hinges which led her to another corridor, this one lit with tall torches. Ahead of her was a flight of spiral stairs leading to a less emense wooden door. The walls wreaked of musty wet clay but she had grown accustomed to it over the years. This was after all, your home. From her golden sash she retrieved a thick iron key and slid it into the lock on the door until a familiar click signaled it had been opened. A large room was revealed to her, its walls stretched a good twenty feet high. A single beam of bright sunlight shone into the room from a hole in the ceiling. That wasn't where it stopped though. One beam bounced off the piles of treasure collected below it, casting a sparkle that twinkled around the empty space. From there the light pierced gems and stopped at the statues and solid . Colours danced across the walls in a rich waltz. She could tell the sun was beginning to set for the light was deep and dull.
Laid out on her bed was a different garb. This one had more pieces with multiple parts to it; a skirt, an archer's style hyde top, a pair of suede boots, bandages and wraps, as well as a belt to hold all her weapons and earnings. She pulled off her dress as she walked towards her bed, crossing under the warm stream of sunlight. Her shirt was a corset form, split open at a centered seam that you wound black rope through, pulling it snuggly to her body. One strap hugged her left shoulder. Her skirt was a simple linen wrap that reached the middle of her thigh, she closed with a brown sash at her waist. She slid on her knee high, sandy brown suede boots and tied them up at the front in a similar way she did her shirt. Finally she wound the bandages over your forearms. The gold bands around her neck glistened like a wealthy Pharaoh's tomb.
Knabbing up her dagger, she sheathed it between her belt and side. It was her prized possession; stolen from the palace itself. The hilt was pure gold, encrusted with large rubies and sapphires and she polished it every morning and wiped it after each kill.
There was a rope in the corner of the room hanging just off to the side of a latch which was in turn next to the hole now sending moonlight across the floor in a white mist. She leapt from the ground and grabbed hold of the rope about halfway up. A few more feet of scaling and she reached the perfect position to swing her body towards the hatch. After three or four powerful thrusts, she launched herself, legs first, breaking through the trap door on her ceiling. She collapsed into a sandy heap in the desert space just outside the temple walls. A jackal howled somewhere in the distance. Jumping to her feet, she dusted herself off and headed towards the outer reaches of the city where the pyramids loomed ahead and the tombs waited below.