Though they had seen their prince several times since then, they had only managed to leave their sarcophagi once or twice to see how the modern era had changed since the last time they had awoken. Finally after several months, the museum exhibit was finally done. Everything being restored had been restored by delicate hands and placed in the room where they lay awake, waiting, hoping, that Prince Rapses would appear sometime within the next few hours.
They had been fretting about his health ever since they had first seen him. And though they had wanted nothing more than to throw their sarcophagi open and go after him...they had been far too weak at that time to do so.
Hopefully whatever had ailed the boy would have left him by now.
Hopefully.
According to the sun dial on the wall, it was...uh... The one in the sarcophagi trimmed in pure god and vibrant blue hues shifted anxiously and peered out of the small opening at the gold and green sarcophagi next to him and wondered, How does the sun dial work again?
The one in the green sarcophagi shifted and peeked out at the sun dial and made a strange half moan half growling sound. How was he supposed to know how the blasted sun dial worked when there was no sunlight in the room! Honestly, why didn't someone else try to come up with the answers? He was getting tired of being asked.
Someone walked into the room that they recognized, it was the man that had upset their prince all those months ago. His name was Jim and he had a bad habit of talking to them when he thought they weren't listening. He seemed like a nice enough guy. He certainly worried about their prince. He had even been kind enough to keep them posted on how Rapses had been doing, though he didn't realize it.
And as such had become a valuable part of their information network that they had dubbed 'the messenger'.
Jim looked around the room before coming to stand before their sarcophagi and sighed tiredly before saying to himself, "I wonder if Lexie is going to show up tonight? The kid isn't very social thanks to-" He paused and ran his fingers through his shoulder length black hair before saying, "Well I guess if I had trouble like Lexie does, I wouldn't feel terribly social either. The poor kid has wound up in the hospital several times because of-"
Jim might have said more if not for the fact that their prince stood a few feet inside the door behind him and cleared his throat. The man turned to look at him and flushed furiously at being caught speaking to the mummies as the museum curator's daughter quietly made her way over to his side and looked around the room. "Hn. Everyone did a better job than I imagined." She said absently.
She'd skipped school to come and see the mummies exhibit while it didn't have anyone checking it out since she didn't want to be here later tonight when her mom would open the place to the rich and famous to let them get the first look.
"Did you think it would be like your second grade play?" Jim asked teasingly.
"Something like that." Lexie said honestly. Even though she had imagined so much worse. Like priceless artifacts sprinkled with glitter and hanging from the ceiling fan kind of worse.
"You're mother would be appalled."
"It was my mom who put the idea in my head." Jim laughed at that, understanding all too well Lexie's nervousness as she continued to look around the room. From what he'd heard of her second grade play, her mother had accidentally stapled part of her fairy costume to her left shoulder then glued the flower wreath to her head.
So not only had she needed to go to the hospital after the play, but her head had been shaved too.
"Ya know, your mother isn't as absent minded as you think," Lexie made a noncommittal sound then both fell silent for several heartbeats before Jim sighed and said, "Well kiddo, I'm going to go home. So you have fun checking out the exhibit." Then started to put his hand on her shoulder, but stopped himself at the last moment when he recalled her 'gift' and dropped his hand.
"Later Lexie."
"Later Jim."
The second Jim left her alone in the mummy exhibit, Lexie instantly regretted being there alone. There was such an overwhelming sense of loss, pain, and betrayal in the room that all she wanted to do was curl up in the farthest corner and scream until she tasted blood. The four bodies laying in the sarcophagi before her had been mummified while still alive as punishment for failing their pharaoh.
She blinked several times as she saw each of them being held down by the pharaoh's guards and helping with the mummification process. She closed her eyes as her head started to ache and she suddenly became dizzy. Everything she was seeing was like something right out of a horror movie!
It was just so horrible that- that there was simply no words to describe it.
It was almost like how she had seen Jim's nephew get eaten by the shark. Only the feeling was multiplied by a hundred. Maybe more. Every cut was felt so keenly, every organ removed was an agony that they prayed would end. And though it had all ended thousands of years ago...
The impressions of their deaths had been etched into their very souls.
Falling to her knees before one of the sarcophagi, she tried to breathe as their memories flowed through her mind. She saw the three men each talking with a young boy. The Prince Rapses, she supposed. She learned that they were his guards and tutors. Teaching him to follow in his father's footsteps. But then something had happened.
The prince had been murdered. She could see the one who had killed him, still holding his broken body in his blood stained hands as he smugly looked down at the boy prince's guards. She could see and feel their sorrow, their anger at themselves, but most of all she felt their rage directed at the man holding the boy's corpse.
She could see them fight the mad man in an effort to retrieve the body of their beloved prince only to fail when the enemy tossed the boy's corpse. Causing it to land in a large area of swirling sand.
A sinkhole? She wondered as everything shifted and the four stood before their prince's father as the man stared down at an empty sarcophagi as he spoke, "You may have failed to return my son's body to me, but I know that you did try. You did not fail him. I did. I never should have left..."
"Pharaoh, it isn't you're fault. With war looming on the horizon, you had to go."
The pharaoh turned and looked at the man who had spoken. He was a strikingly handsome man with sapphire blue eyes and long blue black hair that hung to the small of his back.
"Thank you Ja-Kal for those kind words on such a sorrowful day. I wish that I could be as kind, but you know that where my son is the four of you must follow so that you may serve him again."
The four looked down. They had known this would happen inevitably. Since the day that they had been chosen as the prince's guards. But they had always thought that Rapses would die of old age, or of other natural causes. They had never planned ahead for their families and were concerned about what would happen to them if they were forced to leave them behind.
The man named Ja-Kal fisted his hands at his sides and started to speak again. "Great pharaoh, I- My wife, she just had a child..." Will you please see that they do not starve when I am dead? Was the question he wished to ask, but he found he couldn't ask his pharaoh for favors. Not now when his son's lifeless body lay under the sands.
"I understand Ja-Kal-" The pharaoh said as he looked back at the small sarcophagi that had been made for his son and blinked back tears. Ja-Kal didn't have to say the words for him to understand how he felt. After all, what wouldn't any man do for his son?
