(DISCLAIMER: I OWN NOTHING! Except my character Katherine, of course.)

-Ravyne

Death Becomes Her

Chapter 5:

With the camp noises in the not-so-far distance, Kat walks around the perimeter of the city as she does every night just out of habit. After tonight's attack, she's keeping camp within ear and scream shot just in case she needs to raise an alarm. So far, what she's overheard from the other inhabitants of the camp, they have decided that at night it would be beneficial to combine forces so they could all watch each other's backs.

Honestly, she would rather just keep to her own, but out here in this cursed city, numbers are the key to survival. Every so often, Kat has to skip around a fallen pillar or the ruins of a building, passing under the shadows cast along the sands by the moon hanging low in the sky. It's not yet midnight but it feels almost like it with its calm wind and gentle silence. The whole world is settling down to sleep around them.

Which is what she should be doing…if she weren't so keyed up by tonight's attack on the camp. There's a good chance she won't be sleeping at all knowing that those horsemen were out there watching their every move, readying to pounce on them again when the time came. Of course, that would be in exactly twenty four hours; that's all the time they gave them to pack up camp and leave before they, quote, 'all die'. No doubt horrible deaths.

Twenty four hours. That was plenty of time to get out of here and Kat would love to do just that, but with her brother quickly becoming infatuated with Evie, who absolutely loved being able to explore Hamunaptra, it would only get harder for him to see reason in leaving.

Though on the other hand, she's happy that he's found someone he could be infatuated with. And yet, on the other hand, she would like for them to both survive long enough for Kat to be able to get a niece or nephew out of the deal.

Sighing, Kat stops and stares up at the moon above her; she's always loved the night but for some reason she's hated the moon. It's always seemed so cold and void. Lifeless and unfeeling. She tears her eyes away when a light pressure begins to form at the back of her skull randomly and Kat grumbles under her breath as she reaches back to rub the back of her head.

Did I hit my head during the fight without my knowledge or something?, she wonders. The pressure slowly dies away just as she passes out from under the shadow of a free standing pillar at the corner of a ruined platform and out of nowhere a hand shoots out and wraps over her mouth from behind before she can raise an alarm.

Struggling to free herself from her captor, Kat goes still when a low voice hisses in her ear, "Be calm, I mean you no harm!"

Kat throws her elbow into his stomach and uses his distraction to flip his weight over her shoulder and onto his back across the sands. Ripping out her knife, she goes to stab at his head but his hands reach up to stop her arm.

"You would attack an unarmed man?!" the man snarls.

Kat pauses, staring down into his face. It's the same man from before, the one who attacked her on the boat, the one she fought in camp, and the one who pretty much took her hostage not too long ago. The only difference was now he wore no headdress or cloth to hide his head or face, leaving his shoulder length, wavy black hair free to the wind.

She narrows her gaze, momentarily going speechless, "This coming from the guy who extended a sword to my throat and held me hostage not too long ago."

He jabs a finger into the crook of her elbow suddenly, making one of those weird yet ticklish pains shoot through her arm, and she draws back with a hiss. Jumping to his feet, he holds up his fists towards her and she flips her knife as they circle each other.

"You fight well…for a woman," he states randomly.

Kat forces a sarcastic smile, "Aw, same to you."

The man blinks, fleetingly confused by her words, and she rushes at him before he can recuperate. He blocks her knife left and right a few times before knocking it out of her hand and forcing her to fight with her bare hands. Kat flips backwards to put some distance between them and then raises her fists again…only to lower them in surprise when he raises his hands in surrender.

"I come to you unarmed. Why do you perceive me as a threat?" he demands.

Kat rolls her eyes, "You clearly know how to handle a few moves in hand to hand combat so it's obvious that you could easily snap my neck with your bare hands at any given moment if you got the chance to. That makes you a threat."

The man takes a moment, breathing laboriously from their fight, and Kat takes the moment to catch her own breath. When he makes his next move, she's outright stunned at his choice.

He hesitantly lowers himself to his knees and raises his hands higher until they are level with his head, staring up at her as he waits for her response. Kat's jaw goes slack, glancing away uncertainly, and trying to decide what to do. He's obviously quick on his feet—he could easily jump up and attack her again when she got close—and he's also unpredictably cunning. She's seen him pull out weapons from absolutely nowhere. Who's to say he didn't have a smaller weapon hidden away somewhere in those robes of his or in the wraps tied snuggly around his waist.

Her eyes linger there against her will and she quickly corrects herself with an eye roll, "I'm still not convinced that I shouldn't raise an alarm and call the whole camp over here to skin you alive." She's sure they wouldn't skin him—they're not barbarians—but if she could scare him enough to make him think twice about coming back to attack then she's all for it.

Again the man's shoulders sag, whether in annoyance or defeat she can't be sure, and his eyes flit over towards her dagger lying forgotten in the sand.

"Don't even think about it," she warns through her teeth, taking a step to her right to put herself closer to the discarded weapon. He lifts his eyes to her, holding them steadily, and then very slowly reaches over to pick it up. What really surprises her is that he places the tip of the knife directly against the center of his chest with the hilt facing towards her.

"We both know you could easily kill me now if you desired," he states.

But before the full sentence could make it out of his mouth, Kat has blurred forward and slapped the knife out of his hands, sending it flying with impossible speeds through the air and blade first into the surface of a nearby pillar. The stone cracks a second after it buries into it.

Kat gasps in alarm suddenly catching on to what she'd done, staring horrified at the knife and then to the hand that had thrown it away from him. Her breath hitches in her throat as she stares down at her shaking palm, "W-what…I didn't…How…?"

"It is as I thought," the man states quietly, standing slowly as he stares off at the knife in the wall of the column before turning his gaze to her.

"Why does it sound like you're about to tell me something I don't want to hear…?" Kat balls her hands back up slowly and turns a heated glare to him as she backs away slowly, once more raising her fists defensively.

"I believe you have a connection to this place," he says as he advances towards her. She continues to back up in response. "I witnessed it once during our last fight. You looked lost in a vision."

Kat scoffs as she keeps backing away from him, turning to put fallen ruins of pillars and stones between them, "Yeah, I don't believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, voodoo nonsense. So your tricks aren't going to work on me."

The man spreads his arms out to his sides as he continues to follow her as she backs away, "It is your own words you refuse to believe. I saw your eyes when we fought, saw your reaction when you touched my blade. You felt but did not see."

Kat hops up the steps to the top of the platform in her attempt to get away from him but he rushes up them after her and quickly cuts her off. She stumbles back away from him towards the center of the platform, "You're crazy-!"

"Still denying the obvious," he cuts her off. "You saw something. You've been here before."

"Yes, I've been here," she snaps. "My brother and I were in the Legionnaire, we marched out here to find this city and then had to watch our entire battalion get pretty much wiped clean off the face of the earth."

"We saw," he responds, still advancing on her with a narrowed gaze.

"Yeah, I guessed that was you and your friends on that ridgeline that we saw," she shoots back. Finally tired of running, Kat swings her fist at him only for him to block, grabbing her wrist firmly.

"I stand by my belief that you have a connection to this place. Whether you like it or not," he growls, finally sounding annoyed.

"And I stand my belief that you're still crazy!" Kat throws her other fist at his face and he blocks it again, closing his finger around her hand.

"Then prove me wrong. Tell me there is nothing here that you recognize."

Kat throws her eyes around sarcastically at the pillars that are left standing around the perimeter of the platform, "I don't recognize…any…thing…" Her eyes catch something that does snag her attention. Something she's seen before.

The carving of the Egyptian woman she had seen in the room under the city and on top of the coffin. This time as well, she wields the weird whip-looking weapons.

The man follows her gaze and spots the hieroglyph she stares at and then slowly shifts his eyes back to her face, looking for the signs he had seen before that she had gone into a vision. There's nothing.

"I've seen that…" Kat whispers slowly.

"In a vision?"

"No," she answers, unable to take her eyes off the carving, "In a room down below and on top of a coffin." Her arms start going slack as her fists drop and he lets them go, letting her walk away towards the hieroglyphics. Kat gets about a step away, close enough to see that even in this painting the woman's eyes are weird looking, before stopping. She slowly reaches out to touch the pillar but a sudden hiss of wind whirls around her, kicking up sand, and Kat gasps.

The second she turns around, the pressure reappears at the back of her skull and the world melts away into a totally different one.

This time she stands on a platform similar to this one only this one doesn't lie in ruin. The world isn't washed over in golden light as the last world had been the time before; this time the moon rules this scene. She waits by a pillar as a line of men form a circle near the center of the platform, knelt down with their foreheads to the ground, and another man dressed in darker robes stands in the center. His head is bald and he's facing away from her but for some reason she feels like she knows him even though she knows she's never seen him before. The man spreads his arms wide and lifts them up as if he's going to embrace the moon above but then he turns towards her and his face is revealed.

A second later, a whisper of a hand presses on her shoulder and the world flashes away. She jerks with a gasp and shifts her eyes around frantically. The man in black stands before her, watching her carefully as she blinks out the pressure from her eyes.

Kat realizes that it was his hands that had pressed down on her shoulder and pulled her from…whatever that was. His hands are warmer than she thought they would be and bigger; they make her feel almost…at ease.

No!, she throws his hands off of her shoulders and backs away, wiping her mouth as she does.

"You saw something," he quickly calls before she can run off.

"I saw you leaving before I called for back up to rip you apart," she snarls. With that, she spins on her heel and storms off back to camp, hating the feeling of her quickened heart beat in her chest. She can't tell if it's from the weird experience or because she had found him so close.

Kat hadn't wanted to but she walks into camp just as things are getting gushy between Rick and Evie. The poor woman is obviously drunk and running her mouth with slurred words as she teeters off balance.

She drops to her knees before Rick and stares deeply into his eyes as best as she can with her unfocused gaze, a blush painting her face, and lowers her voice a tad. Poor Rick looks half scared to death of whatever it is she's about to say to him.

"I am…going to kiss you…Mr. O'Connell," Evie blurts out.

The fear melts off his face when he realizes she's not going to say whatever he thought she was going to say and tells her, "Call me Rick."

This response seems to delight Evie to no end as she repeats his name with something near adoration, humming each syllable affectionately, "Rick…"

Kat presses her lips tightly together to keep the ball of laughter building inside of her from spurting out all over the place as she watches the scene. Evie leans forward clumsily, Rick tilts his head to meet her, Kat holds her breath…

And down Evie falls face first onto Rick knee unconsciously.

"Buahahahaahahaahaa!" Kat grabs her stomach and falls to her knees on the blanket she's using a bedding, sinking into the fetal position on her side as her hysteria rumbles through her body in shudders.

Rick gently lays Evie's passed out form onto her blanket, glaring at his sister, "Shut up."

"I'm sorry!" she tries to respond through her giggles. "That was so perfect! You're such a romancer!"

"Shut up!" he snaps as he tosses his bag at her. Kat catches it and cradles it against her stomach only making her giggle fit that much worse. Rick curls up on his blanket with a glare and puts his back to her.

"Oh, don't sulk!" she baits him. "I'm sure she won't remember a thing tomorrow morning, she'll be too hung over."

Rick grabs his rifle, spins over to glower at her as he cocks it threateningly at her. Kat pushes his bag to the side and sits up, unable to take his threat seriously as she fights hard to keep in her snickers, "I-I'm sorry…I'm sorry I really am. I honestly needed that laugh right now."

Rick pauses his rage momentarily as he takes a good look at his sister. In the firelight, he can see that she looks oddly pale, which is rare for her with her skin more naturally darker than his; they are only half siblings after all. Also her face is much too red for a simple fit of giggles to cause. Beyond that, her hands are shaking.

"Yeah, you look like you do," he comments as he sits up and crosses his legs. "You alright?"

Kat's chuckles slowly dissipate as she turns her eyes down to her own crossed legs, "Y-Yeah, I just…uh…well, you know. All this excitement has me worried that's all."

Rick isn't buying it, "Na-uh, what's up? You've been in plenty of fights before and that earlier was nothing compared to what we've been through together. What's got you riled up?"

She chews the inside of her cheek as she lowers her head ever further to hide her eyes from his interrogating gaze. Kat tries not to think back over her talk with the man in black not ten minutes ago but the memories fight against her effort to push them back. So she forces herself to think of something more soothing—like the song her brother used to hum to her when they were younger.

It always put her at ease when she used to have nightmares.

Kat crawls over to her brother's side, leans against his broad shoulder and wraps her arm around his elbow like she used to do when they were kids, "You remember that song you used to hum to me back at the orphanage?"

"You mean the one mom taught us?" he asks.

"Yeah."

"What about it?"

"Could you sing it? You know, for old time's sake?" she asks, dropping her eyes to her hands as she fiddles her thumbs together restlessly.

"Why?"

"Please?" Kat urges, refusing to answer. Rick sighs, patting her arm, and then quietly begins to hum the song so as not to wake the other two siblings across the fire from them. As always, the song lulls Kat's eyelids closed and before long she can feel the pull of sleep on her body.

Always works, Kat thinks one last time before letting exhaustion take over her.