1513 B.C.
A catastrophe occurred in the life of the Pharaoh. Just after midnight at the palace in Thebes, the Pharaoh was woken and there began a great outcry the like of which had never been seen before.
Surrounded by the opulence of his rulership, kneeling by a richly adorned bed, the Pharaoh put his head against the body of his son.
"My son, my son, why do you lay down? First born of my flesh, you would be the next Pharaoh of Egypt. Rise up, my son, rise up! Your time is yet to come. The people worship us like gods and still you die. Wake up, my son, for the time has not yet come for your pyramid to be built! Oh my son, my son!" He wailed out his anguish.
His servant approached him, bowing profusely.
"Your son is with the gods now, oh Pharaoh," he said, keeping his eyes downcast.
The Egyptian king raised his head. "Bring me Jannes, bring me Jambres; my magic-practicing priests. Where are they when I need them? Find them now! They boast and brag of a new power over death they stole from Anubis. Well, where is it? Oh my son, not my son," he finished with fresh tears. Spinning round to the frightened servant, he spat out his command, "Find them now. Go!"
From the shadows of the room, a woman clad in white moved towards the candlelight and prostrated herself at the sovereign's feet.
"He is my son too, oh Pharaoh," she said quietly.
The Pharaoh looked at her through his anguish. "Yes he is, and yet you failed to keep him alive. You with your power and wisdom, you and your knowledge of death, your boasted connections to the great god Anubis." He turned on his knees to her prone figure and put his hand under her chin and yanked her up to his level. Pushing her head towards the bed, he said "Look at him... my son, our son. Dead."
The woman blinked through the pain of his grip. Her long, beautiful, black hair cascaded down her slender back, framing a profile that was sad and bereft, but anger seethed beneath the surface of her ivory skin.
"My Pharaoh, what I would do, what I would give to see my son rule this land. And yet there is hope; we have the Stone of Anubis himself. Perhaps it will work. You are a god to the people. Maybe the gods will help us."
Pharaoh shoved her roughly to the floor and she slid across the flagstones, her head banging against the unyielding surface. She lay still and quiet, her legs and arms splayed in protest to her violent fall. She silently offered up a prayer to the god Anubis.
A gong rang and the voice of his servant filled the death chamber. "Oh mighty Pharaoh, ruler of Egypt, the high priests Jannes and Jambres request an audience with you."
The Pharaoh straightened his stance, ready to receive his visitors.
The huge, gold-plated doors swung open to reveal his two high priests, dressed in white linen, their shaven heads bowed as they entered the room.
"Our Pharaoh, we humbly fall before you. We share the grief of Egypt at the loss of our prince," Jannes announced.
The two men waited for their leader to speak, visibly cowering before his presence.
"You, Jannes, and you, Jambres, have boasted of your power, gloried in your knowledge of dark secrets. If your boasts are true, you have the power of Anubis. So bring back my son! If you fail, you will be executed as traitors. The noses and feet of your mortuary statues will be hacked off and any inscriptions will be erased to make certain you will be lost and crippled in the afterlife. Magic killed my son. Ensure that magic brings him back!"
The arcane priests of Egypt hesitated in horror of the fate that seemed destined to befall them. Their new argument would be of no avail.
"Take my queen with you. She has boasted in a similar vein." He motioned to the inert woman on the ground.
Jambres took from his robes a wand entwined with a snake and pointed it towards the queen. Her body rose into the air and they meekly bowed to the Pharaoh, departing with the floating queen and leaving him to sink once again to his knees.
Making their way out of the palace, they headed for the temple. They passed through the pillared outer sanctuaries and delved into the inner sanctums of the holy place. A statue of Anubis was holding up the ceiling, his jackal face looking down at an altar below. Jambres levitated the queen's body to the altar. Jannes muttered an incantation and she began to stir.
"Our Queen, death is awaiting us. The Stone of Resurrection will not work. We have tried every invocation from the Book of the Dead and cast every known spell onto the Stone. Nothing, my Queen, nothing! We stole something worthless from the gods. Pharaoh will kill us all for our blasphemy."
The queen lifted her face to the effigy of the god. "Forgive us, Anubis, and spare my son."
The sculpture slowly animated, and then its animalistic head darted around suddenly, eliciting small gasps of panic from the three gathered before it.
"I help you? I know what you are, fox, and you stole from me," he growled.
"For my son, my precious son. You must understand!" she implored.
"What is your son to me, who can hide from death? I am the master of death and only I wield the power of it. My Stone will not work when stolen; you have to truly possess it. You must defeat me or I must give it to you. Still, it will not function without all of its elements. I have the elements, you do not, and yet you presume to steal from me, you and your greedy, grasping, magic-practicing priests, whose power is now impotent." As he spoke, Jannes and Jambres fell to the floor, whimpering at the sight of their allusive deity.
Anubis let out a mighty bellow that shook the temple to its foundation and his hands tore away from the ceiling. Rocks fell from above as the enraged god grabbed Jannes and
Jambres. They screamed as they were lifted into the air, wildly thrashing about, trying to free themselves from the crushing pressure of Anubis' hands. The fists closed tighter and tighter, the sound of choking echoing off of the walls until their limp bodies were hurled across the temple. More stones cracked and fell, covering the pitiful figures. He shouted out a summoning spell and a wand flew from the priests.
The gigantic statue caught the wand and pushed it down his throat. "I think that is mine as well," he growled out.
The noise of the crumbling temple grew louder and louder, rocks and pillars falling close to the woman, who was trying to scramble away.
"You cannot escape me! Show yourself for what you are, you demon of the orient!" Anubis snarled at her.
The queen halted at the words, and then her whole body began to spasm and shake. She shrank in size and her features lengthened. The fox stood before Anubis.
"Give me back the Stone! Give me the Sekhen, vixen!" Anubis roared over the deafening sounds of destruction.
The fox gagged and from its mouth fell an onyx stone, black as night yet seeming to shine brightly.
Anubis uttered a charm and the stone flew to his mouth and he swallowed it. His statue became still. Cracks appeared on the effigy, snaking and branching out along the ornate surface, and then it shattered into a thousand pieces.
The fox crawled from the rubble and slunk away into the Egyptian dawn.
Pharaoh never saw his queen again and his son was laid to rest with Anubis watching over his mummification.
The Sekhen was forgotten. As centuries went by, kingdom after kingdom raised its head, and Anubis reincarnated with every generation until Death became his name.
Little did Death know that he would be freely relinquishing his gifts to wizards of the future who would seek the mastery of him.
And the fox would always be watching.
In the Forbidden Forest, the onyx stone waited in the undergrowth. Someone would find it, but would they learn how to master it?