Ilais had been tied up in her own bandages, her arms and legs twisted together and held by two very muscular soldiers, a Transylian named Nimdok, and the Loboan who stepped on her, called Lukaro. Undyyne unlocked her seat's locking clamp and turned it around, interrogating their captive with a glowing spear aimed at her head. She reactivated the targeting system in her bionic eye, hooked up to her suit's subsystems for better accuracy.
"So tell us, warrior, why did you decide to sneak onto our ship? Our base's security could've caught you!"
"I...have the wrong ship," Ilais protested. "I was looking for that of your leader's.|
"Did you do this by yourself, or did someone order you to?"
"I would rather die than answer that question!" The dark-headed warrior shrieked.
Nimdok charged his electrical coils, one hand prepared to send the current onto Ilais' body. He warned, "That can be arranged, my friend. But do you really want that?"
Ilais struggled against her bindings, resistant to so much as talk. That was when Nimdok noticed the gauntlet in her right hand. Examining it more closely, he could see that it clearly contained a holo-com inside.
"You DO have an accomplice, don't you?" He muttered.
Ilais just kept trying to escape, screaming, "I'LL! NEVER! TALK!"
"Nimdok, give her a taste," Undyyne commanded.
"With pleasure," the Transylian smirked as he touched two charged metal fingers to her body, green electricity arced across it – avoiding Lukaro across from him in the process.
Ilais struggled and groaned in pain over this torture method, but at the last minute, she shrieked, "Okay, I'll talk! I work for the pharaoh! He sent me to cripple the ship that Ben Tennyson was on, but I boarded the wrong one!"
Nimdok stopped zapping her, smirking, "That's better."
"Why d'you tamper with the cloaking device, then?" Undyyne interrogated.
"So the pharaoh would see your fleet coming. And he will, I know that much," Ilais stated with a sinister tone. "Once he sees your ship, his army will open fire upon you all."
"We'll see about that," Undyyne argued while turning her chair back around towards the console, locking it in place.
At the narrowest of possible moments, Undyyne sighted a missile headed for her ship, as did the pilot, and they swerved out of its path before the thing was mere feet from the bow of the craft. More missiles were launched, but Undyyne's internal targeting system allowed her to use the ship's turret to down the missiles before they hit her.
Her hand darted to the radio, "Hot-Ra, this is Starglider. Be advised: Our cloaking system is disabled, and the enemy fleet is likely to see us before we de-cloak. Recommendations?"
"I confirm, Starglider," Ja'Kaal responded. "All craft: Keep your shields at front and watch for enemy fire around the palace."
Rehk'Set watched as the one uncloaked ship fired its own missiles on the guards below, shooting down his missiles with its plasma turret.
"Nnnnggaaah! How dare they cheat our artillery?!" Rehk'Set snarled with rage.
He turned to his mage next to the throne, demanding, "Skaraab, is the final plan operational?"
"Yes, under the new site, but our scientists are still processing the appropriate target location on planet Earth," the purple-robed sorcerer answered. "By the way, director Shemay wanted me to give you your personal code sheet," he handed the pharaoh a small, thin scroll. "We will enter the launch code once the target is found, so we're entrusting you with the remaining codes."
"Thank you, my mage," Rehk'Set accepted the document, stuffing it into his robe. "How much longer must I wait? The power open to me is tantalizing!"
"We estimate the next seven hours, but an announcement will be made when we know for sure," the deep-voiced man stated.
Then a female Thep Khufan priest in white robes and a headdress based on Isis, approached the throne. She asked the pharaoh, "In the meantime, why don't you rest? You have been staring at this screen for hours. Trust me when I say that everything will come together by nightfall."
She stretched out one arm and tapped a button under the pharaoh's right hand, turning off the viewscreen.
Looking at the woman who did that, Rehk'Set almost wanted to scream, but decided that, unlike most people, priests were nothing to vent anger at, being one of the few closest to the gods, besides him.
He bowed his head and answered, "Yes, Hatshep. I am feeling rather weary, now that you mention it."
"Good. I will call some servants to come and bathe you, then we will see you to bed. You will be fine until dawn, I promise you that," she patted the pharaoh's shoulder.
With that, Hatshep led the pharaoh through a second set of doors to his quarters, and gave him privacy to change clothes while he waited for the servants in his personal bathroom.
His tiredness was not exaggerated in the slightest. Only now did Rehk'Set know that he needed sleep more than ever. His richly appointed sarcophagus beckoned, even now.
The line of souls took what felt like hours to pass. Both Gwen and Raht guessed that each one was being judged in the Hall of the Dead at the end for how they fared in life. Who knew how many were evil, how many of them good? What disturbed them more than most, however, was that a majority of the souls in line were the figures of very young Thep Khufans, no more than masks with spindly little limbs of bandages, almost like crabs. Both mortals could sense that these were the victims of that horrible, mysterious disease. All of them dead no more than a year into life. How could they explain themselves to Osiris without the means to speak properly?
Eventually, they watched each soul pass, entering the temple but never leaving. From what Gwen remembered about her knowledge of Egyptian mythology, there were only two outcomes in there: Either they moved onto the afterlife, or ended up eaten by the creature Ammut. But the question on her mind was: If this was the underworld that ancient Egyptians always spoke of, why did it have connections to this planet as well? Was there a mutual link?
Trying to break the fear, Gwen casually muttered to Raht, "Say, I think Ben said he wanted to tell you that there's a lot of strange stuff in fiction about Egypt."
"Oh? Like what?" Raht asked with curiosity, eager to stop thinking about these dead people.
"Like a book about a museum where things come alive because of some pharaoh's magic tablet, or another where gods live in the human world as people because the world's going to end if two god-hosting-kids don't save it," she listed off examples.
"How curious," Raht rubbed his wrapped chin. "Considering where we are, perhaps what lays inside may prove that fiction as fact?"
"Who knows?" Gwen shrugged. "I just hope they can help us fight the pharaoh or something."
"Me too, little girl," he sighed, bowing his head. "Me too."
Gwen and Raht could feel more souls arriving behind them, chattering like a normal crowd would be on the surface, but some of them were moaning and wailing in despair over their death, probably murder or sickness victims. The cacophony of noise it all made was unreal, a noise no human should've had the burden of hearing. The voices were overlaid with an ethereal, echoing tone common to ghosts in movies, as if the noise was drifting in and out of phase with audible sound waves. Raht tried to relax with the hindsight that these were real, innocent souls of the dead, not malicious blobs of protoplasm like the Ectonurites.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, they arrived at the door of the building. More souls were lined up against a large dais with a huge set of scales between them and several strangely headed people. Anubis was on the left; a man with an ornate Atef crown, green face, and holding a crook and flail, had to be Osiris. The third was a woman with long dark hair and an elaborate set of wings attached to her arms, probably Isis. Off to the far left, holding a tablet and stylus was the unmistakably distinct figure of Thoth. Across the room from that was the war god Horus. Finally, behind this tribunal of gods, barely visible at the back of the room, stood the similarly bird-headed sun god, Ra, watching over everything. However, unlike the depictions from Egypt, none of these figures looked human, rather appearing similar to Thep Khufans in stature, yet their bandages were colored in accordance with each person's body, and lacked a glow beneath them.
Below the scales stood a ferocious-looking crossbreed of a dog and crocodile, no doubt Ammut. All the gods were clustered together in a horseshoe formation, giants towering over everyone else in the room, their Thep Khufan figures faintly visible.
Gwen had a bad feeling about what these people would say when it was her and Raht's turn. What would gods say to living mortals in this realm?
Ben tried to keep as stealthy and casual as possible in the upper hallway. Guards were patrolling the place back and forth. Columns inlaid with hieroglyphs were all capped with a metal ball depicting the eye of Horus, some of which Ben could unmistakably see were moving back and forth like a security camera. He tried to make sure to move when they weren't pointing at him, and kept his Omnitrix symbol out of sight, for he knew from experience that that would give him away at any moment.
Following Rel'Hathor's directions, Ben gently stepped down the corridor past two doors, one of them reading "GUARD ROOM", another across from it labeled "ARMORY". As he turned the next corner to the left, Ben stopped dead at the sight of two guards in heavy armor, a Florauna and a Tetramand. How did the pharaoh get these aliens, let alone enlist them as his personal guards?
The tetramand shouted, "You! What are you doing up here? This area belongs to the pharaoh!"
Trying to think of something to say, Ben thought up an excuse on the fly, "I...I was going to bring him clean clothes for tomorrow, but I can't find the right room to get them from."
Surprisingly, this worked, and the florauna directed him, in a clearer voice than Ben's own form, "You will find them at the end of the hall, dead ahead."
"Thank you."
"Now move, servant!" The tetramand yelled.
As Ben shuffled off towards the designated room, he mentally asked himself, "Do I really sound that harsh as Fourarms?"
Passing two Thep Khufan soldiers in blue robes and gold headdresses similar to Ja'Kaal's, Ben found the door he needed at the end of the hall, a wooden door marked "LINEN ROOM".
Opening it, he found a walk-in closet with dozens of outfits, each one tagged and assigned to a certain person. Checking each one, Ben found a long black robe near the front, its tag simply reading "Pharaoh, 19th Day." Removing it from its hanging bar using his powers, Ben folded the cloak as cleanly as he could, holding it with both hands as he carefully closed the door and tried the guarded room again.
"Good, you may enter," the Tetramand nodded as he reached for the door with one of his lower arms, while the Florauna warned, "But do not disturb the pharaoh. He is sleeping at the moment."
"I understand, sir," Ben nodded as he stepped through the open door.
Ben happened to enter a room lit entirely in dim red light, giving the room an ominous feel, accentuated when the door loudly shut behind him. On one wall was a large flat slab of stone that Ben could swear was a flat-screen monitor, something he hoped his parents could buy him at some point. Across from it, in the middle of the marble room was a small throne with a side table holding a radio-like device. Near the wall with the monitor was a strange flat machine with a wire coming out of it, which Ben didn't want to take interest in. Behind the throne, flanked by columned marble busts of the pharaoh, was another set of double doors, probably leading to the pharaoh's bedroom. He placed the new cloak in a drop box embedded in the wall next to those doors, as a sign overhead instructed. Realizing that the pharaoh would likely come out of this room if Ben screwed up, he used his enhanced strength to push the two busts in front of both doors, tying the handles of each together with his tensile bandages, and using more to jam the gap between the doors and the floor.
Finally, at the far end of the room, between a bookshelf of scrolls and a desk with blank papyrus still on it, an odd, dark machine glowed in stripe-like spots with an eerie red light, brighter than the room's illumination, almost like something the Empire from Star Wars would build. He could hear a low, steady hum coming from it as he approached.
Checking that no one was watching, Ben inspected the device more closely, crouching down to get a better look at it. The only thing noticeable about this contraption was a small panel hiding a control system inside.
Opening it, on the control panel was a small display showing pulsing red bar graphs of the energy it was generating to create the huge shield, followed by various knobs and buttons, but the thing he most sought, however, was its power switch, shown as a bright red knob at the very bottom.
For a moment, Ben asked himself, "Why leave this thing unprotected? Shouldn't there be a lock or something?" Then he figured that since this pharaoh wasn't in his right mind, Ben chalked it up to the man not putting enough care into security.
With one faint click of the knob, Ben deactivated the machine, watching all four bar graphs abruptly drop to zero, the red light fading as he shut the access panel, the hum steadily dropping in pitch and volume as the thing powered down. He felt like Obi-Wan Kenobi doing this, somehow. Just in case someone might turn it back on, Ben noticed a thick cable running from it to some outlet, and, sighting a strange Egyptian sword on one wall, grabbed that with his elasticity and used it to sever the cable so that it couldn't be reconnected, keeping the sword close as a possible weapon.
Now all that remained was to either get out of the palace or contact the Hot-Ra. Realizing that radio could be of use, Ben suddenly found himself with an idea. Sitting down in the throne, he tapped a button on one arm to activate the screen, showing the Starglider far in the distance behind the rest of the invisible fleet. Ben tuned the radio, trying to find Ja'Kaal's link. Surely the pharaoh would be spying on communications like that? Then he happened to catch his voice cheering, "-units, this is Hot-Ra, the barrier is down! Uncloak and open fire on all enemy forces, we are going down to breach the palace!"
On the screen, one by one, all the ships disabled their cloaking devices, the Hot-Ra leading the fleet. Plasma bullets rained down on the guards below, though he couldn't see them from this angle.
All of a sudden, alarms started blaring in the room, sensors in the room having scanned his body and noticed the Omnitrix symbol Ben forgot to keep covered when he sat in the throne. A female computer voice droned, "WARNING: Primary target detected in pharaoh's quarters. Primary target in pharaoh's quarters."
Thinking fast, Ben reached for a microphone connected to the radio, held down the talk button and called, "Ja'Kaal? Ja'Kaal, do you read me? This is Ben, calling from the palace!"
"Ben, is that you? You sound different, over," the commander responded with concern."
"Yes, I'm in another form. Listen, alarms are going off and people are coming, where are you?"
"We're landing as I speak. We'll be entering the palace and get you out as soon as possible, over,"
"Copy, Where do I go?"
"Just get to the throne room, it should be on the ground level. We'll find you, I promise!"
"Will do, Ben out."
As Ben set down the mike, he sprang from the chair and ran to the outer doors. Ben could hear the doors to the pharaoh's room straining and creaking as he banged on them and struggled with the handles.
Without time to be sneaky, Ben wrenched the outer doors open and took off in a sprint for the stairs, alarms still wailing in the hall. Every guard in the area took off in his direction. With an elastic swing, Ben whipped around the doorway into the spiral staircase he came from.
As he reached the bottom, Ben almost ran over none other than Captain of the Guard, Drexel.
"I don't know how you broke into the palace, but this is the end for you, intruder!" he grunted, forming one of his arms into a tapering sword blade.
Remembering the sword tucked into his bandages, Ben readied the weapon with his right hand, and shouted, "En garde, then!"
As the Hot-Ra and the rest of the fleet landed in front of the palace, the flagship first to do so, Ja'Kaal looked back towards Max in one of the seats behind his and Marnor's, and reminded him as he powered down the ship, plasma fire still raining overhead, "Do you have your weapon, Max?"
Grandpa Max stuttered for a moment, then admitted, "Um...I don't recall being given one, no."
"You'll have to stay close to us, then."
"I can protect you, sir," Elastamun offered.
Neferti giggled, then added, "Do not fret, Marnor, Ja'Kaal, Raht, and I have a special secret...to coin a phrase, up our sleeves."
"And what's that?" Max asked.
"It is, in a way, similar to your grandson's power of transformation. Watch!" Marnor stated, excited over what was to come next.
All three golden warriors simultaneously shouted, "With the strength of Ra!"
Their figures were suddenly cloaked in blue, purple, and red light that lit the cockpit with the brightness of a sun, and would've been seen if not for the one-way coating on the canopy's exterior. Max and Elastamun gazed in awe as visions of a falcon, cat, and ram enveloped the three Thep Khufan warriors like in an old anime transformation sequence.
Then the light faded, and now the Golden Guard leaders were true to their name, wearing armor decorated in elaborate Egyptian, pharaoh-like patterns themed after their various animal motifs. Elastamun in particular was dumbstruck at Neferti's attractive cat-themed armor attached to her red jumpsuit; clawed knuckle dusters now strapped to her fingers, a helmet enclosing her head in the shape of her associated cat motif. If the scribe hadn't found this woman attractive before, this version of her certainly was.
Ja'Kaal hit the canopy switch, mounted his bow and quiver of arrows onto his back, stood up from his seat, and screamed, "CHARGE!"
The whole group jumped from the hovership, leading the throng of resistance soldiers as they stormed the palace. Ja'Kaal made quick work of shooting down the snipers on the roof, several Loboans blew away enemy guards with sonic howls, Transylians used their electricity to shock enemy soldiers through their metallic armor. Undyyne threw dozens of energy spears, Worlock and other magically gifted beings combatted enemy sorcerers, Neferti, Elastamun, and many native Thep Khufans used their natural elasticity to trap, ensnare, toss, and otherwise incapacitate their foes. Despite there being less than a hundred soldiers, the event was so powerful it almost felt like the whole planet was converging on this palace of evil. Without the shield, even as species not native to this planet, Rehk'Set's soldiers were no match for this wave of resistance. The sheer determination to fight this foe, hated by all but those close to him, was so staggering that the guards simply couldn't stand their ground to this militia.
Raht nearly jumped out of his bandages when he noticed that the soul next to be judged, which he couldn't quite discern until now, was the pharaoh's vizier.
Just after Anubis ushered this soul to the front of the room, before the scales, He heard Osiris speak, discussing Valensen's former life, and, reading from a scroll passed by Thoth, testing him on whether or not his own sins were true. Valensen answered each question with a burning honesty, as if he knew Osiris would do this ahead of time. Finally, the headed gods placed his heart on one side of the giant set of scales, the feather of Ma'at on the other, and watched as the scales moved, a needle at the top depicting what the result would be.
But at the last moment, Osiris leaned forward slightly and stated, in a voice that nearly overpowered all else in the room, "What are these mortals doing in the Hall of Judgement?" The scales were still frozen as if locked in place.
Raht answered immediately, "Great lord, we have come to convey news from the living world."
"What would merit such importance as to interrupt our judging of the dead?" Osiris demanded impatiently.
Valensen bowed his head and admitted, "Though I have proven my innocence, I know the reason for their presence."
Isis ordered, "Such a matter must be shown, not told, Osiris."
"Very well, sister," the god agreed with annoyance. Osiris first waved his hands as if commanding an orchestra to stop, rather freezing time itself instead, then used his crook to fire a beam of light at Valensen. From his head, a projection filled the room, showing his memories of the past. Thoth analyzed those memories, and scanned the footage for what he meant, then stopped on his vision on the transhuman slaves.
Thoth nodded, writing on his tablet, and turned his head towards Gwen and Raht, asking in a smooth, calm and understanding voice, "Do you know something of this soul's visions that we do not?"
Gwen quickly answered, "The pharaoh is behind what's happening, he took humans from my world – Earth, and made those slaves out of them. And he's going to keep doing it unless we stop him!"
Raht continued, "The pharaoh in question is insane and driven to complete this mission, even if it means sacrificing humans to gain more of my kind."
"I have been a witness to these horrible acts, time and time again," Valensen admitted, "And when I enlisted help to change the tide, the pharaoh had me burned alive as punishment."
The gods hesitated for a moment, then Osiris dictated, "The gods do not intervene in the matters of the living unless Ma'at is in danger."
Raht argued, "When did you last do that? We were at war with another alien species until no more than thirty years ago! Surely, our loss of physical religion did not hinder you in that regard?"
Thoth nodded, writing on his tablet, and turned his head towards Gwen and Raht, asking in a smooth, calm and understanding voice, "Do you know something of this soul's visions that we do not?"
Gwen quickly answered, "The pharaoh is behind what's happening, he took humans from my world – Earth, and made those slaves out of them. And he's going to keep doing it unless we stop him!"
Raht continued, "The pharaoh in question is insane and driven to complete this mission, even if it means sacrificing humans to gain more of my kind."
"I have been a witness to these horrible acts, time and time again," Valensen admitted, "And when I enlisted help to change the tide, the pharaoh had me burned alive as punishment."
The gods hesitated for a moment, then Osiris dictated, "The gods do not intervene in the matters of the living unless Ma'at is in danger."
Raht argued, "When did you last do that? We were at war with another alien species until no more than thirty years ago! Surely, our loss of physical religion did not hinder you in that regard?"
From behind, Ra intervened. He spoke, in a deep male voice both intimidating and understanding, "Both of your races have suffered much, and both have changed many times. To ask for our aid, you must first understand that from which we have come."
The entire Hall of Judgement vanished into a black void, and the gods now stood as a group, together. Then, suddenly, all of them transformed. Their lanky, Thep Khufan features gave way to perfect, healthy human bodies, an exact match to their depictions in Egyptian murals.
Thoth recited, "We are known as Amun Khufans."
Isis continued, "It was we who blessed both them, and your species with the gifts of enlightenment." She waved her hand, and the blackness faded to a strange sight. Below Gwen and Raht was a vista of ancient Egypt in its heyday, strangely like Gwen's dream from last night. Following the blue sky, above, upside down hung a similar scene on Anur Khufos, from long before the attack of the Ectonurites.
The gods themselves spread out to the sides of the scene, between both desert environs.
Ra continued, "Born from our celestial parents of Nut and Geb, mother of stars and father of earth, we began as the first species on Anur Khufos, and the second honored us for the gifts we gave them."
The witnesses watched, finding the inverted terrain tilting forwards into full view, as the Thep Khufans bowed to smaller versions of these gods, building temples and statues in their image, and constructing buildings from the dirt and sand, living off the plant life and fish from the various rivers and lakes. Food was brought into the temples in bowls and pots, and the dead were buried with their possessions for the afterlife.
Isis followed, "For thousands of years, it was good. Our children nourished us with offerings, and prayers and depictions honored our divine existence. Some chosen kin were even granted the ability to manipulate the streams of mana that bind the universe as one."
Thoth added, "Then, one day, we heard the cries of another species on a world across the galaxy: Earth."
The view flipped around like a hand mirror, to show the aerial view of Egypt.
Osiris dictated, "Although many races on this planet were growing, one such people could not survive without our help. So, in exchange for worship, we gifted them, too, with the knowledge to thrive in the deserts of what you call, 'Egypt'."
"But because of the...fragile nature of human minds," Thoth pointed out, "We took on forms that matched that of their kind, as you see before you,"
The gods appeared in front again, showing their human features.
"We ruled peacefully over both worlds for a time, through a mental link to a chosen being on each, the 'pharaohs', to teach them," Ra described.
Thoth continued, "They lived in a copy of our species' culture, and called it 'Egypt'. Their dead were even prepared in a similar way to Thep Khufans, for in the afterlife, all burdens are lost. That afterlife - to humans - was our world, and after death, if they were good, some could reincarnate among our children.
Raht suddenly reminded himself to research this fact later.
Then Ra shifted to a dark tone, "Then, after centuries of prosperity...chaos struck."
The whole vista shifted to show Anur Khufos and Earth befalling a disaster. On the former, like Ben's nightmare, the planet turned dark, the Ectonurites swarming the planet and waging war on the Thep Khufans. The blue sky was replaced with a thundering cloudscape, lightning cracking all around. Meanwhile, on Earth, different city-states and foreigners were battling each other for power, struggling to have one belief over the other.
"Set, my brother," Osiris described, "Decided that we were too good for either of these planets, and sought to destroy them both from within."
The vision shifted to show a glowing red Amun Khufan, with an aardvark's head, whispering into Zs'Skayr's ear and manipulating his army like strings on a puppet into enslaving the entire Anur system. Likewise, this alien, now in human form, brainwashed various pharaohs and military leaders into attacking each other with their fanatic armies.
"He wanted to watch everything built for us, to crumble...into nothing," Horus piped up for the first time.
"Set was so powerful that he banished all of us to another reality, that where the dead go to rest: the Duat." Osiris continued. "We were imprisoned there, so that we could not aid either the Thep Khufans or humans. He swindled me into giving up the throne of space and time to allow this to happen, shattering my body to pieces in the process."
"The conflicts on the two worlds came and went, with some cultures still sustaining us with prayers and tributes, but we could not speak to them from the Duat," Thoth sighed, "The psychic link was blocked, leaving us helpless to watch the worlds grow without our guidance."
"But then," Horus grunted with vigor, "After centuries of our struggling to reason with Set, I stood up and took it upon myself to challenge him for the throne and end this needless destruction!"
In the vision, Horus grew to a huge size and grabbed Set's devlish figure by his native bandages, and they engaged in a duel with each other. This was mirrored by the armies of Mentuhotep II pushing back the people of Lower Egypt and struggling to conquer that part of the country, and soldiers on Anur Khufos trying to fend off the Ectonurites. Then, Set ripped one of Horus' eyes out with his bare hands, just after Horus ran Set through the groin with an enchanted dagger. Despite being half-blind, Horus grappled with the evil god and managed to get the upper hand, when suddenly the stolen eye vanished, and Thoth broke the fight to mediate the two gods and form a truce, said eye having empowered the scribe god to be able to do so. The scene changed again to a timelapse scene of the two gods being judged by Osiris over who more rightly deserves the throne.
"Eventually, Set bowed to our will," Osiris narrated, "and we were released to the physical world again...but it was not the same as we had left it."
"When we returned, for a time things returned to the way they were, but as more centuries wore on, the people of Egypt soon lost the understanding of their culture, and eventually, were consumed by enemies." Ra dictated, "And as for our kin, Set's mark had been made on our planet and all the others, the enslavement of our home . We had little to return to."
The strange scene now showed the whole Anur system enslaved by the ghosts, and Egypt nearly destroyed from outside attacks, while Greece and other cultures flourished. Libraries and temples burned to the ground, recorded Egyptian knowledge lost to the sands of time, tombs looted and vandalized.
Raht spoke up, "Wait, this makes no sense! How could you be so reluctant to just...return and fix it all again? You are GODS!"
"Because it turned out that we were not alone," Thoth waved his stylus, showing various humanoid aliens that morphed into the shapes of Greek deities, Mayan, Chinese, Hindi, and more. The feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl arriving in a Mayan city; Ancestral offshoots of multiple aliens teaching the Greeks a better way of life; a glowing man appearing as Shiva."
"Others had come to teach humanity where we left off, and our ways were no longer known by the masses. Humans, lost in their pride for violence and power...had forgotten us." Isis bowed her head, on the verge of crying.
"We had tried to maintain balance with humans through the link with the pharaohs, but even they stopped caring over time," Osiris continued, ". And with our own home's culture in disarray, our influence there was weak as well."
Ra stated, "So, after a long time of pondering, I consulted our mother, Nut, and she understood our plight. We sought advice to, as you say, 'fix it all again', and this is what she said."
Thoth added, "Nut advised us that she had sighted the presence of a device of great power across the galaxy, a power that would spell doom in the wrong hands."
"The Omnitrix," Gwen gasped.
"So you know of this, too," Horus judged.
"Soon, we came together to decide on how to solve this terrible problem," Thoth continued, "And it was decided that we had to remove the creatures that enslaved our home system. Even Set agreed to this."
Gwen felt excited, knowing that pieces were coming together.
"Now that we were no longer constrained by the Duat, we could potentially return to Anur Khufos at will, but the...phantoms enslaving it made that difficult. Nonetheless," Isis explained, "I disguised myself as a bird and whispered to him that the device existed, and his greed for power was so great that he dropped all and fled the planet in search of it."
"As for the rest of his kind," Ra finished with an air of pride, "Set and I drove them away, destroying their clouds of darkness so that they could not hide from our sun chariot."
Gwen and Raht watched with awe as the sun rose over Anur Khufos, and Ra's glowing boat cut through the Matrix clouds like the sword of light it was. Several Ectonurites screamed and writhed in agony, some dying from exposure, the rest fleeing off-world. The sight was like a blood stain being cleaned from a piece of clothing, or a tumor being removed from a body. Anur Khufos was free again, and the former slaves cheered in reverence.
"So, our planet was reclaimed, but Earth can never again know of our existence. Not with how much it has changed in comparison," Horus sighed, waving his hand to speed up the two planets. "Only thing we have not yet done is restored the link of telepathy, and we felt that our kin needed time to recover before then."
The vista cut back to Earth and Anur Khufos in daylight. The former, ancient Egypt was now the Earth of 2005, modern cities and society gleaming in sunlight. Anur Khufos, with its technological integration in full swing with the ancient traditions, as little as there were. Sounds and videos filtered in of conspiracy theorists, urban legends, and warped Christian beliefs about aliens and Jesus Christ. Likewise came visions of the ominous Horus drones, exploiting the story of his lost eye to warped proportions; The rumor of the Omnitrix made religious, and Rehk'Set's distorted "mummification" process.
Gwen gasped, "It all makes sense! No wonder people think you guys were myths! If you did come back today, people would freak out and try to kill you instead."
Osiris shifted the discussion, "But, now, as you say, things have changed."
The gods examined Earth, filtering in broadcasts of disappearances in Egypt and around the globe, along with watching Elastamun roaming the town on his research mission, while one Thep Khufan after another emerges from the palace complex on Anur Khufos to build more structures.
Finally, everything faded back to the Hall of Judgement, the souls of the dead still temporally frozen until their turn came.
Osiris concluded, "So, the story you have brought to us confirms that Set is on the rise once more, and has used the pharaoh 'Rehk'Set' to do so. I surmise Set has grown bored with this idle period of inactivity and done this as a result." He waved his arms again, time resumed, and the scales hung evenly. The gods bowed for a moment, and Osiris judged the ghost of the vizier, "Valensen, thank you. You have proven yourself, and are indeed worthy of the afterlife. Although you served an agent of Set, your valiance in turning the tides against him have earned you this gift of vindication. Go now, and may your existence prosper for ever more."
Valensen bowed, "My deepest of thanks to you, O God of Nature." And with that, the vizier looked back one last time, and asked, "Gwen Tennyson, before I go, could you deliver a message?"
"What's that?" The girl timidly asked after all this.
"Tell Elastamun that my death was not in vain, and that his knowledge of humans will go to a greater cause in the future. Just that."
"All right, I'll...try to remind him." the girl replied with hesitation.
Then with a single smile, the ghostly vizier looked away, uttered a single, "Goodbye," then vanished.
Knowing that these two mortals were holding up the line, Thoth concluded, "It will take time to assess this turn of events, but we will search for a means to combat this new threat."
Ra finished, "In the meantime, return to your world so that you may delay him until then." And with that, Gwen and Raht were hit by a beam of light from the sun god's eyes, and for a moment were surrounded by whiteness. When the light faded, they were standing inside the palace's throne room, witnessing the ongoing battle between the resistance and the pharaoh's forces.
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