Disclaimer. The only characters and places I own are mine. The rest belong to their respective owners. This is for FUN!

Note: This is an ongoing series. The first story was Shadowed Past, Shadowed Future. This will actually be the second. I'm rewriting the entire series.



Index of Terms:

Egyptians thought that a person's soul came in four parts and would live on after death.

The Ka is the non-physical copy of the person that needs and wants exactly what their living counter-part needs and wants. A person's Ka could leave its body when the person sleeps, but always needed to return to it.

The Ba is the person's personality.

The Akh is a combination of the Ba and Ka and is reunited at death in order to survive the underworld.

The name and the person's shadow are the only things that remain on earth.

(This is paraphrased from a book called the heart of the pharoh, in the mummy chronicles series.)

Isisethren: Literal translation is One Who Returns. The Isisethren is one of Isis and Osiris' children. This creature is a benevolent guardian spirit that is occasionally born into a material form at key times in history. Normally depicted as a bipedal white tiger with the wings of an owl and nine tails. The Isisethren is closely associated with Anubis. Some believe that the Harvester of Souls is the true incarnation of this spirit. Soralis is the fourth Harvester of Souls. I made this up people!



Clear as mud? On with the fic!





Echoes of the Past

The past is an echo of the present.

From the Harvester's Journal

Los Angeles California: 1935

Soralis sighed as she raked back her hair, looking at the casual carnage with sorrow and anger burning in her heart. The basement was under a small office building, somewhere near the center of L.A. It was set up to look like some bizarre temple, complete with sacrificial alter.

She grimaced as she sidestepped the bodies of the children and young women that littered the floor, obvious victims of whatever hellish rites that had gone on here. She dreaded what she had to do, but…

Soralis swallowed thickly as she placed her hands on the alter and lowered her mental shields. Images slammed into her mind, rocking her back on her heels.

Women and children screamed as foul priests tore their innocence away, then their lives. Chanting echoed around the room. Chants designed to harvest power, the power bought by the pain and death of helpless, harmless people.

Soralis snarled as she memorized the faces of the priests, the faces of the guards. Darkness filled her vision, blocking out the sights of the basement.

The darkness thinned, showing bright stars under a night sky. She was floating high above a desert, the moon's bright rays lancing across the night-blackened sands.

Then she was hovering over the ruins of a once great city; one that tugged at the very essence of what made her the harvester. She instinctively knew that this city was never meant for the living; it only housed the dead. Words slithered into her mind from somewhere, somewhen. Hamanaptra. The City of the Dead. Sahara. Egypt. The book of life, the book of the dead…

A pure gold book, engraved with strange symbols filled her mind, as did an ominous black book, engraved with similar symbols. Her sense of self rotated, facing the night sky. Stars glittered there, flashing brightly. A guide? She thought as the moon's rays blinded her.

Soralis found herself back in the basement; her body slumped over the altar. She hastily jumped up, wincing as the inevitable reaction headache registered on her benumbed mind; it slowly faded as she made her way out of the basement.

At the basement's entrance she turned. Her eyes glowed as she held out her hand, palm facing towards the altar. The room erupted in a gout of flame. She closed the basement door and ran out of the building.

Soralis walked down the street as fire engines rushed to meet the blaze she created. The fire fighters would find nothing but a blackened husk of a building. When she returned to her motel room, she quickly booked a passage to Egypt on the next available flight. Over the centuries, the young immortal had learned to listen to her "dreams"…

***

Hamanaptra, Egypt: Four Weeks later.

Among the fellahin and unnoticed like them, ignored like them, was a young Arabic man, barely past his teens. He tended to keep to himself, never speaking much except for a few occasional words.

Under this illusion, Soralis had slipped into the dig; insinuating herself into the fellahin and began observing her erstwhile "employers". Most of them, she recognized from the vision she had in that basement.

A sudden commotion made her turn. One of the foremen shouted, alerting the red-robed guards. She felt the stirrings of power around the foreman, lashing out at the one of the fellahin.

The guards pounced on the targeted fellahin, who fought back. More guards swarmed over the man, eventually wearing him out with sheer numbers. The fellahin's turban was torn away, revealing a man with a bizarrely tattooed face.

The expedition's leader, Audric Blackburn, dressed in slacks and tan shirt, pushed his way through the guards. The prisoner was on his knees; his arms twisted cruelly behind his back.

Soralis saw that the man had taken a terrible beating, yet was still trying to fight back. One of the guards pressed a pistol to his head and he went still. She clinched her hands in frustration as one of the guards pulled the man's head back, letting the expedition's leader get a better look at the tattoos.

Audric gently traced the tattoos and smiled as he realized who and what they had captured. "Medjai," he announced to the guards. His triumphant grin was echoed by the grins of his followers. "Take him back to Cairo. We'll deal with him later." He glared at the silent fellahin. "Get back to work!" he snarled. They rushed to obey.

"Wonder what that was about?" One of the natives asked no one in particular.

"Thank Allah it wasn't you that caught their attention," another worker admonished.

Soralis bent to the work with a will, thinking that she had to get to Cairo before the next night. Otherwise, she figured glumly, that man might not make it. His capture had put a twist into her plans. She couldn't let him die; something told her he was very important.

Soralis jerked and paled as pain lanced through her mind. People were dying. Then they heard the screams. Their work group rushed to another part of the dig, where a deep pit had been dug. Bugs, scarab beetles, were pouring out of the hole, being beaten back by flame-thrower wielding guards. Inside the pit she could see flailing arms, smell the stench of burning flesh.

The older fellahin pulled her back; still thinking it was the young Arab man. "You can't do anything!" he shouted.

"Scarabs! Fall back!" he shouted in Egyptian. They scrambled backwards, away from the pit.

Audric and his coterie peered over the pit. "Floodlights!" he shouted. "Into that hole!" he grinned as the scarab beetles scattered as the bright lights burned into the hole. There, shining in the floodlights was the book.

"Crane! There!" he pointed at the book. "Get it!"

Soralis watched as the crane lowered, digging up the book and the rubble surrounding it. She winced as it dumped its contents well away from the pit. She and the rest of the fellahin cleared away the rubble. Audric and his cohorts watched impatiently as they finally exposed the book.

Audric pushed the fellahin away in his eagerness to get his hands on the priceless artifact. As he pushed Soralis away, her hand brushed against the gold covers and her vision blurred. Something like an electric shock ran up her arm and into her body.

She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her eyes. Audric glared at the fellahin who dared touch his book. The youth hastily took his hands away, mumbling an apology.

For a brief moment, Audric met the man's eyes. Something incredibly old lurked under those eyes; something he knew wasn't completely human. The Arab lowered his eyes, breaking contact and the sudden insight slipped away from him.

Audric looked at the bright gold book in his hands and grinned. When he looked up, the man was gone. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. He had the Book of the Living and soon he would have its twin as well.

***

Soralis leaned against the wall of the ruined building that shielded her from the rest crowd near the pit she had just vacated. She let out a shaky breath. She had almost been exposed. Only quick thinking and deft mental manipulation on her part had saved her. She thanked the gods that the expedition leader wasn't telepathic or employed telepaths.

She moaned as pain shook her. Images swam in her mind. Streets blurred around her as she swept through Cairo's slums. She was eventually drawn to the more prosperous section of the city. There, isolated from the other homes and situated on the bank of the Nile itself, was a massive villa with well-tended fields surrounding it. When she approached the main building, the view dipped alarmingly as she was drawn underground.

In a large, dimly lit cellar a man was chained to a stone table. She recognized the fellahin by his weirdly tattooed face. He was battered and unconscious. Something must have woken him, for he raised his head, seeming to look at her. She turned around and was blinded by the bright light coming from the cellar entrance.

Her sense of perception canted crazily and she found herself back at the ruins. Soralis swallowed thickly and slipped back to her tent. She threw her belongings together and stepped into the shadows cast by the lantern beside her pallet. The next morning, her fellow workers found the tent deserted as if no one hand ever slept there.

***

Ardeth Bey was forced towards a waiting car. He couldn't move properly and his muscles seemed strangely unresponsive. As they approached the car, one of the guards clapped a chloroform soaked cloth firmly over his nose and mouth. He crumpled to the ground and they bundled him into the waiting vehicle.

When he woke, he found himself bound and chained to a wall in a large, poorly lit and ventilated cellar. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could make out the shapes that lay scattered around the room.

Ardeth identified whips, thumbscrews, a forge and a rack offhand. The rest of the devices were more exotic, but their function was clear. He swallowed bile. All the equipment looked like it had been used recently. Who are these people? He wondered.

At the far end of the cellar was a set of stairs leading to the only door he could see. It opened and briefly lit the room. He winced. The light streaming down hurt his eyes.

A woman, perhaps twenty years old with dark hair and blue eyes walked down the steps. She was dressed in a simple tunic and loose trousers. Behind her were a pair of black robed guards. Both of their skulls were shaved, save for a single, braided topknot.

She unhurriedly crossed the room and stood before him. She smiled slightly as she traced the tattoos on his face. "You are strong to fight off the paralysis Jenday laid on you. Are all Medjai like you?" she asked innocently.

Ardeth winced. A spell. It would explain how those guards had overcome him so easily. Was she a witch as well? This girl did not seem to belong here.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

She laughed delightedly. "Proud aren't you?" she asked. "Very well. My name is Elise Blackburn. I am Audric Blackburn's daughter."

"Let me go. I have done nothing to you!" he said softly, reasonably.

She grinned. But there was nothing innocent about that grin. "You are Medjai. You have been guarding the books of life and death for centuries. We know that the book of life has a passage that can retrieve its twin if it is lost. Unfortunately, the passage has been encoded. We cannot translate it. My lord father believes that you might be able to translate it for us."

He gazed at her steadily. "I am sorry. I don't know what you are talking about. I know of no such passage. I am neither a priest nor a sorcerer." He replied truthfully.

Elise smiled nastily. "I wish I could believe you." She turned to the two waiting guards.

"Gentlemen, please teach this Med-jai, it is not nice to lie." They grinned as each of them took a metal pipe from the far wall and converged on him.

***

Soralis gazed at the villa from the vantage of another building some distance away. First rescue the man; then get out alive. No problem. She thought sarcastically as she saw the well-armed guards and the heavy wards surrounding the place. She grinned. It was just the sort of place she liked to gate crash.

There was no way she could get into that place as she was now. She wondered what would get her through the gate and began to smile slowly. No one looked at fellahin, especially female servants. She closed her eyes. Her body blurred. When she was done, she looked like an Arabic woman, neither young nor old, but striking. She wanted the guards to discount her, to let her through.

As she approached the gate, one of the guards halted her. "What are you here for?" he demanded.

Soralis bowed her head. "Please, I am late for work. I need the money, my mother is ill…" she began, projecting an aura of innocence, of trust.

The elder guard grinned at the other. "Search her, then let her through." He decided. "We always have room for another servant, especially one as pretty as this." He said as he laughingly raised her head with one finger.

She gritted her teeth as they groped her, promising herself that she would personally cast a rather nasty curse on them before they left. Finally, with real reluctance, they let her go on her way. She was just grateful they decided not to rape her. Having to kill the bastards would definitely scupper the whole rescue.

***

He hurt. He couldn't remember a time in which he had hurt so much. Alone in the darkness of the cellar, he wondered what his people were doing. Would they attempt a rescue? He laughed hollowly. They would if they knew where to look.

During the day and night he had been held in the cellar; he had not been fed, nor given any water. He had been left chained to the stone table where they had left off torturing him a few hours before. He was naked, his clothing tossed carelessly to one side. He was cold and filthy; his body laced with bruises, bloody welts and burns.

His wrists had been rubbed raw and his hand… He remembered the rod searing the palm of his hand and remembered Elise closing his hand into a tight fist around it. When she removed the hot metal tong, bits of his own flesh had come off with it. He shuddered, closing his eyes against the memory. He hoped they would get tired of this and kill him soon. He really didn't know how much longer he could hold out.

***

"He's bloody stubborn." Elise snarled as she turned towards her father. "I couldn't get anything out of him, when are they going to deliver the sodium pentathol?" she demanded angrily.

"Soon," Audric promised his daughter. He had never seen her so upset. "Until then, you may as well enjoy yourself." He stroked her cheek lovingly. "Break him. Then use his akh to feed your pets."

She smiled, taking his hand. Together they walked out of the office.

***

Soralis ducked into a dark alcove as Audric Blackburn and a young woman strode past her. His arm was around her waist and they seemed related somehow. She shuddered in revulsion as they walked by. She could literally taste the evil that hung around them.

The darkness in the alcove drew close around her and faint, inaudible whispers echoed in her mind. Cold wind from some unseen source ruffled her hair and her eyes widened as something pushed her out of the alcove. Now, she could feel the unmistakable presence of the undead surrounding her. It was odd that she didn't feel that presence before.

The shadows under the paintings tables and sculptures that lined the walls writhed, boiled like something alive. As she neared a table, the shadows blurred into a human seeming and melted into her shadow. Other shadowy figures stretched out from the paintings and wall fixtures, pointing to the way the Audric and the woman had just come from.

As she walked down the wall, more shadows moved of their own volition; touching her as she past them, some merging with the shadow she cast on the floor. It was an unnerving experience; never had she seen anything like this. Yet they did not feel evil, or at all menacing. Somehow, she felt these things were on her side.

The living shadows led her down into a wine cellar. Racks of bottled wine lay cooling in neat rows, save for one hugging the far wall. This was strange. From what little she knew about wine, most people left the racks free standing in order to allow air to circulate between the bottles. So this rack was suspect.

She examined the odd rack, noticing that most of the bottles were either empty or filled with vinegar. She began to systematically pull each bottle, seeing if it provoked a reaction. On the third row down, she got lucky. The bottle lifted and she heard something click loudly. She pulled the rack and it swung slowly towards her.

***

Ardeth had been dozing fitfully when the door opened, letting in light. He moaned softly. No, no, no… he thought hazily as he heard soft footsteps nearing him. He opened his eyes and was utterly surprised to see a young Arabic woman bending over him, examining the shackles that bound him to the table.

"Who are you?" He asked in Arabic.

"An enemy of your enemy." She replied in English, waving her hand over her face. As she did so, her body blurred.

Ardeth blinked. The Arab girl vanished, only to be replaced by a tall woman with white hair and pale gold eyes. She was dressed in loose clothing bound firmly at the ankle and wrist. Strapped to her back was some sort of sword and pistols hung from her sashed waist.

"My name is Soralis." She said as she gently touched his burned hand. He winced as she did so. "Shit… They worked you over good." She said.

"Free me or kill me," he whispered.

Soralis laughed lightly. "Didn't go to all this trouble just to paint the walls with your entrails. This is a jail break." She said as a metallic claw popped out from between the knuckles of one hand. His eyes widened in shock.

"Um, don't move please. I don't want to be taking your wrist off as well as the shackles." She quipped as she gently inserted the claw between the shackle and his wrist. With a quick twist, the claw went through the iron as easily as if she were cutting through butter with a dull knife. She repeated the process with the other bindings, freeing him. She tossed him his clothes and turned her back while he dressed. He was grateful for the courtesy; though by the time he was finished, he was sweating with the effort and pain it caused. She turned around.

"Can you make it?" she asked seriously.

"With help, yes." He looked at her. "What manner of creature are you?" he demanded.

She grinned at him. "Hell if I know. Would you rather stay here or go with me? Your hosts are far less human than I." She told him.

He had to concede her that. "Looks like I don't have much choice," she nodded agreement and handed him one of her pistols. Together they ran up the steps and out into the wine cellar above.

***

The two fugitives cautiously stepped into the wine cellar. This time, the darkness was empty of whatever it was that had been attracted to her. They heard voices coming from the hallway outside the cellar and froze.

Ardeth tensed. Those voices belonged to the guards who had beaten and tortured him under Elise's orders. Soralis raised her finger to her lips and drew him behind the nearest wine rack.

Elise stopped short as she saw the entrance to the torture chamber ajar. "Somebody's been here." She snarled as the guards rushed into the chamber.

"He's gone!" one of the guards shouted.

Soralis' eyes glowed and the wine rack slammed shut. Elise whirled around, searching the area. "Come on out Medjai. You can't escape." She hissed as she held out her hands.

"If you don't come out, I'll let my pets eat your soul." She said conversationally as hot wind began to blow around her.

Ardeth raised his pistol, aiming through the wine bottles. He pulled the trigger, shooting the woman in the shoulder. She fell back with a hoarse cry and the wind abruptly stopped. He stood up and walked over to the fallen woman, with Soralis trailing behind him.

"Nice shot," Soralis commented. Elise had been knocked out when she had fallen to the ground.

"I was aiming for her head." He replied as he pointed his gun at Elise.

She bent over to check to see if the girl was still alive. She sighed as she felt the pulse beat steadily under her fingers. "She alive?" he asked.

"Yes." Soralis winced as she picked up the memories of the girl. They were ugly. "Come on, let's get out of here." She told him shortly.

"What about her?" he asked.

"Leave her." Soralis said. Ardeth sighed and reluctantly turned away from his tormenter.

Together they snuck out of the cellar and into the house proper.

***

They were lucky. Or perhaps something was aiding them. Every so often, Soralis caught a glimpse of shadows moving, where they should have been stationary. Ardeth glanced at her and mouthed I know. She relaxed perceptively. At least she wasn't loosing her mind.

Maybe it's just some Egyptian thing. Soralis shrugged inwardly.

They heard voices again. They ducked into a room and watched as the servants walked past, carrying some empty trays. "We're pressing our luck," Ardeth whispered when they had gone.

"I know. You okay?" she asked as he leaned against the wall.

He shook his head. He had to get help soon. Otherwise. "I will be," he answered.

***

They made it outside without being spotted. By this time, Soralis was half- supporting Ardeth as they went from one hiding place to another. Soralis peered out of the window of the shed they were hiding in. She could see the gate. "Not too much further," she said softly, turning to him.

"I'm slowing you down." Ardeth managed.

"I didn't go to all this trouble just to abandon you." She told him.

"So this is what you do for a living?" he asked, half-jokingly as his vision blurred in and out of focus. Concussion? He thought hazily. Wonderful…

"Among other things," she replied vaguely.

"Do you know of anyone nearby who can hide us while you recover? The only person I know is half-way across town." She knelt down, looking at his eyes. "I don't think you can travel that far,"

"The O'Connells. They have a home near here." He shook his head, trying to clear it and gave her the directions.

Soralis grimaced, weighing her options. "Damn…." She muttered. "I'm going to get a lot of grief over this…" she said as she helped Ardeth up.

"Brace yourself," She told him. "We're going to sidestep reality for a bit. First time is always worst." She drew him into the shadows. They swallowed them with an audible pop of rushing air.