A/N: This is a short chapter, and mostly follows the movies than adding anything new to the story. I'm sorry about that, but life is happening, and I figured I'd give y'all what I had. Hope you enjoy. ~Angel
The scene jumped, and the transition was jarring for everyone watching.
"What happened?" Esme asked.
"The spell shows events in a linear fashion, but it will only show what it deems important," Amun tells them.
The scene had transported them to a campfire later that night. The siblings were talking to one another, trying to figure out what happened to their companion, when the American came up to them.
"Seems our little American friends had a little misfortune of their own today," he tells them sitting down. "Three of their diggers were, uh, melted."
"What?!"
"How?"
"Salt acid. Pressurized salt acid. Some kind of ancient booby-trap," he said, scanning the area around them.
Carlisle looked up to Amun. "There's no evidence of actual curses amongst the hieroglyphs on any tomb walls. Only spells and such for the continued good health of the deceased," he tells the elder vampire.
"That current archaeologist know about," Amun corrects. "But remember, even now, Hamunaptra is thought to be a legend, even if there has been small evidences of it's existence have been found. Yet here we are looking at past events taking place in that very city."
They refocus on the woman, Evy, telling the other two off for believing in curses, and her brother searching through a bag, before he withdraws his hand with a pained cry. On inquiries to his cry, he pulls out a bottle.
"Glenlivet, 12 years old!" he says, uncorking it. "Well, he may have been a stinky fellow, but he had good taste."
There a commotion amongst the horses and the camels, and the American handed Evy his gun. "Take this," he said, getting up to check it out. "And stay here." His order was sharp and obviously meant to be taken seriously, but when in history has a woman ever listened to such an order.
Evy immediately scrambled to follow. "No, wait, wait. Wait for me. Wait!" she exclaimed.
"Evy! Excuse me, but didn't the man just say stay here? Evy!" her brother said, following.
Emmett laughed. "Good luck, brother."
They watched a fight break out between the explorers and excavators, and a band of men on horseback.
"Medjai," Amun mumbled.
It was, like any fight, chaos. They could see that the American could handle himself well with a gun. And Jasper liked that he took chances, such as with the dynamite.
"Why are they so protective of the city? It's in ruins?" Jasper asked.
"It's not the city. It's what's beneath it."
"And that is?" he asked.
"Remember the sarcophagus?" Amun asked. That quieted everyone, though they had more questions. They were willing to wait to see how things unfolded.
o0o o0o o0o
Irisi felt when the others were able to see what she was seeing. She sighed as she felt the touch of her son. She turned to the unfolding events. It was some time later, after the small skirmish, and she saw that the princess was well and truly intoxicated. And trying to learn how to throw a proper punch in the mean time. It was cute to witness her drunken flirtation with the American, but his serious interest in her. She smiled at his chivalry. Once the princess had passed out, he lay her down on her bed roll and tucked her in for the night. He was a good one, she thought.
It seemed that everyone worked within the city during the hot of the day and then got together again in the cool of the evening around camp fires. It was the night after the skirmish that found Evy enviously eyeing one of the American diggers, and Irisi couldn't blame her. He had the Book of the Dead. Both of them knew that he wasn't supposed to have that. The princess herself had a handful of skeletons.
As Evy and Irisi joined her camp around the fire, she saw that the had company. Said company were waving around Canopic jars. Irisi gave a small growl at the disrespect. Her ire could be felt through her very being and into the throne room of the Volturi.
o0o o0o o0o
"The Great Mother is angry," Demitri said. Amun nodded.
"As are Kebi and I. Those are Canopic jars, Demitri. They hold organs of the deceased. The do not belong to my father. I do not know whose they would be carrying around, but they shouldn't just be toted around as conquered treasure. They should be treated with much more respect."
They watched as the princess came up and sat into the previously occupied space by the man known as O'Connell.
"Look what I found!" she exclaimed excitedly. "Scarab skeletons, flesh-eaters. I found them inside our friend's coffin. They can stay alive for years feasting on the flesh of a corpse. Unfortunately for our friend, he was still alive when they started eating him."
"So someone threw these in with our guy and then they slowly ate him alive?" O'Connell asked, holding up one of the found little skeletons.
"Very slowly," the young woman emphasized.
"He certainly wasn't a popular fellow when they planted him, was he?" her brother asked.
"Well, he probably got a little too frisky with the pharaoh's daughter," O'Connell jibed. Irisi shook her head at his close assumption.
She and her audience in the outer world watched as the princess explained the workings of the curse. Having officially freaked out her brother and their guide, the men turned in, and it seemed for a while that the princess had joined them. But a few hours after both their camp and the American camp had quieted, the princess had risen and crept into the tent of the professor in the next camp.
o0o o0o o0o
"She hasn't changed one bit," Amun murmured.
"What do you mean?" Carlisle asked.
"Nefertiti used to find herself in all kinds of trouble too. Though she knew then what not to get into in her original incarnation. I looks like we're about to get a front row seat to my father's resurrection."
They turned their attention back to the pool.
"That's called stealing, you know," O'Connell said without opening his eyes.
"According to you and my brother, it's called borrowing," she said, setting down the book and riffling through Jonathan's pockets.
"I thought the Book of Amun-Ra was made out of gold," he mused.
"It is made out of gold. This isn't the Book of Amun-Ra. This is something else. I think this may be the Book of the Dead.
Rick's eyes widened as Evy managed to get the key open. "The Book of the Dead? Are you sure you want to be playing around with this thing?"
"It's just a book," she said, turning the key into the book's lock. "No harm ever came from reading a book." As if to contradict her words, a low moaning wind ripped through the city as she fully opened the front cover. Evy jumped as the fire wickered in the wind.
"That happens a lot around here," Rick mused. Evy started reading, and when he looked back down to the page, he asked. "So, what's it say?"
"Amun Ra, Amun Dei, It speaks of the night and of the day. Tsu eh ah haru-muk-tub, sinma-sibet baiya. Ima tipin su pike set sueh yatu eh," but she was then cut off.
"NO! YOU MUST NOT READ FROM THE BOOK!" Yelled the professor, who had woken to find said book missing.
"What's so scary about reading from the Book of the Dead?" Emmett asked.
His question was almost immediately answered when they watched a unholy swarm of locust materialize out of seemingly no where.
"What the fuck?!" Emmett exclaimed.
"Ten plagues remember. It started with locust," Amun explained.
o0o o0o o0o
Irisi watched and slowly made her way through the familiar, if now ruined, halls of Hamunaptra. She was making her way towards the sarcophagus, though she knew it would be empty. She could hear the ruckus the others were making as they sought to get away from the swarm. When she reached it, the sarcophagus was empty, but the room was not. A walking mummy was slowly making his way around the room.
"What in the blue fuck is that?!" she heard from the waking world. Sounded like Emmett.
"Oh, my love," she whispered, though this was but a memory. He would never hear her. But a curious thing happened then. He turned his head as if he could. Thinking it over, she came to conclusion he may have heard her. He was on the living plane, yes, but only half. He was still, obviously, very much dead. And she was using the void he had wondered to view these events.
He turned his body then. Though he was a dry rotted shell of the man he once was, he was still lean, and move fluidly and gracefully. Of everything, she mourned one thing above all.
"Would that you could see me, my love. See me, and look upon me as you once did. I miss our moments. Just gazing at one another, letting the world pass us, knowing we had all the time in the world. If only we knew." she finished on a sigh.
She watched as he left the room, stalking the halls of his city, knowing them as a man knows his own house. He stalked them until he came upon a man who was slowly making his way, one hand on the walls, and another out in front of him. As if blind.
"He was one of the men who set off the curse. One of the sacrifices," she realized, and watched as he pulled the eyes and tongue from the man. She cried, hoping that her earlier wish, spoken aloud in grief, hadn't influenced his decision to torture this man.
Irisi slightly jumped when the trick wall behind her opened and the princess stumbled into the hall. She sighed and shook her head. Always getting into trouble, this one. Always in the worst place at the wrong times. At first the princess had been relieved, seeing one of the Americans. But he turned and reached for her in his agony, calling for his eyes and tongue.
She screamed and turned to run, only to stop dead mid step and come face to face with her risen creature. He herded her to a wall, matching her every step. She foolishly begged for the American to stay as he crawled away, moaning about his lost tongue.
"Anck-Su-Namun?" He questioned.
"No! Please, beloved," Irisi pleaded.
"Come with me my Princess Anck-Su-Namun."
"There you are! Will you quit playing Hide-and-Seek. Come on. Let's get out of here," O'Connell said as he rushed into the hall. But seeing Evy hadn't taken her focus from the walking mummy in front of her, Rick too turned, and startled at what he saw. It was then everyone else entered, and skid to a halt as they caught sight of Imhotep.
Imhotep, who upon seeing his perceived intruders, gave an inhuman scream to intimidate O'Connell. But the man rose to it like any other American. He screamed right back. Gave it a good deep growl within it too, before he cocked his gun and fired right into Imhotep's midsection. Everyone used the distraction to slip past Imhotep and run out of the city. Only their path was then block by Medjai. The leader removed his face covering and approached them.
"I told you to leave or die. You refused. Now you may have killed us all, for you have unleashed a creature that we have feared for more than 3,000 years," he said gravely.
"Relax. I got him," Rick snipes.
"No mortal weapon can kill this creature. He's not of this world," the Medjai pressed. He moved aside when two of his compatriots brought forth Mr. Burns. In the light of the torches everyone bore, his injuries were even more gruesome. Henderson and Daniels eased him to the ground to rest.
"You bastards," Daniels exclaimed.
"What did you do to him?" Henderson asked.
"We saved him. Saved him before the creature could finish his work. Leave, all of you, quickly, before he finishes you all. He orders his fellow Medjai and they lower their raised rifles just enough to move swiftly forward into the city.
"We must now go on the hunt, and try to find a way to kill him," he finishes, passing O'Connell.
"I already told you, I got him," he says to the passing man.
"Know this," the Medjai says ominously. "This creature is the bringer of death. He will never eat, he will never sleep, and he will never stop." And with this as his parting words, he turns and follows the other black clad men into the bowls of the city.