Chapter 2: Pillow Talk

"Enjoy yourself?" Teana asked. She had changed into a simple, plain nightgown, laying back on her bed. The party had concluded a hour or so beforehand, and the royal family had moved to their bedroom as the sun set on Egypt. The two children had already been tucked away in their own rooms, just across the hall theirs. Since the two had first moved into this room, more than nine years ago, as an official couple, things had only become more opulent and magnificent. Artists from all over the world had thrown themselves at the almighty Pharaoh, begging for the honor of having one of their pieces to be put on display where mighty Atemu would see it virtually every day. It showed in the fine, one of a kind paintings hanging on the wall, the sculptures set on every surface to be found, and even the mudane objects like the bed, doors and bookshelf had been made to shine and sparkle with the exotic touch of value.

"Of course." Atemu said, standing next to the bed, unbuttoning his undershirt and letting it fall to the floor. "Always."

"Look on the desk." She said, closing her eyes and gesturing toward Atemu with her right hand.

Atemu looked down at the small surface just to the left of the pillow on his side of the bed and saw a large piece of parchment, a crazed assortment of color covering it. He picked it up and examined it, the colors forming the crude painting of a tall person in the middle, a shorter person to his right, and two shorter yet stick figures on either side.

"That supposed to be me?" Atemu said, pointing at the tallest one. "I need to drop some pounds."

"The kids made that today." Teana added. "I told them to give it to you before bed. They forgot."

"I'll thank them in the morning." Atemu put it back down on the desk. "I hope you're not too tired..." He slid onto the bed, eyeing her figure up and down.

"Well, let's see." She opened her eyes and rolled her head over to look at her husband, staring into his eyes for several seconds. Suddenly, she rolled back over and slid off the bed. "Fraid so." She said, bare feet touching the floor as she stood up.

"Oh. What? What?" Atemu asked playfully, pulling himself over to her side of the bed. "What'd I do?"

"You're irritable." She said shortly, tugging on the neck of her gown. "You know the rules, honey, if you go to bed upset, my legs are shut." She started to move around the bed. "I'll go sleep across the hall, you can have your fun with your harem if you insist."

"I'm not mad!" Atemu whined, watching her walk around the bed. "Why would I be mad? What could possibly make me mad? Besides, it's my birthday!"

"We've known each other a decade, dear." Teana said, stopping at the foot of the bed to look at her husband. "I can always tell. And I don't care what today is, you're a selfish lover when you're angry."

Atemu wormed his way back into a laying down position on the bed, head on the pillow, looking down at his wife. "Oh, come on, it's not that bad! I get rough sometimes, but don't give me this good little girl crap, you like it rough!"

"I like beer too, but not a whole barrel. Besides, that's not really...what I meant." She said, her eyes shifting for a split second at the bookcase against the right wall of the room, opposite the bed, before returning to Atemu.

"What? My harem? I thought we talked about this." Atemu continued to whine, folding his arms over his chest. "All Pharaohs have harems, my father had one, his father, and his father's father before him! No one mortal woman can hope to satisfy a descendant of the gods like me, you'd die trying."

Teana rolled her eyes. "First of all, oh mighty Pharaoh." She came around to his side of the bed now, standing over him with her hands on her hips, smiling naughtily. "Don't toot your own horn, you're not that good."

"See, now you're just being mean." Atemu pouted. "You just don't know how good I am because you've never had anything else."

"Second, I know full well I'm the luckiest girl in the world. That doesn't mean I'm ever going to be fully comfortable with the fact that my husband has a harem of a hundred women, all of whom are prettier than me." Teana continued, still smirking.

"Hey now, don't be so-"

"Let me finish, let me finish." Teana held her hand up toward Atemu. "And that's not really what I meant either. It's your little shows."

Atemu stared blankly. "What are you talking about?" He asked, his arms falling back to his side.

Teana sat down on the edge of the bed, a more comforting smile crossing her mouth. "Honey, you know I love you." She grabbing his right hand inbetween hers. "But you and I both know that you like to take it out on the girls when you get upset."

Atemu swallowed. "What, you feel bad for them? They're nothing. There's nothing to feel bad for."

"No, I don't want to see my husband like that." Teana said softly, holding his hand up in front of her. "It's not fun to watch. Honey, I love you, and I don't like to say this, but you're an angry person. You get angry a lot, and you take it out on the girls, and I don't want to see that. It's not fun anymore."

Teana leaned in closer to Atemu's face. He turned away slightly, looking up at the ceiling. "...I'm not an angry person." He grumbled halfheartedly. "My libido just works differently, I'm a blue-blood."

"Darling, please, it's anger. I know it's anger. You've been angry for ten years." She raised her right hand to his head, running her fingers through his hair. "Ever since...ever since-"

"Shouldn't I be mad?" Atemu said through gritted teeth. "My father was murdered over a profit line, Teana." He looked up at her. "Maybe I am mad. A mad person, more than a person should be. But shouldn't I be?" He turned back away to look at the ceiling.

"Of course." She said, still stroking his hair. "You have every right to be mad. Most people would be. But it's been ten years."

Atemu turned back to face her, glancing down at her small left hand in his larger right one.

"Ten years of warmongering, violence, revenge, anger...please don't look at me like that, honey...when can we go back to the way things should have been?" Teana flinched slightly at Atemu's glare.

"This is a sensitive subject." Atemu said simply, looking back up at the ceiling. "Even for you."

"Honey, I would never disrespect your father's memory, and these people deserve to suffer for what they did to him." Teana rushed out quickly. "But sometimes, power isn't about being strong enough to punish someone. Sometimes...it's about having people at your mercy, with every reason to punish them, but choosing not to. The first day I met you, you talked about how your reign was going to be laid back, and peaceful. You'd do whatever you wanted, wouldn't concern yourself with politics, just focus on enjoying life. That's all I want, but if you continue to beat this warpath against the rest of the world...then you'll always be this angry, frustrated person."

Atemu cleared his throat, looking back at the face of his wife. He saw some fear in her eyes, fear of pushing this too far. It wasn't unwarranted.

"Please don't be mad." She threw in meekly.

"I'm not mad at you." He finally said. "It's...it's fine that you want to talk about this, at some point I have to talk about it. I understand. And if you want to sleep in the other room tonight, I'm not going to make you do anything you don't want to do." He took a deep breath. "And...I'm sorry if I tend to be unpleasant to be around. But I'm not that good of man, honey. You're right. Those other nations, those who banded against Egypt and took the side of the men who killed my father...I want to grind them into nothing. I want to make them watch their precious cities fly the Egyptian flag. And I can't let this go."

Teana nodded. "...I understand too. Believe me. Now, you have fun tonight, and don't worry about me. I just wanted you to know how I feel, I would never dream of disrespecting your reign or your father."

Atemu smiled wanly. "No...no, you should never be scared to talk to me about anything." He turned over to the small desk right next to his pillow and picked a small golden bell off of it. He rang it hard a few times, then set it back down. A few seconds later, the bookshelf across the room slid to the side, revealing a long, stone passageway with a tall, muscular women standing at the newly created entrance. She took one step into the room before dropping into a bow.

"Anything specific tonight, mighty Pharaoh?" The woman asked.

"Meek." Atemu said. "I want to start the night off with an easy one to break."

"As you wish." She said, standing back up and walking back into the hidden hall from where she came, disappearing into it's mysterious depths.

"And please don't think about what I said tonight." Teana added, kissing him on the forehead. "I want you to enjoy yourself."

Atemu nodded quickly. "The...the sensitive subject thing, I'm really sorry honey. You...you're my wife, and if you want to talk to me about...about my father, then I want you to feel free to do that. I don't like to talk about it, but...but I know I can't run from it all the time."

"I can't possibly understand, I know." Teana said. "I don't know what it's like. I just don't like to see you so mad all of the time."

"Maybe one day. Believe me. I want things to be that way too. I don't want to be mad. I don't want to constantly be at war with everyone. I just...I just don't know what else to do right now."

Teana strolled over to the door leading out of the bedroom, waving to Atemu. "See you in the morning."

As soon as she had stepped through the door, the hidden segment of wall opened to reveal the muscular woman, this time holding the end of a length of chain. The chain was stretched taut back into the room from where she had come, and she entered the room, towing it with her.

Eventually, a small, young woman appeared, laying on the ground and furiously struggling, the chain ending in a large cuff around her neck. Her wrists had been attached to the neck-cuff, her hands held up in front of her face. Her ankles had been chained by a separate set of cuffs, which held her legs together tightly. The woman was, in fact, dragging her along as she fought like mad to get free and retreat back into the hidden chamber.

The girl was not of this region, an import from a distant land. Her tan skin and blonde hair made that clear. She wore only a simple white tunic that fell to just above her knees, On the right shoulder of the simple piece of clothing was a red circle with a sketch of a pyramid in the middle, the Pharaoh's insignia.

As soon as she looked up and saw the Pharaoh on his bed, looking down at her struggling figure, she instantly froze up, going limp like a dead fish, eyes widening in abject fear.

"She's very pretty." Teana commented from the door. "Enjoy." She blew Atemu a kiss and shut the door behind her.

The pair of women, currently polar opposites of each other in virtually every way imaginable, went over to the left side of the room, with the unknown little blonde girl suddenly snapping out of her fear-induced paralysis to once again tug on her neckchain with all her might as she was dragged across the room.

"And just what are you planning to do after you manage to break that chain?" Atemu asked, amused by her fruitless struggles. "Roll your way to freedom?"

She had nothing to say in reply, but did not slow her efforts to escape, pulling and tugging even harder. Within short order, however, she had been successfully dragged over to a section of the room a few yards to the right of the bed, where a pair of cuffs lay on the floor, bolted securely to the marble by very short lengths of chain, along with a small metal ring similarly bolted down.

The imprisoner pulled the imprisonee over to her roughly, taking a tiny key from a pouch on her belt as she did so with her right hand. She pulled the struggling girl over to her, grabbing her head, and pushed the key into a small hole in the neckcuff right inbetween the two wrist attachments. The circle of steel popped open on a hinge, and the small girl wasted no time in pulling her neck out of the restraining device and continuing her escape efforts.

"Hmph!" The larger woman grunted as the neck cuff fell away from the two wrist cuffs, the three circles of metal now detached, giving the prisoner a split second of freedom as her bonds separated from the haremmaster's chain. This was quickly taken care of, as she quickly grabbed her wrists and held them together, interlocking two tabs of metal on the insides of them together. She then locked the end of the chain onto the joined tabs. Quickly, as she again began to try and pull away, the haremmaster yanked her hard back toward her, then threw the chain up toward the ceiling as she stumbled forward awkwardly. The chain looped through a metal ring ten feet up, held there from a rod embedded in the ceiling, and fell back down into her grasp. She pulled it through the small metal ring on the ground, as the small girl's arms were pulled over her head. She continued to fight as eventually, she was pulled off the ground entirely, and was forced to put her toes on the ground so her entire body weight wasn't straining on her arms.

The haremmaster then looped the slack on the chain around a knob on the wall, locking it into place. She quickly surveyed her handiwork, as the small girl continued to strain her arms against the cuffs. She then bent down to her feet, removing the cuffs that held them together. Before she could start to kick, she grabbed them roughly with her right hand as her left grabbed the two cuffs on the ground. The two metal chains were quickly slapped onto her ankles, making it impossible for her to pull her legs up.

"There we go." The haremmaster said, watching as she futilely tried to pull her legs up or hands down, her body stretched to it's painless limits. "Should I get some others ready?"

"Yes." Atemu replied. "Warm them up. Surprise me." He slipped off the edge of the bed as the haremmaster quickly moved back toward the concealed chamber from where she had come. She disappeared through the gap and the bookcase slid shut behind her.

Atemu slowly came around the bed, approaching the terrified girl, still frantically fighting the losing battle of yanking on her bonds. She threw a short look at the Pharaoh, eyes wide and breathing heavily, before once again looking up and trying to pull her arms down.

"Keep your toes on the ground." Atemu said, pointing down at her feet, which were currently a few inches above the floor. "You'll dislocate your arms that way."

She ignored him, continuing to tug and pull frantically as Atemu approached her, watching her bemusedly. He bent down to the floor a couple feet away from her, not taking his eyes off her struggles, and slipped his fingernails under a floor tile. He pried it up, revealing a small black stick laying there. He set the tile aside, having not taken his eyes off the girl, who was finally beginning to cease struggling. She put her toes on the ground as well, taking the strain off of her shoulders.

The fear had not left her, however, as she closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, her chest heaving as she did so. After several seconds, she dared to look at the Pharaoh as he stood back up.

"Do you know who I am?" He finally asked. He waited a few seconds for a reply, but nothing came. "I'm sure you do." He finally answered himself. "You should understand, then, that fighting is completely pointless. You escape those chains, I'm right here to put you back. You escape this room, one of a thousand patrolling guards in this palace either capture or kill you. You escape this palace, a empire of millions of people will all be alerted to find you. And no one is coming to rescue you. I answer to no one, no higher authority can come to stop me."

The girl's eyelids fluttered, as she again began to pant heavily, veins pulsing from her neck and sweat streaming down her skin.

"How does that make you feel?" He asked. He glanced over his shoulder, towards the door leading out of the room. "Are you waiting for some of your countrymen to burst through that door and rescue you? Or have you accepted that they're not coming?"

He bent back down towards the ground, reaching for the stick inside the pulled-up tile. "Many women would consider this a great honor. To allow their pain to bring me pleasure." He pulled it out, slowly revealing one end of the rod was attached to a rope, glowing a bright orange, sizzling and smoking as he pulled it out.

Panic built for the girl once again as she saw this thin piece of glowing rope emerge. Eventually, the Pharaoh stood back up and pulled it out entirely, revealing a small hole in the bottom of the floor cavity from where the string had been pulled, smoke rising from that tiny gap. She then noticed, fear engulfing her further, that the rope was, in fact, several ropes. Inspite of all warnings, she couldn't help but begin to frantically pull on her wristchains as she realized that the contraption the Pharaoh held in his hand was a whip, the business end of which was heated to scorching temperatures.

"Just between you and me, though, I always prefer it when they don't." He said, raising the whip behind his shoulder, lashing the burning hot rope towards her back.

""""

"I assure you, any reputable source will vouch for the security of our vault, you can read all about the general specifications of it, and anything you put in there will be perfectly safe. But we...typically, anyway, don't let people into the vault. When you think about it, it's really part of the security of it, that people don't see it." Panhsj insisted, glancing over his shoulder toward the back end of the building, behind the row of desks where the door to the vault was positioned. He turned back to face the prospective client.

"What do you think I'm gonna see?" Thoth persisted on, seated on the opposite side of the desk from the teller. "Listen, I'm sure the security here is great, but there are a ton of banks in Egypt. I could walk a few blocks east and find one, there's one not too far south, I'm just trying to compare security."

"If I may be perfectly honest, sir, bank heists are an outdated myth in Egypt right now. Any half-decent vault is more than enough in this day and age. Even the most crazed criminal minds know it's suicide to try and break through a bank vault. I can assure you that your money and possessions will be perfectly safe with us." Panhsj soothed. "But letting people into our vault just isn't something we do."

Thoth slowly started to nod, then shrugged. "Well, I suppose you're right. Crime's so low right now-"

The front doors to the bank, thick and wooden though they may have been, were suddenly splintered by a fiery explosion, sending small shards of wood in all directions near the entrance of the building, as well as slamming massive slabs of wood down on the tiled floor. The roar of the explosion, as well as the clatter of wood chunks hitting the floor, filled the air as smoke billowed into the large room. The handful of people still inside the bank at this fairly late hour immediately threw themselves to the ground as the entire building shook.

Almost immediately, human figures swooped through the smoke, wearing tight black clothing that covered virtually their entire bodies. Two of them went to either side of the door, where security guards had fallen after being knocked from their positions. In simple, fluid motions, they pulled out small steel blades and stuck them into the backs of the two fallen and disoriented security guards.

More burst into the room as the customers and employees of the bank began to look up and try to figure out what had happened. The two that had offed the guards jumped up, running into the center of the room, as the other six black figures swept across the room, jumping up onto desks and scanning the entire room.

"Stay on the ground!" A voice boomed. Suddenly, a ninth figure entered, this one much more traditionally clothed. A tanned, white haired man ran through the smoke, wearing a white and red robe. He continued to run across the room, towards the back of the chamber. "We've already killed twice, our sentences if we're caught won't be any more severe if we kill a few more!"

Indeed, none of the denizens of the bank dared to get up, remaining on the ground in whatever position they had landed. The mysterious man ran across the tiled floor towards the back, jumping over desks as he did so, haphazardly knocking various items to the floor as he did so.

The eight cloaked figures watched him as he hurdled the desks, every now and then casting their eyes about to make sure nobody stirred from the ground. Commotion from outside the bank was beginning to fill the air, as people began to realize the protector of their valuables and riches had fallen under attack.

The white haired man hurdled the final row of desks in the back, landing on an elderly, bald, mustached man. Without a second thought, he simply stepped over him and walked up to the vault.

"You're mad." The man on the ground coughed up as the robber reached into the folds of his robe, not taking his eyes off the steel vault. "Five units of Egypt's finests will be here in sixty seconds. Enjoy your dark cell, assuming they don't just execute you immediately." He coughed.

Paying the elderly man no attention, the thief pulled a small vial of a green liquid out of his robes. Pulling the cork out of the top, he dipped the index finger of his right hand into it. He then emphatically pointed at the top hinge of the vault door. A vicious explosion suddenly ripped through the hinge, causing yet another cacaphonic crash to sound through the bank. In short order, he pointed at the middle and bottom hinge as well, causing similar explosions, as the final one caused the heavy steel barrier to fall forward, sending a ringing clank as it hit the ground.

Immediately, the eight cloaked figures abandoned their posts and swept towards the now vulnerable goods stored in the safe room. The chaos outside the bank was building even further, as the three extra explosions only further confused everyone.

The eight men quickly ducked into the newly opened chamber, as the ninth tucked the vial back into his robes, turning around to face the main room of the bank.

"Good luck explaining this one to the authorities." He remarked, smirking down at the elderly man on the ground.

"Thirty seconds." He retorted, even as he couldn't help but stare at the man's right index finger. "And you've just barely entered the vault. How pitiful."

Behind the thief leader, the eight henchmen began to quickly sweep the piles of gold coins on the floor of the steel, sterile room into large sacks. He turned to watch them for a second before shouting "Fifteen seconds!"

He turned back to the old man on the ground. "I wouldn't worry about that." He again reached into his robes with his left hand. The old man blanched slightly, fearing he had opened his mouth one time too many, but the hand emerged holding only a golden coin. "I always tip quality customer service representatives." He remarked as he flicked the coin out of his hand, sending it spinning through the air.

He turned back into the vault, as the eight had filled a few sacks with golden coins successfully. He nodded shortly at his men, then pointed at the back wall of the vault, opposite the previously destroyed door, with his right index finger.

An even larger explosion than before rocked the building, threatening to send it crashing down on everyone, as the thieves somehow managed to blow a hole straight through the steel walls of the vault, leading right outside the bank and back out into the streets. As soon as the smoke from this new explosion cleared, the eight made a break for the breech, shoving their newly acquired riches through the gap along with their bodies.

The leader, however, returned to the vault door entrance and looked out, as a squad of egyptian soldiers burst through the ruined entrance of the bank, armed with short swords and sprinting toward the vault.

He looked up at the ceiling, directly above the center of the room. A massive chandelier hung there, swaying slightly from the previous explosion in the vault. Sparkling fake gems hung from golden rims, the intricate decoration suspended only by a golden chain. He pointed up at it, and with a much smaller eruption, the chain had broken, sending the heavy ornament crashing down.

The front rows of the squad realized what was happening too late, as they slipped and scrambled in a vain attempt to avoid the massive falling chandelier. It slammed down into the ground, crushing several unfortunate soldiers under it's massive weight. Gemstones were sent haphazardly in all directions, as the guards further down the procession fell back and threw their hands up over their faces. The crash echoed down many streets, confirming to even those a great distance away beyond any doubt that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

It was several seconds before the surviving soldiers managed to get their wits about them and jump up, but of course, the thief had disappeared through his escape route, gone from the immediate vicinity along with his eight men and four large bags of gold coins.

More Egyptian forces piled into the room. There were many wounded, others outright dead, that had to be tended too. Others began a search party for the thieves. A few more began to question those present on what exactly had happened. It all moved very quickly, with military precision.

It was only several minutes later that the elderly man behind the final desk row stood up, shaking his head. He stumbled over to his desk, where the gold coin that the thief had tossed landed. It still lay there, similar in size and shape to common egyptian currency but quite clearly of a different make.

He bent down over it, glaring at the engraving on it. Indeed, this one proved to be very alien when compared to the simple pyramid on their currency. A human-like creature had been impressed onto the coin, with strange horns jutting out the sides of the head. Massive wings were unfurled from the back of the beast, a smaller pair from the hips. To complete the strange picture, a muscular and sculpted chest ended with the head of a snake emerging from the lower stomach.

The elderly man may have been a banker, had been all his life, but he had once upon a time paid attention in mythology class, and he knew he had seen this creature before. Not often, not so much as to drill the nature or meaning of it into his mind, but a few times. There could be no doubt that, whatever it may have meant or signified, the coin beared the likeness of Diabound.