Chapter 2 Distant Forecast
Heat arose in her chest and blazed throughout her body like a raging inferno. Sweat glistened and crawled down the many curves of her body trying to offer futile relief to her burning mocha flesh. The cries and screams of her people blended with their bodies running in a blurred frenzy in different directions, trying to escape the death that she knew would be imminent. The hazardous crashing of buildings and stoneware echoed in the bloody night.
The woman crawled up the ivory stone steps and pushed against the gold columns of an Egyptian shrine. Shakily, she turned to look out with misty smoky blue eyes at the smoldering filled streets of Cairo. Cuts and bruises littered her body liberally with blood seeping from a side wound she endured, bleeding into her crème-colored dress. Darkness stretched across the great pyramids and crumbled a few of her ancestor's treasures, legacies, and heirlooms. Fumes fogged the night air with sprouts of fire breaking out in various portions of her beloved city. She clutched her forehead staring out in horror feeling her thick unnatural white hair stick to her saturated soot-coated skin. Her kohl lined eyes smudged and grew itchy from the pillows of smoke ballooning in the air.
Pottery, food stands, crates, and other items lay abandoned and broken on the streets as people ran and knocked them over trying to escape the fire that brought death's hand at their doors. Wild animals ran through the streets in chaotic fear causing a few to fall and others to become trampled over. Demonic beings chased her people with her soldiers fighting relentlessly to save them all.
Children huddled in a corner in fetal positions against blood-stained alabaster walls scared of the scene before them coughing and slowly suffocating from the smoke filling up their lungs and drawing tears to their faces. Her heart was full of sorrow as she looked up into the black sky, noticing the sun had almost gone completely eclipsed with the view of a full red moon. She watched the warning signs as one lonely star blinked rapidly eight times before shooting to the east before dimming. Dark skies had fully blanketed what was supposed to be the noon sky leaving her lands in darkness and ravaged by unknown shadowy beasts ripping into everything, slaying her people, and stealing from people's homes.
She stood up shakily calling out to the heavens to relieve them of the blazing firestorm's grip and to strike down the malicious beings that killed mindlessly. She began drenching her city in water from the skies, but it did very little calming down the growing fire that was taking over her city. Coughing profusely, she crouched over against a column as her blue eyes turned silver. Another lightning strike came down to destroy another herd of demons flooding her homeland. The woman had grown tired of fighting for weeks against the beings who had managed to triple in numbers against their powers and she could no longer keep them at bay. Her barriers had failed her. Her city walls had failed her. Her powers had failed her. And she in turn had failed her people.
"How could this have happened to us?" She asked out loud as tears streamed down her face unabashedly. She was never one for hysterics or public display of emotion, but this was something she'd never witnessed before. She watched her people cower, crawl, and run forgetting the plans she implemented for if ever a time should come where she was to fail her people; but they did not listen. They had grown sheltered underneath her and her sister's rule over Egypt and considered her a god amongst men; praising her of her unearthly ability in which she used to sooth the earth and provide resources for her people.
It had happened in a matter of weeks as shadowy creatures formed into strange demonic beasts that terrorized parts of Africa. Accounts from all over the continent had flourished in numbers before reaching her doorstep. Beasts that she had never seen before in a variety of colors that moved like an ominous cloud. She looked up now at the eclipsed red sun and pain from the earth shook her so hard she wept on the marble floor watching her people struggle to escape and fight for their lives that she knew would end regardless.
Giant statues of Anubis and Amon were tumbling down from the wreckage by the demons. Smaller temples dedicated to the new religions of Catholicism and Christianity were being destroyed. Her heart broke at this as she clutched her own cross that hung around her neck to her body. Homes were being terrorized and crushed right before her eyes. Debris of limestone, mud brick, granite, basalt, and alabaster seemed to explode everywhere. Children and mothers were being ushered into boats and rushed off into the Nile as a means of escape. It's river staining red with the blood of the fallen. She could do nothing but watch helplessly as everything she had been trained to protect, honor, cherish, and love was taken from her in matter of minutes. A sharp pain struck her in her side where her wound was growing fatal.
"Ororo!"
She looked behind her as her younger sister ran holding her child's head cradling the precious cargo to her body. Ororo flew down and reached for her weeping sister. Both had brown skin and the same curvy yet tall figures except the oldest sister donned white thick glossy hair and the other had black of the same kind dressed in a gold caftan. Her eyes were rimmed with redness as she tried to protect her crying child.
"Where's your husband?" Ororo asked as she looked around frantically searching for the male.
"I don't know!" She screamed as the earth beneath them shook. "Please come with us! We can run from this! We need you! It's over!" She yelled as she pulled on her older sister's hand frantically towards the river.
Ororo noticed the tired look of her sister who wore the headdress of a pharaoh. Her eyes grew ide seeing her sister don the headpiece instead of it being placed onto her own head. Similar features reflected her own as the younger looked up to the older sister. Blue eyes searching for answers in the younger brown. Ororo grew resolute as the wails of the newborn in her sister's arms grew louder. Her own eyes began to change to that of blue as she pushed the water onward that carried to ships of people to safety. "Asa! You are queen now! Save and direct our people. I will fall with this city."
Asa's tears fell rapidly down her face as the water of the Nile seemed to be raging out of control tossing the ships now further away while growing to build a large aquatic barrier against the attacks. Ororo looked to her with wide eyes before looking up at the heavens again.
"Please tell me what to do!" She yelled among the rain, wind, debris, and the smoke raging around her. Suddenly time seemed to have stood still. Everything around her had slowed down right before her eyes. She looked up at the sky again and seeing the same star from before blink eight times and each time it changed color until it was a brighter pink color almost round in shape with a fluorescent hue about it. Finally, it shot away towards the land behind the attacking army.
Suddenly, she could feel the tugging of her left hand from where her sister had grabbed her. Frowning she turned her head to see that of a different woman. Foreign darkened eyes stared into her own eyes with knowledge. Ororo scanned the woman quickly who dressed in stranger attire of a long white sleeve robe and billowing red pants. Black wavy hair blew about her heart shaped face. On her neck lay a dark crescent moon that caused the skin around it to look diseased. Her chapped lips moved with a message.
"Knowledge is Power. Destroy it."
Ororo watched as the woman let go of her wrist and pointed behind her. Something terrifying brushed against her senses unlike anything she'd ever felt since the many battles of her father. She turned to peer in front of her noticing silver strands of hair and man like build seemingly flying towards her. This one was unlike the rest as he pulled back his hand with claws extending. Fangs bared out to her followed by what looked to be his twin in the back rushing behind him in red pants with many marks and eyes ablaze. Crescent markings rested on their flesh as they came closer into her sight of vision. The front runner's skin was like that of the moonlight donning jagged striped reddish markings among his hips, shoulders, and face. His eyes glowed red as he aimed his pointed bloodied claws with the intent on her destruction.
Eyes glowed silver before her body lifted into the air to try one last time. Her snowy hair billowed around her along with her dress and gold bangles as the skies raged with self-righteousness and anger resulting in sixty mile per hour winds and increasing. Lightning struck in various directions killing hordes of demons that tried to escape her wrath. She called forth a powerful bolt with one hand and drawing into her as much power in her hand.
His claws raised above his head ready to deal onto her deaths mightiest blow. She pulled back with her own attack filled with determination and righteous fury ready to smite down the cause of so much suffering. Both aimed their attacks and brought them down upon each other with so much power that everything seemed to vanish around them. Before she landed her blow, her eyes stared into that of her killer's.
Suddenly the world tilted, and her eyes opened wide. Her heartbeat pounded rapidly out of her chest wanting so desperately to escape its cage. Sweat clung to her thin dress as slender feelings brushed her forehead. Thunder struck outside of her home causing her to jump out further of her self-induced nightmare to the balcony. The young woman looked down and touched the cool fabric of her sheets gaining familiarity with her surroundings. Her body heaved before she realized it was raining. Suddenly her doors were thrown open causing her to react by reaching for her weapon underneath her pillows.
"Pharoah!"
Ororo sighed in relief as a slender woman rushed in. The sound of loud footsteps and torches being lit outside her door echoed in the night. No doubt they came to her aid after the nightmare she just had that alarmed the young woman at her side. Ororo pulled the sheets away from her body to address the woman holding beads and other items. "Iset!" She stood up from her bed, chest still heaving while taking in her sister's appearance as her beloved cousin fell to the cool granite floors assembling the items in front of her with care.
"I had a vision!" she explained making eye contact in validation that Iset too shared the same vision.
Ororo's eyes widened before Iset began to pray with all her might. Ororo watched as another loud angry thunderbolt sounded off in the heavens and more rain poured heavier than before. Her mouth began to move faster before her eyes opened. Ororo lowered herself next to the woman who began to rock and move the items around frantically. She took in her items of various stones and rocks that come from different lands. Seemingly scattered around the floor. Two feathers, a book, and a red paste sat to her side. Ororo listened carefully as a mixture of the ancient Egyptian language and Coptic fell from Iset's lips with hands moving rocks, stones, and gems around. She lifted a feather and roamed it around until it fell lightly from her hand onto the rock. Another feather was picked up before placed in front of Ororo's body. Ororo watched Iset dip her slender finger in the paste, and she began to flip the pages of a book open to a blank sheet. Her finger glided in quick motions on the page. Long black lines and arches were seen with each stroke of her finger before she lifted her hands up and slumped in her stance.
Just as quickly as it had started, it had ended. The rain and the thunder stopped immediately as Iset looked at the word that she wrote. Both women frowned at the lack of understanding of the message delivered to them.
"Iset-" Ororo began before licking her lips and brushing her snowy white hair out of her face. "What is this?" Her blue irises scanned the wording and scene before her.
"I saw a land filled with strange people unlike those of our lands. This land was filled with more kings than we know of Gods." Iset spoke sighing loudly with her own braided black tresses sticking to her sun kissed skin. She sat back on her hind legs letting out a cleansing breath before a simple prayer was said in thanks. "But, I do know…you are being called to interfere in something of great importance. " Iset pointed to the feather before her. "You must travel somewhere far east of this place." She spoke pointing to the words she wrote and the map she assembled out of stones, gems, and rocks. She read some of her writing and put together the syllables. "Some island translates to Nippon…or…Chipan..Jah-pan. I can't make sense of this language."
Ororo picked up the feather and held it to her knowing this would be her guide. "Father wrote about the Eastern Lands during his days as pharaoh. I'm sure we can find something in the archives or speak with the oral scribes about of this place and his dealings with these so called many kings. But what is the rest of this…" She pointed. "Lines and curves."
Iset looked down at what looked to be little drawings of lines in an odd pattern going up and down. It looked to be of some different language or dialect the way it shared similar markings. Both looked at the drawings more in confusion. Iset looked up into her sister's cerulean eyes before she shook her head. Understanding and anxiety gripped them as they both began to silently plan ahead in uncertainty. Iset mumbling words Ororo didn't want to acknowledge that rumbled in her own spirit.
"I don't know."