Chapter 23: The Sun's Fire
Close to the edge of the ruined Memphis, the ground began to tremble and crack. The sand sifted, and the earth beneath it rumbled. After a few moments, the rock and sand burst apart, as a giant golden serpent gasped a breath of freedom.
"Fucking godsssss, thinking they could trap me down there. I am chaos incarnate you foolssssss. Now, where areeeee they…"
Apophis' enraged, slitted eyes traced around the environment. He was in the middle of the desert, somewhere to the southwest of the city. In the distance, the billowing smoke from the ruined Memphis wafted up into the darkened sky. His long, forked tongue reached out, waving a few times and returning back between his scaled lips. The serpent could smell death, many deaths, in the air. The people of Memphis had all but been wiped out. The traces of the corpses of many of his chaos beasts were preset as well. Geb and the other gods must have seen to their eradication. There was another delightful, overwhelming scent on the air as well, the smell of many dead gods. Not all were dead though, he picked up the aroma of life, godly life, somewhere to his left.
It had taken him what felt like hours to dig his way up from the magma pools Geb had cast them into. The parted earth slammed shut behind them, blocking his escape. He did not know what became of the earth god, but he had managed to slither out of the boiling earthen liquid unscathed. Nothing of this earth was enough to crack his nigh impenetrable armor of scales. The only concerns had been Kratos' primordial blades and the weapons they had been gifted imbued with a forbidden magic.
Apophis had managed to find himself a small cavern deep beneath the ground, and used his strength and impregnable hide to begin bashing his way to freedom along cracks and thin caverns left behind. The book of the dead powered him now, and he was far more powerful than he had ever been in his countless years of life. What fueled him was hatred as he slammed his head against stone wall after stone wall seeking freedom from the earth's belly. When he finally found himself back to the surface he would find more animals, and create new, even more powerful chaos beasts. He would also scan the city for any gods clinging to life, and transform them as well.
Their party had been pleasantly surprised by how strong Maahes had been, and he was only their first experiment. He'd find Bast, if the bitch goddess still drew breath, and turn her into a massive, mindless monster just as he had her son. Using the book it would be child's play to contort and corrupt the souls of gods. They'd charge the other cities, capture and mutate their gods. Horus, Isis, Bes, all of them would be turned into their whipped, demonic slaves. The gods of death would even venture into Anubis' realm, turning him and the other gods of the dead, Osiris, Ammit, and the others. With such a powerful army they would wipe over the earth a plague of chaos and death the likes the world had never seen. The more dead entering through the gateway, the more powerful the book would get, and the stronger they would be in turn. It was the perfect plan for a planetary level of death. Night would stand eternal, and an ever-present miasma of doom and disorder would suffocate the world.
That is, until the damned sun god had brought the Ghost of Sparta into their midsts to fuck up their plans. A temporary setback to be sure, the pieces were in place, the events had already been set into motion that could not be undone. The book was unlocked now, and working. The dead souls tallied in the Nile's waters. Their power grew, and would only continue to rise. Even the godslayer could do nothing to stop them.
Apophis' eyes widened, that's whose scent he was following. The god that yet lived. It was the Ghost's son. The one that had landed an arrow down his throat. Quickening his pace, the snake slithered swiftly over the dunes tracking his prey with infallible accuracy. First, he'd dispatch the young giant, and then track down Khonsu and assist him in killing the Greek and his winged bitch.
The pale pink moon shone down upon him and the sands. Apophis was glad the sun was gone. Ra had been his eternal enemy since the dawn of time, the two engaged in a constant struggle of chaos and order. The sun's absence was not only a constant reminder of Ra's demise, but the cool night air felt much better on his scales than the unrelenting sun's heat. His slitted eyes were also very well adjusted to hunting at night, his vision flawless in the near pitch black of the empty desert.
As the chaos demon grew nearer to the scent's source, he slowed. His head turned to the right, seeing a giant crater in the sand two hundred feet from him. The tongue came out once more, and he caught the scent of the Maori death god. He had never much cared for the Egyptian gods, but felt a certain kinship with Whiro and Nergal. They were brothers in arms of a sort, seeking to deal out death and chaos to mortals. If this giant from the north was able to take out Whiro…he must have been far stronger than their group had initially given credit.
Slithering along further, he picked up the scent of Bast's corpse. Glancing over, he saw her lifeless torso resting a few feet from the rest of her. She must have met the edge of Whiro's blade. The Egyptian gods knew their attacks did nothing to them, and yet the idiotic panther goddess still tried. She deserved to die, Apophis thought, just like the rest of them. The trail grew stronger as he approached the city outskirts. The cleared, barren section still remained from where Geb had opened the void, casting him to the earth's depths. The chaos god didn't realize how far off track his digging to freedom had taken him until now.
It was inconsequential though, because at last, he finally found the trail's source that he had been following. In the distance he saw the outlines of two unmoving bodies leaned up against the broken wall of a building. The boy was there, and some woman whose scent Apophis did not recognize. The two of them smelled of some other being as well, but the snake didn't know who.
He grew closer, his mouth opening, venom dripping from his outstretched fangs. The pair were unconscious, he realized as he got nearer. There was no living thing for miles, nothing would be coming to their rescue. Whatever the scent that clung to the two was, it smelt of someone that was weak, afraid. As Apophis towered over the pair of resting giants, his slitted pupils glowed with joy and power. The book's dark touch coursing through his length, making him grow stronger with each passing minute.
Then, a bright light shone in the distance off to his right. Turning his head to focus on its source, he was forced to squint and turn away as the light grew brighter, and closer. At first he believed it to be some rebel star in the night's sky defying the darkness and shining more intensely, but that wasn't the case. This radiating, distant light was growing nearer, and its source was too small to be a star.
Apophis' tongue flicked out, and the scent he caught was…unexpected.
"No…you..you're deaaaaad," he angrily whispered as the light was but a few hundred feet away now. Closing the distance even more, the approaching source ceased to be a spectral ball of light, and took the figure of a man. Apophis had not encountered this particular scent in many years, as he had remained in hiding out of the sun's sight. There was no mistaking it though, this was Ra.
Ra descended down from the night's sky, hovering ten or so feet above the ground. His smell was..different, somehow, as if it were not fully his own. The sun god also appeared slightly different from previous encounters as well. Then, Ra's body glowed golden with the sun's light, now it was a pale whitish-blue. The sharp falcon eyes in Ra's feathered head were indiscernible, as they glowed bright white with regained power. The falcon's beak opened now, and two voices echoed out in unison speaking the same words.
"Apophis, tonight will be your end, demon. You will finally pay for all of the death and destruction you have wrought over the millennia," the sun god calmly stated with its paired voices. One voice was surely Ra, but the other?
"How are you sssstill breathing? We killed you, I couldn't feel youuuu anymore, I was ssssure of it!" The Egyptian god's aura was completely off. Ra in the past felt warm, fiery, smelled of calmness and kindness. This new silver-blue aura was…cold, distant.
"I have merged with my brother, Amun. Together we are now Amun-Ra, the most powerful being in these lands. One of the most powerful entities in the world. Even with the Book of the Dead powering you, you are nothing but a speck of sand in the wind before our might. We are the god of the sun and the sky, and you will not live to regret your actions."
The newly formed Amun-Ra raised their hand to the sky, and a moment later there was a blinding, overpowering white flash from his palms. The serpent turned its head, cowering from the light emanating from the Egyptian. When the burst faded, he turned back towards Ra, and saw that everything was changing. The moon was gone. A swift, golden ray wiped across the sky, erasing the dark crimson night and replaced it with a vibrant, shining light blue. Clouds dotted the atmosphere once more, and the sun returned to its place high in the sky, radiating heat and light down upon the land.
Turning their gaze down upon the golden demon lord of chaos that Ra had battled for eons previously, Amun-Ra raised his hand once more, this time aimed directly at the large snake.
"Return to nothing, demon."
Apophis hissed with rage and a slight tremor of fear. His hood spread wide, fangs bared, lunging for the sun god with empowered strength thanks to the book. Amun-Ra's glowing eyes never faltered or blinked as they continued their emotionless stare at the oncoming demon. Their palm began to glow a silver-white, and in the next instant, a wave of heat surged forth. The heat crashed over the serpent's body, eliciting a shriek of pain as it melted away his scales and flesh to the bone. A second heat wave came a few moments later, and again washed away the remaining muscles and flesh that clung to the demon's bones, as if they were dirt before running water. A minute after Amun-Ra's first appearance all that remained of the once mighty demon lord of chaos was a charred skeleton, sitting still as stone upon the sands.
Amun-Ra's hand ceased its glow, as it lowered back to the god's side. The falcon head turned upward now, to gaze upon the fiery sun burning millions upon millions of miles away.