Egyptian Gods

The Duat

(Hello everyone, I hope you still like my story and aren't mad about this long chapter. Also a huge thanks to all of you who read this story, you are awesome! Now I won't bother you any longer since you are here to read the story and not my comments ;) Have fun, your Dragon_owl <3)

I felt everyone gaze upon me. "Well I suppose we crossed over and entered the Duat haven't we?" I quickly spoke up. "What are you staring at?" I said embarrassed. "Are you ok? We need to stay focused at any time around here." Sobek said seriously, with an alarmed look upon his face. "We can't afford to be unconcentrated." He looked forward to the ship's bow. The whole river ahead of us was different than before and covered in fog, which seemed to slowly reach out to our ship, pulling us into its dangerous embrace. "Shhhhi..." Sobeks voice failed at the end. My body began to tense up and since my vision became restricted, I tried to switch the focus of my senses and to rely more on hearing than seeing. "We have to find a way out of this fog quickly!" Anubis cursed. "I can't see a damn thing! How am I supposed to navigate our ship that way?!" I heard Seth swearing. Then it sounded like he started to walk around in circles. "We have to find Re quickly, we are losing too much time! He must fight off Apophis or we'll soon have bigger problems than..." Seth got interrupted by a loud nasty scratching sound, like wood scraping violently on stone. "Sobek I thought you were a river god? How comes you couldn't warn m...Hmpf!" apparently Sobek somehow quickly sprinted to Seth and covered his mouth. Then I heard him whispering a single word. "Quiet" I completely froze in place as I heard the frightened undertone in his voice. Everything went silent. Then I heard him again. "Get down." I reacted instinctively and not a second too late. A black shadow rose from the water besides our boat and suddenly I heard a new voice. It sounded like boiling blood, sibilant and threatening. "Argh! Another ship? How much more do I have to destroy to be at peace at least for once!", the voice roared. At least I can eat whoever died after I get rid of this nuisance..." The voice chuckled. My eyes narrowed as I understood what this meant for us.

The water besides our ship got increasingly ferocious and the deck beneath my feet started to sway around. All of my instincts yelled at me to leave and to jump right into the water. But a frightening tough held me back. I didn't knew the Duat with all its dangers neither did I knew what might be lurking in the depths of its water. A loud cracking noise threw me back to reality. I looked up to our in fog engulfed sails. Suddenly I saw an enormous black shadow. It seemed like the shadow slowly twined around our ship and suddenly the fog was ripped open by the gigantic tail of a black snake like creature. It was too big to be seen completely and definitely not friendly so I decided to not wait until the tail hit our ship, crushing my body and ending my precious life. I did the only thing I could think of as reasonable... to jump right into the river. I know that doesn't sound like the perfect idea but if I had to choose from either being crushed or trying my luck of surviving in unknown water, I'd definitely choose the water. I nearly hit enormous scales as I dived into the clear dark river. As I dived deeper, trying to swim away from the creature I couldn't even believe my own eyes. Everywhere underwater was an enormous twisted body displayed and I saw countless seemingly razor sharp scales moving. I couldn't believe my luck that I didn't hit any of them when I jumped right into the water. As the creature moved I heard a deafening loud crack as it ripped our ship in half.

I started to panic as I saw that the place where I jumped into the river was just a small hole when seemingly everywhere else were these enormous scales. As the creature moved, the hole closed and there was no chance to reach the surface anymore. I didn't want to drown so I looked around searching for any sort of escape but there wasn't any. I slowly ran out of air but I knew if I would panic I would just drown quicker, so I tried to stay focused. Suddenly I saw a small gap between two parts of the enormous submerged snake body appearing. I saw my chance and tried to swim as fast as I could. I reached the gap in time but just as I tried to swim through it, the creature moved further and twisted its body. I felt the scales slightly brushing against my body and at the same time sliding through the first layer of my skin. It felt like someone cut me with a razor blade. I gasped and lost some air. Things started to look bad for me. Thankfully, when I reached the other side of the gap I could spot the surface of the river, still painfully far away. I began to reach my limit at holding my breath, yet I didn't want to give up so I swam further, leaving the enormous curled snake body behind me. The cold water soothed my wounds but they still hurt. I swam as fast as I could, knowing that the creature still was right behind me. I didn't want to imagine what would happen if it were to turn around and see me. As I finally could see the surface more clearly my vision began to fade. I was finally out of oxygen. The surface was so near, yet so far away... I was about to lose my consciousness and accept to drown as suddenly something strong yanked at my body, picking up speed while pulling me forward to the surface. I turned to my savior and looked straight into two yellowish glowing eyes...Sobeks eyes. I felt so tired and exhausted. My eyes shut. I couldn't do anything as my body slowly fell numb and decided to exhale the rest of air I still had in my lungs. I also couldn't stand a chance against the reflex of breathing in. So I did. I breathe in and fresh air flowed through my lungs. Shocked I opened my eyes to see that Sobek had stopped his way to the surface. I felt his lips on mine, allowing fresh air to flow from his lungs to mine, jet his kiss was somehow passionate.

We finally reached the surface after what had felt like an eternity. I gasped for air but he didn't stopped but dragged me further along the river. After a while, we reached the shore where Anubis and Seth were awaiting us with concern. I crawled to them since my legs were shaking and too weak to support my weight. "Soooo... that was Re's solar bark..." Seth sighted. I coughed, fully regaining my breath. "And what was that THING?" I asked frightened. "That, sweetie, was Apophis", Sobek stood up behind me and patted my back. "You did well", he continued. "I had to save these two Idiots first because none of them seems to be a good swimmer. I believed in you to survive long enough for me to find you. And you did." Sobek smiled.

"I don't know about you guys but I could definitely use a drink right now... and also to get the hell out of here." Seth said exhausted. "Good Idea. I know a good place." Anubis spoke up. "I was here many times before as part of my... you know 'guiding the souls to the afterlife' job." He made a pause. "And as soon as we don't shift to our 'godly' appearance, we shouldn't be bothered." He started to smile and stood up, reaching out for me. I took his hand and we all left, leaving the river shore and the lurking Apophis behind us.

The landscape we came across was somehow strange but beautiful. The fog had lifted the moment we got away from the river shore. Our new surrounding territorial was a rather narrow stripe of jungle like vegetation, with big ancient trees, grass and exotic flowers which I had never seen anywhere else before. In the distance I saw big dunes and in between the desert and the jungle was wide open grassland. We walked some time alongside the river when suddenly a building came into view. The building looked a little run down but still somehow magnificent. As we got closer I could read 'Amu-aa's sanctuary'. "Does this Amu person know how this sounds?" I asked with a grin on my lips. "Hey, don't be disrespectful. He was Osiris fellow once." Anubis answered but he also couldn't suppress a grin. "Enough of that let's get inside and have a drink. Later we can still discuss how we could solve our scaly problem." Seth exclaimed, walking straight inside the building.