Chapter Text
Everyone knows the old saying: curiosity killed the cat.
Narinder has never heeded that warning, because all felines know the actual ending to the phrase: Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back.
This situation in particular might be difficult to come back from, however.
Narinder hides behind a pillar. He covers his nose and mouth with his arm as poison gas fills the room. Kallamar stands nearby, also hiding and clearly panicking. He’s hyperventilating into a cloth pressed over his mouth.
Priests rush them. Narinder meets them with a dagger in hand, trying to keep the pillars between him and the goddess. Something stings into his side, and he reacts on instinct, whirling and slamming his own dagger into the eye of a frilled lizard. Someone charges on the right with a sword, and he flings the body in between them. The priest stumbles over his fallen comrade, and Narinder leaps into the opening. Snarling, he plunges his dagger into their belly. A phantom emerges from the blade to rend the wound open further. His necromantic enchantment works; they have that, at least. Another priest attacks from behind, forcing Narinder to roll through a cloud of poison to avoid a blade to the back. He comes up coughing, the green gas searing his throat and lungs.
A thick tail hits him in the back with enough force to send him rolling across the stone floor. His dagger slips from his hand, metal clanging loudly as if to announce to the entire world he’s currently unarmed. There’s no time to lick his wounds; Narinder rolls to the side as the cobra’s tail falls again. A low, deep hiss reverberates through the temple.
“You are nothing,” the goddess bellows. “You gain the paltry devotion of a handful of mortals, and you think yourself worthy to challenge me?!”
“Clearly!” Narinder shouts back. Deep down, he knows this is a bad, bad situation. It’s just him and Kallamar — Shamura, Heket, and Leshy are back at the cult compound, oblivious. Just a typical crusade, he promised them. Perhaps this was a mistake. Perhaps Shamura was right— maybe Neftis is too powerful for them to challenge. But a goddess of death is too large a threat to ignore, especially now that their cult is growing so rapidly. Neftis will come for them eventually— though if he doesn’t think of something soon, she’ll be going after the shattered remains of his family.
Neftis lets out a shriek of rage, a swarm of winged scarabs bursting forth from her fanged mouth. Narinder goes running for cover again, scooping up his dagger and cutting a chameleon priest’s neck as he does. Blood sprays across his face. He ducks behind a pillar again, chest heaving. He glances over to his brother’s hiding spot. Kallamar is still there, shaking like a leaf.
“Marmar, I could really use some help here!” he yells.
The scarabs begin to swarm around them, obscuringe his brother from his view. A flash of panic. Tiny, razor sharp mouths bite into whatever flesh they can reach. Little legs on his fur, wings beating in his ears. He yowls as one bites down hard on the nape of his neck. He starts to cut through the swarm with his dagger and claws, trying to get them off and reach his brother. “Kallamar!”
A wall of fire incinerates the scarabs. They fall to the sandstone floor, wings burning like scraps of thin paper. A tentacle wraps around his wrist and yanks him close. Kallamar’s beady black eyes survey him quickly, panicked. “You’re bleeding!”
“It’s the priests’ blood.” Narinder presses close to his brother, wiping at the gore with the back of his hand. It’s a lie — he’s bleeding all over now — but his black fur hides the worst of it. He needs Kallamar to be as calm as possible, and that means hiding his own injuries.
“We’ve got to think of something.” His eyes scan the temple. It’s a grand thing, constructed from massive blocks of limestone. Colorful reliefs adorn the walls, telling the story of Neftis’s own ascension with brilliant golds, greens, reds, and blues. Giant golden tapestries adorn others, an unfathomable display of wealth and resources. Red eyes flit from image to image, searching for something, anything. Everyone has a weakness. What’s hers?
“We’ve gotta get out of here!” Kallamar says, voice quavering. “I told you this was a bad idea.”
Narinder gestures toward the grand entrance with his dagger. The giant stone doors are sealed tight. The scratches near the bottom tell a story; they’re not the first ones to get trapped in Neftis’s temple.
“We’re seeing this through; we don’t have a choice.” He peers around the pillar. The goddess of death is waiting, her golden scepter resting in her coils. It radiates powerful magic, adding to her own. Get that away, and some of her magic is gone. It’ll give them half a chance, which is better than their current odds of no chance. “I’m going to get that scepter away from her, cover me.”
“Narinder, WAIT-”
Kallamar tries to drag him back behind cover, but Narinder is too strong for him. He slips out of his elder brother’s tentacles and races towards Neftis, eyes fixed on the scepter. She lunges forward, fangs the size of greatswords snapping at the air where he had been seconds prior. She lunges again, the edge of her hood clipping Narinder and sending him stumbling.
Somewhere in the distance Kallamar screams, and there’s a flash of fire; Neftis hisses as a fireball slams into the side of her face, allowing Narinder’s stumble to turn into a slide across the tile. He bumps against her tail and doesn’t hesitate. He sinks his dagger into the armored green scales. Steaming obsidian godsblood bubbling to the surface.
He clambers up her coils, using his claws and his dagger to give himself purchase. Her scales are hard like iron, but he can dig into the spaces where they connect easy enough. Neftis hisses and begins to thrash, trying to shake him off. Scarabs pour from her mouth, engulfing Kallamar. A ring of fireballs bursts to life, once again incinerating the insects. More priests are summoned from the shadows, curved khopeshes reflecting the firelight burning within the braziers. His brother thrashes wildly with his sword as they swarm him, screaming and casting.
“Get off of me you parasite!” Neftis howls, slamming herself into one of the temple walls. The entire building shakes with the force of the blow, dust raining down from the ceiling. Narinder holds on, gritting his teeth, and leaps for the scepter still grasped tightly in her tail. It’s godsized, nearly twice his own height. Narinder’s hands catch the scepter’s strange head. It’s styled, perhaps unsurprisingly, as a cobra, its fanged mouth open in a scream. It pitches forward, slipping from the snake goddess’s less-than-dextrous grasp. Narinder kicks it as hard as he can with both legs, sending it rolling further than he thought himself capable.
Devotion does the body good, he supposes. Their cult believes him to be super strong, an undefeated and seasoned warrior despite his young age. He draws on that additional strength, a mere trickle in comparison to the hurricane of power Neftis wields. He expects her to lunge for the scepter or him, but she rears back, eyes gleaming with malice.
“You think that did something, you worm?” Neftis chuckles. “I don’t need my scepter to beat the likes of you two.”
Her tail sweeps across the floor, catching both Narinder and Kallamar. They’re sent flying into the corner of the room, hitting the wall with enough force to break bone. The air leaves his lungs, and something cracks in his chest. A rib? Multiple? He slumps to the floor beside his older brother, dazed and staring up at the ceiling. The largest image of all seems to have been reserved for it, yet it’s strange. Half of the grand relief is destroyed; the entire left side is smashed, as though obliterated with a massive hammer. On the opposite end, a grand emerald cobra with a glowing blue diamond on her hood arches towards the center.
His eyes drift to the glowing diamond emblazoned on the back of the hood. If he squints he can see something else surrounding it— stylized runes. Magic.
Gotcha, he thinks.
Narinder forces himself to his feet, gritting his teeth through the pain. The scepter lies discarded against the wall. She means to make good on her promise to kill them without it. Arrogance. He can work with that.
“I’ve got an idea,” he says, voice low. “I think she’s got something magic on her back we can use against her. Do you trust me?”
Kallamar’s eyes look him up and down. He’s far less hurt than Narinder, thanks to a squid’s natural lack of a skeletal structure. But he’s bleeding, and clearly terrified. Beady black eyes flicker between the door and Narinder, but he nods. “I trust you.”
“Good.” He grabs his older brother by the shoulders. “Remember what Mura told you the other day?”
“I’m stronger than I know?” Kallamar’s voice sounds so small. Some days, it’s easy to forget who the elder brother is between them.
Narinder nods. “Exactly. Now get out there and distract her.”
He shoves the squid back out onto the floor and slips into the shadows. Kallamar starts to protest, loudly, until Neftis lunges and he’s forced to go on the defensive. His sword swings wildly, catching the edge of her hood as she draws back.
She lunges again, and Narinder catches sight of what he’s looking for: a giant gem, hidden on the back of her hood, surrounded by some type of magic runes. She strikes a third time, only to receive a fireball in the mouth for her troubles. Neftis shrieks, thrashing her head from side to side. Narinder creeps closer, necromantic dagger shaking in his hand. One shot. If he misses, they’re as good as dead.
“Narinder!” Kallamar cries out for him as Neftis attempts to squash him with her massive tail, bringing it down on either side of him with the force of a falling pillar. He’s ducking and dodging, but sweat pours down his face. “Brother, help me!”
Narinder moves faster, gripping his side with his free hand. The stab wound burns like fire. He pushes through the pain and sneaks closer, moving past the burning braziers. His shadow casts long and dark behind him, though luckily Neftis is too busy trying to eat Kallamar to notice the cat-shaped silhouette on the wall behind her, towering just as large and creeping closer. He’s almost side by side with the massive cobra now; he can see the diamond, as big as he is, no less than thirty feet up in the air when she holds herself upright.
“Your brother abandoned you to save his own skin, you stupid little squid!” Neftis mocks him. “Don’t worry— you’ll be reunited soon enough!” The tail comes down again, hard, leaving a massive dent in her own temple floor.
Without the scepter, she has no scarabs or poison at her command. Other than her sheer size, Neftis has one last trick left under her sleeve. Narinder watches Kallamar’s eyes drift upward to the massive feline shadow on the back wall. Narinder pantomimes covering his ears; his shade follows suit.
Hear no evil, Marmar.
Kallamar nods.
The young squid dodges as Neftis summons another group of priests, dancing away from their grinning blades. One of his tentacles slips into his many pockets. They planned for this, at least. He watches his brother slip the wax plugs into his ears, then turns back towards the far wall. Narinder picks one of the long golden tapestries and starts to climb it, hissing each time he has to reach up with his right arm. He can feel the wound tearing open further.
Don’t think, just do.
He’s halfway up the tapestry when a cry goes out from one of the surviving priests. Narinder grits his teeth and leaps up the tapestry, propelling himself as high as he can. Neftis begins to turn, and he’s still too low, but it’s too late now. He leaps at her. She snaps blindly at the air, and for a split second he thinks he’s dead. Then he impacts the lower part of her hood, necromantic dagger digging in and holding him up by its thin blade. Spirits rise from steel, attacking her scales with their own ghostly claws. Neftis begins to thrash again, and it takes all his strength to dig in and hold on.
A fireball flies past, igniting the tapestry he was just climbing. Kallamar chucks another at her face, but Neftis is fully focused on Narinder and getting him off. He wrenches the dagger free and plunges it back in, using it as leverage to lift himself higher. There’s a slick, coppery taste in his mouth. Blood. Not good.
Just do.
The diamond is above him, protruding at least two feet from her back. A glowing circle of blue runes surrounds it. Narinder squints and holds on, trying to identify the type of spell. A defense, maybe, or a secret weapon.
But the more he looks, the more obvious it becomes. It’s a binding. A powerful magical leash, inactive without a spell caster to make use of it. His heartbeat quickens. A grin spreads across his face. He jumps upward, plunging the dagger into the skin just beneath the gem. Neftis howls with rage and rears back, slamming her back — and him — into the wall. Pain explodes across his entire body, but he’s found her weakness and he isn’t letting it go. He isn’t sure why it’s there, but he knows they can use it, and that’s all that matters.
“Brother!” Kallamar yells, terrified. One more blow like that and Narinder is done for, and all three of them know it.
“Little WRETCH!” She rears back again and the wall rushes towards him. Narinder draws on that trickle of devotion, the fire burning low in his chest. He thinks of the followers, faces adoring in the light of a hellish bonfire. He thinks of Shamura, dexterous hands showing him how to work a loom. He thinks of Heket, batting him away from her meal prep with a spoon, never pausing in her melodic working song. He thinks of little Leshy, always hungry and always excited to play with his big brothers. He thinks of his mother, black as midnight with a voice soft as silk, his village full of life one week and a burning tomb the next—
Narinder holds out a hand, and the impact does not come. They stop short, pushed back by a sudden surge of ghostly figures emerging from the wall. A crowd of spirits jumps to his command, rushing forward from the shadows. They swarm around him, putting weight on her hood, forcing her into a low, deep bow. The diamond comes into Kallamar’s line of sight, and recognition lights up his black eyes. He begins weaving a spell at once, limbs working quickly as he murmurs the words under his breath.
“No!” There’s true fear in Neftis’s voice now. She thrashes, tail straining for her scepter, but it’s beyond her reach. She does a sharp intake of breath, and Narinder realizes his own mistake too late.
He told Kallamar to cover his ears, but didn’t protect his own.
Narinder fumbles for the wax plugs hidden in his pocket. His fingers close around them—
A clear, high note echoes through the temple, the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. Flute music joins it from nowhere, filling the space with an echoing symphony. His hand freezes where it is, no longer responding to his mind’s commands. His grip on the dagger slackens. A golden haze begins to cloud his vision. The ghosts begin to disappear, one by one, as his concentration slips.
“Narinder! Narinder, cover your ears! Liga eam, signa eam, evanescet eam, ligaeamsignaeamevanesceteam—”
But he can’t. He’s slipping, sliding down her scales and dropping to the floor like a ragdoll. The pain is distant, numbed by that beautiful song murmuring in his ear. “Come to me, lay down your woes. I can lighten your heavy load…rend the blade across the neck, forever end your onerous trek…”
The necromantic dagger is still in hand, the faint whispers of spirits manifesting as streaks of silver in the golden fog. It’s a sharp blade; he made it himself, bound the spirits after months of experimenting with necromancy. It’ll cut clean and deep. He’s been so tired, fighting battle after battle for his family. Narinder lifts the blade to his throat. His mother is waiting for him beyond the veil, her voice joining Neftis’s in song: “Come to me, come to the white beyond, come to where all souls are drawn—”
A shrill, angry scream cuts the song off abruptly. He blinks, and the golden fog is gone. Narinder’s own blade rests against his throat, a thin line of blood flowing from the shallow cut he began. Narinder wrenches his hand away, chest heaving, and leaps to his feet. That was close. Too close.
Kallamar has completed the spell, his tentacles held high towards the goddess as runes appear in the air, wreathed in blue fire. Neftis thrashes across the floor, shrieking wordlessly as the diamond on her back glows, matching the color of Kallamar’s magic. A cerulean runic circle appears around her, then presses close. She’s trapped within a rapidly advancing wall of magic. Golden eyes lock with Narinder’s, filled with sheer hatred.
“You think yourselves above a GOD?!” she bellows, her rage shaking the very foundations of the temple.
Narinder smirks. He resummons the spirits, a band of over a dozen spectral figures once again gathering at his silent call. “Yes.”
The spirits rush forward. Ghosts pass through the blue barrier and push her down, down, her screams fading as her form disappears into the stone floor. The runes flash, momentarily blinding them. When it fades, the circle is etched into the stone itself— along with the silhouette of a thrashing, crowned cobra.
The temple is suddenly silent, save the sound of the crackling fire consuming the tapestry and wood snapping within the braziers. Kallamar rushes to Narinder’s side. With the adrenaline rapidly fading, he practically collapses into his older brother. Everything hurts, but Narinder starts to laugh. For a moment, Kallamar looks at him like he’s insane. Then he starts to giggle, too.
“Did we just depose the goddess of death?” Kallamar asks, as though he still can’t believe the strength of his own will. His eyes fix on the circle, as though expecting her to come bursting back out.
“Hells yes we did,” Narinder says. He holds up a hand to high-five him, but instead his brother lets out a celebratory whoop, picks him up, and spins him around like they’re kids again. Narinder winces, then laughs through the pain. He might be delirious from blood loss, but he doesn’t care. They won.
“Heket is going to be so jealous,” Narinder says, grinning as Kallamar gently sets him back on his feet. He sheathes his dagger and limps over to the discarded golden scepter. At his touch, it begins to shrink until it’s no larger than a regular cane. It hums with power, wielding magic of plague, poison, and swarm. He considers it, then offers it to Kallamar. “I promised you this for your studies.”
The magical artifact lure is the oldest trick in the book to get his elder brother interested in something, no matter how hare-brained or reckless the plan. He takes it and grins widely. “Really? We wouldn’t have gotten it at all if not for you.”
“You’ll get more use out of it,” Narinder insists. It’s the truth; despite his own magical studies, Kallamar is the undisputed arcane scholar of their family.
Kallamar’s eyes once again drift back towards the circle, now etched in the stone. “I’ll probably have to come back here and refresh that, eventually. She’s not dead, just…tucked away somewhere. Cut off. Like a pocket between the two worlds. Why would she keep a binding like that on her back? It’s a wonder no one else ever realized.”
He shrugs and begins to limp towards the doors. With a wave of the hand and a rush of cold air that smells like the grave, they swing open. “Who cares? That’s one more god off our to-kill list. A god of death, at that.”
“Shamura is going to be furious,” Kallamar says, sighing. He wraps a tentacle around Narinder’s shoulders, supporting him as though he’s afraid the cat will fall. By his own estimation, he’s cracked several ribs, broken a bone or four, a priest managed to knife his side, there are shallow bites all over his skin, and his lungs burn from the poison. But he’s alive, Marmar is alive, and his family is that much safer.
It’s true what they say: satisfaction brought the cat back.