Contrary to expectations, when Heshtat and his companions entered the Other, it was to a dead and lifeless plane. Rather than the endless sands of a desert bathed in twilight, they emerged onto a wind-blasted plateau of red rock.

  Behind them rose a ridgeline of bleached bone, making Heshtat smile at the poetry of it. He’d thought the small ridge they’d hidden within during the night back in the Waking was but a feeble imitation of the mountains to the north, and it seemed the Otherworld agreed. He did take a moment to pause and scan the structure for movement, the myriad gaps and nooks between titanic bones leaving ample places for predators to lay in wait.

  Once he was satisfied of a lack of immediate threat from that direction, he turned to take in the plane that stretched out before them. Ruddy slabs of rock layering a drowned land, silt and mud turning the patches between the city-sized rocky outcroppings into sucking bogs that would no doubt trap them should they mistakenly stumble into them. No matter though, for he could already spot routes that criss-crossed the stone plateaus without ever setting foot on the swampy land beneath.

  All in all, it looked relatively traversable. Relative, of course, because this was the Otherworld, and the land was liable to twist and change as does the weather over the mountains—that is to say, by its own rules and in its own time. Still, the lack of immediate ambush was promising. He’d been worried that the Eye would begin signalling their location to every beast and fiend in the area, but so far he could detect nothing unusual from the amulet snuggled beneath his vest.

  He smiled. Perhaps this would work, and they’d make great time back to Idib. His smile died on his face when he turned to Harsiese though. Neferu and Maatkare were ogling the environment just as he had been, but Harsiese was frowning off into the distance.

  “What is it?” Heshtat asked. “What do your enhanced eyes see?”

  “Chaos,” the Tomb Guard breathed. “I’ve never seen its like in all my years.”

  “Danger?” Heshtat asked, hand straying to the hilt of his weapon.

  “No, no. I…” the big man trailed off. He shivered and then turned his wide eyes down to meet Heshtat’s own. “Look for yourself, captain. It resolves itself quickly when you focus.”

  Heshtat took his words at face value, despite how little sense they made. But as he looked to the horizon, he had to admit that the wavering line between rock and sky soon began to take shape. A smudge appeared, slowly gaining clarity and detail, until Heshtat sucked in a breath as the vision finally resolved itself.

  “Gods above,” he whispered, hardly able to believe his eyes.

  There, just at the edge of his vision, creeping along the horizon and delineating the cracked earth from the lavender sky above, was a flood. It corresponded roughly to what Heshtat assumed was the position of the Nikea in the Waking, but rather than crystal clear water, or even mud-mashed madness, the flood was instead made up of creatures.

  They were so far away, their entirety barely visible unless one focused on it, but when one did so, the details of that flood could somehow be seen with unmatched clarity.

  Scarabs.

  Millions—No, billions of them. They tumbled one over another in a river of carapace across the empty plane. Heshtat nearly stumbled back in horror, whether at the creatures themselves or the strange zooming of his eyesight that he experienced when beholding the distant flood. Their glittering armour, their many legs scrabbling against one another…

  He drew in a long breath and mastered himself. This was not the Waking, not a realm of logic where magic was a breaker of rules rather than enforcer of them. This was a different realm, governed by different laws, and as such a flood of insects billions strong was not the natural calamity it would be in the Waking. In fact, it arguably made sense. Scarabs were associated with a bevy of deities whose domains encompassed decay and rebirth and regeneration. This was simply a reflection of the bi-centennial flooding of the Nikea. It was a time of great renewal, replenishing the nutrients of the soil and reinforcing the cycle of growth and harvest anew.

  Indeed, once Heshtat made the minor adjustment to his worldview to encompass and explain that strange phenomenon, the flood in the distance took on a rather beautiful aspect. Glittering blue and green; a winding, wending road of gems reflecting the violet light from above back across the plateaus of ruby-red rock all around.

  Despite himself, he let out an impressed whistle. Harsiese looked at him askance and he chuckled, explaining his thoughts to the Tomb Guard, only to be met with another frown.

  “Not the flood,” Harsiese said, pointing higher above the gleaming flow. “The giant above.”

  Heshtat squinted once more, now aware of the others gathered at his back and looking with curiosity. He heard Neferu gasp, and then he saw it himself. Not just a giant. A titan. A behemoth. A being so grand it could not fit inside his view of the world, whether this realm was different or not. The creature strode the desert above the flood, each leg as tall as anything Heshtat had ever seen. Taller. As if Men-nefer had been propped on one side, the bridge-city reaching toward the clouds above.

  And that was just one leg. How massive was this creature? Was that even the right word for it? He’d felt nothing until he saw it, but now that he had, when he watched a foot as large as a pyramid impact the earth a dozen miles away from them, he felt the trembling of the land beneath his own feet.

  Clothed in ceremonial armour, with a nemes-style headdress and embroidered shendyt, the giant looked like a mummified human, its chest cavity hollow and its skin stretched tight to its skeleton. It strode across the land with undeniable momentum though, each step sure and leaving nothing but faint dust clouds in its wake.

  It seemed to be shepherding the flood of scarabs below it, directing them somehow with the abacus it held in one hand and the ankh in the other. Both implements must have been as large as Idib if laid on the ground, but it held them aloft before it with ease, striding across the Other like a mobile lighthouse of unconscionable scale.

  “We had best not disturb whatever that is,” Maatkare offered, and Heshtat couldn’t disagree. He wasn’t even surprised by the seriousness in his friend’s voice given what they were all seeing.

  “Agreed. Let’s rest here a moment, let the creature pass.”

  And so they did. The giant was soon lost to the horizon in truth, its titanic figure slipping beyond the range of their sight in mere minutes with its mile-long stride. The flood didn’t dissipate though, wending its way across the land uninterrupted. Heshtat wouldn’t be surprised if it lasted for months longer, possibly even years. The land of the Otherworld had a way of remembering significant events, and the flooding of the Nikea was about as significant as they came, even if it usually occurred on a regular schedule.

  Heshtat eventually tore his eyes from the sight and inspected his companions. Harsiese was large and imposing as ever, looking enhanced by his connection to the Other more than anything. He was an adept of Sah as well as Khet, and that made him just as deadly in this nightmare realm as the Waking. His appearance morphed slightly to reflect that fact beneath the black sun.

  Neferu looked much the same, though her usual smile was gone, replaced by a look of awe. He suspected her horizons had just expanded a little.

  He and Maatkare had seen similar things before—not anything near as large, but of a similar level of improbability—although that did not make it any easier to accept in the moment when coming face to face with such a sight. The teacher himself was sitting on a rock, gazing out across the land with a wistful expression, no doubt trying to work out how to impart whatever perspective such a sight had given him onto his students when he returned to Idib.

  Finally, Heshtat turned his gaze to Ahhotep. The priest was strapped to a sled, currently on the ground with its mooring ropes scattered loosely around it. Not unexpected—Heshtat suspected it would take another few days for the man to wake—but the expression on the old priest’s face was strange. He looked almost… in pain? A slight wince marred his otherwise placid face, the micro-expression strange considering his otherwise slack features.

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  Heshtat moved closer, inspecting the man’s straps and making sure none were cinched too tightly. But they weren’t, all was as it should be. He knelt by his side, gripping Ahhotep’s hand—the still-human one—in his own and giving it a squeeze.

  “Hold on, my friend,” he whispered. “We’ll get you back to your temple soon enough.”

  Heshtat thought he detected a slight clenching of the muscles in that aged hand. Minute, but perhaps not entirely his imagination? He sighed. Seeing ghosts, more likely. He patted the hand and stood.

  “Rest easy. You’ll need your strength when we cleanse your temple of its squatter.”

  The unconscious priest twitched.

  Heshtat frowned. He definitely hadn’t imagined it that time. Taking a careful step backwards, Heshtat circled around the priest at a distance, frowning in consternation when he saw nothing wrong. He stretched his neck out, bracing himself for pain, and sent a pulse of essence through the pathways of his soul to reinforce his eyes. This was nothing complex, no working requiring the guidance of an aspect or the influence of a patron god. Especially when standing in the Other, this was little more than holding aloft a torch above whatever had caught his interest.

  He was shocked when he felt no backlash from his newly-healed soul. Still, his brown eyes flashed golden for a brief moment, and Heshtat peered through the skein of the Other, piercing below layers of obscured reality to the undercurrents of essence that made up this dreamlike realm. It was disorientating and overwhelming, and Heshtat was unlikely to see anything through the chaos of information given his lack of cultivation to aid him in the endeavour, but he wasn’t looking for detail. Just anything out of place.

  And with such a humble goal, he soon found it. A disruption above the swirling mass of essence that was Ahhotep’s body. A strange smudge against the skein of reality, almost an absence of essence.

  A shadow.

  Heshtat lunged forwards even as he blinked away the spiritual sight and let his normal vision return. He nearly tripped over Ahhotep’s insensate body and turned aside at the last moment to tumble to the ground beside the man, drawing perplexed looks and confused glances from his companions. But he rose once more clutching something in his grasp.

  “What?” He heard Harsiese and Maatkare both ask in confusion.

  Heshtat paid it no mind though, wrestling with the wriggling thing in his hands. It squirmed, throwing itself this way and that and attempting to weasel its way from his grip, but Heshtat’s hands were reinforced by two stages of cultivation in the aspect of Khet, and the Physical Body helped ground him in the Other. Not as effectively as Harsiese or Maatkare would have with their cultivation of the Sah—the Spiritual Body—but it was enough. Considering the relative weakness of his enemy, it was more than enough.

  Heshtat slammed the thing in his hands into the earth, pinning it with one hand and drawing his khopesh with the other. A moment later he was pressing the shining white edge of the sickle-sword into the amorphous creature, and it soon appeared for his companions to see.

  The demonic imp that lived in Ahhotep’s shadow revealed itself, and Maatkare hissed above in dismay. It likely wasn’t the same one that Heshtat had banished, but one was much like any other, given they were all but extensions of the prime’s influence. It squawked in outrage but ceased its struggles when Heshtat’s enlivened blade bit into part of its form. Near enough invisible and strangely incorporeal it may be, but the essence thrumming through the weapon could cut it as surely as sharp bronze parted flesh.

  “Caught you,” Heshtat grunted while the others crowded around, though they were sure to maintain enough room for Heshtat to swing his weapon should he need. “Supping on our friend’s power, were you?”

  “Your friend?” the shadow spoke, that same contemptuous, mocking edge still in evidence. “My my, how close you’ve grown. It was less than a week ago that you were threatening to kill him, if I recall.”

  “I was threatening you,” Heshtat snarled. “It seems you didn’t heed it though. Tell your boss I’ll be coming for him soon.”

  “You don’t want to do that,” the creature of shadow said softly. Its form writhed where the blade dug into its amorphous form, and Heshtat nearly killed it then and there. But the creature didn’t sound desperate. It wasn’t bargaining for its life or buying time. It was amused.

  “Why?” he asked, fighting down his impatience and anger.

  “Because my master is all that keeps the Eye safe.”

  Heshtat shared a grim look with his companions before turning back to the cloud of darkness on the ground. “Explain.”

  “What is it that you don’t understand, little dog?” it asked, the mocking edge back in force. “The priest warned you that the Eye would draw chaos. Did you think him mistaken? It is my master that shields its presence from afar now. To kill me, to interrupt his feast, would sever that bond and leave you vulnerable to every creature in proximity.” The creature squirmed again, and despite there being no features on its shadowed visage, Heshtat was given he impression of a grinning maw as it spoke its next words. “And in case you hadn’t yet noticed… there are many in proximity.”

  Heshtat glanced back to the flood on the horizon and thought of the giant that strode the desert. Many indeed.

  “I will not let you feast on his soul,” Heshtat said, sure of that much at least.

  “It is your choice,” the creature replied, but then it shifted again. It was different this time, no longer the waving, writhing movements of a creature trying to escape a noose. Instead, the shadow fizzled at its edges, and then it stopped moving entirely.

  Heshtat frowned, looking to his companions in confusion, but none of them knew what was happening either. He stepped back, blade still raised, but knowing the creature would be unable to escape now. His sword was faster than even a shadow.

  The shadow in question didn’t move though. It lay there, inert. A ball of blackness that stained the ground beneath it. And then it drew itself up. It soon resolved into a figure that loomed over them, bulky with corded muscle and inhuman in its size. At least a dozen feet tall, digitigrade legs thick and cloven-hooved. Spikes burst from its elbows, knees and shoulders, and three pairs of bull’s horns lined its elongated head.

  That was all the detail they could make out given its strangely two-dimensional form, but it was enough for them to recognise the shape of a demon. The demonic took on many guises, but all were animalistic and vicious, the tools made for rending placed sporadically over their bodies as if they didn’t fully understand the purpose of any animal beyond violence.

  “The imp’s master, I assume?” Heshtat asked lightly.

  It wouldn’t be the first time he had faced a demon in the Otherworld, but it was a rare occurrence, and the last time he had done so with a dozen Tomb Guard by his side and a cadre of senior priests for support. Kom Ombo had still been a near disaster.

  This was an altogether different situation. This wasn’t the true form of the demon; simply a projection of shadow from the imp it had been draining Ahhotep with, but that was bad enough. Especially if what it had claimed regarding the Eye was true. Heshtat suspected it was—he had no other explanation for how they were not inundated with enemies already.

  The hulking creature just inclined its thick neck in a strangely respectful gesture. “Close enough,” it said, and now its voice boomed.

  It wasn’t loud, per se, but there was a reverberation to it, a depth to the noise that made it significant to Heshtat’s ears. Like the world shivered at its words just a little. The Other was sensitive to power and emotion, and this creature had both in spades.

  “I have a proposal for you,” it said, with none of the mocking of its intermediary. “Leave the priest as he is. Return to Idib and I will shield you from harm in the Other while you travel. When we reach the city, you simply leave the priest in my hands, and we go our separate ways.”

  “You surely know I will not allow that.”

  “But you have not yet heard the best part, captain,” the demon crooned, and now Heshtat the mocking. “You have no choice. Refuse my generous offer, and I will relinquish my shielding of the Eye. You will be chased from the Other by its native denizens in minutes.”

  “Then we shall travel in the Waking.”

  “Ah, but that is the crux of it. A single day in this glorious dreamscape would see you to Idib, but it would be nearly a whole tenday in the Waking. You haven’t the time. Your choices have greater consequence than you realise, captain. Even now, the priests delve where they shouldn’t. Hands are shaken, deals made, bonds broken and oaths forsaken. You lack the time to dally, and this priest here is not as trustworthy as he may seem.”

  “I have had enough of cryptic warnings and vague allusions. I do not trust you, demon.”

  “And why not? Did my words not come to pass? Did the Nikea not flood as I predicted?”

  “She did not betray me,” Heshtat countered, thinking back to the cruel whisperings of the shadow in the Temple of Sebek so many days ago.

  “Oh, she did, captain. You just have yet to realise it.”

  “Ignore this feeble goat’s bleating, my friend,” Maatkare interrupted. “Banish it and be done with it.”

  He had also been at Kom Ombo. He knew the lies and toxic truths that the demonic would plant like seeds in the ears of mortals, and he’d seen the devastation they could cause. Heshtat concurred with his friend. Better to end it now than listen to more drivel and open the doors to doubt. He raised his khopesh.

  “I am not the only one of my kind to linger near Idib, but I am far better than the alternative. Is this priest worth all the lives of your precious city?”

  “He is worth more than you,” Heshtat replied, and cut the shadow in half.

  “Very well, mortal,” the demon said even as its form began to disperse. The power in its voice trickled away moment by moment as it spat its last poisonous words at him. “Know that it is your actions that have imperilled those you hold dear. The priests of Sebek cannot be trusted and you will discover the truth of my words soon enough.”

  A bare whisp of smoky shadow remained, and the demon’s voice was naught but a whisper as it said its last. “Come and find me once you have the evidence you need. Until then, you have made your choice and there is only one thing left to do…”

  The last of the shadow dispersed and Ahhotep jolted in his sled, though he didn’t awaken. A working of magic that Heshtat had not even felt blanketing them suddenly lifted, and the amulet at his chest began to thrum. Energy rolled from the mythical artifact in waves, spreading out in ever greater surges across the red-rock landscape. Invisible lines of essence reached out in every direction, shooting across the Other with impossible speed.

  The smudge on the horizon twitched, and Heshtat could just about make out a small sliver of that great river peeling away to surge back towards them. Given the size of the river, that likely encompassed millions of the scarabs still, and Heshtat knew those creatures wouldn’t be the only ones drawn by the Eye’s presence.

  The demon’s voice echoed out one last time, mocking and contemptuous as its imp had been before. “Run.”