Horus, I presume. Bastet’s cousin. Gideon’s friend.
The third figure to escape the pit and crawl free of the aether web was another woman, one dressed in a pale golden dress smeared with dirt and grime. Upon the top of her head two massive bull’s horns stood tall in her black hair, and from the torn skirts of her dress Asha saw that she had the legs of a cow and walked upon hard hooves, with a slender brown tail swaying behind her. But like the others, she stared about with the unfocused, uncaring white eyes of a rabid beast, screaming and brandishing her horns at Gideon.
This must be Isis, mother of Horus.
Asha saw that Gideon had nearly closed the fountain over the tunnel mouth, but in addition to the three white-eyed monsters, a handful of the other creatures had crawled away from the pit and now lay gasping and shaking, lowing and whining in the corners of the street. A man with the head of crocodile, a woman with the head and legs of a crane, a man with the arms of a crab, and a woman with the face of an elephant. “Wren, some of them are escaping!”
“I know,” the girl said softly. “But it’s too warm, too bright. There isn’t enough aether here, and it would take too long for me to summon more of it. I can’t get them all.”
“All right, then just get as many as you can. Gideon! Get that thing closed!”
The soldier nodded as he shoved the fountain statue back the last few paces and the stonework crunched as it fell back into place over the pit. He released his sword, deftly unlocking the mechanism with his left hand and then swinging his arm sharply to the side to make the blade slip free of the sheathe and lock into place behind his armored fist. The sun-steel shone with a perfect white light and crackled with pale blue arcs of lightning, and he pointed it at the monstrous people at the end of the street.
Asha shook her head.
If they escape, people will die. And all because I insisted on going with Gideon, and because I insisted on entering the pyramid alone.
Asha ran forward past Wren as the flame-haired girl lowered her arms and stumbled back, her hands massaging her temples.
The immortals will be hard to control, but the others will be weaker, slower to recover, slower to heal. And they’re afraid of Gideon’s sword. They may be rabid beasts, but they know danger when they see it. They know fear.
This time when she called, the dragon answered and armored her hands in golden scales and ruby claws once again. She ran to the side, into the knot of feral slaves beside the fountain, and she struck. They rose to meet her, half a dozen men and women covered in feathers and scales, all with milky white eyes and shaking, clawing hands. Asha swung her armored fists again and again, knocking them aside, knocking them down, smashing them across the heads and chests and sending them sprawling across the ground and on top of each other. And in just a few moments, all of them lay gasping and groaning in a pile.
“Asha!”
She looked and saw Gideon grappling with Horus. The falcon-man had wrapped his talons around Gideon’s wrist to hold the seireiken away, and they were both struggling to control the blazing white weapon. Behind them both, Nethys spread her wings and leapt into the air, flying higher and higher into the afternoon sky until she vanished beyond the clouds. The horned woman Isis looked at Asha and bellowed, and then bent her thick legs and jumped to the rooftop behind her, and dashed out of sight.
Asha glared upward at the escaping women as she ran around the fountain toward the men. “Gideon!”
“Watch out!” he yelled.
Horus yanked his arm around, brandishing the seireiken long with half of Gideon’s body to keep Asha back. But Asha dove to the ground beneath the sweep of the white blade and she smashed her armored fists into the falcon-man’s legs.
Horus screamed his high falcon scream as he shoved Gideon back into the fountain, and then he too jumped for the high walls around them. He couldn’t take wing or even reach the rooftops, but he drove his talons into the stone walls and hauled himself up, and then he was gone as well.
Asha and Gideon sat on the dusty ground, catching their breath and listening to Horus and Isis escape across the rooftops. After a moment, Asha noticed that her armor had vanished, and Gideon locked his sword away in his gauntlet, and they both glanced back at the creatures lying semi-conscious behind them.
We should be trying to heal them, but there’s nothing I can do for them yet. No way to remove the needles. No way to even find the needles. Not yet. All I can hear from their souls is pain and panic. At least if we let them return to Lilith, she might care for them.
Wren jogged up to the far side of the fountain, her elaborate black dress shining darkly in the sunlight. “I can give you a hand with them, pushing them back in, I mean. If you open the fountain for me.”
Asha nodded.
Credit where credit is due. This girl does not frighten easily. And she doesn’t shy away from doing what needs to be done.
Together, they opened the fountain cover, just a bit, and dragged the poor deformed creatures to the edge and gently rolled them down into the darkness. Many strange animal sounds echoed up from the shadowed tunnel, but no hands or claws tried to escape again, and soon the fountain was back in place and all signs of the struggle had been erased.
As soon as they were finished, Gideon said, “We need to go after the others. They rarely come out, and never in daylight, and never for long. They’re used to being close to Lilith. And if they’re afraid of us guarding this entrance to the undercity, they won’t be coming back here. They’ll try to find another way in.”
“Are there other ways in?” Asha asked.
“A few. There used to be more, but with all the changes to the city over the years, many of them were destroyed from the top, and Lilith sealed up others from the bottom.” Gideon shrugged. “I’m really not sure where they can go, let alone where they will go.”
Asha nodded, and she was about to speak again when a white swirl of mist glided across the empty fountain and a slender, stern-faced youth stepped out of thin air. “Anubis?”
“Is everyone all right?” he asked.
“No thanks to you!” Wren snapped.
“Stop!” Asha glared at the girl. “Calm down. He did the right thing. He can’t do what we can do. If he had stayed, he just would have gotten himself hurt, or worse. He made the right choice. He got out of the way.”
Anubis made no sign that he was bothered by the exchange and he said, “I watched the encounter from the roofs and saw my mother and the others fleeing.”
“Which way did they go?” Gideon asked.
“They each went a different direction,” the youth said. “Horus and Isis both left the roofs and went down into the streets to the south and west. Nethys flew north.”
Asha looked at Gideon. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone in alone. I should have waited, or been more careful.” She reached down to rub her legs. Their run through the undercity had burned her muscles down to leathery bundles threatening to cramp and collapse under her. She waved Wren over to her, and took her medicine bag from the girl, and from the bag she took an ointment and began rubbing the warm clear oils on her legs.
And there’s still the worst to come.
Asha looked up and caught Gideon’s eye, and nodded slightly at Anubis. The soldier frowned, then nodded and stood up, straightening his sweat-stained shirt and dusty jacket.
“Anubis?”
“Yes?”
Gideon paused. “When Asha came out of the pyramid, Set was the first to pursue her. Asha had her claws and I had my sword, and there was a brief struggle. And a moment came when he was about to attack her, and I stopped him. I had to, to save Asha.”