Hatshepsut.
.
.
Senemut could think of nothing else.
Her smell still lingered in his mind.
He was trying not to think of her, but he knew that would be impossible.
It took almost a century to stop thinking of her the last time.
Why was she here?
Senemut couldn’t stop thinking about how the sun made her black hair shine or how beautiful her face looked even though she grimaced in pain.
“Hey, Sen,” Xander said, waving his hand in front of Senemut’s face.
“Hello?
Hey.
Hey!
Sumthin’s burning!”
“Wh-what?” Senemut stammered as he came back to reality.
The kitchen was already filled with smoke.
Senemut grabbed the smoking skillet off the stove, threw it into the sink and began opening the windows while shouting a string of ancient words that Xander didn’t understand.
It made Xander laugh.
“I see we’re having charcoal for dinner again,” Raylin said as she walked through the kitchen to the living room.
“I guess it will be take-out .
.
.
again,” Senemut said, covering his mouth and nose with a towel as he ran water over the smoking mass.
He tried to fan the smoke out of the window.
“I think we should go into the other room,” Senemut said, walking swiftly out.
The smell of human food always seemed to sicken him.
“So, what are we having tonight?” Xaria asked.
She had been sitting in the living room watching TV.
She turned when they walked into the room.
“Anything that delivers,” Senemut said, collapsing into a chair.
“I don’t think it wise to leave the house anymore this evening.”
“I thought you said your ‘friend’ was nothing to worry about,” Raylin said bitterly.
“Hatshepsut is not what I’m worried about.
She’s a gun for hire.
I’m more concerned about who hired her.”
“Sumbody had a hit out on us!” Xander exclaimed.
“No,” Senemut said, amused by Xander’s reaction.
“If Hatshepsut was supposed to kill you, you would be dead.”
Xaria looked at Senemut with a raised eyebrow.
“Okay,” Senemut said, correcting himself.
“She would have come close, but you two would not have been enough to stop her.
We saw what happened today.”
“That was a fluke,” Xander huffed.
“Surrre,” Senemut said.
“I thought you were gonna to tell us more about your little psycho hottie.”
“Yes, but don’t you want dinner first?”
“I’ll order,” Xander said, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket.
“No, I’ll order,” Xaria said, pulling out her cell phone.
“I want Chinese.”
“I want pizza.”
“I want Italian,” Raylin chimed in.
“You’ve been out voted, Xaria,” Xander taunted.
“I didn’t say anything about pizza!” Raylin said.
“Pizza is Italian,” Xander said.
They all turned to Senemut.
“Everyone orders what you want.
Just let me know how much you spend.”
Everyone sat around the counter eating as Senemut cleaned up his dinner disaster.
“Soooo…” Xander began as he grabbed another slice, “your lady friend?”
“You are very eager to hear more about the woman who almost captured you,” Senemut said, throwing the dish towel in the sink.
“But I suppose you all have the right to know what you’re up against.
Have I ever told any of you how I became what I am?”
“When we were little, you used to give us a sugar coated version as a bedtime story,” Xaria said as she swallowed a mouth full of noodles.
“You told me what you were,” Raylin said, pushing her plate away, “but not how you became it.”
“Good,” Senemut said leaning on the counter.
“I would hate to bore any of you with details that you already know.
Where do I begin?
I suppose the beginning.
.
.
“Hatshepsut and I have dwelled upon this Earth for over three thousand years.
We both began life as humans, but we held different stations in life.
She was the ruler of Egypt, and I was her advisor, her chief architect, her.
.
.
I was anything she needed including her lover.”
“Let me guess,” Xaria interrupted, “Your love was forbidden and y’all were cursed by the gods.”
“You read too many romance novels,” Xander poked.
“Do you two want to hear the tale or not?” Senemut said.
“Sorry,” Xaria said, glaring at her brother.
“Now where was I?
Ah, yes.
Hatshepsut and I were so in love with one another.
I thought we were soul mates.
It felt like we were soul mates.”
Senemut began to stare off in space, overtaken by his own story.
“Even though we were in love, we could not truly be together.
Hatshepsut had opposition.
There were those that were not comfortable with the idea of a female ruler.
Hatshepsut was the first female to officially rule Egypt, so the concept did not exist.
In addition to that, her stepson and his supporters were trying to pressure her into giving him his ‘birthright’.
She had to stay vigilant.
“One night as I lay beside her, a serpent slithered into the bed and bit me on the ankle.
I can still remember how the venom burned through my veins.
The pain was horrific, but it was nothing compared to the pain I felt later.
“My cries awakened Hatshepsut.
She tried to comfort me, but there was nothing she could do.
I was already going through the transformation.
I could feel my skin harden, my fingers becoming claws, my teeth lengthening, and I had a hunger rising within me.
With my last strands of sanity, I told her to run.
I begged her to run.
She wouldn’t leave me.
If only she had listened.”
Senemut winced and grabbed his chest briefly.
“Are you okay?” Raylin asked with concern.
“I’m fine,” Senemut said trying to laugh it off.
“Where was I?
Yes, I had completely changed into this man-snake of sorts.
There was nothing left of me.
Through the whole ordeal, Hatshepsut was by my side trying to console me.
She felt that she could still reach me within that horrible form.
Why did she love me so?
She loved me more than herself.
She didn’t even call her guards.
She truly believed that I was still somewhere inside that, that thing while all I could think about was wanting to.
.
.”
Senemut couldn’t get himself to finish his sentence.
He looked up at the three faces that had become engrossed in his tale.
They could all see the shame in his eyes, but they could not understand it.
Senemut let out a sigh and continued with his story.
“Hatshepsut was trying to embrace me.
I grabbed her by the throat and threw her into one of the alabaster pillars.
I threw her with such force that I could hear her skull break as her face crashed against the stone.
There was so much blood.
The right side of her face was crushed.
Her eye was completely gone, but somehow, she was still alive.
As I stood over her broken body, I could hear her praying to her divine father, Amun.
She was asking him to save her Heart.
That was how we refer to one another, I was her Heart, and she was mine.”
Saying those words again summoned emotions that he had longed forgotten.
He could feel his heart clinched with renewed lost.
He took a deep breath to settle himself before he continued.
“Hearing her prayer touched what was left of my humanity, and I was able to regain my sanity.
I took her into my arms as she died and cried to the gods for help.
“One heard me.
I was suddenly surrounded by light.
I looked up from Hatshepsut’s body and found myself looking upon the god of creation, Amun.
It turned out that he was Hatshepsut’s real father.
He took her body, healed it, and breathed life back into it.
He restored her face, apart from the eye.
He placed his mark, the ankh, on her face and transformed her eye into a portal.
After he had restored her to her former self, he told her that he had given her back the life that was taken from her and more.
He said ‘I have given you the gift of immortality, but you will not use this gift to resume your old life.
I need you for another task.
Years from now, far too many for mortal man to count, a great power will be unleashed into the world.
You will stop this from happening.
To aid you on this quest, you now possess certain abilities.
I have given you dominion over ice.
I have bestowed you with the swiftness of the wind, the strength of the elephant, and the grace of the cat.
With these gifts you will not only stop the coming evil, but also the evil that already walks the Earth.
Your eye will reveal these beings to you and aid in their destruction.’
“Then he turned to me and laid his hand upon me, putting his mark on me as well.
Then he told me that he could not change my affliction, but he could give me control over it.
He appointed me to be Hatshepsut’s guard.
I was never to leave her side, which was fine.
I did not want to leave her.”
“But you did,” Raylin interrupted.
“No,” Senemut said, “she left me.”
Xander, Xaria, and Raylin sat waiting.
Senemut looked at them and saw their expressions.
They wanted to know more.
“Hatshepsut blamed me for her plight,” Senemut continued.
“She wasn’t very happy about her new face.
Hatshepsut is rather vain, you see.
Soon, it got to the point that she couldn’t even look at me without becoming angry.
She knew it wasn’t truly my fault, but I provided an easy target.
After a century or so, she released me from my bond and vanished.
At first, I tried to find her.
I’m fast, but she is much faster.
After a while, I gave up.
I knew that she could stay a step ahead of me.
Every once in a while, our paths cross.
Maybe more than we know.
I can change my appearance at will, and she wears different hairstyles and makeup.
We could be looking at each other and not even know it.
But her scent .
.
.
it rarely changes.
She loves myrrh.
Always has.
She wears nothing else.”
“You’re still in love with her,” Raylin said, crossing her arms.
“Yes, I love her,” Senemut said, smiling, “but I’m not in love with her as I once was.
All I know is that I care for her, and I’ll never stop caring for her so long as I live.”
“Well, that’s just great,” Raylin said, throwing up her hands.
“How can we count on you to protect us from her?”
“Like I said before, she is nothing to worry about.”
“But—,” Raylin started.
“Hold up,” Xander interrupted, “before you get into tha ‘you’re blinded by love’ bit, I first wanna understand sumthin’.
You were telling us about her powers.”
“Yea,” Xaria chimed in, “when you get to talking ancient, you can be a little difficult to understand.”
“Right,” Senemut said, letting the water out of the sink, “to put it simply, Hatshepsut has incredible speed.
She can move faster than the human eye can follow.
You would think she was teleporting.
Her agility would make a cat cry.
She can walk the thinnest tight rope or jump the highest wall.
Her physical strength is also quite a marvel, but it’s no match to mine.
She also has incredible stamina and the power to regenerate.
Her ice ability is quite powerful as well.
She can create as much as she likes and manipulate it as she wishes.
She can also change anything into ice.
From shaping to temperature, there is nothing she can’t do, except project it.
She has to have contact with what she wants to freeze.
But once it’s formed, she doesn’t have to be in contact to control it.”
“That explains the ice bullets!” Xaria said.
“Since she couldn’t just throw ice at us, she used the bullets as a way to project it.
She’s creative.”
“Yes, she is,” Senemut said, “but that is not all.
Her ice is special.
Her ice can repel most magic.
It can even absorb it.
That is why it was difficult to melt, Raylin.
As for me, it’s deadly.
Whenever I encounter it, it burns me as if it’s fire.”
“I’m hearing a lot of strengths, but no weaknesses,” Raylin said.
“She has one big weakness,” Senemut continued.
“She can’t handle magic very well.
Any type of mystical energy disturbs her powers.
Her ice is her only protection from it.
So, if you stab her with a plain everyday kitchen knife, she could shrug it off, but if you enchant the same knife and stab her .
.
.”
“She won’t be able to handle it,” Raylin said, pleased.
“So that blast I gave her probably put her down.”
“Yes,” Senemut said less enthused, “I’m sure she is somewhere suffering as we speak.
Well, that is the entire story.
I must clean up and you all have homework.”
“Aw, come on,” Xander said.
“Oh, just come on,” Xaria said, getting up.
“I don’t know why you try to argue with him.
You never win.”
Xaria and Xander got up, threw away some of their trash and went upstairs.
As soon as they were out of sight, Senemut clinched his chest again.
He could feel his ankh tattoo throbbing.
Raylin stood close to the doorway watching Senemut.
“You’re not fine, are you?” Raylin asked.
“I am fine,” Senemut said.
“It’s Hatshepsut that isn’t.
When Amun bestowed his mark on me, he didn’t just give me control over the demon within, he also gave me the ability to sense Hatshepsut when she is injured and right now, she is injured badly.”
“You’re going to go to her, aren’t you?” Raylin asked.
“I must.
She’s hurt and it’s my job to aid her.”
“It was your job.
She released you from it.”
“She didn’t give me the task in the first place.
So technically she can’t remove it.”
“You are so over rationalizing.
By the way, have you forgotten that you are supposed to protect us from her?”
“I would never let anything happen to any of you.
You know that.”
Raylin stood with her arms crossed with a slight pout.
“Fine,” she finally said.
“I hate seeing you in pain because of her.
Just go!”
“Thank you, dear,” Senemut said, sarcastically as he turned towards the door.
“Don’t be surprised if I strengthen the barrier to the point that you can’t get through it.”
“I would expect nothing less,” Senemut said as he ran out the door.