Chapter 79: Sandstorm (823 BC)

823 BC, Valley of Kings, Egypt

(Medusa POV)

I had just teleported from my home to the location of the temple that someone was trying to break into. I'm not a fool to leave dangerous artefact unprotected, so there was no hope for someone to actually break in and steal my stuff. The only issue that this temple of mine should only be known to the royal family in Egypt, more precisely, only the king.

I made a lot of temples in my days as an advisor to the pharaoh and most of them were only filled with treasure. These were known to pretty much anyone who had worshiped me as the snake goddess Wadjet. I mostly left gold there to appease the Pharaoh. For some reason, the man insisted I do this, similarly to how he kept his wealth in a pyramid for him to be buried with, in some vain hope to have it in the afterlife. Plus, I needed a place to put all the useless gifts I kept receiving for some reason. After a while, even Gold is getting old.

I left most of the stuff I don't particularly care about in these temples. These temples were protected so the average mage will not be able to enter, but an entire team of curse breakers in a few centuries could break in. I left it for some lucky team that would be capable enough to get inside and retrieve what should be to them, a great treasure. I would honestly not care if the temple that was being attacked was one of them.

However, there is a single temple I created that mattered to me. A personal vault of memorabilia and precious treasures. It held my personal belongings but I did use it to keep artifacts there, some I confiscated and some were of my own creations. What? I was bored over the years which meant I had all the time in the world to enchant a few items, just to know if I could. I would admit that some of them were a bit too dangerous to exist in case they fall into some idiot's hands but I was bored and lonely; there was little I could do.

In this vault laid all the knowledge of Atlantean magic that I confiscated, even some of the books I wrote about my experimentations with magic. So, what's inside that vault is far more valuable then all the treasures in my other ones combined and so I warded it accordingly. Even its location was supposed to be a secret I only told to the last Pharaoh before I left Egypt and I enchanted the knowledge so that only the undisputed king of Egypt could know.

Even with all that, someone was trying to enter my temple, which meant that it was either the Pharaoh or someone ordered by him trying to steal my property which meant that something was wrong in Egypt.

I teleport into my temple to find that nothing was taken and the wards were at full power. I then turn into smoke and confronted the intruder. There were five in total, they were powerful but it felt artificial somehow. Their magic felt as if someone had tried to inflate it like a balloon somehow, allowing them to gather more magic, but disrupting their control and stopping it from evolving. The power up was bound to the man in the middle somehow, funnily enough the man was blue and was wearing some kind of weird armor that I could sense was very heavily enchanted.

The blue man was trying to teleport past my wards. It was a heavily modified portal that was based pure space manipulation. It would have gotten through anti teleportation wards easily, but I had a deep understanding of space magic and stopped any kind of space magic inside that didn't have my own magical signature. The blue man's magic just felt wrong, like it was a lot of different magic being stitched up together. I didn't like it.

After watching them, I had enough and materialize in front of them and they stiffened in surprise at my arrival.

"You are not welcome here." I bellow.

The blue man steps forward, "How curious. And who are you?"

"It is customary for the intruders to introduce themselves first, especially to the owner of this temple."

"You are the Wadjet?"

I reply sarcastically, "And you are trespassing…"

The man ignored my not so subtle words to leave and just continued, "I am En Sabah Nur, the king of Egypt."

Shit, I totally forgot about him, this is Apocalypse. But aren't they supposed to be mutants, why do they feel magical?

"That you may be, however, you are still not welcome here."

En Sabah Nur seemed to start getting irritated, "This temple is in my kingdom, it is mine and so are its contents."

"No, it's not. My agreement with the previous Pharaoh was for a small land that would forever be untouched by his Kingdom. You are trespassing, En Sabah Nur."

"It seems we are in a disagreement."

I reply, "It seems we are. This is your last warning. Leave now."

The King did not reply and just turned to one of his servants, one of his so called horsemen.

The man started to gather some lightning and threw it at me. I just created a shield that absorbed the attack. I looked at him, raising an eyebrow. Is this seriously the best he could do?

Even En Sabah Nur looked unimpressed with him. Is he some sort of new recruit of something?

Before any of them could react, I gathered the power of the lightning bolt thrown at me and use it to power a telekinetic wave that threw all of them far away into the desert. I teleport towards them, and En Sabah Nur had righted himself in the air and landed gracefully on the sand. One of horsemen sprouted wings out of nowhere and flew into the air, sword in hand, trying to impale me. This looks like it's going to be a fight. I materialize my staff and parry his attack and throw him into the air. It then leaps after him and kick him far away from the fight.

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Suddenly, another one of Apocalypse's horsemen leapt at me. He looked somewhat feral; he had pointy teeth and his nails were elongated into claws. He reminded me a bit of a sane werewolf without the fur and with control over his mind. He looked to be as strong as one, considering I had to put a bit of effort into blocking his attack. I then conjured a blade made out of shadows and stab him in the gut with it. I then throw him away from me.

By the time I was done with him, the two remaining horsemen had arrived to our fight. One was the lightning throwing man, and the other was a woman who was wearing some sort of hood and was holding some sort of crimson sword.

For some reason, the king just stood there watching, assessing and didn't even try to attack me.

I didn't get any time trying to puzzle the man machinations before I was attacked with another bolt of lightning. I redirected it at the woman with a wave of my staff. She blocked it with her sword that seemed to somehow absorb the lightning and started to gain a crimson glow. When the attack finished, the sword looked like it was on fire.

She then waved her sword at him and release a red beam of light at me and I could sense its danger the second it appeared. I tapped my staff on the ground and created a cutting curse that split the beam into two halves that passed harmlessly around me. The ended up hitting a hill behind me, causing some sort of sand avalanche. With another wave of my staff, opened a portal in the middle of the avalanche and another one in front of me. A giant beam of pressurized sand hit them both sending them back behind their master.

Apocalypse and I were the only ones left standing. He observed them and muttered, "Disappointing…"

Unconcerned with their fates, he looked impassively at me, "Do you know how I became king?"

"Can't say that I do."

"I started from the bottom, with nothing to my name. Even my parents abandoned me, probably thought I was an abomination because of my appearance. I was then found by a band of desert nomads called the Sandstormers, whose leader, Baal, recognized my potential and raised me as his own. He even gave me my name, En Sabah Nur. He taught me the truth of the world, that the strong survive and the weak die. Those words are one that I still live by to these days. All was well until the Pharaoh attacked our tribe in fear of a prophecy that a young and powerful warrior would dethrone him and end his line. I was always stronger, smarter than everyone else. I became a fearsome warrior. There were songs of my exploits and tales of my adventures. The more well known I became, the more the Pharaoh feared me so he ordered his soldiers to wipe down my tribe.

My entire tribe was massacred by the mages under the Pharaoh's command and I was apprehended. I was then enslaved by the Pharaoh, to become a symbol to all those who dared to oppose him. Every day I was tortured, until one day another prisoner arrived. He was curious, able to heal from any injury and the Pharaoh wanted to understand his abilities so that he could become invincible. That day, one of the mages went too far and as I was laying there dying, I reached out to the prisoner in a vain attempt to save me, only to find myself in his body. My old body was shriveled and I became him. With my strength, I was able to escape from his prison as they didn't enchant his prison to be unbreakable like mine. There was no need for it. I then proceeded to kill every mage in the palace, every member of the royal family, every noble in the palace. I freed the slaves and took over the city. And the rest was history."

I answer, "As intriguing as this is, why should that matter to me?"

He replied, "I am a man who earned everything I have today and nothing will ever stop me. Even your pathetic order of mages serves me now and have devised a ritual for me to get even stronger. The strong live and the weak die and I am the strongest of them all. I am Egypt and you have no place here!"

He then controlled the sand all around us and created a veritable sand storm, suddenly the sand turned into steel spikes that tried to impale me. I turn to smoke and it goes right through me. That was close. Transmutation and Sand manipulation on this level is really impressive. I create a shockwave sending shards of steel towards Apocalypse. He conjured some sort of force field to stop them. I then raised my staff into the air and conjure a veritable thunderstorm and a giant bolt of lightning appears from the sky and hits my opponent. The bolt was so powerful that it temporarily blinded me and yet when I regained my vision, my opponent was still alive, although a bit ragged.

He then telekinetically controlled giant boulders and threw them at me, I transformed them into smoke that spread around the battlefield blinding him. I then proceeded to travel through the shadows, stabbing him with a conjured sword and then disappearing before he could even register the blow.

Angrily, En Sabah Nur created a telekinetic shockwave, dispersing the smoke. His cuts were already visibly healing by themselves.

"Your reputation was not exaggerated, Wadjet. You truly are a fearsome opponent. Your body will me my masterpiece."

I sensed something coming from my left, it was the flying horseman from before. I was done playing. I unmaterialized my staff and conjured two swords made of shadows. I dodged the flying attack and swung my sword at one of my attacker's wings cutting it off entirely. The man screamed in pain at the attack, and I used this distraction to send a pressurized blast of air towards his head killing him.

I dodge the sand attack that Apocalypse sends at me and create a portal directing it at another attacking horseman. The man wolf one was swept away by the sand. I create another portal later teleporting him towards me and with a swing of my swords I beheaded him.

The last two horsemen attack me but I conjure steel spiked into their foots, pinning them into the ground, then I throw both sword at them, hitting each one of them in the throat, killing them instantly.

In barely ten second, all of the horsemen were dead and I looked at Apocalypse's face. It seemed that he started to understand his mistake. Nevertheless, he screamed into the air and it was like the entire desert came to life and a veritable Tsunami of sand appeared trying to smother me. I gather my power over darkness and create a veritable wave of dark magic disintegrating everything around me, the sand's momentum stopping at it turned into ash.

Apocalypse created a forcefield to protect him from the attack but some of it came through and parts of his body were hit in the process and looked like it was eaten by some sort of acid. Again the wounds started to heal on their own.

"I told you, Wadjet, I am invincible. You cannot kill me."

I smile at him, "Your body might be but there are many ways to kill someone like you."

I cast a spell at him, draining his life force and dispersing it into the ground causing him to visibly starting to age. A few seconds later and he looked like an old withered man. Scared, the man created a purple sphere and teleported away. So that's how he did it.

I knew I could not kill him yet as he's supposed to be alive in the future. Instead, I make sure he is imprisoned. It only took a couple of suggestions for a few mages to turn on him and interrupt the ritual. They destroyed the pyramid where the ritual was being held and kept him trapped in statis for thousands of years. It took a few days, but En Sabah Nur was trapped and Egypt was free.