Cairo, Egypt

Around 2pm... the day after the Event.

Tea had not been offered.

  At the world headquarters of SunRize International, the golden hawk in the red

sun banner waving wildly above a multi storied monstrosity clad in the whitest of

marble, his anger and rage had made the cavernous room positively horrible for his attendants and employees to stand in while world spanning headlines flashed across the chrysalis monitors that had been cleverly, and with great expense, incorporated into the room's ceiling panels.

  Mister Amra Iben Sakr sat in what a generous natured person might call the boardroom, though everyone who had ever entered the gaudy thing would readily admit the entire space had been set up more in the style of a royal receiving chamber from some more opulent age. Mister Sakr sat in his overly large chair (never call it a throne) watching the news of the troubling explosion in Scotland. The reports raced across the gracefully domed arches as the Master of All He Witnessed silently watched, and seethed with anger. The arms of his chair creaked under the assault of his clutching fingers, as they slowly crushed the sleek, ergonomic surfaces tastefully made exclusively in a pattern of gold-shot-white-marble. The long, strong, and in any other setting, elegant fingers began to make the lightweight tungsten frame and damage and stain resistant plastics buckle with slight popping noises that echoed hollowly into the void of the oversized conference room in which He sat, simmering in His rage.

  The chrysalis screens flickered with images of the explosion, the same scene played over and over across the several monitor devices, each relaying news streams from different sources, though mostly European, and each restating the same few story elements over and over.

  He knew these machines, these screens, well; having just accepted the ideas of mass media and

advertising as ways to gain converts just as televisions had gone out of fashion some forty

years ago, now, Amra Iben Sakr had thrown what few followers he had possessed at the new technologies a few decades ago, and now He was seen across the globe as a premier source of "science." The very irony of it all usually made him smile. Tech fields had delivered him more followers than being a god ever had. The newest way to see what the world of broadcast entertainment had available was the chrysalis. And SunRize was where the world came for the hardware, the software, and even the entertainment itself.

  Amra had been intrigued by these most recent images the chrysalis showed Him. But to think, a mere fifty years ago, a blink to one so long lived, the idea of “TV” was useless to Him. And now, watching the images unfold in the set of domed gas crystal rounded matrices on the wall in front of Him brought both the world to Him, and now brought Him to the world.

But this... this cycle of news brought Him nothing but rage.

  Amra had been waiting for the opening salvo in his latest war with the Dancer, but had almost let Himself think the Dancer was going to miss His grand machinations. Now He saw that the Dancer had been waiting…lulling Amra into the

believing He would win this without a fight. He should have known better.

  It was a minor lapse, and one he intended to correct.

  His employees were replaceable, and the three lying at His feet would soon be

taken away by the well dressed guards standing just out of His sight. He knew these

things happened, the cleaning up of... trash... but such things were considered below His exalted perception. As such,

He ignored them when they happened. It was a fiction He allowed to persist to show His munificence. While not as powerful a being as He had once been, it shamed Him to admit in the darkest hours of the deepest nights, small artifices like these aided His priests, relabeled in this modern world as VP’s, in

keeping the faithful adoring Him. Small shows of power, as well as minor shows of restraint, delivered at the right moments, helped to grow the confidence of His Faithful.

  While He sat and ruminated over this latest bit of news, plans and wheels set turning by His ancient enemy, He must appear stoic. Here He must sit, a statue gleaming in the light of the morning sun’s rays as they scintillated, thrusting and parrying

across his handsome, but unyielding features.

  He knew this day would come. He had told His acolytes this would happen.

Travelers would come, returning through the gates from which their people had retreated

almost a thousand years ago. The Dancer would send for his children in a final effort to

stave off His ultimate victory. Amra had been told by His priests that those fell paths would be dangerous to open after so long, but He knew His enemy well, and the Dancer would sacrifice many that one assassin might succeed.

  And now one of those vermin had returned, and was in this world again. It was almost a relief, only the one Traveler. He may need to send out His agents into the world to make certain that only one of the spluttering, gabbling, honking-geese tongued 'Tj'Shea had returned. Where one might find a single member of the horrible things, overturn a wet log and there you would find a deadly hive of thousands.

  Amra had expected the entirety of the Dancer's favorite People to return one day. Back in an age

when HE had almost been forgotten and dying, He heard of the flight from this world of

the fractious and quarrelsome Dawn People, the so called “Dancer’s Children” with the

great sigh of a splinter being removed from a sore and swollen shoulder. But HE knew

even back when HE was called by hidden, sacred names in secret whispers beneath the burning

sands at dawn and dusk, that they would return. Every evil in the world would return to plague Him if he allowed it. Some menaces just needed to be dragged from the street and killed as quickly as they reared their ugly heads.

  The Dancer’s favored children, calling themselves the “Dawn People” as they

roamed the Earth in ancient times, had been hated by Him and His family, almost as

much as the Dancer himself was loathed. While the Dancer’s Gods had never troubled

Him or His people, the Dancer and his vermin had culled from humanity’s ranks each

High Priest He had sent them to their islands to bring new followers to His Glory. Even when

traveling abroad, far from their green, damp isles, the Dancer’s agents slaughtered His

priests whenever they met.

  And each death, to Sakr's mind, had been calculated to enrage Him. Deaths at night,

under water, skinless beneath shaded groves. Burnings on moonless nights. All souls

originally promised to Him, TO HIM and His Glory, in each circumstance ripped from Him. The

Undying Scourge had taught his rabble the best ways to give pain to Amra and to all those of His

family.

  The ‘Tj’Shea, or Sidhe as they were called by the ignorant masses now, and all the

other lesser races had been slaughtered in these lands when Amra and His tribe had risen to

power. Humans began worshiping and sacrificing and groveling with such splendid

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

results that one of the first tests of their love set down by Amra had been to wage the

bloodiest of Holy Wars on their genetic cousins all across the lands men would later call

Egypt. And then into neighboring lands as His family expanded their reach. No Sidhe, no D’jinni, no foul lesser human-like things to water down faith, nor the Faithful, in His lands.

  It was not until trying to spread beyond his great river encompassing lands that

His will was defied. Other Gods and their families held His own at bay in the surrounding

deserts and pastoral lands. And where they had not, the Dancer somehow had. It seemed

that no sooner would His armies take new lands, that they were then thrown back to the Holy

River again and again.

  The Dancer always knew how best to aggravate. Eons before the Romans invaded

the lands He had called His own, the Dancer worked to repel more esoteric invaders. He

should have been a follower, but refused always; never to bow, never to make sacrifices

to a greater power at whose feet he should have worshiped, never tendering his life up to

the Gods and Goddesses who were Amra and His kindred.

  While He had no claim on the Dancer, it amazed Him that his own Gods never brought him to heel, either. It was puzzling to Amra.

  And the Dancer had then encouraged the Dawn People to kill His followers, His High Priests who came by ship to

those dreary little islands looking for converts, sacrifices, and tribute. Any that landed on the mainland of the larger European continent would also be hunted down, but not nearly as quickly. They were killed outright, each and every one; from High Priests down to zealots, followers, and even the very sailors who tended to the trading ships. Often the ships were burned to their water lines rather than repurposed by the Dancer's favored Scions.

  Some acolytes had learned the legend of the Dancer from the older priests, and he was known to them as a bogey man of the highest order. The thing that would thwart their Master’s will. He was the shadow haunting the dreams of all who came to serve Him.

  Some, over the eons, had simply died of their own terror while in the foreign lands held by the Dancer or his allies, their dreams visiting Amra in his temples as they died scream in nightmare wracked sleep. Pathetic.

  All dead before their time, and not a single soul sent from a spent body to His glory. None weighed, none carried to Him on the ferry by Amra’s brother/son, all whisked away from Him. Wasted. And He had always hated the presumption of those

who would vex His plans.

  MY PLANS! Who were they to decide ANYTHING? Who were THEY to presume?

  And the Dancer was more than a thorn burning holes in His side through the ages. The Dancer had proved to be an accomplished planner. Schemes flooded out over the world from the foul old sorcerer and his dark, untouchable soul. They fell

monsoon hard on whosoever might cross his path. NO flooded Nile had ever brought so much dismay to Amra as had the Dancer’s machinations.

  Clever magics, like a monkeys tricks beside the convoluted serpents of doubt and turmoil the Dancer tossed onto all of his

enemies' workings. For all the peace and order Amra had hoped to achieve, all the world bowing in unison to the Great Lord of the Morning and Evening Sun, the Dancer was the Void in every game of Senet he had played.

  Most of His plans needed nothing now, having been firmly set in motion these last four decades,

a few numbering centuries in some cases, past. Now the great stones of his architecture moved inexorably

forward toward completion.

  Now, however. Amra thought. One of the vermin has returned. Possibly more.

But, as time passed, and Amra let his blood cool, a humble cleaner hauled the last of His failed "Executive VPs" from the room, Amra raised a hand in benediction to the cleaner. They bowed deeply, and took the last body from the floor of his boardroom. He decided this parasite riddled pest would be as nothing to his plans. Just a single grain of grit could not make a pyramid fall.

  But, I will see this situation watched. He thought; I will make sure no flies settle on MY meal.

He stood and stepped over the last of the detritus where the remains had fallen, and been dragged away; a sheaf of reports that had dropped from a set of well manicured fingers lay on an onyx table by the window. The file was unexpectedly thick, for an Event that had just occurred yesterday. He would hand the file over to another of His doting VPs, a more competent one; and they would make sure to bring Him the news he deserved to hear, after they had taken care of the issues that might upset their shining Bronze and Golden God.

  Amra contented himself to watch the sun finish its rising course, and come up on the eastern horizon over the disputed Gardens of Suez.

  There were several such file folders, and a few data-chips scattered about the room. It will ALL be gathered up and placed with one of His more deserving VPs; for what else should they do with their time?

  Eyes closed as the soft hands of the loving sun caressed His fine features. Auric

shaded skin, twice each day it appeared more gold than flesh, not seen by Him in this

world since the passing of His sister/daughters and brother/sons. Darkest black eyebrows

and a sprig of ebony on His chin adding contrast to the solar kissed beauty that matched

the early earthy honeyed tones of the exotic and mature face that now graced many an

international business magazine cover.

  Women the world over with no other interest in finance or tech raced to the local

newsstands to grab issues flaunting Iben Sakr’s visage. Bald was most decidedly “IN”

this year, and would remain so for the foreseeable future; shorn and polished pates were now

all the rage, and men across the globe worked hard to emulate his smoothly shorn and gleaming crown.

  The words uttered in a guttural string of consonants flowed forth from his full and

handsome lips. Silken sounds, that if not for the harsh manner and arrangement of their

syllables would have charmed any listener. But his voice was rarely for just any to hear.

He never had to raise His voice beyond a whisper, knowing that at all times His words

were heard.

  He spoke to no one person around Him, but to EVERY person around, His

words were commands from far more than just a popular international CEO. Chiseled in

the heaviest of basalt obelisks, they would have born no more weight than they already

did for those devoted to His wishes; all who heard Him speak this morning had long been

devoted with their very souls, their very bodies bound to His will in pain and blood.

Before the sun had completely arisen, His floor was once again clean. Before Cairo saw the whole of

the great Solar Disk, His acolytes were hard at work sending out feelers for information

on “The Little Tunguska Survivor.”

  From the doorway to a much smaller adjoining room came the soft voice of one of his female employees

making the one call He had commanded.

  The sound of female voices always warmed him, even when, like now, He had already been warmed by the suns early rays. He cared little for the conversation any woman had, they served His interests or were worthless; but the one name he now caught as she spoke did strike Him with an overwhelming pride.

“…Tzal…”

  The small upturning at the corners of His mouth further broadened His lips into

an actual smile at that name. Her mouth, though no doubt lovely, would never be able to

properly pronounce the exotic, TRUE name of his private “trouble shooter,” as they called royal

assassins in this age.

  But, loyally, she had jumped to do exactly as she had been bidden. While not fit for His

direct attentions; her efforts on His behalf would do in place of the long missing sister/wives whose embraces He so

sorely missed. Her last thoughts would, no doubt, be of the glory He had bestowed upon her most

unworthy head.

  From behind the separating screen he heard more of the conversation. Mostly in

English, it held nothing of real interest for Him; but Amra was always delighted to see

His will being done.

  Tzal had been the greatest coup in this last century. He had been hanging on to the

thinnest of existences when Amra’s South American agents reported back that they had

found a tribe still offering sacrifices to him at a long forgotten temple. After all these years, some people of faith

will continue to worship anything. Even to the point of worshiping one of the old Fallen

Ones, a mere Husk. A sad, tired, and bloody thing, the barest shadow of what he had been

just a handful of centuries ago. A pulpy collection of scraps left to those sad, ignorant

people by their conquerors. And after the scant, and dwindling, praise Tzal had subsisted upon, he had

jumped at the chance to work for a greater power than himself, and come out to ply a trade in the broader world.

  Pathetic fool, needing to beg scraps at another’s table. I would whither and die before I let myself

become one of the Husks.

  A mild shudder jumped from His heels to His head at the thought of such a horror

ever becoming of His glorious self.

  The sun had now fully arisen, and it was time to attend to this day’s labors. Or at least see that others less worthy knew what labors they needed to attend. His slight smile returned.

As the following months flew away four more employees would be carried away after such

reports were delivered, with accompanying conclusions that the “poor soul” found at the

sight of the devastation was still in coma, still burned and broken beyond all human

action, all medical assistance, and could never be of any threat to SunRize International’s plans. Amra would

have no presumption from slaves.

And slaves were easily replaced.