Author: Cleo
Fandom: The Mummy
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters from the film the Mummy. I do own the rest of them. If you want to take over my student loans go ahead and sue me – that about all I own.
Summary: It’s been two decades. Little has changed for the O’Connell’s until Cleo proves that she is definitely her mother’s daughter and they find themselves once again at the center of a firestorm.
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PROLOGUE
The moments that forge who we are often go unappreciated and unrecognized. Fleeting glimpses, stolen through the looking glass that shape our vision of the future and create the foundation of all that we will become. So it was for a small boy, busily scrubbing a painted floor, with one eye on his work and another on a patio far below.
The expansive courtyard glowed gold in the firelight. Incense perfumed the night air and created a mist making ethereal the scene unfolding below.
Through the rails of the balcony the boy watched. Large dark eyes framed by thick lashes focused intently on the priests below while small hands, wrinkled and red, relentlessly scrubbed. As a slave, those below paid him no mind ignoring him as they would a potted plant. It suited him, making it possible for him to hear and see things that he would not were his circumstances better.
Shrouded in smoke, Pharaoh watched over the ritual, his posture somber. Awe struck to be so close to a living god the boy was unable to look at his king long. Instead he eyed the small army of priests surrounding him.
All of them, including Pharaoh, started when out of the mist materialized the high priest of Ra. With collected grace the man strode toward them stopping before the monarch and bowing his head only slightly. Without a word the great priest turned to a podium holding something the boy could not see.
Curious, the boy dragged his bucket down a little further giving himself a better vantage point. What he saw amazed him. In the priest’s hands was a huge square of silver, a book unlike any the boy had ever seen.
His senses aroused the child turned to see a group of priests carry in a large figure draped in course linen and place is on an altar. The priests fanned out around the low table bearing the figure creating an undulating circle. Their voices raised to the heavens they began to chant, “Ra triumphs over Apophis, taste thy death Apophis.”
The high priest entered the circle holding the silver volume in his arms. His voice rose above the others, mystic words rumbled through the courtyard, “Get thee back fiend, Ra hath overthrown thy words. Maat has sent forth thy destruction. Fall down and depart, o Apophis, thou enemy of Ra.”
Two of the priests stepped forward, golden chains in their hands. The pair quickly bound the figure, curses flowing freely from each as the chanting continued behind them. When their task was done they stepped back, joining the others. Waiting a beat the high priest continued, “The gods of the north and of the south, of the east and west have fastened thee with fetters, the gods hath overthrown thee. O thou who art hateful to Ra, he looketh upon thee, get thee back.”
The figure began to glow. The Pharaoh took an involuntary step back and the rhythmic chant faltered a bit as strong men felt fear. The boy leaned forward, his attention so rapt that his head pushed through the railing and had his shoulders fit he surely would have fallen to his death.
The only other unfazed witness, the high priest, issued a command and the chant stopped completely. The circle of priests suddenly descended on the figure like a gang of barbarians, kicking and spitting on the glowing figure. The efforts were at first noncommittal but quickly grew to a fever pitch. To the boy’s surprise the shrouded, bound figure never cried out or resisted.
The high priest began to speak once more and Pharaoh stepped down from his place and took a gilded lance from one of his servants and with a mighty thrust, stabbed the spear deep into the figure. It reacted immediately, glowing brighter sending Pharaoh back up the stairs so quickly he barely held onto his dignity.
The high priest seemed not to notice, “He pierceth thy head, he slitteth thy face, he divideth thy head where its bones join and it is crushed in thy land, thy bones are smashed into pieces, thy members are hacked off thee, and the gods hath passed sentence of doom upon thee.”
A priest stepped forward with a knife and slashed and hacked at the figure brutally cutting it into small pieces, but there was no blood. The figure was made of wax, the boy realized. Each piece was carefully carried to a brazier where the chunks melted and disappeared into a billowing cloud of black smoke. All the while the priests now chanted, “Thou art forgotten.”
When the last of the pieces vanished and the chant ended, the high priest strode to the Pharaoh’s side and told the King, “Maat will be maintained for another year, my lord.”
The boy pulled his head back through the rails and leaned back against them, overwhelmed by what he had witnessed. He was too young to realize the significance of what he had seen, but the man he would one day become was born on that evening.
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