The Kid Lich Awakens

The Kid Lich Awakens 6 Will P.

Billy the Kid Lich Pt. 6

The Prison Break

It was dark. It had been dark for ages. But it had been getting brighter, and that was a good sign. It told Set that more and more light from the outside world was piercing through his shadow bonds in his personal jail cell deep within the Du'at. He knew physically he was in a cube shaped room underneath the pyramids in Egypt. Magically, however, he was located deep in the Du'at, a sort of blanket term for a series of magical environments that humans sometimes accessed when dreaming.

Set knew it had been ages, literal ages, because his godly brethren left him with a seeing-eye mirror. Perhaps out of guilt or pity, or maybe as a token of their appreciation of him from when he used to be good. This was before Set realized with Ra retired into the heavens he was the most powerful god in his pantheon and no one could challenge him; inspiring him to forcibly take the throne and declare himself the eternal pharaoh of Egypt.

He still ruminated on that accursed boy, Horus. His little brother. How had he been so blind? He had always been a brilliant tactician, always doing well to be one step ahead of his opponents. His fellow gods had led more than one assassination attempt against him during the time he spent as pharaoh; all of them failed and ended with his assailants imprisoned. Now, here he was, in the very magical prison he had built to be able to contain gods, foiled by his own creation.

He could still remember the day it all fell apart. Horus had entered his throne room and challenged him for the throne, claiming himself as the younger son of Osiris, the previous pharaoh who Set had dispatched into the afterlife forever through the use of a magical sarcophagus. "I challenge you for the throne, brother!"

Horus cut quite the imposing figure, tall, handsome, muscular. He had a single braid of dark brown hair and an otherwise bald skull. He wielded a curved Egyptian blade called a khopesh and pointed it at Set. "I have no choice but to accept." Set had replied. He thought he could win their Mortal Combat. He believed he was the strongest. But fate had decreed otherwise.

The battle was fierce, the force of two heavyweight juggernaut gods throwing their all into it. Set had used every trick in his arsenal: transforming into the Set Animal, a four-legged animal resembling a large horse, but with a slightly different head with forward-facing eyes as it was a predator, and conical ears that could rotate 360 degrees and detect sounds tens of miles away, and a sharp nose that could track the slightest of scents just as far. It was the perfect apex predator, yet Horus was able to avoid it by transforming into a falcon himself and ascending into the sky. He tried striking his younger brother with lightning, but Horus proved too nimble to be hit. He gracefully dodged every bolt. He attempted hand-to-hand combat using his own sword, but Horus matched him blow for blow. He tried buffeting the younger god with the fury of the sands, over a hundred mile an hour winds that should've shredded any normal man's skin, but Horus acted like the wind didn't faze him at all. Set had thought he had won, trading blows with his brother until Set's own back was to the entrance of his godly prison. He knew his prison could only be opened from the outside. He'd planned to grapple his brother and toss him into the prison, but instead, Horus had overpowered his brother, and threw Set into his own prison, and then the combined might of the gods Set had left in there forced themselves out, Horus sealed the entrance, and Set had been alone for centuries since.

Sometime shortly after his imprisonment, they had teleported in the seeing-eye mirror for Set to use. He wondered why they had done that, but figured knowing didn't matter. And so Set had rested, bided his time, century after century, spectating mankind from afar and plotting his revenge. And then... She came.

The mysterious raven-haired woman with a voice that was smooth as silk had greeted him. "Hello, Set." "Who are you, why have you come to this place? How did you enter? My brethren keep a guard posted! There can be no leaving this place once inside."

The woman simply flashed him a small hint of a bemused smile before replying. "I'm afraid you are wrong on many counts. Your brethren figured escape was impossible and abandoned posting a guard centuries ago. As for my entrance, I am very experienced when it comes to escaping magical prisons. My name is Morrigan, and I've come to enlist your help."

"Oh?" Set had replied. He wasn't about to align himself with some mystery goddess he knew nothing about. He wanted to be certain they had some goals in common first, at the very least. "And what exactly would you do with me once we escaped this place?" He had asked.

The woman's answer was succinct and exactly what Set wanted to hear. "Oh, I don't know. I suppose, kill your brother, enslave the other gods, and establish our dominance over all of the mortals by collecting all three pieces of the legendary Staff of Ra?" And he was sold. "Honey, you got yourself a deal."

And the Morrigan had sprung Set, and they got the paperwork done to establish him in the world as a man named Yates Viled. "One last thing," The Morrigan had said. "I have a gift I'd like to share with thee, something to aid us in finding the Rod and the Wings." Set was silent. He watched in awe as The Morrigan retrieved the Jewel of Ra out of the folds of her dress.

"Do you know what this is?" She had asked. "Yes! My grandfather's Jewel! It can grant the wielder the ability to mind control mortals, and it also reveals prophetic visions of the future to anyone who gazes into it! There's only one problem of course—"

"It won't fully function to the apex of its abilities without the other two pieces." said The Morrigan. Set, a little taken aback by her knowledge of magical items replied "Er, yes, that'd be correct." A little under an hour later, the two gods strolled through an outdoor marketplace in Egypt, plotting their next move.

"Where shall we begin? How will we search?" Set asked. "I'll need you to ask the Jewel." the Morrigan replied. Set thought this seemed like an easy enough request to fulfill, so he said: "O, Jewel of Mighty Ra, show us the one we must seek to find your Rod and Wings and complete your sacred staff!" And then, some thousands of miles away, in an apartment, Billy the Kid Lich got the peculiar sensation of being watched. He didn't comment to his friends about it. The feeling passed. But Set and The Morrigan had clearly seen Billy's face and knew who they had to find. The hunt had begun, and the race was on. End of Part 6.

- Will P.