The Loyal God

The Trial

As Neith accompanied Seth into the place where court had been held before Seth took total control, she smelled the scents of pomegranate and sun-warmed cotton, rain-soaked earth and ozone and river water, the tang of blood on sand and souring linens, lotus and fresh air. Truth be told, back when she had first come of age, she had gotten constant headaches. New gods were coming of age very day, their newly developed personal scents mingling with the pre-existing scents that already overwhelmed her. Even now, she felt the urge to cover her nose and retch at the mixture of vastly differing scents. As it was, her pace slowed to where she walked behind her brother, as was befitting of a king and his servant.

Her clothing, despite not being the most modest before, had been changed into a simple two-pieced top, only having enough fabric to cover each breast, the two sides meeting in the middle to attach to an ornate necklace. Her skirts were nary even a bit more than an over-glorified loincloth, the slits of the flowy fabric running up to the waistband. She felt hyper-exposed, her previous confidence vanished in the exact moment that her clothes rippled out of existence and this set materialized back in. Some ill-meaning god had taken the liberty to take advantage of her weakness in the face of the trial to humiliate her.

Her eyes stayed fixed firmly on the ground as the two gods finally made it into the arena-like court area. Dozens of gods surrounded them on all sides. She could feel the more lustful ones' gazes fixed to the exposed skin of her chest and the vast expanses of thigh that had been revealed with her walking. She didn't look up to see Sebek shoot them a deadly glare, head not leaving the ground.

Seth merely whistled as he took it all in, his headdress sitting firmly upon his head, as usual.

"Wooow. Well, who do we have here?" he grinned, looking around at all the gods who had deigned to show up.

Neith sighed, shaking her head. Even in the face of imminent doom, he could find it in himself to be nonchalant. He'd always been good at that, masking his true feelings in the face of adversity. Neith had always envied him in that regard. When they were but babes, not having yet come into their purpose as gods, Seth was the one who didn't cry when he fell and skinned his knee. He had always merely glared angrily at the ground, muttering curses that one of his young age shouldn't have known. When Neith would fall, she would immediately burst into tears, sobbing and shrieking like it was the end of the world. It had all escalated when they came of age. The day she'd come into her own, she'd been alone. She'd been visiting an oasis on the edge of the city when she got a splitting headache. The world brightened. Smells became sharper, colors more vibrant, and she could feel the presence of others pressing in on her like a crushing weight. She'd curled up into a ball, the water from the oasis' pool surrounding her body as her salty tears mixed with the freshwater.

"Why, if it isn't the daughters of the almighty sun god. And to top it off, even the great sun god has personally come all the way to this lowly place. Looks like the sun will rise from the west tomorrow! Hahahaha!!" Seth cackled.

A tanned, well endowed woman reclined upon a grandiose throne mockingly, tapping the arm lazily. She was scantily clad and laden in gold. 

The sun god, Ra.

"Anyway, seeing all of you here together like this makes me so happy. And here I was thinking you all went on a family vacation to Duat without me. It's been forever since I've seen you," Seth grinned, acting as though he were merely a loving man who missed his family dearly.

He held the act for a moment longer before bursting out into peals of crazed laughter.

"SILENCE!" Maat shouted, slamming her hand down on the table in front of her.