Cursed Times - Only Yesterday! Sequel to Wattys 2015 winner!

Chapter 2 - Metjen: Secrets of the Temple

A little bit earlier...

Metjen yawned.

The debate had been raging all afternoon. It was evening now, and the assorted members of the holy council still had not found a satisfactory conclusion to their verbal warfare. If anything, they had shifted away even further from a potential consensus. Metjen found it surprising that this anointed posse was even striving for agreement, given their societies' penchant for dictatorship.

He tried to alleviate his boredom by examining a bunch of fluffy pink clouds as they sailed past the arched windows of the council hall. Eventually, they got hidden by a ceiling painted with unlikely impressions of the Egyptian pantheon of deities. How the artist had managed to squeeze them all in, was beyond him. The gaudy roof protected rows of benches equally jam-packed with priests facing their assorted prophets who floated at various altitudes in mid-air. Behind them, on the pillared side of the hall, the clouds re-appeared in the open skies above the reflection pool. Metjen did a mind-check. Yep, the hues of the clouds perfectly matched the colour of the lilies drifting on the azure surface of the decorative water feature.

His field of view was somewhat spoiled by the perspiring fellow priest sitting on the row of benches below his own. The fact that the guy wore healer-blue and was no female constituted a dead giveaway of his association with the temple of ibis-headed Thoth, the god of science and healing. Thoth was also the deity his multiple great-grandfather Imhotep served as high priest. Sometimes, Metjen wished some form-any form-of healing skills had materialised during his career, giving him an excuse to join Imhotep's outfit. Instead, he prayed to the sun god Ra. No matter what his little sister Rani-Ra might be insinuating-it was not the dandelion yellow of his pleated robes that annoyed him... .

'Your contribution, Golden One?'

Metjen shook out of his reverie and faced a sea of blank stares displaying a wide variation of polite disinterest. The only person who seemed to find a perverse pleasure in his discomfort was that slimy weasel, the second prophet of Ra. Ptahmes, Metjen believed the cretin was called. He was not good with names, especially if it involved people he could not stand, and none of Ra's trio of prophets merited a flexing of Metjen's mnemonic muscles. Still, they purported to be his superiors, so he better be careful.

'Eh, what? Forgive me, Oh Divine Prophet, but that is a complex matter for sure. Would you care to run a summary past me again?' Metjen forced his face into a bland smile.

Groans all around indicated that this answer might have just extended the pointless debate even further. What was he supposed to do when he had no inkling what this oily brother of a Nile snake had been warbling on about? Most likely it was drivel anyway. The guy was full of it, even when he had just returned from the privy. Metjen caught a disapproving gaze from Imhotep and flinched. Had his august ancestor been mind-listening to this little nugget of non information? If so, he was in for some bollocking later. How on Earth-or below it-was a chap supposed to remember all this stuff... .

And maybe he should start paying attention, it would be too embarrassing if he did not catch the morsels of information that droning voice was spitting out.

Apparently the gist of it was that most members of the Holy Council were convinced they had left all of the dark priests behind in the 'demon world', aka the place of his birth. Otherwise known as Planet Earth, 21st century CE, on the African continent; Cairo to be precise. As full of demons as it was, his old home still had been almost devoid of magic which had made his life bloody difficult given who he was... .

In the name of the Devourer, he needed to focus.

'The members of the holy council in their benign wisdom have therefore reached the conclusion that the so-called information brought forth by the so-called High Priestess of Hathor, Iseret, was flawed. We engaged in the supreme effort of constructing the device of life to shift the lands of Kemet-and others, but they are not of much importance, given that they are inhabited by people of foreign birth-into this mirror world. We ensured that all required curses and spells were in place to keep out not only demons but dark ones as well, so no way is it possible-'