Draiks and Angels: Deity

9 - Fish

In the morning the trio headed for the temple of Hatmehit. It was the farthest away and took almost an hour to reach from the safehouse. It, too, was abandoned and was starting to fill with sand. It had cut-out windows in the tops of the walls, letting the morning light inside, and Satiya's fires weren't needed. There were many pedestals of varying heights around the room, and carved images of water and a type of fish on the wall. Satiya didn't recognize it, but it almost looked like a dolphin. The altar, again, was empty.

"Fish eat... worms?" Amisi asked.

"We didn't need to provide an offering to Nemty, so maybe not to Hatmehit either?" Satiya thought out loud.

"What's missing here that we can remedy?" Khait asked.

They looked around the room. The altar was obviously empty, but that wasn't what they were looking for. There were no empty water basins. There was a lot of sand and empty pedestals.

"I can get rid of the sand?"

"But it seems like something needs to go on these," Amisi said, gesturing to the stone stands.

"You two think about that while I deal with this," Satiya started toward the piles of sand.

She stood over a pile, pointed both palms at it, and using her magic, compressed it into a brick. Then she picked up the brick and set it outside the temple. Back to the sand and another brick. It was slow going as there was a lot of sand and she didn't want to make the bricks too large to carry. Eventually Khait and Amisi carried the bricks while she just compressed them.

It was noon by the time the temple had been cleared of sand, on the inside at least. Satiya rested against the wall with her eyes closed while Amisi brought out some bread and cheese for lunch.

"Any thoughts on what to put on the pedestals?" she asked, eyes still closed.

Khait started, "Hatmehit was known as the 'Lady of myrrh,' meaning she was associated with good-smelling things. Maybe if we put things like that on the pedestals..."

Satiya opened one eye to look at Khait, "You think we should put flowers on the pedestals?"

"It's a stretch, I know, but it's all I could come up with."

Satiya looked around, making sure nothing had magically changed from her efforts with the sand, and finally nodded, "It can't hurt to try."

It took them another hour to return to town and get to the market. They found a flower seller and Khait insisted on buying, saying that Amisi had already bought breakfast and lunch, and he wanted to contribute. Trying to think outside the box, they also bought a bottle of perfume, an orange, an overripe pineapple, some vanilla beans, some cinnamon sticks and some incense.

They took a small break to treat Satiya to a traditional dessert, made of puff pastry with pistachios, coconut flakes, and raisins. She didn't even notice the furtive glances people gave her black wings as they passed.

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Kek dropped Michael to the floor. The Shadow had just finished squeezing every last drop of magic from him. How many times had this been? Only twice? It took him and Cona approximately a day to recover their magic, and so once a day Kek had come to the cells to take it from them. Cona had to be more valuable, with vastly more magic than Michael, but Kek seemed to take infinitely more pleasure in stealing his power. He grabbed Michael by the neck, lifted him high in the air, and smiled cruelly, each time. He seemed disappointed when Michael's magic was drained, would drop him to the floor, and stalk over to take Cona's magic too. She, he left on the floor, unconscious.