Bathed Silver in Mercury

X. Elerie

Nick was downing drink after drink, Elerie sitting across from him in a bustling pub, staring at him, too shocked to tell him to slow down.

"What?" he asked, as if he had not just woken up in a morgue after being confirmed dead.

"How did you get out of that plane?" Elerie demanded, not blinking. "There's not a single scratch on your body Nick, and you should be dead, no one could have survived that crash." Nick shrugged, holding a drink in each hand, looking impressed with himself. Of course he would take it as a compliment.

Although she tried to contain it, she couldn't, and embarrassingly enough, a sob escaped her lips, one that had been threatening to break free ever since the crash. It was a mix of shock, relief, sadness, anger, confusion...

Now he looked startled. "Sorry," she said, desperately wiping away at her tears. "It's just, you're alive, and I don't know how. I don't know what's going on." She wiped at her eyes again and swallowed back another sob.

"Hey-" He reached out and placed his hand over hers on the table. She stared down at their hands for a moment before sliding hers away.

She sighed. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Saving my life back there."

"You would have done the same for me. Hell, you almost did."

"Yeah."

"But I couldn't let you do that."

"And now here we are." She nodded a little. There was a pause as she reached into her jacket pocket and withdrew something. "Nick, they found this in the pocket of your jacket and gave it to me. But since you're here now-" She trailed off and instead slid the item across the table.

The photograph. He stared down at it. "I thought I lost it in the crash." He reached out to slide it closer to himself, ensuring their fingers brushed. She quickly drew her hand away.

Again, she sighed. "Listen, Nick. I think you should know something. As you know, I dabble a little in ancient rituals and magic. I became an archaeologist to try and discover more about the beyond if you will and how the ancients saw it - some say ancient civilizations were more developed than we are today. So I search for antiquities with supposed supernatural powers or a connection to them. I had a bad feeling going into that tomb-"

"I thought that's cause I was with you."

"Just listen!" She paused to shake her head. "Jenny and I work with a group of archaeologists, and well we've developed this theory: that an Egyptian princess had been erased from the history books - deliberately. We've been searching for something called the Dagger of Set, a ceremonial knife with a large jewel at the hilt. Now Set is the Egyptian God of-"

"God of Death," he finished.

She paused, surprised. "Yes. How did you-"

"You were always studying this stuff. You were always working."

"I wasn't always working," she defended. He shrugged. She sighed and continued. "Legend has it that the dagger and stone, together, have the power to give Set physical form. We're convinced it was hidden here in Europe, stolen by Crusaders centuries ago. Jenny and I found reference to it in a manuscript written by a Crusader knight himself, and he suggested that the dagger was broken apart, separated from the stone, and we believe that the stone was buried with this knight, somewhere here in England. A massive Crusader tomb was recently discovered under London, and that tomb is what led us to Ahmanet."

"Ahmanet," he repeated in a whisper.

"Yes."

"You think the stone is buried somewhere in that tomb."

She nodded. "We believe that she's the princess in the legend. The hieroglyphs said she was destined to be Egypt's next queen, but then her birthright was taken from her. This led her down a dark path, one that had to be stopped."

"What'd she do?"

"She murdered her father, along with his wife and child, and made some sort of pact with Set. And then when the tomb turned out to be a prison, and then with the spiders, and birds, and sandstorm - something's happening, and I think it's all connected. And you're alive, and I don't know how." She trailed off, shaking her head. "I think that, somehow, we've angered the gods."

He stared back at her for a moment before smirking a little. She'd seen that look from him many times before, usually whenever she would babble on about this sort of thing. He used to do it jokingly to tease her.

"Oh don't look at me like that! This is serious!"

"Would you excuse me, I'll be right back." Nick slid out of his seat and disappeared into the restroom. She sighed.

Jenny came over from where she had been sitting at the counter.

"He won't speak to me, no surprise though, for he never did, even when we were at our closest." Elerie scoffed. "If we even were close. He was always secretive."

"It's so strange," marveled Jenny.

Elerie took one of Nick's still half-full drinks and swirled it around. "Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. For him to have survived that crash-" She shook her head. "It's impossible." She looked to her partner. "Right?"

(Haha I like that scene in the pub :) Hope you guys enjoyed thanks so much for reading!)