Heroes of Nagato

Imagine living in a place where just turning the corner bring you face to face with stalls upon stalls with merchants of every kind, people everywhere, talking, bartering, and laughing. The most calm and peaceful city in which to live.

As I turn the corner, I stand and admire the sites before me. As I walk towards work, I glace at all the stalls as I walk by, stalls made of mood, painted in vibrant colors, some with drapes, some without. The first stalls have a variety of skirts and kalasiris. A kalasiris is a long sheath dress, very form fitting. They are very mute in color. It isn’t very often that either are colorful here, because the Nagada culture uses color accents, like jewelry, to accentuate our clothing.

One stall has a poet offering to write an ode to your love for you. I don’t think he gets much work; he is very thing and frail looking. Of all our people, his name is very original, William. He sings his poems ‘William the Bloody’. I feel bad for him, because his poems are not particularly good, but he tries, and I try and purchase a poem every now and again.

The next stall has two of my friends who work there. They sell the most beautifully painted, hand-crafted pottery. They use clay that has a rich burgundy hue. They paint unique designs on them, or sometimes just a simple black line at the top. They are very high-quality products. Amunet and Nephthys are sisters, one year a part in age. They look very similar, long straight black hair, smooth golden skin, and deep dark brown eyes. They are both tall and slender, but that is where the similarities end. Amunet, who is 21, has a strongly feminine personality, face always full of makeup, and wears an over abundance of gems and jewels. Nephthys on the other hand, is more athletic, her makeup and jewels are minimum. She and I are very similar in that way.

Next, I pass some stalls selling makeup, jewelry and gems. I spend most of my coins here. I’m not much for makeup, but gems and jewels are always catching my eyes. The hues are so rich and vibrant, I would happily buy all of it if I could.

Oh, by the way, I’m Hatshepsut, Hep for short. I’m a barista at one of the food stalls with another friend, Cleopatra, Cleo for short. I am of average height, and I’m 22 years old. My hair is black, which is very common in this area, I keep it short. Although I am female born, I present myself as male, hence hep for short. I feel fortunate that our culture is accepting of this. I hear of other places where people will kill others for wanted to be themselves.

Cleo and I work as baristas at a food stall. We handle drinks while two other handle the food. Our stall is not as exiting as others, we are most of a necessity. We serve plates of fruits, vegetables, and sandwiches, along with warm bean water or warm herbal leaf water. The bean water is much more popular. Also, our clientele is mostly the construction workers, which include two other of my friends, Khalil and Ammon.

Both Khalil and Ammon are muscular in stature and working in construction has also made them strong. Ammon has red hair, and when he smiles it’s like looking at the face of Ramses II, the Pharaoh. Khalil’s eyes are ocean blue and seem to sparkle when he is being mischievous.

Now Ramses, not the pharaoh, but Ammon’s younger brother, thought of himself as the reincarnation of Ramsay II. He is a musician, and his female audience treat him as if he was the Ramses II. He and Ammon look identical but siblings in Nagada also do. Ramses is very talented and does very well as a musician, but truth be told, his parents wanted him to be like Ammon and go into construction. We all took may walks in the middle of the night when he would have arguments with his parents about his work life.

There is another stall I got o everyday. It’s a very humble stall, but its full of colorful drapes. It’s the seers stall, Neith. She is frighteningly accurate when doing readings but has not yet mastered her visions. Neith is a descendant of Nefertiti and just as beautiful. She has long black hair, but there is wave in her hair, like who the ocean moves. Her eyes are as dark as the night sky, and her skin as soft as silk. We have been together for almost three years. Next month, on our anniversary, I will ask her to wed me. Cleo & Khalil have been helping me with the proposal preparations. I know she will say yes, but I am still nervous.

I walk over to say good morning before our day starts. Our stalls are far apart, so I won’t be able to see her till the end of day. As I walk away, our arms stretched out, wanted to keep holding her hand, I say, “Later luv, hugs and kisses.” She smiles sweetly and says “same”.

As I walk back to my work stall, I notice a lot of murmuring. There is always lots of people talking, but today, the conversations seem to be more of a hush, like they are talking of something unnatural. I get to work and Cleo, who has long curly hair, has already opened the booth for the bean water clientele. I take an apron and jump in and start my day.

Throughout the day, I hear bits and parts of stories, about 1 missing boy and 2 other boys who were found dead in the middle of the night. That must have been what the murmurs from this morning were. With every bit of story that we heard, Cleo and I kept glancing at each other. Stuff like this doesn’t happen often, or at least, not to the point where everyone is talking about it. It’s usually kept pretty hush-hush.

After work that night, we all meet at my place, which is just around the corner from the stalls. My house is looks very common, made of bricks and has three rooms inside, kitchen-living room, bedroom and washroom. As I get in, I start preparing food for the friends, Cleo usually helps me. As the others start arriving, some start setting the table while the others take out some of our books.

While we eat, we start discussing the problem of the day, the disappearance of the boy and what happened to the other two boys. Ammon picked up some news parchments for research. All three were from the same locality, just 4 rows away from our market. As we finish our meal, we agree to our respective jobs; Kahlil, Ammon, Nephthys and I go on patrol, Ramses and Cleo with go try and find information from the doctors on what killed the boys, and Amunet and Neith while stay behind channel the spirit world and see if they have any information as well. Amunet is not a seer but is very interested in the occult and Neith insists that it can be thought. And with that, we go our separate ways to meet again in a couple of hours with our findings.

Upon everyone’s return to my place, we all take turns informing the others of our respective finds. Cleo and Ramses are the first to get back, so they, along with Amunet and Neith, start their discussions. Cleo and Ramses were able to get information from the doctors, who as they said, seemed very worried and confused. The two boys seemed to be eaten by some animal, limbs and clothes were torn to shreds. The biggest confusion is that the animal had gone into their houses and dragged out through the windows, according to eyewitnesses. By the time the guards found the boys, they had already passed. The third boy has not yet been found. Neith had a vision of three different animals, each one attacking one of the boys. But since she hasn’t mastered visions yet, she is unsure how to interpret it.

As we walk into my house, we hear the conversation and see the four of them with books open, scribbling on parchments, trying to make sense of things. Khalil, Ammon, Nephthys and I walk in, looking better for ware, and just slink into the sofa, quiet at first, taking mental notes at what we just went through. They look at us, the scribbling and talking stops, and the quiet becomes heavy. Once we compose ourselves, I take a deep breath and start telling them about our night.

“There’s been a fourth victim,” I say with melancholy. “This….creature… was hauling him out of a window, but the boy wasn’t moving or screaming, he was alive, but not fighting to get free. We tried to get to him in time, but the creature turned a corner and when we turned the same corner, it and the boy was gone. It took a while to find him, it was 5 rows over. The boy was lifeless, and the creature just stared at us. We attacked it but it fought well and eventually got away.”

This is when Neith jumped in and asked what the creature looked like. The four of us looked confusedly at each other and then all tried to explain what we saw. Khalil and Nephthys said the creature was a hippopotamus. Ammon swears it was a lion, and I swear it was a crocodile. “Which is why we call it a creature; we can’t agree as to what we saw.”

Everyone was rightly confused, except for Neith. She immediately got up and ran to one of the open books. We all just watched her flip the parchments and throw unneeded books to the ground until “AHA!!” she said very excitedly, but then her brows furrowed, and she looked at us very worried like.

“What?” I ask as I get up and walk over to her.

“Ammit”, she says, “Ammit is the only creature that explains what you all saw, but he’s from the spirit realm, he’s not a corporal form.”

‘I beg to differ, the scratches on my arm would argue differently.”

Neith then explains to us that Ammit is a non-corporal creature from the afterlife and is the devourer of the dead. She eats only the ones Anubis deems impure.

“Ammit explains your vision!” exclaimed Amunet. Neith nodded her head solemnly, then said, “yeah, but how do you kill something that’s already dead? Or make him incorporeal again?

That was the question of the night. It was a night of research. Our stalls will not be open the next day, but we had to get to the bottom of this. Although we work like most everyone else, we are the ones the police go to when the problems are of a supernatural nature. So, our research begins.

….A few moments later…

Just kidding. We all start doing research in our own way. Ramses and Cleo go to talk to the elders, hopefully they have some information. Amunet and Neith start pulling books and start researching. The rest of us go out on patrol. Ammon and Neith go one way, Khalil and I go the other.

About halfway thru the night, we couldn’t find any traces of Ammit. But on our way back home, we are suddenly standing face to face with the Goddess Ma’at, and he’s asking for our help. We head back to the house with the Goddess Ma’at. Ammon and Nephthys were still out patrolling, but everyone else had come back. When we walked in with the Goddess Ma’at, everyone became silent and then bowed in respect to the Goddess.

Ma’at was searching for Ammit and she did not know how she escaped. However, her first order of business was to catch Ammit and make her incorporeal again. She explained we need to find a gold ring with an emerald stone shaped like a scarab beetle. The last sighting of this ring was over 100 years ago.

I sighed, wishing we could have some good luck sometimes, but Amunet spoke up and said that she remembers seeing this type of ring in her grand-mother’s things. And without letting anyone say anything, she was off and running to her place. All her grand-mother’s things were in her attic ever since she came to stay with them.

While she was gone, the Goddess Ma’at gave us the instructions on how to turn Ammit incorporeal again. We only need to touch her forehead with the jewel and poof, incorporeal. The ring had been made especially for retuning incorporeal things to their incorporeal state. Now we just had to hope that the ring Amunet remembers is the same ring the Goddess Ma’at spoke of.

Amunet ran back into the house, clearly out of breath, and tried to hand the ring to the Goddess Ma’at, but she stepped back. We all stood aback and stared. The Goddess Ma’at explained that it would work on her too, and until Ammit is back, she needed to stay here to help as much as she could.

We still had 2 hours left before the sunlight, so we all went out patrolling. As we stepped out of the house, Nephthys and Ammon were just coming back, clearly, they had been in a scuffle. They told us they found Ammit and was just going to follow her around to make sure she didn’t harm anyone. But she found a target so they fought her off until the victim got away.

We all turned on our heals and heading to her last location and we would hunt her down from there. As we walked, we explained what we had found out. When we got to the ocean front, Ammit’s last location, the Goddess Ma’at made a noise, one in each direction. She said it was her call for Ammit. And sure enough, from the east came Ammit, running happily to the Goddess.

As she got closer, she stopped abruptly. The Goddess Ma’at told us to stay still, Ammit senses that we’re trying to trick her. The Goddess sat on the ground and called to Ammit again. We all took the cue and sat down as well. Ammit started approaching cautiously, it took about 25 minutes for her to trust we weren’t trying to trick her. When she finally got beside the Goddess Ma’at, she allowed the Goddess to pet her. During that time, Amunet passed me the ring and I slowly got closer and closer. Ma’at introduced me to Ammit, how let me pet her after sniffing me for about 5 minutes.

As I was petting her, I quickly touched her forehead with the ring and …poof!.... gone. The Goddess Ma’at thanked us and asked me to touch her forehead with the stone as well. I did, and poof…. gone as well.

We all looked at each other and breathed a sigh of relief. On our walk back home, Cleo asked a question that had us silent for the rest of the way… Who made Ammit corporal?