Chapter 602: Somebody Is In My Body...

Chapter 602: Somebody Is In My Body... [Bonus Chapter]

Two statues of lightless oily glass tumbled through the thirty-thousand-foot void for a single second, before the atmospheric drag tore them apart, shattering Tariq and Safira into millions of drifting lifeless black particles that scattered across the sky with their souls erased from the wheel of reincarnation forever.

High above the falling debris, tumbling through the sky clad in his pristine white military suit, was Pharaoh-President Menes Al-Mansur.

His gold pectoral collar had been ripped away by the wind with his beaten-gold headdress lost to the clouds.

His Fourth Stage mana was flaring violently, manifesting a massive shimmering disc of golden solar-sand beneath his boots to slow his descent, but his liquid-gold eyes were fixed entirely on the cloud of black dust below.

...He had watched it all.

...He had watched his last surviving son, the boy who had pointed a lance at him for love, the boy he had secretly blessed, be impaled, crushed, and erased from existence without even being granted the mercy of a corpse.

’If only...’ Menes thought, his composure cracking down the center with a deep bitter thought filling his head. ’If only our ancestor hadn’t been so greedy. If only she hadn’t reached for power she had no right to claim...’

SHRRRRK!

The sky darkened as a colossal wave of black sand, spanning three miles across, towering over the clouds like an apocalyptic tidal wave, descended upon the Pharaoh-President.

Menes looked up with his Fourth Stage solar shield holding for barely half a second before the black sand dissolved the gold mana like acid through paper.

PIERCE!

A massive jagged spear of black glass punched clean through Menes’s abdomen, lifting the ruler of Khemet into the air and the pain was immediate and accompanied by the freezing horrifying sensation of his own flesh calcifying into brittle black glass.

...The calm imperial facade that Menes Al-Mansur had maintained for three decades completely shattered.

"NO!" Menes screamed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched undignified shriek of pure terror. "I DON’T WANT TO DIE! I DON’T WANT TO DIE! THIS WASN’T MY SIN!"

He clawed frantically at the black spear with his fingernails snapping off against the glass as blood poured from his nose and ears.

"THIS IS ALL HER FAULT!" the Pharaoh-President wailed into the roaring wind, his mind breaking under the weight of the ancient curse. "OUR ANCESTOR! SHE DID THIS! IF ONLY SHE HADN’T BETRAYED NITOCRIS! IF ONLY SHE HADN’T THROWN THE WOMAN AWAY... WE WOULDN’T BE PAYING FOR IT! WE WOULDN’T—"

SNAP!

The black glass crawled over his throat, over his jaw, over his eyes.

CRACK-BOOM!

The body of Pharaoh-President Menes Al-Mansur shattered into a cloud of black dust with his soul devoured whole, leaving only the empty wind.

RUMBLE-CRASH!

Thirty seconds later, the flaming wreckage of the Aethel-Sun and its eight escort cruisers slammed into the golden dunes below.

Massive concussive shockwaves rippled outward, throwing towering plumes of white-hot sand hundreds of feet into the air, the seismic thunder rolling across the desolate Khemet desert for sixty miles in every direction, signaling the total extinction of the main royal house of Al-Mansur.

In all of that...

’I’m scared...’

The thought was small and trembling like a plucked wire in the freezing dark.

’I’m so scared... Silas... please... somebody help me...’

Harper Whitmore stood, or rather she floated, in the center of an infinite lightless void that smelled of crushed dry lotus and ancient tomb-dust.

She had no weight and she had no breath.

When she looked down at her hands, she didn’t see the smooth pale skin of a noble trade heiress... she saw a translucent shimmering specter of pale violet light, rippling like an oil slick on water.

She was a ghost... A detached helpless soul trapped in the passenger seat of her own existence...

And barely five feet away from her spiritual eyes was her physical body.

Harper’s physical frame stood with its bare feet planted firmly upon the burning white-hot crest of a massive sand dune.

The desert wind whipped her tailored suit and the dark charcoal wool coated in fine silt while her long vibrant purple hair was loose, thrashing violently around her shoulders.

In her physical right hand, resting loosely at her side, was the First Khopesh of the Khemet Dominion.

The curved ancient sickle-sword gleamed with a sickening iridescent black sheen, its golden crossguard humming with a pulse that seemed to synchronize with the heartbeat of the desert itself.

In the distance, three miles away, black smoke billowed into the azure sky from the shattered burning crater where the royal fleet had fallen.

SLURP!

Harper watched in paralyzed nauseated horror as her physical tongue extended, licking her own lower lip with a slow relish that made Harper’s spirit want to vomit.

’What’s her issue...?’

SWOOSH!

Across the endless golden dunes vast rivers of black sand that had just slaughtered eighty royal guards and erased the ruling dynasty of Khemet came rushing back...

They flowed like living black water up the slope of the dune, swirling around Harper’s bare ankles, crawling up her calves, and seamlessly dissolving directly into the pores of her flesh, vanishing into her core with a soft warm hiss.

"Harper" chuckled.

The sound came from Harper’s own vocal cords, but the tone was off.

"Mmh..." the entity murmured with Harper’s physical fingers flexing tightly around the hilt of the khopesh. "What a truly magnificent vessel you are, little mortal."

The physical head turned slightly, the neck rolling with a slow fluid elegance that looked completely unnatural on Harper’s usually brisk professional frame.

Harper’s physical eyes locked directly onto Harper’s spiritual form.

The eyes were no longer the soft intelligent violet that Silas knew as they were burning with an intense emerald-green fire... a sickening radiance that seemed to pierce straight through Harper’s ethereal soul, pinning her like an insect on a display board.

Harper’s spirit gasped with an involuntary shudder of terror tearing through her incorporeal chest.

"Give it back..." Harper wept, her spiritual voice echoing in the dead space between them, cracking with rage. "Give me back my body, you monster! Get out of my head! GET OUT!"

The green-eyed entity didn’t scowl as she simply offered Harper a wide grin that stretched Harper’s lips until the corners practically tore.

’I’m sorry for acting like this Harper...’

"Now, now," Nitocris drawled, her tone carrying the smooth patronizing patience of an empress humoring a petulant servant. "Do not be so terribly ungrateful, little Harper... You should be down on your ethereal knees thanking me... I was not fully aware, when we first spoke in the quiet corridors of your mind, that you carried Khemet’s blood in your veins."

Nitocris raised Harper’s left hand, turning the pale wrist over, admiring the blue veins running beneath the translucent skin.

"It’s distant, of course," the entity continued, her voice rich with amused observation. "Diluted by generations of northern commoners and trade mongrels... A mere trickle from some wayward concubine who fled the southern wars three hundred years ago and yet, the genetic match is unmistakable... The sand magic, the authority I possess, harmonizes with your nervous system so effortlessly! You were practically born to be my scabbard."

"I am not your scabbard!" Harper screamed, lunging forward with her spiritual hands, desperate to claw at her own physical face and desperate to force her way back into her own meridians. "Why are you doing this...?"

VUM!

The moment Harper’s ethereal form crossed within two feet of her physical body, an invisible impenetrable barrier of dense pressure slammed into her soul.

"I’m sorry."

’Sorr—?’

CRACK!

Harper was violently repelled backward, tumbling through the empty air with her spiritual form flickering dangerously like a dying lightbulb.

Nitocris let out a soft sigh, resting the flat of the black khopesh against Harper’s shoulder.

"Do not embarrass yourself, child," Nitocris chided gently. "I told you... as a true Spirit of the old era, the mortal plane is forbidden to me. Those wretched Suppression Engines anchored in the lower crust by the World Council, they crush consciousness into inert stardust the moment we attempt to cross the waking threshold without a vessel..."

She looked up at the burning suns, her green eyes blazing with centuries of cold malice.

"I cannot walk upon this sand with my own flesh... Therefore, I must extend my deepest, most heartfelt gratitude to you, Harper Whitmore... By voluntarily opening your core, by surrendering your trust to the ’great warlord’ in the blade, you have generously donated your vessel to my holy vengeance."

Harper froze with her spiritual hands clutching her chest as a terrible nauseating realization washed over her.

’I opened my core...’ Harper remembered, the memory flashing through her mind like a jagged blade.

For a while now, the voice in the weapon had whispered sweet intoxicating promises.

It had offered her strength... It had shown her visions of grand battles, promising her the power to stand proudly beside Silas, promising that she would no longer be a weaker woman hiding behind his broad shoulders... And this morning, in the quiet privacy of her bedroom, the entity had told her that the final breakthrough required absolute surrender, that she had to drop her mental wards entirely to receive the ’gift.’

She had done it willingly and she had walked straight into the trap with a smile on her face.

"Who are you...?" Harper whispered, her spiritual voice shaking so violently it barely carried across the dune. "You aren’t Nitocris. You aren’t the First Per-aa... who the hell are you?!"

Nitocris paused.

Harper’s physical face tilted to the side, a slow dark mocking chuckle rumbling from her throat.

"Oh? Have you forgotten so quickly, little mortal?" Nitocris asked, her voice dropping into a deep tone that made the bedrock beneath the sand vibrate with sickening familiarity. "You have stood in my presence before and you walked through the sunken ruins of my sanctuary... You saw the broken pillars of my realm too."

Harper’s ethereal eyes widened in horror.

’No...’

The memories of the ancient sunken tomb, the suffocating lightless domain that Silas had dragged her through weeks ago, surged back with suffocating clarity.

"I... Ititius...?" Harper choked out, her spirit trembling so hard she could barely maintain her human shape. "You... you are Ititius?!"

"We are one and the same," Nitocris replied, her tone conversational yet carrying the weight of an ancient abyss.

’Ititius was destroyed!’ Harper screamed internally with tears spilling from her spiritual eyes. ’Thor shattered that core and ripped that domain apart! How are you still here?!’

Nitocris didn’t bother to answer the unasked question.

She turned Harper’s physical body around with her green-lit gaze locking onto the shimmering heat haze on the northern horizon.

Fifty miles away, barely visible through the distortion of the desert sun, rose the colossal gleaming white walls of Iunu, the capital of the Sun-Crown.

VUUUUUUUM!

Nitocris bent Harper’s physical knees as the golden sand beneath her bare feet violently compressed into solid quartz.

BOOM!

In a detonation that threw a colossal crater of sand fifty feet into the air, Harper’s physical body rocketed forward.

She tore across the desert floor at three times the speed of sound with a trailing jet of black sand screaming behind her like the tail of a falling comet, heading directly toward the capital city.

’NO!’ Harper wailed, her spiritual form being dragged helplessly through the air in the physical body’s wake, tethered by an unbreakable glowing silver thread of soul-binding.

"Stop it! Please, stop!" Harper begged, rushing through the sky beside her own sprinting body. "There are millions of people in Iunu! My sister... Penelope is in the north! Silas is—"

"Quiet."

Nitocris didn’t stop running.

Her green eyes remained fixed on the horizon, but her voice carried an edge of cold sharp annoyance that made Harper’s spirit seize.

"I have an ancient tale to tell you, scabbard," Nitocris said, her tone level as she bounded over a three-hundred-foot sand dune with an effortless gravity-defying leap. "A tale of how this wretched nation was forged in betrayal, and why every soul carrying the name of Al-Mansur must be erased from this world... You will listen to me so I can return back to normal and be ni—"

"I don’t care about your story!" Harper screamed, her terror finally boiling over into desperate hysterical defiance. "I don’t want to hear it! Give me back my body! Give it back, you sick, rotting bitch! GIVE IT BACK—"

SWOOSH!

Harper’s physical body abruptly stopped as she landed on the peak of a high razor-thin dune overlooking the distant outer suburbs of the capital.

Nitocris slowly lowered the black khopesh, turning Harper’s head toward the floating spirit.

The green fire in her eyes was completely still, radiating an emotionless void that was far more terrifying than any rage.

"You seem confused, Harper Whitmore," Nitocris spoke softly. "You seem to believe that your compliance is a matter of negotiation... You seem to believe that because I require your body, you possess leverage over me..."

Before Harper could even comprehend the words—

SHING-CRUNCH!

Nitocris’s right arm blurred and with a swift casual thrust, Nitocris drove Harper’s own bare left hand straight through Harper’s own physical chest.

SPLAT-TEAR!

The fingers, coated in sharp black sand, tore through the charcoal suit, punched clean through the sternum, shattered four ribs, and closed tightly around Harper’s physical heart.

With a sharp wet rip, Nitocris crushed the heart into bloody pulp right inside the thoracic cavity as Harper’s spiritual form froze.

She didn’t feel physical pain since her spirit possessed no nervous system, no flesh to bleed and no lungs to choke on air.

Yet, watching her own hand buried inside her own shattered chest, seeing the bright blood fountain outward, drenching her white silk blouse and dripping onto the golden sand below, a wave of paralyzing existential horror seized Harper’s soul.

Her mind fractured and the reality of her own physical death stared her dead in the face.

"You see?" Nitocris murmured, her voice smooth and unbothered by the gaping bloody hole in her chest.