Just as the noise threatened to shatter the bones of her head, she sprang out of the blackness and landed behind the farmer. It grew louder and louder, provoking her, taunting her, invading her skull and battering its low vault. The steady, dull th-thud, th-thud, th-thud.
And over the sound of his tread she heard that for which she'd been listening all night. Heavy, irregular footsteps announced the farmer's approach. Slinking back into the deepest blackness, she crouched on her hind legs. It boiled through her like rolling thunderclouds. As he marched unsteadily toward her, she felt the sudden burning rush of power spiced with anticipation. He would use the alley to cross this district of taverns and beer houses on his way to the skiff he'd left at the dock. She sniffed the air again and caught the scent of a decayed ka, the soul of the evil one. This was the one who had offended, had transgressed in so callous a manner that she had heard the cry of injustice from below.
#KINGDOM RUSH ORIGINS BLOOD QUARRY CRACKED#
A humble farmer with cracked, sunbaked skin, splayed, dirty feet, and three cracked teeth. He was a small man, as befit his place among the living. She turned a yellow eye and saw, at last, the evil one. The brittle wooden door of the beer tavern swung open again. At an even greater distance, out in the western desert, land of the dead, hyenas yipped and squealed. Far away, in the palace district, a hound howled. All grew quiet again, and the light from the beer house began to dim as someone quenched lamps. Leaning against the chipped plaster of the wall, she rubbed her haunches against the surface, scraping off more chips of plaster with her rough hide. But the evil one had been in the beer house since dusk. She grunted with impatience, something she never experienced below. A larger group burst from the interior, arguing, giggling, swaying to the beat of a sailing song. One of its wooden shutters was loose and warped, allowing light from within to escape and casting rippled shadows on the packed earth of the road. Snorting to rid herself of the stench, she returned her attention to the beer house across the street. Bearing the torch that had assaulted her eyes, they stumbled past and swerved to disappear down the street. Foreigners-in rank, unclean wool robes smelling of beer and sex. Rapid, guttural chattering made her wince. Eyes with daggered pupils observed the strangers. It snaked back into the shelter of the alley at the sudden appearance of light. A claw, long, curved, with a honed blade-edge as sharp as a physician's knife, scraped over the cracked mud brick of a wall. The snout whipped around at the sound of a flute, a shriek of drunken laughter from the beer house.
Lifting her hard, jutting snout, she sucked in the textured scents-waters of the Nile, mud and refuse from the docks nearby, the faint smell of dung mixed with fish and smoke from a thousand dying oven fires. Night in the land of the living was a feeble imitation of the obsidian nothingness that possessed her own lair, yet she could smell the darkness. Memphis, Year Five of the Reign of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun
Ammut, Eater of Souls, Devourer of Shades, swings her head toward the smell of fresh meat. But Ammut lifts her crocodile head and listens to souls in torment in the living world above. The gods turn and face the portal through which the next one will come, the evildoer forgotten.
#KINGDOM RUSH ORIGINS BLOOD QUARRY CRACK#
Bones crack flesh is severed and Ammut the Devouress carries out the punishment dealt to all evil ones- annihilation. Long, yellow-toothed jaws snap, once at the heart, once at the dead one. The Devouress salivates, squats on her haunches, and springs. A scream tears itself from the throat of the dead one who stands at the scales. Toth, Osiris, and the pantheon observe but do not interfere. Ammut the Devouress crouches by the scales while Anubis weighs the heart of the dead one against the Feather of Maat. She is the Devouress, Eater of the Dead, Devourer of Souls, creature of the netherworld- crocodile head, lion's foreparts, hippo's hindquarter- she is feared even by the one called Blood Drinker. Series: Lord Meren Eater of souls Lynda Robinson
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