Set by Alessa Thorn
24
For the second time that evening, Cairo prison was graced with a divine visitor.
Thoth put the two scarabs into his pocket and looked up at the sprawling complex of concrete and metal. He could smell the stench of suffering from there.
With a frustrated growl, Thoth walked through the gates.
Quick flicks of bronze power zipped through the air, knocking out guards as he walked, searching the cells for two dead bodies.
Of course, he couldn't have died somewhere less filthy,Thoth thought irritably.
He found Kader Ayad's cell by following the smell of fresh blood. Two guards were stinking piles of offal in front of it.
Kader, a man who had always looked like a powerful sort of human in the papers, was pale and bloody, crouched by two bodies and wielding a pathetically small knife.
"Ah, good evening, Mr. Ayad. I've come to take these bodies off your hands," Thoth greeted politely.
"You stay away! I have to protect them, I—" Kader slumped to the ground face-first as Thoth's magic hit him.
"Humans. Always have to be so loud and argumentative," Thoth muttered as he stepped around and over the pools of blood. He raised an eye at the exploded body still dripping down the walls. "Someone got dramatic, didn't he?"
Thoth nudged Set's body with a boot. He looked at the wounds, the bullet holes in Set's head, and Ayla's torn neck. "You couldn't make it easy for me just once, could you? No." A scarab bit at him from the inside of his pocket. "Yes, Yes, I'm hurrying. You can't rush perfection."
Thoth sketched two sigils over the bodies, and they floated up in the air.
With another burst of bronze magic, Thoth opened a portal door to his workshop and stepped out of the gory prison and into his home.
The bodies floated after him, arranging themself on the two embalming tables that Thoth had been using on and off as desks.
It had been a long fucking night, and Thoth really didn't have time to deal with resurrecting a god and his woman.
He washed his hands and face in a nearby sink before he left the bodies and went to brew coffee. The scarabs crawled out of the pocket and up his arm.
"Come on, just let me get some caffeine, and I'll do it. You don't want me messing this up, and it has been a long time since I tried it," Thoth complained. "You know I was busy doing things before I was pulled unceremoniously into your messy love life."
It was an understatement. Thoth had been about to trap a rogue ifrit that had been terrorizing people in the Bahig Village when he had been sucked into the Duat. It was the third demon hunt that month, and he just knew his missing spellbook was the cause.
If I ever get my hands on that thief, I swear on the Ogdoad that I'll…Thoth's internal rant was cut off as a scarab bit him. He knew without looking it was Set.
"Yes, yes, I'm going," Thoth murmured, draining the small hot coffee in one deep gulp.
Scooping the scarabs up off the counter, he carried them back into his workshop. There were hours of work that needed to be done before the dawn.
Thoth stripped and washed the bodies, cleaning the wounds and ensuring there was no sign of bullet shavings inside of them.
He couldn't wait to meet Ayla in living flesh and learn how she managed to do the impossible and wake Set's sleeping Ka.
Despite what lies Set told Osiris, Ayla was no ordinary woman.
After washing the bodies, Thoth soaked bandages in oils of lavender, rose, myrrh, and cedar, biding them over their wounds as he spoke healing spells of rejuvenation. He spent an hour meticulously piecing Set's brain back together, vowing that he was going to knock some sense into it once the god was back on his feet.
With his magic straining under his skin, Thoth took each of the scarabs, put them into the mouths of the bodies, and sealed their lips with honey.
"This better work, or I'm going to burn both of you out of spite," he muttered.
Thoth feared that he had forgotten the old spells of resurrection, but as he began, his tongue, Ka, and magic remembered the ebb and flow of them.
On and on, he chanted until the power of the Duat and his own magic combined, releasing the souls and binding them back to their bodies. At least, that's what Thoth tried to do.
"It would seem that Osiris isn't going to let you get away from his wrath so easily," he said as the ritual took on a life of its own and everything became…messy.
