Set by Alessa Thorn

Prologue

Long ago, before Geb, the earth, and Nut, the sky, separated and started creating gods, Thoth, god of wisdom and magic, got impatient with the pace of creation.

Deciding that if you wanted something done you had to do it yourself, Thoth sung himself into being.

Self-begotten and quickly bored, Thoth tried to speed creation up by complaining to Nut to hurry up and make gods for him to talk to.

Nut lamented that she had been sterile for 360 days, so once again, Thoth took things into his own clever hands.

Thoth gambled with the Moon, and won five extra days in the year in which Nut and Geb could get busy, and in that time, Set, Osiris, Nephthys and Isis were born.

The four gods always wanted to know how Thoth had managed to create himself, and harassed him regularly for the secrets he possessed. They even went so far as to complain to Ogdoad about it.

The Ogdoad, eight primeval gods of the chaos before creation, told them to go away and figure it out on their own.

Thoth liked secrets, especially ones that involved him being cleverer than the rest of the argumentative god-children.

He didn’t feel like he owed them any answers, because it was his bet with the Moon that the four squabbling gods were created in the first place.

They hadn’t even thanked him for creating the 365 day calendar at the same time, which shows that even the gods need to learn a thing or two about gratitude.

The gods never forgot that Thoth knew secrets of the universe that they didn’t. And they resented it.

The moon never forgot how Thoth had cheated her out of another five days. And she resented it.

Thoth knew that they resented it. And he couldn’t have cared less…