Page 134 of The Tribrid Princess and the Taste of Chaos
“Intuition?” Leo asks, not fazed at all.
“Maybe.” I brush the pad of my thumb over my nose, feeling the scar.
“The book that was taken. Pull up the images I sent you,” I say, standing up as Leo swipes a few screens, and they appear in front of me on a hologram screen. I stand up, staring at the words; words that were once unreadable, now pop off the screen.
“The words… they…”
“You can read them?” Leo asks.
“Fuck yeah, I can,” I murmur, my eyes skimming the page.
“They’re some kind of directions… From where the sun rises to scorch the brow of the jade-eyed sphinx, setting behind the twin peaks of burning sand. There, shall the desert winds reveal the path hidden in the dunes of the Egyptian desert…”
Leo’s typing as I speak, images of Egypt popping up all around us as I continue.
“Follow where the heat hangs heavy, no shadows dare linger. Rising from the sands is the temple that will only reveal itself when the blood of the Deimos is drunk by the ground itself. In the temple of the Deimos King, you will find what you seek. Blood worthy of dune, blood worthy of truth, blood worthy of Amun.”
“Amun…” Leo types it in when the door behind us opens to reveal Azura and Sienna, both in pyjamas, each holding two mugs of hot drinks.
“Amun?” Sienna asks, her eyes flicking over the holograms. “You can read it?” Her eyes widen as she passes me a mug.
“Thanks,” I say. She looks gorgeous in a long-sleeved, fitted black top and wide-leg pants. I can tell she isn’t wearing a brabeneath her top, and it’s fucking distracting. “Yeah, I can read it.”
“Amun was known as the Creator God, God of all creation. Later on, people began combining Amun and Ra as one, but they were two individual entities at the beginning,” Sienna explains.
“The Creator God, Amun is Zeus,” Leo murmurs, and I gulp down my drink.
Sienna nods. “I think so, yes.” Her eyes sparkle as if something just made sense. “The temple! The temple from my dreams! I was going to tell you, then something came up!” she says to me as if that makes sense.
“The temple in my dreams has this symbol, and the last time I was there, the priest said that this temple belongs to the one who shall be touched by Zeus himself. It was sandy. It could have been in Egypt!”
“Ok, you need to back up, dreams?” Leo asks sharply.
“I think it was a vision,” Sienna says dismissively, her eyes trained on Leo, but… she’s lying.
Why? Nothing about her expression or her heart rate changed, but she’s hiding something.
“Ok, so you saw a temple with this symbol?”
“Yes, very similar. The priest said ‘Zeus’, so that was what was throwing me off, but the text must have been from long before my vision, when Zeus was known as Amun,” she explains, as if it all suddenly made sense to her.
“Right, so let me get this straight. You think Jayce is favoured by Zeus?” Azura asks as she reads the translation Leo had typed up.
“Not think – I know. When Jayce fought that man, it waslike he was channelling Zeus: his strength, the lightning bolt-like energy around his arms. It makes sense!” Sienna says. “The book us girls have-”
“The one no one else can touch?” Azura wrinkles her nose.
“Yes, as we know, the ancient civilisation of Egypt was established around 3200 BC, whilst the earliest recorded Greek culture is from around 2000 BC or so. In that book, it said that the gods first ascended to earth around Egypt, that they drank from the Nile, and that was where they first lived.” Sienna sips her drink as we all stare at her, waiting for her to continue, but she takes her sweet time before she continues.
“Then, of course, they spread out, seeing and leading over other civilisations, and where one god is forgotten, the god becomes known by another name. In this case, Amun goes by Zeus just as Ra is Helios.”
“That makes sense, so the Deimos line is favoured by Zeus, the Solaris line is favoured by Helios. Then what about the Asheton line?” Leo asks, frowning deeply.
Azura steps forward. “I think the Asheton line is Selene’s. The Blessed Wolf is a healer. The moon has healing properties. I don’t know if the term would be ‘favoured’, but that’s my assumption.”
“A smart one,” Leo says, wrapping his hand around her throat, and I look away before they begin locking lips. It’s fucking gross.
“Right, so this passage, I think it tells us the location of…” I trail off, my brows furrowing.
