Page 26 of Sett and his King
"I was hoping more would have changed, but it seems like…" He glanced at a young kid plowing through the crowds with his hand in the air, begging for any spare change. "Nothing really has. There’s technology and cultural progress and yet people still starve in the streets. It’s not…it’s not right.”
I followed the kid with my gaze and as he passed by me I tossed him a few coins.
“That’s capitalism for you."
"‘Capitalism’?" Sett stared at me when his expression stilled and understanding brought back the sadness in his face. “Oh. That-that’s horrible.”
"How do you do that?" I asked him and gestured toward a quieter street up ahead.
"Do what?"
"I don’t know. I’ve seen that look on you a couple of times. You don’t know some modern words and yet you know what a car is. It’s like…like you have a dictionary in your head or something.”
"I kind of do." He chuckled. "There's a remnant, a whisper, of the soul that belongs to this body. It's filling in all the gaps in my knowledge."
"What? Does that mean his soul is trapped inside you?”
If it was, did that mean Loki and Hades also had souls speaking in their heads. Did Horus?
"No. Perhaps…I wouldn't know. I'm not a necrogod. I can only feel a…a consciousness. It's meant to help us adjust to the times we’re invoked in."
"So it’s a slave to you and this body?”
“No.” Sett turned to me and took my hand. “No. Not my slave. Just a remnant of what came before.”
“Does that mean the soul can’t move on? Can’t you save it?”
He pursed his lips into a smile and patted my hand. “I can't even speak to it. But there are other gods, gods of death and of the dead, that could do that. But once a god possesses a human body, it's theirs. I wouldn't be able to give him his body back even if it was within my power. He's been dead for a very long time, so his soul wouldn't be compatible with his body anymore."
"That's fucked up."
"It is. It wasn’t always like that. We used to be able to cross into your world within our own godly bodies, but the demon queen? She cursed us all.”
"Demon queen?"
There was a demon queen?
Of course there was.
He shook his head and waved off my question. "It's a long story. There's a reason why we've not been seen in your world for thousands of years. The gates between our worlds have been sealed off by the demon queen of compassion."
"I’d love to hear the full story at some point."
“I’d love to tell you,” he said.
A screech cut the air in half, sending a chill down my spine.
A woman had dropped to her knees, crying, screaming, as a motorbike with two riders sped away.
“Fuckers!” I spat, immediately recognizing what was going on.
I took a deep focused breath, felt the magic of time crackle around me and held my breath, putting it under my command.
The world came to a stop before me. Sett, the screeching woman, the speeding motorbike, the people crowding the streets, the birds flying up ahead.
I wasted no time. I ran. I ran toward the bike as fast as I could and kicked it and its riders to the ground and snatched the bag they’d stolen out of their hands.
The woman screamed in my face when time came rushing back and with it the dizzying attack of breathlessness.
