Page 40 of The Secret Shape of Worship
But still he pressed on, one hand dragging along the wall to his left and the other stretched out before him to keep from slamming into a dead end or corner at a sharp turn.
With the onslaught of the darkness, Mina’s confidence began to wane. With the cold came fear. His legs felt weak, and hisbody was starting to shake so much that he was having trouble keeping himself upright. What was he doing? Soon, the walls were going to come crashing down, and he’d be killed. A soul lost in this place forever.
But he couldn’t turn back now.
These gods could feel and taste human emotions. Weakness was putrid to them, and Mina needed to be strong. Unrelenting.
And that was when he realized. Hewasstrong. Because Anubis had helped him become strong. No. Better than that. Anubis had helped him find the strength he had all along.Anubis.Mina would never be able to live with himself knowing his god was trapped forever in a world he didn’t want to be in after he’d sacrificed so much to free Mina from his own prison.
That wasn’t justice. It wasn’t right. Mina knew it, and now he just needed to convince an eternal deity of it.
Ahead, a golden glow outlined a small doorway. As Mina reached it, the smell of rot became an almost visible cloud pouring like incense from the door of some unholy cathedral. Mina pulled in a deep, sickening breath and pushed the fear from his body. For Anubis. Forhimself.
He stepped through.
“Osiris! Show yourself! We need to talk!” Mina shouted into the rotting dark that hung like a cloak around him, complete and suffocating. The rank air sticking to his nostrils and skin.
“We’re not done here. I know you can hear me. I’d rather not be crushed under this place when you destroy it, but I’m not going anywhere until we talk. My lost soul will wander for eternity if it has to.”
A blast of cold at his back. A greenish glow mixing with the gold and a voice like breaking bones.
“What is it, mortal?”
Mina turned around, and the god was there. Towering and barely looking down as if he, Mina, were an insect he was trying to decide whether to stomp or throw out the front door.
“Come down to my level. I know you can. I’m tired of hurting my neck to look up at you.”
The God cocked his head. A mannerism so similar to Anubis that Mina felt a pang of sadness at the thought that he might never see him again.
Snapping bones.
Wet sounds of rearranging flesh.
Suddenly, Osiris was a man-sized being and somehow even more terrifying in his corpse-like form that now stood just above eye level. The god settled his red eyes on Mina, waiting.
Mina pulled his shoulders back and met the god’s eyes. “You banished Anubis for eternity, all because of me? Because he didn’t want to send me to my death, you sent him to his?”
“Not death. The Duat is life after life. It is the House of Osiris and the Land of the Gods. Even isolation and desolation are a paradise compared with this writhing in the dirt you call living on earth. This rat maze of stones. It is his home amongst gods, and it is the eternity that he has earned.”
“But he wants to be here. With humans.”With me.
Mina felt his facade of strength waning, desperate for this god who seemingly knew no empathy to be swayed by his pleas and not detect the lovesick note he tried to hide from them. Mina did his best to level his voice.
“Anubis was doing exactly what he was supposed to do. He was helping me. He was helping me become a better person. He shouldn’t have been banished for that.”
“For lying to his father, to his God, he is banished!” Mina gagged on the smell of death that erupted from the rotting god’s black mouth. “For neglecting his duty in favor of his lust, he is banished.” Osiris pulled back his shoulders, joints cracking. In acalm voice, he continued, “Eternity is a long time. He will move on from you.”
“But he loves humanity. He…” The god already knew; there was no point in maintaining the facade. “He loves me.”
“His love will fade, and his soul will renew. For that is the way of the Duat. He forfeited his right to earthly pleasures when he failed to deliver the soul which was his duty.”
“So that’s really it then? An equation? His soul for mine?”
“It is so.”
“So then take me.”
Mina felt the blood drain from his face. Had he really just offered up his own soul for Anubis? It hadn’t even been a conscious thought. In the back of Mina’s mind, he still expected Anubis to have a plan. To have found a way out of this. For the two of them to be together. If he could just get back to him. If he could just convince Osiris to let Mina see him again, he was sure there would be a way…
