This is not a story that ends happily. Not one that has a moral either. No, this is just a story. You can forget all about it. You can remember. It doesn't matter. Simply, it's just a series of events and people linked by a thread of magic. But simple is not a word you would use to describe this tale, for it is long and complicated and starts about four thousand years ago.

Philae, Egypt
Early summer, 1894 B.C.

The beast cornered me as it closed and opened its jaws viciously. The beast, or as its called, Ammut, had the head of a crocodile, the mane, body and front legs of a lion, and the hind legs of a hippopotamus. It was the beast that consumed the unworthy dead and carried their souls to Amenti.

The beast advanced on me, clawing at the ground with its long, lion nails. I kept backing up until I found myself in a corner with no way out. My hand trembled as I raised my twin daggars, or Sai, at the awful beast. It just crept closer and closer and, inevetibly, it dropped into a crouching position. Like an arrow it lunged upward, its jaw aimed for my neck, and then I woke.

My name is Ni-Ket. I am what my people call a prophet, someone who can see things, such as the future, that others can't. My mother says that I have a special gift and that I should use it, but it just frightens me. I find myself constantly seeing confusing and often horrific scenes in my head. They all usually revolve around the gods, but I am not sure what they mean.

I was born to Oliru, the pharoah's aid, and Mil, the pharaoh's daughter, as an only son. That makes me the eventual pharaoh of Philae, but it is not something that I look forward to. I am just not fit for king, and I wouldn't want the power to consume me and turn me into a tyrant.

I'd much rather keep things the way they are with my grandfather, Keno-un-kat, as pharaoh. I love him very much. He has taught me many things about life and the afterlife. I sometimes think he, too, is a prophet. He always seems to know what's bothering me. Then again, it's usually a dream or preminition that's bothering me, so he has a good chance of being right if he guesses that.

"Is it another vision that bothers you?" he asked me later that day.

"Yes," I said, frowning. "I drempt about Ammut again. Do you think it means that I am going to end up in Amenti?"

"Your soul is pure and just," Keno-un-kat said reassuringly. "I would bet my own soul on your's going into afterlife, not Amenti." He seemed to have a way of always making me feel better after a disturbing dream, despite how horrible it would be. "You should go and train for battle to clear your mind. Not like you need the training, though."

I agreed and left him to head to the training hall. He was right when he said that I didn't need to train, although I'd never admit it. I didn't want to end up as a soldier as much as I didn't want to become a pharaoh, but I seemed to have a talent for it. When I had Sai, I was pretty unbeatable. When there were competitions held, I would constantly win.

My father always said, "You have the strike of a scorpion's tail, the legs and arms of a cat, and the skin of a scarab." I know that I was good, but I never knew why or how. I often had dreams about battling. I would battle the greatest warriors and even the gods, and I always seemed to win. I never took this literally because I feared becoming arrogant. My father says that arrogance is a sign of weakness and naivete.

I walked down the halls of my grandfather's palace. It was quite magnificent from the outside and truly beautiful from the inside. The walls were covered with various and beautiful paintings of the gods and the afterlife for my family. I looked at a picture of Osiris holding an ankh over my head as my soul is being sent into sent into afterlife.

As I walked into the training room, I caught a glimpse of a figure wearing a hooded cloak walking down one of the halls, but I couldn't see the person when I looked again. I didn't think much of it, but I had a strange feeling afterward.

I walked into the room and grabbed my Sai, which were made especially for me and were set aside from other boys and girls. This tended to annoy a few of the boys in the room who thought I was an unworthy heir to the throne. One imparticular, Aknek, hated me so very much that he seemed to glare at me whenever I was in the same room with him. I didn't much like him either, and his family was just as bad as him. His father was passionately jealous of my father for wedding the pharaoh's daughter, so he treated me with the respect he would give to a blind peasant.

Aknek, holding a scimitar, his preferred weapon, walked over to me and asked, "Shall we?"

I laughed. "You will lose." I wasn't being overconfident, it was just that I always beat Aknek in sparring, and he could never seem to get over it.

"I will win," he said, trying to sound more confident than he was. He walked out into the circular arena and stood there, waiting for me. I slowly joined Aknek in the small arena, which caused people that were training to moved away and begin to watch us.

As I walked around the edge of the arena, I had this wierd sensation. I saw a flash of light in my head, and then it was gone. I shook it off and raised my Sai at Aknek. He raised his scimitar over his head and stepped back in the Scorpion stance. I bent my knees and positioned the Sai so that I would be in the Feline stance. One of the adult trainers clapped their hands together and shouted "Pa-uoh!," signalling us to begin. With that, I swiftly dashed toward Aknek and swung my daggars. As quick as the wind on the sands of Egypt, he swung his scimitar and hit it against my daggar, and then he swung it around and toward my skull.

I locked my Sai together above my head to block the scimitar and kicked him straight in the stomach. Aknek stumbled back with a loss of breath, but he soon found his footing and ran once again toward me. He swung his scimitar towards my feet, but I leapt into the air, dodging his blade, and kicked him hard in the chest. Once again, he stumbled back, but I didn't wait for him to find his footing. I dashed towards him, but was suddenly blinded. I saw a cluster af blurry lighta and wind, and then I saw a faint picture of an elder man.

As quickly as I had come into it, I fell out of a spontaneous preminitition and back into reality. Aknek had revived himself and was running towards me. Without thought, I leaned forward and did a backflip while I simultaneously kicked him right in the jaw. He flew a foot in the air, and, as if time had stopped, he stood there, suspended.

Everyone was suspended and immovable. The dust that I had kicked up when I flipped backwards was frozen in mid-air, every piece of sand.

In a swirl of sand and light, I was in a different place. It was unapparant at first, but then I noticed my grandfather. He was reading something at his desk. I then realized that I was in his chambers, but he was frozen like the people in the training hall. I walked toward him and read what he was reading. It was a letter from the pharaoh of the city Edfu that read, "...and the troops will travel into the sands of Hamunaptra to wipe out all of the people and capture the pharaoh..."

It was then that I noticed a hidden, cloaked figure crouching behind a tall dresser in Keno-un-kat's room. I walked over to the figure and closely examined it. It ended up being a small girl. She had markings on her forehead that I distinctively knew to be Hamunaptran. Tightly held in her left hand was a Laimanatru, a small axe used in public executions. Then, it hit me with fierce reality. This girl was about to assasinate my grandfather.

And then I was back in the arena, back in the fight, and moments away from being cut wide open with Aknek's scimitar.