Natalie Yacobson - Mistress of Pharaohs. Daughter of Dawn

Alais lifted her head above the sand on which she had dozed. Her angels were crawling in the desert, but you couldn’t call them angels anymore. They were demons now.

They had been through the fall and torture. Michael had come down to earth to become an executioner, but Gabriel had not. His luminous shadow flashed far beyond the earth, staked with glowing stakes on which the winged bodies of the Legion of Alais wriggled. Gabriel seemed to be crying.

Would she ever see him again? Alais wrote his secret name in the sand with the tip of her sword. It was a kind of magical call to the one who remained in heaven.

Gabriel did not appear. So someone had held him back. He himself had flown in and forgiven all. In contrast to Michael, he was more benign and never behaved aggressively. Michael in the fight was aggressive and became like a wild lion. It would be good to put that lion in a cage. Alais scolded herself for not taking her chance and decapitating him right away. Had he lost his head early in the battle, the enemy legion, left without a commander, would have gone to her side. She would have been in charge in heaven. And that would be fair. The most beautiful creature in heaven should be in heaven first. The second battle, while the defeated armies gather strength, is still a long way off. But she is first in the sands. She is mistress of these deserts. This is her kingdom!

“There will be no life here, no grass and moisture. Only golden sand and strength,” were her first words in her new habitat. At sunrise they did not seem terrible, but suddenly there was an eclipse, shadows came, the desert took her words as a curse, and began to turn into a huge-sized living and irrational monster. One day it would consume everything. But now the sands are full of magic. Gold dust swirls, creating magical whirlwinds. The fiery figures are whirling across the desert. Some of the servants of Alais’s army suddenly began to transform, restoring some of the beauty that had been partially taken away. She loved it. She watched their dances of sand and fire.

She was reminded of the destitute wayfarer, covered in wounds, after his defeat. And she had helped him. Is it for good or for evil? What is Upper and Lower Egypt? Was it worth bringing them together? Alais did not know that. She only remembered that when she looked into Menos’s eyes, she saw a reflection of all her sorrows.

The desert lived! The desert was breathing! Alais could feel its breath. The desert beneath her had become a living, all-encompassing creature, with its downcast armies crawling on its sandy back. For now this creature slumbered, but one day it would awaken, and devour the world like a hungry leviathan. Not only were those of her servants who fell into the ocean capable of becoming giants, the desert, too, was a living and monstrous giant, completely under her control.

On the back of this giant just rushed an outlaw who was searching in the desert for untold treasure. Apparently, someone had told him about the gold in the sands.

The bandit was unlucky. Alais’ servants spotted him before he found the gold. The sand floor stretched beneath his feet like a blanket. The man lost his balance and fell and stretched out on the sand. Alais flew up to him and looked up at him. Unlike Menes, this man did not impress her. He was not to be pitied. Let the desert consume him.

“This is desert. The word came from another word-empty!” Alais rounded her lips, repeating the human language. Ridiculous language, but one could get used to it. “How can you call a place with so much sand empty?” She ran the sand through her fingers, turning it into gold. “And where there is sand, there is gold. It’s everywhere the sunlight has fallen after me.”

The outlaw’s eyes lit up with greed. A whole desert of golden sand was beyond his wildest dreams. Only he rejoiced too soon. Alais was playing hardball with him. Not a minute later, the sand began to enmesh the unhappy man’s hands and feet. His whole body was sinking in the sand like a quagmire. The heads and figures of the angels who had fallen into oblivion were forming in the sand. The robber, who had noticed them, wanted to shout, but the sand clogged his nostrils and mouth.

“The desert lives!” stated Alais. “The desert breathes! The desert produces gold and belongs to me! She is a monster like them! It is an earthly monster. He did not fall from heaven. It was my power that turned it.”

“Have mercy!” The outlaw wheezed.

He saw her as a deity. It was the right thing to do. After all, she had wings, she had heavenly beauty. She had power that somehow the god could not take away. So she must be the one to rule the world she found herself in.

“You wanted my gold,” Alais replied dryly. “Then drown yourself in it!”

The outlaw’s body sank into the sand and disappeared beneath it. Alais stepped her foot on the spot where he had recently floundered. Her sandal did not fall through the sand. The desert was no longer a swamp. But if a caravan or a rider drove through it, the sand would once again suck in living people like a swamp.

“The desert is hungry,” Alais concluded.

After the outlaw’s death, one of the sand figures floated to the surface and formed into a winged body.

“Are you Saail?” Alais frowned. The sandy face was hard to recognize. It seemed to be one of her dead angels. “Is it you?”

The sandy figure bowed. Apparently, Saail had taken the life of an outlaw in order to recover himself. One sacrifice was enough for one angel, but not enough for the others. Alais glanced at the outline of the heads in the sand.

“Take anyone who passes or passes through here,” she allowed.

Saail flew to lure new victims into the desert. His wings crumbled with sand. His whole body would probably crumble before he reached the desert’s edge, but he had a chance to be resurrected. Now he knows whose source of life he can take for his own benefit. Angels need people’s lives to rise from the dust. Let them take it.

Alais had no pity for people. The image of Menos arose before her eyes. Pharaoh had gained his kingdom on the defeat and bones of his own army. How he was like her! It turned out to be not at all difficult to give the dead bodies of Menes’s warriors to the dead angels. Disembodied substances took possession of the corpses, raised them from death, and sent them into battle.

Menes got his victory. But what did he do with the demon army? No sooner had the bodies of the warriors decomposed than the demons had to fly away. But before that, they feasted. Surely Menes let them devour all his enemies.

How is he? Did the union of the two kingdoms bring him happiness? Alais wandered through the desert and heard echoes of their recent collusion:

“Do you want me to raise them from death?”

“Can you do that?” There was an echo over the desert of Menes’s words.

“Look! I have raised them from the ashes,” she said, pointing to the monsters. “Then I can raise the dead. But you will owe me.”

“Anything you want!” How easily a man in a stalemate could make promises! Had he known he was pledging his soul to the devil. The echo of his oath stood over the wilderness.

“There is your kingdom and the whole world! I desire them! I will come to you after you have recovered all that is lost and enthroned on your throne, and on the thrones of your children, and their children. The whole world will be mine, but you will have luxury and prosperity for centuries. Then I decide what to do with this world.”

She didn’t say everything, but that was enough for him. He knelt before her and thought everything was a dream.

“I consecrate you to my service, the first angel of the universe,” she slashed a claw across his forehead, sealing the contract with a living seal. You put such a mark on a man, and the man is in her power. The seal of the angel on the flesh will not let him disobey.