Serket - Goddess of healing and poisonous creatures. Her story is fictionalised in this universe inProtectors Of Poison.
Seth - God of chaos. The main antagonist in the Forgotten Gods universe.
Shu - one of the first gods, god of the air, and the supporter of the sky
Thoth - god of writing, magic, and wisdom
Wadjet - The snake protector goddess of Lower Egypt. Her story will be fictionalised in the Forgotten Gods Series.
Gods/goddesses and their relationships towards one another may be different from mythology in this universe.
OTHER DEFINITIONS
Ankh - an Ancient Egyptian symbol of life.
Ba - the ba is part of what makes up the Ancient Egyptian soul. It represents the personality of the person.
Duat - the Afterlife
Senet- a game similar to chess which was played by Ancient Egyptians. The aim of the game is to get the pawns to the Afterlife.
Waset - the Ancient Egyptian name for the capital of the Middle and New Kingdoms. Otherwise known as Thebes (now part of the city of Luxor)
CHAPTER ONE
ONE MORE DAY. I could get through one more day. I just had to take it an hour at a time. No, a minute at a time.
Bodies writhed throughout the room, some of them in pleasure. But not all of them. I knew better than that. At least half of them would have pain so intense they wanted to die going through them.
Yet I did nothing. How could I when I was stuck in a situation just like theirs?
"Rhodopis?" Charaxos called.
I sighed. What did he want now?
Setting down my basket full of linen, I turned to him. "Yes?"
"Our God wants a bath drawn." His lip curled up, but I wasn't sure if it was in disgust or jealousy. It was hard to tell just where Charaxos stood on any matter.
Years ago, he'd loved me. Well, decades ago. Centuries even. I never really paid too much attention to the passage of time.
"I'll see to it once I've dropped these off at the laundry room." I nodded towards my basket.
A woman to my left let out a long moan. Pleasure or pain, it didn't matter. The whole point of this place was that it drove you a little mad. Chaos was the name of the game, and we were just pawns in that. I wasn't even convinced that the people in this room, or in some of the others, were even real.
"He said now." Charaxos tried to sound stern, but he failed. The way his body had grown extra large over the years just made him look like a pushover.
"And I said that I would after I've taken this to the laundry."
He stormed over to me, grabbing my wrist and squeezing so hard that black spots swam in front of my eyes. Whatever love this man claimed to have felt for me, it was long gone.
"You are a slave," he hissed. "You will do what I tell you."
I tugged my wrist down hard, breaking his grasp. "You're a slave too," I responded coolly. "And your threats are empty. You'd have done something about me years ago if you could."
And that was the crux of the problem. Seth seemed to like me. I didn't know why, when I loathed him. And not in a going-to-eventually-fall-in-love-with-him way. I actually loathed him. The god didn't have to be evil incarnate. Chaos wasn't always a bad thing, but he made it that way anyway.
Charaxos seethed, no doubt trying to find yet another empty threat I knew he wouldn't follow through on. It was a mystery why he even bothered trying.
I didn't wait for him to say anything and picked my basket back up. I wasn't lying when I said I needed to take the laundry first. Seth's bath could wait because he'd be even angrier if there weren't fresh sheets on his bed.
Humming to myself in order to drown out the noise of the people filling the courtyard, I headed into the corridor that I knew would take me where I wanted to go. Shouts and noise came from every room I passed, but I was fairly certain it was mostly just meant to distract me. I'd long ago learned that if I ignored them, nothing actually happened.
Seth's palace was a weird place.
"Morning, Rhodopis." The young girl who had recently taken over the laundry waved at me. Young being an operative term. None of us really aged. The reason we'd been picked as Seth's slaves was because we were demi-gods and goddesses. Powerless because no one learned our names, but immortal nonetheless.
"Morning." I didn't know her name, but it was too late into setting up our routine for me to ask what it was. I didn't think she'd last long in here anyway. Charaxos or one of the other higher up slaves would take a fancy to her soon. Or maybe she'd been sent down here to escape a scandal with one of the gods living here at the moment.
I handed her the basket, and she instantly tipped it into one of the vast washing buckets. No doubt she'd had it waiting for just this situation.
"Same time as normal?" she asked.
I nodded. Our days always went the same. Sure, there might be the odd task that went a little bit differently, but for the most part, they remained exactly the same. Boring, dull, and surprisingly safe given we worked under a god who wanted to destroy the world.
Or make the whole world into his slaves, that bit was a little vague. It would be a lot simpler if Seth would just monologue his whole plan in front of me. At least then I'd know what to expect.
Not that I planned on sharing my thoughts with anyone here, but I suspected the other gods would stop him before he could take control. That was just me though. I'd been made cynical in my years of service, probably something to do with the
