Resurrection

Awakening

Tutankhamun blinked open his eyes, and saw nothing. With his first gasped breath of stale, putrid air, he felt a tightness across his chest, restricting his breathing. While attempting to raise a hand to his chest, it connected with something hard and heavy directly over and all around him. He panicked, fighting to push the weight from him. 

Blinded by the sudden light, he threw his arms over his face. The cloth wrapped around his arm fell away to reveal dried and crumbling flesh. He screamed and threw himself from the sarcophagus, scrambling against the wall in terror.

Fire-lit torches burned around the walls of the room, casting flickering light onto neatly stacked treasures. He knew immediately where he was and ran to the door holding him captive. It wouldn't move, regardless of how hard he pushed. Finally exhausted, he fell to his knees in horror.

The afterlife is supposed to be paradise, not this. I should be surrounded by my ancestors, not trapped in this prison for eternity...

"No!" he yelled in anger at the gods. "I will not spend eternity locked within my own tomb!"

Rage at the gods, virtually blinding in its intensity, descended upon him, waking the creature slumbering within his chest. His eyes, once Sepia in hue, swirled and pooled black when the creature took control.

"It is time," he said, rising to his feet. "At last they are ready."

Skin and sinew reformed. Hair sprouted from his head, the length bound with golden bands at his nape, restoring Tutankhamun's body to how it was the night the creature took it over. Raising his arms above his head, the cloths swathing him fell to the floor. He sent a pulse of energy into the ground, making everything around him shudder. Small, golden statues toppled over. Sand swirled inside the tomb, gathering energy and momentum until the stone-block barring the door exploded in a shower of dust.

Desert winds grew fierce, whipping sand away from the pyramid as it rose from the depths. Those same ferocious winds brought clouds full of more water than the desert had seen since the beginning of time. Lightning flashed, illuminating the dark and thunderous sky.

Tutankhamun stood atop his tomb and laughed at the destruction around him. Buildings burned; great rivers swept wheeled monstrosities aside as if nothing more than tiresome flies; craters formed with the cracking and shaking ground; people screamed as their world fell apart.

"Anakhamun, come to me. Join me," he roared like thunder into the night.

The concubine rose from the ground, sand falling from her head, shoulders, breasts and swollen belly as she emerged. "I hear, my King. I obey," she chanted, striding across the desert. Sand parted, creating a wind and rain free tunnel through which she walked.