THE SHEOL, BEFORE THE SATANS

Ankhle had been having a wonderful day until the man with the jackal head entered his store. Ankhle had assumed the man was a demon at first, but that was wrong. This man was not a demon. He was something far more dangerous. The tarp of Ankhle’s tent quivered in the jackal-headed man’s presence. The air around him rippled like the horizon on a hot day. His body was lean and obsidian-coloured, adorned with golden jewellery.

‘Can… can I help you?’ Ankhle asked.

The jackal-headed man nodded. ‘Do you have a set of scales?’ he asked. His voice was ice, and as deep as the ocean.

Ankhle blinked. ‘A set of scales? I don’t…’

‘Yes. Be quick,’ the jackal-headed man commanded. Ankhle shivered.

‘Let me check,’ Ankhle said quickly. He feared what would become of him if he could not comply with the man’s request.

The jackal-headed man said nothing, watching with abyssal eyes as Ankhle rifled through his wares. Ankhle’s search grew more and more frantic with every passing second. In the rational part of his mind, he knew he didn’t have scales. Why would he? He was a pottery merchant! But perhaps the Sheol would be kind to him just this time. Perhaps a set had ended up in his wares by mistake…

‘I don’t have any,’ Ankhle rasped under his breath. A bead of sweat dripped off his chin.

‘Very well,’ said the jackal-headed man. Ankhle looked up, but the man was already slipping out his store’s tent-flap. Ankhle breathed a sigh of relief. That man had not been a demon. He was a god.

Anubis rubbed his eyes in frustration. That had been the fifteenth merchant tent that day. Why did no one have scales? Did mortals just not care about how things weigh? The line of dead awaiting judgement was growing longer and longer by the minute. If Anubis let this go on for another day, he would leave his position wide open for some upstart like Ra to take his place. Ra would probably want to use his fancy ball of fire to judge mortals instead of Anubis’ elegant scale system. It would be a complete logistical nightmare. Anubis had even heard rumours than Amun and Ra were conspiring on some dumb new trick to increase afterlife productivity. Not on his watch. Feeling tenser than ever, Anubis ducked into the next merchant tent, ignoring the terrified stares from the local mortals. If he was lucky, there’d be some good new myths born from this day. The time Anubis went shopping, the mortals would call it. Anubis chuckled at the idea, almost giving the merchant inside a heart-attack.

Feeling a little awkward, Anubis cleared his throat and asked, ‘Do you have a set of scales?’

The merchant stammered some words, then went shuffling about in the junk behind him. Anubis tapped his foot impatiently. Soon he found himself tapping it to the beat of some song he had heard a while back. How did it go again? All the old paintings on the tombs, they do the sand dance-

‘W-what was that, sorry?’ asked the merchant.

Anubis hadn’t realized he was singing out loud. ‘Nothing!’ he snapped defensively.

The man looked confused, then went back to searching.

This was getting ridiculous. ‘Listen, mortal,’ said Anubis. ‘Do you have scales or not?’

‘Hold on!’ replied the merchant. ‘I knew I… here it is!’

With triumph, the merchant slammed a twisted, rusty set of scales on the sandy ground in front of him.

‘What… what is this?’ Anubis asked in disbelief.

‘Scales,’ the merchant answered, his initial fear seemingly dispelled.

‘Why are they wet?’

‘I found them in a canal.’

‘When?’

‘Fifteen minutes ago. In the one across the street.’

Anubis squatted down and inspected the scales closely. He looked up at the merchant.

‘These are mine,’ Anubis said. ‘I lost them yesterday.’

‘Well maybe you should take better care of your things, dogman.’

‘D… DOGMAN?’ Anubis roared. ‘I AM THE GOD OF THE AFTERLIFE!’

The merchant sneered. ‘Sure thing, but right now you’re the god of giving me five silver for this lump of metal.’

Nostrils flared, Anubis snatched the scales up and stormed out of the tent, leaving the merchant shouting at his back. Anubis was totally going to rig this guys’ weighing when some dissatisfied customer drowns him in that stupid canal.

The street outside was empty and silent. It had grown dark. Oppressively so. Anubis glanced back, befuddled. The merchant was gone. The air hung frozen in time. The sky above formed a red grid, shining down on Anubis like a god would a mortal.

‘Very funny, Ra!’ Anubis shouted. ‘Poor old Anubis lost his scales, so you smite a mortal village to prank him! Real mature!’

Ra is dead, a voice inside Anubis’ head whispered. Anubis blinked. This was unusual. He didn’t normally have voices in his head. Dead ahead in the street before him stood a thing. It’s not like it had just appeared. It had always been there, plain as day. Anubis had somehow just not seen it, as if his godly perception had chosen to ignore it. Even now he couldn’t quite parse what it was. He was confident it was a person of some sort, but his mind refused to process the details. All he could gather was that it, whatever it was, was standing there, and it was looking at him.

The realm of the gods has been terminated, said the voice in Anubis’ head. You have been left the sole remainder. Suffer for me before you die.

Anubis smirked. This punk didn’t know who he was messing with. Anubis let a fraction of his power seep off of him like an odourless cloud. Even a mortal child could feel his divine influence released like this. His mind still could not understand the movements of the thing in front of him, but he knew they were not ones born out of fear. These movements were precise and premeditated. Calculated. It transferred itself from one place to another with indescribable grace. It shifted again, this time towards Anubis. No, it was only moving a limb. Was it an arm or a leg, or something else? Anubis couldn’t tell. He felt its Touch, and with it, unimaginable pain. Anubis had experienced little sensation that could ever be described as pain in the past, let alone agony on this level. A fundamental scorching of the soul. Anubis roared and writhed in mania.

Your suffering is acceptable.

In under a second, the body of the god Anubis was ripped apart. Every tendon, organ, nerve and bone was ground to dust. Except the eyes. The thing left Anubis’ eyes intact.