Absolute Chaos

Raijen and his friends all headed back around Otamia’s mountain and across the long grasslands, a deep rumble rolled beneath their feet, pushing them faster towards the great city.

As they neared, the unmistakable sound of a woman’s terrified screams pulsed into the air, swelling into sheer panic. Raijen saw the silhouette of a woman staggering towards them in the soft dawns light. He could see she was bleeding profusely from her stomach, holding her intestines in as best she could with both her hands.

Seeing the blood and gore spilling from her gut enraged him.

“It took my son!....IT TOOK HIM!.” The woman fell to the grass screaming, Raijen straight by her side in a heartbeat, her sobs now overtaking his soul.

He held the poor woman as she died, hushing her as the blood left her body, Chaos now taking her spirit to Heaven’s belt of sheer wonder, along with her innocent sons.

Amaunet moved beside Raijen, her small hot hand entwining in his.

He gently lay the dead woman onto the soft sand and closed her lifeless eyes. Wiping at his silent tears, he stood beside Amaunet, watching the sun break over the Nile and coat Otamia in dull light.

***

A myriad of screams pierced the thick air, they were coming from the hillside of Otamia.

The friends sprinted towards the city, nearing, they saw torn bloodied bodies littering the grassland, their shredded limbs and snapped necks scattered in the sand before them.

The further they moved towards the gates the more gut wrenching the scene became.

Theda was up ahead, one of her arms had been torn from her shoulder, it lay shredded beside her bleeding body. Thick crimson blood bubbled from her mouth, her once bright eyes rolled back under her wrinkled brow and clouded into a lifeless dark puddle.

Hot tears pricked Raijen’s eyelids, Theda did not deserve this. He took a huge breath quietly closing his aunts eyes.

The snarling and barking swelled as they moved toward the ‘great’ King’s caves, many dogs rushed ahead of them, he pushed his fury forward, forgetting his kin for the time.

They were nearly to the southern side of the steep hillside which led to the back gates of Otamia. Climbing the smooth rocks, heading up the back of the city, the ground cracking beneath their feet with each step. Raijen nearly fell, the Earth shook, small rocks falling and sliding past his bare feet.

Quickly he glanced back at his friends, they were still at his heels also scrambling to keep a grip on the loose sliding rocks.

They reached the back gates, these were always closed and guarded, however the old wood stood wide open and a head without a body lay just inside. It was one of the guards, the poor man had been both gutted and beheaded.

Raijen bowed his head and quietly said a prayer to Temu as they past the gory sight.

They headed towards his fathers caves, what they saw up ahead stopped them all in their tracks.

A huge pile of rubble was in place of Araphel’s sprawling cavern, the ground moved like an angry ocean of hate, a dark blue light pierced through the tiny cracks and fissures that had formed in the quake, splintering wonder in tiny shards of dark light.

A few dozen jackals and dogs fled from in and around the rubble, disappearing behind the storage huts.

Raijen looked to Amaunet, two deep blue raging oceans swum inside her eyes, sapphires of dark blue fire flashed with sheer fury within them.

Otamian’s stumbled through the rubble, blood and ashes covering their flesh in inconsolable sadness. Thousands were dead, hundreds injured and crying, many of which were fleeing for cover a little further down the hillside.

Raijen felt nothing but fury, his pure hate and disgust for his father, his ferocious rage toward Am-heh and all the evil consuming the lands. It had now rampaged to the surface, they had hurt all the people he loved around him, hurting his breathtaking Goddess.