It was dark when the Mummy Queen emerged from the caverns in the ground where she had spent so many years alone. By rights, she should have spent it in the Afterlife with all the other dead Pharaohs of long ago. Her ancestors. Both by blood and station. Being ripped so quickly from her destination was still so fresh in her mind it easily brought all the bitterness that had been slowly swelling inside her breast all those lonely years. By some stroke of luck, she was freed, shaking the sand off her back and sides as she moved into the new world. A gust of wind had tumbled the sand down onto her back, squeezing into the tight spaces between bandage and rotten flesh. Rotten and dried flesh. How had that been? No one had told her of some way to return to the living while she had been among them.
Among them in her real skin. This...This wasn't her. Like the world she was standing in, this was new. The gift of her regeneration hadn't been kind enough to return her old skin to her. Her flowing mane with the gold ornaments. She had requested in her will to be buried with the gold in her hair. She had felt the little beads crunch under her hooves back in her coffin as she rose, but there didn't appear to be even a single strand left of her glorious hair. It had all rotted away and turned to dust while she slept. For it had not felt like death. It felt more like a sleep. A deep sleep.
Nefertari was too angry from that long sleep to be bothered greatly by her appearance aside losing her mane. Her mane had been her treasure. Not her only treasure, but one of her greatest. Thinking about some of the others brought another raspy growl from her throat that was more clearing the dust away than a sound of irritation. Her red eyes seemed to glow brighter still as her mood enflamed itself. Like mood rings, the eyes told of her mood. At least in the sense of how dangerous she was at the moment. Right now, had she been in an area with a lot of dried grass, she would have burned herself down to ashes already. The fire of her eyes danced savagely. Narrowing them, she swept her head over the landscape before her.
Nothing had really changed since she had last been here to oversee the preparation of her tomb, which could take her entire lifetime to complete. Would have. But didn’t. Since she had died long before the entrance was even done. She wasn’t sure which part of the desert she was in. It was clear the grave behind her was more a storage shed than anything else, not having a completed tomb for her to rest properly in. It would never be completed on time. And a Pharaoh’s corpse couldn’t be left to ferment in the sunshine while it waited for its bedroom.
Nefertari walked out a bit, not making much of an effort to drench the growing fire of hatred with water. There were white things bellowing in the wind, she could now see. What looked like tents. As her eyes adjusted more, she could see they were indeed tents. Some two legged creatures like the two she had met in her tomb-imagine!-were moving around outside. Without a care in the world, she edged closer until one saw her. There was a scream, high pitched enough to suggest a female of this species, and she turned to take off running. Quicker than one would believe of a corpse, Nefertari sprang forward and headbutted the woman in the back like a goat, feeling the rage at not being able to use her teeth. She heard a crack as the two legged fell down, met by more as the mummy Queen stomped on the creature many times, feeling the frustrations disappear and be replaced by more. Killing these creatures was good. Made her feel better. But it wasn’t the same as pounding her brother. For now it would make due.
Until she could locate his tomb.
