The Eight of Wands
Seize Opportunities,
Anticipate Swift Outcomes
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XXX
Swiftness:
Kill Bill
The element remembers the
flaming powers of its self.
The year is 1628 BC and Mt Thera creates a cataclysmic eruption.
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"You would have offered me, your High Priestess, as a sacrifice to quench that insatiable thirst for power festering within you. Abominable is too weak a word for such depravity!"
"What... what do you mean? You've deceived me? You won't honor your oath?" A tremor of disbelief, thick and sour, laced his voice.
"Your oath? It is *I* who will fulfill mine. You will never see me again. My people will be spared, and your empire, choked by your unholy avarice, will crumble to dust this very night. And you, you dare demand I elevate you to godhood? Hah! The very earth would recoil from such blasphemy. You are drowning in the phantom godhood you've forced upon the hollowed minds of your flock. Ah, but I forgot, in my haste to remind you of your hubris, the mountain. It stirs. It will shatter our city by dawn."
"Ayesha! You would betray your King?" The outrage in his voice was a brittle shard.
"King? You hear what you wish. After tonight, 'king' will be a memory. May Qblh bear witness."
Dagon, his face contorted with fury, roared, "Seize her! I'll tear the insolence from your very soul, witch!"
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"Idiot! Halt them!" A command, sharp as a whipcrack, immediately sliced through the deepening darkness
The guards were frozen, momentarily unable to move,, but Ayesha was already a blur of motion. Dagon would never live to glimpse Qblh. Instead, his dying vision was filled with the glistening red of his own heart, torn free and held aloft in Ayesha's grasping hand.
With a guttural growl, she tore into it, the coppery tang of fresh blood filling the air, a visceral counterpoint to her triumphant declaration: "Witch, am I? Then you are already dead."
The sight of the incandescent rage burning in the Amazon's eyes shocked Dagon's remaining followers. A choked murmur of terror rippled through them, and they scattered like rats, the mountain's thunderous groan now a deafening symphony of destruction. The chamber vibrated, dust raining from the ceiling, leaving Ayesha alone with the pulsing presence of Qblh.
"That viper," Ayesha spat, her voice raw with a hatred that tasted of centuries. "You have no conception, my love, of the ruin he's sown. The lives he's shattered."
Idiot, with the mask of grim resolve, had prepared a chamber, a sanctuary against the dying world. Ayesha and Qblh moved towards it, a silent understanding passing between them as they prepared to depart for Artemis.
"Here, there, or en route?" Qblh's voice was low, a rumble against the rising roar of the collapsing city.
"En route, my Qblh. My love," Ayesha breathed, her gaze locking with his, a silent promise passing between their souls. "My peg. Yoni me."
Once enveloped by the smooth, cool confines of the Box, Idiot engaged the field generators, severing their connection to the groaning Earth. Ayesha felt no lurch, no jarring motion, only a profound sense of liberation, her senses overwhelmed by the impossible expanse of the interior, a space that defied all earthly logic.
"Where are we now?" she whispered, her voice echoing in the celestial stillness.
"Elsewhere and nowhere of meaning to you. Tell me, how did you get to Earth?"
"I told you, Isis dropped me off."
" When did you leave Artemis?"
"While you were in the Pleasure Dome, and now you're returning me. Isis shall be there awaiting us. She doesn't want you to use Genie in the Pleasure Dome."
"And she wasn't supposed to time travel."
"Well, what are you going to do? Beat her? We have been doing no harm. Just observing and helping, now and then."
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"And feeding them false religious beliefs."
"They make up their own idols as a means of self- aggrandizement. Did you see Dagon’s stupidity and arrogance just before he died with my bite?. He wanted them to consider him a god. There’s a lot of those misconceptions as they lust for the power we have over them. They want male equality with us, or even domination."
"And how many more of you are there in time?"
"You'll have to ask Isis that. Why don't we just act as if none of this ever happened and I'll give you my golden peg as we leave my bed from the Pleasure Dome. Can your Genie place us there?"
"I most assuredly can," said the genie. "Landing is within our parameters. It will but a simple matter for you to leave Gemini and join Ayesha as if nothing happened. No one will ever question the fact that no one ever saw Ayesha enter the dome.
"Paradox avoidance Genie. When did Ayesha leave? Isn't that relevant?"
"Not as long as the two Ayesha's do not see each other."
"I can deal with Venetian electronic records upon our return. It does not seem to be too long after our departure that Isis left with the Pegasus. Apparently her launch may have been triggered by the fact that you had summoned me. Gemini will advise or would have undoubtedly advised Isis."
"We will then have to permit her launch and displacement through our transited wormhole."
"Do you want me to track it?"
"Good idea."
"Now what do we do with you, Ayesha?"
"Qblh, you know I do not even try to begin to understand your secrets. I do not doubt your power, nor shall I question your commands. I shall do thy bidding. All I ask is that you love me and not betray me to Isis for having failed her."
"How have you failed her?"
"I return to Artemis your captive and my empire in ruins."
"Yes, but you have your life and my love."
"We were the last of the Amazons."
"There are more back then."
"Yes, but in other lands and other times, but I am forbidden by the queen under oath to tell you details, my Qblh."
Jim usually respected the pleas of his prisoners. He was not a harsh jailer at all. He was not going to punish Ayesha. Ayesha would perhaps punish herself by considering herself as a failure. She would gain Qblh's child in the process. Some would say that Ayesha lost nothing and indeed gained all her dreams that very night that Atlantis perished.
The explosions from the volcano persisted for several days bringing a great darkness over all the Eastern Mediterranean region. Many feared the end of the world was indeed on its way. People from Egypt to Greece were trembling in awe of the great mountain as it went through its death throes.
Some of the eruptions were so great that fire and brimstone would fall many miles from the island itself. Noxious vapors were emitted.
