Chapter 25: The Sphinx
A mountain of silica and quartz swam and poured over the mighty blackened form of the buried terrors in vast rivulets of granulated mineral. Rivers of earth danced in the wind as the fearsome creature to the left shook its mane, with force enough to send shudders through the air. The power was so great that miniature dust devils kicked up into the sky, and almost plucked our intrepid heroes from their place amongst that limitless blue.
A small vortex shook Thrall out of his perch, and sent him tumbling toward the hot, burning sands beneath; but he caught himself about 50 feet or so from impact. Xantheaa, however, agile as she was only barely managed to avoid this consequence as she elegantly weaved between the various fathoms of natural disaster like a leaf in the breeze.
Again, she was probably made for this.
Nevertheless, the group found it wise to follow the crow's lead, and fell to their knees before the encroaching monoliths to their fore. Thrall fell to their mercy to the direct left of 'Aswad, and Xantheaa meekly followed his lead to the right.
Once all three were collected before their emergent frames, and only then, did the right-hand sphinx avail its grand head from the ocean of particulates. A blinding smile was etched across his immortal face, and the sand which had formerly covered this was sent so rapidly upward that it seemed to escape orbit.
"Hee hee hee! What simple souther,
lain beneath the dunes uncovered,
witnessed I, the older brother.
Lost behind the windswept dunes." he sang, his voice drenched in condescension and hunger.
"Lest we hold the fate to shutter,
beg we may obey another.
While we will to feel discovered,
knelt before our sacred tomb." A voice then boomed from hidden features deep within the mountain of sand to their very left. Its voice was fury, and potency. As if the earth itself cried out for retribution for the blood of its imprisoned master. The resonant baritone jostled the earth itself so violently that the trio completely collapsed into each other upon the traitorous platform of the shifting sands underneath.
His scowl glowered through the earth itself, and it was so grand and terrible that even the volumes of opaque sand did little to disguise his inherent blood lust. The three of them shared a quick glance before untangling their extremities from one another in that dog pile they had created. They were each so relieved that he remained half-submerged, that they were beside themselves. Each one of them knew that this was the face of a man who no one saw once, and lived.
As Thrall slowly regained his composure, and sat upright, he looked upon the grinning face to his right. The features were human, but they were contorted in such an extreme expression of mirth that it was nearly unrecognizable as a face. The wrinkles creased and folded in on itself in places that it seemed almost like deep gashes or scars had been etched into his face. Whereas his cheeks were full of such contrasting boisterousness that it seemed near to bursting.
His eyes were each of them a blinding sun within a slender aperture of skin like the umbra peaking over the edge of the moon in a solar eclipse. It was brighter even than the radiant king Ra as he hung in the sky, far overhead, and watching them from his brilliant chariot suspended in the deepest blue. It traced serpentines of glass into the sand wherever he gazed for more than only a second.
His nostrils flared, and out blew a wind with such concussive force that it not only threw all three of the visitors onto their feet, but cast them backward for about 5 yards or so. The dust formerly under his neck and chest became a mighty sandstorm that filled the entire sky and horizon with a pale brown fog of slowly settling dust.
"Goddesses alive," Xantheaa gasped, coughing out a lungful of silt soon after. "We have sphinxes in our world, but they are nothing like this great beast before us! How does one even commune with something with such great power?! I feel so far below its caliber, that he may simply slaughter me without notice!"
'Aswad cawed in accordance, and quickly flew back to his spot before the flaming jackal, who seemed wholly unperturbed by the fact that hurricane force winds and category 7 earthquakes were appearing left and right. They simply continued to pace backward, and forward. The others followed his fledgling light to find their place by the bird's side.
"Be patient, my Theaa." Thrall warned her, "These creatures are born of great honor. They cannot harm us until we have answered one of their riddles."
"Oh, you know us? The seraph shall
convince the kids they know it all—
Unfortunate to show they stall
to throw me to the dust again."
"But perils wane—mastabas call
and in our mane they deign to fall.
They tumble into my canal,
and feast their eyes on fowl kin slain."
They spake past their three interlopers in rhyme and candor. It was almost as if guests weren't even there; the two godlike figures towered over them, so that their shadows were heavier than all of their collective weight combined. As the dust settled, the right figure availed itself in its true magnificent splendor. Its head stood a whopping 66 feet above the ground it rested its front paws upon.
The head alone was as wide as a mid-sized home. The arms stretched for another 50 feet before ending in these magnificent and abhorrent 6 foot claws, that raked into the earth like sabers made of pure blackness. He towered above them incredibly so, and he wasn't even standing up. He hadn't so much as budged a single hair on his tail, or wiggled his toes half a fathom away. They were beneath such concerted efforts.
He could always kill them with a sneeze, after all... though, more likely, he would rather enjoy them as a light snack to act as recompense for waking him from his gentle catnap. The other, mercifully, remained contented to stay mostly hidden behind the dune they had delicately exposed the very tips of their ears from within.
"Resign yourself. Your older brother
is enough to cut and smother
life from this decadent fother.
Or else, this would blight your mood."
"To you, I offer yet another
chance to break your streak of blunders.
Should'st I fail, I'd rend asunder
any man who lost my food."
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone