An OV Odyssey: Eclectic Ascension

Chapter 2: Issue 15: Tested, but never faltered.

Faster than the eye could blink, before the mind could summon a single thought, Edmin was gone. The city of Memphis stood in stunned silence, awestruck by the impossible event they had just witnessed. A younger priest, eyes wide, turned to the high priest and asked, "Elder... how do you think the gods will respond to his presence?"

Still gazing into the horizon where Edmin had vanished, the high priest answered quietly, "It is unwise to predict the will of gods, young one. That being said... what happens to the stranger now is no longer in our hands."

After stepping through concept, Edmin arrives in the Duat, a realm not bound by space or time, but by symbol, truth, and divine resonance. Every inch of this place pulses with cosmic principle. He looks around, struggling to believe what his senses deliver: a land bathed in eternal twilight—not darkness, but a shimmering, rose-gold dusk. The air is fragrant with wild lilies and sacred myrrh. Golden reeds sway gently, moved by a wind that cannot be felt.

Cat-like shadows drift silently across the horizon, graceful, eternal observers. The ground beneath Edmin's feet is soft obsidian dust, warm with memory. In the distance, ancient ruins float in the air, held aloft by invisible currents of divine music. Gigantic felines, some house-sized and others vast and ethereal, roam lazily through the fields. Overhead, the sky is torn in two: one half a radiant crescent sun, the other a full moon, embedded with countless unblinking eyes that watch over every path.

Every tree bears both ripe fruit and claw marks. Every statue smiles. Every statue watches.

Edmin slowly exhales, awestruck. "This place... it's beautifully strange. But I didn't come here to marvel. I need to find the one they call Bastet."

The moment he speaks her name, dozens of ethereal cats materialize around him. They do not attack. They do not move. They only watch.

Edmin looks calmly from one feline form to the next. "I seek the deity of this realm," he says. "I wish only to speak. My search is urgent."

Then, a voice, not from above or around, but from everywhere at once, cascades across the realm. It echoes like wind over sand and silk, bouncing from reed to ruin.

"A stranger walks into my domain and dares to ask for audience with the Great Huntress?"

Edmin turns, seeking the voice's origin. "I mean no harm. I only seek a soul dear to me!"

A moment of silence... then soft laughter, musical and wild.

"Do you now? Very well... you've piqued my interest."

Two of the ethereal cats before him step aside, revealing a hidden structure emerging from the reed-choked field. A temple. Shaped like a reclining cat, half-pristine and half in beautiful ruin. Its eyes glow dimly, as if waking from a dream.

Edmin begins walking toward it, noting that the ethereal cats follow closely behind, silent as shadows.

Inside the temple, the air shifts. Silk and shadow drape every corridor. Echoing purrs ripple through the space like a second heartbeat. The stone beneath his feet is warm, soft, as if the temple itself is alive.

He enters the central hall and sees a throne, not carved stone, but an enormous cushion of deep violet silk. Yet Bastet is nowhere to be seen.

The cats that followed now surround him again, this time, hissing softly, claws raking the air in warning. Still, Edmin does not flinch. He neither panics nor engages.

A roar suddenly splits the air—thunderous, ancient.

Edmin turns as a ten-foot lion pads forward, golden eyes locked on him. The beast snarls, lowering itself. Then, without warning, it charges, its claws outstretched, maw wide, death incarnate.