Prelude
Khepri
In the Earthly realm, there’s a saying—it’s nothing personal, but in the godly world, there’s no such thing.
Everything is personal, and everything is done with an intent.
Take, for example, my job at the Black Hole Prison, or the Back Hole as the prisoners call it. Those prisoners specifically being demigods who have committed “godly crimes.”
Nothing could have been more calculated than me taking one of the coveted positions as a prison guard.
Or, me currently undercover in scarab-form, buzzing through the trees outside the prison walls at the Back Hole, approaching a pile of shit.
Scarab is just a fancier name for dung beetle, but if the humans want to worship a shit-eater, who am I to stop them? I’m not just a crap god, either, I swear. I was one of the three most important solar deities in the Egyptian pantheon—not that anyone recalls this.
Forgive me if I sound bitter, not better, but fuck if it doesn’t chap my ass that my duties were constantly overlooked for those of the almighty and popular Ra’s. That fuckstick never even did half the work I did! As the god of the midday sun, Ra merely used to take the brilliant ball of fire from my hands and roll it leisurely to Atum, who was in charge of the evening, or setting sun.
But because Ra’s sun shone the brightest and was at the zenith in the sky when humans were awake, they worshipped his golden ass most. Atum got a little more glory than me. His sunsets made him legendary.
But me?
I was the forgotten former sun god. When the sun set in the West, Atum handed it to me to roll through Duat, the Egyptian underworld.
Do humans think that shit is easy?! Of the three of us sun gods, I had the ball the most, all night and into the morning. But I got the least appreciation. My wings flutter extra fast in irritation as I approach the huge mound of shit, a bouquet of scents wafting from it and hitting my antennae. But even the scent doesn’t distract me from the memories of my former life.
My old job as sun roller didn’t even end there in the underworld. In the morning, when I shoved the burning hot sun onto the horizon in the East, did Ra move his lazy ass to meet me?
Nope.
The fucker slept in—till like ten a.m.! Only then did he take over, when everyone revered the intense heat and light of his sun.
Why don’t humans appreciate subtlety? Where was the adoration for my sunrises? Why did humans always bemoan getting up at the crack of dawn? Didn’t they notice the gorgeous streaks I tried to lace through the sky? Their eyes were supposed to be programmed to see more colors at dawn than dusk, because I helped them slowly adjust from dark to light. Didn’t they realize what an asshole I could have been, just shoving that bright yellow light at them all at once?
I give an annoyed squeak as I fly through Duat; that sound is the best I can do to express my frustration while I’m in my insect form.
I might be angry at the humans, but Ra’s egotistical ass went above and beyond to gain their attention. He wined and dined them, essentially, until Atum and I were forgotten.
We finally gave up and just let Ra have all the glory.
And all the work.
If Ra wanted to be the main Egyptian solar deity, then he sure as Duat could have all the trappings that came with it. Atum and I said fuck it and let Ra have the fire ball full time.
Like I said, I’m bitter, not better, about it, but I’m not fucking enraged about him taking over. Certainly, not enough to want to exact revenge on Ra’s narcissistic ass.
No, it was only when Ra started doing something even worse than stealing all my glory and worship that I was spurred into my current personal vendetta against the man.
Not only worse, but evil. The asshole’s created a prison to lock up demigods. And he’s throwing them in right and left.
Hence why I am in my scarab-form and flying straight into a fetid pile of shit. Said shit pile is none other than Nut, goddess of the cosmos, in disguise. Clever goddess. Who would suspect a mound of crap? And what better thing to attract a dung beetle, right? I land right on top of her, trying not to laugh.
“Wow. You went all out. You’re still steaming.”
“It’s cow manure,” she comments, unfazed. Two eyes pop open in the shit and I’m caught staring at something that looks like a cross between the poop emoji on my phone and a hieroglyphic cartoon face.
The cow manure bit makes sense since Nut is also the goddess of cows. The question is—did she literally shit herself out of her cow form for this? The bigger question is—do I want to really know?
Not really.
“Impressive,” I tease instead of asking my questions. “I guess I should have said something like ‘holy cow’ or ‘holy shit.’”
“Always the joker, aren’t you, my Khepri? I don’t relish being fecal matter, but for my son, I am happy to be dung all my life. How is he?”
“He is well. Hopeful and strong. He knows that we will free him. He sends his love.” The Demigodling always asks me to tell his mother this, whether Ra has tortured him or not, which happens more often than not. He doesn’t want her to worry. But Nut is very familiar with Ra’s tactics, since the dickwad tried to prevent her from ever having children.
Nut doesn’t say anything, but her cartoon eyes fill with tears. It’s strange to talk to bodily waste. It’s even stranger to see it cry.
“There, there, mother,” I soothe. “You’re turning into diarrhea. Pull yourself together.”
Nut really isn’t my mother. I’m a special deity in that I don’t come from a parental meeting of a dick in a vag, (I created myself out of the fabric of the universe) but Nut is one of the few gods to acknowledge, and even care for me. Being even older than me, she’s become a mother figure of sorts over the centuries. I love her dearly and would do anything for her—even take on Ra.
See, before I willed myself into existence—that’s right, I’m also the god of reincarnation—I was born a scarab beetle from nothing but another glorious pile of poop.
But enough about me. Nut and I are on a mission to destroy the sun fuck and his awful unjust prison. I’m not the only one who hates Ra.
Nut and Ra have been at one another’s throats for millennia—ever since she ticked him off and turned him down to marry Geb, the Earth god.1 Ra was so jealous that he tried to prevent Nut from having children. When she outwitted him with Thoth’s help, Ra tried to kill her offspring. He even went so far as to permanently separate Nut from Geb. So, Nut stooped—per Ra’s godist, biased opinion—to sleeping with a human man and having a demigodling.2
If that wasn’t offensive enough—the Egyptian people ignored Ra’s wish to be their King Maker. The humans declared Nut’s child god their pharaoh. The demigodling’s worship stats soon surpassed Ra; enraging the sun god even further because he was left in the shadow of this spawn of fucking.
Except—gods don’t believe anything’s an accident, right?
Everything’s personal to them and Ra took every move that Nut made as an audacious slight.
So, Ra, the deviant fuck, had to be crafty. He devised a way to frame the Demigodling. Ra made it appear as if the Demigodling attempted to kill his half-siblings for their power. As god of justice—anyone else see the irony here—Ra sentenced the Demigodling to jail, a.k.a: a lifetime in a piece-of-crap holding in the depths of Duat, the Egyptian Underworld, called the Black Hole.