“Guess I don't have to worry about that twenty bucks.” Leoma dusted herself off after crawling off of Kadin.
Kadin stood up, and stared at the tunnel suspiciously, “I wonder if there really are booby traps.”
“We can’t go back, we can’t stay here, so we have to go forwards one way or the other.” His partner trotted on ahead, reading the hieroglyphs.
Catching up with her, Kadin stared at the strange pictures on the walls, trying to read them. But he wasn’t schooled in the language, “What does it say?”
Leoma halted and stared hard at the right wall, “Here it indicates...that one of Akenohotepu’s daughters was mummified before the Romans attacked. She was buried here. And...” She went down the line of pictures, “But the burial...was strange. They didn’t complete the mummification process...and buried her with a strange stone of some kind.”
“Is that what this says?” Kadin pointed at a large picture of a blue stone in front of a picture of the sun, with several Egyptians below it.
“No. That one says that the stone was said to be able to take the people into the afterlife without actually killing them. It doesn’t make any sense though.” Leoma shook her head.
“Weird.” Kadin led the way onward this time, gazing at the pictures of people being mummified on the walls. “Really sick.” He couldn’t wait to get out of the place.
“Hmmm. According to these...Akenohotepu was buried here after the Romans conquered Egypt. Apparently he’d gone into hiding and managed to survive the massacre. But everything was destroyed, and his country fell. So...he committed suicide.” Leoma gulped.
Kadin cleared his throat, “Heh...that’s nice to know...I think.” He pulled his shirt from his neck releasing some sweat and heat from his body.
They continued walking for a few more moments, until Leoma paused at another piece of hieroglyphics and translated out loud. “Beware of the pharaoh’s booby traps. Only the holy at heart will pass to awaken the...mummies?” She gulped.
“That doesn’t sound very nice. I don’t wanna wake up anything.” Kadin shook his head.
“Their traps couldn’t have been too sophisticated. I mean, what kind of traps could there be in rock?” As she finished her sentence her foot sunk into the ground and the floor crumbled behind her!
Reaching back, Kadin managed to grab her hand and pull her forwards away from the chasm. They both stood and breathed for a few moments, staring down at the small, black hole.
Shining their flashlights down, they could see a very large and pointed spike at the bottom, only about ten or fifteen feet away.
“Ouch.” Kadin let out a breath as he stepped back from the hole.
Leoma’s hands shook slightly as she waited for her nerves to calm down. “From now on...I think we need to test where we walk first.”
“No, really? I thought we could do some tango dancing.” Kadin’s sarcastic tone returned as he trudged slowly ahead, testing the ground with his feet before he placed weight on them.
“You know we might be able to find the legendary Tomb of Akenohotepu in here. We’d become famous and rich from all the treasure that was buried with him.” Leoma concentrated on better things as she followed directly behind Kadin so she wouldn’t fall into another chasm.
“Can’t you think about anything else besides dead people?” He was becoming very irritated.
“Can’t you think of anything other than booby traps?” She snapped poking his back.
Kadin halted and turned around, ready to release his nervousness in anger, “We need to be searching for a way out of here, not looking for a bunch of dead people, that are guarded by deadly traps!”
“But to find a way out of here I need to find more tombs and read the hieroglyphs so we can get out, oh mighty and wise guide!” Leoma fumed.
Neither noticed the cloud of sulfur that seeped through a crack in the ceiling behind them and covered the walls with acid.
“Fine! But there is no way I’m going to go into those tomb places!” Kadin folded his arms.
“Good! Then you won’t be on my back the whole time!” They were both near shouting before they smelled the sulfur.
Kadin sniffed the air some. “You smell rotting eggs?”
They both turned and glanced behind them at the area they’d just come through, and the sulfur that blocked off the passage. They couldn’t return that way now. If they’d stopped very long in that area they’d be dead now for sure.
“Well...it should settle in a couple hours if we need to go back...” Leoma swallowed.
“Or it’ll get flushed our way and suffocate us.” Kadin quickly began walking inwards again towards their first fork in the passages. He paused and gazed from hall to hall. “I think we should go...right.”
“Hey! Let me read the inscription first!” Leoma grabbed his arm and pulled him back into the middle so she could read.
He wretched his arm quickly out of her grasp and waited impatiently.
She glanced at the top of the doorways and stared at the strange Egyptian letters. “The one on the left says ‘r-n’, the middle one says, ‘Corridor’, and the one on the right says ‘s-g-r’.”
“What kinds of words are those? R-n? S-g-r?” Kadin set his fists on his hips and stared disbelievingly at the scribbles.
“They're not words, they're names. The Egyptians didn’t write down the vowels of the names. So all I have to work with are the consonants. They’re probably tombs.” Leoma shrugged.
“They might have more hieroglyphs in the Corridors, like all those walls we passed on the way.” Kadin tapped his chin.
“Or it could be one giant maze trap.” Leoma thought aloud.
They both fell silent for a few moments, thinking.
“I think we should go from right to left. Then we won’t get lost as easily.” Leoma pointed her light down the faded blue hallway.
“Fine. I’m staying right here until you come back from the tomb.” Kadin sat down, folded his arms and turned his light off to conserve the batteries.
“Oh yeah, dead bodies wrapped in cloth might come alive and come after us!” Leoma clapped her hands to her face in mock fright before rolling her eyes, turning and walking down the tunnel.
“Hey!” Kadin immediately hopped up and ran after her, turning his flashlight back on. When he caught up to her at the tomb entrance he began his sentence again, “You know you’ve got a lot of nerve little missy!”
Leoma ignored him as she shown the flashlight inside the tomb, staring in awe at all the small gold treasures in the room, and the loads of hieroglyphs.
Even Kadin became silent as the flicker of light off gold caught his eye. Then his mouth dropped as he saw the wonders around them.
Running over to the wall, Leoma began to read it, while Kadin immediately hurried over to the treasure and began filling his pockets.
“Huh...that’s odd. He wasn’t of royalty.” Leoma scratched her neck as she read.
“So? Look at all this treasure! The guy must’ve been important!” Kadin’s eyes shown as he held up a heavy pile of the treasure in front of her. Gold statues, jewelry, and coins were everywhere, as well as silver and bronze, some painted, but most not.
“No...” Leoma read some more. “He was only a royal advisor. He was S-g-r’s royal advisor.” She read further. “Apparently they mummified him like they did Akenohotepu’s daughter, with that strange stone. And they put half of S-g-r’s riches in here for him to protect. He was also supposed to aid her in her afterlife.” Leoma’s eyes widened. “So S-g-r must be Akenohotepu’s daughter.”
Kadin didn’t hear very much, “Yeah...uh huh.” He was still busy loading himself with treasure until he got to the point that he could hardly stand up.
After reading all the hieroglyphs, Leoma walked slowly over to the back corner of the room, spying a large sarcophagus setting on the ground against the dusty wall. Walking over, she blew the sand off the top and read the inscription, “R-n lies here buried near S-g-r as her guardian.” She blinked a few times, examining the large case.
Looking it over, she found the opening slit down the side. Taking a chisel and hammer from her belt, she stuck the chisel into the crack, and hit it lightly with the hammer a few times, until the sarcophagus groaned. Then she put her tools away and lifted up the lid, just to reveal a smaller encasing around the mummy.
This encasing was made of clay, and had the mummy’s face and body painted on the top, showing his robes and headdress of importance.
Carefully grabbing the side of the lid, she slowly lifted it, holding her breath. A sudden blast of stale air hit her in the face, along with some dust. She had to pause and wipe it from her eyes before she gazed at the wrapped body.
It was strange. The mummy only appeared to have been buried yesterday. His whole body was intact, and even the wrapping was still white! He was wrapped head to toe, with his arms crossed on his chest.
She stared with wide eyes at the mummy, then at the small, blue jewel on its forehead. It must have been the jewel in the hieroglyphs. Could it have been the thing keeping the mummy looking so young?
Then she shook her head, ashamed that she’d thought that. The sarcophagus must have been vacuum-sealed.
“Leoma! Ain’t you going to get any treasure?” Kadin asked as he limped over, heavily laden with treasure. He stopped in front of the mummy and stared down at it. “Whoa. Dead guy.”
“Careful. Don’t drop anything...” Leoma eyed the jewels in his pockets and hanging from the necklaces.
About that time several jewels fell from his pocket as he leaned over the body. The jewels clanged down beside the mummy, and he quickly leaned back. “Oops.”
Leoma narrowed her eyes at him before reaching down and picking up the jewels. He quickly decided to help, stuffing them back into his pocket. She eyed the mummy again, immediately noticing that the blue jewel was gone. “Kadin, you blockhead. Give me the blue one. It was on his forehead.” She held out her hand impatiently.
“Alright alright, keep your pants on.” He continued muttering while he dug in his pockets, “It’s not like he’s gonna need it anyway.”
“We need to leave everything like it was on the mummy, so it can be better analyzed in a lab.” Leoma tapped her foot on her ground while Kadin opened his hand revealing several jewels, one red, one yellow, one green, and two blue. “Oh great. Which one was the original?”
“Who cares? They’re both the same.” Kadin took one of the blue jewels and set it down on the mummy’s forehead. “There. Happy?”
“Yes.” Leoma folded her arms. “Now we need to close it up so air doesn’t destroy the body.”
“Ho no. You opened it. You close it.” Kadin shook his head, walking away as necklaces and chains drug behind his feet.
Snorting at him, Leoma slowly closed the inner encasing, then heaved down the large sarcophagus lid. Once finished, she clapped the dust from her hands and hurried after Kadin, pausing to stuff some jewels of her own in her pockets.
Not long after the two left the tomb and headed back towards the fork in the passageways, a loud creek echoed through the silent room.
More creeks and groans sounded from inside the sarcophagus, as the inner encasing was being forced open from the inside. The echoes stayed inside the room, and soon the heavy sarcophagus lid itself was being heaved against. Slowly, but surely, grunts from the person were heard outside the sarcophagus, as he managed to lift it off and free himself.
The jewel had been removed from his head by someone, and replaced with the wrong one. But by who? He could hear that the room was empty again, and could see that it was dark. It would take a long while for him to find a torch and light, and another long while to find who’d brought him out of his deep hibernation.
“You know, if we run into another trap, you’ll be the first to go with all that gold weighing you down.” Leoma laughed as they paused at the fork in the passage.
“Well...I can’t leave it here. If we find a way out I’d have to hurry back here and get it before thieves do.” Kadin grunted, forced to bend over from the weight.
Leoma paused and gazed up at the words above the halls. If the Corridor were really a maze, she’d be better off going into the tomb of S-g-r first. “I think I want to go into the next tomb, before we brave the Corridor.” As she turned towards him she couldn’t help but laugh at his bulging pants, as they began to slide down off his waist.
Kadin quickly hocked up his pants, “Hey, it’s not funny.” He dropped several pieces of jewelry and coins on the floor and stumbled to pick them back up. Finally he sighed, “All right. I’ll leave this stuff here until we come back from the tomb.”
Quickly hurrying down the hallway, Leoma glanced at the hieroglyphs that she passed by, and watched the ceiling almost change before her eyes. Soon column faces were on either side of the walls, and a small indent was cut at the bottom and top of the walls. The ceiling and columns were painted white, and the walls were painted hieroglyphic colors with a blue background. Even though everything was faded and covered with sand and dust, it still held the image of a palace.
“Wait for me!” Kadin, who could run almost twice the speed as Leoma, caught up to her as she skidded to a stop in front of the tomb entrance.
Both of their mouths dropped and their eyes bulged as they stared at the royal room. Huge statues of gold were everywhere, as were treasure of all kinds, royal tools, headpieces, and clothes. Off to the left side nearer to the doorway, was a slab of rock, with a large statue of a black leopard. On the leopard’s head was a blue jewel, like the one they’d seen on the last mummy.
“I’m...I’m going to have to make a couple trips.” Kadin’s jaw dropped. Then he quickly stuffed his flashlight in his pocket and hurried over to the treasure, sticking his tongue out the corner of his mouth in concentration. He began piling treasure on himself and pulling it out of the room back towards the fork in the passage.
Leoma headed straight over to the walls, more concerned about getting out. This was definitely the tomb of the pharaoh's daughter. The paintings on the walls said it over and over, and they also bore instructions for the ‘holy’ ones that were supposed to ‘awaken’ her...whatever that meant. It also informed her that the sarcophagus was inside the rock slab.
So stepping over treasures, Leoma steadily made her way over to the sarcophagus. After blowing the dust off the top, like she’d done before, she read the inscription on the lid. It read ‘S-g-r, daughter of K-n-h-t-p (Akenohotepu), Princess of the Nile’.
Sticking her flashlight in on her belt, she spat in her hands and rubbed them together. She would need a lot of elbow grease to lift this kind of weight.
Grabbing the edge of the slab, she heaved and heaved, pulling it up and pushing it off the block at the same time. But the slab only moved a few inches. Kadin was off with his treasure, so she couldn’t count on him for help.
She heaved several more times, moving the rock inch by inch, until finally the slab fell off the rock edges and slammed into the rock ground with a loud ‘thwack’! The sound bounced off the walls, and echoed so loudly that she had to cover her ears.
Kadin hurried back into the room, unloaded of his treasure, and quickly shown his light on Leoma, “What happened? What was that noise?”
“Just the slab.” Leoma breathed, leaning against the rectangular, box made of rock.
Kadin sighed relief, “Thought it was another booby trap.” Then he walked over to one of the mounds of treasure and began loading himself up again. “You know it’s bad luck to unbury dead people.”
“What kind of luck is it to forcefully bury them alive in the first place?” Leoma retorted quickly, eyeing the large sarcophagus inside the large rock casing.
“It was buried alive?” Kadin stood up and stared at the slab.
“Yep. She was mummified alive after her father found that blue jewel. He was afraid the Romans would kill her.”
“So...he killed her himself so that wouldn’t happen?” Kadin raised an eyebrow.
Leoma nodded as she took her tools and began to pry the sarcophagus open.
“Well that was stupid of him. Glad my parents ain’t like that.” Kadin went back to gathering treasure. He soon came across a large sword, with a gold and silver pummel, and long blade. “Wow! Look at this sword!” Kadin held it up for Leoma to see.
She glanced at it and nodded, “Must have been S-g-r’s. The princesses would carry them around sometimes and cut of slave’s heads when they bowed if they displeased them.”
Kadin held his throat with his hand and glanced down at the sword, “Wonderful.” But then he paused. “I could use it anyway, in case we run into anymore traps.” Then he picked up the belt, sheath, and clasp that went with it and put them on.
Finally prying the sarcophagus open, Leoma opened the lid to reveal the small, inner encasing with her face and body painted on it, in her royal attire. “Almost there.” She grunted to herself as she grabbed the gold inner encasing and lifted. Again dust puffed some around her, and she coughed and rubbed it from her eyes.
In the encasing was the wrapped mummy. She had a blue jewel on her forehead, and the wraps were all white, as if they were brand new.
“Alright, now this is getting weird.” Leoma commented leaning her elbows against the rock rim and eyeing the mummy.
“What?” Kadin hustled over and peered in at the body. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s over two thousand years old!” Leoma pointed at the mummy as she spoke. “Some of the wrap should be missing, it should be all brown, the body should be shriveled, and there was never originally supposed to be a jewel on its forehead. It looks brand new!”
“Huh. Maybe thieves were here and traded the old bodies for new ones.” Kadin shrugged and trotted back to the treasure again.
“Hah hah, funny.” Leoma leaned further on the rim and rested her head on her hands. “And still we have no way out.”
“It’s probably in the Corridor.” Kadin shrugged. “At least you should grab some stuff so we have proof that we’ve been here.”
“Yeah...” Leoma sighed, “Maybe you’re right.” So she reached out and plucked the jewel from the mummy’s forehead and looked it over. “At least I found the tomb of one of Akenohotepu’s daughters.”
“Heh, you’re lucky! Most archeologists I see around here only find a little picture here and there most of their lives, let alone two tombs full of treasure and mummies all in one day!” Kadin called from his spot surrounded by gold.
“Yeah, that’s true.” Leoma turned around and leaned back against the rock, looking over the blue jewel. She heard a groan from Kadin. “That treasure too heavy for you?”
“What?” Kadin stood up with the necklaces around his shoulders.
“You sounded like you were having trouble.”
Kadin stared at her, then down at the necklaces, “No.”
The two stared at each other for half a moment, right before the mummy sat straight up moaning and groaning loudly!
Leoma screamed and jumped back away from the sarcophagus, dropping the jewel and her flashlight!
Kadin yelled and shone the light on the mummy as it wretched against the wrapping right before he made for the door, with Leoma right behind him! They ran down the corridor as fast as their legs could carry them, Kadin shedding treasure the whole way! They didn’t stop at the fork in the passage, but went into the hall that led to the Corridor.

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