Forever The World of Nightwalkers - By Jacquelyn Frank Page 0,14

molecule, so he would know the same pain that Kamen was feeling and had been suffering from ever since Odjit had been wounded.

Her body was healed, finally. The process of drawing her away from the brink of death had been arduous and he had come close to failing in spite of her Bodywalker ability to heal rapidly.

Yet she lingered in a coma. Dead but alive. Alive yet dead. It was an infuriating limbo and she didn’t deserve such an ignominious existence. Odjit was the most powerful and beautiful priestess of her time. She communed with the gods whenever she walked on this earth, providing the Templar Bodywalkers with a conduit to them. All she had ever done, all she had ever tried to do, was bring the Bodywalkers closer to their gods.

But Menes and his foul followers in the body Politic thwarted her efforts time and again, leading the so-called “lawful” Bodywalkers further and further from the only resource open to them that could perhaps, one day, bring a peaceful end to this interminable existence where they resurrected over and over and over.

Life had become so empty for him. He would do anything … anything at all to finally find a sense of peace and finality. And he believed with all his heart and soul that Odjit was the only way to do that. Only her fervent belief could bring them there.

He turned the page and found what he had been looking for. A translation of the Bodywalker prophecy they called the Resolution Prophecy.

The children of the sun will fall into misguidance, will pervert the natural order of things, and find themselves knowing only night. There will be no final peace, no resolution, until Amun rises and holds his hands out to the most repentant and most deserving of his children. Love, blinding and pure, will guide Amun home at last. But should he find poison and acrimony amongst his children, then his fury and punishment will know no bounds.

All scholars and historians, on both sides of the civil rift, agreed that the falling into misguidance had already occurred. It was wha know how much he means toouhrdt had created the Bodywalker species to begin with. Their elaborate mummification rituals, meant to bring their wealth and households into the afterlife with them and preserve them for their glorious rest had, in fact, ended up tethering their souls to the mortal world. They had suffered for angering the gods with their hubris, waiting in the Ether, numb and in limbo, for hundreds of years before they had evolved enough to learn that they could exit the mists by luring to them a living mortal on the cusp of death. The lesser mortal souls were honored and graced with the Bodywalkers’ powerful presences. They gave them new life and extraordinary power in trade for the dominant control of their mortal flesh. In essence, they paid for their near-immortality by moving to a submissive position and allowing the host full reign over all thoughts and actions.

And even so, they could never look upon the face of their beautiful sun. They who had been born to the deserts of Egypt and Mesopotamia, the absolute children of the sun and the great god Ra. It was a painful and bitter punishment, and Kamenwati, as well as all of the other Templar followers, longed for the day when this curse would end.

But here was where interpretations divided. The Templars like himself and Odjit believed wholeheartedly that if Amun rose and found the Bodywalkers at war he would be further angered and there was no telling what greater punishments it would earn them. Templars like Kamen believed that prayer, rituals, and absolute devotion to the gods and to a unified peace was the only way to earn Amun’s blessings and, finally, a place in the afterlife.

The godless Politic with their modern ways and blasphemous practices would be the ruin of them all. Kamen could not see that happen. Refused to see that happen. He was tired. So very damn tired. He longed for the end of all of this. Sure, he had thrilled in the immortality of it all in the beginning. But it had not taken but two long lives for him to feel disenchanted with all that had once given him joy, like material things and prestigious power. He had been wealthy and powerful in his original life and continued to enjoy those same powerful positions with every rebirth. It was just as easy to