His fingers clumsy with cold, Sethi pulled his dagger from his scabbard and poked at the smoldering camel dung, hoping to awaken the dying embers of the fire. Several sparks ignited, glowing orange-red. He blew on them, gentle.

In the east, the hope of a new day approached as the sky's hue shifted from deep blue, to dark pink, brightening as Re-Atum's barque ascended, slow. Stars dimmed, succumbing to the smear of color spreading across the horizon. A rustle came from behind. Sethi turned. Within the tent, Horus sat up with a quiet groan, rubbing his hands over his face, the stubble on his jaw rasping in the deep silence of the frozen desert. Careful not to wake Imhotep, he pulled one of the frost-rimed blankets around his shoulders and moved to the fire. Within, a single flame flickered to life, brightening, the unspent fuel catching, spreading. Sethi piled more fuel around it, careful, nursing it back to life. Its heat grew, steady. He held out his hands, grateful for its meager warmth, enduring the ache of his blood stirring within his numb fingers.

"Forty-two days," Horus murmured, holding his hands toward the flames. "Every day the same, and we are only halfway there."

Sethi grunted. "Feels like an eternity."

Horus scoffed, quiet. "No. This is worse."

Soft sounds rose from the caravan's camp. Men, women, and beasts stirred, waking with the rising light. Sethi opened his pouch and pulled out his breakfast ration, eating his dried biscuits, almonds and dates in silence, lost in his thoughts. Twice in the last week they had passed enormous caravans, the length of them stretching to the horizon, neither of them coming from Babylon, but from the north, heading for the promise of Egypt's verdant delta. One had departed from Ashur, the capital of Assyria months before, the camels different to their own, bearing two humps instead of one. The other came from Karchemish, carrying news from Hatti and Damas, all of it dire.

Both caravans had stopped to trade their gold for food, their passengers offering fortunes for mere handfuls of grain, outbidding each other in their desperation to secure whatever food could be spared. Though his grasp of Akkadian was limited, and his knowledge of Nesite non-existent, Sethi understood enough as he walked along the caravans' endless lengths of camels, observing the well-dressed passengers upon their palanquins, their wealth no protection against the hunger gnawing their flesh. Their conversations carried in the dry desert air, quick, guttural and harsh, matching the ugliness of the lands they fled. Famine. Unrest. Riots. Raids by tribesmen. Entire cities burned to ash. Other words followed, murmured, fearful: earthquakes, floods, disease, rot. They clutched their stone idols, made in the images of the gods of their lands, their fingers stroking them as they prayed to them, begging for mercy.

Horus had kept to a distance, watching, silent, dispassionate, reminding Sethi of a falcon. When the caravans had parted ways, Sethi had asked him whether he thought the gods would intervene. Horus had shaken his head, his gaze moving to the east, toward Babylon. "This is his world now," he'd answered, cold, "not ours."

"Whose?" Sethi had asked. But Horus had walked on, his eyes fixed on the distance, determined, hostile, dangerous.

Swallowing the last of his breakfast, Sethi opened the water skin and drank, grateful for the rising heat of the fire.

A strangled cry came from the tent. Imhotep sat up, abrupt, his eyes wide and unseeing. "No," he whispered, stricken. "It cannot be." He looked past Sethi and Horus, pale and trembling, into the emptiness of the sky. He blinked, and patted the walls of the tent, orienting himself.

"Tent," he murmured. His gaze moved across the rippling expanse of the dunes, gray in the pre-dawn light. "Desert."

"What ails you, sorcerer?" Horus asked, eyeing him, wary.

Imhotep turned and peered into the shadows of the tent, suspicious. Keeping his eyes on its slanted depths, he backed out and joined them by the fire. Sethi handed him the water skin. Imhotep took it, his hands shaking as he pulled the stopper free.

"I thought I had seen it all," Imhotep muttered as he finished drinking and handed the skin back. "I didn't think anything could surprise me after what I experienced in Thoth's cave." He shook his head, slow. "I was wrong."

Sethi pushed the stopper back into the water skin. "A dream?"

"A vision. A message," Imhotep answered, meeting Horus's gaze. "From Thoth. Just like when he gave me the tablet so I could decipher the symbols in the cave."

Horus stilled. "What did you see?" he asked, low.

"I dreamed I walked in a city of unspeakable beauty, all white, gold and light," Imhotep began, quiet. "A blink and I found myself at the threshold of a large circular room. Behind me—an elegant, cluttered apartment. Ahead, in the middle of the room, a table, overflowing with scrolls and covered in equipment I could not comprehend. Around the room's circumference, four closed doors, spaced at equal distances. Deep cracks penetrated the walls, and as I stood there, a great rumbling rose from the depths of the city's foundation. From above, pieces of masonry loosened and tumbled down. A piece crashed through the table and destroyed everything on it."

He paused to fiddle with the bracelets on his forearm. "It was so real," he said. "Dust filled the room, I felt the crunch of debris underfoot. It was hard to see—to breathe. I was choking. The shaking wouldn't stop."

Sethi glanced at Horus, but the once-god kept his gaze riveted on Imhotep. "Go on," he urged, soft.

"It changed again and I found myself in a vast, high-ceilinged hall with a strange raised basin," Imhotep continued, pausing to scratch the back of his hand. "Thoth was there, waiting for me, encased within a globe of white light. He pointed at the basin. I went to it. On the surface of the basin I could see moving pictures. After a while, I realized I was watching things that were happening here. I saw the caravan; saw you both sleeping. Saw myself sleeping." Imhotep shook his head. "It makes no sense."

"The vision pool," Horus breathed. "Thoth found a way to waken it."

"Is that what you call it?" Imhotep muttered, bitter, toying once more with his bracelets. "A fine thing, if one finds it entertaining to watch the annihilation of an entire world."

"What do you mean?" Sethi demanded, alarmed, thinking of the people traveling from the north, of their empires unraveling; of Istara's caravan fourteen days ahead of them. He lunged to his feet, his hand going to the hilt of his dagger, instinctive. "Is Istara—"

Horus caught Sethi's forearm. "Istara and Baalat are safe—for now. Time moves differently in the vision pool." He turned his attention back to Imhotep. "Finish the rest," he said, taut, "and leave nothing out, no matter how small."

Imhotep sighed and let go of his bracelets. "Once I understood what I was seeing," he said, his eyes moving to the flames of the fire, "Thoth waved his hand over the basin and the pictures changed. The view flew away from the caravan across the desert to a vast, walled city spread out from the banks of an enormous river and came to a halt above a massive blue-tiled stepped pyramid. Deep beneath its depths, a man—no, not quite a man, his eyes were wrong—resided in luxury unlike anything I have ever encountered. In some of the rooms I saw strange, metallic things—incomprehensible things—some bigger than a barge. Then, the view slid into an opulent suite. Inside—" He stopped and shook his head.

Sethi eyed Horus, but the once-god ignored him, his attention remained fixed, intense, on Imhotep.

"Inside?" Horus prompted.

Imhotep shook his head again, resigned, and carried on, miserable. "Inside I saw Thoth, or at least the very likeness of him, living there, confined. I looked up at Thoth standing beside me within his globe of light not understanding how there could be two of him at once, but he pointed at the basin's surface, his expression filled with warning. I looked back again, as he wished me to do and the view pulled back outside the pyramid. From there, I observed the passage of time—days and nights unraveling, unfolding within heartbeats. In the distance, a distorted wall of black rose from the horizon, slow at first, then faster, growing in size, rippling like the still waters of a pool after you throw a stone into it. It bore down on the city, as though it would crush it. The view then lifted up and flew away, showing me many different kingdoms and empires. Everywhere, destruction: forests bursting into flame, earthquakes consuming mountains, violent storms carrying seas onto the land and submerging entire cities; men and women falling to sudden sickness, and in the fields, the crops withering, blackened by blight." He shuddered. "Everywhere I looked: death and destruction." He glanced up at Horus, bleak. "Then, as the kingdoms fell one by one, the distorted wall of black rose into the heavens and surrounded Re-Atum's barque. In a heartbeat, the light of the Creator became . . . nothing." Imhotep toyed with his bracelets, morose. "It is too much for a mind to comprehend," he muttered, staring once more at the fire. "Impossible. And yet it happened. I saw it."

Imhotep fell silent, occupied with lining up the stones of his bracelets.

"Was there anything else?" Horus asked, quiet.

Imhotep looked up, startled from his thoughts. "Anything else?" he repeated, blank. He blinked. "Yes, now I think of it. Thoth pointed at himself, then at the dying world below." Imhotep huddled nearer the fire, suppressing a shiver. "Then he held up two fingers and pointed at himself and at the dying world again. He showed me the Thoth imprisoned inside the pyramid and shook his head. I realized he was telling me the world was ailing because there are two of him. He left then, in a flash of light, while I remained to watch the world disintegrate. In the world's final hours, I saw the pyramids of Egypt appear on the riverbank of Qi Shin's kingdom, and a great sea emerge from the midst of the Thamud Desert. I saw empires shorn in two, riven by powerful earthquakes, the chasms between filled with liquid fire, its molten heat melting the earth." He ground the heels of his palms against his eyes, fighting images only he could see. "How can a man not go mad after witnessing such things?"

"It will pass," Horus said, firm. "It was a warning, nothing more. We still have time to stop it. My brother did well to speak to me through you." He patted Imhotep's shoulder. "Your vision may well be the thing to save all of us, both gods and men."

"I never wanted this," Imhotep moaned.

"None of us do," Horus answered, rising to his feet, tilting his head at Sethi to follow him.

A little apart from the camp, Horus turned to Sethi just as the edge of Re-Atum's barque crested the horizon. Its light spilled across the dunes, devouring the shadows in its path. "Nine months ago," he said, narrowing his eyes against the rising disk of Re-Atum's barque, "Baalat had a dream. It is the reason I came to you."

His spine prickling, Sethi held himself still, sensing a door long closed about to be opened.

"We knew this journey was meant to happen," Horus continued, "but the wait," he shook his head, his lips thinning, "was excruciating. All those months you and I marched along the Libyan border, I began to wonder if Baalat's dream had been nothing more than that—if I had wished to see more than what was there." He cut a look back at Sethi. "But then Imhotep came along and hauled us back from the brink of death." He nodded to himself. "That was when I became certain Baalat had dreamed true, and when the time was right, the Creator would send you and me across the desert to face our destiny."

"What did Baalat dream?" Sethi asked, eyeing a wake of vultures as they abandoned the bleached bones of a camel and lifted up into the sky, their movements clumsy with cold.

"Everything Imhotep described except the existence of a second Thoth and the unraveling of the world," Horus answered, turning to look to the east. "Imhotep's vision has granted me the whole of it now, and with it, great purpose." When Sethi remained silent, Horus eyed Sethi, sharp. "We are, all of us, heading for Babylon. You cannot possibly continue to hold to the belief what happened between the four of us ended the day I brought you back?"

"No," Sethi admitted, envying the birds as they flew into the rising light of Re-Atum's barque, wishing he could fly, too, longing to close the distance between him and Istara. "I became suspicious things weren't over the day you turned up at the training ground."

Horus looked back at the camp, as the men and women packed up the tents and rugs, quick, efficient, loading them into the camels' panniers.  He let out a heavy breath. "At last," he said, "I have certainty. Purpose." He looked back at Sethi, his features hardening. "Marduk was the cause for the wars between gods and men and the reason we fled to the Immortal Realm. It was the only way to stop the destruction. It is he who I must face--who we must face."

Sethi absorbed Horus's words. He would face a god. He hadn't counted on that. "I suspected Babylon was where my path would end," he said, resigned, "though I never expected it to end like this, against a being even the gods could not defeat." He looked over the endless sands of the desert, shifting from orange to gold as Re-Atum's barque ascended, slow, steady. "So it is to be a fight to save the world? How shall only the two of us—" he paused, a memory surfacing from when he returned to his villa and found Istara gone. "Wait, there is another here. One called Teshub."

Horus blinked, his attention drawn away from the movement within the camp. "He is my younger brother, the storm god, always unpredictable in battle. I would never have expected the Creator to choose him for this task. Sekhmet would have been a better choice, by far."

Sethi let out a long, slow breath as the pieces fell together, unpleasant. "And how did he come to be here?"

Horus met his eyes. "I think you already know the answer."

"He is bound to Urhi-Teshub," Sethi said, low. He bit back a curse. "So, the Creator expects me to stand against a god beside Hatti's king. How can I—"

"Marduk is not a god, nor even immortal," Horus cut in, tight, "though he possesses regeneration devices which enable him to live like an immortal." He scuffed the toe of his sandal against the tip of a half-buried rock. "If we are to succeed in stopping what is to come, Hatti's king is going to be the least of your troubles."

"And Istara?" Sethi asked, cautious. "What is her part in this?"

"Baalat is a healer, not a warrior," Horus answered, vague, casting a look over his shoulder, into the orange disk of Re-Atum's barque. "But we have thirty-three days to think about what we have learned this morning. Let us not waste the advantage Thoth has granted us. He used to say: All knowledge is within us." He stopped, and fell silent. "Perhaps we are the key," he said, low. "Three gods and three mortals, bound together in the mortal realm. The Creator will not want us to fail. The answer is here," he touched his fingers to his chest, over his heart, "we just need to find it."

He walked back to the camp, his head down, deep in thought. Sethi watched him go, uneasy, his gaze moving to the east, to where the woman he loved rode to Babylon, believing him dead, in the company of a man bearing the light of a god. A man just like him. A man who also loved Istara. He cursed, impatience tearing at him. Thirty-three long, brutal days stood between him and when he would see her again. What would seventy-five days in the company of her husband, a king, determined to win her back, do to their bond—a bond she believed to be dead?

"I'm here!" he bellowed, his words racing away, screaming across the emptiness of the desert toward her. "I'm here. I live. I am right behind you. Hear me!"

He stopped, panting, staggering, the light of Re-Atum pouring over him, cleansing the cold from his bones. He clenched his fists, willing himself to see across the impossible distance to her caravan. "My love," he whispered, "let me have you for those final days in Babylon. Let me love you one last time, before I am gone. Forever."