254 Reveal What Was Hidden

She could see a strong arm covering Lycster's mouth. The person did not come out of the shadow. But Vy was relieved that the arm belonged to a living creature. At least it looked like it. 

"Are you here for the scepter?" a voice shot out from the darkness. 

The voice was rough and guttural, a male voice. 

"No, and let go of my brother," Vy said in a cold tone of voice. 

The man did not loosen his grip on Lycster. 

"If you're not here for the scepter, then why are you here?" another voice asked from the darkness. 

Though she knew they would not believe her, she told them the truth. 

"We were trying to get away from an approaching sandstorm. So we decided to take shelter here."

"Lies," the man with the rough voice spoke. 

Lycster did not like how rough the man was holding him. The man smelled of smoke and alcohol. Without any warning, Lycster turned into his owl form and slipped out of the man's grasp. 

He flew over to where his sister and Aether was and perched on Vy's arm. Although she could not see who was in the shadows, Vy could hear them trying to get away. She harnessed the ice powers of her Kyu form and froze them in place based on sound. 

Using spheres of fire, she lit up their surroundings. Now, they could see how the men looked in the light. The two men continued to struggle to get out of the ice that held them in place. But Vy was not about to let them off so easily. 

The ice crawled up their leg, immobilising them up to their knee. 

"What is this scepter you're talking about?" Vy asked. 

She was intrigued by it when the man mentioned it. The man with the guttural voice was hesitant to answer. His comrade, on the other hand, was focused on trying to get out of the hold of ice around his leg. 

From the gear they were carrying, Vy deduced that these men came into the pyramid in an attempt to steal the scepter. It must be a powerful artifact, a valuable one too. Aether remembered that the murals did depict Pharoah Netiri holding it. 

The image of it on the mural was painted with gold paint, with royal blue striped all around it. The head of the scepter resembled a hook of a cane but more rounded and curved. At the centre of it was a dark red gem, likely a ruby, floating in the middle of it. 

Vy threatened the two men with her energy dagger. Knowing that was not enough to scare them into talking, Aether coiled himself around one of the men and hissed as he constricted his body.

"It's the Scepter of Pharaohs. We were hired to retrieve it," the other man caved in. 

"Damn it Marco!" the man with the guttural voice cursed to his comrade. 

"Well thanks for revealing my identity, Loiden," Marco said bitterly. 

"You can call it whatever you want, but we're here to retrieve it. Does that answer your question?" Loiden barked impatiently. 

Vy nodded, "Yes it does. Thank you. Aether's they are all yours."

A grin appeared on her Familiar's face. -My pleasure.- The winged serpent unhinged it's jaw, revealing it's sharpened fangs and the dark abyss of its mouth. 

"I wouldn't do this if I were you. You need us." Loiden said calmly. 

Lycster looked at the man, "What do you mean?"

"Without a map, you will never be able to find your way out of here. You'll be trapped here forever." the man explained. 

Vy thought about it for a while. What was the man talking about? All they needed to do was to retrace their steps and push down the limestone bricks to get out of the pyramid. Loiden seemed to have read her thoughts. 

"The entrance you came in no longer exists, if you don't trust me, you can go ahead and check it," he said confidently. 

"He's bluffing, sis," Lycster remarked. 

"It... it's true! Why would we lie now when we're about to be eaten?" Marco added. 

Aether chuckled. -Who said I was going to eat you?-

"Release him," Vy said to Aether. 

Aether loosened his grasp on the man and returned to her side. The two men took the opportunity and wriggled their legs free from Vy's trap of ice and made a run for it, leaving them behind in the hallway. 

Lycster was about to give chase but his sister held him back. 

"Let them go, it's alright," Vy whispered to her brother. 

"But without them, we can't get out of here!" Lycster argued. 

Aether revealed to Vy and Lycster a rolled up piece of fabric. When Vy unfurled it, they realised that it was a map. It contained the layout of the pyramid. Aether had taken it off Marco when he was coiled around the man. 

Looking at the symbols on the map, they quickly identified where they were needed to go. The map also provided them with the locations of where the traps were so that they could avoid triggering them. 

"Wait so what trap did we trigger just now?" Lycster asked out of curiosity. 

In the commotion that followed after Vy stepped on the panel, nothing seemed to have happened. Upon examining the map, they realised that a giant boulder should have rolled out and crushed them. 

"It seems like maybe the trap malfunctioned. It did not work." Vy replied. 

Using her spheres of fire, Vy continued to light the hallway as they continued down the path. They went up a long flight of staircases with multiple sealed chambers that had been bricked up on each side. 

The map indicated that each room was filled with different objects, from furniture to servants. 

"Servants? You mean there are actual bodies of servants in there?" Lycster asked in shock. 

Vy shrugged her shoulders, while Aether examined the writings on the walls. The deeper down the hallway they went, the more well preserved the writings were. When they came before one of the bricked up rooms, he read the writings surrounding it. 

-No, not real bodies. They have figurines made out of howlite, a type of white mineral that was often dyed blue. The figurines were carved and placed in the room. Each one represented one servant for the Pharoah in the afterlife. 

As they continued down the hallway, the three of them could hear arguing echoing through the hallway. It was Loiden and Marco again. They discovered that their map was missing and could not decide on which was the right way to go. 

"You lost the map? How are we going to find the Queen's chamber now?" Loiden chided. 

"Are you dumb? Is this the first pyramid you've been in? I thought you were a seasoned expert? The Queen's chamber is always down, the Pharoah's chamber is up."

In the darkness of the hallway, Vy noticed that there were pairs of glowing red and green eyes before them. 

-Cat spirits?- she wondered to herself. 

When she lit up the hallway with her fire, the eyes remained, with a ghostly presence in the shape of a cat remaining. The cat walked up to the Vy and rubbed itself on the side of her leg, meowing to her. 

It's meow echoed through the hallway. Another cat spirit walked up to the men and meowed at the men as if asking them to follow it. The cat walked up ahead of them and sat in the middle of the split hallway that was going upwards. 

"The cat is clearly trying to fool us. We should go down," Marco declared. 

"You're right, Netiri was evil, she killed all the cats. This cat is clearly trying to lead us to our doom," Loiden agreed. 

Vy thought back to the murals they had seen in the beginning of the hallway. Could this female Pharaoh be evil?

"Once we're done with this mission, we'll destroy this place." Loiden noted before he and Marco went downwards. 

"Destroy this place? Why can't you just leave this place alone? It's a tomb for goodness sake," Vy could not stop herself from rebutting. 

Why was she defending this evil pharaoh?