Treasure Hunter Elaine: Chapter 2: Back from the Dead

Previous chapter: http://pastebin.com/wP41Aiv3
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So.

I just found a living magical girl sleeping inside of a sarcophagus that was resting in an untouched ancient Egyptian tomb. Well, it was untouched before I arrived anyway.

The girl in the sarcophagus has tan skin, and her hair goes down to her chin. Her dress… you know, that typical Egyptian dress women wear… I think it's called a kalasiris? Hers is odd. Usually the clothes at the time helped indicate social status, and longer and larger was considered better at the time. Point is, this girl's kalasiris is unusually short for someone well off enough to have their own tomb. Hers only goes down to her thighs instead of her ankles. The dress is also made of silk instead of linen. She has a decorative golden belt resting on her waist, as well as gold bracelets that cover most of her forearm, and several golden gorgerine – the metal discs Egyptians wore as jewelry – on her chest. (I swear I'm not looking up what everything is called on my tablet right now. I can't even get a signal this deep inside the pyramid.)

Resting on her chest is a sapphire soul gem.

Allow me to restate my previous assessment of the situation:

What the absolute fuck?

She's definitely not some thousand-year-old magical girl. That's impossible. There is no way she could have survived that long. Her body hasn't decayed at all, so it must be sustained by magic, yet her soul gem is crystal clear. If she had ludicrous amount of magical energy and some sort of stupidly efficient magic focusing on preservation, I'd be generous and give her a week, maybe two at the very most, before there would be some darkness in her soul gem. There's no way she's been here longer than that.

So that brings up the question… How the fuck did she get here? She certainly didn't dig her way through like I did, or phase through the walls, or even teleport in. Not when it took me two grief seeds to get here and she's still grief-free.

Fuuuuuuuck. Does she know how hard it was to get here? The bullshit traps I had to go through? I had to dig my way through several tons of stone to make it here!

And she's just lying there, not a care in the world, sleeping.

Having more than enough questions and not enough answers, I reach down and pick up her soul gem, and bring it up to mine to forcibly wake her up.

The second the gems touch and a spark of magic escapes my soul gem and enters hers, she bolts up looking around.

"Who are you?" She demands the second she lays her eyes on me. "You're not Osiris."

"Osiris? Of course not." I scoff. "Does it look like my head is—"

"Where are the scales? The feather of Ma'at?" she continues, as if I hadn't spoken at all. "My heart is to be weighed upon the scales to see if I am worthy to live for all eternity in the afterlife! How am I meant to live forever if neither Osiris, the scales, nor the feather of Ma'at are here?" The girl takes another look around the king's chamber. "This isn't the Hall of Judgment. Is this my tomb?"

She then turns to face me. "Answer my questions, peasant!"

Alright. Well. I wasn't expecting her to actually say something a pharaoh might conceivably say if they came back from the dead.

I still don't believe that this is her tomb though; too many things don't match up.

"Well for starters, you're not dead." I state. "Not only are you not dead, your body isn't even mummified, let alone—"

"Well of course I'm not mummified!" The girl proclaims. "To enter the afterlife one needs to be mummified after death and have the Death of Osiris inscribed in the tomb, or have the proper spells cast on the body after death! I refused to let anyone defile my perfect body in such a way, so I ordered the high priest to chant spells and have the Death of Osiris in my tomb instead of having them eviscerate me! I refused to be placed in my tomb any other way!"

…She's not wrong.

I mean, she's crazy if she thinks this is her tomb, but she's not wrong about how the Egyptians believed they could enter the afterlife. Those that could not afford to be mummified, which ended up being most of Egypt back then, could have a priest cast the proper spells on their dead body. Back then the Egyptians believed that the proper spells would be enough to transfer the dead over to the afterlife. I mean, they weren't spell spells. The priests weren't using real magic, just some scripture. However for the ones paying the priests for closure, it was enough.

"Wait a moment. You say that I am not one of the dead?" She asks me.

Well, soul gem aside… "Obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be able to sp—"

"Aha!" She interrupts again. Does she ever let people finish sentences? "Osiris must have saw fit to return me to my mortal body to rule once more!" The girl stands up in the sarcophagus. "I, Cleopatra VII Philopator, the reincarnation of Isis herself, shall not disappoint him as I continue my rule!"

My mind grinds to a halt.

Cleopatra? No. Bullshit. No. Cleopatra died about two thousand years ago. She committed suicide about a week after her husband killed himself after losing to Julius Caesar on the battlefield. This insane girl is NOT Cleopatra. I don't care how well she knows her Egyptian history and mythology. I don't care how tempted someone could be to disregard all of the evidence saying that it's impossible that she's been here for at least two thousand years. She is NOT Cleopatra.

I'll admit our knowledge of history isn't perfect. Researchers have been hilariously wrong about things in the past, and I have no doubt we'll continue to make mistakes in the future. But I'm willing to bet all the treasure in my inventory that this girl is not Cleopatra.

Do you want to know why I'm so sure she's not Cleopatra?

Do you want to know why I don't think she could have been here for a hundred years, let alone the two thousand required for her to be Cleopatra?

Hell, do you want to know why I'm beginning to doubt that she's even Egyptian?

She's not speaking ancient Egyptian. This entire conversation is in perfect, modern day English.

She even speaks in an American accent.

Yeah.

I don't think I need to explain anything else as for why I think she's either insane or full of shit.

"Aha!" the fake gets my attention. She apparently replaced the lid to the sarcophagus while I was mentally disputing her claim of being Cleopatra. She's now standing on top of the sarcophagus as if she's the queen of the world or something. "I see that now you know who I am, you are awestruck in my royal presence. Usually I make my subjects bow before me, but I shall let it slide this time peasant. Your look of adoration is enough to satisfy me for now."

You… what? Adoration? What?

The not-Cleopatra jumps down from her sarcophagus. "Come, my loyal subject. The world must have changed since I've been gone. Show me the wonders of this new world and what I need to know for my glorious return!" She then turned and starts walking out of the king's chamber, expecting me to follow.

I stand there for about a minute absolutely dumbfounded. It's only the sound of a soft thump down the passageway that not-Cleopatra went down that I snap out of it. I turn to the sarcophagus after a moment to see if she is as stupid as I think she is. I reopen it and look inside.

…Yep. It's right there on its side. She really did leave her soul gem behind in the sarcophagus.

I reach down and pull out the girl's soul gem. Still perfectly clear.

With a sigh I put her soul gem in my pocket, and debate about what I'm going to do.

I can't just leave her here or… kill her. Pius, our incubator, might want a word with our faux-Cleopatra to find out what she was doing here. I certainly want to know what the hell she's doing here. If she wasn't acting and she really has no idea that she's a magical girl, Pius might even try recruiting her.

However, the idea of waking her up, putting up with her for several hours, and then convincing her to come to Rome and meet with Pius… Yeah, I don't see that working out with her attitude. I mean, if she's sincere I could probably get her most of the way to the 14th, maybe even all the way to Pius, with her "show me the world!" order. However, if she tries to keep up the Cleopatra act by causing a scene everywhere she goes by marveling at the technology, or by trying to start a cult that will worship her, that would be much more trouble than it's worth. I'm a treasure hunter, not a babysitter. And I certainly don't want to watch for a dagger in my back the entire time if she's here for a reason and she decides to drop the act at some point.

It's not like I could just carry her body around either. Besides being creepy as fuck, airport security would have… rather interesting things to say about hauling a dead body around. After all, it's not like I can just carry her dead body around without anyone noticing like I hide the treas—

No. It would make things… much, much easier and cause minimal headaches on my end, but…

I can't believe I'm even thinking of this.

I look around the room for a moment and my eyes rest on the sarcophagus.

…The third, innermost sarcophagus is empty. I could fit that into my inventory…

"I can't believe I'm doing this." I mutter as I walk towards the hall the other girl went down.

I'll be fine. I just have to not think about what's in my inventory for the next several hours and I'll be just fine…