For all his sins, Imhotep had been a loyal servant of Anubis. His grip on souls rivaled Li Ming's, perhaps even outstripped it in scope. It didn't take him long to steady himself, recognize that he existed now only as a projection, and grasp the truth: as long as he kept his spirit from re-entering the skull branded with a slave sigil, Li Ming could never truly bind him.
But to complete his resurrection, Imhotep needed to kill Li Ming. Only then would the curse ignite, his strength restored. And yet—without that strength, he couldn't hope to kill the mage. The paradox was perfect, cruel, and airtight. Despair set in.
In another life, at another breaking point, he had reached for his lover only to watch her abandon him. That betrayal was branded deeper than the sigil now carved into his skull. Faced with a similar fate, Imhotep gave a bitter laugh. Then he turned and fled—not across sand, but across spirit—bolting toward the Underworld. If he could reach Anubis before he unraveled, he might be spared. If not, oblivion.
Li Ming blinked. Ruthless little fellow. Choosing erasure over compromise? "Really? What's wrong with living, even if you're down to a single head?"
But with the resurrection technique slipping from his grasp, panic sharpened his thoughts. He called after Imhotep in the tongue of the dead, lifting the Book of the Dead like bait. "Imhotep! I can bring your lover back. What was her name again?"
The spirit faltered mid-stride. "…Anck-su-namun?"
He looked back, a bitter smile on his hollow face. "You destroyed my body. I cannot be revived. Even if she returns, how would we be together?"
He turned to leave.
Li Ming's voice slid after him, calm, promising. "I can raise a corpse. Give you a new body, whole and strong. Resurrection, not ruin."
Imhotep hesitated. No one truly preferred annihilation. But trust came harder than life. He lingered, wary, watching Li Ming with the suspicion of a cornered animal.
The mage pulled a slim grimoire from his robes, flipped to a page, and edged it forward as if offering a cigarette. "These are the steps," he said, all confidence. The script was foreign to Imhotep's eyes, but before he could parse it, Li Ming snapped a mirror-dimension bubble shut around him.
Relief eased into Li Ming's grin as Imhotep's panic flared. Here, the Underworld couldn't hear him. No escape, no petition to Anubis. Just the mage and his toy. "Now where will you run?"
Imhotep cursed himself. Why had he listened even this long? Now he was trapped, reduced to a skull, unable even to bite his tongue in defiance. Should have stayed with the scarabs.
Cornered, he drifted back into the skull. The sigil bit down, binding soul to bone. Li Ming exhaled, satisfied. Not perfect—Bob had already proven contracts could be bent—but good enough for now.
He strode out into the sunlight with his prize, ignoring Evelyn's glare and Jonathan's nervous laughter. "Dig under that statue," he ordered Evelyn. "The Book of the Sun should be there." Then he hefted the skull and kept walking.
Still, doubt tugged at him. Imhotep had once been high priest, and even headless, his devotion to Anubis remained. How long before he picked apart the seams in the sigil? Torture wouldn't matter—Pharaoh's wrath had set that bar long ago. And conversation was exhausting. Imhotep spoke the tongue of the dead with an accent thick as mud; to Li Ming it sounded like someone from "Sushi Country" mumbling through a mouthful of gravel.
After minutes of headache, he gave up and dragged Evelyn down into the ruins again. "Translate. He's useless on his own."
With her aid, the Book of the Dead began to yield its secrets. The spells were there—hidden like knives slipped between hymns. Li Ming copied them into his grimoire while Imhotep identified them. But the revelation cut both ways. Imhotep admitted he'd never cultivated power himself. His might had been fed to him—faith gathered, belief converted by Anubis, strength ladled back down. Priest, not sorcerer. Incantations, not principles. Recite the words, the god answered. No need to understand the wiring beneath the spell.
Li Ming cursed under his breath. Divine outsourcing. That meant the resurrection he craved was impossible here. Without Anubis to hold the souls, without that divine channel, no spell could work.
The paths narrowed:
Master ancient Egyptian, wield the book only where Anubis held sway.
Become a priest of Anubis, wield fragments of the power—but never resurrection.
Ask the god directly. Dangerous. Unreliable.
In the Marvel world, resurrection was closed. Unless he grew strong enough to storm the afterlife itself and drag souls back by hand. Cleaner, faster, more honest than candles and circles.
Across from him, Imhotep saw the frustration and laughed. A skull cackling was grotesque enough that even Evelyn paled. Li Ming snapped the sigil, silencing him, and forced him to keep pointing out spells until every hymn was unraveled and copied.
By sunset, the Book of the Dead was transcribed. Imhotep sulked, waiting for nightfall, planning his escape. He would seduce some laborer, charm him into stealing the skull, then decide whether to break the sigil, restore his body, or simply vanish into death's arms.
But Li Ming wasn't careless. At dinner, he tossed the skull to a crooked, invisible creature with long limbs and sunken eyes. "Kreacher, watch him." The thing blinked once, unimpressed by Imhotep's allure. The priest cursed again, foiled.
After the meal, Li Ming had Evelyn sift the newly unearthed Book of the Sun, pressing Imhotep into identifying spells there as well. By dawn, both volumes had been gutted for secrets. Li Ming lifted his staff, eyes gleaming, and reached deeper. He began pulling memories from Imhotep in strips, storing them like film reels.
Evelyn watched, chilled. If he could do that to Imhotep, what would stop him from someday reaching into her? She buried herself in the work, teaching Li Ming Egyptian script with manic energy.
Li Ming noticed the zeal. Oddly touching, in its way. Probably the desert heat burning holes through her better judgment.
Jonathan waited until the mage looked properly miserable—ink-stained fingers, brows knotted over ancient Egyptian declensions—before he sidled up with a burlap sack that clinked like a church bell.
Li Ming didn't glance up until the bag hit the table. He set the grimoire down, plucked out a gold bangle, weighed it, and squinted at Jonathan. "For me? What's the angle?"
Jonathan's smile could have greased a door hinge. "Mr. Mage, letting all this gold rot underground—it's practically a public service to relocate it. Perhaps we could—"
"I get it," Li Ming said, flicking the bangle back. "Anything truly priceless goes to the Egyptian government. Ordinary bullion? Take what you can carry. What you can't carry is mine."
Jonathan brightened like sunrise. "A most enlightened policy."
Li Ming wasn't here to build a hoard. He'd come because Marvel had turned quiet and the desert promised answers. Now the checklist was longer: learn Egyptian properly—mispronounced syllables made spells misfire; find Shangri-La in the Himalayas and drink from the Fountain of Eternal Life; and test the quantum energy in his body—did it bleed off after eighteen months off-world or not?
All of that took time. Time wanted money. He was cash-poor.
Hamunaptra had gold by the ton, but this was 1926. Back home, China was battered and hungry. If he was heading toward the Himalayas anyway, why not carry some weight east? He hadn't decided where to drop it. He just knew it shouldn't sit here as tomb décor.
As for Egyptian officials—he'd already promised to return rare artifacts. If they wanted bullion, they could show paperwork. No receipt, no claim.
Within days, Jonathan and his friends looked like ambulatory idols, ropes of gold slung across shoulders, saddle bags stuffed to groaning. The horses and camels communicated their suffering in looks alone—ears flat, knees wobbling.
(If animals had captions: Horse—These people are monsters. Camel—Tell me about it. My humps are now a landing strip.)
Meanwhile Kreacher shrank the rest and packed it into an expanded leather trunk until the seams begged for mercy. Li Ming toyed with a dormant scarab, watching the mummies he controlled stand at attention and thinking through logistics.
Too many spells in the two books depended on local conditions. "Summon scarabs" required… scarabs. Easy in a pyramid. Impossible in Manhattan. Scarabs weren't magical creatures; the crossing gate didn't like passengers that weren't. Breed dung beetles up and hope for evolution? Best case, pest problem. Worst case, a skyscraper-sized dung ball rolling down Fifth Avenue. The Ancient One would hang him by the cape.
Mummies? Marvel had them—under glass. Not Anubis's domain, not his authority. He could raise an army here, brand them, stuff them in the trunk, and pray the bindings held through the gate. But a few wouldn't matter; a legion meant carving slave sigils until his hand cramped. And if the bindings failed on the other side… bad headlines.
He shelved the "mummy regiment" idea with a sigh. He sent the Dementors and a handful of test mummies through a portal to a remote Himalayan shelf and locked the coordinates down for later. Then he climbed back to the surface, whistling.
"Where's the guardian?" he asked, taking in Jonathan's latest evolution into a walking bullion display.
Jonathan blinked. "No idea."
O'Connell hefted a sack. "He was here while you and Evelyn were studying. You said the artifacts go back, so Ardeth Bay refused any gold and took the treasures to the authorities."
"Figures," Li Ming said. Ardeth didn't look like an embezzler. "Shame to leave the rest underground. If we're heading to China anyway, might as well grab more. Any other buried cities I should know about?"
O'Connell and Jonathan looked at their collapsing mounts, then at each other. One city could feed families for generations. Li Ming sounded like he was applying for a franchise.
On the road to Cairo, Li Ming walked, read, and tested small cantrips. When his legs complained, he cupped the grimoire and shaped a chair from drifting sand, sat back with a glass of conjured water, and let the dunes carry him like a lazy tide.
O'Connell watched, somewhere between admiration and irritation. After that initial display of force, the mage hadn't killed anyone. He'd found the books, turned to study with Evelyn, and mostly ignored everyone else. Curiosity finally won.
"Mr. Austin," O'Connell said carefully, scanning the empty air, "those invisible subordinates of yours—ghosts?"
"Close enough," Li Ming said without looking up.
O'Connell cleared his throat. "Shouldn't someone like you keep a low profile in a mountain somewhere? Why take a vacation in Egypt?"
Li Ming thought of a future where a certain son dug up the First Emperor. He shrugged. "Powerful? Back in China, I'm small fry. Plenty of mages can mop the floor with me. I travel to find things they don't have. These two books count." He tapped the cover. "Once I master the contents, I'll trade them for resources. Should keep me afloat a few months."
O'Connell stared at the rippling dunes. "Marvelous China," he said at last, as if the phrase had just acquired new meaning.
Li Ming smiled. That's right. Tell your heirs: do not poke sleeping emperors.
They rolled into Cairo and chaos bloomed on cue. A caravan sagging with gold is a beacon; thieves and bandits surfaced like sharks. Eyes tracked Jonathan everywhere—the glittering target with a heartbeat. He walked faster, flinching at alleys and reflections, a gold porter with a death wish.
They took rooms in a hotel that bragged about the best security in the city. Night fell. O'Connell fired a warning shot down a corridor. Kreacher wrapped two intruders in curtains and hung them by their ankles from the front portico to "air out." Word spread. Fewer volunteers.
At first, Li Ming was just irritated. Cairo felt built by pickpockets. But the pressure bled into the work. Outside lessons, Evelyn moved like prey—watched, wired tight. Sleep turned into a one-eyed exercise. By day three she was yawning through grammar and dropping accents like grenades.
Li Ming imagined a misread verb turning "summon a mummy to fight" into "have the mummies hold hands and play tag," and decided the line between comedy and catastrophe was thin. He told Kreacher to extend protection to Evelyn's room.
Jonathan invoked big-brother privilege, dragged the luggage into her suite, and camped on her sofa. O'Connell invoked boyfriend status and moved in, too.
Li Ming stared at the new domestic arrangement, then at his notes, then back at the sofa. "Incredible," he muttered. "I hire an invisible butler and somehow I'm still the least secure man in Cairo." He turned a page, underlined a vowel that changes everything, and kept reading.
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