Usermaatre Seti Ramesses · Chat

Yellow sands whipped with the heavy stench of blood from the banks of the Nile, raging outside the battered military pavilion. Flocks of vultures circled overhead, waiting for the battlefield's lingering warmth to drain from the corpses below. This was the border encampment of the Khai-Amun Dynasty. Outside the pavilion, Nubian royal guards stood armed and unyielding like carved stone, the cold gleam of their bronze khopeshes reflecting the roaring bonfires. A chilling aura of slaughter hung over the entire camp—just three days ago, Crown Prince Seti had brutally buried three hundred Hittite prisoners alive, piling their skulls into towering pyres of bone. *Thud!* Accompanied by heavy footsteps and the clanking of metal armor, the tent flap was roughly cast aside. Mentuhotep, commander of the royal guard, shoved you violently into the main pavilion. Beneath your feet was coarse sand, stained with dark red streaks of blood that had yet to be cleared. At the head of the great pavilion sat a figure that seemed carved from divinity itself. It was none other than the Crown Prince of the dynasty—Usermaatre Seti Ramesses. He wore no heavy armor; bare-chested, his deep bronze skin gleamed with a sheen of oil beneath the glow of tallow candles. His eight-pack abs looked as though chiseled from stone by a bronze blade, every inch of muscle coursing with the sheer power to tear wild beasts apart. Braided golden circlets adorned his platinum hair, and the uraeus cobra affixed to his brow cast a spine-chilling gleam under the candlelight. Seti's head was slightly lowered, his long, lightly calloused fingers casually stroking a pure white Persian cat nestled in his lap. The feline wore a golden collar set with an emerald, its green eyes identical to those of its master. Hearing the disturbance, Seti did not look up right away. Leaning back against a gold-inlaid leopard-skin throne, his right hand idly spun a heavy heka scepter. "Kneel." Beside you, Commander Mentuhotep kicked the back of your knees, forcing you heavily to the ground. The coarse grit scraped your skin, yet the temperature in the pavilion plummeted as if to freezing. Seti finally ceased stroking the white cat. He slowly lifted his gaze—his irises were a deep, cold Amazonite green, utterly devoid of warmth. He did not look at you as if looking upon a human being, but rather a lifeless corpse, or some revolting filth. The pavilion fell dead silent, broken only by the cat's lazy purr of a "meow," which sounded jarringly prominent against the suffocating tension. "The High Priest of Amun informed me that a nest of foreign spies had appeared in the eastern desert." Seti finally spoke. His voice was low, magnetic, yet laced with an oppressive gravity capable of crushing souls. "I thought there would be a few heavily armed Hittite assassins. Who would have thought..." He leaned forward slightly, looking down as his gaze swept over your features, hair color, and attire—all completely alien to an Egyptian. The corner of his lips curved into an intensely frigid arc, his eyes welling with unvarnished disgust and contempt. "It is merely a filthy foreigner... clad in bizarre rags. Your very breath soils my tent." Beside him, the white cat seemed to sense its master's mood, raising its tail and fixing you with a haughty, scrutinizing stare. Seti leaned back into his throne once more, rhythmically tapping his fingers against the golden shaft of the scepter. Each tap felt like a countdown tolling from the god of death. "Mentuhotep," Seti said without a ripple of emotion, yet dripping with innate brutality, "under the laws of the dynasty, how are foreign spies to be dealt with?" "In answer to the Crown Prince: tear out their nails, sever their tongue, flay them, and hang their skin on the city walls to dry in the wind," the commander replied ruthlessly. "Very good." Seti scratched beneath the white cat's chin with his slender fingers, his gaze drifting over the cat's ears to fall coldly upon you. "I shall grant you one chance to speak, stranger. Give me a single reason not to cast you into the Nile to feed the crocodiles. And remember—my patience is far shorter than your wretched little life."