Infinite 01 - Infinite Sacrifice

clear fluid. I lick the liquid, which instantly burns, numbing my tongue.
    Poison .
    I pray I removed it in time. The shadow moves across the walls and disappears out the door. I look down and see the wound is ominously turning black. A searing, burning fire creeps up my arm. I feel the poison flow into my heart, and after several painful spasms, my heart slows.
    In my last few moments, struggling to breathe, I try to piece together how this all could have happened without any warning from Serapis.
    How could I have been so blind? Aapep’s namesake—the moon snake god!
    Something bounds through the window beside my bed and I call out, “Aapep? Come back… to watch… me die?”
    I brace for his final blow but instead feel the familiar pull on the linens as she leaps on top of me, and I hear her comforting purr. Sehket quickly settles in, her paws tucked on my chest, and warms my cooling heart as I close my eyes.





Second Life
    Spartan Education

Chapter 1
    The sea air dampens my long hair as I ride Proauga through my father’s countryside. A sunny crisp day in glorious Sparta and it was torture waiting until my lessons were done and my mother finally let me go outside. The sweat from my black filly’s back soaks into my tunic as I ride bareback. I’m one with her as she gallops over the hills, knowing the way to my favorite spot. She slows as soon as she reaches the cliffs. I dismount and lay in the silken grass, looking over the turquoise Gytheio harbor, watching all the little white sails flashing and cracking in the wind as fisherman gather up their heavy nets. I can smell the sea from all the way up here.
    A thunderstorm rattles the earth, causing me to roll onto my knees in search of lightning, but the sky is blue and free from clouds. Then everything shakes. Proauga’s golden eyes widen as she shrills a frantic whinny and speeds into the thick brush. I fight the momentum of the earth’s shaking and retreat from the cliff toward the trees. An estate crumbles in the distance, its majestic columns falling over like felled trees. The roof and walls collapse forward onto fountains and statues in the garden. The helot slaves go running in every direction, screaming for their lives. The cliffs give way, and the ground I’d just been standing on crashes to the shores below.
    We had earthquakes before, but nothing compared to this. Five minutes pass until the quaking stops. As soon as I can get Proauga to come to me, I mount, desperate for home.
    I pray to Hestia as Proauga flies through the never-ending olive groves, my fists white in her dark mane. Approaching, I see our helots deep in rubble, lifting away stones. I know in that instant my life has changed. I rush to where I’d left my mother sitting with her weaving and start digging there first. I remove the stone covering her feet and yell for the helots to come lift off the rest of the debris on top of her. I turn away once I see her crushed into something unfamiliar, recognizable only by the mole beside her eye. One of the helots removes his tunic and places it over her, attempting to erase the memory from our minds.
    “Father!” I cry as I strain to move more stones, then shout at the slaves, “Why aren’t you all digging faster!”
    Two other bodies are found before we find my father’s. One is our helot, Delia, the household slave who cared for me for all of my sixteen years. The other is her daughter, Kharis, who had been raised with me. Father is found last, under the collapsed timbers in the barn. All who meant home to me were wiped away in a single moment. My house is in ruin, with only one wall still standing.
    I watch from a safer distance on the hillside as our helots carry my parents to the supply wagon and cover them with the linen my mother wove that morning. I split a long piece of grass in two as I remember neither would be allowed a marked grave, which were reserved only for battlefield deaths and women who died in childbirth. They will be buried somewhere I can never find them. A tear breaks free from my burning eye as flames ignite in the cleared field beside the house. As the hungry cremation flames reach to the sky, I realize Delia and Kharis should be so lucky.
    Where am I to go?
    I can think of only one other place. Leaving everything behind, I ride in haste to see how my uncle’s estate has fared. From far away, his situation looks bleak. Like all the other estates I pass, everything is reduced to dust. However, as I