The Duat

Layla woke up on stone. It didn't feel quite as comfortable as the rock in the chamber, a little dustier, a little harder. She blinked a few times, eyes still adjusting, and her hand bumped into more stone to her side. Coughing, feeling the dust in the air, Layla sat up.

And suddenly felt the stone digging into her butt. She looked down, and instinctively gasped, wrapping her arms around her chest: she was sat in a small room, worn golden stone all around her, and in the middle of it, where she'd been laying, an ancient sarcophogus. She tried to ignore that symbolism. And, annoyingly, she was back to being naked, her bare legs stretched out across the old golden stone, the strip of hair between her legs exposed, and nothing but her arms to cover up her breasts.

Great. Well, she had technically been naked when she'd fallen asleep, maybe this was expected - she took a breath, flushing, trying to get her bearings.

She'd... been somewhere like this before. Marc had said something about that; the Duat looked different to everyone that went there, drawing on something from their lives. This was some old ruin; she could see the worn bricks in the wall around her, cracks in them, a few small gaps near the roof that let in more sunlight than she was comfortable with.

Then she heard dootsteps; to her side, there was an open doorway and a small staircase that presumably let up and out of the room.

Some kind of dig site, maybe? It had the look. And she was naked in the middle of it. Layla gulped-

Then **** herself to think. She was still reacting instinctively, still panicking; this wasn't a normal situation though. She'd been on digs all kinds of times over the years, and definitely wouldn't want to have been caught nude on one, but she was a superhero now. If she just...

She focused, and Taweret's suit manifested around her a split second before an archeologist walked into the room. Layla let out a sigh of relief, lowering her arms, and pushing herself up and out of the sarcophogus. Neat trick, anyway. It was still far easier than it had been before - whatever had happened to their connection still made the suit appear with barely any conscious effort on her part.

"Hi, don't mind me," Layla said. "Just passing through."

She debated asking him whether he'd seen a hippo-goddess walking around, then decided against it. Shifting, adjusting the costume a little, she walked out past the evidently-baffled man, and out through the front stairs.

Outside the building was, as she'd imagined, a dig site. Knee-high remains of old ruins, a sandy floor, and a good few dozen people carefully digging their way down, taking notes and pictures and examining and cataloguing every stray stone that they found. Layla paused for a moment, an odd note of nostalgia hitting her.

Well, she was glad she wasn't naked for this - there was no cover to speak of, and running on desert sand was never easy. Even the building she'd come out from was about three-quarters below the sand.

Slowly, Layla moved forwards, looking around. She ignored the baffled looks she got - though, admittedly, checked that her costume was still intact out of habit. Too many close calls lately.

There was a strong heat haze surrounding the dig. Frowning, Layla walked towards it, trusting her instinctive feeling that something was amiss there. Well, her patron goddess did seem to be in charge of this place, even if just for the time being - maybe it came with some sense. Layla walked towards the edge of the sight, and after a few minutes...

Stepped through the heat haze and onto the front of a barge. All the breath left her body.

It had the chill of the desert at night, but the stars were clearer than they'd ever been, and the barge was surging forwards over the sands like they were sea, vaster than she could even really comprehend. More pieces of ancient history, as intact as if they'd been made yesterday, but with that sense of weight and ages behind them.

And Taweret a few steps ahead of her, fiddling around with a few odd ritualistic objects. She turned around to see Layla, and squeed.

"Laylaaa!" Taweret said. "You made it!"

Layla dragged her eyes away from the awe-inspiring view, and to the goddess. It took her a moment to find her voice.

"Er, yeah. Wow, this is... a place," Layla said.

A rumble carried up from the base of the barge as it glided through the endless dunes, a thrum of inconceivable propulsion sliding it forwards. There were no clear lights beyond the sky - for now, it was filled with stars, the faint aura of galaxies stretching out as far as she could see.

It wasn't exactly the way Marc had described it, though maybe that was to be expected. For a moment, she forgot why she was there, looking all around. Her father had raised her on all these stories. Standing here, standing here in this costume of all things, brought it all back home.

She let herself bask for a moment, and then **** herself to focus.

"So, how do we do this?" Layla said.

Taweret's ears drooped, again. For some reason Layla still felt the urge to comfort the excitable hippo.

"You know I can't spend my life as some god's avatar," Layla said. "But you said this can be undone."

"Oh, yes, of course! We seal the symbol of our union in stone - er, ahem," Taweret began, then paused, fumbling with what looked like flashcards. "And I formally vow to break the stone when and only when you, my avatar, request it. Well, yes! So your power is here, it can be released, but even if we're technically connected, it's suppressed. You get none of the gifts, and even if you technically still summon the suit easily, you won't be able to summon it so you'll just get nothing. Understand?"

Layla nodded along. It made sense, she supposed, inasmuch as any of this magical stuff did.

"I guess," she said. She paused. "So this 'symbol of our union...'"

"You're wearing it sweetie," Taweret said.

"Of course I am," Layla said tiredly. That figured. "Let me guess, you need it."

"Well we don't want to seal you away, that would be awful," Taweret said. "Just lay it down here, and we can do the ritual."

Taweret stepped back, resting her hands on a small altar. It was hexagonal, a wooden rim around a fine sand interior, runes and heiroglyphs etched around the outside.

Layla took a deep breath, psyching herself up. Well, unfortunately, the hippo had seen rather a lot of her as it was, one more moment of nudity if it meant freeing herself from all this wasn't unbearable. She bit her lip, but kept her expression as neutral as she could.

First, she slipped off the armlets - two on each arm - then the loose neckpiece, the metal weight on her back that held her wings, and paused. That was most of the loose accessories. She crouched, and took a moment to figure out her boots; it took a little time to find the edges of every stray bit, more used to the outfit magically appearing than she was, well, actually putting it on.

Eventually she found the tops, and carefully slid them down her legs, making a mental note to try on more thigh-high boots in future. She liked how they looked, anyway; the rest of the costume went down as far as her knees, though it already seemed a bit incomplete.

Layla lay the boots on top of the altar, adjusting herself a little as she felt the coarse woodgrain of the barge underfoot. She felt around for a bit, flushing a little deeper at how she must look trying to work out how her costume came together; the best she could tell, there were two parts left: golden pants that went down to her knees and up halfway up her stomach, and then the white-and-gold outer tunic that was draped down over the top of all that.

The costume seemed to lack underwear of any kind, and as far as Layla could tell that either meant her subconscious shaping the outfit like Steven seemed to make his costume look different to Marc, or there was an Ancient Egyptian Goddess that decided she ought to go commando, and Layla opted not to ask. She wasn't sure she wanted confirmation of either answer.

Taweret, meanwhile, was humming patiently to herself. Cheeks warm, Layla slid out of her pants first, taking a little bit of effort to slip the tight-fitting garment down her bare legs. The outermost layer descended in a rectangle, hiding her core, even if a little more of her thigh than she was comfortable with was still exposed.

She lay it on top of the boots, then self-consciously tugged at the bottom of the tunic.

"So, how does this go after this?" Layla said. "You wave your hands, and it's done?"

"We hold hands over them, and our intention seals them, easy," Taweret said. "Do you need any help?"

"N-no, I've got it!" Layla said quickly.

"Blue and black are just my favourite colours," Taweret said cheerfully, clapping excitedly.

"Huh? But it looks- never mind," Layla said.

Inhaling as if it would somehow boost her nerve, Layla lifted the last piece of the costume up and over her head, the lowermost flap trailing up past her core, her abdomen, and finally up past her breasts as the whole thing fell off past her neck; she dropped it immediately onto the altar, then crossed her arms, unconsciously shifting one thigh in front of the other.

She was suddenly a little cold, ever the desert of the Duat not so sweltering at night. She fidgeted, arms over her breasts, as Taweret adjusted the costume and pushed each trailing edge into the centre of the altar.

Then Taweret, standing on the far side, offered her hands. Layla grimaced, but obliged, taking the goddess's hands and trying to forget about being naked on this weird afterlife-barge.

She felt energy surge inside her, a thrum of light mirrored in Taweret, passing through them until it met where their hands were together. Layla held on, Taweret's grip on her hands firm enough that she probably couldn't have let go, even if she tried.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. There was a constant breeze from the barge's perpetual forward motion, the chill of the night air moving past her every body every second, her breasts, her thighs, her heated face, her hair, leaving her unable to do much beyond her lip and be glad Taweret probably wouldn't be telling anyone about it.

Eventually, it was done - the energy fell down from the hands, and the outfit was subsumed in a flare of light. A few seconds later, and all that was left was a small, grey-stone statuette of a tiny black-faced figure in the same costume.

Layla had already crossed her arms again, a hand on each breast, and moved forwards a little to get closer to the altar. She tried to ignore the breeze as it went past her butt, instead focusing on keeping her front out of view of Taweret, her core concealed by the altar's natural high, just a few wisps of dark hair hinting at her nudity.

"So, is that it?" Layla said. Her voice came out a little higher-pitched than normal.

"You're no longer my active avatar," Taweret said. "When you're back in the real world, you won't be able to see me. Can you summon the suit?"

Layla willed - she focused even as hard as she did without the boosted connection. There wasn't so much as a thread that manifested to hide her body.

"Nope," Layla said. She muttered: "Kinda miss it now."

"We could break the statue and get it back!" Taweret said, clapping excitedly. Layla firmly shook her head.

"Tempting," she admitted. "But no. Um, so how do I get back?"

"Oh, just go back in the way you came, you're not dead so the door should open both ways," Taweret said offhand. She paused. "Hug?"

An involuntary squeak escaped Layla's lips, which only made her flush deeper. She took an awkward step back, a hand darting down from her breasts to cover her then-exposed core.

"Um, no, no, I think I'm good," Layla said. "Um, bye though. It's been fun."

She paused, suddenly remember what was on the other side of the door that led into the barge.

"Wait, the way I came? I had to walk through a dig site!"