Mistress of Pharaohs. Daughter of Dawn. Natalie Yacobson

She could feel it in her skin.

      A trail of blood ran from the chariot’s wheels. She seemed to have driven over a corpse that her servants had finished eating.

      Some sort of procession was approaching. It was time to call her warriors to the feast. She had already prepared to call out to them, but suddenly she felt something…

      People are coming to worship her. So it is not honorable to attack them. She is a deity after all, not a desert robber. Bandits were the most common thing they caught to be eaten.

      There were no bandits in the procession. Alais could not understand whether these people had been sent by Pharaoh Menes to worship her, or whether they themselves had heard about the miracles that were going on in the desert and had come to look for a deity here.

      She did not ask them, but rode in her chariot past the fallen crowd. The people were enthralled by the sight of the winged creature driving the chariot.

      “Are you flattered by the worship of men? Don’t you long to slaughter them all?” The shadow behind her was nervous.

      Alais herself didn’t know what she wanted today. Feeling like a deity turned out to be nice. Alais had power: she could do something good for people, show them some nice magic, but her monstrous servants swooped in behind her, and the procession of worshippers was gone in a matter of moments. The monsters wanted blood. Alais watched their revelry indifferently. Then she drove over the corpses.

      The chariot left a trail of blood in the sand. The wheels were stained with the blood of the wayfarers. Red lines in the sand joined together in a bizarre pattern. It made the sandy plain look like a carpet.

      Suddenly Alais felt something grim on her soul. She was used to treating people as people treat livestock. Humans are food for her legionnaires. If you compare humans to angels, humans are irrational. The heavenly race and the earthly race are too different. So why did it seem to Alais today that there were those in the crowd of wayfarers who were worth paying attention to?

      Alaïs shook her golden curls stubbornly and grabbed the reins tighter. This was no time for melancholy. Morale is what counts. She had yet to fight another war. The more nourishing her warriors are, the stronger they will become. And the food for them is people. For some reason, cattle and birds did not attract the fallen angels. But animals, like people, are made up of meat and blood. So why are they not suitable food for the fallen angels? Something is not right. There’s something special about humans. But why is it? Of all the humans, Alaïs only liked Menes. Maybe we should go to him now. Or is it too soon? How long had it been since he’d won? Alais frowned. Time was measured differently on earth than it was in heaven. Every moment here was equal to a year. Remy, who often flew over territories inhabited by humans, reported that while she had been resting in the desert, the humans had already had many generations and civilizations replaced.

      Alais didn’t even know if Egypt was the first human civilization. All she knew was that she wanted to see Menes again.

      As she made laps around the desert, the sand turned brown with traces of blood.

      Before the fall

      Alais remembered the war. She loved to perform ahead of the angelic legion. She was a born leader. To rule was her destiny. She was supposed to be in charge in heaven.

      She would have won if the fight had not been with those with whom, before the fight, they were bound by love. During the war argument, everyone forgot about love. The three best angels were named Dennitsa, Michael, and Gabriel. All three loved each other. So why, as soon as war broke out, did they end up in different enemy camps?

      The heavens were ablaze. Mirrored shields reflected the way the angels turned into monsters. Michael was very handsome. Winged, blond, blue-eyed – he resembled a dawn, too. He behaved too aggressively, and that made him vulnerable. Alais could cut his head off with a single sword blow, but she preferred to play him long in battle. She was giving him a chance. What if he still came to his senses and took her side? By waiting, she lost. An angel named Gabriel came between her and Michael. He wanted to separate them. Gabriel was so confident in his peacemaker charm that he flew out onto the battlefield unarmed. His appearance disoriented everyone. When a beautiful creature with dark curls and snow-white wings flies toward you in the heat of battle, you don’t want to strike at him at all. But Alais’s sword was already drawn to strike. The point was aimed at Michael’s shoulder, and wounded Gabriel. A deep wound split just below his left shoulder, where the men’s heart is. Blood spurted out. Until that moment, no one knew that angels had blood. Gabriel’s blood resembled scarlet rubies. It seemed to solidify the rubies on Alais’s sword.

      Alais no longer remembered all the details. She didn’t even remember if Gabriel had been a brunette before the Celestial War. Or had his hair turned darker after the battle? Barely had he been wounded, a lily had sprouted in his cut chest. The flower resembled a parasite. The petals chewed the angelic flesh in which they grew.

      Gabriel looked at Alais with a discouraged look. He couldn’t believe that she could have hurt him. His astonished eyes still haunted Alais. He was in great pain. The azure billow around his pupils, had turned purple. The heavens, too, turned purple. The angels of Alais began to lose, and then they turned into monsters.

      Heavenly fire poured down on them like flames from a dragon’s mouth, but for a while it didn’t burn them.

      Dragons! It is a strange comparison. They did not yet know what they were in the sky. The first dragons appeared among her fallen army. They were angels, in the sky capable of breathing fire. On earth they became monsters, but the ability to breathe pure heavenly flame remained. It is a correction. Not heavenly! It has now become poisonous and all-destroying.

      Well, the comparison came to mind depending on current knowledge. And cognition has changed because the reality around us has changed. The skies have been replaced by deserts. The sunlight froze them in gold. The sand, too, has become gold. Beauty has become ugliness. Unselfishness became mercantilism. It’s time to pass all these vices on to someone else. Animals remained immune to angelic vices, probably because they had no cunning of mind. So that leaves only humans. It’s time to deal with them.

      Alais lifted her head above the sand on which she had dozed. Her angels were crawling in the desert, but you couldn’t call them angels anymore. They were demons now.

      They had been through the fall and torture. Michael had come down to earth to become an executioner, but Gabriel had not. His luminous shadow flashed far beyond the earth, staked with glowing stakes on which the winged bodies of the Legion of Alais wriggled. Gabriel seemed to be crying.

      Would she ever see him again? Alais wrote his secret name in the sand with the tip of her sword. It was a kind of magical call to the one who remained in heaven.

      Gabriel did not appear. So someone had held him back. He himself had flown in and forgiven all. In contrast to Michael, he was more benign and never behaved aggressively. Michael in the fight was aggressive and became like a wild lion. It would be good to put that lion in a cage. Alais scolded herself for not taking her chance and decapitating him right away. Had he lost his head early in the battle, the enemy legion, left without a commander, would have gone to her side. She would have been in charge in heaven. And that would be fair. The most beautiful creature in heaven should be in heaven first. The second battle, while the defeated armies gather strength, is still a long way off. But she is first in the sands. She is mistress of these deserts. This is her kingdom!

      “There will be no life here, no grass and moisture. Only golden sand and strength,” were her first words in her new habitat. At sunrise they did not seem terrible, but suddenly there was an eclipse, shadows came, the desert took her words as a curse, and began to turn into a huge-sized living and irrational monster. One day it would consume everything. But now the sands are full of magic. Gold dust swirls, creating magical whirlwinds. The fiery figures are whirling across the desert. Some of the servants of Alais’s army suddenly began to transform, restoring some of the