I can no longer claim to have all eternity laid before me. The future is hidden from my sight, and I have no guarantee of what was once promised to me.

I could claim my own righteousness, but I am no fool. No matter what my intentions were; I chose my way, knowing full well what the only possible consequence would be. I fell so that a man could rise, I gave up my inherent purity for sin, so that I could help him cleanse himself from the corruption that had infected his land. There is no sin without death, and, soon, I will be no more. But then my enemies will have also been forgotten—will have also faded and died. We shall meet again at Judgment.

And after seeing the fruit of all my effort—how could I not think that my Master is angered? We lost everything, everything we had worked so hard for, and then—then I lost him. Even so, I cannot believe that it was the work of our God—for nothing we did was for ourselves, only for His glory. We fought a battle for Him, and for a short while, the truth was known. Of course, now it is lost—buried beneath the fear of those enslaved in mind, if not body; beneath the power-craving corruption of professed holy men, and the merciless desert sands.

Hope remains, in the newly enslaved—more fortunate than those they serve, for only their bodies are bound. The forces that I fought against may oppress their bodies, may threaten them with outright extinction, but these Chosen will rise again. My Master’s victories in this land will not be limited to the progression made during the time of our rule—the reign I shared, too briefly with—

Even now, I cannot bear to say it—to call him by any name, by any title, for the sounds weigh so heavily on my tongue. My beloved, my husband, the father of my daughters, my pharaoh, Akhenaten, the servant of the One God… my earthly joy and pleasure, my painful tragedy, my reason for this…this path, this fate. I can never define what he was to me, only pray, hope that all of my labor, now made all fruitless, that all of my anguished repentance, made insincere by my arrogant self-righteousness, will somehow lead me back to my Master—and back to him, so that we, together, can exalt the One who created all. The One, denied by all, for whom we denied all so that the people of Egypt could realize the truth—so that He could finally take his proper place, receive his due worship and bless us with his boundless Goodness, as we reveled in the joy of His creation, of the life granted to us…

But now, again, He is denied, forgotten, hated by the people of Egypt, and no matter what excuse they claim for this ignorance, they will receive due punishment for it. Cowed by the puppets of the dark ones, they chose ease, stability and conformity over the truth. They chose to submit to the power of man and those fools of the other world—my world—who thought they could replace the One they so resented.

But they could not. Joining the other fallen, trapped in this sin-ravaged world, they sought to control man through the natural tendencies of his own fall—greed and selfishness. Having fallen themselves for the same sins, they failed to realize how their own weaknesses bound them to the fate of these men. All the while the more powerful force of man’s potential goodness—his yearning towards closeness to his Creator—lived on, beyond their reach.

So, I am no destitute, I am not bitter, I am not hopeless. Though I have lost all sight of what may come, I know how this war will end, no matter how many battles may be lost.

My children and husband are all dead, but the man who replaced him, the imposter, the heretic who replaced good with evil and called it cleansing, is now also gone. His body remains, preserved so that his harsh features may still be discerned, under its many wrappings, but his soul is static—unmoving, until the day it shall be weighed, but not by the hand of Anubis, for Anubis will be at his side on that day. Along with every other—including you, who dares assert yourself as chief among all of your false gods—Amun—or should I call you by your proper name, Samyaza? You could not remain content with misleading your brethren, but also those below you—those whose souls you were sent to guide, not damn with your false, exceedingly vain doctrine.

My powers have been weakened by despair and I am no longer able to fight you, but there are others who have been sent to continue my work, men and angels both. You too shall suffer torment, die, and be held accountable for all the evils you have committed. There is one who even now is being born—coming into this world a slave, he shall be drawn from the water, into your world—and through the One God of his forefathers, he shall bring down destruction on all the corruption you have constructed.

In our first tongue—long ago, when you first, briefly, knew me, I was called Nsalya—the Servant of Pure Heart, but I was given another name when I arrived at this place. Nefertiti—the Beautiful One Who Has Come. I had more than one beauty then—but now, I retain only one, and it is not of myself. It is the beauty of the sunrise every morning, of an infant’s first cry, of the blooming of a flower—the beauty of God’s creation, which you may never approach, equal, or conquer. The war is lost already for you and your master both, Samyaza—and so now, I give myself up to death gladly, knowing this, and that I have done all I could—my mission to this earth is complete, and my last words will not be to you, but to those I loved—for whom I sacrificed all…to the One God whose existence cannot be denied, whose will shall never be unknown…

“The world came into being by thy hand,

According as thou hast made them.

When thou hast risen they live,

When thou settest they die.

Thou art lifetime thy own self,

For one lives only through thee.”

(from the Hymn to the Aten)