Chapter 193 — Parting the Sea
"What about that?" Harry suddenly asked, looking up at the stone coffin hanging upside down.
"That?" Chuck followed his gaze. "Have you ever heard the story of Moses parting the sea?"
Moses's tamarisk staff still dripped with blood, the copper serpent coiled around its handle glinting with an eerie green under the moonlight. Thirty days ago, he had still been a court instructor of magic in Egypt, until he discovered a batch of anti-magic shackles engraved with Hebrew runes in the basement of the Memphis Academy of Sorcery. The so-called "voluntary laborers" of the royal court had all been forced to drink date wine laced with memory-erasing potions.
"The bronze pillars you're forging are not wizard totems!" Disguised as a supervising mage, Moses infiltrated the smelting grounds and saw it with his own eyes—four hundred of his people chained beside furnaces, their magic siphoned away by altered incantations. Each bronze plate bore the Eye of Horus, a sigil designed to suppress magic. The eldest Hebrew wizard tore open his robes, revealing a scorpion-shaped enslavement mark burned into his chest, a sigil the court had long claimed was extinct.
The Pharaoh's daughter struck Moses across the shoulder with her yew wand, tearing flesh apart, and the spellbook hidden in his sleeve scattered across the ground. Thirty-seven counter-curses, now evidence of treason.
"A mongrel raised by Egypt dares pity slaves?" she sneered, the serpent crown on her brow hissing softly. "Feed his tongue to the sacred scarabs!"
For the first time, Moses unleashed the true power of his staff. Years ago, deep in the mines of Horeb, when he had used it to save buried miners, a whisper had echoed from within it: when your blood resonates with volcanic ash, you will gain true power.
Now blue flames erupted from the staff, tearing through the royal suppression array and even melting half of the Pharaoh's daughter's silver crown. Before the guards could activate the city's defenses, Moses turned into a sandstorm and fled into the eastern desert, three parallel burn marks appearing on his left palm as the pact fully took hold.
Seven days later, Aaron returned from the Sinai Peninsula with shocking news: every Hebrew wizard who had worn those shackles now bore the same burn marks.
"We need a ritual powerful enough to shake the foundation of the royal court," Moses said, lowering his staff into an oasis. Blood-red runes writhed across the water's surface. "We will take the curse they forced upon us and turn it against them."
On the seventh night after the Nile turned to blood, Moses led the awakened wizards in a sudden assault on the Temple of Heliopolis.
The instant Aaron's elder-wand struck and shattered the scarab idol, three centuries of suppressed resentment erupted into substance. From the churning blood rose countless Hebrew curse-spirits, tearing apart the sacred bull the Egyptian priests had prepared for sacrifice, leaving only gleaming white bones behind.
When the plague of frogs surged into Thebes from the overflowing riverways, the Pharaoh's daughter could bear it no longer. The serpent gem set in her silver crown burst with black light. "All Hebrew wizards are walking vessels of dark magic. Execute them—immediately."
On the night of the full moon, when the slaughter decree was issued, Moses stood atop the pyramid and activated the final covenant.
As the tamarisk staff pierced the apex, the cursed sigils he had buried across Egypt three years before ignited all at once. In Memphis, swarms of locusts devoured every spell scroll in existence. Across the delta, three days of darkness swallowed the sphinx-beasts bred by the royal court. And the death curse of the tenth plague was diverted—through Moses's pact with the devil—into the drowned pharaoh's undead legions beneath the Nile. The price was absolute: the burning marks on his left hand would never heal.
When the Red Sea boiled under surging magic, releasing clouds of sulfurous mist, the covenant marks on the wrists of seven hundred Hebrew wizards flared to life in unison.
"Now they understand," Moses said, driving the blazing tip of his staff into the sand. Cracks of light spread across the salt marsh beneath his feet. "We are not fleeing—"
The earth split open with a blinding glow.
"—we are forging a road of freedom that Egypt will fear for eternity."
On the horizon, the Egyptian wizarding host advanced in shimmering silver-scaled robes. The seven hundred enslaved Hebrews retreated to the shores of the Dead Sea.
"Drag them back to the dungeons!" the Pharaoh's daughter commanded, astride a sphinx, raising her wand set with sacred scarabs. Twelve granite sphinxes rose from the dunes at her call. "Traitors deserve only to be fed to the scarabs!"
Moses's staff erupted in blue fire. The moment its tip struck the salt marsh, the volcanic bedrock beneath the sea roared like thunder. Countless luminous jellyfish surged upward from the fissures, weaving themselves into a living bridge across the raging waters.
"Cross!" Moses's roar was torn apart by the storm winds, but Aaron had already understood. Biting his fingertip, he traced runes in the air; drops of blood transformed into crimson ravens that streaked into the crowd. "Step on the glowing tendrils!"
The high priest of Egypt slammed his crocodile-headed staff into the ground, summoning the Nile's water spirits. Vast, algae-draped arms rose, heaving walls of brine thousands of meters high—only to be seared into steam by the sulfur barrier Moses had prepared.
The Pharaoh's daughter laughed in fury. The ruby-studded armlet on her wrist unleashed a beam of black light, awakening the colossal undead construct slumbering in the abyss of the Dead Sea.
"Split apart!" Moses drove his staff into a crack along the giant's ankle. Blue flames raced up through the stone veins, surging skyward.
Millennia-old salt crust shattered under the violent pulse of magic. The seabed tore open along a volcanic fault line, revealing a coral canyon crawling with luminous worms. The Hebrew wizards ran across, their feet pounding on still-twitching jellyfish tendrils as they raced for the far shore.
"The waters are closing!" Aaron seized the arm of a blind old wizard lagging behind, his serpentwood staff striking the ground to summon a bridge of thorned vines. By then, the Egyptian host had plunged into the chasm. The Pharaoh's daughter's chariot crushed glowing worms beneath its wheels—only to meet the trap Moses had left behind.
Along the canyon walls, hundreds—no, thousands—of petrified lizard eyes snapped open at once.
Moses wrenched his staff free and stepped back. In the next instant, the two halves of the seabed slammed shut like the jaws of some ancient beast.