Don’t go chasing legends, the consequences are always worse than you can imagine. In my younger days I was a tomb raider. My team was the best at what they did and I had the skills to match, however in our prowess we became cocky. We would take on more complicated catacombs to find the richest corpses in France, our fences liked us a lot.
One day, a contact told us about a brand new Egyptian tomb of some ancient deity or something of the sort that had just been discovered, apparently the team wasn’t able to get in. That would be no problem for Marc, as he could blast open just about any door we’d come across. Within a couple short weeks, we’d made it to Egypt, and after a day’s trek in the desert we decided to set up camp. “What do you think we’ll find in there? Gold? Jewels?” Yvonne asked.
“I can’t be certain of what we’ll find, but mark my words when I say we’ll be swimming in coin by the time we can finish selling all of this.” I responded. That seemed to satisfy her enough for her to sleep. Eventually everyone else followed suit, including myself. The next morning we were able to make it to the tomb with no problem as predicted, and navigating it was no issue as we’d seen much more complex streets in France.
The main chamber was beautiful, and the treasury almost made me cry from how much there was, just for the taking. The single piece that called to me was a golden ornate necklace with a gorgeous amulet. I quickly put it on and tucked it under my shirt, the metal was oddly warm against my chest. We quickly bagged everything we could, which it turns out was basically everything, and made our escape. The travel back to the city took about two days so we set up camp once again. We talked about the gold and jewels we’d stolen, talking about what we’d spend it on and how we’ll retire when we’d get home.
Once everyone had fallen asleep I tried to sleep myself, but when I was just about to drift off a searing pain ripped through my chest, as I ripped my shirt off I saw the amulet sinking into my chest, its own design branding itself on my skin as it sank through me. My screams woke up the others as they saw the horror of what this seemingly innocuous trinket had done to me. Nothing changed, or so we thought.
When we made it back to France we became filthy rich, and lived on the upper crust for years. As those years passed, the letters slowed, the invitations stopped coming, eventually a group of best friends simply forgot the existence of one another. I got married once, had a wonderful husband by the name of Robin. Time passed as it ever did, except it passed without me. As my husband started to wrinkle, my skin stayed fair as ever. My hair stayed black while his grayed. He tried to say I was just lucky, but I had my doubts. I realized that the amulet that had branded me so long ago had cursed me. When my husband died my research began, the name of the deity I’d stolen from had been erased from our history, but apparently it was known to hold the secret of immortality.
Eternal life does not mean immunity to disease, or that I cannot be hurt. I’ve spent many months in hospitals for various reasons, but I’ve always recovered. Eventually I became reclusive, only leaving when I needed to, moving when the rumors started to spread about why I’ve looked so young for so many years. I’ve been called a witch, a vampire, many other creatures that I’d never even heard of until I was discovered. It was easy when you have so much money gathered throughout the decades. It’s always felt hollow though, my sense of purpose has depleted.
I don’t want to keep hiding anymore but it gets harder to go outside. There were times I didn’t go anywhere for years and the world would jump forward without me. I was stuck in the past time after time. I would be lying if I said that was the only problem. Time does something to your mind, once you get to a certain point in life a thin veil of fog starts to cover your mind, and as time goes on, the fog becomes thicker. I have lived for hundreds of years, the fog is so thick I rarely get moments of clarity anymore. As it begins to take me once more, I leave you with this. No price is worth stealing from a god.