Free Clockwork Countess by Delphine

below.   Not an insect's chirp disrupted the unearthly silence which hung over the capital.  In the Field of Mars, no midnight breeze stirred the laurel wreath crowning the brow of Caesar's statue.  The Senate’s marble stones gleamed like polished old bones in the waning moonlight and a low fog lay heavy over the Tiber.  Her eyes swept across the stone houses that lined the streets.  They might almost have been mistaken for tombs of the Necropolis, so silent and mysterious were the sleeping citizens of Rome.
    Isis, why this fear?  
    She gazed up at the cold moon.  A cloud drifted across the silvery face of the Goddess and the light softened and diffused.  Cleopatra’s limbs were suddenly too heavy.  She grasped her forehead as pinpricks of pain surged through her third eye.  Blinking back tears, she watched the clouds slowly whirl around the dying moon, swirling faster and faster, until she stood hypnotized by the spinning tunnel of stardust tearing a void in the sky. 
    With a sharp rush of breath, she lurched back as an intense pressure built in her chest.  She grasped the railing for support.  But her numbed fingers slipped across the metal as her heart center opened and her immortal ka was violently sucked from her chest into the shimmering tornado, leaving her crumpled body on the balcony floor. 
    She was spinning now, flying, airy as the feather of Ma’at.  The light seared her eyes as she hit the whiteness, and for a moment was one with it, before she broke through and entered the Time Out of Time. 
    She was falling again, falling through billows of storm-gray fog.  She reached out and tried to find something solid to grasp, tried to discern some shape or light, but everything was covered by heavy swirling mists.  Taking a deep breath, she forced her mind to calm. 
    This was not, after all, her first time in this place. 
    As her mind grew steadier, the falling sensation began to still.  She floated in the fog, a disembodied form lost in the Time Out of Time. 
    A familiar odor rose up from somewhere below.  It was moist and filled with the aroma of damp fertile earth and soggy green things.  Her feet touched muddy ground and she found herself walking along the banks of the Nile through the marshy Land of the Reeds––gateway to the Land of the Dead. 
    As the mists thinned, a black sarcophagus became visible floating in the murky water.  Dread rose up from the pit of her stomach. 
    What lay in there? 
    Cleopatra splashed into the river, the warm currents dragging at her linen skirts, impeding her progress.  She reached out to touch the coffin, but just as her fingertips brushed the smooth granite, it floated farther downstream.  Diving into the water, she swam up to the side of the sarcophagus, determined this time to reach it, but once more the Nile carried it just beyond her grasp.  
    Cleopatra swam back and heaved herself onto dry land.  With her heart hammering, she struggled to keep up with the sarcophagus on foot.  As she ran through the mists, the coffin floated along the currents, until at last it hit a shallow bend in the river and stuck in the thick mud. 
    Ignoring the swampland that sucked at her feet, she forced her way through the papyrus reeds to the coffin.  She paused, terrified of what lay inside, and yet she must know.  Must see it with her own eyes.
    The stone was as smooth and black as jet.  Searching for a place to grip her fingers, she finally found a groove beneath the lip of the lid and began to pull with all her might.  Her wrists ached as she strained her tendons trying to lift it, but her hands slipped out and she fell back into the marshland.
    Cleopatra rose, the wet green clay sticking to her dress and hands, and once more grabbed hold of the sarcophagus.  She would know what was inside.  Taking a deep breath, and gritting her teeth, she pulled. 
    Isis, help me!
    With a rough scraping of rock against rock, the enormous weight of the stone