Our Creation Myth

“I’ve received word from the Mighty Helm—from the East. From Canterlot. All of her friends are gone, too.”

The sphinx flicked her tail as the pharaoh spoke. “Why have you returned to tell me this?”

Hisan hovered in the cave entrance, sunlight slitting through his feathers. “Because I can’t stop thinking about what you said.”

The sphinx grinned. “So you have an answer for me.”

Hisan’s throat was tight. Somnambula’s string of glowpaz was wound around his neck—too precious to travel the world with her. “Hero. She became a hero when she defeated you. When she saved me.”

“And whatever sacrifice she and her friends made is merely the cost of that heroism,” the sphinx said with distant neutrality.

Hisan cried, “Did you know she would disappear one day? Is that why you let her win all those years ago?”

The sphinx’s gaze was as inscrutable as a single grain of sand in the desert. “Her victory was entirely fair.”