Nothing happens, thought Danny, despairing. Because Set isn’t tied to my body the way my ka is. When my body dies, I’m done, my ka moves away from here. But he will remain.

“I can keep it going after you bleed to death,” said Danny’s mouth. “Not terribly long, but long enough to get to somebody else. Someone you know.”

He was trying to call up a clear memory. Danny immediately thought of Hermia.

Hermia was the one. Let him find Hermia and take possession of her.

“I don’t want your enemies, I want your damn friends! I want to make you watch me kill them, slowly! Rape them and kill them! I’ll do it to everyone you love if you don’t let me use your gates! And then they’ll come for you and take you and execute you, and you’ll be dead, not me!”

It wasn’t even making sense. Was it crazy? I’ll let you bleed to death, I’ll keep your body going, and then they’ll kill you again? No, Set was confused. His rage was clouding his mind.

Because it was a human mind he was controlling.

The human brain, rather. Because Danny’s mind was still there, thinking his own thoughts. Hermia, he was thinking. Imagining her body in a way he never had before—with desire, with lust. Never mind that it was someone else’s body that he had felt all those desires for. The face he put into his memory, the name he thought of, they were Hermia’s.

One more time he stabbed. One more thrill of agony. But it didn’t hurt as much. No, it did hurt, every bit as much, perhaps even more. But Danny didn’t care as much.

I’m detaching. My ka is fleeing from the pain. From the threat of death. I can’t let that happen. I can’t let him drive me from my own body. I gave away my ba, my outself, all my unmade gates, but I can’t let him take away my body or I’m dead. Literally dead.

For a moment he had the idle thought: Then I’ll know. What happens to the ka after the body dies. Do I return to Duat, as the desert hermit said? Or do I go somewhere else, or just haunt the place I died? Or do I dissolve like smoke?

But he stifled his curiosity and forced himself to connect with the pain, to feel it with the greatest possible intensity. You won’t drive me out of my own body this way.

As if the Dragon could feel him dig his ka more deeply into his own body, the Dragon again gave a cry of frustration and rage. “Bastard!” he cried. “You’re no match for me! Give it up! No one ever withholds from me the thing I want!”