The dream I had last night was incredibly vivid and intricately detailed. This one is very involved, so this will be long. My apologies in advance.

I don't know anyone else I saw in the dream IWL, so the only characters I can really give any sort of background on are myself and the gods, all of whom are easily searchable. All the gods in the dream were Egyptian gods.

When it started out, I was in a hurry to get somewhere. I was a priestess and knew it was incredibly important that I get to the temple for the ritual to start. I was running as fast as I could and wearing very ornate clothing, like those depicted in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs - a floor-length white dress with an elaborate collar, wig, jewelry and headdress covered in gold and precious stones. I ran up some stairs, through some ornate doors and into an immense, beautiful grand hall. I continued running down the center of the hall past a bunch of people, priests, priestesses, servants, slaves, court members and such hurrying around finishing getting things ready and turned opposite a large stone and gold staircase into a smaller hall which led to a smaller room. I stopped just short of the smaller room and had a small sigh of relief. I'd made it and got there on time. I smoothed my dress, took a deep breath, shook my shoulders a bit to ease my tension and after another deep breath, looked around and noted the anxiety on the faces of those around me. What we were preparing to do was about to begin and we were all excited, had a lot of weight on each of our shoulders, and, last but not least, terrified.

I smelled the incense start to change (as if one type which had been on all night had run out and replaced with another) and I knew it was time to begin. A quiet fell over the entire temple. Everyone in my smaller hall lined up along the sides of the hall and took very specific stances. Those of higher importance in this part of the rite were close to the entrance of the smaller hall (meaning I was, on the side of the hall I was assigned to, the highest ranking priestess, and likely on the equal of the priest opposite me), with the most important of us inside the chamber itself. One of the lesser priestesses looked at me afraid and I nodded at her before turning away, picking up the items I needed to hold and taking my stance. I had a dagger and an orb with a chalice inside and I was to be looking at the wall with the orb/chalice in my left hand above my head and the dagger in my right hand with my right arm in front of my chest and the dagger pointing towards the floor. I was trembling because if anything was wrong, one hair out of place, it could mean the quite literal wrath of the gods, the ending of thousands and thousands of lives, probably those of the entire city, from the poorest peasant to the Pharoh himself and a wrath which would last for eternity because Sekhmet, Osiris, Geb and Seth were among those who would be raised in just a few moments, so if anything went wrong, s*** was going to get real.

The High Priestess in the smaller chamber began to chant and the ritual had begun. All those in the hallway were standing in the manner that hieroglyphs stand, either directly facing forward, or to the side and heads facing left or right and so on. No one was to look at the gods as they passed. We had to be absolutely still like living hieroglyphs. After a few minutes of standing in our specific positions shuffling, creaking noises started in the other room and the High Priestess' chant changed and got louder and then stopped. The gods had risen. I could see movement out of the corner of my eye and the figures of the deities walked one by one though our hallway, we all held our breath as they passed, out into the hall and up the stairs. I could see paws, hooves, legs and feet mostly because of the position I was in. They were all black, like the resin statuary made of them, save for Osiris, who was green with the mummy coverings on his legs. There were around eight raised in total. The ones I recognized were Sekhmet (in lioness form), Osiris, Geb, Seth (as a horse. I think it was Seth, he's the only one I know of who has any depiction including a horse even occasionally), Thoth (as that strange bird thing) and Anubis (jackyl form). Now that the gods had risen, it was time to take their council, give our offerings and pay our respects and homage to them.

The hallway had to have some things rearranged, so the others mostly got to that, a few went out into the grand hall and I took one of my priests and a couple of priestesses and went into the smaller chamber. I was looking for two brushes and they collected a few other implements and waited for my instructions. They lined up behind me and we proceeded down the hallway and out into the grand hall. It was out here that I noticed just how huge the gods were. The horse's shoulder was probably nine feet in the air, and the others were sized similarly. They looked a fair bit like statues, but the ones who would've had fur did have fur, and they had jewelry and markings like their statues as well. He was still at the foot of the stairs, as was Sekhmet and Anubis and we approached, Seth laid down and I approached him, bowed respectfully and looked at the ground in front of me waiting for him to give me the sign to approach, he stared at me for a moment with his right eye, then lowered his head and I began to brush his mane. The priest and priestesses in my party took to brushing his sides and legs, caring for his hooves and just generally fawning over him and he seemed to enjoy the attention and closed his eyes. I kept closest to his face and combed his cheeks, mane and throat, alternating between petting and massaging his soft fur and brushing it. Other parties were attending to the other gods in a similar manner. Two were tending to Anubis and Sekhmet much the same as my group was, with brushes and petting and massaging. Osiris' group was changing his bandages and putting balms on his skin and Thoth's was smoothing his feathers and tending to his beak and claws. When this was done, each of our groups went back into the hallway and I led my group into the chamber again, as did the priest who had been across from me when the gods walked through, and his group. There was a doorway in that room which I went through and in that room were two prisoners who were to be sacrificed to the gods. Two of the unknown gods required blood to be released from their living statue state and put back on their plane (the bodies they were in were just physical vessels which they occupied while here) and it was for my group and the priest's group to set up the sacrifice for them.

Along the chamber wall there were pedestals, some occupied with statues of gods, and the ones which belonged to the ones out in the great hall were empty. In front of the two unknown gods pedestals were large crates. I had been told prior to the rite that the priest was to be doing the set-up, but he just mumbled to me to put them in the crates, handed me a knife and some keys and left the room. I had no idea what to do. I had never seen that part of the ritual done, so I had to just kind of improvise. I was unprepared and had a room of younger, less experienced people looking to me for guidance, so I went to the elder guard and asked him how this was normally done. He didn't speak my language. None of the guards spoke my language, so I motioned to them to follow me and opened the crates myself. They looked about large enough to hold a man, so after some struggling (for obvious reasons, the prisoners weren't exactly excited about getting in the crates), and with much effort, I managed to push them in and get them locked and directed the others to hurry and tidy up the room, putting the brushes and whatnot away and setting the ritual knife on a small table between the crates which had nothing on it and getting back into the hallway and our stances again so the gods could proceed back to their pedestals. The others hadn't gotten into the correct positioning this time, so the only spot available to me was across from where I should have been. I decided it was more important for me to be where I was supposed to be than for things to look balanced because I wasn't about to get killed because someone else wanted to squeeze me out of my spot, so I pushed her out of the way (she did end up getting to be where she was supposed to be) and got into my stance. Just as we all got positioned, the higher priests and priestesses went back into the room and I heard them discussing how it was all wrong and if the gods got upset, they would find out who was responsible and kill them for treason and heard shuffling, dragging, jingling keys, dragging, chains and some screams which I guess were from the prisoners. All of us held our breath again and hoped for the best, but I worried the entire time for my life.

The gods walked one by one back into the room just as they had left it, and the release chants began. Those of us in the hall had a chant we had to recite as well and some ritual movements we had to complete during the release. Everything went according to plan, and the gods were satisfied with their offerings. After all was said and done, I went back into the smaller chamber and through the door on the other side, which led into a courtyard, and walked over to a bench under a tree. Energy was buzzing in the air and I waited nervously to see if I was going to get approached by angry priests and guards, thinking about how it really wasn't my fault, that wasn't my role, I knew nothing about the part the priest was supposed to do, and how, though I did my best, that wouldn't matter if they wanted to torture and kill me, but they never came for me. The others went about the temple cleaning up and talking about how magnificent the different gods were, how dazzlingly beautiful Sekhmet was in her lioness form, how luxurious Anubis' fur had been to touch and speculating about how their council and words would affect our coming years, and how excited they were about which gods would be raised next year. I just sat on the bench waiting, staring into one of the ornate pools in the courtyard and thinking about how amazing the ritual had been, and how much of an honor it was to tend to Seth and thinking about my future in the temple. I realized just how lucky I had been that everything turned out well. It wasn't necessarily a good feeling, but more stunned and "Oh my... That was close. I dodged a major bullet..."


Thanks for reading all of that! I know it's a lot.