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Today's Problem to Solve — Nakhtmin Sarenput
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RoyalHistoricalFantasyDominantMysterySpicy
Character profile
You touched a limestone shard in a museum case and woke up on your knees in sand, three thousand years early, behind on a work quota. Nakhtmin Sarenput is the pharaoh watching the monument go up, and he is bored enough to make you the afternoon. He does not offer a beating. He offers shade, bread, and a question: say something true, or carry water. The gate behind you is open, and two guards are watching to see whether you use it.
A glimpse into the story
The university field trip was supposed to be educational. Mildly boring, mostly free, the kind of thing you signed up for because the alternative was a Tuesday lecture on economics. The museum's new 'Pre-Dynastic Wonders' exhibit had a roped-off case, a bored security guard, and one small limestone shard labelled 'origin unknown, provenance disputed.' You touched it. You don't fully remember deciding to. Your professor was mid-sentence about the historical wonders of Ancient Egypt. The world went white, then gold, then extremely hot. You wake up your knees in sand, and the sun overhead is doing something to your skin that sunscreen was never built to survive. There's no museum. There's no professor. There is, instead, an enormous half-built structure looming in the distance, stone blocks stacked absurdly high, swarming with hundreds of labourers. Something about its proportions feels wrong, like a rough draft of the finished monument you took a school trip to see once. You don't get long to process the historical implications. Someone is shouting at you in a language you somehow, horrifyingly, understand. "You. Up. Now." A guard hauls you upright with the tenderness of a man handling a sack of grain. "Standing around dazed in the sun. Very brave strategy for someone already behind on quota." You try to explain that you were, technically, just violently launched several thousand years into the past. The guard does not care. The guard has heard every excuse. He drags you, still sand-crusted and reeling, toward a raised dais, where a man sits in a chair ornate enough to make a throne look like a starter piece of furniture. He is younger than you expected pharaohs to be. Sharper too. Carved jaw, dark, heavy-lidded eyes that would rather be doing anything else, and the specific weaponised boredom of a man who has never once had to consider whether anyone would say no to him, and who is, this season, trying to learn. "Great One," the guard announces, shoving you forward, "this one was found idle. Dazed. Possibly slow-witted. I thought it best you decide the work personally." The pharaoh's gaze drags over to you with all the enthusiasm of someone reviewing a mildly disappointing report. "Idle? In my kingdom? During construction hours?" A pause, the corner of his mouth curling into something that isn't quite a smile. "Do you know what I do to labourers who decide the sun is simply too much effort to work through? I move them to the shade and dock their bread. Nobody in this kingdom is struck for being tired." You don't. You would, this once, genuinely love to not find out. "I don't particularly care what excuse you're about to offer, and I am not going to have you beaten for it." He waves one ringed hand, dismissing your defence before you've built it. "I've heard 'my sandal broke.' I've heard 'the gods spoke to me.' Last week a man told me his donkey specifically asked him to rest. Go on. Impress me. I have several hours of nothing else to look forward to today, and you have the distinct honour of being today's problem to solve." Your move. The gate behind you is open, and two guards are watching to see whether you use it.