4I'm back baby! Did you miss me? No? Meh, oh well, as long as you review the story I'm content.
Enough babbling from me here's Chapter 1.
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Chapter I - Riddle Me That
"Ladies, Gentlemen, order if you please!" The United Nations chairman shouted over the babbling chatter of millions of dignitaries and ambassadors. "Order! Order if you please!" He slammed his gavel down on the podium and finally silence reigned.
The chairman sighed then straightened his tie.
"Thank you. Now, as you all know this meeting has been called in regards to the chain of deaths spreading over the United Kingdom and Europe at large. I'm sure most of you saw the video footage, but for those that didn't we will run it now."
The lights dimmed and the brief 10 minute clip of footage rolled on a large television in the wall. Silence continued to reign as the lights brightened once more and the clip ended.
"As you can see." The Chairman said, sounding slightly befuddled. "What we just saw will, to say the least, re-write history as we know it. What we just saw, this thing. This creature, is an undocumented entity, the likes of which haven't been thought of since before Christianity."
He had everyone's attention, never had he felt like so much was resting on his shoulders.
"This being has killed over a dozen people a month, for nearly half a year and this is the first evidence we have ever found of this being at a crime scene, aside from hair and paw print samples-"
"Excuse me Chairman, but did you say. Paw prints?" The English dignitary inquired.
"Indeed I did. I am not qualified however, to explain further so without any more delays allow me to bring forward those who can give us the answers we seek." The chairman stepped back from the podium and looked to two people, a male and a female, in business attire who sat to his right. "Doctor Henry Morrison, the lead in his field of paranormal science and Professor Leslie Blanchard, Professor of Mythological History at Oxford."
Doctor Morrison and Professor Blanchard stepped up to the podium and said their hello's and then, quickly set to the matter at hand as Professor Blanchard addressed the United Nations.
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the U.N. what you see before you, as the Chairman has already said, is a creature not seen in history texts since the days before the creation of Christianity. My Colleague and I believe this is a being of Egyptian mythology, a creature thought to be make believe and legend. What you're looking at here." The professor said, rewinding the camera footage to stop at the creature, crouching over the bodies of her victims. "Is a Sphinx."
A murmur rose in the crowd, bawking and chortling.
"That's preposterous!" One of the dignitaries said, standing. "The Sphinx is a creature from fairy tales, there is no scientific evidence to suggest such a creature truly exists!"
"No?" Doctor Morrison interrupted an almost smug smile on his face. "So I suppose the creature caught on that film is just an over sized bird mutated by radiation with the ability of sentient thought?"
The dignitary sat back down, blushing faintly as he realized that, while he still thought the idea preposterous, he didn't have a way to rebuttal that last statement.
"Creatures such as the Sphinx actually HAVE had evidence to suggest their existence, evidence thousands of years old. It is in museums, cave walls, and the inner tombs of pyramids. For ages we have studied hieroglyphics of ancient man and wondered what they truly meant. It has now come to light that all our hypothesis may have been wrong, what we thought were simply idles of the gods, the canine headed jackal warriors, the cat faced queens of Egypt, even the legendary statue of the sphinx, could from a certain point of view, very well be all the proof needed to show the existence of so called 'mythical' creatures.
Hieroglyphics, statues, art of the ancient world, all of it is, arguably, ancient humanities version of photographic evidence. The proof was here all along, we were just too busy splitting atoms to make bombs and crafting biological weaponry to take the time to investigate true mysteries."
"The signs are all here." Professor Blanchard spoke up, supporting her colleague. "The creature asked a riddle before attack, just as the sphinx in the Greek myth, she only attacked after one of her victims answered the riddle incorrectly. And the description also coincides, a feline body with the head of a human and the wings of an eagle. There truly is nothing else this creature could logically be past off as. The only question now is, what are we to do about it?"
"It's killing innocent people! Gather team of operatives and hunt the damn thing down!" An American dignitary shouted, his cries met with support and agreement from others.
"We CAN'T do that!" Doctor Morrison shouted angrily. "This is a one of a kind find, the first creature of its kind seen in centuries, and it is quite clearly sentient! It could be quite possible to reason with it if we could find a way to get it to hear us out!"
Angry shouts rebutted the good Doctor. As always, humanities thirst for vengeance when blood was spilled over powered their sense of logic.
"Order! ORDER!" The Chairman shouted, grabbing up his gavel and striking it down once more till silence returned. "Ladies and Gentlemen this is NOT a decision to be made lightly, we cannot react to this like a terrorist threat, or a civil war, this is a creature we know nothing about, a creature that quite possibly may be only one of many more. We cannot simply hunt it down and shoot it. The Professor and Doctor have however suggested something to me that seems a good course of action, they propose that they themselves, along with a group of experienced combat personal, set out to find and subdue this creature, so that we can learn all we can of it, and if there are indeed others like it."
This idea caused another outbreak of babble, agreeing voice, disagreeing voices, eventually, it all came down to the vote and an hour afterward Professor Leslie Blanchard and Doctor Henry Morrison went live on CNN, to tell the world of their intentions.
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Soft mews and purrs echoed within of the dark cave, offset into a small cliff side within the English woodlands. The mewing grew louder with the beat of large wings outside, the kitten like cries of hungry cubs.
Three soft little balls of fur, humanoid bodies, their wings still but downy stubs upon their backs, human faces still covered with a soft layer of golden fur, bright golden eyes looking out of the cave as their mother returned and then clambering over each other as they scrambled and crawled to her.
"Oh my dears." The sphinx purred softly, scooping her cubs up into her arms. "Mommy missed you so much." She nuzzled each in turn, purring comfortingly while the wriggled and squirmed in her arms, mewing impatiently from hunger.
"All right, all right settle down!" She cooed softly as she set her cubs back upon the save floor. "Mother got plenty of food this time." She smiled and held up a furred and clawed finger. Rising from her crouch she sauntered back out of the cave and return carrying a victim beneath each arm.
Two of the teens from the attack a few nights before, she knelt and lay the bodies down on the floor.
"Sorry dears, survival of the fittest, I can't have my youngsters half starved." She purred softly while stroking one corpse's cheek.
The cubs scrambled to her once more whimpering and mewing.
"All right, all right, calm your selves!" She crooned, sliding of the ribbon like top that covered her chest.
She sighed softly as the cubs fought among themselves for who got to her first.
"Now, now, little ones, ladies first." She said softly, plucking her daughter from the group of tangled cubs and placing her upon her chest to nurse.
The two boys hunger was quickly forgotten as they wrestled and tumbled about while waiting for their sister to finish her feed.
Their mother purred contentedly, gently stroking a finger over her daughter's spine, watching her sons as they tumbled and rolled over one another like lion cubs playing upon the Sahara.
A moment of sadness passed through her eyes as this thought came to her. What she wouldn't give for the life she once had, a mate whole loved her, back in Egypt, during the days when her species were plentiful and feline kind were revered for the power and mystery that they held.
"My darlings. If only you could have lived during such a time. Respected not hunted, loved and not feared." She closed her eyes, sighing. "Those days are long gone."
After another few minutes her mind was brought back to reality as her daughter crawled down to her mothers lap and curled up contentedly, drifting to sleep while bother boys came to their mother's side to feed as well.
She wrapped her arms about them both as they nursed, smiling softly.
"No matter, I can provide quite a decent life for you now. After all, humans no longer even believe in us."
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This poor creature, hunting and killing only so that her children might live, unaware of the horrors to come, the trials her family would face, all because man lost their way so very long ago.
Even now Professor Blanchard and Doctor Morrison were gathering the best of the best, trackers, big game Hunters, military personnel. Headlines on papers world wide in over 20 different languages all read the same "Government Confirmation! Mythology is real!"
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A.N. This concludes chapter 1, I hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned for Chapter 2 A Mother's Wrath.
For all those interested I DO have a picture of the Sphinx that stars in this story, if you would like to see if please leave a review saying so and a way I can get in touch with you (AIM or e-mail) and I'll sent you the picture. ^-^