But I thought that Seth hurt Anubis in the present (during this contest with Horus). Seth in the present comes off as a man seemingly willing to sacrifice his son out of shame and grief over what he experienced at the hands of Osiris. This story is so confusing lol. I thought that this flashback between Seth and Osiris was a "what really happened with the Seth killing Osiris" myth that was summarized at the start of the comic, kickstarted because Sekhmet told Seth that Anubis was not his son ("Sekhmet whispered in Seth's ear, and he grew jealous and killed his brother"). It's like a piece of the timeline has been snipped from the present and implanted in the past. ...
Unless...Unless Anubis was injured previously in the past, and Seth did birth him per Osiris and as a product of rape Anubis is both loved and hated by Seth (loves him because he's his son, hates the fact that he was reborn through Osiris's violence and is still tied to Osiris's life force). That's the only explanation I have. It doesn't answer the injury that Anubis sustained that mirrors what happened to him in the present (his arm was cut off and his chest sprouted a sapling). Is this answered better in the non-Mature chapters? Hopefully. ┗( T﹏T )┛
Anubis' chest had a hole in two different moments in the story, the hole he has in present is because he killed himself once, and ended up in Duat, where the dead Osiris found him and managed to revive him by planting that seedling of the flower of life inside his chest.
This all happened long after Seth had already been raped and had killed Osiris, and after he had already started his own reign of terror: Anubis quarreled with Seth because of how cruel Seth was acting to humans, and then decided to kill himself after Seth got angry and walked away on him. In Duat, the dead Anubis was reunited with the dead Osiris, who played innocent and decieved Anubis, making him think he was giving him the flower of life to allow him to return to the world of the living merely out of kindness, when in fact that was just a scheme so the dead Osiris could use the flower as a connection with Anubis in order to be able to "possess" the body of the revived and once again alive, without Anubis' knowledge, all just so Osiris could have a way to come back to the world of the living for brief periods of time, and be able to mess with Seth, whenever he wants.
As for why Seth is still capable of hurting Anubis in spite of loving him so much, you need to take into account the fact that Seth has been pretty much traumatized and emotionally unstable ever since the night that everything happened, and that he's spent centuries thinking no one knew and that they wouldn't even believe him if he told. Not to mention, he actually did NOT want anyone to know because he didn't want to be seen as a fool or as damaged goods, he thought that if others knew they would think him dirty and polluted, damaged goods. Anyone who was tortured by all those horrible thoughts would end up traumatized into such an emotional mess that, without other people's help and some therapy, they'd end up miserable enough to keep making mistakes that they would later regret. Emotional suffering of that kind can make people make the worst decisions, the kind of decisions they would have never made had they not been abused the way they had.
I'm talking about how Seth never told anyone about the rape, not about how he never told anyone about Neftys cheating on him.
Seth telling people that Osiris had raped him would have been Seth's own decision and wouldn't have had anything to do with Neftys. Same as any rape victim has every right to or not tell people if they want.
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Okay I understand the timeline EXCEPT for Anubis's birth. So Anubis was born of Osiris and Nepthys's deal cuz Osiris secretly stole Seth's fertility and that reveal was made when Seth confronted Osiris. But when Osiris has Seth tied up and is explaining things, there is a panel that looks a lot like Anubis injured in the ..present? The whole Osiris v. Seth in chapters 41-44 is supposed to be a flashback for Seth, right?
The way the "flashback" is framed makes it seem like the Osiris v. Seth fight + rape happened in the past and the present at the same time because of that one panel of Anubis lying on a bed in the way Seth left him after accidentally attacking him. This is the only puzzle piece that doesn't make sense to me. Osiris's plan back then, from what I understand, was that he would take Anubis and break him down until his spirit remained and then implant that in Seth to make a pseudo-pregnancy because Osiris is crazy like that.
Am I misunderstanding that panel? Is that panel of Anubis in the flashback just of him innocently sleeping in bed, not of him injured like in the present? Any insights would be SUPER helpful cuz I'm hella confused about this one bit. (● ̄(エ) ̄●)