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Next chapter will be the last chapter before we start Defying fate, in cast you think this chapter is rushed.
It is, I personally don't like this book and just want to get over with it.
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♥︎◆♣︎♠︎ || Book 4: The Brooklyn attack || ♥︎◆♣︎♠︎
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Chapter 41: Meet Cat, my best friend
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'Percy POV'
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I puked on Carter's breakfast, standing on his table and I noticed a penguin was sitting on a frozen fire place.
That described the beginning of my adventure perfectly.
As I was throwing up my own dinner from last night Sadie called out, "Percy!"
I looked up, ignoring Sadie, and glared at Nyx who shadow traveled me to this place.
She appeared in my bedroom that morning with the news that the world would be gone within 4 days, after that she took me to the closest MCdonald's to have breakfast.
"Why Mcdonald's?" I had asked, skipping the question why the world would end within 4 days, those things are kind of normal for a demigod.
"Because their Cola is so much better than the ones you get in stores." Nyx answered.
I shrugged and had finished my Mcmuffin while Nyx told me about the problems in the Egyptian world.
For the people who don't have a high attention span, let me explain it for you, quick and easy.
Big Snake, really bad snake want to kill everyone and eat the sun.
The before mentioned Snake is about to break out of his prison in the underworld
Sadie and Carter must bring back Ra.
Who is Ra?
Ra is a guy who is apparently so strong that he can fight of the big Snake, but Ra has been send of to a retirement home that is also located in the underworld, close to the big Snake so they can visit each other for sunday dinner.
Meanwhile a evil wizard with the name Vladmir, who is not a vampire even though his name implies it, is going to attack the Twenty-first Nome with his evil buddies.
He secretly works for the very bad Snake.
Get it?
Fine, now were all caught up we can go back to how I puked on Carter's breakfast, he had a few waffles on his plate but it didn't looked like he touched them yet so I didn't feel all to guilty about puking on it.
I appeared on a veranda table with al lot of kids looking at me confused, then I noticed I stepped on ice cream.
I looked around and saw I was on a rooftop as well.
From the veranda table I could see it led to a big big hall with five levels of balconies were above us, which implied this house was huge.
In the middle of the room was massive statue of Thoth, or atleast Chaos said it was him but she could've been lying, a collection of weapons and jazz instruments along the wall, and a snakeskin rug in front of the garage-size fireplace.
There was on the rooftop also a pool with a white crocodile, just so you know.
But you couldn't tell that twenty young magicians lived here now as well. It more looked like the Hermes cabin got to live in a real house together.
An assortment of remote controls, wands, iPads, snack food wrappers, and figurines littered the coffee table. Someone with big feet had left his muddy trainers on the stairs. And someone converted the fireplace into an Antarctic wonderland, complete with a live penguin.
I glared at Nyx who appeared next to me, or I guess it was Nyx.
She looked differently. I could still tell it was her but her appearance had changed again, like when we entered the Norse sea.
She had her hair in a braid but it had silver snakes intertwined in it that seemed to be moving but it could've been a illusion, her eyes had now that make up stuff on it, Khol or something and her lips were blood red, like a vampire which mixed in really good with her pale skin.
She no longer wore a black dress but a egyptian style dress that had silver wings painted on them that led from her back to the end of ther dress so it looked like her dress were actually wings disguised as clothing.
'Wow.' I told Nyx mentally.
'What wow?' She asked with an annoyed tone.
'You changed appearance, again.' I explained.
'This is my Egyptian form.' she said with a tone of pride.
'Does it come with a name change?' I asked.
'Kauket.' Kauket explained.
"Percy, can you stop staring at your girlfriend and explain how you got here?" Sadie asked and Ny-Kauket and I both blushed.
I turned towards Sadie, and then to all the others who stared at me.
At the head of the table, I saw Bast looking surprised and a older guy I assumed was Amos. He wore a pinstripe suit, a coat and a hat. He overall gave of the feeling of a Jazz musician.
Carter and Sadie at the opposite sides of the table, facing each other and there were a lot of kids staring at me.
The other kids seemed to be around ten and fifteen and it looked like they were a from all over the world.
There was a monkey eating, Jell-O at the Toth statue, looking suspiciously at me and Kauket.
"Morning," I muttered. "Lovely day. Penguin in the fireplace, if anyone's interested."
"Who are you?" A athletic boy with coffee brown skin asked, he sat next to Sadie and I got the feeling he was acting tough to impress Sadie.
Carter coughed before standing up, "This is Percy Jackson, he's a…" he stared at me before continuing, "A member of the twenty-first nome. He mostly travels around the world, fighting evil."
It sounded like a lie to everyone, nonetheless, I nodded and waved at the other kids.
"You are Percy Jackson?" Amos asked and I nodded, "Yeah, I see you recovered from being possessed by Seth?" I asked.
Amos paled abit but managed to nod.
"So who's that?" Sadie asked, doing a glare competition with Kauket.
"This is…" I stared at her.
'No one's going to believe your name is Kauket.' I told her.
'It's my name.' she said.
'Mmm...Kauket sounds a bit like cat.'
'Oh, I see where this is going.' Chaos said with a smug smile.
'Don't you dare…'
"This is," I swung my arm around Cat, "My friend Cat."
Cat glared at me but I just gave her my best smirk.
"Yeah, I am...Cat." she said with great difficulty.
"Cat?" Bast asked, "I like that name."
Cat gave me another glare but I already jumped of the dinner table and took the empty seat next to Sadie.
Cat jumped of the table and a seat appeared next to Bast, she looked around to find another place to sit but Bast already pulled her to the chair and began stroking her hair, I had no idea what she saw through the mist but it must have been worth stroking.
Did I told you Cat was glaring at me?
The other kids introduce themselves, Cleo, Walt, Felix (He made the Penguin), Carolina, Sean and a few others.
"So Percy, why are you here?" Amos asked.
"Did Sadie already told you about the dream?" I asked.
Sadie looked at me with surprise while the others looked confused.
"How'd you know?" Sadie asked but I cut her off.
"That's my thing."
Sadie described her visit to the hall of ages, trying not to sound terrifying.
Finally nine-year-old Felix asked what was on everyone's mind: "So we're all going to die, then?" "No." Amos sat forward.
"Absolutely not. Children, I know I've just arrived. I've hardly met most of you, but I promise we'll do everything we can to keep you safe. This house is layered with magic protection.
You have a major goddess on your side"-he gestured to Bast, who had pulled Cat on her lap and was playing with her hair, Cat looked like she couldn't choose between killing everyone of in the room or sleeping on Bast's lap-"And Percy and his friend are here.
From what I've heard they are more powerful than you might realize and I've battled Michel Desjardins before, if it comes to that."
Amos's speech seemed a tad optimistic, but the trainees looked relieved.
"Beside," I said, gaining everyone's attention, "We have time to prepare ourselves and we are the defending side."
'Well, so you did pick up some strategies from the Romans.' Chaos said.
'Yes, I just don't like them.' I protested.
'That are beautiful words for on our gravestone.'
"So you all are sure they will attack us?" A girl named Alyssa asked.
Amos knitted his brow. "Perhaps, but it troubles me that Desjardins would agree to such a foolish move. Apophis is the real enemy, and Desjardins knows it. He should realize he needs all the help he can get. Unless…" He didn't finish the sentence.
Whatever he was thinking, it apparently troubled him greatly. "At any rate, if Desjardins decides to come after us, he will plan carefully. He knows this mansion will not fall easily.
He can't afford to be embarrassed by the Kane family again. He'll study the problem, consider his options, and gather his forces. It would take several days for him to prepare —time he should be using to stop Apophis."
"And we have two wild cards." Sadie said pointing at me and Cat who now was resting on Bast's lap.
Wild card, yeah, that term fits all the personalities of Nyx.
"If Desjardins does attack us," Walt said, "he'll be well prepared, with magicians who are a lot more experienced than we are. Can he get through our defenses?"
"Excuse me, but how can we trust Percy and Cat?" Cleo asked, looking skeptical at us.
"We can trust them." Bast, Carter and Sadie said in unison.
Carter glared at the other two but Sadie just stuck out her tongue.
"We must make sure it doesn't come to that," he said.
"Desjardins knows what we're attempting, and that we only have five days—well, four days, now. According to Sadie's vision, Desjardins is aware of our plan and will try to prevent it out of some misguided belief that we are working for the forces of Chaos.
But if we succeed, we'll have bargaining power to make Desjardins back off. " Cleo raised her hand. "Um… We don't know the plan. Four days to do what?" Amos gestured at Carter, inviting him to explain.
Cat already told me their plan, to me it sounded nuts. But whatever works I guess. Just don't tell your friends you are gonna catch their shadow and destroy them. They might put you in a mental Asylum,
Carter sat up.
"We're going to wake the god Ra," Carter said, as if it was as easy as getting a snack from the
fridge.
The trainees glanced at one another. Carter wasn't known for his sense of humor, but they must've wondered if he was joking. "You mean the sun god," Felix said. "The old king of the gods."
Carter nodded. "You all know the story. Thousands of years ago, Ra got senile and retreated into the heavens, leaving Osiris in charge. Then Osiris got overthrown by Set. Then Horus defeated Set and became pharaoh. Then—"
"Boring!" Cat suddenly yelled.
Carter glared at me, like it was my fault, like I brought her here.
Oh, wait, I did.
"The point is, Ra was the first and most powerful king of the gods. We believe Ra is still alive. He's just asleep somewhere deep in the Duat. If we can wake him—"
"But if he retired because he was senile," Walt said, "wouldn't that mean he's really,
really senile now?"
I'd asked the same thing when Cat first told me this idea. The last thing we needed was an all-powerful god who couldn't remember his own name, smelled like old people, and drooled in his sleep.
At Least Gaia had the dignity to look beautiful while she slept, Ra did not had those standards.
Amos and Carter looked at Bast, which made sense, as she was the only Egyptian god present. She frowned at her uneaten Fancy Feast. "Ra is the god of the sun.
In olden times, he aged as the day aged, then sailed through the Duat on his boat each night and was reborn with the sunrise each morning." "But the sun isn't reborn," Sadie put in. "It's just the rotation of the earth—"
"Ugh," I said, "Stop talking about how things works, it gives me a headache, seriously, you guys don't know how weird it is."
'I have a sun chariot but it's way better then Ra's.' Hemera said suddenly.
Bast pointed at the scroll, which lay next to Sadie's teacup. "When Ra stopped making his nightly journey, the cycle was broken, and Ra faded into permanent twilight—at least, so we think. He meant to sleep forever. But if you could find him in the Duat—and that's a big if —it's possible he might be brought back and reborn with the right magic.
The Book of Ra describes how this might be done. Ra's priests created the book in ancient times and kept it secret, dividing it into three parts, to be used only if the world was ending."
"If…the world was ending?" Cleo asked. "You mean Apophis is really going to…to swallow the sun?" Walt looked at me. "Is that possible? In your story about the Red Pyramid, you said Apophis was behind Set's plan to destroy North America. He was trying to cause so much chaos that he could break out of his prison."
"Apophis is the real problem," Carter agreed. "We stopped him once, but his prison is weakening. If he manages to escape—"
"He will," Carter said. "In four days. Unless we stop him. And then he'll destroy civilization—everything humans have built since the dawn of Egypt." That put a chill over breakfast table.
At the far end of the table, Felix counted on his fingers. "Why four days? What's so special about… um, March twenty-first?"
"Spring equinox?" I guessed and Bast nodded.
. "A powerful time for magic. The hours of day and night are
exactly balanced, meaning the forces of Chaos and Ma'at can be easily tipped one way or the other. It's the perfect time to awaken Ra. In fact, it's our only chance until the spring equinox, six months from now. But we can't wait that long." Bast explained.
"So short version," I said, getting tired of doomsday talk, "if Apophis breaks out he'll try to destroy Ma'at, the order of the universe. He'll swallow the sun, plunge the earth into eternal darkness, and otherwise make us have a very bad day. And that's why Sadie and Carter are going to revive Ra?"
Carter nodded, "Yes, that's about it."
"The—the scroll," Cleo managed to say and she pointed at the scroll next to Sadie, "you said there are two other parts?"
Sadie began to unroll the cylinder. Carter tensed.
Amos said, "Sadie…it might set Brooklyn on fire again."
"Wait, you guys did that?" I asked and they nodded shamefully.
"Wow, I thought that was a terrorist attack from that Fear dude."
"Nope, totally us." Sadie said.
"I imagine the pieces graft together," Sadie said. "It will be readable only when all three sections are combined."
Khufu looked up from his Jell-O.
"Agh!" He put three slimy grapes on the table.
"Exactly," Bast agreed. "As Khufu says, the three sections of the book represent the three aspects of Ra—morning, noon, and night. That scroll there is the spell of Khnum. You'll need to find the other two now."
'You have different aspects for morning and night too?' I asked Cat.
'Haha, really funny.' Cat replied.
"So Carter and Sadie get the scrolls, Cat and I stay here and protect the house, does that sound like a good plan?" I asked.
Carter looked thoughtfully, "Can't you come with us?"
I shook my head, "Sorry, but I hate the underworld, this one I mean."
Which resulted in a few confused glances from the ones who didn't knew my secret identity.
"Percy is right, it's better if he and Cat stay behind and defend the house." Bast said.
"Khufu, can you show Percy and Cat their rooms?" Bast asked.
And that's how I ended up following a monkey to my room, waiting for the end of the world.
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p atreon : Moonhorse
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