Disclaimer: I do not own Percy, the Kanes or the Heroes.
~ Chapter 6 ~
Amber's POV
I watched as the initiates prepared their attack. Felix was rubbing his hands together, a maniacal grin on his face. Something black and white appeared, then scurried behind his legs. It looked suspiciously like a penguin, but I didn't have time to think about that as I turned my attention to Alyssa. She was kneeling down, her hands laying flat on the floor. She noticed me looking and gave a nod to say she was ready. I returned her nod, then moved my gaze quickly to our opponents. Kufu was sitting on his haunches, staring at me. I shifted my vision to the left, but quickly looked back at the baboon. He was still sitting there like before, but I could have sworn he had stuck his tongue out at me. Shrugging off the thought, I looked at the two siblings. They seemed like they were in deep conversation, and if I had to guess it was probably about me. Before I had more time to dwell on that thought, I noticed that the rest of the initiates had lined up like I had asked. Clay figurines were lined up in front of them. We were ready.
"Charge!" I yelled, only slightly overdramatic. The clay figurines grew and sprung to life. There were rhinos, hippos, kangaroos, buffalo, flamingo, and even a few giant geckoes. The animals all rushed over to the baboon, and surrounded him. The kids had said he had a weakness for things that end in o, so thats exactly what we gave him. There was no way he could get out of that giant mass of o ending animals anytime soon. When I was sure the initiates were doing fine controlling them, I turned to check on Felix's progress.
There he was, on the edge of a miniature snowstorm that was covering half the room. In the middle somewhere was Carter, but somehow I knew how easy it was to get disoriented in one of those - let alone a magic one. Satisfied with that, I turned to check on Alyssa's progress. She was still kneeling, but a square hole about the size of a person had opened up in front of her. She was mumbling things, hieroglyphics marking the ground in front of her. If you concentrated enough, you could feel the ground rumbling faintly. She stopped suddenly and looked up at me, giving me a thumbs up.
I slipped into the hole, landing in a tunnel right below the ground. I grinned as I walked toward the opposite end of the tunnel where the rings had fallen through a similar hole. Picking them all up in one swoop, I turned and started walking back. I was about halfway back, when the tunnel started shaking. Behind me, a piece of the floor fell in, giving me a view of the room above. Carter had donned his combat avatar in an attempt to escape the blizzard, but Felix had moved the blizzard so it covered Carter's head. The avatar was stumbling around, which explained the cave in, but he was headed toward Alyssa who was too focused on keeping the tunnel stable to notice.
I broke out into a full sprint. While I ran, I cursed myself for walking to grab the rings and wasting valuable time. When I made it to the opening, the tunnel was shaking even worse than before. I jumped and propelled myself off of the wall and out of the tunnel. When Alyssa saw me, she sagged with relief and started to close the tunnel.
I had just enough time to yell, "Halt!" before a giant blue foot came within a foot of us. The clay shabti shrank back to their original size, revealing a slightly disappointed looking Kufu. Alyssa stood up, the stone floor fully repaired. Felix stopped the blizzard with a word, letting a confused Carter go. His combat avatar shrank down until it was just regular Carter, his hair covered in frost. He stared at us with his jaw hanging open.
Carter's POV
They had somehow distracted both Kufu and me, and got the rings all without setting foot on the basketball court. I stared at each one of them individually, my mouth open from shock. My eyes landed on Amber last, her eyes full of triumph and pride. I was about to look around the room when a thought passed through my mind. Her eyes were her regular olive green color, not glowing green and purple like they had after she had used magic. She had pulled that off without using any of her own magic. He glanced down at his watch. It had only taken 5 minutes.
Remembering Sadie's words from earlier, he lowered his vision into the Duat. A bright green cloud streaked with ribbons of purple cloaked her body from view. When he brought it back up, he felt her eyes on him. When he met her gaze, he could see a question in them. For once Sadie had been right; they definately didn't want Amber as an enemy.
"Uh... That was pretty impressive... Um I think you deserve the rest of the afternoon off. Nice job initiates," I managed to get out when I could speak again. They all whooped excitedly, and high-fived each other. When they started filing out of the room, I caught Amber's attention and mouthed that I needed to speak with her.
She nodded warily, but walked over nonetheless. I also motioned for Sadie to join us, before leading her out of the room. She started to speak, but I shook my head. It was best to wait and talk about it all at once. When we made it to my room, I opened the door and led her in, shutting the door when we were through.
Once we were all seated, she opened her mouth and asked impatiently, "What is going on here?"
Amber's POV
Frankly, I was mentally planning my escape the whole way to Carters room. The two siblings were being oddly serious, and from what I could tell that wasn't always a good sign. I was able to control myself until we all sat down and I was no closer to finding out what they wanted. Carter was having a silent conversation with his sister, and it looked pretty intense. I casually cleared my throat to try to regain their attention, but ended up actually coughing pretty hard. They both turned their eyes to me, and I mumbled a quick apology. Carter looked slightly uncomfortable as he stared me down, but he nodded and decided to finally answer my question.
"My sister and I both believe that your past has been blocked off from you. However we also have agreed that you must have been incredibly powerful, and still probably are - if not more so. That puts us in a bind, as we are the leaders of the 21st Nome, not to mention Egypt its self," he explained looking rather solemn. "We have to protect them from potential threats - no offense. You also seem to know a lot about us," he began, but didn't have a chance to finish as Sadie hopped in and finished it for him.
"And that causes us to believe that you have some sort of informant," she said that with a pointed look in my direction. I felt my face get warm, but I shrugged and motioned for her to finish. She looked at me curiously, but nodded and continued. "If you would be willing to tell us what you know and how you know it, we would be willing to become allies and teach you what we know."
When she had finished the siblings shared a look, then turned and waited for my reply. It was extremely quiet while I thought about everything. I nodded slowly, and a smile spread across my face. "I'm all for it. I promise. I have nothing to hide. If you ever doubt me, you have my permission to blast me into tiny pieces," I said cheerily as I stuck out my hand and shook both of theirs.
"So I suppose you would like to know how I knew about your awesome adventures," I said as I leaned back into the chair and launched into my dream.
Following the meeting, we all went down to eat supper. Everybody was in a great mood, and many of them congratulated me on the victory from earlier. When we had finished, Sadie led me up to my new room.
I opened the door, and was hit by a wave of de ja vou so hard that I stumbled backward a few steps. It didn't look like much, with plain purple walls, but I felt strange sense of home sickness looking at it.
Walking into the room, I suppressed a shiver at the cold cobblestone floor. It was about the size of a small apartment. There was even a small kitchenette presumably stocked with an asortment of goodies. My bed was against the right wall, a bright green bedspread with purple swirls laying on top. There was a funky shaped pillow on it, that according to Sadie would get rid of my dreams. A sliding door that led out to a small balcony looking over Brooklyn was on the farthest wall. A fluffy purple rug covered about half the room from under the bed to the balcony. The dressers were a pale wood. Over all, it looked like something that had come from a cabin summer camp.
Sadie looked at my room once more, and said a quick goodnight before gently closing the door. As soon as the door was closed a wave of exhaustion hit me. I barely made it to the bed before I fell asleep.
AN: Hey! I got one up just in time for Christmas! Please R&R and I hope you all have a great holiday!
By the way, I can't wait for the next chapter! Its definitely starting to pick up!