Heheheheh. I love you guys. And you're gonna end up hating me when it gets to some of the more recent chaps I've written.
Replies:
Undeath9087: Yeah, they're really gonna go through the wringer in upcoming chapters, it's gonna be very much fun for me I tell ya.
Guest: Right now she's with Desjardins, Menshikov has given orders for her to be retrieved when he's ready. But for now she's with Desjardins.
Boring username here: Thank you! And I admit it's not always easy but I tend to try and write at least two chapters a day- one for each fic, and if I can write more I do.
Unknownloser097: Sadie is badass, we take no criticism.
Dotalot345: Not yet- it'll be a few days before we get there- but hey, when it comes you will quickly end up regretting it me thinks-not the first Percy chap but the ones after that. The first one is fun
batmanuchiha: Thank you.
Sadie was willing to admit that she'd been shaky after they'd started on their way again- and the fact that they'd had to sail through a river of fire had only made it that much worse- thankfully her mad genius protection glyphs had worked when she and Carter had combined their power- and she could admit that having him so close had been comforting- she knew both of them had the same fear now- they'd already lost Percy- even if they were determined to get her back, at this stage neither of them could stand the idea of being parted.
Still, they'd managed to come through the other side, on a much improved boat too- it had been renewed by the flames.
Its sail gleamed white, the symbol of the sun shining gold in its center. The oars were repaired and newly polished. The paint was freshly lacquered black and gold and green. The hull no longer leaked, and the tent house was once more a beautiful pavilion. There was no throne, and no Ra, but the crew glowed brightly and cheerfully as they tied off the lines to the dock.
And Sadie was unashamed to admit that she'd thrown her arms around Carter and clung to him like a little kid, more from relief than anything else, and they'd been reassuring one another that they were really okay when a familiar voice had interrupted him after Carter asked her where they were.
"Sunny Achres."
And Sadie let out a relieved laugh when she saw Bes making his way down the steps onto the dock. He wore a new, even louder Hawaiian shirt and only his Speedo for pants- but Sadie was still relieved to see him. Now that he was in the Duat, he fairly glowed with power. His hair had turned darker and curlier, and his face looked decades younger.
"Bes!" Sadie grinned at him, "What took you so long? Are Walt and Zia-" "They're fine," he said. "And I told you I'd meet you at the Fourth House." He jabbed his thumb at a sign carved into the limestone archway. "Used to be called the House of Rest. Apparently they've changed the name."
The sign was in hieroglyphs, but Sadie had no trouble reading it.
"'Sunny Acres Assisted-Living Community,'" she read. "'Formerly the House of Rest. Under New Management.' What exactly—"
"We should get going," Bes said. "Before your stalker arrives."
"Stalker?" Carter asked.
Bes pointed to the top of the fiery waterfall, now a good half mile away. At first Sadie didn't see anything. Then there was a streak of white against the red flames—as if a man in an ice cream suit had plunged into the lake. Apparently she hadn't imagined that white smudge in the darkness. They were being followed.
Sadie curled her fingers into fists- a part of her wanted to race back into the flames, to kill him- because she knew who it was- and based on the way Carter stiffened so did he. "Menshikov." Sadie almost snarled the name. And Carter looked just as furious as she did.
"You two." Bes' voice had a warning tone, "Facing him now is a bad idea. Now come on, we have to find the sun god."
And Sadie gritted her teeth- she felt the very strong urge to argue against that but she got the feeling that it wouldn't do her much
good.
So she scowled and glanced at Carter, who looked about as unhappy as she felt, and together they followed Bes up to Sunny Acres- and they stepped through the limestone gateway into a large open hall—the Egyptian version of assisted living. Rows of colorfully painted columns were studded with iron sconces holding blazing torches. Potted palms and flowering hibiscus plants were placed here and there in a failed attempt to make the place feel cheerful. Large windows looked out on the Lake of Fire, which would only be a nice view if you enjoyed the sight of brimstone. The walls were painted with scenes of the Egyptian afterlife, along with jolly hieroglyphic mottos like IMMORTALITY WITH SECURITY and LIFE STARTS AT 3000! Glowing servant lights and clay shabti in white medical uniforms bustled about, carrying trays of medication and pushing wheelchairs. The patients, however, didn't bustle much. A dozen withered figures in linen hospital gowns sat around the room, staring vacantly into space. A few wandered the room, pushing wheelie poles with IV bags. All wore bracelets with their names in hieroglyphs.
Some looked human, but many had animal heads. An old man with the head of a crane rocked back and forth in a metal folding chair, pecking at a game of senet on the coffee table. An old woman with a grizzled lioness's head scooted herself around in a wheelchair, mumbling, "Meow, meow." A shrivelled blue-skinned man not much taller than Bes hugged one of the limestone columns
and cried softly, as if he were afraid the column might try to leave him.
Sadie honestly didn't think she'd ever been anywhere so depressing, "What is this place?" her voice was hesitant, "Are those all gods?"
Carter seemed just as mystified as Sadie at least- it did annoy her sometimes, how much more he knew about all this stuff than she did- then again it was good to have a walking encyclopedia who she could question whenever she found something she didn't know.
Bes though, Bes looked uncomfortable- like he was about to crawl out of his skin.
"Never actually been here," he admitted. "Heard rumors, but…" He swallowed as if he'd just eaten a spoonful of peanut butter. "Come on. Let's ask at the nurses' station.
The desk was a crescent of granite with a row of telephones, a computer, lots of clipboards, and a platter-size stone disk with a triangular fin—a sundial, which seemed strange, as there was no sun. Behind the counter, a short, heavy woman stood with her back to them, checking a whiteboard with names and medication times. Her glossy black hair was plaited down her back like an extra-large beaver's tail, and her nurse's cap barely fit on her wide head.
They were halfway to the desk when Bes froze. "It's her."
"Who?" Carter asked.
"This is bad." Bes turned pale. "I should've known…. Curse it! You'll have to go without me."
And that made Sadie very curious, she peered closer at the nurse who still had her back to them.
Sure she was a bit imposing with massive beefy arms thicker than Sadie's waist and oddly tinted purplish skin, but she couldn't understand why she bothered Bes so much, and when Sadie turned to ask Bes had ducked behind the nearest potted plant. It wasn't big enough to hide him, and certainly didn't camouflage his Hawaiian shirt.
"Bes. Stop it." Sadie hissed, her eyes narrowing at the god.
"Shhh! I'm invisible!"
Carter sighed. "We don't have time for this. Come on, Sadie. The others are depending on us." and Sadie nodded at that, frowning as they made their way to the nurses station.
"Excuse us," Carter called hopefully across the desk.
And Sadie knew she shouldn't have been surprised- she'd seen all sorts of things, but when the nurse turned she yelped in surprise- the woman was a hippopotamus. Literally, her long snout was shaped like an upside down valentine heart, with bristly whiskers, tiny nostrils, and a mouth with two large bottom teeth. Her eyes were small and beady. Her face looked quite odd framed with luxurious black hair, but it wasn't nearly as peculiar as her body. She wore her nurse's blouse open like a jacket, revealing a bikini top that—how to put this delicately—was trying to cover a very great deal of top with very little fabric. Her purple-pink belly was incredibly swollen, as if she were nine months pregnant.
"May I help you?" she asked. Her voice was pleasant and kindly—not what one would expect from a hippopotamus. Come to think of it, Sadie wouldn't expect any voice from a hippopotamus. Which was probably stupid- Percy wouldn't have been surprised Sadie was sure but- well, sometimes even after all she'd been through there were things she found odd.
"Um, hippo—I mean, hullo!" Sadie mentally cursed herself, "My brother and I are looking for-" she glanced at Carter and found he was not staring at the nurse's face. "Carter!"
"What?" He shook himself out of his trance. "Right. Sorry. Uh, aren't you a goddess? Tawaret, or something?"
The hippo woman bared her two enormous teeth in what Sadie only hoped was a smile. "Why, how nice to be recognized! Yes, dear. I'm Tawaret. You said you were looking for someone? A relative? Are you gods?"
Behind them the potted hibiscus rustled as Bes picked it up and tried to move it behind a column. Tawaret's eyes widened.
"Is that Bes?" she called. "Bes!"
The dwarf stood abruptly and brushed off his shirt. His face was redder than Set's. "Plant looks like it's getting enough water," he muttered. "I should check the ones over there."
He started to walk away, but Tawaret called again, "Bes! It's me, Tawaret! Over here!"
Bes stiffened like she'd shot him in the back. He turned with a tortured smile.
"Well…hey. Tawaret. Wow!"
She scrambled out from the behind the desk, wearing high heels that seemed inadvisable for a pregnant water mammal. She spread her chubby arms for a hug, and Bes thrust out his hand to shake. They ended up doing an awkward sort of dance, half hug, half shake, which made one thing perfectly obvious to Sadie- and somehow she could hear Percy's voice in her mind going 'Ewwwww'.
"So you two used to date?"
Bes shot eye-daggers at her. Tawaret blushed, which was a very strange sight.
"A long time ago…" Tawaret turned to the dwarf god. "Bes, how are you? After that horrible time at the palace, I was afraid—"
"Good!" he shouted. "Yes, thanks. Good. You're good? Good! We're here on important business, as Sadie was about to tell you."
He kicked Sadie in the shin, which she thought was quite unnecessary, though she was used to kicks in the shin- Percy tended to aim there when she was annoyed.
"Yes, right," she said. "We're looking for Ra, to awaken him."
If Bes had been hoping to redirect Tawaret's train of thought, the plan worked. Tawaret opened her mouth in a silent gasp, and as if she'd just suggested something horrible, like a hippo hunt. "Awaken Ra?" she said. "Oh, dear…oh, that is unfortunate. Bes, you're helping them with this?"
"Uh-hum," he stuttered. "Just, you know—"
"Bes is doing us a favor. Our friend Bast asked him to look after us." Sadie explained quickly- which did not seem to help- she could almost feel the temperature drop as Tawaret's expression became icy.
"I see," Tawaret said. "A favor for Bast." and okay, okay clearly Sadie had put her foot in it."
"Please. Look, the fate of the world is at stake It's very important we find Ra."
Tawaret crossed her arms skeptically. "Dear, he's been missing for millennia. And trying to awaken him would be terribly dangerous. Why now?"
"Tell her, Sadie." Bes inched backward as if preparing to dive into the hibiscus. "No secrets here. Tawaret can be trusted completely."
"Bes!" She perked up immediately and fluttered her eyelashes. "Do you mean that?"
"Sadie, talk!" Bes pleaded.
And Sadie did, telling the goddess everything, and the goddess listened, looking almost nervous- and when Sadie added in the part about how they needed to rescue their sister too the goddess definitely softened somewhat- Sadie knew how to play at peoples heartstrings.
And when Sadie was done the goddess spoke.
"That's not good," she said. "Not good at all."
She glanced behind her at the sundial. Despite the lack of sun, the needle cast a clear shadow over the hieroglyphic number five:
"You're running out of time," she said.
Carter frowned at the sundial. "Isn't this place the Fourth House of the Night?"
"Yes, dear," Tawaret agreed. "It goes by different names —Sunny Acres, the House of Rest—but it's also the Fourth House."
"So how can the sundial be on five?" he asked. "Shouldn't we be, like, frozen at the fourth hour?"
"Doesn't work that way, kid," Bes put in. "Time in the mortal world doesn't stop passing just because you're in the Fourth House. If you want to follow the sun god's voyage, you have to keep in synch with his timing."
"So what happens if we get too far behind?" Carter asked.
Tawaret checked the sundial again, which was slowly creeping past five. "The houses are connected to their times of night. You can stay in each one as long as you want, but you can only enter or exit them close to the hours they represent."
"Uh-huh." Sadie pulled a face. This was all getting very complicated. Sadie didn't like complicated. She liked blowing things up. Carter did complicated- and Percy to a lesser extent. "Do you have any headache medicine behind that nurses station?"
"It's not that confusing," said Carter, just to be annoying. "It's like a revolving door. You have to wait for an opening and jump in."
"More or less," Tawaret agreed. "There is a little wiggle room with most of the Houses. You can leave the Fourth House, for instance, pretty much whenever you want. But certain gates are impossible to pass unless you time it exactly right. You can only enter the First House at sunset. You can only exit the Twelfth House at dawn. And the gates of the Eighth House, the House of Challenges…can only be entered during the eighth hour."
"House of Challenges?" Sadie pulled a face "I hate it already."
"Oh, you have Bes with you." Tawaret stared at him dreamily. "The challenges won't be a problem."
Bes shot her a panicked look, like, Save me!
"But if you take too long," Tawaret continued, "the gates will close before you can get there. You'll be locked in the Duat until tomorrow night."
"And if we don't stop Apophis," Sadie spoke slowly, "there won't be a tomorrow night."