Isis
I recognize the next vision. It's a memory, playing out once more before our eyes. We're at the Thames. Dead of the night, 3 o'clock in the morning. The Embankment is empty. Mist obscures the lights of the city. The air is wintry.
A man and a woman stand bundled against the cold. They're holding hands in front of Cleopatra's Needle, a little scared to let go.
I can feel Sadie's shock as she recognizes the couple.
Julius lifts his face and scowls at the obelisk.
"You're sure?" he asks Ruby. "Absolutely sure?"
We had no other choice. Ruby brushes her blond hair out of her face, her hand shaking ever so slightly. Was it the cold or the nerves? I can't even remember anymore.
Sadie tries to call out to her mother, let her know her little girl is there. No use, we are nothing but a voiceless observer of this moment.
"She told me this is where it begins," Ruby says. She pulls her black coat around her. For a moment, we catch a glimpse of her necklace – my amulet, Sadie's amulet. My host stares at it, stunned, but then Ruby pulls her collar closed and the amulet disappears. I'm sure once the initial shock passes, I'll be left to deal with Sadie's anger. I told her she shouldn't touch the sarcophagus. "If we want to defeat the enemy, we must start with the obelisk. We must find out the truth."
Julius frowns uneasily. He's drawn a protective circle around them - blue chalk lines on the pavement. He touches the base of the obelisk. The circle begins to glow.
"I don't like it," he says. "Won't you call on her help?"
"No," Ruby insists foolishly. "I know my limits, Julius. If I tried it again…"
It wouldn't have made much of a difference. She wanted to die on her own term, wanted to die as herself.
Iskandar's words echo in Sadie's mind: She saw things that made her seek advice from unconventional places.
'Why didn't you tell me?' I can hear Sadie scream in my head.
Julius summons his staff and wand. "Ruby, if we fail-"
"We can't fail. The world depends on it."
They kiss one last time.
As if knowing they are saying goodbye.
They knew, even though they never said it. It was written in the way Ruby talked about her visions. It was whispered in the lingering touches of the previous night, in the way they're now taking their time. It was woven into Ruby's sad smile as she kissed Carter and Sadie's foreheads earlier that day, gave them a last hug, saw her parents once more. Her goodbye was in the tears that threatened to roll down her cheeks as the door to her parent's flat closed.
And as Julius and Ruby parted, she whispered it once more. A single tear. A quite smile. The determination of a mother, a wife, a protector, a true mortal manifestation of Isis.
Then they raise their staffs and wands and begin to chant. Cleopatra's Needle glows with power.