The next morning, I pack up my camp and once again hit the highway. I decide to try out a few more fancy Egyptian spells I found in the spell book to make the drive much shorter. I cast a dissolve spell on the car, meaning it will pass through solid matter on the sides I choose, and an invisibility spell to make myself invisible. I have to say, driving my car at 100 miles per hour is a pretty great experience. I also needed a reflex spell to make my mind work fast enough to process what's blurring by otherwise. I push my luck and drive past the speedometer's limit, and by the end of the acceleration, I may have been going well over 200 miles an hour.
Thanks to me actually reading for once, I manage to get to Pittsburgh in just two hours. I find myself in a nice suburban area of the outskirts in the city. There is good access to the Interstate highways in Pittsburgh. However, after my encounters with so many monsters, I've become more than weary of travelling over land. So, I decide to plan out my next best thing.
I drive to a junkyard still a good bit outside of city boundaries. This one is much larger than the one in no-name flyover town, and it contains a much more diverse array of parts to salvage. Heaps of old cars, boats, trucks, tractors, and whatever else transportation equipment lie everywhere around this yard. Deciding I want to prove myself to Hermes once again, I just steal all the parts I need to salvage. After forty minutes of scavenging, I snag myself a boat propeller, a rudder, a locking differential, several plates of steel, a hydraulic suspension kit, and a second drive axle. Then, I swipe adhesives and one-way valves from a hardware store nearby and several gallons of gas from the station next door (hacking the machine is quite fun).
I find a secluded patch of forest to work. Thanks to the toolkit Hermes gave me, I actually have some proper tools to work with. I waterproof and one-way valve the doors and hatches, then cut holes into the Avalon to facilitate the new boat parts.
I then begin the painstaking process of adding nonstandard parts to a very standard car. As reliable as Japanese cars are, their hardware is truly horrendous to modify these days. I just barely managed to supercharge this car last night, and now I'm modifying it once again. I start by swapping out the suspension, which is an absolutely grueling task. I then install the locking differential onto the drive axle. This required me to add an extender to the driveshaft. Then, I carefully install the boat components into the slots I cut out. All along the way, nuts, bolts, screws, and oil fly around, making my worksite very messy and impossible to organize. I'll need to request a change of mechanic clothes and a parts bin from Sadie later.
Once all the parts are installed, I patch up the exposed machinery with more waterproofing. I use lightning to melt the steel plates into a good shape (which is quite tedious, I must say) and weld them under the Avalon. The plates are further sealed off with silicone for good measure. If my mental math checks out, my insane plan is now ready for a maiden voyage.
By this point in the day, Apollo is already driving the Sun Chariot out into the horizon, but I have to see if this works. I drive back onto the open road in a completely jacked Toyota Avalon. The Mist and my illusions do the extra work in disguising my vehicle. After twelve miles of driving, I finally find a good launch point.
I find a deep, navigable tributary of the Ohio River. This river is muddy and turbulent in this section of its course. However, very flat alluvial banks flank the water on either side. I choose this spot as a launch point for this reason. Cautiously, I begin driving the Avalon into the river water a few feet in at a time.
To my great relief, the Avalon floats, and I see no signs of water leaking in. The river's current begins to carry the car downstream. A few more taps of the gas pedal later, I fully launch the car into the water. I engage the locking differential, and the boat propeller springs to life, meaning I am steering the makeshift amphibious craft in the water.
Holy crap! This thing works!
In celebration, I look into the Duat to grab a Ribena. To my pleasant surprise, Sadie leaves for me a box of coke and some chips. I help myself to a can and a bag of junk food, satisfied with my work. After eating, I find a pen and paper in the glove box and write to Sadie my request. Now needing to let the river do the work for me, I kill the engine, then lay myself in the back seat of the car, and it's lights out for the night.
I once again have this dream. This time, looking from my usual vantage point, I once again see the trenches and the command tower. However, I see three men in the command tower instead of two. There's Hades and Osiris as before. Now, a third figure is with them. This man has a mane of unkempt, long red hair and icy, pale blue eyes. He wears an Imperial German Army uniform straight out of 1914, although it looks forced and unnatural on him. He has broad shoulders and strong arms, and his hands are absolutely gigantic, large enough to grab and throw me like a football. He wields an equally mammoth iron hammer, its intricate designs reminiscent of Nordic script. I realize I must be gazing upon the Norse God of Thunder, Thor.
"Thankfully, Thor's arrival has allowed us to smuggle in many Egyptian magicians," Osiris begins. "However, the front lines are still not budging. We are still outnumbered 4:1 in many sectors of the front. The arrival of Freya's troops next week should be buy us enough time to get that boy down here."
"Indeed, Osiris," Thor begins. "There is much speculation on the identity of the boy. Never before has all the pantheon have such an eerie consensus on the importance of the same exact hero. There has been a rumor that the boy has wielded both my rune and your brother's power, Hades. If that is indeed true, we could be in serious trouble indeed. It would be absolutely crushing to tell the son of Frey that Ragnarok can be upon us once more."
"He is a legacy of Zeus as well?" Hades asks wide-eyed. "That's the first Big Three power he's shown if true. No, wait. A naiad reported that the boy healed in her river without any other intervention. He has to be a legacy of Poseidon. But if he can also wield Zeus's power, that can only mean a few things."
"He also wields the power of a magician, and seems to have an affinity towards the Path of Set," Osiris says. "That's what my children reported anyway."
Who could possibly be Osiris's children? Wait, Egyptian gods don't conceive demigods in their pure form. They use human hosts. But still, who are the children of Osiris? It has to be the kids at Brooklyn House.
Wait, Carter and Sadie? But their dad's name is Julius Kane, right? Something is not adding up.
"We can all agree this child is very strong," says Hades. "That's already the powers of four pantheons he's shown to potentially have, and no one knows if the prophecy really does mean him."
"Only way to know is when he finally arrives," Thor says at once.
I wake up once again in the back seat of the Avalon. My internal GPS tells me I am not far from the Ohio State Line, which means I travel on a painfully slow current. Time for me speed up this process.