Thank you all for the reviews. I really enjoy hearing what you all think of my story, please continue. And for all who haven't reviewed yet, please do. I really want to know what you think, don't be afraid to tell me where I can improve. Now, after my impolitely long absence, may I present the second chapter in Two Worlds Collide.

Carter

(Thanks Sadie, now you hand the microphone.) So yah, thanks to Sadie, Brooklyn House is back in the business of finding trouble. We left the next morning for Long Island aboard Freak's new boat. Thankfully we had a spare boat after we disintegrated the last one. (Long story.) But the new one was a little less roomy. It was really only made to seat five but there were seven of us. So after a lot of fidgeting and yelling we finally settled in for what was a very uncomfortable, but mercifully short flight. Freak took off, his wings buzzing like a humming bird's, and descended into the Duat. Fog surrounded the boat the temperature dropped to well below freezing. Ghostly voices echoed through the mist.

"I will never get used to this form of travel." I thought dully. The Duat has so many different layers of magic that it makes my head spin just thinking about them.

I came out of my musings with a jolt as I realized we were out of the Duat and cruising over Long Island. Sadie was up front and had preformed a locating spell. She was now staring intently at a ball of light in front of her, which kept glowing brighter and brighter with every passing second.

"Stop," Sadie suddenly shrieked. "this is about the spot that the foreign magic is in. I can't give us an exact location so we will have to spread out and look until we find it's source, ok?" Everyone nodded.

"Umm, Sadie, wouldn't it be a better idea if we go in groups of two or three. We don't exactly know what this magic is. We wouldn't want to stumble upon something we have no idea about alone and unarmed would we?" Sadie blushed. She hates it when she misses something important like that.

"Umm, yes arm up everyone and choose a partner." She said. We climbed out of the boat. There was a lot of scrambling and yelling as everyone found partners.

Then Sadie looked around and yelled, "Right, everyone got a partner? Ok, spread out and look for anything unusual or out of place."

We moved out. Sadie and her partner Walt went north; Jaz, Alyssa, and Felix went west; and Zia and I went east. Within ten minutes the forest around us was riddled with evidence of something strange happening.

"Look at this." Zia said.

I turned from my study of the raggedly torn bark of a nearby tree to see what she was looking at. Zia was kneeling on the ground pointing to a set of tracks. I stared at her. How were tracks going to help us in anyway other than to tell us that people had been here which we already knew?

She sighed exasperatedly. "Look at them Carter."

I knelt down next to her and finally saw what it was she was seeing. There were human footprints, but side by side with them were hoof prints, and running right over the top of them were the prints of a truly gigantic dog.

"How big of a dog do you think that has to be to leave that size of foot prints?" I whispered.

"I don't know." She breathed back. "But my best guess is we do not want to run into that."

I looked at the prints for a few seconds more. Then a thought dawned on me.

"Zia, how did you think to look at the ground for prints?" I asked.

She sighed. "It was part of my training as a magician of the house of life. We had to know how to demons and stuff liked that and I figured the same sort of principles applied here. It turns out I was right."

"So what now?" I asked. "Should we call the others and let them know what we've found?"

"Yah." She said distractedly. She was still busy studying the strange tracks.

I raised my walkie- talkie. "Hey Sadie?" I said into it.

Instantly Sadie responded. "What Carter?" She sounded slightly annoyed.

"We found something." I said ignoring her abrupt greeting. Sadie never seems to ever be happy to see me unless the world is caving in. (No, Sadie the world nearly ended only once. Near death experiences don't count.)

Her tone instantly changed. "Well be there in a minute."

I turned back to Zia. "Do you think we should follow those?" I asked hesitantly.

"Yes," she replied "but they are heading towards were we just came from. I think we'll have more luck tracing them back." I was fine with that. I really did not want to run into that giant dog.

A few minutes later a loud rusting and muttered cursing behind us announced the arrival of my sister. I turned as Sadie was disentangling herself from a bush. Everyone else followed somewhat more silently behind her.

"So what have you found?" She asked once she was free.

"This." I said pointing at the ground.

"A rock!" She said. "You called us all here for a rock!"

"No Sadie. The ground next to the rock, there is tracks on it, and we think they belong to who ever is responsible for the magic." She came over and stared at the ground. Then she whistled.

"That is one large dog."

"I know. But Zia thinks that we will have some luck following the tracks to their source."

"Sounds good to me." Said Sadie. "None of the rest of us found anything any way."

We started off. I could tell Sadie was mad that we had found something before her, mostly because she was quite for once. She usually never shuts up. (Ouch. What did you punch me for Sadie?) But I was just glad we had found something. The months since Apophis had destroyed the earth have been kind of boring. Even though it was nice to not have constant danger hanging over our heads.

We had started to climb up hill and the evidence of magic had become even more numerous. Trees were missing bark or were hanging at odd angles and once I even thought I saw one of the trees move but that might have been a trick of the light. There was also broken armor as we climbed higher. The armor was slightly rusted but it looked like it would have been at home in the time of the Greeks. Finally we crested the hill and what I saw took my breath away.

Cliffhanger I know. But I will try to update sooner this time. Thank you all for hanging in there with me, and don't forget to review! And I hope the spacing is better I didn't know the whole thing about spacing out dialogue. I had to have my friend, who also writes fan fictions explain it to me. Again sorry it took so long to update. I hope you enjoyed it.