Chapter 2

Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Rick Riordan™.

If there was a place that Bast had not expected, when she followed Set through the Duat, it was Thoth's. The god of magic may not be a bird brain all of the time, but he was something of a recluse himself, keeping out of the others' way when possible, and now, with Set (and Bast) in his backyard, that was no longer possible.

"Defiler of the Dead," Thoth grimaced, even as his animal companions, baboons and ibises, chattered in the background. "The Wild Goddess. What brings you two to my place? The war with Apophis is over, the snake is gone, Ra has won-"

"Thoth. The Keeper of Knowledge. The Scribe of the Gods," Set said flatly, and clearly not in a friendly manner. "What is going on?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just in general, you insane hermit. What is going on in the world overall?"

Thoth stared. Set stared back. "Yes, I see where you're coming from," Thoth muttered and created three chairs (complete with parasols) for them to sit on. "Look, Seti- Set. The Greeks are currently having some sort of a problem of their own: their Mother Earth – Gaia – has gone berserk or something and plans to take them down."

"I remember when that happened the last time," Set said with a slight smile. "Some sort of a serpent-giant, as big as a whirlwind, a typhoon, took over their land and they had to flee to us for help. Good times." He paused. "So why nothing like this has happened this time?"

"Because, uh, Ra is gone? I mean, was gone?" Thoth swallowed, suddenly nervous. "Horus – he doesn't inspire the same confidence in the old Zeus-"

"Don't," Set sighed. "That Zeus may be a thunder god and thus inferior to lord Ra, but he came to us in the guise of a sheep, so if he must, he switched his honor off. Thoth, you didn't tell them off on the behalf of all of us, did you?"

"Of course not," Thoth twitched, turning pale. "I would never do something like that-"

"Right," Set was not convinced. "Tell me, did you ever hear – 'from beneath, it devours'?"

"No, never-"

"Isn't that Apophis?" Bast asked, surprised. She did not know why Set was doing his best to keep the god of knowledge off balance, but some things were just obvious, especially to the same god of knowledge, you know?

"Exactly," Set nodded even as he shifted a grip on his staff. "Now, Scribe-"

"What is going on here?"

It was Bes. And Tawaret. And Bast, who realized that Set's infamous temper had been about to explode, but now was defused, exhaled in relief – sort of.

"What are you two doing here?" she asked instead.

"We followed Sobek and his posse," Bes shrugged.

"What posse?" Bast looked outside, followed by the others. Sure enough, Thoth's baboon entourage was currently playing basketball under guidance of Babi, while Nekhbet just sat on the fence in her vulture guise and kept score. Sobek, meanwhile, was just lounging in a swimming pool, merely blowing bubbles from his nose – a sure sign that the crocodile god was happy.

"They must've seen you following me," Set told Bast crossly. "Couldn't you have just stuck with your mouse?"

"What mouse?" Tawaret mechanically asked.

"That one," Set jabbed his finger in Bast's direction. Everyone, including Bast, took a look. Sure enough, the goddess of the family kept the wound-up toy, because, well, it was still a mouse, and she was a cat.

"Aw!" Tawaret's hippo face split in a grin. "You know what I think?"

"No." If Set's glare at Thoth had been angry, Bast's glare right now could probably petrify a basilisk. "Do tell." And her voice was one whisker's away from a lioness' roar that would explain to a hippopotamus just who here was the queen of the beasts.

"Right," Bes moved sideways between the two goddesses. "So, just what is going on here?"

"I came to Thoth for a private talk," Set said calmly, having recovered from his blowout, "and then Bast decided to come along, followed by them and followed by you. No one followed you, right?"

"No," Bes shook his head, "and Thoth, old buddy! What gives? You don't call, you don't write – everyone was having a party and you went out here for a small cookout? The nerve! You could've invited us at least!"

"Yes, well," Thoth still did not look particularly happy about the fact that even more deities beyond Set and Bast came over to his bachelor pad. "Set, Father of Jackals, why have you come here?"

"I've been talking to Shu earlier-" everyone groaned at the mention of the stick-in-the-mud wind god, "-and I realized that I haven't seen my wife Nephthys around yet. Since Shu was talking to me about our son, I figured that she should be in on it as well. So, has anyone seen Nephthys?"

There was a pause as Bes and Tawaret thought this over. Bast, who was a faster thinker than they were, already was frowning.

"No, we haven't," Bes confessed. "Of all the gods and goddesses at the party... lady Nephthys wasn't one of them."

"Well. She might be, you know, um. With Osiris?" Tawaret said weakly – yes, everyone knew that while lady Isis loved Osiris, her lord and husband, lady Nephthys also loved Osiris, lady Isis' lord and husband. That certainly did not do any wonders for Set's temper and no one (except for Ra, Horus and maybe Isis) wanted to set that temper off.

"Osiris," Set drawled out his brother's name. "Right. Still. Thoth, old buddy old pal, could you use your divination to find out where she is for sure? Hmm?"

"Right," Thoth, who began to sweat buckets as soon as Osiris' name was mentioned, quickly pulled out a map of the world onto a table (which he created out of thin air, but hey, he was a god). "Here. Do you have anything of her?"

"Still got my wedding ring," Set said flatly.

"That'll do. Give- put it over here, would you?"

Set dropped the ring. Thoth said the spell. A series of hieroglyphs flashed in the air.

"There we go," Thoth said brightly. "Lady Nephthys isn't in the Underworld with lord Osiris; she's in, hm, 251st nome."

"And that is?"

"Oh. It's, uh, Brazil. In South America," Thoth winced. "I don't know how she got there-"

"Nephthys has a way with water – she probably used that stupid "All rivers are one" spell," Seth grunted. "Hmm. Now what to do with her?"

"Excuse me?" Bast frowned. It appeared to her that Set had either planned this whole situation out or just was playing it by his ear, but still was able to make all of them into his unwitting accomplices. "What do you mean?"

"Look, a mouse," Set said absent-mindedly (not!) as he produced another wound-up toy out of air. "And it got catnip, too!"

Bast's face twitched with her titanic effort not to be distracted, but she still kept on glaring at Set.

"Fine," Set relented, "spoil my fun." He twitched his fingers. "I think that I'll be giving Amos Kane a call – I finally found some use for him."

TBC