A/N Ok this part two of I drop a little man on his head. Hope you enjoy it!

Chapter 18 I Drop A Little Man On His Head Part 2

Artemis's pov.

Apollo continued.

"Would you come to life and try to kill him, had he made you perfectly?" "Probably," Doughboy admitted.

The smile vanished from Hestia's face. "Well at least, he admits the truth!" Ruby tried to cheer her up. Damn, If only we would have met before she got married, she would have been a great huntress. An excellent one at that. But no worries, his daughter is one step further than her. Full of Sass and energy. She is like the female version of Percy. Well more like younger Percy. Poor Percy, The pit has taken so much toll on him. Others may not notice but I have how much sad and depressed he is these days. And I noticed it just because he is the only male demigod I approve of. And not because he is also the most handsome one. And that a virgin goddess is crushing on him.

Ok, I have to admit I may have a tini-tiny crush on him, but it doesn't matter. I am a virgin goddess, goddess of the hunt. And he is a mortal. Who is born to die one day? Ugh... When did my thought become depressing? Ever since you saw him fall into the Pit. Replies my conscience.

Apollo nudges me taking me out of my brain.

"Are we done?" "Not by half," I said. "What happened to our dad?"Doughboy shrugged. "How should I know? But I see his wand and staff aren't in the box."

"No," Carter said. "The staff—the thing that turned into a snake—it got incinerated. And the wand...is that the boomerang thing?" "The boomerang thing?" Doughboy said. "Gods of Eternal Egypt, you're dense. Of course, that's his wand."

"It got shattered," I said."Tell me how," Doughboy demanded.

Carter told him the story. I wasn't sure that was the best idea, but I supposed a ten-centimeter-tall statue couldn't do us that much harm.

" Well, he can bore you to death ?" Reyna suggested. " Till then we would already tape his mouth. Duh !"

"This is wonderful!" Doughboy cried."Why?" I asked. "Is Dad still alive?" "No!" Doughboy said. "He's almost certainly dead. The five gods of the Demon Days released? Wonderful! And anyone who duels with the Red Lord—" "Wait," I said. "I order you to tell me what happened." "Ha!" Doughboy said. "I only have to tell you what I know. Making educated guesses is a completely different task. I declare my service fulfilled!"

" That thing is so annoying!" Drew huffed. I never liked Aphrodite's current daughters other than Piper.

With that, he turned back to lifeless wax."Wait!" I picked him up again and shook him. "Tell me your educated guesses!"Nothing happened."Maybe he's got a timer," Carter said. "Like only once a day. Or maybe you broke him."

" No, There are no timers in Shabti. Sadie could have broken him, but it didn't happen. Doughboy just loves to find the easy way out of his tasks. " Julius told Carter. Not that it mattered. I am no fan of Egyptian mythology like several gods or their goddesses like my brothers, Athena and Hera. I am much more interested in the girls I could ask to become huntresses.

"Carter, make a helpful suggestion! What do we do now?"He looked at the four ceramic statues on their pedestals. "Maybe—" "Other shabti?" "Worth a shot."If the statues were answerers, they weren't very good at it.

" You must be doing them the wrong way!" Zia commented. Zia can be a good huntress but she must be knowing about us as she looked wary of Thalia and me when we introduced ourselves and asked Sadie for a talk.

We tried holding them while giving them orders, though they were quite heavy. We tried pointing at them and shouting. We tried asking nicely. They gave us no answers at all.

"Told you !" Zia smirked.

I grew so frustrated I wanted to ha-di them into a million pieces, but I was still so hungry and tired, I had the feeling that spell would not be good for my health.

Finally, we decided to check the cubbyholes round the walls. The plastic cylinders were the kind you might find at a drive-through bank—the kind that shoot up and down the pneumatic tubes. Inside each case was a papyrus scroll. Some looked new. Some looked thousands of years old. Each canister was labeled in hieroglyphs and (fortunately) in English."The Book of the Heavenly Cow," Carter read on one. "What kind of name is that?

" It is devoted to Hathor, My wife. Her sacred animal is a cow." Horus nodded " Oh that was very nice of you, not bringing your wife to such important discussions. " Hera commented in a restrained voice.

What've you got, The Heavenly Badger?"

"No," I said. "The Book of Slaying Apophis."

All the magicians shivered and the room darkened some. Seems like he is a match of our grandfather and great-grandmother. The funniest reaction was of Bast. her hair puffed out looking like a frying pan.

Muffin meowed in the corner. When I looked over, her tail was puffed up."What's wrong with her?" I asked."Apophis was a giant snake monster," Carter muttered. "He was bad news."

Muffin turned and raced up the stairs, back into the Great Room. Cats. No accounting for them.

Bast huffed. Someone doesn't like it when their minions are shown in bad light.

Carter opened another scroll. "Sadie, look at this."He'd found a papyrus that was quite long, and most of the text on it seemed to be lines of hieroglyphs."Can you read any of this?" Carter asked.

I frowned at the writing, and the odd thing was, I couldn't read it—except for one line at the top. "Only that bit where the title should be. It says...Blood of the Great House. What does that mean?"

" What is the blood of great house?" Athena asked Julius. Oh, my lovesick sister! He gestured her towards the book.

"Great house," Carter mused. "What do the words sound like in Egyptian?" "Per-roh. Oh, it's pharaoh, isn't it? But I thought a pharaoh was a king?" "It is," Carter said. "The word literally means 'great house,' like the king's mansion. Sort of like referring to the president as 'the White House.'

" Ahh, So it is like referring Dad to Olympus !" Hermes nodded. Dad sent him a withering look. Go for it, Daddy!

So here it probably means more like Blood of the Pharaohs, all of them, the whole lineage of all the dynasties, not just one guy."

"So why do I care about the pharaohs' blood, and why can't I read any of the rest?"Carter stared at the lines. Suddenly his eyes widened. "They're names. Look, they're all written inside cartouches." "Excuse me?" I asked, because cartouche sounded like a rather rude word, and I pride myself on knowing those.

Julius and Ruby stared hard at Sadie but I couldn't help but look amused at her. She will make a really good huntress.

"The circles," Carter explained. "They symbolize magic ropes. They're supposed to protect the holder of the name from evil magic." He eyed me. "And possibly also from other magicians reading their names."

"Oh, you're mental," I said. But I looked at the lines, and saw what he meant. All the other words were protected by cartouches, and I couldn't make sense of them.

"Hah! Now, who is mental!" Carter retorted. Sadie simply ignored him.

"Sadie," Carter said, his voice urgent. He pointed to a cartouche at the very end of the list—the last entry in what looked to be a catalogue of thousands.

Inside the circle were two simple symbols, a basket and a wave.

"KN," Carter announced. "I know this one. It's our name, KANE."

"Missing a few letters, isn't it?"

"How do you know? The Vowels are missing." Piper asked.

Carter shook his head. "Egyptians usually didn't write vowels. Only consonants. You have to figure out the vowel sounds from context."

"They really were nutters. So that could be KON or IKON or KNEE or AKNE."

" Who has surnames Ikon and Knee? Heck, what person would like his name Charles Akne or Bailey Kon? They sound nutter." " Oh, they were just examples." Sadie hid her face in her palms.

"It could be," Carter agreed.

" Carter, are you mental? How could you agree to that? " " I just agreed with her on the fact that they could be another person's surnames too with consonants KN not to the fact that anyone has the surname Ikon. Ok!"

"But it's our name, Kane. I asked Dad to write it for me in hieroglyphs once, and that's how he did it. But why are we on this list? And what is 'blood of the pharaohs'?"

That icy tingle started on the back of my neck. I remembered what Amos had said, about both sides of our family being very ancient. Carter's eyes met mine, and judging from his expression, he was having the same thought.

"There's no way," I protested.

"Must be some kind of joke," he agreed. "Nobody keeps family records that far back."

" We do! Because we are nutters!" Walt replied.

I swallowed, my throat suddenly very dry. So many odd things had happened to us in the last day, but it was only when I saw our name in that book that I finally began to believe all this mad Egyptian stuff was real. Gods, magicians, monsters...and our family was tied into it.

Ever since breakfast, when it occurred to me that Dad had been trying to bring Mum back from the dead, a horrible emotion had been trying to take hold of me. And it wasn't dread. Yes, the whole idea was creepy, much creepier than the shrine my grandparents kept in the hall cupboard to my dead mother.

" My parents love to live in the past." Ruby sighed.

And yes, I told you I try not to live in the past and nothing could change the fact that my mum was gone. But I'm a liar. The truth was, I'd had one dream ever since I was six: to see my mum again. To actually get to know her, talk to her, go shopping, do anything. Just be with her once so I could have a better memory to hold on to. The feeling I was trying to shake was hope. I knew I was setting myself up for colossal hurt. But if it really were possible to bring her back, then I would've blown up any number of Rosetta Stones to make it happen.

" Well, you did break tons of museum stuff. So no loss there!" Carter replied trying to lighten the situation. What nobody else noticed was Sadie leaning towards her brother and he putting an arm on her shoulder. It almost made me guilty for my plan to ask her to join my huntresses. Almost.

"Let's keep looking," I said.

After a few more minutes, I found a picture of some of animal-headed gods, five in a row, with a starry woman figure arching over them protectively like an umbrella. Dad had released five gods. Hmm.

"You are on the right path, sweety! " Julius nodded.

"Carter," I called. "What's this, then?"

He came to have a look and his eyes lit up.

"That's it!" he announced. "These five...and up here, their mother, Nut."

The Greek gods laughed at that. " You have a goddess named Nut? What is her last name cracker? " Most of them looked annoyed. Osiris was keeping his face devoid of any emotion while Bast smirked at Sadie.

I laughed. "A goddess named Nut? Is her last name Case?"

"Very funny," Carter said. "She was the goddess of the sky."

He pointed to the painted ceiling—the lady with the blue star-spangled skin, same as in the scroll.

" I have met her!" Sadie replied with pride.

"So what about her?" I asked.

Carter knit his eyebrows. "Something about the Demon Days. It had to do with the birth of these five gods, but it's been a long time since Dad told me the story.

"Excellent, kids. You are doing good. If you stick to it and fight less, you will reach your goals" Julius beamed at his children making them blush. So that is their weakness. They are strong separately but stronger together

This whole scroll is written in hieratic, I think. That's like hieroglyph cursive. Can you read it?"

I shook my head. Apparently, my particular brand of insanity only applied to regular hieroglyphs.

" It is more like boon than insanity! " Annabeth admonished while Percy joked, behind her back, " It is an absurdity which will eat your brain in no time." I stifled a chuckle.

"I wish I could find the story in English," Carter said.

Just then there was a cracking noise behind us. The empty-handed clay statue hopped off his pedestal and marched towards us. Carter and I scrambled to get out of his way, but he walked straight past us, grabbed a cylinder from its cubbyhole and brought it to Carter.

" You have a clay librarian. Omg, Please provide me too with some Shabti." Athena asked the magicians. " Sure! So Lord Hades want a set of Shabti and so does Lady Athena. We will discuss how many and for what activities later in the break. Ok!" Walt asked. They both nodded.

"It's a retrieval shabti," I said. "A clay librarian!"

Carter swallowed nervously and took the cylinder. "Um...thanks."

The statue marched back to his pedestal, jumped on, and hardened again into regular clay.

"I wonder..." I faced the shabti. "Sandwich and chips, please!"

Sadly, none of the statues jumped down to serve me. Perhaps food wasn't allowed in the library.

" Awww. That is so wrong. You should totally make some Shabti who can serve and cook too." Leo suggested. "Leo, don't give this one any ideas. " Carter warned pointing at Sadie who winked in reply to Leo. If she joins the huntresses, I would have to keep an eye on her and her pranks.

Carter uncapped the cylinder and unrolled the papyrus. He sighed with relief. "This version is in English."

As he scanned the text, his frown got deeper.

"You don't look happy," I noticed.

"Because I remember the story now. The five gods...if Dad really released them, it isn't good news."

"Hey!" Set, Nypthys, Isis and Horus exclaimed. " Who is the fifth one?" I asked. " The one inside me!" Julius replied. Ohh. Athena sent me a glare.

"Hang on," I said. "Start from the beginning."

Carter took a shaky breath. "Okay. So the sky goddess, Nut, was married to the earth god, Geb."

" I have met him too. " "Tell one god/goddess you haven't met?" Asked Apollo annoyed at being disturbed from reading. "Now that I think about it have met most of them." Sadie nodded thoughtfully. " I have met them all, being a king and host of Horus, you know," Carter added.

"That would be this chap on the floor?" I tapped my foot on the big green man with the river and hills and forests all over his body.

"Right," Carter said. "Anyway, Geb and Nut wanted to have kids, but the king of the gods, Ra—he was the sun god—heard this bad prophecy that a child of Nut—"

"Child of nut!" All the Greek gods chuckled.

"Child of Nut," I snickered. "Sorry, go on."

"—a child of Geb and Nut would one day replace Ra as king. So when Ra learned that Nut was pregnant, Ra freaked out. He forbade Nut to give birth to her children on any day or night of the year."

" That is despicable -" Hera began, only to be cut off by my brother," says the woman who didn't allow another woman to give birth on the land!" Hera quieted down but showed her fury by glaring at everyone. Nice try Hera. Not even demigods are scared of you anymore. I thought rolling my eyes.

I crossed my arms. "So what, she had to stay pregnant forever? That's awfully mean."

Carter shook his head. "Nut figured out a way. She set up a game of dice with the moon god, Khons.

Sadie and Carter glared at the book so hard It might have started to burn. Bes covered his smile with a cough.

Every time Khons lost, he had to give Nut some of his moonlight. He lost so many times, Nut won enough moonlight to create five new days and tag them on to the end of the year."

"Oh, please," I said. "First, how can you gamble moonlight? And if you did, how could you make extra days out of it?"

"They are gods. They can do anything!" Reyna replied.

"It's a story!" Carter protested. "Anyway, the Egyptian calendar had three hundred and sixty days in the year, just like the three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle. Nut created five days and added them to the end of the year—days that were not part of the regular year."

"The Demon Days," I guessed. "So the myth explains why a year has three hundred and sixty-five days. And I suppose she had her children—"

"During those five days," Carter agreed. "One kid per day."

"Again, how do you have five children in a row, each on a different day?"

"They're gods," Carter said. "They can do stuff like that."

"That doesn't make it sound less weird." Percy *sigh* commented.

"Makes as much sense as the name Nut. But please, go on."

"So when Ra found out, he was furious, but it was too late. The children were already born. Their names were Osiris—"

"The one Dad was after."

"Then Horus, Set, Isis, and, um..." Carter consulted his scroll. "Nephthys. I always forget that one."

" I can't forget that one. As she protected Zia." Carter had a dreamy smile on his face as Zia blushed and Sadie gagged.

"And the fiery man in the museum said, you have released all five."

"Exactly. What if they were imprisoned together and Dad didn't realize it? They were born together, so maybe they had to be summoned back into the world together. The thing is, one of these guys, Set, was a really bad dude. Like, the villain of Egyptian mythology. The god of evil and chaos and desert storms."

" Yep! Handsome and smart villain," Set smirked winking at me. Apollo shot him a death stare.

I shivered. "Did he perhaps have something to do with fire?"

Carter pointed to one of the figures in the picture. The god had an animal head, but I couldn't quite make out which sort of animal: Dog? Anteater? Evil bunny rabbit? Whichever it was, his hair and his clothes were bright red.

" Evil bunny rabbit!", Set shouted outraged as everyone else stifled their snicker," Does my dangerous and ferocious Set animal looks like a bunny?"

"The Red Lord," I said.

"Sadie, there's more," Carter said. "Those five days—the Demon Days—were bad luck in Ancient Egypt. You had to be careful, wear good luck charms, and not do anything important or dangerous on those days. And in the British Museum, Dad told Set: They'll stop you before the Demon Days are over."

"Surely you don't think he meant us," I said. "We're supposed to stop this Set character?"

Set was still grumbling about his set animal to notice how Sadie had made fun of her.

Carter nodded. "And if the last five days of our calendar year still count as the Egyptian Demon Days—they'd start on December 27, the day after tomorrow."

The shabti seemed to be staring at me expectantly, but I had not the slightest idea what to do. Demon Days and evil bunny gods

Everyone couldn't help but snicker.

—if I heard one more impossible thing, my head would explode.

And the worst of it? The little insistent voice in the back of my head saying: It's not impossible. To save Dad, we must defeat Set.

As if that had been on my to-do list for Christmas hols. See Dad—check. Develop strange powers—check. Defeat an evil god of chaos—check. The whole idea was mad!

" No, The whole idea is not crazy," Percy replied calmly. " Exactly!" Isis agreed immediately. I knew he is going to throw a good one! " We live in a world filled with gods who are way over in their heads. People who wish to kill no matter if we are their friends or foe. This is the world of mythology, where myths are as real as a sky is blue. Welcome to this world Sadie and Carter Kane!" Percy ended with a grand gesture as if he was welcoming them to a five-star resort. The gods couldn't help but blush at his comment while demigods and Magicians laughed at that. Even Chiron had a smile.

Suddenly there was a loud crash, as if something had broken in the Great Room. Khufu began barking in alarm.

"Holy Styx! What happened?" Everyone was on their seat edge at the sudden change of atmosphere. " Our life happened! " Sadie commented.

Carter and I locked eyes. Then we ran for the stairs.

"And the end of the chapter! Now who is going to read?" Apollo asked.