Hey everyone, I am back with a new chapter. It feels like centuries since I last posted my last chapter. I will try to post them regularly, most likely on Sundays. So see ya next Sunday but on my other fanfic cause, I am doing them alternately.

Hope you will like this chapter and review.

Chapter 22: WE MEET THE HUMAN FLAMETHROWER

Hestia's pov (I Almost forgot her !)

These magicians' siblings sound very interesting. And even though they fight, they still care about each other. Like true siblings. I hope that they can overcome all obstacles that come in their future, by sticking together. Unfortunately, their relationship already has problems coming in the form of Hunters of Artemis!

Annabeth took the book from Horus and started to read.

Chapter 11. We Meet the Human Flamethrower

"YOU MET A FLAMETHROWER ! AWESOME.", Leo shouted excitedly, with his hair on fire. " LEO !" Piper admonished and Percy brought water from the nearby fountain and drenched him. Leo smiled sheepishly at everyone. most of the demigods and young godlings were trying not to laugh at his antics. Julius, Ruby, Bast, Ra, Bes, Hephaestus, and Poseidon looked amused while others looked bored.

RIGHT, I'M TAKING THE MICROPHONE. There is no chance Carter would tell this part properly, as it's about Zia.

"Eeee " Aphrodite squealed thinking it might be something romantic while Julius, Bast and Ruby gave questioning glances to Carter and Zia s' blushing faces. "Oh, he was worse when we went to find his girl ." Bes retorted amused. " You think they were bad, these two were oblivious idiots " Grover commented pointing at Percy and Annabeth.

[Shut up, Carter. You know it's true.]Oh, who is Zia? Sorry, getting ahead of myself.

"You think! When we were listening to the recording for the first time, we thought she might be another villain after you."Walt said. Zia glared at him as Carter scolded Sadie " See I told you. Don't give spoilers in the beginning. People will get confused."

We raced to the entrance of the museum, and I had no idea why, except that a giant glowing cat woman had told us to.

"The giant glowing cat woman's name is Bast" Bast huffed at them.

Now, you must realize I was already devastated by everything that had happened. First, I'd lost my father.

Julius and Carter winced.

Second, my loving grandparents had kicked me out of the flat.

Ruby looked sad.

Then I'd discovered I was apparently "blood of the pharaohs," born to a magical family, and all sorts of rubbish that sounded quite impressive but only brought me loads of trouble.

"That is our life." The magicians nodded. " It doesn't get any better as demigods." demigods cringed.

And as soon as I'd found a new home—a mansion with proper breakfast and friendly pets and quite a nice room for me, by the way

"Well, something good happened." I tried to stay positive.

—Uncle Amos disappeared, my lovely new crocodile and baboon friends were tossed in a river, and the mansion was set on fire.

I became disheartened by her fate.

And if that wasn't enough, my faithful cat Muffin had decided to engage in a hopeless battle with a swarm of scorpions. Do you call it a "swarm" for scorpions? A herd? A gaggle?

"Actually it is a bed of scorpions or nest of scorpions," Annabeth informed.

Oh, never mind.

My thoughts exactly. Annabeth didn't look amused.

The point is I couldn't believe I'd been asked to open a magic doorway when clearly I had no such skill, and now my brother was dragging me away. I felt like an utter failure.

"No, you were just a moderate failure." Apollo joked.

[And no comments from you, Carter. As I recall, you weren't much help at the time, either.]

"I wasn't going to. " Carter said, annoyed.

"We can't just leave Bast!" I shouted. "Look!" Carter kept running, dragging me along, but I could see quite clearly what was happening back at the obelisk. A mass of scorpions had crawled up Bast's glowing green legs and were wriggling into the hologram-like it was gelatin. Bast smashed hundreds of them with her feet and fists, but there were simply too many. Soon they were up to her waist, and her ghostly shell began to flicker.

"Uhu! Why do I have a feeling that is not a good thing." Jason asked.

Meanwhile, the brown-robed goddess advanced slowly, and I had a feeling she would be worse than any number of scorpions. Carter pulled me through a row of bushes and I lost sight of Bast. We burst onto Fifth Avenue, which seemed ridiculously normal after the magic battle.

"It always does when you travel from the mythological world to the real one." Piper and Percy commented.

We ran down the sidewalk, shoved through a knot of pedestrians, and climbed the steps of the Met.

"Met is open on a holiday ?" Nico questioned.

A banner above the entrance announced some sort of special Christmas event, which I suppose is why the museum was open on a holiday,

He nodded in understanding.

but I didn't bother reading the details. We pushed straight inside. What did it look like?

"Who cares ?" Clarisse looked bored now that all the action ended.

Well, it was a museum: huge entry hall, lots of columns and so on. I can't claim I spent much time admiring the decor.

Annabeth and Athena glared at the poor description of the museum.

I do remember it had queues for the ticket windows, because we ran right past them. There were also security guards, because they yelled at us as we dashed into the exhibits.

"I really like your daughter, Julius! " Hermes replied amused as his sons were cheering for her. Julius made a face.

By luck, we ended up in the Egyptian area, in front of a reconstructed tomb sort of place with narrow corridors. Carter probably could've told you what the structure was supposed to be, but honestly, I didn't care.

" You should care when you are on the run!" Percy, Annabeth and Grover replied, then blushed when everyone rose their eyebrow at them.

"Come on," I said. We slipped inside the exhibit, which proved quite enough to lose the security guards, or perhaps they had better things to do than pursue naughty children.

" Naughty children can also be dangerous!" Ares grumbled glaring at Percy.

When we popped out again, we sneaked around until we were sure we weren't being followed. The Egypt wing wasn't crowded—just a few clumps of old people and a foreign tour group with a guide explaining a sarcophagus in French. "Et voici la momie!".

"Nice, not many witnesses. "Ares replied rubbing his knuckles.

Strangely, no one seemed to notice the enormous sword on Carter's back, which surely must've been a security issue (and much more interesting than the exhibits).

"Glamour !" "Mist !" Zia and Thalia commented then looked at each other questioningly. "Same stuff different names! Move on Annabeth." Athena said.

A few old people did give us odd looks, but I suspect that was because we were dressed in linen pajamas, drenched in sweat, and covered in grass and leaves.

"Gross!" Aphrodite and her daughters, except Piper, commented.

My hair was probably a nightmare as well.

"It isn't any better! " Drew made a face. Piper rolled her eyes at her half-sister's antics while Sadie's eye twitched.

I found an empty room and pulled Carter aside. The glass cases were full of shabti. A few days earlier I wouldn't have given them a second thought. Now, I kept glancing at the statues, sure they'd come to life any minute and try to bash me on the head.

"Being alert is always helpful !" Artemis nodded her head in approval.

"What now?" I asked Carter. "Did you see any temple?" "No." He knit his eyebrows as if trying hard to remember. "I think there's a rebuilt temple down that hall...or is that in the Brooklyn Museum? Maybe the one in Munich? Sorry, I've been to so many museums with Dad that they all get mixed together."

Poor boy! I thought He had to run so much that he never had a place to call his hearth.

I sighed in exasperation. "Poor boy, forced to travel the world, skip school, and spend time with Dad while I get a whole two days a year with him!"

"Hey!" Carter turned on me with surprising force. "You get a home! You get friends and a normal life and don't wake up each morning wondering what country you're in!

"You know most of us can relate to both of you. For quests we travelled so much, it is hard to name all the places we visited. And many of us spent our childhood running from monsters. At the same time, all of us have parental issues, sometimes with both parents. " Percy replied. Most demigods nodded in agreement while gods and goddesses who had children looked away in shame

You don't—"The glass case next to us shattered, spraying glass at our feet.

"That actually reminds us of those times when we didn't know our powers and ended up doing stuff unknowingly!" Hazel commented.

Carter looked at me, bewildered. "Did we just—" "Like my exploding birthday cake," I grumbled, trying not to let on how startled I was. "You need to control your temper." "Me?"

"You both fight at the wrong places and in the wrong moments." Hades tutted at them. I raised my eyebrows at him. As if He, Zeus and Posiedon do it correctly.

Alarms began to blare. Red lights pulsed through the corridor. A garbled voice came on the loudspeaker and said something about proceeding calmly to the exits. The French tour group ran past us, screaming in panic, followed by a crowd of remarkably fast old people with walkers and canes."Let's finish arguing later, shall we?" I told Carter.

"You know you both are smarter than most of the gods in the room," Percy muttered to Carter and Sadie. "Yeah and from them too," Grover added pointing at Percy and Annabeth who blushed.

"Come on!"We ran down another corridor, and the sirens died as suddenly as they'd started. The blood-red lights kept pulsing in eerie silence. Then I heard it: the slithering, clacking sounds of scorpions.

The atmosphere tensed as fast as it had lightened.

"What about Bast?" My voice choked up. "Is she—" "Don't think about it," Carter said, though, judging from his face, that's exactly what he was thinking about.

" But you were alive! Right? " Piper asked Bast. She nodded.

"Keep moving!"Soon we were hopelessly lost. As far as I could tell, the Egyptian part of the museum was designed to be as confusing as possible, with dead ends and halls that doubled back on themselves. We passed hieroglyphic scrolls, gold jewelry, sarcophagi, statues of pharaohs, and huge chunks of limestone. Why would someone display a rock?

All the Egyptians glared at her.

Aren't there enough of those in the world?

"When you say it like that! Yeah, maybe they should tone down the rock collection." Jason said thoughtfully. "There are other reasons for those rocks, Jason. Anything Egyptian can be used as a portal. You will find out about it in later chapters. " Walt replied.

We saw no one, but the slithering sounds grew louder no matter which way we ran. Finally, I rounded a corner and smacked straight into someone. I yelped and scrambled backwards, only to stumble into Carter. We both fell on our bums in a most unflattering way. It's a miracle Carter didn't impale himself on his own sword.

At first, I didn't recognize the girl standing in front of us, which seems strange, looking back on it.

"You have not been in the magical world for 48 hrs. You can't be expected to know each person there by their name. " I scolded Sadie.

Perhaps she was using some sort of magic aura, or perhaps I just didn't want to believe it was her. She looked a bit taller than me. Probably older, too, but not by much. Her black hair was trimmed along her jawline and longer in the front so that it swept over her eyes. She had caramel-colored skin and pretty, vaguely Arab features. Her eyes—lined in black kohl, Egyptian style—were a strange amber color that was either quite beautiful or a bit scary; I couldn't decide which.

"That's what I thought about Annabeth's eyes when I first saw her," Percy commented. "Me too." Jason replied, "Except they are more on the scary side." Most boys agreed with Jason but shut up when the said lady glared.

She had a backpack on her shoulder, and wore sandals and loose-fitting linen clothes like ours. She looked as if she were on her way to a martial arts class. God, now that I think of it, we probably looked the same way.

"You have a very slow brain if you realize it then!" Athena snorted. "Not everyone is a bird-brained, 'thena." Posiedon shot back. Before they would start bickering, Annabeth started reading.

How embarrassing. I slowly began to realize I'd seen her before. She was the girl with the knife from the British Museum. Before I could say anything, Carter sprang to his feet. He moved in front of me and brandished his sword as if trying to protect me.

"How sexist!" Most females glared at Carter. "What! I am her big brother. I have to protect her." Carter spluttered back making them smile at him. He is very caring and protective of his sister. "Do you think I need protection, Big bro?"Sadie replied with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes... "Yeah Carter, people need protection from her antics," Walt said teasingly.

Can you believe the nerve?" Get—get back!" the girl reached into her sleeve and produced a curved white piece of ivory—an Egyptian wand. She flicked it to one side, and Carter's sword flew out of his hands and clattered to the floor. "Don't embarrass yourself," the girl said sternly.

"Too late" Zia said smirking at Carter's red face.

"Where is Amos?"Carter looked too stunned to girl turned towards me. Her golden eyes were both beautiful and scary, I decided, and I didn't like her a bit.

"What about now ?" Zia asked. "Now you are my best friend !" Sadie replied making Zia laugh. They are a tight-knit family. If they keep it up, they will definitely get out of the troubled waters, very soon.

"Well?" she demanded. I didn't see why I needed to tell her a bloody thing, but an uncomfortable pressure started building in my chest, like a burp trying to get free. I heard myself say, "Amos is gone. He left this morning." "And the cat demon?"

"I am not a demon! " Bast screeched angrily while Zia looked guilty.

"That's my cat," I said. "And she's a goddess, not a demon. She saved us from the scorpions!"Carter unfroze. He snatched up his sword and pointed it at the girl again. Full credit for persistence,

"Should stop doing that sword thing, dude. It will keep on increasing your embarrassment" Apollo commented. Everyone ignored too engrossed listening to what will happen next.

I suppose."Who are you?" he demanded. "What do you want?" "My name is Zia Rashid." She tilted her head as if listening.

Right on cue, the entire building rumbled. Dust sprinkled from the ceiling, and the slithering sounds of scorpions doubled in volume behind us.

We leaned in our seats, anticipating a fight.

"And right now," Zia continued, sounding a bit disappointed, "I must save your miserable lives. Let's go."

I suppose we could've refused, but our choices seemed to be Zia or the scorpions, so we ran after her.

"So your choice was between bad and worse, and you choose worse." Leo tried to joke but it fell flat.

She passed a case full of statues and casually tapped the glass with her wand. Tiny granite pharaohs and limestone gods stirred at her command. They hopped off their pedestals and crashed through the glass. Some wielded weapons. Others simply cracked their stone knuckles. They let us pass, but stared down the corridor behind us as if waiting for the enemy.

"That can come in handy !" Thalia replied rubbing her knuckles.

"Hurry," Zia told us. "These will only—"

"Buy us time," I guessed. "Yes, we've heard that before."

"That gets old, very fast."

"You talk too much," Zia said without stopping.

"That's true too," Walt commented only to get a punch on the shoulder.

I was about to make a withering retort. Honestly, I would've put her in her place quite properly. But just then we emerged into an enormous room and my voice abandoned me.

"Whoa," Carter said.

I couldn't help agreeing with him. The place was extremely whoa.

"Really, just extremely whoa. Try beautiful or spacious or enchanting. Whoa doesn't say anything about it. You need to enhance your vocabulary. " Percy scolded in imitation of someone. We raised our eyebrows questioningly. "That's how Paul, his stepfather would have reacted," Annabeth replied without looking up from the book. "Here is the description he would certainly like. " Saying that she started reading again.

The room was the size of a football stadium. One wall was made completely of glass and looked out on the park. In the middle of the room, on a raised platform, an ancient building had been reconstructed. There was a freestanding stone gateway about eight meters tall, and behind that, an open courtyard and square structure made of uneven sandstone blocks carved all over on the outside with images of gods and pharaohs and hieroglyphs. Flanking the building's entrance were two columns bathed in eerie light.

"That sounds like an Egyptian temple," Hazel said thoughtfully.

"An Egyptian temple," I guessed.

"The Temple of Dendur," Zia said. "Actually it was built by the Romans—"

"When they occupied Egypt," Carter said, like this was delightful information. "Augustus commissioned it."

"Yes," Zia said.

"Not again." Boys groaned.

"Fascinating," I murmured. "Would you two like to be left alone with a history textbook?"

It made many of us crack a smile.

Zia scowled at me. "At any rate, the temple was dedicated to Isis, so it will have enough power to open a gate."

"To summon more gods !" Katie asked.

"To summon more gods?" I asked.

Zia's eyes flashed angrily. "Accuse me of that again, and I will cut out your tongue. I meant a gateway to get you out of here."

"Wait, are gods so bad in your culture that you are not even allowed to talk about them?" Piper commented. "Nope, just disbanded and banished to duet. About which you will learn in further chapters."

I felt completely lost, but I was getting used to that.

"You were getting used to feeling getting lost?" Reyna asked Sadie as if she has lost her mind. All she got in response was a nod.

We followed Zia up the steps and through the temple's stone gateway.

The courtyard was empty, abandoned by the fleeing museum visitors, which made it feel quite creepy. Giant carvings of gods stared down at me. Hieroglyphic inscriptions were everywhere, and I was afraid that if I concentrated too hard, I might be able to read them.

"You are saying as if they will come to life and eat you," Chris asked amusedly.

Zia stopped at the front steps of the temple. She held up her wand and wrote in the air. A familiar hieroglyph burned between the columns.

Open—the same symbol Dad had used at the Rosetta Stone. I waited for something to blow up, but the hieroglyph simply faded.

Zia opened her backpack. "We'll make our stand here until the gate can be opened."

All the demigods were excited to know how portals worked.

"Why not just open it now?" Carter asked.

"Portals can only appear at auspicious moments," Zia said. "Sunrise, sunset, midnight, eclipses, astrological alignments, the exact time of a god's birth—"

"How do you remember all that ?" "It takes years to memorize. " " I don't. I just take a guess and boom portal." Zia and Sadie both replied to the question Leo asked. We couldn't help but laugh at Sadie's reply and Zia's annoyed face. "One more question what if there is no auspicious time at the moment? Then what do you do?" Reyna asked. "There are so many gods and they all have birthdays, marriage anniversaries etc. that it's impossible not to have auspicious time nearby. " Walt replied. "How many gods do you have?" Jason asked. "So many that even if we forgot like thousands of them and dump them in a dump yard we can still fill this hall and that is saying something. " Sadie replied.

"Oh, come on," I said. "How can you possibly know all that?"

"It takes years to memorize the complete calendar," Zia said. "But the next auspicious moment is easy: high noon. Ten and a half minutes from now."

She didn't check her watch. I wondered how she knew the time so precisely, but I decided it wasn't the most important question.

"Questions are always better to be answered than left unasked," Demeter said wisely.

"Why should we trust you?" I asked. "As I recall, at the British Museum, you wanted to gut us with a knife."

"That is a good question."

"That would've been simpler." Zia sighed. "Unfortunately, my superiors think you might be innocent. So for now, I can't kill you. But I also can't allow you to fall into the hands of the Red Lord. And so...you can trust me."

"You know that's not how trust works, right ?"

"Well, I'm convinced," I said. "I feel all warm and fuzzy inside."

Zia reached in her bag and took out four little statues—animal-headed men, each about five centimeters tall. She handed them to me. "Put the Sons of Horus around us at the cardinal points."

All Greeks and Romans looked confused at the terminology.

"Excuse me?"

"North, south, east, west." She spoke slowly, as if I were an idiot.

"I know compass directions! But—"

"That's north." Zia pointed out the wall of glass. "Figure out the rest."

I did what she asked, though I didn't see how the little men would help. Meanwhile, Zia gave Carter a piece of chalk and told him to draw a circle around us, connecting the statues.

"Magic protection," Carter said. "Like what Dad did at the British Museum."

Now we understood what they were doing.

"Yes," I grumbled. "And we saw how well that worked."

Carter ignored me. What else is new? He was so eager to please Zia that he jumped right to the task of drawing his sidewalk art.

Carter glared at Sadie but she smiled.

Then Zia took something else from her bag—a plain wooden rod like the one our dad had used in London. She spoke a word under her breath, and the rod expanded into a two-meter-long black staff topped with a carved lion's head. She twirled it around single-handedly like a baton—just showing off, I was sure—while holding the wand in her other hand.

Carter finished the chalk circle as the first scorpions appeared at the gallery's entrance.

Everyone tensed, excited to see the Egyptians fighting.

"How much longer on that gate?" I asked, hoping I didn't sound as terrified as I felt.

"Stay inside the circle no matter what," Zia said. "When the gate opens, jump through. And keep behind me!"

She touched her wand to the chalk circle, spoke another word, and the circle began to glow dark red.

Hundreds of scorpions swarmed towards the temple, turning the floor into a living mass of claws and stingers. Then the woman in brown, Serqet, entered the gallery. She smiled at us coldly.

"Zia," I said, "that's a goddess. She defeated Bast. What chance do you have?"

"Certainly more than Bast. " Zia said. Bast made a face behind her back.

Zia held up her staff and the carved lion's head burst into flames—a small red fireball so bright, it lit the entire room.

"Woohoo go flamethrower!" demigods cheered.

"I am a scribe in the House of Life, Sadie Kane. I am trained to fight gods."

"WHAT !" "You are trained to fight gods. What about demons and monsters !" "Yes, well in the beginning of our journey, gods and magicians really fought a lot. Now who wishes to go to 21st Nome." Everyone cheered and started preparing for the trip.

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