CARTER

I'm really not in the mood to make any introductions. But let's go. My name is Carter Kane and you can tell that my life is far from normal. Would you believe that in the middle of the 21st century there would be someone who would say, "Hey, I'm a Pharaoh," and that person wouldn't be lying? Yeah. That's me. Nice to meet you, I'm Carter Kane, Pharaoh of the House of Life since about two years ago. But now I'm currently in despair about the idea of being able to enter an University. Much has happened in recent years. About three years ago I discovered that my sister and I are descended from two long lineages of pharaohs, we discovered the existence of the Egyptian gods, we defeated many monsters and two years ago we defeated the most complicated one, a serpent called Apophis and then the Egyptian gods left the human world (but then we discovered that Greek gods also exist, since we met a certain Percy and a Annabeth soon after that, long story), but only an Egyptian god stayed here, Anubis. And that's the problem that makes me not have the mood to do this introduction, but I'll have to do it since my sister is not fit for it right now.

My sister, Sadie, has been practically raised away from me. She is only two years younger; I am currently 17 and Sadie is 15. If you meet us on the street, you will never say that we are siblings, because we could not be more different. At the moment, my sister is locked in her room crying a lot, and I do not blame her. I would be like that, too. I could hear the cries coming from her room from the living room couch. I sighed, not knowing what to do.

"She's still the same, eh?" Said a voice that appeared behind me. I turned around and saw Anubis, the god Anubis. And I had to admit that even for me it hurted to see that it was "only" Anubis.

"Yes," I said with a sigh. "I don't know what else to do. Can't you do something else? Being the god of death and everything else ..."

"I rarely have to deal with the living in a situation like this and ... The fact that it's Sadie makes it all more complicated." He replied.

"If as god you can't, and as her boyfriend?" I asked.

"Exactly the most complicated part," he said, sighing and looking toward my sister's room.

Yeah. My sister was dating a god. But then you might say, "But Carter, he might as well try to do more for her." Well, I agree it's pretty complicated. Let me explain, or try to explain, everything that happened. It's kind of complicated so try not to get lost.

When Sadie and I discovered the existence of the Egyptian gods, it didn't take long for her to end up with a ... crush ... on Anubis. (It was very annoying to hear her talking about how cute he was). In the meantime, she started having a crush on another boy, a normal mortal one ... Or almost that... Called Walt. Walt was also from the blood of the Pharaohs, descended from Tutankhamen himself. The love triangle was the least of Sadie's problems. While Anubis enjoyed an infinite amount of years of life in the future, Walt's years were numbered since he was cursed and such a curse had apparently no cure. When we were close to our battle with Apophis, Walt was almost killed by the curse, but to make him live, Anubis used Walt as a host because even for Anubis it would be very difficult to date Sadie since he can only appear in places of mourning and death (and having dates for the rest of the life in cemeteries does not seem pleasant. I won't even get into the problem of him never getting old).

After our biggest problems with Apophis ended this relationship on three was working somehow. We all returned to school, trained our magicians (oh yes, here at home there are a lot of other children and teens who also have pharaoh blood and we train them), fighted against occasional monsters and all these normal things in the life of every teenager. But it all went downhill earlier this week. Walt was actually dead now. And that was why it was now "just" Anubis looking worried at Sadie's door. Please, understand, he tried to comfort her (more than once), but I guess that just seeing his face right now is hurting her too much.
Now I'm here with my worries divided between Sadie and the whole situation that led to Walt's death.

It was just another normal day, even by the normal "normal" standards. We were coming back from school. Me, Sadie and Walt / Anubis. We were walking through the streets of Brooklyn when a bald man with a huge black beard decided to run toward us and bump into Walt. The man was strong and muscular. I think his arm was the size of my thigh. He pushed him into a narrow corridor of those no one with the right mind would enter in a big city like that. And in that corridor, there was a portal.

"Ah! " My sister cried almost instantly, taking out her wand and entering the portal after Walt and the bearded guy.

" Sadie! Wait! " I screamed back already chasing after my sister while she did not even give a signal to have listened to me.

When Sadie and I appeared on the other side of the portal, the portal closed and we noticed that despite having taken a strong push from the unnamed man, Walt managed not to fall to the ground and was already invoking an Egyptian sword from the Duat (called Kopesh ) and trimming the blow that the nameless man also gave with a newly invoked sword. I'm not quite sure where the portal took us, I just know that it was a very deserted place, I could only see, stone sand, stone mountains and more stone.

" Hello, Anubis ... How long have we not seen each other eh? " Said the nameless man with a half-maniacal smile making the hair of my neck twitch.

" Zababa. " said Walt.

" Do you know this guy with such stupid name? " Sadie was already apparently preparing a spell, probably also concerned about her boyfriends.

" Yes." said Zababa " unfortunately, I am not your adversary today, Anubis. "

" Oh? " that was all Walt had time to say before, under the sand, a large tail came up that grabbed him by the waist and pulled him away in the air to the horror of Sadie who screamed. I barely had time to see the huge creature that came out of a pile of sand and was the owner of that tail. The creature was a huge serpent-like dragon that flew off to devour Walt in the air.

I didn't have time to think about what to do about the dragon, for Zababa runned toward my distracted sister. I summoned from Duat my own Kopesh and started to fight against this Zababa.

The movement brought Sadie back, she didn't seem to know who to help, but, I think she ended up deciding to help me (since theoretically Walt had Anubis and Anubis had Walt).

" A'max! " Cried my sister, invoking the divine word of fire. Not that this seemed to have affected Zababa much, he managed to stop my blow and almost knocked me down and then attacked Sadie. She managed to use the 'N-dah' spell on the last second creating a shield around her.

When I almost fell, I could see how the fight between Walt and the dragon was. The dragon was trapped in strips of linen (of those used on mummies) screaming and trying to get rid of them. Apparently, Walt was no longer at risk of death by falling from great height, for he was already standing on the ground invoking armor for protection.

Noticing that I should help my sister, I got up as fast as I could and started to attack Zababa again with all sorts of blows I had learned from Horus. Sadie was also trying to use her combination of spells trying not to hit me too (gratefully). But the man was good and he fought like a savage. Sometimes we managed to hit some attacks that seemed to affect him, but, on the whole, it was the other way around.

I wanted to know how things were going against the dragon, although I doubted they were much better since yeah ... A dragon is a dragon. As I asked myself this, I saw with the corner of my eye something strange. It looked like a buffalo, only much bigger than what I expected and it had wings and looked much more demonic. I bet, unfortunately, that it was a little help for the dragon and Zababa. I hate to admit I got it right. Perhaps judging that the dragon needed more help, (or perhaps for another reason, as I would have thought later), the buffalo was to participate in the fight against Walt and Anubis. It was probably at this time that Sadie felt more like going to help her boyfriends, because I did not see very well what happened. Anubis would tell me later, that the buffalo crossed Walt's body as if it was made of smoke and disappeared. As he told me, it didn't make much difference at first and they continued to fight the dragon by summoning their jackal warriors. But with each passing second, he found it more difficult to continue the fight and keep the linen strips holding the dragon.

Meanwhile, we were losing to Zababa. Distracted by the Walt's fight that did not seem to be going so well, Sadie began to become sloppier. Being Zababa a formidable opponent, very difficult for me alone or even Sadie by herself (and I have my doubts if the two of us together would work much better), the fight began to get even worse for us.

I could see that Sadie's legs were shaking, her eyes going fast from Zababa to the dragon and her cheek and arm were bleeding. I wonder now if she was running out of magic. I think so, because I was already running out of strength and was also bleeding in the thigh and feeling a severe pain in the ribs.

"You lasted long enough, Egyptian mortals." Zababa said as his sword turned into an ax. Sadie tried to wrap us in a magic shield with the magic left, but I realized that the shield failed.

It was then that several things happened at the same time. A portal appeared above Zababa's right shoulder, from which Walt fell while the dragon screamed in frustration from afar as noticing that his enemy just fled from him. Walt, apparently very weak, clung to Zababa and quickly Zababa went through all stages of putrefaction until it became a heap of dust on which Walt fell. Without strength and erroneously momentarily relieved, Sadie and I fell on our knees, forgetting that we still had the dragon to deal with. Such dragon was already going fast towards us, Sadie and I noticed this and tried to find the strength to get up and fight. But, letting the wind carry the dust that once was Zababa, Walt used the strength he had to throw himself in our direction and grab us by taking us through another portal that he opened almost at the same time that the dragon swiftly passed by right through where we were as trying to use us for breakfast. If we took just a second longer, I would not be here telling such an adventure.

When we opened our eyes, we were still surrounded by sand and stones, but this time, in front of a house made of stones too and a different man was running toward us. I don't know if he was bald too, because he wore a strange hat. He had no beard, just a generous mustache, and eyebrows as generous as his mustache.

" Anubis ... Where did you get us? " Asked Sadie, because the choice of place probably was not from Walt. But she turned pale as she looked at her boyfriends, and then I decided to look too, and I was equally pale. Walt looked weak. He barely had the strength to stand on his knees, his body was trembling and he was coughing and spitting blood as his expression shifted from anger to pain.