Disclaimer: I do not own PJO or Kane Chronicles, they belong to the man, the myth, the legend Rick Riordan.

Author's Note: Hey Everybody! Asmodeus here. Welcome back to another chapter of Greco-Egyptian Convergence.

P.S. If it's one of the Kanes telling the story, there'll be no POV notation, but rather the typical recording intro used in their series.

I have created a Discord server. The code is hfKwz9k. The link is also in my profile. I hope to see you all there!

Hey all, I'm back. Before I get started with the story, let me just consult my notes to see where Annabeth left off. Yes, I know I should've done this before I started recording, but I was a bit lazy.

Right, Annabeth binding Serapis. To be completely honest, I wasn't exactly sure that it would work, but it was worth a shot.

As Annabeth kicked her way out of the plywood, Serapis merely flexed his muscles and shattered the golden prison I had trapped him in, evaporating the protective circle I had made into a cloud of red steam. One word flashed through my mind as he summoned his staff to him and turned to face me - 'Shit.'

He then cried angrily, "You would bind me? You would name me? You do not even have the proper language to name me, little magician!"

As Serapis blew up at me, I could see Annabeth stumble forward. I myself was barely maintaining my ground. My breathing was shallow. Now that Serapis held the staff, his aura felt ten times more powerful. My ears buzzed. My ankles turned to mush. I could feel my life force being drained away - vacuumed into the red halo of the god.

Fortunately, I'd faced much worse during what Sadie continues to refer to as our "vacation to the shores of Chaos." That was no vacation, let me tell you.

I decided to channel my inner Sadie when responding to Serapis, "Right, you said proper language, yeah? How about this - HA-DI!"

Unfortunately, the hieroglyph produced was merely swiped out of the air by Serapis with his free hand. He closed his fist and smoke shot between his fingers, as if he'd just crushed a miniature steam engine.

I gulped at seeing Serapis swipe the hieroglyph out of the air and managed to stutter out, "That's impossible. How -"

Before I could finish, Serapis interrupted me and said, "Expecting an explosion?"

He laughed for a bit before continuing, "Sorry to disappoint you, child, but my power is both Greek and Egyptian. It combines both, consumes both, replaces both. You are favored of Horus, I see? Excellent. He was once my son."

"What?" I cried out in shock.

"Oh, yes! When I deposed both Osiris and Zeus, and Isis forced to serve as my wife, Horus was forced to serve me as my son. Now I will use you as a gateway to summon him here and bind him. Horus will once again be my son! With him by my side, I will be undefeatable!"

Serapis thrust out his staff. From each of the three monstrous mouths, red tendrils of light shot forth, encircling me like thorny branches.

As I screamed, I could see Annabeth grab a sheet of plywood - a wobbly square about the size of a shield - and yell, "Hey, Grain Head!"

She twisted from the waist, using the force of her entire body. The plywood sailed through the air just as Serapis turned to look at her, and the edge smacked him between the eyes.

"GAH!" he yelled.

As I tried to recover from the tendrils of light, which were much worse than they sound, Annabeth dived to one side as Serapis blindly thrust his staff in her direction. The three monster heads blasted super-heated plumes of vapor, melting a hole in the concrete where Annabeth had just been standing.

She kept moving, picking her way through mounds of debris that now littered the floor. She dived behind a pile of broken toilets as the god's staff blasted another triple column of steam in her direction, which came really close to her, close enough to make me worry for her life.

By the time I was able to stagger away from Serapis, Annabeth was already a good 30 yards away from me.

As I was staggering away, Annabeth made eye contact with me, her eyes conveyed a simple message - 'I'm going to distract him. If you've got something up your sleeve, be prepared to use it.'

As soon as we lost eye contact, she yelled out, "Hey, Serapis!' How did that plywood taste?"

"Child of Athena!" the god bellowed in response. "I will devour your life force! I will use you to destroy your wretched mother! You think you are wise? You are nothing compared to the one who awakened me, and even he does not understand the power he has unleashed. None of you shall gain the crown of immortality. I control the past, present, and future. I alone will rule the gods!"

'Thank the gods for that long speech…' I thought to myself.

As I prepared to pop out of my hiding place to do my part in distracting Serapis, he had blasted Annabeth's position, turning the toilets into a porcelain slag heap. Fortunately for Annabeth though, she had crept halfway across the room by that point.

When Annabeth got about ten feet away from me, I popped up out of my hiding spot and shouted: "Suh-FAH!"

To be completely honest, I was rather surprised at how well it worked. Mortar disintegrated. The side of the building groaned, and as Serapis screamed, "NO!" the entire wall collapsed on top of him in a brick tidal wave, burying him under a thousand tons of wreckage.

As Annabeth stumbled her way over to my side, I merely stared at the gaping hole I'd made in the side of the building.

"That worked," I muttered, half to myself.

"It was genius!" Annabeth explained as she gave me a fist bump. "What spell was that?"

"Loosen," I replied without hesitation. "I figured ... well, making things fall apart is usually

easier than putting them together."

As if in agreement, the remaining shell of the building creaked and rumbled.

"Come on," Annabeth said as she took my hand. "We need to get out of here. These

walls -"

The foundations shook. From beneath the rubble came a muffled roar. Shafts of red light shot from gaps in the debris.

"Oh, please!" I protested. "He's still alive?"

"He's a god. He's immortal," Annabeth replied.

"Well, then how -?" I began to say.

Serapis's hand, still clutching his staff, thrust through the bricks and boards. The monster's three heads blasted shafts of steam in all directions. Annabeth's knife remained hilt-deep in the monster's shell, the scar around it venting red-hot hieroglyphs, Greek letters and English curse words - thousands of years of bad language spilling free.

I then muttered, "Come fucking on. You've got to be shitting me. Why the hell do I never get a break?"

Annabeth POV:

Surprised to see me in this chapter? Yeah, well, Carter just played back up for most of the rest of the fight with Serapis, so I decided to take over for him.

So, as Carter was swearing about his miserable existence, I was pondering over something Serapis had said. 'Okay, so he said that he controlled the past, present, and future. It's almost like a timeline."

I then voiced my thought out loud to Carter, "Past, present, and future. He controls

them all."

Carter replied, "Huh? What relevance does that have?"

"I'll explain later, but the staff is the key. We have to destroy it."

Before Carter could say anything, I sprinted towards the pile of rubble. My eyes were fixed on the hilt of my dagger, but I was too late.

Serapis's other arm broke free, then his head, his flower-basket hat crushed and leaking grain. My plywood Frisbee had broken his nose and blackened his eyes, leaving a mask like a raccoon's.

"Kill you!" he bellowed, just as Carter yelled out: "Suh-FAH!"

I beat a hasty retreat, and Serapis screamed, 'NO!' as another thirty-story section of wall collapsed on top of him.

The magic must have been too much for Carter. To be honest, I was surprised at how much he could do, as Sadie was typically the one who used divine words when the two of them got into fights. As he crumbled like a rag doll, I caught him just before his head hit the ground. As the remaining sections of wall shuddered and leaned inward, I scooped up Carter and carried him outside.

Somehow, I cleared the building before the rest of it collapsed. I heard the tremendous roar, but I wasn't sure if it was the devastation behind me or the sound of my own skull splitting from pain and exhaustion.

I staggered on until she reached the subway tracks. At that point, I set Carter down

gently in the weeds.

Carter's eyes rolled back in his head as he muttered incoherently. His skin felt so feverish that I had to fight down a sense of panic. Steam rose from his sleeves.

Over by the train wreck, the mortals had noticed the new disaster. Emergency vehicles were peeling away, heading for the collapsed apartment building. A news helicopter circled overhead.

I was tempted to yell for medical help, but, before I could, Carter inhaled sharply.

He spat a chip of concrete out of his mouth, sat up weakly, and stared at the column of dust churning into the sky from their little adventure.

I sighed in relief. "Thank the gods you're okay. You were literally steaming."

"Ugh. That one of the unfortunate hazards of being a magician" Carter brushed some dust off his face. "Too much magic and I can literally burn up. That's about as close to spontaneously combusting as I'd like to come today."

I nodded, remembering that Sadie had once said something similar to that when Percy introduced us.

"No more magic for you," I commanded.

Carter grimaced. "I don't suppose Serapis is defeated?"

I gazed towards the site of the would-be lighthouse. I wanted to think Serapis was gone, but I knew better. I could still feel his aura disrupting the world, pulling at my soul, and draining my energy.

"We've got a few minutes at best," I guessed. "He'll work his way free. Then he'll come after us."

Carter groaned. "We need reinforcements. Sadly, there isn't an Egyptian artifact nearby that I could use to create a portal. Do you have any way of contacting someone, say Percy?/;

"If only …" I muttered.

At that moment, I realized my backpack was still on my shoulder. How had it not slipped off during the fight? And why did it feel so light?

I unslung the pack and opened the top. The architecture books were gone. Instead, nestled at the bottom was a brownie-sized square of ambrosia wrapped in cellophane, and under that...

My lower lip trembled as I pulled out something I hadn't carried with me in a long time: my battered blue New York Yankees cap.

I glanced up at the darkening sky. "Mom?"

No reply, but I couldn't think of any other explanation. My mother had sent me help. The realization both encouraged and terrified me. If Athena was taking a personal interest in this situation, Serapis truly was a monumental threat - not just to me, but to the gods.

"It's a baseball cap," Carter noted. "Is that good?"

"I - I think so," I replied hesitantly. "The last time I wore it, the magic didn't work. But if it does ... I might have a plan. It'll be your turn to keep Serapis distracted."

Carter frowned. "I can't use magic anymore, so what can I do?"

I instantly replied. "No big deal. How are you at bluffing, lying, and trash-talking?"

Carter thought for a moment and then replied, "Well, if you had asked before I discovered I was a magician, I would've told you I was shit at that. But, now, after living with Sadie 24/7 for as long as I have? I'd say I'm halfway decent at that."

"Excellent," I replied. "Then it's time I taught you some Greek."

They didn't have long, but it was long enough.

I had barely finished coaching Carter when the ruined building shook, debris exploded outward, and Serapis emerged, roaring and cursing.

Startled emergency workers scattered from the scene, but they didn't seem to notice the fifteen-foot-tall god marching away from the wreckage, his three-headed staff spewing steam and red beams of magic into the sky.

Serapis headed straight in our direction.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Do I have a choice?"

"Here," I said as I gave him the square of ambrosia. "Demigod food. It might restore your strength."

"Might?"

"If I can use your healing potion, you should be able to eat ambrosia."

'"Well, let's hope for the best then." Carter took a bite. Color returned to his cheeks. His eyes brightened. "It tastes like birthday cake."

I smiled, and said "Huh, interesting. Ambrosia always tastes like your favorite comfort food. I wonder why that's yours…"

Instead of answering my indirect question, Carter took another bite and swallowed, before saying, "Here he comes."

Serapis kicked a fire engine out of his way and lumbered towards the train tracks. He didn't seem to have spotted us yet, but I guessed he could sense us. He scanned the horizon, his expression full of murderous rage.

"Here we go, "I said as I donned my Yankees cap.

Carter's eyes widened. "Nice! You won't start shooting sparks, will you?"

"Why would I do that?"

"Oh ... I, uh, cast an invisibility spell once. Didn't work out so well. Anyway, good luck."

"You too."

I dashed to one side as Carter waved his arms and yelled, "Yo, Serapis!"

"DEATH TO YOU!" the god bellowed.

He barrelled forward, his massive feet making craters in the tarmac.

As we'd planned, Carter backed towards the beach, as I crouched behind an abandoned car and waited for Serapis to pass. Invisible or not, I wasn't going to take any chances.

"Come on!" Carter taunted the god. "Is that the fastest you can run, you overgrown village idiot?"

"RAR!" Serapis yelled as he charged past my position.

I ran after Serapis, who caught up with Carter at the edge of the surf.

The god raised his glowing staff, all three monstrous heads belching steam. "Any last words, magician?"

"Yes," Carter stated as he whirled his arms in movements that could've been magic - or possibly kung fu.

"Meana aedei thea!" Carter chanted, reciting the lines I had taught him. "En ... ponte pathen algae!"

I winced. Carter's pronunciation was pretty bad. He'd got the first line right, more or less: Sing of rage, O goddess. But the second line should've been: In the sea, suffer misery. Instead, Carter had said something like: In the sea, suffer moss!

Fortunately, the sound of Ancient Greek was enough to shock Serapis. The god wavered, his three-headed staff still raised. "What are you -"

"Horus, hear me!" Carter continued. "Athena, to my aid!" He rattled off some more phrases - some Greek, some Ancient Egyptian.

Meanwhile, I sneaked up behind the god, my eyes on the dagger still impaled in the monster's shell. If Serapis would just lower his staff ...

"Alpha, beta, gamma!" Carter cried. "Gyros, spanakopita. Presto!" He beamed in triumph. "There. You're done for!"

Serapis stared at him, clearly baffled. The red tattoos on his skin dimmed. A few of the symbols turned into question marks and sad faces. I crept closer ... twenty feet from him now.

"Done for?" Serapis asked. 'What on earth are you talking about, boy? I'm about to destroy you."

'And if you do," Carter warned, "you will activate the death link that sends you

to oblivion!"

"Death link? There is no such thing!" Serapis lowered his staff. The three animal heads were level with my eyes.

My heart pounded. Ten feet to go. Then, if I jumped, I might be able to reach the dagger. I'd only have one chance to pull it out.

The heads of the staff didn't seem to notice me. They snarled and snapped, spitting steam in random directions. Wolf, lion, dog - past, present, and future.

To do maximum damage, I knew which head she had to strike.

But why did the future have to be a dog? That black Labrador was the least threatening of the monster heads. With its big gold eyes and floppy ears, it reminded me of too many friendly pets she'd known.

'It's not a real animal,' I told herself. 'It's part of a magical staff.'

But, as she got within striking distance, her arms grew heavy. She couldn't

look at the dog without feeling guilty.

The future is a good thing, the dog seemed to say. It's cute and fuzzy!

If I struck at the Labrador's head, what if she killed her own future - the plans I had for college, the plans she'd made with all my friends back at camp ...?

Carter was still talking. His tone had taken on a harder edge.

"My mother, Ruby Kane," Carter told Serapis, "she gave her life to seal Apophis in the Duat. Apophis, mind you - who is thousands of years older than you and much more powerful. So if you think I'm going to let a second-rate god take over the world, think again!"

The anger in his voice was no mere bluff, and suddenly I was glad I'd given Carter the job of facing down Serapis. Despite his nerdy appearance, he was surprisingly terrifying when she wanted to be.

Serapis shifted his weight uneasily. "I will destroy you!"

"Good luck," Carter said. "I've bound you with Greek and Egyptian spells so powerful they will scatter your atoms to the stars."

"You lie!" Serapis yelled. "I feel no spell upon me. Even the one who summoned me had no such magic."

I was face to face with the black dog. The dagger was just overhead, but every molecule in my body rebelled at the idea of killing the animal ... killing the future.

Meanwhile, Carter managed a brave laugh. "The one who summoned you? You mean that old con artist Setne?"

I didn't know the name, but Serapis obviously did. The air around him rippled with heat. The lion snarled. The wolf bared its teeth.

"Oh, yes," Carter continued. 'I'm very familiar with Setne. I suppose he didn't tell you who let him back into the world. He's only alive because I spared him. You think his magic is powerful? Try me. Do it NOW."

I stirred. I realized Carter was talking to me, not the god. The bluff was getting old. I was out of time.

Serapis sneered. "Nice try, magician."

As he raised his staff to strike, I jumped. My hand closed around the hilt of the dagger, and I pulled it free.

"What?" Serapis cried.

I let loose a guttural sob and plunged my dagger into the dog's neck. I expected an explosion.

Instead, the dagger was sucked into the dog's neck like a paper clip into a vacuum cleaner. I barely had time to let go.

I rolled free as the dog howled, shrinking, and shriveling until it imploded into the monster's shell. Serapis roared. He shook his scepter but he couldn't seem to let go of it.

"What have you done?" he cried.

"Taken your future," I responded smugly. "Without that, you're nothing."

The staff cracked open. It grew so hot that I felt the hairs on my arms start to burn. I crawled backwards through the sand as the lion and wolf heads were sucked into the shell. The entire staff collapsed into a red fireball in the god's palm.

Serapis tried to shake it off. It only glowed brighter. His fingers curled inward. His hand was consumed. His entire arm contracted and vaporized as it was drawn into the fiery sphere.

"I cannot be destroyed!" Serapis yelled. "I am the pinnacle of your worlds combined! Without my guidance, you will never attain the crown! You all shall perish! You shall -"

The fireball flared and sucked the god into its vortex. Then it winked out as if it had never existed.

"Ugh," Carter groaned.

They sat on the beach at sunset, watching the tide and listening to the wail of emergency vehicles behind them.

Poor Rockaway. First a hurricane. Then a train wreck, a building collapse, and a rampaging god all in one day. Some communities never catch a break.

I sipped my Pepsi that Carter had summoned from his "personal storage area" in the Duat.

"Don't worry," Carter assured me. "Summoning snacks isn't hard magic."

As thirsty as Annabeth was, the Pepsi tasted even better than nectar.

Carter seemed to be on the mend. The ambrosia had done its work. Now, rather than looking as if he was at death's door, he merely looked as if he'd been run over by a pack of mules.

The waves lapped at my feet, helping me relax, but still, I felt a residual disquiet from my encounter with Serapis - a humming in my body, as if all my bones had become tuning forks.

"You mentioned a name," I said out of the blue. "Setne?"

Carter winced. "It's a long story. Evil magician, back from the dead."

"Oh, I hate it when evil people come back from the dead. You said ... you allowed him to go free?"

"Well, technically that was Sadie, but that's not important. We needed his help. At the time, we didn't have much of a choice. At any rate, Setne escaped with the Book of Thoth, the most dangerous collection of spells in the world."

"And Setne used that magic to awaken Serapis," I guessed.

"Stands to reason." Carter shrugged. "The crocodile monster Percy and Sadie fought a while ago, the Son of Sobek ... I wouldn't be surprised if that was another of Setne's experiments. He's trying to combine Greek and Egyptian magic."

After the day I'd just had, I wanted to put her invisibility cap back on, crawl into a hole, and sleep forever. I'd saved the world enough times already. I didn't want to think about another potential threat. Yet, I couldn't ignore it. I fingered the brim of her Yankees cap and thought about why Athena had given it back to me today - its magic restored.

Athena seemed to be sending a message: There will always be threats too powerful to face head-on. You are not done with stealth. You must tread carefully here.

"Setne wants to be a god," I said.

The wind off the water suddenly turned cold. It smelled less like fresh sea air, more like burning ruins.

"A god …" Carter shuddered. That scrawny old man with the loincloth and Elvis hair. What a horrible thought."

I tried to picture the guy Carter was describing. Then I decided she didn't want to.

"If Setne's goal is immortality," I said, "waking Serapis won't be his last trick."

Carter laughed without humor. "Oh, no. He's only playing with us now. The Son of Sobek ... Serapis. I'd wager that Setne planned both events just to see what would happen, how the demigods and magicians would react. He's testing his new magic, and our capabilities, before he makes his real bid for power."

"He can't succeed," I said optimistically. "No one can make themselves a god just by casting a spell."

Carter's expression wasn't reassuring. "I hope you're right. Because a god who knows both Greek and Egyptian magic, who can control both worlds ... I can't even and don't want to imagine."

My stomach twisted as if it were learning a new yoga position. In any war, good planning was more important than sheer power. If this Setne had orchestrated Percy and Sadie's battle with that crocodile, if he'd engineered Serapis's rise so Carter and I would be drawn to confront him... An enemy who planned so well would be very hard to stop.

I dug my toes into the sand. "Serapis said something else before he disappeared - 'you will never attain the crown.' I thought he meant it like a metaphor. Then I remembered what he said about Ptolemy I, the king who tried to become a god -'

"The crown of immortality," Carter recalled. "Maybe a pschent."

I frowned. "I don't know that word. A shent?"

Carter spelled it. "It's an Egyptian crown that looks rather like a bowling pin. The pschent invested the pharaoh with his divine power. If Setne is trying to re-create the old king's god-making magic, I bet you five bucks that he's trying to find the crown of Ptolemy."

I decided not to take that bet. "We have to stop him."

"Agreed." Carter sipped his Pepsi. "I'll go back to Brooklyn House. I'll put our researchers to work and see what we can learn about Ptolemy. Perhaps his crown is sitting in a museum somewhere."

I traced my finger through the sand. Without really thinking about it, I drew the hieroglyphic symbol for Horus: the Eye of Horus. "I'll do some research, too. My friends in the Hecate cabin may know something about Ptolemy's magic. Maybe I can get my mom to advise me."

Thinking about my mother made me a bit uneasy.

Today, Serapis had been on the verge of destroying both myself and Carter. He'd threatened to use them as gateways to draw Athena and Horus to their doom.

Carter's eyes were stormy as if he were thinking the same thoughts. "We can't let Setne keep experimenting. He'll rip our worlds apart. We have to find this crown, or -"

Before he could finish, a loud screech could be heard. Carter and I looked up to see a massive bird, that I knew to be Carter's Griffin, Freak, pulling a reed boat flying through the clouds with a seemingly angry Zia riding in the reed boat.

Carter's voice suddenly faltered as he said, "Ah, shit. My ride is here, and it looks like Zia is pissed."

I replied, "I should probably go too. See you around Carter."

We then exchanged a friendly (nothing more, you weirdos) hug, before parting ways.

'Stay safe," I called out to him

"Hardly ever," Carter responded as he climbed into the boat, and Freak took off. Fog rose out of nowhere, thickening around Freak. When the mist cleared, Freak and Carter Kane were gone.

I stared at the empty ocean. I thought about the Mist and the Duat and how they were connected.

Mostly she thought about the staff of Serapis, and the howl the black dog had

made when I'd stabbed it with my dagger.

"That wasn't my future I destroyed," I assured myself. "I make my own future."

But somewhere out there, a magician named Setne had other ideas. If I was going to stop him, I had planning to do.

I then turned and set out across the beach, heading east on the long journey back to Camp Half-Blood.

Author's Note: Please Follow, Favorite, and Review if you enjoyed! Anything familiar you see comes straight out of the Staff of Serapis. I did borrow heavily from it in order to make a better story, but there are still some changes from canon.

The reason this chapter is so long is that there really wasn't a good place to break the chapter without making one part super short and the other super long. Please, give me your thoughts and concerns!

The next chapter will be the beginning of The Crown of Ptolemy, which likely won't have too many changes, due to the fact that the four are all together. It'll be different though - don't you worry!

The next update will be at 25 reviews and/or 10 people on the Discord server.

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