Chapter Text
A museum. An explosion. A haunted, desperate man ripping apart the world as it exists, defying rules set in stone by the House of Life itself, for a chance to save civilization and see his wife. Destruction and broken laws and, for two people (the legendary Kanes, legends declare) any sense of safety or stability, every semblance of their old lives, shattered.
It feels a lot like an end. Looks like one too, with smoking shards of precious Egyptian relics flung across an exhibit and a roaring god of Chaos gloating as he pulverizes Julius Kane’s hopes for resolution.
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Still. Somehow it isn’t. A pair of siblings pick themselves up, dust each other off, and begin on a journey towards being the greatest team of magicians Western civilization has ever known. It is the end of an era, but the start of a new age, an epic, where a brother and sister, strong and impassioned, will raise old gods, cross new bridges, and remake the fabric of the world. The Rosetta Stone combusts, but a stronger family, Carter and Sadie’s quite literally life-saving familial bond is solidified, setting them on a path to save the universe. Together. Together, because that’s the way these things are. No one can single-handedly halt interplanetary destruction, but they learn to pull each other up, hand over hand, and something great, storied, a bond that will be passed down from generation to generation, kind and impossibly powerful siblings who keep each other in check, prevent the Apocalypse and inspire an entirely new (or long forgotten) form of magic, is begun.
But, because the world is messy (or beautiful, one could whisper) something else is begun too.
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A grieving man frees the gods, an exhibit implodes, a pair of children lose their father, but another pair of powerful magicians (trying in their own way to prevent catastrophe) make their way to the museum. It just so happens, one of them is a girl. The boy lifts his hands away from his head, off his curly brown hair and looks around the demolished room, searching for his father. Instead, his chocolate eyes meet her amber and maybe fate set more than one partnership in motion that night. A force looks down on them and smiles, yes, yes those two could definitely be something. Five gods are released, fleeing into new hosts, and time begins to move once again.
Next, a whole mess of things happens. Turns out that a number of new developments have been waiting for this very opportunity, the walls breaking down around the Kane’s relatively well-ordered lives. An uncle appears, carrying with him stories of magical, ancestral powers and new worlds. But Chaos is not done with these new players – they have only just stepped onto the field. The uncle disappears, leaving them with a kindly cat goddess for a “responsible adult chaperone” and little else.
Any brief promise of stability is yanked away, all of a sudden, but this time it is less surprising. They are learning, learning to rely on each other while small should-be-safe-things betray them again and again.
She never promises to be safe.
She never shows them anything other than blunt honesty and painful truths and later Carter will read a message into it: run, run away. everything will get worse before it gets better. save yourself. But in a constantly shifting, newly dangerous world, he is drawn in by her sincerity, even if she won’t say what he wants to hear. The honesty is attractive, everything about her is attractive. Sadie disagrees, the girl isn’t on their side! She’s snobby and cruel! Carter is learning to trust Sadie, trust her more than he can trust himself, but he doesn’t know how to tell her this. He doesn’t know how to describe this mysterious girl’s pull, something about honesty and no-holds-barred, the way she wields her power and the night he saw through her invisibility spell, her eyes glowing as she revealed small, sacred pieces of herself.
She’s scared, he thinks, scared and brave and tired of hiding both those things from everyone all the time. So, when Sadie complains about her, he doesn’t say anything much back, because this girl touches a part of him that he can’t put into words. The act of magic is to describe, to command, to put letters together and create order, but Carter isn’t very good at Divine Words yet.
Zia. Carter rolls his name across his tongue at night, an incantation, a prayer for safety, when his problems come to life and roar so loudly that he can’t sleep. Her name is the softest spell he’ll ever hear.
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They flee the First Nome, heading across deserts and new lands, trying to rescue their dad, uncle, cat goddess, the world. The things they have to lose keep multiplying, the stakes get higher, the enemies more dangerous. Carter is growing more attuned to Sadie’s constantly shifting moods, he can sense her frustration like needles on his skin and after Thoth tricks them into destroying Graceland, Sadie pauses for a moment and screams at the sky. Carter joins her, they need to present a united front.
When both their throats are raw and they need to pull themselves up for the rest of the journey, she smiles gratefully at him, because they are the Kanes, plural, neither is alone. For a kid with two potentially dead parents and no idea where he’ll sleep tonight, Carter feels surprisingly at home, venturing towards potential destruction with his annoying (brave) little sister at his side.
He sleeps and dreams of Horus. This whole brain-hitchhiker thing is weird and new, but not entirely unpleasant. It’s not a permanent solution, Carter and Sadie both know they can’t stay like this forever, but the backup is nice, someone needs to know what’s going on, and they are teetering on the precipice of understanding something new, and ancient. The Path of the Gods could heal ancestral wounds for magicians, Carter is slowly understanding this, and so he decides that surviving the next few days would be nice. He wants to give Sadie her Christmas present, buy Bast some Friskies, and talk to Zia for like, seven hours straight, telling her everything he’s learned and maybe by hour five she’ll smile at him.
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Sadie has trust issues.
She doesn’t talk about them much, but Carter’s learning how much their dad being kept away has hurt her. They’re going to talk more, he decides. Later, when the world isn’t ending they’ll help each other learn how to be a real family and they can patiently unfurl her, their trauma, but for now he NEEDS her to give Zia a chance. Sadie doesn’t do too well with authority either, so Iskandar saying Zia must be relied upon, that she’s could be the key to future success is NOT a good idea.
But here they are, in New Mexico because he saw Zia in a dream and Amos is acting so weird, Sadie finally relents, trusting her as a lesser evil. Maybe that counts as progress, in this new reality they’re piecing together.
Speaking of trust, there is none between Zia and Amos. Someone is wrong here, but Carter and Sadie can’t tell who they should leave behind. (that’s probably for the best, even if they knew they were about to be betrayed, Kanes are not the kind of people who abandon those they care about – especially in dire circumstances). Today though, Zia brings opposing magicians with her and they are all forced to flee, with a bloodthirsty lioness on their tail. That victory is special, the first time they manage to work together, all three, to defeat a truly monstrous enemy.
They are equals, for real, and teamwork is clearly the only way forward.
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Afterwards, they summon a boat, trying to get back to Amos and their dad. Sadie, being a good sister in her very specific way, leaves Carter and Zia alone. She tells him about the House of Life, what she’s risking, what they’re all risking, and he breathes in the spicy scent of chili pepper still in her hair. When her story stutters, when the narrative confuses her for reasons neither understand, he smiles at her, trying to be a source of calm. She is a mystery, not just to him, and being unknown to yourself is terrifying. They try to understand what’s happening – between them, around the world, how she knows Set’s secret name, but they are both so tired and she leans her head on his shoulder.
He takes her hand and they sit silently for a moment, sharing comfort and trying to believe that everything is going to be ok. They could lean in (metaphorically), but everything is too big and scary and Carter has to believe that they’ll have more time, later, to explore every exquisite detail of this thing between them. On the most simplistic level, he’s glad she’s here. (She’s glad too. There’s something wrong with her, something missing, something that can’t be ignored anymore, but she carefully stores away her memories of this strangely beautiful boy, saving them for someone, she’s not sure who.)
They begin to hear the first whispers of “pharaoh” referring to Carter, and Sadie is growing in power every day. They stand on the edge of something huge, but the path ahead is murky. All they can do is cling to each other and take one step forward at a time.
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They win, in the end.
Or . . . they don’t die, the world doesn’t end, and by now they know that’s the best thing to hope for. And Zia saves them. Or Sadie saves them. Or Carter saves them. Their success wouldn’t have been possible without every component and being the Eye of a god is exhilarating and fighting feels natural like, yes, saving civilization is what they’re meant to do. With divine help they make a deal with Set, prolonging Doomsday for a little longer and for a moment Carter feels limitless.
But his dad is gone maybe forever and oh gods, Zia. She dies, and his heart stops. Too many emotions to count wash through him: anger, grief, rage, and impossible sadness. He understands why Horus urged him to be wary, because this hurts so much and he doesn’t know how to recover. Sadie’s head is bowed next to him, equally stunned, when suddenly Zia cracks.
Her skin turns to clay, and shatters.
Sadie barely manages to sputter out an explanation and Carter is shocked, because everything has been somewhat of a clusterfuck recently, but this is really crossing a line, and then it hits him that Zia isn’t dead. Yeah, she’s been a clay sculpture this whole time and he doesn’t know where the real girl is, but she’s safe and right now he couldn’t ask for anything else. He places his forehead on the statue’s and whispers, “I’m coming. Promise.” The last glowing blue orb, it must be some form of communication, flies out of her mouth, and the clay turns to dust. That’s probably a good thing, Sadie doesn’t think Carter would be able to leave her behind any other way.
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They collect Amos, clean up as best they can, and go home. Their dad visits, tells them not to worry, to embrace this new life, and they do.