Love & Chaos 2: A New Pharaoh for Egypt

Chapter 8

Porky and Kate

Liz.

"Liz, this is a bad idea." Reyna refused to open the scrolls. "We don't know how dangerous it could be. I mean, we know a lot of dangerous things are coming, but we don't know how far along our world is in the prophecies. How do we decide what's a Great Prophecy and what's just an average one?"

"By opening them, duh." Liz grabbed the closest one to her, and read aloud, "'A child of the eldest gods shall reach sixteen against all odds.' Hey, this looks familiar. So, anyways, underneath this prophecy - which is big and bold - there are a bunch of prophecies written underneath in smaller writing. I mean, for us Greeks and Egyptians, it'll be a little difficult to pick through, since it's in Times Old Roman, but hey, the spies all know their languages, and the Romans are, well, Roman. Okay, so this one is clearly before..." She grabbed another one and found it to be the Prophecy of Seven. "Before this one. Okay, someone find the one of Love and Chaos."

"Wasn't that an unwanted addition by your patron?" Annabeth asked.

"Oh, right. Okay, that one will be in Greek, then, right? So we just have to find the Greek scroll."

"Or the pink scroll," Hazel pointed out. "Here, it's in Greek, also. Can you read it?"

Liz took a brief look at it and she knew. "So, this is where we are now. Um, Annabeth, you know the old prophecies well, don't you?"

"Yes..." the Athena girl replied slowly. "Oh, no. No, no, no. I am not going through all of this."

"Reyna and Hazel and Sarah can all help you..."

"No. I'm not doing it. We have gotten on just fine without the scrolls for thousands of years. Today is not the day we suddenly need them."

"Here's everything and I'm still upset with you."

"Thank you Annabeth. In case you were wondering, I managed to make a battle map to loosely outline the places we'll be needing to go with the help of Frank, Percy, Bex, and Zach, so I wasn't being totally useless." Liz held the map out to Annabeth with puppy dog eyes.

"You and Percy make the same face when I'm angry and it's really creepy," Annabeth decided, taking the map. "This only covers the countries we have to go to. What are we going to do about the rest of the world?" she asked.

"Well, I'm glad you asked, Annabeth, because it's actually quite simple. There are sixteen, now seventeen of us. We'll obviously be needing a new pharaoh for Egypt if it is to rise again. Greece will need some form of leadership, also, and then a Caesar in Rome. As for Ireland, they've already got themselves taken care of, but the other three places, we'll have to leave someone behind. It was probably always our destiny, though, you know?"

"That explains why such a dramatic number of us are here," Annabeth agreed.

"So they're in order by event?"

"Yes. I mean, there are three Great Prophecies after our current one... and you may not want to read them," Annabeth warned.

"Um, but how did you know which ones went in which order?" Liz questioned.

Annabeth looked back at Reyna, then at Liz again. "If you really must look, then... do it after we leave. They just get gloomier and gloomier."

"Valdez, come here!" she shouted. "Everyone else, out!"

Annabeth, Reyna, and the others left the room, and Leo came in. "Yes, fish princess?"

"We're going to take a glimpse into the future and I'm too chicken to do it alone," she informed him, flipping through the pages until she reached the next Great Prophecy. She read it aloud, and she and Leo stared at one another.