Who Is She? | Jaz Anderson

• twenty-three •

Doing an incantation right requires unbroken concentration, correct pronunciation, and perfect timing. Otherwise you're liable to destroy yourself and everyone within ten feet, or turn yourself into some form of marsupial.

Trying to cast a spell with someone else — that's doubly hard. And with two other people? Almost impossible.

Sure, Sadie, Carter, and Ayden had studied the words, but it's not like they could actually do the execration in advance. With a spell like that, you only get one shot.

As they began, Ayden was vaguely was aware of Bast and Bes battling the serpent, and their other allies locked in combat at different levels of the Duat. The temperature kept dropping. Crevices widened in the ground. Red lightning spread across the sky like cracks in a black dome.

It was hard to keep her teeth from chattering. Ayden concentrated on the stone figurine of Apophis. As they chanted, the statue began to smoke.

Michel Desjardins had died casting an execration, and he had faced only a partial manifestation of the serpent, not Apophis at his full power after triumphantly devouring Ra.

Focus, Nephthys told Ayden.

Easy for her to say. The noise, cold, and explosions around her made it almost impossible — like trying to count backward from a hundred while people scream random numbers in your ears.

Bast was thrown over their heads and landed against a stone block. Bes roared in anger. He slammed his club into the snake's neck so hard, Apophis's eyes rattled in his head.

Apophis snapped at Bes, who grabbed one fang and hung on for dear life as the serpent raised his head and shook his mouth, trying to dislodge the dwarf god.

The Kane siblings continued to chant. The serpent's shadow steamed as the figurine heated up. Gold, blue, and green light swirled around them as Nephthys, Isis, and Horus did their best to shield them. Sweat stung Ayden's eyes. Despite the frosty air, she began to feel feverish.

When they came to the most important part of the spell — the naming of the enemy — Ayden finally began to sense the true nature of the serpent's shadow. Funny how that works: sometimes you don't really understand something until you destroy it. The sheut was more than just a copy or a reflection, more than a "backup disk" for the soul.

A person's shadow stood for his legacy, his impact on the world. Some people cast hardly any shadow at all. Some cast long, deep shadows that endured for centuries.

If a person cast no shadow at all, he couldn't be alive. His existence became meaningless. Execrating Apophis by destroying his shadow would cut his connection to the mortal world completely. He'd never be able to rise again. Ayden finally understood why he'd been so anxious to burn Setne's scrolls, and why he was afraid of this spell.

They reached the last lines. Apophis dislodged Bes from his fang, and the dwarf sailed into the side of the Great Pyramid.

The serpent turned toward them as they spoke the final words: "We exile you beyond the void. You are no more."

"NO!" Apophis roared.

The statue flared, dissolving in their hands. The shadow disappeared in a puff of vapor, and an explosive wave of darkness knocked them off their feet.

The serpent's legacy on the earth shattered the wars, murders, turmoil, and anarchy Apophis had caused since ancient times finally lost power, no longer casting their shadow across their future. Souls of the dead were expelled from the blast — thousands of ghosts that had been trapped and crushed within the shadow of Chaos. A voice whispered in Ayden's mind: Ayden, darling, and Ayden sobbed with relief. She couldn't see her, but she knew that their mother was free. Her spirit was returning to its place in the Duat.

"Shortsighted mortals!" Apophis writhed and began to shrink. "You haven't just killed me. You've exiled the gods!"

The Duat collapsed, layer upon layer, until the plains of Giza were one reality again. Their magician friends stood in a daze around us. The gods, however, were nowhere to be seen.

The serpent hissed, his scales falling away in smoking pieces. "Ma'at and Chaos are linked, you fools! You cannot push me away without pushing away the gods. As for Ra, he shall die within me, slowly digested —"

He was cut short when his head exploded. It was just as gross as it sounds. Flaming bits of reptile flew everywhere. A ball of fire rolled up from the serpent's neck. The body of Apophis crumbled into sand and steaming goo, and Zia Rashid stepped out of the wreckage.

Her dress was in tatters. Her golden staff had cracked like a wishbone, but she was alive.

Carter ran toward her. She stumbled and collapsed against him, completely exhausted.

Then sorneone else rose from the smoking ruins of Apophis.

Ra shimmered like a mirage, towering over us as a muscular old man with golden skin, kingly robes, and the pharaohs wown. He stepped forward and daylight returned to the sky. The temperature warmed. The cracks in the ground sealed themselves.

The sun god smiled down at her. "Well done, Carter, Ayden, and Sadie. Now, I must withdraw as the other gods have done, but I owe you my life."

"Withdraw?" Carter's voice didn't really sound like his. It was deeper, more gravelly — but it wasn't Horus's voice either.

"Good luck, my Eye," Nephthys whispered. "I must leave now."

"You mean... forever?"

Ra chuckled. "When you're as old as I am, you learn to be careful with that word forever. I thought I was leaving forever the first time I abdicated. For a while, at least, I must retreat into the sky. My old enemy Apophis was not wrong. When Chaos is pushed away, the gods of order, Ma'at, must also distance themselves. Such is the balance of the universe."

"Then... you should take these." Carter offered him the crook and flail.

Ra shook his head. "Keep them for me. You are the rightful pharaoh. And take care of my favored one..." He nodded at Zia. "She will recover, but she will need support."

Light blazed around the sun god. When it faded, he was gone. Two dozen weary magicians stood around a smoking, serpent-shaped mark in the desert as the sun rose over the Pyramids of Giza.

Sadie rested her hand on Ayden's and Carter's arms. "Ayden? Carter?"

"Yeah?" Ayden croaked.

"That was a bit too close."

For once, Ayden had no argument with her sister.

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Yay? Almost done! Only like five more chapters to finish the book, then into my writing.