The Rebirth

Even if she was going downstairs, she promised that she would NOT go into battle.
She wasn’t that stupid. Elena knew that she would definitely be more harm than help in this situation. In any situation, really. They knew magic. She didn’t. What could she possibly provide?
But she needed to see what was going on. She needed to know what was going on. Elena wasn’t a terribly stupid kid. She knew the importance of knowledge, and the power it gave her. The more she knew… the more she’d be able to help: the others and herself, in later situations. Like if another break-in happened, but it happened to her, extra knowledge could be the difference between lying on the floor, dead, and living another forty years.
And another thing: it never occurred to her until right now, but she needed to know if these people that took her in were trustworthy. Which is absolutely insane- she should’ve been skeptical of this place the minute she woke up! She should’ve been skeptical of THEM the minute she woke up. But, for some reason, maybe because of Benji, because she met him once before and he helped her…
Elena thought they were okay.
But it was definitely good- no, it was absolutely necessary- to make sure that she was sleeping in a good guy house.
And also, even if Elena couldn’t help at all in any big, fighting ways… maybe, just possibly, if a knife is thrown her way, she can take it and hand it to someone who needs it. She could at least do that.
All signs (except for the burning flesh in her shoulder) pointed to: go downstairs .
A quick prayer- Lord help the good, bless them, and thank you- and she went.
Immediately, Elena had almost gotten killed.
The walls were a very sunlit cream color, about the size of a large swimming pool, if you don’t count the extra little room that sticks out into a random area in the back, which seemed to be the dining place. It would have been very nicely decorated, with symbolic runes and Egyptian stone relics and some odd statues and a plasma screen television- little pops of color and black against the cream walls; Elena likey- if they weren’t being obliterated to bits at that moment.
She would’ve been able to scan the room a little bit more- hey, a sofa!- and fully finish her Home Furnishing review if a blast hadn’t knocked a statue directly at her chest.
Elena was not defenseless. Maybe not-so-helpful to everyone else in this situation, but definitely helpful and strong to herself.
Reflexes caused her to glide smoothly into a roll. There were so many different energy blasts and magics being used all at once that she had some trouble dodging all of them- one knicked her knee- but as she instinctively weaved herself through attacks, keeping herself to the wall, she felt a strong surge of confidence. It was almost easy. Of course, that should never, ever let your guard down- if anything, you should tense up and get in the game faster. So that’s what Elena did, scanning and dancing even quicker through the magical attacks until she found possibly the safest spot in the room.
On the ceiling. There were a bunch of stringed decorations across the top- somebody’s birthday?- that seemed very weak individually, but enough of them together might be able to hold her.
The only problem was doing this without anybody noticing.
Too late. A girl with silky, slick-straight raven hair and dramatically winged black eyeliner had caught sight of her, wide eyed. She- stupid, god so stupid- mouthed in bewilderment, ‘Who are you?!’ like she was about to pause her battle to escort Elena back through the door in which she came from. But- when Elena grabbed a sword from the floor and slid it over to her, so that the raven-haired girl could stab the rock monster that was coming up behind her, the girl seemed to decide that Elena wasn’t totally incompetent and that she suddenly had some rockier problems to deal with.
Nobody else seemed to really be distracted. They couldn’t be distracted. They had their own beings to fight.
Luckily, the two people that’d probably throw her out of the room, Benji and Wyn, were far off in the space that led to the dining area, getting farther and farther away. With no other real fear of distracting anyone, Elena tensed, dodging a rock by jumping onto the wall, through the air, and catching hold of one of the strings.
Unfortunately, it was just one string, and it snapped underneath her weight. She found herself on the back of- what was she on the back of?
It all happened so fast. Elena fought the urge to scream and kicked the animal on its sides, causing it to buck her off.
Finally. She leapt towards the strings, entangling her hands in them. Some of them broke, but she managed to grab a heapful of each, thick as ropes, and most held. She brought her legs up and stuck one foot in the strings, also. The “Happy Birthday, Tanya!” sign fluttered down to the ground.
It took her a second to realize what she’d actually done, and she was amazed.
How…?
It didn’t matter. Elena fought down a surge of pride and confidence, an urgency to get back into battle. She’d only gone into battle to observe. And that’s what she was going to do. She was going to stay out of the way.
But what if they need help?
No. She’d probably kill more people trying to help than staying out of the way watching some of them die. It sounded absolutely awful, but it was true. Elena’d just have to just stay out of it. She knew her limitations. She was just a mortal.
In her new position, she was finally able to watch just about everything that was going on. Elena had researched all the different cultures, of course, and studied them every day along with training, so she could figure out which monsters she was fighting. She particularly researched the Egpytian gods with a fierce intensity.
It didn’t take her long to realize that each magician- both good and bad- in the room was channeling one particular god in general to fuel their magic.
For example- those two kids, a boy and a girl, suddenly switching with the raven-haired girl to take on the rock monster. They punched the thing on its sides, shouted something, and watched it crumble. Earth magicians? It took her a second to remember the name. Geb. They were using Geb magic.
That redhead, throwing up a hieroglyphic blue rune that looked like an eye with her hands. Elena recognized that symbol. Was that… Horus? The eagle god? A real warrior… Yep, she noted the girl narrowing her eyes, her fiery hair burning the room, and charging to stab a- blimey, what is that? A scorpion, with a head of a deer? Was that the animal I fell on before?- thing in the back, rolling away calmly before advancing again. Definitely a warrior.
She realized how much her shoulder was roaring at her, being tied in a painful position by the strings. What a surprise- her bloody injury was hurting again? Elena sighed, forcing herself to think of something else. Her eyes roamed around to find Benji, and Grey.
Only flashes of them were seen, along with the blasts of crumbling walls. Elena herself just narrowly missed a knife to the face, which broke some of her strings. She latched onto some other ones. No harm done.
But the knife… She was in some fresh jeans and a t-shirt (her face burned at the thought of other people dressing her… but now was not the time), and her silver knife was probably not in her pockets. She might be able to use that knife. It was stuck in the ceiling.
Elena grabbed that quickly, still watching for Grey and Benji. The number of kids here surprised her; there were probably forty or fifty of these 7 to 19 year olds, all fighting for their lives and apparently having a blast- literally. They were actually blasting energy bombs with their runes (some of them grinning while doing it). And while some of the things they were attacking were monsters, the teenagers were mostly fighting against people- other, actual, much older magicians who snarled and called them kids but actually were having a hard time defeating them.
In fact, Elena realized that she hadn’t seen a single kid go down. However, the adult magicians they were fighting against were slowly disappearing, one by one. Not dying- literally disappearing. The younger kids cheered, and called them cowards, before quickly turning to the scattered monsters, but the older teenagers of the Twenty-First Nome- like Elena- frowned. What were those older magicians doing, coming here to attack and disappearing for no reason? It seemed like if the adults really tried, they’d really be able to give the kids a fight…
Benji. And Wyn. They both came tumbling into the room.
Elena watched them. This one monster circled around them, a giant serpent, and they went back-to-back, holding these… staff things out in front of them. Just as Elena tried to guess what godly powers each of them had, Wyn muttered something and they both levitated up in the air, dodging an attempt to trap and squeeze them to death.
Ohhh, Elena realized, as she read Wyn’s tattered tshirt-dress. “I'M ABSOOOLUuuTELY NUTS”. Nuts. Nut, the sky goddess. Wyn channeled the energy of the sky.
But Benji…?
She wasn’t so sure.
Elena continued to watch, fascinated. Their movements were so… synchronized, almost, like they knew each move that the other one was going to make. As they circled in the air, and Benji threw his throwing knives, his hair as wild as ever, Wyn seemed to know when he wanted her to move them faster and slower. Her own hair was a mess, but in an almost beautifully careless way- it was whipping around her, burnt autumn silk untangling itself from the restrictions of the braid. Her eyes were clouded, but focused- concentrated in her own daze of what she was doing. She was still, relaxed, calm, dreamy, but serious. It was the oddest and weirdly the most fitting mixture of expressions Elena had ever seen, and she couldn’t help but admire it.
Benji had just run out of throwing knives. He tensed, and together Wyn and him leaped to the ground, his feet slamming onto the serpent. Just as the snake, its scales a sickly yellow beige color, raised its tail, just about to throw Benji off, Wyn threw something glowing, and blue, into its face.
It took Elena a second to realize it was a hieroglyph, one that cut a wounding slash across the snake’s face, burning cerulean into its beady black eyes. She also realized, just as it faded, that it looked like some sort of blade cutting into something. Cut. Maybe that was what the hieroglyph meant.

Her attention turned back to Benji. And, just as he tossed the earthen curls out of his face, she was struck with a sudden thought-
His eyes. Those golden-hazel eyes. They looked a little like a cat’s.
He closed them, and concentrated.
His fingers splayed out, and bladed claws that Elena could see even from up on the ceiling extended. Benji winced, saying something Elena couldn’t hear, before digging them into the serpent’s scales, slicing and clawing the first layers of skin to bleeding scars. It wriggled over, its voice slithering out a screeching hiss as Benji began to run with a lanky, lean, cat-like speed. He raced forwards towards the head, keeping his balance on the rolling animal with a grace Elena would never, ever, ever be able to even resemble in a million years.
Reaching the head, Elena could see in his posture that he was slowing, wanting to hesitate, to pause, so badly, but he kept going, closing his eyes when it was finally time to rake his claws against the serpent’s face.
It let out a mortally wounded sound and flipped over, wriggling in absolute agony. When it finally flipped back, its neck was bleeding, and there was some black blood all over Benji’s clothes.
Wyn didn’t seem able to stand it anymore. While Benji and the serpent continued wrestling with each other, she took it upon herself to march up to the snake, repeating her rune. But this time, it sliced itself all the way through the body, decapitating its head, and Wyn promptly fainted.
Benji caught her, a falling body of lithe, freckled limbs and tattered clothes. It was then that Elena noticed the way he held her, so carefully. He seemed to be thinking so intensely, carrying her to one side and gently shaking her awake, a slow smile forming on his face, as though he was remembering something about her, about them, from the past. They’ve been through so much together, Elena realized, with a slow, dull pang. He knows her like the back of his hand.
The other monsters in the room disappeared, all except the scorpion deer thing, which was still battling the Horus girl. She was taking him magnificently, all on her own, but it seemed to have its own godly magic surrounding it.
All the others, suddenly with their monsters gone, advanced towards the scorpion. Only Benji and Wyn stayed in the back, along with a boy with sleek black hair tied back in a ponytail, muttering some words over Wyn’s body, magic steaming and furling from his hands.
Just as they reached it, a scratchy voice boomed throughout the room. “You’re no match.”
Clearly, some people recognized the sound. After stabbing the scorpion in its leg and rolling away, just as gracefully as the first time, the red-haired girl of Horus scowled and in a surprisingly musical voice muttered to herself, “How did I guess?”
One of the youngest paled. “Wait, guyyys! Is this-“
“Yes,” the girl of Horus said savagely.
“I gave you fair warning-“ it took Elena a beat to realize the voice was coming from the scorpion-deer itself. The thing was laughing. “And you fools still went through with it! As we speak, the magicians of the First Nome transport to San Francisco, and then to New York, to meet with the Senate and Councils of Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood. Your cultures will bind and be immediately destroyed. You have no idea exactly what kind of power you’re releasing, do you? A shame- I’ve even given you all so many hints…”
“Setti,” somebody hissed. “Your hints are meaningless, because your plan won’t work. What- that army you sent after us? The one we defeated in minutes? Was that your warning?”
Laughter, scary laughter of insanity, filled the room. The scorpion thing stood up on its hind legs. “Again- fools.”
There was a red glow of light. A shimmering layer of magic presented itself, and the army they’d all had fought just minutes before- every monster they killed, every person that’d disappeared- showed themselves, grinning, with even more energy than before. The kids stared. Benji’s teeth was clenched, and he was on his feet. This was the first time she saw him not smiling, laughing, having his signature carefree expression on his face.
“I’ve been prepared for years now. I know how to see through and manipulate this magic. You think you know everything there is to know about Egpytian voodoo? Well- maybe. But do you know anything about the new breed of magic to come? Open the doors, and you get all of it- good and bad.”
Laughter and a pulsing red glow swirled around, in a frenzied steam, faster and faster and faster, until it flashed in a pop and they were gone.

Notes

kind of complicated chapter, I know