The brothers exchanged a meaningful glance. “Not until we find Amon,” Ahmose replied.
“It’s okay. I’m sure it’s just low blood sugar,” I said. “We’ll get something to eat as soon as we save Amon.” I couldn’t help but notice that both brothers kept glancing my way as we walked and they held out their arms to support me even when it wasn’t necessary.
Soon we came to the temple, this time entering through a back door on the Horus side of the building. It was still dark, but dawn was coming.
I wasn’t as aware of my surroundings as I should have been, and at first I didn’t even realize it was me making noise when there was a loud crunch from glass littering the floor. Everyone had stepped around the glass but me.
“Sorry,” I whispered as I froze in place.
“What a shame,” Dr. Hassan murmured. “Someone has stolen the ancient medical instruments that have been on display here and they’ve broken the tablet depicting evidence of my Egyptian ancestors performing intricate surgery.”
“Ew…that—”
Screaming distracted me from finishing my sentence about the grotesque scene I had just imagined thanks to Dr. Hassan’s description. “Amon!” I cried as Ahmose lifted me quickly over the broken glass and we darted toward the sound. Before I took two steps into the next room, Ahmose cut me off.
Placing his big hands on my arms, he looked me in the eyes and said, “We will go together.”
I nodded, desperate to do something, and shifted on my feet restlessly while Ahmose and Asten created weapons. They held out their hands, murmuring softly as tiny grains of sand rose in the air from every corner of the room. When the sand gathered wasn’t enough to make weapons, it was joined by a steady stream from outside until a big enough ball had formed in front of each of them.
Asten’s sand elongated, shaping itself into his bow and a quiver of diamond-headed arrows, but Ahmose’s dusty particles separated into two equal-sized orbs. One solidified, becoming a gleaming silver ax. Its double edges were sparkling and sharp, and its surface was covered in engraved hieroglyphs.
The second weapon looked like a hammer, except it was several inches longer. Instead of a claw to remove nails, one end was a thick spike, and the other held a wide plate as big as my hand with dozens of painful-looking darts embedded in it. A pointed barb at the top completed the deadly weapon that Dr. Hassan told me was a cudgel.
“Stay well behind us,” Ahmose said as he gave his weapon a twirl to test its balance. “If it is safe enough, your task will be to free Amon. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
Dr. Hassan took a few digging tools from his bag and handed me a trowel caked with dirt, keeping two pointed files for himself. We adjusted our bags over our shoulders and nodded at the Egyptian warriors standing at the ready before us.
Adrenaline was pumping through my veins as I danced on my feet and gave my weak-looking trowel the once-over. Asten offered a small smile and said, “Let us proceed.”
Stealthily, the two brothers moved forward, following the sounds of the screams, and when they signaled each other that the coast was clear, we moved ahead. We had passed three rooms before we finally came upon guards.
There was something…unnatural about them. During the brief glance I managed to get, I noted that their bodies were not correctly proportioned and their eyes gleamed ghostly white. Dr. Hassan pressed his back against the wall next to me. He looked nervous, which scared me more than the ghouls standing between us and Amon.
“They are Masaw Haput—those born of death,” he whispered. “You would call them zombies.”
“Zombies? Are you serious?”
“This is further proof that we are dealing with a gifted necromancer.”
“So how do we fight them, then? If they are already dead, how do we kill them?”