Nico's Quest

Chapter 1

"Nico, wake up!"

Nico didn't want to. He was sleeping.

"Nico! Please! Wake up! Nico, wake up!"

It was the primal fear more than anything else that cut through the sleepy haze obscuring Nico's mind. Someone was scared. He was too out of it to be able to tell who it was yet, but he knew that he couldn't leave them like that. It wasn't in his nature to turn away when someone needed help.

"Hang on. I'll save you." He struggled to open his eyes which wasn't easy. All of his muscles seemed heavy, somehow. Almost numb. This realization alarmed him and helped him fight off the sleep haze. Something was wrong with him, he realized. He wondered if he'd been poisoned as he tried to remember where he was and what he'd been doing.

A sigh of relief was heaved by someone close by. "Thank the eternal sun. Are you awake now?"

"Anubis?" Nico recognized the voice but something about it seemed strange. I'm hearing it with my ears, he realized suddenly. Not in my head the way he usually speaks to me.

"I'm here. Can you open your eyes?"

Nico made a monumental effort and was rewarded by a face-full of stinging sharp bright light that had him squeezing his eyelids shut again. "No."

"You just did."

Nico swallowed, suddenly aware of how dry his mouth was. "What happened?" he asked. "What hit me?"

He could still feel his connection to Anubis in his mind. Nico thought he would have known instantly if that was gone, he'd grown so used to being the death god's host. But Anubis was also physically beside him which meant that they were either in a place of death, like a funeral home or public school . . . or . . .

"We're in the Duat," Anubis told him right before Nico's mind could come to that conclusion on its own. "Remember? We came here to do the locator ritual."

Translation: Nico had come there to be a tool for Anubis while he did the locator ritual.

"Did it work?" Nico tried opening his eyes again but winced against the brightness of the light once more. "Did you find the book?"

Anubis was silent.

"Argh!" Nico cried out in frustration. Then he started coughing violently. He felt as though he'd inhaled a desert. The kind that was spelled with only one 'S' and was usually associated with sand and heat-strokes. Not the kind spelled with two 'S's that were made out of sweet sugary stuff, which Nico inhaled on a regular basis.

"Are you alright?" Anubis sounded worried again.

You stupid jackal-headed freak! Nico raged in his mind, sending his thoughts through their fused souls since he didn't have to physically speak to convey his message to Anubis this way. What the crap? You dragged me on another acid trip into the Duat for nothing? You put me through all that for nothing?

'All that' was the process that had left Nico limp and worn out, and obviously, up until just a minute ago, unconscious. As Anubus' host, Nico could serve as a conduit for the god, enabling Anubis to do things that he couldn't normally do. Unless he was acting through Nico, Anubis' powers were restricted to places of mourning while he was on earth. In the Duat he had more freedom, but there were still things that the Egyptian gods required hosts for to direct their magic properly, just as magicians required staves and wands for maximum efficiency in their spells. Had Anubis tried the locator ritual without Nico there to use as a conduit, he might have ended up blasting himself off to some far corner of the Duat which would take weeks to get back from. Nico didn't mind a little pain. Or a lot of pain. What he'd just gone through was nothing compared to some of the things that had happened to him in the past. But channeling the full force of Anubis' magic had left him so drained that it was impossible for frustration not to set in. Now he felt like crying. He had no energy, they had no idea where the Book of Ra, the one artifact that could save their world was, and the world was two weeks away from being destroyed by Apophis' next move in the chaotic chess game they were playing with him.