House of Gateways/House of Persuasion

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Niamh grabbed up the book and quickly informed the others of what she was doing before rushing in the direction of the school. She passed all the mayhem just as the others did before her until she arrived to the school, astonished by what had happened to the building. She handed the book over to Jared who flipped it open and skimmed over the pages.

"Wh-what does it say?" Mr. Rainier asked.

"I don't know; I read Arabic, not Coptic," Jared admitted without taking his eyes off the pages.

"Well can you decipher anything from this?"

"Not with you talking!"

Jonah apologized on Jared's behalf, aware of how stressed his brother was and honestly, they all were.

"Th-there are English pages at the end," Mr. Rainier enlightened. "How about those?"

"News flash," Jared informed, "I can barely read English either."

Mr. Rainier furrowed his brows.

"Dyslexic," Jonah explained.

"Luckily, the rest of us can read it," Niamh reminded. She reached for the book, but Jared came to a sudden realization.

"I can read Arabic, not Coptic," Jared repeated, this time with an expression of clarity. "Okay, it's a long shot, but..." He began flipping through the pages again.

"What is it?" Jonah asked.

"Remember when we first discovered this book?" Jared reminded. "And we saw that familiar Arabic phrase on one page?" Jared found the page and tapped at it.

"Yeah, but it's just an idolized phrase at the top...the rest of the page is in Coptic, right?"

Jared took a deep breath. "Wrong. It's all in Arabic; I was just too lazy to read it."

Jonah glanced back at Niamh and Mr. Rainier, finding that very typical of Jared.

Jared skimmed through the page, most of it useless information, but he did find at least one important fact.

"When you summon a god back to life," Jared said to them aloud, "their existence is monistic..."

"It means one something..." Niamh trailed off, only understanding the prefix of the word.

"Their existences are defined by one reality," Jonah declared. "Their staffs."

"So, destroy the staffs-" Mr. Rainier began.

"-destroy them," Niamh concluded. "One problem though. They kind of have them."

"Yeah?" Jared stood to his feet. "Well I have something too." He looked up. "Okay so Osiris, my right-hand man-you know who you are-I know you might possibly be in the middle of something, but...if you could maybe give me something cool and powerful, that'd be really great. Thanks."

The four of them waited there, glancing around for anything.

"It seems we're settling with my puny orbs then," Jared remarked at the lack of any response from Osiris.

He turned to head through the wreckage of the school, assuming that was the direction the gods had carried on in. Niamh and Jonah followed him, and Mr. Rainier remained there to watch over Lucille and Sarah.

~~~~~
Jared was the first to spot Ptah, Nefertem, and Sekhmet from afar, their silhouettes lined in silver by the moonlight. They were gathered around the gatehouse, no longer moving around.

"What are they doing?" Niamh asked.

Jared shrugged.

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