Powerstones please — Khufu is watching and I don't trust what he'll do if we run out.
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Brooklyn was different from Manhattan.
Manhattan pushed upward — everything competing for sky, noise bouncing between glass and steel until it became its own weather system. Brooklyn spread outward. Brownstones, iron fences, trees that had been growing on the same block for fifty years and had developed opinions about it. The kind of neighbourhood that didn't need to announce itself because it had been here longer than you and would be here after you left.
2 Pierrepont Street sat on a corner. Red brick, four floors, iron railings, the brass falcon knocker on the front door exactly where Julius said it would be. From the street it read as a standard successful-person-lives-here brownstone. But there was something off about the proportions — the building looked like it had more room inside than the outside should have allowed.
I stood on the pavement across the street and looked at it.
Deliver Letter - straightforward errand, I thought, and crossed the street.
Two men stepped out from either side of the building entrance.
Coats too formal for the neighbourhood. Moving with the coordinated efficiency of people who had been waiting and were now executing. One tall, sharp-eyed, forties. One younger, compact, with the trained stillness of someone who held position under pressure.
They were looking at me with the expression of people whose instruments had just returned something unexpected and who were trying to decide if the instruments were broken.
I stopped. They stopped.
"Morning," I said, because someone had to start.
The taller one raised his hand and drew something in the air. Quick, precise, glowing faintly gold before it faded. An assessment of some kind — Julius had described the category. It hit the space around me and apparently returned nothing useful because the operative looked at his hand. Looked at me. Drew it again, slower.
Still nothing.
They looked at each other. Then at me.
"What are you," the taller one said.
"Aditya Rudransh. I'm here to see Amos Kane."
"What are you," he said again.
The younger operative said something.
One word.
I didn't understand what it meant. It landed in the air with weight behind it — language that was also a force — and then it hit me.
My whole body LOCKED.
Not the leg. Everything. Every muscle seizing simultaneously, like someone had grabbed my nervous system and SQUEEZED. My knees buckled. I went down HARD — one knee cracking into the pavement, hands catching myself, duffel bag slipping off my shoulder.
What, I thought. What was—
The younger one said it again. Louder. More force.
The lock TIGHTENED. I couldn't get up. Couldn't move. My muscles were concrete, every signal from my brain hitting a wall and bouncing back.
Okay, I thought, somewhere under the panic. Okay this is magic. This is a SPELL. Julius mentioned this category. It's supposed to—
The lock broke.
Just — released. All at once. Like a fist unclenching.
I was on my hands and knees on the pavement breathing hard, and both operatives were staring at me with expressions I didn't have context for yet.
I got up.
My legs were shaking slightly. Embarrassing but honest.
"Is that Ancient Egyptian?" I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected. "Because it sounds like someone gargling sand."
The taller operative's expression moved from confused to something more urgent. His hand went to his coat — wand, ivory, curved — and his partner moved simultaneously and I was already tracking the movement and stepping back when—
Ha-wi.
Both of them. Together. Full power.
It hit me like a wall.
Not like being pushed. Like being LAUNCHED. The force caught my entire chest simultaneously and THREW me — ten feet, twelve, I lost count — and I hit the iron fence of the adjacent building with everything I had.
The fence SCREAMED. Metal warping on impact. Every bar in a three-foot section bending inward. Something in the fence post cracked at the base.
The impact triggered something — the automatic response of a divine protection system that did not wait for permission — and the golden armour ignited across my body mid-collision, flooding from my chest in the half-second before the fence bars made full contact. What would have been three broken ribs and a very bad morning became something that merely rattled my skeleton and bruised my pride significantly.
I stayed against the bent bars, back pressed to the warped iron, inside golden armour I had not consciously summoned.
Both operatives had stopped.
Staring at the armour. At their instruments, which were apparently returning something entirely different from thirty seconds ago. The taller one looked at his wand with the expression of someone whose threat classification had just jumped three categories at once.
I looked down at the Kavach. At the bent fence. At my completely uninjured self inside it.
My ego had sustained significant damage.
"That," I said, brushing fence-rust off the golden armour with as much dignity as the situation permitted, "is not how you teach Newton's laws."
THE FIGHT
Two magicians with wands and words and wards. I had Kavach up. I had Dhanush. And I was fifteen years old and had been in a fight with a Titan and I was not running from two men in coats on a Brooklyn pavement.
I moved toward them instead.
The taller one threw Ha-wi again immediately — same spell, full force, clearly the one they were most confident in. It hit the Kavach and pushed me back a step. One step. Not twelve feet. The armour distributed the force across my whole body and I absorbed it and kept moving.
His expression changed.
Good, I thought. Update your notes.
The younger one went for the binding — Tas — and the rope of woven light shot out and wrapped my left wrist before I could redirect. Kavach covered the wrist but the rope found the gap at the edge of the armour and locked. My left arm yanked sideways.
Oh that's annoying, I thought.
I went with it rather than fight it, turning the momentum, closing the distance between me and the younger operative faster than he had planned.
He hadn't expected me to move toward the binding.
Neither had I, honestly, but it worked. Sometimes the plan forms after the action and you just have to commit and hope.
I got inside his reach before he could release another spell. The problem with being inside someone's reach when you are fifteen but built like someone who has been has a dragon heart is that they are now at a significant disadvantage. I grabbed his wand arm at the wrist — not breaking it, controlling it — and turned him and used him as a shield against the taller operative who was already raising his wand for another shot.
The taller operative stopped.
Good instinct. Shooting at me now meant shooting at his partner.
We held like that for a second. Me with the younger operative's wand arm locked. The taller one with his wand raised and nowhere useful to point it. The younger one very still because he was the one in the middle and stillness was the correct strategy.
I have them, I thought, and then immediately: I have them for approximately as long as it takes them to think of something I haven't.
Then the younger one said something — a single word, fast, directed at his own arm — and the binding rope reversed, suddenly pulling instead of holding, yanking my wrist toward him with enough force to break my grip.
There it is, I thought. That's the thing I hadn't thought of.
Smart. I let go before it could fully take. Stepped back. Burned through the rope with a targeted flame — it dissolved — and put three feet between us.
The taller one immediately threw Ha-wi again.
It hit the Kavach and I stumbled back a step. One step.
"You've thrown that four times," I said. "It's not getting more effective."
He threw something different.
I didn't know what it was. It hit the Kavach at chest level and the armour flared — I felt it, a real flare, warmth spiking suddenly — and for a second my vision went slightly bright at the edges.
That one actually did something, I noted. That one goes on the do-not-let-him-do-that-again list. The list is growing.
The younger one was trying to circle to my left. Taller one holding my attention from the front. Textbook flanking, the kind of thing Chiron had drilled into me specifically so I would recognise it when it happened.
I recognised it.
Chiron would be pleased, I thought. Chiron would be significantly less pleased about everything else that has happened this morning but this specific thing he would be pleased about.
Dhanush formed.
Both operatives threw up shields immediately — protective wards shimmering into existence, solid, covering them completely. Fast and coordinated. They had protocols for divine weapons.
They had not encountered explosive arrows.
Here was what a ward did I learned afterwards: absorbed and deflected magical energy. Fire, divine charge, solar heat — the ward caught all of it.
Here was what a ward could not do: argue with physics.
A divine explosive arrow was not purely magic. It was pressure detonating outward in all directions at speed. The ward caught the magical component perfectly. The shockwave went through it like the ward was made of air. Because for the shockwave, it was.
Arrow one.
The ward held. Not a mark on it.
The taller operative went BACKWARDS into the iron fence. Spine-first. Hard. The same fence that had bent when I hit it — he hit it harder, because he had been moving toward me when the arrow landed and the momentum had compounded on top of the blast. He hit it and crumpled. Slumped sideways. Stayed there.
Not moving.
I stared at him.
Get up, I thought. You'll get up. Give it a second.
He did not get up.
Arrow two.
The second operative had a half-second more to brace. This helped with the magical component. It did nothing about the shockwave.
He went sideways into the hedge and the hedge received him and he did not come back out of it. There was a sound from inside the hedge that I did not want to think about too carefully. His legs were visible from the ankle down, sticking out at an angle that suggested the rest of him was not in a position to do anything about it.
I stood there.
That's... I thought. That's not—
Both were down. One slumped against a bent fence, not moving. One in a hedge, also not moving. Neither of them was getting up. Neither of them was doing anything a person who had merely been inconvenienced would do.
They were hurt.
They were genuinely, actually hurt.
I had been fighting monsters. Sybaris, who was the size of a building.
Perses, who was a Titan.
The demigod traitors at Alcatraz.
Luke, who was bloody fucking Luke.
Clarisse, who hit like she had a personal grudge against the concept of holding back.
Everything I had ever fought was built to absorb damage the way I was built to absorb damage — with divine reinforcement, with inhuman durability, with the specific resilience of things that were not fully mortal.
My mental model of how much force a person can take was calibrated entirely to the wrong category of being.
These were humans.
Trained humans. Magical humans. But humans.
Oh, I thought, with the specific sinking quality of someone who had just understood something they should have understood several seconds earlier. I massively miscalibrated that.
I burned through the last of the binding residue on my wrist — the rope had dissolved but there was still a faint tingle where it had been — and let the Kavach drop and stood there looking at both of them.
The taller operative against the fence had his eyes open. That was something. He was conscious, technically, in the way that someone was conscious when they were lying very still. There was a quality to his breathing I didn't like.
The one in the hedge made a sound. A small one.
"That," I said, because I had committed to the callback and abandoning it now would have been somehow worse, "is how you teach Newton's laws."
Neither of them responded. This was understandable given the circumstances.
I picked up my duffel bag.
Julius said don't cause trouble, I thought. Julius's people threw multiple spells at me on a public pavement in Brooklyn at ten in the morning.
This cancels out.
I think.
Mostly.
The front door of 2 Pierrepont Street opened.
AMOS KANE
The man who stepped out was barrel-shaped, dark-skinned, wearing a chocolate-coloured suit that had no business looking that good at this hour on this kind of morning. Round glasses. Hair braided with amber beads. He moved with the unhurried precision of someone who had assessed the situation from inside and was now executing a decision he had already made.
He looked at operative one against the fence.
He looked at operative two in the hedge, of whom only the ankles were visible.
He looked at me standing in the middle of the pavement with the Kavach fully dissolved.
He looked at operative one again. At the quality of his stillness. At the way he was breathing.
Something moved across Amos's face that was not the expression I had been expecting. It was the expression of a man looking at a political situation that had just become significantly more complicated.
"How injured," he said. To me. Quietly.
"The ward stopped the fire," I said. "I didn't expect — I miscalibrated. I didn't account for—"
"How injured," he said again. Just needing the information.
"The fence one is conscious. Breathing wrong. The hedge one—" I glanced at the ankles still visible. They hadn't moved. "—I don't know."
Amos walked past me to the operative against the fence. Crouched. Said something in Ancient Egyptian — a word with that specific quality. The operative's breathing evened out slightly. Not healed. Stabilised.
Amos stood. Walked to the hedge. Did the same. The ankles shifted — a small involuntary movement, the movement of someone who had just had something addressed.
He came back and stood in front of me.
"Did you intend to injure them," he said.
"No. I intended to stop them."
"There's a difference."
"I know there's a difference. That's why I'm—" I stopped. "I miscalibrated. I know."
"Someone will come for you," he said to the operatives. Quietly. Like something said to injured people who needed a direction.
Then he looked at me.
I was suddenly very aware that I had been in Brooklyn for approximately forty-five minutes and had already put two magicians - one in a fence and another in a hedge respectively and was now standing in front of the man Julius had sent me to deliver the letter while said magicians were being helped by that man.
They are going to report what happened. They are going to report it in detail. Whatever political situation Julius's letter was navigating, I have just made it significantly more complicated within the first hour of my arrival.
Julius, I thought, is going to be very smug about this when I eventually tell him.
If I eventually tell him.
Assuming this doesn't end badly first.
"You have something for me," Amos said. Not a question.
I reached into my jacket. The envelope was intact — slightly warm from the fight, wax seal unbroken.
I held it out.
Amos looked at the seal for a long moment. Something moved across his face — there and gone, controlled so fast I almost missed it. The specific quality of a man recognising something he had been both waiting for and dreading in equal measure.
He took the letter.
"Come inside," he said, picked up my duffel bag on the way past without being asked, and held the door.
I walked into Brooklyn House feeling considerably less triumphant about the Newton's laws callback than I had sixty seconds ago.
THE INTERIOR
The inside was larger than the outside. Not slightly — significantly, in a way that said the building's dimensions operated on different rules within than without. The entrance hall had a ceiling too high for the floors I had counted from the street. Egyptian artefacts lined the walls — not reproductions. These had age in them, the kind of age that meant something. Hieroglyphics carved into the doorframe. A staircase that curved upward and kept going past where the building should have ended.
The whole place had a quality I had started recognising from the Carlyle. A density to the space. The atmosphere of somewhere magic had been practised seriously for a long time and had left a residue.
Amos set my bag at the foot of the stairs.
"Wait here," he said. Not unkind. Just precise.
He went through a door at the end of the hall with the letter. The door closed.
I was alone in the entrance hall of Brooklyn House with nothing to do except look at artefacts I was not going to touch, because Julius had said don't touch anything without asking and I was applying that broadly to everything in this house until told otherwise.
From somewhere above me — a thump. Then another. Then the rhythmic bounce of a basketball.
I looked up at the staircase.
Something was watching me from the top of it.
A baboon. Golden-furred, bright-eyed, sitting on the top step with a basketball tucked under one arm, looking down at me with the patient attention of a creature making a preliminary assessment and not yet reaching a conclusion.
We looked at each other.
The baboon tilted its head four degrees. Looked at my jacket pocket. Looked at my face. Looked at the pocket again.
I had nothing in my jacket pocket that a baboon should have been interested in.
Then I remembered the bodega stop two blocks ago. The emergency breakfast purchase because I hadn't eaten since yesterday and the morning had been, by any measure, complicated.
The Oreos were in my jacket pocket.
Oh no, I thought.
THE STANDOFF
The baboon descended the stairs with the specific dignity of a creature that went where it wanted and expected the environment to accommodate this as a matter of course.
I followed it apparenty to the kitchen because that was clearly where we were going.
The kitchen was large, clean, well-equipped. A door on the far side led to a terrace — through the glass I could see a pool, January-grey water, something large and white moving slowly beneath the surface.
I sat at the kitchen table.
The baboon sat across from me. Basketball set aside. Hands folded. Eyes fixed on my jacket pocket with the patience of a creature that had identified the correct strategy and saw absolutely no reason to deviate from it.
I did a quick environmental assessment the way Chiron had taught me.
Exits: the door I had come in through, currently behind the baboon. The terrace door, to my left, currently showing a large white shape moving under the pool water that was getting closer to the terrace door in a way I didn't like. The window above the sink, which was not large enough to be useful even if I wanted to exit a kitchen through a window, which I did not.
I am trapped, I realised. I have survived a Titan and I am trapped in a kitchen by a baboon and what appears to be an albino crocodile approaching from the terrace and the negotiating currency in this situation is apparently Oreos.
This is fine.
I looked at the baboon.
The baboon looked at the pocket.
"No," I said.
The baboon did not move.
"These are mine. I bought them with my own money. They are my breakfast. I have had an extremely complicated morning and I deserve my breakfast."
Complete stillness. The stillness of something that had done this exact negotiation before and knew beyond any doubt that stillness was more effective than argument.
I reached into my pocket. Produced the Oreos. Opened the packet. Took one out.
The baboon's eyes tracked the Oreo with the focused precision of a targeting system that had acquired a lock and would not be releasing it.
I put the Oreo in my mouth. Maintained eye contact.
The baboon unfolded its hands.
The terrace door opened.
The crocodile was approximately six feet long, albino-white, and entered the kitchen with the casual confidence of something that lived here and therefore went wherever it liked. It positioned itself to my left and looked at the Oreos.
Then at me.
Then at the Oreos again.
I have fought a Titan, I thought. I will not be intimidated by a golden baboon and an albino crocodile over a one-dollar-forty-nine packet of biscuits.
I took another Oreo. Put it in my mouth. Maintained eye contact with the baboon.
The crocodile's tail swept sideways and connected with the table leg. The table jumped. The Oreo packet slid six inches toward the baboon.
The baboon moved. Fast — I hadn't clocked just how fast a baboon could move until it was already on my side of the table with one hand on the packet and the other braced on my shoulder for leverage. I grabbed the packet with both hands. We had a brief, undignified tug of war while the crocodile's tail swept the table leg again and the table jumped again and my chair scraped sideways.
"That's MINE—"
The baboon made a sound that was not agreement.
I spun to keep the packet away from it and my elbow caught the fruit bowl and the fruit bowl went sideways and three apples hit the floor and the crocodile's head turned toward the apples with the evaluative look of a creature deciding whether apples were relevant to its interests.
They were not relevant to its interests.
Its tail swept again. This time it caught my ankle. I stumbled.
The baboon got the packet.
The crocodile put one foot on my shoe.
Gently. Very gently. With the specific patience of a creature communicating that it was prepared to escalate and was giving me the opportunity to avoid that.
I looked down at the crocodile's foot on my shoe.
I looked at the baboon hanging from the light fixture with the Oreo packet.
I looked at the kitchen — the displaced fruit bowl, the three apples on the floor, the table at a slightly different angle from where it had started, the chair two feet from where I had been sitting.
The baboon dropped from the light fixture, took eight Oreos with the efficiency of a creature that had been planning this exact outcome from the beginning, and retreated to the table with its basketball under one arm.
The crocodile took three Oreos and the entire empty packet, which it carried toward the terrace door in its mouth.
The kitchen door opened.
Amos Kane stood in the frame holding the opened letter with the expression of a man who had just read something that weighed considerably more than the paper it was written on. He looked at me on the kitchen counter. At the table at a different angle. At the displaced fruit bowl. At the three apples on the floor. At the retreating tail of the crocodile carrying its packet through the terrace door. At the baboon on the table eating Oreos with its basketball tucked under its arm like nothing had happened.
"How," he said.
"I don't know," I said. "I genuinely, completely do not know how any of that happened."
Amos looked at the letter. At the kitchen. At some point in the middle distance that appeared to represent his life choices in general.
"There's a room on the third floor," he said. "East-facing. Don't let the baboon in unsupervised." A pause. "Don't touch anything in the library without asking. Don't go to the roof alone."
"Julius mentioned the library."
Something moved across his face at the name. Fast. Contained. Gone.
"I imagine he mentioned several things," Amos said.
"He said try not to destroy anything that can't be repaired."
Amos looked at the kitchen table sitting at its new angle. At the fruit bowl. At the apples.
"He knows you reasonably well," he said, which wasn't quite accurate given that Julius had known me for three weeks, but I understood what he meant and didn't correct it.
He set the letter on the counter and left.
Stood in the kitchen and looked at the displacement I had caused.
Straightened the table. Picked up the apples. Put the fruit bowl back. Found a cloth and cleaned up the Oreo crumbs.
The kitchen looked mostly normal by the time I was done. Mostly. The table was perhaps six inches from where it had started and I couldn't find the original position with any confidence, and one of the apples had a scuff on it, and there was a faint mark on the light fixture where the baboon's hand had been, but the overall impression was of a kitchen where nothing significant had occurred.
This is fine, I thought, for what felt like the hundredth time since January.
The baboon — whose name, I would learn later, was Khufu— was already at the top of the stairs with his basketball, watching me ascend with the alert satisfaction of a creature that had correctly predicted every outcome of the last ten minutes.
CHARLES
A few days later-I was on the terrace. Philip was making his slow circuit of the pool. The East River was doing its grey thing.
My phone rang showing Camps area code.
"Hello-" I said.
"Aditya." Charles's voice came with background forge sounds — the low roar of the fire, a distant clang. Calling while doing something else, which was standard. "Quick question. Weapon maintenance day. Going through the camp inventory."
"Okay."
"Your greatsword. The one I made. Where is it."
I went very still.
"Charles—"
"I've checked the armoury. Not there. Checked the cabin racks. Not there." A pause and a clang. "I checked the training grounds. The storage shed. The repair station. I assumed you'd left it for annual maintenance but I can't find the intake form either so—"
"Charles."
Something in how I said it made him stop.
"What."
"It's at Alcatraz."
Silence.
The forge sounds continued. Something being hammered somewhere. The bellows working. Everything carrying on while Charles Beckendorf processed what I had just said.
I braced.
I had been bracing for this conversation since January. I had rehearsed it in my head a dozen times on the train, in the deli, in the room at The Monarch staring at the water-stained ceiling. I had the full script ready.
I'm sorry, Charles. I know how much work went into that blade. I know it was camp property and I know you trusted me with it and I know I said I'd take care of it. The dragon grabbed me before I could reach it and I was already unconscious from the fight with Perses and I genuinely had no ability to — yes I understand that's not an excuse — yes I understand you spent years on that blade — yes I understand that even if it was damaged it was still recoverable and I left it at Alcatraz which is underwater and probably collapsed — I know, Charles. I know. I have the money. I've been saving since January. I can pay for a new one. I'll pay for materials, labour, everything. Please don't tell me I'll never get a camp weapon again, I know, I know—
I had the whole thing ready. I was prepared to absorb it.
Charles Beckendorf laughed.
Not a small sound. A genuine one, surprised out of him before he could catch it — the kind of laugh that happened when the brain hadn't caught up with the response yet. I heard him set something down on what was probably the anvil.
"Alcatraz," he said, still with the laugh in his voice.
"I was unconscious. The dragon grabbed me mid-fall and I couldn't—"
"The dragon," he repeated.
"It grabbed me before I could—"
"Aditya." He was quieter now but the warmth was still there, the laugh settling into something softer. "You know what a sword's job is?"
I waited.
"To protect its wielder." Simple. Obvious. "That sword apparently did its job until it couldn't anymore. You made it out. The sword didn't." A pause. "What more can I ask."
I sat on the terrace in Brooklyn in March holding my phone and feeling the complete absence of the speech I had prepared.
"That's it?" I said.
"That's it." Another pause, and I could hear the shift — the quality of his attention changing, the craftsman brain engaging. "You need a new one."
"Yes."
The thinking kind of silence. I could almost hear him calculating.
"New design," he said, and now he was moving — footsteps, paper being pulled out. "You're taller since I saw you last. Stronger. Different weight distribution needed. What are you thinking for composition—"
And just like that we were talking specs.
Charles fired questions with increasing speed while I heard him writing things down — blade length, cross-guard geometry, composition ratios. The craftsman brain fully engaged before the conversation had officially shifted topics, before the previous subject had even fully closed. Six months minimum, he said.
But the main issue was the ore sourcing.
I told him I'd send them.
He said if there is another extenuating circumstance with me specifically then he would consider loosing swords a pattern which he found professionally concerning.
He wasn't wrong.
I hung up. Sat there. Philip surfaced in the pool and looked at me and submerged.
Six months. Sword incoming.
For the first time since January something that might have been described as optimism appeared and did not immediately get corrected by circumstances.
The terrace door slid open.
Khufu came out carrying two things: his basketball under one arm, and a small folded piece of paper in his other hand, held with the careful precision of a creature who had been given a job and intended to execute it correctly.
He walked across the terrace.
Sat down next to my chair.
Held out the paper.
I looked at him. At the paper. At him again.
"Did Amos send you?" I said.
Khufu looked at the paper with the expression of a creature whose position on this matter was that the paper should be taken and the questions could come after.
I took the paper.
Unfolded it.
One word in Amos Kane's precise handwriting:
Stay.
I sat on the terrace of a house that was larger inside than outside, holding a one-word note delivered by a golden baboon, with a crocodile in the pool below and a sword six months from existing and a letter that had been delivered to the right person and an Egyptologist's brother somewhere inside who had apparently decided, in his measured and precise and forty-words-per-day way, that I could.
Khufu bounced his basketball once on the terrace tiles. Looked at me. Bounced it again.
It's a start, I thought.
It was.
END CHAPTER