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W e didn’t even get a chance to process or even discuss our visions before we were ordered out of the pools and sent through another portal. I hadn’t actually seen the castle we were staying in from the outside and I couldn’t see it now. I could basically just see the tops of the spires in the distance.

“Does anyone have camping experience but me?” I asked. “My Baba took us camping all over the world. I can navigate the map and find things to eat.”

“I can,” Liam said.

Liam was a little wild, but at least he would be useful. If he was just going to run his mouth and slow us down playing pranks, I didn’t want him on our team. But he looked ready to work and I could respect that.

Lucian had soft hands, and he clearly took care of his nails. He was also well groomed, and I doubted he did much roughing it. I just hoped he pulled his weight. Right now, he looked visibly shaken by whatever he’d seen in the pool, and I didn’t need him distracted. My parents were big about talking things out.

“What all did everyone see?” I asked.

I already knew who I was because I knew my history. The hint was glaringly obvious unless I was completely wrong, and I doubted it.

“I could feel myself running through the forest, but never like that. It was like the forest was alive. I could see, smell, and taste the dew on the leaves. I could sense all the animals and I wasn’t afraid of them. It was rather lovely,” Liam said.

Which was odd. I had him pegged for a trickster, too. He said that didn’t feel right to him and maybe it wasn’t. Honestly, he still could be. It seemed like a very trickster thing to me to fuck with your own reincarnation by sending them the wrong vision.

“I saw three of me,” Sage said. “Like, identical triplets, but dressed for different occasions. I don’t actually know what it means. I wasn’t allowed to have that phase where I got into tarot cards and I couldn’t even read Percy Jackson because it was too pagan for my father.”

“You all got good visions,” Lucian shuddered. “I don’t know who I was, but they weren’t a good person.”

“What did you see?” Sage asked.

“I can’t talk about it. It was disgusting and violent.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to be in this lifetime,” Sage pointed out.

“I hope not,” Lucian whispered.

He didn’t seem like the type that talked about his feelings much, but we were also dealing with ancient deities here and some of them weren’t all that great, so he very well could have seen something truly awful. We could just be there when he was ready to talk about it.

“What about you? What did you see?” Sage asked.

“Well, I’m Egyptian and my vision was pretty straight forward. I saw a jackal. Unless I’m completely mistaken and there is an older god we don’t know about, I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be Anubis.”

“So, like God of Death?” Liam asked.

“God of funeral rites and protector of the dead. The original Anubis guided the souls to Duat and protected them on that journey.”

“So, that’s pretty badass, but Headmaster Mykene is all about the gut. We’re a team because we requested someone. If you’re Anubis, that means something for the rest of us,” Sage said.

“I requested you because you seemed cool when you sat with me and it seemed like the right thing to do,” I said.

“Pretty sure we’re all on this team because we requested you,” Lucian said, rolling his eyes. “I could do without being on the same team as someone who whips their dick out without my consent.”

“Sorry, but you peeked.”

“I absolutely did not.”

“Focus. Even if we know who Khalid is, we still don’t know who the rest of us are and none of us have any magical powers yet. We don’t know where we are and we have to find those crystals,” Sage said.

“I studied the maps Headmaster Mykene gave us. Based on the position of the sun, they dropped us in quadrant two and we only have four hours of daylight left,” Liam said.

Interesting. My father had taught me how to find my way by the stars. Something told me if Liam didn’t know how to do that before, it was part of his magic. He kept rubbing his forehead like he was trying to get something off it.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Anyone get itchy after that dip in the pool? It’s like they were bitey bugs in it and they got me on the forehead.”

“Let me see,” Sage said.

I got a look. His forehead was red from where he was constantly rubbing it, but I didn’t see any bites. None of us were scratching, and I didn’t think there were any pests in the magic pool.

I was pretty sure it meant something, but we didn’t have time to talk theories. We had four hours to explore this quadrant and then we were going to have to find a safe place to pitch the tents for the night.