How It All Goes Down
- This chapter is the first chapter of the second part of the book.
- It's Friday, the first of June. Can you believe all that action so far happened in just one day?
- Sophie, Josh, Flamel, Scatty, and Hekate are at the Shadowrealm, watching all the Torc Allta prepare for battle.
- Josh worries about Sophie as they prepare to be Awakened.
- But Sophie reassuringly takes her brother's hand and says they will do it as they've done everything else—together. The twins tell Hekate they are ready.
- Scatty enters and tells them that the Morrigan has arrived along with Bastet.
- This time there are no Golems, thank goodness.
- An impressed Sophie mentions that she's surprised that the Yggdrasill is still a living tree, what with all these creatures moving around inside it.
- But this ain't your average tree. Scatty tells them that this tree was grown from a seed from the original World Tree.
- Thousands of years ago, when Danu Talis sank beneath the sea, some of the Elders like Hekate managed to save the seeds of the Elder plants and grow them in a new world.
- Good to know.
- Flamel tells Sophie and Josh that when they come out of the room where they are to be Awakened, they will be different forever.
- The twins are hesitant to be different people, but they know that there's no turning back now.
- They enter.
- Greeting the twins, Hekate tells them they should be honored. She has not Awakened a member of the humani (one of the human race) for many generations.
- The last one she did Awaken, in the 12th century, was killed by hailstones, she says. And then she laughs knowingly. Not a good sign.
- The Goddess of the Three Faces gives the twins the back-story to Awakening human potential: apparently, magic simply means using all of the senses, and that humans have grown lazy and haven't used them in a long while.
- Hekate says: "What you call magic is nothing more than an act of imagination fired by the senses, then given shape by the power of your aura."
- Well, the twins have very powerful auras, and that means they have tremendous magical potential. Sweet.
- But they need to be prepared to accept the very real risk of dangerous sensory overload.
- Okie doke, say the twins.
- Hekate tells them it's time to begin.