Philo was a little nervous. Okay, more than a little. If it wasn't for the fact that he could die of exposure and dehydration if he did so, he would be running out into the desert to get away from it all. This felt like breaking tons of school rules. But they weren't at school. But the rules of the trip pretty much were 'Don't go anywhere unsupervised except during free time,' and after that it was always check in on time.

Which lead to the current feeling of unease. Ever since the day at the Cairo Antiquities Market, Alvis and he had been deciphering and then solving the location of the tomb of Amahté Ialu based on the clues provided.

"Right," Philo summarized, "So we know Ialu's tomb is somewhere in this block, since his descendants listed have tombs here. And it's going to be at a very low point. What I still don't get is how to find the entrance." On a spare bit of parchment was the one phrase left unsolved.

Give the proper offering to the divine bird

This was what worried Philo the most. The activity of returning Runner shouldn't take long once they could find the entrance. But the trouble was finding the entrance. Runner had lingered behind them, out of sight and occasionally burrowing under the sand until they got here, the yawning entrance to the tour tunnels of a set of tombs.

" 'Divine bird.' Maybe that's a phoenix? Some Egyptian sects worshiped them. Some kind of mural or hieroglyph, then."

Still, Philo was not courageous enough to say 'alright, let's go right where the chaperones don't want us to go on a hunch thousands upon thousands of years old.'

Abby was secretly a big dweeb. Or not so secretly. She was having a fantastic time so far, hanging out with two younger, nerdy boys, on a quest to discover the origin of Philo's magic rug. It was different! It was exciting! It was rebellious! Last night, she'd even convinced a few of the other girls that they should french-braid each other's hair (they all happened to be blonds), so that today, she could sneak off and Aileen would be less prone to notice.

"Cult of the Phoenix! Yeah!" Abby exclaimed, conveniently neglecting to mention how dangerous the Cult of the Phoenix was, how much her older sister had flipped out this past year over it, and how one of the artifacts had managed to curse her for a month or two. Now that she was no longer cursed, it was all good!

"The phoenix has to do with the sun," she stated the obvious, squinting a bit in the summer heat even with her sunglasses. "Maybe we're supposed to bring the tomb some kind of special light source? Or myrrh? Or a nest?" Abby rambled without putting a ton of thought into her suggestions.

"Let's walk around and see what we find!"

"It could be a phoenix," Alvis muttered, half to himself as he fell into step alongside the other two. "Though there were other birds that the Egyptians considered holy - Ra was represented by an eagle carrying the disk of the sun, Thoth had the head of an ibis, and both Horus and Hathor's names were made up of falcon symbols. Hm..."

He had a wizard's book of hieroglyphics and ancient Egyptian wizard's symbols open in his hand, and was focused on it more than his surroundings. After two weeks of studying the things to translate the original order form, he was starting to get the hang of reading them; but he only managed that through constant practice and was constantly worried he'd gotten something wrong.

That was only compounded by the worry that, even though they were technically doing the right thing trying to bring Runner home, they were also technically breaking the rules, and if they got caught then he'd have to take responsibility because he was the oldest student and they could get in big trouble, and that was all only if they got through this without getting themselves killed or cursed or horribly disfigured...Argh, he couldn't think about that now.

"It's the offering part that I'm worried about," he concluded out-loud, closing the book to put his mind back on track. "Even if we find the bird, what offering can we bring? We've only got one shot at this..." He frowned and tapped his nose, trying to bring their translations to the surface of his memory. "Maybe...maybe it's something on the inside? Inside the tomb, I mean. Maybe Amahté Ialu's tomb is an off-shoot of a relative's, hidden like the secret rooms at Hogwarts to keep it safe. Besides, there will be more paintings inside and everyone'll get suspicious if we hover out here so...."

Alvis gave an awkward shrug and trailed off, gathering his courage. He didn't want to be the one to say, "Let's go break the rules" either, but...they needed to get Runner home. With a resigned sigh, he steered them into the tour tunnels with the other mingling student groups, searching the walls for birds and branching paths as their eyes adjusted to the tunnels' gloom.

Philo agreed with Alvis. "Yeah, the offering bit is bothering me too, but then we wouldn't know what kind of offering to use until we know what kind of divine bird marks the entrance. It should be something we could magically produce, shouldn't it?" Abby was the oldest but she was a squib so it would have to be Philo or Alvis to do any spellcasting. Hopefully they would face nothing above Third Year level.

The tunnels were dimly lit but Philo didn't want to risk wandlight yet. "I guess, all we can do is head down. His tomb is one of the oldest, there's two people with deep tombs."

As he talked he strove to pay attention to each path they had to take. The tunnels weren't too labyrinth but he felt different being underground. It wouldn't do if they got lost.

Half-listening to Alvis' logical worries, Abby shifted her weight to the balls of her feet, then back to her toes, looking like she was either about to run a marathon or do the I-have-to-pee dance. Merlin! If Naomi were with them, they'd be in the tunnels, probably getting lost already!

Casting a furtive glance around her, she followed the students inside the tunnels, and rested her sunglasses atop her head. Though she glanced curiously at the walls as they delved further into the dark, she paid little attention to the layout of the underground tunnels, trusting the other students to do that.

The air smelled dry and dusty, and Abby kept glancing down to avoid stumbling over the uneven path. She had a smile on her face, partly because she knew what they were doing was against the rules and partly because this felt like an exciting adventure. Abby had quite a gift for ignoring potential consequences until she was knee-deep in trouble.

"Hey. Hey, look." After walking for a while, coming to a few dead ends and pausing to figure out where they were, Abby happened to glance up and notice an illustration above their heads. It looked like a round object - the sun, perhaps, and she could just make out bird's wings. The ground felt smoother beneath her feet here, and a bit slippery.

"I have a light," she offered, digging in her purse as she proved that, sometimes, she did listen to her older sister, who had told them that casting magic in ancient tombs was not always the best idea. On a whim, Abby had bought a lighter at a muggle shop, wanting to feel like she could wave a 'torch' around while the other students casted Lumos or used flashlights.

She held her arm above her head, and flicked the lighter with her thumb. A tiny flame sparked. The colors in the illustration became clearer, and the feathers on the bird...

The ground rumbled beneath their feet!

The ground rumbled. Alvis caught himself on the wall, and his eyes darted to the rooftop mural. There, in the light of Abigail’s lighter, was a red disk ringed in black – the Sun – and flying across its face, a bird with brilliant white feathers and a tail that extended five times its body’s length…

His eyes widened. “That’s the same one as the-!” he started, but was cut off when they fell straight through the floor.

It was exactly like the disappearing step at Hogwarts, only a dozen times worse. They fell straight through the stone as though it were air and dropped fifteen, twenty feet into a chamber below.

Alvis’s weight shifted and, when he landed, he toppled backwards, dropping his book, arms flailing. Crack. The base of his skull connected with the wall, hard. The impact left him winded, so he didn’t have the air to shout in pain, but that didn’t stop him from trying. He choked, coughed, and curled up on himself, clinging to the back of his head as his fingers searched for blood that they thankfully didn’t find.

They’d definitely managed to land in the magical section of the tombs this time. The roof above their heads remained solid. The chamber was in fact a long corridor, straight and dim compared to the halls they’d seen before, but kept from total darkness by a particular sort of hieroglyph that glowed a soft green at intervals along the corridor’s length. If Alvis had been in any state to notice them, he would have called it fascinating. As it was, he couldn't even get his head together enough to worry about Philo and Abby. "Ow ow ow ow...."

"Augh!"

This little wince of pain was minutes prior to the localized earthquake. As the trio was walking Philo had his hand to the side, feeling for any odd markings, a sharp rock jutting out from the wall pricked his finger. He was sucking his fingertip when Abby pointed out a bird on the wall. She held up a lighter, which was a good idea actually.

Being the next closest, Philo could see that the bird was not, from their first estimate, a phoenix but that majestic white one from the rug in the carpet stall at the market. "Hey Alvis, isn't this your..."

Philo had touched the marking, pointing with his pricked fingertip, when the ground beneath them gave away.

This was very much worse than Flying lessons and Philo hadn't been prepared for it at all and he was going to land at a bad angle and a bleeding finger was not going to be his only injury and...and...insert a bunch of horrible but appropriate swearing from Arlaug here.

Impact was surprisingly soft, spongier than he had expected for falling down one story onto a stone floor below. After the initial shock he realized that he was sprawled across half of Runner, which he didn't remember standing by when they were up there. So, had the carpet managed to fall underneath them and absorb some of the impact...?

"Ow ow ow ow...."

Philo looked up, horrified, where Alvis lay curled next to the wall. He hadn't managed to land on the carpet. "Alvis! Are you alright!?" He hoped there wasn't blood.

Alvis exclaimed something, and then Abby screamed as they fell through the floor. Her sunglasses were knocked off her head, her lighter out of her hand, she landed on fabric, and then bounced off about a foot down, landing on her bum. It smarted, but not too badly.

Waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darker corridor, Abby sat there, stunned. Luckily, her purse had tangled up around her arm, though a few things had likely fallen out during the fall.

One of the boys muttering in pain moved her to action. Led by the strange glowing light off the wall, Abby crawled the short distance toward Alvis on the cold stone floor.

"Alvis?" Her voice wavered and she glanced at Philo, who seemed to be in one piece. "Can you move? You probably shouldn't move," Abby hovered over him.

"He should stay put, right?" She asked the first-year, then opened up her purse and fished out her phone.

"We can-" Abby opened it. A 'no service' signal greeted her.

A chill going through her, she looked up, thinking they could levitate to safety if Alvis and Philo used their wands, but the ceiling was sealed tight!

"I'm all right. I'm all right." This was obviously a lie. There was no blood and no broken skin, but every time he tried to open his eyes the odd light of the hallway twisted into bright flashes. Alvis hiss through his teeth and covered his eyes with one hand, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I...my head...I hit it, but I don't think it's too bad."

Pull yourself together, he told himself sharply, trying to draw the pieces of his mind back into a coherent whole. This was a tomb, an Egyptian wizard's tomb, possibly the most dangerous gravesite known to man. He was the oldest wizard here. He couldn't just curl up and die here, even if he wanted to, he had to look out for Philo and Abby and...and...

White feathers, glistening like snow in the lazy September sun. Hands, scared and calloused, yet surprisingly gentle with such a creature of delicate beauty. An aura of hope and love. Conversation. Words. A name. Two...

Alvis cracked open his eyes. The lights seemed as normal as they were going to get now, sickly blue glows in the darkness as they were. He licked his lips and tried to commit the word to memory. "Caladrius. That's what it's called, the divine bird. It's a caladrius."

He uncurled and rolled over, sitting back against the wall. His head was still pounding. He spread out his fingers in the sickly blue glow and counted them. Ten. That was the correct number. "I think I'm okay," he said, not entirely convincing. "It hurts, but I can keep going. We can't just sit here. We need to go. Right, boy?" He peered through the darkness at Runner, who sat nearby with the energy of a dog who's trying to be patient but really wants to goforawalkrightnowplease.

Alvis rubbed his head one last time to check for blood - there was none - and sighed, holding out his hands. "Help me up? If I can get standing I think I'll be okay."

"Are you sure you're okay?" Philo asked. He knew that sometimes, wild uncontrollable magic would rescue kids that got in danger before they ever entered school but once they learned to channel magic through a wand this tended to stop. Unless they pursued a career in quidditch where the players regularly shrugged off falls from heights akin to the goalposts.

Alvis' side comment was enough to derail Philo's thought. "Caladrius? What...oh. White bird with long tail feathers. I knew I'd seen the name in an appendix of magical birds. But what was the offering supposed to be?" All he could recall was that Abby had shone a light on the mural and he had touched it with a bleeding finger. He had expected the entrance would take more to pass.

Philo gave Alvis a hand, as best as he could anchor himself to lift up the older student. Runner even squirmed under Alvis to assist the lifting by bunching up like a spring.

"Thanks." It still felt silly to talk to a rug, even though it had rescued most of them by cushioning the impact. He turned to look into the hall ahead. Steps sunk into a lower chamber. The whole tomb was lit with ethereal, shimmering lights. Philo lead the way down into the next chamber. It was filled with different objects and furniture, the treasures Amahté Ialu was meant to take into the afterlife.

"Who dares enter the..." The voice came out of nowhere. Philo jumped, stumbling back. A figure drifted down through the rough hewn ceiling. It certainly looked egyptian with a tunic with grand design and wrappings, plus a headdress and staff. The ghost paused in its haunting warning. "Children?"

"Um, hi," Philo wasn't sure how to address long dead former royalty. "You must be Amahté Ialu. We have something of yours, well, found it forgotten about in a room back at Hogwarts, our school. Run--a carpet, which, since we've come to Egypt we've learned was yours. Apparently there was some kind of...well, here it is."

The ghost looked down at the carpet. "It returned." Something seemed off about that comment. Philo frowned. "For all I had prepared myself for the afterlife, I foolishly believed that only if I took everything I would achieve peace. To think I chose to remain in this life over a stolen treasure. To business."

The magic carpet for once lay motionless. The ghost of Amahté Ialu walked across it. Then stopped. "It is done. Would you like to keep it for the next millennium?"

Philo was so speechless he had to say "WHAT?!"

The ghost was none too perturbed. "A horrid business in my original order for the carpet. That it would not work unless its master walked across it once every thousand years. In our quests for immortality in that age, it seemed like a good deal at the time. Immortality is not what I expected, in this form of a spirit."

Philo was still blown away at the concept. "But, I could keep it?"

"Boy, I am only ba, a ghost on this earth. All that I have collected in my life I can no longer use. You are not the first to return my carpet. The times it has been stolen from my tomb, lost for ages and returned again. I could do little but scare away grave robbers at first, though the magical kind such as yourselves are seldom deterred. The carpet may as well be used."

"Oh." Philo returned to the cacophonous silence in his brain. Runner slithered back to where Philo was standing.

"Is there anything else from my tomb you would want? The last one thousand years have been eventless. Generosity is the lesson I have learned in death."

"On, um, no, just the carpet is fine." Philo shrugged with the same disbelieving look at the other two. He didn't want to push the hospitality of a ghost. The whole event was much more surreal than he had expected.

Abby stood in the lower chamber of the tomb with the two boys and gaped at the ghost. The spirit of an ancient Egyptian wizard was actually talking to them! It was friendly! It offered them shiny things! This was completely different from what she'd imagined a spirit of a tomb would do or say, and she couldn't help but be grateful that they'd encountered him when he'd... mellowed.

Young Philo seemed able to speak to the spirit in a much more thoughtful manner than Abby would have (lots of 'wow really!'), so she simply remained close to Alvis in case he needed to lean on someone.

"Wait!" Abby blurted after Philo told the ghost they'd just like to keep the rug.

“Sorry, Mr…. Ba,” she continued. “Could you tell us how to get out? That would be so helpful. Please.”

Abby shot a nervous grin at Amahté Ialu.

The ghost pointed one long, nearly translucent finger at one of the corridors leading away from the chamber. It lit up with an eerie glow. As she walked through the room, Abby looked regretfully at all the beautiful things around them, picked up a small artifact that had caught her eye, then glanced back.

The spirit nodded. Abby gave him the thumbs up sign, pocketed the object, and kept going.

At the end of the glowing corridor, stairs awaited them. The steps were crumbled and worn. She whirled around, about to run back to the ghost and ask for help, when Runner edged past her and flattened itself in front of the students, hovering in the air. In the air!

Before she could hop on, a voice sounded behind her, near the corridor's entrance. It was the best and the worst thing Abby had ever heard.

“Abby!” Her sister called, accompanied by a very tall, very familiar figure.

As he'd guessed, Alvis felt better once he was on his feet. He was a little unsteady and all the sounds had an odd fuzzy quality to them, as though his head were wrapped in cotton, but he only needed to lean on Abby's shoulder once during Philo's conversation with Amahté Ialu. He listened to what was going on, but found it hard to focus - underneath everything that was happening in the real world, there lurked a tickle of memory.

He couldn't remember what he'd forgotten. That was the most frustrating thing. He remembered forgetting, but couldn't remember what it was he'd lost. All he had to go on was that bird -- the caladrius -- and a name that he couldn't quite place -- Fai-gehl.

He managed to drag himself back to the present long enough to catch the tail end of the conversation, which made him smile. So, Runner would stay with them after all. That was good. He'd grown fond of it, and he suspected that Philo had too. When Abby pocketed her treasure,  Amahté Ialu glanced at Alvis as though offering him a gift as well. Alvis was about to refuse when his eye fell on a small, marble statue of the very bird they'd searched for to enter the tomb. He picked it up, glanced to the ghost for confirmation and, when he got it, even managed a bow without falling over. "Thank you for your hospitality, sir. Rest well."

When the ghost had gone, Alvis followed Abby up the lit corridor, turning the bird statue over and over in his hand. Runner slithered along between him and Philo, and Alvis smiled down at it. "Feeling better?" he asked, before glancing to Philo with a small smile. "All things considered, this went rather well. So long as we don't have trouble getting out..."

He stopped in mid-sentence, faced with the crumpled stairs. Runner darted forward and presented itself for use, much to everyone's surprise, but before they could take it up on the offer, Professor Reid's voice came from behind.

"Damn." Alvis cringed and turned hesitantly to meet the approaching professor. Professors. Even in the gloom, both were immediately recognizable, and filled him with the mixed bag of horror and relief. "Ah...Professor Reid. Professor Trishna. ...Hi?"

The tunnels they'd wandered through had been long and dark, covered with odd paintings and frescoes and traps. Aside from the rooms with the phoenixes and the traps that tried to cut their heads off, this might have been a very interesting place to visit...if they hadn't been visiting it while possibly trapped themselves and having to save Abby, Alvis and Philo. Bloody kids!

It had felt like hours before the dim light of the glowing tunnel had lit up the side corridors Tapendra and Aileen had been trapped in. Following the glow had, in the long run, been the right thing to do...and not just because it meant his phone still had some battery life.

"Abby!" His own cry echoed Aileen's, and his long stride carried him past her as he ran down the corridor to the children. The two professors shared an appearance, at the moment - dusty, bruised, and generally stressed and put upon. His shirt was ripped in a few places and one of his cheeks was slowly swelling - hit and cut by the falls in the dark.

Mind you, the kids didn't look much better. Tapendra came to a stop a few feet away - looking at the carpet with mild surprise - before he looked at them.

"Are you  all alright?" he asked, brows furrowed. "What were you all doing here?"

Hair crusted with sand and shirt stained with who-knew-what, Aileen ran over to the kids with Tapendra. They stood by stairs and a flying rug. She grabbed Abby by the shoulders and looked her over for injuries, ignoring the girl's rambled protests that she was alright.

She seemed alright. A bruise here or there, but walking, talking, and even attempting to smile apologetically. Aileen released her and stepped back. A gamut of emotions flickered across her face as she stared at her sister, unable to decide whether to scream or slap her silly.

She took a deep breath. Her fingernails dug into her palms. Finally, she looked at the boys, wondering if they too were ok, and letting Tapendra speak first.

"It's just the three of you?" Aileen questioned suddenly, her voice strained as she ran a hand through her hair. She wanted them out. She wanted to leave. She glanced up the stairs, then back at Alvis and Philo, unable to even look at Abby right now.

There's a transitive nature between a boy and his pet, like a psychic connection where one empathizes with the other. Philo's face blanched when he saw the professors, a horror worse than any ghost or falling a story. He couldn't say anything but realized to his worsening horror that these were the times Arlaug liked to...

By squishing his satchel tight in his hands Philo just managed to smother out the "%@$*?!!" coming from the Swear Frog.

"P-Professors." Oh no, he'd been getting on so well with Ms. Reid earlier in the trip. She'd never let him into Ancient Runes now. He'd dodged a stupefy once before with Professor Trishna, during an Astronomy session, and this wasn't the same as choosing the wrong possible time to fix omnioculars.

"There is an explanation for, for, this," Philo gulped. "At the start of the trip, no, at the end of the year I found this," his foot tapped Runner. The carpet bunched into an 's' shape in response. There had to be a way he could word it so it wasn't too bad. "Well, it found me, sorta and kept following me until all the way to Egypt, where it broke out and almost left the hotel one night, that's how Abby and Alvis know. So we, Alvis and I, took it to a flying carpet merchant in Cairo and he says this carpet is unlike any he's ever seen at it was owned by a pharaoh, a wizard one, and it was stolen from his tomb which just happens to be at the Valley of the Kings.

"So I, well we thought, if that's where the carpet belongs we'd try to find his tomb and, um, return it? Only we didn't realize the entrance would cause the floor to give way, so we took a tumble. But we met the ghost, oh, I didn't say his name? It's Amahté Ialu. And there's this, sort of self fulling prophecy or something where Ialu has to walk across the carpet each millennium and that, like, recharges it? Keeps the magic? Whatever. So..."

Only in the magical world could stories like these be so unbelievable and yet so true. "So...and...he just said he doesn't mind me keeping the carpet." Philo had to say more than that. He pointed. "And the exit is that way."