Hannah and Hailey had shut themselves in the garage working on some tech to help track the Olympians' group of young heroes. The blowtorch and soddering iron could be heard from inside their brownstone. Komos took over the kitchen to prepare enough dinner for seven teenagers, a satyr, a dryad and an always hungry underworld hound.
"What's your progress children?" Komos yelled, stirring a bechamel sauce for some bulk moussaka.
"The books Cronus got are all pretty useless." Enrico replied.
Pomelia and Akira flipped through the latest grimoire sent in by the egomaniac god of time.
"This one's another dud. What do you think?" Pomelia asked Akira. He just nodded.
"How long have we been doing this?" Enrico asked this time.
Akira looked at his watch. Three hours. Cronus really didn't know how to look for useful alchemy textbooks and grimoires.
Pomelia and her friends were flipping through various magical texts to reference some spells useful to Cronus. The God of time was a maniacal ego-maniac, but he was vague in his criteria of useful spells to trap or defeat heroes under the protection of Olympian Gods.
"Oh! Is this something?" Akira showed the grimoire he held to Enrico and Pomelia. The ink was smudged in a few places but the spell was legible and clear enough. From a French alchemist apparently.
"A necromancy spell?"Enrico wondered if Cronus wanted to raise the dead as some kind of disposable army. He knew Pomelia knew some necromancy but it was not a favored discipline when it came to alchemy and other mystic arts to most magic practitioners across Europe.
The front door burst open. Orfeo and Aurélie trudged carrying stacks of plastic containers full of antique-looking tomes.
"How goes things?"Orfeo belted with a grunt. The boxes were heavy.
"Most of Cronus's suggestions have been useless, "Enrico told his cousin.
"Expected."
Aurélie followed suit but the smell of moussaka distracted her enough to pull her into the kitchen.
"What about this one?" Enrico had grabbed another grimoire to flip through when he landed on a spell that involved one of the bowls their group had to steal.
Pomelia took a peak. The spell helped find ley line locations. This would make travel less risky. The Olympian heroes had easier access to the underworld then they did and their knowledge on magic seemed dependent on the gods. So the likelihood that they had no knowledge of the Earth's ley lines was high.
"Huh. That could work actually."
***************
Odie and Neil were in the library looking up the artefacts Cronus's minions were stealing. European news media couldn't keep up with all the thefts but Odie managed to get enough data to predict a potential pattern to these magicians' escapades. Maybe anyway. Neil had to be there to help Odie because Aphrodite had postponed their lessons while all the other Gods were busy teaching their own young protégés.
"This is boring." Neil sighed. " What are we supposed to be finding again?"
Odie sighed in turn this time.
"We're trying to see why Cronus wants these artefacts. What do these things have in common for Cronus to have his eye on it."
"It just looks like a bunch of rusty dishes to me."
"Neil if you read a bit on the history in the books I gave you-"
Neil interrupted Odie.
"Hey Odie, check this out."
Odie glared at first but obliged. Neil handed him a folklore book. The page Neil had open was about ley lines.
"Ley lines?" Odie asked. "What about them?"
"You think this is how they get around?"
Odie hadn't considered that. Neil did make a good point (to Odie's annoyance).
"Maybe. But how what makes you think that to start?" Neil had a knack for random spurts of good ideas. It was just hard to see how they came about to Odie's more logic based mind.
"They don't have Hermes's portal. Cronus didn't seem to use his scythe vortexes for his minions. They have to have something."
Odie thought about Neil's point more. The main obstacle to this was locating the entrances to each ley line. How would those magicians even manage that? Let's save that thought for now.
Odie ended Neil's correct train of thought with "Let's save that for now and keep looking at the artefacts. We need to see what these are for first."
YOU ARE READING
The Ghost Queen
FanfictionCronus has survived his defeat against the young heroes and has finally found a weapon stronger then anything the teenaged heroes have encountered: a group of desperate alchemists and magicians ready to wager their lives to him. But will a random en...
