Chapter Eight

Hermes' boots touched down on the hewn stone path of the temple's Garden of the Divine with deft skill and confident footwork. The garden was on the rooftop of this great temple and displayed an incredibly detailed mosaic on the bottom of its central pool. The nearby anchor chain had been incorporated into the garden by utilizing oxidized copper styled in the form of vines to help hide the massive arcane chain's presence in the serene garden.

 With little time to enjoy the scenery, Hermes approached the stairwell that ran along the exterior of the garden, descending two whole stories before offering a doorway to enter the temple. The lock of the door was enchanted by a skilled artificer of the Faith and disengaged itself at the presence of Hermes' divine essence, granting him access to the temple's interior.

 Once inside, Hermes found himself in a short hallway. On either side of the hall were doorways to enter bathing chambers. Standing outside the chambers were the Sworn Servants, but Hermes dismissed their gazes with a wave of his hand and continued onward, going to the end of the hall and opening a massive pair of doors that opened onto a circular wrapping balcony that overlooked the central gap of the temple that surrounded the anchor's chain as it descended into the depth of the temple tower.

 The floors directly beneath him would be where Sanctuary was to be found, the apartments of the divine. But, of course, that was assuming the god recalled the temple's layout correctly. Hermes did not want to put much certainty in his architectural recall as he was not prone to staying in temple apartments. Instead, Hermes preferred to spend the night sleeping under the stars or sharing a campfire with others, and when he was found in a city after night, he preferred the embrace of a local brothel's companion or the company of a merchant or traveler he met in an inn's parlor.

 Hermes knocked on a nearby pillar carved from Olympian Oak, glancing back to the Sworn Servants. Once he had their attention, the messenger flashed an urgent smile. "Has my sister, the Divine Heir, been seen within this temple's walls recently?"

 The Sworn Servants looked confused, but after a brief pause, a young man stepped forward and offered a nod. "I saw the Just One just prior to starting my shift, my prince."

 Not a prince, Hermes did not say as he gave a thankful nod. "And where might she be found?"

 "I had seen her speaking with your cousin on the ground floor."

 That was all Hermes needed. Finally, some luck, he thought to himself as he vaulted over the balcony's railing and let the forces of gravity usher him to the ground in haste. Just before impact, the enchantments of his Talaria reminded him of why he put such faith in them as they activated and channeled a cushion of air to gently place him on the floor.

 The sudden gust of wind caused by the air being released once Hermes' feet were firmly placed made priestly garments flutter and flap and blew the flame from countless candles, but Hermes knew his apology would only delay him as countless priests would clamor to tell him there was no need of apology. So without a word, Hermes gave an expressive look to the priest holding the Key of Ascension, and without a moment of confusion, the priest pointed to a nearby alcove.

 With prompt feet, Hermes approached the alcove. He saw his half-sister Athena discussing some matter with a shadowed figure at some distance. The matter must have been of considerable importance for her not to have noticed Hermes' arrival. As the messenger closed the distance, revealing the other participant in the conversation, he recognized why her attention was so focused.

 "Atlantis will agree to provide a blockade across the sea but it will affect both parties mutually," said the sea god Triton, cousin to Hermes and Athena's estranged husband. With the appearance of a man in his prime with a distinguished beard, hair that had a wet sheen to it at all times, and wearing the military attire of an Atlantean admiral, Triton was unmistakable. His pale lips further hinted at his nymphatic heritage as he flashed a smile at seeing Hermes appear nearby. "We will help you prevent a war, Athena; but we're not interested in helping you fight another war with the Empire."

 "I assure you, that is exactly what I am asking of you and nothing more. The last thing I want is another war with my demented brother," said Athena, who finally took notice of Hermes when she glanced over her shoulder to see exactly the reason for Triton's sudden smile. "Brother?"

 Hermes chuckled as he tipped his bowler hat. "M'lady," he said with an exaggerated Athenian accent. Shifting back to his regular inflection, he continued, "So if you're so keen on avoiding war, mind telling me why your ship attacked a Spartan village?"

 Athena scoffed at her younger brother. There was an uncomfortable moment, as she was likely trying to discern if her silly brother was making a joke that she had not grasped. Finally, she ruled that out and inquired with a concerned expression. "I beg your pardon?"

 Hermes scowled, unamused. "I saw the ruins of Metus' plaza," said Hermes. "I could smell the smoke of Republican weapons and I saw the orphaned children," he detailed, not adding that he had witnessed all such things from a great distance as he blew past the village in great haste to arrive in Athens. "Your missing airship assaulted a Sparta town. Your people killed innocent mortals!"

 Shaking her head, Athena refused to acknowledge such a possibility. "What are you going on about, little brother? Surely this is some scheme or joke in poor taste? You cannot be serious."

 "I can, when occasion permits, be quite serious, sister," said Hermes, tucking his caduceus under his arm. "As does our father."

 Athena took a step back to assess Hermes' body language. Not that it would do much good. Hermes was a skilled liar when he needed to be, and her knowing that only made this moment more difficult for him to convince her of his legitimate claim. But not to fret, Hermes simply had to turn on his innate charm and utilize the essence of oration to empower his words with added weight and merit.

 "I came here on errand from father," said Hermes. "First I spoke with Ares and saw the evidence. I now am looking to give you a fair chance to refute the evidence, sister. Please, believe me."

 With a pensive gaze and a slight nod, Athena let out a soft sigh. "Very well, Hermes. I shall believe you."

 Hermes smiled. In the depths of his core, he knew this would be the decision she would arrive upon. He and she went way back. They were children of the same father, but their relationship was not just that. Their father had often sent them together on his most crucial of assignments, trusting his eldest daughter and youngest acknowledged son to have all the necessary skills and talents needed for any circumstance.

 "Perhaps we should take this matter to another chamber?" asked Triton.

 While Hermes and Athena had a long and complex history, Athena and Triton were connected long before. In the time before the usurpation, Athena and Triton had wed. Though it was initially a political marriage to guarantee Zeus and Poseidon's loyalty to one another, Athena was still mourning the loss of her mother, and Triton had been the god most willing to comfort her. This gesture led to true love, or whatever the equivalent was for the divine. Shortly before Hermes' birth, the two had a daughter named Kalliste. Hermes had liked her. He would even say he had a crush on her, but Kalliste was not interested in Hermes and his silly games and petty tricks.

 Kalliste had her mother's strategic mind and her father's love for the sea, making her an exceptional admiral. When the time for the grand conflict came, Kalliste was given command of a war fleet while Hermes was still considered too young and tasked to only serve as a scout, leading troops with his faithful satyr companion, Pan. In that final battle, Kalliste's ship was sunk by the Titan Pallas, and she was utterly destroyed by the same Titan.

 The loss of their daughter affected the marriage of the daughter of Zeus and the son of Poseidon. Athena turned to her books, and Triton returned to the sea, going on incredibly long voyages that would last decades at a time. After centuries of this, Triton decided to return to Atlantis and help his father rule their kingdom there instead of seeking out his wife.

 To be honest, Hermes was not really sure where things stood with the two as he stood before them at that moment. His instincts would tell him that they would have attempted to reconcile at some point in their long history, but Hermes hated to rely on assumptions.

 Following Athena to a nearby stairwell curving upward, Hermes joined the goddess and Triton in an office reserved for private study of the clergy. It was vacant at that moment and would provide the solitude they needed to further discuss these matters.

 "So, you actually saw the wreckage of the A.R.S. Advancer?" asked Athena once she had secured the door behind the other gods. "What was the state of its crew?"

 "Dead," Hermes said most bluntly. He weighed if he should discuss the missing token of death from their uniform pouch but decided to give Ares a chance to punish the offenders before he needed to sour Athena's opinion of their brother any further with talk of apostate misdeeds among the imperial army. "Well, at least the crew was as much. I cannot be certain of the ship's captain as she was not among the row of corpses I saw. Word from our dear brother Hephaestus was that her corpse had been taken away."

 Athena did not like the sound of that. She took a step closer and tilted her head to one side with a soured expression. "Excuse me? She?" asked Athena. "The captain of the Advancer was a man. Captain Coulmier of Aphidnae,"

 That caught Hermes off-guard. "Pardon me?"

 Athena nodded. "I assure you. I have been briefed on the matter and I do not forget such things, as you know."

 Hermes glanced at Triton and then back to Athena. He dug his hand into his pocket and produced the locket he had claimed from the wreckage. His thumb found the small latch and popped it open to reveal its interior portrait and inscription bearing name, rank, and township of origin. The locket was not a sentimental piece of jewelry but was the Athenian identification method, usually only afforded to seasoned veterans or officers. As Hermes kept hold of the chain, he dropped the locket into Athena's hand.

 "Then who in Hades' name is Commander Fleuri of Thorikos?" asked Hermes with a determined gaze.

 After eyeing this locket for a long moment, Athena scowled. Then, finally, she stood upright and waved Hermes to follow her as she reached for the door and swung it open with considerable force. Hermes glanced at Triton, who leaned forward and let his feet carry him in pursuit as she departed the room. Hermes then did likewise. After they descended the steps, the trio crossed the temple's main floor, causing many a follower and cleric to drop to a reverent bow or zealous kneel. It was not every day that three prominent deities strode through the temple without warning.

 Entering another corridor, Athena found a massive door with armed templars outside it standing guard. With but a look from her spectacled eyes, the guards admitted her and her divine companions beyond. This led the trio to a descending stairwell that went into the depths of the basement. Every forty steps or so, there was a landing with a single door before the stairwell would continue in a slowly spiraling fashion. The three crossed three landings, ignoring their doorways entirely until they arrived on the fourth landing, where Athena opened the door and left Hermes and Triton to follow her on their own accord.

 While Triton was right on Athena's heels, Hermes paused to eye a doorway opposite the one Athena entered. This doorway would have been on the exterior of the temple's walls if it were on the surface level, and Hermes' wit quickly informed him this door, if opened, would likely reveal an inclined corridor that would lead up to the surface. This ramp would be used for hauling the dead from the burial chamber to the grave plots or mausoleum. So informed Hermes turned about and stepped into the chamber where three dissected corpses were found. Hermes recognized one of the corpses as the owner of the locket.

 "Well, greetings to you, Fleuri…" said Hermes. Judging by the condition and poor treatment of the bodies inside the burial chamber of a grand temple, it was apparent what sort of person Fleuri had been in life. "Heretics, I see..."

 Fleuri was a comely woman or would have been in life, decidedly less so now. She was stripped of her clothing entirely, revealing the features of a native Theban, though her hairstyling was decidedly Corinthian. She had beautiful and smooth hands, except for the darkness underneath her fingernails.

 Athena nodded. "We had yet to identify them as they refused to give their names, but this woman and this man here," she said as her finger indicated the shorter male corpse, "were found wearing military attire.

 Hermes eyed the man and raised his right eyebrow as he took a step closer and tucked his stolen locket away. "Is this Captain Coulmier?"

 Shaking her head, Athena held an upset expression on her brow. "No. Captain Coulmier had a photograph in his service file. Plus the uniform he was wearing was of the infantry and had markings of a brigadier, not a captain."

 Hermes gave a sage nod, acknowledging Athena had a good point. "Well, then where is Captain Coulmier?"

 "If I may," said Triton. "Perhaps he is near the border? Possibly rotting atop some forest canopy or at the bottom of a gorge?"

 "Pardon?" asked Athena, raising an eyebrow.

 "Are you suggesting highwaymen tactics?" Hermes asked before pausing to click his tongue, shake his head and try again. "Or rather, skywaymen activity? Eh? Eh?"

 Athena sighed and shook her head at her brother before composing herself with an inquisitive glance at Triton. "Explain."

 Triton cleared his throat. "Perhaps the Advancer was intercepted by a larger airship, boarded, and had its crew replaced by insurgents hoping to escalate hostilities between the Empire and the Republic?"

 Athena adjusted her glasses. "Hijacked?"

 Hermes took a deliberate step to place him between the two divinities as he cleared his throat and smiled. "More like skyjacked, am I right?"

 Athena ignored her brother for the moment. "You think our ship was hijacked and did not have a chance to send a pulse-click warning?" she asked as she eased her brother aside with a firm hand on his chest as she moved closer to Triton. "How would such a takeover occur?"

 Unappreciated for his humor, Hermes stepped back and wandered over to give dead Fleuri a closer examination.

 "It is possible there was a stowaway," said Triton, "or a turncoat among the crew. A single well-trained operative acting with the element of surprise could easily dispatch a small crew in such an enclosed space. Once the ship was taken over, it would just require meeting up with another vessel to bring aboard the replacement crew."

 "A replacement crew entirely resigned to such a suicide mission?" asked Athena with a scoff.

 Hermes stroked his chin and shook his head. "Not necessarily," he added. "Maybe they were simply unaware of the Spartan military presence near Povar and Metus?"

 Athena did not seem convinced. "A third party? Bandit hijackers?" she scoffed. "I say this was Ares' men."

 Hermes scratched his head. "Uh… how do you figure that?"

 "Spartoi," said Athena, referring to the five mystical earthen beings that could spring from the ground at Ares' command to serve at his bidding as the Champion of Olympus. Also known as the Sown-Ones, the Spartoi were elemental soldiers of deft skill, limitless stamina, and remarkable resilience. They were legendary for their prowess in battle and part of what made Ares such a daunting deity to face on the battlefield. "They have no fear of mortal death."

 Hermes folded his arms, not sold on the idea. "Assuming Ares is fine with slaughtering his own people to provoke a war with you, sister; I believe you are forgetting an important element. Spartoi spring forth from the ground," Hermes said with a smug smirk. "They aren't a frequent sight in the air."

 Athena glowered at the smartass god. "He could summon them from the ground and then use one of his own airships to transfer them to the Advancer… or maybe he slaughtered the crew when they were at ground or sea level for refueling?"

 Triton nodded as he idly scratched his beard. "All possible, but I would like to hear what Hermes' suspicions might be. He has seen the damage to the target and to the cruiser. What say you, cousin?"

 Put on the spot, Hermes was not sure he had an actual theory yet. He felt there was still something unanswered, and he could not quite place his finger on what it was; however, as he leaned back, the god did just that when he accidentally put his hand on the dead officer's extracted organs. "Eureka," Hermes said as he wiped his hand on a spare wiping rag and then pointed to the deceased heretics. "They are the key. But, for whatever reason, Fleuri is the missing link between these two instances. How did her locket end up on the Advancer, and how did she end up here in an entirely different country?"

 Athena as she stepped up to stand at Hermes' side as the two gripped the edge of the slab on which the officer was laid out. "These three were found breaking into Fleet Command last week. They had forged documents on their persons. We suspect they were attempting to replace these with official records in the archives."

 "Can I see these forged documents?" asked Hermes.

 Athena pointed over to a nearby shelf where a photographed replica of the documents was sitting. Hermes paced over to that shelf and retrieved it. The images were blurred and somewhat difficult to discern in the poor lighting of lantern light, but Hermes was the god of writing, and with little preternatural focus, he had no difficulty whatsoever.

 There were seven photographs, and four were the documents in question. The other three were simply the deceased's arrest portraits. The documents were rather dull and procedural, hardly incriminating in the slightest without the context of the documents they had planned to replace these for. What Hermes did find interesting was Fleuri's portrait.

 "Athena," he said, walking over to lay the portrait over Fleuri's dissected torso. "She is wearing the clothing of a pilot here, yet…" he grabbed her hand and tapped his fingertip to one of the corpse's own. "Notice this? Engine grease…"

 "So?" asked Athena, raising an eyebrow. "She was a pilot."

 Hermes shook his head. "Pilots don't mess with their engines. Pilots have to spend their time memorizing weather charts, flight paths, and instrumental indicators. They trust their engines to the engineers. Even if the pilot were a control freak who liked to personally assure that lugs were tightened or something, they wouldn't get that deep-seated engine grease underneath their fingernails like this… No this here is stained in her fingertips, sister. She's not a flight jockey, she's a pit boss."

 "Pit boss?" asked Triton. "What makes you so sure she was a lead engineer? She could have been a wrench-wench or a-"

 "The locket," Hermes insisted, again dangling that for a spell before tossing it to Triton. "It has her name and picture. It's genuine, too. I already assessed that much. It isn't a forgery. She was a legit ship engineer of the Republic. She held rank. Probably was well-educated, too."

 "It doesn't explain how her locket ended up on the Advancer," said Athena. "Especially when she was captured last week and the Advancer did not leave port until after she was captured."

 Hermes shook his head. "No, it doesn't… unless-" Hermes paced a ways toward the door before he pivoted on his foot. "Anyone know what Ulysses is up to these days?"

 Triton looked confused for a moment, but Athena caught on quick. "You think this was a Trojan Horse scenario?" she asked.

 "I would need to examine the wreckage again," said Hermes with a scowl and scoff. "Ares will not like that. He'll say I am stalling, but… Yes, I think it's possible that Fleuri could have installed a secret compartment for a stowaway, maybe even two of them. She could have also secretly added weaponry to the Advancer. Like a bomb-bay for a single, large incendiary device like what was dropped on Metus."

 "And the locket?" asked Triton.

 "It's possible it simply fell off while she was working on the ship covertly," said Athena, stroking her chin.

 "Hmm," nodded Hermes. "If it went missing during such unapproved work, it would be difficult to report it lost."

 Athena nodded. "I do recall in a briefing that there was mention of the Advancer having recently been down for extensive repairs and inspection. I shall have this looked into at once."

 "But the pilot's uniform?" asked Triton.

 "A pilot accessing the archives would not turn a head," said Athena, nodding. "As Hermes explained, pilots need access to weather reports and detailed maps and flight manuals. He speaks the truth to that much. The archives are a good pilot's second home."

 "But an engineer would cause suspicion?" asked Triton.

 Athena nodded. "In the Fleet Command Archives? Certainly. Technical manuals are available elsewhere and unless she was studying classified airships' detailed schematics, she should have no reason to access such records."

 Hermes smirked as he eyed Fleuri's corpse. "So, she dressed the part of a pilot and used her clearance as per her rank to access the Fleet Command archives and brought along another high-ranking military officer and a dandy in a suit. No, that would not look too out of place. How did they get caught?"

 "They had an outdated password," said Athena. "We had just changed it the day before at a security meeting as we realized it was outdated. It was a stroke of sheer luck."

 Triton scoffed. "And whoever hijacked the Advancer still went on with the mission, despite these three having been captured?"

 "Must have been desperate," said Hermes, shaking his head. "Too much planning had gone into this; there was too much riding on it. They had to risk it."

 "So, these three… Who are they? Who do they work for?" asked Triton.

 "The Apocryphal Order," said Athena, glowering at the naked bodies.

 "Who?" asked Triton with a dismissive scoff as he eyed the other gods.

 "Better known as the Broken Book," Hermes clarified for his sister.

 "So this is a dead end then?" asked Triton. "Ares will not believe this is the work of some heretics with a locket belonging to a Republican engineer and a trio of corpses."

 Athena let out a long sigh. "Damn it, Tri. You are right. How do we make him see?"

 Placing his hand on Athena's shoulder, Triton gave her a brief squeeze and then strolled off, pausing to drop his own shoulders in the opened doorway. "I best make preparations for the fleet. The Spartans are coming, after all."

 As Triton's booted feet left echoes in the spiral stairwell, Hermes eased closer to Athena. She had an inviting scent, even among the dead and their stale gore. "I have an idea, sister. I could use your help."

 Athena raised an eyebrow. "What is it?"

 "How long has it been since you visited our uncle down below?"

## Characters

### Gods

* Hermes
* Athena
* Triton