Forge of the Gods 3

by Simon Archer

  Forge of the Gods

  Book 3

  Simon Archer

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Hephaestus - God of Blacksmithing

  I brushed my hair back, the sweat making the red strands of my hair stick up every which way. But I did not care. What I cared about was the glowing hot metal in front of me. The Kopis was just begging to be released into the world from this metal. All I had to do was help it along.

  Smooth the sides, sharpen the edges. Craft a delicate wooden handle. It was a thing of beauty. Of Pride for me. To see my work before me in its glory.

  The Italian sun shone through the cavern’s entrance, and I decided to take a break for now.

  Stretching, I walked out onto the beach and took a deep breath and inhaled the smell of the ocean.

  “God of Fire and Blacksmith, you are needed,” Brontes, one of the cyclops under my leadership, called. His steps thundering as he walked out of the cavern to fetch me.

  I raised a brow, but followed the cyclops back into the dark space, lit only by the dozen forges scattered around the edges.

  Steropes and Arges stood before me as well, faces covered in coal and bits of metal from where they had been working inside the caverns.

  Steropes held a missive in his hands, the paper looking ridiculously tiny in his large hands.

  He handed it to me to read and the further I read, the higher my brows rose to my hairline, “Zeus is requesting another weapon. And as is their nature, so have his brothers, Hades and Poseidon. They have specific restrictions for what they want. And they want it done in a month’s time.”

  Steropes, Brontes, and Arges looked between the three of them, surprise showing in each of the cyclopes’ eyes. I knew they were remembering when they created the Original Weapons for the big three Olympians. Of course, that was before my time, so I did not concern myself too much with those weapons.

  I growled, the big three had requested it, so I couldn’t deny it. So with my temper as hot as the forges I worked with, I barked out at the three cyclopes, “Well! Get to work!”

  The cyclopes all startled and ran into each other as they tried to run back into the cavern. I sighed and dragged a hand down my face.

  I gave Brontes the task of dealing with the weapon for Zeus, Poseidon I gave to Steropes, and finally, I committed Hades’ desires to Arges. While I watched over them and critiqued their work.

  I did not know why they had requested new weapons and armor, but I wasn’t about to go up to Olympus and ask. I was at home here in the Italian caves, among the forges that were lit with the original fire and chunks of metal that sang to me and asked to be made into new creations.

  I hid a smirk as I listened to the brothers fight about the right style for a particularly hard part of Zeus’s weapon. They were great blacksmiths in their own right, but they were going to be the absolute best under my leadership. After all, we worked well together as long as they listened to me.

  1

  The helmet was a puzzle I couldn’t solve. No matter how I turned my head this way and that, I couldn’t decipher how it had been made. And that frustrated me.

  I knew that if I could just reach out and touch the metal that it would talk to me. It could give me at least some of the answers to the questions I had about how the blacksmith got the metal to bend to that exact curve. Or what steel was used to create that kind of wavy pattern on the grate across the mouth. Finally, I needed to know how smooth the inside was, optimized for comfort and wearability or for strength and durability. Was it possible to achieve both?

  I blinked once to give myself time to think of another series of questions when a familiar voice called me out.

  “You lost.”

  I looked over my shoulder to see a tall blond woman wearing a tight turtleneck sweater with an orange scarf draped casually around her neck. The sculpted muscles in her arms pushed against the fabric of the sweater as she reached up and ran a hand through her hair. She sauntered up to me, her dress shoes clacking on the tile floor, and got close enough to my back for the hairs on my neck to stand up.

  “I didn’t lose,” I protested, turning back to the suit of armor. After a pause, I glanced around at her. “What did I supposedly lose?”

  “The staring contest with that suit of armor,” Hailey said with a teasing tone. “If I were the jealous type, I would be jealous of the amount of attention you’re giving him.”

  I rolled my eyes and leaned into my girlfriend to reassure her of my loyalty. Though, I never took my attention away from the piece of armor before me.

  “It’s just so fascinating,” I commented as I gestured to the full suit. “I could probably get the rest of it down, just by looking at it but that helmet. It’s confusing me.”

  “Confusing you?” Hailey said, mock surprise in her voice. “The world’s greatest blacksmith can’t figure out how that helmet was made?”

  “No,” I grumbled. I crossed my arms across my chest as if I could stubbornly get the suit to reveal its secrets.

  “Well,” Hailey said as she lowered her mouth down to my ear. “Can’t you just sense it?”

  Her voice tickled across my skin, and I had to fight the urge to turn around and kiss her right there. But, as we were in a very public place and the kind of kiss I wanted wasn’t a chaste one, I resisted.

  “I can’t sense it from here,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. “Not with this stupid thing in the way.”

  I gestured to the glass box that stood between me and the armor. As it was the exhibit’s prized possession, the suit of armor was fiercely protected from the grimy, germy, and oily hands of the public. But the temptation to break the glass and get a sneak peek, just to learn the metal’s secrets was there. And it was loud.

  “We should probably get going before you get any ideas,” Hailey said as if she could read my mind. She looped her arm through mine and gave me a gentle yank.

  “But I want to figure it out!” I stated as I dug in my heels.

  “You’ve been staring at it for twenty minutes,” Hailey argued. “I’ve already been to the Impressionists exhibit and the bathroom while you’ve been standing in the exact same place. And you’re supposed to be on this date with me, remember? It’s our single date day. Not the art.”

  I sighed and reluctantly followed my girlfriend out of the room with the suit of armor into another brightly colored room, this time with tapestries created in the Middle Ages. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as the room with the armor and the weapons that we were just in, but my mind was admittedly less distracted. I could actually focus on my date, the daughter of Apollo, who had kindly brought us to the local art museum for the day.

  It was Hailey’s attempt at a normal date. One that didn’t involve mythical monsters, Grecian gods, or fire-wielding powers of any kind. So far, we were rea
lly successful at keeping things normal, but part of me was just waiting for a gorgon to pop up from somewhere behind one of the marble statues.

  We walked hand in hand through some more rooms of art from the Middle Ages in Europe. We pointed out the dark colors as well as the somber subjects.

  “They all look so depressed,” I commented offhandedly as I looked at a particularly grim picture of a nun as she gazed out a window.

  “It was a depressing time,” Hailey added. “What with the Black Plague, no toilets, no electricity.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I chuckled at her commentary. “Is that all?”

  “No,” Hailey said, shaking her head. “I’m sure the whole time was bleak, with countries going to war over religion, dying of the common cold, believing in only one god, those kinds of things.”

  “I guess it was a depressing time,” I conceded as we passed a portrait of a maiden looking longingly into a river with a spilled bucket beside her.

  “If only they could have predicted the future, seen that good times were ahead,” Hailey said, timing her exclamation perfectly as we moved through history into the Renaissance paintings on display.

  I fell silent at her comment, however, losing any amusement I previously had. Hailey sensed my discomfort and stopped walking. She didn’t drop my hands, but she did turn to look at me with an accusing eye.

  “You’re still thinking about not telling her, aren’t you?” Hailey said sharply.

  I bit my lip and shook my head, unable to admit the words aloud.

  “Cameron,” Hailey said exasperatedly. “Come on. You have to say something.”

  “Do I?” I asked with a light voice, trying to be playful but really stalling.

  “Yes,” Hailey said firmly as she put her hands on her hips. “You have to.”

  “But I want to keep my mom’s relationship with my mom the same and not make it awkward by telling her that she might be able to predict the future,” I said in a harsh whisper, recognizing that we were talking about some pretty unnatural stuff in a public area of mortals.

  Hailey and I were demigods, children of Greek gods. We take after those great heroes of history like Hercules, Achilles, and Perseus. We were from the same bloodlines as those great heroes. It was typical for a demigod to have one type of supernatural ability, inherited from their godly parent. Hailey could control and create fire, which made sense, considering she was the daughter of Apollo, the sun god.

  My other demigod girlfriends had abilities that related to their godly parent as well. Jade was the daughter of Hebe, the cupbearer for the gods and the creator of ambrosia. As such, my girlfriend could blend tastes and flavors in food like the best-trained chefs. Beth was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, and she could create multiples of anything she touched, which the Academy used to make their gardens and lawns identical.

  The most literal ability was from my girlfriend Daniella, who was a daughter of Asclepius, the god of healing and medicine. Daniella was the most skilled healer on campus, even working with my mentor Sarah on her treatments for Parkinson’s disease.

  It turned out that I was rather atypical with my plethora of abilities. As if I wasn’t unusual enough with the bright red hair that grew straight out of my head, my resistance to heat, being a rare male demigod and my ability to control fire. The universe thought it would be amusing to add on the ability to look back at the past and have knowledge of nearly every Greek myth ever. This was also known as a form of the Sight.

  The Sight was the ability to see into the past, present, or future. My particular brand was that of the past. The powers relating to heat and fire made sense, considering my father was Hephaestus, the Greek god of Blacksmiths, but we had no idea where the Sight came from.

  I’d encountered Aphrodite, the goddess of love and desire, last year, and she was the first one to suggest that I even had the Sight. When she said I’d inherited it from my mom, I didn’t believe her. But then when I realized how many of my mom’s silly, rhyming songs turned out to be true, her claim seemed to have had some truth.

  Where my version of the Sight relayed information about the past, my mom’s version of the Sight regarded the future. She could predict things when she sang silly songs, a habit that she started when she worked for the Renaissance Faire. Those silly songs turned out to be full-blown prophecies that could predict the future.

  She gave a particularly meaningful one last summer when she predicted a rather nasty case of love potion spreading around my school. Then she also predicted the cause and how to solve it. It made for a rather exciting semester, but I knew it would force an awkward conversation between my mom and me.

  Hence why I had chickened out and hadn’t said a word. I had seen my mom over Christmas break and should have done it then. But when she greeted me with an ugly Christmas sweater with a Picasso-like rendering of the Grinch’s face and a Santa hat that lit up like a disco ball around the fuzzy white rim, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to ruin this time with her.

  But now that the second semester was over and summer break was just starting, I had three months with her. This was as good of a time as any because if there was some kind of fall out, we would have time to recover.

  Hailey and I already talked about my concern with this second power I had. It was unusual for a demigod to have two gifts like this, and I really did want to get to the bottom of this anomaly, but I didn’t know how to bring it up.

  “I gotta think that she doesn’t know about her powers,” Hailey said, trying to reassure me. “You trust her, right?”

  “Of course,” I said automatically.

  “Then trust that she has her reasons for telling you or for not telling you, whatever they may be,” Hailey said calmly.

  I stopped us in the lobby of the museum. I pulled Hailey down to me and kissed her deeply, not caring about the crowds anymore. It was a small thank you for her reassuring and encouraging words.

  “I’m going to miss you,” I said softly after I pulled away.

  “It’s just three months,” Hailey said kindly.

  In addition to being one of my girlfriends, Hailey was a graduate of the Academy where I was currently a student and a Enka soldier for the Olympic Military. She was the one who originally recruited me for the Demigod Academy for the Elemental Military, where they trained demigods to become soldiers who fight monsters and protect the mortal world from the threats of the Grecian myths.

  We planned to spend as much time as possible together over the summer. We knew it would be difficult with her still being an active soldier and being sent on different missions while school wasn’t in session. However, when she was on leave, she planned to come to my hometown so we could spend as much time as possible together. My other girlfriends had made similar promises, though they were still students like me, so they were coming from their families to spend time with me.

  Because of our limited time, we decided to take this detour to the museum before I went back home for the summer. Hailey thought that we could kill some time and enjoy being a normal couple before I went home, and she had to go on her next mission for the Military.

  We wandered around the various exhibits, ate a snack in the café, and simply enjoyed each other’s presence. As it was nearing the end of the day, we walked out of the museum and into the humid summer air.

  The sun was still up, thanks to daylight savings time, but more and more people poured out of the museum, ready to go home. Mom was supposed to pick me up soon, and Hailey would ride off in her father’s chariot, though we had to land it in a nearby park to avoid the eyes of the mortals.

  Hailey pulled me out of the crowd and led me to a stone bench at the bottom of the museum steps. She took my hands in hers and rubbed the top of my hand with her thumb.

  “Before you know it, I’ll be back in the chariot, whisking you back to campus,” she said, the hope clear in her voice.

  “Can’t wait,” I said through a grimace, thinking of our past ride
s in her dad’s chariot.

  “Oh, come on,” Hailey prodded. “It gets better each time you ride it.”

  “Considering I’ve only ridden it a handful of times, and one of those was a crash landing, I’m not so sure,” I countered, keeping my tone playful to hide my fear.

  “The crash landing was your fault,” Hailey pointed out, “and every other landing has been smooth as butter, thank you very much.”

  While she had a point, I still shivered at the thought of riding the chariot. I had never been a big fan of heights. I liked to have both my feet on the ground, preferably by a fire, if possible. Up in the air was so cold, so windy, and just so very, very high up. I only managed to get through the last couple of trips back and forth to campus because instead of looking at the ground, I just looked at Hailey the whole time. It was cheesy, but I just put my confidence in her and held very tightly to the railing.

  Just like right then, I held onto her hands tightly and leaned into her presence. I tilted my head so it could rest on her shoulder, simply wanting to be in this moment with her. If I could drag it on for eternity, or even just another five minutes, I would have been content.

  Unfortunately, we barely got a minute to ourselves before a horn blared. The noise startled us apart, and we both looked up in the direction of the obnoxious sound.

  My mom sat in her car, a tan station wagon, with the windows rolled down so my two dogs, Khryseos and Argyreos, could hang their large heads out and enjoy the wind. The Dobermans looked ridiculous as they tried to cram their heads out and over one another upon seeing me.