To Lyger 0: As just one example, scholars assumed the Trojan War was entirely mythical… until the ruins of Troy were found, exactly where they were supposed to be!

"Here we are: it was just inside here that we found the device that gave us our powers."

Francisco picked his way up the slight incline on the side of Mount Olympus to where Dimitrios stood beside a couple of scrub bushes, Mira following close behind him. Behind Dimitrios, mostly hidden by a tangled mass of brush, he could see an uneven opening, barely large enough for a man to fit through, beyond which Francisco could see little more than blackness. Leaning against the side of the mountain, Dimitrios edged away from the opening, allowing Francisco to move in closer. His brows furrowed intently, Francisco pushed the thin layer of brush away from the cave mouth and crouched lower, running a finger along the rough stone around the came mouth. Mira put a hand on his shoulder, scanning the mountainside to either side of the opening.

"The opening feels… well, it feels like natural rock," Francisco mused, picking up a piece of the debris around the base.

"If you look at the patina around it, the rock was only recently exposed to the elements," Dimitrios explained, nodding. "Our working theory is that the seismic activity back in… January or February, maybe March… broke this open. We found it a little after the Tarasque appeared."

"And you just… wandered into the mysterious cave in the side of the mountain," Mira deadpanned, blinking. She shook her head. "I suppose you were either going to get superpowers or get eaten…"

Dimitrios shrugged. "What can I say? We were feeling adventurous."

Francisco hummed, peering through the opening into the antechamber beyond. Between the bright light behind him and the darkness within, however, he could barely make out any details, beyond the cave floor and some of the shadowed walls at the back of the room. Sitting at the top of his pocket, Perry leaned forward in anticipation, propping himself on the hem with his wings folded. "What do you think? Atlantean?"

Perry shrugged. "I do not remember any of my Atlantean holders visiting this place," he squeaked. "But that doesn't mean anything."

Poking her head out of Mira's purse, Paxx ruffled her feathers. "I know none of my holders came here," she asserted. "Although they were in the area on a few occasions."

Sighing, Mira arched an eyebrow at Francisco, snapped her fingers, and muttered a word under her breath, opening her hand with a flick. A glowing ball of light appeared in her palm, illuminating the entrance. "Nothing for it but to go in," she pointed out, as she ducked into the cave, holding up her ball of light and letting it fill the entire room. Francisco turned away slightly, allowing his eyes to adjust to the sudden brilliance. "It looks like a normal cave," Mira announced, turning slowly in a circle to take it all in. "So far as I can tell, it's all natura – whoa." She cocked her head, taking a couple steps deeper into the cavern. As the light bounced in her hand, the shadows inside the cave shifted, trailing long shadowy lines back toward the entrance. "But this…"

"That's what Zoi and Pyrros concluded, as well," Dimitrios confirmed, nodding. "This part of the cave appears to have been carved out naturally, though they weren't sure about, well, that."

"About what?" Curiously, Francisco stepped into the cave and looked around curiously. The walls inside were rough, the floor covered in a fine layer of loose rocks, though in several spots the gravel had been cleared down to solid stone floor, rough and uneven. A handful of stalactites hung from the ceiling, matched by stalagmites jutting from the floor. In a couple places, they had merged to form thick columns reaching from floor to ceiling; Francisco nearly bumped into one as he moved through the cave, taking in the rough walls. The shadows hid small sections of the floor which came into view as Mira moved around deeper in the cave. Francisco nudged one of the cleared areas with the toe of his boot, studying the debris on the edge. "Did they find anything to indicate that people had been here?"

Dimitrios furrowed his brows in thought. "A couple of coins – mostly Bronze Age Athenian, with a couple of Roman Imperial-age coins in the mix. Evidence of some more modern visitors, though nothing more recent than, say, fifteenth century, maybe. But all of that was outside, around the base of the mountain."

"Hopefully, Mom will find something at the peak," Mira called back from somewhere further in.

"I hope so," Dimitrios responded. "But we haven't had any success yet."

"So was this the entrance?" Francisco asked, turning back to study the inside of the opening. "And if so, who sealed it?"

Kneeling next to the cave entrance, Dimitrios ran a finger along the rock wall and shrugged. "Not sure. But we haven't found anything inside to indicate that people had even been in here before us."

"So there could be another entrance," Francisco mused, nodding slowly. When they had arrived at the mountain, Adrien and Marinette had decided to go for a walk around the base, looking for other places the mountain could have broken open; Art had volunteered to do the same, going in the opposite direction.

"It's possible. But we already checked around the mountain at this level," Dimitrios pointed out. "Nikos ran around the whole thing a dozen times. Nothing."

"Fortunately, we have Kwamis to help with that," Francisco told him, glancing down at Perry.

"If there's anything, Plagg and Tikki and Ikkthi will find it," Perry assured him, nodding confidently.

Francisco nodded slowly and started to follow Mira deeper into the cave, which had almost immediately begun to widen the deeper in he went. Following the light source, he carefully picked his way over rock heaps piled against the walls. "Is there anything inside?" he called, glancing over his shoulder at Dimitrios.

"In the antechamber? Nothing they've found yet," he began, jerking his head back behind them. "But you saw for yourself: they've only managed to search a quarter of the chamber. Besides," he added wryly, "the real prize is up ahead."

"You're not kidding…" Mira murmured, awe in her voice, as Francisco stepped past a small outcropping.

Francisco's eyes widened as he reached Mira and froze in place, taking in the brilliant twinkling lights reflecting off of the unnaturally-smooth walls to either side of them. The clear white light in Mira's hand almost seemed to be drawn into the walls, which absorbed the light and emitted it all across the surface of the walls and ceiling, forming strange patterns and shapes that appeared to swirl around in shifting colors. "Madre de Dios," Francisco murmured, his jaw dropping open. "I see what you meant."

Following them, Dimitrios stared dumbly at the cavern walls. "It didn't do that for us," he gasped, blinking several times and rubbing his eyes in disbelief. "I–I don't know what that is…"

Mira hummed, furrowing her brows pensively, and glanced back toward Dimitrios. "Turn on your flashlight," she instructed him, extinguishing her own light once the flashlight came on. The walls continued to reflect the light strangely, but the swirling patterns of strange figures and shapes disappeared. Mira snapped her fingers, and the light ball in her hand reappeared. Again, the patterns moved around and danced, pulling in and emitting the light. "It must be something about magie arcane," she mused. "Paxx?"

"Yes, Mira?" The Kwami flitted into the room from the direction of the antechamber and looked around the cavern, her eyes going wide in surprise. "I–I don't believe it!"

Floating beside Francisco's head, Perry nodded in agreement. "You see it, too?"

"See what?" Francisco demanded, giving the Kwami a confused look. "What is it?"

Shock in her voice, Paxx whispered, "It's… Atlantean script."

"'Atlantean script'?" Dimitrios repeated, nonplussed. He leaned forward, his eyes narrowed in concentration. "Wait… Oh! Now I can see it… Linguistics has never been my best subject, but there does seem to be a, um, grammar to it? I'm not sure how to describe it, but it's definitely a script of some kind."

"We might be able to decipher it," Dimitrios murmured to himself. "If we take it through Linear A – or as much of Linear A as we understand…" He took a quick picture of the wall on his phone and looked down at it with a groan. "Damn. I'll have to copy it all by hand." He quickly took out a notebook and started scribbling furiously. "But do you have any idea what this means?"

Francisco shrugged. "Until finding my miraculous, history wasn't exactly my strong suit." He raised an eyebrow at Perry. "Since finding my miraculous, I've been more of a treasure finder than a treasure studier."

"This is an entirely unknown language – lost to history for millennia! This… it could unlock the origins of Greek, proto-Greek, Linear B, Linear A… Actually, it–it almost looks like it's related to Linear A. Or at least when it's in a certain orientation, it has that pattern…"

Perry flitted over to Dimitrios. "What is this 'Linear A'?" Not taking his eyes off the wall, Dimitrios opened a picture on his phone and held it out to the Kwami. After a moment, Perry looked up. "This is close to the mundane Atlantean writing style… though it lacks some of the flair. Not everything was imbued with the proper magic to handle Atlantean script," he explained.

"Zoi will be fascinated to see this," Dimitrios muttered to himself, bracing his notebook against the cavern wall. "I wonder if we could publish a paper…"

Giving her wrist a jerk, Mira released the ball of light to hover where it was before forming a second ball in her hand and proceeding further into the cave. Leaving Dimitrios to his copying, Francisco hurried to keep up with her, as the two Kwamis spread out around the cavern, looking up and down at the walls.

"So, um, where did your miraculous come from?" Francisco asked Mira.

"My mother," replied Mira, pausing to look more closely at the wall and holding her light ball right up next to it. "It's been in the family for a millennium – as long as my family has been trying to stop the Bat."

He hummed. "That's cool. I found mine along the pilgrim road to Santiago." He chuckled. "I was trying to run away from my problems, but thanks to the miraculous, I realized I needed to take responsibility."

Glancing back at him, she arched an eyebrow knowingly. "The girl you were with at the wedding?"

He flushed, nodding, and looked away. "Yeah. When I found out she was – that we were–"

"'Expecting'?" Mira supplied, amused.

"That. When I found out, I ran away," he admitted. Mira blinked. "But after finding the miraculous and learning about responsibility from Perry – from trying to find powerful artifacts like the sextant and keep them out of the wrong hands – I realized that I also needed to take responsibility for Marina and the baby."

"And she took you back," Mira deadpanned, turning away from the archway of perfectly-smooth worked stones which divided the cavern from the chamber beyond. She blinked, folding her arms and staring at him. "Really?"

He nodded, giving a small smile. "She was hesitant at first," he explained. "But she's slowly come around to the idea. She knows now that I'm not going to just… run off again. That I'm serious about being with her and raising our baby together. I, um, I think we'll be okay."

"Once the baby gets here?" Mira shook her head ruefully. "It looked like she was about ready to pop two days ago!"

"Another month, month and a half," he confirmed. "Give or take."

"Well, congratulations. I assume she knows about… all of this?"

He nodded. "She knows – I promised not to run away, not to lie to her. So when I needed to go and help the Basques with their thing…" He shrugged. "She nearly had a heart attack when she saw Perry."

"And she was okay with you running off on this mission with us, knowing that the baby could be here soon?"

"She was… unhappy when I left," he admitted. His stomach clenched. "But she knows that if the baby comes, she can call and I will be there in minutes – Pegasus would see to it for us."

Mira shook her head ruefully. "I suppose he would have a soft spot for an expectant father…"

Francisco gave her a curious look. "Have you ever…?"

"What, told someone about Paxx?" She finished. He nodded. She shook her head. "Never – at least, not apart from the Heroes of Paris. Even then, I almost didn't reveal my identity or name to them. My mother never told my father exactly what was going on; the secret ruined their relationship, even though it was necessary to keep him safe. We couldn't tell anyone – ever."

He sighed, giving her a sympathetic look. "That sounds absolutely terrible. I don't know if I could live like that."

"But you would at least live." Mira hummed, running a finger along the smooth stone. "This doesn't look natural – or carved, for that matter."

"Should we check inside?" Francisco suggested, leaning forward and looking through the doorway. The light from Mira's hand caught off a smooth silvery metallic object near the center of the room.

"Yes, we sh–"

"Wait!" Paxx phased through the wall next to them, holding her wings out wide. Perry emerged after her, his eyes bulging out. "Don't go in there!"

"What? Why?"

Perry shook his head. "The device is active," he explained quickly. "If you enter, you could trigger it. And mixing this magic with the miraculous…"

Mira furrowed her brows, looking back and forth between the Kwamis and then past them into the chamber. "Then how do we deactivate it?"

Paxx frowned, sharing a look with Perry. "I'm not sure," she admitted.

"Are we supposed to just… leave it?" Francisco demanded.

Perry shrugged. "Until we determine some other option, we have to leave it."