Things were looking up for Crius. For the very first times since his whole crazy adventure had begun, things were normal. At least, things were about as normal as they could have been at Camp Jupiter.

A week had passed by pretty swiftly. Crius was different from everyone else in a number of ways, including that he had never met the wolf Lupa that everyone was talking about. He also was pretty lame at fighting, though no one seemed to be too bothered about that. The Camp didn't seem to be attacked as often as it used to be, or so the other campers said. They were also continuously chatting about a sort of 'merge' they were going to make. As far as Crius could tell, Camp Jupiter was going to be fused with some other camp in the east, and most of the prized Roman warriors had wandered off there to begin things at the moment.

But what was really valuable was information. Crius eagerly pursued any source of intel that he could, after all, he was tired of being attacked by who knows what and not knowing anything about it. One thing that really stuck out to him was the Mist, and though he had had some idea of what it was before, it was only until he heard a detailed explanation that it began to fascinate him. As far as Crius could tell, he couldn't see through the Mist, but each time that he touched his sword, stuff always managed to reveal itself to him.

Latin words would reassemble themselves so they would be in English. He would see creatures for what they were, and he could see the ghosts, or Lares as the others called them more clearly. Though he could tell that everyone probably wondered why he was carrying something like a plastic sword around, Crius ignored them. If anyone asked, he just told them that it was a family heirloom and he had been told to safeguard it. No one seemed to doubt that.

"Don't worry, you'll get claimed soon enough," was something that he had gotten used to being told. The whole thing seemed like a big deal in Camp Jupiter. Every single person just couldn't wait to be claimed by their godly parent, but maybe because he had been living with two parents all his life, Crius really couldn't see the big deal. He could see many of the kids wearing sullen faces and sounding bitter because they hadn't received a single sign. And when they did, their faces would light up as if they'd won the lottery, and all the time he could hear people swapping stories about how they'd been claimed.

But Crius knew that it wasn't going to happen to him. If there was one single thing that Crius was sure of, it was that he was mortal. He was the sun of Arthur and Elizabeth Sympan, and he didn't have a drop of godly blood in him. He made it a sure point not to even touch Ambrosia and Nectar.

However, despite everything that he had learned, he still didn't understand anything as to why he had been attacked or anything else for that matter. So one day he wandered over to the Roman Archives. Few people ever went there, mainly because most people were dyslexic and hated reading anything anyway, and it just wasn't the 'Roman' thing to do with free time.

That didn't bother Crius much, but what did bother him was the fact that he might have to cross some of the temples on his way. Crius didn't like the temples. He still had the feeling that somewhere, the gods were still looking for him and that waling into a temple would be equivalent to shouting out his true identity to the whole world.

So, he kept his sword in his cabin. He didn't want to leave it, not after it had saved him from Demeter once, but he felt as if the gods might ignore him if he didn't carry it.

Even though it felt weird to be without his sword, as if he had left his arm back at the cabin, Crius carried on. He blinked. He didn't know why he was feeling so attached to the blade. Crius considered the fact that the sword could have been malevolent and might be trying to use him some way, though that didn't seem likely, he thought he'd be wary of what it might do from now on.

Crius rushed around the temples. He tried going around the statues of the deities whenever he could, but he still felt as if he was being watched, or that a god might suddenly pop up out of nowhere and take him to be imprisoned on Olympus for all of his life. Or maybe somewhere worse.

The archives were located so that it seemed as if the architect had thought, "Well, I've got to throw this thing somewhere. Maybe here." Unlike the other buildings in the city, it seemed very old and needed a fresh coat of paint. It was partially hidden from the rest of the world by some trees surrounding it, which may have been why no one really noticed it or bothered to change it.

Crius walked in. The inside wasn't much better than the exterior. There was single desk where someone who must have been at least a thousand years old was taking a nap. Crius would have tapped him on the head and asked him to wake up, but he was afraid that the man might crumble at his touch. Crius decided to walk in without disturbing him, but before he could, the man woke up.

"Lord Somnus, I wasn't dozing off, I was just…" the man shouted. His voice was raspy and weak, and by his manner, Crius guessed he was groveling or something like that. He then then turned and saw Crius, and blinked his eyes. Crius guessed that the guy's eyesight was pretty bad because he did a lot of rubbing.

"You're not Somnus, are ya?" the guy asked in the same raspy tone.

"No," Crius said. He was sure that he had heard the name Somnus somewhere, but the thing was that there were so many Greek warriors and they had so many different and weird names that he just couldn't keep track.

"Thank goodness," the guy said. "I thought I was gonna be killed there." In Crius' opinion, he thought that this guy should probably stop worrying about death, because he looked like he could wilt away any minute now.

"I'm Crius," Crius said. He didn't want to offer his hand for a handshake. "I wanted to see the archives. Do you guys have something like the Dewey Decimal system or a catalogue in here?"

The man laughed until his voice was hoarse. "Catalogue? No one in their right minds ever comes in here, unless of course they've been put here as punishment. So no, there's nothing, so you'll just have to go through whatever you want. Don't worry, if you're not back by sunset I'll see if I can arrange a search part for you."

The guy went back to sleep. Crius was hoping that he had been joking about that last part.

The inside of the library was oddly moist and damp. Crius had read somewhere that that was bad for books and caused them to decompose, but at the very least there were no insects over the place. Crius wasn't overly afraid of bugs, but his mind had started spewing things about giant spiders when he thought of going into an abandoned place.

The scrolls were all placed far above his reach on shelves that were arranged in no particular order. There was a huge layer of dust all around the place, and that seriously made Crius wonder as for how many centuries this stuff had been kept there.

Idiot! He suddenly told himself. All of these records would be in Latin or maybe Greek, and he couldn't understand either of them without his sword. He had momentarily forgotten about that. Or maybe he could read a bit…

Crius climbed one shelf and took out a heavy scroll. It was a painting of someone offering a crown of gold to a statue, and beneath it were several characters in what Crius guessed was Latin from the few classes that he had taken, but unfortunately they made no sense.

Frustrated, Crius kept the scroll back and jumped back down. This whole thing was turning out to be a lot lamer than he had thought. But as he was about to leave, one of the scrolls fell down, even though no one had touched it, and it fell into his hands perfectly. It couldn't have just happened by itself.

Crius looked around. Maybe one of the Lares had followed him and was playing some sort of trick on him. He unrolled the scroll to see a few lines of text that were Greek to him. Or maybe Latin, not that he would possibly know the difference.

But then, the letters did shift around when he looked at them. And strangely enough, it happened almost instantly. It would usually take a few seconds for Crius to process just what it was that he was supposed to be reading when he held onto his sword. The lines read:

'Child, do you mean, by your sole self, to move unconquerable fate? You are allowed to enter the three Sisters' [Fates'] dwelling. There a giant fabric forged of steel and bronze will meet your eyes, the archives of the world, that fear no crush of heaven, no lightning's wrath, nor any cataclysm, standing safe to all eternity. And there you'll find engraved on everlasting adamant the fortunes of your line. I read them there myself and stored them in my memory and I'll declare them that you may not still labor in ignorance of things to come.'

Beneath this was a drawing of a large collection of various stone tablets stored above a huge cloud. On closer inspection, Crius saw that there were buildings on the clouds… like Olympus. He stuffed the scroll into his pocket and heard the parchment protest. He normally would have been more delicate with an ancient record but he couldn't see how he could have damaged it worse.

Crius snuck out of the place. No more scrolls fell on him and he dashed out without alerting the librarian or whoever it was who was still sleeping on the desk.

Once Crius got back to his bank, he unrolled his prize and took another good luck at it. There was nothing at the back or anything, just those four lines. Crius saw a number at the bottom, and he was pretty sure that it wasn't one. He had probably gotten a page from some sort of book. Or maybe this was a copy from somewhere, because the archives had been way too messy for him to sort anything out.

The lines didn't exactly make much sense, so Crius tried reading them out loud. But the moment that he read the words the Sisters, something weird happened. Crius dropped the scroll and clutched his stomach. He suddenly felt nauseous, and the air around him shifted. He looked outside and saw that storm clouds had just gathered.

Crius realized his mistake. He had been told way too often not to go flouting out names all of the time, because names had power, so he had tried his best not to speak about Zeus or Jupiter or any of the other gods in case that would make them notice. He wasn't really sure who these Sisters were, but he didn't have time to figure out as the door suddenly bust down.

A man walked into the place, and Crius recognized him from all of the paintings that he had seen. One of the most honored gods of Rome, his eyes glowed as if his very eyes were on fire and he carried a huge weapon which even Crius could tell was a gun. He was dressed in the attire of an army officer, but occasionally Crius' vision flickered and he saw the man dressed up in Roman armor instead.

"I finally found you, punk," Mars said.