The S.S. Olympus -under refurbishment

Chapter XXXIII: Terra Firma

"Ubi est vita, est spes est" —where there is life, there is hope.—Cicero

Apollo grabbed Cornelia's hand and smiled. It's a good thing lover boy is a smart one eh?

"What?" Cornelia managed to squeeze out before her whole world was enveloped in bright light, her stomach did a familiar twist, and she opened her eyes to realize she was not in Rome anymore, "but Zeus." She gasped out as her knees hit the soft emerald tinted grass below her.

"is not the engineer," Apollo said with a smile as he pulled her off the grass and steadied her, "Hades is."

"How?" Cornelia whispered as memorial wisps of the day she was re-kidnapped from the Olympus flashed in her mind. Hades disappearing into thin air and her screams that fell on deaf ears as she was dragged to her incarceration. "He was sent to the Inferis?" Noxious gas tickled her memories, the sound of claws tearing through metal sent a chill down her spine.

Apollo laughed. After it faded to snorting he clapped her on the back and said, "you think that would stop him?" Apollo took in Cornelia's shock and rubbed her back reassuringly, "I have always said give Hades a hammer, some lubricant, spare parts, and you will have a whole new technology age." Apollo held out a small circular button with a light in the center, "I had no idea how right I was."

"What is that?" Cornelia took the disc with curious trepidation.

"An extra," Apollo said with a smile.

"An extra what?" Cornelia did not trust the look in his eyes it made her shift away from him.

"Your mother is okay," Apollo said in an abrupt change of topic, as he turned to face a small house on the hill.

Cornelia felt a wave of guilt slam into her. My mother I left her there, "where is she?"

"As I said, she is okay. Your sister is with her." Apollo pointed to the house, "in there."

"How is she okay?" Cornelia felt a familiar wash of dread, "she is infected with a vanity wraith."

"Was infected," Apollo said with a devious smile.

Cornelia eyed the button again, "what are you not telling me?"

"This little gadget has a fun new function that Hades created." He handed it to her and she turned it over in her hands, "you can set it to either attract or repel a wraith."

"Why would you want to attract one?" Cornelia asked as she held the device up to her face.

"Apollo pointed to a dial on the side," You can select what kind of wraith you want to attract.

It clicked in her mind, "the hope wraith? You fixed my mother with the Hope wraith!" Her excitement was tapered as quickly as it came, "what did you do with the vanity wraith."

"We solved a problem," Apollo answered quickly.

"Apollo what did you do?" Her tone belied what she knew. He did not have to answer her, but she needed to hear it.

"Gastonus is no longer your problem," Apollo answered with eery confidence.

"How could you do such a thing." She swallowed, "even to him?"

Apollo moved uncomfortably close to her face, "you may have a bit of a condition I like to call, prisoner of love."

"A What?"

"Yeah I need to work on the name," his eyebrows furrowed toying with the words, and then one raised as he dropped his muscular arms to his side, "look, you were rescued, do not get picky as to how we did it. Besides, the wraith was attracted to him regardless we just pointed it in the right direction?"