Cassie and Griffin stared at her in stunned silence once she finished speaking.
“Wow.” The pythia exhaled. “This is even worse than we imagined.”
“We might still have a chance to short-circuit the plague attacks,” Maddie told them. “It’s unlikely that Metcalf will give the green light to his minions until he has the Sage Stone in his hands.”
“So, our job is to keep him from getting it in the first place,” Cassie concluded.
“Hi, guys. Welcome back.” Zach breezed into the office and took a seat on a corner of Maddie’s desk. “Sorry, I’m late. I got held up in traffic.” Oblivious to the tense mood in the room, he turned brightly to the duo. “Kudos! I heard you actually found the Sage Stone.”
“We found its location,” Griffin corrected.
“What’s the diff?” The tyro looked puzzled.
“A whole lot.” The pythia launched into an explanation of the reliquary scales protecting the artifact as well as the dangers of a cave collapse if any force was used to extract it from its hiding place.
“No matter what the risks are, we have to stop Metcalf from nabbing it,” Zach said.
“We?” Griffin raised his eyebrows.
“Maddie already told me she’s going with you to the rendezvous,” the boy said defensively. “And I’m going too.”
“Are you nuts?” Cassie stared at the tyro. “This isn’t a game, Zach. People could die.”
“I know,” he admitted in a small voice. “People like Hannah. I can’t stand by and let that happen.”
The pythia turned toward Maddie. “I can’t believe I’m the one saying this, but he’s way too young. Tell me you’re not letting him tag along.”
The chatelaine gave a resigned shrug. “Here’s the thing. During my time as ops director, I’ve managed some unruly trainees, but this kid is more trouble than a sack full of ferrets. He’s even got Erik’s record of tyro snafus beat all to hell. I swear, some days it’s like playing whack-a-mole just to keep him in line. If I forbid him to go, he’ll simply find a way to get there on his own.”
“True dat!” Zach gave an emphatic nod.
Griffin squinted at the boy. “What language are you speaking?”
Maddie continued. “We can’t have him popping up unexpectedly at the worst possible second and maybe getting us all killed in the process. At least if he’s part of the rescue party, I can keep an eye on him.”
“Bringing him with us is the lesser of two evils, I suppose,” the scrivener conceded grudgingly.
“So, how are we going to take the Nephilim down?” Zach searched their faces keenly. “What’s the plan?”
Cassie and Griffin exchanged startled glances.
“Honestly, we haven’t had a chance to think that far down the road,” the pythia said.
“Then it’s a good thing that I did,” Maddie rejoined. “For the past few days, I’ve done nothing but ponder ways to play this recovery mission.”
She paused to collect her thoughts. “Since we already know we’re walking into a trap, if we go in there with guns a-blazing everybody dies. We have to find a way to minimize the risk to Erik and Hannah knowing full well that our opponents won’t show the same restraint.”
A derisive smile played about her lips. “There’s one upside to an organization run by a tyrant. Obedient followers make lousy successors. When you hamstring a dictator, you paralyze his whole organization. That means our best strategy is to immobilize Abraham Metcalf.”
“Neat trick if you can pull it off,” Cassie said. “But how?”
“The diviner is in a fragile mental state. As a cure for his raging insomnia, he’s been dosing himself with some kind of opiate that makes him hallucinate. The guy is hanging onto reality by a very slender thread which we’re going to do our best to unravel.”
Maddie’s explanation was met by blank stares, so she elaborated. “We gaslight him into doubting his self-appointed destiny. Erik stumbled across some kind of goofy prediction when he was searching through Metcalf’s papers. The old man believes he was ordained by his god to possess the Sage Stone and that it will allow him to conquer the Fallen. When things go sideways because he can’t unearth the artifact, I’m betting he’ll start to fray around the edges.”
“But why wouldn’t he be able to unearth it?” Zach challenged. “I mean, you’re going to let him take first crack at opening the reliquary, right?”
“Yes, but he’ll be using his own set of artifacts to do it,” Maddie replied.
“I see.” Griffin turned toward Zach to explain. “His collection won’t work. The weight of the false relics is bound to differ, however slightly, from the originals which we possess.”
“The labrys key won’t turn in the lock if even one of those artifacts is a mismatch,” Cassie added.
“That’s what I’m counting on,” Maddie said. “After Metcalf flounders around for a while, we make him step aside, and we use the real artifacts to release the Sage Stone. I want Cassie to be the first one to touch it.”
The pythia chuckled grimly. “It ought to make his head spin when I point out that the Arkana not only collected the original Bones of the Mother and succeeded in opening the reliquary after he failed, but that we laid hands on the Sage Stone before he did.”
“We want to shake Metcalf’s confidence in his destiny to the core,” Maddie answered. “When he sees that events didn’t play out as foretold, he might fear that the Sage Stone won’t give him the power he expects. If he really is as drug-addled as gossip says, it will take him a few minutes to process all that. We know his people won’t attack unless he commands it. While they’re standing around waiting for him to give the word, we spring into action. We disable as many of his guards as we can, grab Hannah, Erik, the Sage Stone, and make a run for it.”
“I take it we’ll all be armed,” Griffin posited.
“You better believe it,” Maddie asserted.
“Even with firepower, your entire plan amounts
