Sons of Zeus (The Warrior Trilogy #1)

They stood in a circle, the sky above them fading from orange to purple, four right hands clinging to the Infinity Ring in the middle of their group. Sera ignited the device into action and sparkles of light flashed in the air.

Just before they were swept away, something happened that made Dak’s stomach almost leap through his throat and out of his mouth. About twenty feet away from where they stood, four people suddenly appeared, almost as if they were falling out of the sky, their images flashing into existence just long enough for Dak to see who they were.

Himself.

Sera.

And a man and woman he’d never seen before.

It was only for an instant, but enough for Dak’s mind to explode with confusion. He was staring at himself, and the other version of him looked back with an odd expression of understanding. It was unnerving, confusing, and Dak didn’t like it one bit.

Then the sky ripped open and sucked them into the oblivion of a wormhole.





RIQ COULDN’T believe what he’d just seen. It happened so quickly he thought that he had to have imagined it, that he was seeing things in the moment before they were sucked into the wormhole.

He didn’t love the feeling of his body being pulled and stretched and compressed by a billion forces all at once, but at least he’d grown somewhat used to it. Not to mention the sounds and the lights and the wind that wasn’t really a wind. But he couldn’t help but feel sorry for Aristotle — who wasn’t exactly young and spry — as they traveled through the space-time continuum.

Like always, Riq had a hard time comprehending just how long it took for them to make the leap. Only moving three days, you’d think it would be a quicker warp than usual. But it didn’t always seem to work that way. Regardless, there was the mind-numbing intensity of it all, the world exploding and contracting and streaking all around him, and then it was over.

He tumbled onto a bed of short-cut grass, then slammed into a big green hedge with prickly leaves. The whole thing shook above him as if it were laughing. Dak’s foot smacked him in the face, and he heard Sera asking Aristotle if he was okay. The man coughed, then groaned, then laughed. He actually laughed.

Riq got to his feet and brushed himself off, relieved to see the great philosopher doing the same thing, all in one piece and with no obvious injuries. The man looked as excited as a kid at a birthday party, practically floating.

“Oh, if Plato could see me now!” he yelled, obviously forgetting that they were supposed to be on a stealthy mission to save his former student. “Aristotle, traveler of time!” Riq was pretty sure he’d never seen anything quite so ridiculous as the great philosopher dancing on his toes and making such a pronouncement.

Sera was smiling, and Riq instantly knew that she hadn’t seen what he’d seen. Dak couldn’t have looked any more opposite from her — troubled and confused — which meant that he had seen it.

Dak and Sera’s duplicates. And two strangers.

And no Riq.

What exactly did that mean?

“I hate to dampen the party atmosphere,” Riq said, “but we have to stop Tilda and I think Dak and I saw something that you guys didn’t.” He went on to describe what he’d seen.

Dak’s face was pale — seeing himself had obviously shaken him up a bit. “It was weird.” Riq had to admit that although the kid didn’t have his language expertise, that summed it up perfectly. Sera didn’t even bother with the standard doubtful comebacks.

“Who do you think the man and woman were?” she asked.

“Explain what they looked like,” Aristotle added, his elation from a moment earlier popped like a balloon.

It had only been an instant, but Riq could still see them in his mind. “The man had brown hair, tall. The lady had black hair, green eyes, thin face, some kind of weird jewel on a necklace around her neck.”

“Was it an amethyst?” the philosopher asked.

“Umm, no idea.” Riq was a translator, not a geologist. “But I think it was purple.”

Aristotle shrugged, a comical thing to see on such a great man. “An amethyst, then. The woman you saw was Olympias, Alexander’s mother. In fact, we may be meeting her any second now.” His eyes focused on something behind Riq’s shoulder.

Riq turned around and finally got a good glimpse of the space beyond the giant hedge he’d plowed into upon arrival. Before them lay a vast expanse of gardens — green grass and bushes and flowers and fountains and trees — all arranged in a maze of sorts that reminded him of something out of a fantasy novel. Beyond that there stood a massive house built in the Greek style, with pillars and frescoes and friezes. Small statues lined the walkway that led from the main fountain to the stairs below the back entrance to the palace.

Palace.

That’s definitely the right word, Riq thought. Alexander had some sweet digs.