Apollo wagged his forefinger at Sam. “No can do, kiddo... that would be doing your work for you, and it’s like the big boss said, no hand holding for mortals...”

“But you do know where she is?” Sam pressed.

“Funnily enough, so do you,” Apollo winked.

“I do?” A dumbfounded expression flitted across Sam’s face. “But I’ve never met her.”

Apollo gave Sam a pointed look, almost as if to say he disagreed with Sam’s statement.

“The legacy of my son Asclepius will guide you.” Apollo flicked a finger against Sam’s brow. “You’re a smart kid, Sam... You’ll figure it out — hopefully before it’s too late.”

Sam rubbed the part of his brow Apollo had flicked. “Did you have to end with that?”

“You’re not the only one looking for Farsight,” Apollo reminded him.

Sam sighed. “What if I can’t save her...?”

And just like that, all the negative feelings Sam had been bottling up inside since this morning’s tragedy threatened to burst out of him.

“I’d become so confident...” Sam spoke in a voice that was barely a whisper. “Thought I was finally turning things around... and then Maeve fell right in front of me and there was nothing I could do.”

Once he began giving voice to his regret, Sam couldn’t help but spill all his grief onto the god who listened to him whine and rail without comment and seemingly without judgment.

Later, after Sam had finally emptied himself of his mixed-up feelings, Apollo placed a hand on his shoulder and the warmth of his touch stole away the fatigue plaguing Sam’s heart.

“Relieved you got all of that out of your chest, huh?” Apollo asked in a compassionate tone.

Sam nodded. “Thanks, Apo—”

“—you really are a self-deprecating idiot, Sam,” Apollo snapped. “Exactly the kind of shmuck Chiron likes to teach... claims the self-pity makes for responsible heroes.”

“Dude,” Sam’s eyes narrowed, “That’s just—”

“—If you think it’s your fault Maeve ended up the way she did,” Apollo shook his head, “then, man, you’ve got one inflated sense of ego.”

“I don’t have an inflated sense of ego,” Sam protested. “I just—”

“—you just thought the weight of the world was on your shoulders,” Apollo guessed, and rightly too. “Maybe it will be some day, but not today, Sam. You’re about nine-hundred-and-seventy-four levels too low to carry the world on your back.”

“That’s an oddly specific number...”

“Yeah, level 999, isn’t that like the upper limit for most RPGs?”

“Actually, it’s usually level 99,” Sam corrected. Then he frowned. “Hold on... you play video games?”

“You wouldn’t believe how boring immortality can sometimes get... We get our kicks where we can,” Apollo reasoned. “And Hephaestus’ just remade his classic First Fantasy of the Gods VII, and it is killer!”

Sam listened to Apollo gush over his video game and then his godly gaming rig and then his hopes to one day steal the ‘God of Streaming’ title from Athena, and Sam couldn’t help thinking that he wanted to smash this whimsical god’s face in.

“Dude...” Sam was shaking his head now. The look of disappointment on his face was also very apparent. “If you’ve got time to play, then shouldn’t you spend it listening to our prayers instead?”

“You know how many prayers I get daily, Sam?” Apollo’s face turned serious for the first time since they met. “You mortals pray for everything. Your hopes, your dreams, your irredeemable quests for vengeance — a god would go crazy listening to all of it... and some of us actually do.”

Apollo spared Sam a smile. “But sometimes... sometimes we do listen. I’m here, aren’t I?”

Sam turned away from Apollo. He couldn’t gaze into those eyes that reflected his grief right back at him. “So... you hijacked my dream—”

“—Nightmares,” Apollo corrected.

“Right, nightmares...” Sam found it was very difficult to keep one’s eyes from rolling at a god as it might be perceived as blasphemous. “You hijacked my nightmares for a therapy session?”

“You seemed like you needed it, man,” Apollo answered.

Sam wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t quite believe that. “You sure you weren’t just bored?”

“Ahem,” Apollo cleared his throat. “As I was saying, what happened to Maeve isn’t on you... Her fate was written long before you came along... So stop beating yourself up for it.”

“I...” Sam’s shoulders sagged. He sighed heavily. “I used to think that way... that fate was an unchangeable and unassailable thing we all just had to accept...”

He raised his left hand to chest level and then balled it into a fist.

“But then I learned the impossible was possible,” Sam said, his voice cracking with emotion. “That a failure like me could grow and become more than what I was...”

Sam’s gaze drifted toward Apollo’s face, and it was no small thing to stare into a god’s eyes and not get lost in their boundless depth.

“I can’t agree with you, Apollo,” Sam answered, the knot in his chest finally unwinding. “I can’t believe that a hero can’t change fate, that we mortals can’t be masters of our own destinies...”

He thought Apollo might laugh at him for thinking a pesky little mortal could ever challenge the Fates, but his godly patron’s grin only widened.

“When things get really rough later on, remember this moment of clarity, Sam. It’ll help,” Apollo said.

Apollo glanced up, his eyes glazing momentarily.

“Sun’s coming up,” he said. “It’s time for you to go, kiddo.”

But then Apollo frowned almost like he’d just remembered something.

“Oh, yeah,” he snapped his fingers, “I forgot that your missions usually come with warning labels...”

WARNINGS:

Failure to complete the mission means the prophecy will forever be lost. The old enemies will rise again, lay waste to mortals, kill the gods, and end the world as we know it.

Also, Thunder succumbs to the blight, so bye-bye to Sam’s love-life.

Plus, the hero will make Apollo look really, really bad to the other gods — and that’s the worst thing that could happen, FYI.

Sam had an inkling suspicion that those last two add-ons were Apollo’s personal embellishments.

“Wow... and here I thought there wasn’t enough pressure already,” Sam said wryly.

“One final piece of advice, kiddo,” Apollo placed an arm across Sam’s shoulder and then leaned in conspiratorially to whisper in his ear, “Don’t get too worked up about broken prophecies. And don’t let misplaced guilt eat you alive. There are enough bad things in the world that’ll do that.”

Apollo and Sam shook hands.

“Focus on finding Farsight,” he added. “And watch out for her... she’s... quirky.”

“Hold on, what do you mean—”

But Apollo had already snapped his fingers. The world around Sam grew bright, so bright that he was forced to shut his eyes. Then there was this feeling of falling into water, drifting, and then landing on something fluffy.

Sam blinked his eyes open and stared up at the ceiling fan in his bedroom. His head ached, and he felt like he hadn’t slept at all.

“Styx,” he rubbed at his eyes, “that was a trip...”

He sat up and glanced over to the window on his left. Dawn’s first light filtered in through the gap in the curtains.

You’re finally awake, sleeping beauty. Chiron’s disembodied voice was back and nagging at him to get out of bed.

“Master...” Sam jumped off his bed and drifted lazily over to the door of his bathroom. “I had the weirdest dream...”

Kid, if you’re about to explain the details of an awkward, perverted, or nonsensical dream to me, then you better put a sock in—

“—I talked to A—”

Sam stifled the words in his mouth because he remembered he wasn’t supposed to talk about his meeting with Apollo.

“I had a vision,” he said.

What kind of vision? Chiron asked.

Sam pulled up Triple-A’s radial menu and tapped on the [MISSION] tab. Then he pulled up [ACTIVE MISSIONS] and saw that Apollo’s mission was the only one on the list. However, that bit about Apollo in the warnings had been removed.

“Read it for yourself,” Sam insisted.

After a while, Chiron replied with, Which idiotic god gave you this? Ah, wait, don’t tell me... this whole thing reeks of goldilocks.

There was another long pause before Triple-A’s map popped up in front of Sam.

Look familiar? Chiron asked.

“This is...” Sam breathed. “Fordham heights in the Bronx...”

It was the most recent sight of an alpha-level calamity, the one where you became an Argonaut... Coincidentally, it’s also the location of Farsight’s apartment, Chiron revealed.

“You were looking for her?” Sam asked.

Who do you think told Thunder to take you to Red Weaver?

“You sent us to Maeve?”

I saw the signs, kid... There are only so many sources of divination left in the city...

There was a sadness in Chiron’s tone that Sam wasn’t used to.

But if I’d known that bastard Trickster was coming, I would have—

“It’s not your fault,” Sam said, remembering what Apollo had told him about misplaced guilt. “All we can do is make sure he doesn’t get Farsight too.”

Sounds like you got more from this dream than just a mission, kid, Chiron noted.

“It was a really weird dream... Also, I—”

Sam finally noticed the floating pin on Chiron’s map. It was smack-dab in the middle of where he and Thunder had fought the alpha-level Terror.

“There’s no such thing as coincidences...” Sam repeated.

So, you’ve noticed it too, huh?

“I... you don’t think...”

I do, kid. I do think that Terror wasn’t just there to trash the Bronx. I think it was there for Farsight. Only, it didn’t get her.

“It didn’t?”

She wasn’t home, hasn’t been in months. But it looks like the Trickster or whoever it is pulling his strings didn’t know that at the time.

“Where is she?”

You’ll love this, kid... It’s another freaking coincidence... Farsight’s holdup at the same place you’ve been visiting nearly every morning.

The map moved automatically to Queens. Its pin dropped on a place Sam was intimately familiar with.

Mount Sinai Queens, Chiron revealed. She’s a patient. Goes by the name of—

“Ashley Day,” Sam whispered.

Sam wasn’t sure how he knew, but he was sure of it. Ashley Day, the supposedly catatonic short-haired teenage girl he’d glimpsed at the hospital’s healing gardens, was actually Farsight. Besides, the legacy of Apollo’s son was proof enough.

How did you know that?

“I’ve met her before... in the place where I heard about an old student of yours... Asclepius, the god of medicine...” Sam suppressed a shiver as he thought about all these coincidences piling up on him. “We gotta go get her before the Trickster finds out where she is...”