The first thing you do is search the case. The group didn’t strike you as the most modern, but in this day and age, it would have to be to survive. A tracker is entirely plausible.

You rip out what little cloth lining there is in the case and toss it into the street, carefully keeping the case mostly closed to protect the items from prying, green eyes. You find a small bead of metal in the bottom, splatter from the welding most likely, but you take no chances. A lady walks by you and you slip it into her open bag then turn and walk in the opposite direction.

Only after all this is done do you allow yourself to realize that you are bone tired. You desperately need rest. There is a hotel not far from here. At least there was fifteen years ago.

The streets of Athens in the afternoon are packed to the walls with people doing everything imaginable and many things that you don’t want to. The heat bakes down from the sky, reflecting off the brick streets until you run with sweat. Several cats take advantage of this, warming themselves in the patches of sunlight that the chaotic buildings grudgingly let through. Some cities have pigeons, some cities have crows. Athens has cats.

The hotel is long since closed.

Throngs of people jostle each other as they look to buy everything from tanned leather to commemorative bracelets. Jewelers do a brisk trade in silver olive tree necklaces, leveraging the heritage of the city to mark up prices only to be haggled down by their smarter clients.

You stop, only once, to buy a knife from a dodgy looking stall that doesn’t ask a single relevant question. It is a sharp, mean looking thing, nothing like the small darting blade of the feather. Big knives are a deterrent; you know that you don’t have it in you to kill again.

After wandering for a while you finally find a familiar street that winds toward another hotel that you once stayed at for a conference. It’s not a nice hotel, but it is the closest one to Demosion Sima, a site that had been sought after and debated by generations of scholars until it was found quite by accident. One of the biggest and most exciting finds in the last century.

The front door is hidden in plain sight next to five other similar doors. A small sign differentiates it from its neighbors. You open it and head down the narrow, cracking hallway to an even more worn front desk. Good to know that nothing has changed in the past two decades.

Check in is not for another hour according to the woman at the front desk, but you allow your weariness to bleed through and she agrees to let you in early, taking down the fake name you give her with a fake brass pen. You pay cash.

You take no note of the room when you arrive, pausing only to draw the curtains and lock the door before falling, fully-clothed, into bed, the new ugly case clutched to your chest, stone-cold and heavy as gravedirt.

_________

The dreams, when they come, are disconnected flashes of people and places you’ve seen over the past few days.

A man covered entirely in feathers waves at you from the banks of a river, the sunset turning the water blood red. Or maybe it's just blood. You raise a hand in answer to him, but instead of english, you speak an unknown language. Power flickers in your fingertips and the man catches fire.

Screaming, he pitches into the bloody river.

The scene changes and you are once again in the streets of Athens, but this time they are completely empty. The woman from earlier, Kael, shouts something at you, but her voice is clipped in the careful accent of British royalty. You run towards her, but no matter how fast you push your legs, she is always one street farther.

She goes to shout again and this time her jaw opens too wide, dislocating and falling to her chest as she begs for help.

Fear spikes through you and the scene changes again, but this time it is one you are intimately familiar with. The Temple of the Blue Rose.

The jungle air, even at night, is humid and sticky, but you ignore it and run forward. The last time you were here, an entire ton of rock had sealed the entrance forever, but there is no sign of such damage now. You rush inside.

It is just like you remember it. The walls are lined with the same rough glyphs. They undoubtedly started as crisp lines, but moisture and time has loosened the hand of the calligrapher. You pay them no mind, there is only one place here that you truly want to see.

You pass through the large stone room and down the hallway there, turning the corners faster and faster until finally you reach the room and fall to your knees.

On the sarcophagus, sits a vase and in that vase, a perfect living rose.

But this rose is an emerald green.