“Hey, Triple-A… am I using this thing right?” Sam was frowning at the round bronze object he held in his hand.
As a prize for winning against Achilles in the last of three spars, Sam was given an ancient astrolabe that the fallen hero promised would help him find his way around the underworld. It was a complicated-looking device; a bronze metal disc with patterns of wires, gears, and cutouts small enough to fit in his palm like a modern compass might.
Sam wasn’t sure how an ancient astronomical instrument could help him in Hades though as he knew from his time in school that an astrolabe needed stars to perform various functions. There there were no stars in the underworld’s bleak sky though.
“This astrolabe is special. It does not use the stars of the heavens to determine time or latitude but the stars that have fallen across this fel land and taken root here,” Achilles had revealed earlier.
“These fallen stars… they’re pieces of the heavens?” Sam had asked.