Chapter 1
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THERE we were under the Bone Tree with a muddy sack we’d just dug out of Devil’s Cranium. The sunny day Reece had prayed for suddenly turned blustery and cold. Wind cut like razors across that hill and right through our jackets. We kept low to the ground on our hands and knees around the spot where the metal detector had beeped. Mei put on plastic gloves—like we’d decided to do when handling the artifacts—as if we were investigating a crime. We held our breaths as Mei slowly reached into the sack. Something small and round fell out. It was a broken compass. Weeks before, we’d found the helmet and right arm of the armor of God, which had long ago been buried in the basement of Old Pilgrim Church, and which old Stan Dowland had dug up and re-buried near the cemetery. The rest of it was still at large. We had ourselves a mystery involving two ancient relics, maybe worth a fortune. But thanks to my stupidity we had lost them, with little hope of ever finding them again. Only a thousand-year-old scrap of chain mail remained, and it was now in the hands of a scientist in Chicago by the name of Stallard. It was clear that this was a quest, and that all of us—but especially me, Elijah Creek—had been chosen for it. Reece
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