Hermes
Hermes let the image of his son racing away on the back of a purebred Thracian fade from his mind's eye as he stepped into the circle. It was a crumbling mosaic too badly damaged to tell what it had been anymore. He cleared his throat.
Aphrodite dropped the magazine and threw up her hands as soon as she saw him.
"Please tell me you're here to - "
"No," Hermes said with a handsome smile.
"Ugh." The goddess dropped back into the seat she had only just begun to rise from, rolling her eyes. "Then you're useless." She willed her magazine back into her hands, flipped to the exact same page she'd left on. "Go away."
"Wish I could," he said honestly.
Looking at her hurt.
She had May's wavy blonde hair, and it was even threatening to frizz in the damp air just like it should. The upturned nose, prominent cheekbones and small ears were hers, although he thought the natural slant to the pouting mouth belonged to someone else. It was familiar, that and the pointed chin, but he couldn't remember right now. He didn't want to, really. The eyes were all May, though. They even echoed like hers. The ones in her skull and on her spine reflecting back through the ones in her face, making them
shine. Eyes and eyes and eyes…
All she had wanted was to do something good with her Sight.
For a goddess of Love, Aphrodite was always the
last person anyone who'd loved and lost wanted to see.
He looked away.
"Anything worth mentioning?" He asked, before his phone rang. "Hang on."
'I have Demeter on line three,' Martha said.
"Not now," Hermes replied. "Tell her to leave a message."
'The last time you put her off, all of our packages for delivery sprouted thorns.'
"I'm not doing
delivery, right now," he snipped back. "Door keeping. And
singular. Tell her she's on the list."
His pocket vibrated again.
'Can I tell Frigg to fu - '
"No!" He cut George off. Holy Zeus, no. That woman scared him. "Redirect her to Iris,
please."
Sometimes, he hated his job.
Iris didn't get it. She hadn't been
demoted, it was a
lateral move. And no, being able to go to new and exciting locales with the full backing of Olympus was not a bonus. Because no one was thrilled to see someone from Olympus anymore and
this was the new and exciting locale.
A large, dark underground cavern.
Well, he supposed dark wasn't new. It was hard finding someplace that
wasn't dark right now, but this was more than just the absence of light. It was more of a feeling, then anything. The large red doors were not barred or otherwise secured aside from an ornate and complicated looking Assyrian lock that made his fingers twitch.
He found himself frowning. At first, he thought it was just because he'd seen hundreds of dark caverns, Styx, he'd been
born in one, but… the detailing on the columns and the type of brazier in the corner…the doors.
Was this even Greek? It looked…he was reminded of Alexander's former empire and he didn't like it.
"I have no idea where I am," he realized. How had that happened?
"You wouldn't," Aphrodite said dully, turning the page, bored of his presence already. "This isn't a
place. There were a few cracks," she said and waved off his alarm with a flip of her long blonde hair. "That's
hardly worth bothering about, really, although give it another moment to realize
you're here - "
There was a pulse. It was little more than an uncomfortable feeling like his heart had just skipped a beat or turned over in his chest.
'Hermes?' May's voice called, sounding slightly muffled on the edges, like she was speaking through a keyhole. His eyes snapped to the red doors.
'Is that - are you out there?'
What - he reeled. He hid her. They didn't find her - they didn't
know - The sudden terror had him casting his mind back to the white Colonial house in an ordinary, American suburb -
May's voice sobbed.
'Oh, I'm so sorry, Hermes. I wanted it to work - babe, I wanted it to work so bad…'
He didn't tell her that story so she could apply!
He took an unsteady step towards the doors. Why was she willing to risk it all to try to become the Oracle of Delphi? Luke had been so young - they had
time…
'I'm so sorry! Where's Luke?' May wailed.
'He ran! Oh, my baby boy. I'm sorry - I don't want to be trapped in here - Hermes please!'
Trapped?
It was enough to snap him out of it.
May hasn't been herself for over a decade. Not sane. Barely human. And no one would have bothered to lock her away in a dungeon deep like this. They would just put her down.
First was the relief. It wasn't May.
Then came the
rage.
"Hup bup bup," a well manicured hand pressed against his chest, stopping him in his tracks completely. "And
you, don't
make me come in there."
For a moment, he was confused. He wasn't
weak. He was whole. All of his Names in one place, the weight of them heavy enough to send ripples throughout a three dimensional reality as he forced it to move around him. He pressed a little and found not a single ounce of give. He slowly turned his eyes to the obstacle.
"No," Aphrodite said. Her eyes were a steel blue now, the color of a reflection off freshly tempered metal. The ripples hit her form and
broke. What was he
seeing?
"That's exactly what it wants and if you break
anything - " Her voice rose in that tell tale whine that had him already cringing. "I'm going to have to
fix it and you
know how much I hate responsibility!"
Hermes sputtered.
"Honestly." She rolled her eyes and shoved him back with little more than a flexing of the fingers she had on his chest. "Blast first and ask questions never, just
what did I see in you?"
Hermes' mouth opened, then closed, strangely hurt that he lost out in a comparison to
Ares, of all people. He tried, "I'm very handsome."
"True." Aphrodite admitted as she idly inspected her nails.
He felt like he should have whiplash.
"Come
on," she needled him. "Did you really think I'm wasting the best hours of my life in this dump for
fun?" She flapped a hand as he tried to wrap his brain around a crisis of this magnitude being
anyone's best hours of their life. "Because
trust, I am not."
He almost needled her back that Athena was the goddess of Wisdom for a
reason… He almost needled her back. His anger finished draining as Hermes paused.
He wasn't
weak. Even his father would have spent a bit more effort holding him back.
"What?" Aphrodite demanded. Her brows were furrowed in her signature annoyed pouting and her eyes remained wide and guileless.
He eyed the goddess warily.
"Oh, that?" Aphrodite turned to indicate the doors. "It was nothing
you did, honestly, I'd be more concerned if you
didn't have a reaction to it."
He swallowed thickly. "It sounded like - "
"Someone you
love." Aphrodite swooned, spinning in a little, giddy circle with the back of her hand against her forehead and everything. "No wonder they have to hide this here, can you imagine if just anyone can hear it? The most powerful force in the cosmos is love…and no one ever
believes me!"
"And you're safe because you don't love anyone?"
Aphrodite gasped in outrage, whirling on him. "How dare you! I love
everyone equally!"
"Athena."
"I'd
love her head on a stick!"
And something in his gut was still whispering:
Liar, liar, liar.
Aphrodite was old.
His father had cast the tie breaking vote to give her full rights and privileges as a god of the Greek pantheon, but that was well before his time. She was a
terrific lay, fun mother and was very good at defusing people. Being non-threatening.
He'd noticed when the Fates came for their daughter, Tyche, the goddess of Fortune.
He still doesn't know what they said to her, but Tyche always managed to talk a whole lot without saying anything about it. Aphrodite raised their daughter and now Tyche was a goddess that knew just what she needed to say to convince everyone that Fortune wasn't dangerous. She had to have gotten it from her mother, because no one let
him get away with anything anymore.
Tyche was just under a few Fated restrictions so she wouldn't
interfere, is all.
He might have bought it, if he wasn't himself.
Thief covered the grifters, the conmen, the cheats and embezzlers. The intersection with
Commerce drew in the insider traders, the price gougers and the anti-trust. Someone who always wins, wasn't
lucky.
They were rigging the game.
Four days ago, he learned he had
never known how to swear an Oath on the River Styx.
He should be asking a lot more questions.
"What's in there?" He asked instead.
Aphrodite pulled on a lock of wavy blonde hair, shifting her weight from one foot to another, cocking a hip. "You know leucrota, yes?"
Hermes swallowed what tasted like pure bile.
They were monsters with the bodies of red-furred lions with the hooves of a horse and heads that looked like a cross between a horse and wolf, glowing red eyes and instead of teeth, their jaws were fitted with two solid plates of bone that clacked together. They were good mimics of voices, luring in the unaware.
It was something like a secondhand memory. That thing your mind does when you see your care keys and you aren't reminded of the last time you lost them, but of the time you got so drunk you had to take a taxi home, maybe you hit on the fat cabbie and then spent the rest of the night locked in the bathroom crying.
Not that he had any personal experience with that.
The point is, his mind jumped to the one time leucrota were hellbent on killing his son, Luke. He had been so much younger, running through the halls of an old mansion belonging to a cursed son of Apollo with the daughter of Zeus when he ran into an older blond man the boy instantly recognized as a god.
'He's your son, isn't he? How could you - what kind of father are you? He doesn't deserve this! He just wanted to save someone!'
He couldn't look Apollo in the face without feeling the urge to punch him for a year after.
"I know leucrota," Hermes said darkly.
Why was he allowed?
What made
him so special he could overturn his son's cursed fate decades later without getting
ruined?
"Well,
that," Aphrodite jerked a thumb back at the large red doors. "Is their progenitor."
He looked over her shoulder. "Does it have a Name?"
"Yes."
He understood.
Aphrodite was
old.
If he broke the doors, she would fix them. She took it for granted that she would not only know how, but could. That it was expected of her to. While contributing to the protection of all the Camps and Olympus
and guarding this Door as a singular being.
And she
did hate responsibility.
All of that just didn't
count.
"Crocotta are from north Africa," he probed lightly. "India."
She rolled her eyes again before giving him a flat, unamused stare. He could hear the 'bitch,
please.'
"The complex is secure, everything works, honestly if you're not here to relieve me -
" Aphrodite absently adjusted the way her jean jacket fit over the pink blouse that had sparkling silver
Beautiful, baby written on it. Her face brightened. "
Actually a quickie would - "
"No," Hermes said with another handsome smile. Not when she looked like that. It would just flay his heart wide open. "I'll just - "
The coral, pearl and seastone walls of Atlantis blinked into existence around him.
" - go," he burbled underwater.
He was answered with attempted murder.
"Woah! Woah!" He danced out of the way of gleaming bone spear tips. To their credit, it only took the merman guards a second to realize that he wasn't an intruder, just an idiot.
He should have
known they'd be jumpy.
Everyone was.
Well, maybe not Aphrodite.
"Sorry, sorry," He showed off his Iphone. Its commercial release was in two years, but since when did that matter to him? "Official business," he said, swirling the phone and its snake antennae around his head.
'I'm going to be sick,' George, the left snake head, complained.
'Not on me!' Martha, the right, snapped at him.
Hermes ignored them both and tried out a winning smile.
The guards glanced at each other. The right fish man had an entire conversation with his eyes, gills and right shoulder, but Hermes could tell the left shark man understood maybe a quarter of it. They both shrugged at him, decked out in sea green scaled battle armor. Then left held up a small signpost made out of small sea coral and anemone.
'Lord Hermes,' it said in the pink words of blooming anemone. He almost laughed, but then he remembered.
Oh right.
Not everyone could talk.
Left's sign flipped around.
'If you seek our Lord, he is overseeing defenses.' Makes sense. They had their own Camp too, didn't they. The sign flipped back and there was new writing.
'We can summon an escort.'
"I was hoping I could talk to Queen Amphitrite, actually," Hermes tried and watched them both frown. But they were fish. Mermen, whatever. They didn't have lips, so it was more like their bared teeth showed even more pearly white
sharp. "Just a short report and then I'll be out of her hair, promise!"
The guards shared another glance, but they stepped back to the opposite side of the double sided palace doors. They couldn't be anymore different from the doors to the Olympian Assembly or even the Doors of Death. Those had Grecian mosaics, heroic scenes and legends etched into them of their history. These were crafted to look like the interlocking tentacles or limbs of some massive sea creature reluctantly prying open from the bottom, still staying stubbornly closed at the top. The hallway past the doors kept the image going, being circular and lined with pale curving columns like ribs as if visitors were walking right into its gullet. He hoped he was just
imagining the contractions rippling through the slick, blood red walls.
The Elder Cyclops and Olympus. Erebus and Uncle Dead's House in the Underworld. It made him wonder, and not the first time, who built the halls of Atlantis.
He was let into the throne room with little fanfare and he felt it the moment the Queen of Atlantis noticed him. May liked calling it his Thief Sense. That feeling you get when your foot nudges a trip wire, when you spot a camera looking your way, when a guard dog stops and sniffs the air.
Poseidon's wife wore a stunningly beautiful woman with black hair tied back under a silk net of pearls on a clamshell throne and this time the circlet on her brow was made up of white starfish. A long teal fishtail flowed out from under her green and gold dress, fins idly moving with the current. She was dark skinned with regal cheekbones, straight nose and full mouth. The talk on Olympus was that she was a kind and gentle goddess.
They had the benefit of distance.
The eldest granddaughter of Pontus was kind enough, he supposed. Maybe if her sea monster kids weren't a dime a dozen compared to the four
proper gods, he'd feel better about it.
One word: Charybdis.
As for gentle?
People couldn't tell the difference between genuine gentleness and ever present caution.
"Hermes," Amphitrite said. He would never like the meticulous way she said Names. Made his
soul itch. "And what does Olympus want from me?"
He sketched out his best diplomatic bow. "Queen Amphitrite."
Technically, he wasn't supposed to. He was the Messenger of the Gods of Olympus. On the clock, he carried the full authority of his father, Zeus Olympios. It was a
fact that Atlantis was under Olympic rule.
His father's Master Bolt was still missing and Hermes knew better than anyone stealing it wouldn't have been hard. Piss easy actually, for anyone who isn't a god. While he didn't think Atlantis
needed to steal it, he wondered if that fact was close to overstaying its welcome.
He hoped not.
Uncle Sea was powerful, but his Queen was
dangerous.
He wasn't even
talking about her grandparents.
Either set.
"Just…asking if anything has changed down here," he offered as nonchalantly as he could. Looking into her eyes was uncomfortable, even for him. "Anything to worry about?"
The corner of Amphitrite's supple lips pulled up.
"Athena remembers," she said thoughtfully. Hermes bit his lip so he didn't blurt out that it was a request from
Zeus.
But.
Yeah, it was Athena's idea. His dad deserves some credit for recognizing a good idea when he heard one, right? If one primordial was mucking things up, better make sure other massive headaches weren't getting any funny ideas.
"I had wondered."
Hermes patiently waited out the pause.
"The stars are not right. However, three of grandfather's lowest circuit are unaccounted for."
Yikes, Hermes thought. Weren't they all supposed to be dead in that sunken city of theirs? Or was it sleeping?
Or
both?
"We are tracking them and do not require assistance at this time," Amphitrite offered. "She will know what that means."
"Thank you," he bowed again.
"Do not thank me," Uncle Sea's wife said mildly with a small wave of a hand. "The sea takes care of its own. I would have you remind her of this." Amphitrite paused. "And perhaps suggest that her preoccupation with forewarning has reached a limit."
Hermes frowned. "Forewarned is forearmed?"
He didn't mean for it to come out like a question.
The Queen of Atlantis studied him, making him shift in place. "Ah," she said softly and he felt his stomach sink. "You are under the impression that if one such as grandfather arose, or if the Night found our existence offensive, Olympus would be able to defend itself."
He waited for her to finish, but she didn't say anything.
"Oh," Hermes said quietly.
Maybe Hecate had the right idea. He kind of felt like praying right now.
Maybe not to the Serpent.
He could still remember the titanic weight of the Serpent's attention before Apollo's altar; cold, caustic and utterly uncaring. And maybe not Buddhism either. Iris tried to explain it to him once, but it just made his head hurt. The Hindus terrified him, so that was a no.
Hecate's White God?
Would he have to apologize for all his bellyaching over the past two millennia first?
Because he did
a lot of it.
"Thank you. I won't darken your doorstep - " The last thing he saw of Atlantis was Amphitrite's blazing eyes as she tilted her head in dismissal.
Hello, Delphi, Greece.
" - any longer," Hermes whispered. He breathed in the air of the Old World from the top seats of Apollo's Theater. Time had worn them down to crumbling bricks baked pale gray by the sun, but at least it was mostly intact. It was recognizable. He dreaded the day when it would no longer be. The mortals had just gotten around to reclaiming Hephaestus' temple for study sometime before that silly war they had in Europe and the Oracle of Delphi no longer called Greece home.
Well, he guessed it called nowhere home now, because it was in the stomach of a demigod.
Good riddance.
"Alright," he said loudly as he approached the wheat blonde woman sitting on one of the Theater seats, making a daisy chain in the dark. "I'm here, sorry for making you wait, Aunt Demeter." The second eldest Kronide started a little, before she put the flowers down and crossed her arms, pinning him with a stern look. Hermes held up his hands in surrender.
'Told you,' Martha snarked.
"I'm here now. You wanted to speak with me?"
"Yes." Demeter nodded sharply. "If I had the choice, I would
absolutely do it again. Give up on Kore? Over my
dead body."
Hermes blinked.
"What?"
He was missing something.
"This is Delphi," Demeter said.
"I…know that."
"The Navel of the Earth."
"Know that too."
The Earth Mother was imprisoned here.
Demeter's face made a pained expression. "It's cracked."
"I - " Hermes stopped. "Oh dear."
His aunt wrung her hands. "I thought I fixed it after Kore
finally left that no-good brute for just
five minutes - "
"Demeter."
His aunt huffed. "I might have understated the damage I did to the prison," she said quickly. "Just a little! Turns out, it was more of a symbiotic relationship than I thought - really, it wasn't like it was even my
fault - "
"You just said you would do it again," Hermes pointed out.
"Yes, well," Demeter began, looking a bit hunted. "Mother helped put things back to rights and that should have been the end of it."
Rhea?
"Maybe we should have known after that bit of trouble in Alaska a little while ago. Hera's hiding something - don't
tell me she isn't, but Alaska? You just
know the daughter-stealing ruffian was just
asking for it - "
"Can't grandmother help us fix it now?" He didn't need this. None of them needed this. "The Questers came across her recently." Before everything went to shit. "I think she wants the Earth Mother back just as much as we do."
Which was not at
all.
Demeter frowned and instead of talking about anything to do with the protogenoi that hated them getting free, asked, "What Quest?"
"The one for father's Master Bolt."
"Oh, that old thing?"
Hermes boggled.
"I thought Artemis found it?" Demeter looked at him expectantly with mismatched eyes as if he had just
forgotten her second favorite had taken care of the problem already. "No?" She frowned harder before flapping both hands at him. "Don't look at me like that - you know I don't pay attention to these kinds of things. It's
summer!"
"The Bolt was stolen at the Winter Solstice." Even as it came out of his mouth, he knew it wouldn't help. Winter Solstice was the only time of the year Hades was invited to Olympus and when it came to the Lord of the Underworld, his aunt had two modes: Bitch and Nag.
Her round face predictably darkened.
"Rhea fix Earth Mother's prison!" He said quickly.
"Without turning around and killing us all, maybe," Demeter said absently and Hermes reeled. "Well, maybe Geb - oh no, wait, the Egyptians are still useless, aren't they? What is Ra
doing - "
"Demeter," Hermes croaked.
The Earth Mother's Warden blinked at him. "Do you remember the Byzantine?"
"No," he said, bewildered.
No one on Olympus remembered the Byzantine, not even Demeter, because humanity just up and threw them away long before Rome collapsed. They didn't
Fade, but he supposed they might have slept. Dreamed.
Hermes paused.
Aphrodite remembered.
"Your grandmother is putting herself through that so that she doesn't cleanse the world of mortals."
Hermes' world tilted. "What?
Why?"
"So she doesn't cleanse the world of mortals," Demeter repeated slowly at him, as if
he was the one who didn't understand plain Greek. "They really are much alike," she said in this very reasonable tone. "Like Mother, like daughter as I always say. All you have to do is listen to them talk for a bit - "
"The Earth Mother is
talking to you?"
"I
am Her Warden," Demeter said. "Even the
mortals figured out that solitary confinement was cruel."
Hermes stared.
"And throwing the pieces of your father into the Pit was just
a little unfortunate?"
"For the
record," Demeter said loudly, offended. "Hestia and I argued against that, but we all knew he was awful, no chance of changing his mind. Self-defense."
Hermes continued staring.
"Oh, She won't change," his aunt finally admitted. "But it's symbiotic. She
is learning from me."
"That's - that's
bad."
"It is."
A flower bloomed within her empty right eye socket, the long thin blood red petals unfolding like shapes within a kaleidoscope.
And it bloomed and bloomed and bloomed.
"Thank you for telling me, Aunt Demeter," Hermes said stiffly.
Demeter beamed at him.
"Of course, dear." She motioned for him to step closer so she could put her finished daisy chain crown on his head. "And I'll make sure you have plenty of those wheaties that you like so much," she promised as he smiled weakly. "Be careful running around in the dark, now."
He nodded. "You know me, Aunty. I'm
always - "
Cold wind slapped him in the face. "- careful."
The god of the North Wind lowered his newspaper just enough to squint at him from over the pages. He was wearing a snow suit as usual with icicles clinging to his pale beard and eyebrows. Hermes glanced around and saw that he was…not where he was expecting. His inner GPS was telling him he was in Quebec, Canada and it certainly looked like it. He could still see The Edge from the icy penthouse's windows as a shimmering aurora borealis barrier separating their world from the land beyond the gods.
He didn't mean 'beyond' as in they
couldn't go there. He meant 'beyond' as in they
shouldn't.
It was a land where even gods were prey.
"How is the barrier holding up?" Hermes asked, looking up over the reflective Art Deco ice desk.
Boreas' eyes narrowed into slits.
Ugh.
Dealing with the Four Winds
always felt like trying to teach a demigod common sense.
"Athena's checking?" He tried instead.
"Intact," Boreas grunted.
"I'm only asking because if you haven't noti - wait, what?" Hermes' mind spun.
He just saved himself an hour.
Holy Zeus.
"I - thank you."
A grunt.
Hermes hesitated, but then he decided to just go for it. A god only lives once. "And I would like to thank your daughter for her help on my son's Quest."
Boreas' eyes flashed back up to him as the god reared up, rising from his seat with his purple wings flaring behind him like an enraged stallion. "Khione hardly needs your
gratitude, son of Zeus.
"
Hermes deflated.
May was a good person. And through her, he had come to realize that he…
He wasn't.
Maybe he could blame his upbringing. His mother didn't exactly
want him after all, but his father did. And maybe Zeus wasn't the best role model around, but he'd been doomed from the start.
Thieves were used to taking what they wanted. That was the point. But those were pathetic excuses.
He wasn't a good person. Even now, he found it difficult to care. There were things he regretted though. Hurting Khione was one of them. She didn't deserve it. Maybe no one did.
He was glad Luke took after his mother.
For them, he'll try.
"I know." He said quietly. He tossed one of his business cards onto the god's desk. "She has it anyway. If she needs anything…" He finished hopefully.
Boreas' gaze cut through him, but eventually, the god sat back down. Hermes counted it as a win that he didn't just blow the card away.
"Get out."
He went.
A few more visitations, both Greek and not, and he found himself revisiting the Old World. Or rather, the outskirts of it. He already had his hands up in surrender when the one he wanted to visit noticed him, which was damn quick.
Heracles wasn't called the greatest hero in Greek history for nothing.
"Oh, it's
you."
"I'm flattered," Hermes said.
His elder half-brother rolled his eyes as he leaned on his club, looking down on him.
Because he was very tall.
Hermes was actually kind of jealous. If he tried to make himself look that tall without going full god form, he'd look ridiculous.
"What do you want?" Heracles raised a skeptical eyebrow.
He had their father's black hair and was rocking the stubble look Apollo could never pull off. His eyes were an electric blue, also like their father's, but up close, Hermes could see that they echoed. Like May's.
"I can't leave my post, so if you're expecting me to do some stupid errand for you - "
"No, I - " Hermes was beginning to regret visiting. "Nothing like that. I just - "
He looked out over the island. The Pillars of Hercules loomed in the distance, jutting out over the sea like swollen fingers.
"What was Athena like as King?"
Heracles' eyebrows shot up into his hairline.
"Humor me," Hermes begged. "I don't - I don't know anything. Apparently."
Heracles scratched at the small scar on his stubbled chin, then sighed. "Exactly the same as she is now," he said and Hermes frowned. "You know that thing she does where she expects you to follow her train of thought, but she's crap at talking to people she thinks aren't
complete imbeciles, so you don't get the memo and she looks at you like you're stupid anyway?"
"Oh yeah."
"Hate that," Heracles said. "My King or not."
The god of Heroism swung his club, knocking some white sand off his bare feet.
"I understand, you know," he said. "You've learned that you had it wrong this entire time and now you're
lost."
I'm not, Hermes thought, but he couldn't quite make the words come out of his mouth.
"You are," Heracles said. "And you're looking around, hoping that this
crushed feeling you have is because the world changed recently without having the damn decency to
tell you about it. But
it hasn't changed at all."
There was a painful lump in Hermes' throat.
"
You did," Heracles finished.
"What do I do?" Hermes asked.
"I rebelled." Hermes cringed and his brother sighed. "Styx, I don't know. What do you
want?"
Hermes didn't even have to think about it.
"I want my son Luke to have a future."
"A demigod?" Heracles asked knowingly. "Good luck with that, the laws haven't been changed - "
"He's not - " Hermes scuffed at the sand with a foot. "I've been looking for loopholes and it - it brought me to you," he confessed.
Heracles straightened.
"My way wasn't exactly…ideal," he said slowly.
"Not that."
His brother went still.
"His mother - May was clear-sighted. Badly." Hermes said quickly. "I know what that means."
"Aren't those records sealed?"
"Thief."
"How badly?" Heracles finally asked flatly.
"She could See - " He made a vague gesture in the air with his hands. "Diagonal. The Could Be." The way Apollo had explained it to him, the Could Be could be changed. If you told someone else, if you made a different decision, if you
ignored it. It was Fool's Gold to the real thing, but that didn't necessarily mean it wouldn't come true. It just wasn't
inevitable.
A False Prophecy.
All she wanted was to be able to do some good with her Sight.
That was
all.
"And I invested a lot in him. My son." Hermes hesitated. "I gave him
everything."
Finally saying it out loud felt like lancing a boil. He wasn't ashamed, he realized. Every single one of his Names was Luke's father and he wasn't ashamed of giving a mortal so much.
My son.
"He can - he can do something I can't. And I tried."
He demonstrated, wrapping the mantle of
Thief around him and reaching for that one spot in the center, that one tiny,
tiny place that
felt like what he felt in Luke. Thieves stole things, but the concept was far too tied to stealing the
material. Things of perceived value. Things you could pickpocket, grab, swindle and cheat out of someone else.
What he felt in Luke felt far more pure. Something that felt like
Steal, but reaching for it felt like his heart would burst.
He let it go, huffing and puffing.
Exhausted.
"I see," Heracles said softly. Hermes looked up, but his face could have been carved from the stone of his Pillars. "An emergent daimones if you could argue it, perhaps," he mused and Hermes' heart leapt. Daimones, like their Nymphai counterparts, could
live on Olympus. "But it's more likely he'd be destroyed."
"No!" Hermes shouted.
The god of Heroism raised an eyebrow. "Children with the clear-sighted used to be outlawed for a reason," he said mildly.
"But - "
"Like I said, my way isn't ideal."
The last time he felt this small, he realized he had
never known how to swear an Oath on the Styx.
"Thank you for your time," Hermes managed to choke out.
"Hm." Heracles roughly nudged his right shoulder in an awkward, comforting gesture. "Sorry."
"...I am too."
Returning to Olympus was no relief. The golden streets were washed out pale gold without sunlight and the great palaces looked like condemned buildings against the void of the Night sky. Various immortals of all kinds wandered the streets, because life goes on.
Until it ends.
He reported to Athena and it was just as Heracles said. He could see it now, the way she asked for clarification and the way she looked to the side when she was thinking, like there were puzzle pieces tumbling around in her skull.
He looked the former King of the Gods of Olympus in the face and felt…
"Troubling." Her brow furrowed. "My
preoccupation with forewarning," she scoffed. "The Earth Mother we can do something about, at least." Her eyes went through every color of the rainbow as she glanced up at the Night sky. "One last thing," Athena said in her sharp, cold way. "Your conversation with Heracles."
"You
heard?" He nearly screamed, mortified.
Athena actually paused. He could see her make the effort to step back and lower her head as her expression softened. "Around Herakles, I always listen to my Name. Even if I cannot respond."
Like she was his divine parent.
Hermes' mouth opened, and then he closed it.
"This surprises you."
"Yes," he admitted. He supposed if there was any child her pride would gladly call her own if she could, it
would be the greatest hero in Greek history. "Yes, it does."
"A habit from his, let's call it
accident-prone ways and the Giant War," she explained, a quicksilver smile flashing over her face. "Boy could get into trouble standing still. I saw no reason to stop."
He wondered how Heracles felt about still being called 'boy.'
"I merely wished to reassure you that I will say nothing about it, and if you
wished to have it argued - " Her iridescent eyes searched his face. "It would be best to approach Demeter of Sacred Law."
Hermes nodded sharply.
Athena owed Luke.
Well, in for the penny, in for the pound. "What was grandfather like?"
Gods only live once.
He should coin the phrase.
GOLO?
No, if he wanted to make it a thing, it's got to be more inclusive.
"Pragmatic. Efficient." Athena said immediately. If she was caught off guard by his sudden interest in the Titan Lord, she didn't show it. "Do not forget, the Golden still live within the fields of Elysium and they welcomed his return. However," she said thoughtfully. "It was also true that he is
still an enemy of Olympus, no matter his role. He was
bitter. Resentful. Scornful. Furious."
She paused.
"Grieving."
Hermes finished his rounds, all of the Doors under his jurisdiction pressing like hot brands at the back of his mind. Where was Thanatos when you
needed him? The Lake of Lerna. The Doors of Death. Acheron. The Grove of Arcadia. He stopped at the last for a moment.
It was deep in the heart of the Amazon. The smoke of a nearby slash-and-burn tickled his nose.
His heart ached.
These trees used to be Pan's pride and joy, but now they were covered in cancerous-looking growths and clumps of bleeding fungi. Places where the gnarled, dark ash colored bark fell away revealed silvery lines like spiderwebs or veins on the wood, crawling with mutated insects and worms. In a jungle like this, there wouldn't be much flora anyway. He both hates and loves that he knows that.
The sickly sweet smell wafting from the rotting ground tells him enough.
He thought about it for a second. One of the ward stones wasn't far. All it would take was a crack and a gap in the Mist so mortal greed would find the grove…No, it wasn't worth it, he thought then, running a hand through the curls of his black hair. It wasn't worth it.
And it wasn't their fault.
The mortal need to destroy their environment was a poison they leached from the Black Goat
first, not the other way around.
He threw a stone.
Startled, bloodshot eyes opened all over the dark trees as twisted roots ripped themselves up from the ground, flailing.
The dryads were restless.
It was his decision not to tell the satyrs about his son, Pan, not even when they made that ridiculous Cloven Council thing a while back with their searcher's licenses. Dionysus didn't care and it wasn't
Hermes' fault they were so stubborn about it. And it wasn't like he knew where he was now, so it wasn't as if their search was
futile.
Just meaningless.
Why couldn't he save anyone he loved?
He smelled smoke.
Hermes stepped away.
He had work to do.
