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"You'll not give yourself up to me, will you?" Artemis did not feel bothered with coaching her questions with subtlety or grace. Alchemist knew of what she spoke, there was no need for such foibles.
After their battle with Theseus, Alchemist had opened a doorway back to his realm and led her to his workshop. The lack of aggression at her presence was... Confusing.
"No." Alchemist told her rather simply as he shucked off the pack upon his back. "I'm not exactly interested in doing so."
"Why then?" she asked, pleading for an answer. "What was the purpose of-of all of this!? Why the ruse, what was your goal?! What was the point!?"
She didn't like shouting. She didn't like screaming. She didn't like that they felt appropriate.
"Zagreus." Her prey told her, leaning back against a workbench that was pushed against a nearby wall. "His father wants him to grow strong. And I've been tasked with seeing it done."
"...And myself?" Artemis found herself asking. She could feel her fists clenching tightly, her hands shaking with the force. "What am I in all of this? Did you find amusement in your efforts, proving myself to be beneath your notice? Time and again slaughtering your prey before I'd even had a chance to line up my own shot?"
"Hmm..." he hummed quietly, his eyes locked on to hers. His gaze felt different to that of Theseus, there was consideration there but none of the base lust that the long-dead hero had looked upon her with. "Honestly, I'd just told your father the truth without much thought as to the consequences. Everything since then has just been business as normal for me, really."
"Ruining my life, destroying my equipment, offering me cursed treasures on-par with the workings of the gods- This is normal for you?!" Artemis barely kept herself from screeching but it was a near thing. Too close for her comfort, really.
"...Oddly enough, yeah." The sheer gall of the man, the utter gormlessness in his response- It was enough to make her want to scream! "I do tend to have that effect."
"...If I cannot complete my duty, what do you think would happen to me?" It was as much an accusation as it was a question. Artemis didn't know, not truly. Her father's temper could be best described as mercurial. He may ignore her failure, think nothing of it and simply carry on without change.
Or he may just decide that failing a direct command from her king would justify stripping her freedoms and...
Artemis didn't know for sure but her imagination was quick to supply her with increasingly worse scenarios.
"Trapped on a mountain as a bird eats your liver every day." Alchemist held up a hand and began to list out some of the punishments her father had inflicted. Each time he raised another finger. "Stuck holding up the corpse of Ouranos so it can't impregnate Gaia with a fresh batch of incestuous monsters. Your agelessness stripped from you so that you're forced to grow old within your immortality. Not exactly hurting for options, here."
Artemis shivered at the cold, clinical way he described the judgements passed by the gods.
"So you understand." Artemis nodded, firming her resolve. It felt as thin and fragile as a single thread of spidersilk but it was all that she could muster. "If I cannot... Cannot... What? What am I to do?"
She didn't know. It felt as though her only option was to flee, but to where? Where could she go that she would be safe? Where her freedoms would not be stripped from her?
"I don't really have a good answer for you." The mage said before he sighed quietly and shook his head. "You could carry on the family tradition, try some patricide but I don't think that would really work out. According to prophecy, that's Athena's role."
"Her?!" Artemis barked out, a hysterical laugh on her lips. "Strike against our father?! Even when her justice was spurned and Poseidon barely punished for defiling her temple, she obeyed father's whims. I cannot begin to imagine how... How... Do you know of this?"
"Does it matter?" Alchemist asked her, his arms crossed before his chest. "Your father married Metis, the Titan of Olympus and then devoured her when the corpse of the sky told him that his trueborn heir would kill him, just as he'd done to his father and his father had done to his grandfather."
Artemis stared for a long moment before she reached up and removed the small mask he'd formed for her so she could rub at her eyes.
"I can't speak for you but I'd prefer to be far, far away from that mess when everything comes to a head." Alchemist continued, shifting on his feet uncomfortably as he tried to fill the silence.
"...That does sound best, actually." Artemis felt light-headed at the revelation. Not just politics, now prophecy was involved with Olympus. And it was... The impact it would one day have, it would be ruinous. "The question I'm truly struggling with is not so much in the doing, it is the place to which I ought go."
If she'd known about this prophecy... And it sounded a bit too direct to be a lie...
She would have left the lands her father controlled decades ago.
A knock upon the door of the workshop proved a most welcome distraction.
That it was Hypnos who entered after Alchemist's barked greeting was not.
"Ah, Alche- Artemis? I wasn't expecting to see you!" Hypnos greeted the two of them jovially, a wide smile on his face under his tired eyes.
"Afternoon, Hypnos." Alchemist nodded to the other man, his face serious though less severe than it had been moments earlier. "What brings you by?"
Artemis kept her thoughts to herself, taking the moment to merely breathe and think. Whatever foolishness the meekest titan felt like getting up to was-
"I've decided I would like to join you." Artemis felt her thoughts freeze at the declaration from Hypnos. He... He could not be serious, the titan knew what fate awaited the man!
"Alright." Alchemist agreed without any sign of hesitation. "Zagreus should be able to best his father in another week or so. Maybe a few days if I can get him to actually use magic."
"So soon?" Hypnos asked, though he doesn't sound surprised. If anything, the man sounded pleased instead. "Oh, that's wonderful! I had no idea he'd caught up with his father so quickly!"
"He hasn't." Alchemist pushed off the wall and stretched, his arms going high over his head for a moment. "Hades wants him out of here almost as much as Zagreus does. He just wants to make sure that Zagreus isn't going to get killed by something stupid, like a farmer with his hoe."
"Well that... Does make quite a bit more sense, now doesn't it?" Hypnos muttered, quietly and to himself but Artemis heard it all the same.
Yes, it might have made sense... But all that she knew suggested that the god cared little for his child and the antipathy was quite mutual.
She hadn't pegged Alchemist as being an idealist.
"So, you've offered to let Hypnos join you on your return to your world?" Artemis asked, finally having some semblance of order to her thoughts.
It carried its own problems, many of them in fact, but it could not called an inelegant solution to his own self-imposed imprisonment.
"He asked. I'm not opposed." Alchemist answered her, as though it was so blindingly simple.
That had really been all that it took? All Hypnos had to do was ask and he was offered a chance at freedom, at a realm in which he was not a wanted man?
"...Could I come along as well?" Artemis felt the words escape her mouth but she wasn't sure she'd actually said them. The dragon was a monster, he terrified her to her very core but... There was a decency to him that she struggled to understand.
"Sure." Artemis waited for a long moment upon getting that answer, half expecting to hear some kind of demand or restriction but... Nothing.
It really had been that simple.
"I think she's speechless." Hypnos whispered to the man, far too loud to be unheard.
"It's a good look for her." Alchemist whispered back, mischief shining clear in his eyes as though he were Eris herself.
"...Oh, go to the crows!" Artemis shouted, her cheeks burning red. "Both of you!"
Unfortunately, that just caused the two men to break out laughing. Much to her irritation.
-----
It took Zagreus quite a bit of time to cross the distance to the Temple of Styx, made all the worse as he did so by his lonesome.
The journey there had been uneventful but Artemis, surly as the goddess was, truly did make for good company. If nothing else, she did prove to be a good listener.
Looking up at the stonework of the temple's exterior, Zagreus felt so very small. The labyrinthine interiors were ever-shifting, much the same as the rest of the underworld. The temple was significantly larger within than it appeared from where he could see it.
Which, given what he'd seen of Alchemist's realm, wasn't truly so surprising.
"You took your time." A cold, flat voice called from the doorway.
Looking down to the great steps that led into the temple, Zagreus was not terribly surprised to see the flickering shape of Flamel's shadow.
"I thought I'd enjoy the view." Zagreus said, speaking lightly as he teased Stygian just free of its sheath. "Get some fresh air- It's colder, here, you know? Compared to home, I mean. At first I'd no idea what the experience meant at all!"
"...It is." Flamel agreed, standing from his place seated upon the steps. "Your grandmother lost something precious to her and she's been making it a problem for all others ever since."
Flamel rolled his shoulders as he walked down the grand staircase, his head twisting back and forth as he loosened his neck.
"Though, you'll likely meet her soon enough." Flamel continued as he reached the ground, standing on even footing with Zagreus. "Someone thought it clever to give the mortals the tools needed to regain their place."
"Regain their place, sir?" Zagreus felt a shiver run down his spine, though he could not place why. "What do you mean by that?"
"Poseidon? Hades? Thanatos?" Flamel held his arms out wide, an almost welcoming gesture if not for the frigid delivery of his words. "They look upon humanity as though they are an idle curiosity. As though we are but a passing fancy, too foolish to understand what we see within the mirror. Zeus saw the truth, however. He and Gwynn both feared Humanity, the both of them saw what Man would become and they trembled at the mere thought of it."
Flamel reached down to his waist and extracted a longsword, covered in curious, black vines. As he moved to hold it out, the shadows upon his person vanished!
Zagreus finally, finally had a chance to see what Flamel looked like in truth. Or, at least had an opportunity to look upon his armor.
His face was concealed underneath of a tattered black hood, only a pair of glowing yellow eyes visible from underneath. His armor, the body, the gauntlets, the leggings and boots were all made of a strange, almost grotesquely organic black metal and arranged in plates. In the center, though, right over the chest was a deep, bottomless black pit ringed in fire.
God-fire, from someone far, far stronger than Zagreus was.
"Who is this Gwynn, sir?" Zagreus asked, slowly drawing Stygian as he tried to make sense of what he saw.
"The god-king of his pantheon. Lord of light and fire, the one who sat in the center as time devoured itself to feed his dying flame." Flamel's voice had grown deeper, descending into a growl as whatever magic he'd used to disguise it faded away. "Slain, countless times. And each time, his soul and fire would latch on to his killer to begin the cycle anew."
Flamel's free hand rose to rest over the flaming circle upon his chest. "Like Zeus, he feared Humanity. Like Zeus, he sealed away their strength. Their potential. After all, why wouldn't a god fear-"
Flamel disappeared, or perhaps he moved too fast for Zagreus to see? Either way, he went from being more than a dozen meters away to suddenly being right in the god's face. The back of his hand slammed into Zagreus's face and launched him to the side, sending him tumbling head over heels and his sword sent flying after him.
That strike alone left the godling on the verge of being reclaimed by the Styx!
"-an entire race of natural-born god-killers?" Flamel's voice was nearly imperceptible against the ringing in Zagreus's ears.
The godling coughed, spitting out a mouthful of red and white chunks before he shakily climbed to his feet. Looking up, Zagreus felt confusion and trepidation alike when he saw that Flamel had placed the tip of his blade in the ground and merely stood in place.
Watching.
Waiting.
"Whut ish-" Zagreus tried to say but his mouth refused to move properly. His jaw hurt, the pain was nearly blinding and the godling couldn't tell if it burned or throbbed or both!
"You'll not get past me, Zagreus." Flamel growled, yellow orbs locked on the god's own eyes. "Not as you are, sitting once more on the precipice of death."
The man took his right hand off the pommel of his sword and held it out, palm up towards Zagreus.
"But you know how to fix that, don't you? Cast Drain upon me and restore your vitality, Zagreus. Do this, or you! Shall not! Pass!" The last words were shouted, echoing in the grand expanse around the temple.
"I dun-" Zagreus tried to say, his tongue swelling in his bleeding mouth. It was not the worst pain he'd ever felt, far from it but...
No. Zagreus would not allow it to distract him.
He'd never called upon magic the way the book described. Twisting and shaping his internal forces, imposing himself upon the world to force an alien effect into existence? It was almost anathema to what he'd been taught by Nyx.
A god imposed their will upon reality in a way that reality was often willing, even eager, to bring into truth. Magic? Magic was not some instinctive force, not a means of concentrating a bit of natures purpose into something that was, but more-so.
But none of it mattered, not in that moment.
Calling forth his divine strength, Zagreus twisted and willed it as the book had described. The dark, hungering force. The will to consume. The call to blood-
Zagreus shoved his hand forward, willing the spell to completion-
And nothing happened. The magic faded away as easily as it came, dissipating into nothing.
"Again." Flamel called, his voice lighter than it had been before. "You wish to best your father? To learn the truth of your mother's fate?"
"Yesh!" Zagreus shouted, cutting off into a choked scream as he tried to work his broken jaw.
"Then you have to want it!" Flamel's voice regained that harsh growl, his eyes burning underneath his hood. "Are you asking the world to capitulate to you, boy! Or are you demanding it?!"
Zagreus forced the spell to form again. He held his hand out, calling, begging the spell to work.
There was a brief glow of crimson light surrounding Flamel for a moment before the spell failed once more.
"Is this all you have to offer?" Flamel asked, disappointment in his words. His hood shook from side to side for a second before the man raised his blade-
And sheathed it at his side.
"You are not negotiating your magic into existence, Zagreus. You do not ask to make it work." Flamel turned away, disgust clear in his words. "If you wish to spend decades, scraping by to catch up to the barest measure of your father's skill, perhaps it would be best for you to stick to your blade. I'm sure your mother, Persephone, can wait-"
Per... sephone?
That was his mother's name.
His father, Nyx, even Thanatos had been unwilling to tell him even that much... But Flamel knew. Flamel was willing to speak of things none in the house would out of fear of angering Zagreus's father.
The man had answers, answers that Zagreus desperately wanted!
"Haaa-uurgh!" Zagreus shouted, willing it, wanting it, forcing it to work when he cast the spell for the third time.
Flamel froze in place as a crimson orb was ripped from him, soaring across the distance and into Zagreus.
"...Perhaps I was wrong." Flamel said, sounding perversely pleased.
"Perhaps so." Zagreus agreed, one hand rubbing at the side of his jaw as he felt the injuries seal over, felt new teeth tear through his gums to replace what he'd lost. "...You know my mother, sir?"
"No." Flamel disagreed, his voice softening as he shook his head. "We've never met. I know of her, that is all."
Zagreus took the brief reprieve as an opportunity to approach, sidling up next to Flamel as the man looked over the grand expanse of the underworld.
"...Do you know what she is like?" Zagreus hated how weak the question made him feel. Hated how little he knew of someone that he was supposed to have loved but never met.
"She's a strong woman." Flamel said before he quietly sighed. "She loves plants, got that from her own mother, and she has a heart big enough to love Hades."
Zagreus jumped when he felt a gauntleted hand land on his shoulder. Looking over to the man, Zagreus was almost certain he could make out the face underneath the hood.
"She'll love you, too."
-----
Using Bilocation, one Alchemist had remained behind in the House of Hades to oversee the dock where special residents would wash ashore. Once he'd confirmed that Zagreus had failed to best his father, Alchemist packed in for the day.
He'd forced the godling to expand his abilities, that had been enough socializing for him.
"Those crystal things down there are so weird..." Jinx, in her dragon form, walked alongside him as he worked on a personal project within the demi-plane that housed the elemental crystals.
Well, more like he was working overtop the demi-plane that housed the crystals.
Suspended over platforms made out of Wall of Force, his spaceship was in the middle of a full refit. One of him was working on the outside of the ship while another was inside, trying to figure out how to add actual sensors to the repurposed space-jet so it could at least see what was happening inside of the solar system.
Their current plans looked like they would need to buy and then dismantle a Federation Shuttlecraft from the online Star Trek game. The other options were generally more expensive and would all need a lot more work to get functional, even with True Skill bolstering his engineering skills.
"I don't really understand how they exist, either," Alchemist admitted to the girl as he continued to crawl along the surface of the ship, adhering to it through the use of a spell that let him walk along any surface, regardless of orientation.
Spider Climb. A very basic but incredibly niche spell. Good for a level two spell from Pathfinder but easily and readily outclassed by any of the flight spells. Still, it allowed Alchemist to directly connect with the Saquasohuh which facilitated the use of Conversion upon its hull.
He was turning the entirety of the outer shell into Darksteel. A slow process and, after he'd removed the ring that reduced spell costs to zero, a very draining one.
"I don't think you ever explained why you bothered doing all of this, anyway." Jinx flicked her tail towards the ground where the Crystelle were gathering in a mass directly underneath of them. "It's pretty, kind of, in a strange way... But what's the point?"
"You remember when we fought four of 'em inside of a tree where they were throwing around supercharged magic?" Alchemist asked, crawling along the ship as the blue hull turned black. Once Jinx nodded (Did she nod? The perspective was getting a little off.) he continued. "Well, I wanted to try and turn these Crystelle into those, literal hosts of living magic that could crystalize if killed. We picked up a lot of elemental shards off the monsters inside the Incorruptus Item Worlds and I was thinking of buying elementally charged crystals off the game shop to try feeding to 'em. Those could give us some of the other elements. Ice, Lightning, Light and Dark."
"...Okay?" Jinx still sounded confused as she followed along behind him as he slowly turned the ship as black as the night sky. "Why though?"
"Ah, well..." Alchemist paused for a moment, letting his MP regenerate as he thought of how to explain his thought process. "The crystals work best in either groups of four or groups of eight. And you need at least four to maintain a magical biosphere on a planet. I was thinking about putting a set on one of the other planets in our solar system and seeing if it would terraform it."
"Soo... We'd go from having our own personal, private little realities to owning whole planets?" Jinx sounded confused, which was fair. Creating habitable planets was a daunting idea no matter how it was viewed.
"Jinx?" Alchemist paused his work to turn to the dragon, crouching so that he was eye-level with her. "How many planet-busting threats are there every year? Mind-controlling space aliens, the various Lanterns of the rainbow, random asteroids on a collision course?"
He stood up and turned around, resuming his work of adding an absurd amount of weight to his ship. "It's not a matter of 'if' something will get through and ruin the world, Jinx. It's a matter of 'when'. And when that comes I'd like to have an option that doesn't involve squatting on Mars or begging the Thanagarians for help."
"...Do you just live in constant fear?" The dragon asked him after several long moments that eventually saw them back on the underside of the ship.
The Crystelle on the ground were gathered together in a large pile, crawling on top of each other to try and get at the two.
"Well, it's not 'constant' fear. Occasional anxiety and a host of intrusive thoughts, absolutely." Alchemist crossed his arms and watched in confusion as the mass of monsters overhead(?) began to fuse together, the individual Crystelle gluing themselves into a larger, cohesive mass. "I prefer to leave the whole 'Living in fear' thing to Batman."
Which wasn't entirely true, no, but then that would be what he preferred. What he preferred and what reality gave to him were two very different things.
"...Okay, so this is the prep work for a backup plan. Cool." Jinx craned her neck back to look at the giant Crystelle but it seemed as though fusing together into a giant spire of spiky crystals had also made the creature immobile. "Any idea if you can, like, make those crystals you were planning to feed that thing? 'Cuz I bet it's going to eat a lot."
"No idea yet," Alchemist admitted to the girl, shrugging before he got moving again. "I'll have to experiment with 'em a bit. I know there's a way to drain the elemental power out of these crystals and clusters that I can buy off the shop from Final Fantasy Eleven, so I might be able to get a feel for the inert crystal to convert other materials into it. Then it'd be a matter of figuring out how to add a charge."
Alchemist pulled a hand off the hull of his ship and used it to tap at his chin. "Might see if Mera would be interested in the idea. See about supplying her with some drained crystals and unload the research on her."
He had an idea for how it would work. He'd cheated his way through more and more of the Nether Scrolls and figured out the trick to using magic to charge a Soul Gem without needing an actual soul. He could probably stockpile enough to figure out Enchanting if he wanted to have legitimate access to the skill instead of using Synthesis: Fusion to access it instead...
Doing the same thing with elemental magic into an appropriate receptacle shouldn't be too different.
He hoped.
"Ugh, work." Jinx groaned, obviously teasing him. "Have you ever considered doing something else? Like taking a vacation?"
He was tempted to remind her what happened the last time he'd tried to take a vacation. They'd ended up spending months on the world of Gaia because the goddess there decided to trap them instead of just waiting for her parasite problem to be dealt with naturally.
Tempted, yes, but he doubted guilt-tripping the girl would really help anything.
"...I've been thinking about it, yeah," he admitted to the girl as they began to crawl towards the claws of the dragon-ship. "I was planning to finish up a few things for Batman when we get back home and then tell him I'm going on a two-week vacation. There's a lot of stuff I wanted to do in my last life and I never got the chance."
"Like what?" Jinx asked, her tail slowly starting to wave behind her.
"Never saw the pyramids, never saw too much of most other countries except for their airports," Alchemist admitted to her before he adjusted his grip and wiggled his butt a few times to solidify his footing before leaping from one claw to the other. He waited for Jinx to join him before he continued. "I took Yuffie to get some comfort food in Japan but I always wanted to try the ferries there. I think that'd be a good compromise over the month-long cruise ships folks my age usually get up to."
"Huh. Wow." Jinx butted her shoulder against him before passing him on the return trip from the ship's claws back towards the body. They were mostly done, Alchemist just needed to get to the back and convert the material around the engines. "That really does make you sound old... But it also sounds kind of nice. Can I come?"
"...Get Bilocation up to one-hundred so you can keep up with school, then yes." Alchemist compromised after a second of thought.
"Ugh, really?" Jinx whined, though the way she looked back, her tail wagging and her eyes bright, the humor in her voice... She was teasing him again.
"Ugh," Alchemist responded, voice flat. "really."
-----
~~ False Swipes has reached Level: 2! ~~
"...I'm not a Pokémon..."
