Sun's Valour (PJO SI/DXD/Multicross)
- Thread starter Firewillreign
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Sairaorg Nearly Kills Me, But It's Actually Really Cool.
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We may have kicked things off pretty slowly, but as soon as we hit our stride, there was no stopping.
Every morning we started with classes. Chiron ran us through the regular stuff, like maths and science and essay writing, but there was also mythology - or history, I guess, since it was all real.
We learned about the big highlights - the great and relevant pantheons and factions of the world, the different realms they governed, the way they all dealt with one another and the mortal world in between, but we covered the smaller things too - common threats, common magics, and anything that could give either of us a bad day or was important enough that Chiron decided we had to know about it.
And as it turned out, there was enough random trivia there to fill half a dozen libraries.
"I thought I could skip the books when I was disinherited," Sairaorg muttered to me this one time, halfway through another one of Chiron's lectures on inter-pantheonic diplomacy - which was exactly as fun as it sounded "This would make half the Pillar heirs I know cry."
He probably wasn't wrong - what we were going through was basically a crash course on everything supernatural, only our teacher didn't do anything by halves.
And he wasn't kidding about the pop quizzes either.
I leaned across my desk to pat his back in sympathy, then I yelped as Chiron's staff materialised and whacked my hand and his head in quick succession. He loomed over us as we winced, and I couldn't even tell you if he'd teleported or moved there from the front of the room, because he was just that fast.
"Any questions, my students?"
"I'm good." "What questions?"
"Wonderful." He smiled pleasantly, and that's how I usually knew we were in danger "Then when you're done reciting the major points we've covered today, you can start running laps around the estate. Clearly, you have some energy you need to burn off. A thousand should do for a start."
We groaned, but neither of us tried arguing - I'd learned that lesson after the one time I'd tried, and he doubled the number.
Honestly, I was just glad that all his classes were in Greek, because otherwise I'd have fried my circuits and had whatever was left of my brain melting out of my ears trying to keep up through my dyslexia.
After the regular lessons, we'd cycle through outdoor activities - a different one every day.
Sword and spearmanship practice against the rock golems was going well. Chiron liked to drill us until my arms felt like they were going to drop off and my legs stopped moving altogether - and that was on a good day - but it was paying off quickly.
It only took a few spars before I could hold and train with a sword without feeling like an idiot waving around a Halloween prop, and I got even better with a spear that much faster - I think the fact that it doubled over as a throwing weapon helped me take to it more.
Physical conditioning got more intense, too. Sometimes we'd go for laps around the house and go through enough calisthenics reps - push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, and all that - to make a professional bodybuilder cry, and other times Chiron would teleport us out into the middle of the wilderness and have us run through different terrains until we collapsed in breathless exhaustion, every time.
No monster scorpions with anger issues since the first one though, so that was a plus, but that didn't mean he'd stopped shooting us
Oh no - Not even when we were done training.
Whether we were in the house or within a hundred miles of it, post-training or right smack dab in the middle of it, the old centaur liked to spring in sneak attacks out of nowhere, just to keep us on our feet.
That, or he just enjoyed smacking us around.
I prefer not to think about it.
"One must always be prepared."
"We get it!" I yelled as we desperately hopped out of the way of his staff - five minutes after we were finished running and getting pelted by the aftermath of his arrows. "Stop hitting us already!"
"Stop getting hit." He countered reasonably, then he whacked me in the face and sent me sprawling into the dirt right before he swept out Sairaorg's legs and launched him into the nearby river before his back even hit the ground. "It's quite a bad habit, but I'll break it out of you yet."
"Please don't." I hissed, nursing the welt running down my face and the beginnings of a swollen jaw - they'd heal by the tomorrow, but they still hurt. "And I think Sairaorg might be drowning."
No, seriously.
He hadn't come up yet, and it's not like Chiron ever really removed the Lesser Curse Of Atlas from us - he just dialled the intensity of it up and down depending on what kind of training we were doing.
Or what kind of mood he was in.
"Indeed he might be." Chiron nodded and stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Well, go help him then."
And then he flicked a finger and threw me into the river after him, which, really, I should have seen coming.
Turns out Sairaorg was just holding his breath and taking an underwater break, the absolute genius, but I guess Chiron must have figured that out before I did, because he waited just until we clambered back onto shore before grabbing us both by the scruffs of our necks and tossing us right back in again.
Then he froze the water solid behind us.
On the bright side - literally - I figured out how to emit sunlight and warmth that quickly spiralled up into scorching heat in my panic when the air started running out, and Sairaorg had his fists, so between the two of us we managed to get out real quick, and with only a teensy bit of hypothermia for the road.
Success!
Sure, we had to go through it three more times before we were allowed to collapse, each tougher than the last, but that was just Chiron being Chiron.
Case in point - Sairaorg and I didn't always train together. Sometimes, we'd get pulled apart for individual practice.
For me, that was archery.
Chiron would use his magic to animate all kinds of different targets for me to shoot - floating scoring boards, more golems, and little miniature creatures constantly skittering about whatever field he took me to train in.
And they didn't exactly just still still and let me take them out, either.
The first time we practiced, Chiron didn't even give me a heads-up that they hit back, so I'd barely drawn back my bowstring before I had to duck underneath the honest-to-dad javelin that had come sailing for my face like its owner had a score to settle.
"Crap-!" I turned to Chiron, wide-eyed. "A little warning next time!?"
"Of course not."
Then he smacked me over the head.
"Ow!"
"Don't ask stupid questions. No enemy will sit still and let you take aim at them."
"I just wasn't ready for it."
"You won't always be. Learn to adapt or suffer the consequences."
Fair enough.
"I got it." I rubbed the top of my head gingerly and eyed his staff warily. "You know, that thing is going to give me permanent brain damage one of these days, and then you're going to feel really bad about it."
Or at least I hoped
"I'll try to find some way to live with the pain." Chiron said dryly "Then again, seeing as you don't seem to use that brain regardless, damaging it shouldn't make much of a difference at all."
"..."
"..."
"... I'm just going to start shooting now."
"I'd be disappointed if you didn't. Are you ready?"
I turned around and glanced at all the targets just waiting for me to make a move.
The closest were hundreds of meters away, the kind of shots world champions would only manage to make once in a blue moon, maybe, and the farthest were so distant they might as well have been a mile off - heck, some of them were probably farther away than even that.
Chiron raised a brow expectantly when I glanced back at him.
A while ago I'd have said that pulling them off would be impossible, but I was a demigod who was finally figuring things out, so I just grinned up at him and nocked an arrow.
"I said I got this, didn't I?"
"That's the right attitude." Chiron nodded approvingly, which made me puff up a little right up until I heard the next words coming out of his mouth. "Try to keep it up for what comes next."
I took a step back, but I didn't even have time to ask before the clouds gathered up above us and darkened like the beginnings of an ominous thunderstorm.
"Chiron..."
"I'd start running in three, two-"
"Oh, come on!"
"-one."
I was already moving right as the clouds shuddered and started raining hail stones the size of golf balls, and that would have been bad enough, only the stupid things came down in a torrential downpour and exploded like miniature grenades the second they hit the ground, pelting me with blasts of condensed force and shards of ice even as I ran around avoiding them and trying to fire my arrows off like an absolute lunatic.
"A good archer should seek a vantage point, but never sacrifice mobility! Never hold a single position for too long!"
"Why are you like this!?"
I yelled at him some more as I scrambled around, and he just laughed.
In other breaking news, Sairaorg started training with an axe.
It wasn't actually that big a deal - We'd been talking during one of the rare afternoons where Chiron let us go off into the city to mess around, and after we hit the cinema and caught a movie, I ended up ribbing him over the fact that I was training with three weapons and he was falling behind at only two.
I was only joking, but it lit this competitive fire under him, so the next day he marched right up to Chiron and asked for another weapon, and our teacher just shrugged and told him to pick whatever he wanted from the armory - though I think he was a little please about it too.
Sairaorg came back ten minutes later with this mean-looking double-edged axe held in his hands, determination gleaming in his eyes and everything, and from then on whenever I was practicing my archery he was going at it with the rock golems and getting scarily good at using the thing just as quickly as I was picking up the spear, even if he still preferred his fists over everything else.
Heck, even Courage was getting in on the training action - My canine buddy started joining us on our runs and dodge practice a few mornings in out of the blue, keeping at it even when it looked like he was going to croak a couple of times, and after a while the little menace was holding his own and matching our pace just fine.
As the days turned into weeks, and then the first couple of months passed by, my senses got sharper, my skills grew, and I was getting stronger, faster, tougher - just all around better than what I was before.
We all were, and it was all coming up golden.
And then things kicked up a notch.
It started during one of our Pankration lessons.
If you don't know what that is, think mixed martial arts, only it was brutal - it was part of the Olympics in Ancient Greece, and the only rules in its time were no biting and no eye-gouging.
Anything else was fair game if it meant taking down your opponent, and even back then people thought you were either desperate for glory or straight nuts for stepping into that ring even if they loved the spectacle of it - people regularly came out of it with broken limbs and mangled body parts, and that stuff was a lot harder to treat back then even if you had healers who knew what they were doing or were rich enough to afford them.
For regular mortals back in the day, there was a very fine line not to cross even if you were in it for the fun of it - Get hurt past a certain point, and nothing short of magic or a god taking pity on you was putting you back together again.
We didn't have that problem.
I darted forward, throwing a left hook, but Sairaorg powered through it, ducking low and coming up with a quick jab to my chest. I stumbled back and recovered quickly, flashing him a grin as we circled around each other.
"Stay light on your feet." Chiron's voice rolled over us from where he was standing off to the side, supervising with Courage plopped down beside him for a nap. "If you're pinned down, the odds of you slipping your opponent's hold drop abysmally."
No need to tell me twice.
I'd done a lot to bridge the gap, but Sairaorg still packed a meaner punch than I did, and he was absolutely the better grappler. I kept making the mistake of getting too close during the first few spars we'd had, and he'd taken me down and forced me to eat so much dirt it was a miracle I wasn't half-plant and growing roots already.
I was better at playing keep-away, though.
"You're getting comfortable, Sai." I ducked out of his range as he swung for my head again. "Slowing down there! Are you even trying anymore?"
He grinned right back, cocking his fists.
"What, like I have to? When you keep running away?" He abruptly charged ten steps forward and nearly managed to tackle me off my feet. "Why waste the effort!?"
"Hah!"
His next charge brought him right into my space, and the details blurred a little as we locked into the fight.
See, Chiron walked us through all kinds of basic moves, but Pankration wasn't about just the moves - once you got going, it was all one part reflex, one part control, and just the right sort of timing.
Deflect, dodge, slip and strike.
Sweat beaded my brow and my knuckles started going numb as we kept at it. I feinted a right hook after eating a particularly nasty punch to the gut, only to slide a quick uppercut under his guard and graze his ribs, and his eyes narrowed.
He lunged towards me again and would have toppled me over for sure if I hadn't backpedaled hard, and then he tried to leap after me before I could put up my hands again.
And that's when it happened.
Sairaorg cocked back his fist, and the air around him suddenly shimmered like a heat haze in a desert, glowing with an off-white shine that charged even the breath in my lungs with pressure - like the staticky feeling of Chiron's magic right before he dropped lightning bolt arrows on us or lobbed fireballs our way on a whim, but not quite right.
Everything seemed to slow down glacially as my instincts blared like a car horn at the back of my head, and I only had a split second to react, which probably saved my life.
I dropped flat - not a dodge, but a full-on sprawl to the grass as Sairaorg threw out his fist with a yell, and the world promptly exploded.
The air displaced with a crack and a howl, the ground trembled, and a cone of pure force blasted out in a fearsome pulse and carved a trench through the garden behind me. Soil and formerly solid ground rained down from above as the aftershocks of the blow threw them so high into the air that they just about replaced the clouds for a few seconds there, and when it was all over and done with, the two of us just stared, slack-jawed.
It was like looking at the aftermath of a meteor strike, not a freaking punch.
"...Sairaorg, what even...?"
I couldn't even get out the words, and it wasn't fear - stuff going boom in my immediate vicinity was nothing I hadn't already gotten used to around here - but utter disbelief instead.
Where the hell had that come from?
"I don't know?" He sounded as stunned as I felt, glancing at down fists like they were strange and alien creatures he'd just discovered attached to his wrists. Then he clenched them and inhaled sharply when they flared with that faint white glow all over again. "What is this?"
"The next step in your training." Chiron cut in, and both of us turned to him as he trotted up to us - and even if his expression was pretty level, I could tell that he was excited just from the sheer focus in the look he gave us. "It seems that it's time to push onto a new frontier. Today is a good day."
I've said it before, but it's worth a repeat - whenever Chiron does or says something like that, it's usually a sign that we were about to be introduced to some new-fangled and absolutely terrifying method of training I'd be feeling all over for the next week, but given that Sairaorg had just come way too close to knocking my head off for comfort, I was a little distracted.
Sue me.
"You have ten minutes to freshen yourselves up." He clapped his hands decisively, and we were both startled as he gestured back up to the house. "It's time for a rather special lesson."
"Magic - what is it?"
Sairaorg and I sat on the ground, cross-legged on the grass as Chiron slowly settled into full lecture mode. He didn't look surprised when both of us gave him clueless looks.
To be fair, what exactly was I supposed to say?
It's the stuff that lets you make food appear out of nowhere and teleport and shoot arrows that explode at us?
He'd totally whack me for that one.
"Magic, magical energy, or mana among a thousand other words roughly refer to the same concept," Chiron said, pointing at the familiar chalkboard that materialized in front of us at the gesture. As he spoke, the words scribbled themselves out in neat little lines. "There is a great deal of debate between various different schools of thought, but the most commonly accepted - if vastly simplified and incomplete - theory centres around the belief that magical energy is the innate potential of any living being to alter the world around them made manifest, crystalized into tangible power through the inner workings of the soul."
He stopped there for a second to check that we were keeping up, which we... kind of were.
"Whether that potential is derived and watered down from the greater world itself or from other mechanisms within it is also up for debate, with wildly different answers depending on who you might happen to ask, but that level of thesis is irrelevant to either of you at this point."
That was good to hear - this was already threatening to get confusing fast, and we'd barely started. From the way he shifted next to me, I could tell that Sairaorg was just as relieved.
"One thing to keep in mind for future reference is that the exact properties and workings of magical energy can vary by species - different beings generally express that potential in different ways."
"I know about that!" Sairaorg blurted out and sat up a little. "It's why angels have their Holy Power, and devils have Demonic Power - they're both magic, but they're total opposites."
Chiron nodded with a smile.
"A good example, though the exact natures of the Abrahamic Holy Power and its counterpart are more complex than just that."
"Eh?
"Don't worry about it - it's a discussion for another day." He turned back to the chalkboard "While the magical arts cover the most widely used form of intrinsic power in the supernatural theatre, they are not the only source of it. Far from it, in fact."
A new couple of words appeared right on top.
Life-force
Chiron seemed amused by our blank looks.
"Any guesses?"
"..." I squinted up at him suspiciously. "...If I say 'it's what keeps us alive', are you going to hit me?"
"I'll let it slide just this once, because you're technically correct."
I'll take it!
"Think of it this way - If magic is the energy used to change reality around oneself, life force is the energy used to sustain oneself. It does, in fact, keep you alive, but that's the very least of what it can be used to achieve under the right circumstances. The soul is an efficient machine that runs on the bare minimum of a living being's life force, and this leaves a wellspring of untapped power in reserve."
He gave Sairaorg a very pointed look.
"A reserve that, once discovered, can be used to bolster and reinforce the soul, and in turn the body, resulting in an explosive growth of physical strength and capability - and that's simply to begin with."
Sairaorg's eyes lit up.
"Is that what I did?"
Chiron nodded
"You told me that you were born with an abysmal degree of Demonic Power, yes?"
My friend grimaced, but he didn't flinch away from the truth.
"I have reserves so pathetic I'll never be able to use them for anything useful. It's why I got disinherited."
... and now I wanted to punch someone, but that's really a thought for later.
"It's fine though!" Sairaorg smiled and clenched a fist fiercely. "I've gotten strong without it!"
"Indeed." Chiron agreed and matched his smile. "The absence of interference or distraction by inherited magical power likely contributed to it - you pushed your body to the brink for years, always searching for more strength, and in doing so you managed to become tangentially aware of the shape of your soul, in part, and your own base of life - Touki, as it's commonly known by the avid practitioners of the east."
"Touki." Sairaorg had stars in his eyes as he memorized the word, and I grinned a little as I nudged him with my elbow.
"So you figured out how to use your life force by accident... and the first thing you do is nearly end my life?"
"Ah." He laughed sheepishly. "Sorry?"
I pretended to scowl at him before shrugging it off.
"What's a little near-murder between friends?"
"Oh, that strike would have hardly killed you. You're more durable than you think." Chiron said absently, then he paused. "Though I will admit that it would have almost certainly done terrible things to your skull... and very likely your spine."
"...It was funny five seconds ago," I said flatly. "It's not funny anymore."
"You'd have walked it off eventually." Chiron hummed dismissively, and then he turned back to Sairaorg before I could start protesting and brooding over my mortality. "Moving on - tapping into your base of life is only the first step. With the proper training, you can cultivate that reserve and grow it to even further heights. By reinforcing your body and soul, you will also learn to shrug off the effects of conventional and certain greater magics, and heal physical wounds depending on their severity. In time, you can even begin to draw in and manipulate ambient life force from your environment, and disrupt that of your enemies to cripple them - this and more fall under the art that is, once again, most commonly practiced in the East and referred to as Senjutsu."
Forget about stars - by the time Chiron was done talking, Sairaorg had entire galaxies seared into his eyes, and he was vibrating so hard you'd think he was about to bounce up into orbit.
"How do we start!?"
"Don't get overexcited." He cautioned. "This new achievement can lead you to great heights of power, but it can and has been the downfall of many. There are cautionary tales of practitioners who damage their bodies and even sacrifice their lifespans in an effort to grow too quickly.
"Yikes," I muttered, and Sairaorg simmered down a little.
"I understand. I'll be careful." He promised, and then he shrugged a little and grinned again "And besides, I'm a devil! Even if I lose a little lifespan, I have tons to spare!"
"..."
It was about five seconds into the silence that followed that Sairaorg realized he may have said something stupid.
"Wait..."
In his defence, I'm pretty sure that was a joke, but from the look on Chiron's face, I don't think he cared.
"Um..." Sairaorg swallowed nervously when Chiron's stare didn't soften. "I mean-"
"It seems," We both froze at the way our teacher's tone came out - totally level as was usual, and yet somehow still the stuff of nightmares. I wouldn't be surprised if he practiced that in the mirror. "-that I must teach you self-preservation as well."
He smiled.
"Very well."
"It's time to start training your base of life, student." He snapped his fingers, and Sairaorg hissed sharply and nearly buckled over as the strength of the Lesser Curse Of Atlas increased so sharply I could see him starting to sink into the ground from all the extra pressure. "Start running laps for now."
"... How many?"
"Oh, let's start easy. Twenty-"
Sairaorg perked up hopefully.
"-thousand should do."
"Hrk!"
"And they had better be completed inside of an hour, or else..."
"...Or else what?" Sairaorg whispered as he trailed off, like he was rightfully afraid of the answer but couldn't help but ask anyway.
Chiron leaned forward to loom over him a little, still looking downright genial.
"Use your imagination."
Sairaorg thought about that for a second, paled, shot me a terrified look and then took off so fast I swear he left flashing afterimages behind as he disappeared into the distance.
"Now then." Chiron turned back to me after nodding in satisfaction, and I had to resist the urge to scram and run after Sairaorg. "Let's talk about Divine Thaumaturgy."
"...What in the what now?"
"I imagine you want to follow along in his footsteps and find your own base of life."
I opened my mouth, then closed it again with a nod.
Because... yeah.
I wasn't stupid - Sairaorg had just leveled up, big time, and even if it meant that Chiron was going to start upping the ante too, I wanted in on that.
"It's not going to be easy, is it?" I sighed, but I wasn't really put out by it. "Where do I start?"
Like hell was I falling behind now.
"The method he used is unlikely to bear the same results for you - not in a reasonable time frame," Chiron said bluntly, and I frowned. "Pure physical stress is an unreliable tool as a matter of principle, and even more so for a demigod. Hence, Divine Thaumaturgy."
"Still don't know what that means."
"In essence? It is a subtype of the magical arts reserved almost exclusively for demigods and those empowered by divine means - priests, godly messengers and the like." He explained. "A god's divine grace isn't simply potent magical energy - It carries within it imprints of that god's domains and authorities, and mortals blessed with such power can use it to mimic their properties in the form of spells and lesser magical phenomena."
The chalkboard cleared itself out as he waved a hand and another word appeared in their place.
Faith.
"A child of Zeus, for example, might call down lighting and storms with nothing but sheer will and instinct, but they can do more than that - they might sing hymns, dedicate prayers, and use words of belief among other tools as catalysts to resonate with the divine power within them and bring forth greater or more esoteric feats of power into the world even in the middle of a battle."
He glanced down at me.
"Are you with me so far?"
"I think so?" It wasn't that hard to keep up, just yet, even if he was starting to branch into headache-inducing territory. "God power likes to do god stuff, and you can use prayers and things like them as... magic words? To pull off crazier or weirder stunts?"
"Essentially. I told you before that faith in yourself makes you stronger, but faith in your father and the inheritance you derive through him will let you achieve things I doubt you can even imagine. Tell me - what are lord Apollon's domains?"
I blinked.
Didn't we just cover this a couple of weeks back?
"The Sun." That was the obvious one. "Light. Archery and Marksmanship. Prophecy and Divination. Youth, Healing and Plagues. Music, Arts and Poetry. Some kinds of Truth and Knowledge, and some other stuff too, right?"
"Correct."
Fun fact?
My dad has a stupid number of divine domains - so many that even the Greeks were probably getting really confused about it back in the day.
Hey, Joe, whose the god of basketweaving again?
I dunno, man. Isn't it Apollo? It's always Apollo!
Man, I kinda hate that guy.
Shut up or you'll get us smote, you idiot!
You get the idea
"But how does that help... oh."
It hit me like a freight train.
Divine power from a god can be used to mimic that god's domains... and I had a boatload of stuff to choose from there.
"Oh."
"Now you're getting it." Chiron laughed at the look on my face. "You've barely scratched the surface of your potential even if you've begun to manifest intrinsic abilities tied to it - supernatural marksmanship, the ability to sense projectile weapons heading your way within a growing range, an instinctive if untrained capacity to heal and the power to emit and manipulate sound and sunlight to various degrees."
I felt myself sit up in excitement as the implications started catching up to me.
"I can do more."
"Far more." He agreed.
"And this'll help me use my life-force the way Sairaorg is learning to?"
"Daniel, your divine power is your life-force - or part of it, at the very least. Demigods are born from divinity, which means that inheritance occupies a grey area between ordinary magical potential and life force and blurs the line between both. Train it, cultivate it, and you'll elevate every aspect of yourself with it."
...
Well, then.
My grin was starting to hurt from how wide it was getting.
How about that?
"Where do we start?" I asked again, and this time Chiron held out a hand towards me. An enormous book appeared over his palm, leather-bound and little dog-eared at the edges, and I grunted at its weight when I caught it.
"Get to reading."
"...Seriously?"
Chiron chuckled as I deflated.
"That is a compendium of old and relatively new stories focusing on Lord Apollon's great works, as well as examples of applications of Divine Thaumaturgy commonly used over by priests in service to him - even a few of his children from centuries long past have relied or contributed to some of them."
I perked up again.
That sounded awesome.
Sure, they weren't actually my siblings - Apollo and Apollon were technically different beings, but only by degrees.
This could be huge.
"Learn them, and take inspiration from the feats within, and we'll see just how far you grow."
"Right."
"But first, join Sairaorg on his run."
"Wait, what?" I panicked. Don't blame me, half the people my age I know would run away screaming if someone tried to make them run twenty thousand laps around an estate as big as Chiron's."But you just said-!"
"Unless of course you think that you simply can't keep up, now that Sairaorg has moved on to the next level of his training."
"..."
"..."
My eyes narrowed.
Chiron smiled back.
"...See, the thing is, I know you're playing me." I scowled. "But damn it, it's working."
He was still chuckling when I took off after handing him the book and letting him turn up the curse until it was just about ungodly in it's force, but what else was new?
Of course, it wasn't all smooth sailing from then on.
"SAIRAORG, I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!"
"YOU ASKED ME TO HELP!"
"NOT LIKE THIS!" I yelled over the screaming winds, and we started tumbling down to the ground... which was some ten thousand feet below the clouds underneath us.
Let me back up a bit.
Chiron gave me the book and told me to train with it.
So naturally, the first thing I did with it was try and figure out how to fly.
What?
Flying is cool, my friend could do it and I wanted to as well... only it turned out that just wanting to spring up into the air really hard isn't enough to make a son of Apollo pull a Peter Pan.
So I asked Sairaorg to help me out with it - and I meant help me brainstorm ways to figure it out.
The compendium Chiron had given me had all sorts of stories, prayers, hymns, and songs dedicated to Apollon that could be used as inspiration to pull off every trick you could imagine, from bringing the 'grace of the sun' from above - whatever that meant - to spreading plagues - which was kinda cool in a horrifying way - but nothing explicitly about flight, and I'd gone through a fifth of it by the time I started trying.
"Look deeper," Chiron advised when I tried to ask for his help. "And don't be afraid to get creative with your interpretations. The words are secondary to will and faith."
Will and faith - he kept going on and on about those, but something in my mind hadn't clicked yet, so I had the bright idea to turn to Sairaorg for a hand.
In hindsight, the sly look on his face should have clued me in on the fact that he was planning something, but I was too eager to try something new to defend myself.
"I can show you what flying is like for me, if you want?"
"Yeah, that might help, actually," I said, then I faltered. "Wait, show-?"
Too late.
I couldn't turn around fast enough before Sairaorg cackled and tackled me, unfurled his wings, and shot up right into the sky with me, dangling me over the ground by the ankles.
"GOT YOU! NOWHERE TO GO THIS TIME!"
"SAIRAORG!"
It was like rising up a drop tower at a carnival upside down and doing it a thousand miles an hour, so I was perfectly justified in setting his clothes halfway on fire and giving him a nasty sunburn the second he got us back down again.
It didn't stop him from laughing and running all over before I managed to chase him back into the house - and then Chiron caught us tracking dirt and soot into his living room, and made us clean the entire place, top to bottom...with toothbrushes.
Seriously, I couldn't make this up if I tried.
Even Courage wanted nothing to do with it - he padded into the room chewing on a bone Chiron must have given him, took one look at us hunched over and scrubbing down spots on the marble floor with the little things and zipped right back out again.
"Traitor!"
I kept at it for a week, with no results... until I had the bright idea to wake up early one day and sit outside in the garden to watch the sunrise, and see if that did anything for me.
I'd like to say I had a plan going going for, but honestly?
It was totally just a whim - most of the things I was learning now on using my powers were more spiritual and abstract and just plain old weird instead of logical, so it couldn't hurt to try something like this, right?
Right?
...
Okay, fine, I'll admit it - I felt really dumb in the first half-hour leading up to it, and then I started reciting some of the lines from a few of the poems in the compendium I'd memorised under my breath for the heck of it.
"Glittering, Wise, Father of Light."
"Behold Burning Warmth, The Fire Of The Rising Sun."
I was throwing around anything out at that point - and then the first rays of sunlight started rising in the distance, and it was like a flip had been switched.
I jolted so sharply you'd think that someone had hooked me up to a car battery, my instincts went into overdrive, and the ordinarily subtle glow that covered me when I used my powers burst out in a megawatt flash of radiance so brilliant that for a second, it was as if another dawn had come out to match the one on the horizon.
Holy crap.
"Gleaming In A Sea of Orange And Rose"
"Thy Chariot Rises... And Now So Will I"
That last part wasn't part of that poem, or any other.
I didn't even know how that poem ended - I made those words up on the spot, based entirely on what I wanted.
Will and Faith, right?
I looked up the sun, rising in the distance.
Constant, steady, and inevitable.
I'm the same, I told the little piece of a different kind of sun I imagined was burning away inside of me, and I want up.
The world held it's breath with me for a beat... and then it finally decided to play ball, and my feet began to rise over the ground.
"Yes!"
Another quarter-hour later, and Sairaorg walked out the front door, ready for his morning run.
But he sure wasn't ready for me, and the squawking sound he made as I flew in from behind the house and slammed into him so hard he face-planted into the dirt was hilarious.
Or maybe that was just my sheer euphoria doing the heavy lifting, but who even cares?
I could freaking fly!
He came right back up a second later, expression scrunched in disgust as he spat out a mouthful of dirt before it went slack in shock when he stared up at me and realized what he was seeing.
"Dan!?"
I hooted down at him from above, wreathed in a shimmer of pulsing, glowing light, laughing like a total basket case - and man did it feel good.
"Got you back, sucker!"
For a second, there was only stunned surprise there, and then his eyes lit up in matching delight.
"Oh, it's on."
His wings unfurled, he leaped up after me, and we were both dots rising into the morning sky again by the time Chiron padded out, fresh mug of tea in hand and a bemused look on his face.
Courage came out after him, head turning this way and that in search for his master, and then he caught sight of him up above and did a double-take.
"Impressive, isn't it?"
The hellhound barked in disbelief, and the centaur shrugged.
"I suppose you wouldn't know, would you? Take it from me - their progress is quite remarkable, especially in this softer day and age. That aside, they do seem to have forgotten about their morning classes." He clicked his tongue. "Foolish students. I'm going to have to teach them another lesson for that."
Or so he said, but his smile didn't abate.
They'd come down eventually - he could let them enjoy their flight before he smacked them back down to reality.
Just this once.
At the same time, deep in Daniel Winchester's soul, a nascent ember crackled, popped, and slowly grew into a S̵̻͐̔̾̈́̕p̸͉͂̓̅a̸͙͓̋̀̕̚͘r̷̫̭̦͖̅͝ḵ̸̰̑͂̑
Next Chapter: Revelations
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.
Every morning we started with classes. Chiron ran us through the regular stuff, like maths and science and essay writing, but there was also mythology - or history, I guess, since it was all real.
We learned about the big highlights - the great and relevant pantheons and factions of the world, the different realms they governed, the way they all dealt with one another and the mortal world in between, but we covered the smaller things too - common threats, common magics, and anything that could give either of us a bad day or was important enough that Chiron decided we had to know about it.
And as it turned out, there was enough random trivia there to fill half a dozen libraries.
"I thought I could skip the books when I was disinherited," Sairaorg muttered to me this one time, halfway through another one of Chiron's lectures on inter-pantheonic diplomacy - which was exactly as fun as it sounded "This would make half the Pillar heirs I know cry."
He probably wasn't wrong - what we were going through was basically a crash course on everything supernatural, only our teacher didn't do anything by halves.
And he wasn't kidding about the pop quizzes either.
I leaned across my desk to pat his back in sympathy, then I yelped as Chiron's staff materialised and whacked my hand and his head in quick succession. He loomed over us as we winced, and I couldn't even tell you if he'd teleported or moved there from the front of the room, because he was just that fast.
"Any questions, my students?"
"I'm good." "What questions?"
"Wonderful." He smiled pleasantly, and that's how I usually knew we were in danger "Then when you're done reciting the major points we've covered today, you can start running laps around the estate. Clearly, you have some energy you need to burn off. A thousand should do for a start."
We groaned, but neither of us tried arguing - I'd learned that lesson after the one time I'd tried, and he doubled the number.
Honestly, I was just glad that all his classes were in Greek, because otherwise I'd have fried my circuits and had whatever was left of my brain melting out of my ears trying to keep up through my dyslexia.
After the regular lessons, we'd cycle through outdoor activities - a different one every day.
Sword and spearmanship practice against the rock golems was going well. Chiron liked to drill us until my arms felt like they were going to drop off and my legs stopped moving altogether - and that was on a good day - but it was paying off quickly.
It only took a few spars before I could hold and train with a sword without feeling like an idiot waving around a Halloween prop, and I got even better with a spear that much faster - I think the fact that it doubled over as a throwing weapon helped me take to it more.
Physical conditioning got more intense, too. Sometimes we'd go for laps around the house and go through enough calisthenics reps - push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, and all that - to make a professional bodybuilder cry, and other times Chiron would teleport us out into the middle of the wilderness and have us run through different terrains until we collapsed in breathless exhaustion, every time.
No monster scorpions with anger issues since the first one though, so that was a plus, but that didn't mean he'd stopped shooting us
Oh no - Not even when we were done training.
Whether we were in the house or within a hundred miles of it, post-training or right smack dab in the middle of it, the old centaur liked to spring in sneak attacks out of nowhere, just to keep us on our feet.
That, or he just enjoyed smacking us around.
I prefer not to think about it.
"One must always be prepared."
"We get it!" I yelled as we desperately hopped out of the way of his staff - five minutes after we were finished running and getting pelted by the aftermath of his arrows. "Stop hitting us already!"
"Stop getting hit." He countered reasonably, then he whacked me in the face and sent me sprawling into the dirt right before he swept out Sairaorg's legs and launched him into the nearby river before his back even hit the ground. "It's quite a bad habit, but I'll break it out of you yet."
"Please don't." I hissed, nursing the welt running down my face and the beginnings of a swollen jaw - they'd heal by the tomorrow, but they still hurt. "And I think Sairaorg might be drowning."
No, seriously.
He hadn't come up yet, and it's not like Chiron ever really removed the Lesser Curse Of Atlas from us - he just dialled the intensity of it up and down depending on what kind of training we were doing.
Or what kind of mood he was in.
"Indeed he might be." Chiron nodded and stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Well, go help him then."
And then he flicked a finger and threw me into the river after him, which, really, I should have seen coming.
Turns out Sairaorg was just holding his breath and taking an underwater break, the absolute genius, but I guess Chiron must have figured that out before I did, because he waited just until we clambered back onto shore before grabbing us both by the scruffs of our necks and tossing us right back in again.
Then he froze the water solid behind us.
On the bright side - literally - I figured out how to emit sunlight and warmth that quickly spiralled up into scorching heat in my panic when the air started running out, and Sairaorg had his fists, so between the two of us we managed to get out real quick, and with only a teensy bit of hypothermia for the road.
Success!
Sure, we had to go through it three more times before we were allowed to collapse, each tougher than the last, but that was just Chiron being Chiron.
Case in point - Sairaorg and I didn't always train together. Sometimes, we'd get pulled apart for individual practice.
For me, that was archery.
Chiron would use his magic to animate all kinds of different targets for me to shoot - floating scoring boards, more golems, and little miniature creatures constantly skittering about whatever field he took me to train in.
And they didn't exactly just still still and let me take them out, either.
The first time we practiced, Chiron didn't even give me a heads-up that they hit back, so I'd barely drawn back my bowstring before I had to duck underneath the honest-to-dad javelin that had come sailing for my face like its owner had a score to settle.
"Crap-!" I turned to Chiron, wide-eyed. "A little warning next time!?"
"Of course not."
Then he smacked me over the head.
"Ow!"
"Don't ask stupid questions. No enemy will sit still and let you take aim at them."
"I just wasn't ready for it."
"You won't always be. Learn to adapt or suffer the consequences."
Fair enough.
"I got it." I rubbed the top of my head gingerly and eyed his staff warily. "You know, that thing is going to give me permanent brain damage one of these days, and then you're going to feel really bad about it."
Or at least I hoped
"I'll try to find some way to live with the pain." Chiron said dryly "Then again, seeing as you don't seem to use that brain regardless, damaging it shouldn't make much of a difference at all."
"..."
"..."
"... I'm just going to start shooting now."
"I'd be disappointed if you didn't. Are you ready?"
I turned around and glanced at all the targets just waiting for me to make a move.
The closest were hundreds of meters away, the kind of shots world champions would only manage to make once in a blue moon, maybe, and the farthest were so distant they might as well have been a mile off - heck, some of them were probably farther away than even that.
Chiron raised a brow expectantly when I glanced back at him.
A while ago I'd have said that pulling them off would be impossible, but I was a demigod who was finally figuring things out, so I just grinned up at him and nocked an arrow.
"I said I got this, didn't I?"
"That's the right attitude." Chiron nodded approvingly, which made me puff up a little right up until I heard the next words coming out of his mouth. "Try to keep it up for what comes next."
I took a step back, but I didn't even have time to ask before the clouds gathered up above us and darkened like the beginnings of an ominous thunderstorm.
"Chiron..."
"I'd start running in three, two-"
"Oh, come on!"
"-one."
I was already moving right as the clouds shuddered and started raining hail stones the size of golf balls, and that would have been bad enough, only the stupid things came down in a torrential downpour and exploded like miniature grenades the second they hit the ground, pelting me with blasts of condensed force and shards of ice even as I ran around avoiding them and trying to fire my arrows off like an absolute lunatic.
"A good archer should seek a vantage point, but never sacrifice mobility! Never hold a single position for too long!"
"Why are you like this!?"
I yelled at him some more as I scrambled around, and he just laughed.
...
In other breaking news, Sairaorg started training with an axe.
It wasn't actually that big a deal - We'd been talking during one of the rare afternoons where Chiron let us go off into the city to mess around, and after we hit the cinema and caught a movie, I ended up ribbing him over the fact that I was training with three weapons and he was falling behind at only two.
I was only joking, but it lit this competitive fire under him, so the next day he marched right up to Chiron and asked for another weapon, and our teacher just shrugged and told him to pick whatever he wanted from the armory - though I think he was a little please about it too.
Sairaorg came back ten minutes later with this mean-looking double-edged axe held in his hands, determination gleaming in his eyes and everything, and from then on whenever I was practicing my archery he was going at it with the rock golems and getting scarily good at using the thing just as quickly as I was picking up the spear, even if he still preferred his fists over everything else.
Heck, even Courage was getting in on the training action - My canine buddy started joining us on our runs and dodge practice a few mornings in out of the blue, keeping at it even when it looked like he was going to croak a couple of times, and after a while the little menace was holding his own and matching our pace just fine.
As the days turned into weeks, and then the first couple of months passed by, my senses got sharper, my skills grew, and I was getting stronger, faster, tougher - just all around better than what I was before.
We all were, and it was all coming up golden.
And then things kicked up a notch.
...
It started during one of our Pankration lessons.
If you don't know what that is, think mixed martial arts, only it was brutal - it was part of the Olympics in Ancient Greece, and the only rules in its time were no biting and no eye-gouging.
Anything else was fair game if it meant taking down your opponent, and even back then people thought you were either desperate for glory or straight nuts for stepping into that ring even if they loved the spectacle of it - people regularly came out of it with broken limbs and mangled body parts, and that stuff was a lot harder to treat back then even if you had healers who knew what they were doing or were rich enough to afford them.
For regular mortals back in the day, there was a very fine line not to cross even if you were in it for the fun of it - Get hurt past a certain point, and nothing short of magic or a god taking pity on you was putting you back together again.
We didn't have that problem.
I darted forward, throwing a left hook, but Sairaorg powered through it, ducking low and coming up with a quick jab to my chest. I stumbled back and recovered quickly, flashing him a grin as we circled around each other.
"Stay light on your feet." Chiron's voice rolled over us from where he was standing off to the side, supervising with Courage plopped down beside him for a nap. "If you're pinned down, the odds of you slipping your opponent's hold drop abysmally."
No need to tell me twice.
I'd done a lot to bridge the gap, but Sairaorg still packed a meaner punch than I did, and he was absolutely the better grappler. I kept making the mistake of getting too close during the first few spars we'd had, and he'd taken me down and forced me to eat so much dirt it was a miracle I wasn't half-plant and growing roots already.
I was better at playing keep-away, though.
"You're getting comfortable, Sai." I ducked out of his range as he swung for my head again. "Slowing down there! Are you even trying anymore?"
He grinned right back, cocking his fists.
"What, like I have to? When you keep running away?" He abruptly charged ten steps forward and nearly managed to tackle me off my feet. "Why waste the effort!?"
"Hah!"
His next charge brought him right into my space, and the details blurred a little as we locked into the fight.
See, Chiron walked us through all kinds of basic moves, but Pankration wasn't about just the moves - once you got going, it was all one part reflex, one part control, and just the right sort of timing.
Deflect, dodge, slip and strike.
Sweat beaded my brow and my knuckles started going numb as we kept at it. I feinted a right hook after eating a particularly nasty punch to the gut, only to slide a quick uppercut under his guard and graze his ribs, and his eyes narrowed.
He lunged towards me again and would have toppled me over for sure if I hadn't backpedaled hard, and then he tried to leap after me before I could put up my hands again.
And that's when it happened.
Sairaorg cocked back his fist, and the air around him suddenly shimmered like a heat haze in a desert, glowing with an off-white shine that charged even the breath in my lungs with pressure - like the staticky feeling of Chiron's magic right before he dropped lightning bolt arrows on us or lobbed fireballs our way on a whim, but not quite right.
Everything seemed to slow down glacially as my instincts blared like a car horn at the back of my head, and I only had a split second to react, which probably saved my life.
I dropped flat - not a dodge, but a full-on sprawl to the grass as Sairaorg threw out his fist with a yell, and the world promptly exploded.
The air displaced with a crack and a howl, the ground trembled, and a cone of pure force blasted out in a fearsome pulse and carved a trench through the garden behind me. Soil and formerly solid ground rained down from above as the aftershocks of the blow threw them so high into the air that they just about replaced the clouds for a few seconds there, and when it was all over and done with, the two of us just stared, slack-jawed.
It was like looking at the aftermath of a meteor strike, not a freaking punch.
"...Sairaorg, what even...?"
I couldn't even get out the words, and it wasn't fear - stuff going boom in my immediate vicinity was nothing I hadn't already gotten used to around here - but utter disbelief instead.
Where the hell had that come from?
"I don't know?" He sounded as stunned as I felt, glancing at down fists like they were strange and alien creatures he'd just discovered attached to his wrists. Then he clenched them and inhaled sharply when they flared with that faint white glow all over again. "What is this?"
"The next step in your training." Chiron cut in, and both of us turned to him as he trotted up to us - and even if his expression was pretty level, I could tell that he was excited just from the sheer focus in the look he gave us. "It seems that it's time to push onto a new frontier. Today is a good day."
I've said it before, but it's worth a repeat - whenever Chiron does or says something like that, it's usually a sign that we were about to be introduced to some new-fangled and absolutely terrifying method of training I'd be feeling all over for the next week, but given that Sairaorg had just come way too close to knocking my head off for comfort, I was a little distracted.
Sue me.
"You have ten minutes to freshen yourselves up." He clapped his hands decisively, and we were both startled as he gestured back up to the house. "It's time for a rather special lesson."
...
"Magic - what is it?"
Sairaorg and I sat on the ground, cross-legged on the grass as Chiron slowly settled into full lecture mode. He didn't look surprised when both of us gave him clueless looks.
To be fair, what exactly was I supposed to say?
It's the stuff that lets you make food appear out of nowhere and teleport and shoot arrows that explode at us?
He'd totally whack me for that one.
"Magic, magical energy, or mana among a thousand other words roughly refer to the same concept," Chiron said, pointing at the familiar chalkboard that materialized in front of us at the gesture. As he spoke, the words scribbled themselves out in neat little lines. "There is a great deal of debate between various different schools of thought, but the most commonly accepted - if vastly simplified and incomplete - theory centres around the belief that magical energy is the innate potential of any living being to alter the world around them made manifest, crystalized into tangible power through the inner workings of the soul."
He stopped there for a second to check that we were keeping up, which we... kind of were.
"Whether that potential is derived and watered down from the greater world itself or from other mechanisms within it is also up for debate, with wildly different answers depending on who you might happen to ask, but that level of thesis is irrelevant to either of you at this point."
That was good to hear - this was already threatening to get confusing fast, and we'd barely started. From the way he shifted next to me, I could tell that Sairaorg was just as relieved.
"One thing to keep in mind for future reference is that the exact properties and workings of magical energy can vary by species - different beings generally express that potential in different ways."
"I know about that!" Sairaorg blurted out and sat up a little. "It's why angels have their Holy Power, and devils have Demonic Power - they're both magic, but they're total opposites."
Chiron nodded with a smile.
"A good example, though the exact natures of the Abrahamic Holy Power and its counterpart are more complex than just that."
"Eh?
"Don't worry about it - it's a discussion for another day." He turned back to the chalkboard "While the magical arts cover the most widely used form of intrinsic power in the supernatural theatre, they are not the only source of it. Far from it, in fact."
A new couple of words appeared right on top.
Life-force
Chiron seemed amused by our blank looks.
"Any guesses?"
"..." I squinted up at him suspiciously. "...If I say 'it's what keeps us alive', are you going to hit me?"
"I'll let it slide just this once, because you're technically correct."
I'll take it!
"Think of it this way - If magic is the energy used to change reality around oneself, life force is the energy used to sustain oneself. It does, in fact, keep you alive, but that's the very least of what it can be used to achieve under the right circumstances. The soul is an efficient machine that runs on the bare minimum of a living being's life force, and this leaves a wellspring of untapped power in reserve."
He gave Sairaorg a very pointed look.
"A reserve that, once discovered, can be used to bolster and reinforce the soul, and in turn the body, resulting in an explosive growth of physical strength and capability - and that's simply to begin with."
Sairaorg's eyes lit up.
"Is that what I did?"
Chiron nodded
"You told me that you were born with an abysmal degree of Demonic Power, yes?"
My friend grimaced, but he didn't flinch away from the truth.
"I have reserves so pathetic I'll never be able to use them for anything useful. It's why I got disinherited."
... and now I wanted to punch someone, but that's really a thought for later.
"It's fine though!" Sairaorg smiled and clenched a fist fiercely. "I've gotten strong without it!"
"Indeed." Chiron agreed and matched his smile. "The absence of interference or distraction by inherited magical power likely contributed to it - you pushed your body to the brink for years, always searching for more strength, and in doing so you managed to become tangentially aware of the shape of your soul, in part, and your own base of life - Touki, as it's commonly known by the avid practitioners of the east."
"Touki." Sairaorg had stars in his eyes as he memorized the word, and I grinned a little as I nudged him with my elbow.
"So you figured out how to use your life force by accident... and the first thing you do is nearly end my life?"
"Ah." He laughed sheepishly. "Sorry?"
I pretended to scowl at him before shrugging it off.
"What's a little near-murder between friends?"
"Oh, that strike would have hardly killed you. You're more durable than you think." Chiron said absently, then he paused. "Though I will admit that it would have almost certainly done terrible things to your skull... and very likely your spine."
"...It was funny five seconds ago," I said flatly. "It's not funny anymore."
"You'd have walked it off eventually." Chiron hummed dismissively, and then he turned back to Sairaorg before I could start protesting and brooding over my mortality. "Moving on - tapping into your base of life is only the first step. With the proper training, you can cultivate that reserve and grow it to even further heights. By reinforcing your body and soul, you will also learn to shrug off the effects of conventional and certain greater magics, and heal physical wounds depending on their severity. In time, you can even begin to draw in and manipulate ambient life force from your environment, and disrupt that of your enemies to cripple them - this and more fall under the art that is, once again, most commonly practiced in the East and referred to as Senjutsu."
Forget about stars - by the time Chiron was done talking, Sairaorg had entire galaxies seared into his eyes, and he was vibrating so hard you'd think he was about to bounce up into orbit.
"How do we start!?"
"Don't get overexcited." He cautioned. "This new achievement can lead you to great heights of power, but it can and has been the downfall of many. There are cautionary tales of practitioners who damage their bodies and even sacrifice their lifespans in an effort to grow too quickly.
"Yikes," I muttered, and Sairaorg simmered down a little.
"I understand. I'll be careful." He promised, and then he shrugged a little and grinned again "And besides, I'm a devil! Even if I lose a little lifespan, I have tons to spare!"
"..."
It was about five seconds into the silence that followed that Sairaorg realized he may have said something stupid.
"Wait..."
In his defence, I'm pretty sure that was a joke, but from the look on Chiron's face, I don't think he cared.
"Um..." Sairaorg swallowed nervously when Chiron's stare didn't soften. "I mean-"
"It seems," We both froze at the way our teacher's tone came out - totally level as was usual, and yet somehow still the stuff of nightmares. I wouldn't be surprised if he practiced that in the mirror. "-that I must teach you self-preservation as well."
He smiled.
"Very well."
"It's time to start training your base of life, student." He snapped his fingers, and Sairaorg hissed sharply and nearly buckled over as the strength of the Lesser Curse Of Atlas increased so sharply I could see him starting to sink into the ground from all the extra pressure. "Start running laps for now."
"... How many?"
"Oh, let's start easy. Twenty-"
Sairaorg perked up hopefully.
"-thousand should do."
"Hrk!"
"And they had better be completed inside of an hour, or else..."
"...Or else what?" Sairaorg whispered as he trailed off, like he was rightfully afraid of the answer but couldn't help but ask anyway.
Chiron leaned forward to loom over him a little, still looking downright genial.
"Use your imagination."
Sairaorg thought about that for a second, paled, shot me a terrified look and then took off so fast I swear he left flashing afterimages behind as he disappeared into the distance.
"Now then." Chiron turned back to me after nodding in satisfaction, and I had to resist the urge to scram and run after Sairaorg. "Let's talk about Divine Thaumaturgy."
"...What in the what now?"
"I imagine you want to follow along in his footsteps and find your own base of life."
I opened my mouth, then closed it again with a nod.
Because... yeah.
I wasn't stupid - Sairaorg had just leveled up, big time, and even if it meant that Chiron was going to start upping the ante too, I wanted in on that.
"It's not going to be easy, is it?" I sighed, but I wasn't really put out by it. "Where do I start?"
Like hell was I falling behind now.
"The method he used is unlikely to bear the same results for you - not in a reasonable time frame," Chiron said bluntly, and I frowned. "Pure physical stress is an unreliable tool as a matter of principle, and even more so for a demigod. Hence, Divine Thaumaturgy."
"Still don't know what that means."
"In essence? It is a subtype of the magical arts reserved almost exclusively for demigods and those empowered by divine means - priests, godly messengers and the like." He explained. "A god's divine grace isn't simply potent magical energy - It carries within it imprints of that god's domains and authorities, and mortals blessed with such power can use it to mimic their properties in the form of spells and lesser magical phenomena."
The chalkboard cleared itself out as he waved a hand and another word appeared in their place.
Faith.
"A child of Zeus, for example, might call down lighting and storms with nothing but sheer will and instinct, but they can do more than that - they might sing hymns, dedicate prayers, and use words of belief among other tools as catalysts to resonate with the divine power within them and bring forth greater or more esoteric feats of power into the world even in the middle of a battle."
He glanced down at me.
"Are you with me so far?"
"I think so?" It wasn't that hard to keep up, just yet, even if he was starting to branch into headache-inducing territory. "God power likes to do god stuff, and you can use prayers and things like them as... magic words? To pull off crazier or weirder stunts?"
"Essentially. I told you before that faith in yourself makes you stronger, but faith in your father and the inheritance you derive through him will let you achieve things I doubt you can even imagine. Tell me - what are lord Apollon's domains?"
I blinked.
Didn't we just cover this a couple of weeks back?
"The Sun." That was the obvious one. "Light. Archery and Marksmanship. Prophecy and Divination. Youth, Healing and Plagues. Music, Arts and Poetry. Some kinds of Truth and Knowledge, and some other stuff too, right?"
"Correct."
Fun fact?
My dad has a stupid number of divine domains - so many that even the Greeks were probably getting really confused about it back in the day.
Hey, Joe, whose the god of basketweaving again?
I dunno, man. Isn't it Apollo? It's always Apollo!
Man, I kinda hate that guy.
Shut up or you'll get us smote, you idiot!
You get the idea
"But how does that help... oh."
It hit me like a freight train.
Divine power from a god can be used to mimic that god's domains... and I had a boatload of stuff to choose from there.
"Oh."
"Now you're getting it." Chiron laughed at the look on my face. "You've barely scratched the surface of your potential even if you've begun to manifest intrinsic abilities tied to it - supernatural marksmanship, the ability to sense projectile weapons heading your way within a growing range, an instinctive if untrained capacity to heal and the power to emit and manipulate sound and sunlight to various degrees."
I felt myself sit up in excitement as the implications started catching up to me.
"I can do more."
"Far more." He agreed.
"And this'll help me use my life-force the way Sairaorg is learning to?"
"Daniel, your divine power is your life-force - or part of it, at the very least. Demigods are born from divinity, which means that inheritance occupies a grey area between ordinary magical potential and life force and blurs the line between both. Train it, cultivate it, and you'll elevate every aspect of yourself with it."
...
Well, then.
My grin was starting to hurt from how wide it was getting.
How about that?
"Where do we start?" I asked again, and this time Chiron held out a hand towards me. An enormous book appeared over his palm, leather-bound and little dog-eared at the edges, and I grunted at its weight when I caught it.
"Get to reading."
"...Seriously?"
Chiron chuckled as I deflated.
"That is a compendium of old and relatively new stories focusing on Lord Apollon's great works, as well as examples of applications of Divine Thaumaturgy commonly used over by priests in service to him - even a few of his children from centuries long past have relied or contributed to some of them."
I perked up again.
That sounded awesome.
Sure, they weren't actually my siblings - Apollo and Apollon were technically different beings, but only by degrees.
This could be huge.
"Learn them, and take inspiration from the feats within, and we'll see just how far you grow."
"Right."
"But first, join Sairaorg on his run."
"Wait, what?" I panicked. Don't blame me, half the people my age I know would run away screaming if someone tried to make them run twenty thousand laps around an estate as big as Chiron's."But you just said-!"
"Unless of course you think that you simply can't keep up, now that Sairaorg has moved on to the next level of his training."
"..."
"..."
My eyes narrowed.
Chiron smiled back.
"...See, the thing is, I know you're playing me." I scowled. "But damn it, it's working."
He was still chuckling when I took off after handing him the book and letting him turn up the curse until it was just about ungodly in it's force, but what else was new?
...
Of course, it wasn't all smooth sailing from then on.
"SAIRAORG, I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!"
"YOU ASKED ME TO HELP!"
"NOT LIKE THIS!" I yelled over the screaming winds, and we started tumbling down to the ground... which was some ten thousand feet below the clouds underneath us.
Let me back up a bit.
Chiron gave me the book and told me to train with it.
So naturally, the first thing I did with it was try and figure out how to fly.
What?
Flying is cool, my friend could do it and I wanted to as well... only it turned out that just wanting to spring up into the air really hard isn't enough to make a son of Apollo pull a Peter Pan.
So I asked Sairaorg to help me out with it - and I meant help me brainstorm ways to figure it out.
The compendium Chiron had given me had all sorts of stories, prayers, hymns, and songs dedicated to Apollon that could be used as inspiration to pull off every trick you could imagine, from bringing the 'grace of the sun' from above - whatever that meant - to spreading plagues - which was kinda cool in a horrifying way - but nothing explicitly about flight, and I'd gone through a fifth of it by the time I started trying.
"Look deeper," Chiron advised when I tried to ask for his help. "And don't be afraid to get creative with your interpretations. The words are secondary to will and faith."
Will and faith - he kept going on and on about those, but something in my mind hadn't clicked yet, so I had the bright idea to turn to Sairaorg for a hand.
In hindsight, the sly look on his face should have clued me in on the fact that he was planning something, but I was too eager to try something new to defend myself.
"I can show you what flying is like for me, if you want?"
"Yeah, that might help, actually," I said, then I faltered. "Wait, show-?"
Too late.
I couldn't turn around fast enough before Sairaorg cackled and tackled me, unfurled his wings, and shot up right into the sky with me, dangling me over the ground by the ankles.
"GOT YOU! NOWHERE TO GO THIS TIME!"
"SAIRAORG!"
It was like rising up a drop tower at a carnival upside down and doing it a thousand miles an hour, so I was perfectly justified in setting his clothes halfway on fire and giving him a nasty sunburn the second he got us back down again.
It didn't stop him from laughing and running all over before I managed to chase him back into the house - and then Chiron caught us tracking dirt and soot into his living room, and made us clean the entire place, top to bottom...with toothbrushes.
Seriously, I couldn't make this up if I tried.
Even Courage wanted nothing to do with it - he padded into the room chewing on a bone Chiron must have given him, took one look at us hunched over and scrubbing down spots on the marble floor with the little things and zipped right back out again.
"Traitor!"
...
I kept at it for a week, with no results... until I had the bright idea to wake up early one day and sit outside in the garden to watch the sunrise, and see if that did anything for me.
I'd like to say I had a plan going going for, but honestly?
It was totally just a whim - most of the things I was learning now on using my powers were more spiritual and abstract and just plain old weird instead of logical, so it couldn't hurt to try something like this, right?
Right?
...
Okay, fine, I'll admit it - I felt really dumb in the first half-hour leading up to it, and then I started reciting some of the lines from a few of the poems in the compendium I'd memorised under my breath for the heck of it.
"Glittering, Wise, Father of Light."
"Behold Burning Warmth, The Fire Of The Rising Sun."
I was throwing around anything out at that point - and then the first rays of sunlight started rising in the distance, and it was like a flip had been switched.
I jolted so sharply you'd think that someone had hooked me up to a car battery, my instincts went into overdrive, and the ordinarily subtle glow that covered me when I used my powers burst out in a megawatt flash of radiance so brilliant that for a second, it was as if another dawn had come out to match the one on the horizon.
Holy crap.
"Gleaming In A Sea of Orange And Rose"
"Thy Chariot Rises... And Now So Will I"
That last part wasn't part of that poem, or any other.
I didn't even know how that poem ended - I made those words up on the spot, based entirely on what I wanted.
Will and Faith, right?
I looked up the sun, rising in the distance.
Constant, steady, and inevitable.
I'm the same, I told the little piece of a different kind of sun I imagined was burning away inside of me, and I want up.
The world held it's breath with me for a beat... and then it finally decided to play ball, and my feet began to rise over the ground.
"Yes!"
...
Another quarter-hour later, and Sairaorg walked out the front door, ready for his morning run.
But he sure wasn't ready for me, and the squawking sound he made as I flew in from behind the house and slammed into him so hard he face-planted into the dirt was hilarious.
Or maybe that was just my sheer euphoria doing the heavy lifting, but who even cares?
I could freaking fly!
He came right back up a second later, expression scrunched in disgust as he spat out a mouthful of dirt before it went slack in shock when he stared up at me and realized what he was seeing.
"Dan!?"
I hooted down at him from above, wreathed in a shimmer of pulsing, glowing light, laughing like a total basket case - and man did it feel good.
"Got you back, sucker!"
For a second, there was only stunned surprise there, and then his eyes lit up in matching delight.
"Oh, it's on."
His wings unfurled, he leaped up after me, and we were both dots rising into the morning sky again by the time Chiron padded out, fresh mug of tea in hand and a bemused look on his face.
Courage came out after him, head turning this way and that in search for his master, and then he caught sight of him up above and did a double-take.
"Impressive, isn't it?"
The hellhound barked in disbelief, and the centaur shrugged.
"I suppose you wouldn't know, would you? Take it from me - their progress is quite remarkable, especially in this softer day and age. That aside, they do seem to have forgotten about their morning classes." He clicked his tongue. "Foolish students. I'm going to have to teach them another lesson for that."
Or so he said, but his smile didn't abate.
They'd come down eventually - he could let them enjoy their flight before he smacked them back down to reality.
Just this once.
...
At the same time, deep in Daniel Winchester's soul, a nascent ember crackled, popped, and slowly grew into a S̵̻͐̔̾̈́̕p̸͉͂̓̅a̸͙͓̋̀̕̚͘r̷̫̭̦͖̅͝ḵ̸̰̑͂̑
...
Chiron to his students: The Most Important thing is not to get hit.
Also Chiron:
View: https://imgur.com/RCC27Am
Chiron to his students: The Most Important thing is not to get hit.
Also Chiron:
View: https://imgur.com/RCC27Am
Next Chapter: Revelations
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.
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- Location
- California
Courage: Ay Yo, what the Fuck is this!? Demigods back home can't do this. Horse-Man! How do this?!?
- Location
- Brasil
The gods intentionally keep info about other pantheons from their children, maybe this is a similar case of them intentionally not informing the demigods about their true potential.
Maybe its even for a good cause, like, they don't want a bunch of overly superhuman demigods making a mess of the mundane human world.
or maybe its just a difference between PJ and DXD
*Headpat Courage for being a good boy
- Location
- California
If Courage could speak do you suppose he would be able to convey the impossibility of what occurred to Chiron? Or, is it the location and supplies, which might not exist on PJO World, which grant this possibility?
- Location
- Brasil
I don't know, but dogs are one of the most philosophical creatures that exist, maybe he'll be able to convey something.
We Go On An Unexpected Side-Quest
New
The second I realized I was dreaming again - and I don't mean the regular kind either - I knew it wasn't going to go well.
Call it a hunch.
I was walking down a hallway I didn't recognize, dark but vaguely homey, when I turned the corner into a dining room and found myself looking at my family for the first time in months.
The four of them sat around the dinner table, digging into their meal and enjoying the food - or at least Alex was, munching and giggling away at a story Uncle David was telling.
Aunt Sarah was probably trying to do the same with Katie, but my little cousin kept staring down at her plate sullenly and occasionally nudging her casserole around without ever stopping to take a mouthful.
"Katie, don't play with your food."
"I'm not hungry."
"Won't you at least try to eat?" My aunt smiled, but it looked a little tight around the edges "We're finally moving back home tomorrow, and if you don't fill up now you won't be able to help us move your things back into your room."
"Okay."
My aunt frowned at the lackluster response and lifted her head a little to give my uncle a pointed look.
"Katie, sweetie." He sighed gently, and I realized that he sounded tired as he turned away from Alex, and looked like it too in a way that I couldn't quite put my finger on. "What's wrong?"
"What about Danny?"
He froze, and my aunt went stiff. Even Alex stopped eating and started biting her lip the way she always did when she was halfway between confused and upset.
"Honey, we talked about this." This time my uncle's smile was so fake you could have slapped a made-in-china sticker on it and sold it for a dollar. "We're still looking for your cousin."
She scowled. "That's what you always say!"
"Please don't raise your voice-"
There was a sharp clatter as she pushed her chair away from the table and ran out of the room.
"Katie!"
She didn't stop running, and I watched her bolt down the hallway and into a room that must have been hers before slamming the door shut hard enough to rattle the hinges and locking it behind her for good measure.
By the time my aunt caught up and started knocking frantically and trying to get Katie to let her in, she'd already curled up on the bed and burrowed under the covers like a caterpillar - not that it helped much, in the end.
I could still see her shaking under there and hear her sobbing quietly, and watching that happen and knowing what it was all about left me feeling a special kind of miserable too complicated to put into words.
I tried to reach out to her, even with a part of me knowing that it was a dream and totally useless, and just as the tips of my fingers brushed against her blanket, everything seemed to glitch and the room began to shudder ominously.
Suddenly, I was ten feet away from her and getting farther every second.
"!"
Calling out didn't work either, just the same as before. My mouth opened and closed silently as I tried to get to her - everything I could see was distorting like it was being reflected through a funhouse mirror, and when I tried to push past that despite myself, it was all over.
One second, I was reaching out again.
The next, the room was coming apart and splintering at the seams, dissolving into this sea of overlapping colors and shapes too big and too weird to imagine, closing in on me from all directions-
-Then I woke up.
...
If that felt too abrupt for you, good.
That's exactly what it was like for me to go from that dream and whatever that was in the end to finding myself inhaling lightly and sitting up in bed, still blinking phantom spots out of my eyes.
One glance out the window and I could tell that it was still a few hours before dawn, and Courage was rumbling away at the foot of the bed where he slept.
Okay then.
Same old, same old for me.
For the first little while, I just... breathed, slowly, and thought about what I saw.
Considered it a bit.
Then I got angry.
No, scratch that.
I got furious - zero to a hundred like greased lightning, the kind of stupid rage that made you want to punch a brick wall bare-handed, even if you knew in your heart of hearts that you'd probably just come out of it with a smarting fist at best.
And this time there was no dreaming barrier to filter it out.
I hated seeing my cousins cry, especially when it was because of me.
Look, I'm no saint - sometimes I'd mess around, play a prank or tease a little too much here or there, and there'd be tears, but I always ended up feeling guilty about it, and I could fix things when it happened.
Something close to a third of the allowance I saved up basically had Katie and Alex's names stamped on it for those rainy days when I had to bribe the little extortionists with Jolly Ranchers and figurines from the corner store near the house to cheer them up again, but this...
I gritted my teeth.
I couldn't fix this, and that little tidbit was driving me up a wall and a half even as I tossed the covers off and got up out of bed to pace across the room and back.
You'd think that after eight months of training under Chiron, helplessness would be easy to push past, but apparently not.
Not this kind.
Homesickness wasn't new to me, and I kept pushing it down every time it came up with training, but after that dream...
My fists clenched.
I wished I could visit, even if it was just for a minute.
Just once.
Click.
It was like a switch had been flipped somewhere in my head, and I lit up with a glow of golden light before I could blink and figure out what was happening.
Everything happened way too fast after that.
This instinct took over me - like the kind I got when I practiced my archery or flew or healed a bruise after a spar with Sairaorg without even having to think about it - and for the first time in my life I realized there was something inside of me besides the Apollo-themed divinity and all the perks that came with it.
A Spark.
As soon as I discovered it, the moment I actually reached for it, it started thrumming under my skin like a second heartbeat.
Then...
Look, I blame the residual drowsiness of sleep and my lizard brain taking over for doing something so reckless.
I need to go home.
That's all it took.
I wasn't thinking about anything else the way I probably should have been, and I didn't have to either. I knew what it was. I knew what it could do, and what I wanted it to do, and it just did it.
The Spark ignited, and every cell in my body lit up like a fire-cracker with it. Space in front and around me followed suit a split-second before it bubbled and twisted, and then reality itself began to swirl into a miniature cyclone with me as the eye of the storm.
I heard Courage bark, suddenly wide awake and darting towards me in a startled panic, but it was hard to focus on him right then and there.
Not when I felt like I was hurtling over a precipice to something unfathomably vast and horrendously dangerous at a million miles an hour and about to drop any minute.
It was exhilarating, and also the most terrifying thing I've ever felt yet.
Familiar, too.
The part of me that wasn't struggling to think as the instincts took over remembered exactly what that night after that hellhound nearly filleted me - the bits of It that I could make sense of, at least, and I knew how it was I'd gotten to this world in the first place at last.
And how to get.
Back.
Home.
Courage barked again, I took one step forward, and we blinked right out of existence.
Colors everywhere - only this time, the difference was like going from dealing with the glare of a flashlight to having a flashbang go off right in your face - and then it kept happening, over and over and over again.
As for the rest... well.
Words wouldn't do it justice.
Courage and I went tumbling, or flying, or something vaguely related to the idea of movement through nothing but pure chaos.
Everywhere I looked - and I looked everywhere, because I couldn't not - there was only an endless, swirling expanse of energy. Strings of brilliant light crisscrossed the space around me, impossible shapes the size of stars and galaxies flickering and fading out in ways that just felt wrong to however much of my senses I could still recognize, overwhelming me just long enough to hurt before shimmering away to let even greater things take their place.
It was the sound that was the most eerie, though. When I wasn't hearing something that couldn't possibly be noise but somehow counted anyway, there was emptiness - the kind of silence that felt alive, as if the universe itself was holding its breath and waiting.
I didn't want to know for what.
Home
I focused on that, knowing that was why we were still moving and the fact that something bad would happen if I lost sight of it - I didn't want to know what that was, either.
Several blinding eternities later, space flattened out, and I tumbled back down into reality and onto my knees on the floor of a room I'd never once been in with a gasp.
"...Son of a..." I whispered under my breath, head ducked so low my forehead was only half an inch off the ground. "That was..."
You ever felt so many things at once that the burns you out and left you numb?
Well, I hope there's room left on that boat, because that's what it felt like for me those first few minutes - already past the disbelief and the awe and the more-than-mild case of existential dread and right into this strange 'huh, so that happened' kind of calm.
I'd probably circle back to the well-deserved freakout sometime later, but not losing it immediately was probably for the best.
There was a thump as Courage slumped down next to me, a disorientated whine slipping past his jaws. By the time I glanced over at him he'd already gone immaterial, dissolving into darkness and melding into my shadow the way he tended to these days whenever he was done putting up with stunts he didn't sign up for.
Honestly?
Fair enough.
I kind of wanted to melt away into darkness myself - that, or curl up into a ball and pass out for the next decade - but then a light clicked on, and I looked up and froze like a deer in headlights in the same breath.
Katie stared back, just as stunned, hand still pressed against the switch of her night light, and the silence between us as she wriggled out of her blanket cacoon to get a better look at me was so loaded you could almost hear the awkward cricket noises going off in the background.
"...Danny?"
Her eyes were wider than dinner plates, and I saw her furiously rub the sleep out of them one at a time, always keeping one fixed on me like she was afraid I'd disappear if she blinked even once.
I...
I didn't know what to say.
I could barely believe this was happening at all.
Hey, I'm back?
Sorry I missed your ninth birthday?
Did you get a little taller?
...Okay, that last one was especially dumb, but you get the idea.
...
Screw it.
"Yeah, I got nothing." I shrugged and smiled shakily, before raising my arms out in an open invitation "Hiya pipsqueak. Hug?"
There was a pause.
Maybe I should have gone with-
"DANNY!"
-nope, never mind.
"Oof!"
I grunted as a little blonde missile shot off the bed and into me with enough force to put one of Chiron's arrows to shame, and then she was bawling into my shirt as I wrapped her in a hug and tried to swallow down this sudden and inexplicable lump in my throat the size of a friggin brick.
"W-Where were you?! You should have come back sooner!" She grabbed my shirt and tugged it around until the seams started tearing, but I didn't I couldn't have cared less about that if I tried. "Jerkface! Stinker!"
Scathing, right?
"Sorry," I croaked, and my eyes started stinging a little even as I pulled what had to be the stupidest-looking smile up onto my face. "I got a little caught up, but I missed you too."
That just made her cry louder, and her hug tightened even as she devolved into total gibberish. I only got about one in every five words, and a couple of them were ones I'm pretty sure Aunt Susan would feed her half a bar of soap for if she heard.
Those were probably my fault, in hindsight, but hey - I sure wouldn't be telling.
Bang.
And just as soon as I thought that, the door to the room was kicked open hard enough that it cracked against the wall.
"GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER YOU-!"
I wasn't sitting in the same spot anymore.
As soon as the door started moving, I was already on my feet and back up against the wall, cradling Katie in my arms and getting ready to dodge against and start counter-attacking on sheer reflex - the benefits of Chiron's training and all that, which means I got a perfect view of the exact second my aunt realized who it was holding her kid in his arms and choked mid-word.
Behind her, my uncle stumbled out of his frantic charge and nearly toppled them both over.
It would have actually been pretty funny if not for a couple of tiny details.
"Is that a shotgun?" I stared down at the weapon as she flinched and dropped it like a hot potato, because seriously? My aunt? "Did something happen while I was away?"
"Daniel?" You'd think my name was a prayer by the way she whispered it, and behind her, my uncle went pale as a ghost as he stumbled into the room. "David, is he-?"
"It's him." My uncle rasped, never once taking his eyes off of me. "No Mist."
My eyebrows rose even as I swallowed.
"Missed you too, Uncle David." And then, because I'm kind of a moron when it comes to priorities and we should never forget that, I got a good look at what he was holding and the certain sheen to it I recognized from my arrows and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "And where the heck did you get a celestial bronze sword?"
"...Eight months, and that's the first thing you ask me?"
"...Well, we could talk about that terrible haircut if you want, but I figured I'd be polite."
"...you damned little-"
He rushed at me and I nearly dodged out of the way on principle, but there was no escaping the bone-crushing hug that nearly swept me off my feet. Katie started wiggling in my grip she tried to escape and save herself, the little traitor, but then my aunt joined in and and we were both goners.
And I guess that's when it hit me.
I was really home.
The first hour and a half after the reunion was blurry.
I think I was still a little shell-shocked, and...
Okay, fine, I'll admit it - There was some crying involved.
Just a bit, and it doesn't count.
Eight months is a long time, alright?
Enough said.
Anyway, by the time all the embarrassing stuff was over and done with and I could think straight again, we'd already moved to this new place's living room.
Katie was out cold again, slumped over on the couch next to me with her head on my lap as I idly brushed back her hair, and my aunt and uncle sat across us on the other two-seater, looking ready to just sit there and watch over us forever.
"So," I cleared my throat when the silence got a little too old for comfort. "Who wants to go first?"
Not me.
Really not me - There was so much to get through and no easy way to get it over with, but I knew I probably didn't have much of a choice.
"Daniel." My uncle started, and he looked haggard. More than I realized through the dream - hair a little unkept, beard scruffy, and with bags under his eyes. "Where have you been?"
I winced.
Right for the throat, huh?
I wasn't sure what to say - my body tingled with warning when I thought about explaining all the details, even if it was probably just me wanting to avoid a messy conversation.
"Safe," I said after searching for the right word, then I added "I've been training. Getting stronger. Even made a couple of new friends."
His shoulders relaxed a little but his expression pulled oddly, like he couldn't decide whether or not he wanted to frown.
"We thought you were dead." Beside him, my aunt looked a little sick at the words. "You weren't at Camp Half-Blood."
It wasn't a question.
"...No. But I was still probably even safer than if I had been. I just couldn't call or come home before now or else I would have." Then I matched his frown with my own. "And how would you know that?"
He shifted uncomfortably, another look in his eyes I wasn't sure I liked.
"I checked."
"..."
"..."
"You... checked? Personally?"
"Yes."
I stared.
"Not a call, or-"
He shook his head, and I didn't know what to do with that.
My straight-laced, no-nonsense uncle... what?
Walked up to Camp Half-Blood's border and knocked at the metaphorical door or something?
"You weren't there. I checked and so did yo-" He cut himself off and shook his head again before giving me another hard look. "Where were you?"
"Someplace else. It's a long story, but..." I dodged the question and looked at him funny when he shifted again, like he was bracing for the my obvious next-ask and trying not to show it. "Look, Uncle David, how much do you know, exactly?"
And how?
Because I thought that... my mom might have clued him in on the big secret when I was a kid, but the pieces to that puzzle didn't fit anymore.
The go-bags he'd already had prepared way back when.
Talking about the Mist.
Visiting Camp Half-Blood.
The celestial bronze sword.
I was starting to think I was a lot farther out of the loop than I thought I was to begin with.
"About everything, I mean?"
My aunt and uncle exchanged this long, pointed look - and wasn't that suspicious - and then she stood up and smoothened out the creases in her dress the way she always did when she was worked up and trying not to show it.
"I'll go make us some tea."
She gave me this strained smile as she walked past and ruffled my hair firmly, her fingers lingering a little before she walked around the corner and into the kitchen.
"Daniel," My uncle hesitated like he was picking his words carefully. "You've learned about our world when you were gone."
Our world?
My eyes narrowed.
"Yeah?"
"Good." He nodded. "You know that your mother and I were twins, yes?"
"Duh."
"And do you know what a legacy is?"
Lega-
I blinked.
"No way."
"My mother - our mother - was a demigod." He said, and my face went slack in floored disbelief. "The goddess of crossroads, mists and magic is our grandmother, and your great-grandmother."
"What?"
He grimaced. "I won't risk using her name-"
No, really, what?
"I know who she is! That's not the big deal here!"
I heard the words, but it was like my brain refused to translate their meaning properly.
The goddess of crossroads and magic
I'd studied enough Greek mythology over the past few months that narrowing that down was as easy as breathing.
Hecate.
But that meant that my uncle... and my mom-!?
"I'm going to need a little more than that."
If I sounded a little strangled, it was totally justified.
"We grew up divided between both worlds." He explained quietly. "Our mother taught us what she thought we needed to know to keep ourselves safe, even if we weren't demigods and didn't face the same... challenges."
"Challenges?"
"Legacies don't attract monsters the same way demigods do, and whatever inheritance we have dilutes further with every generation down the line, but we were never entirely safe, either. Our mother kept us protected, and taught us how to handle ourselves before she died, but..." He paused and sighed, raising a hand to rub his eyes tiredly. "Your mother and I had our differences in how we went about our lives. I stepped back from all of this the moment I could, and she... didn't."
He chuckled ruefully.
"You could say that we came to the same crossroads, and we chose different paths forward. Do you remember what she did for a living?"
The question startled me, but what part of this conversation hadn't?
"She had a bunch of jobs that she went through, right?"
The look on his face did terrible things to my confidence in an answer that should have been clear-cut.
"Not always," He said bluntly. "Your mother dealt with the other side of this world far more than I ever did when we were younger - sometimes she hunted monsters that went out of their way to threaten mortals, and sometimes she worked with Camp Half-blood to protect and deliver demigods across the country into the fold when things got too dangerous for them."
I stared blankly.
"Mom did what now?"
He sighed again.
"I know it's a lot to take in-"
No, really?
"-but it's the truth."
He stressed the word like he was expecting me to come out and call him a liar - even though we both knew he was giving it to me straight.
My uncle had a terrible poker face.
Then again, he hid all of this from me for years and years, so what did I know?
"It's how she met your father. She saved one of his children years and years ago and that drew his attention."
... Right.
Apollo has other kids - Lots of them.
Who were also my siblings.
I let myself get distracted by that for a second before I shook my head and pushed it away for later.
"She had you afterward, and she finally took a page out of my book and left it all behind, mostly. The rest is history."
"...Okay then."
He looked at me funny for that, but he had no room to talk.
What else was I supposed to say?
Barely five minutes into the conversation and I was already reeling.
Then I looked at him - really looked at him - and realized there was another expression on his face that rubbed me the wrong way.
"What?
"Daniel... your mother... she didn't die in a car crash."
...
It was almost impressive, how one sentence less than ten words long could make a person go cold all over.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
It wasn't a whisper, but my voice came out low.
Not the kind of low you struggled to hear, though - no.
It was the kind you couldn't possibly miss, even if you were standing in the middle of a heavy metal concert with a thousand other people screaming out at the top of their lungs.
My uncle took one look at my face and his expression shuttered - he looked like he regretted ever saying a word.
"I don't know all the details, but she got a call from an old friend." He said, and sounded miserable as he did. "Something about another demigod who was being stalked by monsters and needed someone to get them to camp, and she agreed to help."
There was something that sounded vaguely like static building up at the back of my head the longer he spoke.
"She came over and dropped you off with us. You were supposed to spend the weekend with us before she came back to take you home, and then..."
I remembered.
How could I not?
You be good for your aunt and uncle, okay? I'll be back soon.
It was the only time she ever lied to me.
"What else?"
He stilled.
"What else aren't you telling me?"
I wasn't stupid - there was a reason he wasn't looking me in the eye when he spoke.
For a while, we just stared at each other across the room.
Then he swallowed and inhaled deeply.
"She asked for my help."
I stopped breathing.
"Your mother... she thought things might get her rough on her trip, and she asked for my help. I didn't-" His voice cracked. "I never wanted to get involved in that kind of misadventure, and I didn't think she'd need me anyway - she never needed the help before, she was always so capable, and we had just found out your aunt was pregnant with Alex. I couldn't just leave, so I turned her away and-"
He took another breath, more ragged than the last.
I almost stopped him, just because I knew what was coming next.
"-she never made it back."
Slowly, I stood up, carefully shifting my weight so that I didn't startle Katie.
"I need to go."
He paled, from sallow to stark-white in no time flat.
"Daniel, wait, there's more-"
I ran.
I felt like a total coward, but I couldn't stop myself from bolting even if I wanted to as he yelled after me in a panic, or when I heard a crash of shattering glass and saw my aunt drop her tray and press her hand to her mouth with tears in her eyes.
Somehow, even at rock bottom, seeing that just made it all worse.
I want out.
My new power surged, right there in the middle of the hallway.
Space parted-
-Colors erupted everywhere as I slipped through the chaos-
-and I stumbled into the training field outside Chiron's place another eternity later, nearly smacking right into Sairaorg who was already up by now and running through his morning stretches.
"Woah!" He leaped back and let me stagger off to the side. "That's new! And you're late! Where-?"
His smile died when he saw the look on my face.
"Dan?"
I ducked my head and held up a hand.
Don't think about it.
Don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think-
"Give me a second."
I tried not to throw up - whether it was from the sudden bout of spinning exhaustion, from the sick feeling in my stomach from everything I'd just heard, or just the relief that I was back and out of there so quickly was anyone's guess.
"Student?"
I wasn't surprised when I looked up and found Chiron staring down at me in concern, brows furrowed.
"Is there a problem?"
I actually laughed, and they both looked even more worried after that.
Probably because I sounded like death warmed over, in more ways than one.
"You have no idea."
"Enlighten me, then."
I opened my mouth to argue, then I closed it again as I thought that over.
...
... you know what?
It was either this or I totally lose it, so fine.
"I'm not from around here..."
I waited for Chiron to put up a privacy ward at my request - better safe than sorry, or dead via dangerous eavesdropper - and then I just told them both the truth.
Everything except that last story about my mom - I was repressing that until I knew what to do with it, however long that took.
I refused to even acknowledge it, even.
But as for the rest - surprised?
Don't be - I didn't have it in me to lie anymore, even by omission.
And as for trust...
Sairaorg was my best friend, and Chiron was my teacher - the same one who'd taken me under his roof for over half a year with barely any questions asked.
If I couldn't trust them after all that, I was already screwed beyond all words.
So there I was, sitting on the grass after explaining the fact that, yes, multiverse theory was real.
Sounds fun, right?
"I," Sairaorg blinked - he was doing a lot of that, and had been for a while. "Am so confused."
"That's fair."
"I mean, I kind of get it, but also…"
"Yes."
"That's…"
"Yep"
"So then…"
"That's the idea."
It honestly went better than it should have - nobody broke down screaming at any point, which I'd been sorely tempted to do at the start.
But the longer we talked, the more my breathing evened out, and the more my shoulders stopped heaving until I finally felt like I was halfway back to myself again.
Or at least well enough to pretend.
Nobody missed that, either.
"Well," Chiron said at last, stroking his beard with a far-off look in his eyes when I was finally done. "That settles it then."
"Settles what?"
I couldn't quite suppress the worried edge to the words.
What comes next?
"I was trying to determine whether or not you had a good reason for missing our morning class. After much deliberation, I've decided that you did."
...
That… wasn't the first thing I expected him to say, but it still made me smile.
Just a little
Sairoarg also perked up beside him. "So does that mean he's not running laps for showing up late?"
"Foolish student." Chiron looked disappointed in him. "Of course he will."
I choked in outrage, and Sairaorg started cackling.
"Why!?"
Then he looked at me like I was an idiot for that one.
"You still missed class, obviously. A good reason is an explanation, not an excuse."
"That's your takeaway from all this?"
"Hardly. I still have many, many questions, but they can wait for now." Chiron chuckled warmly. "Needless to say, this doesn't leave our circle. At all."
Sairaorg frowned. "I would never-"
Chiron raised a hand and flicked him on the forehead, ignoring his yelp with a shake of his head.
"It was not an accusation, merely a reminder. For both of you." He eyes me pointedly. "This… ability of yours has dangerous implications to it that would have mortals and gods alike up in arms. Never reveal it thoughtlessly."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Good." He nodded "Now then - Are you alright?"
…
"I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?"
They both gave me flat looks.
"I am!"
I was only dealing with the fact that my mom's death was a lie, just like nearly everything I thought I knew about my family, and...
… Okay, not fine.
Very not fine.
This sucked colossally.
But I wasn't going to talk about it, and I think they could both figure that much out, because Sairaorg leaned over to pat me on the back.
"Should we get back to training now?"
"There's still stuff Chiron wants to ask me" The centaur nodded when I looked over at him, and I shrugged. "Nothing you want to ask me?"
Wasn't he even a little curious?
He paused, and I waited patiently.
"Are you going back home?"
I…
"Maybe later? To visit, at least."
There was still stuff I wanted to talk about, and more I needed to ask.
The sooner the better, but not right now.
No way.
"Are you still living and training here?"
"Obviously."
Then I realized that might not actually be my call to make.
I glanced up at Chiron, but he'd already moved, and his hand landed on top of my head gently.
"You are my student" He smiled reassuringly. "Your place here is beyond question."
And there was that lump in my throat again.
Man, I should really get that checked out sometime.
"Thanks."
"Then it's settled! Or it should be." Sairaorg punched his palm and grinned. "You did say your goodbyes, right?"
"Well, no, but- CRAP!"
That's when it hit me.
"I left without saying goodbye to Katie and Alex."
And just like that, I was back in crisis mode.
I hadn't even seen my younger cousin when I was there - she'd been asleep, and if Katie found out I left after she nodded off when I spent twenty minutes promising I wouldn't over and over again-
"Forget later." I jerked up to my feet. "I need to go back right now. Just for ten minutes."
Chiron raised a brow.
"Not without your weapons you're not. Ten minutes or ten seconds is irrelevant - you don't ever leave to unknown territories unarmed."
I didn't bother arguing before I sprinted into the house, up the stairs and into my room to grab my bow and the spear I liked to train with and came rushing back again.
It was going to be horribly awkward - just the thought of talking to him was screwing my stomach into knots, but Katie and Alex trumped that - but if I was quick enough I'd be in and out before uncle David could stop me.
I exhaled sharply.
Alright, focus.
"Want me to come with?"
I was distracted, so I barely registered Sairaorg's question.
"It's a terrible trip."
"I don't mind."
It was such a casual request that I didn't even think about the potential consequences before answering.
"Fine, whatever."
I need to go home.
I reached out for him quickly, more on reflex than anything else, and Chiron's eyes widened.
"Hold on-"
Too late.
The second my hand landed on his shoulder, the Spark ignited, and we vanished on the spot.
"...Those utter idiots."
Immediately, I realized that something was different - wrong.
Instead of hurtling through infinite expanses like before, we plummeted straight down, through endless nothingness.
My limbs flailed wildly as they twisted both weightless and also crushed under the pressure of invisible forces pressing down from every direction. I tried to yell, but I had no voice, and we continued to hurtle down without anchor, without direction.
Stop.
It was Sairaorg - bringing him with me so abruptly did this, I could tell.
Stop!
Reality flickered—
...
- and we reappeared and slammed into a floor made of unforgiving stone with an impact so quick and brutal we nearly splattered like bugs on the windshield.
"Hnngh!" The ringing in my ears even out just in time for me to hear Sairaorg let out the most pitiful-sounding croak I've ever heard. "...Are we dead?"
"...If death hurts this much, I want a refund." I groaned and rolled over to flop onto my back.
That's about as far as I got before the sound of clanking metal and deadbolts sliding open drowned him out, and the door to the strange room we landed in burst open.
"Someedoh!"His voice bellowed out in a language I didn't recognize, and my eardrums would have called foul at how loud it was if they had mouths to speak with. " Someedoh ray doh sola!"
Slowly, achingly aware of the fact that I hurt all over and felt like a sock-puppet that'd been stepped one way too many times, I glanced up.
Then I did a double-take.
A man loomed over us, expression thunderous, dressed in black leather, a metal helm and genuine half-plate armour.
He looked like he'd stepped right out of the dark ages, complete with a sword and a dagger both strapped to his hip.
As soon as we locked eyes, he pointed at me and started yelling furiously.
"...Sairaorg, what the hell is he saying?"
And where exactly did we just land?
I'd have worked some magic to get across the language barrier and figured that out for myself, but I felt wrung out there too - three jumps across worlds in one day ate more power than I'd have used for an entire day's worth of training.
"Ugh." He groaned and propped himself up onto his elbows... then his expression went weird as he listened to the rapid-fire tirade the other guy was spitting out "...Huh."
That was never a good sign.
"What?"
"It's not good."
For the love of - now what!?
"Sai, tell me."
"He says his name Braga, Chief of the Esgaroth Guard." The man huffed like a bull when he recognized his name, an angry red shade to his skin as he clenched his fists and gestured for the four guards coming in behind him to hurry up. "And that we're under arrest for trespassing and attempted theft."
"..."
"..."
...
Oh, this was going to be just great, wasn't it?
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.
Call it a hunch.
I was walking down a hallway I didn't recognize, dark but vaguely homey, when I turned the corner into a dining room and found myself looking at my family for the first time in months.
The four of them sat around the dinner table, digging into their meal and enjoying the food - or at least Alex was, munching and giggling away at a story Uncle David was telling.
Aunt Sarah was probably trying to do the same with Katie, but my little cousin kept staring down at her plate sullenly and occasionally nudging her casserole around without ever stopping to take a mouthful.
"Katie, don't play with your food."
"I'm not hungry."
"Won't you at least try to eat?" My aunt smiled, but it looked a little tight around the edges "We're finally moving back home tomorrow, and if you don't fill up now you won't be able to help us move your things back into your room."
"Okay."
My aunt frowned at the lackluster response and lifted her head a little to give my uncle a pointed look.
"Katie, sweetie." He sighed gently, and I realized that he sounded tired as he turned away from Alex, and looked like it too in a way that I couldn't quite put my finger on. "What's wrong?"
"What about Danny?"
He froze, and my aunt went stiff. Even Alex stopped eating and started biting her lip the way she always did when she was halfway between confused and upset.
"Honey, we talked about this." This time my uncle's smile was so fake you could have slapped a made-in-china sticker on it and sold it for a dollar. "We're still looking for your cousin."
She scowled. "That's what you always say!"
"Please don't raise your voice-"
There was a sharp clatter as she pushed her chair away from the table and ran out of the room.
"Katie!"
She didn't stop running, and I watched her bolt down the hallway and into a room that must have been hers before slamming the door shut hard enough to rattle the hinges and locking it behind her for good measure.
By the time my aunt caught up and started knocking frantically and trying to get Katie to let her in, she'd already curled up on the bed and burrowed under the covers like a caterpillar - not that it helped much, in the end.
I could still see her shaking under there and hear her sobbing quietly, and watching that happen and knowing what it was all about left me feeling a special kind of miserable too complicated to put into words.
I tried to reach out to her, even with a part of me knowing that it was a dream and totally useless, and just as the tips of my fingers brushed against her blanket, everything seemed to glitch and the room began to shudder ominously.
Suddenly, I was ten feet away from her and getting farther every second.
"!"
Calling out didn't work either, just the same as before. My mouth opened and closed silently as I tried to get to her - everything I could see was distorting like it was being reflected through a funhouse mirror, and when I tried to push past that despite myself, it was all over.
One second, I was reaching out again.
The next, the room was coming apart and splintering at the seams, dissolving into this sea of overlapping colors and shapes too big and too weird to imagine, closing in on me from all directions-
...
-Then I woke up.
...
If that felt too abrupt for you, good.
That's exactly what it was like for me to go from that dream and whatever that was in the end to finding myself inhaling lightly and sitting up in bed, still blinking phantom spots out of my eyes.
One glance out the window and I could tell that it was still a few hours before dawn, and Courage was rumbling away at the foot of the bed where he slept.
Okay then.
Same old, same old for me.
For the first little while, I just... breathed, slowly, and thought about what I saw.
Considered it a bit.
Then I got angry.
No, scratch that.
I got furious - zero to a hundred like greased lightning, the kind of stupid rage that made you want to punch a brick wall bare-handed, even if you knew in your heart of hearts that you'd probably just come out of it with a smarting fist at best.
And this time there was no dreaming barrier to filter it out.
I hated seeing my cousins cry, especially when it was because of me.
Look, I'm no saint - sometimes I'd mess around, play a prank or tease a little too much here or there, and there'd be tears, but I always ended up feeling guilty about it, and I could fix things when it happened.
Something close to a third of the allowance I saved up basically had Katie and Alex's names stamped on it for those rainy days when I had to bribe the little extortionists with Jolly Ranchers and figurines from the corner store near the house to cheer them up again, but this...
I gritted my teeth.
I couldn't fix this, and that little tidbit was driving me up a wall and a half even as I tossed the covers off and got up out of bed to pace across the room and back.
You'd think that after eight months of training under Chiron, helplessness would be easy to push past, but apparently not.
Not this kind.
Homesickness wasn't new to me, and I kept pushing it down every time it came up with training, but after that dream...
My fists clenched.
I wished I could visit, even if it was just for a minute.
Just once.
Click.
It was like a switch had been flipped somewhere in my head, and I lit up with a glow of golden light before I could blink and figure out what was happening.
Everything happened way too fast after that.
This instinct took over me - like the kind I got when I practiced my archery or flew or healed a bruise after a spar with Sairaorg without even having to think about it - and for the first time in my life I realized there was something inside of me besides the Apollo-themed divinity and all the perks that came with it.
A Spark.
As soon as I discovered it, the moment I actually reached for it, it started thrumming under my skin like a second heartbeat.
Then...
Look, I blame the residual drowsiness of sleep and my lizard brain taking over for doing something so reckless.
I need to go home.
That's all it took.
I wasn't thinking about anything else the way I probably should have been, and I didn't have to either. I knew what it was. I knew what it could do, and what I wanted it to do, and it just did it.
The Spark ignited, and every cell in my body lit up like a fire-cracker with it. Space in front and around me followed suit a split-second before it bubbled and twisted, and then reality itself began to swirl into a miniature cyclone with me as the eye of the storm.
I heard Courage bark, suddenly wide awake and darting towards me in a startled panic, but it was hard to focus on him right then and there.
Not when I felt like I was hurtling over a precipice to something unfathomably vast and horrendously dangerous at a million miles an hour and about to drop any minute.
It was exhilarating, and also the most terrifying thing I've ever felt yet.
Familiar, too.
The part of me that wasn't struggling to think as the instincts took over remembered exactly what that night after that hellhound nearly filleted me - the bits of It that I could make sense of, at least, and I knew how it was I'd gotten to this world in the first place at last.
And how to get.
Back.
Home.
Courage barked again, I took one step forward, and we blinked right out of existence.
...
Colors everywhere - only this time, the difference was like going from dealing with the glare of a flashlight to having a flashbang go off right in your face - and then it kept happening, over and over and over again.
As for the rest... well.
Words wouldn't do it justice.
Courage and I went tumbling, or flying, or something vaguely related to the idea of movement through nothing but pure chaos.
Everywhere I looked - and I looked everywhere, because I couldn't not - there was only an endless, swirling expanse of energy. Strings of brilliant light crisscrossed the space around me, impossible shapes the size of stars and galaxies flickering and fading out in ways that just felt wrong to however much of my senses I could still recognize, overwhelming me just long enough to hurt before shimmering away to let even greater things take their place.
It was the sound that was the most eerie, though. When I wasn't hearing something that couldn't possibly be noise but somehow counted anyway, there was emptiness - the kind of silence that felt alive, as if the universe itself was holding its breath and waiting.
I didn't want to know for what.
Home
I focused on that, knowing that was why we were still moving and the fact that something bad would happen if I lost sight of it - I didn't want to know what that was, either.
Several blinding eternities later, space flattened out, and I tumbled back down into reality and onto my knees on the floor of a room I'd never once been in with a gasp.
"...Son of a..." I whispered under my breath, head ducked so low my forehead was only half an inch off the ground. "That was..."
You ever felt so many things at once that the burns you out and left you numb?
Well, I hope there's room left on that boat, because that's what it felt like for me those first few minutes - already past the disbelief and the awe and the more-than-mild case of existential dread and right into this strange 'huh, so that happened' kind of calm.
I'd probably circle back to the well-deserved freakout sometime later, but not losing it immediately was probably for the best.
There was a thump as Courage slumped down next to me, a disorientated whine slipping past his jaws. By the time I glanced over at him he'd already gone immaterial, dissolving into darkness and melding into my shadow the way he tended to these days whenever he was done putting up with stunts he didn't sign up for.
Honestly?
Fair enough.
I kind of wanted to melt away into darkness myself - that, or curl up into a ball and pass out for the next decade - but then a light clicked on, and I looked up and froze like a deer in headlights in the same breath.
Katie stared back, just as stunned, hand still pressed against the switch of her night light, and the silence between us as she wriggled out of her blanket cacoon to get a better look at me was so loaded you could almost hear the awkward cricket noises going off in the background.
"...Danny?"
Her eyes were wider than dinner plates, and I saw her furiously rub the sleep out of them one at a time, always keeping one fixed on me like she was afraid I'd disappear if she blinked even once.
I...
I didn't know what to say.
I could barely believe this was happening at all.
Hey, I'm back?
Sorry I missed your ninth birthday?
Did you get a little taller?
...Okay, that last one was especially dumb, but you get the idea.
...
Screw it.
"Yeah, I got nothing." I shrugged and smiled shakily, before raising my arms out in an open invitation "Hiya pipsqueak. Hug?"
There was a pause.
Maybe I should have gone with-
"DANNY!"
-nope, never mind.
"Oof!"
I grunted as a little blonde missile shot off the bed and into me with enough force to put one of Chiron's arrows to shame, and then she was bawling into my shirt as I wrapped her in a hug and tried to swallow down this sudden and inexplicable lump in my throat the size of a friggin brick.
"W-Where were you?! You should have come back sooner!" She grabbed my shirt and tugged it around until the seams started tearing, but I didn't I couldn't have cared less about that if I tried. "Jerkface! Stinker!"
Scathing, right?
"Sorry," I croaked, and my eyes started stinging a little even as I pulled what had to be the stupidest-looking smile up onto my face. "I got a little caught up, but I missed you too."
That just made her cry louder, and her hug tightened even as she devolved into total gibberish. I only got about one in every five words, and a couple of them were ones I'm pretty sure Aunt Susan would feed her half a bar of soap for if she heard.
Those were probably my fault, in hindsight, but hey - I sure wouldn't be telling.
Bang.
And just as soon as I thought that, the door to the room was kicked open hard enough that it cracked against the wall.
"GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER YOU-!"
I wasn't sitting in the same spot anymore.
As soon as the door started moving, I was already on my feet and back up against the wall, cradling Katie in my arms and getting ready to dodge against and start counter-attacking on sheer reflex - the benefits of Chiron's training and all that, which means I got a perfect view of the exact second my aunt realized who it was holding her kid in his arms and choked mid-word.
Behind her, my uncle stumbled out of his frantic charge and nearly toppled them both over.
It would have actually been pretty funny if not for a couple of tiny details.
"Is that a shotgun?" I stared down at the weapon as she flinched and dropped it like a hot potato, because seriously? My aunt? "Did something happen while I was away?"
"Daniel?" You'd think my name was a prayer by the way she whispered it, and behind her, my uncle went pale as a ghost as he stumbled into the room. "David, is he-?"
"It's him." My uncle rasped, never once taking his eyes off of me. "No Mist."
My eyebrows rose even as I swallowed.
"Missed you too, Uncle David." And then, because I'm kind of a moron when it comes to priorities and we should never forget that, I got a good look at what he was holding and the certain sheen to it I recognized from my arrows and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "And where the heck did you get a celestial bronze sword?"
"...Eight months, and that's the first thing you ask me?"
"...Well, we could talk about that terrible haircut if you want, but I figured I'd be polite."
"...you damned little-"
He rushed at me and I nearly dodged out of the way on principle, but there was no escaping the bone-crushing hug that nearly swept me off my feet. Katie started wiggling in my grip she tried to escape and save herself, the little traitor, but then my aunt joined in and and we were both goners.
And I guess that's when it hit me.
I was really home.
...
The first hour and a half after the reunion was blurry.
I think I was still a little shell-shocked, and...
Okay, fine, I'll admit it - There was some crying involved.
Just a bit, and it doesn't count.
Eight months is a long time, alright?
Enough said.
Anyway, by the time all the embarrassing stuff was over and done with and I could think straight again, we'd already moved to this new place's living room.
Katie was out cold again, slumped over on the couch next to me with her head on my lap as I idly brushed back her hair, and my aunt and uncle sat across us on the other two-seater, looking ready to just sit there and watch over us forever.
"So," I cleared my throat when the silence got a little too old for comfort. "Who wants to go first?"
Not me.
Really not me - There was so much to get through and no easy way to get it over with, but I knew I probably didn't have much of a choice.
"Daniel." My uncle started, and he looked haggard. More than I realized through the dream - hair a little unkept, beard scruffy, and with bags under his eyes. "Where have you been?"
I winced.
Right for the throat, huh?
I wasn't sure what to say - my body tingled with warning when I thought about explaining all the details, even if it was probably just me wanting to avoid a messy conversation.
"Safe," I said after searching for the right word, then I added "I've been training. Getting stronger. Even made a couple of new friends."
His shoulders relaxed a little but his expression pulled oddly, like he couldn't decide whether or not he wanted to frown.
"We thought you were dead." Beside him, my aunt looked a little sick at the words. "You weren't at Camp Half-Blood."
It wasn't a question.
"...No. But I was still probably even safer than if I had been. I just couldn't call or come home before now or else I would have." Then I matched his frown with my own. "And how would you know that?"
He shifted uncomfortably, another look in his eyes I wasn't sure I liked.
"I checked."
"..."
"..."
"You... checked? Personally?"
"Yes."
I stared.
"Not a call, or-"
He shook his head, and I didn't know what to do with that.
My straight-laced, no-nonsense uncle... what?
Walked up to Camp Half-Blood's border and knocked at the metaphorical door or something?
"You weren't there. I checked and so did yo-" He cut himself off and shook his head again before giving me another hard look. "Where were you?"
"Someplace else. It's a long story, but..." I dodged the question and looked at him funny when he shifted again, like he was bracing for the my obvious next-ask and trying not to show it. "Look, Uncle David, how much do you know, exactly?"
And how?
Because I thought that... my mom might have clued him in on the big secret when I was a kid, but the pieces to that puzzle didn't fit anymore.
The go-bags he'd already had prepared way back when.
Talking about the Mist.
Visiting Camp Half-Blood.
The celestial bronze sword.
I was starting to think I was a lot farther out of the loop than I thought I was to begin with.
"About everything, I mean?"
My aunt and uncle exchanged this long, pointed look - and wasn't that suspicious - and then she stood up and smoothened out the creases in her dress the way she always did when she was worked up and trying not to show it.
"I'll go make us some tea."
She gave me this strained smile as she walked past and ruffled my hair firmly, her fingers lingering a little before she walked around the corner and into the kitchen.
"Daniel," My uncle hesitated like he was picking his words carefully. "You've learned about our world when you were gone."
Our world?
My eyes narrowed.
"Yeah?"
"Good." He nodded. "You know that your mother and I were twins, yes?"
"Duh."
"And do you know what a legacy is?"
Lega-
I blinked.
"No way."
"My mother - our mother - was a demigod." He said, and my face went slack in floored disbelief. "The goddess of crossroads, mists and magic is our grandmother, and your great-grandmother."
"What?"
He grimaced. "I won't risk using her name-"
No, really, what?
"I know who she is! That's not the big deal here!"
I heard the words, but it was like my brain refused to translate their meaning properly.
The goddess of crossroads and magic
I'd studied enough Greek mythology over the past few months that narrowing that down was as easy as breathing.
Hecate.
But that meant that my uncle... and my mom-!?
"I'm going to need a little more than that."
If I sounded a little strangled, it was totally justified.
"We grew up divided between both worlds." He explained quietly. "Our mother taught us what she thought we needed to know to keep ourselves safe, even if we weren't demigods and didn't face the same... challenges."
"Challenges?"
"Legacies don't attract monsters the same way demigods do, and whatever inheritance we have dilutes further with every generation down the line, but we were never entirely safe, either. Our mother kept us protected, and taught us how to handle ourselves before she died, but..." He paused and sighed, raising a hand to rub his eyes tiredly. "Your mother and I had our differences in how we went about our lives. I stepped back from all of this the moment I could, and she... didn't."
He chuckled ruefully.
"You could say that we came to the same crossroads, and we chose different paths forward. Do you remember what she did for a living?"
The question startled me, but what part of this conversation hadn't?
"She had a bunch of jobs that she went through, right?"
The look on his face did terrible things to my confidence in an answer that should have been clear-cut.
"Not always," He said bluntly. "Your mother dealt with the other side of this world far more than I ever did when we were younger - sometimes she hunted monsters that went out of their way to threaten mortals, and sometimes she worked with Camp Half-blood to protect and deliver demigods across the country into the fold when things got too dangerous for them."
I stared blankly.
"Mom did what now?"
He sighed again.
"I know it's a lot to take in-"
No, really?
"-but it's the truth."
He stressed the word like he was expecting me to come out and call him a liar - even though we both knew he was giving it to me straight.
My uncle had a terrible poker face.
Then again, he hid all of this from me for years and years, so what did I know?
"It's how she met your father. She saved one of his children years and years ago and that drew his attention."
... Right.
Apollo has other kids - Lots of them.
Who were also my siblings.
I let myself get distracted by that for a second before I shook my head and pushed it away for later.
"She had you afterward, and she finally took a page out of my book and left it all behind, mostly. The rest is history."
"...Okay then."
He looked at me funny for that, but he had no room to talk.
What else was I supposed to say?
Barely five minutes into the conversation and I was already reeling.
Then I looked at him - really looked at him - and realized there was another expression on his face that rubbed me the wrong way.
"What?
"Daniel... your mother... she didn't die in a car crash."
...
It was almost impressive, how one sentence less than ten words long could make a person go cold all over.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
It wasn't a whisper, but my voice came out low.
Not the kind of low you struggled to hear, though - no.
It was the kind you couldn't possibly miss, even if you were standing in the middle of a heavy metal concert with a thousand other people screaming out at the top of their lungs.
My uncle took one look at my face and his expression shuttered - he looked like he regretted ever saying a word.
"I don't know all the details, but she got a call from an old friend." He said, and sounded miserable as he did. "Something about another demigod who was being stalked by monsters and needed someone to get them to camp, and she agreed to help."
There was something that sounded vaguely like static building up at the back of my head the longer he spoke.
"She came over and dropped you off with us. You were supposed to spend the weekend with us before she came back to take you home, and then..."
I remembered.
How could I not?
You be good for your aunt and uncle, okay? I'll be back soon.
It was the only time she ever lied to me.
"What else?"
He stilled.
"What else aren't you telling me?"
I wasn't stupid - there was a reason he wasn't looking me in the eye when he spoke.
For a while, we just stared at each other across the room.
Then he swallowed and inhaled deeply.
"She asked for my help."
I stopped breathing.
"Your mother... she thought things might get her rough on her trip, and she asked for my help. I didn't-" His voice cracked. "I never wanted to get involved in that kind of misadventure, and I didn't think she'd need me anyway - she never needed the help before, she was always so capable, and we had just found out your aunt was pregnant with Alex. I couldn't just leave, so I turned her away and-"
He took another breath, more ragged than the last.
I almost stopped him, just because I knew what was coming next.
"-she never made it back."
Slowly, I stood up, carefully shifting my weight so that I didn't startle Katie.
"I need to go."
He paled, from sallow to stark-white in no time flat.
"Daniel, wait, there's more-"
I ran.
I felt like a total coward, but I couldn't stop myself from bolting even if I wanted to as he yelled after me in a panic, or when I heard a crash of shattering glass and saw my aunt drop her tray and press her hand to her mouth with tears in her eyes.
Somehow, even at rock bottom, seeing that just made it all worse.
I want out.
My new power surged, right there in the middle of the hallway.
Space parted-
...
-Colors erupted everywhere as I slipped through the chaos-
...
-and I stumbled into the training field outside Chiron's place another eternity later, nearly smacking right into Sairaorg who was already up by now and running through his morning stretches.
"Woah!" He leaped back and let me stagger off to the side. "That's new! And you're late! Where-?"
His smile died when he saw the look on my face.
"Dan?"
I ducked my head and held up a hand.
Don't think about it.
Don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think-
"Give me a second."
I tried not to throw up - whether it was from the sudden bout of spinning exhaustion, from the sick feeling in my stomach from everything I'd just heard, or just the relief that I was back and out of there so quickly was anyone's guess.
"Student?"
I wasn't surprised when I looked up and found Chiron staring down at me in concern, brows furrowed.
"Is there a problem?"
I actually laughed, and they both looked even more worried after that.
Probably because I sounded like death warmed over, in more ways than one.
"You have no idea."
"Enlighten me, then."
I opened my mouth to argue, then I closed it again as I thought that over.
...
... you know what?
It was either this or I totally lose it, so fine.
"I'm not from around here..."
...
I waited for Chiron to put up a privacy ward at my request - better safe than sorry, or dead via dangerous eavesdropper - and then I just told them both the truth.
Everything except that last story about my mom - I was repressing that until I knew what to do with it, however long that took.
I refused to even acknowledge it, even.
But as for the rest - surprised?
Don't be - I didn't have it in me to lie anymore, even by omission.
And as for trust...
Sairaorg was my best friend, and Chiron was my teacher - the same one who'd taken me under his roof for over half a year with barely any questions asked.
If I couldn't trust them after all that, I was already screwed beyond all words.
So there I was, sitting on the grass after explaining the fact that, yes, multiverse theory was real.
Sounds fun, right?
"I," Sairaorg blinked - he was doing a lot of that, and had been for a while. "Am so confused."
"That's fair."
"I mean, I kind of get it, but also…"
"Yes."
"That's…"
"Yep"
"So then…"
"That's the idea."
It honestly went better than it should have - nobody broke down screaming at any point, which I'd been sorely tempted to do at the start.
But the longer we talked, the more my breathing evened out, and the more my shoulders stopped heaving until I finally felt like I was halfway back to myself again.
Or at least well enough to pretend.
Nobody missed that, either.
"Well," Chiron said at last, stroking his beard with a far-off look in his eyes when I was finally done. "That settles it then."
"Settles what?"
I couldn't quite suppress the worried edge to the words.
What comes next?
"I was trying to determine whether or not you had a good reason for missing our morning class. After much deliberation, I've decided that you did."
...
That… wasn't the first thing I expected him to say, but it still made me smile.
Just a little
Sairoarg also perked up beside him. "So does that mean he's not running laps for showing up late?"
"Foolish student." Chiron looked disappointed in him. "Of course he will."
I choked in outrage, and Sairaorg started cackling.
"Why!?"
Then he looked at me like I was an idiot for that one.
"You still missed class, obviously. A good reason is an explanation, not an excuse."
"That's your takeaway from all this?"
"Hardly. I still have many, many questions, but they can wait for now." Chiron chuckled warmly. "Needless to say, this doesn't leave our circle. At all."
Sairaorg frowned. "I would never-"
Chiron raised a hand and flicked him on the forehead, ignoring his yelp with a shake of his head.
"It was not an accusation, merely a reminder. For both of you." He eyes me pointedly. "This… ability of yours has dangerous implications to it that would have mortals and gods alike up in arms. Never reveal it thoughtlessly."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Good." He nodded "Now then - Are you alright?"
…
"I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?"
They both gave me flat looks.
"I am!"
I was only dealing with the fact that my mom's death was a lie, just like nearly everything I thought I knew about my family, and...
… Okay, not fine.
Very not fine.
This sucked colossally.
But I wasn't going to talk about it, and I think they could both figure that much out, because Sairaorg leaned over to pat me on the back.
"Should we get back to training now?"
"There's still stuff Chiron wants to ask me" The centaur nodded when I looked over at him, and I shrugged. "Nothing you want to ask me?"
Wasn't he even a little curious?
He paused, and I waited patiently.
"Are you going back home?"
I…
"Maybe later? To visit, at least."
There was still stuff I wanted to talk about, and more I needed to ask.
The sooner the better, but not right now.
No way.
"Are you still living and training here?"
"Obviously."
Then I realized that might not actually be my call to make.
I glanced up at Chiron, but he'd already moved, and his hand landed on top of my head gently.
"You are my student" He smiled reassuringly. "Your place here is beyond question."
And there was that lump in my throat again.
Man, I should really get that checked out sometime.
"Thanks."
"Then it's settled! Or it should be." Sairaorg punched his palm and grinned. "You did say your goodbyes, right?"
"Well, no, but- CRAP!"
That's when it hit me.
"I left without saying goodbye to Katie and Alex."
And just like that, I was back in crisis mode.
I hadn't even seen my younger cousin when I was there - she'd been asleep, and if Katie found out I left after she nodded off when I spent twenty minutes promising I wouldn't over and over again-
"Forget later." I jerked up to my feet. "I need to go back right now. Just for ten minutes."
Chiron raised a brow.
"Not without your weapons you're not. Ten minutes or ten seconds is irrelevant - you don't ever leave to unknown territories unarmed."
I didn't bother arguing before I sprinted into the house, up the stairs and into my room to grab my bow and the spear I liked to train with and came rushing back again.
It was going to be horribly awkward - just the thought of talking to him was screwing my stomach into knots, but Katie and Alex trumped that - but if I was quick enough I'd be in and out before uncle David could stop me.
I exhaled sharply.
Alright, focus.
"Want me to come with?"
I was distracted, so I barely registered Sairaorg's question.
"It's a terrible trip."
"I don't mind."
It was such a casual request that I didn't even think about the potential consequences before answering.
"Fine, whatever."
I need to go home.
I reached out for him quickly, more on reflex than anything else, and Chiron's eyes widened.
"Hold on-"
Too late.
The second my hand landed on his shoulder, the Spark ignited, and we vanished on the spot.
"...Those utter idiots."
...
Immediately, I realized that something was different - wrong.
Instead of hurtling through infinite expanses like before, we plummeted straight down, through endless nothingness.
My limbs flailed wildly as they twisted both weightless and also crushed under the pressure of invisible forces pressing down from every direction. I tried to yell, but I had no voice, and we continued to hurtle down without anchor, without direction.
Stop.
It was Sairaorg - bringing him with me so abruptly did this, I could tell.
Stop!
Reality flickered—
...
- and we reappeared and slammed into a floor made of unforgiving stone with an impact so quick and brutal we nearly splattered like bugs on the windshield.
"Hnngh!" The ringing in my ears even out just in time for me to hear Sairaorg let out the most pitiful-sounding croak I've ever heard. "...Are we dead?"
"...If death hurts this much, I want a refund." I groaned and rolled over to flop onto my back.
That's about as far as I got before the sound of clanking metal and deadbolts sliding open drowned him out, and the door to the strange room we landed in burst open.
"Someedoh!"His voice bellowed out in a language I didn't recognize, and my eardrums would have called foul at how loud it was if they had mouths to speak with. " Someedoh ray doh sola!"
Slowly, achingly aware of the fact that I hurt all over and felt like a sock-puppet that'd been stepped one way too many times, I glanced up.
Then I did a double-take.
A man loomed over us, expression thunderous, dressed in black leather, a metal helm and genuine half-plate armour.
He looked like he'd stepped right out of the dark ages, complete with a sword and a dagger both strapped to his hip.
As soon as we locked eyes, he pointed at me and started yelling furiously.
"...Sairaorg, what the hell is he saying?"
And where exactly did we just land?
I'd have worked some magic to get across the language barrier and figured that out for myself, but I felt wrung out there too - three jumps across worlds in one day ate more power than I'd have used for an entire day's worth of training.
"Ugh." He groaned and propped himself up onto his elbows... then his expression went weird as he listened to the rapid-fire tirade the other guy was spitting out "...Huh."
That was never a good sign.
"What?"
"It's not good."
For the love of - now what!?
"Sai, tell me."
"He says his name Braga, Chief of the Esgaroth Guard." The man huffed like a bull when he recognized his name, an angry red shade to his skin as he clenched his fists and gestured for the four guards coming in behind him to hurry up. "And that we're under arrest for trespassing and attempted theft."
"..."
"..."
...
Oh, this was going to be just great, wasn't it?
...
And here we go:
View: https://imgur.com/Dkxl0Hb
Have a Chiron meme:
View: https://imgur.com/3RuScNQ
And here we go:
View: https://imgur.com/Dkxl0Hb
Have a Chiron meme:
View: https://imgur.com/3RuScNQ
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.
- Location
- California
Oh boy, the metaphysics here is similar to Skyrim, in that everything is connected. I wonder what discordant noise they will sound in Eru Illúvatar's symphony?
KillerFish
Grumpy Owl, Bird Lawyer
Fucking "two ribcages" is going to keep me up tonight unless I get really drunk … fortunately, I have a head start!
Amazing story, just catched up. I hope way way way later in the story towards the end, either in PJO Greek or in a diff universe he has to go Kratos for whatever reason just to see a conceptual battle between Apollo demigod vs. A version of Apollo. Would be epic
That would all depend on how early kratos is starting his adventures right now, the only chance he'll get to do something like that is either during 2/3 when it was basically the gods of Olympus versus everyone. Any earlier and he might risk kratos himself coming after him cuz he was still working for the gods before that, any further and it would be too late and apollo would already be dead, not to mention he would have to find some way to knock him out as kratos needs his head in order to reach the end of 3.
Sorry I meant go Kratos as in fight a version of the Greek Patheon, whether PJO or otherwise, I didn't mean Kratos universe, though that is a good universe to pick if the author does want the MC to fight any Greek gods at any point.
Oh, I read your reply wrong lol.
- Pronouns
- He/him/his
A quick google later - Dang, these two are rather overpowered for most of what's still around at this point in the timeline! Wonder if they'll end up dealing with
or not.
Smaug
- Location
- Denial
Only if you don't take the metaphysics of it all into account. If you do, smaug is one of the lesser creatures you can find in middle earth. Lower than the balrogs and wizards, even. His power is mostly physical, and can be taken out with the right arrow.
The wizards are literal divine messengers who hide their power in order to keep free will around. Smug is a giant lizard.
Not too overpowered against everything - they're still in training after all, and LOTR has it's dangers - though they are quite a bit above most every mortal-tier threat in the verse, yes.
Yes, the deeper lore behind the wizards is worth noting.
Samug is a lizard with an absurd vulnerability, but he's a lot more dangerous and magical than most would think - especially if you take some of the flowery language about him as fact.
Guess we'll see how stuff goes down
We Make Terrible Life Choices
New
I have a decent singing voice if I do say so myself - high highs, low lows, good pitch and timbre, and all that kind of stuff, even if I don't really use it that often.
That shouldn't be too much of a surprise - when your dad's the god of music on top of a whole bunch of other things as well, you come out of it with neat little bonuses like that.
"I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
Everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves,"
But here's the thing - being naturally hardwired for whipping out musical numbers on the spot?'
"I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
"Yes, on everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves"
It means that you also had a pretty good idea of how to screw them up like nobody's business.
"I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
and this is how it gooooooes....!"
Or maybe that was just me.
"For the love of all that is good and just, keep your mouths shut!" The guard standing outside our cell door - if you could call it that - finally lost it and started yelling at us as our singing reached a horrible off-key crescendo... for the eighth time in the last ten minutes, give or take few. "Or else I'll have you flogged!"
Sairaorg and I stared at him for a little as he panted for breath, red-faced in frustration... and then we glanced at each other and grinned.
"Again?"
"Ready when you are."
"I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
Everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves-!"
"Raagh!"
So.
Let's back up a bit.
The two of us jumped into the void and tumbled down into a new world with the mother of all rough landings, right smack dab in a place called Esgaroth.
Then we got arrested.
See, it turns out we'd landed in what passed for an armoury for these people, crammed full of weapons and armour I hadn't been paying attention to at all, and the locals really hadn't appreciated the idea that a couple of thieves might have snuck in and nearly made off with their stuff.
I mean, we weren't, obviously, but you could kind of see where they were coming from - especially since we couldn't exactly explain how we'd ended up there, and they weren't really in the mood to listen either, what with all the yelling and furious motioning and everything.
Long story short?
They herded us right out of there and into the open, and I'll tell you this much - it only took one look around to realize that we really weren't in Kansas anymore.
Or anywhere close to it.
Esgaroth was a town built on stilts that raised all its buildings over the lake running beneath it. Instead of roads, it had wooden planks that locked against each other to form walkways crisscrossing above the water, and the homes we saw as we passed by came in all shapes and sizes - everything from little cruck houses with timber walls and thatched roofs that glinted through the mist in the early morning sunlight, to bigger log-cabins that rose two stories up and towered over the rest of them.
There were other walkways higher up too - more rickety-looking planks and makeshift bridges stretching out between the different houses left and right, with more people than I could count flitting over them and dressed in woollen tunics, cloaks, furs and leathers.
Some of them stopped to stare at Sairaorg and I as we were marched past them, and from the way they looked us up and down and pointed, you'd think they were staring at a couple of aliens that fell out of the sky.
Which... was technically kind of accurate, if you looked at it from a certain way.
From a distance.
And squinted.
...
Wow, my life is nuts - and from the looks Sairaorg kept giving me, you could tell that he was riding on the same wavelength too.
I didn't have that much time to reflect on that before they led us up to this rougher-looking, square block of a place that passed for a local prison or something, and man, it sure wasn't pretty.
The inside was cramped and poorly lit by torches and the little sunlight that seeped in through the cracks in the roof, and it was divided into three small and slightly waterlogged cells closed off by rusty iron bars reeking from visible patches of mold and murky stains that would have probably given a health inspector a heart attack on the spot.
Yikes.
Zero stars, would not recommend.
Needless to say, we didn't sit down when they pushed us into one of them and slammed the door shut with a clang of tortured metal.
"You'll stay here until the Master has the time to take a good look at you." Braga, the Chief guard who'd 'captured us' and hadn't stopped crowing about it the entire way here grunted through the bars. "Nasty little thieves. If it were up to me, I'd have cut off your filthy hands and been done with the trouble!"
You could just tell that this guy was fun at parties, couldn't you?
Sairaorg cleared his throat. "We weren't-"
"Quiet!"
I didn't actually understand the words as he said them - then - but even without Sairaorg translating for me I still would've gotten the idea just from the ugly scowl on his face.
You might be wondering why we went along with all of this and didn't try and make a break for it?
Well, for starters, that headache I was talking about before?
Teensy bit worse than I let on at first.
I was shrugging it off fast, but it took a little while to get my feet back under me properly and it sucked all the way up to that point. Playing along with them to avoid the extra noise while we caught our breaths just seemed like the easiest way to go.
And, for another thing, it wasn't like we were in any real danger. Braga and his men could threaten and spit until they were blue in the face, but they couldn't actually do... anything to us, really.
What would you expect?
They were bog-standard mortals armed with swords and daggers.
Even at our worst the two of us were still so far out of their league we might as well have been playing another game entirely.
Case in point - the pounding in my skull finally dimmed enough then that I reached for a spark of power and began whispering under my breath right as the man turned around.
"Father Of Poetry, Arbiter of Song"
"All Tongues Are Golden Atop Thy Own"
It felt like something in my head shifted as the magic took form, and my skin flashed with a faint, split-second burst of light as it settled into place.
Braga whirled around right as it faded.
"What was that?"
I grinned as I understood him perfectly - the translation spell worked, invoking the concept of Apollo as a god of music and poetry in all languages to loophole my way into understanding them.
It also worked both ways - making sure people understood me clearly even if we spoke two completely different languages.
"What was what?"
The man glared at me like he was trying to force me to fess up with pure force of will, but I've met squirrels more threatening than he was.
Literally - those little dudes don't look it, but they have teeth and they know how to use them when they want to, and that's all I'm going to say about it.
Eventually, he turned around again and that was that - until I saw him pick my spear up from where it had been propped up against the wall across our cell.
"That's mine."
He snorted dismissively and gave me another glare.
"Who'd you steal it from, then?"
"I didn't. My teacher gave it to me."
"A likely story." He scoffed, but he wouldn't peel his eyes off of it, and for good reason.
Chiron had given me the pick of his armoury a while back when he'd decided I was good enough to start training with weapons that weren't blunted and dulled for practice, and it was the first one I chose - a wicked-looking thing seven feet tall all in all, carved out of ashwood and topped with a blade fashioned out of gleaming orichalcum that glinted like polished brass with a red-gold hue in the flickering fire-light.
It was well-crafted and pretty useful all around, but as far as magical weapons went it wasn't anything crazy special in the long run.
I mean, don't get me wrong, the orichalcum was a valuable metal, and the whole thing was enchanted to make it tough enough to handle the kind of punishment an ordinary spear would shatter into a million pieces under, but it wasn't a game changer or anything like that.
That didn't mean it wasn't important to me though - it was my spear, and I didn't like the way this guy was eyeing it.
"A weapon as fine as this is wasted on a thief. It will be taken in reparation for your crimes."
And there it was.
"What crimes?"
"Quiet!"
"We didn't actually-"
"I said quiet!"
My eyes narrowed at the half-angry, half-smug look on his face - like he'd already won and was happy to gloat without coming right out and saying it.
Alright then.
If that's how he wanted to play...
"Tell you what," I smiled pleasantly and tried to channel my inner Chiron, and I saw Sairaorg's lips curl up a bit at the edges out of the corner of my eye before his expression evened out again when Braga's look flickered to him. "If you can hold onto it, it's yours."
He scowled at me some more like he was expecting me to say something else, but I just kept smiling until he finally grunted and looked away.
"You keep watch." He pointed at one of his men before turning to grunt at the other two. "Get back to your posts. The Master will see them at noon."
Then he shot us one last nasty look and marched out of the place with my spear hefted in his grip like it belonged to him.
The guard he left behind chortled as he saw me staring after him and rapped his knuckles against the bars of the cell in the most condescending way ever.
"Don't dream of it, boy. You'll never see that spear again."
"..."
Slowly, I turned to stare him dead in the eye.
"That right?
He blinked at me, probably confused at the smirk I aimed his way before I nudged Sairaorg with my elbow.
"Well, guess there's nothing to do about it then. Sai?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm feeling a little down. How about we sing song?"
My friend blinked, then took one look at me and broke out into a matching grin as he figured it out.
"What song?"
"That's the spirit!"
A quarter-hour later, the guard was nearly howling in frustration, the two of us were trying not to laugh so hard we were nearly crying, and the rest of my headache had just about cleared out.
All caught up?
Great.
"Again?"
"No!" The guard roared and launched off the stool he was sitting on before I could answer Sairaorg a second time, looking like a bull about to charge away at a red cape. "No more!"
He even picked up the stool in his one hand and started waving it around threateningly - or tried to, at least.
I'm not sure what that was supposed to do to us across the bars, but I guess it was the thought that counted.
"I don't think he liked our singing, Sai."
"I know," My friend shook his head sadly. "Some people have no taste."
"Hmm." I nodded sagely. "So sad."
"I've had it!" He pitched the stool down at the floor so hard bits of it splintered off as it bounced away, cursing under his breath. "Let some other fool have you!"
Then he made to march out of the room, stepped into a particularly tricky puddle and nearly topped over with a squawk.
That did it - we cracked up and couldn't stop laughing until he stomped out of the room cursing, boots squelching against the floor so loudly they reminded me of a pair of squeaky shoes I once got for Halloween.
"T-That-" Sairoarg finally trailed off, still wiping a tear from his eyes. "-was awesome."
"Right?" I inhaled and tried to get my lips to stop twitching. "That was fun. I feel good about life again! You?"
"All better." He rolled his neck a little before gesturing at the bars and making a fist. "Should I-?"
"Nah, I got this." Breaking the bars was easy - they were so frail that either of us could do it by sneezing, but it was some other poor guy that'd have to replace them later and that seemed a little too mean a thing to stick on a random stranger. "Well, Courage does, anyway."
"..."
"Right buddy?"
For a second, I thought I timed that wrong. I was sure he was awake, but maybe -
"Arf!"
-And there he is.
We heard another bark, and then the shadows at our feet darkened and twisted unnaturally before they burst out in one quick surge, flowing upwards and stretching into a curtain of darkness that swallowed us up so quickly you'd have missed it if you blinked.
Shadow travel was always a rush - like you were sprinting through a cold, pitch-black tunnel, but there was no floor under you and no gravity to pull you down - but compared to whatever it was I was doing when I went from one world to the next, it was a total walk in the park.
We popped back out of the darkness and out across the bars a split second later, and Courage materialized next to me with a bark and a satisfied jump.
"Good to have you back, you little show-off."
I gave him a good back rub before I walked up to the bench against the far wall to get my bow and quiver back while Sairaorg ruffled his fur some more.
"Courage?"
He perked up and huffed at me expectantly.
"Go fetch my damn spear."
Braga wanted to try and take my stuff?
"Arf!"
Let's see how he likes a jumpscare-by-hellhound first thing in the morning.
Thirty seconds later, I heard a faint scream and suspiciously high-pitched scream somewhere in the distance before Courage popped back out of the shadows with my spear between his teeth.
"Atta boy!"
Then we went from there.
"So where are we?" Sairaorg asked as we hopped across the rooftops of Esgaroth - we couldn't walk down below without all the locals staring and pointing, and I was pretty sure there were a few people after us already.
On the bright side, I got to practice my parkour skills while we figured things out, and Courage was following after us from below and probably scaring the life out of a few more people while he was at it.
"I don't know, the Dark Ages maybe?" He snorted and vaulted over to another roof, and I grinned and followed suit "That, or a really hard-core renaissance fair."
"Hah!"
The thing is, I was only half sure I was kidding - a look at the street underneath us didn't exactly fill me with confidence before we scrabbled over a chimney and leaped across a bridge leading past some kind of forge.
At least, that's what it probably was - I could see and smell the smoke, and hear the strokes of a heavy hammer striking against metal.
"Seriously, though, I have no idea. I'm nearly as new to this as you are, and I've never pulled it off with anyone but Courage."
Which is probably where I messed up, now that I think about it.
I grabbed onto Sairaorg before I stepped into that sea of chaos between the worlds, and instead of hurtling across it like the last couple of times we'd fallen straight down like someone had tied cinder blocks to our feet and tossed us over the edge of a ship and into a maelstrom.
If I hadn't pulled us out, we'd have probably still been falling - and wasn't that a scary thought?
"Are we stuck here then?" Sairaorg actually stopped as he thought about that, freezing at the edge of the rooftop to give me a concerned, halfway panicked look. "We can get back, right?"
I didn't miss a beat.
"Absolutely."
Technically, I had no idea if we could, but like hell was I going to consider the chance that we might be stranded here.
I got us here, I could get us back easy - I was too busy with too much on my plate to screw up now.
"I just need a while to get my magic back up to snuff, and then we're out of here."
I'd exhausted myself at the third jump, after all, but I was always quick to regenerate lost magic.
Even Chiron had said so-
Wait.
"Oh."
"What?"
"I messed up by bringing you here," I whispered. "I messed up bad."
"...Not that bad." He frowned and patted my shoulder, trying to cheer me up. "I mean, the trip was terrible-"
Fair
"-but this is fun, and I wouldn't have left you-"
"It's not that." I groaned and dropped my face into my palms "I just realized that Chiron's going to kill us when we get back."
He took that in for all of a second, and then he winced.
Rushing into a journey unprepared? Using magic I only just learned I had without testing it beforehand?
"That's..."
"Yeah."
We were toast.
"...Now I don't want to go back."
"Maybe we don't have to?"
That was a legitimate question, but somebody yelled out over us before he could answer me.
"There they are!"
It was our old friend Braga, staring up at us from the ground with a furious death glare and a couple more lackeys crowding around him.
"Get down here, you filthy rats!" He roared loud enough that you'd think he was being murdered, and the townsfolk around him backed away like they were afraid they'd be murdered instead. "And somebody find that cursed mutt!"
...
Well then.
Guess who volunteered to be our distraction until I was fully recharged?
Sairaorg and I didn't even need to look at each other for this one - we just started waving and hollering on the spot.
"You'll never take us alive!"
Then we turned around and bolted.
I'm not going to lie -springing all around Esgaroth and leading the town guard on a wild goose chase?
Total blast - but it was only when we finally catapulted off one last rooftop and landed only a few corners away from what I was guessing was the town hall that things got interesting.
"Oi!"
The woman who called out to us stared at us from the inside of an open little pavilion, wearing a long, earth-toned dress and a shawl over her shoulders, an intense glint in her eyes.
An old man was sitting behind her too, leaning back in his chair and wearing a faded brown tunic, patched in places, frayed with age, and halfway covered by a blanket.
"You two are the outsiders riling up the guard, aren't you?" She frowned, stepping out from behind a wagon full of trinkets and rumpled tapestries and things I couldn't really recognize as she looked us up and down pensively. "Why?"
The fact that she was actually threw me for a loop, but not for long.
"He thinks we're thieves, but we didn't steal anything." Sairaorg was the first to offer with a shrug - it's not like lying really got us anything here. "And he tried to steal my friend's spear."
"That he did." I agreed and patted the sling that fastened it over my shoulder.
I think we were both surprised when she nodded slowly, like she believed us.
"Aye, I can believe that."
There you have it.
"You can?"
"Braga's a rotten one." She said, and she sounded less suspicious and more resigned now. "Shame, too. He was a sweet lad once, before his Da went out too deep into the lake whilst half-drunk and drowned for it. Now he's the Master's man through and through, and every bit as greedy to match."
She clucked her tongue and curled a strand of her greying hair behind an ear before sighing in disappointment.
"What a waste."
"Hilda," The old man sighed and picked up a cane that had been propped up against the post next to him, before leaning over to nudge her side reproachfully. "Talk like that'll do you no good if it spreads."
"S'only the truth, isn't it? Everybody knows it, and they give us all a bad name." She batted his hands away gently when he started poking her again. "Aye, fine! I'll hold my damned tongue."
"That'll be the day," He chuckled deeply, before turning over to give us a nod. "What brings you lads up to Esgaroth?"
"Can't be trade," Hilda grunts, rummaging through her wagon and pulling knickknacks out left and right before stacking them into neat little piles. "Word would have spread if there was good business to be had from beyond the pointy-ears up at the Mirkwood."
"We were just traveling, and ended up here by chance."
Which was true, if you ignored the context.
His brows furrowed in concern.
"Alone?"
"We split up from our teacher a little while back, and we were planning to meet up again soon," Sairoarg added, and the old man seemed to accept that easily enough. "Then we ran into your Braga, and... you know."
"I do," The old man agreed. "Not very charming, is he? But it is what it is - Esgaroth's not much good for outsiders these days, and hasn't been for many years."
He sounded sad about it, too, before he took a deep breath and seemed to shake it off.
"But enough about that. You'd best be going now before the guards catch up to you." I think we could all hear the commotion building a few turns away by now. "You'll find no good in this town whilst they hound you."
And see, that would have been it.
What he said made sense, I shrugged and nodded, and Sairaorg waved goodbye - we'd have left right then.
And then the old man spoke up one last time.
"Careful now. They're a nasty lot, and they'll get nastier if they get their hands on you and drag you to the Master. I'd rather travel up to the old dwarven mountain and wake the dragon sleeping inside than have that man spitting and frothing in my face."
Hilda snorted. "Wouldn't we all."
I nearly tripped over my own feet and face-planted, and Sairaorg whipped his head around so fast my neck was getting phantom pains just from imagining the sheer whiplash.
"The what?"
Hilda and the old man exchanged a confused look, before she turned back to us with a raised brow.
"The dragon, up in the Lonely Mountain?" She said slowly, brows rising higher as we gaped at her. "The fiery nightmare that set fire and brought ruin to old Dale on the same day it drove the Dwarves out of their kingdom so it could claim all their treasures for itself, all those years ago?"
There were dwarves in this thing too?
Somehow, I don't think they were talking about the Norse-kind, either.
"Haven't you heard the story?" The old man looked just as lost as her. "I never thought I'd meet a soul in all the lands that wouldn't know of the tale in this day and age. Where did you say you were from again?"
We didn't.
"And what are you wearing?" Hilda added, frown deepening as she glanced over our get-ups, again.
Which was... also fair, really, because jeans, t-shirts and trainers didn't exactly blend in around here.
"Clothes."
"Never seen clothes like that."
"I've never seen clothes like yours, either."
Not outside of movies, anyway.
"You're a cheeky one, aren't you?"
"I've been called worse."
I'm going to be honest here and admit that I wasn't quite paying attention to the individual words anymore, because seriously?
"A dragon?"
I hadn't missed that enormous mountain miles off in the distance, since it was obscured by mist and I hadn't paid it that much attention, but that was all over now.
"There's a real dragon lairing in that mountain?"
"As real as the ruins of Dale, though few dare visit that cursed place now," Hilda grunted. "Too close to the mountain."
And this wasn't just a fairy tale or something?
Apparently not.
"The dwarves of old once ruled from that mountain, their great seat of power. Haven't you heard the songs? Vast halls filled with treasure, silver, gold and gems beyond measure?" The old man's expression went heavy and somber. "But there's nothing dragons love more than treasure, and so it came from the east. The death of Dale and the breaking of the old kingdoms. The dwarves that didn't fill its belly or burn under its breath fled and scattered to the winds, and the dragon sealed itself in the mountain. No one's seen it for generations, but only a mad fool would even try."
"Arf!"
"Blast-!" Hilda nearly jumped out of her skin as Courage skidded around the corner and bounded over to us, red eyes glowing with delight. "What breed of dog is that!?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." I said, and then I tapped Sairaorg on the shoulder as the sound of heavy footfalls and angry calls started growing closer and closer "And that's our cue to bounce. Nice meeting you, Hilda, and-er-"
"Alford." The old man offered with a grin that made him look years younger "Off you go then, but come by and visit when they finally give up - you seem like the right sort."
"See ya."
We hightailed it just as the first furious cry started catching up to us, but we didn't get far before we left them in the dust and Sairaorg turned to look me dead in the eye.
I knew what was coming before he even asked it, for exactly the same reason as he did.
"So we're both thinking the same thing, aren't we?"
"Obviously."
"But we're not going to act on it, right?"
"No way, that'd be insane. I mean, a dragon?"
"See, that's what I thought too! It's way too crazy."
"Right? And we're already in for it when we get back. If we do this, Chiron would lose it."
We both nodded empathetically.
"He would, so it's a bad idea all around, honestly."
"True, true."
"..."
"..."
"It's a baaaad idea."
"Agreed."
"..."
"..."
"...So are we going to check it out or what?"
"Well, duh."
Yeah, I know.
This is already shaping up to be the stupidest thing you've ever heard us do, ever, but hear me out on this one - it's a dragon.
Terrifying?
Sure.
Out of our weight class?
Probably.
Might end up with us getting chargrilled if we mess up?
Likely.
But, again, it's a dragon - where else where we going to get the chance to check things out, even from a distance?
Besides, it wouldn't be the first giant monster we've faced down, and we were both a lot stronger than we were nearly a year ago, if we even had to fight at all - it wasn't like we were going to go out of our way to wake it up or anything.
"We're just taking a look, that's all."
"Yeah! Besides, somebody should check on it anyway." Sairaorg grinned. "No one's seen it in generations, and better us than the people here, right?"
"When you think about it, we're performing a public service here."
"Exactly!"
You ever lie so hard you convince yourself while you're at it?
Voila!
We found a nice, out-of-the-way spot before Sairaorg unfurled his wings and I lit up with the effects of my flight spell, and up into the air we went.
At something close to five miles away, the ruins of Dale might as well have been right next door for two people who could ignore all the uneven terrain between there and here and the branching streams from the lake running across it, but it still was the Lonely Mountain that stood out first.
The mists had cleared up more by now, and it seemed to loom in the distance now that I knew to look for it - imposing and jagged as it sprouted up from the earth like a giant spine, swallowing up more of the horizon the closer we got until we could almost count off all the towering cliffs one by one, and see the snow crowning the very highest peak as it branched out past the cloud-cover.
"Woah."
They said it used to be a kingdom, and I could believe that just from its sheer size alone.
A part me of wished I had a camera just so I could keep a picture as a souvenir.
Then I looked down, and I felt the idea shrivel up a little inside of me as I saw what was left behind in the valley between the mountain's southeast and southwest ridges.
"Are those-?"
"Yeah."
We descended slowly.
The ruins of Dale were... quiet, more than anything else.
Silent leftovers of buildings and the walls that made them reduced to broken skeletons, scattered debris and half-standing arches that sagged and twisted left and right, with faded symbols weathered down by the wind and water wear.
Some of them were ruined so badly that the stone seemed to be melting back into the earth, bits and pieces you could barely even tell used to be part of a city vanishing into the earth like they were slowly being swallowed.
I could see the faint outlines of what might have been cobbled streets down there too, nothing like the roughly worn planks down in Esgaroth, but some of them had huge ruptures running through them, and patches that were damaged so badly they reminded me of the fine-crushed gravel you'd see people carting around in grab-wagons at a construction site back home.
"Look." Sairaorg quietly pointed at another spot, and I frowned.
There was a statue there, right in the middle of a town square, and also weathered enough that it was just a lump of disfigured stone some twenty meters tall—you couldn't tell anymore, but it would have probably been impressive back in its day, especially around these parts.
Now it was just broken and half-buried, and I could just barely tell it was supposed to be holding something up, Statue of Liberty style - only its hand had snapped just under the elbow and crumbled way underneath it.
"There's barely anything left."
"It was a dragon."
Yeah, it was.
You'd have to be blind not to see it after this.
The only signs of life left were the wild grass and the vines growing in and creeping around the ruins, and only in some spots - the rest of the grounds were stripped bare and blackened so thoroughly they looked like they were made of coal, and I doubted anything would ever grow there again without a miracle - and I mean a literal one.
Heck, just looking at them was giving me a bad feeling in my gut that just about screamed 'unnatural', and it didn't take a genius to figure out why.
I floated over to Sairaorg as we both rose higher up into the air again and gestured towards the mountain.
For some reason, it felt a lot more intimidating than it did a minute ago, and the shadows were that much darker.
"Still wanna do this?"
"You're kidding, right?"
But the fact that he might've hesitated was probably telling, too.
Ah, well.
We're already here anyway.
Getting into the Lonely Mountain from Dale was easy - we just had to follow the long, sloping path leading out of the valley and up to the front door.
Well, I say front door, but that's only because I didn't have a better word for the absolutely enormous gate carved into the mountainside and flanked on either end by equally extra-sized statues of armoured vikings carrying axes bigger than either of us - or people that looked like them, anyway.
The dwarves, maybe.
Whoever they were, the detail was amazing - I was nearly expecting them to jump off their pedestals and start asking for our paperwork as we stepped up their gate.
The entrance itself was more eerie, though, because it seemed both solid and fragile - a mass of jagged and uneven rock stacked up to seal off the doorway behind it and shot through with cracks and breaks, and some of it looked like it had been melted into place.
I don't think I would have noticed those signs if I hadn't been looking for them either, and it was also how I found the crevice that led us in.
Narrow and uncomfortable, but just enough space to squeeze through without too much trouble.
The moment we stepped inside, though, something shifted,
It wasn't just the stale scent of dust and rock in the air, or the almost absolute darkness that took over once we were far enough away from the opening - Sairaorg was a devil who could see through that just fine, and all I had to do was will it and I lit up like a golden glowstick - but the weight that fell over us was a whole other kind of problem.
If that was even the right word for it.
Presence, maybe?
Whatever it was, it was there, and heavy enough that I swallowed and mimed zipping my lips to Sairaorg, who nodded seriously.
No more words from here on out.
The hollowed-out mountain seemed to grow even bigger as we crept into it, and it didn't take us long to find something worth goggling at.
To be fair, the entry hall alone was something else - an enormous carved threshold with a vaunted ceiling and engraved walls scattered with symbols and pictures of all sorts, and with proportions so absurd you could've fit four football pitches worth of people in there and still had plenty of room for more.
Looking around the place was...exciting, I'll admit it - like we were in the middle of an Indiana Jones movie, minus the cowboy hat and the whip.
But there's always a twist with those flicks, and ours smacked us in the face right after we left that hallway.
There were dozens of branching hallways that led off from there, an entire sloping labyrinth's worth of them, and we got 'lucky' on the first one.
One second we were following along it, idly tracing the walls and the next we stumbled on to-.
On to...
...
Gold.
...
Now, I want you to follow me on this one:
Gold.
Not gold bars, gold treasure, gold adjacent goodies or even gold-wrapped chocolate coins.
I mean gold, the color.
That was the first thing I registered.
Then my eyes processed the scope of it, and I started feeling all faint and floaty inside.
From one end of the titanic domed cavern to the next, the treasures of the mountain stretched out like a miles-wide ocean - a literal one, made of gold coins piled so high Sairaorg could stand on my shoulders and we still wouldn't reach a quarter of it's height - and that was just the gold.
There were gems that glinted in every color of the rainbow in there too, swords and spears and armor beyond counting, gilded drinking cups and goblets and enough random treasures that you'd need an army to shift through them all - hell, you'd need an army to claim them in the first place, because some of the stuff looked like it could start wars just by existing at all.
"What the..." Sairaorg leaned back a little, dazed. "This is...who would even need this?"
People who wanted to give Midas a run for his money, that's who - and this is coming from Sai, who was a disinherited devil and still wealthy as sin from what I'd been told.
It was the kind of stupid wealth that hurt to think about. My aunt once invited a friend of hers who was an economist over for dinner this one time, and I'm pretty sure the lady would have a seizure on the spot if I ever showed her this place.
But that wasn't the big deal.
"Where's the dragon?"
Sairaorg beat me to it, glancing around and stepping back as his feet clinked against some stray coins that had scattered out of the main pile noisily.
"You're asking me?"
There was something here, and neither of us doubted it- not with the charged feeling in the air that racketed the adrenaline in my blood right up, and the taste of magic that made me want to cringe away - but I couldn't see a thing.
I was half expecting it to leap out right then, because asking that question was basically handing it an engraved invitation, but nothing happened.
"Maybe it's not-"
I don't know what finally did it.
Maybe we whispered a little too loud. Maybe the coins we stepped on clicked a little too much, or maybe it was just that fate got bored of waiting for us to screw up, so it decided to jump the gun.
It doesn't matter.
We both stiffened as the pressure in the cavern changed, like a blurry image suddenly coming into focus.
And that focus was sharp.
"Sairaorg."
"I know. I feel it too."
We both ducked back as the gold began to clatter under the movement of something buried underneath it, and my throat went a little dry as I realized just how much of it was shifting.
At first, it was nothing but a low, echoing hiss, sharp and venomous, like the sound of a snake ready to strike, but then it went deeper - a rumbling growl like the hum of a car engine rolled in with a woodchipper and dialed up to eleven thousand, and it was then that the dragon began to emerge from underneath its hoard.
How big was this thing?
Yes.
The answer was just yes.
Fun fact - in my experience, nothing makes you come face to face with your own mortality quite like having a mass of gleaming red scales, encrusted gems, teeth, and wings bigger than a freaking airbus rise up in front of you and blink open fiery slitted eyes the size of industrial furnaces your way.
"Well, thief."
The dragon spoke slowly, languidly, because of course it did.
Its - his - nostrils flared, and his long, serpentine neck tilted this way and that as he pulled more of himself out from beneath his gold, his tail whipping up a minor avalanche as it lanced out and began to sway behind him.
"Two thieves, in fact." He chuckled, and it was as if everything in the mountain vibrated with it - even my bones. "Come now, don't be shy. Step into the light."
The fact that he was speaking wasn't nearly as disturbing as the way he was doing it - his snout and muzzle shifted unnaturally with every word, and the air rumbled with power and something other that was making the hairs on the back of my neck rise at just how wrong it sounded.
Even Sairaorg was grimacing through gritted teeth, and his fists were clenched and ready to throw down.
"Look on the bright side," I swear that putting the false cheer in my voice was the hardest thing I've ever done. "We found the dragon."
He snorted weakly, eyes never straying from the wall of pure, uninhibited draconic murder - and wow, was coming here a terrible idea or what? - leering at us from across the cavern.
"Lucky us."
"Am I being ignored?"
The way the dragon asked was polite and measured, and it almost managed to disguise the sheer malice that was bubbling up underneath it.
Almost.
"The only thing worse than a pair of thieves slinking about in the dark." His voice reverberated across the hallway, and the size of them made it easy to see the way his eyes narrowed into slits. "Is a pair of rude thieves."
I couldn't help it.
"You know, that's not the first time that someone's called me a thief today, and I'm starting to take it personally."
Drop.
Dead.
Silence.
You could have heard a pin drop - or maybe the sound of me swallowing the foot I just jammed into my mouth before the dragon's maw curled up and flashed with a row of teeth so sharp you could cut yourself just by getting too close to them.
It's at times these where I'm forced to confront the fact that my survival instincts are jerks who tap in and out whenever they want to, because my tongue decided to go on autopilot right then and no one was around up there to veto it.
"Oh?" His forelegs hit the ground like falling boulders as he heaved himself up a little, and the room shook again. More gold coins poured off him, clinking down among the rest as the higher he rose. "Is that so, little trespasser? Have I offended the insects that intruded upon my domain?"
"...I prefer visitors."
"You speak to me of your preferences?" The dragon chuckled deeply, and we took a few steps back as he began to writhe forward. "How quaint. And though it has been quite some time since last I stirred, I do believe that custom dictates a visitor must be invited in before they traipse into one's home at their leisure."
... The thing is, he did have a point.
Or maybe not.
He did steal this place from the previous owners after doing a bunch of horrible things to them, so he's got no room to talk.
Luckily, I had enough of a filter to know that bringing that up was the kind of bad idea I didn't want to play around with right now.
The presence he was giving off as it is was bad enough - it felt like I was tasting static, and the more he moved around, the more the smell of sulfur, ash, and something distinctly nasty clogged up my nose.
"We apologize for intruding on your domain," Sairaorg stepped up and plastered a smile I knew was fake onto his face. "We've only just learned that a great dragon was sleeping under this mountain, and we wanted to see it for ourselves."
He even sounded a little different when he talked - like the noble heir he was until a few years ago, and not my goofy friend who was as easy-going as it got and punched like an eighteen-wheeler with no brakes installed.
The dragon's gaze narrowed even more, and his neck stretched out as he came closer.
"You claim not to know of me?"
I wasn't sure whether that was offence or confusion rumbling under the question, but my fingers twitched for my bow anyway.
"No. Our home is very far away, and we've never even heard your name. A true shame."
Oh.
My eyes widened
Chiron did tell us something about this, didn't he?
Dragons were prideful - like, more than gods prideful, and they used their names and titles interchangeably because they were all edgy like that.
Getting a dragon to talk about their name - and themselves by extension - is a great way to buy yourself a few minutes if one ever decided to corner you and make you its late-night snack.
"Indeed," Sure enough, the great fiery thing backed up for a breath before his wings exploded out as he rose to all of his genuinely terrifying height. "I am Smaug the Impenetrable, The Dragon Dread, Bane of Dwarves, and King Under The Mountain!"
The last roar nearly burst my eardrums - and that's saying something, considering my tolerance for sounds of all kinds.
"And now that you are familiar with my name, I would have yours." He slammed back down with his forelegs, and this time dust rained down from above as the tremors jolted the entire cavern. "I have not smelled either of your kind before - you are not of Men, do not try to deny it. Who are you and where do you come from that your people do not know of my name, might I ask?"
It may have been phrased like one, but it wasn't a question, and he asked it it like a serial killer looking up a potential victim's home.
Only the serial killer would probably be the safer bet here.
"I am Sairaorg of House Bael, and this is my friend Daniel. And as for our home-" Sai shrugged with the kind of casualness everyone standing here knew was feigned, but said nothing about anyway. "You wouldn't have heard of it, or our kind."
Smaug exhaled, a hint of acrid smoke rising from his nostrils.
"Is that right?"
"It's in the middle of nowhere, really." I didn't flinch when the dragon turned back towards me, which is something I'm absolutely going to be proud of in the event that we don't get barbecued. "It's beneath your notice."
"Hmm." He mused, eyes flickering over us as he adjusted his weight. "Perhaps. I would thought you liars had I smelled the scent of dwarf on you."
"We've never met any dwarves."
And I don't think you should be expecting visitors, either.
Oh, that I do know. No stench lingers quite like that of dwarf flesh, and I know it well - no one better!" He laughed, and the cruel delight there was something I didn't want to describe even if I had the words for it. "It was I who drove them out of this mountain, who broke their misbegotten pride and ate their people like a wolf amongst sheep."
Something in his eyes changed, then.
"And how scrumptious they were."
The way he looked at us now…
Yeah, no.
We were done here.
"On that note, we're late for lunch ourselves." I met Sairaorg's eyes, and I think he got it right away because he just barely nodded. "Let's do this again some other time. Bye!"
And then we turned around and broke out into a dead sprint that lasted for all of about five seconds before we split up and streaked off in either direction, just like we practiced.
Half a beat after that, Smaug's entire absurdly-sized head slammed down onto the platform we'd been standing on, reducing it to rubble with the same kind of effort you'd use to snap a toothpick in half.
"I think not!" The dragon coiled up behind us like a monstrous behemoth, tail flicking out like a serpent, wings flaring and brushing against the pillars holding up the place as before charged forward far faster than something his size had any right to move. "It has been quite some time since my last rising, and after such a riveting conversation I find myself famished. Should the first morsel please me, perhaps I'll permit the other to-!"
"TALKING ISN'T A FREE ACTION!"
My arrow - the one I'd nocked and aimed in the time it'd taken him to spit out the words, and one of the few celestial bronze ones I had left struck at his eye and erupted in a deliberate flare of golden light and concussive force like a cannon blast.
What?
You all know what I'm about.
The screech of pain and unholy rage Smaug let rip felt like it was the horn to call out the end of the world.
They probably heard it all the way back down in Esgaroth, and for a second, I thought I'd settled things before they'd gotten out of hand.
Then Smaug lunged forward, eye-blinking erratically but otherwise unharmed, and his good eye locked onto me.
Crap.
Most dragons had magic-resistant hides, didn't they?
The scales may offer the most protection, but the rest of their bits got a nice little general buff anyway.
"You dare harm me!" A clawed talon the size of a small car hurtled down towards me and deflected my second arrow harmlessly before smashing down at the spot I'd just been standing in and punching right through solid rock like cardboard. "Insignificant wretch! Your death will be agony for this insult!"
"Oi!" Smaug heard that and snarled upwards - and then he bellowed in raging disbelief as Sairaorg landed on his snout, wings out, and punched down hard. "Pay attention to me too!"
The burst from his touki-enhanced fist landed like an earthquake and displaced the air violently, and the way Smaug struck the ground jaw first would have been comical if his scales didn't remain unbroken.
Sairaorg hissed and leaped off warily a second before those jaws snapped right back up after him again.
"Fool! I know not what manner of thing you are, but there is no victory for you here! My armor is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath-" The scales from his belly up to the end of his neck began to lit up with a crimson glow, and my brain started screaming. "-death!"
"MOVE!"
Sairaorg and I were up against the roof an instant before the firestorm erupted out of his maw, but if we'd been even a second slower it wouldn't have mattered - his flames lashed out with real magic, malicious and cascading and spreading all across the chamber in the blink of an eye.
They glowed a shade of red that was as wrong to the world as the dragon that spawned them, and the heat was so scorching that the stoneworks that wasn't melting at proximity began to crackle and pop like chains of firecrackers.
And Smaug kept going too, even when everything began to go a hellish shade of red with the temperature to match.
Starting to really panic now, I shot down and onto the edge of the room just outside the line of sight of his ruined eye, cocking another arrow - but he must have smelled me or something, because I only had time to curse and duck before his tail swung out and slammed against the entire wall that had been behind me with enough power to shatter it like glass, sending an eruption of dust and splintered debris out.
"Damn it!"
"I have you now!"
Smaug bellowed, still spitting fire, and angled his head off directly at me. The flames incinerated it instantly and nearly caught the back of my shoes as I flung myself out of the way and into the most absurdly uneven flight path I've ever taken, and then Sairaorg took the chance to dive in again.
His strike landed like the roar of an explosion, and the utter force of it knocked back the dragon's head at an angle so twisted it would have shattered the spine of any other creature I could think off of the top of my head.
With Smaug, it just left him that much more furious.
"YOU WILL BURN!"
…
…
Right, screw all this noise.
It's time for me to pull out the really big gun.
"Sairaorg!" I yelled out over the berserk dragon and the roar of spreading flames "I need one minute!"
He didn't answer, but I knew he got the gist of it as he dove back in again.
I was asking a lot - One minute might not seem like much on paper, but with the kind of fights we get into, even a second could be the difference between life and a ridiculous excessive death.
Unfortunately, I needed it.
I'd been learning magic it for months, and I had only one spell brainstormed in the tank guaranteed to work here - if I could pull it off - but it needed every bit of that time to make it count.
When you lived in a world where dragons were among the most powerful creatures to ever terrorize the masses and your odds of running into one weren't zero, it paid to have a way to fight back.
This was mine, or at least it was supposed to be when I thought it up.
Now, I was going to test it out against the real deal.
I flew back up against the farthest edges of the cavern and let Sairaorg hammer away at Smaug's nearly indestructible hide before I slung my bow back and reached for my spear instead.
I gripped it carefully and took another deep breath.
There was no rationing power for what came next - it was an all-or-nothing attack, and if I messed it up I'd need Sairaorg to pull me out of the line of fire.
Literally.
"Here goes..."
I raised the spear up and let my divine power surge outwards, igniting a corona of golden sunlight around that quickly went from bright to blinding.
The air hummed with a new kind of pressure as it built up, and even the glow of the dragon fire seemed to dim as I pulled on more and more, until it it felt like I was trying to hold onto a star ready to go supernova.
Smaug might've stiffened and tried to turn around, but another ceiling-rattling blow distracted him as I poured out all of that power out until my gut burned from the effort - and then I directed it to my spear.
"It is said that on the fourth day after his birth graced the world, Mighty Apollo learned of the tale of woe that Python, Child of Gaea, visited upon Mother Leto."
The words echoed, and reality seemed to fall silent as my voice overtook everything.
"So great was the lord's vengeful wrath that at once did he take arms and descend upon Delphi, where dwelt the foul beast."
No, it wasn't just my voice anymore - it had gone layered, and it felt like I was being spoken through so much as speaking myself, the power taking life and meaning of its own.
"Over and over their battle raged, until at last did Apollo draw back his bow and let loose a single, piercing blow."
The spear in my hand shuddered before the shaft and the orichalcum came alive with pure sunlight, and something distinctly more menacing.
Everyone felt it, too.
Across the cavern, Sairaorg's eyes widened and he flew back at once, and Smaug's head rounded on me with something I doubt the dragon had felt in a long, long time, if ever.
Genuine fear.
"What power is this!?"
"Not power.." I said - no. I intoned. "Judgement. With this strike, I deliver unto you your death, beast!"
"You-!"
"Now fall and be silent!"
"No!"
This was my greatest spell - an application of divine thaumaturgy that weaponized the myth of Apollo slaying Python, one of the greatest dragons of ancient Greece in one blow, and channelled it through any medium.
Preferably an arrow, but it worked on my spear just fine, elevating it from an ordinary weapon into - for just one instant - a proper dragon-slaying armament.
Smaug lunged forward in a desperate, instinct-fuelled attack, flames surging forward as he charged at me in a last-ditch effort to stop the inevitable.
"What are you!?"
I didn't answer
I just hurled my spear forward, and it struck home and lit the world with power and cascading noise as Smaug howled.
As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.
That shouldn't be too much of a surprise - when your dad's the god of music on top of a whole bunch of other things as well, you come out of it with neat little bonuses like that.
"I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
Everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves,"
But here's the thing - being naturally hardwired for whipping out musical numbers on the spot?'
"I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
"Yes, on everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves"
It means that you also had a pretty good idea of how to screw them up like nobody's business.
"I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
and this is how it gooooooes....!"
Or maybe that was just me.
"For the love of all that is good and just, keep your mouths shut!" The guard standing outside our cell door - if you could call it that - finally lost it and started yelling at us as our singing reached a horrible off-key crescendo... for the eighth time in the last ten minutes, give or take few. "Or else I'll have you flogged!"
Sairaorg and I stared at him for a little as he panted for breath, red-faced in frustration... and then we glanced at each other and grinned.
"Again?"
"Ready when you are."
"I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
Everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves-!"
"Raagh!"
...
So.
Let's back up a bit.
The two of us jumped into the void and tumbled down into a new world with the mother of all rough landings, right smack dab in a place called Esgaroth.
Then we got arrested.
See, it turns out we'd landed in what passed for an armoury for these people, crammed full of weapons and armour I hadn't been paying attention to at all, and the locals really hadn't appreciated the idea that a couple of thieves might have snuck in and nearly made off with their stuff.
I mean, we weren't, obviously, but you could kind of see where they were coming from - especially since we couldn't exactly explain how we'd ended up there, and they weren't really in the mood to listen either, what with all the yelling and furious motioning and everything.
Long story short?
They herded us right out of there and into the open, and I'll tell you this much - it only took one look around to realize that we really weren't in Kansas anymore.
Or anywhere close to it.
Esgaroth was a town built on stilts that raised all its buildings over the lake running beneath it. Instead of roads, it had wooden planks that locked against each other to form walkways crisscrossing above the water, and the homes we saw as we passed by came in all shapes and sizes - everything from little cruck houses with timber walls and thatched roofs that glinted through the mist in the early morning sunlight, to bigger log-cabins that rose two stories up and towered over the rest of them.
There were other walkways higher up too - more rickety-looking planks and makeshift bridges stretching out between the different houses left and right, with more people than I could count flitting over them and dressed in woollen tunics, cloaks, furs and leathers.
Some of them stopped to stare at Sairaorg and I as we were marched past them, and from the way they looked us up and down and pointed, you'd think they were staring at a couple of aliens that fell out of the sky.
Which... was technically kind of accurate, if you looked at it from a certain way.
From a distance.
And squinted.
...
Wow, my life is nuts - and from the looks Sairaorg kept giving me, you could tell that he was riding on the same wavelength too.
I didn't have that much time to reflect on that before they led us up to this rougher-looking, square block of a place that passed for a local prison or something, and man, it sure wasn't pretty.
The inside was cramped and poorly lit by torches and the little sunlight that seeped in through the cracks in the roof, and it was divided into three small and slightly waterlogged cells closed off by rusty iron bars reeking from visible patches of mold and murky stains that would have probably given a health inspector a heart attack on the spot.
Yikes.
Zero stars, would not recommend.
Needless to say, we didn't sit down when they pushed us into one of them and slammed the door shut with a clang of tortured metal.
"You'll stay here until the Master has the time to take a good look at you." Braga, the Chief guard who'd 'captured us' and hadn't stopped crowing about it the entire way here grunted through the bars. "Nasty little thieves. If it were up to me, I'd have cut off your filthy hands and been done with the trouble!"
You could just tell that this guy was fun at parties, couldn't you?
Sairaorg cleared his throat. "We weren't-"
"Quiet!"
I didn't actually understand the words as he said them - then - but even without Sairaorg translating for me I still would've gotten the idea just from the ugly scowl on his face.
You might be wondering why we went along with all of this and didn't try and make a break for it?
Well, for starters, that headache I was talking about before?
Teensy bit worse than I let on at first.
I was shrugging it off fast, but it took a little while to get my feet back under me properly and it sucked all the way up to that point. Playing along with them to avoid the extra noise while we caught our breaths just seemed like the easiest way to go.
And, for another thing, it wasn't like we were in any real danger. Braga and his men could threaten and spit until they were blue in the face, but they couldn't actually do... anything to us, really.
What would you expect?
They were bog-standard mortals armed with swords and daggers.
Even at our worst the two of us were still so far out of their league we might as well have been playing another game entirely.
Case in point - the pounding in my skull finally dimmed enough then that I reached for a spark of power and began whispering under my breath right as the man turned around.
"Father Of Poetry, Arbiter of Song"
"All Tongues Are Golden Atop Thy Own"
It felt like something in my head shifted as the magic took form, and my skin flashed with a faint, split-second burst of light as it settled into place.
Braga whirled around right as it faded.
"What was that?"
I grinned as I understood him perfectly - the translation spell worked, invoking the concept of Apollo as a god of music and poetry in all languages to loophole my way into understanding them.
It also worked both ways - making sure people understood me clearly even if we spoke two completely different languages.
"What was what?"
The man glared at me like he was trying to force me to fess up with pure force of will, but I've met squirrels more threatening than he was.
Literally - those little dudes don't look it, but they have teeth and they know how to use them when they want to, and that's all I'm going to say about it.
Eventually, he turned around again and that was that - until I saw him pick my spear up from where it had been propped up against the wall across our cell.
"That's mine."
He snorted dismissively and gave me another glare.
"Who'd you steal it from, then?"
"I didn't. My teacher gave it to me."
"A likely story." He scoffed, but he wouldn't peel his eyes off of it, and for good reason.
Chiron had given me the pick of his armoury a while back when he'd decided I was good enough to start training with weapons that weren't blunted and dulled for practice, and it was the first one I chose - a wicked-looking thing seven feet tall all in all, carved out of ashwood and topped with a blade fashioned out of gleaming orichalcum that glinted like polished brass with a red-gold hue in the flickering fire-light.
It was well-crafted and pretty useful all around, but as far as magical weapons went it wasn't anything crazy special in the long run.
I mean, don't get me wrong, the orichalcum was a valuable metal, and the whole thing was enchanted to make it tough enough to handle the kind of punishment an ordinary spear would shatter into a million pieces under, but it wasn't a game changer or anything like that.
That didn't mean it wasn't important to me though - it was my spear, and I didn't like the way this guy was eyeing it.
"A weapon as fine as this is wasted on a thief. It will be taken in reparation for your crimes."
And there it was.
"What crimes?"
"Quiet!"
"We didn't actually-"
"I said quiet!"
My eyes narrowed at the half-angry, half-smug look on his face - like he'd already won and was happy to gloat without coming right out and saying it.
Alright then.
If that's how he wanted to play...
"Tell you what," I smiled pleasantly and tried to channel my inner Chiron, and I saw Sairaorg's lips curl up a bit at the edges out of the corner of my eye before his expression evened out again when Braga's look flickered to him. "If you can hold onto it, it's yours."
He scowled at me some more like he was expecting me to say something else, but I just kept smiling until he finally grunted and looked away.
"You keep watch." He pointed at one of his men before turning to grunt at the other two. "Get back to your posts. The Master will see them at noon."
Then he shot us one last nasty look and marched out of the place with my spear hefted in his grip like it belonged to him.
The guard he left behind chortled as he saw me staring after him and rapped his knuckles against the bars of the cell in the most condescending way ever.
"Don't dream of it, boy. You'll never see that spear again."
"..."
Slowly, I turned to stare him dead in the eye.
"That right?
He blinked at me, probably confused at the smirk I aimed his way before I nudged Sairaorg with my elbow.
"Well, guess there's nothing to do about it then. Sai?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm feeling a little down. How about we sing song?"
My friend blinked, then took one look at me and broke out into a matching grin as he figured it out.
"What song?"
"That's the spirit!"
...
A quarter-hour later, the guard was nearly howling in frustration, the two of us were trying not to laugh so hard we were nearly crying, and the rest of my headache had just about cleared out.
All caught up?
Great.
"Again?"
"No!" The guard roared and launched off the stool he was sitting on before I could answer Sairaorg a second time, looking like a bull about to charge away at a red cape. "No more!"
He even picked up the stool in his one hand and started waving it around threateningly - or tried to, at least.
I'm not sure what that was supposed to do to us across the bars, but I guess it was the thought that counted.
"I don't think he liked our singing, Sai."
"I know," My friend shook his head sadly. "Some people have no taste."
"Hmm." I nodded sagely. "So sad."
"I've had it!" He pitched the stool down at the floor so hard bits of it splintered off as it bounced away, cursing under his breath. "Let some other fool have you!"
Then he made to march out of the room, stepped into a particularly tricky puddle and nearly topped over with a squawk.
That did it - we cracked up and couldn't stop laughing until he stomped out of the room cursing, boots squelching against the floor so loudly they reminded me of a pair of squeaky shoes I once got for Halloween.
"T-That-" Sairoarg finally trailed off, still wiping a tear from his eyes. "-was awesome."
"Right?" I inhaled and tried to get my lips to stop twitching. "That was fun. I feel good about life again! You?"
"All better." He rolled his neck a little before gesturing at the bars and making a fist. "Should I-?"
"Nah, I got this." Breaking the bars was easy - they were so frail that either of us could do it by sneezing, but it was some other poor guy that'd have to replace them later and that seemed a little too mean a thing to stick on a random stranger. "Well, Courage does, anyway."
"..."
"Right buddy?"
For a second, I thought I timed that wrong. I was sure he was awake, but maybe -
"Arf!"
-And there he is.
We heard another bark, and then the shadows at our feet darkened and twisted unnaturally before they burst out in one quick surge, flowing upwards and stretching into a curtain of darkness that swallowed us up so quickly you'd have missed it if you blinked.
Shadow travel was always a rush - like you were sprinting through a cold, pitch-black tunnel, but there was no floor under you and no gravity to pull you down - but compared to whatever it was I was doing when I went from one world to the next, it was a total walk in the park.
We popped back out of the darkness and out across the bars a split second later, and Courage materialized next to me with a bark and a satisfied jump.
"Good to have you back, you little show-off."
I gave him a good back rub before I walked up to the bench against the far wall to get my bow and quiver back while Sairaorg ruffled his fur some more.
"Courage?"
He perked up and huffed at me expectantly.
"Go fetch my damn spear."
Braga wanted to try and take my stuff?
"Arf!"
Let's see how he likes a jumpscare-by-hellhound first thing in the morning.
...
Thirty seconds later, I heard a faint scream and suspiciously high-pitched scream somewhere in the distance before Courage popped back out of the shadows with my spear between his teeth.
"Atta boy!"
Then we went from there.
...
"So where are we?" Sairaorg asked as we hopped across the rooftops of Esgaroth - we couldn't walk down below without all the locals staring and pointing, and I was pretty sure there were a few people after us already.
On the bright side, I got to practice my parkour skills while we figured things out, and Courage was following after us from below and probably scaring the life out of a few more people while he was at it.
"I don't know, the Dark Ages maybe?" He snorted and vaulted over to another roof, and I grinned and followed suit "That, or a really hard-core renaissance fair."
"Hah!"
The thing is, I was only half sure I was kidding - a look at the street underneath us didn't exactly fill me with confidence before we scrabbled over a chimney and leaped across a bridge leading past some kind of forge.
At least, that's what it probably was - I could see and smell the smoke, and hear the strokes of a heavy hammer striking against metal.
"Seriously, though, I have no idea. I'm nearly as new to this as you are, and I've never pulled it off with anyone but Courage."
Which is probably where I messed up, now that I think about it.
I grabbed onto Sairaorg before I stepped into that sea of chaos between the worlds, and instead of hurtling across it like the last couple of times we'd fallen straight down like someone had tied cinder blocks to our feet and tossed us over the edge of a ship and into a maelstrom.
If I hadn't pulled us out, we'd have probably still been falling - and wasn't that a scary thought?
"Are we stuck here then?" Sairaorg actually stopped as he thought about that, freezing at the edge of the rooftop to give me a concerned, halfway panicked look. "We can get back, right?"
I didn't miss a beat.
"Absolutely."
Technically, I had no idea if we could, but like hell was I going to consider the chance that we might be stranded here.
I got us here, I could get us back easy - I was too busy with too much on my plate to screw up now.
"I just need a while to get my magic back up to snuff, and then we're out of here."
I'd exhausted myself at the third jump, after all, but I was always quick to regenerate lost magic.
Even Chiron had said so-
Wait.
"Oh."
"What?"
"I messed up by bringing you here," I whispered. "I messed up bad."
"...Not that bad." He frowned and patted my shoulder, trying to cheer me up. "I mean, the trip was terrible-"
Fair
"-but this is fun, and I wouldn't have left you-"
"It's not that." I groaned and dropped my face into my palms "I just realized that Chiron's going to kill us when we get back."
He took that in for all of a second, and then he winced.
Rushing into a journey unprepared? Using magic I only just learned I had without testing it beforehand?
"That's..."
"Yeah."
We were toast.
"...Now I don't want to go back."
"Maybe we don't have to?"
That was a legitimate question, but somebody yelled out over us before he could answer me.
"There they are!"
It was our old friend Braga, staring up at us from the ground with a furious death glare and a couple more lackeys crowding around him.
"Get down here, you filthy rats!" He roared loud enough that you'd think he was being murdered, and the townsfolk around him backed away like they were afraid they'd be murdered instead. "And somebody find that cursed mutt!"
...
Well then.
Guess who volunteered to be our distraction until I was fully recharged?
Sairaorg and I didn't even need to look at each other for this one - we just started waving and hollering on the spot.
"You'll never take us alive!"
Then we turned around and bolted.
...
I'm not going to lie -springing all around Esgaroth and leading the town guard on a wild goose chase?
Total blast - but it was only when we finally catapulted off one last rooftop and landed only a few corners away from what I was guessing was the town hall that things got interesting.
"Oi!"
The woman who called out to us stared at us from the inside of an open little pavilion, wearing a long, earth-toned dress and a shawl over her shoulders, an intense glint in her eyes.
An old man was sitting behind her too, leaning back in his chair and wearing a faded brown tunic, patched in places, frayed with age, and halfway covered by a blanket.
"You two are the outsiders riling up the guard, aren't you?" She frowned, stepping out from behind a wagon full of trinkets and rumpled tapestries and things I couldn't really recognize as she looked us up and down pensively. "Why?"
The fact that she was actually threw me for a loop, but not for long.
"He thinks we're thieves, but we didn't steal anything." Sairaorg was the first to offer with a shrug - it's not like lying really got us anything here. "And he tried to steal my friend's spear."
"That he did." I agreed and patted the sling that fastened it over my shoulder.
I think we were both surprised when she nodded slowly, like she believed us.
"Aye, I can believe that."
There you have it.
"You can?"
"Braga's a rotten one." She said, and she sounded less suspicious and more resigned now. "Shame, too. He was a sweet lad once, before his Da went out too deep into the lake whilst half-drunk and drowned for it. Now he's the Master's man through and through, and every bit as greedy to match."
She clucked her tongue and curled a strand of her greying hair behind an ear before sighing in disappointment.
"What a waste."
"Hilda," The old man sighed and picked up a cane that had been propped up against the post next to him, before leaning over to nudge her side reproachfully. "Talk like that'll do you no good if it spreads."
"S'only the truth, isn't it? Everybody knows it, and they give us all a bad name." She batted his hands away gently when he started poking her again. "Aye, fine! I'll hold my damned tongue."
"That'll be the day," He chuckled deeply, before turning over to give us a nod. "What brings you lads up to Esgaroth?"
"Can't be trade," Hilda grunts, rummaging through her wagon and pulling knickknacks out left and right before stacking them into neat little piles. "Word would have spread if there was good business to be had from beyond the pointy-ears up at the Mirkwood."
"We were just traveling, and ended up here by chance."
Which was true, if you ignored the context.
His brows furrowed in concern.
"Alone?"
"We split up from our teacher a little while back, and we were planning to meet up again soon," Sairoarg added, and the old man seemed to accept that easily enough. "Then we ran into your Braga, and... you know."
"I do," The old man agreed. "Not very charming, is he? But it is what it is - Esgaroth's not much good for outsiders these days, and hasn't been for many years."
He sounded sad about it, too, before he took a deep breath and seemed to shake it off.
"But enough about that. You'd best be going now before the guards catch up to you." I think we could all hear the commotion building a few turns away by now. "You'll find no good in this town whilst they hound you."
And see, that would have been it.
What he said made sense, I shrugged and nodded, and Sairaorg waved goodbye - we'd have left right then.
And then the old man spoke up one last time.
"Careful now. They're a nasty lot, and they'll get nastier if they get their hands on you and drag you to the Master. I'd rather travel up to the old dwarven mountain and wake the dragon sleeping inside than have that man spitting and frothing in my face."
Hilda snorted. "Wouldn't we all."
I nearly tripped over my own feet and face-planted, and Sairaorg whipped his head around so fast my neck was getting phantom pains just from imagining the sheer whiplash.
"The what?"
Hilda and the old man exchanged a confused look, before she turned back to us with a raised brow.
"The dragon, up in the Lonely Mountain?" She said slowly, brows rising higher as we gaped at her. "The fiery nightmare that set fire and brought ruin to old Dale on the same day it drove the Dwarves out of their kingdom so it could claim all their treasures for itself, all those years ago?"
There were dwarves in this thing too?
Somehow, I don't think they were talking about the Norse-kind, either.
"Haven't you heard the story?" The old man looked just as lost as her. "I never thought I'd meet a soul in all the lands that wouldn't know of the tale in this day and age. Where did you say you were from again?"
We didn't.
"And what are you wearing?" Hilda added, frown deepening as she glanced over our get-ups, again.
Which was... also fair, really, because jeans, t-shirts and trainers didn't exactly blend in around here.
"Clothes."
"Never seen clothes like that."
"I've never seen clothes like yours, either."
Not outside of movies, anyway.
"You're a cheeky one, aren't you?"
"I've been called worse."
I'm going to be honest here and admit that I wasn't quite paying attention to the individual words anymore, because seriously?
"A dragon?"
I hadn't missed that enormous mountain miles off in the distance, since it was obscured by mist and I hadn't paid it that much attention, but that was all over now.
"There's a real dragon lairing in that mountain?"
"As real as the ruins of Dale, though few dare visit that cursed place now," Hilda grunted. "Too close to the mountain."
And this wasn't just a fairy tale or something?
Apparently not.
"The dwarves of old once ruled from that mountain, their great seat of power. Haven't you heard the songs? Vast halls filled with treasure, silver, gold and gems beyond measure?" The old man's expression went heavy and somber. "But there's nothing dragons love more than treasure, and so it came from the east. The death of Dale and the breaking of the old kingdoms. The dwarves that didn't fill its belly or burn under its breath fled and scattered to the winds, and the dragon sealed itself in the mountain. No one's seen it for generations, but only a mad fool would even try."
"Arf!"
"Blast-!" Hilda nearly jumped out of her skin as Courage skidded around the corner and bounded over to us, red eyes glowing with delight. "What breed of dog is that!?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." I said, and then I tapped Sairaorg on the shoulder as the sound of heavy footfalls and angry calls started growing closer and closer "And that's our cue to bounce. Nice meeting you, Hilda, and-er-"
"Alford." The old man offered with a grin that made him look years younger "Off you go then, but come by and visit when they finally give up - you seem like the right sort."
"See ya."
We hightailed it just as the first furious cry started catching up to us, but we didn't get far before we left them in the dust and Sairaorg turned to look me dead in the eye.
I knew what was coming before he even asked it, for exactly the same reason as he did.
"So we're both thinking the same thing, aren't we?"
"Obviously."
"But we're not going to act on it, right?"
"No way, that'd be insane. I mean, a dragon?"
"See, that's what I thought too! It's way too crazy."
"Right? And we're already in for it when we get back. If we do this, Chiron would lose it."
We both nodded empathetically.
"He would, so it's a bad idea all around, honestly."
"True, true."
"..."
"..."
"It's a baaaad idea."
"Agreed."
"..."
"..."
"...So are we going to check it out or what?"
"Well, duh."
Yeah, I know.
This is already shaping up to be the stupidest thing you've ever heard us do, ever, but hear me out on this one - it's a dragon.
Terrifying?
Sure.
Out of our weight class?
Probably.
Might end up with us getting chargrilled if we mess up?
Likely.
But, again, it's a dragon - where else where we going to get the chance to check things out, even from a distance?
Besides, it wouldn't be the first giant monster we've faced down, and we were both a lot stronger than we were nearly a year ago, if we even had to fight at all - it wasn't like we were going to go out of our way to wake it up or anything.
"We're just taking a look, that's all."
"Yeah! Besides, somebody should check on it anyway." Sairaorg grinned. "No one's seen it in generations, and better us than the people here, right?"
"When you think about it, we're performing a public service here."
"Exactly!"
You ever lie so hard you convince yourself while you're at it?
Voila!
We found a nice, out-of-the-way spot before Sairaorg unfurled his wings and I lit up with the effects of my flight spell, and up into the air we went.
...
At something close to five miles away, the ruins of Dale might as well have been right next door for two people who could ignore all the uneven terrain between there and here and the branching streams from the lake running across it, but it still was the Lonely Mountain that stood out first.
The mists had cleared up more by now, and it seemed to loom in the distance now that I knew to look for it - imposing and jagged as it sprouted up from the earth like a giant spine, swallowing up more of the horizon the closer we got until we could almost count off all the towering cliffs one by one, and see the snow crowning the very highest peak as it branched out past the cloud-cover.
"Woah."
They said it used to be a kingdom, and I could believe that just from its sheer size alone.
A part me of wished I had a camera just so I could keep a picture as a souvenir.
Then I looked down, and I felt the idea shrivel up a little inside of me as I saw what was left behind in the valley between the mountain's southeast and southwest ridges.
"Are those-?"
"Yeah."
We descended slowly.
The ruins of Dale were... quiet, more than anything else.
Silent leftovers of buildings and the walls that made them reduced to broken skeletons, scattered debris and half-standing arches that sagged and twisted left and right, with faded symbols weathered down by the wind and water wear.
Some of them were ruined so badly that the stone seemed to be melting back into the earth, bits and pieces you could barely even tell used to be part of a city vanishing into the earth like they were slowly being swallowed.
I could see the faint outlines of what might have been cobbled streets down there too, nothing like the roughly worn planks down in Esgaroth, but some of them had huge ruptures running through them, and patches that were damaged so badly they reminded me of the fine-crushed gravel you'd see people carting around in grab-wagons at a construction site back home.
"Look." Sairaorg quietly pointed at another spot, and I frowned.
There was a statue there, right in the middle of a town square, and also weathered enough that it was just a lump of disfigured stone some twenty meters tall—you couldn't tell anymore, but it would have probably been impressive back in its day, especially around these parts.
Now it was just broken and half-buried, and I could just barely tell it was supposed to be holding something up, Statue of Liberty style - only its hand had snapped just under the elbow and crumbled way underneath it.
"There's barely anything left."
"It was a dragon."
Yeah, it was.
You'd have to be blind not to see it after this.
The only signs of life left were the wild grass and the vines growing in and creeping around the ruins, and only in some spots - the rest of the grounds were stripped bare and blackened so thoroughly they looked like they were made of coal, and I doubted anything would ever grow there again without a miracle - and I mean a literal one.
Heck, just looking at them was giving me a bad feeling in my gut that just about screamed 'unnatural', and it didn't take a genius to figure out why.
I floated over to Sairaorg as we both rose higher up into the air again and gestured towards the mountain.
For some reason, it felt a lot more intimidating than it did a minute ago, and the shadows were that much darker.
"Still wanna do this?"
"You're kidding, right?"
But the fact that he might've hesitated was probably telling, too.
Ah, well.
We're already here anyway.
...
Getting into the Lonely Mountain from Dale was easy - we just had to follow the long, sloping path leading out of the valley and up to the front door.
Well, I say front door, but that's only because I didn't have a better word for the absolutely enormous gate carved into the mountainside and flanked on either end by equally extra-sized statues of armoured vikings carrying axes bigger than either of us - or people that looked like them, anyway.
The dwarves, maybe.
Whoever they were, the detail was amazing - I was nearly expecting them to jump off their pedestals and start asking for our paperwork as we stepped up their gate.
The entrance itself was more eerie, though, because it seemed both solid and fragile - a mass of jagged and uneven rock stacked up to seal off the doorway behind it and shot through with cracks and breaks, and some of it looked like it had been melted into place.
I don't think I would have noticed those signs if I hadn't been looking for them either, and it was also how I found the crevice that led us in.
Narrow and uncomfortable, but just enough space to squeeze through without too much trouble.
The moment we stepped inside, though, something shifted,
It wasn't just the stale scent of dust and rock in the air, or the almost absolute darkness that took over once we were far enough away from the opening - Sairaorg was a devil who could see through that just fine, and all I had to do was will it and I lit up like a golden glowstick - but the weight that fell over us was a whole other kind of problem.
If that was even the right word for it.
Presence, maybe?
Whatever it was, it was there, and heavy enough that I swallowed and mimed zipping my lips to Sairaorg, who nodded seriously.
No more words from here on out.
The hollowed-out mountain seemed to grow even bigger as we crept into it, and it didn't take us long to find something worth goggling at.
To be fair, the entry hall alone was something else - an enormous carved threshold with a vaunted ceiling and engraved walls scattered with symbols and pictures of all sorts, and with proportions so absurd you could've fit four football pitches worth of people in there and still had plenty of room for more.
Looking around the place was...exciting, I'll admit it - like we were in the middle of an Indiana Jones movie, minus the cowboy hat and the whip.
But there's always a twist with those flicks, and ours smacked us in the face right after we left that hallway.
There were dozens of branching hallways that led off from there, an entire sloping labyrinth's worth of them, and we got 'lucky' on the first one.
One second we were following along it, idly tracing the walls and the next we stumbled on to-.
On to...
...
Gold.
...
Now, I want you to follow me on this one:
Gold.
Not gold bars, gold treasure, gold adjacent goodies or even gold-wrapped chocolate coins.
I mean gold, the color.
That was the first thing I registered.
Then my eyes processed the scope of it, and I started feeling all faint and floaty inside.
From one end of the titanic domed cavern to the next, the treasures of the mountain stretched out like a miles-wide ocean - a literal one, made of gold coins piled so high Sairaorg could stand on my shoulders and we still wouldn't reach a quarter of it's height - and that was just the gold.
There were gems that glinted in every color of the rainbow in there too, swords and spears and armor beyond counting, gilded drinking cups and goblets and enough random treasures that you'd need an army to shift through them all - hell, you'd need an army to claim them in the first place, because some of the stuff looked like it could start wars just by existing at all.
"What the..." Sairaorg leaned back a little, dazed. "This is...who would even need this?"
People who wanted to give Midas a run for his money, that's who - and this is coming from Sai, who was a disinherited devil and still wealthy as sin from what I'd been told.
It was the kind of stupid wealth that hurt to think about. My aunt once invited a friend of hers who was an economist over for dinner this one time, and I'm pretty sure the lady would have a seizure on the spot if I ever showed her this place.
But that wasn't the big deal.
"Where's the dragon?"
Sairaorg beat me to it, glancing around and stepping back as his feet clinked against some stray coins that had scattered out of the main pile noisily.
"You're asking me?"
There was something here, and neither of us doubted it- not with the charged feeling in the air that racketed the adrenaline in my blood right up, and the taste of magic that made me want to cringe away - but I couldn't see a thing.
I was half expecting it to leap out right then, because asking that question was basically handing it an engraved invitation, but nothing happened.
"Maybe it's not-"
I don't know what finally did it.
Maybe we whispered a little too loud. Maybe the coins we stepped on clicked a little too much, or maybe it was just that fate got bored of waiting for us to screw up, so it decided to jump the gun.
It doesn't matter.
We both stiffened as the pressure in the cavern changed, like a blurry image suddenly coming into focus.
And that focus was sharp.
"Sairaorg."
"I know. I feel it too."
We both ducked back as the gold began to clatter under the movement of something buried underneath it, and my throat went a little dry as I realized just how much of it was shifting.
At first, it was nothing but a low, echoing hiss, sharp and venomous, like the sound of a snake ready to strike, but then it went deeper - a rumbling growl like the hum of a car engine rolled in with a woodchipper and dialed up to eleven thousand, and it was then that the dragon began to emerge from underneath its hoard.
How big was this thing?
Yes.
The answer was just yes.
Fun fact - in my experience, nothing makes you come face to face with your own mortality quite like having a mass of gleaming red scales, encrusted gems, teeth, and wings bigger than a freaking airbus rise up in front of you and blink open fiery slitted eyes the size of industrial furnaces your way.
"Well, thief."
The dragon spoke slowly, languidly, because of course it did.
Its - his - nostrils flared, and his long, serpentine neck tilted this way and that as he pulled more of himself out from beneath his gold, his tail whipping up a minor avalanche as it lanced out and began to sway behind him.
"Two thieves, in fact." He chuckled, and it was as if everything in the mountain vibrated with it - even my bones. "Come now, don't be shy. Step into the light."
The fact that he was speaking wasn't nearly as disturbing as the way he was doing it - his snout and muzzle shifted unnaturally with every word, and the air rumbled with power and something other that was making the hairs on the back of my neck rise at just how wrong it sounded.
Even Sairaorg was grimacing through gritted teeth, and his fists were clenched and ready to throw down.
"Look on the bright side," I swear that putting the false cheer in my voice was the hardest thing I've ever done. "We found the dragon."
He snorted weakly, eyes never straying from the wall of pure, uninhibited draconic murder - and wow, was coming here a terrible idea or what? - leering at us from across the cavern.
"Lucky us."
"Am I being ignored?"
The way the dragon asked was polite and measured, and it almost managed to disguise the sheer malice that was bubbling up underneath it.
Almost.
"The only thing worse than a pair of thieves slinking about in the dark." His voice reverberated across the hallway, and the size of them made it easy to see the way his eyes narrowed into slits. "Is a pair of rude thieves."
I couldn't help it.
"You know, that's not the first time that someone's called me a thief today, and I'm starting to take it personally."
Drop.
Dead.
Silence.
You could have heard a pin drop - or maybe the sound of me swallowing the foot I just jammed into my mouth before the dragon's maw curled up and flashed with a row of teeth so sharp you could cut yourself just by getting too close to them.
It's at times these where I'm forced to confront the fact that my survival instincts are jerks who tap in and out whenever they want to, because my tongue decided to go on autopilot right then and no one was around up there to veto it.
"Oh?" His forelegs hit the ground like falling boulders as he heaved himself up a little, and the room shook again. More gold coins poured off him, clinking down among the rest as the higher he rose. "Is that so, little trespasser? Have I offended the insects that intruded upon my domain?"
"...I prefer visitors."
"You speak to me of your preferences?" The dragon chuckled deeply, and we took a few steps back as he began to writhe forward. "How quaint. And though it has been quite some time since last I stirred, I do believe that custom dictates a visitor must be invited in before they traipse into one's home at their leisure."
... The thing is, he did have a point.
Or maybe not.
He did steal this place from the previous owners after doing a bunch of horrible things to them, so he's got no room to talk.
Luckily, I had enough of a filter to know that bringing that up was the kind of bad idea I didn't want to play around with right now.
The presence he was giving off as it is was bad enough - it felt like I was tasting static, and the more he moved around, the more the smell of sulfur, ash, and something distinctly nasty clogged up my nose.
"We apologize for intruding on your domain," Sairaorg stepped up and plastered a smile I knew was fake onto his face. "We've only just learned that a great dragon was sleeping under this mountain, and we wanted to see it for ourselves."
He even sounded a little different when he talked - like the noble heir he was until a few years ago, and not my goofy friend who was as easy-going as it got and punched like an eighteen-wheeler with no brakes installed.
The dragon's gaze narrowed even more, and his neck stretched out as he came closer.
"You claim not to know of me?"
I wasn't sure whether that was offence or confusion rumbling under the question, but my fingers twitched for my bow anyway.
"No. Our home is very far away, and we've never even heard your name. A true shame."
Oh.
My eyes widened
Chiron did tell us something about this, didn't he?
Dragons were prideful - like, more than gods prideful, and they used their names and titles interchangeably because they were all edgy like that.
Getting a dragon to talk about their name - and themselves by extension - is a great way to buy yourself a few minutes if one ever decided to corner you and make you its late-night snack.
"Indeed," Sure enough, the great fiery thing backed up for a breath before his wings exploded out as he rose to all of his genuinely terrifying height. "I am Smaug the Impenetrable, The Dragon Dread, Bane of Dwarves, and King Under The Mountain!"
The last roar nearly burst my eardrums - and that's saying something, considering my tolerance for sounds of all kinds.
"And now that you are familiar with my name, I would have yours." He slammed back down with his forelegs, and this time dust rained down from above as the tremors jolted the entire cavern. "I have not smelled either of your kind before - you are not of Men, do not try to deny it. Who are you and where do you come from that your people do not know of my name, might I ask?"
It may have been phrased like one, but it wasn't a question, and he asked it it like a serial killer looking up a potential victim's home.
Only the serial killer would probably be the safer bet here.
"I am Sairaorg of House Bael, and this is my friend Daniel. And as for our home-" Sai shrugged with the kind of casualness everyone standing here knew was feigned, but said nothing about anyway. "You wouldn't have heard of it, or our kind."
Smaug exhaled, a hint of acrid smoke rising from his nostrils.
"Is that right?"
"It's in the middle of nowhere, really." I didn't flinch when the dragon turned back towards me, which is something I'm absolutely going to be proud of in the event that we don't get barbecued. "It's beneath your notice."
"Hmm." He mused, eyes flickering over us as he adjusted his weight. "Perhaps. I would thought you liars had I smelled the scent of dwarf on you."
"We've never met any dwarves."
And I don't think you should be expecting visitors, either.
Oh, that I do know. No stench lingers quite like that of dwarf flesh, and I know it well - no one better!" He laughed, and the cruel delight there was something I didn't want to describe even if I had the words for it. "It was I who drove them out of this mountain, who broke their misbegotten pride and ate their people like a wolf amongst sheep."
Something in his eyes changed, then.
"And how scrumptious they were."
The way he looked at us now…
Yeah, no.
We were done here.
"On that note, we're late for lunch ourselves." I met Sairaorg's eyes, and I think he got it right away because he just barely nodded. "Let's do this again some other time. Bye!"
And then we turned around and broke out into a dead sprint that lasted for all of about five seconds before we split up and streaked off in either direction, just like we practiced.
Half a beat after that, Smaug's entire absurdly-sized head slammed down onto the platform we'd been standing on, reducing it to rubble with the same kind of effort you'd use to snap a toothpick in half.
"I think not!" The dragon coiled up behind us like a monstrous behemoth, tail flicking out like a serpent, wings flaring and brushing against the pillars holding up the place as before charged forward far faster than something his size had any right to move. "It has been quite some time since my last rising, and after such a riveting conversation I find myself famished. Should the first morsel please me, perhaps I'll permit the other to-!"
"TALKING ISN'T A FREE ACTION!"
My arrow - the one I'd nocked and aimed in the time it'd taken him to spit out the words, and one of the few celestial bronze ones I had left struck at his eye and erupted in a deliberate flare of golden light and concussive force like a cannon blast.
What?
You all know what I'm about.
The screech of pain and unholy rage Smaug let rip felt like it was the horn to call out the end of the world.
They probably heard it all the way back down in Esgaroth, and for a second, I thought I'd settled things before they'd gotten out of hand.
Then Smaug lunged forward, eye-blinking erratically but otherwise unharmed, and his good eye locked onto me.
Crap.
Most dragons had magic-resistant hides, didn't they?
The scales may offer the most protection, but the rest of their bits got a nice little general buff anyway.
"You dare harm me!" A clawed talon the size of a small car hurtled down towards me and deflected my second arrow harmlessly before smashing down at the spot I'd just been standing in and punching right through solid rock like cardboard. "Insignificant wretch! Your death will be agony for this insult!"
"Oi!" Smaug heard that and snarled upwards - and then he bellowed in raging disbelief as Sairaorg landed on his snout, wings out, and punched down hard. "Pay attention to me too!"
The burst from his touki-enhanced fist landed like an earthquake and displaced the air violently, and the way Smaug struck the ground jaw first would have been comical if his scales didn't remain unbroken.
Sairaorg hissed and leaped off warily a second before those jaws snapped right back up after him again.
"Fool! I know not what manner of thing you are, but there is no victory for you here! My armor is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath-" The scales from his belly up to the end of his neck began to lit up with a crimson glow, and my brain started screaming. "-death!"
"MOVE!"
Sairaorg and I were up against the roof an instant before the firestorm erupted out of his maw, but if we'd been even a second slower it wouldn't have mattered - his flames lashed out with real magic, malicious and cascading and spreading all across the chamber in the blink of an eye.
They glowed a shade of red that was as wrong to the world as the dragon that spawned them, and the heat was so scorching that the stoneworks that wasn't melting at proximity began to crackle and pop like chains of firecrackers.
And Smaug kept going too, even when everything began to go a hellish shade of red with the temperature to match.
Starting to really panic now, I shot down and onto the edge of the room just outside the line of sight of his ruined eye, cocking another arrow - but he must have smelled me or something, because I only had time to curse and duck before his tail swung out and slammed against the entire wall that had been behind me with enough power to shatter it like glass, sending an eruption of dust and splintered debris out.
"Damn it!"
"I have you now!"
Smaug bellowed, still spitting fire, and angled his head off directly at me. The flames incinerated it instantly and nearly caught the back of my shoes as I flung myself out of the way and into the most absurdly uneven flight path I've ever taken, and then Sairaorg took the chance to dive in again.
His strike landed like the roar of an explosion, and the utter force of it knocked back the dragon's head at an angle so twisted it would have shattered the spine of any other creature I could think off of the top of my head.
With Smaug, it just left him that much more furious.
"YOU WILL BURN!"
…
…
Right, screw all this noise.
It's time for me to pull out the really big gun.
"Sairaorg!" I yelled out over the berserk dragon and the roar of spreading flames "I need one minute!"
He didn't answer, but I knew he got the gist of it as he dove back in again.
I was asking a lot - One minute might not seem like much on paper, but with the kind of fights we get into, even a second could be the difference between life and a ridiculous excessive death.
Unfortunately, I needed it.
I'd been learning magic it for months, and I had only one spell brainstormed in the tank guaranteed to work here - if I could pull it off - but it needed every bit of that time to make it count.
When you lived in a world where dragons were among the most powerful creatures to ever terrorize the masses and your odds of running into one weren't zero, it paid to have a way to fight back.
This was mine, or at least it was supposed to be when I thought it up.
Now, I was going to test it out against the real deal.
I flew back up against the farthest edges of the cavern and let Sairaorg hammer away at Smaug's nearly indestructible hide before I slung my bow back and reached for my spear instead.
I gripped it carefully and took another deep breath.
There was no rationing power for what came next - it was an all-or-nothing attack, and if I messed it up I'd need Sairaorg to pull me out of the line of fire.
Literally.
"Here goes..."
I raised the spear up and let my divine power surge outwards, igniting a corona of golden sunlight around that quickly went from bright to blinding.
The air hummed with a new kind of pressure as it built up, and even the glow of the dragon fire seemed to dim as I pulled on more and more, until it it felt like I was trying to hold onto a star ready to go supernova.
Smaug might've stiffened and tried to turn around, but another ceiling-rattling blow distracted him as I poured out all of that power out until my gut burned from the effort - and then I directed it to my spear.
"It is said that on the fourth day after his birth graced the world, Mighty Apollo learned of the tale of woe that Python, Child of Gaea, visited upon Mother Leto."
The words echoed, and reality seemed to fall silent as my voice overtook everything.
"So great was the lord's vengeful wrath that at once did he take arms and descend upon Delphi, where dwelt the foul beast."
No, it wasn't just my voice anymore - it had gone layered, and it felt like I was being spoken through so much as speaking myself, the power taking life and meaning of its own.
"Over and over their battle raged, until at last did Apollo draw back his bow and let loose a single, piercing blow."
The spear in my hand shuddered before the shaft and the orichalcum came alive with pure sunlight, and something distinctly more menacing.
Everyone felt it, too.
Across the cavern, Sairaorg's eyes widened and he flew back at once, and Smaug's head rounded on me with something I doubt the dragon had felt in a long, long time, if ever.
Genuine fear.
"What power is this!?"
"Not power.." I said - no. I intoned. "Judgement. With this strike, I deliver unto you your death, beast!"
"You-!"
"Now fall and be silent!"
"No!"
This was my greatest spell - an application of divine thaumaturgy that weaponized the myth of Apollo slaying Python, one of the greatest dragons of ancient Greece in one blow, and channelled it through any medium.
Preferably an arrow, but it worked on my spear just fine, elevating it from an ordinary weapon into - for just one instant - a proper dragon-slaying armament.
"Serpent's Downfall!"
Smaug lunged forward in a desperate, instinct-fuelled attack, flames surging forward as he charged at me in a last-ditch effort to stop the inevitable.
"What are you!?"
I didn't answer
I just hurled my spear forward, and it struck home and lit the world with power and cascading noise as Smaug howled.
...
Average Villain: Monalogue and Special Move Time!
View: https://imgur.com/jkuhMJW
Daniel: TALKING ISN'T A FREE ACTION!
View: https://imgur.com/ZdxAHrE
Average Villain: Monalogue and Special Move Time!
View: https://imgur.com/jkuhMJW
Daniel: TALKING ISN'T A FREE ACTION!
View: https://imgur.com/ZdxAHrE
As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.
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- Location
- Dallas Texas
Even if this doesn't kill him, at the very least he is probably crippled. LotR power levels are not like DxD, while there are godlike figures you can't train up to pinch them there, mortals have to make do with mortal means. Something like the Devil and Demigod, even at 'Mid Class' power like they are nowish? Stomps over the kind of threats that mortals could barley clutch with the right circumstances.
- Location
- California
Holy Balls Batman!
What are the metaphysical Ramifications of this!
What are the metaphysical Ramifications of this!
I don't really know enough about dxd to know if Sairaorg has already gotten his queen yet, but the more I see of Daniel's awesome friendship with him the more I want to see them form the ultimate worldwalking peerage together.
(I mentioned his queen piece because I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that you need better/more pieces the more powerful someone is, and the queen sounds like the strongest piece.)
(I mentioned his queen piece because I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that you need better/more pieces the more powerful someone is, and the queen sounds like the strongest piece.)
- Location
- New Zealand
Kinda sorta? Liek many manga/anime things, the sheer volume of material means that things change over time, but the TLDR is that more pieces are required for a stronger base being. The type of piece used also carries an inbuilt power boost built for a certain type. Knights get speed, bishops get magic power, rooks get defense. Pawns and Queens are special, because queens get all of it, but a bit more general and Rooks don't get much of an inbuilt boost but can be temporarily enhanced into one of the other pieces.
Would he want to become a devil though? He seems to be doing pretty well as a demigod? No reason to become a devil besides a temporary power up and unlimited lifespan