that's pawns not rooks
Sun's Valour (PJO SI/DXD/Multicross)
- Thread starter Firewillreign
- Start date
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Each piece gives a specific boost, AND is worth a specific fraction of the king's power. We just don't know what that fraction is, it is just measured in Pawns. One Pawn is the lowest amount, worth one Pawn. Bishops and Knights are worth 3 Pawns. Rooks are worth 5 Pawns. Queens are worth 9 Pawns. You can use multiple of the same pieces to reincarnate a stronger being, most often seen with Pawns. Sairog famously used 7 of his Pawns to reincarnate Regulus Nemia, an independent-action type sacred gear containing the Nemian Lion. Issei, the protagonist of DxD, required all 8 of Rias' Pawns. In addition to this, there is a low chance when you get your pieces that one or more will be Mutated. Mutated pieces are worth more than normal, though how much more is different for each piece.
The bonuses are Pawns: promotion, able to gain the boost of any other piece in certain circumstances; Bishops: enhanced magic; Knights: enhanced speed; Rooks: enhanced strength and durability; and Queens: all the bonuses of the non-pawn pieces at once.
The bonuses are Pawns: promotion, able to gain the boost of any other piece in certain circumstances; Bishops: enhanced magic; Knights: enhanced speed; Rooks: enhanced strength and durability; and Queens: all the bonuses of the non-pawn pieces at once.
I care more about seeing them in a peerage together than I care about Daniel becoming a devil. I just think the dynamics of them making a peerage, recruiting other people, and going on more world hopping adventures would be interesting. Plus, that would mean that Sairaorg would be more likely to come with Daniel, rather than him just eventually not going with him like what might happen.
That said, it would also just be cool to see how his light and sun based powers interact with the race change into a devil.
williams1996
Alba gu bràth
- Location
- Scotland
He doesnt have to actually join the peerage devils have contracted magicians our mc could easily become that for him and even if he doesnt join his peerage i dont see sairaorg not going adventuring with him anyway
Contracted magicians are weirdly common for SIs, which makes them kinda boring. Almost all the ones I've seen have basically just been close friends with a few extra steps involved, too, so I'd rather not see that plotline happen again. Also, Sairaorg probably would adventure with the MC for a while more at least, but the position of a peerage member means he would be more likely to stick around.
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
The Contracted Magician is supposed to be a Human maye that comes to the Devil for magical power and/or knowledge. Where a Bishop is more likely to be a combat mage, a contracted magician would be an alchemist or enchanter or other non-combat specialization.
SIs like to make it "evil piece without becoming a Devil" which it is not.
williams1996
Alba gu bràth
- Location
- Scotland
An mc joining a peerage is 90 percent of dxd SI fics so I'd say that's even more boring and our mc doesn't need the power boost a peerage would give a weaker person the advantages don't outnumber the negatives for our mc
Last edited:
MCs being the king of a peerage is common, not just joining one. Even then, most MCs that do join a peerage rather than somehow making their own tends to find some type of power boost or loophole that allows them to immediately leave that peerage to make their own.
An MC joining a peerage, not becoming an actual leader for a long time, and traveling through different worlds picking up fellow members for their peerage. Any of that alone would be at the very least slightly unique, all of it together would make for a super unique fanfic.
williams1996
Alba gu bràth
- Location
- Scotland
That defeats the whole purpose of sairaorgs peerage in the 1st place though he builds it with members of the extra demons and other devils who are looked down upon by pillar families and the elite so he can prove they are strong etc because of what happened to him being disowned for not having the bael clan power the only exception being regulus i think.
Meh, I never watched or read dxd itself so I don't really care about that. It's also fanfic, and I don't even know if that's started happening yet, so it doesn't really matter.
Seriously, What Even Is Today!?
New
Here goes:
I saw it just as I went to throw my spear.
As Smaug bore down on me like a meteor built of scales and flashing teeth, jaws unhinging and erupting with the heaviest, darkest flames I've ever seen, a kind that pooled in his maw like malevolent napalm that seemed to sear even the air itself in his instinctive, haywire charge to prevent what was coming, I clocked the patch of missing scales on his left breast.
There it was, as bare as a snail out of its shell - a hollow spot just a little over and way from the point where his foreleg met the rest of his body.
An obvious, critical chink in his supposedly impenetrable armor, and to an archer, it was effectively the equivalent of a bright red gleaming bullseye on a scoreboard.
I didn't even have to think about it.
He roared something murderously - and fearfully - at me that went ignored as I launched my spear towards it with all my might, letting it hurtle forward in a line he had no hope of avoiding as it trailed spectral light and put out enough magic that even an ordinary mortal would have been able to taste the stuff in the air before impact.
Everything seemed to slow down.
Smaug talked a big game and threatened an even bigger one, but I saw the exact instant that the fear in his eyes leveled up into genuine and total terror, the way his flames tried to lick at the spear ineffectually, and how his bulk tried to rear away to avoid it - maybe even to protect that one vulnerable spot if he knew it was there at all.
It didn't save him.
"No!"
All he managed to do in his desperate attempt to survive was have the spear miss the patch by a little under a foot, and in the end?
It struck the scales there and, backed by the conceptual weight of a dragon-slaying myth and all the divine power I could use to empower it, punched right through anyway and lanced deep into the flesh within.
What happened next was...
""▅▅▅▂▅▂▄▅▃▃▄!"
Beyond words.
One spell, one spear, and a breath - then we passed through the threshold of the absurd and right into hell with a hop and a handbasket.
Smaug's charges and roars of fury had been one thing, but his death throes?
Boom!
Nothing short of cataclysmic.
The titanic dragon jerked back convulsively and let rip a sound that shock-waved through the air, slamming into me with physical force and driving me back just as he quite literally lit up like a star, scales and wing membranes going almost translucent as the fiery mess erupting inside of him began to seep out - like a shaded lamp with a too bright bulb, only the bulb was also a stick of dynamite on the verge of exploding right in my face.
It wasn't just his flames going berserk either, but the light and divinity I'd poured into him too, and the unholy - or maybe especially holy - combination built up as he thrashed and flailed, claws cleaving through stone like rows of hot knives through butter, tail thrashing and shaking the cavern with every ridiculous blow it landed against the wall, and wings buffeting the rapidly-heating air until it felt like even the breath in my lungs was on the verge of bursting into flames and burning me from the inside out, just like he was.
Then it got worse.
""▅▅▅▂▅▂▄▅▃▃▄!"
The pressure skyrocketed through the roof and up and out towards the stratosphere as Smuag roared - or screamed, or did something so awful I'd never forget it in my life ever again - and for a second, it was as if the whole world was dissolving into this furious inferno ready to leap out and incinerate us, the mountain and everything else for good measure.
I plastered myself at a higher perch and as far away as I could get from the nightmarish meltdown, and suddenly Sairaorg was there too, rocketing over the dying dragon so fast he nearly crashed through the stalactites around me before he pulled out of his flight to press against my side.
We didn't have to talk, not that we could have right then.
His eyes met mine, and he nodded fiercely as he flared his Touki outwards as far as he could push it, while I wrapped what was left of my divine power out over it and together, we put a hundred and fifty thousand percent of our collective effort into not dying horribly as Smaug's glow hit it's final peak and burned brightly enough that it still felt like we were about to catch on fire through the shield.
We might have been screaming through the sheer adrenaline as we pushed back against it - I honestly can't remember.
And then, in that stupidly abrupt way that that'd been happening more and more at the weirdest times over the past few months, it was suddenly over.
One second the giant murder lizard was getting force-fed an ungodly heaping of what had to have been extremely well-deserved karma in one go, and the next the light show stuttered, spluttered, and winked right out of existence.
For a split-second, Smaug-
Wait, no.
Not Smaug.
His corpse seemed to stay suspended a few meters above the ground as we caught sight of it, trapped in the instant he'd leaped up in some frenzied attempt to escape the agony that was ripping him apart, his wings splayed out, neck extended up to the cavern roof and eyes left as sallow, lightless pits the color of chalk.
The rest of his body seemed strangely unharmed, save for the spot where my spear had pierced through him - that still glowed faintly, a single dot of color blinking and pulsing in his chest oddly even though the job was already done.
Sairorg and I blinked, holding our breaths - And then time kicked back in with a vengeance, and hundreds of tons of draconic dead-weight tumbled back down to the floor with this terrible, groaning crack that had it shattering under him and belching up a wave of clogging dust and debris like a blown water-hydrant.
And that was that.
"..." "..."
Slowly, carefully, we floated down from our corner on the cavern roof, panting hard and drenched in sweat as we very gingerly got closer and closer.
We didn't have to - I felt it when Smaug died, and I'm plenty sure Sairaorg did too, but after all that we were so keyed up that you could probably hear our blood pressure from across the room.
Despite that, and even with all the dust in the air and the heat from the patches of red-hot and outright molten rock scattered all over the place - and I'm not even going to talk about the stench of dragon, because dear dad was that nasty - there was an extra edge from before that just wasn't there anymore.
Smaug's presence and that heavy, slithering malice he'd been putting out dissipated the moment he croaked - or at least dispersed enough that whatever after-affects and bits of it sticking around after the fact were a walk in the park compared to the real deal.
And speaking of the real deal-
"Ugh."
Our feet finally touched the ground, and a sudden bout of dizziness hit me like a truck. I'd have toppled over if Sairaorg hadn't seen it coming and thrown my hand across his shoulders to prop me up.
"Are you okay?"
"Fine." I palmed my face with my free hand and tried "Just... took a lot out of near the end."
It was just a second of disorientation - I'd never used that much power in one go, and the moment I stopped floating on that rush it was like my whole system glitched and had to load back up again.
"You?"
"Never better."
Sure.
Because I was obviously just imagining the exhausted, heaving breaths, the copious sweating and the way his free hand kept clenching and unclenching as he tried to shake off phantom pains.
"Lying is a sin you know."
Said the demigod to the devil.
He gave me a look so flat for that one it was basically 2D, and I snorted.
"I heard it as soon as I said it."
"Moron."
"Idiot."
"Numbnuts"
"Muscle brain."
"Glowstick."
"Loudmouth."
"Really? Coming from you?"
Fair
"Well, I would know, wouldn't I?"
"Yeah, know how to get us both killed, Mr. Run-my-mouth in front of a dragon!"
"Hey, at least I didn't start kissing up to him, you spoiled noble brat!"
"Former noble brat! And I was playing dumb to buy time!"
"What, was being yourself that hard?"
He raised his fist and waved it threateningly.
"Not as hard as I'm going to deck you!"
"Bring it-!" I started to say, matching his grin tit for tat, before my eyes flickered back and the smile flickered out just as fast.
Sairaorg tracked the movement and ended up staring just like I was.
"...Wow."
"Yeah." The enormity of what we just did came back to me just as quickly as I'd pushed it away. "...Sairaorg, we fought a dragon.... we killed a dragon."
"... Yeah, I guess we did."
This was huge.
In the supernatural side of the world, dragon-slaying was a Big Deal, in capital letters.
Absolutely nuts, even - like scaling Mount Everest, or winning the Superbowl three times in a row.
Sure, it could mean more or less depending on what kind of dragon it was and how strong they were, and I had no idea where Smaug would have fit into the hierarchy way back home, but with how new we both were at this it was still an insane feat that we managed to pull off.
And by the skin of our teeth, too.
If I hadn't had that spell ready, and the power to fuel it...
I swallowed dryly as I thought about it, glancing over at Smaug's cooling corpse and feeling a little jolt as I realized just how massive he was again - big enough to flatten my old home like a Lego model or blast it into smithereens with one whip of his tail.
If I'd messed up even a little, we'd have been in trouble.
A lot of things ran through my mind after that, most of them distant as I stared at the dragon some more.
But one came first before all the others.
"...Huh. Hey, Sai?"
"Hmm?"
"Chiron is going to eviscerate us when he finds out about this, isn't he?"
"...Yep."
No ifs or buts about it.
We both nodded, before slowly turning to meet each other's eyes.
"..."
"..."
"Hrrnk." "Snnkt."
Then we staggered and snorted, fell back against the nearest wall with our arms over each other's shoulders, and immediately began to howl with laughter.
And if it sounded borderline hysterical, well, no one was around to judge.
A good while later, when we were done losing our minds a little, - and I was already smiling at how quickly I could feel myself regenerating my magic, even if I was running on near empty right that second - we finally clambered back up to our feet and started figuring out what to do.
First, though, I tried casting a nifty spell of recall Chiron had taught me to collect any arrows that were scattered close by. I was only looking for just the one - the second shot I'd taken at Smaug had bounced off, and the arrow had been one of the few celestial bronze ones I had left.
Nothing.
I grimaced even though it made sense - It'd fallen into ground zero with all the fire and the carnage, so the shaft was dust in the air and the bronze was probably a little dollop of molten slag mixed in with the rock.
Probably for the best that I didn't have that flying towards me, now that I thought about it.
Then I tried calling for my spear, and that's when things got weird.
Look, I wasn't expecting it to work.
After all, I'd sent the damned thing into what I was, like, ninety percent sure was Smaug's heart, so even though it stung like nobody's business I was ready to write it off as a loss.
I held out my hand and tried recalling it on a whim, just for the sake of trying, and then my head snapped over to the mountain that was Smaug's body as I felt something twitch on the other end of the connection.
A resonance, like the spell had latched onto something and was tugging at it insistently after it refused to give the first time.
The heck?
Sairoarg frowned as he saw my brows furrow in concentration.
"What's wrong?"
I waved him off, distracted by the sensations I kept getting as I poured more magic into the spell and reached for oh what the hell is that!?
I yelped, drew back my hand and tackled the squawking Sairaorg down just as a vaguely familiar streak of light lanced out of Smaug's chest, rocketing straight up with a sharp air-cutting whistle before it curved right back down again and striking into the spot where we'd been standing with a sound of sharp metal sinking into stone.
I grunted as I turned around, and...
And...
My jaw dropped.
"No way," Sairaorg whispered as he got back to his feet, and he was right to. "What happened to it?"
The it was obviously my spear, and the answer to that was who the flip knows?
It looked the same, but that was in shape only - the light ashwood had changed and darkened into a shade like red-brown rust, and I could swear it was getting darker by the second as small, long-winding streaks of molten color that reminded me of veins of all things stretched around it and seemed to seep deeper into the wood the longer I stared at it.
The spearhead had changed too, the sharp, brass-like shine of the orichalcum shifting into something that was closer to red-gold and getting darker just as quickly as the wood, and the entire spear was covered in a hazy aura that flickered in shades of red, orange, and dull gold.
"I don't know."
But it radiated danger and I could tell that touching it right now was a bad idea, so I wracked my brain for an explanation even as we backed away from it.
Thinking it through now... what had I done, exactly?
It was already a subtly magical spear, and I'd empowered it with a divine dragon-slaying spell before turning right around and using it to kill an evil dragon with a single blow straight to the heart.
...
Symbolism like that had a lot of meaning in the magical side of things, and meaning could usually be translated to power and effects.
My eyes shifted back to the spear, looking over it carefully.
Sometimes permanent effects.
...
I needed to talk to Chiron about this - probably after he was done tearing us a whole new dimension for this stunt.
"Just leave it where it is for now." I hesitated. "Let it cool off, I guess."
"Great." He gave it another look himself before shrugging "Now what?"
Good question.
So - what do two conquering heroes do after they've just drawn a ridiculously massive dragon out of his lair and ganked the enormous jerk?
Well, obviously, they start looting! We had lessons on it and everything!
No, seriously.
See, it goes like this - heroes killing monsters is a regular old thing in just about every mythology ever, and in those stories, the odds were always good that the monster with a deadline before death-by-hero was going to have some kind of treasure going for it.
Sometimes it was its own, and sometimes it was stolen or left behind by its victims, or something else like that.
The point was that it was there, and the hero who did all the work got to call dibs on a whole bunch of nice and shiny things as a reward.
Except it wasn't always that easy.
If the hero was a soldier or a slave (that happened too) or answered to any kind of higher power, like a lord or a king or even a god who'd put them up to it, they had about as much claim to it as any regular Joe off the street.
If they were contracted or hired to kill a monster by somebody else, chances were it'd be the contractor who had the rights to whatever it was that was left behind, and the hero would have to settle for what they agreed to be paid with beforehand.
It's when they were neither and were in it for the fun of it, or just happened to be swinging by when they took care of business that things got a little blurry.
Say you killed a monster that'd been terrorizing a village for a few years now and stealing away all of its valuables left and right - technically, all that stuff belonged to you now.
The villagers wouldn't have a strong claim to it anymore, not after losing it in the first place, and it's not like they could force the issue when they couldn't even square up against the monster you had to kill to get it back.
Only, glory and honor and all that jazz had their place too, and nobody really wanted to be known as that one jerk who heroically killed this or that monster only to make off with the people's treasure and leave them all to rot.
I mean, you technically could, but your reputation would take a hit and you'd come out of it looking like a total dipstick.
On the flip side, by returning some of the treasure you ended up smelling like sunshine and roses, and you still got first pick of all the goodies
If you were really lucky, you could get enough treasure anyway that you'd probably be pretty loaded one way or the other when everything was said and done.
Smaug's hoard had been stolen from an entire kingdom of dwarves, mountain and all, which meant a lot of it had to stay, but since we had first-pick, and there was so much there...
I stared at the oceans and oceans of economy-threatening treasure in the cavern where the dragon had slept and let myself laugh a little incredulously.
"We're freaking rich."
"No, you're rich now." Sairaorg grinned and nudged me with his elbow, but even he was staring around like he couldn't tell up from down or anywhere else at all. "I'm just rich-er, peasant."
He wasn't wrong, actually.
When Sairaorg got booted out of his Bael heirship, he lost out on a pretty ridiculous amount of money and power down in the Underworld, and pretty much anywhere the devils had free reign.
Luckily, because his mom was just as smart as his dad was a scumbag, he still had the inheritance she left for him, which came with a bunch of perks like a whole estate and a manor back home, servants to take care of it and enough money that he probably never even had to ask for prices when paying for stuff unless he really cut loose.
Devil nobles were excessive like that.
Still, though...
"Jerk."
He yelped and flailed as I shoved into a pile of gold the size of a small car before leaping up and chasing me around the chamber until we called a truce.
By then, I'd seen so many things I was tempted to hurry up and pocket that my fingers were starting to twitch like a kleptomaniac.
Some were just plain cooler than others - I saw a set of brilliant golden harps off to one side, strung with strings that glinted silver in the light that had me reaching and the fingers of one hand down the column while my other tested out a few the way only a total beginner could.
The way they quivered and the tinkling notes they hit made me smile.
I'd never used a harp before, but my dad did, and it was kind of a big thing with him too.
Something to think about for later.
For now, though...
"There's no way we can sort this out ourselves," I said, and Sairaorg was already nodding along with me before I'd even finished. "We should-"
"Get Chiron? I figured." He titled his head off to the side, gesturing to the hallway we'd just crawled through. "We kind of need his help with the dragon too."
"Wha?- oh" I blinked as it hit me. "Right."
Dragon parts were valuable magical ingredients - you could use them in everything from tool-making to alchemy, and the older and more powerful, the better.
The corpse of a dragon like Smaug was worth way more than its weight in gold to the people who knew how to use it.
It was kind of morbid when you really thought about it, but it's not like Smaug was going to be complaining anytime soon, and even if he could I'd tell the the reptile from hell to go pound sand.
Serves him right for pulling everything that he did and then topping it off by trying to eat us.
"Yeah, we probably do need to bring Chiron back here."
Because there was no way I'd ever be able to take Smaug back with us when we tried - we'd all die trying, and the gold was also a no-go.
Frankly, if I could get us over to Chiron and back without ending up with another splitting headache that made me regret all of my life choices up to now, I'd consider it a win.
We could worry about the other stuff later.
"But weren't we supposed to visit your family first?"
I winced.
Right. That.
"We're already late."
Katie was probably already up by now, and Alex too, so I was in for it no matter when I got back at this point.
A few more hours wouldn't change that anymore.
"Might as well get the important things out the way first now that we're on it."
It'd leave me more time to visit later, without having to rush.
He shrugged.
"If you're sure."
Great.
Now all we had to do was wait for me to store up enough magic again, and we were out of here.
First things first though...
We walked back to the spot where I'd left my spear. By now the lights had faded away and the dark colors had settled in, but I wasn't fooled by that.
It was still thrumming with power and letting more of the stuff waft off of it, even if it seemed different now.
Calmer.
Sai and I exchanged another look, and I sighed.
"Here goes nothing."
I gingerly reached for the thing with a careful stretch of my hand, half expecting it to burst into flames the second my fingertips brushed against the wood.
But it didn't.
Instead, I started as it momentarily flashed when I got a good grip on it, almost jolting in my hand as I pulled it free from the ground and hefted it up before it dimmed and went quiet again.
Sairaorg stared at me expectantly as I moved it left and right, switching it from hand to hand and comfortably twirled it in my grip. I even ran it through a few drills, thrusting and jabbing experimentally and listening to the way the air seemed to faintly shriek around the blade every time.
"So?"
"I don't know. It feels alright."
Actually, it felt better than that - strong and steady, right even.
A bit strange too, but it wasn't exploding in my grip after all that, so I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I also very deliberately didn't push any more magic forward and... I don't know, do something with it, because at this point, it was better safe than sorry.
"Feels a little... sharp to me," Sairoarg muttered, eyes narrowing before he shrugged again. "But maybe Chiron will say for sure. Are you ready?
"Looks like it." I agreed, and slung it into the strap over my back before rolling my neck a little. "Let's head back to Esgaroth and get Courage."
I'd left my little buddy back in the town to have a little run-around, so who knows what he was up to right now?
In the end, we managed to make it about ten steps out the path we came, enjoying the real sunlight and the fresh air of the mountainside before we got interrupted again.
Honestly, I'm just happy we got that much - or at least I was, before I heard the low, steady voice ring out behind us.
"Greetings"
Both of us whirled on the spot, knees already bent and ready to break out in either direction at a twitch before we zeroed in on the source.
Perched on the handle of the axe held in one of the dwarven soldier statues guarding either side of the Lonely Mountain's gate was a single, solitary black raven, glancing down at us with dark and beady eyes.
"I am Roäc," The raven's head rose a little as his wings puffed out, like he was standing to attention. His beak shifted as he spoke, mannerisms inhuman but nothing as wrong Smaug's had been, or at all for that matter.."Chief of the last great flocks of Ravenhill. Allies to the Line of Thrór I of Erebor, King Of Durin's Folk, whose descendants remains the true heirs to this mountain and the kingdom within."
"..."
"..."
"I'm Daniel Winchester." I pointed to the side. "This is Sairaorg Bael."
"Greetings." Sai raised his hand in a wave that was only a little awkward and parroted back the raven's words, and if the bird was disappointed by the lackluster responses, it didn't show it.
Though to be fair, I'm not sure I would been able to tell anyway.
"Well met."
Just the fact that I didn't even flinch at the sight of a genuine talking bird should say a lot about the kind of life I'm leading these days.
"Can we help you?"
I was still ready for him to transform into a twenty-foot-tall monstrosity with teeth for eyeballs and try and pounce on us, but he only hopped back a little as a gentle breeze brushed past us all, ruffling his feathers in its wake.
"You have slayed the dragon."
It wasn't a question.
"Yes," Sairaorg answered for us, lips pursing a little as he raised a brow. "How did you know?"
"The Calamity's death cry was carried by the winds and echoed in the hollow of the mountain, of which my kin dwell close. The truth of its fall reached me within moments, and already the depths of its taint lift from the land."
"...Great. Is that a problem?"
Chief Roäc didn't miss a beat.
"As far from it as the sun from the moon. I congratulate you on your great victory and thank you for your noble work." His inflection didn't change and his voice didn't rise or drop, but the words that poured out of him rang with truth despite that. "The day the dragon descended from the sky was black with tragedy for Men, Dwarves and Ravens alike. The burning of Dale and breaking of Erebor preceded the destruction of many of my kin's homes, and of those that were not lost in the fires that took many of our great trees, more fled from fear or grief or both."
I... didn't know what to say to that.
Seriously, what was I supposed to say to that?
"...I'm sorry for your loss."
I felt a little lame saying it, and even Sairaorg winced, but I think that was more in quiet sympathy than it was at how inadequate the words felt off the tip of my tongue.
On the bright side, now I felt even less guilty about having Smaug skinned for parts - maybe somebody would turn his scales into a pair of oven mitts.
That seemed fair to me.
"Justice has been meted, and vengeance reaped. That must suffice for olden scars. In time, songs will be sung of this day just as they were of the one that came before. You have my respect and gratitude for such." Roäc wings fluttered, and I think he may have given us the raven equivalent of a slow nod as his head bobbed. "Duty now bids me to ask - do you seek to linger within Erebor?"
Sai and I blinked at the question.
"No."
"We're leaving." I said, before shrugging and adding, "We might come back soon, but I don't think we'll be sticking around long even then."
Just enough to take our share of that treasure, but I didn't feel like bringing that up here and now.
Roäc croaked, as if in thought - or maybe he was just clearing his throat.
"Word has reached me in months past of the heir to the throne of Thror and his kin setting out on a journey with the aid of the Grey Wanderer, having secured a means to gain entry into Erebor. I had expected and thought to welcome him and his on Durin's day, but now I fly north for the Iron Hills and their lord, Dáin Ironfoot." Roäc moved, and I realized he was readying himself to leap up into the air. "I go to spread the word of the death of the foul drake, to recall the people of the mountain from when so I came, and now to spread further the word of your valiance on this fateful day, as will my kin. This is my solemn oath to you."
Most of those titles meant nothing to us, but they seemed important and I think I got the gist of it anyway.
Looks like we were about to be famous around these parts.
"Thank you."
This time, there was no mistaking the little bow he gave us.
"Til next we meet, know that you are honored friends of the Chief and flocks of Ravenhill."
Without another word, the kingly raven beat down and took off from his perch, quickly catching the winds and veering off across the mountainside.
Sairaorg and I just stood there, watching him disappear in the distance for a long, quiet minute.
"Huh. That happened."
"It did, didn't it?"
"Our lives are weird."
"Ain't that the truth."
Let's just get out of here before things get any weirder, shall we?
When we got back to Estaroth, there was a whole kind of jittery, spiraling nervous tension in the air, and there were far more people crowding outside their homes and pacing the makeshift streets then there were before, and it looked like half of them were trying to fit into either what passed for their Townsquare in front of the largest building of them all, or trying to push each other out of the way as they head non too slowly for the docks.
The whole place had the energy of a colony of ants scattering after some kindergartner kicked over their hill, complete with so much angry yelling I'd be amazed if any of them could even hear themselves speak.
Sairaorg and I just frowned and looked on as we hopped from rooftop to rooftop, heading toward the spot where I could sense Courage was, and while a whole bunch of people saw us as we moved above them, none of them paid us so much as a second glance.
It didn't take a genius to take a guess at what it was that had them all so riled up, but there wasn't anything we could do about it right now.
"There." Sai pointed, and we leaped off the roof and dropped down in front of my dog, and a familiar face tucked away in a quiet little corner on the outskirts of town.
Courage, the fearsome hellhound descending from myth and legend, had his head draped in Alford's lap, tongue out and tail wagging as the old man laughed and rubbed his back and whatever parts of his belly he could reach without leaning over his chair too much.
Then he caught our scent, and he perked up and came bounding over even as the old man's eyes lit up.
"Lads!" He laughed again, hand rising to press against his chest."Stars, I'd feared the worst!
"Hello, Alford." I like this old man. Anyone who treated my dog right was good in my book until they screwed up. "Courage hasn't been bothering you, has he?"
Courage looked up at me and huffed.
Who, me?
"Blast the thought." Alford waved the words off as I crouched down to ruffle up Courage's fur a little. "That dog's better company than my own brother and sweeter than elvish honey besides."
I blinked.
Elvish...?
...
You know what?
More questions for later.
"Guess you had fun, huh?" I snorted and leaned back to avoid the enthusiastic slobber he was about to cover me, but I didn't have to. His nose got a little too close and he jerked back, stiffening a little as he looked at-
Ah.
My spear was slung over my back and it was probably sending him all kinds of bad signs.
"Don't worry about it. I'll explain it later." I leaned down to whisper to him, scratching under his chin for good measure. "We fought a dragon while you were here getting ear scritches. You got all the luck between us, didn't you?"
The look he gave me for that was something in between 'I regret nothing' and 'You fought a dragon? Dude, what is wrong with you?'
I had no good answers for that.
"Where's Hilda?" Sairaorg asked Alford as the old man adjusted his blanket. "Down over in town?"
"Aye. They're all up in arms and making a mess of things." He nodded. "A few of the fishermen who were out on the lake came back a little ways ago. Swore up and down on their kins souls that they heard a foul sound coming from the mountain, and enough folk agreed that they've stirred up a good and proper panic."
He settled in against his chair as he leaned back a little.
"Now, these old ears of mine aren't what they used to be, but half of Esgaroth is convinced the dragon I told you about has woken and means to fall on them from above. That's why Hilda dragged me out here and away from the noise, bless that girl's heart." He looked at us and smiled wryly. "You didn't hear it as well, did you?
"..."
"No, we didn't."
"What sound?"
Alford chuckled as we tried to look innocent and clueless.
"Aye, I thought as much. There's no dragons to be had here and now. Certainly none so slow, I would think." He shook his head comfortably. "If that old monster were awake and coming here, it'd have arrived long before the fools stopped arguing down there and left whatever poor souls escaped it choked in ash and ruin."
That... was true.
"Sounds about right."
And from the way Sairaorg looked at me, real quick and eyes very wide, he was also realising just how badly things could gone if we hadn't been able to deal with Smaug in the mountain.
Yikes.
Just... yikes.
Never thinking about that again for the foreseeable future.
"Though there is some good to be from all this trouble." Alford grinned. "The Master's fled."
Sairaorg stared.
"Your town's leader... ran away."
"Aye. Like the sniveling coward he tried so hard to pretend he wasn't." The old man was still grinning when he added, "Took a boat the very moment he heard whispers of a dragon, and stole all the people's gold as well."
...
"...And this is a good thing?"
"Of course it is, lad." Alford laughed this time. "Because he'll be back when no dragon appears, you'll see, and all the people will have seen him for what he is, and he'll get his by dusk or dawn, whichever comes first."
I... well.
When you put it like that...
"All's well that ends well," I said, before shrugging a little. "I'm almost sorry we won't be around to see it."
Seriously.
It sounds like the guy has it coming nearly as much as Smaug did.
"A shame. You'll be leaving then?"
"For now. We have to get back to our teacher, but maybe we'll come by for a visit sometime soon."
"We'll be happy to have you." He chuckled and waved us off again as we said our goodbyes. "Properly this time. I'll tell Hilda you gave your best."
Courage padded back over to him and got a last little ruffle before we left, and then it was time to leave.
Finally.
Twenty minutes later, we were a little ways out of Esgaroth and I finally had enough power back that I felt ready to get us home.
"Are you sure you've got this?"
Almost.
"Sairaorg, you're not helping."
He smiled innocently
"I'm just saying-"
I jabbed a finger at him.
"One more word and I will find a way to drop us in a world full of zombies or something just so I can leave you there!"
He grinned and held his hands up in surrender.
I glared at him some more, before taking a deep breath and closing my eyes.
Alright, I think I got this.
The last time I did this, I didn't expect Sairaorg's weight - or something like that - to screw up the 'jump'.
This time, though...
I focused on the image of Chiron, the way I had for Katie and Alex before. I pictured us reaching out, leaping from this place and over to the-
"Got it."
The Spark ignited, and we vanished.
Space warped.
Colors and shapes flew past as we hurtled across the constantly shifting chaos sea.
All of us this time, without falling, without losing momentum, speed building and building as we streaked towards the point I'd locked onto in the infinite distance.
No falling this time, and no endless noise - just sheer focus and movement.
Three, two, one-
-And time!
We flickered and staggered back into existence right smack dab in the middle of the house, in the open pavilion where we usually had breakfast, and about three feet away from Chiron.
Score!
Not going to lie, I grinned like a lunatic when I realized I'd done it on demand.
He stared at us impassively as we straightened up a little, and I raised a hand to wave sheepishly.
"Hey teach!" No reaction. "I know you're probably really mad, but have we got a story to tell-"
"Daniel."
His tone stopped me cold.
Blank.
Steady and impassive - like he was talking to total strangers.
That's when I realized he wasn't meeting our eyes, and was instead looking at something - someone - over our shoulders.
"Well," The voice spoke up behind me, and I felt every atom in my body lock up all at once. "It's about time."
I knew who it was.
Instantly and inarguably, without looking back at all - like the information had been wired into my brain directly, and now the alarms up there were ringing at full force and blanking out everything else.
I turned around, and there he was.
Blonde-haired, blue-eyed. Tall and youthful, but sharp-featured, lounging on a highbacked chair that might as well have been a throne for how elaborate it was, and dressed in a striking black suit.
He even looked a little like me as he sat there, face propped up by one hand and observing me the way a lion did a mouse that wandered between its paws.
Or the way a god did a mortal.
Our eyes met, and for a second his flashed a golden, and I saw the looming pressure of the Sun bearing down on me for a split-second before it vanished.
"..."
"..."
"...That's not one of Chiron's chairs. Did you bring that with you?"
...
It's official - I have a death wish.
"...Not again." I heard Sairaorg mumble off to the side, but he may as well have been a million miles away as the god's eyebrow rose incrementally, a look of what might have been mild, polite amusement tugging at his expression.
"What can I say? I have a taste for proper theatrics." Apollon, Olympian God of the Sun smiled blankly, tone even, and rose from his chair with all the grace of a being who could blink and wipe me off the face of the earth. "Now let's have us a talk, Daniel Winchester."
View: https://imgur.com/z0V4IDz
...
Dan and Sai's Day, every time they think things are going well:
View: https://imgur.com/nyS1nxO
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.
"Serpent's Downfall!"
I saw it just as I went to throw my spear.
As Smaug bore down on me like a meteor built of scales and flashing teeth, jaws unhinging and erupting with the heaviest, darkest flames I've ever seen, a kind that pooled in his maw like malevolent napalm that seemed to sear even the air itself in his instinctive, haywire charge to prevent what was coming, I clocked the patch of missing scales on his left breast.
There it was, as bare as a snail out of its shell - a hollow spot just a little over and way from the point where his foreleg met the rest of his body.
An obvious, critical chink in his supposedly impenetrable armor, and to an archer, it was effectively the equivalent of a bright red gleaming bullseye on a scoreboard.
I didn't even have to think about it.
He roared something murderously - and fearfully - at me that went ignored as I launched my spear towards it with all my might, letting it hurtle forward in a line he had no hope of avoiding as it trailed spectral light and put out enough magic that even an ordinary mortal would have been able to taste the stuff in the air before impact.
Everything seemed to slow down.
Smaug talked a big game and threatened an even bigger one, but I saw the exact instant that the fear in his eyes leveled up into genuine and total terror, the way his flames tried to lick at the spear ineffectually, and how his bulk tried to rear away to avoid it - maybe even to protect that one vulnerable spot if he knew it was there at all.
It didn't save him.
"No!"
All he managed to do in his desperate attempt to survive was have the spear miss the patch by a little under a foot, and in the end?
It struck the scales there and, backed by the conceptual weight of a dragon-slaying myth and all the divine power I could use to empower it, punched right through anyway and lanced deep into the flesh within.
What happened next was...
""▅▅▅▂▅▂▄▅▃▃▄!"
Beyond words.
One spell, one spear, and a breath - then we passed through the threshold of the absurd and right into hell with a hop and a handbasket.
Smaug's charges and roars of fury had been one thing, but his death throes?
Boom!
Nothing short of cataclysmic.
The titanic dragon jerked back convulsively and let rip a sound that shock-waved through the air, slamming into me with physical force and driving me back just as he quite literally lit up like a star, scales and wing membranes going almost translucent as the fiery mess erupting inside of him began to seep out - like a shaded lamp with a too bright bulb, only the bulb was also a stick of dynamite on the verge of exploding right in my face.
It wasn't just his flames going berserk either, but the light and divinity I'd poured into him too, and the unholy - or maybe especially holy - combination built up as he thrashed and flailed, claws cleaving through stone like rows of hot knives through butter, tail thrashing and shaking the cavern with every ridiculous blow it landed against the wall, and wings buffeting the rapidly-heating air until it felt like even the breath in my lungs was on the verge of bursting into flames and burning me from the inside out, just like he was.
Then it got worse.
""▅▅▅▂▅▂▄▅▃▃▄!"
The pressure skyrocketed through the roof and up and out towards the stratosphere as Smuag roared - or screamed, or did something so awful I'd never forget it in my life ever again - and for a second, it was as if the whole world was dissolving into this furious inferno ready to leap out and incinerate us, the mountain and everything else for good measure.
I plastered myself at a higher perch and as far away as I could get from the nightmarish meltdown, and suddenly Sairaorg was there too, rocketing over the dying dragon so fast he nearly crashed through the stalactites around me before he pulled out of his flight to press against my side.
We didn't have to talk, not that we could have right then.
His eyes met mine, and he nodded fiercely as he flared his Touki outwards as far as he could push it, while I wrapped what was left of my divine power out over it and together, we put a hundred and fifty thousand percent of our collective effort into not dying horribly as Smaug's glow hit it's final peak and burned brightly enough that it still felt like we were about to catch on fire through the shield.
We might have been screaming through the sheer adrenaline as we pushed back against it - I honestly can't remember.
And then, in that stupidly abrupt way that that'd been happening more and more at the weirdest times over the past few months, it was suddenly over.
One second the giant murder lizard was getting force-fed an ungodly heaping of what had to have been extremely well-deserved karma in one go, and the next the light show stuttered, spluttered, and winked right out of existence.
For a split-second, Smaug-
Wait, no.
Not Smaug.
His corpse seemed to stay suspended a few meters above the ground as we caught sight of it, trapped in the instant he'd leaped up in some frenzied attempt to escape the agony that was ripping him apart, his wings splayed out, neck extended up to the cavern roof and eyes left as sallow, lightless pits the color of chalk.
The rest of his body seemed strangely unharmed, save for the spot where my spear had pierced through him - that still glowed faintly, a single dot of color blinking and pulsing in his chest oddly even though the job was already done.
Sairorg and I blinked, holding our breaths - And then time kicked back in with a vengeance, and hundreds of tons of draconic dead-weight tumbled back down to the floor with this terrible, groaning crack that had it shattering under him and belching up a wave of clogging dust and debris like a blown water-hydrant.
And that was that.
"..." "..."
Slowly, carefully, we floated down from our corner on the cavern roof, panting hard and drenched in sweat as we very gingerly got closer and closer.
We didn't have to - I felt it when Smaug died, and I'm plenty sure Sairaorg did too, but after all that we were so keyed up that you could probably hear our blood pressure from across the room.
Despite that, and even with all the dust in the air and the heat from the patches of red-hot and outright molten rock scattered all over the place - and I'm not even going to talk about the stench of dragon, because dear dad was that nasty - there was an extra edge from before that just wasn't there anymore.
Smaug's presence and that heavy, slithering malice he'd been putting out dissipated the moment he croaked - or at least dispersed enough that whatever after-affects and bits of it sticking around after the fact were a walk in the park compared to the real deal.
And speaking of the real deal-
"Ugh."
Our feet finally touched the ground, and a sudden bout of dizziness hit me like a truck. I'd have toppled over if Sairaorg hadn't seen it coming and thrown my hand across his shoulders to prop me up.
"Are you okay?"
"Fine." I palmed my face with my free hand and tried "Just... took a lot out of near the end."
It was just a second of disorientation - I'd never used that much power in one go, and the moment I stopped floating on that rush it was like my whole system glitched and had to load back up again.
"You?"
"Never better."
Sure.
Because I was obviously just imagining the exhausted, heaving breaths, the copious sweating and the way his free hand kept clenching and unclenching as he tried to shake off phantom pains.
"Lying is a sin you know."
Said the demigod to the devil.
He gave me a look so flat for that one it was basically 2D, and I snorted.
"I heard it as soon as I said it."
"Moron."
"Idiot."
"Numbnuts"
"Muscle brain."
"Glowstick."
"Loudmouth."
"Really? Coming from you?"
Fair
"Well, I would know, wouldn't I?"
"Yeah, know how to get us both killed, Mr. Run-my-mouth in front of a dragon!"
"Hey, at least I didn't start kissing up to him, you spoiled noble brat!"
"Former noble brat! And I was playing dumb to buy time!"
"What, was being yourself that hard?"
He raised his fist and waved it threateningly.
"Not as hard as I'm going to deck you!"
"Bring it-!" I started to say, matching his grin tit for tat, before my eyes flickered back and the smile flickered out just as fast.
Sairaorg tracked the movement and ended up staring just like I was.
"...Wow."
"Yeah." The enormity of what we just did came back to me just as quickly as I'd pushed it away. "...Sairaorg, we fought a dragon.... we killed a dragon."
"... Yeah, I guess we did."
This was huge.
In the supernatural side of the world, dragon-slaying was a Big Deal, in capital letters.
Absolutely nuts, even - like scaling Mount Everest, or winning the Superbowl three times in a row.
Sure, it could mean more or less depending on what kind of dragon it was and how strong they were, and I had no idea where Smaug would have fit into the hierarchy way back home, but with how new we both were at this it was still an insane feat that we managed to pull off.
And by the skin of our teeth, too.
If I hadn't had that spell ready, and the power to fuel it...
I swallowed dryly as I thought about it, glancing over at Smaug's cooling corpse and feeling a little jolt as I realized just how massive he was again - big enough to flatten my old home like a Lego model or blast it into smithereens with one whip of his tail.
If I'd messed up even a little, we'd have been in trouble.
A lot of things ran through my mind after that, most of them distant as I stared at the dragon some more.
But one came first before all the others.
"...Huh. Hey, Sai?"
"Hmm?"
"Chiron is going to eviscerate us when he finds out about this, isn't he?"
"...Yep."
No ifs or buts about it.
We both nodded, before slowly turning to meet each other's eyes.
"..."
"..."
"Hrrnk." "Snnkt."
Then we staggered and snorted, fell back against the nearest wall with our arms over each other's shoulders, and immediately began to howl with laughter.
And if it sounded borderline hysterical, well, no one was around to judge.
...
A good while later, when we were done losing our minds a little, - and I was already smiling at how quickly I could feel myself regenerating my magic, even if I was running on near empty right that second - we finally clambered back up to our feet and started figuring out what to do.
First, though, I tried casting a nifty spell of recall Chiron had taught me to collect any arrows that were scattered close by. I was only looking for just the one - the second shot I'd taken at Smaug had bounced off, and the arrow had been one of the few celestial bronze ones I had left.
Nothing.
I grimaced even though it made sense - It'd fallen into ground zero with all the fire and the carnage, so the shaft was dust in the air and the bronze was probably a little dollop of molten slag mixed in with the rock.
Probably for the best that I didn't have that flying towards me, now that I thought about it.
Then I tried calling for my spear, and that's when things got weird.
Look, I wasn't expecting it to work.
After all, I'd sent the damned thing into what I was, like, ninety percent sure was Smaug's heart, so even though it stung like nobody's business I was ready to write it off as a loss.
I held out my hand and tried recalling it on a whim, just for the sake of trying, and then my head snapped over to the mountain that was Smaug's body as I felt something twitch on the other end of the connection.
A resonance, like the spell had latched onto something and was tugging at it insistently after it refused to give the first time.
The heck?
Sairoarg frowned as he saw my brows furrow in concentration.
"What's wrong?"
I waved him off, distracted by the sensations I kept getting as I poured more magic into the spell and reached for oh what the hell is that!?
I yelped, drew back my hand and tackled the squawking Sairaorg down just as a vaguely familiar streak of light lanced out of Smaug's chest, rocketing straight up with a sharp air-cutting whistle before it curved right back down again and striking into the spot where we'd been standing with a sound of sharp metal sinking into stone.
I grunted as I turned around, and...
And...
My jaw dropped.
"No way," Sairaorg whispered as he got back to his feet, and he was right to. "What happened to it?"
The it was obviously my spear, and the answer to that was who the flip knows?
It looked the same, but that was in shape only - the light ashwood had changed and darkened into a shade like red-brown rust, and I could swear it was getting darker by the second as small, long-winding streaks of molten color that reminded me of veins of all things stretched around it and seemed to seep deeper into the wood the longer I stared at it.
The spearhead had changed too, the sharp, brass-like shine of the orichalcum shifting into something that was closer to red-gold and getting darker just as quickly as the wood, and the entire spear was covered in a hazy aura that flickered in shades of red, orange, and dull gold.
"I don't know."
But it radiated danger and I could tell that touching it right now was a bad idea, so I wracked my brain for an explanation even as we backed away from it.
Thinking it through now... what had I done, exactly?
It was already a subtly magical spear, and I'd empowered it with a divine dragon-slaying spell before turning right around and using it to kill an evil dragon with a single blow straight to the heart.
...
Symbolism like that had a lot of meaning in the magical side of things, and meaning could usually be translated to power and effects.
My eyes shifted back to the spear, looking over it carefully.
Sometimes permanent effects.
...
I needed to talk to Chiron about this - probably after he was done tearing us a whole new dimension for this stunt.
"Just leave it where it is for now." I hesitated. "Let it cool off, I guess."
"Great." He gave it another look himself before shrugging "Now what?"
Good question.
...
So - what do two conquering heroes do after they've just drawn a ridiculously massive dragon out of his lair and ganked the enormous jerk?
Well, obviously, they start looting! We had lessons on it and everything!
No, seriously.
See, it goes like this - heroes killing monsters is a regular old thing in just about every mythology ever, and in those stories, the odds were always good that the monster with a deadline before death-by-hero was going to have some kind of treasure going for it.
Sometimes it was its own, and sometimes it was stolen or left behind by its victims, or something else like that.
The point was that it was there, and the hero who did all the work got to call dibs on a whole bunch of nice and shiny things as a reward.
Except it wasn't always that easy.
If the hero was a soldier or a slave (that happened too) or answered to any kind of higher power, like a lord or a king or even a god who'd put them up to it, they had about as much claim to it as any regular Joe off the street.
If they were contracted or hired to kill a monster by somebody else, chances were it'd be the contractor who had the rights to whatever it was that was left behind, and the hero would have to settle for what they agreed to be paid with beforehand.
It's when they were neither and were in it for the fun of it, or just happened to be swinging by when they took care of business that things got a little blurry.
Say you killed a monster that'd been terrorizing a village for a few years now and stealing away all of its valuables left and right - technically, all that stuff belonged to you now.
The villagers wouldn't have a strong claim to it anymore, not after losing it in the first place, and it's not like they could force the issue when they couldn't even square up against the monster you had to kill to get it back.
Only, glory and honor and all that jazz had their place too, and nobody really wanted to be known as that one jerk who heroically killed this or that monster only to make off with the people's treasure and leave them all to rot.
I mean, you technically could, but your reputation would take a hit and you'd come out of it looking like a total dipstick.
On the flip side, by returning some of the treasure you ended up smelling like sunshine and roses, and you still got first pick of all the goodies
If you were really lucky, you could get enough treasure anyway that you'd probably be pretty loaded one way or the other when everything was said and done.
Smaug's hoard had been stolen from an entire kingdom of dwarves, mountain and all, which meant a lot of it had to stay, but since we had first-pick, and there was so much there...
I stared at the oceans and oceans of economy-threatening treasure in the cavern where the dragon had slept and let myself laugh a little incredulously.
"We're freaking rich."
"No, you're rich now." Sairaorg grinned and nudged me with his elbow, but even he was staring around like he couldn't tell up from down or anywhere else at all. "I'm just rich-er, peasant."
He wasn't wrong, actually.
When Sairaorg got booted out of his Bael heirship, he lost out on a pretty ridiculous amount of money and power down in the Underworld, and pretty much anywhere the devils had free reign.
Luckily, because his mom was just as smart as his dad was a scumbag, he still had the inheritance she left for him, which came with a bunch of perks like a whole estate and a manor back home, servants to take care of it and enough money that he probably never even had to ask for prices when paying for stuff unless he really cut loose.
Devil nobles were excessive like that.
Still, though...
"Jerk."
He yelped and flailed as I shoved into a pile of gold the size of a small car before leaping up and chasing me around the chamber until we called a truce.
By then, I'd seen so many things I was tempted to hurry up and pocket that my fingers were starting to twitch like a kleptomaniac.
Some were just plain cooler than others - I saw a set of brilliant golden harps off to one side, strung with strings that glinted silver in the light that had me reaching and the fingers of one hand down the column while my other tested out a few the way only a total beginner could.
The way they quivered and the tinkling notes they hit made me smile.
I'd never used a harp before, but my dad did, and it was kind of a big thing with him too.
Something to think about for later.
For now, though...
"There's no way we can sort this out ourselves," I said, and Sairaorg was already nodding along with me before I'd even finished. "We should-"
"Get Chiron? I figured." He titled his head off to the side, gesturing to the hallway we'd just crawled through. "We kind of need his help with the dragon too."
"Wha?- oh" I blinked as it hit me. "Right."
Dragon parts were valuable magical ingredients - you could use them in everything from tool-making to alchemy, and the older and more powerful, the better.
The corpse of a dragon like Smaug was worth way more than its weight in gold to the people who knew how to use it.
It was kind of morbid when you really thought about it, but it's not like Smaug was going to be complaining anytime soon, and even if he could I'd tell the the reptile from hell to go pound sand.
Serves him right for pulling everything that he did and then topping it off by trying to eat us.
"Yeah, we probably do need to bring Chiron back here."
Because there was no way I'd ever be able to take Smaug back with us when we tried - we'd all die trying, and the gold was also a no-go.
Frankly, if I could get us over to Chiron and back without ending up with another splitting headache that made me regret all of my life choices up to now, I'd consider it a win.
We could worry about the other stuff later.
"But weren't we supposed to visit your family first?"
I winced.
Right. That.
"We're already late."
Katie was probably already up by now, and Alex too, so I was in for it no matter when I got back at this point.
A few more hours wouldn't change that anymore.
"Might as well get the important things out the way first now that we're on it."
It'd leave me more time to visit later, without having to rush.
He shrugged.
"If you're sure."
Great.
Now all we had to do was wait for me to store up enough magic again, and we were out of here.
First things first though...
We walked back to the spot where I'd left my spear. By now the lights had faded away and the dark colors had settled in, but I wasn't fooled by that.
It was still thrumming with power and letting more of the stuff waft off of it, even if it seemed different now.
Calmer.
Sai and I exchanged another look, and I sighed.
"Here goes nothing."
I gingerly reached for the thing with a careful stretch of my hand, half expecting it to burst into flames the second my fingertips brushed against the wood.
But it didn't.
Instead, I started as it momentarily flashed when I got a good grip on it, almost jolting in my hand as I pulled it free from the ground and hefted it up before it dimmed and went quiet again.
Sairaorg stared at me expectantly as I moved it left and right, switching it from hand to hand and comfortably twirled it in my grip. I even ran it through a few drills, thrusting and jabbing experimentally and listening to the way the air seemed to faintly shriek around the blade every time.
"So?"
"I don't know. It feels alright."
Actually, it felt better than that - strong and steady, right even.
A bit strange too, but it wasn't exploding in my grip after all that, so I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I also very deliberately didn't push any more magic forward and... I don't know, do something with it, because at this point, it was better safe than sorry.
"Feels a little... sharp to me," Sairoarg muttered, eyes narrowing before he shrugged again. "But maybe Chiron will say for sure. Are you ready?
"Looks like it." I agreed, and slung it into the strap over my back before rolling my neck a little. "Let's head back to Esgaroth and get Courage."
I'd left my little buddy back in the town to have a little run-around, so who knows what he was up to right now?
...
In the end, we managed to make it about ten steps out the path we came, enjoying the real sunlight and the fresh air of the mountainside before we got interrupted again.
Honestly, I'm just happy we got that much - or at least I was, before I heard the low, steady voice ring out behind us.
"Greetings"
Both of us whirled on the spot, knees already bent and ready to break out in either direction at a twitch before we zeroed in on the source.
Perched on the handle of the axe held in one of the dwarven soldier statues guarding either side of the Lonely Mountain's gate was a single, solitary black raven, glancing down at us with dark and beady eyes.
"I am Roäc," The raven's head rose a little as his wings puffed out, like he was standing to attention. His beak shifted as he spoke, mannerisms inhuman but nothing as wrong Smaug's had been, or at all for that matter.."Chief of the last great flocks of Ravenhill. Allies to the Line of Thrór I of Erebor, King Of Durin's Folk, whose descendants remains the true heirs to this mountain and the kingdom within."
"..."
"..."
"I'm Daniel Winchester." I pointed to the side. "This is Sairaorg Bael."
"Greetings." Sai raised his hand in a wave that was only a little awkward and parroted back the raven's words, and if the bird was disappointed by the lackluster responses, it didn't show it.
Though to be fair, I'm not sure I would been able to tell anyway.
"Well met."
Just the fact that I didn't even flinch at the sight of a genuine talking bird should say a lot about the kind of life I'm leading these days.
"Can we help you?"
I was still ready for him to transform into a twenty-foot-tall monstrosity with teeth for eyeballs and try and pounce on us, but he only hopped back a little as a gentle breeze brushed past us all, ruffling his feathers in its wake.
"You have slayed the dragon."
It wasn't a question.
"Yes," Sairaorg answered for us, lips pursing a little as he raised a brow. "How did you know?"
"The Calamity's death cry was carried by the winds and echoed in the hollow of the mountain, of which my kin dwell close. The truth of its fall reached me within moments, and already the depths of its taint lift from the land."
"...Great. Is that a problem?"
Chief Roäc didn't miss a beat.
"As far from it as the sun from the moon. I congratulate you on your great victory and thank you for your noble work." His inflection didn't change and his voice didn't rise or drop, but the words that poured out of him rang with truth despite that. "The day the dragon descended from the sky was black with tragedy for Men, Dwarves and Ravens alike. The burning of Dale and breaking of Erebor preceded the destruction of many of my kin's homes, and of those that were not lost in the fires that took many of our great trees, more fled from fear or grief or both."
I... didn't know what to say to that.
Seriously, what was I supposed to say to that?
"...I'm sorry for your loss."
I felt a little lame saying it, and even Sairaorg winced, but I think that was more in quiet sympathy than it was at how inadequate the words felt off the tip of my tongue.
On the bright side, now I felt even less guilty about having Smaug skinned for parts - maybe somebody would turn his scales into a pair of oven mitts.
That seemed fair to me.
"Justice has been meted, and vengeance reaped. That must suffice for olden scars. In time, songs will be sung of this day just as they were of the one that came before. You have my respect and gratitude for such." Roäc wings fluttered, and I think he may have given us the raven equivalent of a slow nod as his head bobbed. "Duty now bids me to ask - do you seek to linger within Erebor?"
Sai and I blinked at the question.
"No."
"We're leaving." I said, before shrugging and adding, "We might come back soon, but I don't think we'll be sticking around long even then."
Just enough to take our share of that treasure, but I didn't feel like bringing that up here and now.
Roäc croaked, as if in thought - or maybe he was just clearing his throat.
"Word has reached me in months past of the heir to the throne of Thror and his kin setting out on a journey with the aid of the Grey Wanderer, having secured a means to gain entry into Erebor. I had expected and thought to welcome him and his on Durin's day, but now I fly north for the Iron Hills and their lord, Dáin Ironfoot." Roäc moved, and I realized he was readying himself to leap up into the air. "I go to spread the word of the death of the foul drake, to recall the people of the mountain from when so I came, and now to spread further the word of your valiance on this fateful day, as will my kin. This is my solemn oath to you."
Most of those titles meant nothing to us, but they seemed important and I think I got the gist of it anyway.
Looks like we were about to be famous around these parts.
"Thank you."
This time, there was no mistaking the little bow he gave us.
"Til next we meet, know that you are honored friends of the Chief and flocks of Ravenhill."
Without another word, the kingly raven beat down and took off from his perch, quickly catching the winds and veering off across the mountainside.
Sairaorg and I just stood there, watching him disappear in the distance for a long, quiet minute.
"Huh. That happened."
"It did, didn't it?"
"Our lives are weird."
"Ain't that the truth."
Let's just get out of here before things get any weirder, shall we?
...
When we got back to Estaroth, there was a whole kind of jittery, spiraling nervous tension in the air, and there were far more people crowding outside their homes and pacing the makeshift streets then there were before, and it looked like half of them were trying to fit into either what passed for their Townsquare in front of the largest building of them all, or trying to push each other out of the way as they head non too slowly for the docks.
The whole place had the energy of a colony of ants scattering after some kindergartner kicked over their hill, complete with so much angry yelling I'd be amazed if any of them could even hear themselves speak.
Sairaorg and I just frowned and looked on as we hopped from rooftop to rooftop, heading toward the spot where I could sense Courage was, and while a whole bunch of people saw us as we moved above them, none of them paid us so much as a second glance.
It didn't take a genius to take a guess at what it was that had them all so riled up, but there wasn't anything we could do about it right now.
"There." Sai pointed, and we leaped off the roof and dropped down in front of my dog, and a familiar face tucked away in a quiet little corner on the outskirts of town.
Courage, the fearsome hellhound descending from myth and legend, had his head draped in Alford's lap, tongue out and tail wagging as the old man laughed and rubbed his back and whatever parts of his belly he could reach without leaning over his chair too much.
Then he caught our scent, and he perked up and came bounding over even as the old man's eyes lit up.
"Lads!" He laughed again, hand rising to press against his chest."Stars, I'd feared the worst!
"Hello, Alford." I like this old man. Anyone who treated my dog right was good in my book until they screwed up. "Courage hasn't been bothering you, has he?"
Courage looked up at me and huffed.
Who, me?
"Blast the thought." Alford waved the words off as I crouched down to ruffle up Courage's fur a little. "That dog's better company than my own brother and sweeter than elvish honey besides."
I blinked.
Elvish...?
...
You know what?
More questions for later.
"Guess you had fun, huh?" I snorted and leaned back to avoid the enthusiastic slobber he was about to cover me, but I didn't have to. His nose got a little too close and he jerked back, stiffening a little as he looked at-
Ah.
My spear was slung over my back and it was probably sending him all kinds of bad signs.
"Don't worry about it. I'll explain it later." I leaned down to whisper to him, scratching under his chin for good measure. "We fought a dragon while you were here getting ear scritches. You got all the luck between us, didn't you?"
The look he gave me for that was something in between 'I regret nothing' and 'You fought a dragon? Dude, what is wrong with you?'
I had no good answers for that.
"Where's Hilda?" Sairaorg asked Alford as the old man adjusted his blanket. "Down over in town?"
"Aye. They're all up in arms and making a mess of things." He nodded. "A few of the fishermen who were out on the lake came back a little ways ago. Swore up and down on their kins souls that they heard a foul sound coming from the mountain, and enough folk agreed that they've stirred up a good and proper panic."
He settled in against his chair as he leaned back a little.
"Now, these old ears of mine aren't what they used to be, but half of Esgaroth is convinced the dragon I told you about has woken and means to fall on them from above. That's why Hilda dragged me out here and away from the noise, bless that girl's heart." He looked at us and smiled wryly. "You didn't hear it as well, did you?
"..."
"No, we didn't."
"What sound?"
Alford chuckled as we tried to look innocent and clueless.
"Aye, I thought as much. There's no dragons to be had here and now. Certainly none so slow, I would think." He shook his head comfortably. "If that old monster were awake and coming here, it'd have arrived long before the fools stopped arguing down there and left whatever poor souls escaped it choked in ash and ruin."
That... was true.
"Sounds about right."
And from the way Sairaorg looked at me, real quick and eyes very wide, he was also realising just how badly things could gone if we hadn't been able to deal with Smaug in the mountain.
Yikes.
Just... yikes.
Never thinking about that again for the foreseeable future.
"Though there is some good to be from all this trouble." Alford grinned. "The Master's fled."
Sairaorg stared.
"Your town's leader... ran away."
"Aye. Like the sniveling coward he tried so hard to pretend he wasn't." The old man was still grinning when he added, "Took a boat the very moment he heard whispers of a dragon, and stole all the people's gold as well."
...
"...And this is a good thing?"
"Of course it is, lad." Alford laughed this time. "Because he'll be back when no dragon appears, you'll see, and all the people will have seen him for what he is, and he'll get his by dusk or dawn, whichever comes first."
I... well.
When you put it like that...
"All's well that ends well," I said, before shrugging a little. "I'm almost sorry we won't be around to see it."
Seriously.
It sounds like the guy has it coming nearly as much as Smaug did.
"A shame. You'll be leaving then?"
"For now. We have to get back to our teacher, but maybe we'll come by for a visit sometime soon."
"We'll be happy to have you." He chuckled and waved us off again as we said our goodbyes. "Properly this time. I'll tell Hilda you gave your best."
Courage padded back over to him and got a last little ruffle before we left, and then it was time to leave.
Finally.
...
Twenty minutes later, we were a little ways out of Esgaroth and I finally had enough power back that I felt ready to get us home.
"Are you sure you've got this?"
Almost.
"Sairaorg, you're not helping."
He smiled innocently
"I'm just saying-"
I jabbed a finger at him.
"One more word and I will find a way to drop us in a world full of zombies or something just so I can leave you there!"
He grinned and held his hands up in surrender.
I glared at him some more, before taking a deep breath and closing my eyes.
Alright, I think I got this.
The last time I did this, I didn't expect Sairaorg's weight - or something like that - to screw up the 'jump'.
This time, though...
I focused on the image of Chiron, the way I had for Katie and Alex before. I pictured us reaching out, leaping from this place and over to the-
"Got it."
The Spark ignited, and we vanished.
...
Space warped.
Colors and shapes flew past as we hurtled across the constantly shifting chaos sea.
All of us this time, without falling, without losing momentum, speed building and building as we streaked towards the point I'd locked onto in the infinite distance.
No falling this time, and no endless noise - just sheer focus and movement.
Three, two, one-
...
-And time!
We flickered and staggered back into existence right smack dab in the middle of the house, in the open pavilion where we usually had breakfast, and about three feet away from Chiron.
Score!
Not going to lie, I grinned like a lunatic when I realized I'd done it on demand.
He stared at us impassively as we straightened up a little, and I raised a hand to wave sheepishly.
"Hey teach!" No reaction. "I know you're probably really mad, but have we got a story to tell-"
"Daniel."
His tone stopped me cold.
Blank.
Steady and impassive - like he was talking to total strangers.
That's when I realized he wasn't meeting our eyes, and was instead looking at something - someone - over our shoulders.
"Well," The voice spoke up behind me, and I felt every atom in my body lock up all at once. "It's about time."
I knew who it was.
Instantly and inarguably, without looking back at all - like the information had been wired into my brain directly, and now the alarms up there were ringing at full force and blanking out everything else.
I turned around, and there he was.
Blonde-haired, blue-eyed. Tall and youthful, but sharp-featured, lounging on a highbacked chair that might as well have been a throne for how elaborate it was, and dressed in a striking black suit.
He even looked a little like me as he sat there, face propped up by one hand and observing me the way a lion did a mouse that wandered between its paws.
Or the way a god did a mortal.
Our eyes met, and for a second his flashed a golden, and I saw the looming pressure of the Sun bearing down on me for a split-second before it vanished.
"..."
"..."
"...That's not one of Chiron's chairs. Did you bring that with you?"
...
It's official - I have a death wish.
"...Not again." I heard Sairaorg mumble off to the side, but he may as well have been a million miles away as the god's eyebrow rose incrementally, a look of what might have been mild, polite amusement tugging at his expression.
"What can I say? I have a taste for proper theatrics." Apollon, Olympian God of the Sun smiled blankly, tone even, and rose from his chair with all the grace of a being who could blink and wipe me off the face of the earth. "Now let's have us a talk, Daniel Winchester."
View: https://imgur.com/z0V4IDz
...
Dan and Sai's Day, every time they think things are going well:
View: https://imgur.com/nyS1nxO
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.
Last edited:
1. I don't know why, but I kind of want Daniel and Sai to go to the nasuverse sooner or later, mostly because they're already dealing with two different versions of the same mythology (The Percy Jackson and DXD versions) so why not at a third.
2. It's going to be so funny when this next chapter comes out and apollo basically just goes: "whose child is this? Why does he look like one of mine?"
2. It's going to be so funny when this next chapter comes out and apollo basically just goes: "whose child is this? Why does he look like one of mine?"
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Nah, presumably he was talking to Chiron before they got back
williams1996
Alba gu bràth
- Location
- Scotland
Better go back for that dragon and there loot before the dwarfs get there the greedy lot will try steal the dragon
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Eh, the dwarves are traveling at foot speed and middle earth is…. Not small. They have at least a few days.
I'm more interested in seeing where this is going tbh
Just blurt out he killed a dragon and needs chiron to help harvest the corpse. The absurdity should distract Apollo enough that he'll say fuck it and tag along putting off the talk just a bit. Hopefully enough for him to think of a line of bullshit to throw at dear old not dad.
Also nasuverse could be fun just for the confusion at a demigod walking around in the modern day. Maybe cuck the history teacher and snag medea. They both have a connection to hecate so that could get some good will, and she just wants a second chance at life with someone who won't fuck her over. Plus I'm a simp for the adorable elf ears and her magic is bullshit and she'd be a great magic teacher for him.
Also nasuverse could be fun just for the confusion at a demigod walking around in the modern day. Maybe cuck the history teacher and snag medea. They both have a connection to hecate so that could get some good will, and she just wants a second chance at life with someone who won't fuck her over. Plus I'm a simp for the adorable elf ears and her magic is bullshit and she'd be a great magic teacher for him.
Last edited:
I Officially Give Up On Today
New
He only took about five steps forward, but Apollon still managed to strut through them like the world was warping to accommodate his existence and he was halfway bored with the effort - the kind of lazy, effortless confidence that'd probably have come off as ridiculously smarmy and big-headed if he wasn't a god who had enough power at his fingertips to back it up a hundred times over.
His arms were folded behind his back and his dress shoes clicked off the ground as he sauntered up to us, blue eyes focused on me with this flat, inescapable interest, and I...
Well.
I'm going to level with you here - the second I processed who he was, I kind of started screaming internally.
A lot.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!"
Something like that, yeah.
What?
Monsters I could handle.
Dragons were a bit much, but a win was a win, and I had one of those in the bag already.
But Gods?
And this one, in particular, with all the messy and convoluted context behind everything?
Nope. Hard pass.
His just being in the room was overwhelming in every sense of the word - and acknowledging that didn't help, because he was still coming closer, and there was no eject button on this flaming train wreck of a confrontation waiting to happen.
My lizard brain broke all the speed limits as it went from zero to a thousand miles in under a second and flailing all the way, and I was honestly debating the pros and cons of yanking Sairaorg and switching worlds again right then and there on sheer instinct - until a hand caught my shoulder and startled me so badly that I nearly jumped three feet out of my skin and back before I realized who it was.
I hadn't even heard Chiron move - or anything really, what with how loud my heartbeat was thundering in my ears, but he was suddenly right there and gently but firmly pushing me back half a step behind him.
I didn't argue - I was just happy that I could suddenly breathe again as Apollon's gaze flickered from him to me.
"Forgive my student's loss for words, Lord Apollon," Chiron said politely, and something about the way he said it made me ease up the tiniest bit, and the blaring sirens in my head began to peter out a little. "He is quick-witted and quicker on his feet where it counts, but even the greatest mortals can find themselves losing their stride when graced with the presence of a god."
Apollon's brow rose an inch.
"Oh, is that what it is?"
"Indeed. I'll have to coach him through the proper conduct for such occasions thoroughly." Chiron didn't miss a beat. "After you've taken your leave, of course."
"That would be wise indeed." Apollon's polite smile quirked up a little in a way that seemed to scream 'I know what you're doing, and I know that you know that I know, but I'm going to let it slide anyway' "I suppose we should get on with it, then, so as to not waste any more time."
Then he turned back to me, and I... didn't flinch under those eerily familiar eyes, but just barely.
Chiron's presence was grounding enough that I didn't feel one wrong word or twitch away from being zapped into a dust cloud and scattered to the winds.
"I would have words with your student." Apollon tilted his head, silently gesturing to the doorway behind us. "Let's take a walk."
And then he just... strode past us without another word, stepping in between me and Sairaorg like he didn't have a care in the world.
Which I guess he didn't - not here anyway.
The second he stepped out of the room, I counted to three under my breath and whirled to Chiron, trying to keep my voice down and level before I started yelling.
"What I do-?"
"You go take a walk."
I opened my mouth to protest - and probably to say something rude, because what the hell even-?
"Don't waste time."
Chiron's fingers snapped, and the air around us changed - a split-second spell that prevented outsiders from listening in as he fixed me with this grave, might-as-well-have-been-carved-from-stone kind of look.
"I'm here, and this is my home. No harm will come to you while I draw breath." He said, and then he pointed out the door. "This was always likely to happen at some point, on some day. Apollon is rightfully intimidating, but you only need to keep your head clear, be polite, and answer his questions to his satisfaction."
Alright, that sounded like a good plan - except for the Texas-sized crater of a hole in it.
"But I can't tell him about who I am and where I come from." I took a quick breath, and glanced at Sairaorg - who looked about as cool with this as I did - before panning right back to Chiron."You told me never to tell anyone else that yourself."
And only a few hours ago at that - seriously, what even was today!?
"Yes, I did, and no, you can't. But the truth is still the truth even if phrased in exactly the right way to mislead." Chiron pushed me forward a couple of steps. "Now go - before he gets impatient."
Damn it.
I couldn't argue - Chiron had my back, and this was happening one way or the other.
In hindsight, the fact that it hadn't happened beforehand was a big deal all on its own, but I wasn't thinking about that right now.
What else was I even supposed to say here?
I turned back to Sairaorg, and the look on his face was what you'd get if you tried to plaster a smile onto a grimace and came out with something new-fangled and right smack dab in between.
"Good luck." Then he punched his palm and grinned at me, even if it came out stiffer than it ever looked. "Call me if you need backup."
... He totally would, wouldn't he?
Even though it'd be complete suicide.
For some reason, that bit of crazy stupidity fit right in our ballpark, and it made me smile through the panic.
Even Chiron chuckled faintly, murmuring things under his breath that were probably totally unflattering and still managed to sounds found anyway.
"Moron."
"Takes one to know one. Now go!"
And I did just that, darting after the god who should never be kept waiting if you knew what was good for you.
Then again, that was just about every god, really, but the point still counts.
Apollon was waiting with back to me just outside the house, hair glinting in the afternoon sun as the breeze ruffled it. He didn't do much more than angle his head my way as I stopped just half a foot away from him.
"Come. Walk with me."
And then he started making his way down the garden without looking back at me once.
I didn't exactly have any other option than to follow along behind him as we crossed the garden, stepping past the flower beads and beginning to tread up the grassy path that rounded the estate, trying not to stare too hard at him out of the corner of my vision.
The weird thing was, that the silence we started with wasn't unbearable.
Tense, sure, but after that first jolt of pure 'holy hell, I'm in trouble' flavored shock passed through my system, the air between us didn't feel dangerous.
Much.
"Tell me," Apollon began at last, the pace of his steps not changing one bit and with a conversational tone as he looked ahead and past the tree line. "Has Chiron begun teaching you of the other divine factions of the world?"
... That's not what I expected him to start with.
"Yes," I said, then I swallowed and added a quick "Sir."
Look, I can snap and snark all day and then some whenever I wanted to, but even I could tell when it was time to shape up and be real nice and polite when I had to.
"Good. Tell me what you've learned of the Norse pantheon and their Ragnarök."
...
Okay, really not what I expected him to start with.
I almost asked why, before a shrill voice in my head smacked whoever it was behind the wheel out of the way and pumped the brakes hard.
"Ragnarök is the prophecized apocalypse and end of the Norse aspect of the World," I said instead, and I got a little more comfortable when he didn't interrupt or even glance my way. "A series of escalating skirmishes and events that all lead up to a deciding battle between the Æsir, the jötnar, and everything in between and ends with the King of Muspelheim, Surtr, burning what's left of the other realms and the World Tree Yggdrasil to cinders before it all finally sinks into the primordial sea."
It's one of the scarier 'end of the world' type prophecies in mythology, where just about everything that can go wrong does - like a line of increasingly terrible dominoes falling one after the other until the last one finally topples onto a great big red button and blows everything right to kingdom come.
Sure, the world supposedly gets reborn after everything is said and done - a fresh, clean slate all around, but I don't think that's going to be much of a mood-lifter for anyone stuck at ground zero when it all eventually goes down.
"That's right." Apollon nodded, and for a second, I thought I heard approval in his voice before it went flat again. "Simplified, and lacking in multiple contexts, but an acceptable answer for a beginner. Now let me tell you a story."
We crossed past our training fields and began to loop around it as he spoke.
"Some time ago, the cycle of Ragnarök that the Norse were so dearly bound to was suspected to have halted." I blinked, and Apollon's lips quirked up a little. "Yes, it is interesting, isn't it?"
"Does that mean there's no more apocalypse waiting for them?"
I blurted out the question before I could stop myself, but he didn't acknowledge the interruption and only shook his head instead.
"Not quite. For a number of reasons - some proven and some confined to theory - the cyclical wheel of their cosmology has seemingly stopped spinning. Prophecized events destined to occur still have the potential to take place as foretold, but they are no longer in motion of their own momentum. Ragnarök is still inevitable, the immutable and inescapable beast waiting at the end of their road, but it is no longer actively approaching like a storm closing in from the horizon."
I slowly nodded.
That made sense.
The last chapter in the book was still exactly what and where it was supposed to be, but suddenly there were a whole bunch of empty pages in between here and there and nobody knew how many.
"As it turned out, several parties within the Norse who'd seemingly escaped the headsmen's axe decided they quite enjoyed living a life without waiting for the blade to drop down from above, and sought to ensure that that state of affairs was permanent." Apollon's expression changed here, and the faint smile turned a lot more wry like he was remembering an old inside joke and trying not to laugh. "So they did what many a fool has done to escape the games of fate. Something daring, ambitious, and in many ways almost overwhelmingly stupid."
I blinked.
"They stole a fragment of Surtr's essence." My jaw dropped, and he noticed. "As I said, for a group that wanted to ensure their long-term survival, they put forth a remarkably impressive display of suicidal idiocy."
I'll say - Surtr was basically a living armageddon even when he was just existing and not acting in his role in the actual armageddon.
There's poking a sleeping dragon, and then there was whacking a sentient hydrogen bomb with a war hammer and somehow expecting things to end well for you - And I would know, because I basically just finished doing the first thing and still came out on top with a souvenir to prove it.
"Regardless of the thought process behind the affair, they succeeded in making off with their prize, and used it to create a clone of Surtr."
"..."
"..."
Did I just hear that right?
"A clone?"
"A clone," Apollon confirmed, and he waved it off so easily you'd think he was talking about the weather. "What the goal behind its inception was, few can say with any certainty, but the most common belief is that it was created with the hopes that it would either grow to match its predecessor in power or perhaps usurp and siphon his into itself. A way to match the king of the fire giants or drive him into irrelevancy and defeat come Ragnarök."
"And Surtr found out about this?"
I tried to think of what that would have looked like, but all I was getting through the image in my head was enough fire to make Smaug's light show look like a matchstick in comparison.
"There's no way to know for sure, but I'm told he laughed. Once." Apollon let out a sound that might've been a chuckle as I nearly missed a step. "And why should he have done anything else? The counterfeit they staked their half-baked ambitions on turned out to be just that. A cheap imitation that didn't come close to matching the original in power and potential. When they realized this, they washed their hands of their creation, their so-called Surtr Second, and cast it out into the wilds hoping that it would disappear and that the world would simply forget about their blunder. The clone's feelings on the matter were, of course, irrelevant."
...Wow.
"That's scummy."
"And costly." He agreed. "The clone wandered the world for some time, until he was approached and willingly folded into the Abrahamic Devil Faction. The Norse tried to protest this when they realized what their haste had cost them, but they had no room to stand on after they deliberately exiled their creation, and the Devils gained a weapon with enough power to fight minor gods and the drive to do so happily for the acceptance they gave it. Or him, I suppose."
He added the last part in almost as an afterthought, but I could already tell he'd moved on past it.
What I couldn't figure out was what the point of telling me this was.
"You're wondering what this has to do with you?" The question must have shown on my face or something, because he nodded in a way that was more descisive than reassuring. "The reasoning behind the debacle I've just told you off is not quite unique, but the circumstances that led to the frankly disastrous end result it spawned were irregular - exceptionally rare, even. Messy enough that I would have never expected a repeat performance from any faction I could name off the top of my head for the foreseeable future, and certainly not own - or so I thought."
Finally, he stopped walking and turned to face me fully.
I tried not to freeze up like a deer in headlights as our eyes met again, I really did, but if wishes were horses beggars would ride, and all the rest of that noise.
"Then I found a child some eight months ago now on an otherwise ordinary night, grievously wounded and absolutely dripping in my divinity, and I found myself reconsidering that opinion."
For a moment, the words didn't quite register - They buffered and refused to lock into place with the rest of the pieces in my head.
Then they did, and I just barely managed to inhale as everything up to and including my spine froze solid in sheer shock.
Eight months ago.
The night I ended up in this world.
"You saw-?"
"Do you take me for a fool?" I abruptly swallowed down the whisper as his brow rose. A faint aura of shimmering sunlight flared out over the outline of his figure before it dimmed again, just as quickly. "Did you think I wouldn't have noticed a demigod - seemingly mine - simply appearing in what is effectively my own backyard?"
Crap.
Crap, crap, crap.
I don't think he could have thrown me for a worse loop if he'd physically picked me up and pitched over the horizon.
"You've known about me all this time."
"From the very first day."
CRAP.
I wasn't starting to panic again because of what he was saying - I was starting to panic again because I had no idea what I was supposed to say to it.
He didn't seem angry - Just steady.
Then I started thinking about it some more, and something hit me.
"Wait, it was Chiron that found me," I said, the pieces not quite adding up anymore. "It was Chiron that healed me."
"Yes, it was." Apollon agreed. "After I layered my blessing over you to keep you alive and free of pain, and subtly draw his attention and guide him to you."
My eyes widened.
"What?"
Why?
"I did so because, in those first few hours, I was furious." He said, and the truth was so heavy coming off of him you could almost feel it. I nearly flinched back on instinct alone. "I have not sired a demigod in centuries, and there you were - alive, if only just, and inarguably my own. I thought at first that it was a trick or plot against me. An attempt to undermine or weaken my position, or perhaps even to supplant some of my power."
I started, because that was a dangerous line of thought right there.
As in the 'terrible for my future life expectancy' kind of dangerous.
"I'm not-"
He raised a hand and cut me off.
"I am aware, now. Then, however, I chose to guide Chiron to you and allowed him to finish healing you without revealing myself because I needed him to take responsibility for you of his own accord. I stood off to the side and let him welcome you into his home without interference because I needed you kept somewhere where I knew where to find you while I investigated your origins to see who - or what - exactly you were supposed to be, and at whose hand you came to exist, because it was certainly not at my own."
That's...
"Did Chiron know?"
Apollon blinked, languid and curiously like he was surprised that that was my first question.
I was a little surprised too, honestly.
"He did not, before today. Your teacher is no fool, so I imagine he must've at least suspected that there might've been something a touch too convenient about the way he just so happened to stumble on to you moments before your 'death'-"
I didn't shudder at that, but it was a close call. Remembering that part of that night was just nasty.
"-but he had no knowledge of my plan at all, because he likely wouldn't have kept it to himself."
Apollon smiled in that same wry way from before.
"Chiron so despises the idea of lying to his students or the people that hold his confidence. It makes him both trustworthy and annoyingly difficult to work with at times."
I nodded slowly.
That was good.
I didn't think Chiron would have lied to me anyway, but it was still nice to hear it firsthand.
And now since that was out of the way-
"Why not just ask me?"
Not that I minded, because having him show up that early on would have scared the life out of me for sure, but it sounded like he'd gone out of his way to make things way harder for himself than they should have been when he could have just interrogated me from the start.
"If you were what I thought you were, the chances that your creators would have left you with any knowledge worth looking into was as likely as Dionysus choosing to swear a vow of sobriety." Apollon snorted at the thought and shook his head. "And as I've already said, I was angry. Very, very angry. You wouldn't have enjoyed my questioning."
I stepped back before I even knew I was doing it, and I almost twitched for my spear before I remembered how useless that would be.
"After a few months, I found nothing - and I looked extensively." Maybe he was pretending not to see how nervous I was - or maybe he just didn't care, but strangely, I didn't think that was it. "I even investigated the involvement of the Underworld - that hellhound pup I found in your shadow didn't help my suspicions any, and the only reason I didn't investigate the devil-"
His voice shifted imperceptibly and back as he brought up Sairaorg.
"-was because he'd come for Chiron's tutelage and had no apparent attachment to you. Then, at least."
The distinction sounded downright grudging for a second there.
"Without any more to go on, I simply continued to watch."
"Watch?" I repeated, trying to keep up. Then my brows rose "You were watching me?"
Apollon didn't answer.
Instead, he raised his hand again, palm-up first.
Between one blink and the next, a glimmering sapphire the size of a large egg appeared in his grip, almost perfectly round and cut with so many flat faces that it sparkled like a disco bowl in the sunlight.
His eyes flared with light, and the sapphire followed suit and began to spill out refracting beams like an old-school projector kicking into high gear.
Slowly, wherever the beams hit, ghostly images began to play out in full, life-like size, and my breath hitched.
Because I recognized them.
Me and Sairaorg at our very first spar.
The two of us fighting the giant scorpion in its lair.
My archery classes with Chiron.
The moment I first learned to fly.
A whole bunch of other things, big and small
"You saw all of that?"
"I did," Apollon said quietly. "When you invoke my name in thaumaturgy, you resonate with my divinity and draw on aspects of my domains. Once, that'd be nothing more than white noise, but in this era, it's a sensation I have not experienced in...quite some time."
... He just said he hadn't had a demigod child in centuries, hadn't he?
Before I could think of that too much, he turned to glance over my shoulder and frowned.
"What is that spear?"
I blinked when he held out his free hand, and it vanished from its sling and reappeared in his grip in a flash of light.
"What sharp anger." He tutted, eyeing the red-gold blade before he looked back up at me questioningly "Where did you get this?"
"It's mine. I killed a dragon with it."
"..."
"..."
Okay, I may have a problem with blurting stuff out.
"Did you now?"
Damn it, now he was looking at me funny again.
What was it that Chiron said?
The truth is still the truth even if phrased in exactly the right way to mislead
"We messed up when we were teleporting." I explained hastily, and I don't think I've ever picked my words more carefully in my entire life "We ended up somewhere outside of its lair - this place called the Lonely Mountain, and we ended up exploring and waking it up. Things happened, stuff went down, and we ended up fighting and killing it."
Apollon took that in slowly, before he stabbed it into the ground and took a step towards me.
"Uh-"
And then his hand was on top of my head, and I went still.
Dead still.
"Think of the memory of your battle." He instructed, in the same way people did when they were ordering you and knew you were going to listen one way or the other. "Offer it to me."
...
He was going to read my memories or something, wasn't he?
Suddenly, his hand felt like it weighed a million tons.
I almost paled and went back to the internal screaming before I bit the inside of my cheek and clenched my fists hard enough that my knuckles went numb.
Right, think fast. What do I-?
Wait, that's it.
Think
I thought of Smaug- only Smaug.
The trip through the mountain, the treasure room and the moment he awoke, and everything up to the point where I sent my spear into his heart.
Nothing else.
'Offer it to me', he'd said.
So I did - I imagined the memories being given to him, almost like a prayer, and that was enough.
Look. Here it is.
Not even a second later, Apollon's eyes widened as he stepped back.
"Using that reenactment of myth to land the finishing blow... you've likely elevated a mediocre weapon into a dragon-killing spear of some power." For the fourth time over, his voice changed again, so much so that I was getting hit by the emotional whiplash just from trying to keep up. "Impressive."
"Thank you?"
He didn't respond - but he didn't stop staring either.
I resisted the urge to fidget as he eyed me... I don't even know how to describe it properly - just that it was intense.
"Who are you, Daniel Winchester?"
The question didn't come out of the left field - The moment he opened his mouth again, I swear I just about saw it coming, but it still landed between us like a freaking anvil.
Or maybe a meteor.
We both knew exactly what he meant by it, too.
"You said you thought somebody made me to what, act against you?"
I take back what I said before - I've never picked my words more carefully than I did right then.
"I don't know anything about that. I grew up with my mom until she died, and then my uncle's family until we got separated."
I inhaled slowly when he didn't interrupt me.
Here goes nothing.
"When it comes to the supernatural part of this world, I'm the son of the Olympian god of the sun, and the student of Chiron. That's it."
There. The truth.
It had more holes in it than a block of Swiss cheese, sure, but it was technically true - and that was the best kind.
And the only kind I could give here.
Apollon took it in quietly, at first.
Then he smirked at me.
"Such a carefully worded answer."
My blood turned to ice.
Screw it, time to grab Sairaorg and Chiron and skip the hell out of here.
If I moved fast enough-!
"But I will accept it, for now."
...
...
...
"...Come again?"
"You heard me." He sighed and pinched his head, and there was this edge of nostalgia and something deeper to it that I just didn't get. "I've gone soft. 'Temis is going to be awful about this, I can just tell."
"Who now?"
Or at least that's what I wanted to say - it came out a lot more messy and garbled than that because my face had gone so slack you'd think it was suddenly made of silly putty.
He understood it anyway, because of course he did.
"My twin. Your aunt."
Artemis, the Goddess of the hunt.
My eye twitched.
"What does she have to do with this?"
"We'll see, I suppose."
More eye twitching.
"We will?"
I had no idea where this was going now.
"Indeed."
"... Can I get a little more than that?"
His smirk widened.
"Can you?"
I...
"Are you just messing with me for fun now?
...it took me a second to reflect and realize that I probably shouldn't have said that last part out loud, but by then it was too late.
For the first time since we'd met, Apollon tipped back his head and laughed, loud and hearty.
The sound was melodious and shifting in a way that reminded me of my magic incantations, like something had taken the idea of laughter and pasted it onto the regular sound to give it the mother of all extra kicks.
Even the air around us shifted a little because of it, and the sunlight seemed to brighten until everything was glinting in shades of warm gold, and felt like it too. When he finally turned that smile back at me, it was like I staring right into the sun all over again - only this time, it was the parts of it that I liked best.
"Oh, fun doesn't even begin to cover it."
He stepped forward until he was towering over me, but not threateningly.
Just there.
"You have my divinity in your veins, you train under Chiron, and you honor me with your spellwork and your feats." He grinned as I stared up at him, dumbfounded, because something about his words was different now and this wasn't actually going where I was starting to think it was, was it? "Killing a dragon at your age, and in this softer age as well? That just seals it."
Alarm bells should have started ringing back up in my head at how final that sounded, but I was still flapping my jaw in his general direction and trying to backtrack to a point where everything made sense again.
Which probably started yesterday and fell back from there, actually.
"Seals what?"
"This."
That was all the warning I got.
Before I could get another word in edge-wise, he reached forward and dropped his hand over my head again.
"Regardless of whoever or however you came to be, I claim you."
Instantly, the world changed.
The clouds parted, the air shuddered, and light lanced down from above and down my spine before it erupted out through the rest of me.
Holy Rhea, Mother of Zeus.
I stopped breathing and started tasting sunbursts and solar flares crackling at the back of my tongue.
"I acknowledge you as my own. Stand proud, Daniel Winchester."
Soft - that was the look he gave me this time.
Just soft.
"You are a true son of Apollon."
It was like I'd just been plugged into a socket and charged right up, and that was after guzzling down a six-pack of red-bull on one go and going back for seconds.
My senses sharpened. My blood quickened. Even my strength seemed to skyrocket until I felt like I could juggle skyscrapers and cause an earthquake with a step.
"A rush, isn't it?" Apollon's grin was infectious, and nothing like the polite interest he showed before. "Most of it will wear off soon, and you'll get used to what doesn't."
"Get used to-?"
I cut myself off and just stared.
Apollon waited patiently.
And I...
What did he even expect me to say?
No, seriously, what?
Everything was moving blindingly fast - and that was before I got, what?
Adopted?
By a version of my dad who technically was and technically wasn't.
I wanted to start laughing, but I'm pretty sure someone would be tempted to put me in a straightjacket if it came out as hysterical around the edges as I was feeling.
"...What am I supposed to say now?"
He patted my head gently, ruffling my hair and looking more pleased than I'd seen him since all of all this started.
Even the gesture was warm - and I'm not just talking about temperature.
"Nothing right this second. We'll have time for more words later."
And then he snapped his fingers, and we vanished in a seamless teleportation.
"Chiron."
Apollon's tone was different now - not as measured, a lot warmer, and I think I saw Chiron relax a little at the sound of it.
"My lord."
"We'll speak soon. Until then, my son remains in your care."
Nobody missed the way he stressed that one word, even if Chiron didn't even flinch.
"Of course. He is my student."
"Good." Then he finally turned to Sairaorg, and his expression cooled several degrees. "Devil."
My friend stiffened.
Heck, I stiffened too.
"... Lord Apollon?"
"You are also Chiron's student. A choice I would not have made myself if it were up to my say in the end." His eyes narrowed, flickering to an impassive Chiron and back to Sairaorg. "But you have proved your worth to my son. Continue to do so."
Or else.
He didn't say it, but everybody heard it loud and clear.
Sai pursed his lips and nodder firmly.
"I would have done that anyway."
"He's my friend," I added, finally feeling like I could speak again. I didn't like the way he Apollon was eyeing him, either - like he was looking for an excuse to do something messy. "Fought a dragon together and everything."
Chiron twitched.
Had Sai not told him?
I glanced at my friend, and then I winced at his sheepish look.
Guess not.
"We shall see."
Apollon didn't spare him another look after that.
Instead, he turned back to me and tossed something my way with a lazy underhand throw, and my hand shot up to catch it on reflex before I even registered the blue glint.
It was the sapphire from before.
"A small gift. You haven't begun dabbling in divination and far-sight, have you?" He nodded towards it when I shook my head a little dumbly. "Use it a focus, and you'll be off to a good start."
"...Thank you?"
Yeah, I was just rolling with it at this point. I can process it later.
"One more thing."
He gestured, and my spear reappeared in his grip.
"A weapon like this deserves a proper title."
The spear pulsed with an orange flare of light, like it was agreeing with him.
Or maybe it was just reacting to the absurd power he had coursing through him even at rest.
Dealer's choice.
"See that you don't leave it unnamed."
"Yes sir."
He frowned, and for a second I thought I'd said something wrong.
The he leaned forward and-
And-
...
I blinked again.
My skin stung.
"Did you just flick my forehead?"
Yeah, I sounded incredulous.
Sue me.
"I did."
"Why?"
"Consider it a lesson. I'm your father. Unless I tell you otherwise, don't be so formal." He nodded seriously. "It's depressing."
...
'"You're messing with me again, aren't you?"
His lips twitched again, and he winked at me.
He actually winked.
"I'll be watching."
Then the world glitched, and he vanished on the spot. The extra lighting disappeared with him, and the lingering presence retreated like it was never there at all.
My spear was left hovering there in the air, suspended under a twisting power that didn't cut off until I reached out and grabbed it myself, and Chiron trotted up to stand next to me as I did.
"You handled that quite well"
"He claimed me."
My brain was still screeching in static for that.
"He did."
"Why?"
I couldn't have been more suspicious if I actively tried.
Chiron just shrugged when I told him as much, but even I could tell he was subtly relieved.
"Because he wanted to."
Real helpful, that.
Except... maybe it was?
I thought about that for a second, and the way Apollon seemed so warm about it.
I claim you.
...
I'm your father
...
You know what?
Fine.
The messy truths were a problem for future me to deal with.
I dropped down to the floor and laid out on my back, staring up at the ceiling as I settled into being done with everything.
"Okay."
"We'll have to up your studies in diplomacy and etiquette. Now that you are an acknowledged demigod in this era, you'll have to expect certain rules of conduct when you have dealings within or outside of our pantheon."
"Great."
"That means more written work."
"Sounds good."
"And pop-quizzes."
"Fantastic."
"..."
"..."
"You're not listening to a word I'm saying, are you?"
"Oh, no," I shook my head. "I'm hearing you just fine. I'm just so burned out by today that I've currently got the emotional capacity of a teaspoon left in me. Please try again later"
Anytime starting next year would be good, really.
"Oh, I will." He patted my shoulder firmly. "Beginning with this dragon you spoke of."
...
"Sai?"
"Don't look at me, I wasn't going to tell him without you there too!"
I scowled as he dropped down next to me.
"I hate you."
He grinned.
"No you don't."
Then we both yelped as Chiron's staff cracked down on both our heads in quick succession.
"I'm sorry, did I give you the impression that you had time?" Our teacher smiled down at us with all the happiness of a man already cooking up new and terrifying ways to make us regret ever being born. "Start talking. Now."
We both looked at each other and groaned.
Man, what a crappy day.
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.
His arms were folded behind his back and his dress shoes clicked off the ground as he sauntered up to us, blue eyes focused on me with this flat, inescapable interest, and I...
Well.
I'm going to level with you here - the second I processed who he was, I kind of started screaming internally.
A lot.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!"
Something like that, yeah.
What?
Monsters I could handle.
Dragons were a bit much, but a win was a win, and I had one of those in the bag already.
But Gods?
And this one, in particular, with all the messy and convoluted context behind everything?
Nope. Hard pass.
His just being in the room was overwhelming in every sense of the word - and acknowledging that didn't help, because he was still coming closer, and there was no eject button on this flaming train wreck of a confrontation waiting to happen.
My lizard brain broke all the speed limits as it went from zero to a thousand miles in under a second and flailing all the way, and I was honestly debating the pros and cons of yanking Sairaorg and switching worlds again right then and there on sheer instinct - until a hand caught my shoulder and startled me so badly that I nearly jumped three feet out of my skin and back before I realized who it was.
I hadn't even heard Chiron move - or anything really, what with how loud my heartbeat was thundering in my ears, but he was suddenly right there and gently but firmly pushing me back half a step behind him.
I didn't argue - I was just happy that I could suddenly breathe again as Apollon's gaze flickered from him to me.
"Forgive my student's loss for words, Lord Apollon," Chiron said politely, and something about the way he said it made me ease up the tiniest bit, and the blaring sirens in my head began to peter out a little. "He is quick-witted and quicker on his feet where it counts, but even the greatest mortals can find themselves losing their stride when graced with the presence of a god."
Apollon's brow rose an inch.
"Oh, is that what it is?"
"Indeed. I'll have to coach him through the proper conduct for such occasions thoroughly." Chiron didn't miss a beat. "After you've taken your leave, of course."
"That would be wise indeed." Apollon's polite smile quirked up a little in a way that seemed to scream 'I know what you're doing, and I know that you know that I know, but I'm going to let it slide anyway' "I suppose we should get on with it, then, so as to not waste any more time."
Then he turned back to me, and I... didn't flinch under those eerily familiar eyes, but just barely.
Chiron's presence was grounding enough that I didn't feel one wrong word or twitch away from being zapped into a dust cloud and scattered to the winds.
"I would have words with your student." Apollon tilted his head, silently gesturing to the doorway behind us. "Let's take a walk."
And then he just... strode past us without another word, stepping in between me and Sairaorg like he didn't have a care in the world.
Which I guess he didn't - not here anyway.
The second he stepped out of the room, I counted to three under my breath and whirled to Chiron, trying to keep my voice down and level before I started yelling.
"What I do-?"
"You go take a walk."
I opened my mouth to protest - and probably to say something rude, because what the hell even-?
"Don't waste time."
Chiron's fingers snapped, and the air around us changed - a split-second spell that prevented outsiders from listening in as he fixed me with this grave, might-as-well-have-been-carved-from-stone kind of look.
"I'm here, and this is my home. No harm will come to you while I draw breath." He said, and then he pointed out the door. "This was always likely to happen at some point, on some day. Apollon is rightfully intimidating, but you only need to keep your head clear, be polite, and answer his questions to his satisfaction."
Alright, that sounded like a good plan - except for the Texas-sized crater of a hole in it.
"But I can't tell him about who I am and where I come from." I took a quick breath, and glanced at Sairaorg - who looked about as cool with this as I did - before panning right back to Chiron."You told me never to tell anyone else that yourself."
And only a few hours ago at that - seriously, what even was today!?
"Yes, I did, and no, you can't. But the truth is still the truth even if phrased in exactly the right way to mislead." Chiron pushed me forward a couple of steps. "Now go - before he gets impatient."
Damn it.
I couldn't argue - Chiron had my back, and this was happening one way or the other.
In hindsight, the fact that it hadn't happened beforehand was a big deal all on its own, but I wasn't thinking about that right now.
What else was I even supposed to say here?
I turned back to Sairaorg, and the look on his face was what you'd get if you tried to plaster a smile onto a grimace and came out with something new-fangled and right smack dab in between.
"Good luck." Then he punched his palm and grinned at me, even if it came out stiffer than it ever looked. "Call me if you need backup."
... He totally would, wouldn't he?
Even though it'd be complete suicide.
For some reason, that bit of crazy stupidity fit right in our ballpark, and it made me smile through the panic.
Even Chiron chuckled faintly, murmuring things under his breath that were probably totally unflattering and still managed to sounds found anyway.
"Moron."
"Takes one to know one. Now go!"
And I did just that, darting after the god who should never be kept waiting if you knew what was good for you.
Then again, that was just about every god, really, but the point still counts.
Apollon was waiting with back to me just outside the house, hair glinting in the afternoon sun as the breeze ruffled it. He didn't do much more than angle his head my way as I stopped just half a foot away from him.
"Come. Walk with me."
And then he started making his way down the garden without looking back at me once.
I didn't exactly have any other option than to follow along behind him as we crossed the garden, stepping past the flower beads and beginning to tread up the grassy path that rounded the estate, trying not to stare too hard at him out of the corner of my vision.
The weird thing was, that the silence we started with wasn't unbearable.
Tense, sure, but after that first jolt of pure 'holy hell, I'm in trouble' flavored shock passed through my system, the air between us didn't feel dangerous.
Much.
"Tell me," Apollon began at last, the pace of his steps not changing one bit and with a conversational tone as he looked ahead and past the tree line. "Has Chiron begun teaching you of the other divine factions of the world?"
... That's not what I expected him to start with.
"Yes," I said, then I swallowed and added a quick "Sir."
Look, I can snap and snark all day and then some whenever I wanted to, but even I could tell when it was time to shape up and be real nice and polite when I had to.
"Good. Tell me what you've learned of the Norse pantheon and their Ragnarök."
...
Okay, really not what I expected him to start with.
I almost asked why, before a shrill voice in my head smacked whoever it was behind the wheel out of the way and pumped the brakes hard.
"Ragnarök is the prophecized apocalypse and end of the Norse aspect of the World," I said instead, and I got a little more comfortable when he didn't interrupt or even glance my way. "A series of escalating skirmishes and events that all lead up to a deciding battle between the Æsir, the jötnar, and everything in between and ends with the King of Muspelheim, Surtr, burning what's left of the other realms and the World Tree Yggdrasil to cinders before it all finally sinks into the primordial sea."
It's one of the scarier 'end of the world' type prophecies in mythology, where just about everything that can go wrong does - like a line of increasingly terrible dominoes falling one after the other until the last one finally topples onto a great big red button and blows everything right to kingdom come.
Sure, the world supposedly gets reborn after everything is said and done - a fresh, clean slate all around, but I don't think that's going to be much of a mood-lifter for anyone stuck at ground zero when it all eventually goes down.
"That's right." Apollon nodded, and for a second, I thought I heard approval in his voice before it went flat again. "Simplified, and lacking in multiple contexts, but an acceptable answer for a beginner. Now let me tell you a story."
We crossed past our training fields and began to loop around it as he spoke.
"Some time ago, the cycle of Ragnarök that the Norse were so dearly bound to was suspected to have halted." I blinked, and Apollon's lips quirked up a little. "Yes, it is interesting, isn't it?"
"Does that mean there's no more apocalypse waiting for them?"
I blurted out the question before I could stop myself, but he didn't acknowledge the interruption and only shook his head instead.
"Not quite. For a number of reasons - some proven and some confined to theory - the cyclical wheel of their cosmology has seemingly stopped spinning. Prophecized events destined to occur still have the potential to take place as foretold, but they are no longer in motion of their own momentum. Ragnarök is still inevitable, the immutable and inescapable beast waiting at the end of their road, but it is no longer actively approaching like a storm closing in from the horizon."
I slowly nodded.
That made sense.
The last chapter in the book was still exactly what and where it was supposed to be, but suddenly there were a whole bunch of empty pages in between here and there and nobody knew how many.
"As it turned out, several parties within the Norse who'd seemingly escaped the headsmen's axe decided they quite enjoyed living a life without waiting for the blade to drop down from above, and sought to ensure that that state of affairs was permanent." Apollon's expression changed here, and the faint smile turned a lot more wry like he was remembering an old inside joke and trying not to laugh. "So they did what many a fool has done to escape the games of fate. Something daring, ambitious, and in many ways almost overwhelmingly stupid."
I blinked.
"They stole a fragment of Surtr's essence." My jaw dropped, and he noticed. "As I said, for a group that wanted to ensure their long-term survival, they put forth a remarkably impressive display of suicidal idiocy."
I'll say - Surtr was basically a living armageddon even when he was just existing and not acting in his role in the actual armageddon.
There's poking a sleeping dragon, and then there was whacking a sentient hydrogen bomb with a war hammer and somehow expecting things to end well for you - And I would know, because I basically just finished doing the first thing and still came out on top with a souvenir to prove it.
"Regardless of the thought process behind the affair, they succeeded in making off with their prize, and used it to create a clone of Surtr."
"..."
"..."
Did I just hear that right?
"A clone?"
"A clone," Apollon confirmed, and he waved it off so easily you'd think he was talking about the weather. "What the goal behind its inception was, few can say with any certainty, but the most common belief is that it was created with the hopes that it would either grow to match its predecessor in power or perhaps usurp and siphon his into itself. A way to match the king of the fire giants or drive him into irrelevancy and defeat come Ragnarök."
"And Surtr found out about this?"
I tried to think of what that would have looked like, but all I was getting through the image in my head was enough fire to make Smaug's light show look like a matchstick in comparison.
"There's no way to know for sure, but I'm told he laughed. Once." Apollon let out a sound that might've been a chuckle as I nearly missed a step. "And why should he have done anything else? The counterfeit they staked their half-baked ambitions on turned out to be just that. A cheap imitation that didn't come close to matching the original in power and potential. When they realized this, they washed their hands of their creation, their so-called Surtr Second, and cast it out into the wilds hoping that it would disappear and that the world would simply forget about their blunder. The clone's feelings on the matter were, of course, irrelevant."
...Wow.
"That's scummy."
"And costly." He agreed. "The clone wandered the world for some time, until he was approached and willingly folded into the Abrahamic Devil Faction. The Norse tried to protest this when they realized what their haste had cost them, but they had no room to stand on after they deliberately exiled their creation, and the Devils gained a weapon with enough power to fight minor gods and the drive to do so happily for the acceptance they gave it. Or him, I suppose."
He added the last part in almost as an afterthought, but I could already tell he'd moved on past it.
What I couldn't figure out was what the point of telling me this was.
"You're wondering what this has to do with you?" The question must have shown on my face or something, because he nodded in a way that was more descisive than reassuring. "The reasoning behind the debacle I've just told you off is not quite unique, but the circumstances that led to the frankly disastrous end result it spawned were irregular - exceptionally rare, even. Messy enough that I would have never expected a repeat performance from any faction I could name off the top of my head for the foreseeable future, and certainly not own - or so I thought."
Finally, he stopped walking and turned to face me fully.
I tried not to freeze up like a deer in headlights as our eyes met again, I really did, but if wishes were horses beggars would ride, and all the rest of that noise.
"Then I found a child some eight months ago now on an otherwise ordinary night, grievously wounded and absolutely dripping in my divinity, and I found myself reconsidering that opinion."
For a moment, the words didn't quite register - They buffered and refused to lock into place with the rest of the pieces in my head.
Then they did, and I just barely managed to inhale as everything up to and including my spine froze solid in sheer shock.
Eight months ago.
The night I ended up in this world.
"You saw-?"
"Do you take me for a fool?" I abruptly swallowed down the whisper as his brow rose. A faint aura of shimmering sunlight flared out over the outline of his figure before it dimmed again, just as quickly. "Did you think I wouldn't have noticed a demigod - seemingly mine - simply appearing in what is effectively my own backyard?"
Crap.
Crap, crap, crap.
I don't think he could have thrown me for a worse loop if he'd physically picked me up and pitched over the horizon.
"You've known about me all this time."
"From the very first day."
CRAP.
I wasn't starting to panic again because of what he was saying - I was starting to panic again because I had no idea what I was supposed to say to it.
He didn't seem angry - Just steady.
Then I started thinking about it some more, and something hit me.
"Wait, it was Chiron that found me," I said, the pieces not quite adding up anymore. "It was Chiron that healed me."
"Yes, it was." Apollon agreed. "After I layered my blessing over you to keep you alive and free of pain, and subtly draw his attention and guide him to you."
My eyes widened.
"What?"
Why?
"I did so because, in those first few hours, I was furious." He said, and the truth was so heavy coming off of him you could almost feel it. I nearly flinched back on instinct alone. "I have not sired a demigod in centuries, and there you were - alive, if only just, and inarguably my own. I thought at first that it was a trick or plot against me. An attempt to undermine or weaken my position, or perhaps even to supplant some of my power."
I started, because that was a dangerous line of thought right there.
As in the 'terrible for my future life expectancy' kind of dangerous.
"I'm not-"
He raised a hand and cut me off.
"I am aware, now. Then, however, I chose to guide Chiron to you and allowed him to finish healing you without revealing myself because I needed him to take responsibility for you of his own accord. I stood off to the side and let him welcome you into his home without interference because I needed you kept somewhere where I knew where to find you while I investigated your origins to see who - or what - exactly you were supposed to be, and at whose hand you came to exist, because it was certainly not at my own."
That's...
"Did Chiron know?"
Apollon blinked, languid and curiously like he was surprised that that was my first question.
I was a little surprised too, honestly.
"He did not, before today. Your teacher is no fool, so I imagine he must've at least suspected that there might've been something a touch too convenient about the way he just so happened to stumble on to you moments before your 'death'-"
I didn't shudder at that, but it was a close call. Remembering that part of that night was just nasty.
"-but he had no knowledge of my plan at all, because he likely wouldn't have kept it to himself."
Apollon smiled in that same wry way from before.
"Chiron so despises the idea of lying to his students or the people that hold his confidence. It makes him both trustworthy and annoyingly difficult to work with at times."
I nodded slowly.
That was good.
I didn't think Chiron would have lied to me anyway, but it was still nice to hear it firsthand.
And now since that was out of the way-
"Why not just ask me?"
Not that I minded, because having him show up that early on would have scared the life out of me for sure, but it sounded like he'd gone out of his way to make things way harder for himself than they should have been when he could have just interrogated me from the start.
"If you were what I thought you were, the chances that your creators would have left you with any knowledge worth looking into was as likely as Dionysus choosing to swear a vow of sobriety." Apollon snorted at the thought and shook his head. "And as I've already said, I was angry. Very, very angry. You wouldn't have enjoyed my questioning."
I stepped back before I even knew I was doing it, and I almost twitched for my spear before I remembered how useless that would be.
"After a few months, I found nothing - and I looked extensively." Maybe he was pretending not to see how nervous I was - or maybe he just didn't care, but strangely, I didn't think that was it. "I even investigated the involvement of the Underworld - that hellhound pup I found in your shadow didn't help my suspicions any, and the only reason I didn't investigate the devil-"
His voice shifted imperceptibly and back as he brought up Sairaorg.
"-was because he'd come for Chiron's tutelage and had no apparent attachment to you. Then, at least."
The distinction sounded downright grudging for a second there.
"Without any more to go on, I simply continued to watch."
"Watch?" I repeated, trying to keep up. Then my brows rose "You were watching me?"
Apollon didn't answer.
Instead, he raised his hand again, palm-up first.
Between one blink and the next, a glimmering sapphire the size of a large egg appeared in his grip, almost perfectly round and cut with so many flat faces that it sparkled like a disco bowl in the sunlight.
His eyes flared with light, and the sapphire followed suit and began to spill out refracting beams like an old-school projector kicking into high gear.
Slowly, wherever the beams hit, ghostly images began to play out in full, life-like size, and my breath hitched.
Because I recognized them.
Me and Sairaorg at our very first spar.
The two of us fighting the giant scorpion in its lair.
My archery classes with Chiron.
The moment I first learned to fly.
A whole bunch of other things, big and small
"You saw all of that?"
"I did," Apollon said quietly. "When you invoke my name in thaumaturgy, you resonate with my divinity and draw on aspects of my domains. Once, that'd be nothing more than white noise, but in this era, it's a sensation I have not experienced in...quite some time."
... He just said he hadn't had a demigod child in centuries, hadn't he?
Before I could think of that too much, he turned to glance over my shoulder and frowned.
"What is that spear?"
I blinked when he held out his free hand, and it vanished from its sling and reappeared in his grip in a flash of light.
"What sharp anger." He tutted, eyeing the red-gold blade before he looked back up at me questioningly "Where did you get this?"
"It's mine. I killed a dragon with it."
"..."
"..."
Okay, I may have a problem with blurting stuff out.
"Did you now?"
Damn it, now he was looking at me funny again.
What was it that Chiron said?
The truth is still the truth even if phrased in exactly the right way to mislead
"We messed up when we were teleporting." I explained hastily, and I don't think I've ever picked my words more carefully in my entire life "We ended up somewhere outside of its lair - this place called the Lonely Mountain, and we ended up exploring and waking it up. Things happened, stuff went down, and we ended up fighting and killing it."
Apollon took that in slowly, before he stabbed it into the ground and took a step towards me.
"Uh-"
And then his hand was on top of my head, and I went still.
Dead still.
"Think of the memory of your battle." He instructed, in the same way people did when they were ordering you and knew you were going to listen one way or the other. "Offer it to me."
...
He was going to read my memories or something, wasn't he?
Suddenly, his hand felt like it weighed a million tons.
I almost paled and went back to the internal screaming before I bit the inside of my cheek and clenched my fists hard enough that my knuckles went numb.
Right, think fast. What do I-?
Wait, that's it.
Think
I thought of Smaug- only Smaug.
The trip through the mountain, the treasure room and the moment he awoke, and everything up to the point where I sent my spear into his heart.
Nothing else.
'Offer it to me', he'd said.
So I did - I imagined the memories being given to him, almost like a prayer, and that was enough.
Look. Here it is.
Not even a second later, Apollon's eyes widened as he stepped back.
"Using that reenactment of myth to land the finishing blow... you've likely elevated a mediocre weapon into a dragon-killing spear of some power." For the fourth time over, his voice changed again, so much so that I was getting hit by the emotional whiplash just from trying to keep up. "Impressive."
"Thank you?"
He didn't respond - but he didn't stop staring either.
I resisted the urge to fidget as he eyed me... I don't even know how to describe it properly - just that it was intense.
"Who are you, Daniel Winchester?"
The question didn't come out of the left field - The moment he opened his mouth again, I swear I just about saw it coming, but it still landed between us like a freaking anvil.
Or maybe a meteor.
We both knew exactly what he meant by it, too.
"You said you thought somebody made me to what, act against you?"
I take back what I said before - I've never picked my words more carefully than I did right then.
"I don't know anything about that. I grew up with my mom until she died, and then my uncle's family until we got separated."
I inhaled slowly when he didn't interrupt me.
Here goes nothing.
"When it comes to the supernatural part of this world, I'm the son of the Olympian god of the sun, and the student of Chiron. That's it."
There. The truth.
It had more holes in it than a block of Swiss cheese, sure, but it was technically true - and that was the best kind.
And the only kind I could give here.
Apollon took it in quietly, at first.
Then he smirked at me.
"Such a carefully worded answer."
My blood turned to ice.
Screw it, time to grab Sairaorg and Chiron and skip the hell out of here.
If I moved fast enough-!
"But I will accept it, for now."
...
...
...
"...Come again?"
"You heard me." He sighed and pinched his head, and there was this edge of nostalgia and something deeper to it that I just didn't get. "I've gone soft. 'Temis is going to be awful about this, I can just tell."
"Who now?"
Or at least that's what I wanted to say - it came out a lot more messy and garbled than that because my face had gone so slack you'd think it was suddenly made of silly putty.
He understood it anyway, because of course he did.
"My twin. Your aunt."
Artemis, the Goddess of the hunt.
My eye twitched.
"What does she have to do with this?"
"We'll see, I suppose."
More eye twitching.
"We will?"
I had no idea where this was going now.
"Indeed."
"... Can I get a little more than that?"
His smirk widened.
"Can you?"
I...
"Are you just messing with me for fun now?
...it took me a second to reflect and realize that I probably shouldn't have said that last part out loud, but by then it was too late.
For the first time since we'd met, Apollon tipped back his head and laughed, loud and hearty.
The sound was melodious and shifting in a way that reminded me of my magic incantations, like something had taken the idea of laughter and pasted it onto the regular sound to give it the mother of all extra kicks.
Even the air around us shifted a little because of it, and the sunlight seemed to brighten until everything was glinting in shades of warm gold, and felt like it too. When he finally turned that smile back at me, it was like I staring right into the sun all over again - only this time, it was the parts of it that I liked best.
"Oh, fun doesn't even begin to cover it."
He stepped forward until he was towering over me, but not threateningly.
Just there.
"You have my divinity in your veins, you train under Chiron, and you honor me with your spellwork and your feats." He grinned as I stared up at him, dumbfounded, because something about his words was different now and this wasn't actually going where I was starting to think it was, was it? "Killing a dragon at your age, and in this softer age as well? That just seals it."
Alarm bells should have started ringing back up in my head at how final that sounded, but I was still flapping my jaw in his general direction and trying to backtrack to a point where everything made sense again.
Which probably started yesterday and fell back from there, actually.
"Seals what?"
"This."
That was all the warning I got.
Before I could get another word in edge-wise, he reached forward and dropped his hand over my head again.
"Regardless of whoever or however you came to be, I claim you."
Instantly, the world changed.
The clouds parted, the air shuddered, and light lanced down from above and down my spine before it erupted out through the rest of me.
Holy Rhea, Mother of Zeus.
I stopped breathing and started tasting sunbursts and solar flares crackling at the back of my tongue.
"I acknowledge you as my own. Stand proud, Daniel Winchester."
Soft - that was the look he gave me this time.
Just soft.
"You are a true son of Apollon."
It was like I'd just been plugged into a socket and charged right up, and that was after guzzling down a six-pack of red-bull on one go and going back for seconds.
My senses sharpened. My blood quickened. Even my strength seemed to skyrocket until I felt like I could juggle skyscrapers and cause an earthquake with a step.
"A rush, isn't it?" Apollon's grin was infectious, and nothing like the polite interest he showed before. "Most of it will wear off soon, and you'll get used to what doesn't."
"Get used to-?"
I cut myself off and just stared.
Apollon waited patiently.
And I...
What did he even expect me to say?
No, seriously, what?
Everything was moving blindingly fast - and that was before I got, what?
Adopted?
By a version of my dad who technically was and technically wasn't.
I wanted to start laughing, but I'm pretty sure someone would be tempted to put me in a straightjacket if it came out as hysterical around the edges as I was feeling.
"...What am I supposed to say now?"
He patted my head gently, ruffling my hair and looking more pleased than I'd seen him since all of all this started.
Even the gesture was warm - and I'm not just talking about temperature.
"Nothing right this second. We'll have time for more words later."
And then he snapped his fingers, and we vanished in a seamless teleportation.
...
We reappeared right in front of Chiron and Sairoarg - my teacher smiled, and Sai looked like he would have been happy to tackle me on the spot if it wasn't for the god standing right next to me."Chiron."
Apollon's tone was different now - not as measured, a lot warmer, and I think I saw Chiron relax a little at the sound of it.
"My lord."
"We'll speak soon. Until then, my son remains in your care."
Nobody missed the way he stressed that one word, even if Chiron didn't even flinch.
"Of course. He is my student."
"Good." Then he finally turned to Sairaorg, and his expression cooled several degrees. "Devil."
My friend stiffened.
Heck, I stiffened too.
"... Lord Apollon?"
"You are also Chiron's student. A choice I would not have made myself if it were up to my say in the end." His eyes narrowed, flickering to an impassive Chiron and back to Sairaorg. "But you have proved your worth to my son. Continue to do so."
Or else.
He didn't say it, but everybody heard it loud and clear.
Sai pursed his lips and nodder firmly.
"I would have done that anyway."
"He's my friend," I added, finally feeling like I could speak again. I didn't like the way he Apollon was eyeing him, either - like he was looking for an excuse to do something messy. "Fought a dragon together and everything."
Chiron twitched.
Had Sai not told him?
I glanced at my friend, and then I winced at his sheepish look.
Guess not.
"We shall see."
Apollon didn't spare him another look after that.
Instead, he turned back to me and tossed something my way with a lazy underhand throw, and my hand shot up to catch it on reflex before I even registered the blue glint.
It was the sapphire from before.
"A small gift. You haven't begun dabbling in divination and far-sight, have you?" He nodded towards it when I shook my head a little dumbly. "Use it a focus, and you'll be off to a good start."
"...Thank you?"
Yeah, I was just rolling with it at this point. I can process it later.
"One more thing."
He gestured, and my spear reappeared in his grip.
"A weapon like this deserves a proper title."
The spear pulsed with an orange flare of light, like it was agreeing with him.
Or maybe it was just reacting to the absurd power he had coursing through him even at rest.
Dealer's choice.
"See that you don't leave it unnamed."
"Yes sir."
He frowned, and for a second I thought I'd said something wrong.
The he leaned forward and-
And-
...
I blinked again.
My skin stung.
"Did you just flick my forehead?"
Yeah, I sounded incredulous.
Sue me.
"I did."
"Why?"
"Consider it a lesson. I'm your father. Unless I tell you otherwise, don't be so formal." He nodded seriously. "It's depressing."
...
'"You're messing with me again, aren't you?"
His lips twitched again, and he winked at me.
He actually winked.
"I'll be watching."
Then the world glitched, and he vanished on the spot. The extra lighting disappeared with him, and the lingering presence retreated like it was never there at all.
My spear was left hovering there in the air, suspended under a twisting power that didn't cut off until I reached out and grabbed it myself, and Chiron trotted up to stand next to me as I did.
"You handled that quite well"
"He claimed me."
My brain was still screeching in static for that.
"He did."
"Why?"
I couldn't have been more suspicious if I actively tried.
Chiron just shrugged when I told him as much, but even I could tell he was subtly relieved.
"Because he wanted to."
Real helpful, that.
Except... maybe it was?
I thought about that for a second, and the way Apollon seemed so warm about it.
I claim you.
...
I'm your father
...
You know what?
Fine.
The messy truths were a problem for future me to deal with.
I dropped down to the floor and laid out on my back, staring up at the ceiling as I settled into being done with everything.
"Okay."
"We'll have to up your studies in diplomacy and etiquette. Now that you are an acknowledged demigod in this era, you'll have to expect certain rules of conduct when you have dealings within or outside of our pantheon."
"Great."
"That means more written work."
"Sounds good."
"And pop-quizzes."
"Fantastic."
"..."
"..."
"You're not listening to a word I'm saying, are you?"
"Oh, no," I shook my head. "I'm hearing you just fine. I'm just so burned out by today that I've currently got the emotional capacity of a teaspoon left in me. Please try again later"
Anytime starting next year would be good, really.
"Oh, I will." He patted my shoulder firmly. "Beginning with this dragon you spoke of."
...
"Sai?"
"Don't look at me, I wasn't going to tell him without you there too!"
I scowled as he dropped down next to me.
"I hate you."
He grinned.
"No you don't."
Then we both yelped as Chiron's staff cracked down on both our heads in quick succession.
"I'm sorry, did I give you the impression that you had time?" Our teacher smiled down at us with all the happiness of a man already cooking up new and terrifying ways to make us regret ever being born. "Start talking. Now."
We both looked at each other and groaned.
Man, what a crappy day.
...
Chiron in the background, getting ready to throw hands to protect his students if Apollon starts messing around:
View: https://imgur.com/mClfw1h
View: https://imgur.com/5Z8Fbz3
Dan being done with this day:
View: https://imgur.com/dwBR9hx
Chiron in the background, getting ready to throw hands to protect his students if Apollon starts messing around:
View: https://imgur.com/mClfw1h
View: https://imgur.com/5Z8Fbz3
Dan being done with this day:
View: https://imgur.com/dwBR9hx
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.
Last edited:
Quick distract chiron with a teleport to smaug so you can be a loot goblin. Also his actual apollo dad is gonna be confused as hell when he goes back
- Location
- New Zealand
I'm picturing pj Apollo as a mixture of "Bwuh?" and teamfourstars freezer "I'm absolutely livid."
On the one hand, "WHO STOLE HIS KID" on the other hand, "Huh, feels like me".
On the one hand, "WHO STOLE HIS KID" on the other hand, "Huh, feels like me".
- Location
- United States
AND another little sister.
