by Zachary Howe
Apollo sighed. “Well, I cannot say that I know for sure that it was Hermes, but I at least suspect. He and I have always been closely related, our fates intertwined. I was there at his birth after all. He was a troublemaker from the very first, and I have always tried to stomp it out, but I am sure what he has done was meant to protect you. I have tried to communicate with him, help him in this endeavor, but he has refused me. Still, I think you must thank him for your life.”
“Why didn’t you just come to me like you did with Chiron? Talk to me through your little green window?”
“He was shielding you from me. I had to get you away from him. He does not trust me, but he is wrong not to . . . it was not my fault.” Apollo looked away. Gordie waited to hear what had happened between him and Chiron, but was not rewarded.
“So, you brought me here to find out what exactly is going on, is that right?”
“More or less.” Apollo looked back out at southern Europe. “But I understand the crux of the issue: You are a descendant of Heracles and my father has tried to kill you . . . but why?”
“There was some kind of prophecy that said a descendant of Hercules would overthrow him.” Gordie shrugged while trying to cool his head over the cavalier attitude towards his attempted assassination, especially as it had resulted in his father’s death.
“No such thing could exist.” Apollo turned to look at him with an eyebrow raised. “Prophecies are made by the oracle—my oracle. If there were such a prophecy I would be the first to know.”
“Well, it does!” Gordie’s voice rose. “The Fates showed me! In their little weaving thingy.” He waved his hands in front of him in a motion that he thought captured the essence of weaving at a loom. Then Gordie told Apollo all about his interaction with the Fates, his convention with Hades, and Zeus’s plan to reclaim power, and his training under Chiron—the last of which Apollo was already aware. Apollo looked back out, the lines in his forehead doubling as he did so.
“So, it is no prophecy, but his fate. Then it truly does mean the end of Olympus.” He stood in silence for a minute. Gordie watched him tentatively. He was watching someone who had just been told of the end of his race, and this end would come by the hands of Gordie himself. He steeled himself for backlash, or hostility, not knowing exactly what to expect.
“My father,” Apollo paused, “has become a monster—has been, for quite some time. At the beginning of his reign he was merciful and just, but he became drunk with power, as cliché as it seems. For too long did he torment humans for his own pleasure . . . Yes, I see now that his power truly has faded, but he has been provoked by your arrival into this world, and it seems he is preparing to war against the humans.” He continued to stare out.
“Yeah.” Gordie backed away a few feet, his whole body tensed as he shifted into a ready position. “So the question is . . . whose side are you on?”
Apollo turned around to see Gordie in his fighting stance and waved a hand as he shook his head. “I have already told you, Gordon, I will not fight you. My father is a tyrant and he must be stopped. The time of the Olympians is at an end. My time is at an end.” He looked exhausted as he said this, and Gordie relaxed, feeling a sliver of pity.
“So, what do you plan to do about it? How can we stop him?”
“That is complicated. For now he is trapped on Olympus just as I am trapped here, but I am sure he will be working against those boundaries. Hermes is playing a dangerous game, especially if he is feeding our father false information. It is only a matter of time before he discovers Hermes’s deception and forces him to unlock the borders. If only I could convince Hermes to accept my help, but he is too stubborn.” Apollo pounded a fist into his palm, and Gordie was relieved to see that he was capable of some emotion other than despair.
“The Fates said that I’m the only one who can stop him, but in order to do that, I have to complete the tasks.” Gordie’s heart started racing. He looked down at his hands and felt the strength coursing through him. He was excited by the prospect of another task and acquiring more power, and now he was close. It was a physiological reaction as much as mental: his body was excited to become more powerful. He looked up at Apollo and stiffened, raising his head and standing to his full height. The words came to him as if they had always been on the tip of his tongue.
“Apollo,” he almost bellowed the name, and Apollo looked taken aback, “I, Gordon Leonhart, demand the opportunity to prove my worth!”
Gordie had not consciously decided to demand Apollo’s task, but felt inexorably compelled to say the oath at that moment. Just as had happened between he and Hades, a cluster of ethereal silver strands exploded away from Gordie’s chest and wrapped around Apollo before they came streaking back towards the speaker, wrapping him in the same manner. In another instant, the ghostly strings were gone, but the god remained frozen in place. His eyes clouded over with a smoky green color, extinguishing any sign of iris or pupil—they looked like miniature versions of the portal through which Gordie had arrived.
Apollo stood rigidly for a moment, and then his mouth opened to deliver a thunderous message. “Gordon Leonhart,” Gordie’s eardrums pounded, but he watched with fascination, “I, Apollo, God of the Sun, command you to find my sister, Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt,” Apollo’s sonorous voice paused so long that the reverberating echoes nearly died away before he added, “and convince her to forgive me.” The command had resonated throughout the chamber with the force of a bullhorn, but the last piece about forgiveness was pierced by a deep sadness that made the booming tone waver.
Gordie watched Apollo as he shuddered and became unfrozen, then sidled backward looking shell-shocked. He placed his hand on one of the columns for support. A tear had formed in the corner of his eye; it quivered until it fell over the lower lid and rolled down his cheek. He stared at Gordie with wide-eyes and open-mouth.
“I-I . . .” he panted. Gordie, meanwhile, was feeling a sense of extreme disappointment. With his blood up, he had been envisioning great challenges of fighting monsters or moving mountains. But now he had to go convince some lady to forgive her brother? He was perturbed. But it did not matter. This was the task set to him by a god of Olympus, and he would have to see it through. He looked at Apollo who pushed himself up and rose back to his full stature, shaking his head.
“That was . . . unexpected,” Apollo said, staring at Gordie in disbelief. As the tear dripped off his chin, the track it had left on his cheek suddenly glowed and then disappeared just as quickly, as if it had never existed. Gordie studied him with curiosity, but remained silent, waiting.
Apollo looked at him for a time, then turned to look out at the heavens again. “My sister is the vision of purity.” His hands dangled at his side. “She is a maid—has only ever preoccupied herself with her craft. She is diligent and disciplined . . . truly great.” Gordie could sense the direction this was headed. He listened.
“There was a hunter. His name was Orion. He was a demigod, son of Poseidon. Many men had tried and failed to win my sister’s heart. Men, centaurs, satyrs, gods . . . none were good enough for her. But this hunter . . .” Apollo sighed, “this hunter caught her eye.
“She wanted to have him, give him her purity, but she wasn’t thinking clearly,” Apollo’s speech quickened. “They were in the forest together. I was watching—always watching. She removed her robes and waded into a pool, rinsing her hair in the fall that fed it. He looked at her hungrily. His carnivorous eyes scoured her body.” Apollo was spitting out into space as he spoke, his fist clenching.
“He stepped into the pool. He never should have entered the pool. I had my bow. I strung an arrow and released. He was a fool. He was so hungry, weak as all men. He never saw it coming. The arrow struck him between the eyes and he fell to his knees in the shallows.” Apollo put his head down and paused. Gordie watched with disgusted fascination. How many murderers had he been in the presence of now?
“My sister . . . screamed. She ran to catch him as he fell forward. There
she knelt, with the man she loved dead in her arms. Or the man she thought she loved,” he said with a snarl. “He was not good enough for her either, although she did not see it.” There was another pause, the longest yet.
“She discovered me. I did not try to hide. She had known from the instant that he was struck down that it was my bow that dealt the death blow. She looked at me, fury and hate in her eyes. I have not seen her since.”
Gordie stood quietly for a time. “Orion is a constellation . . .” he said eventually, not completing his thought before Apollo interjected.
“Yes, he is. After I killed him I put him in the cosmos in the hopes that his sigil would give my sister comfort, and maybe that she would one day forgive me. The latter has not happened, as you know.” He sighed again.
“That’s why you follow the sun,” Gordie said, “because you don’t want to see him . . . his constellation.” It wasn’t a question—he knew it was true and Apollo’s silence confirmed it. Gordie’s stomach dropped. How was he supposed to convince Artemis to forgive her murderous brother? He wouldn’t forgive someone for doing that to him. Now he really wished this task required a feat of strength or courage—but emotional reparation? That was impossible.
The silence stretched on for a time. Apollo stood looking out on the world. Gordie stood behind him looking into the open air. He did not know what to say at this point, so he waited. When boredom struck, he examined the room. The wall to his right depicted Prometheus giving fire to the humans; the wall to his left displayed a different scene . . . one of war.
The scene was red with blood and fire. The landscape was wild—mountains running into a great field of wheat which crashed into a tumultuous sea. Dark clouds roiled, streaks of lightning cutting through them in every direction. The Olympians were painted, battling against an enemy that Gordie did not recognize. Warriors were dispersed across the landscape, some battling one on one, others fighting two or three enemies at a time. From three separate peaks giants with countless hands hurled boulders. Some of the projectile rocks were frozen in the air; some were painted at the exact moment they impacted the ground, chunks flying everywhere as they exploded. Gordie looked at the giants, and a name floated to the front of his brain: Hekatonkheires—the hundred-handed ones.
In the upper right-hand corner, a charcoal, winged horse carried an archer. Gordie recoiled as he recognized a much younger Apollo unleashing arrows from his flying steed. His face was alight with battle frenzy; it made him terrible to behold. Gordie followed the path of his arrow and saw it sticking through the chest of a great four-armed being, the agony almost audible on his screaming face.
Poseidon stood in the surf—waves crashing around him—stabbing at oncoming combatants with his trident, two bleeding in the water at his feet. His hair and beard were flying in separate directions. The whole scene had a sepia-like tint, but his hair color appeared to be a dark blue. The red tint was coming from the nearby wheat field, which was ablaze.
In the center of the field, a goddess stood tall with her arms raised, a cyclone of flaming amber grain chased and encircled fleeing soldiers, their faces alight with terror. Demeter’s robes were the same color as the grain in which she stood. Her face was also lit by the blaze, but it did not show the frenzy plastered on Apollo’s features. Hers was a fierce concentration, but there was no joy in it. She was stony-faced except for her eyes. At first Gordie thought the fire was just painted there as the artist’s trick to reflect the flames. But something told him that fire came from within. It was her rage.
A great man fought with his back to her, twice her size in every dimension. He wielded an enormous knotted-club, which was shown bashing the skull of an unfortunate warrior. The club-wielder wore some sort of animal skin hung around his shoulders with a cap in the shape of a lion head. The lion’s mouth was open, it’s two front fangs hooked onto the warrior’s forehead, as if it were eating him, but the Nemean Lion had eaten its last meal long before, when Hercules killed it. Gordie stared at his ancestor in awe. Hercules wore an expression similar to that of Apollo’s, but it was even more gruesome, more blood thirsty. He reveled in death. And death was nearby.
A patch of barren earth butted up against the wheat field, from the center of which a dark abyss yawned. Great, mottled arms reached out grabbing at soldiers. One arm clenched the ankle of a fighter and was dragging him into the void as he clawed at the dirt. Even the tracks of his fingers were painted into the dust. Maybe Hades was confined to the Underworld, but even so he was a dangerous enemy.
Gordie’s eyes roved up the central mountain where a female warrior stood with her bow, felling soldiers in every direction. Four arrows were painted in the air before her with one just leaving her bow as she pulled another out of her quiver. Her face roared with a cry of battle. She was surrounded by wild animals: a jaguar was chomping the arm of one of her attackers, and a werewolf was pouncing on another. A great, shimmering elk stood just to the left of Artemis, goring a would-be attacker. Nearby, a squat, plump deity roared with laughter as his satyrs kicked and pummeled his enemies for him. Dark red wine stained the front of Dionysus’s robes, drunk in the heat of battle.
Higher up, two gods fought back to back. Ares’s beard was ablaze—not on fire, but literally comprised of fire. He laughed as he held a severed head in one hand, the other wielding a sword that was thrust through the armor-plated-abdomen of a foe. The flaming sword cut through metal, bone, and sinew like a knife through butter, blazing victoriously as it stuck out the back of its victim. Behind Ares, Aphrodite stood in front of a group of kneelers, almost as if she were giving a sermon in the midst of battle. But Gordie looked closely and saw the glaze in their eyes: they were mesmerized by her beauty and he couldn’t blame them. She was so beautiful, even in paint, it was almost scary. Her long, dark hair flowed in the wind and a light-blue aura surrounded her. Gordie realized with revulsion that one of the revelers lay prostrate on the ground, his eyes painted at the instant they had started to melt. Another lay next to him, a splatter of blood and gore on the ground above his shoulders. There was no head in sight.
And on the mountain top stood Zeus. The sight of him made Gordie nauseated, terrified, and furious all at once. His eyes had no pupils or irises, just like Apollo’s when he had gone into his trance to give Gordie his task. Zeus’s eyes were blindingly white like the instant of a lightning strike. His mouth was open in maniacal laughter. Above his head he held a glimmering lightning bolt, both frozen and electrified. Another bolt was shown speeding away from him towards an enemy, and a third was piercing two enemies, sending them flying down the mountain like a giant shish-kebab. A great, bearded man wielding a flame in his hand was approaching Zeus from the side with an angry roar on his face. Gordie recognized Prometheus from the mural on the opposite wall. He knew that Prometheus had not won this battle, and he felt solidarity with the famed titan.
Gordie had walked over to the mural absent-mindedly and was staring into the laughing face of Zeus, unable to look away, until he jumped when Apollo spoke at his side.
“The Titanomachy,” he said. “The War of the Titans . . . it was a terrible war. There is Atlas.” He pointed at the Titan who was being attacked by satyrs. He was roaring as he threw them in every direction. “That mountain, where my father fought,” he pointed at Zeus, “is where Atlas resides now holding up the sky. It is Prometheus’s home, too. He is chained near his brother, where his liver is eaten by a great eagle every day, until he is healed at nightfall, only to be devoured alive again the next morning.
“Cronus.” Apollo pointed at a giant falling backward into the waves that Gordie hadn’t noticed before, two lightning bolts stuck out of his chest as he crashed into the ocean. “My grandfather. As prone to filicide as his son—hereditary I suppose. Well, filicide as well as patricide. Maybe I will follow in his footsteps.” Gordie looked up at him with mixed feelings. He was talking about killing his dad. Given who his father was, it was understandable, but still a little creepy.
“You look pretty scary.” Gordie pointed at Apollo’s fierce depiction, changing the subject out of discomfort. Apollo did not respond immediately, and Gordie felt heat rising to his face.
“I fought for the wrong reasons then. And I could not appreciate, until much later, how much I had lost,” Apollo whispered, staring at his likeness. “I have known for quite some time that Prometheus was right all along. The titans were divided. Cronus was selfish and only wished to remain in power, but others fought for freedom. They did not wish to trade one despot for another. And when the humans came, Prometheus continued to fight for freedom, not for himself, but for your people. And now he is subjected to eternal torment.” Apollo went silent again, staring at the mural. Gordie looked into Prometheus’s enraged face, and then down the mountain at Artemis.
“Your sister is quite the fighter.” Gordie pointed at Artemis.
“She is.” Apollo looked over his left shoulder. Gordie turned to follow his eyes. The room they were in was what someone might imagine a throne room to look like—with its decorated walls and sparkling columns—but in the place where a throne might sit stood a statue of a goddess with her bow drawn. The statue was life-sized—or so Gordie assumed, as the stone goddess was nearly as tall as the deity to his right. The most amazing detail, to Gordie’s mind, was the chiseled hummingbirds hovering around her head, which weren’t tethered to the main body of the statue, but appeared to be magically suspended in midair.
“So, where can I find her?” Gordie looked back up at Apollo.
“I cannot say. But wherever she is, she has been there since your birth. She was, of course, always partial to the wilderness, but you will not find her in your world.”
Gordie looked at the mural depicting the Titanomachy. He stared at Artemis, watched her face her enemies. His eyes slid to the jaguar next to her mauling her adversaries and the werewolf eviscerating an unfortunate soldier. He stared into the dark eyes of the beast and shivered slightly, thinking about his close shave in the pine tree. He thought back to his return trip to the forest realm, the blood stain of the great beast, and the streak it left as it had been hauled away. And it clicked.
