by Simon Archer
The Stratego was a large man with his tree trunk sized legs and rounded upper body. He towered over me, not at much as Arges did, but the son of Zeus could give the cyclops a run for his money. He had a salt and pepper beard that covered his whole neck. This close to him, I could see that his nose had been broken at least twice and there was a small spot on his face, up by his ear, where a patch of hair didn’t grow, as if he had been burned there.
As I stood so close to him, I realized that I knew very little about the leader of the Elemental Military. I didn’t know his history, what he had been like as a student. Nothing. I didn’t even know his real name for Hades’s sake! He was always referred to as the Stratego.
Suspicion crawled along my stomach like a parade of ants. I squinted my eyes at the demigod before me, not bothering to hide the change in my mood. The Stratego caught on quickly and his scowl deepened.
“Something wrong, Cameron?” he asked, his voice coming out as a growl.
“What’s your name?” I asked, a spike of boldness prompting my question. “Like I get that everyone calls you the Stratego but that’s not what’s on your birth certificate. What is that name?”
The Stratego grunted. Then he promptly turned and walked back into the office, leaving the door open for me.
I hadn’t really expected an answer, but it didn’t hurt to give the question a shot. So I shrugged and stepped into the Stratego’s elusive office.
The first thing I noticed was the shrine to Zeus in the corner. A collection of lightning bolts made out of everything from cardboard cutouts, to metal, to little ceramic statues stood on a pedestal in the corner. In a bowl the size of a teacup, some of the Eternal Flame burned, releasing no smoke. An empty plate of food, with a few crumbs still on it, sat next to the bowl.
The rest of the office was dark and rather uninteresting. A single but full bookshelf sat behind his oak desk which was completely clear save for a lamp and a stack of papers. There was one pen resting next to the papers and one of those forest green padded squares so he didn’t write directly on the desk itself. The walls were bare which was unnerving.
Two wooden chairs sat across from the desk. I took the one closest to the door out of instinct. I perched on the edge of it and folded my hands between my legs in an effort to stop my bouncing leg.
“The good news is that a lot of the duties of being an Elemental Official won’t fully apply until you graduate from the Academy,” the Stratego said, jumping right in. He didn’t take a seat in his office chair as I had expected. Instead, the bulky son of Zeus paced back and forth behind the desk, leaving it as a barrier between us.
Wishing I had brought some kind of paper to write everything down on, I nodded. Part of me wondered if I could ask him to borrow some, but I refrained, biting on my own tongue to stop myself.
“You will be required to teach classes once you graduate,” the Stratego continued, wrapping his hands behind his back. “However, lesson plans, office hours, and the like will not come into effect until that time.”
The Stratego paused as if to consider something before moving on. “You will also be responsible for a staff of commanding officers that will report to you directly. You will consult with them on missions and battle plans. You will be required to visit their bases on multiple occasions throughout the year as well.”
The son of Zeus cleared his throat, putting a fist to his chest before speaking again. “However, if you complete the Ultimate Weapon, and end the war, that will be much less frequent.”
“So, what will I be doing now?” I interrupted. “Anything?”
“You will participate in the necessary ceremonies like the introduction at the start of each semester, as well as graduation,” the Stratego said, ticking items off his list. “You will also attend all of the meetings each week.”
“There are weekly meetings?” I said in shock. I thought about the idea of having to sit in on those meetings while the Officials discussed things like whether to paint the armory pearl white or eggshell white.
“A lot goes on here in order to run the Military and the Academy,” the Stratego said pointedly as he shot me a glance out of the corner of his eye.
“Got it,” I grumbled.
“In order to account for this unprecedented new… event,” the Stratego said, struggling to find the right word, “we will need to accelerate your studies so that you can graduate by the end of this semester.”
“You were serious about that?” I balked. “How do you expect me to do a year’s worth of work in a semester, while still taking the classes required for this semester? Oh and go to the meetings?”
“And still work in the forge,” the Stratego added unhelpfully.
I pursed my lips together. “Seriously?”
“I thought you would be excited about that part,” the head of the Academy said, finally sitting down in his chair. He scooted it closer to the desk so he could rest his elbows on the top. “As you are the best blacksmith in the world.”
The last statement dripped with malice, and I rolled my eyes in response. “Are you ever going to let that go? I get it, you don’t appreciate my arrogance but can’t we just agree already that I’m good at what I do?”
“I never said you weren’t a good blacksmith, Cameron,” the Stratego said with a snort. “But the best in the world? I’m not sure.”
“Then who’s better?” I challenged, the nerves leaving my body in a flash. If there was one thing I did have confidence in, it was my skills as a blacksmith. No one could question that fact and I never gave them a reason to. “Tell me, and I’ll prove it to you if I have to.”
“Your father,” the Stratego said, overemphasizing every consonant.
I didn’t say anything, nor did I want to. I could have argued that Hephaestus was a god and I only a demigod, still mortal even. Of course he would be better. But I didn’t say that. I said I was the best in the world, which to the Stratego meant gods, mortals, and everyone in between.
“I think your theory on finding him is interesting by the way,” the Stratego said, changing the subject so unexpectedly that I almost missed the sort of compliment he gave me.
“Thank you?” I wondered, still unsure if it was a compliment in any sense.
“It makes sense that the magic of the gods would be needed to defeat other gods,” the Stratego continued as he pressed his intertwined fingers together so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “Mortals don’t have a lot of influences over them.”
“That’s what the Ultimate Weapon is going to do for us,” I said. “Supposedly anyway.”
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do with the Ultimate Weapon, once you manage to actually make it?” the Stratego asked as he cocked his head to one side like a hungry bird. His eyes narrowed into slits so that I couldn’t tell what he was thinking by asking me this question. Not that I could ever tell what the Stratego was thinking anyway.
“That’s not my problem,” I answered right away. “I’m just supposed to make it. Someone else can wield it.”
“Have you given any thought as to who that someone should be?” the Stratego wondered, an edge to his voice that I hadn’t detected before.
“I didn’t know I would get to choose that… ” I replied hesitantly.
“You have to decide who to give the weapon to once you finish it,” the Stratego said as if this fact had been obvious all along.
“Really?” I asked with a slight protest in my voice. “I can’t just put it in a stone and say, ‘Whoever pulls it out will be king’?”
The Stratego’s gaze narrowed on me, and I shrank back in my seat, realizing that I had done something wrong.
“Is this a joke to you?” the Stratego asked, his voice sharp and loud as it echoed throughout the office. “Are the lives of your fellow soldiers, fellow demigods, a joke to you?”
“Sir no, sir,” I said, slipping into my soldier’s replies because of the fear his glare continued to give me.
“
This war has gone on too long, Cameron,” the Stratego snapped. “If we have a chance to end it, I’m not going to lose that chance because of Hephaestus’s untrained son, do you hear me?”
While fear was still at the forefront of my mind, clouding all my other emotions, something bugged me. It poked against the fog of fear, like a blinking lighthouse in the distance. Something in the way that he called me untrained and Hephaestus’s son, like he resented both of those things. Even though I knew the Stratego disliked me, it was the first time he’d openly insulted me in that way.
Zeus and Hephaestus had a sordid history, considering that Hephaestus was only born as Hera’s retaliation on her husband for birthing Athena on his own. There were countless stories about the two male gods getting in one another’s way, never to help and always to harm. I resigned myself that the dislike carried down the bloodline to a feud between the Stratego and me. But while that had always been an hunch, something in the way the Stratego spoke my father’s name gave me more confidence in that hunch.
“What makes you think that I’m going to throw away that chance?” I challenged back, feeling the need to be defensive of not only myself but also of my father. “Have I given you any reason to think that I’m not loyal to the Academy or to the other demigods?”
The Stratego didn’t answer right away. He reached up with a hand and stroked his beard as if considering my question. When he didn’t speak for a minute, I jumped back in.
“I’ve helped progress the war in our favor, even as a student,” I defended, no longer shrinking in my seat but sitting up straight. “I made alliances with the gods when they wouldn’t ever even visit the Academy before now. I’m responsible for the majority of the weapons out in the field right now. I even uncovered who was behind the whole war in the first place! I have no idea why you doubt me, but from where I’m standing, you have no reason to.”
A silence crackled between the two of us as if the Stratego had released a bolt of lightning. I waited for him to speak with a challenging glare in my eye. My mother’s stubbornness came in handy in this situation. The Stratego seemed to be using some of his own calming techniques because while his face was beet red, he didn’t talk. Finally, his hairy cheeks returned to their normal pale color before I ventured a question.
“Why do you think she’s doing it?” I wondered, changing the subject. While I had the Stratego like this, I was going to ask the questions I wanted to ask. Even if he didn’t give me an answer or a direct one, I still had to try. Maybe I would find out the answers in my time as an Elemental Official, during those secret meetings but I wanted to know now.
“Do you mean Eris?” the Stratego clarified, his face softening ever so slightly.
“Yes,” I confirmed with a sharp nod. “Why do you think she’s set up this whole war?”
“I know exactly why,” the Stratego said, surprising me enough so that my guard lowered and my eyebrows shot upwards. When the Stratego didn’t follow up his statement with an explanation, I prompted him.
“Care to share with the class?” I said as I crossed my arms over my chest and then gestured outwards as if there were a bunch of children sitting on the floor.
“She wasn’t invited to an Academy graduation several years ago,” the Stratego said as his grey eyes flitted to the corner, as though he were watching a laser bounce about on the wall.
“I’m sorry, what?” I gaped. I put my hands on the arms of my chair and leaned forward. “You’re telling me that the goddess of chaos has had us at war for decades because of a missing party invitation?”
“There was no missing invitation,” the Stratego said, missing the point entirely. “She didn’t have one to begin with.”
“This is some serious Maleficent shit here,” I commented offhandedly before I took a deep breath in. “Why wasn’t she invited?”
“Your sister forgot to invite her,” the Stratego said plainly, as though he were reading from the phonebook not dropping some Hephaestus family shame on me.
“My sister?” I tried to act surprised at this news since the Stratego had no idea that I had actually met my sister though she had been a ghost.
“Katlynn Sideris,” the Stratego said, his breath coming out as if in a puff of smoke. He leaned back in his chair, relaxing his shoulders. “She was the Elemental Official responsible for inviting the gods and goddesses to the graduation that year. It was her first year as an Official and she forgot some of the key players, like Eris.”
“So… what?” I prompted, waving my hands in circles to indicate I wanted more information. “The goddess just threw a hissy fit and cursed the Academy or something?”
“Not something, exactly that,” the Stratego confirmed. He licked his lips and looked down at his hands. It was the first time I’d ever seen him unsure like that. Shameful, might have been another word for it. “We didn’t take her threat seriously at first, but then the monster attacks started coming more frequently and closer to home. We weren’t prepared for that kind of volume.”
“Wait, we?” I said, holding out my hand like a stopping guard. “How old are you?”
I was baffled by his inclusion of himself because I knew for a fact that Katlynn lived in the 1920s and considering it was something around one hundred years later, why would the Stratego include himself?
As if he was a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar, the Stratego’s eyes shifted around the room and he coughed nervously into his fist. “I meant the Stratego ‘we’. It’s used often.” Then he blazed past my question which only made the seeds of suspicion in my stomach grow more.
“While Katlynn insisted she invited everyone she was supposed to, we could find no evidence to support her claims,” the Stratego said with a sigh. “She died in one of the first battles, stubborn enough to fight it herself because we made her believe the war was her fault.”
My head whirled with the onslaught of information. When I met Katlynn, she said she made a grave mistake. So grave that Hephaestus punished her by not letting her pass into the Underworld until she helped another child of Hephaestus, AKA me. Katlynn never told me what that mistake was, and I’d never asked. But now that I realized it was this one, one so small but with such dire consequences, I realized why the gods might have overreacted in such a way.
“I just can’t believe we’re fighting a war over a missing or undelivered party invitation,” I said with a scoff. “I mean, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The last time Eris wasn’t invited to a party, she created the Golden Apple which eventually led to the Trojan War, so… ” I trailed off, realizing that the Stratego probably knew the story and that I didn’t need to retell it to him.
The Stratego’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s right but not a lot of people know that. They think the fight over Helen of Troy caused the Trojan war.”
“Well it did,” I agreed. “But the only reason she was taken in the first place was because Aphrodite agreed to give Paris the most beautiful maiden if he granted her the Golden Apple, which would make Aphrodite the most desirable of the goddesses. But why Zeus just didn’t pick the goddess himself or throw the apple away, we’ll never know.” I rolled my eyes at the thought, knowing that I shouldn’t ever expect more from the gods, since the stories always followed their incompetence and how the mortals had to pay the price.
However, the Stratego’s face turned a violent shade of red again. His beard twitched in anger and I sat back in my chair again, weary of the sudden change.
“Zeus did the best he could at the time,” the demigod said, defending his father. “I’m sure he recognized his mistake.”
“Did he?” I wondered, a playful lilt to my voice. “He is Zeus after all.”
I meant it was a joke but it was clear from the audible exhale, quite like a bull ready to charge, that the Stratego didn’t take the statement as a joke.
“I would advise, son of Hephaestus, that you don’t insult the leader of the gods in that way,” the Stratego said through gritted teeth.
/> “Right,” I said, drawing the word out into two syllables. “I’ll make note of that. Are you okay? Do you need some water, or something?”
The man looked ready to explode. If he was a cartoon character, I’m sure there would be steam coming out of his ears. I didn’t know he was so sensitive to insults about his dad. So I stood up and side stepped out of my chair.
“Is there anything else you need to tell me or can I… ?” I thumbed the door behind me, asking if I could go.
“We will get you your new class schedule and the dates and times for the Elemental Official meetings,” the Stratego grumbled. It seemed as though he were talking at me rather than to me. I didn’t really mind. I just nodded once and gave the Stratego a thumbs up.
“Cool, great, well… thanks for the chat,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say.
Then I booked it out of the door before he had a chance to respond. Once I was out of the administrative building completely, I finally slowed my speed enough to wrap my head around all of the new information I just gathered. But everything still seemed to be running a mile a minute.
“That… was weird,” I said out loud to no one.
The more I thought about it, the more I decided that talking was the thing I needed to do. I just had to tell someone about Eris’s motives and the Stratego’s weird sensitivities. I knew the perfect people to talk so and chances were they were squatting at my house that very minute.
I couldn’t wait to tell my girlfriends about this craziness.
9
“Thanks for coming with me,” I said to Bethany as the two of us walked up one of the pathways towards the trees around the perimeter of campus.
“Thanks for letting me use your jacuzzi bathtub later today,” Bethany said as she rubbed her hands together like a maniacal villain.
I scoffed. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who knew that jets were the way to your heart?”
“What can I say?” Bethany replied with an exaggerated shrug. “I’m easy to please.” Then she lowered her voice conspiratorially. “But you know I would have come anyway, with or without the jacuzzi.”
