~~~The Brave Son~~~
"I care not for this Leodes," I warn him again. "This is barely a patch of sand above the waves and that smoke will surely bring others to this place." We have not yet stepped from our boat but this island does not even boast a tree and I am certain that the tides swallow is whole at times.
He has grown tired of my woman's mewling. "All the more reason for us to be fleet of purpose." He tucks his gutting knife into the faded indigo sash about his waist holding the lower part of his chiton in place.
"You expect trouble from your Gods' gift?" I point to the blade.
He smiles his young man's smile behind his young man's beard. "Perhaps this is some trick of the Harpies to steal our catch and make us slaves before we become dinner." Dislodging the net spear from its place he tosses it to me. "This is our chance, to become more than fisherman, sons of Plaecles. To give mother a smile and a life. To give our women, lives, and see children of our own."
I shake my head and lower my eyes, "there are no more Titans brother, Achilles lay long dead, and it has been some great time since the gods bothered to look down from Olympus. The songs are already written and mother already smiles each time we return and she knows the waves have not taken us." He offers the spear and though I hesitate and look into his eyes, shallow brown and devoid of depth in their milkiness, I accept it.
He frowns and steps past me and before my eyes follow him I can hear the sound of his feet splashing into the waters. I heft the spear in my hands and let the weight of the tool turned weapon fill me with a sense of unease.
We step onto the sandy bar pocked with grasses. Only some few feet away the earth has been pushed into a mound from which the smoke pours. The smell is otherworldly. It is the smell I would expect if ever I had gone to an Oracle and let them pronounce the Gods' fate of me. Leodes approaches slowly, his shoulders tensing, as if awaiting the lion to pounce from its desert kingdom. I follow close behind.
At first my mind cannot make sense of this thing. It is like polished bronze then blackened like the night sky. It is crafted like the hull of our boat, but of this metal, and it is cold, deathly cold despite the sun and the smoke which plumes from it. I know in my heart of hearts that this is nothing from the gods. This is no gift. But our father taught me something when I was young, and he taught me again when together we shed blood in the Lelantine Plains and made it the fertile farm land we had fought for; you always back your brother.
In this I could not fail.
In remembering my father, those bloody days that were his end, the realization of the futility of war and the true spoils of it, I nearly missed Leodes ducking into a tear in the side of the black belly. I stepped into the dark with him and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dim light and odd structure.
Small lights are fixed into the odd, ovular, pillars which lined the walls every step. The slant of the hall was steep enough that we both held on to keep ourselves from sliding down the smooth grey floor, and easily wide enough for three men to walk abreast.. The lights were a soft blue, like the color of the sky outside, though they did not light our way much more than a torch.
And it was cold. The same deathly cold.
"Let us away," I whispered. "This place holds no gift."
Leodes glances back at me and I know that I have lost all battles of reason with him. Picking his way carefully down the pillars he descends into the depths of this thing. The black bronzed tomb. We are almost to the wall at the end of this tunnel, the endless symmetry of this place biting into my senses, when he stops and looks back at me. "There is a song in this brother, our song, and we will join Achilles in eternity."
"Plaecles was a Titan?" I ask softly. Our father was no god's son, he was a man who died on the end of a spear like so many others that day. He fought like any man does when the promise of glory and honors and wealth are cast before him. A brave hopplite who at least trained one of his sons to know that the songs had already been sung.
My brave brother Leodes, son of Plaecles, fisherman.
I took Gravity for Wormhole and Propel.
Nothing says Lovin' like hitting 'em with an oven. -AddamsFamily
~~~Fickle Gods~~~
It our surprise when the wall parts for us as we reach the bottom of the pillar lined tunnel. It is also the first time we feel the rumbling from deep below us. It was the shake of an angered god and it was more of the omen to me.
Beyond the parted wall another room, also gray and cold, and lined with the lighted pillars. In this room there is also the signs of upheaval and chaos. Steam hisses from some place in the ceiling over head. The are flickering lights. Orange like a flame, but without any fire. The room is nearly twice as wide as the tunnel which we descended.
"This is some greatly boat of the gods, brother, it itself may be our gift," Leodes whispers taking in the room with awestruck eyes.
He does not see the damage, he does not see the brokenness of the place, "the gods are fickle them in their gifts for they have sent us a broken vessel."
There is another great rumble from beneath us.
"Come we must be fleet if we are to make our claim," Leodes commands with a lightness in his tone.
We slide down the angle into the center of the room for there is a circle of pillars and a small waist level wall of the same grayish metal. There is a bit of debris piled there against some of the pillars the the flickering of a light.
I choose my footing lightly, Leodes is pushing the debris aside, and we see it at the same moment. A type of hand. Two thick digits supported by a thumb. It was larger than a man's and armored in some dark green material. I think I hear Leodes giggle with excitement. I am not certain for another rumble shakes this place.
Leodes begins to scramble like a maddened dog digging for a long lost bone. He cast aside debris like a demon until the thing from the sky is laying at our feet. It is crumpled and broken. The head of this beast is like nothing I have heard in song or legend. It is a thing from the sea, which fell from the sky in its boat. The head is long and smooth like so many things from the seas I have seen, but it is attached to a body most like a man. The long thin arms tapering to the hands which I have already described.
The body is covered in that armor, the head with its two closed eyes, is a brown like wet sand color. It has a small mouth revealed by what was some piece of brown metal like the lower half of a helm designed only to shield its mouth.
And it gasps.
The ragged sound nearly throws us both from our balance among the debris and pillars. Another oath passes my teeth. Leodes practically laughs the moment his initial fright passes him, but I lower the spear in an angle to throw myself and it upon this half-giant-fish-man.
The eyes then open. Pure blood with no white, no iris, no color other than blood. I know it is our doom we are seeing. My heart races. My breath suddenly shallows.
"Are you from the Gods?" Leodes asks. He kneels over the beast.
The right three fingered hand slowly raises toward my brother.
When the fingers are hand spans from my brother's face the scream begins.
Not its scream. Not the scream of some demon harpy. Not the scream of Hades.
Leodes' scream. The scream that make my tears comes at every remembering. Every time you make me come here. Every time you unearth what I have entombed within me.
And every time I wonder if I will see you smile.
I took Gravity for Wormhole and Propel.
Nothing says Lovin' like hitting 'em with an oven. -AddamsFamily
~~~Personal Wars~~~
The blood. The blood like its eyes. The blood I remember. I remember only what I can see from standing behind him. I remember the sudden gush of blood splatter out onto the beast, across its green armor and brown flesh. The sudden explosion of it which silences Leodes and his scream like nothing else ever heard on this world. The blood as is trails from his turned face as he falls from our debris perch in the center of the tilted room.
I know I scream his name. I know I scream because I dreamt that scream fore two thousand years.
I see the eyes shift and they see me. The hand had been knocked back to its chest as Leodes had fallen, but it raises it again and I know it is meant for me.
The spear is more of a hooked pole meant for snaring nets and less for killing.
It does the job.
I let myself fall and the rough bronze cap shatters the hand as it passes into the armor and through the body of the beast with a sickening crunch and crush. A sound like metal on metal escapes that little unshielded mouth and spattering of something warm slaps my face and gushes over my hands.
I do not know how long I spend wrenching the pole back and forth through the beast's insides, but I imagine the armor to be empty, whatever the blood of this gods' gift to have been spilled out of it entirely.
There is no more motion from it. The blood red eyes simply gape and stare at nothing.
Sobbing I let myself slide down to my brother's body. I cradle him. I only am aware now of the rumbling becoming more constant. My tears and sobs as I hold his broken flesh blind me to the fog that is billowing into the room.
I am unaware of the chill growing deeper.
"And that is when you can take the rest of the story," I tell you. I have grown accustomed to keeping my eyes on yours as I tell that last part.
"Indeed," you say softly returning my stare.
"I awoke on one of your operating tables. Unearthed. Unthawed. You took me in and made me understand what I had been through. You taught me to read and write and fight. You gave me your war," I explain as unmoving as I can.
"Our war," you correct me without emotion.
"Our war, yes ma'am."
"Thank you Nikias."
That's not my name. I don't even remember my name. That's another thought I have learned to hide from you.
"I wanted to hear it one last time."
"One last time?"
"I am moving out of our Eurozone. You have trained enough. I am also moving you out of The Shield. In forty-eight hours you will be in Paragon City, under orders from The Gauntlet. Helm, Herald, and Sword have all been advised. You are going to do what you must to take this fight on."
I think I cannot hide my frown. And your look changes just enough to let me know I did not hide it well enough.
"Yes, ma'am."
"They've been calling you Protos Kreios, Nikias," you explain. "You have been at the fore of all of your classes. I think it's time you went and earned a few more victories."
It finally strikes me then. I know why you have wanted to hear this story of mine so often. I know why you have sat self satisfied so many times. I know why you have made relive that pain over and over like some torturer.
I have something so few of your soldiers have. I have a reason. I have a purpose. Its personal for me. And you have wanted to make sure that fire was so deeply embedded into my being that it would burn me right through any challenge set before me.
Well played. Well played.
I will give you your victories. I will smash down what they build up.
Something changes then. There's an understanding.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Dismissed Protos Kreios Nikias."
I took Gravity for Wormhole and Propel.
Nothing says Lovin' like hitting 'em with an oven. -AddamsFamily
((Thanks for taking a look, comments welcome, but I haven't exactly fine tooth combed this yet))
~~~GOING BACK~~~
"We can go over this again, it's okay." Though part of me secretly dreads it. I know you know it. I can see it just as plainly in your eyes, but it is different between us. I do not wish to go back there. Your hunger for this is all consuming and my desires mean nothing in the end.
At least we have come to point where I no longer stand at attention to do this. Sitting across from you at a table in a safe room is enough.
"You have told me that the year was probably 648 B.C. and I have told you that the last I recalled it was a perfect day upon the waves of the Egeo Pelagos." I close my eyes and try to focus through it all. All of what's been between then and now. Not that there is much, but I have enjoyed burying this. Burying my death.
-Aegean Sea- 648 B.C.
"Wake up you lazy son of a mule and drag that net back aboard," Leodes chides me sternly as his toe digs into my side. The sun was warm without cooking us, and Poseidon lay calm deep within the water this day. It was everything I had needed for a nap.
Scowling a bit I growl between my teeth, "watch yourself, brother or I shall tell mother what you truly think of her." My growl turns into a laugh as I open my eyes and stare up at my brother. His form is shadow against the sky but I see his hand beckoning me up. I take it and let him haul me to my feet.
Our boat is our family's prize. And we are fishermen. Just the two of us. My father is long dead and that leaves myself and Leodes to care for my mother whom has not found the heart to take another man.
We laugh and clap each on the back in good camaraderie. We start to pull at the nets and the small boat is barely able to balance the weight. The haul is good, the best we have seen in days. We shall be hard against the oars the two of us to make our way to the market on Ios. Then it will be another day home. Despite the time at the oars we laugh and jest through the work and the nets.
Our jesting ends suddenly. Leodes' eyes widen over my shoulder and the fear of Hades is present there. It is then that I hear the sound. It is like the thunder of ten thousand chariots charging over the sky. As I turn my head to look I see the shadow pass over us fleet as Mercury himself.
An oath passes my teeth as the fire falls, a trail of smoke burned across the sky in its wake.
"By Glaucus," Leodes breathes huskily as the fire passes us by and the smell of the smoke and burned copper washes over us. Moments later we see the termination of the fall. A flash and the sound of a distant thunk.
"Let us leave," I urge my brother my hand on his shoulder both of our gazes into that distance.
Long is the pause and the drawing of our breathes. Then, "we must go and see what the gods have cast to the ground for us."
"Let us away," I urge him again more stone in my voice.
But he is undeterred and he begins making ready our oars. Handing me mine he explains, "land speckles these waters, brother, and it is by chance that this treasure fell with the sound of earth and not wave in this place?" I see it now. The same look our father once accused me of having.
He is my younger by some years. He was not there to watch our father die. He was still at home. His swords were reeds and his foe-men were Hector and Memnon in the air.
"There is no song to be sung of this brother," I warn him, but I take the oar and take my seat.
We turn the boat and Leodes taps rhythm with his sandal as we pull at the waters and speed the ship in the direction of the faded smoke trail.
Please do not make me go there again. For all you have given me, please do not make me give this again. But your eyes tell the story of your grief; the absence of it. I close my eyes.
I took Gravity for Wormhole and Propel.
Nothing says Lovin' like hitting 'em with an oven. -AddamsFamily