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aj-artjunkyard · 5 years

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Trials Of Apollo Oneshot Series CHAPTER THREE

It had been a hectic few weeks, so naturally, I figured I’d earned some alone time. I lay facing the twinkling stars on the roof of our borrowed (see: stolen) Ford Transit van, in the middle of nowhere, plucking at the strings of my combat ukulele. I closed my eyes and played a tune I had written for my mother many millennia ago…

572 BC

“Phoebus Apollon!” My mother laughed as she slapped my arm playfully. “You cannot insult the Queen of the gods like that!”

“Ah, but you know she deserves it.” I said, bumping my shoulder into hers. We sat on the highest cliff on Delos, watching the sunset. The golden light made mother’s bronze skin glow, and her silky, caramel hair whipped around her face, sometimes obscuring her kind eyes. I gazed at her in awe, having no doubt why my father had fallen in love with her. Or why queen cow-face was so jealous. I myself appeared as a twenty-one year old, with my usual shoulder length blonde hair and golden toga. My head sat just a few inches above my mother’s.

“How is your new job?” Leto stirred my out of my reverie.

“Hmm?”

She smiled again, showing her dazzling white teeth. “The sun chariot, yiós.”

“Oh. It’s good. The sun horses moulded their personalities to suit mine after the first day. Most of the palace did actually. I named the horses too. And I don’t use the whip like Helios did. I think they’re grateful for that. The whip, I mean, or lack thereof. Though I do hope they like the names I gave them. They’re all sun related; Blaze, Flame, Dawn and Fire, though I may change that last one as it seems quite unoriginal-” I glanced over at my mother, only to see her smile had melted. She looked out at the sea, her head slightly bowed. Tears threatened to fall from her soft blue eyes.

Realising my mistake, I quickly took her hands in my own. “I’m sorry. I should have been more sensitive. I really need to learn to keep my mouth shut sometimes, huh?” I tried for a smile, and manage to coax a sad one from my mother.

Leto could have rivalled even Hestia’s serenity and kindness. Of course she had taken the disappearance of her two cousins, Helios and Selene, to heart. They had both been such good souls, neither deserving of extinction. But such is the life of an immortal. Someday we would all fade from human memory. I fear that day.

Leto wiped a tear from her cheek. “I am glad you are not using the whip, child. I expect nothing less from such a kind-hearted young man.” She knew of my hatred of slavery. She knew everything about me, more than any mortal lover could ever comprehend. I did not have to pretend to be unrelentingly optimistic when I was around her.

“And what of the names?” I asked. Leto giggled, her dimples deepening.

“Very catchy.” she said, resting her head on my shoulder. “What about your other domains? Have you written any new songs lately?” In response, I willed my lyre to materialise in my hands. Leto cuddled closer to me as I strummed my latest tune, and closed her eyes when I sang softly along to the calming melody.

Leaning my head down on my mother’s, we watched the last traces of the sun melt beyond the horizon. It was a glorious sunset, if I do say so myself. Of course, it was all for the best mother in the world.

Present

As the final note dissipated, a jarring clang rang out from my right. Startled, I sat bolt upright and huffed at the source of the noise.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep, Meg?”

“You’re not sleeping either, dummy.” My demigod master clumsily climbed the rest of the way onto the roof of the van, and plonked herself down beside me. We sat in silence for a while. That was alright with me. I figured this was as close to ‘alone time’ as I would ever get as a mortal. “The song you played,” Meg said suddenly, “who was it for?” I said nothing. I looked up at the stars again. They hadn’t changed. Maybe a few new ones, but mostly, they were the same. I tried to say something, just to make meg’s painful question go away. I opened my mouth and felt a sob swell up in my throat. I closed it again. After a while, Meg’s stare became too much.

“My mother,” I conceded. Meg nodded, as if this answer was worth an hour’s explanation. A few more minutes silence followed.

“Were you close?” I thought it strange that my master of few words and more kicks would be asking two questions in a row. Was she trying to comfort me in her own Meggy way, perhaps? I studied her expression. As always, she was hard to read. The tilt in her eyebrows gave a concerned look, though the rest of her face was unchanged from her usual closed-off/blank character. Part of me wanted her to back off. My past was my business. But I reminded myself that she had only had a proper parental figure for a few years. Then he was gone. I was lucky. One of my parents had always loved me and stuck by me, and I took her for granted. I feared I may never see her again. It was my duty to spread the warmth she had given me to a young girl who had never had the comfort of a parent for long.

“Yes. Though I doubt I was as attentive a son as she was a mother. I was always ‘too busy’. But when I did see her, she was always forgiving of my stupid excuses.” I gestured vaguely at the dark sky in front of us. “We did things like this. Sit up in the highest, quietest place we could find, and watch the sun set. Sometimes, she would ask me to sing for her. I’d teach her my best songs, and we’d sing them together. I wrote a lot of songs that were only for my mother and I on those peaceful evenings. We’d dance too. Her waltz is only rivalled by my friend Terpsichore, the muse of dance. Even she has complemented my mother’s gracefulness.” I sighed. Meg stared at a star, squinting her eyes in and out of focus.

“We did that too,” she said.

“What,” I said. “Dance?”

“No, dummy.” Meg punched me in the arm. I bit back a retort, knowing she may be about to share something sensitive. Unless she decided I was too stupid to understand and said nothing more. I waited for her to elaborate, but I admit I wasn’t expecting anything. To my surprise, she continued.

“We watched the sun set. Then we stayed for the stars. My dad used to name all the constellations.” She picked at a callus on her hand, a seemingly frequent habit of hers. “He was smart like that.”

I nodded. “Where you had a father, I had a mother. At least that’s one thing we have in common. Though I feel you and Demeter would get along like a… well, you’d agree on most things.” I looked away and blew out my cheeks. I had almost said they’d ‘get along like a house on fire’. I am doubtless our little session would be abruptly cut off if I reminded my young master of the house-fire that drove her and Phillip McCaffrey out of Aeithales.

“Would we agree on how dumb you are?”

I shot her a glare, but for some reason the sheer bluntness of her question amused me more than usual. “I suppose you would,” I snickered.

Meg leaned back on her palms. Her rhinestones glittered in the starlight, illuminating her moss green eyes. “She missed out.”

“What do you mean?”

Meg shrugged. “Aeithales. Dad. She missed out.”

I wanted to explain that even if Demeter wanted to visit, she couldn’t have. Zeus’s laws forbade it, as we would get distracted from our godly duties. But as I looked up at my sister’s peaceful chariot, I thought about the sun, and how it would continue to soar across the sky even if there were no one driving it. It would take the form of a barque or a star. It made me wonder if Zeus’s excuse was even close to an acceptable one. Definitely not something I would be able to stomach telling my children to excuse my absence anymore, anyways.

“You tried to kill your dad once,” Meg noted.

“Not exactly, but I know when you’re referring to,” I said, confused. I failed to connect what an unsuccessful revolution thousands of years ago had to do with our present talk about good and bad parents.

“It didn’t work.”

I sighed. “I am aware.”

Meg looked me right in the eyes, giving me the unsettling feeling that overtook me when she issued me an order, but somehow without uttering a word. She appeared to study me like a patient on an operating table - proof that she was a far more complex being than she seemed. I fidgeted a bit. Her gaze became heavy, and I found my eyes were flicking around for a safe place to land. I forced myself to stop and look her in the eyes, though it took some convincing. I wasn’t sure if I’d overstepped my mark and made her angry, and believe me, an angry Meg is not someone you want to sit next to in the middle of the night with no witnesses around to call her out. Not that Meg cared that much about witnesses, mind you. Thankfully, instead of kicking me, Meg began to speak.

“If it had worked,” she said quietly, “Would it have been worth it?”

I admit, I was more taken aback by that question than I should have been. Of course she would compare my daddy issues with her own. Although I would never admit it out loud, I had privately compared Zeus to Nero on multiple occasions. Sometimes I would try to put myself in her shoes to predict what her reaction might be before I said anything. The other times I would forget, and end up with an elbow in my ribs.

I sighed. “I will never know, Meg. But I do know that Nero needs to be stopped, and we’re the only ones who can do it. We don’t exactly have the choice to flee.” Meg’s shoulders slumped. That was not the answer she’d been looking for.

“I wasn’t taking about Nero,” she muttered.

“Of course not. But if it makes you feel any better-”

“It won’t.”

“-I don’t along with my father either.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “Duh,” she mocked, lifting my shirt and gesturing at my pathetic mortal flab. I promptly snatched my shirt back from her grip and glared daggers at her. She only snickered, which I found quite annoying.

“I meant that I never got along with him. One time he forgot my name and called me Aspirin.”

Meg smirked. “I bet you’re still bitter.”

“I am!” I cried, throwing my hands up for dramatic effect. “It's not even close!”

“Kinda is.”

“And to make matters even worse, we were at lunch! All the Olympians were there,” I huffed. “Hermes wouldn’t shut up about it for years.”

Meg snorted. “There’s gotta be one time you agreed on something.”

1335 CE

“Apollo!” A low voice thundered around the white walls of my palace in Delphi. I jumped, dropping the tub of oil paint I was using to decorate the whitewash. It showed my newest prophetic vision: an era of renaissance was ahead. I shook my hands (which then became clean), tucked the loose strands of my long, blond hair back into it’s man bun, and turned to see my father, Zeus, standing menacingly behind me. His were fists locked at his sides, and his electric blue eyes sparked. I tried my best not to shake. My father did not mess around when he was angry. I gave him a nervous smile.

“Father,” I greeted. “Is something amiss?” His scowl only deepened.

“One of my sons just visited your oracle,” he growled. “She told him his death would be by your hand.”

I gulped. “W-well, I believe her exact words were ‘you shall be slain by the arrow of ill health’. That could mean many things, I am sure. Perhaps it is a metaphor, and he simply dies from sickness. Perhaps he gets bitten by a venomous serpent. I also have reason to believe he will enlist in a war in around fifteen years, perhaps he will be struck by a poisonous-” my anxious ramblings were cut short when a lightning bolt flashed into existence in Zeus’s right hand. I looked up at Zeus’s face, hoping, believing I would see some kind of reassurance. There was none there.

“Father, you cannot truly think I can change the prophecy, do you?” Zeus starting striding towards me. Like the brave god I was, I backed up. Cowardly, I know. But I had no intentions to fight my father. I did not want to be vaporised.

“Do not tell me what I can and cannot think, boy.” He scowled. His bolt began to spark more furiously, as if reflecting its master’s rage. I held my hands up in an ‘I surrender’ gesture, locked eyes with him and hummed a slow tune, hoping it would calm either my father or myself down. Zeus simply tensed his shoulders and muscled his way through the magic.

With blinding speed, the lord of the sky reached out and roughly grabbed my upper arm, yanking me into his bolt. It erupted from my side and the pain overtook me. It seared every part of my body with a fire that could not even compare to Hephaestus’s hottest forges. I screamed a very ungodly scream.

After an eternity, it ended. I hung limply in my father’s grip. My feet tried to support me, but my knees buckled like I was holding a herd of elephants on my back. My head hung as if my neck had been severed from my shoulders. My hair, now free of it’s man bun, dangled by my face, sticking to the sweat on my forehead and cheeks.

A crackle sounded from beneath my chin. The bolt, as full of energy as ever, flickered madly, ready to give another shock at any moment. It was raised, forcing my head up to look at my father. His face showed no sign of regret.

“Let us try that again,” Zeus snarled. “You will erase my son’s memories, take him to your oracle, and she will give him a different prophecy. Understand?”

I swallowed the taste of ichor in my mouth. “I can give him a different prophecy,” I wheezed. “But I cannot erase what my Pythia has already spoken.”

That gained another bolt to my godly chest. Its razors tore though my lungs, my stomach, my heart, until I retched ichor and yesterday’s ambrosia. My eyes were overtaken by blinding light. I felt like I was floating, everything hurt so much that I couldn’t differentiate between the pain and the pressure of my feet on the floor or Zeus’s fist around my arm.

When the light died down, I was lying on the floor, Zeus’s sandals an inch from my face. The pungent smell of smoke filled my nostrils. My skin was sizzling softly. I knew my form would begin to fix itself shortly, and I technically could take another hit, as I could not die, but to put it simply: I did not want to see or feel that bolt for at least another million years. A rough hand dragged up by the back of my robes, and held nose to nose with Zeus.

“Would you like to test my offer again?”

I shook my head, already thinking about how great it would feel when I finally did slay that demigod. I would enchant that arrow with such awful diseases, such terrible sicknesses that would overcome his corpse and spread to anyone with mile of the body. I wanted that boy to suffer the way I suffered. Father was wrong. I could not change the prophecy. But I would let the oracle tell him of his greatest days - his victories, his legacies. I would paint him a picture so great that he would never see his death coming. I would wait. I would wait until his best day - that would be the day I would cut him down. I hated that boy. I hated that accursed lighting bolt.

I did just that. In the end, it was me that killed the boy. Zeus knew who did it - deep down, he knew prophecies could not be changed. I would still be the one to kill his son. I was not sorry. I almost welcomed the excruciating torment of the bolt.

Present

“No. I don’t think we ever agreed on much.”

Meg blew a raspberry. “You're so petty.”

I smiled, but it didn’t reach my eyes. I remembered killing many innocent people for the singular reason that I was too scared to be angry at my father. I had never before looked back. But now, it was no wonder that demigods had short lifespans. I was not alone in being too afraid to challenge the lord of the sky. My sister, Artemis, was guilty. So was Ares, Hephaestus, Hera and everyone else. Poseidon would always be the only one to challenge him. But he was not innocent either.

“We should get some sleep. If I remember correctly, we found some blankets in he trunk.”

Meg jumped off the roof of the van, and called back, “Dibs on the big green one!”

Ugh. Typical.

#writing #toa #oneshot #toa oneshot #apollo #leto #zeus #meg mccaffrey #trials of apollo #fanfic #fanfiction

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