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The Legendary Journeys Saga #9: Apples and Cerberus
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#1
07-16-2021, 05:11 PM

9A: The Godmoot XI

“The Cattle of Geryon have been claimed!” Hermes speaks again. The mood within the palace is dour and crestfallen, with the Messenger’s voice being the only enthusiasm that could be roused. Even that too, however, seems to lack a certain sureness. Though most of the gathered party still remains, the attack upon the hill and the subsequent departure of the Egyptian contingent, as well as one or two others, had underlined the gravity of the situation for each of them. Gods rarely felt such misery of being powerless.

“This would have been the end…” the Highfather muses aloud as he thinks upon the trials of the mortal. Ten have been completed, and ten there were supposed to be. At the urging of the Moon of the Nile, two more were added, but now that very same Falcon who petitioned for more is not here to see the fruits of his labour ring true.

The Falcon. He hopes his kin have travelled safely. Though their interactions over the past few days had been testing, the King of Olympus knows how heavy the head that wears the crown is, and that the Moon was still adapting. For all their millenia-long battles over the lives of humanity, the peace that had been found in the wake of the God of Abraham’s forceful consolidation of power was one that Zeus saw no merit in disrupting. As he looks down to where Amaterasu of the Eastern Sun stands next to the ancient - even by their standards - serenity of the Dreamtime’s own skyfather, Baiame, he knows that the balance that has been found extends beyond those who reigned in bygone eras, extending even to those who still walk the mortal plane, in their own fashion. He is in no hurry to see the end.

“But it’s not,” his wife replies, interrupting his thoughts. He notes that her attention to his face is greater than it had been at any point prior during this trial. Is that concern? If so, is it for him, or for something else?

“No…” he agrees. “It is not.”

From the skies, he scans the moot once more, before returning his eyes to the sunlit outline of the Shinto Skymother.

“We committed to our brethren that two more there would be. Though our family from Egypt are not here to see it be done, all here will know it was as we said. Just as was said to you, Amaterasu.” She nods in acknowledgement. He shifts his focus down the line to where the one-eyed Raven stands. “And just as it was said to our fallen brother of Asgard. We will have time to bury the dead. To mourn and celebrate their lives. But for now…”

“What if he is innocent?” asks the divine Rising Sun.

“That’s what the trial is for,” Zeus says.

“That’s not what I mean,” Amaterasu replies. “We have agreed that the mortal no doubt has responsibility for the lives lost at the flesh-starved jaws of Diomedes’s Mares, but if he is able to complete the tasks set for him today, we are to take him as innocent for the atrocity committed against Ra, and by his proxy, all of us. We know there are other forces at play here, beyond even our understanding. What then do we do to determine the culprit? What then do we do to influence our Egyptian family to act consistent with our way? Great Highfather of this meeting place, this trial is supported by you and your kin. If he is found to be blameless, what options would we then have under your court to determine who is answerable for my fellow Sun’s death?”

“We will cross that bridge if and when we need to,” he says, though the answer doesn’t wholly satisfy the Sun of the East’s interest. Still, by now she knows when it will be easier to bite her tongue and when she can push. Today is the former, and as she studies the Highfather above her, he turns his eye once more to another. Back to the Messenger.

Back to the trial.

“The next trial will begin.”

~~~~~

“Question. Explore. Discover.
What do you know by now?”






9B: The Golden Apples of the Hesperides


[Image: f325NSy.jpg]



The garden was encircled by the world ocean. All it would take is one gentle push from the shore, and eventually the current would sweep him away to the edge. To the end.

He was so close to the end.

But he’s seen what lies on the other side, and today was not the day for that.

For much of his journey, the shrill call of a falcon overhead had kept him from sleeping. Even in the black of the night, he could still hear its ’KAK, KAK, KAK’, as though it were the moon itself. But when the splendid, psychedelic splash of the garden’s technicolour flower beds greeted him that morning and beckoned him to land, the falcon was nowhere to be seen.

He had sailed alone this time, with nothing but his club for an oar, his bow for a rudder, and the pearl tucked safely in its pouch. Thus when he arrived on shore he had to haul the small boat up the water-clogged sand, and find a safe place to store it. He found such a place in a slightly elevated cave.

Beasts live in caves.

Fuck ‘em.

~~~~~


Bidding adieu to the Old Man of the Sea, he set forth into the enchanted garden. There was something quaintly familiar about it. That gentle breath of spring in eternal bloom blew against his cheek in a romantic sigh, and took him back to a hilltop infused with hope and wonder. There, amongst the bounding bunnies and blissful bees, he had danced on a sunbeam with coquettish angels who dared to dream. Here, amongst chrysanthemums and roses and magnolias and tulips, all growing together in perfect harmony, he felt as though he had been let into the angels’ home. The dream made true!

And he could hear them sing. Oh, how they sang! He nearly breaks into a skip as he follows their voices past flamboyant display after flamboyant display until he sees them. The nymphs. They glow of the sunset, though it was still but the morning, as they frolic about a large, perfectly symmetrical tree. Hanging from its branches, and tinkling in the sunlight, were apples of solid gold! Hundreds of him!

“All I need is three,” he says to himself, because that’s definitely a thing that people do in real life.

And this is definitely real life.

He shouldn’t have. Though his voice was barely a whisper, the nymphs heard him. They were charged with keeping the apples safe, and at the merest suggestion of danger, they were quick to act. They certainly had three to give, but he knew they wouldn’t give them to him willingly. Their heads dart to his direction, but before they can act he flees. He already knew how that particular encounter would go. The nymphs were wily, and a man capable of resisting their charms had yet to be birthed.

As he ran, he stuck to the narrow paths of grass cut with otherworldly precision, being careful not to tread on any of the flowers in their exquisite arrays. When the sound of the nymphs singing quietens, though not ceasing entirely, he brings his flight to an end and lays his back against a smooth boulder.

~~~~~


“Excuse me,” growls a husked voice. “Would you mind getting off my foot?”

The man springs forward in surprise. He madly spins about to find the source of the voice.

“Who said that?” he asks.

“I did,” the voice replies. It was coming from above!

Craning his neck, he looks up into the heavens. There straight above him, overlooking the garden, is a mighty titan upon whose shoulders the sky itself rests. The massive creature has fur tinged with blue that runs down its arms, back, and legs, leaving only bare feet and hands, and an awkward , half-human half-lupine face. The man scans down its body, noting that the beast is a female by its breasts that ’aren’t actually that big but everyone says they are’. Surveying further, the man’s eyes drift right down to the base of the beast.

“Oh,” he says, realising what he had been leaning against. It was the titan’s toe. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

“Because I’m so hard to miss?” she snarks. “What are you doing here?”

“I uh… I came to get some apples,” he says, always tending to favour honesty.

“Those apples are sacred, no man may fetch them,” she replies, choosing herself to favour the obvious.

“I’ll figure out a way,” he shrugs.

“I could get them for you?” she offers. Somewhat surprised, he isn’t quick to answer. “I’d need you to help me in return, but I’m sure I could get them.”

“What sort of help would you need?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Just hold up the skies for me while I fetch them,” she says. “I’ve been carrying it for so long that I could really use a chance to stretch my shoulders. Shrug even.”

I know the feeling. How do I know you would actually get the apples, though?” his suspicion rises. “How do I know you wouldn’t just leave me there in your place?”

“The Gods would find an even worse punishment for me if I did that.” She grimaces, struggling under the weight of the heavens.

The man relates to that too.

“Just while you get the apples.”

~~~~~


From the top of a mountain reaching into the sky, he carries the universe on his shoulders.

~~~~~


‘Heavy is the head’, Zeus thinks again.

~~~~~


Commotion! He tries to see what’s going on. The massive frame of the titan almost blocks out the sun. In its shadow, he sees a serpentine form slither its way around the titan’s leg.

A dragon!

Another line of defence to protect the apples.

Beasts.

Fuck ‘em.

The titan struggles to keep the dragon contained. If she should fall...

“No!” he yells, stuck between the earth and the sky.

The dragon latches on to the titan’s calf, leaving a chronic wound. The titan rips it away, but still the dragon keeps coming (taking a page out of the man’s own book).

“No!” he shouts again. Finding a strength within himself beyond even his own reckoning, he presses the sky above his shoulders. The heavens shake.

Another chronic bite from the dragon!

“NO!” he bellows, and his fingers begin to curl inwards. They pull the sky with it, tearing strips into its soft felt lining. He pulls one arm down, and supports the entire world with just his left hand raised in the sky. And with his right, he punches a hole in the heavens themselves. The sky shatters and falls, like a glass ceiling being broken. In the distance, the titan holds the dragon in one hand. The man pulls the string back on his bow and shoots.

The tainted arrow pierces the dragon in the mouth and kills it. The titan discards it to the side like a piece of trash.

~~~~~


“Did you see that?” the titan asks. “I just slayed a dragon!”

“We both slayed a dragon,” he corrects her. Standing on top of the mountain, he now looks the titan directly in the eye. Equals. “Now, give me the apples.”

“I changed my mind,” her disgusting face grins. “You can hold the sky up now.”

“Don’t you see?” the man asks, pointing to the nothingness of everything above.

Vast.

Expansive.

Indefinite.

“There is no sky now,” he continues. “You’re free.”

“Free?” The very word seems to shake her to her core. “What… what do I do?”

“Whatever you want,” he says. “The sky is not the limit anymore. You have no limit. Go slay some more dragons if you want to. Just give me the apples.”

She thinks for a moment, pensively staring down into her reflection within the shimmering surface of the fruit. He knew the look well, for he had spent many nights now staring into his mysterious pearl in much a similar fashion. When she reaches a decision, she announces it by simply tossing the apples in the air towards him. He snatches them out of the air with an inelegant juggle and brings them safely into his chest.

“Thank you,” he says, looking up into her canid eyes.

“And you,” she replies.

~~~~~

Seek to live, not to get away with living.






9C: The Eleventh Labour/The Godmoot XII

“The Apples of Hesper…”

“We know!” the Highfather says, interrupting the Messenger and slamming his fist down on the side of his chair. It’s not anger that rumbles within him, though. Dark clouds roll in but they remain as silent as though the sky were clear. Not anger. Concern? Worry? He thinks to himself ‘is this fear?’ For all the battles that he and his kin, both familial and otherwise, have fought; all their experiences in war; this… this is new.

“One more,” Amaterasu says.

Zeus doesn’t reply. The observation from the Sun of the East is obvious. The mortal has completed eleven of the tasks that the Queen had set for him, and though the King truly believed in the necessity of the trial, a part of him had wished that the mortal would fail so this whole thing could be over with. Given the present disposition of the pantheon of the Nile, the alternative, if the mortal should succeed, would prove to be a most challenging circumstance to navigate. It would be much easier in the face of failure. It would be much easier if the mortal simply die…

“Husband…” the matronly voice of his wife interrupts and breaks him out of his own mind. He looks upon with regard. They do not always see eye-to-eye, his own fidelities having caused much harm, but in this matter he had relied on her so dearly. He looks upon her, and her sedate eyes obscure a wickedness that he has seen plenty of times before. “Are you ready?”

He pauses, and takes stock. The entire gathered horde seems to be waiting on his breath. But his mind is elsewhere.

“What do we know of our foe?” he ponders aloud for all to hear.

“The mortal?” Nihon’s Skymother asks.

“No,” he says. “The beast.”

“Very little,” she replies.

“Little, yes,” he nods. “But still some. Let us focus on what we do know. He fought the great worm, no?”

“Indeed,” she agrees. “And won.”

“Hmm…” stroking his beard of clouds, he looks nowhere in particular.



The void.




Again, the Highfather floats away. In his mind, the voice of Amaterasu is more an idea hovering in the vacuum than it is a spoken word. A reflective sounding board. She sees his distant gaze, but is comfortable to continue. There is a feeling that rises in her. One she cannot ignore. The feeling as though everything is about to come to a head. That same feeling emanates, unsaid, by quiet Baiame beside her as well.

“What else?” the Highfather asks.

“He is collecting artifacts,” the Mother of the Sun continues, her mind drifting to the five stone altars that she has seen. That they have all seen. “Though we do not know for what purpose.”

“Has he collected them all?”

“We think.” In truth, she doesn’t know. Five items have been placed upon five altars. “Or at least, the mortal has on his behalf. The beast himself is…”

“Missing,” Hera interjects. That base maleficence stashed away behind her maternal visage surfaces, if just for a second. The harsh serenity of her voice once more brings the Father of Lightning back to Olympus. “The beast is missing. The mortal is found.”

“Indeed he is. So let’s focus on him.” He faces the crowd once more. “My friends, do any of you have concerns to raise, before the final task commences?”

Silence.

Broken.

“The apples.”

The One-Eyed Raven speaks, finally illuminating the moot with his all-seeing vision! It is Amaterasu, again, who translates.

“He had help!” her voice grows excited. Out-of-character, even. Zeus sits forward on his marble throne, his eyes widen. This may be the opportunity that he was looking for! A way to keep the peace amongst the gods!

“The task…” He looks to his wife for guidance once more. “A precedent is set. We must void the task.”

“No,” she says. “Not ‘void’. As with last time, the task was still completed. But perhaps another…”

“Yes!” He stands once more, high atop the rainbow. “More even! Tw…”

~~~~~


“The next task will begin.”

~~~~~


Olympus is silent.

That voice…

~~~~~

“The sun sets and rises. As does the moon. Tell me…
Just who do you think has been running the show?”






9D: Cerberus

The man.
Me.

~~~~~


[Image: 0qGao0S.jpg]



Beasts don’t live in caves. They’re all around us. In the trees, the ground, the seas, the sky. They’re in a mother’s milk, and a lover’s warm embrace. They encircle us completely, watching like a hunter watches its prey. They wait until we are at our most vulnerable, and then… they strike. They take us whole, and use us for their own perversions. They don’t care for us, they just want us to care for them. And we do. We grovel before them on our hands and knees, begging for their favour. And what do they give us? Nothing but scraps from their table.

I will not beg.

~~~~~


This city brims with a civil fever. Its liveliness skips along thatched rooftops and bounces from stone to clay to me. I’ve found the dark alley that I was seeking. Hunched over in the shadows of an old elm reaching over the wall - with false dreams clinging to the underside of its leaves, I pat my hand around upon the moss-lined wall in an erratic, inconsistent pattern.

Where is it? It has to be here somewhere!

KAK! KAK! KAK!

“What the…” I twist to the opening of the alley, and there, with talons atop the uneven ground, a falcon stands. It's larger than usual, with feathers as silver as the moon save for a brownish-gold design on the top of its head that makes it look as if it were wearing a crown. As it stares at me, its head cocking to the side, it speaks to me through its sharp caws.

There’s a voice there, if you know what to do.

KAK! KAK! KAK!

“Shut the fuck up.”

Sound familiar?

Its wings begin to beat as it rises above the ground. I see it in slow motion. I draw my bow, armed with poisoned arrows.

And I shoot it right in the head.

“There’s your fucking deicide,” I say to those whom I know are listening.

At the spill of godsblood, the task perverts, and the wall behind me falls away.

Beasts don’t live in caves.

But they do live in hell.

~~~~~


Through the hole in the wall I descend down further and further. Darkness takes over, and I bent fire to my will to guide my way.

Do I not deserve the light?

Eventually I stepped out into a cold and desolate cavern. Each journey seems to take me further and further from where I started, and this… this is something beyond anything else. It is the darkness. And I… I don’t deserve the light. I am.



The fire that will snuff the flames.




The surging waters of an uncrossable river wrap around the small rocky outcrop that I emerged onto, and the ferryman beckons me towards him. I pay my toll, and am paddled across the river and into the underworld.

On the other side, I hear three low growls coming from my left. I know that’s where I need to go, eventually, but not yet. I go right.

“Help!” calls a voice, and I warily proceed towards it. In this land, anything could be a ploy. I arrive on a scene of two men seated in chairs, ensnared in place. I approach them with my wits still about me, and see them for who they are. One, dark-skinned and of a land unknown to all of Greece, with his ankles encased in stone. The other, fair-skinned like the Veneti, with a deadly serpent coiled around his legs, it’s venom-soaked fangs dripping on his lap.

“Are you okay?” I whisper, careful not to alert anything else that may be down here.

“Huh?” the exotic man says. It was he who I had heard calling out. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

Help!” shouts the other man. Worriedly, I place my hand over his mouth and look around in case something heard. With a weary eye, I keep sight of the sleeping snake as well. When convinced that the coast is clear, I slowly peel back my hand, allowing him to speak once more.

“What happened here?” I ask. “How were the two of you bound like this?”

“We’re not bound,” the fair man says, as if he had forgotten his cry from before.

“Help!” the darker man yells, but the process repeats. When pushed for further understanding, he simply can’t recall.

They were forgotten about.

But I am here.

I bludgeon the snake to death with my club, and then turn my attention to the stone. It shatters into twelve pieces, and I’m able to free the men. Both of them. The moment that they stand, they remember who they were.

Heroes.

Legends.

Myths.

I escort them back to the river, and offer to pay their toll for them. At first, the ferryman refuses, believing his role to be unidirectional. With a little convincing, he eventually relents.

Because I’m in control.

And I think you finally fucking get it.

~~~~~


“Only one was supposed to be freed,” says the Master of the Underworld, as he appears in a puff of brimstone and smoke. His beard is dark and matted, and his skin as absent of light as this place we meet. I know him. And he knows me. “This was not how this was supposed to go.”

“I uh… I have a habit of doing that,” I say with a cheeky grin. Hades is not impressed.

“I know why you’re here,” he tells me.

“Of course you do.” My smile doesn’t fade.

“We need not war, you and I,” he says. “I do not believe that would work out in either of our favours. You are of this Realm yourself, but also… not.”

“If you don’t want to fight,” I say, brandishing my club and staring my afterlife in its flaming eyes. “I’m going to need you to get out of my way.”

“I can do that,” he agrees. “Under one condition.”

SMACK! I answer with the club powerfully slapping against the palm of my own hand.

“Take my hound with your bare hands,” he continues, not engaging in my hubris. “...and I will consider it a gift. Use weapons or assistance, and I will consider it a theft.”

“Fine.” I hook the club back to my tunic’s belt. I push past the God of the Underworld.

And I turn left.

~~~~~


When I emerged from the underworld, I did not have Cerberus over my shoulder.

I was riding it.

~~~~~

Fear not at all; fear neither men nor Fates, nor gods, nor anything. Money fear not, nor laughter of the folk folly, nor any other power in heaven or upon the earth or under the earth.

~~~~~


I rode it all the way to the top of the fucking mountain.





9E: The Twelfth Labour

“He’s here!” some bitch squealed. I ate them. Or… my new puppy did. I was on its back as it sunk its teeth into the Godlike flesh.

Godlike.

Fake ass bitches.

Whatever remained of the minor Gods after the attack on the mountain by the Mares is now eradicated. Each devoured.

And I’m not even fucking full yet.


Inside the hall is the real treat.

I dismount and leave Cerberus outside to feast on the remains of the pieces of shit that dare think they’re better than me. And I enter the hall to face the bigger cunts that think they’re even better than them.

“Remember our deal.”

I remember.

Armed with the Tunic of Nessus - that which in one story would kill me - I show them all what I’m fucking capable of.

I burned a village. I slayed an entire race of beings. And now…

“It wasn’t me who was on trial…” I tell Amaterasu, as I crash my club down upon her skull. “It was you.”

Baiame follows.

“And you’re all found guilty.” As with his ally, his skull is crushed. He will Dream no more.

“Rally on me!” shouts the Highfather, Zeus. Hávi steps beside him at the front of the rainbow steps. Together they wield the sky. But they can’t even leave a mark on my face. I strangle they both to fucking death with the Tunic.

The kids are next. Apollo simply looks at me and dies.

“Didn’t you hear? I’m the fucking Sun-Killer.” If it wasn’t true then, it certainly is now.

Demeter, whom had been quiet the entire time, goes the way of Zeus. I shove the Tunic down her stupid throat until she chokes on it. Hestia too had simply been sitting on a tiny tripod next to the hearth. I drive her face into its flames and watch her burn. For Hermes and Artemis, I offer the exact same arrow. It stabs through both their throats. Two birds, one stone. Athena and Ares come at me with their Asgardian brethren. Four of them? Fuck it!



The rest of the nameless and faceless fucks get slaughtered. I rip the other foot off Mixcoatl and make him be the one to eat it. Then I rip open Hachiman’s enormous belly and strangle the Aztec bastard with the Japanese entrails.

Pretty soon, all I’m left with is Poseidon and the Mother. I shove his trident up that seafaring bitch’s fucking ass and mount him atop the hill.

And Hera…

Hera I leave alive.

To tell the others what she saw.

As she flees, I revel in the destruction around me. A grin on my face, I reach into the pouch strapped around my waist and withdraw a small pearl - the one I found when first I came to this land.

“I brought you with me,” I say to it, with eyes aflame. “Because I knew this would be the only way you’d ever get here, I wanted to give you a taste of what it’s like at the top of the mountain. And look, don’t you see?”

~~~~~



---BLINK!---






The man is still atop a mountain.

Bodies are strewn everywhere.




~~~~~


“I told you it would be like this…” he continues, “...so many months ago. Well here it is. Those who aren’t here… they’ll fucking get theirs. Because nobody is going to control me.

I can’t say your name. Apparently we’re not friends. But, don’t you see? All this death, all this destruction…

It’s all for you.

Did you read between the lines?

Eff your Gods.”


I throw the pearl from the top of the mountain, and don’t even bother to see where it lands.


[Image: rlPErAu.jpg]

“Find him. Find me.”



























































9Ω: King

At his wish, he was taken from the land in which he had made his kingdom.

Kieran King got off the boat, and was met by a retinue of paid mercenaries and soldiers.

“Make the preparations,” he tells them, as the contingent wrap themselves around him, and he makes his way up the rain-drenched pavement leading away from the dock.

A new saga is set to b…


[Image: zg6onYy.gif]



.exe

Do you have a light?

[Image: 7qdASxF.jpg]
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