Chapter Text
𝒜𝓃𝓎 𝓅𝒶𝓃𝓉𝒽𝑒𝑜𝓃𝓈
𝓁𝑜𝑜𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝒽𝒾𝓇𝑒? ℐ 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝓀
ℐ 𝒿𝓊𝓈𝓉 𝑔𝑜𝓉 𝒻𝒾𝓇𝑒𝒹
𝐘𝐄𝐒, 𝐘𝐄𝐒. You heard me right.
Laugh it up. Get it out of your system. Go on. I know you must think this is the most hilarious thing ever. The god Apollo, no sooner back on Olympus, cast out again little under two months later in yet another freshly wrapped Lester suit to go.
Whilst there are worse things to be than human, Zeus’ go to methods were starting to get old. Where was the originality? The pizzazz? The je-ne-sais-quoi as the French like to say? Perhaps the muses were getting tired of dear old dad. They’d dried up his well of creativity in a subtle effort to stick it to the man (you go girls!).
Oh, who was I kidding? As if Zeus ever had one of those. He’s a stickler for old tried and true methods, that one. If mortality could work on me once, then sure, why not? Toss me down again and again to see if a fallen god can land on his feet.
The answer was still an emphatic no.
It had me disliking cats for a whole other reason. The one Ares threw from Olympus never met the ground. Athena came to its rescue. No such godly intervention came for me.
At least, this time, I did not land in another dumpster. I feared that, any more, and the fates would bestow me dumpster diving as a domain. Even Cloacina would get a chuckle out of that. I wouldn’t survive the indignity.
I landed in crumbly, Californian dirt, thoroughly bruised in places I was all too familiar with (thanks mortality). If I had been anywhere near conscious at this point, I might have even recognised the exact location.
As it was, I was passed out colder than one of Boreas’ winds. Something I was also familiar with (we have history).
Now at this point you, dear reader, may be thinking, Apollo, what did you even do to earn such an encore of Zeus’ ire? Park the sun chariot on double yellow lines? Sing one too many high notes and shatter all the vases on Olympus (again)? Chase after a nymph he, too, was after?
No, no and no (oh, who do you think I am, Dionysus?)
The truth? Lester’s favourite catchphrase: I didn’t actually know. Oh, I could make a guess. Something pertaining my recent dismissals of the ancient laws, blatantly ignoring them in favour of family bonding time with my kids, making a few house calls, and visiting my favourite demigods from across my adventures despite having zero quests to give them as per our usual mo. It was everything an Olympian god should not be doing, and I, like a rebel, absolutely was.
Of course, if anyone asked, I was on my best behaviour. I had learned after all! My trials had taught me the importance of my duties, and what would happen if I neglected them. So I kept an eye on my oracles, on my red cattle, on Camp Half-Blood’s original borders I had instated once so long ago.
Who was to say if I just happened to bump into some other familiar faces whilst conducting this routine inspection? It was all mere coincidence. Mere coincidence, I say! They happen. After all, my duties were on their stomping grounds.
But no one asked. No one had caught on or cared enough. It was all irrelevant things. It wasn’t as if I was interfering on any quest. Perhaps, if they had, the others would have simply thought it was a phase mom ™, the after effects of mortality, and I would grow out of such activities. Maybe that’s what they were waiting on, and Zeus did know, but was willing to overlook it all for the same reason for his awkwardness upon my return.
Maybe he did. Maybe his leniency waned. Maybe he grew tired of being tested.
But Zeus certainly hadn’t confronted me about it.
Not that I could remember, anyway. Because here I was. Mortal.
But whilst this was my best guess, it was just a guess. Unlike my previous fall into the streets of Manhattan, Zeus hadn’t so much as left me with a hazy reason as to why. My ears didn’t ring with an echo of his thundering fury.
Strangely enough, he was silent. And I was in the dark to his intentions, which, as a sun god, is the last place I would want to be, right next to Chaos (for more details, see my scathing Yelp review), the Limburger
cheese factory (still on the list—sorry Aristaeus. Maybe next Father’s Day, we should just go regular old fishing. Or literally anything that doesn’t require a clothes peg over my nose), and Ares’ personal gym.
Somehow, this was all the more fear inducing. Zeus loved to let others know how they crossed him. If he hadn’t, then something was clearly very, very wrong.
I remembered the three strikes and you’re out rule. Was this it? Was this what out looked like? I did the maths. I had definitely exceeded the limit at four.
Oh dear. If I trudged up to Olympus right now, would there even be a throne left for me? Or was Zeus clearing out my chambers and holding job applications for the next sun god as we speak? I shuddered to think of the potential candidates. If Caligula had still been around, he very well could have been taking that interview. As it was, maybe Ares would be getting that god of climate disasters after all.
I was just that replaceable. Me, the once shining god. Me, once my father’s favourite.
But as Meg could tell you, nothing good ever comes of that.
Perhaps I should just change pantheons.
I wondered if the Norse had any vacancies. They were always dying (though, admittedly, they were also always coming back after the fact). I could even get back in contact with Frey again! It would be worth it, even if I would have to put up with that annoying sword of his again, and constantly eat golden apples (if I haven’t already made my stance clear on that, golden apples are the worst).
Maybe they would even have room for two. Maybe I had an opportunity to get Artemis away from Zeus for good.
I wondered how she was faring. I had caused her enough grief on my last stint. I didn’t want to be the reason she turned a permanent premature grey. It wouldn’t suit the whole twelve year old look she had going. Though, grey would work with her colour scheme.
Look at me. I was getting ahead of myself. I couldn’t afford to think so pessimistically. I would get frown lines. On top of all my one hundred and one other concerns, I couldn’t afford to get frown lines.
Oh. I felt a sting of pain. Make that one hundred and two.
Being awoken by the Meliai almost made me wish my sister was here instead with her beloved water bucket. Almost.
I groaned, shifting on my elbows as I squinted up at the women warriors, their tall statures just as imposing as the spears being thrust near my face. I eyed the pointed tips, growing poignantly wary I could find said eye shish kebab skewered at a moment’s notice if I wasn’t careful. I resolved to be careful.
“Trespasser!” declared the collective as one. If they were more musically inclined, they would have made a wonderful chorus. They were just so in sync. “State your purpose here.”
Truthfully, I had no idea what my purpose here was. I had only just realised where here even was, too disoriented to even think about activating my godly positioning system, yet alone why I couldn’t. But there was only one place you could find the Meliai.
Aeithales. I was in Aeithales.
At least, despite everything, I was surrounded by friendly faces. Friendly, spear-wielding faces.
“Come on girls, surely you recognise me by now?” I said. I was here often enough that I was starting to believe this was their way of messing with me. Urgh. Must they do this every time? “It’s me!”
“The weakling servant,” said one.
“You seem different,” said another.
“More of a weakling than usual,” finished the one I recognised as their leader. I felt my eye twitch.
“So nice of you to notice.” I grimaced. “You see, I think—“
“Lester!!!!”
I swivelled my head as the Meliai parted, leaving room for me to be tackled by my favourite fashion eyesore, Meg Mccaffrey, and if I wasn’t already on the floor, I would have been now. Today she was sporting her signature green dress of Theseus. Was it really the original dress after so many swatches of fabric had been used to mend it? Meg certainly didn’t seem to mind. She would continue to wear the garment well past its best with as many audacious pairs of leggings as possible. Now I was looking at the most bedazzled pink bottoms I think I had ever seen. Some things never changed.
After a brief hug, she pulled away, all smiles until she seemed to spot something on my face.
Meg gave me an incredulous look. “Is that… blood?”
I swiped a thumb at my cheek, and pulled it away, now glistening red. It seemed one of the Meliai had nicked me with one of their spears.
I winced. That confirmed it. What I had instinctually felt the moment I fell was officially made real.
I decided I would bypass the emotional heartache of experiencing all the stages of grief towards humanification, and instead, I settled on taking a shortcut to acceptance. Apparently, these things just happen if you’re me, and me specifically.
Might as well get used to it.
“So it is,” I said, an astute observation from yours truly. “Huh.”
“I thought you said goddy blood was gold.”
“Ichor,” I corrected because I prioritise educating the youth, and certainly not because I was distracting myself with menial critiques. I let the word goddy slide because it had already infiltrated itself into several works of poetry. What can I say? Meg’s a terrible influence. “And yes, usually it is.”
“But yours isn’t,” she said slowly.
“Yep.”
“So you’re not a god anymore.”
“Evidently.”
Meg threw her hands up in the air. “Urgh! You’re such a dummy. What did you do?”
I did not whine. “Why are you assuming this is my fault?”
She gave me a look as if to say ‘do you really need me to answer that?’
“Point taken. But I really have no idea why I’m mortal again.” I held off on giving the specifics of my leading theory. I didn’t want to say ‘I think visiting you may have got me punished.’ She didn’t deserve that kind of guilt. And if godhood meant I’d never get to see my friends again, then I didn’t want it (and oh, if the old me could hear that). “Honest! I just woke up like this. I guess… Father thought I had something else to learn.”
She gave me a scrutinising look. I had never felt so read. My skin itched, though that may have just been a return of my formidable foe: Lester’s horrendous case of acne. I seemed to be back in my old body again, scars and all. I could still feel the bandage on my nose. Strangely enough, it was a relief.
Don’t get me wrong, I still hold many of the same opinions about being mortal. It requires so much effort, and it’s exhausting. How you mortals live your entire lives, well, mortal, is beyond me.
But after having spent all my time questing as Lester, earning scar after scar, memory after memory tied to them, with all the people I had met, friends I had made, tragedies and hardships we’d faced head on together, I had grown quite fond of the body. My father had made it as a punishment, everything unappealing, ungodly, put to human form, but I had made it my own. I grew out my hair, I renewed my muscle memory, I built stamina in my voice. (A shame about the acne, though. No amount of pimple patches could solve that. Leo and Calypso had to restrain me from blowing our budget on ineffective skincare.)
As time went on, Lester felt less like an empty shell of an apartment, and more of a cosy home. Sure, he didn’t belong on any front page magazine, but he felt lived in in a way that had its own kind of charm. A charm that reflected me, in a way. A more human me, but still very much me. Perhaps even more me than I had been in a long time.
Which is why the Lester look never retired post my trials. As something I never would have chosen for myself, my actions baffled my sister to no end (but when didn’t they?) Even so, I quickly adopted the look among my frequent faces, right next to the hot blonde you all know and love (don’t even try and deny it dear reader. I’m everybody’s type.)
The look spoke of my journey, of my entire friendship with Meg. I met her like this, sounding like this. The look would always have a special place in my heart as she did.
So the fact that Zeus had kept it, just as I left it, came as a relief. If he had been feeling particularly vindictive, he would have given me another body entirely. One that even Dionysus wouldn’t stoop to wearing. Perhaps he saw the scarred body as an extra layer of punishment.
I had no intention of telling him otherwise.
What I had learnt as Lester had never been what I had been meant to learn.
“You did change,” observed Meg. “You got better. What else would he want from you?”
Obedience, I though privately. A son who didn’t question his word.
Instead, I merely shrugged.
Meg frowned. “Then that’s dumb. He’s dumb. Dumber than you.”
“Um, dear Meg,” I said, strained. “Let’s try not to anger the king of the gods. Especially when he could be watching us. Right now. As we speak.”
“So? Me and the Meliai can take him. Make him talk. Then you’d have answers.”
Gods, what were demigods made of these days? Whatever it was, it wasn’t strong enough to face the full brunt force of Zeus’ wrath.
As for the Meliai? As powerful they may be, I really didn’t want to chance it.
“Meg,” I scolded, a nervous edge to it. “Please drop it.”
Meg didn’t appear too happy about this, she never was with orders (I could relate), but perhaps sensing my desperation, she resolved to drop the matter, instead choosing to focus on something else.
“We’re really doing this again.”
“We?”
“Duh, dummy,” said Meg like it was a given. Like we were a team, just as we had been before. I found myself comforted by that even as I worried about her getting involved in my mess again. She had a nice life here as the protector of Southern California. And here I was taking her away from it for the second time. If I was Meg (and what a terrifying hypothetical that was) I would have complained. But she didn’t. “It’s the same as last time, right?”
“Uh. I assume so.”
“Same rules?”
Where was she going with… oh. Oh.
I rolled my eyes, trying to fight back a smile. “Yes, Meg. You may claim my service.”
Meg stuck her tongue out. Yes, yes. I of all people knew that she was not after my permission. But she had it. No one wants to be a slave to anyone, least of all a twelve year old, but as far as demigod masters go, this young girl had a way of somersaulting her way into your heart.
At least, with her, I could trust that being bound to her commands wouldn’t have a sinister outcome. No more sinister, anyway, than the command to veer off the highway, or her accidentally commanding me to join her as she practiced handstands through the woods. As a god, any gymnastics team would have been ecstatic to have me. But Lester couldn’t handstand—no sense of balance. He could, however, careen straight into tetchy dryad.
Oh, memories.
There were much, much worse people to be at the mercy of. Laomedon had been a slave driver, truly the worst of the worst, and I didn’t want to imagine a reality where Nero had bypassed Meg, and visited me in that alley himself. I fear I wouldn’t have survived the day. Or perhaps he would have had a fate in store far worse. One that would put my loved ones at risk.
And to top it all off, Meg would have still been trapped in that tower.
I suppressed a gulp. So much for not imagining it. It was a what if that could have changed everything. But I would not let Nero haunt me any more than I would let him haunt Meg.
Her friendship was dear to me, she was dear to me. It was hard to believe it all began with servitude.
“I’m Meg Mccaffrey,” she said for old times sake. Either that, or she remembered my memory troubles last time as Lester and had decided to reintroduce herself. “And I claim your service!”
…
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I patiently waited for the heavens to rumble, but there was no divine laughter to be heard. Strange. Zeus was really overdoing it with the silent treatment.
“Feel anything?” asked Meg.
“No,” I replied forlornly. “Nothing at all.”
“Slap yourself.”
Somehow not slapping myself felt like even more of a slap to the face.
“Perhaps it’s a one time deal sort of thing?” I suggested. I had never attempted to be reclaimed by the same master before (for obvious reasons), and had never been handed a formal document with all the terms and conditions. I didn’t think Zeus had gone to the trouble of writing them out. We were entering new territory here.
I did not like the look of gears turning in Meg’s thoughts. Despite her initial disappointment towards being unable to boss me around for the foreseeable future, her eyes began to gleam. I was briefly reminded of the many wolves Artemis kept in her pack, the reflection in their eyes if you stared them down at night. I would be lying if I said the comparison didn’t make me nervous.
“I’ll take you to my siblings,” Meg offered, though it sounded more like a command. If I was still in service with her, I would have no choice but to comply. The problem was, however, that I wasn’t. But she knew exactly who she wanted me to be in service to. “One of them can borrow you.”
“Oh you really don’t have to! I see no need to rush the process. Give me a few days and I’m sure I’ll find a better candidate.”
I was already making a mental list. So far it did not start with any of Nero’s former adoptees.
“Nah.” Meg smirked. “I do.”
And that was how I, a former god once more, found myself marched by seven Meliai and a Meg towards what I was sure would be my impending doom.