Title: Oracle
Word Count: 500 (at least it's an even number?)
deathnote100 Challenge: Mythology
Light calmly pushed through the curtained doorway leading into the sanctuary of the oracle of Delphi. Walking up to the girl sitting awkwardly by the altar, her feet tucked into herself and looking as if in deep thought, the young senator placed his offering of gold before her. With her hair unkempt, piling over her eyes, she had to push it out of the way before seeing exactly who had come to disturb work. Watching as the young woman took up the gold bag, the youngest senator in the Athenian Assembly resented the fact that part of his senatorial duties required a pilgrimage to the Pythia at Delphi. Looking into the girl's sunken eyes, he wondered again what insight a hallucinogenic slip of a woman could provide a man whose words would soon shape the Greek populace.
"O, wise Pythia, what do the gods have in store for the people of Athens?" Light asked with just the right hint of deference and awe.
Catching Light dead in the eyes, the Pythia began her tale, spinning about the room, gracefully on her bare feet. "The gods are every smiling on the people of Athens. They who are ever faithful need not worry about what the gods have in store for them. The God of Death however grows bored and weary from his self-enforced stay in the Underworld, away from his ladylove. He seeks a new champion to send him souls for worship. His might will be great and his fury righteous. His most loyal subject will guide and teach the ways of death." As if drained of all her strength, the girl crouched on the first step leading to the altar.
Light rushed her and caught her robes in his hands dragging her up to his level, shouting, "What is your name? Who are you that can speak so freely of the God of Death?" Getting no response, the Greek senator shook her again.
"I have no name. I am the Pythia of Apollo." The oracle answered back unblinkingly.
Looking into her eyes one more time, Light's face softened and he smiled at the girl in his arms, "What did Apollo tell you to make you think that Hades, God of Death, has a champion in this world?"
Shaking her head back and forth as if awakening from a dream, the Pythia stared back at her captor with large beguiling eyes. "Who are you? What was I saying? Were you asking for the advice of Apollo? When Apollo foretells the future, I do not know what I have been saying..." she trailed off haltingly.
"Nothing. It was nothing." Light responded letting go. "Thank you for allowing me to hear the words of the gods." Turning, the senator headed towards the entrance. The Fury, Ryuuku followed in his wake.
The girl's eyes hardened, tracking the figure leaving her domain, calculating in her mind the games that gods play and all the worshippers who asked what they could do to escapes Hade's eyes.
end
Notes: I'm going to claim artistic license here, naming Ryuuku a Fury in this fic instead of the correct Greek term. The Furies were the Latin equivalentof the Greek Erynnies who helped guard the gates to the Underworld. They were created when Kronos, the father of Zeus and Hades et al, castrated his father, Uranus (lovely imagery there, right?), and Uranus' blood created the Furies. The Furies were disfigured, winged beings and were avenging spirits who appear in different myths in Greek and Roman mythology to punish crimes out of the reach of human justice.