A/N: Holy hell, After a week and a half straight I can get a day off! Sorry for the lack of uploads, but I write on my days off and without that I just don't really write. But hey, I'm here now with a chapter, and since I have the next several days off I'll be getting some good new chapters out.
Samuel meets Mori's gaze, both expressionless with empty, unfeeling, unblinkng eyes. Slowly, Samuel looks down to the item she holds out for him to take. A small glass vial filled with a sickly green fluid that seems halfway to being as thick as slime. He looks back to her and slowly shakes his head. A single eyebrow raises and she pushes the potion closer to his lips, causing him to further squish into the couch like an angry turtle into its shell.
"Samuel, for fuck's sake just drink the damn thing!"
"Fuck you bitch, that's poison!"
Mori throws her hands up dramatically. Samuel notes that the fluid in the vial barely moved from the sudden movement, further reinforcing his decision not to drink that shit.
"Oh, my gods. Samuel, do you want to be on your ass with bent ribs for like, nine months?!"
"Yes!" He yells, "That sounds great! Wonderful even! I've been running across the country getting bit, thrown, crushed and heartbroken for like, a month straight! Sitting on my ass watching the Sopranos sounds like a great time right now!"
"Okay answer me this; When your ass is dragged by this bed by the next god that walks through that door, are you going to be able to handle the shit storm they throw you into with caved in ribs and a heart that physically can't beat properly?"
"...Fine! Give me the shit!"
Samuel sits up and snatches the vial from her hands, grumbling angrily as he twists the top off and carefully smells the contents.
"Good lord, what the fuck is in this! It smell like you mixed a skunks ass juice with piss!"
Mori scoffs haughtily, not from the idea of using urine in alchemy, but more from a 'pfft, amateur' way.
"Please, urine is what beginners use! This is made from high quality-"
"SHUT UP! Just, don't tell me!"
He looks at the vial with vile for several tense moments. Mori watches with the utmost intensity, her emerald colored eyes giving Samuel slight flashbacks to a other certain son of Hecate he despises.
In one quick gulp, the entire potion is emptied into his mouth. He holds it for barely a second before spitting it out violently, all over Mori's face. He makes choking noises and desperately tries to wipe the leftover fluid off his tongue.
"UGH! Auntie what the fuck! This is undrinkable!"
Mori doesn't respond. She's silent with her eyes closed as the potion drips down her face. With a quick snap of her fingers, the potion on fer face and the floor appears back in the vial, even her clothes and hair being dried completely. Samuel looks at her, blinks and looks at the vial completely filled and capped like he didn't just spit it all over someone.
Unfazed, Mori explains while setting her hair back into its proper style, "Nice try, but you're not getting out of this. You used to hold your food in your mouth then spit it all over my face when I went to wipe your face. You were a nasty little bugger, ya' know that? Max always complained about how much of a handful you were and how many nannies he had to go through on a monthly basis."
Samuel scoffs but doesn't say anything. Hearing someone talk so casually about his father is still a weird experience, and he isn't sure how to feel about it even years after the... event happened.
He throws his head back and finally downs the horrible potion. He almost spits it out again, but forces himself to swallow with a loud groan of displeasure. He leans back into the couch and stares up blankly at the ceiling.
For a second he thinks about asking her about him, his father. Only Eris ever talked about him, and he's seen his mother only a scant few amount of time. Likely less than he can count on his fingers, thinking about it. Here is a chance to learn more about his father, to get to understand him by the few people he had close to him. He thinks on it for a second, but decides not to try and humor Auntie Mori anymore than he has to.
The plan always has and will be to get them out of his life as soon as possible. She had her chance and fucked it up when she let his father die, and he's not about to forget that any time soon.'
"You gonna take off any time soon?"
Mori sighs at his not so subtle shooing attempt, "I'm your nurse. I need to make sure your bones are setting properly, and that means I need to keep a vigilant watch or else we'll have to do this all over again."
"Yeah, more time around you assholes would be pretty awful."
She rolls her eyes opens her bag, searching for another potion recipe. Although childish insults are something she's long grown past caring about, hearing it from Samuel strikes up some unhappy memories.
The pain in her heart really is quite awful.
"This place is awful."
You don't have to tell Samson that twice. He's been here once before and it was awful trying to navigate the distorted landscape. Though he notes that the world seems to have changed somehow? It's hard for him to explain as the whole realm is the most bizarre place he's ever seen, but it has changed from before.
It still has islands' that float aimlessly in the air around one another loosely connected by vines, roots or other fleshy growths with each 'island' being in completely different angles to one another while gravity works relative to each twisted lands sense of gravity. That means you could look straight up at the floor of a different one and see gravity working relative to the angle, regardless of what is 'up' or 'down' compared to your version of it.
However, Samson notes that odd, distorted 'cracks' in reality like cracks in a mirror are sprinkled around the world in varying sizes. Peeking into the horribly shattered anomaly, he can see bare flashes of imagery and words, but not really make anything out.
"You said this was a flipped version of our world created by the destruction of the Golden Age, then perhaps these are 'memories' of that time?"
A worthy hypothesis, and given that this world was created by the death of a time god then it makes sense for these to be 'mirrors' that look out at different points of time in the history of the world. Whether he can interact with the anomalies he doesn't know and isn't too keen to find out. His Looking Glass Mirror can travel via mirrors, and during creation he noted the distinct possibility of being shredded into particles should the enchantments be made wrong, so who's to say a similar issue couldn't happen with these things?
"Athena said we're hunting a formless entity. She never told us exactly what we're looking for, or how we can fight it. Anything you can add onto this?"
Embarrassingly, Samson really doesn't know. He does know he made a mistake by being too hasty. Athena clearly knows what the entity is and how it can be defeated, and given the look he caught in her eye she would've told him too. Dammit! If only he wasn't so hasty he could've prepared himself. What kind of Son of Athena is he if he can't even go into a situation without bumbling around like a drunk!
"Samson! Calm yourself. This is an entity of negative emotions, okay? You'll summon it to us in no time if you keep acting like a child! Get over yourself. Everyone makes mistakes, and she could've easily told us by herself too. Clearly she intends this to be your true trial. Not how well you can handle foreknowledge on a situation, but how well you can handle with limited information. Now get a move on. Surprise is on our side but who knows for how long. And don't forget; Last time there were glass monsters we couldn't destroy."
She's right. Now's not the time to be childish and self absorbed. If he's going to be successful Samson needs a plan and a good one at that. The glass creatures from years ago weren't necessarily powerful but being made from glass shards they were able to reform in only a matter of moments, essentially making them invulnerable. Last time he had to drop them off the edge of an island into the vast emptiness that surrounds everything and nothing.
That was back when he was young and weak, barely able to use magic if that. Now he's become much more powerful, and his skill with sorcery has reached heights not achieved by any in camp since he was still human. Call him arrogant, but after years of slogging through the mud he's finally become the strong being he wanted to be all along.
"Samson, I can feel something heading our way."
Dammit, just like last time! The glass creatures seem to have a psychic way of tracking intruders down, they always show up within moments of entering and no matter how far you travel they find where you're at.
Samson quickly looks around his surroundings, the landmass he's on is large and flat, hardly anything bigger than grain grass growing. Though what immediately draws his focus is the loud, thundering crash of a huge chunk of the ground being ripped up by some gigantic force. The city block sized chunk of Earth slowly floats away along with several smaller boulders and a huge cloud of loose soil.
He scans across the rest of the land and sees faint white in the distance. With a place in mind, he sets off after the mystery location, hoping it'll lead him to wherever it is he's supposed to be.
"To your left!"
Samson ducks down as a glass hellhound leaps over his head. It crashes into the dirt, long claws digging deep trenches into the Earth as it pivots its body around and prepares for another charge. Samson holds his hand out to the creature and a blast of telekinetic energy utterly destroys the loose form it holds and scatters the glass across the field.
As he remembers, the glass clinks and cracks as it slowly starts piecing itself back together. Suddenly Samson's whole body is thrown from under his feet by a tremor comparable to the Demon Horse back at Laila's mansion.
A great crack starts by his feet and quickly grows across the length of the field, spider-webbing into many small fissures. He quickly comes back to his feet and faintly sees the glass horde approaching before the ground under them gives way, forming a massive hole that goes straight through the entire landmass. Samson curses and jumps to his feet, taking off towards the now visible stone city.
"Samson this whole place is falling apart! We're running out of places to go!"
Dammit! What the hell can he do?! He can't fly, and none of his spells can hold a disintegrating chunk of Earth in once piece long enough to help him understand what the fuck is going on!
His only chance might be... He looks around, trying to spot the familiar peculiarity as he races around the winding, abandoned streets of what must've been some ancient Greek city.
The ground shakes violently, a thundering boom as more of the ground collapses nearby. He stops at what must've once been the trading center and takes a quick look around.
"Your 6 o'clock!"
He spins around and there it is, one of the mirror anomalies! Another explosion like thunder and he sees part of the city off in the distance sinking below the city skyline. Making what is likely the stupidest decision yet, he breaks for the anomaly and leaps towards it, all the while a fissure grows and swallows all the land behind him.
The last thing he can make out as he collides with the mystical crack in reality is the color blue and the fluttering of wings and something heavy crashing into roaring water and the distraught screaming of a broken heart.
Samson slowly opens his eyes and finds himself standing in the center of a dimly lit room. He looks around and sees diagrams and drawing stuck to the wall. Curious, Samson steps closer and gently takes one from the wall. It's a drawing of an invention, wings of some kind, but very classical and fantastic looking. Almost exactly like the drawings of Da Vinci, only these ones also contain references to ingredients and principles only a Demigod would know.
Suddenly, it all clicks. Wings, Magic and tragedy can only mean one thing. This is Daedalus's workshop, and the one invention he's known for is-
"Wings."
Making a quick decision, Samson races around the room, turning up every corner and basket desperately hoping to find what he's looking for. At a large wardrobe he throws open the doors, and instead of clothes he finds a gleaming bronze contraption similar in size and appearance to a backpack. Samson picks it up and holds it up to the light peering in from the tiny window high on the wall.
He feels the sides and presses a button he finds. Slowly gears like a clock whir and click. Chutes open on the sides and slowly glimmering wings made of enchanted metal fold out. Even in the dim light they sparkle radiantly with glory. A smile works its way onto his face, a childish giddiness and excitement he hasn't felt in years building up in his heart.
"Well, looks like we solved our flight problem."