Reboot
The vast hall where the Olympian Council sat developed around a firepit that was being tended to by Hestia herself, the columns in white marble seemed to surround the Thrones with a presence that was at once heavier and more delicate than what should have been possible. To the Gods sitting inside, the sight was nothing new.
Mortals and those that weren't welcome to the Council would only see walls where in truth there were none, and couldn't listen in, no matter what sort of power the immortals were capable to bring to bear. Far over the heads of the Twelve, the sky spun with precision and elegance, reminding everyone of the King's Rule.
Dionysus saw nothing of the beautiful marble around him. Didn't relish in the tacky display of power of his father and found meaningless the showmanship of his fellow Gods, that seemed to wish to make themselves seem more than the squabbling gaggle of idiots that they'd been for the past couple of millennia. From Poseidon, that appeared in a rumbling flash of seaspray, carrying with it the distant rumble of titanic waves crashing against the shore, to Ares, who instead strode in, hate and fury and bloodlust resting over his shoulders like a mantle.
The God of Ritual Madness might have ruled over the Theatre, but performances were meant for an audience, and among the Twelve, there wasn't a single god that came to the Council to Learn, to be Awed, or to Feel what their lives couldn't give them. He barely withheld a snort, drinking the meaningless diet coke that he had manifested a while before.
An earth-shattering thunder introduced the last to join the council, and with the flash of white lightning, the youngest son of Kronos appeared on his Throne, which seemed fashioned out of a cumulonimbus, grey with rain and promising storms.
Dionysus ignored the rituals designed to reestablish that Zeus was, in fact, the King and that he could have done anything on his own far better than anyone else could, because he was the best, yadda yadda yadda, and reminding them of that fact (or empty boast) seemed to be one of the main reasons for the very existence of the Council.
The God of Ritual Madness let the meaningless words of his fellow Gods wash over him with disinterest, preferring to stare into the fire at the center of the Council, hoping to catch in the flame an echo of the events of the Adamas. He felt, from time to time, the warmth trickling down from the Tyrsus he had gifted to Icarus, but while Dionysus luxuriated in the feeling at any given opportunity, that didn't allow him to know everything that was going on.
Hestia, noticing his attention on her flames, raised an amused eyebrow in his direction, and pulled, allowing him a glance from the brazier lit with one of her embers: Solid Stone, Wild Plants, Quiet Waves, and a general feeling of tired restlessness, coupled with a feeling of conquest that he immediately recognized.
"I like them!" Ares thundered, catching Dionysus' attention, as it was abvious just who he was referring to.
"They're out of control." Athena quietly spoke, tilting her head towards her father while she tilted her shoulders just enough to be subtly dismissive of the God of War, "At the very least we should remove Icarus, he's quickly following in the footsteps of his namesake, but this time he dragged a group of demigods with him."
"The point of Demigods wasn't to challenge everything and everyone?" Hermes rose from his seat, his eyes blazing with endless stretches of road and the promise of communication, "Don't we keep having demigods so that we're not forgotten? Why aren't we honoring those that killed the Hydra, those that escaped Circe, those that ended those uncivilized cannibals?"
"Sit!" actual thunder rippled across the Council, forcing Dionysus himself to sit a tad bit strighter in his seat, if only because he would be able to better enjoy the Spanish Telenovela that his 'family' actually was.
"We all know that Icarus doesn't act in order to honor us." Athena's voice was implacable as her grey eyes, that denied any concession in front of her merciless logic: "In fact, more often than not he does the opposite."
Ares laughed while he clapped loudly, knowignly covering the voice of his half-sister with his booming voice: "Where was this coldness when you praised the way they slowly but surely chipped away at the Laestrygonians? "
"That was before Icarus killed Kampê." Hera spoke calmly, with all the grace and control that she could exercise as the Queen, "And even before, the little bastard should have been put down."
A muted rumble seemed to echo within the clouds that shaped her husband's throne, but the King chose not to speak against her in this particular circumstance.
"Nonetheless, it was a magnificent Hunt." Artemis spoke with barely restrained glee: "Acting as the prey only to set up an ambush."
Taking a slightly longer sip of his diet-coke was the only thing Dionysus could do to stop himself from laughing: for all of her inherent wisdom and political-savvyness, Hera far to often forgot that there were many bastards seating at the Council, and that her casual contempt did more to keep the Olympians from killing Icarus than anything the mortal had actually accomplished on his own.
"He travels the Labirynth with almost casual ease, does he not?" Athena returned to the fray with yet another of her arguments in favour of killing the demigod captain of the Adamas, her tone as glacial as ever, "Why, he came out with flaming horses and managed to free Briares, that we thought long lost. Now he has a powerful ally, and there are whispers that he wishes to built an actual city on the island he conquered."
"I bet it burns that he didn't even think to ask the goddess of architecture for help." Dionysus spoke for the first time since the beginning of the meeting, delighting in seeing his half-sister's mask crack just enough to earn himself a glare: "Or any of us, truly. But for now it is only an idea, when there'll be an actual city, then we can speak about Patrons, trying to avoid the mess that was Athens."
"But why does Apollo not speak?" Hera questioned, her voice almost mocking in her usual scorn, "Isn't he the one that broke the Rules and openly took part of the Quest? Isn't he the one that blatantly lent his power to his daughter, and then failed to claim the demigods' lives on site? Why, he even healed them. Isn't he the reason why this extraordinary council has been called?"
"I did what I had to." Apollo stiffly replied, but a frown was clear to see upon his face, betraying his unease at his own actions. Being the God of Truth didn't allow him to conceal too much, very much like the Sun, he shone, and while he may be unwilling to share his deepest reasonings, his actions spoke just as loudly as dawn's light, and that, brought Dionysus to sit a tad straighter on his throne, purple eyes gleaming with interest. After all, Apollo almost never acted cagey.
"Instead of healing his eye, you made sure he couldn't be regrown." Poseidon too deigned to speak for the first time, the approximation of a grin on his face while he studied the Sun God: "I've taken my share of souls because they refused to pay tribute before setting out, and I've no qualms as long as he remains on dry land."
"It won't last." Apollo turned his head towards the God of the Seas: "This much I can tell, the Adamas is tied to his Fate."
Just as an heavy frown appeared on the features of Poseidon, an eardrum-rupturing chain of thunders brought everyone to silence before the council could fall into the chaotic mess it usually became, and Zeus spoke.
"Many here have interests in the travels of this demigod." he rose from his cloudy-throne, lightning blazing in his eyes as he took in the form of each Olympian: "Some gave him an addictional task," his eyes landed on Artemis, who had the decency of look away almost immediately, "others feel slighted," he directed his attention to Athena, who stared blanly in front of herself, "and some support him almost openly."
Dionysus let a wide smile stretch over his face, not bothering denying it even as Ares commented: "When was the last time that demigods partecipated in a proper raid?"
"Only because they don't travel on my Roads, it doesn't mean that they do not travel. Demigods have been sitting still for far too many decades, running meaningless errands for anyone of us."
"When on a Quest for a god, the Heroes must act without open intervention from eny divinity, lest this very council is torn apart by fleeting loyalties." Zeus' voice boomed again, his head turning this and that way even as he gestured with grandious movements: "Icarus brought together a large group of the oldest demigods, and headed out without Prophecy to guide them, openly spitting in our faces. And yet, he braved the Sea of Monsters, he didn't leave Athena's daughter to her own devices despite the child's folly, and he led his people against many perils."
"We will not smite him. But neither we will openly help him ever again." Zeus declared, and with that, everybody could feel the weight of his Rule settle in the Council Room like an heavy cloud: "Officially, Icarus isn't on a Quest, and everybody could have intervened, openly or not. The lack of a Prophecy means that we could have muddled with his Fate with no consequences, but it is clear that expecting some form of responsability out of any of you was too much to ask. So I now declare that we will act as if he's under the protection of a Prophecy."
Apollo's sigh was the only sigh that of his relief.
The message that everybody could hear however, wasn't a novelty for any stretch of the measure: He's going to save my daughter, I am the Law, and so you'll leave him alone.
Dionysus couldn't hold back a quiet scoff: nepotism had always disgusted him.
Far away from Olympus, in the metaphysical opposite of the Empire State Building, there was a plateau atop of a mountain, and it was as quiet as it always was during the night, letting in the faint music of the nearby Garden, while an echo of the winds that carried news to those that were able to listen.
Bent but not broken under the weight of the Sky, Atlas tilted his head towards the daughters that no longer walked among the living, remaining instead as eternal mementoes in the celestail spheres.
Then another sound made itself known: steps, crushing the gravel with a constant pace that not many could keep on that kind of terrain, and a presence he was more than simply familiar with.
"Prometheus." he greeted the fellow Titan, his voice guarded as to not give away his thoughts, that, from the Fire-Giver's smile, were all too obvious.
"I've met a curious someone recently." Prometheus smiled while his eyes landed briefly on the celestial-bronze machine that rested not far from the Sky-Bearer: "Someone that I bet you're familiar with."
"So he's alive."
"Quite." Prometheus' smile was just a bit too wide to actually reassure Atlas, but the titan didn't let that deter him, and a matching showing of teeth appeared on his face.
"He freed you." the Sky-Bearer stated with certainity: "In exchange of what, I wonder?"
"Well, I tricked one of his people into freeing me, but the old hags weren't too appreciative of that, so instead of a vulture, I had Laestrygonians eating my guts every day."
A rumbling laughter was Atals' answer to that unexpected bit of information: "Ah, so that war actually happened. I thought the Hours were telling tall stories."
"Genocide." Prometheus nodded with an estatic smile: "Only because they were in the way, only because he could. He's not like your ordinary Olympian' lapdog."
"That much I already knew." Atlas' smile slowly disappeared, his shoulders shifting minutely in order to bring some attempted relief to his back, without much success: "Why are you here, brother?"
"The previous King is starting to move, and something tells me that the both of us have different ideas, after all, he's never been one to share power." Prometheus let himself rest on his back, his eyes peering in the starlit sky: "And something tells me that with time, your fellow Sky-Bearer can be... thaught."
"You won't manage to make a puppet out of him, not for yourself and not for someone else." Atlas chuckeld even if it made the Sky press uncomfortably against his shoulders: "I've seen his willfullness, it is not something that can be direted by lies."
At that, Prometheus inched forward: "Who said anything about lies? The only necessity is to get him involved, he'll do the rest. As you've said, he's willful enough."
Atlas tilted his head towards Prometheus, a faint gleam shining deep into his eyes: "What did you have in mind?"
ICARUS POV
My senses trickled back into working gear separately, like waves on the sand, each carrying with it a different taste of the world that I knew was just beyond the reach of my conscious. Even in the depths beyond the waking world, there was nothing. No dreams, no colors, not even music summoned from memory. Just... quiet, heavy as a lead curtain, silence, cold as wind that stole the breath, and... dullness.
In the dark, with sounds muffled beyond any hope of me recognizing them, with smells too faint to be associated with anything, and with my touch reporting the odd feeling of falling upwards, I felt... strained.
It wasn't the hurt that comes after a good workout, nor the limb-shattering weight of true exhaustion, it wasn't even the weariness that I could recall from my stint under the sky. No, it was a persistent feeling of being... fragile. I felt like a thin sheet of paper and a wrinkled one at that.
Slowly, I came to recognize a relatively regular movement, and through breathing, I discovered that I had a chest. From there, even with my eyes closed, my wary feeling of myself spread, and tentatively, slowly growing accustomed to the unfamiliar and unwelcome weakness that seemed to characterize my sense of self, I started attempting to move, my mind far too muddled to focus on anything beyond the immediate, instinctive need of becoming once more aware owner of my body.
I felt what I knew were my muscles strain to the limit only to allow me the barest movement of my arms. And instead of pushing myself even further, I took a deep breath, letting my mind roam over the waves of discomfort that made me feel like my skin was too tight, my bones tilted wrongly, my ligaments pulling at the wrong times.
"You're cracked open boy," a man's voice stated, "yes, I know you're awake, and you're pouring outwards... you're dying."
What?
My mind returned to Janus words, recalling his twin, dissonant laugh even as I ran from Kampê, before I focused once more on the sounds coming from around me. Once again, I forced myself to ignore the discomfort that the awareness of my own ears gave me, and I heard myself breathing.
Slowly, as if my eyelids were lifting mountains, I blinked, revealing a blurry world that did not match any expectation that I had of it. Wait... I blinked again, and half of my vision remained black. With a painstakingly slow movement, I managed to carry a hand over my face, where I tentatively became aware of scar tissue that went from my forehead to my jaw.
"Don't touch it." the flat voice, carrying the tone of an experienced healer, brought the rest of my attention once more to my surroundings, and blinking furiously, I brought into focus the only other person that I could spot in my immediate surroundings.
The man was in his fifties, with grey hair and grey eyes that shone like steel in the well-lit circular room. I looked him over briefly, easily recognizing his presence as a warrior's one: "Who are you?"
"Name's Quintus." he replied gruffly. Dedalus? What the fuck?
The revelation managed to completely awake me, and my eyes briefly took in the rest of the circular room, included the bed upon which I was resting. It looked like any random hospital's room, despite it being circular, and obviously, it having a grey maned warrior instead of a doctor in a lab coat.
"Icarus." I introduced myself, slowly taking stock of my body. While the feeling of weakness persisted, I was in control. My toes followed my will, and I managed to scratch distractedly around my scar tissue, carefully avoiding the actual scar: "Can I have some ambrosia? It will help."
"What?" the man's voice expressed only disbelief.
"Ambrosia will set me straight." I failed at shrugging, but from the frown of Quintus, I could tell that he managed to spot my action, and he was far from pleased.
"Didn't you hear boy? You're cracked open. No ambrosia, no nectar, your body is as frail as a mortal's right now. Worse, even."
Oh, yeah, I forgot...I forced my focus to return to the man in front of me: "My injuries?"
"The ones that anyone can see are cosmetical." the healer shrugged, "but your psychí, your soul... it's a mess, like a violin string."
I liked my lips, not knowing if I could trust this guy. Then again, he just healed me, or I can simply not say it outright... "Once I managed to get my hands on Golden Apples from the Queen's garden, if I succeeded in retrieving another..."
"Leaving alone the fact that as you are now, you couldn't steal candy from a child, never mind Ladon, how in the Hades should I know? I've never seen a Golden Apple." the man gestured wildly around himself: "But if I were to make a guess, I'd say that pouring more water into a cracked glass is a recipe for disaster."
I grimaced, hearing the words that shot down my immediate theory. Then again, it made some sort of sense: whatever a Golden Apple did, it wasn't something to be consumed willy-nilly.
"I'm sending you the satyr, you've got shit to talk about I suppose."
"Wait." I slowly raised a hand, which he grasped with an arched eyebrow: "Thank you."
Dedalus-in-disguise snorted: "You'd think I had a fucking choice."
I was left looking at the quickly retreating back of the man, which made me frown as I slowly rebuild my last moments of consciousness. I wasn't overly worried about the others, the only ones near Kampê had been myself and Mera, which was by far more fast than me when it came to hightailing the fuck away from danger.
"A freak downpour helped to quench the Sixth Great fire of San Francisco, congratulations, you killed more mortals in a single swoop than any demigod since Hitler." Charles snorted derisively in my direction, as soon as he walked in, "But you can try to beat his record once you're better, eh?"
Before I could start to even make sense of his accusation, he clamped a hand on my left shoulder: "And before finding this shifty-looking guy, we met Pan."
The new jarred me greatly, and my eyes... eye, singular, bored into his seeking confirmation for his words, what I saw was a mixture of sadness and relief that I quickly linked to my metaknowledge: "Is he...?"
Charles nodded heavily: "Pan is dead."
AN
Boom! Dedalus fucking yeah! It stands to reason that the wounds on Icarus, which included but were not limited to the 'tearing himself apart' with the I am Free, can be dealt with by Dedalus, who has been body-hopping for more than a couple of millennia.
Yeah, I've skipped the interaction with Pan. I did so for several reasons, one: there are only that many ways in which I can dress up an event that everybody knows about. And two: since Icarus isn't really invested in Nature (he didn't bat an eye at Geryon's treatment of the animals) I felt that there weren't impellent reasons for having him interact with the God of the Wild.
Besides, even after the build-up that has been the fight against Kampe, I don't want to lose momentum, so this chapter is more up to the speed I want to keep. Even the eventual fight against Polyphemus will be underwhelming after Kampe. The problem when you bring out the big guns is that you need to give reasons while the new enemy isn't curb-stomped. I have a little nerfing because of the state of Icarus, who is being torn apart by his name, but there is only so much that I can accomplish.
And yeah, Apollo's help came out of left field, but, while I usually prefer to give you readers the same mushroom treatment that Icarus gets, making it up to you to guess possible reasons why the god of the Sun helped, I opted for some little foreshadowing.
In any case, Kampe isn't something that can be killed through plot armor people. Admittedly, Icarus&co would have failed without Apollo, but what's to say that Briares wouldn't have snapped out of it seeing his saviors fall?