The Fourth Life: The Infernal Machine
Because someone asked me and I'm sure others want to know and I feel compelled to do so, and for those who have lost touch with the series or don't care to actually buy the book:
My Review of The Tower of Nero…*SPOILER WARNING*
Nothing shocking really happened. Apollo won, defeating Nero in his tower in the middle of Manhattan with help from Camp Half-Blood, fully stocked with a new generation of demigods. After Nero came Python, who predictably lost to Apollo, who subsequently regained godhood and is now devoted to maintaining his newfound humanity, i.e. compassion, humility, pain, etc.
There is nothing at the end of the book that says anything about a new book series coming out, like there has been at the end of every other book that Uncle Rick has written regarding his Riordan-verse, but there were teasers throughout ToN. Chiron is absent most of the book until the end, and this is because he was visiting "friends," a severed head and a cat, who are from other pantheons…obviously Mimir and Bast from Magnus Chase and Kane Chronicles, and Rachel gives us another prophecy, one we don't actually get to read because "Apollo" wasn't paying attention. So, it's possible that the next series of books, if there is one, will be an Infinity War-type crossover in which all the heroes must band together for one final conflict, which is exactly what my Chaos War fic will be about, so if this happens I will be very upset.
There is no major character death, unless you count the Arrow of Dodona passing its spirit along during the battle with Python in order to weaken him. Meg lives, Nico and Will live, Rachel lives so do Austin and Kayla, and Percy and Annabeth, Leo and everyone else from the Waystation, Reyna, Thalia, Frank and Hazel all live, and so does Piper. Really, other than Jason and the other introduced minor characters throughout this series, no one important actually dies.
A lack of depth in my opinion.
On the socio-political side of things…plenty of Solangelo. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that almost every ten pages there's something about Solangelo. Also, Uncle Rick gives Nico the same kind of dick-sucking that Kishimoto gives Sasuke, in that their respective emo characters are just the saddest, most emotionally anguished and in-pain young people ever. Uncle Rick dedicates half a page to outlying Nico's tragedy, and it goes, verbatim:
He was deceptively quiet. He appeared anemic and frail. He kept himself on the periphery. But Will was right about how much Nico had been through. He had been born in Mussolini's Italy. He had survived decades in the time-warp reality of the Lotus Casino. He'd emerged in modern times disoriented and culture-shocked, arrived at Camp Half-Blood, and promptly lost his sister Bianca to a dangerous quest. He had wandered the Labyrinth in self-imposed exile, being tortured and brainwashed by a malevolent ghost. He'd overcome everyone's distrust and emerged from the Battle of Manhattan as a hero. He'd been captured by giants during the rise of Gaea. He'd wandered Tartarus alone and somehow managed to come out alive. And through it all, he'd struggled with his upbringing as a conservative Catholic Italian male from the 1930s and finally learned to accept himself as a young gay man. Anyone who could survive all that had more resilience than Stygian iron.
From the top: there's not a thing anyone can do about when they're born, so "Mussolini's Italy" is not a valid argument for pity. The Lotus Casino is described as paradise, and even in the Titan's Curse, Bianca describes Nico's behavior as that of any rambunctious child—he was having a blast in the Casino. Granted, bones must be thrown to Nico because his sister did willingly abandon him and she was his closest remaining family, but then he replaced her with Hazel, so eh. "Self-imposed exile" is explanatory enough, so is "wandered Tartarus alone." Sexuality is likewise not a valid argument for pity, sympathy, or any preferential treatment, as it is a choice one makes, and must live with.
Besides that, I guess we're just going to shit on everything Sally went through: orphaned at five and taken in by an uncle "who didn't really have time for her," who she dropped out of high school for and didn't receive her diploma or GED, damning her to a life of minimum wage, and then single-parent childrearing of a hyperactive, dyslexic boy who attracted supernatural phenomena, which in order to counteract this she married an abusive slug of a human being and put up with both him, and her son getting kicked out of every school in Manhattan, for six years straight. That's a lot of stress and heartache for one woman, especially when considering all the worry she was racked with every time Percy was on a quest, and the missing six months of Hera's machinations.
And nevermind everyone here IRL: the kids abandoned to the streets by their parents, left to starve and freeze to death; the veteran soldiers that came back to no home, no future other than dumpster-diving and disease; the children and women that are kidnapped and sold into slavery, both labor and sex; rape victims, kick Nico's ass in the tragedy department.
Anyway, in summary of Nico: for all the reasons that we are supposed to feel sympathetic for, I think there are much better, stronger reasons to direct that sympathy elsewhere, to a more worthy recipient. Worthy as in they went through a lot worse than Nico.
Further on the socio-politics, Piper, who now resides in Tahlequah, OK, is now canonically a lesbian. Since her romance with Jason Grace was falsified to begin with, and eventually destroyed anyway, a solid argument could be made as to whether Jasper was ever a real thing. Now, however, confirmed in the final pages of ToN, and on the wiki, Piper's girlfriend is Shel, who is described as having "short dark hair and a rhinestone nose stud." The canon reason for Piper suddenly being gay is that she's defying "Aphrodite's expectations" and Hera's "idea of what the perfect couple looked like." She's "finding her own way." I think this is shoehorned and unnecessary and spitting in Jason's dead eyes.
Rachel became the Oracle of Delphi again, Leo is going to high school in Indianapolis with Calypso, and has been adopted by elderly lesbians Jo and Emmie, introduced in The Dark Prophecy, and Reyna has officially adopted Leo as her little brother, something that will last only a couple of decades because she's a nigh-immortal Hunter of Artemis now. Percabeth is all set up for college life in New Rome and Berkley, and Hazel is now curse-free, meaning all the gems and precious metals she can summon from the ground can now be spent on the massive New Rome renovation project she and Frank are spearheading as praetors.
All in all, a pretty happy ending for everyone.
Except for everyone else on Planet Earth, which is doomed to the constant badgering we see on a daily basis because those with the power—and therefore the responsibility, as dictated by Uncle Ben—have decided they've done their part for the world, and are now content with trying to lead a "normal" life.
Percabeth aims for collegiate careers and no more quests; Frazel has decided not to spend Hazel's virtually unlimited access to wealth on things like cancer research, world hunger/poverty/disease solutions, clean energy, etc. Jasper has been replaced with Shelper, or Pishel, or whatever you want to call it, with Piper not using her Charmspeak for more constructive purposes, like influencing world leaders to set aside their differences and work towards a better tomorrow not ruled by corporate greed; Caleo, while the most underwhelming by far, disappoints even further with Leo taking up autoshop and mechanics—granted, Leo has potential to do some good, but the odds of him designing and building clean energy machines or cheaper, far more efficient desalination machines are slim to none.
Even Apollo, a god once again, with his newfound humanity, shows no signs of engaging in any worthwhile global projects.
TLDR:
Apollo defeats Nero and Python and becomes a god again.
The only one that dies is the Arrow of Donna.
Copious amounts of Solangelo.
Piper is now a lesbian for some reason.
New young demigods, obscure references to Mimir and Bast, and a spoken-but-not-written prophecy hint at an encompassing new book series.
The heroes of the Riordan-verse are shirking their higher responsibilities to the world at large, but they are primarily characters meant to entertain middle school kids, so I guess saving the world from mythological threats gives them pass to not save the world from mortal threats.
*SPOILERS OVER*
And now, our feature presentation!
The last chapter of the Fourth Life…
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Inspired by historical events and an over-active imagination, this work of fiction was designed, developed, and produced by a single-cultural team of one religious faith and belief, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
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"Inconceivable!" Zoë cried.
Cheyenne sat on the bed, having been undressed and redressed in a gown by the irate Huntress, kicking her legs back and forth as her lover paced up and down their room, lamenting the recent happenings.
"Kissing me to steal my dagger—engaging Orion by yourself—inconceivable!"
Of course, where Zoë angry at what Cheyenne had done, Cheyenne was soaking this whole thing up with a small, content smile on her face. Having spent her whole childhood and teenage years devoid of anything even remotely resembling motherly attention, getting a motherly scolding by her mother hen of a lover was fulfilling in a way words couldn't describe.
"Being ambushed and not escaping to come get me—forcing me to have come get you—worrying me sick like you did—in-in-inconceivable!"
Sure, Cheyenne had experienced all of the good motherly things Zoë had to offer, like goodnight kisses, meals being prepped and prepared for her, being put down for naps, her boo-boos getting kissed and attended, being dressed and undressed from head to toe from her Assassin gear into her relaxing gown, bedtime stories, etc. Zoë even breastfed Cheyenne whenever the girl wanted, though she was still totally in the dark about the true nature of breastfeeding, entirely convinced by Zoë's lie that the act was a sacred sign of trust and affection from Ancient Greek culture.
Being treated to the bad side of mothering, like this scolding, was a refreshing experience, one that Cheyenne was enjoying because it was making her a bit warm between her legs. Zoë's angry mommy side was kinda hot…
"We could've died—we could've been captured and violated—we had no proper plan, no preparation, and you just—ugh! Inconceivably stupid girl!"
Cheyenne giggled. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Zoë practically teleported across the room she moved so fast, ending up just barely an inch away from Cheyenne's nose, the proximity creating the optical illusion that Zoë now had four eyes, which really derailed the effect she intended to have on Cheyenne.
"I know exactly what that word means, young lady, I was living before it to mouth!"
Cheyenne pecked Zoë on the lips. "You're cute when you're angry."
Zoë fumed so hard, fumes erupted out of her ears with the sound of train whistles as her face turned bright red at this disrespect and total disregard for the danger they were just in. Cheyenne just smiled innocently, kicking her legs back and forth. Zoë's anger evaporated in an instant, unable to keep the fires going at how cute and sweet Cheyenne was.
"Come here," the Huntress sighed, opening her arms.
Cheyenne bounded up and entered embrace, the top of her head resting comfortably under Zoë's chin.
"I'm glad you're alright," the daughter of Atlas whispered. "I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you. I love you, Cheyenne Cormac."
Unbidden, the girl burst into tears, and Zoë held her tighter because she knew why Cheyenne was crying. Only two people had ever said those three words to her in all her life, the first one having been murdered many years ago. Cheyenne didn't get to hear that phrase enough in her life and it showed on a daily basis.
It wasn't long before the crying stopped and Cheyenne nuzzled at Zoë's breast with her cheek, indicating she was thirsty. The Huntress picked her up bridal style and plopped down on the bed. She undid her top and gave Cheyenne all the access she wanted. When she was full, Zoë propped her up and gently patted her back until she let out a burp with so much magnitude the furniture shook.
Cheyenne flushed. "E-Excuse me…"
"Better out that way than the other, and now I have a messy girl to clean up."
"With how much you like to touch my ass, I figured you'd relish the opportunity."
"Not for that endeavor. I will mother you in many ways, but wiping your filth from your rear is not among them."
"Oh~, so that's how far your love for me goes," Cheyenne grinned.
Zoë rolled her eyes at the girl sitting spread-eagle on her lap. "I love you to the Sun and back, mon chéri petit, but while you have the physical ability to wipe your own ass, I will leave you to that yourself."
"So what happens if I lose that ability, like my arms get cut off or I become quadriplegic?"
"Then I will do what must be done, if only to spare my nose from your lingering stink."
Cheyenne mock-gasped and playfully swatted Zoë's arm. "Mean! I do not stink! I smell like roses," she said matter-of-factly.
"No, you don't," Zoë said flatly.
"Do too!"
"Not."
"Too!"
"No."
"Yes!"
"Yes."
"No!"
Zoë smiled. "Exactly."
"Hey!"
"Is for feeding livestock."
"Um…yes?"
"Correct. Now, it's nap time. After I wake you up, we shall go and celebrate."
"I like celebrating," Cheyenne said.
Zoë kissed her, stood up with her arms and legs wrapped around her waist and neck, pulled out the covers of the bed, set Cheyenne down, pulled the covers up, and kissed her again.
"I love you, Zoë," Cheyenne said sleepily, her system finally starting to shut down after so much excitement today.
"And I love you, my beautiful little one."
With a smile on her face, Cheyenne closed her eyes and quickly entered the realm of sleep, her smile fading away to allow for drool to start seeping into the pillow.
Zoë rolled her eyes.
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Now alone, the Huntress plopped down in a rocking chair in another room of the house and basked in amazement. In her hand was Arachne's Stinger, Orion's golden blood dried along the blade.
For five centuries, half a millennium, Zoë had hunted Orion across Europe and in some parts of Asia and Africa. Sometimes their battles had been nothing but an exchange of arrows from the other side of buildings and structures, and sometimes their battles ended up leveling entire villages, resulting in the regrettable deaths of innocent lives. They'd taken equal amounts of blood and flesh from each other over the many decades, Orion sometimes completing his objective of killing some strong woman, Zoë sometimes completing her objective of saving some strong woman.
All the time desiring the death of the other.
And now it was so.
Zoë didn't know what to think. Her Cheyenne, just a human girl that obviously had something else going for her, had managed to do what Zoë had come to start thinking of as impossible: kill Orion. In their first battle, no less. The Giant ambushed her, took a grenade to the face that virtually ended the battle right there, knocking Orion's focus out, and Zoë was fairly certain that her intervention had been unnecessary, with Cheyenne having concocted some kind of plan and strategy on the spot to take the Giant out.
Zoë has just provided ample opportunity.
Then again, had it been Cheyenne at all? That eagle, that man…Zoë had seen that man before, roughly 1800 years ago, nailed to a tree with a spear in his ribcage. She had never seen Diana so terrified before watching that Roman soldier….
Zoë could say she knew a whole lot about Cheyenne. She knew the girl's childhood: dropped on her grandfather's doorstep by a woman who had claimed to be Shay's defacto daughter-in-law, who promptly died of sickness. Cheyenne spent the next six years as a quiet, reserved child, who had reportedly never cried or whined, not even as a baby when she was hungry, uncomfortable, distressed, or in need of a diaper change, and not as a child when she wet/messed her bed or her pants. After Shay's murder, she was kidnapped and enslaved by the Assassins.
During her time with the Assassins, she suddenly came alive as a human being, feeling emotions, particularly anger, hatred, despair, and vengeance. She excelled in all of her classes, physical or otherwise, outstripping her peers and outshining everyone, pissing off her teachers who sought nothing but her humiliation and failure, beating and whipping her for the slightest misstep or whenever she opened her mouth just right. In many ways, the Assassins had tortured Cheyenne in all ways: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
She might have been a young woman in body, but in every other category she was still a small child grieving for her grandfather. She was hurt, lost, alone, scared, and desperate for someone to save her. Zoë was that someone.
Because she was that someone, she'd been privy to secrets and confessions that no one knew. She'd been privy to Cheyenne's body in a way that those four men never had been and never would be. More than that, Zoë was more to Cheyenne than words would be able to describe. She had become both lover and mother of all things, which was something Zoë was probably more comfortable with than Cheyenne was, coming from a family rife with what was now considered "sexual immorality."
Just one example, Antaeus. Son of Poseidon and Gaea.
Poseidon had fucked his grandmother.
Anyway, Zoë had been confident that she knew Cheyenne Cormac. After today, after she had seen His direct action, something that happened maybe once every other two hundred years or so just for one person, because in all other cases, the happy outcome came in the form of a nudge here or a nudge there, or maybe a passing comment or phrase spoken by a passerby on the street, Zoë wasn't sure anymore.
Especially because Cheyenne had repeatedly made her opinions of the church well known, even going so far as to argue with a street preacher to the point that the man tried to hit her, and she broke his arm in three places. Cheyenne had zero love for the church and everyone who attended or believed in the texts of the Bible, Torah, or Quran. She would say that all religions were false, since all the "prophets," Moses, Elijah, Jesus, Mohammed were all fakes with Pieces of Eden, and all the "gods" were just members of the Precursor species, but then would get very quiet and snappy whenever Zoë brought up how that was literally not true because she was the lieutenant of Artemis' Hunt.
Zoë thought she knew Cheyenne, but after today, perhaps not.
Oh, well, the Huntress thought to herself. Reaching into one of her pouches, Zoë produced a pair of golden bands, one big enough for her finger, the other big enough for Cheyenne's.
Should all go according to plan, she'd have a long time to figure out the mystery of Cheyenne Cormac.
Meanwhile, in the streets of Paris, a trio of elderly women selling produce and bread at very reasonable prices given the climate of the time snipped the thread to a glove they were making.
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Arno and Cheyenne got together on the night of September 2, 1792, because the Brotherhood had caught wind of an Austrian Conspiracy, with Georges Danton at the center of it.
"Hey, Arno."
"Cheyenne."
"Heard you killed Rouille."
"Yes, I did."
"In broad daylight, on top of the Grand Châtelet prison."
"That is correct."
"Is it true that he captured the warden and was waving the guy's brother's head around in front of him on a pike."
"Yes."
"C'est merdique."
"Oui."
"You okay? You seem kind of distant."
"Elise is…" Arno sighed, unable to describe how his legal stepsister was behaving.
"Being a bitch?" Cheyenne supplied.
"I suppose that would be the easiest way to describe it. For the past several months, it's been nothing but Germain this and Germain that. She'd obsessed with finding him and killing him."
"You feel jealous and left out."
Since lying to Cheyenne was not something Arno fancied, he didn't bother. He came clean about his feelings.
"I do! We were raised in the same house by the same man—I feel her pain over Monsieur de la Serre's death as much as she does, he was as much my father as he was hers. I have just as much a right to vengeance as she does, and I want it just as much as she does, but I also want to not lose myself in the process. I don't want to be consumed by hatred and violence."
"And because of the fact that you well and truly love Elise and she's been blowing you off in favor of finding Germain, you feel yourself slipping and you feel like she's slipping, and that hurts you as much as the fact that she's trading all of her available time for her vendetta than for a few moments with you."
"Yes…," Arno sighed, once again in a defeated manner.
"And you're hoping that I, as a fellow female, will be able to provide insight as to how to handle this situation."
"The phrasing could've been a bit better, but yes."
"Well, you saying you're in love with the girl whose father you view as your father could be phrased a bit better, but whatever." Arno opened his mouth to argue that, but Cheyenne was just picking on him, so she talked over him and shut him up. "Sounds to me like—and I mean this in the nicest possible manner—Elise loves the idea of killing Germain more than she loves you."
Immediately, fury rose up in Arno's throat, and he managed to stop himself just in time from saying some very mean and hateful things in the name of defending his and Elise's love for each other, because he didn't know if Zoë was around, and he didn't fancy the idea of an arrow in his dick because he was mean to the Silver Witch's little girl. What also stayed his tongue was common sense, logic, and the love he still had for Cheyenne.
"I will…reflect on that."
"Cool, but do so after we're done tonight. We have a city to save, after all."
Down below them, Danton was engaged in a duel with an Austrian spy. The two Assassins parkoured their way down, Arno leaping and landing on the spy, driving his Hidden Blade into the man's neck.
Danton gasped in surprise and relief. "Cheyenne! Wonderful to see you again!"
"Likewise. I thought I told you to lay off the croissants?"
"What can I say? My wife has an excellent recipe."
Arno cleared his throat. "Austrian army threatening to overrun Paris, remember?"
"Quite right, my friend," Danton said. "The spies are sending information to Austria. You need to find them before they meet their couriers."
Cheyenne nodded. "On it. Come on, Arno!"
"Wait—what-?"
Cheyenne grabbed him and dragged him along with her.
"How do you even know where to go!? The spies could be anywhere in Paris!"
Cheyenne just cackled mid-run.
The sprinted through the alleys, and then Cheyenne went scrambling up a building, bounding from foothold to handhold, propelling herself up with catlike grace and nimbleness. Arno was right behind her, and they convened upon the roof, overlooking a street that had Extremists milling about. On the balconies and rooftops on the buildings opposite of Cheyenne and Arno were Extremist snipers.
"Am I to take it that these are the spies?"
"Nope, just that one."
Cheyenne indicated one of the Extremists down below, the tall skinny one with the top hat that was flanked by a couple of burly men with halberds. The trio of Templars were mingling among the commonfolk, the spy examining that merchandise of the vendors. Also among the crowd below were pro-Assassin vigilantes, the looks on their faces indicating they were just itching for any excuse to engage the Extremists.
"What's the plan?" Arno asked.
Cheyenne pulled her air rifle from her back and started shooting at the snipers across the way, killing each of them with a body shot because the ammo she was using was coated in a concoction of deadly poisons. Ironically, deadly nightshade among them.
"Now that they're out of the way, I want you to go down there and wait for the signal. When you see the signal, steal the documents, so make sure you're close to the spy."
"Got it."
Arno descended beautifully, getting to the ground from the roof as if performing ballet. He maneuvered through the crowd, getting behind the trio of Templars. Cheyenne tossed a cherry bomb, and when it went off with its sparks in the middle of the street, drawing all attention to that spot, Arno struck.
The Dorian scion climbed his way back up, accomplishing the theft without being exposed. Cheyenne looked over the document he stole.
"This is only half of what we need. Come on."
After another sprint through Paris, one that stopped at the Hôtel Voysin's immaculate hedge maze. Cheyenne and Arno overlooked the maze from a rooftop, noting all the snipers and guards throughout the area.
"How do you just know to come to these places?" Arno demanded.
Cheyenne just grinned at him. "Trade secret."
Arno crossed his arms. "Does this trade secret also identify where in this maze our target is?"
"He's in the center, where that big rock rook is."
"Of course he's at the center, surrounded by walls of grass and a battalion of armed idiots."
"Yep, should be fun."
"Ladies first," Arno said.
"After you, then," Cheyenne smirked.
Arno rolled his eyes and leapt from the roof, landing with perfect balance and control upon one of the ropes that spanned the distance between a couple lampposts. Tight-roping his way across the perimeter, Arno reached a spot that more or less unoccupied by men with guns and swords, and he leapt, sailing through the air to come down on top of a brute that was standing guard in the corner of the center of the maze, where the spy was holed up. Luckily, the brute and the spy were standing on opposite sides of the giant stone rook, so Arno went unseen.
Strolling confidently across the grass, Arno rounded the rook and casually tossed a stun grenade into the face of the spy, temporarily neutralizing him and the two brutes he had with him. It was enough time for Arno to dash in and kill all three of them with fluid movements. Looting the dead spy and vacating the area before his nose was clogged with the stench of postmortem shit, Arno climbed out of the maze and rejoined Cheyenne.
After reading this document, Cheyenne determined that the Austrian spymaster was Comte de Gambais and the Vicomte de Gambais, both of which were residing in the Hotel des Ambassaduers. Cheyenne led the way, she and Arno coming to stand atop yet another roof to overlook their targets.
"It's almost like they were expecting us," Arno dryly noted, seeing all the Extremists crawling around the building, along with the large crowds of very angry citizens.
"You take the Vicomte," Cheyenne said. "I'll take the Comte."
"Whoever kills their target first is treated to dinner by the loser."
Cheyenne smirked and jumped from the roof, landing in a role after falling four stories, popping up into a sprint. Arno cursed and took off, leaping from his roof to the roof of the Hotel. He got inside the building by Air Assassinating a sniper standing on an internal balcony. Once inside, seeing the Vicomte de Gambais through the walls with his Eagle Pulse, Arno picked the lock on a door, crept through the hall, assassinated one guy, shot another with the Phantom Blade, and then stood outside the doorway to the room the Vicomte was in, with a group of guards around him.
Arno was about to throw a smoke bomb when gunfire sounded from elsewhere in the Hotel, making Arno role his eyes. 'Hide in plain sight…sure.'
The commotion alerted the Extremists, so Arno threw his bomb into the room and dashed in with his breath held and his Eagle Pulse active, allowing him to see through the haze. Just like in the maze, his arms moved with pinpoint accuracy born of skill and practice, dispatching four men in less than give seconds.
Taking no time to savor his success, Arno went sprinting through the halls to where the gunfire was coming from, firm in the mind that Cheyenne had bitten off more than even if she could chew. Arno rounded a corner, took in the scene and was so shocked that he slipped on a rug and smacked into the opposite wall.
Cheyenne vaulted over the railing from above, the Hotel's upper floors having been designed with large lookouts so you could see into the halls below, and she landed with a dramatic flourish. "Ta-da! Oh, hey, Arno."
"Huh?" the Assassin managed.
He gestured dumbly to all the bodies strewn about the floors in the next several consecutive rooms.
"Oh, that? Well, you see Arno, when it comes to stealth…nobody will notice, if there's nobody to notice."
Arno just gaped at her.
"Oh, and you owe me dinner. Let's go!"
Arno just laid there for a few second after Cheyenne skipped out of the Hotel des Ambassaduers, wondering if he should just forget about Elise entirely and go talk to Zoë about living life in a threesome.
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"What a beautiful night," Cheyenne said reverently, the turn of the years just minutes away.
She and Zoë were out in the countryside of Paris, away from the lights of the lanterns and the torches, laying together atop a hill. Above them sprawled the innumerable twinkling lights of the Milky Way Galaxy, its band of gasses and clouds stretching from one horizon to the other. It was crisp outside, and so Cheyenne was nestled up against Zoë's ever-warm body.
"That it is," the Huntress agreed, "though not as beautiful as you."
Cheyenne giggled. "Sappy."
Zoë just grinned. "I cannot help but speak the truth when the need comes upon me."
"Uh-huh."
Cheyenne craned her head and Zoë met her halfway to join their lips in a loving, tame kiss. When they broke it, they turned their attention back to the shining stars, basking in each other's presence and just enjoying this moment together.
Then Zoë let out a sharp gasp. "Do you see that!?"
She pointed at the sky. Cheyenne bolted upright, getting to her feet in the blink of an eye. "See what!?" She thought Zoë was indicating an incoming object, like a bird or an arrow or some kind of celestial body. "Zoë, what do you see!? I don't see-!"
Cheyenne looked back down at her lover, and her hands went straight to her mouth as her breath left her lungs.
Down on a bended knee was Zoë Nightshade, holding up a gleaming golden ring between uncharacteristically shaky fingers, a look of apprehension, doubt, fear, and hope on her face, an uncertain smile upon her lips.
"Cheyenne Cormac…will you marry me?"
For many seconds, Shay's granddaughter just stood there, silent as the bottom of the ocean, her eyes wide and unfocused. Zoë started losing what little confidence she had in facing such a momentous question, beginning to think that as much as they seemed to have loved each other, they didn't love each other that much, or that Cheyenne never had any intention of something like marriage, and simply of the mind that their relationship was fine as it was and needed no furthering.
Neither of these things were the case, however, as Cheyenne's hesitance stemmed solely from the fact that her brain did a hard shutdown.
Then she rebooted.
Zoë yelped when Cheyenne suddenly squealed and tackled her down the slope of the hill in a bone-crushing hug.
"YES!" Cheyenne gushed when they tumbled to the bottom of the hill, tears of unbridled joy streaming down her face. "Yes, yes, yes! Oh, gods, Zoë—YES!"
With over 3,000 years of speaking experience under her belt, Zoë managed to deliver this legendary response, "Great!"
Zoë gently got back to her feet, bringing Cheyenne with her, and slid the golden ring onto the appropriate finger. Cheyenne squealed again, literally vibrating with excitement.
"We're getting married, we're getting married!" she sang.
Zoë's own grin threatened to split her face. "Are you going to give your fiancé a kiss?"
An erupting volcano of energy and happiness, Cheyenne mashed her lips to those of her bride-to-be at the exact moment that a hail of fireworks erupted across the night sky, the Parisians ushering in the new year with multicolored gusto.
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Zoë's proposal was not a private affair, however.
In some part of the world, the Hunters of Artemis were shouting and cheering, whooping and hollering, and uncorking wine and champagne bottles in celebration of their sister's mighty accomplishment. Tears of mixed emotion fell from the goddess' eyes.
On one hand, she was about to lose her beloved daughter to mortality, as all romantic love was forbidden in the Hunt, whether it be between girl and boy, girl and girl, or girl and animal. Artemis would have to watch as Zoë withered and her hair greyed to white, and she died of old age, barely able to move she was so weak and frail. On the other hand, her beloved daughter was the happiest she had ever been in over two thousand years, and that happiness would never fade for the rest of her impending mortal life with Cheyenne.
Artemis dashed these sad thoughts; this moment wasn't about her, but about the happiness of Zoë.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
On Olympus was drastically less of a celebration, as only so many of the deities found the love life of one of Artemis' Hunters to be appealing, but there was one goddess that absolutely bonkers right now.
Ares lay naked on Aphrodite's bed, grumbling and muttering to himself with his erection still hard as his battle sword, while his lover literally ran screaming through the halls of her palace.
"SHE'S GETTING MARRIED!" Aphrodite screamed at the top of her lungs, her unbridled elation causing flowers to bloom all over Olympus. "THAT STONE-COLD BITCH IS GETTING MARRIED TO A GIRL AND I CAN'T BE BLAMED FOR IT! FUUUUUUUUCK YEAAAAAAAAAH!"
The love goddess summoned wind spirit attendants and had them furiously scribbling down all the preparations for the wedding, and Ares just slowly dragged a hand down his face, entertaining the idea of smiting the two girls down below if only to shut the high-pitched shouting up.
But he refrained as that would inevitably end with him being punished by Zeus on behalf of a very distraught Artemis.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
In the Underworld, the goddess Persephone dabbed at her watery eyes as she watched the proposal and its following events. The mighty god Hades seemed to have a sheen of mist over his own eyes at seeing such happiness and joy. The third member in the throne room was openly weeping as he watched his granddaughter's engagement, so happy for her that it was hurting his soul to feel this much living emotion.
Persephone sent a pleading look at her husband, and Hades, in a very, very rare display of kindness, gently set his hand on the man's shoulder. The man looked up at the god.
"It is customary for the bride's chosen father-figure to give her away at her wedding. I believe something can be arranged for this tradition to take place once more."
More tears sprang to Shay's eyes, proving that the dead could cry.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"Zoë and I are getting married."
Arno's jaw dropped when he heard that, and a tidal wave of emotions went surging through him. Jealousy and envy that he wasn't the one marrying Cheyenne; anger for those same reasons, and anger at himself for the same reason that he felt sadness and regret, that he didn't make a move sooner, as he was hung up on Elise, the girl that he thought he loved more than anything else in the world, but it seemed as if those feelings were not being returned. Arno felt bewilderment that two women were going to be wed, and confusion as to what church would even consider marrying two people of the same sex.
Ultimately, Arno felt like that guy who had a high school sweetheart, broke up with her for college, met a college girl that he thought he liked and who liked him back, then the relationship started to turn sour, and then he got a Facebook notification that his high school sweetheart was now engaged to a vague acquaintance, and looked to be just happy without him.
Arno felt stung, betrayed, and petty, because he knew that he shouldn't be feeling this way because he was totally in the wrong to be feeling this way. He was the one that never advanced with Cheyenne; he was the one that stood by and let her and Zoë develop and flourish; it was him that had sidelined Cheyenne and pursued Elise, which was turning out to be a mistake and wasted effort. Arno had no one to blame but himself, and he knew it, and he hated it.
But for the sake of Cheyenne, he smiled brilliantly.
"Congratulations! That's wonderful news! I take it I'm invited to the wedding, yes?"
"If you want to come."
Arno noted the hesitance and caution in Cheyenne's voice, how she was being careful with her words. She knew exactly what was going through his mind and was weary of how volatile he was right now.
God, did Arno want to explode. He wanted to storm up and down the hall, shouting obscenities, throwing things, breaking things; he wanted to take all of this raw energy that had been created at Cheyenne's declaration and expel it at everything around him in a destructive wave. If he destroyed Paris, then oh well. Germain would probably be amongst the corpses.
But Arno did not. He refrained because that would be unfair to Cheyenne, unfair to that lovely vase, unfair to the patrons of the Café Théâtre below, and just wholly unprofessional anyway. He was irrational, he knew he was irrational, and he hated it.
Cheyenne gently touched his arm. Arno looked away, unable to meet her eyes, just barely able to keep his emotions in check.
Cheyenne didn't say or do anything else. She cast one last, meaningful look at him, one that conveyed more meaning than words could, and she left. When she was out of sight, Arno punched a hole through the wall.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
On Cheyenne's request, the wedding was not a massive affair with every being on Olympus descending to provide blessings and gifts, but there were of course the Hunters of Artemis, Artemis herself, and an assortment of gods and goddesses that were friends or at least friendly enough with Zoë to have been invited, namely Hestia, Athena, Apollo and Poseidon.
Of course, Zoë observed the ancient tradition of asking permission before she took Cheyenne's hand.
Despite being taller than him, despite being monumentally more powerful than him, despite being far, far older than him, Zoë still felt like a nervous child before him, awaiting judgement for something naughty that she had done, which, to be fair, she had done a lot of naughty things with Cheyenne already.
"M-M-May—ahem," Zoë cleared her throat after her pitiful squeak of a start and recomposed herself. She took a deep breath to try and calm her racing heart, and then she tried again. "Master Shay Patrick Cormac, may I have your permission to marry your granddaughter?"
"Do you promise that you will always love her?" Shay asked, his black and red Templar uniform freshly starched and laundered.
"I do promise. I swear it on the-"
Shay held up his hand to stop her from swearing this oath on the Styx. "An oath made on the River is to risk its wrath, but your oath as a warrior and as a woman calls upon your integrity, your devotion, and your honor. Do you promise to always love my Cheyenne?"
"I do promise," Zoë answered sincerely.
"Always to care for her?"
"Yes."
"Even should she suffer an attack that would leave her without the use of her limbs, meaning you have to take care of every facet of her life? Feeding, bathing, clothing, transporting, and cleaning?"
"I will," Zoë said, remembering the poking conversation she and Cheyenne had about whether Zoë would actually wipe the girl's ass, and now the Huntress was truly entertaining that possibility, and she was finding herself determined that if she had to, she would.
"Even if she were to be struck on the head and rendered dumb for the rest of her life?"
"I will."
"If she were to be burned by fire and horribly disfigured, or to be mutilated by the hands of others, will you still love her."
"I will."
Zoë idly thought that all of these described happenings could simply be reversed by a prayer to Artemis, but that wasn't the point. The point was that so many people said they loved each other, and then something happened to them on a physical level and suddenly that love evaporated, meaning they really didn't love each other after all.
Shay was making Zoë really think hard about whether she loved Cheyenne or not. If the little one really did end up a quadriplegic, or did up mentally retarded, would Zoë really stay with her, putting food in her mouth, changing and washing her clothes, bathing her body, wiping her ass, cleaning her vomit, handling her period, etc.? If Cheyenne were to be burned by fire or scarred by the hands of men, left with a horrible, ugly, revolting visage, would Zoë still love the girl who looked like a monster?
Did Zoë well and truly love every facet of Cheyenne Cormac, not just her pretty face and wonderous body or spitfire personality?
"Are you willing to do whatever it takes to keep my granddaughter safe and sound? Whatever it takes, even the most disgusting and depraved of acts?"
In three thousand years, Zoë had seen no shortage of disgusting and depraved acts, and in that moment, all of these despicable and nasty things sprang to the forefront of her mind. Would she be willing to perform some of these acts on the pain of some kind of unspeakable harm befalling Cheyenne should she refuse to do them?
Zoë swallowed and affirmed herself. "I will do whatever it takes."
Shay stared at her for a long time, searching for any weakness or hesitance, or anything to suggest Zoë would renege on her oaths of honor and love. Zoë stood with her back straight and her arms at her sides, her eyes never leaving Shay's. She would not back down and prove herself unworthy of this great man's beloved grandchild.
After a while, Shay's jaw squared and he said, "You have my permission to marry Cheyenne."
Zoë's heart soared.
Cheyenne's trial with Artemis was nowhere near as tense or as trying as Zoë's was with Shay, because Artemis had been watching the little one for years now, ever since Zoë arrived in Paris and foiled Orion's assassination attempt. Artemis had seen Cheyenne's skill in stealth and in battle, had seen her kill Orion, and had seen how happy she and Zoë were together.
Artemis, in the form of a woman instead of a twelve-year-old, gently placed her hands on Cheyenne's shoulders, and blessed her.
"No beast of the ground, nor fish of the sea, no bird of the air will ever harm you."
Cheyenne felt the power of the blessing trickle through her, and she bowed slightly. "Thank you, m'lady."
"No, Cheyenne, thank you for making Zoë so happy."
As many tears as there were at the wedding, from all the Hunters who were more or less saying their final goodbye to Zoë, who had renounced her vows to Artemis and had been honorably discharged from the Hunt, no one cried harder than Cheyenne when it was revealed that Shay was temporarily out of the Underworld, and would be allowed to walk her down the aisle to give her away.
Hestia performed the ceremony, since Zoë and Cheyenne didn't fit Hera's idea of the ideal marriage, and Aphrodite was too busy getting reemed by Ares to attend despite her excitement over the fact that a Hunter was willingly getting married.
"I pronounce you wife and wife," Hestia declared after the vows had been spoken. "You may now kiss your bride."
Zoë and Cheyenne kissed, and the small audience erupted into wild cheers and wilder whistles.
Dinner was literally divine, with Artemis having personally hunted cooked a massive assortment of game. Poseidon had provided the cake, made by Aphros and Bythos of the underwater hero camp for mermen and mermaids collectively called Camp Fish-Blood, because its appropriate name was hard to pronounce for those who didn't understand Fishese.
With directions from Zoë, Cheyenne was allowed to drive Apollo's sun chariot to their honeymoon destination, a resort of endless fun and entertainment ran by the Lotus-eaters (who were under extremely dire threats from Artemis), and there the two newly weds rocked the planet with items from Lucy's "toy box."
The witch-daughter of Hecate claimed that she had traveled to the future and procured all of the sexual items from this time, but she was known for her tall-tales and extravagant stories, so her claim was doubted. However, no one really cared about the truth of Lucy's story so much as how overwhelmingly pleasurable her new toys were.
Cheyenne, never having been exposed to a seven-inch, variable-speed, heated, ribbed, hot pink dildo certainly loved Lucy's toys.
When the honeymoon was over and the newly weds returned to France, both of them glowing like the sun itself, they arrived to find out that King Louis XVI had been executed, and Arno had been expelled from the Brotherhood due to an unsanctioned, public, botched assassination attempt on Francois-Thomas Germain.
Cheyenne went after Arno.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
She found him just outside the same gate of Paris that she and him shared their first mission together at, heading to Versailles with two Assassin grunts standing at the gate with their arms crossed, ensuring that Arno wouldn't try to turn back and cause mayhem due to his raging emotions.
"Arno!"
He stopped in his tracks and whirled around so hard his hood fell off and exposed the whole of his furious face. The two Assassins escorts promptly fled, the rising energy telling them it was time to leave before the walls of the city were destroyed.
"You!" Arno snarled.
Cheyenne puttered to a stop, mouth hanging open at the venomous hostility. "I-I heard what happened—why are so angry? I th-thought-?"
"Why am I so angry?!" Arno roared. "Well, let's examine things, shall we? The girl I thought I loved dumped me after I saved her life, and the other girl I thought loved me went off and married some immortal harlot, several hundred times her age, as if that's not strange enough. Then, following all of this, after working my ass to the bone and through it to avenge the man I called father and take down the very enemy of the Brotherhood my other father called his own, I'm cast out from said Brotherhood, cut off from my house, my funds, my weapons, my armor, and my munitions, with both of the women I loved lost to me! What reasons do I have to not be angry!?"
Arno finished his tirade with a thundering roar, coating Cheyenne's scrunched up face in spittle he had gotten so close to her. She wiped herself clean with the sleeve of her leather prowler coat, and blinked.
"I thought we had this discussion a few years ago, where you didn't actually buy in to the Creed or the council, but had become an Assassin to get the training and resources necessary to avenge Messier de la Serre, something you were doing just fine on your own without the council's permission, so I don't really get why you're so broken up about being expelled by people whose opinions you didn't value in the first place."
Honestly, after being expelled, Cheyenne would've expected Arno to have been thrown for a small loop from the sheer shock of the situation, and then immediately recover and deliver a snarky "Goodbye" on his way out the door with a dismissive wave of his hand, now free to pursue his vengeance unimpeded. If Cheyenne and Arno had gotten together, that would have been the case, but alas.
The real reason that Arno was so emotional about his expulsion was because it was fuel to the raging fire within him about Cheyenne marrying Zoë.
But Arno was far more unstable today than he was on the day he was informed of the engagement, because today he had also been dumped by Elise and expelled from the Brotherhood. The filter that held him back last time had been thoroughly destroyed, and he said things he didn't mean at all.
He shouted obscenities at Cheyenne, condemned her, her grandfather, her marriage, her as a person, levied curses and accusations against her. He spewed mean and hurtful things at Cheyenne, and by the time he ran out of ideas on what to say, Cheyenne was just standing there, in tears, ashamed and humiliated due to what had just been said about her to her face by the man that she still loved.
To finish this whole thing, Arno lashed out physically, shoving Cheyenne to the ground. He turned and took ten hard steps towards Versailles, then the infernal heat of the moment completely and totally burned out of his system, and in the ashen wake was nothing but regret, remorse, and shame. Arno almost looked back, he almost went running back to Cheyenne to make sure she got back to Zoë in one piece and to profusely apologize and beg forgiveness for what he said, but he couldn't bring himself to do so.
Instead, emotionally shattered, Arno sprinted the whole way to Versailles, and into a drunken stupor that lasted for over four months before Elise was able to help put him back on the right path. Arno pulled himself back together to assassinate Le Touche and return to Paris. One returned, he endeavored to find Cheyenne and beg forgiveness, only to learn that she and Zoë had disappeared without a trace. Arno's heart nearly broke then and there, but he held strong, believing that he would find her one day and pour his heart out to her.
For the next two years, Arno would redeem himself, serving with his brothers and sisters of the Brotherhood with distinction during the infamous Reign of Terror. In the July of 1793, he participated in a tournament and worked his way through the challenges with his fellow Assassins and assassinated the Templar General Marcourt and his compatriots, who were planning a coup against the Convention. In the same month, Arno would also assist in the exodus of innocent Girondists under the house arrest on orders of Francois Hanriot to await execution. Arno also solved the murder of Jean-Paul Marat.
There was a whole bunch of other things Arno did to earn the favor of the Council, demonstrating loyalty, control, righteousness, and devotion and understanding of the Creed and what it was the Assassins did and believed in, eventually earning the rank of Master just as his father did.
In the last days of the July of 1794, all of the emotional constitution that Arno was subject to a humongous loud of hot shit, courtesy of Elise's red-haired asshole.
Beneath the Parisian Temple, the former medieval fortress of the Knights Templar, Arno and Elise battled Francois-Thomas Germain at last, but the Sage had managed to get his hands on a pwerful Sword of Eden, and though he was eventually defeated by Arno, Germain used the power of the Sword to create an explosion that caught Arno under a heavy piece of rubble. Elise tried to help free him, but when she looked up and saw Germain trying to hobble away, Arno wasn't sure what she said.
It was either "I love you" or "Fuck you," but what she did was certainly a clear "Fuck you," because instead of helping Arno, she went running after Germain to engage him in a duel.
Using every bit of his adrenaline-infused, panic-fueled, beyond-human strength, Arno was able to throw the slab of rock off him and go running to Elise, arriving just in time for the Sword of Eden to release its final charge of power, mortally wounding Germain and turning Elise extra crispy.
And extra dead.
Once again emotionally volatile, Arno took his sweet time in slowly pushing his Hidden Blade into Germain's neck, only halfway paying attention to the Memory Corridor he found himself in with Germain as the Templar explained himself and his connection Jacques de Molay. After that acid trip of an experience, Arno, barely lucid, for a reason he didn't understand, carried the traitorous Elise's body out of the Temple and oversaw her burial in de la Serre crypt in Versailles, placing her next to her mother and father.
The day after, in an attempt to help him cope, the Council assigned Arno to assist Théroigne de Méricourt and some other Assassins in finally ridding Paris of the remaining Jacobin leaders. While being sent to kill people as a coping mechanism was certainly indicative of how fucked in the head the Assassins really were, it served to give Arno enough clarity to realize he needed to get out of Paris.
What followed was another episode of rock-bottom, as Arno once again found himself a drunkard in the town of Franciade. The lecherous Marquis de Sade contracted Arno's services, putting the depressed Assassin on the first steps to getting back on the right path. Some things happened and Arno once again was able to pull himself out of depression, demonstrating a willpower that few men possessed. Arno once again returned to Paris, his head held high, ready to serve the Brotherhood once again.
With the Reign of Terror over and the monarchy abolished, a new government established forever over the country of France, things slowed down for the next five years, with Arno trying to find things to enjoy during this period of pseudo peace without Elise or Cheyenne. He tried desperately to find her, still racked with guilt over his terrible mistreatment of her that day, following even the most out-there lead that he ever came across, but it was obvious that Cheyenne didn't want to be found.
Considering who her wife was, it was entirely possible that she wasn't even on this place of existence anymore, and would literally never be found.
Arno never gave up hope, however, learning how to compartmentalize his feelings when on missions, like tonight.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
December 24, 1800
Seventy years before the United States of America would declare Christmas to a national holiday, Napoleon Bonaparte was on his way to the opera for the night, but word had reached the Assassins that the remaining Royalists were going to take a page from their book and assassinate the First Consul, via a massive explosive that had been dubbed La Machine Infernal, as the first step in the lengthy progress to reclaiming Paris for themselves. Obviously, the Assassins couldn't let that happen.
If they knew that Napoleon would become Emperor and try to take over Europe, they might've had different opinions on the matter, but as it was, Arno was dispatched to protect Napoleon from the Royalist threat, along with another Assassin for backup.
The Master Assassin stood on the rooftops above the street leading to the Palais-Royal. He heard footsteps behind him, his backup.
"Just in time," Arno, now a grown man of 32 said. "I'll take the left buildings; you'll take the right."
"Um, yeah. I'll be deciding who does what since I'm a member of the Council and you're just a Master."
"Um, yeah," Arno replied sarcastically. "While you haven't been formally voted off the Council, I don't think-"
Arno caught himself and whipped around, eyes wide and jaw hanging open. "Cheyenne," he breathed.
"That's my name, don't wear it out."
He stared at her, totally unbelieving what he was seeing. It was Cheyenne, now a mature woman of 30, dressed and equipped in the exact same manner during their first mission, eleven years ago. She looked just as beautiful as ever, but now the wildfire of her youth was gone. Her eyes didn't glitter like they used to, but they did faintly shimmer. Her smile wasn't a crazed, but it was still dangerous. The way she carried herself wasn't like I'm a badass and I know it, but more like I'm dangerous, and I'll prove it if I have to.
She was all grown up.
And she still had her wedding ring on her finger.
Arno lost total control of himself and through his arms around her, tears rolling down his cheeks. "I said—I said—I said-" he choked on his sobs.
Cheyenne hugged him back, even silencing him with a kiss on the lips. "I know," she said after breaking the kiss. "I had to tie Zoë down with chains to prevent her from hunting you down and skinning you alive after she removed your testicles from your scrotum and slicing your penis open to peel it like a banana…along with some other things. She made a list."
Arno blanched.
"Oh, and I forgave you about two weeks after your expulsion. Never got around to swinging back through Paris because Zoë and I were busy."
"Doing what?"
Cheyenne waved her hands dramatically, proving that the childish girl Arno once knew was still there. "Things."
The Master got serious again. "You just…forgive me? Just like that?"
"Yep."
Arno was flabbergasted and confounded. "How? Why?"
"Because everything you said came from an emotionally charged moment of weakness. We say things we don't really mean when we're seriously emotionally compromised."
The way Cheyenne said it, and the far-off look in her eye in tandem with the little smile on her face, told Arno that she was speaking from experience.
"How are you and Zoë?" he asked warmly, feeling like a changed man.
"We're doing great!" Cheyenne said enthusiastically. "We've had our bad moments, but every married couple has. We always made up, and our good moments far overshadow all of the bad ones. We're even going to have a baby!"
"What?" Arno asked enthusiastically, confused as to how that was possible but totally onboard anyway. "Are you pregnant right now?"
"Nope! But I'm gonna be! Zoë found a way for her to get me pregnant, and so we're going to start trying!"
Arno just stared at her with a wide, mostly blank smile as he tried to comprehend this, and then he put that whole line away in favor for another line of conversation. "Why are you here?"
"To help you with one last mission, make sure all of my affairs are in order, and extend an invitation to you for a life outside of the Brotherhood."
"We'll talk after we're done here tonight."
"We sure will."
Cheyenne gave Arno another kiss, this one on the cheek. "You take the left side of the street; I'll take the right."
"Got it."
And off they went, feeling a mutual exhilaration and excitement that they hadn't felt in years, one that could've only been brought upon by when they were together. As the Assassins went down the street, killing the Royalist snipers and their guards, they felt 19 and 21 again, just like during the Women's March a decade ago.
In taking the right side of the street, Cheyenne cheated herself out of some kills and ended up down on the street while Arno cleared out a balcony overlooking Napoleon's route.
"Hey, Zoë," Cheyenne smirked. "You know I'm a big girl and don't need you to shadow me, right?"
The daughter of Atlas, older now herself since her eternal youth was no longer in play due to her no longer being in the service of Artemis, smirked right back. "You'll always be my petite fille chérie."
Arno waved from across the street, and the two women waved back.
"I still want to cause unfathomable physical harm to him," Zoë said.
"Nope," Cheyenne chirped. "I'll put you out on the couch if you're mean."
Zoë rolled her eyes, but her smile could not be kept down…but that smile was wiped clean from her face when, during the course of her eye-roll, she saw a familiar, dreaded figure standing upon a rooftop, one with purple eyes and the garb of a Huntress.
Lucy.
Right then, Zoë's eardrums exploded at the same time something huge exploded right behind her, making her back burn, knocking her clean off her feet, her whole body feeling rattled. While she no longer had the protection of Artemis's blessing, she still retained her powers as a daughter of Atlas and Pleione, granting her durability that most did not. That was why Zoë lived, and other did not.
Dazed, ears ringing, body aching from the force of the powerful explosion, Zoë shakily got to her feet. Her ears weren't picking up any sound except for incessant ringing, but she could see through blurry vision that people were running around in a panic, and it was like the sun was suddenly present. Zoë turned and saw a big fire behind her, the source of the explosion no doubt, and a carnal pit of eviscerated, burnt corpses.
Adrenaline and shock overrode Zoë's systems as panic gripped her all the way through her soul. Her eyes darted around and she began tossing bodies aside like they were just toys. The former Hunter's ears cleared, and the screaming started to filter in. Because of this, she was able to hear the distraught cry of her name from across the street.
Whipping around, Zoë saw Arno down on his knees, cradling something in his arms, sobbing hysterically. Zoë bounded over and forgot how to breathe when she saw all the blood that coated the Assassin, all the ash. With trembling hands, Zoë gently pried the object from Arno, terrified of what she would see.
What she did see would haunt her nightmares for decades to come.
The explosion had been La Machine Infernal, a massive barrel filled to the brim with gunpowder and iron bits, struck by bullet from across the street at the nearby Palais-Royal. Besides the force and the heat of the explosion, there was also copious amounts of shrapnel, wood and metal.
There was a wooden plank lodged through Cheyenne's face and out the back of her skull, a massive hole right through the part of her chest where her heart used to be, and other grievous wounds about her body from the shrapnel. Skin and muscle hung loosely in some areas, and bits of her intestines were hanging out from holes in her abdomen area.
Zoë screamed.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The two took their turns in torturing both the sniper that made the shot and one Francois-Joseph Carbon, the Royalist behind the whole plot on Napoleon's life. For weeks they were at it, Zoë using medicines and magics to keep the two men alive just long enough to be healed enough for another round of agony. However, no amount of screaming or begging was enough for the distraught Arno and Zoë.
Eventually, whatever relief they felt in torturing the two men faded, and they finally ended the men by letting the rats have them…while they were still alive, of course.
Almost immediately after the two men were hunted down by her and Arno, Zoë had armed and armored herself with enough weapons and potions to lay waste to an army. She stormed the Underworld by herself, ready to tear through Charon, Cerberus, hordes of dead, Orcus, Melinoe, Thanatos, Persephone, and Hades himself so that she could see get her Cheyenne back.
Zoë didn't get two feet into the waiting area of the Underworld before Hades appeared before her and informed her that Cheyenne was not in the Underworld. Her soul had not been claimed by Thanatos or any of the Valkyries, and Hades had checked with every afterlife god that he knew of, and none of them knew the whereabouts of Cheyenne Cormac's soul.
Zoë fell into depression and took to torture for alleviation.
It was after this torture ended, the souls of the sniper and Carbon passing on to be personally welcomed by Hades into the Fields of Punishment, that Arno and Zoë discovered a First Civilization Memory Seal, one that Shay had found during his extensive search for the Precursor Box and had given to Cheyenne. She had recorded a message on it.
In the memory, Cheyenne was standing before a full-body mirror in a dark room, a disembodied light shining down on her. She was wearing her night gown, the one Zoë had routinely put on her before carrying her to bed for either naptime or bedtime.
"Zoë, Arno, if you two are watching this, then that means that I've died prematurely. Since that's the case, I need to tell you some things that I couldn't to say when I was alive. Arno, I love you. I think I fell in love with you when I first saw you. In another life, one without Elise or Zoë, I would've gladly spent the rest of my life with you. I know that sounds bad, Zoë, and I'm sorry if that hurts you, but it's the truth.
"I'm pretty sure by now that you two have pieced it together that Bellec raped my ass when I was fourteen, to show me my place because I was kicking all the asses of all the other trainees. What you two don't know is that the Council at the time, composed of Trent, Quemar, Beylier, and Mirabeau's predecessor covered it up. They didn't want word of what Bellec did to me to reach any of the other Brotherhoods, and so they made sure that the only ones that knew about what Bellec did were him, me, and themselves. So, there's that.
"I don't why I'm dead, but I do know that both of you will blame yourselves. I also know telling you it's not your fault and you shouldn't be feeling like you are because I knew the risks of our lifestyle won't do any good, so I won't say anything about that. What I will say is that I love you both, and I look forward to seeing you both again."
The memory ended, and Zoë and Arno were left with the perfect outlet for all of their feelings.
Armed to the teeth, they stormed the Parisian Brotherhood's hideout and proceeded to slaughter everyone indiscriminately. Every Assassin that wasn't a Council member was either their way, or had scorned Cheyenne in some manner. Presumably, anyway, but neither Arno nor Zoë cared for semantics or specifics.
THEY WERE ALL GOING TO FUCKING DIE!
And die they all did.
Zoë displayed just how far the physical gap between humans and mostly-divine being like herself really was by moving so fast she appeared as nothing more than a silver blur, dodging bullets, turning men into stains on the wall, her blades cutting through the blades of others like they were made of paper.
Arno had to rely more on skill and tools than Zoë did, but he was still a demon with the blade, cutting down his former comrades left and right without mercy or hesitance, even the ones that called themselves his brother or sister and begged him to stop. Arno was too distraught to care about anything else besides avenging Cheyenne by eradicating the whole organization that had enslaved and tortured her for over ten years straight.
The two carved their way through the whole hideout, eventually butchering their way to the Council, who they proceeded to slaughter like animals.
After they were soaked to the bone in blood and everyone was dead, Arno and Zoë parted ways after sharing a broken embrace together over their mutual feelings for Cheyenne. Where they should've glued to each other's hip to help each other cope and heal, they instead parted ways.
Arno would march for Cairo, Egypt, aiming to kill the Mentor of the whole Brotherhood, the poorly named Al Mualim, and every other Assassin who was there along the way. Arno kept a journal with him during his descent into madness, which is why the majority of the whole story of Cheyenne Cormac is known among the modern-day global Brotherhood. Arno wouldn't even come close to achieving his goal, and would be cut down before he made it out of France.
Zoë would just go stumbling through the wilderness, Artemis desperately rushing to her to save her from jumping off a cliff. Delirious and heartbroken, Zoë muttered the sacred oath and Artemis, panicking, reaccepted the vows, restoring to Zoë her youth, powers, and station, and also placing her on suicide watch. There was really no need for it, as Zoë was so dead on the inside that the only thing she did for a month straight was lay curled up in the center of her tent in a ball, at one point soiling herself because every muscle in her body was in a state of relaxation, even her sphincters.
Artemis personally attended to Zoë, along with Apollo, and while Zoë never did recover from Cheyenne's horrible death and missing soul, she did get back on her feet and start walking again, then jogging, then running, but there was always something missing in her step.
She compiled a box of mementos in Cheyenne's name: her air rifle, one of her eight-barreled flintlocks, Shay's flintlocks, and the Memory Seal.
Keeping Shay's guns was admittedly less about Cheyenne, and more about Zoë's broken promise to the man to keep his granddaughter safe.
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Just like Faris, Virgil, and Jake before her, Cheyenne stood outside a set of gates, beyond them lying a warm, golden glow. All around her was endless blue sky, her feet touching nothing, but she was standing as if on solid ground.
She looked and saw a man in a robe, a man that was weeping for her. Cheyenne felt panic surge through her as she realized what was happening, and what this meant for the life she had led.
"N-No—this can't—you—fake—Piece of Eden—Precursors—not real—Elysium—I—I—"
Cheyenne could barely comprehend what was happening and its ramifications for her. Her mind was splitting at the seams, tearing apart and fracturing as the enormity of the situation came to rest upon her. As such, in an effort to escape this terrifying, eternal weight, Cheyenne's mind pushed this all away and grasped desperately for a way out. She pulled her eight-barreled pistols out in the blink of an eye and aimed them at the man.
"You'd better send me back to Zoë right-fucking-now, or I'll give your face some holes to match your hands and feet!"
The man just smiled brokenheartedly through his tears. Cheyenne's arms and legs started to shake like a leaf, then her whole body. There was no power acting on her other than her own. Her face contorted and her will crumbled. Her guns clattered away from her as she dropped to her knees, sobbing hysterically.
The robed man was there, embracing her and sharing in her agony. She wrapped her arms around him and refused to let go.
"If you're good," she managed through her crying, "why did you abandon me?"
"I never abandoned you, Cheyenne. I never have and I never will."
"I wanna go back," she whined pitifully. "I want my Zoë…"
The man kissed the top of her head. "I love you, Cheyenne. Never forget this."
Through her water-stained vision, it got brighter and brighter and brighter, until the only thing was darkness.
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Percy bolted upright in the bed he was in, causing Zoë to gasp and flinch. He looked at her, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
"Ch-Cheyenne…?" Zoë asked, concerned, worried, scared, and hopeful.
"Mon bien-aimé…" Percy whispered from a faraway place.
That's when the memories crashed into him all at once and he almost sank the Eastern Seaboard.
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We're finally back to the present, and I really need to stop writing fanfiction and finish editing my novel.
Anyway, that's how the 18th century romance of Cheyenne and Zoë happened, flourished, and ended. How it picks back up in the 21st century will be interesting, because Zoë was definitely Cheyenne's Mommy-dom, which clashes horribly with the masculinity of Faris, Virgil, and Jake.
As for how the Titan's Curse arc goes down…well, you'll just have to wait a little bit longer!
…or just hit the next chapter button, because you're reading this long after the next chapter has been already posted, or the story is finished…miraculously.
Fav, Follow, and Review please!