Hello everybody!
I just want to warn you that from now, the rythm of update will change. I am now going to publish one chapter each month, except if I am really missing time or if I am having a huge boost of inspiration and motivation.
I just hope that you will not mind it
Chapter 5: Delphi
Apollo was satisfied. So satisfied. Python was dead…by his hand. He avenged his mother and would definitely be ready to do it again in order to protect her dignity.
He eyed everything around him. Before him was standing a temple – a small one. He would replace it with a much bigger, much more beautiful and impressive one to represent his own cult.
But for now, seeing the few habitants of Pytho kneeling in front of him, he knew he had something to do.
He rose his right arm with his bow, still caring to look powerful in the eyes of his audience.
"From now on, Python is dead. I, Apollo, son of Zeus and Leto, God of the Sun, now claim the sanctuary of Pytho as my own. The Oracle is mine as well and I shall be known as the God of Prophecies. You may stand."
And all the mortals rose and began to praise loudly the god, their savior, and their new protector. Only the priests seemed displeased. They were probably faithful to Gaia. Well, Apollo would need to replace them.
He looked at the landscape around him. The view on the valley was incredible. The chain of mountains shaped with rocky walls was breathtaking. The valley possessed a small but wonderful river in meander leading to the sea. It had nothing to envy Mount Olympus.
He was young and had seen few of what the whole world had to offer, but he would bet that few places could rival this beauty. He was proud to have claimed this place as his own. The center of the world.
But he had to be honest. He didn't like the name Pytho at all.
He heard a sound of someone coming. He easily guessed who it was.
His stare turned to the blond-haired woman that was standing at a close distance from the dead monster's body. She appeared surprised. She clearly never expected him to succeed to slay Python considering his very short age. Deep inside, he felt really proud to have impressed her.
She was beautiful. Of course, as a goddess, it was normal for her to be pretty but she had a charm that made her unique. He could write a poem to describe how gorgeous she was but it would be unnecessary. Simplicity spoke better.
She was simply the most beautiful to his eyes.
…
Delphina could still not believe it. Only four days old, Apollo managed to kill Python. That was quite impressive.
She was also a little intimidated when he turned to look at her. She forgot she was older than him. He truly reflected the stature of an Olympian. So confident, so strong and so beautiful. He seemed to come from another world.
He finally went down and came closer to her.
"So, I think I owe you apologies." Delphina said, a little nervous. "You did succeed, after all."
"Thank you. And this sanctuary is now mine."
He was really proud. Well, she would be too. No doubt he was going to be a great god. But a god of…
"Wait! Did you present yourself as the God of the Sun? Isn't the title of Helios?"
"Well, my father judged that such important entity should be under the control of an Olympian. Helios will still be a god of the sun and ride the chariot, but I will share the responsibility and be of higher rank. It's the same with my sister Artemis. She is the Goddess of the Moon and the Hunt too."
"Ok! And now, you just became the God of Prophecies. Not so bad."
"Not so bad?" He laughed. "There are far more!"
"What?"
"My father also made me God of Light, Truth, Music, Art, Poetry, Knowledge, Healing, Plague, Archery… Did I forget something? Ho! Also, I am the protector of colonies and…"
"Ok! Ok! I understand!"
Seriously, how could it be possible to rule over so many things? She might look pathetic by just being Goddess of Dolphins.
"Can I make it short and just call you God of Almost Everything?"
He was laughing even louder.
"I am serious." She said firmly.
"Right! If that helps you, I have no problem with it."
She smiled. She was about to ask him another question when she was distracted by a call. She listened to it. Someone needed guidance.
She began to move when Apollo took her wrist.
"Wait! Where are you intending to go?"
"Someone in the Gulf of Corinth is praying for my help. They must be Cretan priests of mine."
"Of yours?"
"I may be a minor divinity, but I am really proud to possess at least one temple in this world. A small one in Knossos in Crete where I created the first dolphins."
He stared at her, seeming hugely interested by what she said and seeming to have something in his mind. Or maybe she was just imagining things!
"Anyway." She added. "I have to go back to my own duties."
"Let me come with you."
"What?"
"Transform me into a dolphin again. I want to help you."
"I am really fine on my own. By the way, you have a sanctuary to build, I think."
"I let you accompany me to the killing of Python. You may let me join you in return."
Delphina was unsure. She went through a lot of emotions today and would like to go back to her job to regain a little normality in her life. By the way, she was just beginning to learn to know Apollo. To let him come would be like inviting him in her intimacy. Not sure she was ready for that. But he had been nothing but kind to her until now and he even saved her.
So, she agreed, even if doubts were somehow still floating in her mind.
…
Delphina, in her mermaid form, swam fast, followed by the dolphins, including Apollo. She deeply cared for her priests and hoped they were alright.
She soon saw the boat. They were there alone. Her priest always possessed the particularity to be good sailors as well. This way they could travel all around Greece and bring up their expertise since she got only one individual temple.
They seemed lost. By chance, being closer she could hear better their prayers.
"Dear Goddess, please, we need your help. We followed your orders to come in the Gulf but we are now lost. We need your guidance to bring us where you want us to go."
Delphina was shocked. She never asked them to come here. She even hardly ever asked them to do anything for her. Something was clearly wrong.
That was when she reached the boat that she saw Apollo in his dolphin form go at the surface of the water. She jumped. What was he doing? She was the leader, here!
The priests, who are four, saw the majestic dolphin and looked relieved.
"Look! A dolphin! More beautiful than the others!" Their leader said, impressed. "It must be the Goddess! She is there! Great Delphina, we are your servants. Please, enlighten us!"
"I am not Delphina." The dolphin answered, in a deep voice.
The Goddess was stunned. Just what was Apollo doing? He clearly had something in mind for daring to disobey her! It was entering himself in her own domain without her approval. It was outrageous!
But instead to intervene, she ordered her dolphins to stay behind. She needed to know the next actions of Apollo. She brought her head a little at the surface to observe the scene. Since the dolphin spoke with a human voice, the priests guessed they were in presence of a god. But not the one they expected.
"Don't fear me. I mean no harm to you. Connect me to your boat with a rope and I will bring you to a special place."
Since the mysterious god was appearing in a dolphin's shape, he certainly had the support of Delphina, the Goddess they served. That was the conclusion of the priests. So, they gave him their trust and obeyed him. They connected the ship to the divinity and with his divine strength and speed, Apollo led them right to Pytho.
He was clearly up to something! Something he refused to share with her. She was becoming mistrustful. She could make him loose his dolphin disguise easily and have a serious conversation with him. But she needed to take care of the religious men and didn't want to be humiliated in their eyes.
Delphina decided to trust her friend that he wasn't about to do something foolish. So, she followed him.
And finally, when they arrived near the port of Crissa, Apollo turned to the priests again, who seemed scared and fascinated at the same time.
The mermaid was prepared to listen. He was better to have a good motivation behind his suspicious actions.
"My name is Phoebus Apollo." The Olympian spoke. "I am a son of Zeus. Today, I killed Python and freed the sanctuary of Pytho which is now mine. You are here because I chose you to become my priests to my Oracle."
What?! How dared he? These priests were already hers!
"You will take care of my temple and welcome the whole world where they will be able to consult the Oracle. You will look over one of the wealthiest and most prestigious sanctuary in the world because I shall become one of the most important and influential god as the God of Prophecies. As my servants, you are going to be highly honored, I promise you."
"But, great son of Zeus, we already serve Delphina back at her temple in Crete." One of the religious men mentioned.
"And this is exactly the reason why I chose you. I appear to you as a dolphin, right? This is because I am going to ask you to worship me not as Phoebus Apollo but as Apollo Delphinius."
No… Delphina was definitely shocked. How could he do that to her? Too much upset, she swam and ran away.
…
She went back to Pytho. She was mad, totally mad. She didn't feel that much anger since a very long time. Her fury towards Apollo was great!
He stole her priests and made them his without asking her. He totally acted in her back. And like it was not enough, he requested to be venerated in the shape of a dolphin. Again without her permission!
After everything she had done to him, how could he do that? How could he take the sole object of her own cult and attach it to his own. Dolphins were hers! He could have any animal! Why? She had trusted him!
She eyed the temple. It was average but still bigger than her only temple in this world. The kind that would embarrass any major god, but for someone born as a nymph, it was a symbol of achievement. She would still have new priests to serve her, this wasn't the problem. But it was still symbolic. It was like if Apollo considered her not important enough to represent that animal, her own soul!
Talking of Apollo, she suddenly felt him behind her. She just knew it was him. She felt his heat coming from his new status as the God of the Sun.
"How could you?" She said with venom in her voice.
"Delphina… You are mad?"
"Seriously, you are asking the question?" She said, turning to face him.
He didn't look guilty at all and it pissed her off.
"Honestly, why did you do that? When you told me that you wanted to be known in the form of a dolphin, I didn't expect you to go that far! You lied!"
"I am the God of Truth. I cannot lie. I have just omitted to tell you the extension of my intentions. But, trust me, I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm even surprised that it did."
"Really? You truly believed it would not be insulting for a goddess to watch another one take her priests as his own? And to take her own symbol as well? You are already the God of Almost Everything but it seems it wasn't enough for you."
"I think you completely misunderstood my intentions."
"What?"
"Look around."
She did. She faced the temple again. There was nothing new. But after looking at it with more precision, she finally saw what he meant.
The written name "Pytho" at the beginning of the village disappeared. It had been replaced.
"Delphi." She read.
She could believe he named it after the animal which he stole the image, but then, she was reminded she named it after herself. That meant…
"You are naming your sanctuary after me?"
And it wasn't any sanctuary! It was the center of the universe! The navel of the world!
"I never intended to steal your own cult. I just want to share."
"Share?"
He came closer to her. She could feel his chest almost touching her back. She felt his heat warming her body in a pleasurable way. She breathed faster, disturbed by this proximity.
"Before to be born, I caught an image." He whispered to her ear. "It was Python. It became my greatest obsession at that moment. But it also made me afraid of the world because of the monstrosity attached to it. But when I was born and I opened my eyes, I saw you."
She was trembling but couldn't say which emotion was the cause. It was awkward that he could remember that.
"Your beauty replaced the ugliness of Python in my head and made me happy. It made me want to live. Your kindness surpassed its terror. It just suits so well that a name like "Pytho" should be replaced by a name like "Delphi"."
It was truly the God of Poetry. She understood but was still nervous.
"There is something else you are not telling me." She told him.
"Indeed. I named my Oracle after you because I want you to be its patron goddess with me. I want you to rule over it at my side…as my wife."
She should have guessed! She turned around and fell face to face with a strongly confident god. He looked at her seriously in a way that proved he expected a positive answer.
She got a big sense of déjà vu.
Any other woman would have been happy to be seduced by such a beautiful and powerful man but again, Delphina would not react like any woman.
It was the second time she got proposed by an Olympian. And again, there was no true love behind it. She never cared that much about marriage, but she always convinced herself that if it was to ever happen, she would like to have one like her foster parents, Nereus and Doris. Their love was pure and beautiful. She wanted the same.
But no, twice she was proposed because of her beauty and her qualities and not because she was loved. It was like if she was not worth to learn to love. And it made her sad and angry!
"No." She answered.
"No?"
"You heard me." She said more firmly. "Seriously, did you truly expect me to fall in love with you just today?! We still know few of each other! And your description of our first meeting may sound romantic from your point of view but from mine, it is completely creepy! You were only a baby! Think about it!"
"But here, I am standing before you as an adult."
"It doesn't change the fact that you are only four days old when I am at least over one hundred years old! It is not that the age difference matters to me but your own life time is just a sparkle in comparison to my own. You may have known me since your birth, but for me it was just the adventure of the month!"
"The adventure of the month? So this is what it is for you?"
"No! This is not what I mean! It is just that for me, it is too sudden. I cannot love you! This kind of feeling just doesn't work like that! And now, you just bound me to your cult without asking me! Did you really think that it would make me accept?!"
"You know, you could have stopped when you simply said no. No need to be so rude."
She stopped, finally realizing what she just did.
He was right. She had been nothing to him but harsh in her answer.
He didn't deserve it. She felt insulted but he never wanted to make her feel this way.
Now she could see in his eyes that she hurt him. He was not looking at her. He was slimly deviating his stare. He was trying to not let his emotions be seen but she wasn't blind.
And now, she felt really bad.
He was still young. It was normal that he possessed few experience in love and now she gave him a bad one.
What went wrong with her? It wasn't in her nature to act like that. Was it because of all the emotions of the last days with the long labour of Leto, the encounter with Python, her godhood granted, her sister leaving and now Apollo proposing to her?
But whatever, she had no excuse for her attitude. Here, Apollo was standing proudly, accepting her rejection with courage and dignity.
Ironically, he was the one acting with maturity and she was the childish one.
"Apollo… I'm sorry." She said. "I…"
"No need to explain. I understand."
"Ok." She said, still unsure. "So how are you going to rename your sanctuary?"
"I am not going to change it. My decision was already finale."
It did nothing to appease her guilt.
…
Delphina entered the temple. It still belonged to Gaia but it was her daughter Themis who gave the prophecies for her. Well until tomorrow. Apollo would not wait too long to impose his presence.
She passed the grey columns to access to the inner chamber. Inside, it was very dark. Or maybe it was just because of the sundown. Well, it was dark.
In the end of the temple, there were many old priests who looked at her in a treating way.
Any mortal who dared to defy a god this way would end up with a terrible fate. But Delphina wasn't like that. She was famous for being a divinity you can insult without that much consequences.
Well, the Goddess believed that the mortals had the right to hate her if they were justified. Here, these men were about to lose their position in favor of her own priests. Their only weapon as simple mortals was to be unkind to her. She let them. Their anger was understandable.
But she was not here to present her excuses. She wanted an answer to her question and knew who could give it to her.
In front of her, sitting on a golden tripod, she was there. A woman, barefoot, wearing a long orange chiton and a red veil covering her long brown hair. Just under the tripod, there was a crevice in the floor from where a mysterious gas was escaping. A gas that the mystical woman was inhaled.
She was the famous Pythia.
"I desire to ask a question to the Oracle." Delphina requested.
"Write your question on the tablet before you and we will read it for you to the Pythia." Answered the head priest rudely.
She did it.
Once it was done, the religious man took the tablet and bowed in front of the priestess.
"Dear Themis, this is a new question for you from the Goddess Delphina: "Besides myself, will Apollo be able to find love someday?""
They waited.
On her tripod, Pythia suddenly went into trance, she completely shook in any direction as if she was possessed. She was screaming words freaking hard to understand.
It was almost scary, but the priests calmly listened. It was clearly a part of the ritual.
She yelled a few more words before calming down, almost falling unconscious.
The head priest turned to her, with a stoic stare.
"Your answer: "When love will reach him, Anteros will not be there. When love will attain him, Thanatos will be there.""
"What? Are you saying that Apollo is going to be cursed in love? He will never find happiness?"
"You are allowed only one question and only one answer. Now, leave."
She was desperate. Now, she felt terribly guilty towards Apollo. She wanted him to be happy but somehow felt like she condemned him to a miserable love life. Or maybe she was just building ideas in her mind.
Anyway, the Oracle did nothing to reassure her.
She left the temple and contemplated the landscape. The view over the valley from the shrine was spectacular. It made her feel free, powerful, at peace. It was so majestic. Really worthy of a god.
Then she saw Apollo. He was watching the sun setting in the horizon over the mountains. Probably under the control of Helios at the moment but from now it would be his attribute as well.
He was very beautiful. A beauty she would have never thought possible to achieve. And yet, the union of Zeus and Leto just did that. Probably, the other nymphs would speak of her as crazy to have first turned down the powerful Poseidon and now the most beautiful god ever.
But beauty and power didn't create love. And her heart decided for her.
But that didn't mean she would reject any relationship.
So she came closer behind him.
"I accept." She said.
Surprised, he turned to look at her. His blue eyes were wide open, shining and blinking. He gazed at her in a caring way. He was clearly having a hope revived.
But Delphina would lose no time to be more precise in her intentions.
"I accept to patronize Delphi along with you."
Thank you for reading!
An alternative version of the origin of the name Delphi is that there was another monster with Python named Delphyne, which is also pretty close to Delphina in french (Delphine).
In the homeric hymn to Apollo, the god gave the new name Delphi at the same time he asked to be worshipped as Apollo Delphinius.
I read somewhere that Apollo Delphinius was probably already worshipped in Crete and the priests probably brought the cult themselves to Delphi and this is how the myth may have been born in real life. We will never know for sure if it is true, but it inspired me for my story since Apollo could logically not be worshipped just four days after his birth, but the dolphin could!
You have probably understood the pattern of my story. Each chapter is going to be dedicated to a myth, sometimes related to Apollo or the dolphin. You are also going to see a lot of mythical greek heroes and also a lot of Apollo's canon lovers (not all of them just the most famous ones).
Delphi is truly a beautiful place. I encourage you to visit it once in your life. It is a great experience!
If you want a hint about what is coming in the next chapter, I am going to give you a simple key-word: Laurel.
See you soon!