"Where are you going?" Athḗnē asked as Hermês lifted from the ground to go back to his search. "Father has ordered you specifically to not leave the mountain."

"What? Why?"

"Were you even listening in there?"

"Scarcely."

His sister sighed, and with a voice filled with disappointment, she said: "Háidēs reported that Thánatos has gone missing. With Boréas' words yesterday of the dead not being confined to the Underworld, it was rightly assumed that he has been taken hostage. As the psychopompós and one of the Twelve Reigning Olympioi, if this is really her..." His sister walked closer to him, yanked him into a hug. He was thankful that she was not dressed in armor. "Do be careful, Kyllenius. Our youngest born."

"Fine," Hermês grumbled, stomping back to his home upon Olympos. He looked around not seeing Peithō anywhere around. Truthfully, he couldn't remember the last time he saw his wife. At least with Laranda, he knew that he could find her within New Roma, but Peithō had been a mystery to him. They certainly didn't have a good talk from the last conversation that he could remember. Not when he mockingly and cruelly threw her words back in her face. When he looked her in the eyes and remarked of how his Lea did not die and was not going to die anytime soon and so Peithō had no other choice but to see them both together for thrice the years Kalypsô kept Odysseús imprisoned on her isle.

She had stormed away angrily, returning to backflowing Ōkeanós, from whom the gods are sprung.

He tuned into watching the trio on the quest to save his stepmother, watched as Hḗphaistos' boy singlehandedly took down a trio of kýklōpes.

And he raged within his mind, feeling the raw grief and anger clawing at his throat. His form shifting into Mercurius as the overwhelming need to tear into the world, to venture down to the home of the Moirai and rip apart their precious tapestry for taking his son... his boy, his little David Pitts; they took him. And he wanted to strangle them with their own threads. He wanted... he wanted...

Apóllōn came to drag him out of his temple, forcing him back into the throne room where his children had turned into a new business endeavor. They were selling food and drinks and places to rest with promises of better seats working in conjunction with Hḗphaistos, Hebe, and Ganymēdēs for the best results.

His mind snaps to attention when they get to Chicago and even though they are miles away, separated by time and space, he could still taste death on his tongue as they drew closer to whoever this person maybe. But it wasn't exactly "whoever" they may be when he knew. He was no Apóllōn or Athḗnē, but Hermês was not unintelligent. He was a cunning god, a trickster at heart. He was crafty with ideals inside of ideas and it was trivial to see where one plan started and the other ended. But it was one thing to think about... the Boreádai, a child of Aphrodítē, a champion of Hḗrē that was named Jason... oh, if it were not the daughter of Aeëtes, then he would eat his foot. Heck, they even have a dragon.

And it was her.

Mēdeia.

She wore her faux skin like a costume, but he could see her for what she really was. A princess of a time long lost, bitterness clouding her soul as her own blessing, platonic at its creation but manipulated into romantic, left her for another. He could see the anger and hatred that had carved gouges into her soul and taking residence in where her heart would be as years and years passed and her story changed into her being the monster instead of the victim that she was.

He watched as she and Drew traded barb words and he watched as Drew looked her over, accounting for the best way to take her down. Apóllōn's training was thorough after all, and Hermês sat in plenty of session as his brother gave her an in-depth lesson on anatomical science of the human body and all the ways to dismantle it in a fight. Hermês knew that Drew rarely ever let loose, but the few times in battle whether it was arrows or a gun or that one time with a bazooka, her hits were designed for either instant kills or ones that prolonged suffering belied the truth of what she could do.

(Watching the reruns of the battle for Manhattan, returning to the city after defeating Typháōn and watching as demigods and mortals choking and gargling on their own blood as they fought to live as if Atropos was hacking at their life threads with a butter knife covered in oil instead of snipping it serenely.)

He knows that Apóllōn taught her of how the human body was both formidable and incredibly fragile, and very easy to subdue if they had the proper knowledge. He showed her different wounds, what would happen if they were left untreated and infected, the way certain poisons worked and how the antidotes were always so helpful and taught her how to inflict wounds way beyond what they learned at camp. He taught her how to heal just as easily as she could kill. Apóllōn made her a reflection of himself and her own Mother, crafting her into a very fine dagger to let out against the world. She was a contradicting being and the mortals didn't even know how much more complex that she was in regard to them. She could harm one and profit another, sorely perplexing the tribes of unenviable men.

(And she used a traitor and a spy as her moral compass, but now she clung to Lea to reign her in and well, his Lea was clearly a favorite of khaos.)

They all watch as she looked calmly at Mēdeia and says clearly: "I came here to parley. But do not mistake a desire to avoid violence for the inability to deal it."

And they all know it to be true because Apóllōn to her. He taught her how to break bones, how to escape capture with teeth and nails, where each pressure point was, and she knew every part of the human body intimately whether it be through his teachings or the trauma that in her past that made her rage at the world so easy to ignite within her. She knew how to incapacitate anyone in a matter of seconds if she so pleased, but he pushed and pushed and made her aware of how much power that her own voice holds and molded it into her greatest weapon.

They listen.

And the skies rumble in fury as Mēdeia admits to her deception. The princess mocks Drew, unable to recognize the danger that she was in the longer that spoke. She tells Drew of how Alabaster's protection had been removed when Lea snatched away the seat of power during the war, leaving him about as skilled as a kid watching Hocus Pocus on Disney. Mēdeia speaks of how she attended that coffee shop that Ethan and Alabaster frequented with the mistform of Dr. Claymore since the previous one had been burned down. She gleefully tells Drew of pouring a potion into the boys' coffee cake to do her bidding, Ethan in just the right place to be moved all the way over to the Bay Area and Alabaster to the camp to piqued Drew and Lea's interest. She cruelly tells her that none of it would have been possible without Lea taking away Alabaster's powers otherwise he would have realized the potions and its magical effects. Cruelly, she tells Drew to thank Lea for her.

When Drew questioned her as to why, with that same look of calm; that calm before the storm, Mēdeia mentioned of knowing about the prophecy of seven, about how she accidentally wandered into the Fields of Punishment instead of Elysium as she had been rewarded, where her anger and bitterness played against her psyche and she saw how important Leo would become and how she awakened her... awakened... it was a thought too terrifying to complete. She mused a bit and stated that it was also a bit of revenge she supposed for Lea brutally embarrassing her Father also and making him look weak in comparison to a mortal, but not too much revenge because he was a bit bitter about Medeia going further than he did in life.

All of them raged, and yet despite them being gods, Olympians, deities of immeasurable power that could tear the world apart with just the snap of their fingers within a blink of an eye and without any cognizant thought, all of it paled in comparison of Drew's wrath and the magic that held onto the two boys shattered as she attacked. Her katanas, affectionately named after Phobos and Deimos, the ones who had gifted her the things to being within, twirls through the air and Mēdeia scrambles away from her with fear in its purest forms dancing in her eyes. Its everything and nothing for Mēdeia to try to defend herself against the onslaught but Drew's too precise; surgically precise as a byproduct of Apóllōn's training and soon, Mēdeia was more blood than skin as she raced away, tripping over her feet.

Drew's anger was an almost physical thing, and she spews curses and insults, switching between english, french, japanese, and ellinika all at once. "Elle est l'amour platonique de ma vie," she stated, speaking about Lea.

The princess set her sun dragons out, thinking it would be enough to distract Drew. It wasn't. She gave the boys the order to deal with it while she hunted Mēdeia down like the vermin that she was.

"I wouldn't have admitted to that unless Hades said it was my only way into Elysium," Drew snarls, blades stained in so much blood that it seemed painted on. "You would use our boys against us?"

They dance around each other, Mēdeia with her mageia and potions, and Drew with her spoken charm and swords. They seemed evenly matched as they twisted and twirled. They ducked under punches and kicks, spinning around each other as neither gained an upper hand, knocking potions over into each other. But it became obvious soon enough that Drew was simply playing with her food as she twisted once more, the sword named Phobos sinking into the witches' back, hitting her spinal cord in a way that completely paralyzed her. Mēdeia fell towards the earth right as the dragon crashed into it. Drew smiled with all teeth, something dark and hungry and evil in her eyes as she watched on, words dripping in charm: "I think it's time for you to die."

And with a swipe of the sword named Deimos, she cut her head off.

The screens went dark as the trio sailed away, silence covering shining Olympos before unnerving cackling echoed around the room as Apóllōn and Aphrodítē cheered.

It was bit crazy how Lea preached about finally feeling like a real person. All these new emotions that she felt in general never mind the ones that she felt towards people. Sometimes she slipped up, hiding behind the facade that she knew. And she knew that it wasn't healthy. How could she understand those feelings when she kept running from them but- with everything just going to hell at the moment, when things had finally started to look up in a way that it hadn't for the past four years... it was...

It was just too much.

And so Leaneira slipped into what was comfortable for her. The detachment came easy to her and a later, she would be scared of just how easy but... that was later.

For now, she sat atop of her apartment building after failing to strengthen her mageia enough to bypass whatever took her brother from her. Her mageia glows around her hand as she manipulated it, swirling between her fingers and around her arm like a snake. The world spun in muted colors, and she wonders what would happen if she poured all of her mageia deep into the core of the earth; deep enough that she hit the center mass where she suspected the seat of Gaea's divinity existed. She stared at the mageia in her hands, curling about and glowing with the full intensity. Could she do that? Could she actually destroy the world, or would it be some empowering type of thing that brought back extinct animals and shit? The question made her a bit uncomfortable, so she let it go.

Lea turned her head, watching the way the air beside her shimmered and she could see Medea and Magnus and oh, Bomon; she hadn't spare the little pixie a thought in some time, appear in her botanical garden. She looked them over once as they came completely into view before turning away to once more manipulate the mageia in her hands.

Medea falls to her side and Lea shied away from the tears in her eyes. She's mouthing words and grief and disbelief all at once and Lea doesn't like it. She blinks and the world keeps spinning. Hands frame her face as Medea forces her to look at her, forces her to see the grief and agony in her eyes. "Where's Percy? Did you find him? What happened?"

Lea shied away from it, feeling the raw grief and anger clawing at her throat. It makes her want to tear into the world, into fate itself and rip the threads that hold them to this world; this world that keeps hurting them and won't let them be normal-let them be kids-away. She wanted to scream and claw at life itself. She wanted to watch it all burn. She wanted... she wanted...

A tear slips from her eyes and drops onto her hands.

She wanted to cry and as Medea wrapped her in her arms, she fell into the abyss of the emotions that she didn't know. That she didn't understand. She fell and she let them drift her under.

Because dealing with them was easier than dealing with a world that just wanted to hurt her.

WORD COUNT: 2416

THINGS TO KNOW:

1) Listen, I love greek mythology and reading the myths over and over again because seriously, why did I just learn that Dionysos? He's blond.

1A) In Hesiod's Theogony in the Olympian Gods section, it says: "And golden-haired Dionysus made brown-haired Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, his buxom wife: and the son of Cronos made her deathless and unageing for him."

1B) No seriously, like that just shifted a lot of things for me.

2) There are a few things that I can't wait to explore in the rewrite of Surface Pressure like the fact that Mercurius was the god of wisdom and Venus was much more in touch with her domain as being a goddess of the sky as she placed the constellations.

COMMENTS FROM THE AUTHOR:

1) A bit of a short chapter that could be considered fillerish in a way. As I started writing these chapters, it really didn't occur to me how stagnant the writing would be since its only in two povs. Im not changing that, but i feel like it would go faster if i was writing in the others povs also. The next few chapters will be the same in a way because Hermês cares about Hḗrē but he cares more about Lea and Lea is breaking at the seams little by little.

1A) Anyway, we're building into Lea's adventure and she's not in the right mind frame right now either. And the way everything is timed, i just realized that she won't actually know what happened to her brother until the end. And then Hermês will be the one breaking at the seams.

1B) Lea's feelings of detachment are something that I can relate with because as I was thinking over my own life the past few days, I realized I have some serious detachment issues which probably isn't actually detachment but a side effect of my chronic depression and social anxiety. Because I've been going through some things lately, and it's just like huh, it is what it is. I don't feel anything towards it.

1C) It gave me the idea to write a child of Aphrodítē that doesn't feel anything. Like a child of love that doesn't feel love or hatred, pain or anger. just real detachment issues. they don't grieve or get scared. the entire PJO arc would be a goddamn mess on their psyche with the potential to go nuclear when all emotions come out of nowhere as it ties in with Silena's death.

2) For the roman theogony, should I put it in the same frame as Hesiod's Theogony, write it like a book, or just the do a family tree? Cause tbh, its stressing me right now and I can't dive into the rewrite of Surface Pressure without it. Well I can, but it'd make it a bit easier.

3) A quick update: The draft for the sequel is going through some major rewrites right now. Its pissing me off cause i have so many ideas for it.

TRANSLATIONS:

1) She is the platonic love of my life - Elle est l'amour platonique de ma vie

QUOTES:

1) I came here to parley. But do not mistake a desire to avoid violence for the inability to deal it. - Diana of Themyscira (Prime Earth)