TRIGGER WARNINGS: PLEASE READ
1) Domestic Violence (Sparsely mentioned but I still wanted to notate it.)
1A) This isn't Lea punching Hermes as she cried in grief and desperation and abandonment (and even she apologized because it was wrong of her.)
1B) This is placing your hands on your spouse for no justiciable reason.
2) Mentioning of Past Sexual Assault/Rape/Sexual Coercion (which is still rape!)
2A) It's not pretty and its especially worse because it's said in front of the victims.
2B) Also, the only background to these accounts are from the roman era so it's their roman forms except for the case of the "sexual coercion" which is still rape. I need to state that as many times as I can because the myth paints it as being "seduction" but no, its rape.
3) Assaulting a Minor because Leaneira is still 17 and therefore, underage. Though, she is not there.
Olympos was quiet.
Olympos was never quiet and yet—
Apóllōn left the mountain, venturing down to the mortal world where he spoke with Sally Jackson and Paul Blofis. He explained to the two of them of how Leaneíras had been attacked at the Camp and that she had been taken away to Olympos for healing and her protection. He told them that as soon as she was able to, then she would be able to send them a message. It wasn't necessarily a lie. The chalice that she had been drinking from had been sent to Olympos, the last thing to hold her mageia a point for her to return to whence she came... came from where she had been transported to for even the gods did not know and as soon as she was back, because she would come back; she had to... she would be able to contact her parents.
Apóllōn explained to them that Perseus was also okay, but their enemy wants him dead and that he too was hidden from them until it was safe for his return. He apologized for the stress and fear that they feel. He told them that it was the will of Fate and even they as gods had to bow down to it. With a snap of his fingers, Kírkē and Eurythion return back to their sides, agreeing to pretend to be the twins, sick with the flu to keep away any questions and offer them safety in case of an attack.
In the next moment, he went back to his brother, his little prince of robbers, who was staring out onto the mountain in silence as if he was not even there with them.
Within the mortal world, Hḗphaistos' son, Leo, revealed that Bunker of his while explaining to the campers that they would be traveling to Ellada. Drew had found the whole thing amusing before disappearing in the chaos after to see her Ethan. The boy was doing much better as Paul helped him around the infirmary floor. And when Drew showed up, the two of them could only stare at each other before she was throwing herself into his embrace as carefully as she could. "Eh? Aeri, don't cry. I'm okay. You saved me."
"I was almost too late. I didn't think I was going to be strong enough," she murmured as she clutched to him tighter. She sniffled, turning to look at him in the eyes. "But... but... Ai shiteru kara, tsuyoku nareru." His features softened, pure adoration on his face as he brushed her hair behind her face. "Hanii, daisuki da yo. You can do anything you want, Drew. And your love has the power to rewrite fate itself. I knew you could save me whether you believed in yourself or not."
Iūnō sighed, disappearing from the mountain to speak with her son in all but blood. A part of her felt pained to see the annoyance and dislike that painted his face as he looked at her... looked at her as if she was a stranger. She fed him, clothed him, personally trained him; held him when he was sick. She loved him just as much as she loved her own children and he—It was her fault, she knew. She made the choice to take away his memories, but he could not keep them. Not if they wanted to survive what was coming. Those memories would tear them apart... Jason would tear it apart. This entire camp destroyed under the onslaughts of the heavens, and they could not afford that. Her Family... divine and demidivine could no longer be separated. Admittedly, she was a bit irritated with Poseidón for siring the twins and ruining all of her carefully laid plans even if Perseus was the best match for the quest (and even she had long saw the miracle of Hērmês finding love in the demigoddess that had originally been the one to slay his son so maybe it was a good thing that Poseidón sired twins instead of just Leaneíras on her own).
The conversation goes as well as it could though as she looked over her boy, she may need to speak with Mnēmosúnē and Hērmês about making sure that all his memories came back. She was a bit careless when she removed them.
And then Olympos was quiet no more.
Hērmês had disappeared.
He did not go far.
As the children at Camp Half-Blood talked about the quest and argue over who was to go; Connor Stoll was saying that he and Travis could have their younger sibling; Cecil, see if he could speak with Nico as Cecil was a psychopompós. There was something in there about choosing between blessings and who would they pick; the one that they had been friends with for years or the one that they were truly in love with because of their heart and not some mark on their skin.
And then again, Olympos was quiet though not in their grief and pity.
This time Olympos was quiet in shock for Hērmês, friends to mortals, was not so friendly.
Molten anger rolled through him, springing to life with every step he made up the mountain and they knew it was simmering for he didn't even find it convenient to fly. He was marinating in resentment; the greens of his eyes dark enough to look like the earth itself.
The doors to his temple slammed open, leaving cracks in the marble. Ζεύς turned, calling for his once-lover to come to soothe their son as the Father of gods quickly made his way to try himself.
The building felt as if it were closing around Hērmês as he whirled through it. His children poking their heads out from their rooms before disappearing behind their own doors. Hērmês was falling deeper and deeper into his rage, but he could not get himself under control. Not from what he saw... from what he sensed. He gripped his kērū́keion in his hand as he threw open another door and he should stop. He should stop, but he could not find the control to do so, and he continued onward even as every door laid in ruins behind him. Even as his brothers and sisters pushed the remains of them away as they rushed after him.
Olympos shaking after all.
And there she stood, under a marbled statue of the two of them, made to commensurate their love and marriage.
"That was quicker than I thought," she said, golden strands flying freely down her back. Her own kērū́keion was held lightly in her left hand, wrapped in twine while she held a glass of wine in the other. "I thought I could at least have one night of peace before you came."
Hērmês stood, fists clenched by his sides as Geōrgios and Mártha hissed in anger. He rolled his shoulders back, glaring at her. "Care to say that again?'"
"Why should I," she shot back, turning to him with almost the same amount fury in her eyes. Almost. "You come in here with an accusation written all over your face and I have not done a single thing to—"
"YOU POSOINED MY LEANEÍRAS," He roared. "I saw it! I sensed your power all over it. You had the nymph give it to her with promises to help her with her blessing! You took her from me, and you will bring her back."
"Oh, I will," Peithō scoffed. "Ha! I will do no such thing! I have done none of the things you accuse me of—"
"You cannot lie to a liar," Hērmês sneered. He raised his hands, a kaleidoscope ball of goetia in his hands. "Your mageia is all over this and an entire band of them and I will go after each and every one of you if you do not bring my Leaneíras back to me."
"Your Leaneíras this! Your Leaneíras that! I am your WIFE!" Her wine glass went flying towards his head. A twitch of his fingers had it curving in another direction. "Why should I care if that little whore went missing!"
"Because I do! Morning, noon, and night, I care about her!"
"Well, I don't," she huffed. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but Hērmês could not find the strength to care outside of the ache in his very soul where Lea was supposed to be. "I care nothing for her!"
Narrowing his eyes, he took a step closer to her. "You clearly do, Peithō, or you would not have attacked her. Why did you do it? Why must you hurt me so?"
"Hurt you?" The goddess of seduction sauntered over to him to punch at his chest. "Hurt you? I am supposed to care about hurting you when all you have done is hurt me! Year after year! Bastard after bastard! And now this? This mortal fleshbag that would sooner die than live to give you the life and love and family that you deserved! You claim to love me! And yet, you bring another woman into my home and call her your wife! You bring children not of my womb into our home! But you love me! Ha!" Her laugh was so bitter and so filled with pained as she slapped her hand against his chest.
"I have loved you for thousands of years, Peitho!"
"WELL, I HAVE NEVER FELT LOVED BY YOU."
"BECAUSE I AM NOT IN LOVE WITH YOU," he roared; voice loud and thundering just as his Father. Twas a wake-up call; a needed reminder that for all that he was friendliest to the mortals, for all that he was a trickster, lucky-bringing; he was still the youngest divine-born of the Olympioi Major; he was the son of Ζεύς Panhellenios, he was Argeïphontes, the slayer of Árgos, the god that drew first blood in the new era of Olympioi. The grandson of enduring Átlas and cruel Krónos. He who had been reared by Kullḗnē, and Hēmérā and Ouranós.
But what stood there when that luck ran out? When that friendliness turned to aloofness. His true form emerged from his mortal vessel like some eldritch horror; the onslaught of the heavens and earth; of the underworld and the wild combating in his gaze. His kērū́keion sparked in his hand, the golden wand wrapped in polar leaves as Geōrgios and Mártha dripped venom; venom directly from the streams of the Lḗthē from their fangs.
No one said anything. Not the husband or wife. Not the children that peeked their heads out of their rooms. Not Laranda who gazed at them both blankly. Not his siblings or his parents; his aunts or uncles.
The only sound that could be heard was their heavy breathing as Hērmês stepped away from her, eyes darting to the ground and back again. "I—I only married you because you tricked me into it, you, lovely Peithō, a whisper of persuasion and seduction, managed to tie the tongue of Hērmês, god of crafty wiles but I have never been in love with you and that will not change no matter how much you try to come between Leaneíras and I. It will not happen. You know that it will not. She and I— we are bound together by leaps of faith and strings of destiny. Since the dawn of time before land and sea and the all-covering sky were made, in the whole world the countenance of nature was the same, all one, well named Khaos, a raw and undivided mass, naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds of ill-joined elements compressed together… She has been mine long before I even knew of her and nothing that you do will change that. Me and you… you and I may have looked as if we were in love, but it was only on camera, Peithō. And you know it. You're fighting this so strongly and for what? If this was your blessing, I would have let you go."
And she knew, as one of the goddesses of marriage, that the significance of a simádi psychís outranked any vows that they pledge lest he or Leaneíras formally acquitted it as a platonic mark. And neither of them saw it as such.
"Let me go? Let me go? Like that infernal song that Apóllōn continuously sings from some vision of the future? You would let me go? I have stood at your side for centuries upon centuries. I stood by you when you defied Iovis after he ripped out the tongue of Laranda, that foolish and excessively loquacious river-nymph, daughter of the river-god Almo and told you to take her to the infernal marshes of Avernus, the gateway to the Underworld, the dismal realm of Ditis Patris."
She stepped forward, poking her finger at his chest as she hissed her terrible words.
He growled, Geōrgios and Mártha twirled around his kērū́keion, in their natural forms of Inland taipan snakes. Blood dripped from his arm so similar to when he beheaded Árgos all those years ago. Similar to when he struck Hippolytos down during the Gigantomachia alongside Allektos and Mimon and Aezeius who also fell to his might.
"I stood by when you took her forcibly despite her pleading glances. I stood by as she bore you two sons and yet, you still joined her bed every night, taking pleasure where she found pain! I stood by when you forced your way onto Aphrodítē! The way you were stirred by her beauty and fell for her charm, and when she rejected you, you went to Iovis for help! He snatched away her sandal and as she chased after it, she came upon you. The mortals call it seducing, but coercion into sex is not seduction! Tis rape!" She yelled, punching at his chest once more. "And I still stood by for your other lovers! Pollox to whom you gifted the Thessalian horse Dotor. Amphīōn who you taught him to play and gave him a golden lyre. Krókos who you killed and from his blood the saffron flower came to be. The first Perseús who you gifted divine items because of your love! At least you did not sire any children from them for me to raise!"
"You think that you are without faults?" he snapped and like a band snapping; the full might of his divinity explodes from him. His power coats the world; imbuing into his domains... mortals fall asleep and never wake again; lovers finding themselves parents of multiples in one pregnancy, the internet goes dark; messages lost to the void; postal workers cry in despair at the onslaught of work while others shout in joy when the day finds themselves finished early. Souls that have lingered within the graveyards for over thirty nights found themselves dragged mercilessly to the underworld. Birds of omen caw loudly; dive bombing the mortals. Minds fall one by one; more and more people finding themselves with early onset dementia or a glancing blow of amnesia with no hope of recovery. And then all at once, the world stopped. No messages or calls or emails could go through. The world communication system fails and slowly one by one, ten by ten, hundreds to thousands of people found themselves muted; unable to even speak.
He stood before her, not as radiant Hērmês, the son of Maia.
Όχι. Όχι.
He was Hērmês Pangkratís, Hermaas Areias, Mercurius Terminorum, Hērmês Klepsiphrôn.
"The only way mortals even know that you are my wife is because of a writer that wrote fan fiction about Diónysos! You think that I have not made amends? Aphrodítē made me work for her forgiveness and even now, I am inclined to do whatever she asks to make up for my shame! I have countlessly offered to free Laranda from our marriage, to never see her again if that is what she wished and she has refused! You do not get to throw my faults back at me when I know what you have done! To my children! To my nieces and nephews! To those that reside in the sea. You are no better than me, Peithō! You are worse than me! I can admit to my actions! To my shame! To my faults! But you cannot do so. Όχι, what you do is fake pregnancies and when that fails to capture my attention, you go out and actually get pregnant to spite me. I DO NOT CARE ANYMORE!"
She backed away from him, but he noticed not.
They could all only watch as gold, so similar to his grandfather and his favored brother, began to seep into his brilliant green eyes. It was a scene so similar to centuries past when in the place of Hērmês stood his elder brother and beloved friend, golden haired with eyes that matched arrived before the council... only one person had been able to calm him... calm them.
"All these years," he hissed so similar to the snakes around his herald wand. "You have screamed of how you wanted me to look at you as I did on our wedding day and yet when I had done so, you screamed of how much you no longer wanted me. Now that I have found my blessing, the missing piece to my rib. Love on a genome sequence level. She who looked at me as if I were a blank canvas and decided to paint me a new picture and I love every fucking color. She is mine and now, you cry victim." He pointed his kērū́keion at her, aiming directly for the seat of her power. Her face was pale in fear as she stumbled into that statue. "But I won't let you take her from me." Even if he had to carve his Leaneíras out of her corpse.
All but the husband and wife turned as a shy goddess, for she avoided the company of the blessed gods, and lived within a deep, shady cave approached; Μαῖα the rich-tressed Nymphe of the lively eyes, moved past them all. She who was outstanding in beauty, the violet-haired daughter of Átlas of the heavenly Pleiádes.
With a gentleness that belied familiarness, they watched she carted her fingers through his curls as she turned his body to face her own and lower his weapon from the air. She took her son's face into her neck as she held onto him tightly and he stood there stiff for only a moment before he sank into her embrace. She shushed him, humming a song of the wild before the world twisted around them and they disappeared from the Mountain.
When he found the strength to look around him, he noticed that they were not on Mount Kyllene like he had expected, but instead they were hidden in one of the rooms of May Castellan.
And despite the grief that the place invoked in him, he could do nothing but shrink into his Mother's arms as he cried for his lost love.
My Leaneíras, where are thy?
WORD COUNT: 3098
WORDS TO KNOW:
1) Ζεύς Panhellenios - "Ζεύς of All the Greeks
2) Hērmês Pangkratís - all-powerful Hērmês. (Orphic Hymn 28.2)
3) Hermaas Areias - warlike Hērmês
4) Mercurius Terminorum - Mercurius, god of boundaries (especially in the sense of violating boundaries)
5) Hērmês Klepsiphrôn - Hērmês, the Dissembler though it can also be translated to Hērmês, the Deceiver.
5A) Hērmês is such a nice god that his darkest epithet is about him killing Árgos. I was about to give up on that until I saw the orphic hymns and remembered that I could pull from there too.
5B) A crazy thing to say after this chapter, but its true.
TRANSLATIONS:
1) "Ai shiteru kara, tsuyoku nareru" – "Because I love you, I can become stronger."
2) ハニー、大好きだよ (Hanii, daisuki da yo): "Honey, I love you"
THINGS TO KNOW:
1) Kullḗnē - the Naiad or Oread nymph and the personification of Mount Kyllene in Arkadía, the region in Ellada/Greece where the god of travelers and shepherds Hērmês was born and brought up. Kullḗnē is said to have been Hērmês' nurse while he was growing up.
2) psychopompós - soul guides; In many cultures, the shaman also fulfils the role of the psychopomp. This may include not only accompanying the soul of the dead, but also to help at birth, to introduce the newborn child's soul to the world. This also accounts for the contemporary title of "midwife to the dying" or "End of Life Doula", which is another form of psychopomp work.
2A) And considering that I am making him the third to Nico and Will... I just felt like it was a good place ESPECIALLY when you realized that in greek mythology, Hērmês' favored brother is Apóllōn and considering that he would most likely see him more, then Háidēs would be his favorite uncle.
COMMENTS FROM THE AUTHOR:
1) Yall could have NEVER thought that I was going to write this and not get into how fucking terrifying that he could be. Not only is he one of the Major Olympians, not only is he Ζεύς' son, but he's the messenger of the gods. Iris is Hḗrē's personal messenger and like the second herald for when Hērmês is otherwise occupied. God of Memory, God of Communication, Guide of the Dead, I didn't even get into him being the Patron of Thieves; God of the Gymnasium, Being a Trickster. Like its so much more that I can add to it, but that seemed terrifying enough.
1A) Hērmês being reared by Hēmérā and Ouranós is a nod at Mercurius being called the son of Diēs and Caelus.
1B) I find it hilarious that Maia comes back during the winter solstice when her first "official" debut in the story was during ttc - the winter solstice. even though she had been mentioned before hand.
2) Anyway, TLH arc ended in 12 chapters tying with the SOM arc leaving BOTL as the arc with the longest chapters at 19.
3) I want to mention that Drew is worried about Lea, but she's also under the impression that she's with the gods considering that Hērmês was seen coming for her and then his brothers immediately took him back to Olympos. And when Hḗrē speaks with Jason, she just adds onto what Apóllōn said and when they get the time, someone will inform Medea and Magnus.
4) Please understand that I try to focus on all aspects of them even when I do favor their more positive aspects. They are deities and are inherently more complex than what we can understand. In Ancient Greece, a lot of them were just as beloved as Christian, Judaism, Catholic today. I will NEVER agree with a lot of their actions, but I also will never write them as just horrible people with no hope of redemption except in the case in which a mortal is telling them off about something or whatever that trope is.
4A) I'm going to try to write them as a bridge like old writers did. A way of understanding both the mortal and divine world.
4B) And also this is fiction so the gods probably don't even behave an ounce like I portray them.