Centaurian

[RHHorst]

Chapter 6d

“Oh, I see. So, you’re not really here to meet little ol’ me then. How disappointing.”

“We must discuss Kratos. He didn’t die, you destroyed him and denied me my due. Having done so, you are intruding upon my territory.”

“Elias destroyed Kakia, have you already given him this speech?”

“Kakia used the Chronosian blade in the senseless destruction of a mortal beloved by Eros, and in turn, Elias destroyed her for it. Eros has asked me to consider it justice served, and that I would do. Besides, he no longer has the blade, and despite his status, one day he could be mine. You can still destroy gods, and now—having stood in your presence—I sense you permanently beyond my reach; you are not really alive in the traditional sense and therefore incapable of dying.”

“That’s right. You can never have me, but I could destroy you, and do you know what? I really hate that it boils down to a question of a god getting their way—whether I like it or not—or me having to destroy them just so they would leave me alone. None of you can have me under your thumb; I won’t tolerate it.”

“If you should destroy me,” said Death, “no one would die ever again, and that would be dangerous.”

Ronan shook his head. “No, I’m not falling for it. Kratos was the divine personification of strength. He’s gone, and I can assure you that strength still exists. Your mother is Nyx, the personification of night. If she didn’t exist, would the sun suddenly begin shining on the entire planet simultaneously, or would half always remain in shadow? So, death exists independent of you. Do you know why humans stopped believing in the gods? Because they realized you weren’t necessary, and yet, here you are…superfluous…redundant…expendable even. No doubt, you have power, but you’re not invulnerable to me.”

“That remains to be seen,” said Death, “but you’re not completely invulnerable to me either, so I suggest we come to an arrangement.”

“What sort of arrangement?”

“I ask that you leave me to my job and refrain from destroying any more gods. In exchange for that, I will avoid anyone you designate off-limits.”

“I see three problems with that,” said Ronan. “One, it implies that I would destroy gods for no valid reason like I’m stalking them for sport or something. Two, if gods would leave me alone and not make threats on my friends and loved ones, they’ve nothing to fear from me, so let’s not pretend they have no choice. And three, my friends and loved ones are already off-limits, and I could view what you just said to me as a threat, so back off. I will destroy anyone who touches them, so no deal. If you feel the itch to tackle someone, come after me. You’ll find me a challenge. Have you ever seen what bad kids do to butterflies? You wouldn’t enjoy it. However, I will play just as fair with you as I had with Kratos. You are welcome to leave now in peace, but you will be responsible for what happens to you if you choose to stay. Give Zeus a message. I won’t put up with his shit. He can either leave me, my loved ones, and my friends alone, or he can lose his throne. The choice is his.” Death began to beat his wings and took to the air, but just before he left, Ronan yelled to him, “And one last thing, Death, you visit me again at your peril.”

In the sky, Death faced Ronan while he moved away, as if he feared turning his back on him. With Death in the distance, Ronan’s wings burned away as he picked up his shirt and returned to the superstructure.

-------

“I don’t get it,” he said. “If Zeus thinks that I will dethrone him, why does he keep poking me with a stick?”

He met his friends, including the captain and first mate on the bridge. The first mate called them there to watch as Ronan spoke to the winged man. Dolos—in the guise of Emma—immediately recognized his brother Thanatos and told the others who he was.

“All the other Stallions kept their head down,” said Emma, “and in doing so, they appeared non-threatening. You’ve drawn attention to yourself. And now, in believing you mean to dethrone him, you have challenged his authority, but worse still, you’ve told him what he must do. If he complies, then he’s not King of the Gods, you are.”

“Ugh…that’s absurd,” said Liam.

She shrugged a little. “He does what he wants, not what he’s told.”

“I’ve told him to leave me alone,” said Ronan. “He’s mistaken if he thinks he has the right to harass anyone he wants just because he’s Zeus.”

“Herr Stallion,” said Captain Stettler, and everyone turned, “I’ve heard the concerns of several crew members after last night. It seems that some of the crew believe you present a danger. I have had time to think on it, and it has occurred to me that if Zeus would try to sink the ship, it would have a greater likelihood if you were aboard. It was bad enough to have Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, and Kratos here, but now we have had a visit by Death. I have never believed in omens, but it doesn’t bode well. I think the time has come for you to leave the ship.”

“Captain…,” said William.

“No, William,” he said, “I think it’s best.”

“I’m truly sorry it has gone this far, captain,” said Ronan, “but I think your first instinct was the right one. I ask that you not allow our recent visitor to change your mind.”

“You said if Zeus tried to sink the ship you weren’t sure what you could do about it.”

“Yes, captain, but if I’m not here, I can do nothing.”

“That assumes he would bother in your absence,” said Captain Stettler. “Now that you have access to more abilities, I need you to find a way off the ship and go. This isn’t just about the ship, it’s about the crew’s livelihood. We need this vessel to complete its round. I will keep my word and donate to the children’s charity. I’m sorry it must be this way, but it’s settled. You should go as soon as you can accomplish it.”

“I understand, captain.” Ronan looked upon Liam, Emma, and William.

“Can you do that?” asked Liam.

“I better start learning how,” he said and made to leave the bridge.

“I’ll be there to help you as soon as I can,” said Emma as he left.

With brows drawn in a severe angle, William broke his usual reserve, “Captain, I believe you misunderstand the depth of the problem. They are gods, and Zeus sounds irrational to me. To hurt Ronan, he could use any or all of us at any time. The distance from him won’t make a difference.”

“If we take our chances either way, then as captain, I think we should take our chances alone.”

“This ship and its cargo can be replaced,” said William, “our lives cannot.”

“If Ronan can do it,” said Emma, “we will take anyone who wants to reach land for safety.”

“Encouraging people to abandon the ship in the middle of the voyage is tantamount to inciting mutiny,” said the captain.

“I couldn’t say that any of the crew is willing to go,” said William, “but if Ronan leaves, I am not staying.”

“You’re the purser,” said Paul, the first mate, “we need you.”

“I am unwilling to take chances with my life. The captain has the legal right to make decisions for this ship; he doesn’t have the legal right to make anyone stay. I have much respect for you, captain, but this isn’t the Deutsche Marine; it’s just a job. I was looking for a job when I found this one; I can find another.”

“What will we do without you?” asked the captain.

“That’s up to you, captain, but if Ronan must leave, consider me resigned as purser of this ship.”

“Do you think to give me an ultimatum?”

“No, I merely exercise my right to leave based on your decision.”

“I will refuse to let you back me into a corner. I will fire you.”

William shook his head. “You mistake me. I know that when you’ve made up your mind about something, you refuse to change it. Ronan was leaving no matter what, so you can’t fire me, I’ve already resigned.”

“You’re making a mistake,” said the captain to William.

He gave that a moment’s thought. “If I leave, and I’m wrong about the ship, good, I can live with being wrong, but I think your judgment in this matter is faulty.”

Emma left to help Ronan, and on return to Emma’s cabin, Liam and William met the attractive blond steward, Garit Bruckhauser, waiting outside the door wearing his white smock.

“Is something wrong?” asked Liam.

“I wanted to speak to William. I know that Otto and Kurt apologized to you this morning, and Frau Nordström returned them to normal. Gustav asked me to tell you that he intends to apologize, but his duties have kept him extremely busy this morning. I also wanted to tell her how much I appreciate her having cursed them.”

“Why is that?” Liam asked.

“I have worked aboard this ship for three years, and Gustav knows I’ve had a serious crush on him, but he thought I only wanted his big dick, and don’t get me wrong, I love it, but he now knows that isn’t the only reason. We had talked before, but we have had in-depth discussions over the last three days. Gustav said the words ‘I’m gay’ aloud last night for the first time, and he admitted that when we complete a circuit and return to Hamburg, he misses me when we don’t see one another on our off days. He also realizes what a jerk he has been.”

“That’s nice to hear,” said William who began to pack. “If he wants to apologize to me in front of Emma, he needs to do it before our passengers leave today. I have resigned as purser, so I’m going with them. I’m unsure when. It depends on how quickly Ronan can do it; it could take just a few hours.”

“Why have you quit?”

“Because when Thanatos showed up, the captain asked our friends to leave, and I think the ship could be in danger if Ronan isn’t here. I have no guarantees of that, and admittedly, I could be entirely wrong, but we have only this one life, so I’m taking no chances. I’m leaving.”

“Well, I’ve always had respect for your intelligence, if you think the chance of danger to the ship is enough to make you leave, then I’m not sure I want to stay.”

“Emma said anyone who wishes to leave with us may do so,” said Liam.

“Don’t leave without me,” he said, “I will talk to Gustav and pack a bag.”

-------

Emma found Ronan leaning against the railing overlooking the ocean on the main deck outside the port-side hatch. She joined him, and he hadn’t acknowledged her presence before he started talking.

“Are you at all upset that I destroyed your cousin Kratos?”

“It wasn’t personal,” she said. “You hadn’t destroyed him because he was my cousin, or because he was a god; although his being a god forced you to destroy him. He was a problem, and at the time, you hadn’t used your abilities, so you had limited means to deal with him. But that’s not why we’re just standing here, is it? You have a fear of your power.”

He turned to her. “How did you know?”

“The look on your face before you left the bridge. The captain is pushing you before you’re ready. And…because most anyone else would be so excited about it that they would explore it as soon and as quickly as possible. You’ve not even attempted to manifest anything external from yourself, have you?”

He glanced downward. “No,” he whispered, sounding ashamed. “Have I disappointed you?”

She gazed up at him and saw the evidence of his concern writ across his face. She laid her hand on his cheek and stared into him for a moment. “Here you are, probably the most powerful being in the universe, and you worry that you’ve disappointed me.” She started to laugh but the wetness of her eyes showed more than amusement, and she hugged him. “How wonderful you are.”

Suddenly, they heard a series of unknown, heavy metallic sounds at an extraordinary volume from the stern of the ship. TANK…TANK TANK…TANK…TANK, and a BOOM accompanied by a rapid, violent earthquake-like shaking of the ship as Ronan ran into the superstructure. The ship stopped, the general alarm sounded, smoke poured through the hatchway from the bowels of the ship, and people began to run out onto the deck. On his way to the bridge, he met the captain in the process of evacuating the structure.

“What’s happened?” Ronan asked in a hurry.

“We’ve been hit by a meteor shower; we watched them fall. The engine is out, we’re taking on water, and I don’t know whether to blame you or not.”

“There are men trapped in the engine room!” yelled a crewman from the floor below.

A message came from the radio on the captain’s shoulder. “Captain,” said the man, “the lifeboats are missing. I repeat; the lifeboats are missing.”

 

[RHHorst]

Chapter 7a

Among humans, the occasional dethroning of a monarch has happened repeatedly for as long as monarchs have existed, and whether they happen by murder, forced abdication, civil war, or military coup, the removal of a monarch is usually a messy business, depending on the strength of the opposition. In the case of divine royals, the Greek gods have had a line of rulers, but one might consider only three of them real kings, and the stories from ancient humans of how the first two lost their thrones are—to put it mildly—bizarre.

According to the stories, Uranus, the first king, despised his children and kept them inside their mother Gaia (Earth) and wouldn’t allow their birth. Gaia called upon her unborn—fully formed—children to seek vengeance on their father, so Cronus used the adamantine sickle given to him by his mother while still in the womb and castrated his father Uranus when he came to lie with Gaia and tossed his testicles into the ocean, which allowed the Titans to be born, and Cronus to assume the throne.

In retaliation, Uranus placed a curse upon his son Cronus so that one of his children would dethrone him. To prevent this, Cronus swallowed his children when they were born. Rhea, the mother of Cronus’s fully divine children, hid her youngest son Zeus at birth to prevent Cronus from swallowing him, giving him a swaddled stone in his place. The goddess Métis mixed wine and mustard for the adult Zeus to feed Cronus which caused him to vomit up his—now fully formed—children. Afterward, there came the rebellion and the war, resulting in the removal of Cronus from the throne in favor of Zeus, the god of the sky.

Zeus reigned as King of the Gods for many millennia. He withstood monsters, prophecies as well as rebellious children and siblings who attempted to overthrow him, so he had a proven mastery of his extensive powers, and he used them to intimidate until he had no opposition to his supremacy. For millennia, he had the luxury of considering his throne secure, but then came Ronan the Centaurian and Prometheus’s prescient vision.

Without witnessing it, he wouldn’t believe Ronan had as much or more power than himself. Apart from his capacity to vaporize a god and his immunity to Zeus’s attempt to remove his power, the Centaurian had demonstrated no ability he found noteworthy. Ronan’s claims of fearing these much talked about but unseen powers, might prove nothing more than an attempt to conceal a profound inadequacy, so Zeus wanted certainty over how much danger he presented.

He knew from lifelong experience that one should never reveal personal desires to an enemy. He found it better to simply take a thing—usually by force—to avoid anyone manipulating him over it. In Ronan telling Zeus what he wanted, it revealed his weaknesses. To Zeus’s mind, if Ronan wanted his peace, he should simply go after Zeus and destroy him, taking his peace by force with the strength of his power, just as Zeus tried to remove Ronan as a threat the moment he learned of his dethroning.

Figuring to test the Centaurian, he made a careful selection of asteroids. He hadn’t wanted to utterly devastate the ship by sending one too large. He sought a more tactical strike, so the Centaurian would either rise to the occasion or prove himself impotent.

The smaller meteors would burn down to a two-inch shard of metal and struck the superstructure from behind. The seismic-like event that had shaken the vessel down to its keel, however, came from above, a strategically aimed meteor the size of an anvil whose supersonic speed, odd shape, and composition allowed it to rip through the steel ship like a bullet through a tin can.

Ronan had raced up the staircase in search of Liam where he met the captain in the process of evacuation. The engine had stopped, the general alarm had sounded, and smoke began pouring through the hatchway from the bowels of the ship as men ran onto the deck in panic.

The moment the captain used the word meteor, Ronan knew Zeus had caused it, and if the meteors alone hadn’t proven his villainy, he also stripped them of their only means of escape by taking their lifeboats.

It came down to Ronan doing or men dying, and he would need the power he feared. He stood paralyzed for a moment upon the staircase, knowing that to act upon one need would delay acting upon others, perhaps with deadly consequences. The ship had just begun sinking beneath the water, the engine room had men trapped, he could hear calls for help from above and below him, crewmen raced past them on the staircase in urgency, and he still hadn’t seen Liam.

“Are you just going to stand there?” asked the captain. “You wanted to help people, so help them!”

The situation had Ronan pulled too many directions and pushed too far. His double and triple guessing himself caused a lapse in his ability to think or decide, and in an unreasonable fit of momentary madness, he squinted his eyes, clenched his fists, and with a voice erupting from deep inside him, he shook as he cried, “STOP!”

Faster than he could blink, Ronan thought he had gone completely blind, coupled to a silence so profound it would have driven most anyone insane. He felt no vibration, no sensation of temperature, or even direction. As though disconnected from his body, he felt nothing. He tried to touch whatever lay before him in the darkness, but he found himself trapped as though he had petrified in Medusa’s gaze and with a growing sense of terror, he thought, “What have I done?”

The answer came from someone else inside his head, a deep masculine voice that would have resonated in a man’s chest. “You’ve gotten yourself into a pickle. That’s what you’ve done.” The man chuckled to himself in amusement.

Ronan hadn’t recognized the voice. With Chiron and his former human self fully combined, it could be neither as individuals. It sounded like no one he knew.

“It’s true,” said the man in his measured, casual tone, “you and I have never met.”

“You can hear my thoughts?” asked Ronan in his mind.

“Yes, but only here,” he said. “This is my domain. Do you know where you are?”

“No, where?”

The man was enjoying this. “That’s right, you’re nowhere.”

“Nowhere? How can I be nowhere?”

“I suspect most people wonder how they came to be nowhere, especially when in the middle of it; with its popularity, one might think to find a tourist attraction. However, unlike other people’s experiences, you have willed yourself to the most nowhere of all nowheres. I come here when I need some time to myself—which sounds funny for me to say. I’ve never been here with anyone before, and I now realize that I know nothing of the future here. Having no knowledge of what you will say next is fascinating. So, welcome to my nowhere.”

“Who are you?”

“I am one of the two oldest beings in this universe and the only other person capable of coming here. Except, when I come here, I avoid the pickle you’re in.”

“And what precisely is this pickle?”

“You willed everything to stop, so it stopped…except your mind, probably as a defense mechanism…and me, of course, because I can live both in and outside of Time.”

“You’re Chronos, the god of Time.”

“Only to the gods who aren’t my close friends, my children, and my ex-wife Ananke (the goddess of necessity and inevitability. I’m proud to say that she and I fucked this universe into existence, and it came to be at the birth of our child Chaos. You may know that event as The Big Bang). For everyone else, what they call me depends on who they are. You know, humans too often confuse me with your Titan father Cronus. That’s why they mistakenly depict me as carrying a scythe—he was a god of the harvest—but I’ve no need for such an implement and talk about insulting… Cronus swallowed his own children! No one wants to get mistaken for that monster.”

“Hadn’t you created the Chronosian blade for Elias to kill me?”

“No, I created the blade because Zeus told me to. He never makes requests of anyone except his brothers and Athena, his favorite daughter. To everyone else, he makes demands, and we must comply. So, I apologize that I had to create it, but I already knew it would cause you no danger. It’s a shame about all the people in the hotel, especially Felix Raposo. He was a magnificent young man. I also mourn his loss. His destruction should never have happened, but I could not say the same of that garish and horrid Kakia. Good riddance.”

“Well, if Zeus ordered you to make the blade, I understand. So, why can’t I move?”

“All movement requires Time, so by stopping Time, you eliminated the possibility of space. Except for myself, apart from your mind, you have locked your physical self and the entire universe—to its farthest reaches and from the highest point on Olympus to the deepest pit of Tartarus, everything, down to the last quark—into a state not unlike a solid block of concrete.”

“I hadn’t meant to do that,” said Ronan.

“Well, you have.”

“I hope you’re not angry with me over it; it was an accident, and unfortunately, it has me stuck. Could you get me out of this?”

The man gave a deep chuckle. “Oh no…no, I couldn’t do that,” he said. “It would deprive you of the opportunity to learn to use your abilities. You do want to learn, right?”

“I do,” said Ronan in hesitation, “but…I have a fear of the power within me.”

“And just why is that?”

“Well—for one example—because getting stuck in Time is apparently a thing, but the power is too much. Everyone keeps telling me that I have more power than anyone else, and someone just today said that I could be virtually omnipotent. And I happen to know that virtual omnipotence is as close to true omnipotence that anyone can logically get. Why would anyone want that much power?”

“For you, that’s a sensible, if naïve question,” said Chronos, “and the answer is easy—they want control. Someone will always have more power than others but combine that with an overzealous willingness to wield it for their own benefit, and typically, they rule. Unfortunately, when someone threatens their reign, they make the most dangerous of enemies. They will do anything to maintain their control. I see both a lesson there and a warning, don’t you?”

“Message received,” said Ronan. “I had no idea about this power when I agreed to take Henri’s place, and I get why he couldn’t tell me about it, but it appears Prometheus intended that I should be the final Stallion, so I guess the question is, why me?”

“With that question, you’ve asked the right god. Prometheus has prescience and a knowingness of future events, but I am the god of Time. I have an intrinsic connection to the timeline with the knowledge of all events. So, let me ask you, just before Henri passed the eternal flame to you, what did he say?”

“Remember to keep the love in your heart and the image in your mind,” said Ronan.

“Well, surely you comprehend the importance of the image, it’s part of your appearance, but Henri hadn’t told you to hold the love in your heart just to express some flowery sentiment. Henri and Prometheus chose you, due to your loving nature because almost anyone can acquire knowledge and experience, but someone either has a loving nature or they haven’t. And the fact that you agreed to replace Henri demonstrated bravery and a willingness to commit. Holding the love in your heart—which you did—has kept you a fundamentally loving person during your transition. You couldn’t let that love go now even if you wanted to, and while people too often view love as a weak emotion, it has aspects that many people rarely consider.

“Kratos never made idle threats, and his threatening the people you care for and love made you understandably angry. He pushed you into a corner to force you to fight him—and make no mistake, he would have fought to the death; he intended to kill someone that night. But you had no obligation, so you simply destroyed him, and no one who knew Kratos could reasonably blame you. It seems to slip the mind of many people that Love isn’t always kind and gentle. Sometimes, it’s fiercely protective, but that’s okay, sometimes it needs to be. So, why you? Search inside yourself, Ronan, you know why they chose you, and you’ve known it all along, you just have difficulty believing it.”

“Sometimes it puzzles me why I care so much,” he said.

“It’s a result of your experiences as Chiron, and especially as a human, which you knew were best forgotten. I have nothing further to say on that topic.”

“I knew I would forget my human past, so I must agree with that.”

“It’s fortuitous that you should wind up here, you have the chance to learn to wield your power, and with that, I will help you. You need it to dethrone Zeus. Besides, if you will muck about in my domain, I insist that you know what you’re doing. But don’t worry, now that you’ve stopped Time, you have an eternity to learn this, but I suspect it won’t take that long. The movement of matter and energy requires Time, so if you want to move, you must separate your material self from it with a time-field. Your mind is still functioning, so already, you create a field there as a means of self-preservation, just expand it.”

“What does a time-field look like?”

“Your body should fill with a white light and in its glow, you expose everything your light touches—or you touch physically—to the time-field. It unlocks the matter around you, so you can move.”

Ronan concentrated, but nothing happened. “I’m using my imagination, but it’s not working.”

“If imagination alone made things manifest, your every thought would require extreme caution. Manifesting requires intentionality, and this is no different than manifesting your wings. But whether you manifest internally or externally, you create, and to create is to act with intention.”

“Why does external manifesting seem harder? What’s the trick?”

“The trick is deciding it isn’t harder,” he said. “If you have trouble with that, we will be here a while. Some people might call this a watershed moment for you and this nowhere, the perfect proving ground. I will help you as best I can, and together, we will fix this. Zeus deserves no satisfaction from his actions here, and you will discover that he has caused more damage than you realize.”

“Is Liam okay?”

“Blood has splattered the wall of the room in which you will find him.”

“No!” In Ronan’s need to reach Liam, he focused, and from his body emerged a light, and it grew brighter as it expanded. He began to feel his limbs again, and his eyes could see the wall of the staircase and the captain who remained temporally locked beside him.

 

[RHHorst]

Chapter 7b

At the top of the stairs, on the floor that held the room he shared with Liam, he could see a figure that glowed with an eerie light like his own, that together, illuminated the staircase. The shirtless, ruggedly handsome Chronos had the size of an enormous bear with huge, rounded muscles, and enormous pecs like his own, but while his abdominals remained visible, they hadn’t appeared deeply chiseled. The dark thatch on his head had some slight graying, as did his beard and profuse body hair. He wore black-leather boots and a wide belt of the same material. His beefy thighs packed a pair of faded blue jeans, and Ronan noted the thick horizontal bulge in his pants that lay far across his hip.

Chronos spoke with his lips, warning Ronan in a deep rumble, “Don’t touch the captain! I must caution you against touching anyone accidentally. The light of your time-field affects them superficially, but to touch them for only a moment would cause them an unpleasant, rapid temporal disruption.”

“We can talk to one another?”

“The light of our time-field unlocks the air around us. As the light dims farther away from us, the speed of time slows to a gradual stop, but while our lights mingle, it creates a shared pocket of Time that will carry sound.” He waved Ronan up the staircase.

Due to his sizable body, Ronan had difficulty skirting around the captain on the staircase without touching him.

Once he reached the top of the stairs, Ronan said to him, “Am I reading into it, or do you and I have things in common?”

Chronos smiled. “I haven’t always had this appearance, just the last thirty years, and I intend to keep it, but we have much in common. You, Liam, and I should talk one day,”— he raked his eyes over Ronan’s body—“and you are one fine-looking Stallion.” He jerked his head toward the hallway. “Liam’s this way.”

Ronan hurried down the hall and grasped the door handle to his cabin.

“Not there, he’s in this one.” Chronos opened the door to Emma’s cabin, and Ronan hadn’t expected what he found.

The room held four people, and Ronan discovered someone hurt but not Liam. The blood splatter on the wall came from William. As he stood packing a bag, a small shard-like metallic meteor pierced the outer wall. It left a ragged and oddly shaped, golf-ball-sized hole. It matched the one through William’s belly and the hole through the interior wall to the corridor where the meteorite lay embedded in a metal stud on the opposite side.

William lay on the floor between Liam and Emma, who apparently had teleported herself there before Ronan had stopped Time. Their features had frozen in a look of horror and concern, but from the angle of Emma’s head and the position of her mouth, she was—most likely—calling for Ronan’s help. The other person in the room, whom Ronan never wanted to see again, the winged figure of Thanatos.

“I told him not to mess with my friends and loved ones,” said Ronan.

“I will ask you to temper your anger at Death,” said Chronos, “no one likes to see him due to what his presence could mean, but he has not caused this. He came to fulfill his purpose. It’s not personal.”

Ronan thought about it for a moment and nodded. “You’re right. I will keep that in mind.”

“I would like you to look at this scene. What do you see?”

Ronan looked around and at the people. “William isn’t dead. His eyes are open, his face shows he’s in pain, and Emma is still calling for help.”

“Good. Also, Death moves toward William, not away, so this is great timing. Once Death has someone, we would have difficulty bringing them back, and if they were in the underworld, it would be impossible to bring them back without Hades agreeing to it, and he would insist that we pay a heavy price.”

“Could Emma not heal him?”

“Emma is Dolos, and his powers are bound to his nature of deception, lies, and trickery. He has made an amazing evolution over the millennia and found a means to help others by getting around his limitations through plotting, but he isn’t a powerful god, and he hasn’t the time to circumvent his nature. For now, he can barely think. He just knows he loves William and cannot bear the thought of losing him.”

“What does William want?”

“Not to die, obviously. He is a good man who admires you and trusts that you will save him. When the captain asked you to leave the ship, he stood up for you. He wishes he could remain with the three of you when you leave, and Emma wants him to. He loves Emma, but that’s a problem because he thinks she is the goddess Erastís, the lover. He would dearly love to be with her forever, but he knows that cannot happen because he’s just a mortal, and helping people like him is what she does. He thinks she will move on to someone else, leaving him just another man in her past.”

“I see,” said Ronan. “Can I just heal William, or should I just rewind Time and undo everything Zeus has done here in one go?”

“You could do either,” said Chronos, “but this event is part of the timeline, and changing Time comes with consequences. Every event has ripple effects, some might perceive them as positive or negative, depending. As things stand, the gods will know this event has happened, and they would expect you to save everyone, so no one needs to die. Fortunately, while Zeus sent four other meteors this size, the others had near misses. If you change Time, Zeus will not get the level of negative attention his actions deserve than if you let it happen and save everyone, along with the ship.”

“Why is that necessary?”

“Because Olympus has gods not so sure about you and your abilities, and some that, surprisingly, have yet to see Zeus for what he is. He has acted without provocation which gives you support and not enemies willing to stand up to some interloper dethroning their king.”

“That’s rather political. I had no idea the gods had any interest in such things.”

“Only when it suits our purpose, and in this instance, it suits yours.”

“Wouldn’t that allow people to suffer, even just for a short while, for the sake of expediency? I would prefer to eliminate all suffering.”

“The desire to eliminate all suffering appeals to you,” said Chronos, “and that you want to end it says wonderful things about your character, but not all suffering is bad. Often, it causes growth and change. The problem is chronic suffering for the sake of suffering. You are welcome to end that; it serves no good purpose. But to take away all suffering would be extremely bad for everyone.”

“Why?”

“Because the tapestry of the world is woven with many threads. You would find three of extreme importance—consequences, compassion, and empathy. Without suffering, consequences have no teeth, but compassion and empathy help to draw people together. They only exist because of various degrees of suffering. So, while you could reduce suffering without an issue, to eliminate it entirely would pick apart the threads that hold the world together, and it weakens the cloth.”

“Okay. I get it.” Ronan thought for a few minutes and an idea occurred to him. “I like William, and if he wants to join us, he’s welcome, but this incident has demonstrated to me that if he remains with us, he can’t stay mortal. If he changes his mind later, I can undo it, but for now, he will need this.

“In being partly my son, Elias has a spark from my eternal flame that has not only made him immortal, but he’s also impervious to injury, otherwise he would never have survived the hotel’s destruction. I will give William more than just a spark, with a strength of body and even greater strength of character.”

Ronan removed his shirt, placed his open palm onto his chest, and concentrated on precisely what he wanted as an intensely bright fire leaked from beneath it. Ronan pulled his hand up and drew his thumb and forefinger together pulling a delicate web of fiery embering from his skin, and from within him, he drew a tiny sphere of golden light the size of a pea.

Ronan turned to Chronos. “I think I’m getting the hang of this.”

“Well done. Do you know how to administer it?”

“I imagine that I would place it into the wound. Is there anything you would recommend?”

Chronos smiled a little and looked kindly upon Ronan. “You are so different from Zeus. You hadn’t taken it personally when I said to you what I had about Thanatos, you listened, and now you seek advice. It’s refreshing to see someone with your power not have violent outbursts, pretend to know everything, or seek to control others through fear.”

“That’s because I’m an adult. I hear Zeus likes torturing people, has he ever tortured you?”

“Indirectly,” he said. “You have no idea what living under Zeus is like, especially for me. Many of the others have experienced Zeus’s torture at one time or another—which is terrible—and they know a lot he has done, but they couldn’t stop him and must accept that. As the god of Time, I know everything he has done and all he would do…all of it. And knowing is a burden because—unlike everyone else—I could stop him. So often, I have contemplated giving in to the temptation of going back in time to undo Zeus. I’ve wanted to on many occasions; he has harmed so many people.”

“What stopped you?”

“If I did that, you wouldn’t exist. I had to remind myself repeatedly that we had to endure Zeus, so everyone would have the benefit of your presence.”

They stood staring at one another for a moment. Ronan had no idea what to say to him, and Chronos hadn’t expected him to.

“William is in the last few seconds of life,” Chronos told him, “so when you place it into his wound, be cautious not to touch him. Afterward, hover over the wound with your hands and focus your time-field there to get the healing process started by illuminating it like sunshine. It will only heal so far for now, but it will be enough to stabilize him and keep him alive to allow it to complete its work when you restart Time.”

Ronan did so, and William’s tissues knitted back together in a glow of embering that began to spread throughout his body but stopped when the light could no longer penetrate his skin.

The four other small meteorites had only left holes in the superstructure. The larger metallic meteorite, reminiscent of an anvil, had pierced the base of the superstructure and passed through several floors of the substructure. It shot through the engine room, through the double-walled hull, and then began its long drop to the ocean floor.

The door to the engine room had sealed itself as a safety measure, but the meteor’s entry point in the ceiling would allow the room’s air and smoke from the engine to rush out as the room rapidly filled with seawater. As the hole had compromised the other floors, they would also fill with water, and within a couple of hours, it would send the ship plummeting to the bottom.

“If we open the door,” said Chronos. “Our time-fields would cause the water inside the field to unlock and run out.”

“Are the men inside still alive, and if so, are they injured?”

“It’s two men you know, Gustav Lauterborn and Garit Bruckhauser. Fortunately, they have just minor injuries.”

“Good,” said Ronan. “I want to temporally undo this to a point before the meteor strikes the ship.”

“We have made changes elsewhere, so you must isolate this from it, but you lack the expertise.”

“You and I move about in a pocket of time, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, if we can do that, why don’t I manifest a bubble of Time that encompasses the trajectory of the meteor and reverse it? I could include the engine room and the damage that it made as it tore through the ship.”

“That sounds workable, but it’s not that simple. Currently, the ship has sunk to the same degree that the water has entered the engine room, so a bit of the ship has filled the void. There is no pocket of empty space in the ocean for the water to flow to. Without Time there, the water outside the ship is like concrete. It’s a matter of hydraulic pressure, the water wouldn’t evacuate the room.”

“So, I would…”

“You would have to lift the entire ship, along with several other simultaneous actions, and I can think of simpler alternatives.”

Ronan began inspecting the door to discover how the locking mechanism functioned. “How deep is the water in the room?”

“It’s a fairly sizable room, but it flooded quickly, so when Time stopped it had reached their knees.”

He turned to Chronos. “Okay, I probably should just restart Time and lift the ship, have we anything else I should accomplish first?”

“Before you continue this train of thought, there’s something I should tell you. I hadn’t wanted to distract you from learning here; for the moment, there is no rush.”

“What’s wrong?”

“This morning, you spoke to Poseidon on the bow of the ship, and he had to flee when Death arrived. Death suspected you had spoken to someone in secret. He has keen eyesight and saw you emerge from a cloaking field, and he noted the discoloration on the deck from a puddle of seawater, and the vanishing trail of footprints from someone’s bare feet leaving the scene, so he had no difficulty guessing to whom they belonged.”

“And he told Zeus.”

“He told him he would do what he could. Remember?”

Ronan closed his eyes in silent frustration. “Shit. Is he…?”

Chronos nodded a little. “Zeus has prepared to torture him for information.”

“Where can I find him?”

“Olympus has a temple to Zeus, and out front, he has placed a duplicate of the Brazen Bull of Phalaris with Poseidon inside it. He had yet to light a fire beneath it, but he says he will if Poseidon refuses to tell him what he wants to know.”

“Poseidon should just tell him then.”

“Based on what he would say, if he told the truth, he would light the fire beneath it anyway for betraying him.”

“Can I go there with Time stopped?”

“No. Teleportation requires Time, and one can reach Olympus no other way.”

“Then I should take care of everything aboard ship now.” He considered it for a moment. “I think I have an idea, but I must go to the bridge.” He mounted the stairs at a trot to reach the top floor with Chronos close behind.

“What will you do?” asked Chronos.

“Well, if I have as much power as people have insisted, then let me put that to the test. Our presence aboard this ship has caused trouble for the captain and crew, making them behind schedule with a damaged ship. And although the captain has asked us to leave, I refuse to abandon them near the middle of the Atlantic in this condition.” They came to the flight of stairs where the captain stood locked in Time, and they used caution to pass him without making contact. As they continued upward Ronan asked, “Have you any action that you would forbid me?”

 

[RHHorst]

Chapter 7c

Chronos smiled a little. “I appreciate your desire to respect me and my domain. I know you would only do what you must, so I would forbid nothing. However, if you intend major alterations to the timeline, they can have drastic consequences, and I can give you a picture of those beforehand, so I ask that you consult me.”

“I agree to that. My plan requires unlocking the entire ship but not the people. Do you know who Robert Baden-Powell is?”

“Founder of the Boy Scouts, I believe,” said Chronos.

“Exactly. One thing he said was, ‘Try and leave this world a little better than you found it,’ which easily translates into leaving the places you visit in better condition than when you arrived. If this works, I have decided to take that on as a philosophy. Which reminds me, I made a mess in the ocean when I chucked things off the ship, I need to clean that up when I have spare time.”

“Commendable,” said Chronos, “but you also injected extra heat into the ocean when you boiled it, and into the atmosphere when you destroyed Kratos. That’s not good.”

“Thank you for pointing that out, I will take care of that when I clean up my mess.”

“And you killed several fish,” he added.

“Okay! I get the picture.”

“Just trying to help,” he said as they entered the bridge.

Ronan’s light began to intensify as he moved to the instrument panel and laid his palms onto the console before him. While intending to leave the people time-locked, he sent out a wave that began an illumination on, in, and throughout every part of the ship, creating a pocket of Time that encompassed the entire vessel, including all that its light could touch, namely the air and water around it.

“Poseidon told me I would find using my power deceptively simple, and he was right.”

“Do you still fear it?” Chronos asked.

“Yes, and I think I now know the reason.”

“Why?”

They gazed out the windows to watch the ship emerging in a bright glow that, in the distance, faded to the vast, black, timeless nowhere beyond.

“I fear that I will grow to like it too much,” said Ronan.

“Why is that a problem?”

“Because power corrupts.”

“Oh, I see, so if power corrupts then anyone on the verge of omnipotence should turn into the most corrupt being in the universe, is that it?”

“Something like that, yeah. Take Zeus for example, he’s powerful—and not nearly omnipotent—but look at him.”

Chronos rolled his eyes a bit and shook his head. “You are not Zeus. Beneath the power itself, you are entirely two different beings, not remotely similar.”

“Poseidon said Zeus’s evil had grown over time,” said Ronan. “Wouldn’t that mean it could happen to me too?”

“Zeus has always lacked what you have. He hasn’t a clue how to love anyone, and he has never had the benefit of a protector.”

At the mention, Ronan’s brows drew together. “You mean Liam?”

“Did you think perhaps your need of his protection extended little beyond him picking you up and carrying you into his home?”

Ronan turned toward the window his mind trying to work it out.

“Kratos’s jibes at Liam protecting you stemmed from his ignorance. The god of brute strength could not comprehend the more subtle aspects of what it means to protect someone. Liam is—forever and always—essential to you, not in defending you from anything external but protecting you from yourself. Liam is your policeman; he is your compass; he is your someone to answer to. And you will because you love one another, and you would never want to disappoint him. So, do you want to ensure that you never become evil?” Ronan turned his head, and Chronos held his complete attention. “With every decision, always keep in mind his love for you and his favorable opinion because losing him can happen.”

Ronan leaned forward with his hands on the glowing console before him, his head hanging, and from his lips came that not quite laugh, not quite cry of a relief that allowed his body to relax which melted into amusement and gratitude. “Prometheus really is a genius, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but he can’t take all the credit for this,” said Chronos. “Most of the other Stallions successfully avoided being found by anyone during their initial dormancy period, and typically, they remained alone throughout their lives not fully connecting with anyone, but Zeus ensured that Rosine ran across Henri in Toulouse. She took him in, and something odd happened. He became emotionally attached to her upon awakening, as if by compulsion. Prometheus hadn’t wanted you to spend eternity alone, so he searched the entire world and found Liam on the little island of Key Biscayne. He wouldn’t want you to think he had manipulated you both into a relationship. He simply anticipated several of your needs and fulfilled them as best he could by playing matchmaker.”

“But Henri left Rosine after he got her pregnant,” said Ronan.

“Henri was afraid. He had believed that having children could not happen and should not have happened. He felt he had betrayed his duty to carry the eternal flame, and that his remaining would expose his agelessness. He had not left her with ease. But also, you must remember the dangerous and superstitious era in which it happened.”

“Someone would likely have tried to burn him at the stake or something, I suppose.”

“His never aging would have caught up with him,” said Chronos, “and it would have been bad.”

“Was Elias’s birth supposed to happen?”

“In temporal logic, every event automatically falls under the umbrella of supposed to happen, including changes to the timeline which are not really changes at all.”

“But how can-”

“Don’t ask me to explain that because I couldn’t. Language is an inadequate means of communicating the complexities of Time. We should get on with your plan.”

“Very well, if you say so,” said Ronan. “I have a question. Would moving the ship harm the others here?

“Although they remain internally time-locked,” said Chronos, “they are—essentially—little islands of stopped Time cut off from the rest while surrounded by the ship’s time-field, and you can safely move them.”

Ronan held out his upward-facing palms at waist height. “In that case, I will lift the ship, make all the repairs, give them some new lifeboats, and while I can’t teleport the entire ship, I can still move it to an empty patch of the Mediterranean just off the coast of Genoa. That would more than make up for lost time and save them a significant amount of fuel.”

“Have you thought of using your imagination and doing a little more than just repairing the ship?”

“Like what?”

“Ooh,”—Chronos shrugged a little and his eyes skimmed the ship for a moment—“like giving it an upgrade, perhaps…”

Ronan’s brows rose as he glanced around. “Hmm…I could use the practice.”

With Time stopped, Ronan took the opportunity to hone his abilities to the point he could manifest his will with relative ease. His most significant challenge came from broadening his imagination far enough to effectively utilize his power.

He renewed the entire ship as though it were brand new, and during that, he found many items the crew had attempted to seal out the corrosive effects of the sea with multiple layers of paint, giving them an unsightly appearance, so he took it upon himself to change its metals to a titanium alloy that wouldn’t corrode. He had wanted to change the entire ship’s metals to titanium, but the designers had built the ship with the weight of steel in mind and changing it to a lighter metal would require altering the ballast. That would mean restructuring the ship. Not having the necessary expertise in such matters, he felt it best not to tamper with that.

Moving the ship took little effort, and he made a gentle landing with it in an arm of the Mediterranean called the Ligurian Sea, a third of a mile off the coast of Genoa, ensuring the ship hadn’t lain in the pathway of any oncoming vessels.

With all that accomplished, he had just a few things left before he restarted Time.

“I want to thank you for your assistance,” Ronan said to Chronos. “Without you, I might have been stuck for an eternity.”

Chronos smiled. “I doubt it,” he said. “Eternity is a long time. Eventually, you would have thought of something, but you’re welcome. This has been my privilege. So, what’s next on your agenda?”

“Before I restart Time,” said Ronan, “I need to speak with Liam.”

“Right. I will meet Liam on the timeline, so I cannot meet him now.”

“I was about to ask you for some privacy.”

“Ahh! So, that’s how it happened. Not a problem.” He held out his hand, and Ronan took it. “I want us to be great friends, and please, know that you can count on me.”

“I appreciate that Chronos, I can never thank you enough for what you’ve done here.”

“Well, perhaps you can help me. And why don’t you and the others call me Angus.”

“Angus?” Ronan asked in disbelief.

He nodded. “I own and live in the Barlow Building in Los Angeles. It holds three successful gay clubs—two public, and one private. I have a dance club called Beef, a strip club called Beef Strips, and in my home there, I have a members and invited-guests-only sex club and bar called Beef & Chill. So far, the club has fourteen permanent members. I have a blast at my clubs, and I have even been known to strip at Beef Strips for special gatherings and charity events, so nearly everyone has seen me naked, and unlike during my marriage, my bed is never lonely. The humans know me by the legal name, Angus Barlow, but the guys at the clubs like to call me Steakhouse.”

“Why steakhouse?”

Angus unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned, and unzipped his pants. Reaching inside he pulled out the cause of his bulge. Even soft, it hung heavily off him like a hairless forearm atop a sack filled with two unenhanced goose eggs, and each one could fill a man’s palm.

“I get it now,” said Ronan. “What an appetizing hunk of meat and potatoes you have there.”

“Why, thank you. You, Liam, and the others may drop by as my special guests anytime.”

“I appreciate the invitation. The place sounds amazing, and I would love to see it. So, you suggested that I might help you. In what way do you need help?”

You and I never have this initial discussion on the timeline, so it must happen here. I would normally have a reticence to reveal the future to anyone, but I will on this matter since it’s already evident. You need to know what’s coming on this topic. Your cum is Ambrosia, but that’s not the only way you can make it. Unlike anyone else, the source of your power is so strong, stable, and pure that you can create Ambrosia at will, and that will be important to the gods in the future.”

“Why is that?”

“Our supply of Ambrosia has dwindled, but the usual flow of it to Olympus will soon cease. It would arrive there every day, and today, we received about one-tenth less than before. Our having it every day has never been more than a decadence, but we have received it daily, so we must drink it, or it goes to waste. We couldn’t store it like wine; old Ambrosia isn’t good.”

“If you’re connected to the timeline and know all events,” said Ronan, “then you know where Ambrosia comes from.”

“That’s right, I do. I refuse to say from where, except that no other planet has Ambrosia. It’s a substance that accumulates over a twenty-four-hour period, and it has a short lifespan of only twenty-four hours after we receive it, and the following day more arrives.”

“And you’re saying that, over time, it has begun accumulating less and less.”

“Yes. So, you see, our need for you is twofold.”

“Who else has noticed it dwindles?”

“I don’t know what everyone thinks—or suspects and keeps to themselves. For that, I can only surmise based on the evidence from the timeline. I only know those things said and done. That it dwindles would create a stir, and no one has spoken of it, so, for the moment, I think it’s just me, and now you.”

“Okay, then I have two questions. How long before the supply to Olympus stops? And how much do the gods actually need?”

“According to the timeline, the source will dwindle until it stops by the end of next year, but our access to it ceases well before then for reasons I cannot say. As for how much we truly need, Ambrosia is powerful. If we had three or four feast days a year, and everyone had some, we would be fine.”

“Would they eat nothing in between?” asked Ronan.

“Oh no, we manifest food when we get hungry, and we eat all sorts of things, but we cannot manifest Ambrosia.”

“Okay, I’m glad you’ve told me. So, how does this apply to my helping you?”

Angus smiled. “Long ago, Zeus had made an edict against giving mortals Ambrosia. Not all mortals are worthy of immortality. I hope that you will be more trusting. I have an inner circle of friends that are very much like Liam and William. I would like for them to have it, and if you could send me a wooden firkin cask of Ambrosia on a prearranged date every year, I would be most appreciative.”

“Would you agree to let me meet them first?”

“Yes, please do,” said Angus. “They work during the week, so any Saturday night you like would be perfect.”

“Let me meet them, and I will decide then.”

“That’s most fair and gracious of you. While you’re with Liam, I will transport myself to Genoa to look around, but call me if you need me. And by the way, just so we’re clear, I am here for you even if you must say no when you meet my friends. Okay?”

“Okay.”

As Angus left the CS Fritz Himmel for the continent, Ronan returned to Emma’s cabin, and the four people in the room hadn’t moved but the space around them reflected the pristine condition of the ship that the captain and crew would soon discover.

He squatted to look carefully at Liam. Fortunately, when Time stopped, he had lifted his hand from William, so Ronan could unlock him without unlocking them both, but how to go about that without causing him a fright seemed important, but maybe unavoidable.

From Liam’s perspective, he had knelt beside William before Emma arrived, and from his training, he thought to apply pressure to the wound, but as the odd-shaped projectile had tumbled and tore into his body, it left a golf ball-sized hole, and Liam could see through it to the rapidly pooling blood on the floor and pushing on the wound would likely have done nothing more than cause William more pain. They both called for help, but mid-blink everything had altered. Liam saw that the lighting of the room had changed with everything around him glowing except Emma and William who had frozen in place.

 

[RHHorst]

Chapter 7d

“Liam,” said Ronan who stood just behind him to the left.

He turned his head, smiled to see him, and stood. “Hey! Why does everything look strange? What’s happening?”

“I have stopped Time, but everything that you see glowing is generating a time-field.”

“Holy shit… You can stop Time?” Liam spied a figure with folded black wings at the side of his vision that startled him. “Death.”

“He had come for William, but he will walk away empty-handed.”

“So, the gods stop when Time stops?”

“Apparently so, but only Chronos and I can do it, and I’m uncertain that the others know it happens. I doubt they even notice it. I stopped Time many hours ago, and a lot has happened since then. We have much to talk about, but first…” Ronan guided Liam into their cabin across the hall, took him into his arms, and kissed him for several minutes.

Liam pulled back. “I need you.”

“Right now?”

“Absolutely.” He began to undress.

With raised brows, Ronan made a momentary tip of his head. “Why not?” He removed his shirt. “We have time.”

Liam began kissing him again.

Ronan pulled back. “There’s something I should tell you about the Ambrosia.”

He shook his head and got onto his knees before him. “Later.” When he pulled down Ronan’s shorts, he shoved his rapidly hardening cock into his mouth and began sucking him.

“Ooh…I love you,” said Ronan.

As Liam’s lips caressed the head, he ran his tongue along the foreskin and frenulum before taking more into his mouth. It reached the entrance to his throat but having so often practiced on his ex-boyfriend’s ten inches caused him to lose his reflex, and even with the thickness, he slid several more inches into his face. He wished he could disengage from the practical necessity of breathing, a wish that most anyone who found comfort in accommodating an appendage as magnificent as Ronan’s would make at every opportunity. Just slide it in, and leave it there, like the perfect garage for a vehicle as fast and sexy as a Lamborghini, as classy as a Rolls, and long like a super stretched limousine. Ronan reoriented his cock with a downward curve to make an easier slide into Liam’s throat as he fucked his face. Retreating to his mouth with every other stroke had allowed Liam to breathe as he raced to his orgasm. Just before it started, Ronan pulled back until Liam held his Centaurian cock like he was jacking a fire hose into his mouth with the flared tip of a smooth bore nozzle trapped between his lips. With a determined, machine-like efficiency, Liam gulped and guzzled the massive gouts of Ronan’s delicious Ambrosia. It pumped out the end for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, the twenty-minute mark had come and gone, but still, Ronan stood there with his eyes closed enjoying the sensations, his feet planted on the floor, his legs locked into position as his upper body swayed with Liam jacking his giant meat into his mouth and chugging his liquid gift.

As they hit their new record of thirty minutes, Liam tapped Ronan’s leg, his eyes flew open, and he immediately stopped the flow. With concern, he helped Liam lay upon the bed with his head and shoulders elevated by pillows, and his belly stood out like he had swallowed a watermelon.

“Are you okay?” Ronan asked.

“I’m feeling strange.”

“I’m not surprised, but I probably should tell you what Poseidon told me. He said all this Ambrosia is likely to cause you to achieve godhood. I suspect he means that you’ll become a demigod, and I think that’s what you feel about to happen.”

“What will that do?”

“I’ve watched you grow taller, stronger, and more handsome, so I suspect this will complete that transformation, but in my opinion, it’s not enough. Chiron was a demigod, and he could still sustain an injury. You are my partner, my protector, and the one whom I love above all others. I want to give you the same invulnerability that I gave William when I healed him, but also more. For now, you need time to absorb this, and as we wait, let me tell you all that’s happened the last few hours.”

As the Ambrosia absorbed into Liam’s body, Ronan conveyed all he had done with Time stopped and all the information he had acquired. He told him about Chronos (Angus), the dwindling Ambrosia, Zeus readying to torture Poseidon, all the practice he had renewing the ship, saving William, and how the time-fields worked, but he also informed him fully of what it meant to be his protector, and for Liam, it lifted an enormous weight.

Liam needed Ronan to need him. Ronan’s love meant more to him than he could say, but he needed more than to live as the object of Ronan’s affection or as an ornament for him or as Kratos might have put it—useless for anything more than an ass for Ronan to mount. Kratos’s words had made a deep cut into Liam’s confidence, making him question whether anyone as powerful as Ronan really needed a protector. He never wanted to struggle with finding some use or relevancy to Ronan’s existence, but in the light of the current information, he had a vital function and a responsibility greater than he could have imagined, one that made him irreplaceable. He had never been irreplaceable for anything, and it gave him a feeling inside that his career as a police officer couldn’t touch in a billion years.

When Ronan began to tell him his thoughts about Elias, the power in Liam’s body had reached critical mass and the light emanating from him began to brighten causing him to strain to hold back the pain he felt all over his body.

“Are you okay?”

Unable to get comfortable, Liam squirmed as the light intensified. “I hurt.” He began to moan, and his breathing became irregular. “I’m a little scared.”

“I’m right here,” said Ronan who held his hand.

His moaning turned into a long continuous wail as his light grew so bright it made Ronan squint. He partially lifted Liam from the bed and hugged him. “Hold onto me,” he said to him, “you’re going to be okay.”

Liam tried for a minute but fell limp, having fainted from the pain, and although Ronan couldn’t see inside the brilliance of the light, he could feel Liam continuing to breathe as his body grew bigger. The growth continued for several minutes as Ronan held him, and when the light faded, he smiled when Liam wrapped his arms around him again.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel glad it’s over,” Liam whispered, his forehead on Ronan’s shoulder, he took a couple of deep breaths. “The pain is nearly gone.” He pulled back to look Ronan in the face.

“Your eyes!”

“What? Are they blue again?”

Ronan shook his head. “They’re like mine, the color of cognac…which, now that I think about it, is the color of concentrated Ambrosia.”

“That makes sense, actually.” He kissed Ronan. “Let’s check the damage.”

Standing from the bed, Liam felt heavier and bigger, but he had also gained more height. Originally, he stood six feet tall and had grown nearly an inch the previous few doses of Ambrosia, but he stood six feet four, and his musculature had increased to demigod proportions, but he couldn’t match Ronan who had far surpassed anything remotely human. But for as much as his height and muscles had a drastic change, his greatest change had more subtlety. He had a godlike handsomeness on par with Poseidon. Except, unlike Poseidon, Liam still carried the extra eleven inches of cock gifted to him by Emma which, when added to what he already had, dangled well below his knees before, but with the added height, came to just below his knees.

“A slight improvement,” said Liam gazing down at it.

“Is it too much, really?” asked Ronan.

“If it would make you happy, I would have a cock that hung to my feet, but I couldn’t walk about with that much. This gets in the way as it is.”

Ronan placed his hand on Liam’s chest. “I think I have the solution. There’s something I need to give you. I wouldn’t want anyone injuring you, especially just to get to me, so I will give you some protection, and with that, a few other things.”

“Will this hurt me?”

“Not this time.”

Ronan released a burst of energy into Liam that spread throughout his body. It happened with such intensity his eyes widened as his mouth dropped open from taking in a rapid breath with several orgasmic spasms as his dick hosed a stream of ejaculate that coated his feet.

“There…” Ronan smiled, glancing at the string of cum hanging from the head of Liam’s cock. “That’s better than pain, isn’t it?”

“I loved it! Do it again!”

Ronan laughed as he bent down to catch the string of cum on his finger. Tipping his head back he dropped it into his mouth. He then kissed Liam. “Maybe later. I’ve just given you an invulnerability like mine, the ability to heal people (I figure that could come in handy for us when we finally get back to the task of helping people), and now, not only can you change your junk at will, but also, you can help others with theirs. I know you liked the idea when Emma told you about doing that.”

“That’s thoughtful of you. Thank you.” Liam kissed him. “So, I’m a demigod now?”

“A gifted and immortal demigod. William is like Elias; they both carry the spark that makes them invulnerable, as well as immortal. I also gave William superhuman strength, so he’s stronger than the strongest human being, but as a demigod charged up with a couple of kegs of Ambrosia, you’re stronger.”

“You mentioned Elias before my transformation. What about him?”

“He wanted to meet us at the train station in Milan where we would transfer to the overnight train, but I have placed us within a few minutes of Genoa, and we’re several days early. We need to find him. It’s just easier than him flying here.

Ronan’s brows lowered with a tip of his head. “I thought I would feel anyone carrying a spark from me, but for some reason, I’m not feeling you. I don’t understand that.”

“That’s odd. So, what about Emma, William, and Death over there?”

“I would unlock Emma to talk privately, but she’s touching William, and that would unlock him as well, so it will have to wait. I want to ask her if she would like to leave Dolos behind and become Erastís. I wouldn’t want to discuss that with her in front of William for obvious reasons.”

“He should be told the truth.”

“I agree, but that’s not our secret to tell.”

Ronan donned his cream-colored, square-necked tank top with the midnight-blue reinforcement around the arms and neck, bedecked with CENTAURIAN across his chest, but when he held up his shorts, he had to reconsider them. “I have no problem with these for the ship or some resort, but I need these in pants.” He put them on and stared at the hem on the legs for a moment. He concentrated, and in a fiery embering, they extended down to his ankle. “That’s better.”

“I’m impressed,” said Liam, “and you said you weren’t a designer.” He held up his clothing. “Could you help me with these? They won’t fit.”

Ronan took Liam’s shorts, shook them a bit, and a line of embering changed them into a pair of pants like his own. He did the same with the shirt, but rather than Centaurian across the chest, he left it blank, and Liam noted it.

Ronan shrugged. “Think of something, and I’ll put it there.”

“You make all this look so easy.” Liam stuck a foot into a pant leg and began to dress. “So, have you considered having a team and use these as our uniforms?”

“What would you think of that?”

“I think it would solve some problems,” said Liam. “You couldn’t always stop Time whenever you get overwhelmed in an attempt to do everything yourself.”

“I can think of circumstances where stopping Time wouldn’t help much. My Time field would negate its effect on things around me, but my helping people also extends to setting a good example, which couldn’t happen if I stop Time as I have here.”

They crossed the hallway as Ronan asked, “You know what to tell the captain, right?”

“Yes.”

“I may be gone a little while. Ask Emma to find Elias and get his exact location. When I return, hopefully, the ship will no longer be in danger, and the captain will have docked.”

“So, you will go ahead and dethrone Zeus?”

“If I have the opportunity, but I will definitely save Poseidon.”

Liam kissed Ronan. “I love you.”

Ronan smiled. “Okay, I admit, that’s nice to hear. And you know I love you.”

Liam returned to William’s side where Ronan found him. “Good luck.”

Ronan moved in front of Death to block his path. “Thanks, I’ll need it. Are you ready?”

“Let’s do this.”

Ronan held out his left hand, so Death wouldn’t walk into him. He held up his right hand, his fingers at the ready. He concentrated on what he wanted, and with intention, he snapped his fingers.

Immediately, the glow of everything around them vanished, light poured through the cabin window, and William’s wound continued to heal as he received Ronan’s spark and gifts. Death walked into Ronan’s hand. And with a look of astonishment, he gazed up at Ronan’s stern and unamused face, where two words escaped the Centaurian’s lips, “Off-limits.”

Thanatos backed up a little, staring at Ronan for a moment. He gave a curt nod but turned and with a few steps, he vanished.

It relieved Ronan to find William breathing normally again, and Emma hugging him.

“I must go,” Ronan told them. “Emma, should I concentrate on anything specific to teleport to Olympus?”

“You’re going to Olympus?” she asked.

“Zeus is about to torture Poseidon.”

“Concentrate on Zeus, and it will take you there.”

Ronan’s brows shifted both incredulous and repulsed as he tipped his head.

“It’s narcissistic, I know,” she said.

“Ronan,” said William, “thank you. I knew I could count on you.”

He nodded. “I’ll be back when I can.” He concentrated on Zeus, walked forward a few paces, and faded into nothingness.

 

[RHHorst]

Chapter 8a

Mount Olympus is Greece’s tallest mountain. It has an array of fascinating flora and fauna, waterfalls, and incredible views topped by fifty-two craggy peaks, and every year, thousands of regular mortals trek up and down Mount Olympus, all heedless of the knowledge that their feet tread upon the earthly foundations of the abode of the gods from the divine realm, who they believe to be nothing more than myth. Olympus has coexisted there in the primordial aether atop its mountainous namesake since the Titanomachy.

Ronan teleported to the divine realm, just outside the gates, near the base of the acropolis. He found himself in a rectangular courtyard flanked by two marble fortifications highlighted with architectural fret. He took in his surroundings, and the air held the warmth of early summer with the sweet fragrance from a variety of perpetual blossoms from the gardens of Olympus. The sun in the cloudless sky illuminated the intricate marble and gold mosaic beneath his feet whose vanishing edge several yards behind him told that he stood near a cliff, beyond which seemed to lay nothing.

He could see little of Olympus apart from its only entrance, a towering columned and arched gateway made of white marble inlaid with metallic gold. It appeared that no one guarded the gates, and he thought to hurry through the golden bars. As he approached, the Horai appeared, three sisters of incredible beauty, dressed as guards with golden helmets and armor, carrying adamantine swords whose razor-sharp blades they had kept inside their scabbards.

“Welcome, Centaurian,” said the middle one, nodding her head, acknowledging him. “We have awaited you.”

His brows rose in curiosity. “Who are you?”

“I am Eirene, the goddess of Peace.”

“Eunomia, the goddess of Good Order.”

“And I am Dike, the goddess of Justice.”

“Ah…Peace, Good Order, and Justice, three goddesses whom I admire greatly,” said Ronan. “Given your importance—if I may so inquire—why do you have the task of guarding the gates?”

“An astute question,” said Dike who glanced at the sister beside her.

“For millennia, we have stood here,” said Eirene, “initially believing our appointment held honor. We have come to realize that we stand outside the gates of Olympus to give Zeus free reign to distort a meaningful Peace, impose his own tyrannical Order, and pervert the spirit of Justice. At great risk, we have discussed this and have made a conscious choice.”

Their unsmiling faces no longer held Ronan’s gaze, and with their heads held high they maintained a forward stare reflecting their united resolve.

“We know why you have come,” said Eirene, “and you may pass.” Whereupon she stepped to the side of the passage.

“With our blessing,” said Eunomia who did the same.

“And may Justice prevail,” said Dike who copied her sisters.

Ronan thanked them, and as he moved to the gate, three heroically handsome naked men, rippled with muscle, emerged from behind a pillar on the other side. One god looked in his thirties along with his two identical twins in their early twenties. The younger ones looked genuinely pleased to see him, and unlike when the older one lived on Earth, he had well-kempt hair and beard. His overall appearance outshone any statue ever created of him. Ronan knew him from Chiron’s memories; it was his former pupil Heracles. He stood staring at Ronan for a moment, the figure of a model athlete and Olympian.

“Hello, Centaurian,” he said through the gate. “These are my sons Alexiares and Anicetus.”

“Hello,” Ronan said to them. “Like you, your sons certainly are handsome, Heracles.”

His brows drew together. “You are half Chiron, and we discussed this; you should know how I hate that name.”

“Still not quite ‘Hera’s Glory’ after all this time, Alcides?”

“The things she did and made me do are unforgivable, and she will remain my enemy for eternity. She is no better than Zeus, and he let her do it. When Athena brought me here, Zeus made me gatekeeper only to help Hera avoid me. We have an uneasy truce. That’s about all.”

“You know why I’m here,” said Ronan.

“Yes.”

“Will you let me pass?”

“Zeus ordered me never to let you in,” he said, and he tapped the golden bars between them, “but you probably could rip these gates down with one finger.”

“At this point, I wouldn’t even need my hands. I’m just trying to be non-combative.”

When a rumble of thunder echoed throughout Olympus, they both noted it, and a deafening clash from a close lightning strike followed.

“Hmm,” Heracles said with a little tip of his head, “he knows you’re here; you might want to change tactics.”

“You told him I was here?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s Zeus; I had to.”

Ronan nodded. “I understand.” He concentrated and stepped through the bars with a fiery embering that allowed him to slide through.

The three men’s eyes went wide as they backed away. “The gates are gold-covered adamantine,” said Heracles. “That should be impossible.”

“Really? No one told me that.”

“We’re glad you’re here,” said Alexiares. “The six of us will follow.”

Ronan nodded and hurried away.

Beyond the gates, Ronan faced a right turn to a wide golden stairway that followed the marble wall, curving to the left and upward around the base of the acropolis. To his right lay the line of life-size statuary of many gods. They stood atop the newel piers of a railing along the cliff edge—a drop so far down that the bottom disappeared into the cloud cover below. As he raced up the curved stairway, he would have passed a few hundred statues before reaching the top, but he realized that he had no memory of Chiron ever visiting Olympus, so he had no knowledge of its layout. He hadn’t a clue where to find the temple to Zeus. So, he burned away his shirt, manifested his giant white wings, and took to the air.

Due to its extreme age, and contrary to all expectations, Olympus looked old-fashioned in an unappealing way that couldn’t even match the beauty of the Athenian acropolis in its prime. That acropolis—built hundreds of years later, largely by Ictinus, the greatest architect of ancient Athens, during the fifth century before the common era—had the benefit of many centuries of human innovations and a greater understanding of architectural beauty. Ictinus would have found the aesthetics of Olympus appalling. Rather than a focus on great visual appeal, what Olympus had was great quantities of gold—as if that represented the pinnacle of elegance and beauty. It had gold streets, gold roofs, gold this, gold that, it had an overuse of gold to the point of monotony which gave Ronan, who flew above it all, difficulty when trying to distinguish one thing from another.

Oddly, he could find no one on the streets and wondered where they might have gone. When he spied a thin trail of smoke rising above one of the courtyards, he knew where to find Poseidon.

The Brazen Bull of Phalaris consisted of a life-size hollow bull made of bronze. A hatch on its back allowed authorities to seal the condemned inside it, and a fire built beneath it would then bake to death its occupant. The method of torture and execution seemed so horrific and cruel that historians have had difficulty believing it ever existed, but they had pronounced it one of the worst ever conceived if it had, and arguably only a sadistic maniac would ever dream of using it. However, the Athenian Perilaus created it for the Sicilian tyrant, King Phalaris, who fit that description well. Perilaus told Phalaris that once the screaming inside began, it would echo through a series of chambers and tubes built within it and would exit the bull’s mouth and nose sounding like those noises made by a real bull. According to the story, the king loved it and wanted a demonstration, but unfortunately, he had no one on which to test it. However, Phalaris had its inventor Perilaus who—in short order—became its first victim.

It hadn’t surprised Ronan that the Brazen Bull appealed to Zeus, not only would it give him a means to torture someone, but he had taken the bull as one of his symbols when he cheated on his wife Hera with Europa long before then. This caused many on Olympus to note how baking inside the bull paralleled life on Olympus under Zeus’s tyranny.

The courtyard in front of Zeus’s temple held a beautiful garden, with a wide variety of colored bulb plantings in permanent bloom. In the center, the bronze bull stood atop a massive slab of marble that carried the scorch marks from the fires of the bull’s previous usage. When Ronan arrived, he saw the fire had just started. From a distance, he reached out his hand and imitated grabbing the burning wood beneath it and flung it, causing it to fly off into the distance. He raised his hand concentrated for a split second, snapped his fingers and Time stopped, leaving him in an angelic glow within his personal time-field. When he landed, his wings burned away in a line of fiery embering as he rushed to the bull. He grabbed the locking mechanism and tore it from its hasp. Having thrown back the hatch, he saw Poseidon inside curled into a ball, his face wet with tears in an expression of abject terror. With his hand glowing evermore brightly, Ronan placed it inside and touched Poseidon, giving him his own time-field.

Poseidon gasped in fright at the sudden change.

“It’s me!” said Ronan.

“Ronan!” He said in panic. “Get me out of this thing!”

After helping him climb out, the moment Poseidon’s feet touched the ground, he hugged Ronan.

“Thank you. I wasn’t sure you knew what had happened.”

“Chronos told me,” he said. “I have stopped Time; that’s why everything looks strange.”

“You can stop Time? You are as powerful as I thought.”

“I should get rid of this…” Ronan placed his hands onto the bull and heated it. “You might want to step back a bit; I wouldn’t want to get this on you.” The metal oozed, dripped, and then ran down the bull’s body until Ronan had left nothing but a solidifying puddle of bronze on the marble slab it stood upon.

“Where’s Zeus?” asked Poseidon.

“I’m not sure, I suspect he’s somewhere nearby. Where is everyone? When I searched for you, I saw no one on the streets or anywhere else.”

“They’re all here,” he said and gestured to the darkness around them. “They stand watching from the cloisters surrounding the courtyard. Zeus had everyone on Olympus gather to witness as he took my powers from me before placing me into the bull.”

“He took your powers again?” Ronan shook his head. “That needs to stop. Would you like me to give you power he can never take away?”

“Yes, please!”

“I will do this, but I must tell you that I cannot give you a realm of influence or the divine authority that Zeus took from you. I can only give you an equivalent power. And while he cannot take this from you, I still could. Having given it to you makes me responsible for what you do. I only ask that you never use it for evil, no violent revenge—especially for minor offenses—no petty vindictiveness, and no violating anyone either—sexually or otherwise. We have no legal system, so if you feel you must take vengeance upon anyone, make sure it’s for something truly awful, like when Elias stabbed Kakia for destroying Felix Raposo.”

Poseidon told him, “I trust that you would only take my power if I actually deserved to lose it. With Zeus? Not so much.”

Ronan laid his hand on Poseidon’s chest, and as the energy flowed to him, he took in a sharp breath as he felt the surge.

Breathing heavily, he said, “This feels different.”

“You’re probably stronger than you were,” said Ronan. “You should have seen Liam when I gave him his powers.”

“So, Liam has gone through apotheosis. I told you he would.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t a pleasant experience for him.” Ronan held out his hand, manifested a brilliantly lit time-sphere, and tossed it into the air where it hung unsupported about fifteen feet above them. He made a hand gesture to brighten it further, illuminating the entire courtyard.

Within the cloisters, there stood those who lived on Olympus. Ronan then understood why Athena told the lie. It wasn’t enough for Zeus to torture people; he made his subjects watch as a warning.

Ronan gazed about for the miscreant. “Let’s find Zeus.”

A search of the courtyard and the temple told of his absence. When Ronan came across Athena in the crowd, he decided to unlock them all to ask what they saw. The moment Athena saw Poseidon, she hugged him in relief and thanked Ronan.

Behind them, from the direction of the courtyard, came a belligerent voice from a god approaching them. “You should not interfere with the king’s decisions! I will defend my father and his throne!” When Ronan turned to see the golden-chest-plated god who had spoken, everyone backed up as the god punched Ronan in the face with all his might, after which, the assailant yelled out in agony cradling his hand. Ronan found the god devilishly attractive with that wild and dangerous bad-boy vibe that looked more than willing to cuckold his own brother, slay a thousand men without a second thought, and immediately begin to lay a thousand women with a virility of a thousand gods.

“Ah, it’s you, Ares,” said Ronan. “What a handsome god of savage warfare and slaughter you are. But now, I see why many of the gods find you so annoying.”

His upturned right hand lay shattered and crippled in the palm of his left. “I have fought many battles against a multitude of fearsome enemies and never have I broken a bone! What are you made of?”

“Oooh,” said Ronan, “snips and snails and puppy dog tails, probably. Here, allow me.” He used his forefinger to touch Aries’s hand, and it began a line of embering that mended his injury.

Unfortunately, the moment it healed, he drew his sword and everyone around them retreated even farther. “I will not allow you to dethrone my father!”

“You’re a right old stereotype, aren’t you?” asked Ronan. “I have noted your objection. However, you are but one voice among many. For now, let us listen to what others have to say.”

 

[RHHorst]

Chapter 8b

Ronan hadn’t bothered to stop Ares when he made an unsuccessful attempt to slit his throat with his sword. He grabbed the adamantine blade and jerked the weapon from Ares’s hand. As everyone looked on, they gasped as he started at the tip, manipulating the metal as he folded the blade—end over end—until it met the hilt. He then handed it back to Ares.

“That was my favorite sword.”

“And this is my favorite neck,” said Ronan. “Do you know why Zeus has used torture to keep you all in line, and never destroyed any of you? It’s not because he’s so forgiving or cares about you, it’s only because he hasn’t the power to do it. You’re lucky, Ares, that I’m not like your father, or else, I wouldn’t hesitate to take you by the pollex and hallux—as I had with Kratos—jump into the sky with you and vaporize your ass. So, I suggest you reach deep inside yourself and find the discipline to listen, or at the very least remain quiet and non-disruptive.”

Poseidon grew tired of it. “Why don’t you just freeze him in Time…permanently?”

“Because, as the opposition, he should hear other voices besides the one in his head telling him to kill, maim, and slaughter.” He addressed them all. “I don’t know how many of you agree with Ares, but I want to thank you for taking a moment to listen. Some of you, tired of Zeus’s tyranny and torture, have asked me to remove him from the throne. I would find it helpful to know how many of you would ask me to remove him. One thing is certain, even if only a minority of you want his removal, something, somehow, must change.”

“I want Zeus to remain King of the Gods,” said Eris, the goddess of strife and discord. “I agree with his methods of punishment. Why should those of us loyal to Zeus lose him in favor of the will of traitors?”

“I agree,” said Enyo, the goddess of destruction. “If you attempt to remove Zeus, I will call for civil war.”

“There aren’t enough of us who disagree to mount a civil war,” said Apate, the goddess of deceit.

“You do this Centaurian, and we will make you regret it,” said one of the Erinyes, the goddesses of vengeance, of which there were several.

Ronan turned to Athena and Poseidon. “This may be more complicated than I anticipated.”

Poseidon whispered, “I told you that some gods were evil by their nature.”

A goddess with braided hair encircling her head came forward. She wore a snowy white chiton whose drape resembled a fluted column. Knowing Ronan’s power, she uncharacteristically restrained herself. “You do not belong here,” she said to him. “Who are you to interfere with the gods?”

Ronan asked, “Who is Zeus to interfere with me?”

“He is King of the Gods.”

“Well, he’s not my king. And which goddess are you? Olympus has so many.”

“I am queen.”

“Ahh, well, if it isn’t Hera, the queen of petty revenge. I expect no answer to this question, I only ask it as something to consider. Do you not care what Zeus does, other than when he’s cheating on you? Surely, you remember when he tortured you. He has harmed you, just as he has harmed many other people, not only long ago, but recently. Today, he nearly killed a good friend of mine who had done nothing. Zeus deserves no one’s loyalty.” As Ronan spoke to them all, several within the crowd loyal to Ronan separated themselves and moved to stand behind him. “You ask me, who am I to interfere? Half of me is Chiron—a son of Cronus—so I am brother, uncle, cousin, or some such distant relation to all of you. So, do I belong here? Not to live, perhaps, but certainly related enough to drop by without calling first. As for the topic of interfering, I hold no enmity for any of you, but since I’m the only one powerful enough, I cannot allow Zeus’s actions to go unchallenged. He would just continue to harm others, and for the sake of all that’s good and decent, I will not allow that.

“I know that long ago many of you also did horrible things for whatever reason, but that is the past. However, I want it to go on record, that the Earth and its people are now under my protection. A protection—I will add—which also extends to those of the divine realm who request it, and I have had such requests.

“I know some of you have already made this choice, and I commend you for that. You have my admiration and gratitude. But the rest of you have the choice to either learn to embrace the larger community and get along, or—at a bare minimum—you can adopt a benevolent indifference to its existence, for I refuse to tolerate anyone acting against it.”

“And if we are the ones who refuse?” asked Hera.

“I will make this exceedingly clear,” he said. “By your actions, if any of you make yourself an enemy to humanity, the Earth, or any of your fellow divinities under my protection—especially with a call for civil war—you will have made me your enemy. At that point, I would consider every aspect of your transgression before I respond to it, but rest assured, I have no need to torture anyone. I have plenty of other options. I ask so little, just play nice with others and mind your own business. If anyone refuses to do that…well, we’ll just see how that works out for you. Zeus has already made himself my enemy, so you may wish to reconsider following him. I must ask that those of you who wish to live in peace and recognize that things must change to stand behind me with the others.” A few others joined them.

So that they could speak in privacy, Ronan raised his hand and removed the personal time-field from everyone except those who stood behind him. Of the two-hundred and thirty-seven gods and goddesses present on Olympus that day, only sixteen of them wanted things to change, including those who Ronan met at the gate who had joined the group.

“There aren’t many of you,” he said.

“Some of us, like Apollo, are on Earth,” said Athena.

Ronan nodded. “Okay. I can dethrone Zeus, but the fallout from that could be enormous. So, I have a recommendation, and I don’t know how you might feel about it, but I intend to build a home base, and all of you who wish to live in peace may join me. It may not have thrones, but it will have what matters most—peace, choice, respect for others, freedom like you’ve never experienced, and an opportunity to grow.”

“That sounds wonderful,” said Athena, “and I appreciate the invitation, but why should the others get to keep Olympus?”

“I can only ask,” said Ronan, “why would you want it? There are so many bad memories here. Of those of you who have evolved, why not let go of the past, act in accord with who you have become in all its fullness, and start afresh? I can give you that chance.”

“But this has always been my home,” she said.

Poseidon laid his hand on her shoulder. “You have an understandable emotional attachment to Olympus, but you’re not thinking clearly. Many here remain stuck in the past. You know they spoke the truth about a civil war. Is Olympus worth that?”

“You’re willing to leave Olympus forever?” she asked him.

“Yes, and for three reasons. One, Ronan is good and happens to have more power than anyone else. That’s a unique combination that doesn’t often happen, and I want to surround myself with good people. Two, when it comes to those of us who have evolved versus those of us who haven’t, by necessity, it will fall to us to make the magnanimous gesture and give Olympus to them. You know they haven’t the capacity, and I can think of myriad things I would rather do than fight to keep this place, when… three, I want to continue evolving, and I’ve come as far as I can here.”

“You’ve made some valid points,” she conceded, “…especially the last one; I find myself in the same position. So, what’s the plan?”

It seemed unlikely that Zeus would allow any of his subjects the freedom to reject him as their king, leave, and carve out a new life for themselves with Ronan. He would view it as usurping his dominance, and with it, his power. So, what would Ronan do with Zeus? Ronan had no problem seeing the king as one who perpetrated horrific crimes against his subjects and deserved what would come to him, but Zeus had so much support that dethroning him could cause more trouble than he was worth. He would have to give it a lot of thought, but a clear plan seemed unattainable at that moment.

It surprised Ronan that so many whom Zeus had tortured still supported him and saw his ability to torture his subjects as his divine right as king. They hadn’t evolved enough to recognize how twisted that was.

The list of the ten people who wanted to leave because they had evolved—including those absent—consisted of Poseidon (the god of the oceans and seas), Athena (the virgin goddess of war, wisdom, and knowledge), the Titan Prometheus (the god of fire and knowledge, as well as the maker and champion of humanity), Dolos (the apprentice of Prometheus and originally the god of deception, trickery, and craftiness), Demeter (the goddess of the harvest, agriculture and the fertility of the earth), Chronos (the self-created primordial god of Time), Ananke (the self-created primordial goddess of necessity and inevitability), Aletheia (the goddess of the naked truth), Apollo (adopted father of Chiron and the god of archery, poetry, dance, music, healing, and many other things), and finally, Hestia (the virgin goddess of home and hearth).

The reasons why ten others who lived on Olympus wanted to leave had more nuance, and Ronan took each of them aside to ask them about it.

Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt, said, “Zeus tortured my twin brother Apollo just for questioning him. That’s all he had to do, and he always made us watch. In secret, Zeus had become my enemy since then, so when Apollo leaves, I will go with him.”

At just five feet five, Eros, the hunky primordial god of carnal love and son of Chaos, looked like the unconsciously seductive, twenty-four-year-old blond swimmer who lived next door. He preoccupied the mind with an irresistible crush that included an overt willingness to be an object of his seduction. He told Ronan, “I’m indifferent to Zeus keeping the throne. Although, I always recognized the torture as horrific. I’m a god of love; it’s beyond my nature to comprehend such barbarity. I want to leave because I find the atmosphere of Olympus repulsive, with its hatred, anger, and oppression. But not only that,”—he smiled looking Ronan up and down—“I find you incredibly attractive, not just because of your body, but because I sense an enormous wellspring of love inside you, and that makes me smile.”

Ronan couldn’t help but find Eros charming. “That’s kind of you,” he said. “I know that Aphrodite is your best friend, are you okay with her remaining here?”

Eros sighed. “I understand it,” he said. “She will remain because Ares remains. Long ago, I had Ares once out of curiosity because Aphrodite kept going back to him and couldn’t seem to stop herself”—he began whispering—“even when she was married to Hephaestus who—as I’ve discovered—is one of the most sexually generous, attentive, and loving gods I’ve ever known; not that Aphrodite would know, she never had sex with him. In contrast, Ares’s passion for carnality is positively savage, and Aphrodite seems to enjoy that. For myself, I thought Ares was a bit overblown. She never knew what she gave up with Hephaestus. He and I have spent much time together.”

Hebe, the wife of Heracles, also wanted to leave. She had begun having nightmares from witnessing so much torture, and Heracles wanted to leave to be with her and to get away from Hera. Their identical twin sons, Alexiares and Anicetus, wanted to leave as well. Feeling they would have a far better life with Ronan, they gave him their loyalty.

Dike, Eirene, and Eunomia just wanted some respect, and with Ronan, they knew they would receive it.

Hephaestus, the god of the forge, stood naked before Ronan using a cane to walk, and although he had the same height as Ronan, he had a body that one wouldn’t expect. It certainly hadn’t lived up to an Olympian standard of godhood. From the top, his head had gone almost bald, which is why he wore a cloth cap. His forehead looked too wide, his brow ridges jutted too far, his eyes looked too far apart, cheekbones too prominent, and his jaw too large. He had an unbalanced musculature and an odd shape to his torso. His lower half gave him an ungainly appearance, and his genitals looked to be the size of the average human, which looked out of place on a god. His legs looked thick with no definition, and of course, he had that wrong-turned left foot.

He had a unique situation that encouraged his desire to leave. He had conflicting stories of his parentage as well as conflicting reasons for someone casting him from Olympus. The truth was that, just as Zeus liked to take credit for impressive things in which he was not involved, he also tended to deny his involvement in things out of convenience. Despite whatever stories to the contrary, Zeus intentionally cursed the last child Hera carried for him, and that was Hephaestus. When she gave birth, the cursed baby had the congenital defect of ugliness and a clubfoot. So, Zeus obtained the imperfect child he secretly sought, just so he could reject it, shame Hera, and vow to never lie with her again. He did this to give a further excuse for his many infidelities, which resulted in heightening Hera’s vindictiveness against his paramours and their children. Out of anger for his deformity—in true Hera fashion—she blamed the baby and tossed him from Olympus where he eventually fell into the ocean. The oceanid Eurynome, and the nereid Thetis—the mother of Achilles—found Hephaestus, raised him on Lemnos, and they loved him dearly.

Eventually, Dionysus brought the adult Hephaestus back to Olympus, and he remained the only god ever allowed to return after his ejection (Zeus only allowed it to use him for his skills). At the time of his return, Zeus’s daughter, the beautiful Aphrodite had many suitors. So, to stop them from fighting over her, Zeus forced her to marry Hephaestus simply because Zeus knew she would never lie with him. As a result, she had affairs with many others during their marriage, and since they hadn’t a good union, it forced Hephaestus to find affection elsewhere.

Hephaestus had one story told of him that besmirched his good name, and that’s the one involving the alleged attempted rape of Athena, but that story never actually happened. It supposedly caused Hephaestus’s semen to fall upon the ground, resulting in a birth from the soil an early king of Athens named Erichthonius. The king invented the story from whole cloth for the sole purpose of fabricating himself some divine origins at the expense of Hephaestus’s reputation. In truth, Hephaestus, along with a tiny minority of gods, had never harmed anyone of his own volition. Like many others, he only did what Zeus made him do.

“Eros likes you a lot,” said Ronan.

“Eros and I have been spending a lot of time together if you know what I mean.”

“So, you’re no longer with Aglaea?” Ronan asked.

He shook his head. “Like Aphrodite, she cheated on me with Ares.” He shrugged a little. “I can’t say that I blame her, Ares is so handsome, and look at me. Eros has been the only one who sees beyond this.”

Ronan glanced down at Hephaestus’s foot. “Has no one tried to help you?”

“Zeus cursed me before my birth,” he said. “He’s too powerful; every attempt to lift it has failed.”

“And of course, Zeus is too much of a jerk to undo it himself. Would you like me to do it?”

Hephaestus dropped his mouth open. “If you would try, I would be grateful.”

“I won’t just try; I will remove and reverse it. What Zeus did to you was cruel. But first, I need to find what you would look like without the curse. Hold onto me so you don’t fall.” Hephaestus held Ronan’s shoulders to steady himself.

When Ronan laid his hands on Hephaestus’s chest, he closed his eyes and concentrated to see in his mind beyond what Zeus had done to him. In the distance, an image came racing toward him, and there he was. Tucked away in another universe, over the farthest reaches of Time and space, Ronan could see him…Hephaestus, whole and glorious—the blue-collar god, the proud symbol of skills and innovations born of the sweat and struggle of hard labor. Beneath a covered workspace, he stood mostly naked before his anvil near the flaming forge whose light cast shadows behind him. He pounded away at a chunk of red-hot metal while sweat ran down his sooty, lean, well-balanced physique rippled with an astonishing quantity of fur-coated sinews. He lifted the tongs to inspect the piece, and in its glow, Ronan saw his face. He had short hair and beard, dark like the coals of his forge, and a face that anyone lucky enough to have his love would have eyes for no one else and would never conceive of sharing anyone else’s bed. They would look forward to every tender moment beneath him, his kiss, and his loving embrace. The level of Zeus’s disservice to Hephaestus was palpable, and it upset Ronan.

 

[RHHorst]

Chapter 8c

He opened his eyes and gazed upon Hephaestus in amazement.

“Did you see me?” he asked.

“You’re beyond belief.” Ronan hugged Hephaestus and held onto him tightly. “Brace yourself, removing and reversing Zeus’s curse is likely to hurt.”

At that point, they had the attention of all those nearby who moved closer.

Ronan built up a surge of purifying energy and began bombarding Hephaestus with it. With the light emanating from the blacksmith, the moment Ronan removed the curse, a flash of darkness burst from his body causing him to collapse, but Ronan held him aloft, as Henri had when Ronan accepted the eternal flame.

The others shielded their eyes, the light outshining everything, like standing near the sun. When it dimmed, Ronan settled Hephaestus upon his feet. For the first time, they would hold him without assistance or discomfort.

Ronan jostled him. “Wake up, buddy. It’s done.”

He opened his eyes and stood on his own.

“Everyone, I would like you to meet Hephaestus without Zeus’s curse. When Ronan backed away, everyone had a chance to see him whole for the first time, and they had more than just shock upon their faces at how delectably handsome he was. They also recognized it as just one more horrible thing that Zeus had done. In many ways, he had tortured Hephaestus for his entire life.

“Is anyone else cursed?” asked Ronan.

“I know someone,” said Alcides (formerly Heracles).

“Who?”

“Priapus,” said Hestia. “Before he was born, Hera cursed him with ugliness, foul-mindedness, and impotence because Paris (a prince of Troy) said that Priapus’s mother, Aphrodite, was more beautiful than she.”

“I see…more petty vindictiveness. Well, where is he?”

“Because of the curse,” she said, “which we could not remove, he was so foul minded that he had nothing but lustful thoughts, and in his youth, he tried to…well, let’s just say that nothing happened because I woke up before he even touched me. However, because he was a threat, we cast him from Olympus. He lives on Earth now with Pan. I know the incident only happened because of Hera. It would be in everyone’s best interest if the curse were lifted.”

“Are you saying he tried to rape you?” asked Ronan.

Alcides spoke up. “Hera cursed me with a madness that caused me to kill my first wife and my children, so I personally know what she can do. Please, help him.”

Ronan palmed his face. “Ugh…what a mess. Okay, I’ll do that, and if there are any others, bring them to me as well, but let us settle elsewhere first. Before we do that, where is Zeus?”

“We just were discussing that,” said Poseidon.

“He used lightning to ignite the fire beneath the bull,” said Athena, “and teleported immediately afterward.”

“Where would he have gone?” asked Ronan.

“Maybe, he just left because he fears to face you,” she said.

“Maybe. For now, I can think of nothing else that we can do with Time stopped unless any of you would like to pack before we leave.”

They indicated they had nothing they couldn’t reacquire.

Poseidon thumbed over his shoulder to the crowd left frozen in time. “What will you do with them?”

“For the moment, I’ll leave them that way when I restart Time. I don’t want them plotting civil wars against anyone, after all, I prefer to leave them in peace. Have you all someplace you can go where Zeus can’t find you?”

“We have a house hidden from him on Earth,” said Athena. “We can go there.”

“Good. Hephaestus, would you accompany me, please? I might need your input into our new location.”

“I am here for anything you need of me, Ronan. You have my loyalty.”

“I appreciate that, and I want you all to know that you have my loyalty, as do all those I must leave frozen for now. I would never do anything to harm any of you, that’s just not who I am. I only destroyed Kratos because he was a threat to the people I care about, and I had no other options at the time. I have many options now, and the age of hurting others, just because someone can, has ended with me. Through the choices that you’ve made here, I will trust that you’ve learned that there is another way to live, and I will hold each of you to that. As for those frozen here, I won’t hurt them, but at the same time, I cannot allow them to hurt others, especially any of you and those on Earth. I will have to think of some way to give them the freedom to live—and an opportunity to evolve—while not allowing them to play havoc with everyone else by acting on their nature. If any of you have ideas on how I might go about that, I welcome suggestions. Okay, here we go.”

Ronan lifted his right hand to make an exception of those he intended to keep frozen and snapped the fingers of his left hand. In an instant, everything changed. The light from the sun shone all around them and felt as though they stepped from a darkened room into the daylight, but as little islands of stopped Time, the light would not reflect from the frozen gods standing nearby. They each appeared as a statue made of the blackest stone with all frequencies of light vanishing upon them.

“Centaurian!”

The voice came from the golden doorway of the temple behind them. Ronan turned to find Zeus standing as one might find the Colossus of Rhodes, hands on his hips and legs astride the entryway of its harbor. The moment he saw him, he raised his hand and froze Zeus in Time just like the others.

“That was easy,” said Poseidon.

“Too easy,” said Ronan. “For now, at least, we know where he is. No one can unlock any of them but Chronos and me.”

“I have seen his look of satisfaction before,” said Athena. “He’s done something.”

“Like what?”

She turned her gaze upon Ronan and stared him in the face. “Something that has made him comfortable enough to confront you.”

“If he left the moment he lit the fire with the lightning, no more than three minutes passed before I stopped Time here.”

“For him, that’s more than enough.”

“Right. Thank you, Athena.” Inside his head, he heard his name called. “Emma needs me. I must go to her. Let’s go, Hephaestus.” He took him by the hand.

“Wait, we can’t teleport from here,” he told Ronan.

“Why not? Zeus did.”

“It’s part of the security for Olympus,” said Dike, the goddess of Justice, “only Zeus can teleport within Olympus without first passing through the gate.”

“Well, that’s inconvenient,” he said.

“You must break The Great Seal if you wish to leave any other way,” she said.

“Without knowing what form it takes,” he said, “I wouldn’t know how to do that.”

“We’ll take the shortcut to the gate,” said Hephaestus.

-------

At the time of his birth, Elias Adrianus had the name Aquila (meaning Eagle), a symbol of Zeus foisted upon the subconscious of the mother in an act of the sky god taking credit for her child’s existence. As with all mortal beings, in time, Elias’s mother died, his wife died in childbirth as did the baby, and every relationship he fostered seemed doom to failure as those around him who hadn’t died of disease, aged while he remained unnaturally and inexplicably young. When the how of it came into question by enough people—with no acceptable explanation—the necessity of faking his own death arose (the first of many such occasions).

Over his lifetime, he had cast aside his birth name along with a string of assumed aliases, and those new identities came with the hope that things would improve, but they never could. So, with every arduous beginning—and there were many—after the death of his third wife, and every child he attempted to raise, the hope he occasionally felt, faded into the reoccurring misery of having to face the onerous chore of another name, another location, and another attempt to fit in. The curse of his unwanted immortality forced him to endure these pernicious disruptions with a growing despondency in their wake.

Throughout his life, Elias had believed himself attracted to women, but later, as his lust for living had waned, so had his lust for the female sex. Of course, he had replaced it with a lust for money and power, attempting to find, if not meaning, then something to occupy his seeming endlessness, but his attempt to fulfill avaricious desires had also grown tiresome. After nine hundred and ninety years, he thought he had done it all—all he deemed worthy of him, anyway—but then came his transcendental sexual encounter with Felix Raposo. Afterward, he felt an aching need to recreate that sense of joy and fulfillment that he had gone without for more centuries than he cared to count. Suddenly, he had sexual fantasies of every man he found even remotely attractive. Doubtless, they wouldn’t measure up; Felix had set the bar so high. Anyone would have difficulty measuring up to Eros’s specially blessed and beloved Lucky Fox, but to have someone with whom he could share his bed sounded better than having no one at all.

He had envisioned erotic scenarios with the handsome limo driver en route to the Miami airport, the hunky co-pilot of his private jet in his fetching uniform, the White House intern who—at the president’s request—ensured a rapid replacement of the passport he lost in the hotel’s destruction, the FBI investigator who questioned him about the incident at the hotel, and even his own broad-shouldered administrative assistant who stood before his mahogany office desk that morning. He held a curious expression when asked how he and his husband were faring.

“Okay, who are you, and what have you done with my employer?”

Elias laughed. “Carl, how long have you known me?”

“Seven years, sir.”

“And in all that time, have I ever asked about you and your husband?”

“Not once, sir.”

“Well, I do beg that you forgive me that neglect and those years of my Scrooge-like behavior. It had evolved over a lifetime, but it hadn’t taken a fright from three spirits and a major holiday to help me see the error of my ways. Oddly enough, I credit the giver of a pink business card and the care of a nineteen-year-old Puerto Rican bellhop named Felix Raposo for saving me.

“It seems that I have acquired more power and personal wealth than I could ever know what to do with, and I have come to the terrifying conclusion that the allure of power is like a black hole. It has a pull so strong, that it ethically disfigures and distorts anyone who seeks it until they grow so warped it sucks the light from them entirely. That captivating singularity held me in its clutches for too long, and I have a lot to make up for, but…I know that I could never do that here. As an independent lobbyist for corporate interests, this company is morally irredeemable. Its clientele is a corruption of scoundrels, and you have no idea of the weight I bear for having hurt so many people over the years by pandering to venal politicians. So, as the sole owner of Adrianicus Ltd., I have no public investors to answer to, and I’m shutting its doors for good. However, I am doing right by my employees, and this morning I have given a generous severance package to all the others, but you are my last.” He handed him the final Manila envelope from his briefcase and held up a white one the size of a personal letter. “Only you receive one of these, and this is added to the top of your severance. When was the last time you took a real vacation?”

“Never, sir,” he said. “Something always got in the way.”

“Well, I want you to know that I like you. I have always liked you. And I know when this conversation ends, I have no right to ask you to do anything, so I won’t ask. I beg you and your good husband to take a proper vacation to unplug. And this,” he said, shaking the white envelope, “is to make up for the last seven years of underwhelming bonuses I have given you. They devalued what you have meant to me and this company. I took advantage of you even when I knew you performed most of the heavy lifting here. I sincerely apologize, and you have my word that I will never do that again to anyone.” He handed him the envelope, and Carl pulled a check from it.

“You’re giving me forty-million dollars.”

“That’s right. This company functioned well because of you. I wanted to give you four million for every year you’ve worked here, but they will deduct an extraordinary amount of taxes from it, so I rounded up to ensure you get the full twenty-eight million you’re due, but it’s more than that after taxes. Please, take some of it and go on the best damn vacation you’ve ever had, and I hope you have a marvelous time.”

Completely flummoxed, Carl asked, “Sir, why are you doing this? Are you dying?”

He smiled and laughed. “I understand why you ask, but it’s funny to give a man forty-million dollars only for him to inquire why. And no, I’m not dying, not yet anyway. It’s just this is a new world, Carl, and this is a new me. I’m about to take a flight to Milan to meet someone who I think will give me what I have needed for a long time.”

Off to the side and several paces behind Carl, a ponytailed blonde woman wearing a white button-up shirt and skin-tight jeans faded into the room, and Elias saw it happen.

“Ah! There you are,” she said. She took a moment to concentrate and said, “Ronan…” in a voice that she knew Ronan would hear.

Carl turned. “Ma’am, you can’t come in here.”

“It’s alright, Carl,” Elias said as he ushered him from the room. “I’ll take care of it. Thank you for all you’ve done over the years.” Carl shook Elias’s hand, and the moment the door closed behind him, Elias asked the woman, “And you are which goddess?”

She smiled. “It’s complicated. I call myself Erastís, but for the moment, you may call me Emma Nordström.”

“You’re Swedish?” he asked.

“Like I said, it’s complicated. Ronan sent me to find you. He’ll be along any time now.”

 

[RHHorst]

Chapter 8d

“Why? I thought I would meet all of you in Milan. I looked forward to being there, actually.”

“Zeus tried to sink the container ship we traveled on, and almost killed someone I care about, so our plans changed. Ronan left to save Poseidon from Zeus’s torture, and I don’t know much beyond that. Things have moved rather quickly.”

“Is Ronan angry with me, after what happened?”

“No, not at all. And we’re sorry to hear about Felix Raposo. Many of the gods loved him, including me, and I’ve not heard the slightest hint of grief over the destruction of Kakia. And you couldn’t have known what would happen when you stabbed her. I’m not sure that anyone could blame you, not even Ronan. Did you know that you and Ronan are the only two people to ever destroy a god?”

“Ronan destroyed a god…”

She nodded. “Kratos, the god of brute strength.”

“Did he use a blade like the one I had?

“Oh, no, he wouldn’t need it. I hope you get to know Ronan. He is the kindest, most thoughtful, loving, and compassionate being I’ve ever known, and that’s just scratching the surface of how wonderful he is, but he’s also deadly dangerous to anyone who would harm the people he loves and cares about. Kratos threatened the lives of everyone aboard the ship and had threatened Liam in particular. He is Ronan’s protector, his lover, and no doubt, his future husband. So, Ronan vaporized Kratos.”

“Vaporized him?”

“There are temperatures that not even the matter and energy of a god can withstand, but only Ronan is capable of producing.”

“So, he’s that powerful…”

“There’s every reason to believe he’s the most powerful being in the universe, but he wouldn’t want you to think of him in that light. He’s just Ronan. So, do him a favor and never mention how much power he has. He prefers not to talk about it.”

“Then why would you tell me?”

“You must not realize how special you are.”

A moment later, Ronan—wearing only pants and shoes—and a naked Hephaestus teleported into the room.

Looking a bit frantic when he arrived, Ronan made a gasp as his eyes went right to Elias, and he never deviated from looking at him. He snapped his fingers and stopped Time while giving the four of them a time-field. “Thank you, Emma, for finding Elias. I have discovered that Zeus has done something, and I worry what he’s done is something to Liam. However, I can’t be everywhere at once, and I must do this, Elias has waited over nine hundred years, and this is well overdue. Elias, Emma, please meet Hephaestus. Hephaestus, this is Erastís but, you can call her Emma. And this man standing before me in this beautiful Armani three-piece suit is Elias Adrianus…my son.”

Emma, on the verge of commenting on the blacksmith’s appearance, stopped as Ronan had drawn both of their attention.

Elias, whose head reached Ronan’s shoulders, couldn’t take his eyes from Ronan, who stood there staring down at him with a little smile. “Your son?” asked Elias.

Ronan nodded. “I’ve never seen you before, but I remember your mother through Chiron’s memories, and I knew Henri. Looking at you now, I realize that you resemble neither of them. You look like Chiron. Chiron and my former human self are not only fully bonded, but unlike with the previous Stallions, they’re fully merged. Apparently, Henri couldn’t feel you out in the world. If he could have, he wouldn’t have believed you died long ago. Standing this close to you, I feel you so strongly, it’s almost overwhelming.”

Emma spoke up, “But I thought that Henri and the others were bound to Chiron.”

“They were,” said Ronan, “but it couldn’t have been in the way I am. Chiron and the flame would be transferred every thousand years, so it couldn’t be permanent. With me, it’s permanent, and there’s no going back, so a difference must exist.”

Elias told him, “You’re bigger and taller than I thought. I’m sorry I allowed Kakia to entice me into thinking that murdering you was the best solution to my problems.”

“That’s okay,” said Ronan as he smiled a little, “Kakia had a reputation for tempting people into doing evil and horrible things, so I would never hold it against you, but I hear you wanted to speak with me.”

“Yes, I had wanted to ask if you would take my immortality, so I could grow old and die.”

Ronan hesitated. “I see. Why don’t we sit and talk for a few minutes?” He gestured to the couch in the seating area. Emma and Hephaestus stood by and listened to them.

Once seated, Elias asked, “Why can’t I feel you? If you’re my father, shouldn’t I be able to feel you too?”

“That’s a fair question,” said Ronan and turned to Emma and Hephaestus. “Why do you think that is?” Ronan waved them into the wingbacks across the seating area from the couch, and they took a chair.

“He needs Ambrosia,” said Hephaestus. “If he’s Chiron’s son, he can carry power, but he must have just enough to protect his body and make him immortal, but nothing else. Ambrosia should fix that problem.”

“I agree,” said Emma. “He needs charging up.”

“He just asked me to take his immortality from him, so he could die one day. Ambrosia would carry him in a direction, he may not wish to go.”

“Why did you leave us?” Elias asked. “Mother was heartbroken, and I have needed you the last nine hundred and ninety years.”

“I’m sorry.” Ronan shook his head a little. “I probably have no satisfactory answer for that. From all that I remember, Henri and your mother had been together for quite a while, and she had reached the end of her ability to have a child. She used to beg Henri to have his baby. And this may be supposition on my part, but because of Henri’s nature—he wasn’t really human anymore—he had no control over having children. However, as the one fully bound to the creative power of the eternal flame, Chiron did. He could have made you fully human and mortal, but he had experienced what it was like to almost die when Zeus took his immortality, and Prometheus saved him. Having gotten that second chance, he knew that life is invaluable, and so long as someone had their health, it’s invariably better than death. To a mortal, nine hundred and ninety years sounds like a long time, but as an immortal, you’ve not even experienced a drop of Time in the ocean of eternity. I cannot undo what you’ve gone through, and I cannot make up for my absence. Unfortunately, atrocious childhoods and intolerable periods of time are ubiquitous among the gods.”

“Among the gods…” he said.

“I’m sorry,” said Ronan. “Do you even know what you are?”

“Not really. All this is still new. You would need to be specific and spell it out for me.”

“You are the immortal demigod son of Chiron the centaur, so you are half human and half centaur. My name is Ronan Stallion, and Chiron is the Stallion part of me, which makes you my son. You are grandson to the Titan Cronus, and nephew to the six main Olympians, Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Demeter, Hera, and Hestia. You are first cousin to all their children, like Hephaestus sitting there. You’re also a distant cousin of Emma. If I were you, I wouldn’t trust all my relatives, but you could trust those standing with me.”

Elias sat there beside Ronan in a daze. “So, I have an actual family.”

“That’s right. But asking me to take your immortality is to ask me to sacrifice you, when you have an opportunity from this point onward to have a life with your divine family that mortals could never dream possible. However, this decision must be yours.”

Elias watched in wonder as his father manifested on the coffee table a transparent sixteen-ounce crystal goblet. Ronan ran his finger around the rim as he spoke to Elias causing it to vibrate in a musical tone, and as it filled from the bottom in a line of embering with a honey-colored liquid suspended with gold flecks of pure creative energy, the tone rose in pitch as the glass filled to three-quarters full. “If you embrace who you are, you can have a brand-new experience of your immortal life, one with all the things you could want in abundance, a father, a family, love, stability, support, an opportunity to grow, and a new name that has a connection to who you are. You could put the past behind you, we could pick up from here, and I could show you what a beautiful and fulfilling life you could have. Or…”—Ronan sat back with his hands in his lap and turned to Elias—“or you can have what you said you wanted. You can reject who you are. I could make you fully human with mortality, vulnerability, and all that entails. To do that, I would have to remove from you all that makes you divine. At that point, you would experience occasional illness, injury, suffering, and one day you would die.”

“Wow, you make mortality sound like fun,” said Elias in sarcasm. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because you’re my son, and if I love you, then I should not control you, but at the same time, it would be heartless of me to not give you this chance. I couldn’t be here before, but I’m here now, and I would love for you to stay with me.”

“If I choose to be with you. What if one day I change my mind?”

“That’s another benefit of being my son. It would break my heart then, rather than now, but I would give you what you want. At least then, I would know you had tried, but I suspect, just a little time with me, and you would never want to leave. All the things that have made life so intolerable for you would end. I can’t give you the perfection of a placid life, there would be challenges, good times and bad. But you will not be alone, and I will love you more than any son could hope of their father.”

Elias sat there a moment trying to control his breath and his emotions, blinking away the wet from his eyes. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted,” he said, and Ronan hugged him. “If I drank the Ambrosia, what would it do to me? You said I’m half centaur. Would I end up with hooves?”

He sat back and thought about it. “I don’t know. Fortunately, you wouldn’t have to go through the unpleasant process of apotheosis as Liam had; being my son, you are already a demigod. I suspect that most of the typical demigod powers and centaur characteristics are lying dormant until you power up. At that point, they should manifest themselves. I don’t know how much ambrosia it will take to fully charge you or how fast the changes will manifest, but I can pretty much guarantee changes will occur. I can have hooves if I want them, and they’re pretty cool, but I admit, they’re less versatile than human feet, so if you end up hoofed and don’t want them, I can change it.”

“If I end up with drastically apparent changes, how would I explain that to anyone who knows me?”

“Don’t worry about it; I’ll take care of it. If you want, you can leave Elias Adrianus behind. You can take on a new name with this new life, and I can make it where no one remembers you other than with the new name and appearance, all else will remain the same.”

“So, you can do all that,” said Elias, “…and you’re my father.”

“Yep. You’re welcome to take my surname if you want. But please, never be afraid to tell anyone that I’m your father because I will never deny that you’re my son. Being my son means you no longer must run when people wonder why you’re still in your late twenties. I won’t get older, none of our family will get older, and neither will you, which means everyone will just have to accept us as we are and move on.”

“I hated having to reset my life every so often.”

“This time don’t think of it as resetting your life. Think of it as finally leaving all that behind to join the family that loves and wants you. If you want this to be permanent, it is.”

Elias took a deep breath and laughed a little. “I can’t believe I’m doing this because I had my mind set on dying one day, but okay, I’ll take the Ambrosia.”

“You might want to get out of that suit first. It could grow tight rather quickly.”

“What about Cousin Emma over here?”

“If you’re shy, she’s a goddess, she’s seen more dick than you can imagine. You might be surprised at how many gods never wear clothing.”

“I never do,” said Hephaestus.

Ronan asked him, “If I asked you to wear clothing when it was important, would you?”

A broad smile bloomed on Hephaestus’s handsome face. “After what you’ve done for me, I will do anything you ask.”

Emma told Elias, “I saw you naked on the beach when the hotel was destroyed. It would be nothing new.”

“Oh, very well.” He stood and began removing his clothing. He laid his jacket on the back of the couch. “I’m glad you stopped Time, so no one will interrupt this.”

“I should tell you, I have only one rule for anyone I help this way. Never use the power I give you for evil. So, don’t go out of your way to hurt people; you can lose what I give you.”

Elias unbuttoned his vest and nodded a little. “I understand. You have people to protect, just as you would protect me. That’s a rock bottom, bare minimum thing to ask, and I think that’s more than fair.”

“Thank you for saying that son. That means a lot to me.”

“I think I like you calling me son.” Elias tried to smile as he loosened his tie and removed it. “May I call you Father?”

“You sure can.”

Elias began unbuttoning his shirt, smiled, and shook his head a little. “All this feels so strange, and you’re right, if I’m going to do this, why not go all the way and just change my name as well? Over the years, I invented so many names for myself, and I often wanted to break up the monotony by going with something unusual, but I always chickened out and went with something sedate and boring. When I chose Elias Adrianus, I just liked the sound of it.”

“It’s a nice name,” said Emma.

He shrugged, and nodded a little, removing his shirt. “And I’m not attached to it any more than my previous names, and I’ve had so many. They held no meaning for me, and the name Aquila was awful. I couldn’t imagine why mother named me that.”

“I’m certain Zeus made her do it,” said Ronan. “It means Eagle, one of Zeus’s symbols.”

“It figures.” He untied his shoes, kicked them off, and removed his socks.

“So,” said Hephaestus, “what name would you like to have?”

“If I’m half centaur, Something Something Stallion seems appropriate.” He pulled off his pants and underwear together, and his penis dangled a bit more than halfway down his thigh.

“Well, aren’t you just a chip off the old cock,” said Ronan. “Is that ten inches?”

Elias nodded. “And twelve erect.”

“That’s a decent size for a colt like you, but don’t be surprised if that changes with the Ambrosia.”

“Really? How big are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Wow…that’s definitely horse-like, but I’ll accept whatever happens with it.”

“You have no body hair at all,” said Hephaestus.

“Yes, and I’ve never understood that,” said Elias. “And I’ve always just had the average body type.”

“I suspect,” said Ronan, “all that was intentional. It makes you look more human.”

Elias picked up the Ambrosia.

“That’s a special glass,” said Ronan. “Drink it all, and it will refill itself, so keep drinking entire glasses of it until you just can’t drink more.”

 

[RHHorst]

Chapter 8e

Elias tipped it back and the instant it touched his tongue, he began chugging it. He couldn’t believe the taste and planned to drink a lot more before he even finished downing the first glass. “That was delicious!” He held the glass vertical, and it began to fill from the bottom with Ambrosia. Within moments he felt it, and it grew in intensity, he told Ronan, “I think I’m starting to feel you!” He began to drink more.

“It’s likely to grow stronger.”

Hephaestus said, “I thought no one could manifest Ambrosia.”

“Ronan is the exception,” said Emma.

They watched as Elias guzzled one glass after another of the golden liquid, and his body absorbed it immediately like every cell had become an energy sponge. The more he drank, the more his body changed. His muscles grew, his body hair came in, the configuration looking just like Ronan’s. He had the same reddish-brown hair color as Chiron. A chest full of curls began appearing, and a much thicker pelt of hair—almost fur-like—filled in from his iliac furrow downward, and like Ronan, it covered his buttocks, but he had no pubic hair and none on his genitals.

Unlike Liam, Elias never seemed to look bloated and full. He just grew bigger with every glass. He downed three glasses, five, eight, but by the time he reached ten, he had to stop, leaving the goblet mostly full. Hephaestus reached for it, Elias handed it to him, and the blacksmith began chugging as much as he could.

“Wow,” said Elias to Ronan, “my being close to you is so distracting!”

“I think we’ll grow accustomed to it over time. I thought when I gave Liam and William a spark like yours to protect them and make them invulnerable, I would feel them the way I feel you, but I don’t. It’s just your singular presence out in the world. They’re not my son, I guess that’s the difference.”

Elias gestured to his body. “So, how big am I?

“You look about the size of a professional gymnast ready for the Olympics,” said Ronan, “but how do you feel?”

“Incredible. And I’m still growing; I can feel it. I’m glad I removed the suit. Sadly, I have a closet at home full of expensive and unwearable Armani.”

“Which would you rather have,” asked Ronan, “this or the suits?”

“No contest, this. Absolutely, THIS.” He bent over and put his hands on his knees as he stood there. “Well, I see no hooves coming in, so I think I might have dodged that bullet, but my body hair is strange, and look at this thing!” He lifted his penis from his newly muscled thighs. “It’s gained a couple of inches. So, overall, how do I look?”

“You look like a handsome, very fit half-centaur,” said Emma. “I wouldn’t toss you out of bed.”

Elias’s brows rose. “You’re my cousin, and I’m not from the backwoods of Appalachia!”

They all laughed.

“Boy, are you in for a shock when you learn more about the gods,” she said.

“After Felix Raposo, I’m not sure I’m much interested in women, at least for now. I am probably bisexual though.”

“Most of the gods are just sexual,” said Hephaestus.

Ronan stood next to him. “You’re an inch or so taller, but you’ve yet to reach demigod proportions. We’ll keep working on it.” He held his hand out to Hephaestus who almost finished off his fourth glass of Ambrosia. “Glass…”

Hephaestus handed it to him. “That’s the strongest, best-tasting Ambrosia I’ve ever had.”

“That’s because it’s fresh.” From a line of embering, the glass and its remnants burned away to Ronan’s hand. He then placed the hand on Elias’s shoulder where he manifested the current Centaurian uniform for Elias to wear and manifested his own shirt with CENTAURIAN across his chest, and above it, he placed the symbol identical in size and shape to the tattoo on his back.

Elias adjusted his Centaurian appendage and tapped the blank space on his own chest. “What about something for right here?”

“What would you like?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Aren’t sons usually named by their fathers? Why don’t you name me?”

“Alright,” he said and thought about it for a moment. He realized he used the perfect name for him earlier. He held his finger before his son’s chest and said, “I dub thee, my son, Colt Stallion.” He laid his finger on the cloth and a line of embering stitched COLT upon it in a navy-colored thread, below he had placed a half-sized Centaurian symbol. “If you’re wondering, that’s my symbol. From now on, everyone, everywhere who has ever known you as Elias Adrianus has now only ever known you as Colt Stallion with your current appearance, and I even changed your IDs.

He stood there open-mouthed. “I’m blown away you can do that so easily.” He hugged Ronan. “Thank you.”

Ronan pulled back and put his arm around him. “I need to catch Emma and you up on what’s happened. I froze Zeus in Time on Olympus. As I said before, he’s done something, but I don’t know what. It may have to do with Liam. Emma, had you seen anything unusual before you came here?”

“Liam had gone to the cabin you shared, I kissed William goodbye before I went in search of Colt, and nothing seemed any different when I left.”

“Okay,” Ronan turned to Colt. “If you have anything to bring, you should get it. We need to get to the ship and look around.”

As Colt retrieved his smartphone, wallet, and passport, tucking them into the waistband of his pants, Hephaestus manifested a uniform like Ronan’s. It had HEPHAESTUS across his chest with an anvil and hammer symbol above it.

“Very nice,” said Ronan.

“I’ll get used to it.”

“I’m ready when you are,” said Colt.

Once Ronan restarted Time, he took his son’s hand. As they formed a line and stepped forward a few paces, the office they stood in rapidly blended into the hallway of the ship just outside the cabins, and as they completed the teleportation, the office faded away.

“That sure beats air travel,” said Colt.

They checked the cabins, and both lay empty.

“This is a big ship,” said Ronan. “Let’s get to the bridge and page him from there.” He raced up the staircase two steps at a time, the others on his heels.

They reached the bridge and found William there in his Centaurian uniform with the crew.

“Ronan!” said the captain. “William tells me that you restored the ship. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, captain. This is my good friend Hephaestus, and this is my son, Colt. Has either of you seen Liam? Have there been any strange occurrences apart from the ship’s renewal and the fact that I moved us to Genoa?”

“I’m glad you asked,” said William. “I have looked for Liam, and I can’t seem to find him. I just paged him a minute ago. I’ve heard nothing so far.”

“Nothing else has occurred that we’ve noticed,” said the captain.

“I’ve stopped Time twice since I left and little actual Time has passed from then until now. He should be here.”

“It’s as we feared,” said Emma, “Zeus has done something with him.”

Ronan could feel the anger swell inside him, and he knew he would need help. “Emma, William, Hephaestus, Colt, I need you to come with me. We’re going to Olympus to confront Zeus.”

William asked, “What could we do to help against Zeus?”

He looked them in their faces. “I need you there because your presence will stop me from doing something stupid that I’ll regret.”

 

[RHHorst]

Chapter 9a

Chronos, the primordial god of Time, had grown accustomed to knowing all events on the timeline, and for as much as his knowing could burden him, it conveyed a sense of order and logic that he appreciated. It often pained him how language could not comment upon it without grotesque inaccuracies like the crude simplicity of cause “A” leading to effect “B”. It stripped away all nuance leaving little else but false impressions, like a five-year old’s black and white drawing of a universe that had decillions of colors. But he also knew that if language could depict a genuine description of the relationships between causes and effects, it would ultimately lose its audience in its profundity. However, as it stood, the complexities of Time, and all it entailed, defied description. He alone could comprehend, in its fullness, the beautiful tapestry of the universe’s seemingly infinite number of causal chains, and as such, he thought of it as a work of art in his own private gallery.

No one noticed the furry muscle god and his concerned expression atop the staircase at the entrance to the bridge. He watched as Ronan invited Emma, William, Hephaestus, and Colt with him to Olympus. Wanting to show his support for them, as they turned to leave, they saw him dressed in a Centaurian uniform like Ronan’s. His shirt held a depiction of an hourglass made from a lemniscate—an infinity symbol—with the name CHRONOS stitched into the fabric.

“Angus,” said Ronan, surprised to see him. “Is something wrong?”

“We should talk,” he said.

Ronan turned to his companions. “Pardon me, I must stop Time for a moment.” And he did so.

Angus entered the bridge and stared at the others.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ronan. “Have I done something?”

“Yes,” he said, “but I carry the fault, and it’s complicated so bear with me. As I said, I have never had anyone but myself capable of stopping Time, and I have never unlocked anyone with Time stopped, so this is unusual. The experience of Time is linear, and events—with a minimum of randomness—are largely a matter of cause and effect, but those causes and effects have always occurred on the timeline. However, you’re having to stop Time just to get things done—and given your perspective, understandably so—but many large events are happening off the timeline, and it has fractured the timeline’s continuity, a problem exacerbated by the inclusion of many unlocked people during these extra-timeline events. They create ripple effects that appear to have no causes. If that’s not clear, please let me know.”

“I unlocked over two-hundred gods on Olympus.”

“Yes, and it’s making the timeline messy, which is a real problem, not because it damages the timeline per se (it’s pretty forgiving), but because it hinders my ability to help you. I must apologize for this necessity, but since I only know events that happen on the timeline, I have had to secretly follow you to help mitigate the problem, so the faster we get back to the timeline the better. From what I can see, things smooth out soon, but I think that happens from this conversation, and I think I help you here, so we can get back to normal. You could create a great many extra-timeline events trying to coax Zeus into telling you what he has done with Liam, but I can tell you from what I know of him, he would reveal nothing. I wish to spare you that. I hope you know by now that I can’t do this for you by giving you the final solution—that would be T.M.I. (Too Much Information). However, I have a tiny tidbit that I believe I should give you because I don’t know how you get it; you do not receive it on the timeline. I worry that it’s my doing, and if I hold to my usual code of silence, by choosing not to tell you, I might alter events. Perhaps, from that alone, you can see how messy this is getting. So here it is, ask Emma about Métis.”

“Ask Emma about Métis. Got it. I apologize for making a mess of the timeline.”

“You’re just doing what you must,” said Chronos. “So that you know, if you must stop Time, keep the number of people unlocked with you to a bare minimum; it helps to reduce the problem. Here’s why this is so important. Even with all your power, this is a limitation for us both. Events are accessible along the main timeline because of its perpetual existence.”

“Right.”

“The moment we stop Time, as now, we begin a secondary timeline and any event that occurs on that secondary timeline is only accessible to us while that timeline is active. If something should happen on a secondary timeline that has damaged the main timeline, you can’t go back to that secondary timeline to search for its cause to change it because it no longer exists.”

“Oh… Well, no wonder you’ve followed me around. So, none of the secondaries are connected.”

Chronos shook his head. “If you should stop Time again later, you are beginning a new secondary timeline, independent of all the others. Once they end when you restart Time, they vanish.”

“We really do need to get back to the timeline then. Thank you. I’m glad you’re telling me this.”

“I’m pleased you understand,” said Chronos. “I will leave you to it.” He descended the staircase.

“Thank you, Angus.”

Ronan turned to Emma and unlocked her. “Hey.”

She smiled a little and looked around. “Where’s Chronos? Is something wrong?”

“Apparently, I’m making a mess of the timeline by all these off-timeline events, like the one we’re having right now, and the more people unlocked with Time stopped the worse the mess gets. He says that we need to get back to the timeline as quickly as possible, so he gave me a hint. He told me that I should ask you about Métis. The name is familiar to me, but what can you tell me about her?”

“Métis…,” she said, sounding almost nostalgic, “I haven’t heard or thought of that name in centuries, but I think I know why he told you to ask. Métis was the goddess of wisdom and good counsel, Zeus’s first wife, and Athena’s mother. Someone prophesied that she would bear two of Zeus’s children, and both would have great power, but the second, was a son who would dethrone him. So, Zeus followed his father’s example, tricked Métis into turning herself into a fly, and swallowed her. Unfortunately for Zeus, she had already gotten pregnant. Somehow, she made her way to his head, and she gave birth to Athena who grew there, causing him terrible headaches. When it became unbearable, he asked Hephaestus to crack open his head with an ax, and Athena leaped from Zeus’s head fully formed and wearing armor.”

Ronan laughed. “Uh-huh,” he said, with a look of extreme skepticism. “How can that possibly be true?”

“Because, like yourself, the gods are more than we appear. You continue to view yourself as a physical being, but you’re not. I find it charming that you prefer to live in the illusion that you’re more biological than you are, and I understand why you prefer it, but we are energy beings. We have these bodies as a conduit for experiencing this universe, so we may have the ability to touch and sense and fully feel our emotions. We intuitively understand that this”—she patted her chest—“is living, but as pure energy, we would have only existence. That is how Zeus can survive an ax cutting open his head to release his fully formed daughter.”

“I see. So, what happened to Métis?”

“Zeus sealed himself up again, keeping her trapped inside his head. Zeus said that she became pure thought and has the same role she had before he swallowed her…as his wise counsel.”

Ronan tipped his head in disbelief. “Ha! Right. I’m more inclined to believe the ax in the head story.”

“Well,” she said, “I saw Hephaestus wielding the ax, so I can attest that it’s true, however, we have only Zeus’s word about Métis, and it would be an easy lie.”

“Angus had me ask you for a reason, and the only one that makes sense is if she’s still there, and she knows where Zeus took Liam.”

“I agree. Why do you call him Angus?”

“That’s a story you’ll have to hear another time. I have a question to ask you, and I want you to think hard about this, and decide what you want. Would you like to leave Dolos behind? You could stop having to find ways around your trickster nature to help someone and you could become Erastís. Whatever you want, Emma, it’s yours.”

She smiled. “I appreciate the offer. I have yet to tell William; he may not want me once he knows.”

“If he rejects you, that’s his prerogative, but in that event, let me talk to him. What sort of relationship would you want with him?”

“You may not know this, but I never married, and I’m unsure how I feel about marriage. So, while I hesitate to get my hopes up, I would love it if he was my companion and lover.” She took a deep breath and leaned her back against the wall. “Perhaps, William and I should stay aboard the ship; we should have that conversation, and it would mean two fewer people to unlock when you get to Olympus.”

-------

The moment Ronan, Colt, and Hephaestus arrived on Olympus, the sun still shined high in the sky, but they found the once pristine marble mosaic of the courtyard fractured and sullied with piles of debris. Someone or something had mangled the gates and destroyed its surrounding columned structure.

A booming voice echoed, “Zeus!” Then came the sound of beating wings and a thunderous boom, followed by a shower of gold and marble chunks from the citadel which rained over the cliff edge behind them with lesser bits falling into the courtyard. Ronan stopped Time with a snap of his fingers. The sun in the sky vanished as though he had flicked a light switch, rendering all around them barely viewable in the glow from their mingled time-fields.

“Who the hell was that?” asked Colt.

Ronan shook his head and shrugged.

“You’ve mostly kept Time stopped,” said Hephaestus, “and only a few actual minutes have passed since we left Zeus frozen here earlier, so whoever that is, they must have just gotten here.”

“I will fly up and see who we’re dealing with,” said Ronan.

“Can you fly?” asked Colt.

Ronan burned away his shirt. “Should that really surprise you at this point? You two might want to move to the side of the courtyard. On the way up, my time-field will likely unlock a bit of falling debris. If your time-fields keep it unlocked, it might fall on you. While I’m gone, get to Zeus. We’ll meet there.”

As they backed away, Ronan turned, manifested his giant white wings, and took to the air causing some rock already in transit to fall farther as he rose into the sky.

Colt watched in amazement as Ronan flew out of sight and earshot. He asked, “Is my father a god?”

“No, I think he’s something better. We should go.” He gazed upon Ronan’s son, smiled a little, and began leading him to the citadel above. They tromped through the debris to the gate. “I think you’re a handsome man. Would you go out with me? That is the phrase, isn’t it, go out?”

“But you’re my first cousin,” said Colt.

“I have news for you,” he said as they climbed over the ruins, “all the gods are related. However, if that matters to you, just remember, you could never have my children. Beyond that one concern, is there anything applicable keeping us apart?” He helped him navigate some larger pieces of marble.

“You mean, other than the fact that I find you so shockingly attractive that you’re well out of my league?”

“We have both seen one another naked,” said Hephaestus. “All that should matter is that I liked what I saw. How about you?”

Colt raked his eyes over Hephaestus’s body and jumped from the block he stood upon. “Of course, I liked it.”

“Have you ever cheated in any of your past relationships?”

“No, definitely not.”

“In that case,” he said ushering Colt to the shortcut, “you sound perfect to me. If we do well together, I would swear upon the risk of ruining my reputation with your father, that I would be good to you, and I would never cheat.”

“You barely know me, and already you speak of relationships. I’ve never had a relationship with a man.”

“Good,” he said, “neither have I. Zeus had arranged my previous marriages, and they both cheated. I figured if I could make my own choices, I would choose you. You are desirable, so I would feel awful if I held back and squandered this opportunity.”

“When we get settled somewhere,” said Colt, “I will agree to a date, and we’ll see how it goes.”

“May we have sex on the first date?”

“Looking at you, it would disappoint me if we didn’t.” Colt smiled to himself, as they entered the passage.

-------

The landscape of Olympus followed the shape of the mountain, and Zeus’s palace lay at the top. The peak of the mountain held his highest and most favorite throne, enabling him to look down upon all his kingdom and subjects.

Every beat of Ronan’s wings lifted him toward the peak. He manifested time-spheres in his palms to use them as searchlights. Swooping upward at the top when he saw the damaged building, he realized he stared down the throat of a giant snake with fangs that matched his height.

“Shit! Don’t touch the snake!” Ronan struggled to back away with the tips of his wings coming within inches of unlocking the creature frozen in a wide-mouthed, standing posture

The light from the time-spheres hadn’t provided enough light, so he backed much farther away, increased their intensity, and released them to illuminate all of Olympus, and he saw the massive culprit.

Typhon—known as the father of monsters and the youngest son of Gaia and Tartarus—had an immensity that one might expect of a Titan, one-quarter the size of Olympus. He had the head and muscular torso of a man, the massive wings of a demon, and giant vipers for arms and legs. Ronan had caught him mid-flight, and the time-spheres unlocked the air around him. Unable to keep himself aloft by his wings, the shadow beneath Typhon caused him to drift down from his position as if he weighed no more than a feather. He would have crashed upon the buildings below, but the closer he came to the roofs, the shadow would grow darker, slowing his descent to a stop before causing damage to them. Once Time restarted, however, they would bear his full weight. The beast had destroyed Zeus’s palace, flattening and pulverizing what he hadn’t ejected from the mountaintop.

 

[RHHorst]

Chapter 9b

Ronan flipped his body in the air to change direction, soaring to the courtyard at Zeus’s temple below.

With Time stopped, Zeus and the other frozen gods had once again become visible. It showed them in slightly muted tones like everything that hadn’t had a time-field of its own. Colt and Hephaestus joined Ronan as he stood before Zeus staring at him.

“So, what will you do about Typhon?” asked Hephaestus.

“For now, nothing,” he said. “Frozen in Time, he’s of no danger to anyone. Zeus is a more pressing matter. I can’t unlock him without taking his power, so when I take it, what should I do with it? Neither of you will get this reference, but it’s sort of like Emma and the inches from the men aboard ship, I can’t just hold onto it, it must go somewhere.”

“Inches?” asked Colt.

Ronan laughed. “It’s a funny story. Remind me to tell you later.”

“I think that Zeus could absorb the power of a god for quite a while,” said Hephaestus. “He would have done that with Poseidon, so you probably could absorb it.”

He turned to him, his face an expression of having scented something rotten. “I consider his power tainted, so thank you for the idea but no.”

“You have only one other option I can see,” said Colt. “Use a container of some kind.”

“That’s what I was considering,” said Ronan. “What container is strong enough?”

“If you froze it in Time,” he said, “a container wouldn’t need a lot of strength, would it?”

“That’s a good point,” said Hephaestus.

“What do you intend to do with it once you have it?” asked Colt.

“Not sure,” said Ronan, “but I probably won’t give it back to him.”

“In my opinion,” said Hephaestus, “a powerless person who sits on a throne is no monarch. If you take and keep Zeus’s power from him, you’re the king. Is that what you want?”

“Would that really be so bad?” asked Colt. “After all, what is a good king but a leader? You’re already that without the label.”

“There’s far more to being a monarch than just acting as a leader,” said Ronan. “But I seek neither a kingdom nor followers to lead. You are my friends and my son,”—he put his arm around Colt—“and I love you all very much. I’ve just wanted to help people, and for now, Liam needs my help the most. Whether I ever return Zeus’s power to him remains in question, but that he must lose it for now, is certain. Thank you for the idea, son. That’s what I’ll do.”

“How will you remove his power?” Colt asked.

“I’ll siphon it off him like this…”

Hephaestus rested his hands on Colt’s shoulders. “Let’s not stand too close.” He moved them back a few feet.

They watched as Ronan held out his hands and acted as though he pulled long and powerful lines of fiber from Zeus which he imitated as though he were spinning threads onto a single strand that wound around itself, and as he did, Colt watched as though his father had lost his mind because nothing was happening. When Ronan finished, he said, “See? Just like that.”

“Okay,” said Colt, “I’m impressed by your pantomimical theatrics, but let’s see you actually do it.”

“I just did,” he said. “It’s done. Now, I need a container for it.”

Colt tipped his head back and glanced up at Hephaestus’s grinning face, looking for some shared skepticism. “He’s pulling my leg, isn’t he?”

Ronan smiled. “Watch and learn.” He moved to the side of where he had stood as they looked on. He held his hands out with his palms open as though he would catch a fly, and he paused before shouting, “Now!” The king unfroze, and Zeus wailed while his power extruded from every pore in thin fibers of golden light, and it spun together and wound itself onto a ball of glowing string at the exact spot Ronan meant it to. As it continued, Ronan waited, his hands at the ready.

“I have been patient with you, Zeus,” said Ronan. “You have grown so comfortable with bullying and hurting others with impunity. But I had warned you; I’m not putting up with your shit.”

As the last of Zeus’s power left him, he fell to his hands and knees. Ronan manifested two halves of a diamond sphere and encapsulated the brilliant light before him. He twisted the two halves together and froze them in Time. As he held the crystalline container, lines of embering surrounded it in a layer of adamantine, and a layer of gold until he held a perfect golden sphere. He then applied a layer of cork and finally a white leather cover with the familiar red stitching around it and printed it with the words “Zeus” and “Powerball”.

“He held no more energy than that?” Colt asked. “It wasn’t much.”

“The power in this is coherent, stable, and ultra concentrated,” said Ronan. “If I hadn’t bothered it would probably end up the size of a beach ball. Here catch.” He gave it a little toss. “I’m placing you in charge of that until I ask for it back.”

“A baseball?”

“A last-second decision. I couldn’t resist.”

Hephaestus took Zeus’s arm and lifted him to his feet. He looked a little pale and weakened.

“You’ll regret this,” said Zeus.

“You and I need to have a talk,” said Ronan.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“A narcissist like you with nothing to say. I find that unlikely.”

Zeus looked at Hephaestus who held his left arm and he read his shirt. “Who are you? You’re not Hephaestus.”

He ignored the question, and asked Ronan, “What now?”

Ronan manifested a set of handcuffs and proceeded to cuff him. “Zeus, I’m placing you under arrest for the abduction of Liam Phillips. The only right you have is the right to tell me what you’ve done with him.”

“I might tell you if you tortured me, but you’re too weak to do it.”

Ronan drew close to Zeus’s ear. “I’ve already done something far worse to you.” He then turned and placed his hand on the golden door of Zeus’s temple behind him. He gave the entire building its own time-field and proceeded to reconfigure the inside.

Upon opening the door, the spacious columned room with the reflecting pool and the giant marble statue of Zeus, which had sat at the far end, Ronan replaced with a classy Art Deco interior of a police station in bronzes, silvers, coppers, and various grays, lit by overhead and sconce lighting that used time-spheres for bulbs.

“I’m impressed,” said Colt.

“I’ve seen a similar interior before,” said Ronan, “but I can’t remember where. It was probably a movie.”

“It would look better in gold,” said Zeus.

“Oh, what would you know?” asked Hephaestus. “When I redesigned Olympus, they wouldn’t let me do anything interesting. They all wanted gold and marble, marble and gold. Ugh… what a bore.”

Zeus looked up into his face and his brows drew together. “You are Hephaestus?”

“That’s right,” he said, “no thanks to you. Ronan removed and reversed your curse.”

The interview room off to the left held a plain ebony wood table and chairs reminiscent of interrogation rooms of ages past with a single pendant light above it. Hephaestus shoved Zeus into the single chair on one side, and Ronan attached the links in the cuffs to the clip built into the tabletop.

“We have only two other chairs,” said Ronan. “Hephaestus, may Colt sit on your knee?”

Colt whispered to his father, “Not subtle, are you?”

Ronan took a seat. “I’ve seen how you both look at each other.”

“As long as I have a knee, Colt will always have somewhere to sit”—Hephaestus patted his right leg—“providing he promises not to keep his hands to himself.”

Colt turned his gaze upon his father with a smirky smile.

“You’re welcome,” said Ronan, watching his son—baseball in hand—settle onto the leg Hephaestus offered him.

Ronan manifested a small clear dish that held a thin layer of Ambrosia. He gave it a sniff. “Mmm…I’ve made this one extra pungent,” he said to Zeus. “Would you like a whiff?” He waved it under Zeus’s nose, and when he smelled it, his head followed the dish as Ronan passed it before him. With a gentle hand, he laid the dish on the table just out of Zeus’s reach.

“You can manifest Ambrosia,” said Zeus.

“I’ve manifested quite a lot. I’m surprised you’ve just learned of it.”

“I wasn’t always watching you.”

“Apparently so,” Ronan said. “Do you know why you’re here?”

“Because I did to you what you just did to me. I took from you what you love most.”

“In an immediate sense, yes, but in the broader scope, no, that’s not why you’re here. Care to give it another guess?”

He kept eye contact with Ronan but turned his head a little. “Because I attacked the ship.”

“It makes sense that you would expect me to act out of vengeance, but no, that’s not the reason either.”

“Prometheus wants my throne,” he said with a little smile. “That’s it, isn’t it? He wanted revenge after I punished him for giving fire to the humans.”

Ronan shook his head. “Prometheus doesn’t want it, but you hadn’t punished Prometheus, you tortured him, just as you have many others over the centuries. That is why you are here.”

“So, all this is because I punished them like gods and not as mortals. Should I have incarcerated them in a place that would make them worse criminals by the time they leave? Or would you rather I sent them to bed without supper or put them in time-out for an hour?”

Ronan said, “I understand that gods would require a different sort of punishment from a mortal, but torture isn’t punishment.”

“It is for a god,” he said. “I punished Prometheus with pain longer than I had anyone else, and it only lasted seventy-nine years.”

“Oh…only seventy-nine…”

“You continue to look at this from a limited mortal perspective,” said Zeus. “For an immortal being, a billion years is nothing.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, it is something when you willfully go out of your way to hurt someone, and everyone has their psychological breaking point, even gods.”

“Of course, they do,” he said, “how do you think I know when they’ve had enough? I should never have taken Chiron’s offer; Prometheus was still defiant.”

“Then you admit you only tortured any of them to break them.”

“That’s the purpose of punishment!” yelled Zeus.

“There’s a difference between giving a penalty for an infraction and subjecting them to cruelty. When you tortured someone, your efforts had not intended to do anything but destroy their agency, to supplant their will for yours, and don’t tell me you don’t see a difference. When Hera, Athena, Apollo, and Poseidon tried to overthrow you for your tyranny, you hung Hera by her hands from the sky using golden chains with anvils attached to her feet and you forced her to stare into the abyss.”

“That only lasted four days.”

“I don’t care how long it lasted, it’s torture! And I know you know the difference because you only punished Apollo and Poseidon. You took away their power and made them work for King Laomedon for wages for a while. So, you do know the difference. Why would you use torture if you know another way?”

“My divine will is sovereign.”

“That might still play well in the nosebleed section where they can’t see what you are, but those of us who sit near the orchestra will not accept that. To us, you’re an obvious tyrant. That’s what has started all this, and why you’re here.” Ronan’s eyes stared upon his quarry. “Did you enjoy torturing them?”

“Again, what you call torture,” said Zeus, “I call punishment, and I never punished them for my enjoyment.”

“Wow,” said Colt, “you spoke around that question so smoothly one would think you were a politician.”

“Indeed,” said Ronan, “Just because you hadn’t ‘punished’ them for your enjoyment wouldn’t mean that you hadn’t enjoyed it.”

“So, what if I did?” he asked. “I’m King of the Gods. I do as I please.”

“You mean were King of the Gods and did as you pleased,” said Hephaestus. “All that’s in the past now.”

“Things would have been far worse without me,” said Zeus. “They needed a heavy hand. You don’t know what they were like.”

“They reflected your leadership,” said Ronan. “You hadn’t brought out the best in them, they just followed your awful example. Not that I can fully blame you for that. After all, your example swallowed your siblings.”

Ronan noticed a twitch in Zeus’s left eye.

“Would you like another sniff of Ambrosia?” asked Ronan. “He lifted the dish and waved it under Zeus’s nose again. Unable to stop himself, he inhaled its scent, and the twitch of his left eye happened again.

“What will you do with me?” asked Zeus.

“You’ve accepted that I have more power than you?”

“You can take away my power, and you can manifest Ambrosia. None of the gods can do that, so what are you?”

“I’m unsure what I am, specifically,” he said, “but I can tell you what I was not. I was not a threat to you until you believed the lie about how I would dethrone you, and you made me a threat to you by your own actions. So, you turned a lie into a prophecy, and you ensured it was fulfilled.”

Zeus stared at the table in thought.

“This isn’t the first time that’s happened though. Our father Cronus did the same thing. Uranus told him one of his children would dethrone him, and only by his belief in its truth had he acted in a way that ensured it came true. If our father were an amazing parent, loving, good, and kind. You all would have loved him so much that the thought of overthrowing him would have been unthinkable, but he just couldn’t do that. Evil begets evil, but that cycle ends with me.”

When the twitch in Zeus’s eye became more pronounced, Ronan waved the Ambrosia under Zeus’s nose again.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m helping your captive find her way out of your head.”

His eyes went wide. “No!”

Ronan yelled into Zeus’s face. “Métis, if you can hear me, exit through his sinus.”

Zeus could feel the fly inside his head moving around, and the moment he sensed her in his sinus, he began to sniff hard like he had a head cold. Ronan manifested a feather and began tickling Zeus’s nose with it. It had reached the point he couldn’t control it, he inhaled twice, and his face contorted into a grimace while trying to hold it in.

“Give it up, Zeus. Not even you have the power to overcome the compulsion to sneeze.”

Zeus squeezed his eyes shut and with the force strong enough to strain his vocal cords, he violently convulsed, blowing Métis from his head. They could hear the buzzing wings of the fly as she soared around the room. Ronan held out the dish of Ambrosia in his palm. The fly went right to it and began drinking. “Once you’ve had enough to transform yourself, I will heal you. I promise you’ll feel better in no time.”

With a hoarse voice, Zeus said, “I will have her loyalty no matter what I may have done. She loves me.”

“Ha!” said Ronan. “You wish…”

 

[RHHorst]

Chapter 9c

“How long was she in there?” asked Colt.

“Thousands of years,” said Hephaestus. “Since the end of the Titanomachy.”

Ronan set the dish onto the floor, and within a minute Métis had drunk enough to transform back into herself. It happened slowly and with struggle. Zeus held her captive in a confined space the whole time, and only Ronan’s removal of Zeus’s power allowed her to break free. As she transformed, she couldn’t manifest herself some clothes, she stretched and had trouble standing upright, but once she had, she turned, saw Ronan, and began to cry from relief. As Ronan hugged her, she wrapped her arms around him. After he healed her of her aches and pains, he gave her some power and manifested her some clothing, a snowy white chiton like the one Hera wore. She kissed Ronan on the cheek, thanked him, and walked over to the table where Zeus sat, his hands manacled to the table. She reared back with her right hand and slapped Zeus hard enough to have knocked out most anyone else’s teeth.

“You bastard!” she yelled into his face. “How dare you betray me! And to think I loved you. I can’t kill you, but you are dead to me!” She turned to Ronan. “It’s a good thing you can stop Time, he took Liam to the underworld. He wanted to drop him into Tartarus, but Hades stopped him. Zeus was so angry over it that he immediately teleported to Mount Etna and released Typhon from the underground chamber. He will come to Olympus and destroy everything.”

“Typhon is already here. I froze him in Time.”

Zeus tipped his head back in indignation. “I figured if I can’t have Olympus, then no one will.”

“Why hadn’t you taken him to Tartarus?” asked Ronan.

“I tried, but Etna was as close as I could get him. That’s how dangerous he is. I wish I had known you could stop Time. I doubt you could win if you fought him in a fair fight as I had. Using your ability to stop Time is cowardly and cheating.”

“Oh!” He sat across from Zeus again. “I guess I’ll have to fight him now, just to prove to you my bravery because I so value your opinion.” He shook his head and laughed. “You’re pathetic. I can’t imagine why any of the gods support you, but you have given me my answer to what I will do with you. If your throne means so much to you, I insist that you keep it.” He leaned in close. “You wanted Typhon to destroy Olympus, but he only destroyed your palace and thrones before I stopped him, so I will leave you to reign as king for all eternity from the remnants of Typhon’s rampage. I will ensure that future generations remember you as nothing more than Zeus, the Mad Tyrant King of Olympus, and a prime example of the follies of cruelty, unkindness, and greed. But not to worry, your wife Hera will be right here with you. I wouldn’t want to separate you when it’s clear you deserve each other.” He froze Zeus in Time, stood, and turned to his companions to make plans.

Hephaestus would return Colt to the ship, and Métis had requested that she see her daughter Athena, so Hephaestus would take her to the secret house.

Once Ronan took care of the Typhon problem, he turned all of Olympus into a unique kind of cage. He couldn’t allow any of them to hurt people or start a civil war. So, he did the only thing he could do, given the circumstances. Apart from Zeus, all the other gods on Olympus would keep their power, but it would only have any effect within the shield he placed around the entire complex atop Mount Olympus. Among all the gods, only Zeus could break The Great Seal preventing anyone from teleporting away from Olympus. And with Zeus’s power gone, he couldn’t break the seal or teleport himself away. Ronan hadn’t exactly imprisoned them though, not even Zeus. They had three choices. They could stay and keep their power. They could evolve, and if so, they could send word to Ronan, at which point, they would talk about it. Or they could just choose to walk out, but in choosing to pass through the fully restored gate, they chose to pay the price for their freedom. The shield would absorb their power, and they would find themselves on Earth to live out the remainder of their days as a human. Once Ronan restored the natural flow of Time, he gave them the news of their situation, and they were not happy, making many empty threats. Afterward, Ronan left them to contemplate their lives there as he journeyed to the underworld on his own.

-------

Unlike with Olympus, one doesn’t teleport to the underworld without an open invitation. Just as the rites for the dead had structure and customs, Hades had structure and customs in his realm, and he took those things seriously. Hades could be a stickler on formality. Ronan felt that by Hades having saved Liam, he owed it to him to honor his traditions, and enter through the front door as any respectful visitor should. Of all the gods, he wanted to keep on the good side of Hades most.

On his path to the underworld, he crossed the divine terminator to the dark side of the realm, the side influenced by many deities like Nyx—the primordial goddess of the night but presided over in whole by Hades himself. Before the darkness, however, came the twilight.

Lost in thought, Ronan repeatedly tossed the baseball he carried as he strolled the pathway in the growing darkness. He caught it label-side up, displaying the word TYPHON.

He had followed a trail to the edge of a meadow where he reached darkness and the first of five rivers. On the River Acheron, he found an ancient dock lit by a single lantern hanging from a rusted pole. The darkness and the glowing mist upon the flowing water obscured its opposite shore. Not wishing to lose the ball in the water below, he tightened his grip on it and took a few cautious steps onto the dock and waited for the ferryman. Two lights approached from the mist, and once its origin came into view, he saw some sort of black punt boat. The prow and stern of the ship had curves made to hold lanterns for the punter to see.

Many human authors have described the man who propelled it as generally silent, ugly, and filthy, sometimes wearing a dark cloak with a conical cap, or something a bit more distinguished, but Ronan only saw a slender naked man in his thirties with long dark hair kept in a ponytail. He hadn’t an ounce of fat on him, but otherwise, he looked clean and healthy.

When the man came within earshot he said, “Hello, Ronan.”

When the boat reached the dock, he asked the man, “You are Charon?”

“That’s right. I’m Charon, son of Nyx.”

“It’s good to meet you.” Ronan studied him for a moment. “Forgive me, but you look nothing like any description I’ve ever heard.”

“That’s because not everything in the underworld is as it seems. How I look depends on who I’m picking up. Some people deserve the honor of an armored warrior, or a dashing young man in a nice suit to ferry them, but for others, I’m nothing more than a hideous man in greasy rags. It’s all part of the service, and I always give them what they know they deserve.”

“And I deserve…?”

Charon held out his hand to help him aboard. “The truth. Are you ready?”

“Should I not pay you?”

His mouth tightened, brows lowered, and he shook his head. “Nah, that’s just for the tourists.”

Ronan laughed as he climbed aboard and settled himself on the opposite side from Charon to balance the boat. “I would never have thought you would have a sense of humor.”

“I usually never get a chance to express any humor.” He pushed off from the dock with his punting stick. “Most people I ferry are so morose with all that dread and fear, but I suppose, Acheron isn’t the ‘river of woe’ for nothing.”

“How far can you take me?” Ronan watched as the glowing mist surrounded them.

“I know a shortcut to Hades’s palace, but we still must pass through the Styx, and I guarantee she will stop us. The Goddess Styx has remained a staunch supporter of Zeus since the Titanomachy, and I’ve never known her to keep quiet.”

“Anything important I should know about her?”

“Avoid flattery. She hates that. She hates a lot of things, actually, but then she is the personification of hatred, so that follows.” He thought for a moment. “Ahh… Oh! Kratos was her son, so there’s that too.”

Ronan palmed his face. “Oh, shit…”

“She has a respect for strength of will. That’s why she has stood by Zeus. I have heard how you are, Ronan. You’re a good and kind man. Personally, I find that a pleasant change for someone as powerful as you, but she might have a different opinion.”

“I appreciate the warning.”

They traveled a fair distance, but made a turn, following a narrow and shallow passage through the thickets which barely fit the width of the boat, and Ronan could tell Charon had difficulty punting when the boat’s bottom scraped the bed of his shortcut. Ronan concentrated and holding his hands out he lifted the boat a few inches to allow it to skim the surface, and Charon easily punted them through the channel.

“Thank you,” he said. “I wasn’t sure we would make it.”

“Not a problem,” said Ronan. “I wouldn’t want you to damage your boat just to help me.”

With a lift of his brows, he gave a tiny jerk of his head as he punted along. “You really are unique, aren’t you?”

When they reached the mouth of the channel, the River Styx lay before them, Charon punted into the flowing water, and the moment he had, the boat moved far faster than his punt could account for, and Charon nearly fell from his vessel. An unseen hand dragged the boat counterclockwise in an arc, causing them to go around and around in an ever-tightening spiral. When they reached the middle of the developing whirlpool, the boat turned on its center axis upon a column of water as the rapid swirl around them receded to reveal a ten-foot trough, isolating them from the rest of the river.

Ronan forced the boat to stop spinning, and over the sound of the rushing water that swirled around them, Ronan yelled out, “Styx! Show yourself!”—she seemed disinclined—“Don’t think you have me trapped here. I can leave whenever I like. I’m merely allowing you the chance to speak to me, so if you have something to say, say it now. Otherwise, I’m leaving!”

The rapidly moving trough shallowed enough for a nude woman who emerged from it to walk upon the water around the boat with her head the height of Ronan’s, meeting him eye to eye. It was Styx, the Oceanid, goddess, nymph, daughter of the Titan Oceanus, the personification of hatred, and oath protector. Not ordinary by any means, her aqua-colored skin glowed brightly in the dim light from the lanterns of the boat, and her eyes fixed upon Ronan with an evil, contemptuous glare that might have killed any mortal man. A meticulous braid of hair, the color of the bluish depths Ronan had witnessed in the ocean, circled her head like a garland. He might have thought her beautiful, if not for the hostile expression marring her features. She said nothing for almost a minute as she strode around the boat.

“I’m guessing you’re a tad miffed with me,” he said. “Could we get on with why, please? I have things to do. Is it about Kratos?”

She stopped before Ronan. “You destroyed my son honorably, and he kept his oath to Zeus. I am not angry about that. I think oaths should mean something; wouldn’t you agree?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Not necessarily?” She sounded completely taken aback.

“I find it curious how so many people, including gods, find nuance so alien to them. I understand that it complicates matters, but have the gods no concern for circumstances?”

She looked upon Ronan as if he had spoken a foreign language.

Seeing his words had fallen upon uncomprehending ears, he said, “Let’s just get to your point.”

“Long ago, Zeus had the gods take an oath on the waters of the River Styx…on me. He bestowed that honor upon me because, among all the Titans, I gave my fealty to Zeus first.” Whereupon she just stopped talking as if that explained everything.

“And…?”

“You are helping gods break their oath with no repercussions.”

“If their oaths were anything like the one Kratos gave Zeus, I don’t think I care. And what repercussions?”

“If anyone should break their oath, they must drink from my waters which would make them comatose for a year, they would be denied Ambrosia from then onward, and when they awaken, they would either be banished or excluded from everything for nine years, and they would live in disgrace for all eternity.”

“Who ensures these punishments are met?”

“Zeus.”

“Well, Zeus wouldn’t leave me and my loved ones alone, so I’ve taken his power from him, and in doing so, I’ve voided all oaths.”

“You dethroned Zeus…”

“Some of the gods threatened civil war if I dethroned Zeus, so I insist that he keep his title for as long as he likes. So, he can remain your king if you want; I couldn’t care less about such things. However, Olympus now serves as a sort of holding place until they decide what they want to do. They’re welcome to grow up, stay there, or leave whenever they like, but walking through the gate now exacts an extremely heavy price. As for all those who don’t live on Olympus—such as yourself—if any of the gods go out of their way to harm anyone, they’ll find themselves on Olympus with the same three choices. As I told the gods there, ‘just play nice with others and mind your own business,’ that’s all I ask.”

“No…,” she said in disbelief, “you can’t have.”

“I have; it’s already done. Zeus thought I would dethrone him, so he released Typhon to wreck Olympus, because if he couldn’t have Olympus then no one would. But Ares warned me emphatically that I shouldn’t thwart the will of the king. So, I wouldn’t undo the damage Typhon caused when he destroyed Zeus’s palace, but I figured, why should any of the others be homeless just because Zeus is so selfish? I hadn’t left Typhon on Olympus, of course; he’s a menace.” He held up the baseball that contained a miniaturized Typhon frozen in Time.

“He’s inside that?”

“Yes, I’m taking him to Hades as a gift.”

“What about the Ambrosia delivered to Olympus every day?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Ronan, “because of the shield, that can no longer happen. No outside help can enter Olympus, but Chronos tells me the natural source was drying up anyway. Speaking of that, would either of you care for a glass?” Ronan manifested two goblets of Ambrosia and handed them to both Styx and Charon.

Charon immediately began guzzling his, but she sniffed the contents of her own. “You can manifest Ambrosia?” She drank of it.

“Yes. So, all the Ambrosia the gods receive must come through me. Outside of Olympus, I won’t lord that over any of you. I’m hoping you will one day reflect my goodwill toward you into the world. I encourage all of you to evolve. I know you can, but as the personification of hatred, you might have the hardest time finding some love in your heart, but I believe in you.”

“But no one can manifest Ambrosia,” she said. “How?”

“The same way I can destroy a god,” he said. “I’m something else. Something…more. You have my word that I will gift a rundlet of Ambrosia as fine as you hold in your hand to Hades for all his underworld feasts, so the gods won’t go without.”

“You are not as I expected,” she said. “I don’t know how to take you.”

“I’m hoping you’ll take me in the same spirit I take you, in a live and let live sort of sense.”

“I wouldn’t know how,” she said.

“Oh, Styx, you’re a river! I should think going with the flow would come naturally to you. You could just think about it for a while. Things will be different, yes, but there’s nothing wrong. Life will be good; you’ll see. And if either of you ever needs me, call me. We will discuss the problem, and we’ll figure out a way to solve it. In the meantime, however, may Charon and I go? I need to get to Liam.”

Momentarily befuddled, she let them go, and while Ronan knew their dependence on him for Ambrosia would tend to sway them into compliance with his extraordinarily small request that they behave themselves, as he said, he had no intention of lording it over them. He wouldn’t have to, their need for Ambrosia was so great that they would view him in a different light anyway, but he couldn’t help that. The natural source was drying up, and only he could produce it, so that was that.

 

[RHHorst]

Chapter 9d

In the darkness, they turned a bend in the river, and from the light of the torches upon it, Ronan saw the gates of Hades’s palace, and a silhouette of Cerberus, the three-headed hound, within the dark metal gates. He patrolled the grounds for living intruders and escapees of the dead. Fortunately, near the dock lit by the brilliant glow of a bident, he saw Liam standing alongside Hades.

The moment they were close enough, Ronan sprung from the boat, ran across the dock, took Liam into his arms, and kissed him. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, thanks to Hades. Zeus nearly shoved me off into Tartarus!”

“He won’t bother us again.”

Hades said, “Zeus’s actions up until this were bad enough, but he crossed a very personal line, so I accept your decision on whatever you do to him. What was your decision regarding our brother?”

“I hadn’t destroyed him, but I took his power,” said Ronan, “and whether I ever give it back is up to Zeus. I want to thank you for saving Liam. I respect you for that.”

Hades gave a little nod and a thoughtful smile. “I can tell.”

“Oh! I have a gift for you.” He handed Hades the ball.

“You have gifted me a baseball?”

“Read what it says.”

He turned the ball around. “Typhon…” He pointed to the ball. “Is this?”

Ronan nodded. “Zeus released him from Mount Etna. He knew Typhon would destroy Olympus. I arrived, froze him in Time, and eventually shrank him down before I put him inside that.”

“Astonishing,” he said and held up the ball. “Typhon was extremely powerful, and for as much as we gods can do, none of us have this much power. That’s why we stuffed all the troublemakers into Tartarus. So, thank you for this. It’s certainly an improvement; he takes up much less space this way. I shall display him upon my mantle. I would invite you in to show you around and meet Persephone, but I know you have a lot to do, and a tour of the castle can take quite a while. From now on, you both have an open invitation to visit anytime, and feel free to teleport directly.”

“Thank you, we will, especially when making a delivery of Ambrosia.”

“Chronos informed me of the Ambrosia issue. We’re grateful you can supply it. Well, I won’t keep you. I’m sure the others wish to see Liam safely where he belongs. I will see the two of you again soon.”

When Hades teleported back into his palace, Ronan saw that Charon and his boat had gone, so with no one left to bid farewell, they teleported back to the CS Fritz Himmel.

Aboard the ship, the crew typically kept busy with maintenance, cleaning duties, and that never-ending struggle against the deleterious effects of the sea. However, with Ronan having left the vessel anchored off the coast of Italy in perfect condition, the crew had nothing to do, so the captain had given most of them time off until needed. At first, they either meandered through the ship marveling at the miracle of its condition, or they stood at the deck railing staring at the city of Genoa, a view they shouldn’t have had for a few more days. Ronan had won over the crew, including those initially skeptical of him and his intentions. They had seen far too much of what he could do to think it nothing more than a trick, and his repeated defense of them spoke volumes.

When Ronan led Liam into Emma’s cabin, it pleased their friends to see him in one piece.

“Liam, I would like to introduce the god Hephaestus, blacksmith to the gods and a dear friend of mine. And I also want to introduce the demigod Colt Stallion, formerly named Elias Adrianus, billionaire, and as a son of Chiron, he is my son. Colt, Hephaestus…this is the demigod Liam Phillips, a former police officer of the Key Biscayne Police Department, my protector, and… husband?” He gazed upon Liam for confirmation.

“As far as I’m concerned,” he said.

“And husband,” Ronan said to Hephaestus and Colt.

“It’s good to meet you,” said Hephaestus.

Colt shook Liam’s hand. “I’ve seen you!” Colt said. “You picked my father from the ground in the park on Key Biscayne.”

“Yes, I did! You have seen me? How had that come about?”

“Kakia,” said Colt. “When she came to my office in New York, she had with her a tablet that held a video of the whole thing. From just before Henri transferred my father with the eternal flame to Ronan’s former human self, all the way to the next morning when you drove off with him to what I must presume was the hospital.”

“Someone recorded that?” Ronan shook his head at the audacity.

“Apparently so,” he said.

“Well, Ronan,” said Emma, “William and I have talked.”

“What have you concluded?” he asked.

“Dolos needs to go. I haven’t been him in so long, I can’t remember what it felt like to be myself in honesty rather than deceit.”

“I love her no matter what,” said William, “but she’s unhappy as she is, and if she needs Dolos gone, then I support that.”

Ronan gestured for her to come to him. “Tell me what you specifically want.”

“I want to walk away from this ship Erastís, the lover, a self-determinate deity of any sex or gender I choose, and if I want to be Emma Nordström, then that’s who I am, when I am, and in truth. I want to help people the way I do best and eliminate the constraint of it being a lie. Could you help me do that?”

Emma stood before him, and he turned her around, placed his hands on her back, and concentrated. “All the gods can look however they want and always could, but they all have a constraint preventing it from being true by their nature. Poseidon told me he had been equine many times, and—like you as Emma—Poseidon is the horse when he’s a horse, but even while being that, he’s still no less the god of the sea, so I comprehend what you’re asking. Your mother is Nyx, the goddess of night. She has imbued you with dark energy, and that’s what constrains you to the lies and deceit. I admire your strength of will. I find it amazing you’ve gotten this far in your evolution, but unlike the others who have evolved, you need to change your fundamental nature. To remove the restraint is to remove Dolos from you, so let me do this. Concentrate hard on being Erastís. This will feel warm, but it shouldn’t hurt you.”

She did so, and as Ronan fed her new energy with his left hand, he drew out the darkness with his right. It emerged as a sooty substance from Emma’s back and swirled in Ronan’s palm like a black cloud the size of his fist. “There, it’s done.”

Emma turned as everyone gathered around to see what Ronan held. William wrapped his arms around Emma’s waist from behind and gazed over her shoulder.

“What will you do with it?” she asked.

Ronan transformed the cloud of dark energy into a small, shiny winged black bird with an orange beak like those indigenous to the area around Genoa. It sat in the hollow of Ronan’s palm as though it were nesting. “Everyone, say hello to Dolos.”

“So, that is Dolos,” said Emma. “Why don’t I feel any different?”

“It’s as you told me,” he said, “this hasn’t been you for a long time. I’m unsure that you should feel different, but the experience of your life will be entirely different from now on. Hephaestus, would you open the window, please?”

“The windows don’t open,” said William.

“Sure, they do,” said Hephaestus. He laid his hand onto the glass, removed the entire pane like he had a suction-cup hand, and smiled at William.

William shook his head and rolled his eyes. “I forget who I’m with.”

Ronan helped the bird into Emma’s hand. “I think you should be the one to release him.”

She stroked the little bird on the way to the window. “Well, Dolos, I would say I hate to see you go, but that would be a lie, and I don’t do that anymore, so off you go.” When she tossed it out the window, it flew away, and Hephaestus replaced the glass in its frame. “So, am I Erastís now?” she asked Ronan.

“Yes, but one last thing,” he said. He laid his hand on her shoulder and increased her ability to hold energy, causing her to feel a surge of power. “There, not only are you free to be yourself, but you have more power, and you can teleport many people.”

Emma giggled and hugged him. She then manifested herself a Centaurian uniform like Ronan’s. It highlighted her shapely form and had ERASTÍS across her chest with a little red heart. “Do you like?” she asked William.

He smiled, nodded eagerly, and kissed her.

Ronan raised his hand. “By a show of hands, who wants off this ship?”

They all wanted to go, and while Colt and Hephaestus hadn’t lived aboard, Emma, William, Liam, and Ronan couldn’t wait to see the CS Fritz Himmel in their proverbial rear-view mirror.

They stood upon the main deck ready to go, as Captain Stettler, the first mate Paul Hurst, and the entire crew wanted to wish them farewell.

“Well, captain,” said Ronan, “thank you for your patience with us. You could have proven yourself far less understanding, and I wish to apologize for the disruption we caused aboard the ship.”

“Think nothing of it,” he said, shaking Ronan’s hand. “I should be thanking you for all you’ve done for us, and you’ve given us an unforgettable adventure on our transatlantic crossing. I underestimated you repeatedly, and for that, I apologize. It has been a privilege to have met you all and had you aboard. Since the threats to us are no longer an issue, all the crew has decided to remain except for William, and the company is sending us a new purser who will be here this afternoon. We have arrived early in Genoa, so we haven’t permission to dock; they schedule these things for a reason. The company also wants me to thank you for restoring the ship; it saved them time and money. They wish to apologize that one of their employees has leaked onto the internet all the video footage from the ship’s uploads to the company’s server. It seems they’ve gone viral, and the number of people who know about the gods, you, and what you are capable of grows exponentially. The public and the media have a great many questions and concerns.”

“I bet they do,” said Liam.

“In a world of internet users eager for amazing content, I figured that would happen,” said Ronan, “and I accept it. They’ll get their answers over time, but eventually, they must grow accustomed to our presence.”

“What about the paparazzi?” asked Paul. “They don’t get used to anyone’s presence; you get used to theirs.”

Emma said, “That’s alright, we have ways around virtually anything.”

“So, where will you go now?” asked the captain.

“That’s a good question,” said Liam.

Emma spoke up. “We have an enormous villa with a dozen bedrooms on Mykonos. When Ronan said he wanted to go home. Prometheus and I ensured we had somewhere to go.”

“That’s not big enough for everyone,” said Hephaestus.

“I intend to form a new island in the Aegean Sea for a permanent place to resettle the gods from Olympus,” said Ronan, “but like Rome, it can’t be built in a day. You, my friend, will soon be extraordinarily busy.”

“You will let me design the whole thing?” asked Hephaestus.

“Once I make the island. All I ask is that you do what you think is best with it, and not let them bully you again into producing some marble and gold nightmare.”

With all business complete, all apologies made, and every goodbye said, Emma used her extended power and teleported them to Mykonos.

-------

The Grecian LGBTQ mecca of Mykonos, an island of the Cyclades of the Aegean Sea, had picturesque views and villages, many beaches, and an active nightlife with frequent parties at various locales. Prometheus had informed Emma about the villa, and she secretly bought it on their journey to Genoa. To Emma’s mind, it presented the perfect location for their home. They teleported to the vast stone courtyard behind the white multi-leveled limestone villa, with its twelve bedrooms, and fourteen bathrooms.

Colt started laughing when he realized where they were. “Oh my,” he said, gazing about.

“What’s so funny?” asked Liam.

“I built this house about a decade ago.”

“You lived here?” asked Ronan.

“No, I bought the property and had it built for an investment. I’ve done that all over the world. The agent sold it immediately to some Turkish billionaire. I can’t remember his name now. It seems like it was Murat something.”

“Murat,” said Emma, “yes, that’s the man I bought it from.”

“You had the money for this?” asked William.

“Prometheus did,” she said.

“I see some damage to that stone wall over there,” said Hephaestus. “Looks like Murat hadn’t taken care of it.”

Liam peeked over the edge of the enormous empty infinity pool behind them. “The pool has a crack.”

“I suspect he used it for parties,” said Colt.

“I bought it as is,” said Emma, “so the house isn’t in pristine condition.”

“I think I can take care of that,” said Ronan. He set his bag onto a stone block of the courtyard beneath his feet, squatted, and laid his hands flat on the stone. “When I removed the curse from Hephaestus, I discovered that I could see beyond what my eyes can see around me, including other realms and universes. Let me see what the house can tell me.” He concentrated for a moment. “The house isn’t livable. It has no water, no electricity, no furnishings, or necessities at all. I see damage throughout the house, and the construction crew hadn’t built the pool properly; that’s why it cracked.” He searched to see how owners of the house in other universes had decorated it, he found one he liked and duplicated some of their décor. He sent pulses of energy into the entire property. He cleaned it, made repairs, and manifested everything they needed to turn the empty house into their home, like furniture and linens, but he also stocked the cabinets and refrigerator with groceries and dishes, and he filled the bar with an array of alcohol and glassware. He made a correction to the pool’s design and filled it with water. He gave the house a permanent water and electrical source, and lastly, he took care of the landscaping. When he opened his eyes and stood, the courtyard had outdoor furniture and a retractable sun sail above them to shade part of the space.

“Looks like we’ve moved in,” said Liam.

“If you dislike anything I chose,” he said to them, “you’re welcome to change it.” He suggested the others find bedrooms, as he wanted some time alone with Liam. He embraced him. “Had Zeus made you afraid?”

Liam rested his head on Ronan’s shoulder. “No, I wasn’t afraid,” he said. “I knew if you had to tear the universe apart to find me, you would.”

He nodded. “If it came to that.”

“And then you would put it all back together with an apology for the inconvenience.”

Ronan laughed. “You know me so well. While I looked the house over, I noticed that about forty of our friends are inside the main part of the house waiting to give me a surprise party.”

“Are they?”

“Yeah, that’s terribly nice of them, but I need to leave for a minute, and I’ll be right back. Okay?”

“Where are you going?”

“I need to take care of something important.”

“Should I go with you?”

“I wish you could, but due to the circumstances, the fewer people the better. I want to do this before I go upstairs, but you go on up and I will be right behind you. This won’t take but a minute.”

“Okay, be careful,” said Liam.

“As careful as I can be.” He held Liam, kissed him, and left.

Liam hurried up the stone staircase with their bags, and he smiled to see all the gods and goddesses Ronan had freed from Zeus’s tyranny, even Apollo, Hades, and Persephone attended.

“Where is he?” asked Athena.

“He’ll be here in a minute. He had something important to take care of.”

Ronan walked up the staircase accompanied by a young man. When everyone inside the house saw who it was, they were so happy. Felix Raposo stood there wearing a Centaurian uniform with LUCKY FOX across his chest and a depiction of a little stylized fox head stitched above it. Kakia had destroyed him before he had the chance to dress, and they could take nothing from the hotel room, so Ronan manifested him some clothing. Everyone rejoiced at seeing Felix.

The party was Prometheus’s idea. He set the whole thing into motion when Ronan had made it safe to come out of hiding. Standing at the front of the group, he had raven hair with a matching beard. The classically handsome god wore a black bikini swimsuit, and an unbuttoned white shirt. He smiled at Ronan who wrapped his arms around him and hugged him tightly.

Athena spoke, “We know we haven’t a permanent place to call our own yet, but we’ve talked it over, and we want you to know that we’re in no hurry for it. The estate in the Norwegian wilderness is comfortable and more than adequate, so take your time and find the perfect spot.”

“I appreciate your lifting the pressure,” said Ronan who laid his hand onto the bar beside him and began manifesting enough glasses of Ambrosia for everyone to have some. “I have made plans; I just need some patience. Here,” he said, “everyone, please, take a glass of Ambrosia.” He made sure to give one to Felix. He saw no sense in losing him again.

Once everyone had a glass, Athena continued, “We want to thank you for everything you’ve done for us. We could not have freed ourselves on our own, and we want you to know that we understand you didn’t have to do it. You did it out of the kindness of your heart and we will be forever grateful. So, a toast…”—she raised her glass, followed by everyone else—“to Ronan Stallion, the Centaurian, our friend.”

When the toasting with Ambrosia ended, Angus brought in many of his friends and the DJ from his nightclub. They invited many of the crewmen from the ship and teleported them to the party. Colt invited Carl and his husband Wesley. They agreed to come, and since Ronan had given Colt the ability to teleport, he quickly learned how and brought them to the house—much to their surprise and delight.

The alcohol flowed freely from the home’s fully stocked bar.

Ronan met Caleius, the designer of his uniform, he talked to him about his upgrades.

The party continued well into the night. They drank, conversed, and skinny dipped in the pool, but at some point, Ronan and Liam snuck off to their bedroom to make love until sunrise. Upon Liam awakening atop Ronan late that morning, they met a beautiful day.

“How about a final trip to my apartment to get my things?” asked Liam. “I need to hand in my weapon and badge to the department and let the remainder of my leave serve as my notice. If I have a tough time convincing them it’s me, I might need some of your magical persuasion.”

“I think that can be arranged,” said Ronan. “It’s early in Miami, would you like to go to the nude beach here on Mykonos for a bit? We can both fly down there.”

“Me, fly? You’re the angelic one.”

Ronan left the bed. “Well, I say you’re my guardian angel, and every superhero needs a sidekick. So, let’s go Angel Boy, you need a flying lesson.” Ronan tossed Liam his Centaurian uniform shirt. It read ANGEL BOY across the chest, and he could see a little halo sitting at a jaunty angle on the “B”.

“Now I regret pushing that superhero idea.”

The End.

 

[Sailingbear]

Nice story

 

[laptoper]

Chapter 3c

Trace sighed. “Sure, but you have no hooves.”

Ronan stepped back and dried off. “I’m half centaur, and therefore, one-quarter Centaurian equine, but most of what makes me what I am is on the inside. My speed, strength, overall physical size, and the configuration of my body hair are external manifestations of my Centaurian nature. But I have a question for you. Besides Liam, you are the first to know this much about me. Does any of it sound frightening?”

“You’re not as frightening, as you are unbelievable.”

Ronan nodded. “I can understand that. Do you have a quarter you can spare?” Ronan wrapped himself in the towel.

Trace took one from his pocket and dropped it into Ronan’s hand, and he held it up.

“Do you know what I can do with this?”—the man shook his head—“Well, not a lot, a quarter won’t buy much anymore.”

He had Trace laughing.

“However,” Ronan stepped in front of him and began to re-form the quarter into a thin square sheet of metal. He then began to fold it as though it were paper. He folded it this way and that way, and in the end, he opened what he had made. He blew on it a little, cooling it down, and placed a tiny nickel and copper origami boat—slightly larger than a Monopoly piece—into Trace’s hand. He removed the towel and finished drying himself.

“If I hadn’t watched you do that with my own eyes,” said Trace, “I wouldn’t have believed it. Have you any idea the amount of force it takes to manipulate metal like that?”—Trace stared at the tiny boat—“Apart from seeing you naked, this is the most amazing thing I have ever seen.”

“Trace is curious to know if you’re gay,” said Liam. “Since we haven’t had that conversation, I couldn’t say.”

“I’m proud to say that I am gay,” he said.

“Really?” asked Trace sounding surprised.

“Yes, but I don’t consider myself available,”—he made a rapid glance at Liam—“at least, I hope I’m not.”

“That remains undetermined,” said Liam.

“And understandably so,” remarked Ronan in a quiet voice. He donned a similar set of clothing to the one he had ruined. “Well, thank you, Trace, for allowing me to clean up.”

Liam grew curious and asked, “How many people did you find?”

“About three dozen altogether, most of them injured, some just trapped, but a third of them had died in the explosion. There were more that hadn’t survived, but I couldn’t reach them without putting the rescue workers at risk, and I wouldn’t do that.”

Trace nodded. “You did a good thing today.”

“Well…I have made doing good things my mission in life.”

Once Ronan finished dressing, the three of them meandered through the corridor to the lobby, and out to the front of the building. “You are welcome here anytime, Ronan,” said Trace. “I don’t care what you are.” He held his hand out, and Ronan shook it. “I hope I get to hear more about the good you do. You’re a fascinating and unbelievably handsome man, and I’m glad you showed up in my life. It’s solidified my need to get my personal life in order.” He shook Liam’s hand. “I wish you both the best of luck.”

When Trace re-entered the building, Liam asked, “Had you seen any sign of Elias at the hotel?”

“No, but I can still feel his presence out there somewhere. Shall we go to the airport?”

“Aah…hold on.” Liam pulled out his smartphone to begin a search. “On the way here, I heard the words nine-eleven bandied about on the radio. I’m sure other people had the same thought. So, let me check the airport status. And… Yep. Just as I thought. They’ve closed the airport as a just-in-case measure. It says that it may reopen tomorrow. If you want to leave today, we could drive somewhere.”

“This is Miami,” said Ronan staring out at the sea, a ship on the horizon. “We could hop a cargo ship. They often take on passengers. That would be unexpected. It would give me time to think, and for us to get to know one another.”

“That sounds like an amazing idea, but would that be safe?”

“I would make it safe. And it’s not like the captain would insist we ‘heave to’ or anything. We wouldn’t join the crew, just be there.

“Heave to?” Liam laughed. “That’s a sailing term. Look, I can take care of myself with the crew; I meant safe because of your distant relations, namely Poseidon. The ocean is his domain, after all. Should we consult you-know-who?”

“Probably, although I dislike interrupting the enjoyment of his Cuban. Dolos…”

Dolos faded into view as he stepped beside Ronan, and his face carried a sullen expression.

“Hello, Dolos,” said Ronan sounding concerned. “Have we taken you away from your Cuban?”

“No. Things are not good right now. I have a profound sadness, and Zeus is furious.”

“At me?”

“No, at Elias. Kakia discovered what had happened with the bellhop named Felix, and she destroyed that beautiful young man with the Chronosian blade, and that upsets me. I feel that I’m at fault because I instigated their liaison last night. Felix was an amazing lover, specially blessed by Eros who truly outdid himself, and I’m heartbroken over it. Anyway, Elias rightly took his anger out on Kakia and stabbed her with the blade.”

“So, that caused the explosion?”

Dolos nodded. “Prometheus and I are upset about the deaths of those innocent people too, but unlike Felix, at least they’re in the underworld now, experiencing whatever they expected when they died.”

“So, where is Felix?” asked Liam.

“He no longer exists. I would love to ask Prometheus to bring him back, but there’s nothing left of him. The blade destroyed him utterly, just as it did with Kakia, but unlike Felix, she deserved it. I always despised her for her callousness.”

“What specifically angered Zeus?” asked Ronan.

“The Chronosian blade was Zeus’s idea—made by Chronos himself; one had never before existed. That it destroyed a goddess has embarrassed Zeus, and when events deviate from the plan, he gets angry.”

“Where’s the blade now?” asked Ronan. “Does Elias still have it, or should I go search the rubble for it?”

Dolos shook his head. “As Sir Isaac Newton realized in his third law, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You can’t just destroy a goddess without a reaction, so it destroyed the blade at the same time, and at the point where the blade and Kakia intersected there came a hotel-destroying BOOM!

“It threw Elias so far from the building, he landed in the water. He feels terrible about the whole situation; he was crying on the beach after a jogger pulled him to shore. We can hardly blame him for it though; he couldn’t know that would happen.”

“So, does Elias still want to die?” asked Ronan. “Without the blade, he has no means to try and kill me.”

“I can’t tell. I heard him whisper to himself that he needed to find you. I have no idea what his intentions are for when he does. Like with you, he’s immortal, so his thoughts are opaque.”

“The airport is closed due to the explosion,” said Liam. “Ronan has suggested that we take a cargo ship somewhere.”

“At this point, with Zeus having a conniption fit, the sea is safer than the air.”

“What about Poseidon?”

“He refuses to mind Zeus’s business for him; he won’t bother you.”

Liam turned to Ronan. “Okay then, let's try a cargo ship.”

“I can help you with that,” said Dolos. “There are a lot of ships here. What destination had you in mind?”

“I want to go home, at least for a while,” said Ronan.

Taken aback, Dolos raised a brow. “Really… It’s about time one of you Stallions decided to go home. I will get you as close as possible. Let me speak to Prometheus, and I’ll have something by the time you get back to your vehicle.”

-------

William Groß—a German surname similar in sound to Gross meaning Big—had ash-brown hair, a square face, a gym-toned body, and worked as a purser for a container ship called the CS Fritz Himmel for the Reliance Shipping Company out of Hamburg. A purser dealt with all the logistical, financial, legal, and administrative matters for the ship that concerned the crew, the cargo, supplies, and the authorities at their ports of call. And if the ship had any passengers—a rare event for the Fritz Himmel—it would be the task of the steward and the purser to ensure they had everything they needed. So, while William could be a busy man, the bulk of his duties occurred while at port, and he had streamlined his tasks to a level of efficiency that, during the transatlantic crossing, it left little for him to do.

By noon of that day, he had completed his in-port tasks, and the ship had scheduled its departure at 5:00 PM. After lunch, he left the superstructure and took a stroll around the main deck and paused by the aluminum gangway (the staircase used to reach the dock from the main deck of the ship), and below sat an olive-colored Jeep with a woman leaning against the side. When she saw him, she gestured for him to come down, which he did.

He found a voluptuous woman with straight blonde hair in a ponytail had awaited him. Her pale blue, painted-on jeans showed her slender, curvy figure, and the white blouse she wore displayed just enough skin to see its porcelain-like smoothness, but her sensuous lips that held a pleasant smile spoke with the most incredible voice he had ever heard. By her accent, he could tell she was Swedish, and he had never seen anyone who had fit his description of the most beautiful woman he could ever hope to meet than the one who stood before him then.

“Oh,” she said, gazing upon him in interest. “Hello, my name is Emma Nordström, and I wondered if by chance you were heading back to Europe when you left Miami. My two friends and I need a ride, and I hear that a voyage aboard a cargo vessel can be a pleasant, leisurely journey. If you have two cabins available, one for me—as I’m alone—and the other for my two friends, I would be grateful. We can pay you whatever you ask; money isn’t a problem.”

He stood there looking at her dreamily. “I would love to have you…aboard, I mean. I would love to have you aboard. And yes, our next stop is Genoa, Italy. Let me speak to the ship’s first mate, and I will be right back. Don’t go anywhere!” He hurried up the staircase.

Prometheus discovered the Fritz Himmel rarely took on passengers, and they never advertised their four available cabins, so they usually remained unoccupied. In his prescience, he saw William’s stroll as a useful opportunity to get aboard and conveyed the information to Dolos. Dolos then called in a favor from a friend who would drive Liam’s vehicle back to his apartment for them when they eventually abandoned it on the dock.

The purser found the first mate, Paul Hurst, on the bridge in conversation with Captain Stettler about ship matters and took him aside at an opportune moment.

“A woman on the dock has made a request for two cabins and passage to our next port of call for herself and her two friends,” said William.

“Who is it?”

“Someone you will want to see before making a decision.”

Descending the aluminum staircase, Paul then understood what William meant. The woman was beautiful, although he never really found himself attracted to blondes. She stood on the dock by her two male companions, one of whom had considerable height, a lot of muscle, and a familiar face.

“This is Emma Nordström,” said William, “and I’ve yet to meet her friends.”

“This is Liam Phillips,” said Emma, “and Ronan Stallion.”

“Ronan Stallion…,” said Paul. “I thought you looked familiar. I saw you on the internet news. You were at that hotel this morning. We heard the explosion and saw the smoke from here. You saved a lot of lives today. Have you a reason you wish to leave Miami with us? Our journey to Genoa is slow, taking nine days. And as for you Ms. Nordström, we have an amazing chef, but our accommodations aren’t exactly the Ritz Carlton.”

“I expected that,” said Emma, “and I’m tougher than I might seem.” She glanced at William, and he took notice.

“We are in no hurry to get to Europe,” said Liam, “but we do need to go there. May we ride with you? We can pay you whatever you ask.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have three rooms?” asked Paul. “Ours only have double beds.”

Ronan asked Liam, “Would you rather have a room to yourself?”

“If it’s no problem,” Liam said to Paul, “Ronan and I will stay together in one room.”

Paul laughed a little. “We don’t mind.”

He gave them a quote, they accepted the price of the trip, and the captain welcomed them aboard.

William had an instant crush on Emma, and Dolos—disguised as Emma—thought William Groß was dreamy, too dreamy just to walk away from, so Emma accompanied Ronan and Liam to Genoa because why not? Apparently, William usually experienced a great deal of boredom for eight of the nine days across the Atlantic, and on this occasion, he hoped to spend a lot of that time with Emma, and she intended to keep him exceedingly busy.

The hull and the superstructure made up the two basic parts of most container ships. The hull housed the ballast, the tanks for usable freshwater, fuel, lubricant, various storage locations, the engine room, tool room, and other items of utility necessary for the ship. The deck is on the top of the hull and that’s where the crew stacked and stored the cargo containers. The superstructure contained the bridge where navigation took place, the crew and guest quarters, the sickbay, the kitchen, the dining room, meeting rooms, a gym, a seawater pool, and as they stayed on a German ship, it also had a dry sauna.

From their single square porthole, Ronan and Liam could see that their cabin held a double bed. It had lots of storage, a small refrigerator, and a utilitarian bathroom with a sink, commode, and a shower that didn’t require a curtain. They lay back on the bed, their feet still on the floor, and stared at the ceiling for a moment.

“Did you really mean what you said in the locker room earlier about not considering yourself available?” asked Liam.

“Yes,” he said. “Humans can’t know one another without experience because you can’t see one another as you truly are. I heard everything you said to me yesterday, but today, I can see into your heart. You are beautiful, and I could be happy with you. But I know we have some drastic differences. You have a fear of me, but I can’t tell what it’s about. Will you tell me?”

“I have a few things. There’s the whole ‘you could become a god’ aspect of who you are. How will that affect you? And another, if I’m lucky enough to live that long, I will grow old, and one day, I will die. It seems strange that we can’t grow old together, and I would not want to burden you. I guess my fear is that one day you wouldn’t find me so beautiful anymore and you would leave.”

“I understand,” said Ronan.

“However, I know that, at the moment, neither of those things are a problem.”

“Okay, good. I’m not prescient, so I don’t know what the future holds, but neither do you. All we have is right now. Should we worry about things that haven’t happened as if we could know? Will we deny ourselves some happiness today because of what might happen decades from now?”

Liam rolled over and brought his face to Ronan’s. “May I kiss you?” he asked.

“Please do.”

A first kiss is a special and magical thing. It’s thoughts and desires and hopes, all wrapped up and expressed in a passion that inflames the senses and disregards the fears. From the point of that kiss, Liam couldn’t care what the future held, he wanted Ronan just as he was, however that was. And if Ronan wanted him, he was his, willingly ensnared, and not wanting to look back.

Really intriuging story. Interested to see where this goes!

 

[RHHorst]

Really intriuging story. Interested to see where this goes!

It’s seven months worth of work, so I hope you enjoy it!
Rick