Rage against heaven: chapter 31: For all of us

With how much of a slut Greek gods were depicted as, especially in the PJO books I’d devoured in another life, you would have expected a crowd. A hundred anxious faces, maybe. A convention of the damned and the desirous, all united by the catastrophic choice or cruel chance that had tied them to a god.

Well, the sight before me disproved that fact. There were only six.

Six people scattered around Elias Torrington’s opulent living room. Last time I had come, it had been late and I hadn’t really explored the entirety of the Torrington’s house because even though I knew it was spacious and probably had flair because if you were a mage and you didn’t pimp the inside of your house, you probably weren’t a good mage. Still, I didn’t think it would be a space so vast and meticulously decorated it would feel, look less like a room in a home and more like a museum after hours.

Six. That was the number of people waiting for us. It was a number that should not have made sense. We were talking about the Olympians, the Greek gods, the ones who were horny before the concept of horny was even a twinkle in the universe’s eye. Their appetites were the stuff of legend, of myths that were less sacred texts and more divine rap(e) sheets. So, where was the legion of their conquests?

Hecate, when I’d asked her why the numbers were so scant, had given me an answer that was both simpler and more monstrous than I’d imagined. It wasn’t about volume. It was about quality. The gods, she explained with a casualness that still chilled me, could choose. They could engage in their countless liaisons without consequence, a supernatural form of birth control that was apparently one hundred percent effective unless they wished otherwise. They selected the parents of their children like connoisseurs at an auction, seeking out the exceptional—the brilliant minds, the formidable spirits, the breathtaking beauties, the uniquely talented. They were building a Pokémon team, breeding for the best possible stats, hoping to create a demigod worth bragging about to other deities.

It wasn’t that they were less promiscuous than the stories suggested; it was that most of the time, they simply couldn’t be bothered to leave a lasting impression. A demigod’s existence, therefore, was not a product of random passion, but of deliberate, cold calculation. Or, worse, of utter indifference. If a god wanted a child and you didn’t, well, tough luck. If a god didn’t care enough to restrict their power, same result. Every demigod suffering under the weight of their heritage, every child hunted and torn apart by monsters, was ultimately because a god had said, “Why not?” and then turned away, uninterested in the aftermath. It meant that all the pain, the fear, the early graves… it was all by design, or at least, with a divine shrug of acceptance. If anything, the stories had undersold the horror. This wasn’t a messy family drama; it was a systemic, curated culling.

Their gazes, all six pairs of them, locked onto me the moment Elias and I crossed the threshold. They were a collection of portraits ripped from different galleries, each frame holding a story of singular brilliance that had, inevitably, attracted the wrong kind of attention.

The first was a woman who sat ramrod straight on the edge of a velvet chaise lounge, her hands clasped so tightly in her lap that the knuckles were a bloodless white. She had a face that belonged on a coin, all severe, classical lines—a strong, straight nose, a jaw that could have cut glass, and eyes the color of a winter sky just before a storm. Her hair, a cascade of silver-streaked black, was pulled back into a knot so precise it seemed to defy physics. She was dressed in a tailored charcoal-gray pantsuit, the fabric expensive and unforgiving. She looked less like a person and more like a monument to disciplined anguish, a general surveying a battlefield she knew was already lost. Her name, I had found in my preliminaries research before o asked the Torrington’s patriarch to help organise this meet-up in his house was Dr. Eleanor Vance, a neurosurgeon who i had been had once at least in this world pioneered a technique to separate conjoined twins. A mind like a scalpel, precise and brilliant. No wonder Athena had taken notice.

The second was a man who seemed to be made of angles and shadows, slumped in a high-backed leather chair as if trying to fold himself into its embrace. He was painfully thin, with long, delicate fingers that trembled slightly as they traced the pattern on the armrest. His hair was a wild, unkempt mane of brown curls, shot through with premature gray, and he peered out from behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles that magnified eyes of a startling, watery blue. Those eyes held a frantic, bird-like intelligence, constantly darting, absorbing, calculating. He wore a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, a shirt that was misbuttoned, and an expression of profound, existential weariness. This was Professor Aris Thorne, a theoretical physicist whose papers on quantum entanglement would probably make even the Fates pause for a moment. He was the kind of guy with the kind of intellect that could probably on long term unravel the laws of the universe.

The third was a study in contrasts. He looked like he’d just walked off a film set, with the rugged, sun-weathered features of a man who spent his life outdoors. His hair was a thick, tawny blond, and a jagged scar cut through his left eyebrow, pulling his face into a permanent state of mild skepticism. He wore a simple, faded flannel shirt and worn jeans, his boots leaving a faint trace of rich, dark earth on the pristine Persian rug. His arms were crossed over a broad chest, and his stance was one of grounded, immovable patience, like an oak tree that had weathered a hundred storms. But his eyes, a warm, earthy brown, held a deep, quiet sorrow, the kind that comes from loving something fragile in a world full of sledgehammers. This was Gabriel Rossi, a man who could make anything grow, whose vineyards in California produced wines that were said to taste like pure memory. A talent for nurturing life and it was thus only logical that the god with whom he had a dalliance was a god who represented the most untamed, destructive aspects of what he made grow.

The fourth was a woman whose beauty was so intense it was almost aggressive. She had skin the color of dark honey and eyes that smoldered with a fierce, golden light. Her curly hair was a magnificent crown around her head, and she wore a vibrant, crimson dress that seemed to suck the light from the room and reflect it back as heat. Every movement she made was fluid, deliberate, a performance of contained power. A single, heavy silver bracelet, intricately carved with patterns that hinted at waves and serpents, circled her wrist. She held herself with the unshakeable confidence of someone who was accustomed to being the most compelling person in any room, but now that confidence was tempered by a new, sharp-edged fear. Her name was Lena Petrova. I had learnt that she was a prima ballerina whose interpretations of tragic heroines were legendary. She was the kind of actress even though my sister was a A lister wished she could be. I don’t think she existed in my past life. It seemed she was unique to this world.

The fifth was a man who seemed constructed from wiry tension and restless energy. He couldn’t sit still, pacing a short path near the grand fireplace, his movements quick and jerky. He had a sharp, fox-like face, with clever, dark eyes that missed nothing, and a mouth that seemed perpetually on the verge of a sarcastic comment. His clothes were stylish but practical—dark trousers, a black turtleneck, a jacket that looked like it could withstand a gale. On his wrist was a complex, multi-dialed watch that he checked with a nervous flick of his eyes every few seconds.

He was also in a sense the one it had been the most easy to find information about with the both of us technically being in the same if not related fields. He was a man who dealt in the flow of information, the kind of person who understood the world as a series of systems to be hacked and optimized.

Julian Croft, unlike me was a true tech visionary whose early work was laying at least in this world the groundwork for the internet itself.

The sixth and final figure was the most still of all. He sat in a corner, half-hidden in shadow, a large, silent presence. He was big, not just tall but broad, with the heavy musculature of a blacksmith or a stevedore. His hands, resting on his knees, were massive, the fingers thick and calloused, capable of immense gentleness or crushing force. His face was broad and plain, etched with the lines of hard work and quiet endurance. He had kind eyes, the color of dark soil, but they were currently clouded with a confusion so profound it seemed to on agony. He wore simple, clean work clothes, and he smelled faintly of ozone and hot metal.

This was the last one of them, Henry Jacobs, an artisan, a modern smith, a modern Murasama whose hand-forged metalwork was sought after by collectors worldwide.

The silence stretched, a taut wire about to snap. It was the fox-like man, Julian Croft, who broke it, his voice a dry, impatient rasp. “You took your time. I would have been long gone if you hadn’t promised that map. It’s still on the table, right?”

His eyes were fixed on me, sharp and assessing as if looking for the trapdoor in the offer.

“Yes,” I answered, my own voice calm, a flat stone dropped into the tense atmosphere. “Still on the table. Whether you like what I say to you or not, I’ll give it to you.”

From the chaise lounge, Eleanor Vance, the surgeon, spoke next. Her voice was as crisp and clean as a sterilized instrument. “Why? What’s the trap? Nothing is really free. When something is, it is because you’re already paying for it in some way.”

I met her gaze. I saw the suspicion there, the hard-won understanding of transactional realities. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

“I got a daughter who is just like your children.” The words were simple, but they felt as if they cost me something to say. Maybe it was because they were an admission of vulnerability even though it was a thread connecting me to them.

“In case any of you didn’t already know, each of us in this place is the parent of a demigod. Having children like the ones we have isn’t easy, and I’m sure you already know this or you would not want for the map. I know what it’s like to fear something happening to my daughter. I saw what happened, what can happen to a demigod, especially when they are young.”

The memory came then, unbidden and vicious. Not a thought, but a full-sensory assault. The damp, rotten smell of the forest floor. The guttural, wet sounds of chewing. The sight of the small, broken body, so terribly young, limbs bent at impossible angles. And the cyclops, its single eye glazed with stupid pleasure as it feasted. The rage that had followed had been so absolute, so cold, it had felt like a fundamental force of nature. I hadn’t just killed the thing. I had un-made it, scoured its existence from the weave of the world with a fury that had left the very air screaming. I had buried the child, a tiny, anonymous mound in the woods, a testament to a system that viewed such tragedies as acceptable losses. I banished the image, shoving it back into the dark recess of my mind, but the stain of it remained on my soul.

“If you think that’s too selfless,” I continued, my voice a little harder, “just think of it as an assurance to make sure I would never have to see again what I saw.”

The big man in the corner, Henry Jacobs, shifted his weight. The floorboard creaked under him. His voice, when it came, was a low rumble, like distant thunder. “Alright. Fine by me. I can respect and understand that.” He looked at me, his honest eyes searching mine. “So, pretty boy, tell us what you wanted to meet us for.”

A faint, wry smile touched my lips at the moniker. “That’s simple,” I spoke, the words clear and deliberate in the hushed room. “I wanted to meet you to ask you something: are you fine with the way things are? And if not, do you want to try to change it?”

Gabriel Rossi, the vintner, uncrossed his arms, his earthy brow furrowing. “What do you mean by that?”

I answered his question with one of my own, a blade aimed at the heart of their fears. “Do you know that at least ninety percent of demigod children don’t reach adulthood?”

The reaction was not instantaneous. It was a slow, creeping horror, a poison seeping into the room. It began with a collective intake of breath, a sharp, hissing sound. Eleanor Vance’s perfect posture stiffened even further, as if her spine had turned to iron. Her hands, previously clenched, now gripped the fabric of her trousers, the fine material twisting under the strain. A small, choked sound escaped her lips, the kind of sound a person makes when the wind is knocked out of them.

Professor Thorne seemed to shrink, his already slight frame collapsing inward. His magnified eyes widened behind his spectacles, the frantic intelligence in them now turning to sheer, panicked calculation, as if his mind was desperately running numbers, trying to disprove the statistic and failing. He brought a trembling hand to his mouth.

Lena Petrova, the ballerina, recoiled as if struck. The fierce light in her golden eyes flickered and dimmed, replaced by a raw, maternal terror. Her hand flew to the silver bracelet on her wrist, clutching it like a talisman. Her performance of confidence shattered, revealing the raw, terrified woman beneath.

Julian Croft stopped his pacing dead. All the restless energy drained from him, leaving him pale and hollow. He looked at me, then through me, his mind undoubtedly accessing a thousand data points, a lifetime of risk assessment, and finding that this single figure outweighed them all. The number was a virus, corrupting every safe assumption he’d ever made.

Henry Jacobs simply stared, the confusion in his dark eyes crystallizing into a deep, resonant agony. It was the look of a man who has just been told the foundation of his home is built on a fault line that is about to rupture. His massive shoulders slumped under the weight of the revelation.

And Gabriel Rossi, the man of the earth, looked as if I had told him a blight was coming that would wipe out every living thing he had ever nurtured. The sorrow in his brown eyes deepened into something absolute, a grief for a future loss that now felt inevitable.

I continued speaking, my voice cutting through their silent devastation as if I hadn’t just dropped a bomb in the center of their lives. “There are the monsters, of course.” With a thought, the map unfurled. I made it hover in the air with a flick of my will, a simple parlor trick that felt obscenely trivial in the face of their pain. It expanded, glowing with an ethereal light, big enough for all to see. The familiar geography of the country was overlaid with a sickening constellation of green pinpricks. “Each green dot that you see represents a monster, a creature able to smell your child from miles away simply because of their nature, who want to eat, to hurt your children. In the best case, because it’s in their monstrous nature. In the worst case, because they have a grudge directly or indirectly against the Olympians, against the gods, against the parent of your children. And guess what? Nearly the entirety of humanity can’t see them. So if those monsters attack, it’s your child, and you, at best.” I paused, letting the visual horror sink in. “Did I mention that radios, electronic devices, when used by demigods, only make them easier to find, spreading their scent further?”

The reactions this time were more active, more visceral. Lena Petrova let out a soft cry, her hand tightening on her bracelet. Julian Croft cursed under his breath, a low, vicious stream of words. “The phones… I gave him a phone for emergencies…”

“Why?!” Professor Thorne’s voice was a reedy squeak of protest, his mind grappling with the illogical mechanics of it all. “Why, how can they smell demigods? How does that even work? It makes no biological sense! What is the scent? A pheromone? A specific quantum signature?”

“You have to thank a daughter of the goddess of crossroads and the queen of heaven for that,” I said.

Elias Torrington, who had been standing silently by my side, finally spoke, his voice gravelly. “Do you mean Hera and Hecate?”

Normally, saying the name of a deity was an invitation, a flare shot into the sky to draw their attention. Names have power; the books had that much right. But the air in the room remained still, the wards I’d asked Elpida to weave—layers of mystical insulation based on bounded fields from a different mythos—holding firm against divine eavesdropping.

“A long time ago, lived a queen,” I began, my tone shifting into that of a storyteller recounting an old, bitter fairy tale. “She was beautiful, the kind that makes you awestruck, the kind that makes you think wars are worth fighting for. She was strong, powerful, because in her veins ran the blood of one of the most feared and versatile and powerful goddesses of the Greek pantheon, Hecate, the goddess of crossroads and witchcraft.” I looked at each of them in turn. “The thing with beauty, with power, is that they attract like honey for a bear. The two, when together, are an even more deadly, alluring poison. So, of course, such beauty, such power, would attract power. It would attract divinity. It would attract Zeus. Zeus came along and, like in most of the myths, had a dalliance with the queen, a dalliance that would last long enough to give said Queen many children from the brood of the Thunderer.”

Gabriel Rossi grunted, a sound of disgust. “The thing with Zeus is that relationships with the bastard are the kind you should try to avoid. Not because Zeus is Zeus, but because of someone else. His wife.”

Eleanor Vance nodded slowly, her face a mask of grim comprehension. “Hera. She intervened, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” I confirmed, the word flat and heavy. “She is a goddess who had the habit of taking the infidelity of her husband out on the women he cheated with, often without their consent, instead of on her husband himself. So yes, Hera intervened. She killed Lamia’s children. She killed them without physically hurting the Queen, so that she could live, could see her legacy, the ones she loved the most, die without her being able to do anything.” I let the image hang in the air. “Can you imagine it? Losing, watching your children be murdered for something they were never guilty of? Lamia did. And when you lose something so important, you either break, rage at the world, or both.”

Julian Croft frowned, his sharp mind picking at the narrative. “Okay, I get it. I would destroy the world if it meant protecting my kid. But how could that be related to the curse? Hera killed the children of Lamia, and with what the myths say, I could see how she would have a hand in it. But I don’t get how Lamia does. I mean, she lost her children. Why would she have a hand in something explicitly made with the goal of hurting children just like hers?”

“Because of mainly one thing,” I said. “While she was begging, pleading, praying to the gods to help her, to intervene, all of them—even Zeus, the father of her children—remained silent. None of them answered as she lost everything. So, she wanted to make them lose, too. She wanted them to feel the same pain that she felt. She wanted Hera, Goddess of Family, to feel what it is like to lose family like she had. The little problem is that Hera, even though she may be a goddess of family, is also a goddess of marriage, which means that every child not born under wedlock isn’t one she considers family, that she can care about. For Hera, demigods like your children, like my daughter, are one thing: half-blood bastards, stains on a perfect picture. And Hephaestus showed us what she does with something she doesn’t consider perfect.” I paused, letting the reference to the god thrown from Olympus settle. “Lamia cursed the gods themselves. She was one of the strongest of Hecate’s brood, a witch the like of Circe and Medea. She cursed them so that they would feel what she felt. She made just one error. Can you guess?”

I watched them think, their faces a canvas of dawning horror as they followed the logic to its brutal, inescapable conclusion. It was Elias who voiced it, his voice hollow.

“She thought the gods would care,” said the father of Alabaster. “And she was wrong.”

The looks on their faces were not just of understanding. It was as if I had physically slapped each one of them, the impact leaving not a red mark, but a fundamental crack in their perception of reality. It was the look of people who have just been told, and provided with terrible proof, that the sky will not be there tomorrow. That gravity is a lie. That the fundamental rules of their universe were not just broken, but actively malicious.

“Yes,” I said softly. “She thought the gods would care, and most of them didn’t. If anything, a lot weren’t angry.” I repeated the words Hecate had told me, words that had curdled something inside me when I’d first heard them. “No, most of them liked it.”

The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the ragged intake of Lena Petrova’s breath.

“They liked it?” she whispered, the words dripping with disbelief and revulsion.

“Yes, most of them did,” I confirmed, my voice cold and precise. “Because monsters attracted to the scent of their children meant that said children could more easily, conveniently do something in their eyes that is glorious, something heroic, like the heroes recorded in the myths. Something their godly parent could be proud of. And well, if they didn’t…” I shrugged, a gesture that felt obscenely casual. “Elysium existed. Do you truly think that the curse, that it would have remained if the Gods had wanted it gone? The gods, the Olympians, may be many things, but ‘not powerful’ is not one of them. They have the means. They allow it to continue.”

“You said Hera was personally involved. How?” Eleanor Vance asked.

“Simple. I told you that radio, electronic devices and the like made the scent of demigods spread further, be stronger, didn’t I? For that, you have to thank the Queen of Heavens for that.”

“Queen of Heaven?” Henry Jacobs rumbled, confused.

“Yes,” I said. “Queen of Heaven. Hera, due to this title, holds a dominion just second to her husband over the sky and everything in it. And by that, I don’t just mean the clouds and the birds. I mean the electromagnetic fields, the very medium through which your radios and phones operate. The part about electronic devices spreading demigods’ scent? Who do you think is the reason it works so well? A curse from the Bronze Age shouldn’t logically understand fiber optics. Hera updates the terms and conditions.”

Julian Croft, the tech guy, looked ill. “You said that this was the first cause. The curse, I mean. What’s the second?”

“The gods themselves, of course,” I replied.

It was Lena who spoke next, a bitter, knowing look in her eyes. “Ironic, coming from the mouth of one.”

The reaction to her statement was immediate and varied. Elias Torrington and Julian Croft simply nodded, as if a long-held suspicion had just been confirmed. But the others—Eleanor, Gabriel, Henry, and even Aris Thorne—stared at me with a fresh wave of terror. Their eyes widened, their bodies tensed. They were looking at me not as a potential ally, but as a predator who had been masquerading in their midst. I could see it in their eyes, the realization that they had been speaking so freely, so accusingly, to a being who could, with a thought, unmake them as easily as  a single taken breath, in less than a blink of an eye, I saw it dawn on them with paralyzing force. The hree of them looked as if they were considering the various fates worse than death that I might now subject them to.

“I am human, like you all,” I said, though the skepticism on their faces was a palpable wall, one that seemed to scream yeah I’m scared but I am not that stupid. “It’s just that my circumstances and what I went through were, let’s say, pretty… special.”

Henry Jacobs, the artisan, swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Please, lord, uh…”

“I am no lord. Just call me by my name. Alexander.”

“Sure,” he said, the word hesitant, weighted with a fear he couldn’t hide. “You’re not much of a… friend of the Gods, are you, Alexander?”

A wry, genuine smile touched my lips this time. “What gave it away? The Zeus part? But yes, you’re right. I am not much of a friend of the Olympians.”

Julian Croft, ever the pragmatist, asked the next question, his eyes narrowed. “Is it because you’re a Titan or something like that?”

That wasn’t a bad guess, it was even a logical one. Still, I couldn’t help the sigh that escaped me, a sound of immense weariness. “I am not a Titan, or a Giant, or from some group of deities trying to vie for the thrones of the Olympians. It’s more simple, and more complex, than that. They, he, made people I love suffer. And what they did, and are doing, to humanity is something I find disgusting.”

“Doing to humanity?” Gabriel Rossi asked, his earthy curiosity piqued.

“Let’s just say that we live in a world where most conspiracy theories are more true than false,” I said vaguely. “Still, it’s something that can be talked about later. The reason why we’re here in this room, why you came even though you knew it probably wouldn’t be safe, that it could be dangerous, is because of the care you have for your children.”

I brought the focus back, my voice gaining a new intensity. “Monsters, like I told you earlier, are due to the curse a truly important threat. But the reason why I told you that most of your children would most likely not reach eighteen, the reason that could even be said behind the monster threat, are the Gods themselves.”

“Let’s speak in hypotheticals,” I told them. I opened my palm, and above it, an image began to take shape, a holographic figurine of a child, its face and form blurred into anonymity. “There is this place, in case you don’t know, called Camp Half-Blood. As the name indicates, it’s a place full of demigods, a place where they are supposedly able to be safe from monsters.” The figurine was now surrounded by others, welcoming it. The scene was meant to look idyllic, but I made the light around it slightly too harsh, the greetings a little too frantic.

“Camp Half-Blood unfortunately isn’t a haven. At its best, it barely passes as an orphanage. No, if anything, it is the contrary. You see, it begins with the way they are sorted. Demigods are sorted in cabins corresponding to their parents. It sounds neat, until you realize that it’s not an automatic thing. To be sorted, demigods need to be first claimed.”

“What do you mean by ‘claimed’?” Eleanor asked, her voice tight.

“I told you already. Gods want to boast about the glories of their children, their successes. They want to do so to claim that it is because of them that such a glorious thing could be done by a mortal. They want the glories, the spotlights. They don’t want the other side of the medal. They don’t want the defeats, the ordinary, because it wouldn’t be interesting, something worth boasting about to other deities. Thus, the claim.” The holographic child began to fight smaller, monstrous shapes, performing acts of increasing danger. “Most demigods learn quickly one thing: to matter, to be given a smudge of recognition by their divine parent, of love, they have to be exceptional. They have to fight monsters, do things deemed impossible, brave death, even though they are children. Even though a parent’s love should be unconditional. Demigods try and try and try, just to be claimed, just for the love of a parent. And whether they are claimed or not, this need to be recognized, this desperate hunger for a love that is their birthright… it ends with most of them not making it to adulthood.”

The holographic child fought valiantly, but then a larger monster appeared, and the image dissolved into static. The room was utterly silent.

Hecate’s words echoed in my mind: On three hundred, perhaps two are lucky. And their luck never lasts.

“This,” I said, my voice dropping to a near-whisper, “is what would most likely happen. Until you try, until you fight to change it, of course.”

Julian Croft let out a short, sharp, humorless laugh. It was a sound like breaking glass. “How Luciferean of you. This is what you wanted since the beginning, wasn’t it? All of this… the map, the story, the statistics. This is the pitch.”

“I can at least promise you,” I spoke, the words leaving my mouth with a finality that felt like stepping off a cliff, “that what I told you about demigods was true. I swear it on the Styx, the heavens, the Earth, and the chasm from which everything comes from.”

The moment the oath left my lips, the world twisted.

It wasn’t a sound or a sight. It was a fundamental shift in the substance of reality. The air turned thick and heavy, tasting of ozone and grave dirt. The light in the room didn’t dim so much as it was sucked away, leaving colors bleached and hollow. I felt a Gaze. It was not a metaphorical feeling. It was a physical pressure, a presence so vast and ancient and hungry that it made the concept of a god seem like a mayfly. This was something older, something that existed before names, before light, before hope. It was the Chasm I had just invoked. Its attention slid over the room, a slow, deliberate caress that was anything but loving. It was the sensation of being examined by a starved predator that was, for the moment, content to merely savor your scent.

I felt it focus on me. I felt it taste the power coiled within me, the spark of something that was not entirely of this world. It was a sensation of infinite teeth grinding against each other in a silent, eager laugh. It lingered, languishing in the promise of my eventual end, and then, with a sound like a mountain range collapsing into an abyss, it began to fade. But as it left, I felt a whisper, not in my ears but in my soul, a promise of next time that was more terrifying than any immediate threat.

I looked down at my right hand. It was shaking. I had hoped the type moon style wards I added on top of what the Torrington manor already had would be enough, but Primordials it seemed could not be hindered by such things. They were primordials, the canvas upon which the gods themselves could be said to be painted. I should have not expected less than overwhelming even with my precautions. I smiled, a thin, tight expression. Primordials, they were truly, magnificently terrifying weren’t they?

The others had not fared as well. Of all of us, I was the only one still standing. Elias Torrington was on his knees, gasping, his face the color of old parchment. Professor Thorne had vomited onto the expensive rug. Lena Petrova was sobbing quietly, curled into a fetal position on the chaise. Henry Jacobs was leaning against the wall, his massive frame trembling uncontrollably. Julian Croft was staring into the middle distance, his face a blank mask of shock. Gabriel Rossi and Eleanor Vance were clutching each other’s hands, a gesture of instinctual human comfort in the face of the utterly inhuman.

Slowly, shakily, Elias rose. He looked like a man who had aged twenty years in twenty seconds. Without a word, he walked to a mahogany cabinet, opened it, and pulled out a bottle of amber liquid that probably cost more than a car. He fumbled with a crystal glass for a moment, then looked at it with disgust, setting it aside. He uncorked the bottle with his teeth and took a long, desperate swallow. He then turned and, with a hand that still trembled, offered the bottle to Gabriel Rossi.

Gabriel looked at the bottle, then at Elias’s face. He nodded, a wordless understanding passing between them. He took the bottle and drank from it just as deeply. He passed it to Henry, who did the same. The bottle made its way around the room like a passing flame, a passing sacrament of shared trauma, a burning liquid defiance against the darkness we had just glimpsed. Even Eleanor Vance, the surgeon, took a measured but potent swallow.

“I’m sorry,” I told them, and I meant it. The oath had been necessary to make them trust me but the collateral damage that came with it hadn’t been in the plans. “I didn’t think there would be a reaction like that.”

Julian Croft finally spoke, his voice raspy. He took the bottle from Lena and drank. “You know what? Fuck it.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What happened is telling me that even though you are… whatever you are… had you lied, things would have been much worse. What’s your offer? Your red apple?”

I looked at each of them, these six brilliant, broken, terrified people.

“I want to change things,” I said, and for the first time, I let the full extent of my will, my wanting, bleed into my voice. It was no longer a proposal. It was a declaration. “I want to make a world where children like ours wouldn’t have to fight, wouldn’t have to desperately want for a love that should have been theirs since the beginning. I want them to be able to be happy. I want them to be able to live, instead of surviving. I want the concept of monsters like the ones wanting to hurt our children to not be anymore. I want to make the gods pay for their child support money that is at this point way overdue.” A few of them blinked at the mundane phrasing amidst the the sentences kinda as if Mozart began singing a Tupac sound in the middle of his symphony No. 40. “I want to go against the Gods, the heavens themselves, and fight, rage against them until a better world is born. I want to end the age of the gods and begin the age of humanity.”

Eleanor Vance stared at me, her composure completely gone, replaced by a look that was half horror, half a kind of terrifying admiration. “You’re mad,” she breathed. “That is madness.”

“Madness and genius are synonymous,” I replied. “And if anything, I don’t feel as if I’m mad. If anything, I think that it is the world itself that is mad, and I am the only one who is sane.”

Gabriel Rossi shook his head, his expression grim. “You’ll have to fight against them all. No matter who you are, no matter how strong you are, you can’t pick a fight against an entire pantheon. You’re just asking to become a modern Prometheus. Unlike him, it’ll probably be something worse than an eaten liver.”

“At least,” I said, my voice softening, “it would be something worth sacrificing myself for, if that is what happens. At least if I fail, I can fail knowing that I did my best, that I tried to make things better for my daughter.” I spread my hands, a gesture of final, honest offering. “So I ask you. And no matter your answer, you will be given the map. Will you help me?”

Like I said before, children are weighty things. They are anchors in the storm of life and the sails that drag us forward into its fury. They are our best and our worst, our hopes and dreams given flesh, our legacies written in living ink. Here is the great paradox: all children love, but not all are loved the way they deserve to be. But when they are, when a child is truly, fiercely loved by their parent, there is no ocean too deep to boil, no mountain too high to tear down, no heaven too distant to storm.

I saw the answer in their eyes before they spoke. I saw it in the way Eleanor’s spine straightened, not with clinical precision, but with a mother’s resolve. I saw it in the way Aris Thorne’s frantic eyes focused, the chaos within them channeling into a single, determined point. I saw it in the way Gabriel Rossi’s sorrowful gaze hardened into something unbreakable, in the way Lena Petrova’s terror was burned away by a fiercer fire, in the way Julian Croft’s cynical mind began calculating not the risks, but the possibilities. I saw it in the way Henry Jacobs’s confusion cleared, replaced by the simple, unwavering certainty of a man who knows what he must protect.

There was only one possible answer.

Elias Torrington was the first to speak, his voice rough from the whiskey but firm with conviction. “For my son.”

“For my daughter,” Eleanor Vance said, her voice like steel.

One by one, they gave their answer. Not with grand speeches, but with simple, undeniable declarations of love.

“For my boy.”

“For my child.”

“For my son.”

“For my girl.”

“For all of us,” I finished.