Somnium semper Remotum: Chapter 6: This and that

You can say everything you want about the Greek gods, and most would likely be true given how shitty their behaviours and personalities were, but one thing that couldn’t be denied is that they did things in style.

I had chosen after my conversation with Sally to go take a shower because I hadn’t been able to take one last night with how messy and rushed everything had been, and I felt that I truly needed one.

Marble of the purest white, reminiscent of the iconic Cycladic villages I had once visited with my grandfather when I had been young, veined with soft grey or gold.

Expansive, cool-looking stone flowing underfoot and across the walls, culminating in a spacious walk-in rain shower enclosed by a frameless glass door.

A deep, freestanding soaking tub, sculpted from polished porcelain, kinda reminiscent of an ancient amphora.

Brushed nickel fixtures along with a rainfall showerhead and a handheld wand, alongside sleek, wall-mounted taps for the tub.

A vanity taking the form of a long, minimalist console of white marble and an oversized mirror above with a clean-lined frame.

Lighting that seemed deliberately atmospheric and the gentle, natural aroma of fig and olive toiletries put at our disposal.

It was a room worthy of royalty, of divinity. In other words, it was decadence at its utmost. Yet, wasn’t it sad that it was probably something that the campers, the children of the gods themselves, demigods, heroes—something that I, who wasn’t related to the Olympians, experienced before them? The gods were truly shitty parents, weren’t they?

I didn’t take long to shower. Now that I was more alive and cleaner, it was time to do something important: properly try to understand how much and in what way I had changed.

I hadn’t truly taken the time to properly categorize the new abilities I had, but now that I had them, I could only say that they were bullshit, like game-breaking bullshit abilities, the kind of abilities that ensure that you are permabanned forever from playing, but more than that, anyone with a similar pseudo to you had to either change it or suffer the consequences of your actions.

I could feel it thrumming inside, like the beat of a drum only I could feel, the vibrations made each time there was impact and noise was produced—something other, yet mine in every sense of the term, almost like a new limb, like gaining a new one and realizing that you have been missing it all your life.

From what I was able to parse, see, more than the weapons I had connected to my soul—which by themselves would have been crazy (like how did Artoria lose when they were so busted? It must be because of the plot because there was no reason Artoria’s life would have gone this way when her weapons were bullshit amongst bullshit)—still, I had two essences inside of me, essences from the Meta Essence CYOA, which I was very familiar with due to how I literally wrote my first fanfics by giving them to my characters.

It kinda made me wonder. If other worlds exist, if this world that I had known as a book was real, a true living thing with true living people, does that mean that the fanfics I had written were either real because I was just in some way or form transcribing them, or because I was creating them?

Did it mean that I was in a story, that everything happening to me was because of a bastard with not enough talent in writing and too many edgelord tendencies, one that was another version of me?

Maybe… it was better not to think more of this. This way leads to madness, Allen! Why was I even talking to myself? I was going crazy, wasn’t I? Probably already was. Anyway, better focus back on my cheat, A.K.A my essences, A.K.A my new superpowers.

The first one was called the Essence of the Apotheosis, and to summarize it simply, it turned me into a god?! What was that bullshit! Too OP, don’t nerf! Only nerf when it's not me! Only Nerf Magik and Iron Fist because fuck them backline assaulters!

To be more precise, according to its description (because why would it not come with a mental description at this point; rabbits were probably living on the moon and making fabled webs, so at this point, why not?), the other essence was the Essence of the Blank, which was very simple in description for something so broken. To summarize it, this was something giving me the ability—or maybe trait would be more correct—to have a limitless potential.

In other words, it made me able to do shit I should never be able to do. It meant that I could learn any discipline or skillset, regardless of my biological, metaphysical, or cognitive limitations. Whether it was mastering every martial art in existence, learning stuff like languages literally seconds after hearing them.

Yeah, I was now fluent in different variations and dialects of Ancient Greek. Thanks, Camp Half-Blood. It also didn’t stop at something as simple as knowledge. Imagine looking at the action of someone who trained a hobby, a job, a skill all their life, look at it for maybe a minute or less, and know automatically as much as them, if not more, what they took years and grit to learn. That was a level of bullshit an Uchiha would call bullshit, and that wasn’t even the end of it. For example, you see that bird flying in the sky?

You look at him long enough and bam, now you know how to fly even though you are not a bird. You look at it long enough and you can now fly by materializing wings with the appropriate size to make you fly, if you can.

I didn't, though. Maybe I would have tried to test it if I didn’t feel what felt like thousands of gazes following me. I was literally in a place where it would be accurate to say that walls had ears and mouths, with how nymphs, dryads, and air spirits existed in this camp, or should exist at least based on the books.

Everything that I had just mentioned? The least of the broken things the Essence of the Blank could do.

One of the other major benefits of this essence, tangentially related to what I said earlier, was that it came with a perfect memory, with perfect storage—or in other words, there was nothing I would not be able to remember now and in the future. More than that, it meant that all the memories I already had, things I had seen but forgotten, were now perfectly clear, memories since I was a baby until now… maybe dying is the better solution. How could I have been so cringe? Worse, who let me?! Parents are embarrassing; they should have reacted there instead of finding it cute; maybe I would not have turned weird if they hadn’t let me!

Ok, deep breath; it's just memories that make you want to pour bleach on your brain, not that special… hopefully.

Anyway, the third benefit, it could be said, coming with the Essence of the Blank was the fact that it technically made me an engineer, which means that my dad and my grandfather won in the end. It seems Dad hadn’t been wrong about screaming about it being my fate to become like him and his dad. You would have thought I would have been the devil when I told him I wanted to study law instead.

By engineer, I simply meant that skills learned in one domain could be applied to others in novel ways as long as there was a modicum of logic to it. For example, when dawn came, some of the dryads had woken up and chosen to sing Disney princess-style, trees and fruits growing in a way that would make Hashirama proud. I heard them and now I was able to make Hashirama and Tobirama proud, if you know what I meant by that.

Still, it could be rightfully said that none of those things were what made the Blank Essence worthy of its place amongst other ones of the same kind, capable of turning you into an Archdaemon, a mad scientist Rick Sanchez-style, an archmage Frieren-style, or a living calamity Doomsday-style. What made the Blank Essence equal, if not superior in my opinion, to those cited previously was the fact that its true strength lay in how it enhanced other abilities beyond what they should be.

Let's say you were a Saiyan, for example, before gaining said ability. If, for example, your Zenkai should have raised your ability by a thousand, it would instead raise it by ten thousand. If you should have, for example, the equivalent of 1,000,000 S cells to turn Super Saiyan, now, you would only need 10,000 S cells.

I had walked into this new world with another essence and artefacts glued to my soul that would have by themselves turned me into something as inhuman, as divine as the God King of Camelot, if not more, with a little bit of time.

This was, I guess, why the words of the entity were correct. I had powers beyond the pale, that gods would gawk at, balk at, and I would still probably die in two months—not that I would make it easy. Still, I guess it balanced out.

The Essence of the Apotheosis was probably what had allowed me to enter the barrier of the camp, even if this second essence couldn’t be said to be activated, more passive than anything for now. But even in said passivity—passivity that could end the moment I chose to, kinda like having a room with the key dangling on the closed door—it still worked its magic.

It was also, I think, probably why Chiron said I reminded him of them, because for lack of a better description, it was as if that second essence, the essence called the Essence of the Apotheosis, came with a scent, one that reminded me of the sun bathing my skin; of a sunlit day, one not harsh but pleasing, comforting.

It also reminded me of war, of the smell of greed and blood, of an impression of armies trampling, fighting, and killing for an ideal, for a dream of something more they believed in, that they thought the bloodshed was worth it for, a dream worthy of tainting your own soul with.

According to the description of the Apotheosis Essence, this essence made me a god or something so close to it that the difference would not matter, and it did so through many things, like unlimited power within my domain of influence—probably the feelings and smells this essence made me think about, one I couldn’t properly recognize, at least for now. I had at least an inkling of the broad lines.

I just needed to open the door, and the Essence of the Apotheosis would make sure that I could shape reality as I see fit, which again was busted because reality warping, no matter the form, was always busted, and that was reality warping—the kind of ability that made your will become an actualizing force that can override natural laws, create ex nihilo, and alter existence on a cosmic scale.

Of course, it wouldn’t truly be accurate about making me a divine being if it only stopped at the potency part and didn’t dip more directly into the mental, consciousness, awareness part, because wasn’t a god a being with nigh-unlimited power, knowledge, and gravitas?

The omnibenevolent part was unfortunately not a necessary criteria. Had it been the case, the world would have been very much different.

Anyway, according to what I was reading from the description of this essence, it was also supposed to give me a consciousness expanding to encompass all knowledge—past, present, and future.

The past and the present, sure, but knowing the future in a world where Fate was personified by old grandma-looking, technically primordial, sadistic goddesses kinda made me wonder how that would work. Like, was the future locked in one place, or did it branch based on the choices you made, on free will and the like?

A part of me could not help but want to open that proverbial room, turn the key, and allow that essence to turn from passive to active, to see how that supposed coming for me in 2 months would be, to try to see so that I could begin to plan now, to see if there was a way, no matter how overwhelming that thing that brought me to this world was, had seemed to me.

I wanted to say fuck the consequences because I was dying and I had only two months left, and no matter how it would seem, no matter how threatening it would probably be, no matter how difficult it would make interaction with the Olympians and their pantheons become—because something tells me that radiating a “fuck you” amount of divine power in one of their bastions, in their children and soldiers' home, even if they didn’t properly care about them, would not be a good idea.

The sight that escaped me came straight from the heart. I guess I could wait to try to do it maybe today or in two days at most. In both cases, the clock would still be counting at relative time, so no point in making a blunder for now, especially with the beginning of a plan I had due to my talk with Sally.

I had talked of fighting fate with the woman, but empty words, empty boasts had no point to be uttered if in the end they meant nothing. I had two months until whatever that thing had decided was probably ironic enough to end me will come.

The powers, the essences it gave me were crazy useful, but I was not dumb. Trying to fight against whatever came with only what the thing gave me sounded dumb, like really dumb, like what stopped that thing from snapping its fingers and turning me into my apparently dying old self?

Fighting only with what it gave me would be kinda like fighting the sun with fire. Very fucking stupid, unless you were that busted, and I wasn’t that busted yet. The plan was becoming it.

I had read when I had been younger the Journey to the West—well, forced to, but what was the difference in the end—and one of the things I remembered about it was how bullshit the characters were, like even young powerscaler me had thought that it was too much, because what do you mean when you say you got seven different versions of immortality and that they stacked?

I didn’t know if Chinese mythology was real in this world, and if it was real, if it was accurate power-wise and hax to what I had read, but I wanted to find out if possible, know if this world was one where only the Olympians reigned supreme kinda like the first five books, or if there were more pantheons, and if so, how could I leverage all of this to my advantage.

Still, like I said before, I needed to not be dependent on what that entity had given me. I would use it as much as possible, but it should not be something that would turn me defenceless if it were gone.

I wasn’t sure if Sun Wukong, the Jade Emperor, and Buddha were real in this world, if peaches of immortality existed in this world, but I knew without a doubt that there existed the Greek equivalent: the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides, daughters of Atlas, golden apples protected by the Greek version of a dragon.

A certain son of Hermes, who would rightfully in my opinion try to overthrow his godly relatives, had gone on a quest for them just like Heracles but, unlike Heracles, had failed. Still, that meant he probably knew how to make what I planned a lot easier, and I knew how to hook him because, in the end, Luke Castellan was simple to understand; because, in the end, Luke Castellan was only one thing, and that thing was a hero. The moment you understood that was the moment you knew how to make him tick.

The guy right now was still probably a teenager if my calculations were correct, which kinda made me feel manipulative, even if what I had in mind would probably in the end favour him, his plans, and kinda stymie Kronos’s plans.

Luke Castellan wanted to matter; he wanted those he thought of, saw as family, to matter, to not fight for scraps, and I guess that being homeless when he had been younger had probably intensified that want he has.

He wanted the gods, the parents of his family, to care or at least give a modicum of it; to try, not even to be good, to be decent parents, especially with them apparently being the masters of this world in all the ways that mattered.

He wanted to not see children sleep on the floor, in literal barracks, as if their parents probably didn't control the economy. He wanted to not see children desperate because they were not even recognized, claimed by their parents because they had not done something said parent would recognize as glorious, worthy enough, when it should have been the contrary, when none of them had asked to be hunted by monsters, monsters who were directly or indirectly created by said parents’ bullshit; tired of watching parents treat their children like soldiers and preferred toys at best.

This is why he would make the inane decision of backing Kronos, the guy who literally ate his children alive because he feared being dethroned, the guy who was deemed even amongst deities with excesses of cruelty as cruel. And even though I didn't agree, I could understand the logic.

The Olympians were supposed to be just rulers, and Luke had seen in the front row how it was not the case, how indifferent, how petty, how cruel they could be to their own children, so maybe if said gods who were supposed to be good weren’t, maybe those considered bad weren’t all that bad either. It was a shame that in that case, he had been mistaken because maybe Kronos wasn’t as cruel as his children or more than them, but he was still cruel.

More than that, fighting against gods, going against deities wasn’t an easy thing, especially when you weren’t one. Greek immortals were immortals in the sense that not only did they not age, but that they couldn’t be killed no matter what you tried, no matter how you tried to hurt them, at least according to the myths and the books, unless you were the sleeping form of Chaos slumbering in Tartarus or that said immortal wanted to die. That was, of course, without mentioning the superpowers that inherently came with being a god.

Realistically, no matter how talented you are, no matter how great of a swordsman Luke is, going against the gods, fighting for what he wanted meant going against unkillable foes who had lived and fought for centuries at least, who had dominion over aspects of reality, and who could kill you, turn you into ashes if you looked at their true selves.

In other words, if you wanted to fight against such beings, you either pulled miracles after miracles, bullshit after bullshit as if you were in a shonen—one that would probably resemble Akame ga Kill very quickly, but still a shonen—or you do the realistic, logical thing and you fight fire with fire, or in other words, you use deities against deities.

Like I said before, I may not agree with Luke’s actions, but I can understand and empathise with them, especially when he had been fucked since even before his death; since whether he knew it or not, he had been designed to be the hero of the prophecy who will die by his own hand since the moment the Moirai made the Oracle utter the Great Prophecy, when the only ones seemingly most eligible were children of Hades.

This is why I was sure that what I would try would work. Luke Castellan was not stupid, or I think, that stupid. In canon, he had been stuck choosing between two poisons, and he took what he saw as the less bitter one. How would such an individual react when given the red apple, no matter how suspicious it seemed, Luciferian as it was?

Simple, he’ll take it, or try at least, if he thought that the red apple was truly something that would allow him to wash up the bitterness with its taste.

Sally wanted to be strong enough to matter, to be able to change her circumstances, to protect Percy from what was coming. Luke wanted to make those he considered family, those who saw him as their figure model, as their older brother, their confidant, live instead of surviving; sleep in too sumptuous beds instead of on corners on the ground, in little spaces crammed like sardines; laugh and be happy and be safe instead of looking as if all their dreams were already crushed while they were so young. He wanted the status, the title of children of the gods to be something other than only monsters, worries, and death. And I wanted to survive longer than the next two months; I wanted to thrive beyond what death that thing said was awaiting me; to do everything I had never done before; to try things I never had before; to at least have the chance to do such.

With such wants, was there any possibility that we would not work well together? I also didn’t want to limit myself to golden apples of the garden of the Hesperides. I wanted to search for hidden artefacts, items that could help. I wanted to plunder the Lotus Casino for their unlimited amount of money cards because there was no way I would allow something as paltry as poverty to stop me from enjoying this life before and after those two months.

I wanted to go find the Golden Fleece and have it as my coat, Thragg-style, not only for the possible health benefits (because why not), and I didn’t want to stop there. Didn’t Asclepius cure Death or something?

Couldn’t I try to commission the guy for something or maybe even try to copy his abilities with my Blank Essence?

Didn't Glaucus become a sea deity from an average fisherman because he was lucky enough to discover a magical herb that resurrected dead fish and applied it to himself?

Why even stop at the Greek pantheon if it wasn’t the only one in this world? If the Magnus Chase books and their content were real in this world, why not steal some of Idunn's apples, Davy Jones Xebec-style?

Odin had also in the myths hung himself and sacrificed an eye to become wise. I had the Essence of the Blank. I'm sure that I could find a way to cheat the method and have better results; maybe better knowledge and wisdom would allow me to find a way to dodge death.

All of that to say that, like that thing had told me, this world was my oyster, and I would not let anything stop me from reaching my goals. And speaking of goals, who was I seeing if not Mr. Luke Castellan, would-be Morning Star of the Percy Jackson books.

It was still early, probably around 6 A.M., and even though the camp wasn’t as asleep as it had been when I had been talking with Sally, it still was kinda sparse. I didn't think Dionysus was there yet, and I hadn’t yet seen Chiron today, which meant that the conversation I would have with them could be pushed to later, that I should have enough time.

Now, how to go with it? I had the hook, but no hook was interesting when it didn't come with one important thing: in the words of the supervillain, Presentation.

I walked to the demigod. I ignored the gazes I could feel as I came closer to him. Don’t worry, Dryad-chan, I had nothing too bad in mind against him, so far at least.

“Sup?” I greeted the demigod.

His body went rigid as if he had been run through with a live wire before he turned to face me, and his body relaxed a little, still not at ease but less looking like a cat fearing for its life.

“You are the one who saved that kid, his mom, and Grover from the Minotaur yesterday, the one Teach invited. Thank you for that, by the way.” The gratitude coming from his voice sounded, seemed sincere for the most part. Had it not been for my Essence of the Blank allowing me to read his tells like an open book, I would have missed the distaste he had when saying Grover’s name.

If I remembered well, he kinda, I think, had a grudge against Grover due to what happened with Thalia. Still, the part about him being glad for Percy and his mom wasn’t a lie, even though that guy had been canonically the one to frame him—with him being the real lightning thief—and that's without mentioning trying to drag Percy to Tartarus through the cursed flying shoes and the venomous scorpion he had sicced on the son of Poseidon near the end of the first book.

Looking at Luke Castellan, you would have never thought that he would have done what he did in the books. Guy looked like an angel—well, a mischievous one who would probably rob you of everything in your pocket, but still an angel; the kind of person you admire and point to as the thing, ideal, idea to follow, a positive one—not a guy who would help resurrect Greek Satan and who would raise in rebellion against his godly family. But appearances could be tricky.

The more I looked at him, the more it felt I could understand him, the more I think I could see him. Even if he didn’t show it, I could see under the projected amiability, under the tension, curiosity—the kind of curiosity where you wonder if what was before you was either a threat or an opportunity.

More than that, I could see strength, pain, and hate big enough to swallow the world—nothing else that I didn’t expect.

I gave him half of a shrug with a lazy grin. “I did what I did because I could. Nothing more, nothing less. Shouldn’t be something special.”

The smile he had when he spoke was less fake, still fake though. “You’re right. Shouldn’t be something special, but what is and what should be could be two different things.” I didn’t need the Essence of the Blank to know what he was talking about.

“Still, how may I help you?”

“Yesterday,” I told him, “even if it was night, I thought that I kinda had half of a good look at this place. I’m probably wrong, but I can’t help but think that you look like the oldest of all those I saw.”

That was, of course, a lie—the part about watching and seeing and memorising and checking stuff about the camp. I said what I had said because of the books, nothing else, but I couldn’t say that I knew because of any other way unless I wanted to look more suspicious than what I’m sure I already was in their eyes.

I saw a dark haze bloom on his face for a moment, the mask of the amiable, kind, and mischievous teenager replaced by something akin to anger, pain, and hatred.

I could see it like a raw wound that wasn’t healed, just hidden. I knew that would have been the end of this conversation, that he would have closed off, that I wouldn’t have been able to push a little more if not for my next words: “I’m sorry to ask. It’s just,” and the infusing of sincerity, “it’s like something or someone was missing. I could be wrong, but it kinda reminded me of the feel of my home when my family lost someone.”

Those words did what I wanted them to do. I saw something akin to a flash of understanding bloom in his eyes before disappearing. More than that, I could see the mention that I had lost someone, that in a way, someone like me—or even that I was not like the gods, that I was, even if powerful, even if something he didn’t completely understand, something that wasn’t completely beyond him—something he could empathise with, that he could try to manipulate while being honest.

The Essence of the Blank was truly busted. I would have missed 90% of the tells and clues in the way he thought, in the way he would react, if not for it. If this was how it was for Tattletale in Worm, I understand why she was always this smug.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” The words were as honest as one you could expect from someone who had lost people he cared about, who could empathise but still wanted to manipulate you. “Your observations are not wrong. Except our teacher and the camp director, there are no adults in camp. I am the oldest amongst us.”

The words were said matter-of-factly, as if he was telling me that the sky was blue, yet I could hear the scorn under his words, the bitterness.

“You asked me a question; can I ask one in return?” he said in a way that told me that it was not an answer he would easily allow me to avoid, if that was what I wanted to do, at least.

The way he was acting—bright smile that was halfway crooked, that was purposely made cheerful in a way that it would be seen that it was false cheerfulness—I knew that if I couldn’t see the manipulation for what it was, I would have felt guilty, and that guilt was what he counted on.

He truly was, whether he liked it or not, his daddy’s son.

Still, I played the game. “Shoot.”

“May I ask what you are?”

I watched in real-time as he realised the blunder in his words and tried to adjust: “Of course you have divine blood. A friend told me that she saw you enter the barrier without being stopped before choosing to leave it to protect Grover and the two others against the monster.”

By friend, he probably meant a certain blonde daughter of Athena, but with how popular he had been in canon, it could be someone else.

“Had you been a mortal or a monster, you wouldn't have been able to cross it.”

“What makes you think I'm not like you?” I asked him.

“Chiron’s reaction. You apparently struck so hard that you disintegrated the Minotaur and the rain in your surroundings into nothing, and while impressive, while Big Three material, this is something I could see a demigod with a strong parent, a lot of training, time to grow, and items from their divine parent achieve. What makes me think it is not the case is that I know Chiron. I’ve known him for five years straight, and I know that no matter what you may have done in the past or who your divine parent would be, he still would have accepted you without batting an eye if you were a demigod. For all his faults, you can’t deny that.”

Faults, huh? Let’s see what he meant by that… interesting, very interesting. Luke saw Chiron as a coward; a part of him blamed the centaur for the current way Camp Half-Blood was. He reproached the son of the Titan King for not doing anything. No, close. It was for not trying to do enough. He saw Chiron as a parental figure, but the kind of parental figure you love but you know can’t protect you from the abusive one.

“So, what are you?” he asked again. The more I was standing around him, the more I was speaking to him, the more I was picking stuff up. For example, I was now able, without my essence, naturally to know if someone was lying to me.

It was something I was sure I had picked up from the demigod before me. It was probably something he inherited from his father. It was a good thing that so far, I hadn’t truly lied, that I had said half-truths at best, using the clues given to me by my Blank Essence.

I know I could lie to him, try to invent something, but what was the point of lying when the truth by itself could suffice?

“Would you believe me if I told you that yesterday was the first time I saw a monster in the flesh, that I saw anything supernatural?” I could see that he could see that I was actually genuine, which was probably why his mask cracked to show real surprise on his face.

I could understand his surprise. Imagine hearing that one of the most renowned, most dangerous monsters in your entire mythology, one who had probably been the bane of demigods for thousands of years, was blasted to smithereens by someone who knew nothing and thus should never be trained or strong enough to face such a monster. After all, monsters in the Percy Jackson world were attracted to the scent of demigods, and if I wasn’t wrong, the stronger a demigod was, the stronger their scent was. So a demigod capable of doing the bullshit that I did yesterday should have logically been aware of the world behind the Mist because they should have been swarmed by monsters as much, if not more, than a demigod of the Big Three since their childhood.

The only reason I didn’t feel that overwhelmed by everything was because this world was one I had read about in my childhood.

“You never met a monster before?!”

“Nope.”

“Then how did you kill it? What was your plan approaching it?”

“Killed it with a sword and a spear, and I didn’t really have a plan. Just wanted to distract it. Expected to die, to be honest.”

“You… truly don’t know anything, do you?”

“Well, I read Greek books and mythology-related stories when I was younger. I am using that plus everything else to parse everything.”

The demigod looked at me for what felt like an eternity, as if he was trying to read my soul. After a moment, he spoke: “You’re not joking.”

“Not joking. Literally walked into that mess.”

“You’re either very lucky or very unlucky.”

“I believe in myself, so I’m going to say lucky.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

“But it does! Think, bro, think! The most important thing in this world is will, and will trumps everything, even things like fate or luck.”

“Tell me when it is your funeral so that I can come. You told me that you read the myths, but you seem to have forgotten one of the most important things: Fate always wins.”

“Not if you’re smart. I know it’s not the best example, but let’s take Sisyphus!”

“I can see that it’s beginning well.” The sarcasm could not be missed, even by the most dimwitted.

“Sure, Sisyphus’s end was far from the best, but it’s not because of his actions!”

“That’s a first one. Ok, I’m listening.”

“Sisyphus failed because he was a sucker!”

“I’m retracting my previous comment.”

“Quiet, padawan! The senate is talking!”

“Maybe the senate should be careful about needling Brutus.”

“Nonsense! Anyway, what I was saying was that Sisyphus’s problem was that he was a sucker; he was not smart enough. Like, what, do you hide them in your home after capturing him? The guy should have built something on a remote island that would make the Labyrinth and Alcatraz look like a children’s park, but he didn’t.

“How does it relate to fate and luck, pray tell?”

“In every way! As long as you are smart enough, have enough guts, you are capable of doing anything. In the end, Sisyphus failed, but he still was able to capture Death itself, do the impossible. If an idiot like him can do so, why can’t I do the impossible by myself? Why can’t you do the impossible by yourself, Luke?”

“The real world isn’t like that. You’re new to all of this. This is why you think, speak like that.”

“We live in a world of myth, wonder, and horrors, Luke. I’m new to all of this. I’m probably saying a lot of bullshit, but we are in a world that shouldn’t be, where the impossible is more a suggestion than a hard line.”

“The world doesn’t work like that! Maybe it would be like that if it was just.”

“Then make it just, Luke. Then make it fair through your own actions, through your own effort.”

“You’re fucking condescending, you know that? Don’t you think I tried?”

“Then try again.”

“Don’t you hear me? Things don’t work like tha-“

“I have only two months left.”

Whatever words the son of Hermes had wanted to say choked in his throat. “What?”

“I learned not long ago.” Last night, I added mentally.

“I was informed, told with pure certainty that I had only two months left. Yesterday, I learned that this world existed, that monsters, things bumping in the dark, gods, things I thought only existed in mythology were real. Yesterday, I used weapons, power I never had before to kill a monster, to blast it into nothing, and I’m still dying. Everything and nothing had changed since yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, I-“

“You don’t need to apologise, Luke. I didn’t tell you this because I wanted your pity. I’m supposed to die in two months, and it is honestly something I don’t like, that I don’t accept. Even if it’s foolish, even if it’s stupid, I’m going to continue fighting. I’m going to continue living. I’ll do everything that I can for more than two months because I want to live, because the impossible is only what hasn’t been done yet.”

I gazed into his eyes and asked him: “Tell me, do you have dreams? Objectives that seemed impossible yet that you want to accomplish?”

The demigod turned his gaze away from mine. I saw how it turned and swept over the camp, the cabin with the demigods inside. Even without my Blank Essence, I would have known his answer.

“I want them to be happy. I want them to have better than this. I have been living here for five years straight, and nothing changed, nothing improved. This could have been, this should have been a paradise for them, for all of us, yet I can’t help but see all of this as a cage, all of this as hell. The gods, our parents—if they cared, they could have made all of this better, but they don’t; they don’t care.”

“If you want a paradise, if you asked for one and was refused, then make one. Make one greater than what they ever could have made; make it yourself with your grit, your will, and your strength.”

“I don’t think it’s possible.”

“Then do the impossible! Search this world for power and wealth. Use the myths to your advantage. Go where others never dared to tread before. Make, build something with those you trust that couldn’t be destroyed, that could help you. There are myths and legends of heroes slaying monsters, of gods and their whims and actions. Why couldn’t there be one about you making a new Eden?”

“You’re crazy, you know that?”

“I was once told by my ex-psychologist.”

“Maybe I’m the craziest one here, listening to you.”

“Crazy is good. Crazy is what changes the world; it is what can shake it to its core.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I’ll still need to do my research, but if we want this wild ride to succeed, for the other person I want to involve, we need three things: knowledge, power, and money.”

“Knowledge, power, money? Kinda simple, isn’t it?”

I shrugged. “Don’t fix it if it’s not broken.”

“Knowledge because we need to have enough information on what to know, take, make, plan, do, what not to do, and if doing something that logically was a bad idea, how to still do it. We need power, or nothing we’ll try will succeed or will remain for long—pretty simple. We need money, and by money I meant a ‘fuck you’ amount of money, the kind of money capable of buying an entire country. To be frank, I’ve not properly thought about how to accomplish the knowledge and the money part, with me being new to all of this, but I have an idea for the power part.”

“Doing the impossible, huh?” I heard Luke say. It was clear he was thinking out loud more than anything else.

“Fuck it. Why not. Let’s go crazy. I heard that there was this place called the Lotus Casino. It’s apparently a trap, a den of monsters that feed on their victims’ time and obsession. Their victims are stuck in the hotel, not aware, unknowing of the fact that outside, time is passing—days, months, years, even decades. What’s interesting is that I also heard that they have credit cards with an unlimited amount of money. Many children of Hermes tried to steal from them only to fail again and again. You said the impossible is only what hasn’t been done yet, didn’t you?”

He was smiling, his teeth bared as if in a challenge. “So let’s make it a robbery,” the son of Hermes spoke. “Let’s rob a casino, the Lotus Casino.”