Paidophonos

“Kassandra”: A Satyr Story

Kassandra is tired of her father always telling her what to do.  Ever since she had turned ten, her father had kept her cloistered in his house, away from men.  Now that she’s twenty, all she wants is to be sexually free.

As Nyx rules and Apollon sleeps, she sneaks out of her house, wrapped in a thick imatio.

“Gentlemen,” she nods in a low voice to the guards at the gates.  They nod back.

“Be safe.  It’s dangerous outside the polis gates these days.”

Of course, danger is exactly what Kassandra’s looking for.

The path from Sparta leads almost directly into the forest.  Kassandra hesitates for a second.  The guards were right.  The forest is lethal.  Yes, she may happen on the followers of Dionysos she’s looking for, but she could also happen upon one of the fearsome creatures all the heroes fought off.  Kassandra breathes in.  The air is cool, and freezes her fears.  She runs off into the woods.

The path is overgrown and rough.  Several times, her sandaled feet slip on the rocks, roots, and undergrowth.  She swears that she hears the sounds of animals all around her.  She can pick out one in particular… it sounds like… human laughter!

Indeed, as she pulls aside a long branch obscuring her view of a clearing, she sees a most marvelous sight:

Six naked men with horses’ tails and erect penises, dancing around a large, old, fat man.  Five of the men have goblets, and the fruity wine spills onto the ground.  One plays a set of Pan pipes.  The fat man in the center, his tail longer and his dick harder than those of the others, has two goblets of wine in his hands.  The deep red liquid drips from his laughing mouth into his beard, where it either stays or continues its journey to the ground.  Some of it even lands on the throbbing obelisk between the man’s thighs.

Kassandra’s mouth curls into a smile.  She has found the satyroi.

“Hello, sirs!”  The satyroi’s heads all turn simultaneously.  A woman’s voice is always welcome to a satyr.  The large one in the center gets up, his love-thyrsos swinging as he moves.

“Well, now, Missy, what might you be doing so far from Sparta??” he asks as wine drips from his phallus.

“My name is Kassandra.  I have found the strict life my father affords me not to my taste.  I would like to learn about the world of men..”

The satyroi burst into laughter.  “My name is Seilenos.  And we certainly know about the world of men, don’t we boys?”  The satyroi chuckle, greedily eying Kassandra, each pulling off her imatio in their minds.  Their already stiff rods increase in hardness tenfold.

“Kassandra, why don’t you come over here and tell us exactly what it is you’d like to know?”

Kassandra confidently strides over to the satyroi, then turns so her back faces them.  She casts a lusty glance over her shoulder, then rips the clasp from her imatio, letting the garment fall to the ground.  The satyroi whoop with glee, as her form is much more visible under her thin khiton.  Kassandra draws her left hand to her right shoulder, and plucks the brooch from it, showing her lightly tanned shoulder to the cheering satyroi.  She undoes the second brooch, then blows it from her shoulder.  Her khiton falls, stopping at the girdle immediately under her breasts.  Cupping each of her swelling bosoms in each hand, she turns to face the ecstatic satyroi.  She slowly draws her arms downward, between her legs, framing her perky tits, her hard nipples sticking out like the cocks of the satyroi.  She brings her arms back above her head, and slowly turns again.  She undoes her girdle, and what is left of the khiton falls to the ground.  The satyroi will wake up tomorrow with damaged voice boxes, but they don’t care.  They hoot and holler as Kassandra draws one slender leg up the length of the other, her round ass tightening.  She falls to her hands and knees, the sensuality of nature overcoming all other motivations.  She turns onto her back, her breasts flapping and her goblet open, the virgin membrane still intact and inviting as her natural wine fills the cup.

“Do what you will.”

The satyroi’s lusting gives way to raucous laughter.

“You’ll need some wine in you first!” Seilenos exclaims, pulling an amphora and a goblet from the ground.

He pours her glass after glass, and she downs them each with one gulp.  Pretty soon, she feels like she is floating on the cloud of Dionysos.  The god’s euphoria is granted to her, and she smiles at all the lusty man-vines waving around her face.

“More!” she shrieks.

Seilenos looks at the other satyroi, who all nod fervently.

“Put your mouth here,” Seilenos instructs Kassandra, patting the side of his engorged penis.

Kassandra smiles a lecherous smile and looks at the old satyr with salacious eyes, then puts her full, aqueous lips on his lovegiver, noticing the waters of love flowing through her lower lips.

Seilenos lifts an amphora of wine, and begins pouring it onto his chest.  The water of Dionysos cascades down his chest, over his potbelly, through his lower hair, and all over his firm member.  Kassandra delights in the wine, and drinks from the satyr’s staff as if from a fountain.

When she feels like she is about to faint from the joy of the wine, Kassandra falls back, eying the lusty satyroi.  They stare at her virginal sekos, her open legs inviting them like an open door does to a thief.

Seilenos makes a gesture with his finger indicating that she should turn onto her stomach, and she does.  One of the satyroi stands in front of her; Seilenos stands behind.  Together, they grasp her midriff, lifting her to the level of their hips.  They each place their mortars in the respective pestles, and move in and out, mimicking the rhythm with which a winemaker crushes grapes.

Kassandra’s nerves send mixed messages to her brain, the intense pleasure she feels at having men inside her after two decades of chastity mingling with the mild uncomfortableness of having skin where skin had never been before.

She is on her hands and knees now, and a third satyr slips underneath and begins penetrating the thin layer of virginity she has been wanting to break for so long.  The sharp spike of pain gives way to unimaginable pleasure.  The pleasure of sex merges with the pleasure of the wine.  When she can no longer take it, she closes her eyes, and can see Dionysos and Aphrodite, guiding her up a pyramid of ecstasy as her three adytons are visited by the exploratory extensions of the hairy priests.

The other satyroi form a circle around the foursome, grasping their own spikes, rubbing vigorously.  They shoot their descendants onto the satyriasis-filled group in the center.  Once everyone in the outer circle has finished, they jump the satyroi on either side of Kassandra, making two long, lustful lines.  Those on the end, without anyone to stimulate their chutes, stick their own fingers there, their tails flailing about in rhythm with the bouncing of Kassandra’s breasts.

At long last, they part, the satyroi having expelled gallons of the white wine of love into various amphoras, belonging to both Kassandra and to each other.  As for Kassandra, she has climbed so far up the temple of euphoria that it feels like a mountain, second only to Olympos in height.

Exhausted, the former virgin and the seven manimals fall into a deep, Dionysian-induced sleep, their limbs entwining.

Apollon breaks the lascivious orgy with his piercing rays.  They remind Kassandra, as all convex objects will, from now on, of the fleshy promontories that entered and exited her as actors from a stage this night.

She picks up her clothes and puts them back on, bidding the satyroi goodbye with many kisses on many lusty lips.  They beg her to return sometime.  She just smiles enigmatically and winks.

She grunts at the guards, different ones than those who had let her out, as Apollon begins to climb the road that leads across the sky.  She sneaks back to her house and her bed.  She reaches under her khiton, and is pleased to find that she can, with her own fingers, simulate the pleasure granted to her by the large trailers of the satyroi.

She lets out an ecstatic sigh as she reaches the plateau of the euphoria mountain, just as her father, Priamos, opens the door to her bedchamber.  He takes the lustful expelling of air for a chaste exhalation, and smiles to himself.  “Sleep, my chaste little flower.  No man shall ever pluck your petals from you.”  As he closes the door, Kassandra allows herself a naughty smile before drifting off to sleep again.

34. Pergamos; Maimakterion 3, 430 B.C.E. (ELEKTRA)

I scream.  There is nothing else to do.  I bury my tearstained face in Aias’ chest.  Why did Pateras do that?  Why?  He killed Thyestes, didn’t he?  He accomplished his dream, didn’t he?  So why?

I comes back to me like a flash from Dios.  Aias’s words… “Those who live by blood, die by blood.”  This was the only way Pateras could rid himself of revenge.  I cry into Aias’ shoulders, my tears rolling down his muscles and diluting the blood that now runs ankle-deep on the orkhestra.  I look at my tears weakening the blood, and think back to my oath from ten years ago: “I swore that I would kill every soldier there that had raped a daughter of Ellas.”  I turn my eyes from the piles of butchered Athenian carcasses to the cascading blood and, finally, onto the body of Pateras.  His weapons, which had been so loyal, now pierce his flesh, the gaping holes from the spears and javelins still oozing blood.  As I see the broken warrior’s body lying on the orkhestra, I know that I cannot fulfill my oath.  For the Athenian soldiers, lascivious as they are, are fathers and sons, too.  They shall be judged before Aides, Persephone, Minos, Aiakos, and Radamanthys, and they shall suffer accordingly.  The gods see fit to punish those who anger them, and the lecherous dogs would hear from Artemis soon enough.  I am mortal.  I would be committing an injustice to mortal men, to the gods, and to me if I were to drown myself in the blood of the guilty, for only the gods can do that and be left unstained.  Let the Spartans and the Athenians kill themselves over their petty squabbles.  I will not be a slave to revenge. 

“Forgive me, Pateras.” I whisper.  Somehow, I know he does.

We lift Pateras up and carry him to our inn.  We clean him up and wash his khiton and khlamys, laying his weapons by the side of his bed.

That night Aias and I make love.  I feel his half of our child enter me and join with my half.  We have decided that if it is a girl, she shall be named Zeste, and if it is a boy, he shall be named Aetos.

We carry the body back to Sparte.  The whole polis puts aside their worries about the war for his funeral games and the lighting of his pyre.  I tenderly place the obolos under Pateras’ tongue and lay his Beak and Talons across his chest before kissing his forehead.  Aias hands me the torch, and I light the fire.  Before I step down, a single tear rolls down my cheek.  It lands on my father’s forehead before the flames evaporate it.  I hold Aias close to me as the body of my Father, Aetos Iptamenos, turns to ash and smoke.

33. Pergamos; Maimakterion 3, 430 B.C.E. (AETOS)

I cut my way through the rest of the shell.  Thyestes and two bodyguards are scrambling down the front rows of the theatre.  I am faced with a man wielding a spear in each hand.  Spears are strapped to his back, looking like deadly rays of Elios.  He casts both weapons at the same time.  I lean back and catch them, throwing them back.  The hulking spearman ducks, and my spears land in the backs of Thyestes’ bodyguards.  Thyestes is spattered with the blood of his minions and turns.  Seeing me so close, he begins to run.  A Pellet whistles past my ear and impales Thyestes in the ear, pinning him to the column.  My beautiful daughter…  I notice streams of blood cascading down the steep steps of the theatre and am vaguely aware of the battle being waged behind me.  My thoughts are for Thyestes now…

“Send him to Tartaros, Asteropaios!”

The spearman grins, pulling two more longer, sturdier ash weapons from his back.  I leap at him, the Eagle hunting the Bee.

He thrusts, slicing through flesh in my arms.  My blood joins the blood of heathens gathering on the orkhestra.  I dig my Talons into the shoulders of my beast-like foe, removing them and stabbing him again in the stomach, again in the chest.  Each arm movement sends unknown bolts of pain through my body.  I step back.  He is wounded, but not down.  He swipes again.  I duck under one spear and jump over the other, digging one Talon into his chest and another in his stomach.  He is still standing, although less steadily than before.  I pull out my Beak and sever his head’s connection to his body.

As Asteropaios falls away, I see Thyestes, his infected eyes growing large with fear.  I walk up to him, retrieving my Talons as I go, and wrench the arrow from his ear.  The despot screams, the sound echoing around the theatre.  I turn my Beak around, offering him the hilt.

“You will die today, Thyestes.  At least die like a man, not a dog.”

Thyestes hesitantly grasps the hilt.

The coward pulls, revealing a dagger in his other hand which he brings into my body.  I feel the metal scrape my ribs as I push him away.  My Beak is heavy in his hand.  The anger in my heart burns hotter than the fear in his red, swollen eyes.

My Talons are outstretched.  The rabbit may have my Beak in his hand, but I am on him, ripping him all over.  The rabbit tries to stab me with my Beak and bite me with his tooth, but my feathers ignore the pain.  A swipe of my Talons severs his hold on my Beak.  Talons meets tooth and find their way into the rabbit’s stomach.  I pull at his mask.  The rabbit lifts his working hand up to stop me, but I pull the gold from his face, breaking his paws.

A new mask looks at me.  It is burned and pus-covered.  It smells of dying skin.  Perfect.  “Look at me, you bastard!” I shriek.  He does, and I slice him up while he lives.  First the extremities, then moving on to the torso.  His cries echo throughout the city.  The gods on Olympos must be able to hear them.  I work my Talons through his limbs until he is just a torso and a head.  He is still screaming.  I reach under his khiton and castrate him with a Talon.  He screams, and I dig all three of my weapons into his torso.  I look into the embers of his eyes as the life leaves them and Ermes and Thanatos bring his soul to Tartaros.  As his life, so ebbs my revenge.

But not completely.  When Thyestes’ eyes go blank and his lungs retire, I still feel the need for revenge.  I slice at him with all of my weapons.  Nothing.  I turn to Thyestes’ army.  Most have run, but a few are still fighting against the ragged, bruised, and bleeding Aias and Elektra.  I slice two with my Talons and peck lives away with my Beak, but revenge only leaves in droplets.

There is no way to satisfy my thirst for blood.  There is no one I can kill anymore… no one…

Wrong.  There is one.  I sheath my weapons and walk up to my son-in-law.  He is fighting two men at once.  I silence them from behind with a quick flash of Talons.

“Aias,” I say to him, “You are a good soldier, a good sailor, and a good man.  My daughter is lucky to have you.”

“Thank you, Father, he says, taken slightly aback.

“I love you, my son.”  I throw my arms around his strong shoulders.  I hear Pellets fly.  Elektra must be confused.  All will be clear soon.

“I love you, too, Father.”

I think he understands.  I climb the steps to my daughter.  She fires off three more arrows in rapid succession, then rushes up to me.  Aias handles the slow trickle of attackers.

“Pateras, what in Tartaros is going on?”

It is too much for me.  I fall to a knee on the stone bench, tears flowing quicker and faster than the blood rushing down the steps of the theatre.  Elektra kneels and takes me in her arms, comforting me.  I clutch her close to me.  Feeling her warmth against me evaporates almost all of the revenge.  Almost.  There is still a small reservoir in the pit of my liver… curse Ares for his brutal treachery!

“What is it, Pateras?”

I pull her close.  I don’t want to say it.  I need to.  But I can’t.  My lungs won’t provide the air, my mouth won’t shape the words.  I pull her close.  I kiss her cheeks and forehead.  I look at her.  She is radiant.

“My beautiful girl…”

I pull her close and kiss her cheek once more.

“I love you, Elektra.”

“I love you, too, Pateras.”

We hold each other for a moment, then I force myself to pull away.  I look down the steep steps of the theatre, where Asteropaios’ body lies like an urchin in a sea of blood.

“Pateras?”

I fly.

I soar down, onto the collection of spears and javelins that will be my death.  I hear the rush of the wind, the screams of Elektra, and feel the sad blue-grey eyes of Aias on my back.  The spikes are getting closer… the revenge will soon leave me.

Pain.  Each spear digs into my body, feeling like a thousand serpents’ fangs all across my body.  I scream.  I beg Aides, Ermes, Thanatos, and even the Keres for death, to be led to the next world.  They don’t answer.

I am being pulled off of the spears.  I can vaguely feel the blood pouring from my body.  The forms of Aias and Elektra are blurry, their words, incoherent.  Aias has his arm on Elektra’s shoulder.  She is frantic.

I pull away from them with a mighty roar.  I unleash my Talons and dig them both into my throat where it meets the shoulder.  Death’s sweet, dark embrace still hasn’t come… and Pain won’t let me go.  I draw my Beak.

I swing the weapon from the ground into my head, cleaving my skull.  I hear a shriek from Elektra, and see a blurry figure rush into the arms of another blurry figure.  My vision is stained with red.  A black curtain descends….

Five figures appear in the blackness!  It is Ermes, clad in his winged sandals and cap, and Thanatos, winged, armed, and flanked by the shrieking Keres.  Ermes motions with the kerykeion.  “Come, Aetos.  It’s time.”  I follow the otherworldly host into the darkness.

32. Pergamos; Maimakterion 3, 430 B.C.E. (ELEKTRA)

Aias is cut off from me by a wall of six oplitai.  I think it’s just rude to separate a wife from her husband.  Out come my Hoof and Antler.  The first oplites thrusts with the spear, and I knock the weapon away as if it were a twig.  I jab with my Hoof, breaking his skull as I skewer the next man who goes for me.

The third oplites gets a taste of my Moonbeam.  These soldiers bore me, and I want to get back to my Aias.  I pull out my Crescent, and nock three Pellets, which soar into the necks of the last three advances oplitai.

I rush to Aias and kiss him as he fights.  “Always good to see you, darling.”

31. Pergamos; Maimakterion 3, 430 B.C.E. (AETOS)

Elektra and I blend with the crowds celebrating Athena’s birth.  It seems wrong that we have been instructed to kill on the birthday of a goddess, however I will not disobey the words of Apollon.  And Athena has always smiled on Elektra.  I am also sure she doesn’t appreciate her city being raped by Thyestes.  As we near the Sanctuary of Athena, we are stopped in our tracks by an unholy procession of black and purple khitons, carrying their slave driver, behind that hideous golden mask, upon their shoulders.

Elektra grasps my hands.  Smart girl.  Woman, now, really.  Since her marriage to Aias in ’39, it has been hard for me to see her as the woman she’s become.  A part of me will always see her as that little wood nymph running and playing in Sparte…

A shout brings me out of my reverie.

“Out of the way!  King Thyestes would like to take a seat in the theatre!”

The men in black khitons carry Thyestes to a spot in the theatre.  They were going to perform an unauthorized production of Oidipous Tyrannos in the Theatre of Pergamos.  I hate it when authors don’t get royalties for their work.

I push Elektra’s hand away and break from the crowd.  She is smart enough to not make any sound, and silences Aias.  I walk towards the theatre.  Elektra and Aias follow me from what they deem is a safe distance.

“Citizen!  Stop!  You are not permitted any further!”

Using my Beak, I explain that I am indeed permitted.  Upon seeing the metal flash and the colors of my khiton under my imatio, the men surrounding Thyestes draw weapons and form a protective shell around the tyrant.

A Pellet and a javelin crack the shell.  The soldiers should have known better.  Turtles get made into lyres.

Arrows fly past me as I approach the shell.  A line of oplitai in armor the same color as the khitons materializes in front of me.  My Beak is sheathed and my Talons clear a path for me.  Aias has caught up to me and skewers four with a swipe.  He brings his shield across his body, breaking several spears and the skulls of five oplitai.  I turn to my right in time to see five spears that would have embedded themselves in my neck suddenly drop to the ground.  Five Pellets stick out of the eyes of the soldiers wielding the weapons that would have been my death.

30. Delphoi; Thargelion, 440 B.C.E. (AETOS)

I now have a time and a place.  Apollon has been good to me.  Now I must be good to him.  Tetartos leads me to the armory and tells me I may take whatever I wish.  I pick a strong ashwood spear tipped with gilded bronze and a five-layered shield with the sun of Apollon on it.  I send the shield away to have a bronze lambda hammered over the design.  I choose a Khalkidian helmet with a thick horsehair plume and a linothorax with a muscled breastplate.  I round off the armor with a nice set of greaves.  My Beak would serve me better than any rusty poker they have here.  I turn to leave and spot a beautiful aigis of gold, with the bright-shining sun in the center.  Arrows emanate from the disk like rays.  I take that as well.

I meet Elektra back at the inn.  She gets up and puts her arms around me, giving me a peck on the cheek.

“We’re going to show Thyestes’ men the danger of messing with the oracle, aren’t we, Pateras?”

“Of course, my dear.  But first I want to give you something for the coming battle.”

“But Pateras, I already have a shield and a spear!  What more could you give—”

I pull the aigis from my sack, and she falls into a sudden silence.  As she takes the armor from me I say to her, “You have always been loved by Athena.  Go to the armory, pick out a nice helmet, and we’ll show those Athenians how one pays the price when they forsake their gods!”

The black trireme appears and men appear from it, looking like locusts.  Do they really think they can destroy the city of the Destroyer?

I strap on my greaves and linothorax.  Next comes the breastplate and the belt with my Beak dangling from it.  I lace my sandals that must carry me through the undulation of the battle.  I set my helmet upon my head, the horsehair wild and frightening.  I lift my shield, the most important part of a Greek soldier’s equipment, upon my shoulder.  I pick up my spear.  My Talons remain behind, regrettably.  Today I fight not as an individual, an assassin, or an eagle.  Today I am a fish, swimming and surviving through swells of blood.

We line up, everyone clad in full armor, ready to meet our foes.  Elektra wears the aigis and a helmet identical to mine.  She says she wants our enemies to know that they have been killed by the daughter of Aetos.

We form a phalagx.  I stand with Tetartos to my right.  The man is old, but he is a strong fighter.  Elektra stands to my left.  She will be able to fire Pellets from behind the cover of my shield, as Teukros did from behind the shield of the great Telamonian Aias.  My daughter’s Aias stands to her left.  It is good that they are so near.  They will fight to protect one another, just as I will fight to protect my daughter.

We advance, the full force of Delphoi and the surrounding towns massed at the foot of the Holy City.  We see the phalagx of Thyestes assemble against us.  Tetartos shouts.

“Javelins!”

We cast our javelins.  They fly, heliographing against our Elios, and find their homes in the flesh of the Thyestan ranks.

A response of javelins bursts from our enemies.  We raise our shields and the weapons of the enemy shatter, bounce, and stick against our bronze barriers.  I hear cries of pain and agony behind me and to my far left.  I say a prayer for the fallen.

We advance and the enemy advances.  Elektra and I no longer deal with javelins, although Aias and Tetartos continue to throw with lethal accuracy.  I provide a haven for my daughter to ready her Pellets, and she sends the darts forth with a message of death.  With her keen, owl-like grey eyes she spots prey from behind my shield, her own Hoof slung across her back, and she momentarily leaves my protection to send a bronze owl hunting.  All of her shots pierce the uncovered eyes and necks of our impious foes.

We are running now, and collision is imminent.  Behind my shield, Elektra unstrings her Crescent and straps it across her back.  She heaves her Hoof onto her shoulder as a page brings her Antler to her and another brings me my spear.

We form a wall more impenetrable than Troia’s with our shields.

Impact.  I move behind my shield, pushing with my full body weight and the weight of the phalagx, and my enemy’s spear misses me.  He is not so wise, and the ash shaft of my weapon pierces his neck, unleashing his blood and snapping his spinal cord.

Like heads on the Ydra, another soldier fills the gap.  I am underwater in a sea of Aides and Ares.  The phalagx pushes.  If I wanted to, I could not avoid being swept up in the wave of death and bronze.  Javelins, arrows, and rocks blot out the very Sun we are protecting above us.  I can tell we are gaining ground, because I am stepping on the fallen enemies.  Some are still alive.  The back rows will use their sauroters to bring the wounded into Ermes’ and Thanatos’ care.

I keep my shield securely on my shoulder, protecting my left and Elektra’s right.  The spears and arrows sticking out from it made it look like the lethal legs of a centipede.

Elektra thrusts her Antler into one man’s head.  His facial features explode into an unrecognizable crimson mess.  What was once the visage of an individual becomes a gruesome, war-torn statistic.  I thrust through a soldier’s shield, bursting into the soft skin beneath his linothorax.  I wrench my spear from his body, guts tangled around the ash, and the man’s life leaves with my weapon.

Aias bashes a soldier’s skull with his strong wood-and-bronze shield.  I see the unfortunate bastard’s brains as pieces of his skull and helmet fly across the battlefield.

Next to me, Tetartos’ spear breaks on his enemy’s shield.  His enemy gets arrogant and leans back, intending to strike the old man down.  The priest deftly flips his weapon around and makes his enemy breathe the cold bronze of his sauroter.  The soldier to the right of Tetartos takes advantage of the lowered shield of Aides’ newest subject by skewering the soldier to the left of the fallen.

I gain confidence the first time a soldier has to step over a corpse to take the place of a man I’ve slain.  I can see the phalagx beginning to thin out.  Soon a command is given and the enemy breaks rank, running from death at the ends of our spears.  We stick our weapons either into the ground or one of the corpses at our feet.  Mine goes between the unseeing eyes of a man I killed with a thrust through the mouth.

I open my Beak, Elektra releases her Moonbeam, and the other soldiers draw their swords.  Elektra and I swoop upon the fleeing cowards, severing their limbs and heads off with our bronze.

At last we have chased the heretics to their ship.  The frightened soldiers beg like impoverished dogs.  I show no mercy to cowards.

I let them onto the trireme.  Once they are a good distance away, I use Apollon’s heat to light a fire, which I apply to five of Elektra’s Pellets.  In five fiery shots, she makes the ship a floating funeral pyre.  I spit.  Bastards don’t deserve such an honor.

29. Mount Olympos; Thargelion, 440 B.C.E. (APOLLON)

Mortals have the worst timing.  ”I’m sorry, dear.  I’ll be back,” I tell the naked nymph lying on my bed.  “Annoying mortals want another fucking prophecy..”

Ughhhhh.  I am the god of too many things… the sun, light, poetry, arts, archery, music, prophecy, healing, pestilence… the list goes on and on.  You’d think one of these days I’d get a rest, but no!  Any time I take a day off, someone seems to tip off the mortals and they triple their prayers.  If this one weren’t coming from Delphoi I would ignore it completely.  I let Elios drive today.  Hope that doesn’t supernova in my face…

A swig of nectar, a quick bite of ambrosia and the ikhor in my veins is invigorated again.  What have we got here?

I sniff the air above my Temple.  Mmmm!  Fifty bulls!  Delicious.  And there goes Phoibosphene Arktos Ermes Tetartos into the adyton!  Nice little sacrifice.  I strain my ears as the priest begins to speak:

“O great Apollon!  Hear us lowly mortals!  The good man Aetos Iptamenos of Athina seeks to know when he should carry out his assassination of the godless tyrant, Thyestes.  Please, Apollon, grant an answer to the Pythia, so Aetos may rid the land of this horrid wart!”

The Pythia, seated on a tripod, begins to chew laurel leaves.  I become the Pneuma and enter the adyton through the Omphalos.  With leaves of my dear Daphne and a cup of Kastalian water in her hands, she breathes me in.  Though her movements are erratic and her speech unintelligible to most mortals, not a drop of water falls from her cup.  I have taught the priests well.  They understand my words.  They leave the adyton.  I follow suit, materializing into the form of a god again.

In retrospect, I’m glad I got the chance to stretch my legs.  It’s about time we got rid of Thyestes.  Go, Aetos.  My Sister and I will fly with every Pellet your daughter unleashes.

Now, back to that nymph…

27. Delphoi; Thargelion, 440 B.C.E. (ELEKTRA)

Aias pins me against one of the Doric columns of the Temple, his tongue gently kissing mine.  I love it, but I lightly push him away.

“Aias!  My father—”

He cuts me off with another kiss.  I dip a bit as I return it.  “—is talking to the priests and could care less about us.”  His irises are like a blue-grey fog I want to lose myself in.  He dives into my mouth again.  My tongue swims around his, taking the bait.  A thought strikes me like Zeus’ spear and I stop.

“In the Temple?”

He pulls me closer and traces the column of my upper thigh with his hand, under my khiton.  “Where else were you planning?”  His hands reach my sekos.  My eyelids flutter with delight.  Why not?

Because you’re in the middle of Delphoi at the Temple of Apollon, that’s why not, Elektra!

I push Aias’ fingers away from my adyton.  “I’m sorry, Aias,” I whisper, kissing his cheek.  “Not here.  Not now.  Meet me tonight.”

I can see the lust flare in his eyes.  He wants me.  I want him…

And I see it die down.  Wonderful, understanding Aias.

“Of course.  The day is for killing.  The night is for love.”

28. Delphoi; Thargelion, 440 B.C.E. (AETOS)

Now I’ll try to sleep and await my prophecy.  Elektra and I make our way back to the inn.  I don’t sleep.  Elektra thinks I sleep.  She leaves.  I follow her.

She goes down the Sacred Way.  To the gymnasium.  Exercising while Nyx holds court?  What could she be thinking?

I hide behind a column.  She looks back.  She thinks she hasn’t been followed.  She throws off her imatio.  Aias appears.

She begins kissing him.  Passionately.  A part of me wants to kill him.  A part of me knows how sad that will make her.  A part of me sees the joy in her eyes, more joy than she has ever gained from killing.

All of me leaves and goes back to the inn.  I lie in my bed.  Ypnos and Morpheus visit me.

26. Delphoi; Thargelion, 440 B.C.E. (AETOS)

I hear orders shouted, and the chariots begin turning around.  The cowards!  They are beyond jumping distance.  Flying distance, even.  Several owl-fletched darts stick out of the necks of the fleeing dogs.  Good girl.  I lead the phalagx to the boundaries of the city.  We shout insults at the defeated soldiers as they scurry across the Delphic landscape like frightened mice.  The cloud moves and Apollon smiles down on us.  When they are too far away to hear our taunts, we raise a celebratory war cry on our way back to the Temple.

Phoibosphene Arktos Ermes Tetartos reacts much differently towards Elektra and me.  Already he has begun ordering slaves to clean the libations from the streets of Delphoi.  He throws himself at my feet, grasping my knees and grabbing my chin.

“Thank you, Aetos, thank you!  Anything you desire, Aetos: prophecy, gold, women, boys, it is yours!”

I gently take his hand and move it away from my chin, helping him up with my other hand.

“I will only take one of your offerings, High Priest of Apollon.  But not right now.  Now we must fight our common enemy.  These monsters will come back to Delphoi, and if we don’t have phalanxes to meet them we will be killed, the Temple will be sacked, and the Holy City will be burned.”

The priest walks up to me and puts a hand on my shoulder.  “Leave the preparation to us, my boy.  You can carry a shield and spear?”

“I’m a Greek, aren’t I?”

The old priest smiles.  A friendly smile, not the severe, condescending one I’m used to.  “Then you may save the Holy City twice during this visit, my boy.  In the meantime, get some rest.  Apollon will give you your prophecy when he begins his journey tomorrow.”

I am slightly shocked.  I am going to receive my prophecy!  I had threatened to kill Tetartos not thirty minutes ago, and now he was willing to let Apollon hear my prophecy!  The priesthood reeks of corruption, but the words of Apollon are sacred.