Location: Larissa, Aeolia
Time Remaining: 2 Months
Odysseus and Penelope were enjoying a nice breakfast on one of the palace’s verandas when the table shook with the clang of metal being set down, hard. Odysseus looked first at the source of the noise – the severed head of his mechanical enemy – and his eyes went wide when he turned them to the enormous man who’d brought it to their table. Between his darkened, hairless skin, and the elaborate mechanical brace on his right leg, he was unmistakable.
“Which one of you is Odysseus of Ithaca?” Hephaestus boomed.
Penelope shrunk slightly in her seat, and Odysseus cautiously raised a hand.
Hephaestus dropped some sort of tinted crystal down over his eyes and looked at him again, “Oh, yes, I see.”
“Would m’lord... like to join us…?” Penelope asked.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Hephaestus sat in the empty seat between them and began dishing some smoked meat onto a flatbread. The small chair sagged under the weight of his (compared to the other gods) relatively short but densely muscled frame. “Oh, is that honey?” Penelope passed it to him, and the god drizzled it lightly on his meat before rolling the flatbread up and casually munching on it.
“Lord Hephaestus,” Odysseus said, “To what do we owe the honor?”
“Really?” Hephaestus asked, pointing at the severed metal head.
“The island was uninhabited,” Odysseus said, “And the building abandoned. Naturally I had to look, right? And then this… automaton? It attacked me.”
“That much I gathered,” Hephaestus said, “And I already talked to your man Alecto,” Hephaestus rolled up his sleeve to show gruesome scars from his forge, “We had a lot to share, but he said he didn’t see you finally beat my machine.”
“Pardon?”
“Its batteries had to be low, and the solar cells would have taken time to charge, so being able to run away from it – that I would have expected. Taking its head off, though? I have to know how you did it.”
Odysseus shrugged off the strangeness of the moment, thinking, ‘well, this is my life now,’ and dove in, “I pried its head off with a collapsible spear I found in the same workshop, but that was after it partially immolated itself.”
“Immolated? You mean it exploded?”
“I blocked one of those metal tubes on its back, and when it tried to spew forth fire…”
“It back-fired,” Hephaestus nodded, “Makes sense. But how did you get to a position where you could do that?”
“We ran the spear through the back of its ankle, just above the heel, to trip it.”
“Aw, damn,” Hephaestus shook his head, “It’s always the heel. Always. You want it to be well protected, but if you put very much armor there it won’t have a wide enough range of motion to make anything more than a slow shuffle viable. What did you think of it overall, though? I never got to see it in action.”
“Well, honestly, I was terrified.”
“Really?” Hephaestus seemed genuinely delighted, “That’s great to hear. Hera said it was too gaudy with the painted gold and bronze, said no one would take it seriously.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Odysseus said, “I thought the contrast behind the red paint applications and the black parts really made the whole thing more intimidating. Bright colors make things look bigger.”
“Exactly,” Hephaestus said, preparing another flatbread, “A shame you didn’t get to see it at full power though. Those wings weren’t purely aesthetic.”
“That metal man could fly?”
“Well, hypothetically. I mean, the prototype wings worked for Daedalus, but he was much smaller and lighter.”
“Is it true there was a similar metal man in Crete?” Penelope asked.
“Many years ago,” Hephaestus said, “Made him a lot bigger, but a lot simpler. Your Argonauts disabled him, sent him crashing into the ocean. That damned heel again. What did you think of the size?”
“Well…” Odysseus tried to guess what sort of answer Hephaestus was looking for, “I suppose bigger might have been scarier, but at – what? Seven and a half feet? – it was more than big enough to intimidate me, and the animosity it conveyed as it chased me really felt more personal. Running from something the size of what the Argonauts faced would feel like running from a storm. Being pursued by this creature made me feel like I was being hunted. That must be viscerally more frightening.”
“Interesting,” Hephaestus said, “I mostly just scaled back the size because having a giant lumbering around all the time is impractical.”
“Perhaps you could make one that changes size,” Penelope said, “like the armor Odysseus stole from you.”
Odysseus swallowed hard, but Hephaestus didn’t even blink at the mention of the irreverent theft, “No, the armor doesn’t change its mass; it just folds in on itself. T.A.L.O.S. is packed with hardware, there’s no way for him to compress or expand that much. But… if I built five or six of them, maybe they could, somehow come together and reassemble themselves as one giant automaton?”
“That sounds infinitely more terrifying, my lord,” Odysseus said.
“Yeah, yeah it does. I could make them animals too, like mechanical wolves or lions. This was a good talk; thanks.” Hephaestus patted the metal head and left it, eager to get to his parchments. Odysseus and Penelope sat in stunned silence for a moment.
“Well,” Penelope said, “He seemed nice. Do you want to introduce me to any of your other deity friends?”
“No, my dear, I am all yours for the day; what are we doing?”
“Well, they say the ship from Troy came in very late last night, and the boys are wanting to meet the Trojan princes," Penelope said, "I thought we might tag along and make sure they don’t start a war between Troy and Sparta.”
“Oh, that would be especially bad,” Spartans didn’t fare well at sea, and were accustomed to fighting on their own soil, never straying far from it. They were, however, stubborn enough that if an insult was given, it was entirely believable they’d take their entire army across the sea and throw themselves at Troy’s walls like eggs. Odysseus could imagine an entire generation of Spartans wiped out in some adolescent fight over a girl.
“I’m always telling my father what a level head you have,” Penelope said, “you might do well to show it off with a little diplomacy.”
“Alright,” Odysseus said, putting down the grapes he was munching on, “Lead the way.”
There was little doubting that the Trojans – beloved by both Apollo and Poseidon – would be enjoying Thetis’s salt-water reflecting pools as the sun warmed them. “The boys” – Penelope’s twin cousins, Castor and Pollux, and their adopted brothers, Agamemnon and Menelaus, were already there, along with their sisters, Helen, Clytemnestra, and some other girls who Odysseus – honestly – just couldn’t keep track of anymore.
Unfortunately, the half-brothers Ajax and Teucer were also already there, and there wasn’t any love lost between the Trojans and their family. Their father, King Telamon of Aegina, was chiefly known for being one of the youngest men to sail with Jason on the Argo. He also, however, had participated in Heracles’s sack of Troy, which ended with the deaths of King Priam’s father and brothers – the Trojan princes’ grandfather and uncles. Peleus had also played a part in Heracles’s short war, but had spent the past twenty five years trying to make it up to Priam. Telamon had not.
Only three of the Trojan princes had come to the pools, but fireworks started when they ran into Ajax and Teucer. Prince Hector, eldest of the three, was a calm and measured man – Odysseus might have called him unflappable. Unfortunately, Hector’s younger brother, Paris, seemed to feel he had something to prove, and was flinging a number of colorful insults at Ajax and Teucer. Ajax either felt disinclined to engage in an argument with a thirteen year old, or didn’t understand the full array of insults. His half-brother, Teucer, was giving it all back in full. Odysseus had spent most of his life surrounded by sailors, but never had he heard such a range of colorful insults as Paris and Teucer came up with. Paris’s older cousin, Aeneas, seemed to feel that they were all doing themselves a disservice in carrying forward a grudge between their fathers, but participated passively in the dispute by sporadically throwing out suggested insults for both of them while he lounged by the pool.
All in all, it was pretty entertaining – Penelope was certainly getting a good laugh out of it – until Paris took a swing at Teucer. Teucer simply dodged the younger man and tripped him, sending him into a rose bush. Ajax laughed, but Paris turned around and jumped Teucer. Teucer slipped under their weight and the two boys landed in the pool with a terribly messy, cold splash that raised shrill protests from some of the women sunbathing on the other side.
“Well,” Penelope said, “At least my cousins didn’t start it.”
Hector and Ajax dragged their brothers out of the pool, and struggled to keep them restrained – both men were more than strong enough, but trying to restrain the sopping wet boys without crushing them was difficult. Odysseus did what Penelope brought him to do and interceded.
“Hey Ajax, how you doing?” Odysseus said, “And you must be Hector, right?”
“Hey Ody, when did you get in?” Ajax said.
“Last evening,” Odysseus said, “Hector, I heard your lot didn’t arrive until just before sunrise.”
“Pretty much,” Hector said calmly adjusting his hold to put Paris in a headlock, “Made for an early morning today.”
Odysseus turned to Ajax’s brother, “Teucer, come on man, your losing your shit over a fourteen year old who’s probably got sail-lag. Give him a break, right?”
“Hey, you didn’t hear what he and his cousin were saying,” Teucer said.
Odysseus turned to Aeneas, “You seem pretty calm – to have riled them up so much.”
Aeneas sighed and put down his drink, “Paris’s getting bent out of shape because of a comment his father made before we left.”
“And what was that?”
“He told me and Aeneas to bring Aunt Hesione back to Troy!" Paris shouted, "Where she belongs!”
“For gods’ sakes, your dad was joking, Paris,” Aeneas said, “He doesn’t expect you to grab the woman, throw her on a boat, and sail off with her like some barbarian.”
“Wait, that’s what you two were talking about?” Teucer said.
“What did you think they were talking about?” Odysseus asked.
“Wow. Well, I mean, I heard them say something about getting her below decks, and…”
“You thought a fourteen year old boy was talking about fucking your mom?” Odysseus asked.
“Well, I mean, now it sounds silly…” Teucer said.
“Your mom?” Paris asked, “Why’d you think I was talking about your mom? And sex with Aunt Hesione? GROSS.”
“Paris,” Odysseus patted the boy on the shoulder as Hector released him, “Teucer's mother is your aunt. Teucer is your cousin.”
“What? Really?” Paris asked.
“Yeah man,” Teucer reached out his hand, “Hesione and Telamon are my mom and dad.”
“Telamon?! He’s the back-stabbing…” Paris descended into another litany of curses, but Odysseus restrained the boy.
“Telamon has many faults,” Odysseus said, “Teucer would probably be the first to agree?”
“Yeah, a lot of that was probably fair,” Teucer said.
“But,” Odysseus said, “Telamon didn’t kidnap your aunt. She left Troy because your grandfather treated her like garbage.”
“What?”
“Good lord,” Aeneas shook his head, “we have explained this to you.”
“Telamon attacked Troy because our grandfather, Laodemon, refused to pay Heracles for the job he contracted to do,” Hector explained once again.
“Yeah… so…?”
“Heracles’s job was rescuing Aunt Hesione from a sea monster,” Hector explained.
“And she only needed rescuing from the sea monster because grandpa was going to sacrifice her to it to so it would stop harassing his rich friends when they were out on their yachts,” Aeneas said.
“And the only reason the sea monster was there was because grandfather had insulted Poseidon in exactly the same way grandfather insulted Heracles,” Hector finished.
“You mean that’s all true?” Paris asked.
“Yeah, what did you think happened?” Aeneas looked at Paris like he was dimmer than Ajax.
“I don’t know; I thought it was a metaphor or something.”
“I honestly don’t think you understand what a metaphor is,” Aeneas said.
“Look, Paris,” Teucer says, “I don’t have anything against your dad, but your granddad was an asshole, and that’s straight from my mother’s lips.”
“There really was a sea monster?”
“YES!” Hector and Aeneas said at the same time.
“Well, I guess if Dad tried to feed me to a sea monster I wouldn’t want to go back either,” Paris said.
“Thank you!” Aeneas shook his head and went back to his drink.
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