Over the years the Greeks suffered substantial losses, while their ships remained trapped in the dried up sea bed, preventing them from summoning reinforcements or sending aging men home to rest. The Trojans, however, fared little better.
During the zenith of the war their allies throughout Asia sent contingents of soldiers to reinforce them, eager to reopen trade with the West. Many of these soldiers brought with them terrible weapons the Greeks had never seen, or fought with strange arts that could make an unarmed man as dangerous as any hoplite. Worst of all, they brought strange beings with them – monsters and gods of their own, who hoped to best the notorious warriors Ares and Athena in battle. But the land they were fighting for was not their own, and over the years, one by one, Troy’s foreign allies withdrew from the fight.
Eventually, the Greeks were able to wholly cut Troy off from its trade routes. With intel Adresteia had given him years earlier, Odysseus led his soldiers up the Scamander river, south of Troy, up to the slopes of Mt. Ida. After an intense and costly battle with the lesser god who ruled the river, they were able to establish an outpost effectively shutting down any trade coming through the pass on Mt. Ida’s northern slope.
Troy now had no soldiers but those within its walls, and no food but that which they had stored in their larders. Hestia made their rations stretch, though, and the Trojans holed up in the city with Aphrodite, immovable and unassailable, for years. Occasionally the Trojan soldiers would leave the safety of their walls under Hector or Aeneas to try and secure fresh supplies, but only when they had Apollo or Artemis to back them up, and as formidable as the twins had once been, they now fled from any threat of engagement with Ares and Athena, as if suddenly uncertain of their immortality.
Paris remained in the city – at first it was because his leg wounds kept him out of the fight, but later it was because his men simply did not want him on the field – he’d failed them in his duel with Menelaus, and what little respect he’d briefly won from them was more quickly lost. The only man in their ranks who might have still loved him – Pandarus – was thrown from Troy’s walls after Priam found out what happened.
By the tenth year of the war, the Achaean's numbers had dwindled to less than forty percent of what they’d started with. They’d been able to maintain their siege only because they allowed local people to move back into their occupied cities, supporting their war effort, and providing sell-swords for their army’s less crucial tasks. It was a bitter pill for Priam – the people of Troa were now supporting the Achaeans' war on Troy. Where the food went, so went the people's loyalty. Before long, the people of Troy itself would likely betray Priam and his family, so the king took a desperate measure.
Over ten thousand people remained within the walls of Troy, a bit less than a thousand of which had taken up arms in Troy’s defense. The basic math, though, was that they had reached a point where there were too many Trojans to feed. Soon there would be riots.
Priam couldn’t very well execute his starving people to make rations stretch, or simply reduce rations and watch them starve, so instead he promised double rations to anyone serving in Troy’s military. Their armed force tripled in size, and soon they had nearly three thousand men marching out the gates. Priam couldn’t afford the doubled rations he’d promised, but he wouldn’t have to – either the Trojan army would prevail against the Achaeans, ending the siege, or the conscripts would be wiped out, significantly reducing the number of mouths to feed in Troy and eliminating the demographics most likely to attempt to wrest control of the city from his family.
Aphrodite, Apollo, and Artemis took the field alongside the Trojan troops for what was likely to be the last great battle of the war, one way or the other. Many of the Trojan soldiers were old men, boys, slaves, or sickly individuals who had no realistic chance of survival, but Aphrodite used her powers to assuage their fears and stoke their aggressions, while Apollo played inspiring music on his loot. Artemis lent strength to the starving horses and dogs that accompanied the humans into battle – they weren’t the sort of animals she normally conferred blessings on, but the creatures of the wild would no longer answer her call for a circumstance such as this.
Arrayed on the opposite side were survivors of nine years of war. Men scarred by plagues and battles, weathered by poor food and hot sun, and embittered by thoughts of all the time they’d missed with their families. Hera ensured those thoughts were at the front of their minds as she joined Ares and Athena on the battlefield. At the bidding of his mother, Hephaestus distributed steel weapons and armor to the Greeks' elite troops but, like Hestia, he refrained from joining the actual battle.
Adresteia watched from the skies. She welcomed the opportunity to spill Aphrodite’s blood, but she had no interest in doing it under Hera’s command, and Athena had assured her the princess of lies would bleed soon.
After a great deal of posturing and intimidation, the battle began. Both sides advanced slowly and deliberately. The Trojans had always had the greater number of archers, although they had usually been held back in the city, manning the walls rather than taking to the battlefield. Now, however, Priam allowed the majority of them to follow Hector into the field, using the expendable fodder that Priam had recruited to provide an ablative meat shield. They rained down punishment on the Greek ranks, but the experienced Achaean soldiers marched with their shields high, blocking the hail of deadly arrows.
Where Troy was the weakest was in its cavalry. Many of the Trojans' horses had been sacrificed to feed the populace of the besieged city, but on the Achaeans' side, many of the minor kings and princes still had horses, and some of the best warriors, like Diomedes, still had teams of them. These warriors took to the field in chariots, which could quickly flank and overrun light infantry or undisciplined archers, and deliver the Greeks' best warriors wherever they were needed most. It fell to Apollo and Artemis to protect the Trojans' flanks - while apparently severely weakened, the two gods were still deadly archers, capable of felling a horse or picking off a chariot driver before they could reach the Trojan lines.
Eventually the two shield lines met each other, and with a final sprint they crashed against each other like young men playing a ball game. It took a while for the first man to fall – a Trojan – but when he did it started a cascade down both sides. One of the Greeks tried to loot his body, and was shot in the eye. One of the Trojans tried to loot his body, and was stabbed in the gut. Before long the two well-defined front-lines were gone, and there was simply a mob of men fighting one another, tooth and nail. Hera and Aphrodite fought from the back of their respective sides, using their magic to fortify their troops.
Ares roared into battle on his armored chariot, drawn by a team of four fire-breathing beasts, Aithon, Phlogios, Konabos, and Phobos (whom Ares had affectionately named after his son). Every where the four horses passed they left an apocalyptic trail of death and destruction, and Ares leaned from the back of the chariot lopping off heads with his broad axes. Eventually, Apollo and Artemis took on Ares together in what was an amazing display of grace, power, and skill, but it was clear they were barely surviving against him, and they couldn't afford to devote their full attention to him, for fear of one of the Achaean's steel-armed champions getting the drop on them.
With the rank-and-file locked in a desperate struggle, and their masters focused on the spectacle of the 2-on-1 deity battle, Athena slipped away from the battle. That surprised Adresteia; Athena’s ancient bracelet device allowed her to move in ways the rest of them generally could not, and she was very good with it, but Adresteia had expected her to remain on the battlefield and see the war to its conclusion.
Athena had other plans.
The goddess of war located the Achaean hero, Diomedes, and in a blur of light she transported him to a nearby hilltop where they could see the battle unfolding. Diomedes knelt before her, asking what he might do to please the goddess.
Athena explained, “Aphrodite is down there supporting her troops and protecting her son, Aeneas – the only real threat besides Apollo and Artemis. She’s not the most capable warrior among us Olympians, but she’s far beyond the ability of any human to handle, and she’s using her magics to weaken and confuse your brothers in arms. I need you to drive her off the battlefield altogether.”
“My lady, I’m but mortal. I have no gods’ blood in me at all. I might be able to break through the enemy lines to confront Aphrodite, but I have no way to resist her magics, and if I did, how could I hope to match a goddess in battle?”
Athena drew her sword, extended the hilt, and handed it to Diomedes along with a silver ring, “My spear will cut her flesh as if she were mortal, and this ring will ensure you do not lose it. And so that you can survive long enough to use it, I’m going to give you a rare honor. For a short while, you will be my body.”
“What?”
“My spirit, the source of my power, will leave this body and enter yours. It will give you all the guidance you require. When the time is right, when you’ve done what I need you to do, I will reclaim my power.”
“Will… will there be any effects of this?”
“Some lingering immortality, maybe,” Athena said, “Possibly some deformities. But either’s better than getting your head ripped off by a fertility goddess I think.”
“What do I have to do?”
“That’s the easiest part of this for you,” Athena said. She shrank down to a human guise and kissed Diomedes, deeply. Diomedes excitedly kissed her back. Athena ignored his enthusiasm and simply maintained the connection between their bodies long enough to be sure that her Legacy, Morgania, had crossed his mucous membranes and entered his blood stream.
The collective host of microscopic particles that comprised what remained of the ancient entity's consciousness circulated in his blood until it reached his brain. There it began crawling through his gray matter, locking onto synaptic connections, bridging them, replacing them, and altering them, so that Morgania would be able to use Diomedes’s brain to think.
Once Morgania ‘woke up’ inside the man’s mind, she began making alterations to his physical body. She’d seen a Legacy A.I. infect human hosts twice before. Prometheus had imbued his human lieutenants, Typhon and Echidna, with legacies. The two humans had, eventually, transformed into Titans powerful enough to challenge Zeus himself.
Athena didn’t have the time to completely overhaul Diomedes’ body, nor did she have the desire to transform him into one of her kind, but she could optimize him. There was a lot of garbage in the human genome; inefficiencies that compromised the whole system and that significantly contributed to their physical inferiority. Morgania began deleting unnecessary genes, and replacing them with superior equivalents from the malleable and self-editing Titan genome. As Diomedes ran down the hill, instead of tiring and slowing down, he felt invigorated and ran faster. He bounded over logs and boulders, and when he reached the battle he leaped over the fighting men or plowed straight through them like a bull.
He charged towards Aeneas, Aphrodite’s son, knowing she’d be sure to act if he were threatened. Aeneas was mounted on one of Troy's few remaining horses, weaving through the battle lopping heads off with his sword. His strength and skill were impressive, really, but Diomedes didn’t care. He bellowed and charged at the mounted demigod. Aeneas drew a bow and fired at Diomedes, but the man’s skin hardened, and the bronze arrow heads bounced off his skin like sticks.
Aeneas wheeled his horse around and galloped away from the fight, looking for an advantage, but Diomedes could very nearly keep up with the horse now. Not breaking stride, he hefted Athena’s spear and threw it. The steel shaft flew through the air and struck the horse just behind Aeneas, skewering it like a small sausage on a toothpick, and flinging the man to the dirt. Aeneas rolled around in pain, and scrambled for his sword, but Diomedes reached him and with a powerful kick sent him flying away from his weapon.
“It’s nothing personal,” Diomedes said. He snapped his fingers and the ring summoned the spear back to his hand in a flash of light, “You’re just bait.”
“Gee… thanks,” Aeneas gasped, clutching his ribs and wondering how Diomedes could hit him that hard. Diomedes raised Athena’s spear and drove it through Aeneas’s shoulder. “Now scream for me you little bitch.”
Diomedes was suddenly blindsided by a powerful fist that sent him tumbling away. “Not today, Greek,” Aphrodite had assumed the form of a portly redheaded Trojan warrior – a strange but effective disguise that had allowed Aphrodite to walk right up on him. Aphrodite changed back into her godly form to properly intimidate the mortal who’d hurt her son.
Good, Morgania thought, She doesn’t know I’m in here. Now, to give her a good scare. Morgania flooded Diomedes’s body with adrenaline and his brain with oxytocin. The neurochemical would ramp up his aggression while creating a fuzzy sense of optimistic confidence. Diomedes screamed in sudden rage and ran straight at the goddess.
Aphrodite tried to gracefully leap away, but Diomedes was faster than she expected. He spun the spear in his hands as she dodged around him, and sliced her across the side of the face with it. Aphrodite screamed and clutched at her face as it bled profusely. Part of her scalp flapped away from her skull. She created a bronze sword and struck back, but Diomedes grabbed the blade, yanked it towards him as he collapsed Athena’s spear back into a sword, and hacked at Aphrodite’s wrist, cutting through most of it.
Aphrodite dropped her sword and cradled her hand, trying to reattach it, “HELP ME!” She screamed, "HELP ME!”
Ares had sided with the Achaeans – he’d fought alongside them in many battles, slaughtering Trojan troops and killing whatever strange creatures Poseidon or the Eastern gods summoned to support the Trojan army. Aphrodite was the mother of Ares’s sons, though, and for him that trumped any allegiance to a state or master. He abandoned his fight with Apollo and Artemis, who spirited away their wounded cousin, Aeneas, from the battlefield.
Ares fell upon Diomedes with a massive broadaxe in each hand. Diomedes tried to block the axe blows with his steel shield, forged by Hephaestus himself, but the two blades cleaved the bronze oval, reducing it to a simple plank of metal strapped to Diomedes’s forearm. Diomedes hopped back, dodging blow after blow. Morgania had seen Ares fight hundreds if not thousands of times, and could anticipate his moves well enough to systematically trigger Diomedes’s reflexes before he knew what was coming.
They danced like this for a while, until Diomedes managed a solid thrust with Athena’s spear. Ares deflected the blow down and locked the shaft with his axe blades, pinning it a few inches below the spearhead. Diomedes and Ares stared at eachother for a moment, and then Diomedes hopped back and kicked the butt of the metal spear hard enough to force it past the axe heads in a shower of sparks.
The two foot long steel spearhead struck Ares between crotch and navel, and drove all the way into the base of his spine, severing the connection between his upper and lower body. Ares collapsed to the ground, paralyzed from the waist down. He grabbed the spear to pull it out, but it dissolved in his grip and reappeared in Diomedes’s hand.
“Athena?” Ares finally recognized the spear and ring.
“I want you to know, that it’s nothing personal,” Morgania’s words came from Diomedes’s mouth. “You were a good host for Kasios, you reined him in. I wanted you to be a part of my new pantheon, and we tried to make a plan that would spare you. Unfortunately, with every permutation, the answer was always the same. You had to be the first to die, and by a mortal’s hand.”
Ares cried for Aphrodite, but she was long gone, and Apollo and Artemis had left the battlefield to tend to Aeneas. Greeks and Trojans alike had stopped fighting and simply stared, as the god of war begged one of his own soldiers for mercy.
“Please. I don’t want to die,” he said, “I haven’t… I haven’t gotten to do… anything I wanted to do. It’s just been fight, fight, fight and kill. I have sons, two of them, Phobos and Deimos… I was going to get them a dog, and I never… we never did anything together. No fishing, no camping, no hiking, no…”
Diomedes unceremoniously plunged Athena’s spear through Ares’s face and deep into the ground below. Ares’s body twitched for a while as Diomedes walked away. The possessed soldier disappeared in a blur of light that took him back to Athena.
“Did I… did I just murder Ares?” Diomedes asked her, “Wasn’t he on our side?”
“Don’t worry,” Athena kissed him and reclaimed Morgania, “Sacrifices must be made.” She took her ring back and with a snap of her fingers recalled her spear as she disappeared from the field.
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