The trip across the Mediterranean had been arduous. Aeneas had aimed to travel south and make for Egypt, but days of tempestuous storms and terrible visibility had left them – of all places – west of Greece. They’d continued on westward, rounding the great peninsula that all but bisected the Mediterranean, and briefly stopping in the strange land of the Carthagenians, before finally bringing their ship to its final rest on the western shore of the aforementioned peninsula.
Aeneas helped Briseis off of the ship. The woman was tough as nails and had actually given birth at sea. She'd named the boy Patroclus, after a Greek fiend of hers, but Aeneas and the other Trojans simply called him Marus, in honor of the sea. Briseis had affectionately shortened their name to Mars. Mars remained aboard the ship with Andromache and Astyanax, while the rest of the refugees began making camp, and Briseis, Aeneas, and Kassandra walked up a nearby hill. A river ran only a short distance to a beautiful mountain range that stretched down the length of the peninsula. A party of strangely attired people came through the long grass to meet them.
The people cycled through a few languages trying to communicate with them before finally hitting upon a crude form of Greek.
“Welcome to Latium,” one of their men said, ‘Do you come in peace?”
“I hope so,” Aeneas said, “We come from war, and we want nothing more than to leave it behind.”
“Our gods will be pleased to hear that,” the man said.
“What gods do you worship here?” Briseis asked.
A bright flash of light announced the arrival of a young, bronze-skinned blond man with a bow in his hands. Next to him appeared a wild looking Mycenaen woman, who seemed to emerge from the trees themselves. A roar like the sound of a volcano thundered towards them, and a mechanical man made of gold and copper dropped to the ground, the grass burning under the flames that came from his hands. And finally, one of the women with the group of locals morphed into the form of a beautiful, albeit older woman, that Aeneas and Briseis both felt they recognized.
“Hestia?” Aeneas asked.
“They call me Vesta now,” she smiled, “Hello Ares, Aphrodite. These are Vulcan, Diana, and Apollo.”
“Apollo?” Aeneas asked, “No name change for you?”
“Why mess with perfection?” The young man smirked.
Vesta walked up to Kassandra, knelt down and looked her in the eye, “You have a little bit of someone in you too, don’t you, young woman?”
“I agreed to be Athena’s vessel,” Kassandra said quietly, “But she rejected me. I coughed her soul out, and she went back to her body and tried to kill me.”
“Hm,” Vesta said, “It sounds like you rejected her. But she left her mark nonetheless, didn’t she? She left something of herself behind, and now it’s growing, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Kassandra said, “It frightens me.”
“Oh, you should be frightened. But you should be excited too. No new legacy has been born in thousands of years. You’re one in a million child. Has it told you its name yet?”
“Yes,” Kassandra said, “She wants us to be called Minerva.”
“Minerva you shall be, then,” Vesta stood up, “Well, enough with the family reunion. We have a proper civilization to build.”
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