CHAPTER III

CHAPTER III

Prometheus rumbled a deep, exasperated sigh as he watched the bobbing head of a visitor come up the steep track that followed the olive groves and dips in the valley below him before reaching his cabin. His home was high enough up in the Parnitha mountains that he didn’t usually get guests, which was the point, but he already had an inclination about who was approaching him and knew that this would be no social visit.

Bracing himself on the dark red oak desk he’d carved, sanded, and polished this past summer, he rose and walked barefoot across wooden floorboards made of the same oak as he continued to watch his guest effortlessly make her way up the mountainside that was still basking in the late afternoon Grecian sun. It was just beginning to dip below the hills in the distance, creating a shadowed effect across the land that had turned it golden after the hottest summer Prometheus could remember. Demeter, Goddess of the Seasons, had enjoyed a delightful six months reunited with her daughter, Persephone, who now returned to the underworld with Hades. It had been a glorious, if brutal, summer.

Squinting against the light, convinced his eyes were playing tricks on him, he noticed that he had not one guest but two. The taller of the two he recognised immediately. It was hard to mistake Athena’s six-foot two-inch slender frame and confident gait. The petite, curvier woman, who walked behind her, he did not recognise. Both finally made it up to the top of the dusty track to await him in thecourtyard.

“You’ve begun new projects,” Athena stated in lieu of an introduction, nodding towards the blossoming vegetable patch to her left and the metalwork on her right that Prometheus still hadn’t put back in his workshop yet.

“Idle hands,” he replied in turn, holding up a pair of hands the size of baseball mitts in surrender. They were tanned and calloused from his projects, with a light dusting of dark brown hair on the back of them that grew deeper and darker as they made their way up strong forearms. Those hands gestured that Athena and her companion would be welcome to enter his home, though he didn’t really want them in his space, accompanied by a ground-out, between-clenched-teeth “please”.

Athena nodded and moved swiftly inside, the younger woman following behind with her head bowed. Her eyes − bright, inquisitive cat-green eyes − glanced at Prometheus briefly as she passed through the doorway, before quickly darting back down to the ground. He watched Athena taking stock of everything in the rooms, swivelling her head with each stride until she finally found herself in the kitchen, which had a door leading out the back to a patio and a stunning brickwork island.

“Idle hands indeed,” she murmured, for it had not looked like this the last time Athena had visited.

Square jaw dusted with dark stubble clenched, Prometheus chose to ignore the barb. Athena probably hadn’t meant it the way it sounded, seeing as she was patron of household craft. Instead, he set about putting together a platter of meats, olives, and cheeses with wine, as it was custom to provide guests with the goods of hospitality no matter if you were the Titan that had birthed the goddess from Zeus’ head and had no idea of who the other strange creature was with her.

The two women sat in companionable silence as Prometheus plated up and set the feast in front of them, for he was not a man of small talk.

“Who are you?” he gruffly asked, as he placed a ceramic plate in front of the young woman who still hadn’t shared her identity yet.

“Oh, I am Amara.” She smiled. It was a smile so pure, one that lit up the corners of her eyes until they shined, that Prometheus found his own eyes crinkling in turn as he smiled back.

“A pleasure, Amara. Please, eat.”

Prometheus remained standing on the other side of the brickwork island while Amara obliged her host and Athena helped herself too, as she neatly bit prosciutto-wrapped asparagus tips and methodically worked her way through two, following it with a sip of wine. Having fulfilled the custom of being a gracious guest, just as Prometheus had followed the custom of being a hospitable host, she played what Prometheus imagined was her opening gambit, to gauge how well he had fared in the years since he’d been banished from Olympian society.

“Were you aware that the Panathenaic festival passed through here not even two decades ago? They still run your torch relay, you know. Though humans call it the Olympic Gamesnow.”

Prometheus had begun shaking his head before she’d even finished. “You know I have no interest in games that are all about politics,” he replied quietly, the deep timbre of his voice holding a sense of certainty that couldn’t be shaken.

Athena closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I did not come here to quarrel, Prometheus.”

He regarded the goddess for a moment. They had been close once, when being part of the mortal world was allowed. Together they had aided some of the greatest philosophers and built civilizations that were still marvelled at today. They hadn’t always agreed, mind you. Prometheus knew Athena’s tactics for strategy, knew too her penchant for riling him up when he could usually keep a cool head. For if he was the fire, she was the air that whipped him into biting back and the water that doused his flame when he got going.

“Why did you come here, Athena?”

And why had she bought aguest?

“Has word reached you of what is going on in the humanrealm?”

Prometheus shook his head again. “Zeus’ eagle still circles. I am essentially under housearrest.”

Amara hissed in a breath at hearing the ancient confirm what had only been rumoured, that his punishment from Zeus for giving the humans the element of fire had not been the rock but a shunning from society, and proceeded to choke on an olive. While Athena shot her a glare, Prometheus smiled wryly and pushed her cup of wine closer towards her. Amara clutched at it and washed down the vestiges of the olive that had caused such adisplay.

“Sorry,” she gasped.

“It is quite alright, child.” Prometheus chuckled.

At Athena’s inquisitive gaze, he realised he had not chuckled since the last time he was in the presence of humans. It was an … odd sound to hear again from his ownthroat.

“What has been going on in the human realm?” He turned to ask Athena.

“Fear eats at them,” Athena informed him. “It’s a dry rot that lurks beneath their skin. They age slower but die faster. They live longer but their lives are blander. They create but never replenish. In their desperation to guarantee their survival, they actually push themselves closer to extinction. Each collective move takes them one step further into the abyss.

“They’re killing Gaia too. You know her patience usually knows no bounds but even she has a tipping point. She has become restless, heaving underneath human feet while conversing with Uranus, Zeus’ grandfather and our Sky Father. You must have feltit.”

Prometheus’ eyes turneddark.

“I warned Zeus this would happen,” he said quietly.

“Youdid?”

“When Hera banished us from the human realm,” he continued, “I knew the humans would rely on the tools we taught them − science, medicine, legality … you know how they watched us, like a child watches a parent to learn what we do. But when we left, they had no one but themselves to turnto.”

“And so the fear that was supposed to keep them alive, keep them safe from us, was turned in on themselves,” Athena finished.

“Exactly.” Prometheus nodded, moving his big hands through curls that brushed the nape of his neck.

“They won’t survive three centuries,” Athena told him and for this she received a look of deep, unfathomable pain.

“You’recertain?”

“Yes,” she said softly, knowledge in her eyes that said she knew the trick Aphrodite had played on him all those years ago. “I have aplan.”

Prometheus’ jaw tightened again. “No, Athena. I know you. You will treat this like it iswar.”

“Itis.”

“No, it is a human affliction. The Moirai should never have dragged you intothis.”

“Well they have and I will not have one of my father’s precious creations − albeit by your hand − be destroyed. As an old friend, I came to ask for yourhelp.”

“Inwhat?”

Athena paused and looked at Amara, who had been quietly eating and sipping her wine, watching two ancients discuss human civilization like it was a chess match. It was fascinating. No priestess was ever given such a rare honour. When Lysia had taken her to Athena and the goddess had outlined the task she had wanted Amara to undertake, every cell in her body had screamed yes, that this was her destiny, that she’d finally be who the Fates wanted her to be. But when both sets of eyes bored into her, she suddenly realised that being close to two gods, one a Titan no less, was perhaps not an honour so much as potentially a very poor survival move on her behalf.

“Amara here is the most talented alchemist left inOlympus.”

Prometheus grunted. “Is thatso?”

He stared at Amara under bushy brows as if considering something before reaching for her glass. He turned and filled the remaining half with water. Half water, half wine, he returned the glass in front of Amara. Instinctively, she knew what he was asking of her.

Closing her eyes, she placed both hands on the stem of the glass. Repeating the incantation in her head until every fibre of her being believed that she would taste pure wine when she lifted the cup to her mouth, Amara felt the cells change in her fingertips and travel up the thick glass stem made of pure crystal. Only when she was certain that the process was completed − that the glass now only contained wine once again − did she open her eyes and push it across the island to Prometheus.

Not taking his eyes from her, he picked up the glass and drank. When it was finished, he placed it back down and wiped at lips that Amara couldn’t seem to tear her eyes from. They were full-bodied and when he spoke, the voice that came out of them made every cell of her being fidget in attention. She watched him, half fascinated and half terrified. His face revealed nothing until he said, “You are talentedindeed.”

“Amara has agreed to be placed on Earth to teach the humans the art of alchemy. To transmute the fear into love. She will lead the next lineage of witches, and this time we will have her go in human form so as not to arouse suspicion. We don’t need another century of witch-hunting,” Athena toldhim.

“Ah and so you ask me for a human cloak forher?”

“If it is indeedpossible.”

Prometheus didn’t answer, but instead turned to Amara.

“What happens if you fail in yourtask?”

“The fear will eat me alive in my human form,” she replied softly.

Prometheus’ brow furrowed, lines straining his dishevelled, tanned face. Rugged in a way that appealed to warrior goddesses and also those who preferred not to get their hands dirty, Prometheus had the mark of a man who spent his time farming the land. Built with muscle that only came from manual labour, no one would look at Prometheus and think of an artist if they did not know him. Especially not one who was so meticulous about each of his human creations that he sculpted from large, calloused hands with the utmost care.

“And if she is caught by one of the gods?” This question he addressed toAthena.

“She is not a god. Therefore she does not break the meddlingrule.”

“Yet you send her into the human world to do your bidding,” Prometheus countered, a quiet rage beginning to simmer beneath his words. Athena had a terrible habit of treating humans as little more than chess pieces. The fact that she would do so with such a delicate creature as that which sat across from him, irked him. There was something about Amara that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something about her that made his instincts payattention.

“The rule is clear. The Gods of Olympus cannot meddle in the affairs of humans. There was nothing to be said of anyone or anything else. Surely you of all people appreciate the loophole?”

He cast Athena a dirty look that said he knew what she was playing at and, instead, he turned his attention back to Amara.

“And what have you been offered for such anundertaking?”

Amara glanced at Athena for permission to share and received a nod.

“The great goddesses have offered me a place among history that few have received. Should I complete my moira, I shall receive a temple of my own. To share my gifts and arts with others. To become someone ofnote.”

It was all anyone wanted in Olympus, to become someone that history remembered. Unspoken were the words that she would feel as if she had finally found purpose in thisworld.

Prometheus’ eyes bored into her, as if trying to determine the truth behind her words, the motivation behind her actions. As if he knew she was lying to herself.

Apparently satisfied for now, he spoke once again. “Human souls are different from immortal souls. They only know the confines of the bodies I’ve built them. They have no sense of freedom the way we do. When their souls are freed, they are released back into the breath of air that swirls around us. That is a human’s first true taste of freedom, not the free will they play with down there on Earth. Death circles their minds at all times. You have never known death. Once you are in a human body, we have no way of knowing if you’ll retain your memories of Olympus enough to perform the alchemy. You may never again know the freedom you have now. What is being asked of you isdangerous.”

“Someone has to teach the humans and I have faith. It got me this far.” Amara replied softly, though her spine was as straight as steel as she gestured to the cup in front of him as proof of her abilities.

Something in Prometheus tugged low and deep in his belly. Instinct roared at him to protect her, to say no to the goddess’ plan. But some primal part in the back of his mind said to watch, to wait, and, for some inexplicable reason, to trust Amara. He hadn’t had cause to trust another in eons. It felt ... uncomfortable. But even her mere presence caused his concerns to ease somewhat. It was as if she was practising her alchemy on him. Though surely a priestess wouldn’t dare influence a god without permission.

Finally he said to Athena, “You ask too much ofher.”

“And you make ominous declarations, as usual.”

Athena continued when Prometheus went to rebut, “The ruling only speaks of the Gods of Olympus not getting involved with human life. You are a Titan. Hera has no say on what you can do. No one would even stop you walking through the mortal world given your role in theircreation.”

Prometheus cocked an eyebrow at Athena.

“You forget about Zeus’ eagle.”

“I will find a way to deal with my father if you agree to help,” Athena promised, grabbing Amara’s wrist and, turning the priestess’ palm upwards, thrusting it towards Prometheus.

Moments passed in silence as Prometheus considered it, staring, unblinking, at Athena. But they both knew he was stalling. Athena had played her ace card when she had stated with certainty that the humans were dying. Prometheus’ fate was already tied to theirs. It had been a long timeago.

Eventually he held out his own palm in turn next to Amara’s, resigned to play the Moirai’s games, even as a part of his brain clawed desperately at him not to.

“I will assist your priestess, Amara, on Earth to the best of my abilities. This oath I swear by Styxherself.”

Taking a knife from the butter-soft sheath on her bicep, Athena sliced Amara’s left palm from index finger to wrist before doing the same to Prometheus. To the priestess’ credit, she didn’t let out so much of a hiss as tears blinked into her eyes. They grabbed one another’s forearm and his sworn oath was bound. The pact was sealed in ichor, the golden substance binding the two of them together in place of blood. Athena wiped the blade across old, worn warrior leathers and returned it to its sheath. It was done.