Thought this chapter would take me a good bit longer to write. Then I got hit with some truly terrible rl circumstances.
Zero stars, would not recommend.
On the plus side, writing helped take my mind off of it and meant I finished this earlier than expected, so it all worked out at the end lol.
The last 'slow''chapter of the quest - thought it speeds up quite a bit near the end - before we start ramping up in the coming chapters, and this arc isn't a super drawn out one, so due with that what you will.
"Daniel Winchester."
It might have been the static, the background noise on his end of the call or even my own judgment fritzing after the brush with hilariously, hysterically stupid danger we'd just dipped out of on the double, but Gleeson Hedge's voice…
It wasn't what I expected it to be.
I mean, to be fair, I wasn't sure what I expected there to begin with, given that I didn't know all that much about the guy in the first place.
According to Uncle David, he'd known my mom.
They'd been friends and everything, and they'd even worked together over on… let's call it the other side of the Mist.
That was already hard to put into context or think about at all for reasons as plain obvious as the nose on your face, but I also knew - remembered, only relatively recently and real vaguely at that - he wasn't just another background nobody in the grand scheme of things.
Because of course it wouldn't be that simple.
Instead - and take this with a grain of salt or three, because I'm the furthest thing from confident here- I was pretty sure that one day, he'd wind up helping a handful of quirky demigods on a classic 'do this, this, and that pronto or the world as you know it is toast with a side of Tartarus' type quest... and that was about all I could come up with there.
I'm not kidding, either.
It took a long while, but after racking my brain for any details until the inside of my skull felt like a pressure cooker ready to go off, the best I could come up with was a handful of shaky names and the idea - and calling it that is me being generous - that that the whole circus there had something to do with... Hera?
And...wolves, maybe?
For some reason?
Either way, whatever that was all about was just a whole other thing entirely.
Or will be a whole other thing, I guess.
…Will have been?
Eh, who even knows anymore - and, no, that wasn't a rhetorical question, because the answer was just flat out not me.
I had way too many things on my plate now to worry about stuff that was probably - hopefully - primed to go off years and years down the line, and even if all I knew about that fiery mess in the making didn't basically boil down to a list of unreliable footnotes with more holes in it than a block of swiss cheese, I still wouldn't go looking for more trouble ahead of time.
Modern Greek heroing 101: Unless you're all out of options, even the terrible ones, avoid the crap out of any prophecies.
Seriously, just don't.
Eight and a half times out of ten, they were the ultimate monkey's paw, where the paw comes back to life, resurrects the rest of the monkey for good measure and then they both set out into the world with the express purpose of making your life miserable - however long the rest of it lasts afterwards anyway, and good luck getting a healthy average on that one.
Really, good luck getting a healthy anything once you get involved with one of those.
My dad may be the god of oracles and future knowledge, but that didn't mean those things wouldn't screw me over just as badly as the next dude down the street and then some, so... yeah.
Let's not - not right this second, at least.
But back to Hedge now: his voice wasn't what I would have expected it to be, knowing all that I did.
Rough and keen, sure, but also a little haggard, just enough to be noticeable, and I could hear his breaths, all slow and deliberate like he wasn't quite in tiptop shape and was powering through it through sheer force of habit.
Sairaorg and I both knew the feeling.
"Daniel Winchester." He repeated, and there it was again - that same careful tone. "Evelyn Winchester's boy?"
I was too wired up to flinch at the name, even if I did inhale bracingly before breathing out just as quickly.
You know. For luck.
"That's me." I agreed, and he didn't have anything to say to that just yet. "I hope this isn't a bad time?"
"..."
"..."
The silence that followed didn't fill me with confidence, and wasn't that a great note to start off with?
"...Are you kidding me?"
I blinked.
"What?"
"I-You-" He cut himself off, hissing a sharp breath into the phone in a way that me resisting the urge to wince and pull away from it. "Back up. Back all the way up."
"Sure?"
What was there to back up to?
"You say you're Daniel Winchester."
"I... do." I said slowly. "Because I am."
"And say I believe you-"
"Why wouldn't you believe me?"
"Because life, the world and the three fateful old hags that run it all from the top are never that good to me," He said bluntly, voice crackling over the line, and only a moron wouldn't have understood who he was talking about with a hint that ham-fisted. "That, and a whole dictionary's worth of words I won't be spitting out on the off-chance that you actually are a fourteen-year-old pipsqueak."
"I'm nearly fifteen, and pipsqueak? Really?"
"...Say I believe you." He repeated again, and some of that sharp skepticism bled off into something I didn't quite recognise. "I have questions."
Well, alright then.
"'Hit me. I'm an open book."
Which was a bold-faced lie. Without the right context, my existence probably read like and made about as much sense as a half-baked bedtime story that an asylum inmate jotted down on the back of a bunch of used napkins with finger paint and spaghetti sauce, but hey.
It was the thought that counted, right?
Right.
"Where are you?" He cut that line of thought right off and got right to it. "Are you safe?"
"Pretty much. I'm home." I answered, before clearing my throat. "Back home, I mean. My uncle's place."
I knew why he was asking - Uncle David had mentioned something about tipping the man off all the way back when I first 'disappeared', asking for help finding me, and that made sense.
I knew that one of the big things satyrs around these parts were responsible for was finding and guiding rookie demigods, even if that obviously went absolutely nowhere where I was concerned.
"That's...good." He seemed...surprised. "Good. How long have you been back?"
"It's been a couple of-"
Hold it.
The word died in my throat as I suddenly remembered one teensy, tiny little tidbit that had nearly slipped my mind mid-conversation - I'd told my uncle to keep my coming back a secret.
From my... father specifically, sure, but that gag order ballooned out to cover pretty much everyone else on the spot, because who the heck would Uncle David talk to about me that wouldn't become a total security risk the moment an Olympian looked at them funny?
Long story short?
Gleeson Hedge knew I'd up and vanished off the face of the planet - literally - but he didn't know I'd been 'back' for a good long while at this point, and I had a gut feeling that letting it slip and telling him as much would come back to bite me with a grudge if I wasn't careful.
Awesome.
Naturally, I did the mature thing and promptly clobbered my potential problem over the head before pitching it into a ditch for later.
"-days." I finished a little lamely. "Couple of days."
There.
That was better… but not really good, either.
I could tell, because the second stretch of silence that followed was somehow all sorts of loud in that special way these things tended to get after someone screwed up hard enough.
I could put two and two together and understand why, more or less, but you could nearly hear the awkward cricket noises anyway.
"...Two. Days."
I almost winced at the tone.
"Give or take, yeah."
A second passed.
The another.
And another.
And then-
"...David Winchester, you insufferable, thickheaded, lamebrained little-"
I saw it coming, but this time I did wince as the guy broke out into a tirade of... let's call them words - either that, or war crimes against polite language - so fiery they were probably a health hazard to anyone within twenty feet of him.
Call me crazy, but I don't think he liked my uncle much, and the last time we talked I got the impression that the feeling was entirely mutual, and real personal too.
Didn't know why, and there was a story there, but I didn't go looking for answer I didn't need, even if I was curious - I could figure all that out in my own good time.
Still…
"...Had one job, you complete and utter bag of-!"
Guess he wasn't kidding about that dictionary, and man was he nettled. I didn't even know you could use some of those words like that, and I'm not talking about the Greek ones.
Credit where credit was due, though, because he got a hold of himself real quick a few seconds later and rounded back on me so fast I could almost feel him glaring at the phone through the other end of the call.
"Where. On Pan's Good Earth. Have You Been?"
"Well, see-"
"No, wait, don't answer that. Not right now."
Don't gotta tell me twice. I wasn't going to give him a straight answer anyway.
"We'll get to that later. First things first - You said you were at your uncle's?"
My brow rose an inch.
"Yes, but-"
"No buts. Sit tight. I'll be there in a few hours."
"Come again?""
"You heard me. Unless you're in danger, and I know you know the kind I mean-"
"Hold on a second-"
"Kid - If that's who you are, because I'm still not entirely sold on that one." He said, very, very seriously, and also as dryly as a desert at the peak of summer. "I've been' holding on' for the better part of a year."
I opened my mouth… and quickly closed it again, because rats dang it, that was actually a fair point.
"Even longer if you count... ah, to the Pit with it. Just stay where you are. I'm getting a good look at you today and getting you somewhere safe if it's the last thing I do."
By which he meant Camp Half-Blood, which, from his point of view, was probably the best thing he could do for me given everything.
Not that there was a blue moon's chance in any universe that I'd set foot in that place anytime soon unless things got really twisted, but again, it was the thought that counted.
Points for effort and all that.
"Look, there's no need to rush. " I considered what I was going to say next carefully. "You said you were a few hours away? Are you at the city? Or close to it?"
"That's right. Why?"
Because that shuffled some things around in my head, but didn't mess with the big picture at all.
"My aunt's cousin has a place out in Queens-"
"I know the one." He cut me off impatiently. "What's that have to do with anything?"
"You have questions you want to ask me, and I have some questions I need to ask you. The real important kind, too." I smiled a little, even though he couldn't see it - call it a reflex. "How about we meet up there?"
Technically, we didn't need to.
Meet up, I mean.
When Sairaorg and I planned this out, it didn't take us long to realize that, at worst, if push came to shove and trouble came knocking like a troupe of girl scouts selling cookies and surprise sucker punches, this part of things at least could be settled with just a phone call.
Technically - again - if everything went well, I'd only need that much to ask a couple of questions and narrow down where the Golden Fleece was supposed to be.
After all, unless the universe really had it out for us- and I mean more so than usual, duh - the overpowered relic of divine-grade healing could only be in one of two spots, and each one was its own special kind of prime-time headache, but either one of those was a mess for future me to juggle when it was his turn at the driver's wheel.
Point is, the most important thing we needed to figure out could be taken care of right here, and right now, assuming Hedge played ball.
But even if things were that simple, and they obviously weren't…
We were on a time crunch - a personal deadline, but it still counted -and I don't think I personally owed him enough to throw our game plan out of whack, but he deserved something after all the pointless trouble he'd probably gone through over the last few months and it wasn't like quick face-to-face meeting would ruin much of anything.
Besides, it was just decent. The principle of the thing and all that noise, and... he knew my mom.
He was her friend.
That counted for something too, and might come in handy down the line even beyond the answers and the help I could get him to fork over once we got down to business.
Even Chiron agreed.
"We can be at the apartment inside of an hour, more or less. Would that be enough time for you to meet us there?"
There was another pause.
"...You know, I'm not going to ask how, because I have a gut feeling that you either won't give me a straight answer-"
True.
"-or you're going to say something that's going to make me want to bang my head against the nearest streetlight until some wimpy mortal freaks out and calls the cops again."
That's…
"Again?
"Not important." He snapped. "Don't think I missed the rest of that, either. What's all this 'we' business?"
"I'm on… something of a road trip with a couple of friends." Well, one friend and a kill-stealing cat with an attitude bigger than that ridiculous mane, but explaining that would take the better part of forever. "It's nothing to be worried about."
Before you ask, I know exactly how unhelpful that sounded.
Heck, I'd be giving myself the stink eye if I was on the other end of this and then some.
"A couple of friends, and nothing to be worried about, huh?' Calling his voice unimpressed didn't do it justice. "Because that doesn't smell fishy at all."
Thing is, he wasn't wrong.
"Sorry?"
He exhaled heavily, sounding irritated and about seven different kinds of done with this conversation and life in general - I know that feeling too - and then he grunted something back at me.
"Fine."
I perked up, because finally.
"I can be there in an hour. But no funny business, or I'll make you regret it."
"We'll be waiting."
I didn't acknowledge the threat.
"Damn right you will, or I'm hunting you down, and I ain't gonna be nice about it when I get my hands on you. And if you're not who you say you are, then you had better be a god instead because that's the only way you're getting out of there in one piece if I have anything to say to say about it."
"..."
"..."
"...You do know that, if I was a god in disguise - for some reason - saying that to my face could end real badly for you, right?"
It wasn't a threat on my end, just basic common sense.
If there's one thing that the divine powers that be hated - and not just the Greek ones either - it was being called out or threatened by mere mortals, even if they were playing possum, acting outside of their specific domain or doing whatever the heck else they wanted.
Sometimes especially then.
That was a good way to get zapped into a pile of dust, or turned into a goldfish and tossed into an aquarium full of hungry piranhas, or anything else that was existentially horrifying enough to pass muster - and the bad endings tended to get worse the more creative the god you ticked off was feeling.
"I didn't say it to your face. I said it over the phone."
… Fair enough.
That was my kind of logic right there.
"Besides, my bat is rated E for everyone, pipsqueak. God or not, I can get one good whack in before I get smote."
And that… yeah, I had no idea what to say to that.
"Not a pipsqueak."
He just snorted.
"I'll believe it when I see it. Until then - Hedge, out."
Then he hung up on my with a click.
"This satyr's going to be an absolute character, isn't he?"
"I think he sounds fun."
This time I snorted, before turning to give Sairaorg a dry look. He'd been leaning against the fridge, arms crossed and halfway across the kitchen, but with the kind of senses we had, he might as well have been listening over my shoulder the whole time.
"Well of course you would."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing, but be careful there anyway, Sai. Your mind's starting to show again"
"What's wrong with my mind, then?"
"You mean besides not having one?"
He raised a brow
"Ha ha. If that's you saying you have a brain where I don't, then I'm not sure I'm missing out on anything special. You know, given your track record and all."
"That's-" I stopped, blinked, and cracked a grin that he threw back at me right on the spot, naturally "Damn, that was actually a good one.
"Thanks, I try."
"Also screw you. That's our track record."
"Yeah, but it's funnier when I say it this way.."
"...And I can't argue that, either."
"Hah!"
Two good points in a row, huh?
Crap, I'm losing ground over here.
"Well-"
"If you're quite done." Regulus' irritated growl cracked through our fun like a whip - a real nasty one, barbed with wire, spite and all things not at all nice "Thousands of years of imprisonment as a cheat code and a bauble for humans to fawn over, and never once have I regretted my continued existence as I do right now."
Real cheery, isn't he?
"Sounds rough. Have you considered therapy?
His eyes narrowed at me, and his mane bristled sharply. The general feeling of restrained murder he usually radiated like a faulty microwave increased exponentially.
"You. Talk. Now.
"You're going to have to be more specific. All I do is talk."
I know, I know, I have a problem.
In my defence though, my heart wasn't in it that time. It was just a reflex, and I was deflecting only long enough to come up with the explanation he was obviously chomping at the bit to hear.
I guess he must have seen through me too, because Regulus didn't make good on his unspoken threat and come at me like a pinata - his golden eyes just narrowed a hair's breadth more, and he stared at me with edged patience that just about screamed 'get to the flipping point!"
That, or he was silently debating the pros and cons of introducing sun-flavoured demigod to his diet.
Could be either or, really.
"I have a pretty cool power." I started, and his attention sharpened quickly. "Innate, long-distance teleportation."
Very long distance.
Absurdly long distance - and borderline impossible distance as well.
"Not exactly a five star ride, even on my end-"
Sairaorg coughed into his fist and tried his level best not to laugh, and I resisted the urge to kick him in the shin.
"-but it gets the job done when I need it to. Usually."
"Usually?"
"You were just along for the trip, weren't you?" I shrugged nonchalantly. "As far as I can tell, if I'm not a hundred and twenty percent focused when I bring someone along, their 'weight' sort of muddles the jump and we misfire to… someplace else entirely."
But for all that I put it that way, I could tell that this time had been…different.
Look, I'm not an expert - or maybe I technically am, and only by default - but the world-jumping had only misfired once before, and that had been because of Sairaorg.
This time, though…
I idly raised a hand and pressed it against my chest.
Now that I wasn't in "pure fight, flight or die spectacularly" mode because of where we'd ended up… now that I really thought about it…
I glanced at Sairaorg and shrugged again, with ease that I really didn't quite feel.
"I think it might have been my gear."
I wasn't sure, not even close, but I'd felt something that might have been a nudge.
A soul nudge.
That or just plain old nerves, but when have I ever been that lucky?
His eyes widened a little, and he stood up straighter as he uncrossed his arms.
"I thought you had it in the bag."
"I do. Or I did, but-"
I hesitated, and he noticed.
"What?"
"Nothing. It might have acted up the day before because of… reasons, maybe-" And I wasn't following up on that unless it was at active risk of blowing up in my face, not with everything else going on. "-But Chiron knows about it, and he told me not to worry about it."
For now, at least.
That got him to nod and shrug it off easily enough.
Regulus?
Not so much.
"I know about the gear. I felt it act up." He rumbled, voice even in a way that inspired absolutely zero confidence at all. "And I don't care why."
He didn't give either of us time to process that confirmation, either.
"Where was it that you landed us? And what was that thing sitting on its throne?"
Ah.
That.
"I don't actually know for sure."
Sairaorg frowned, and Regulus's pupils shrank some more, but I wasn't lying.
Not really.
Sure, I recognised him, even if I didn't recognise the first place we'd tumbled down into - and blindingly quickly too - but only in the same way that I recognised Sairarog, way back when, and then Kuisha Abaddon and Coriana Andrealphus all the way down that line after that.
Regulus didn't even need an explanation, and I knew a lot more about the four of them and than I did about him.
"His name is Zelretch," I said, almost certain that that was it, and the word sounded heavier on my tongue than it had any right to be. "The Old Man Of The Jewels."
And that's about all I knew about him, except for one little tidbit I couldn't not bring it up.
'"He's like me, I think." I met Sairaorg's gaze and nodded meaningfully. "He can do what I do, I mean."
Not exactly.
Probably not even similarly, and there were oodles of complexity more to his gimmick than there were to mine, from the barest whispers of information I could remember - and I wouldn't even trust those as far as I could throw Sairaorg - but there was enough crossover fuel there that I had to mention it.
The meaning hit him like a lightning bolt, and his brows almost achieved orbital lift off with how quickly they shot up.
"No way."
"I know, right?"
Another world-jumper.
Wild didn't cover it.
Again, I didn't know much about him and his title - or his entire world, while we're on that - bar some super specific information for obvious reasons.
HIs goals, his role, his friggin anything besides the fact that he existed and had some scary, scary powers were all one big question mark wrapped in tin foil and buried in an unmarked grave out in the boonies.
And, after spending all of a minute in his presence, if even that, I felt like a bug that had gone hurtling off towards an omnipotent windshield at terminal velocity and only avoided being splattered by the skin of my teeth. The sheer aura of unfathomable wrongness that I'd gotten a whiff off when I stared into those crimson eyes was something else entirely.
The fact that he'd basically slapped us out of that eldritch, spine-twisting void of a realm we'd met in and sent flying down into what had to be ground zero of a Holy Grail War…
Surprisingly, that hadn't helped.
Just, why even?
There was no answer I could come up with with the scattered, flimsy pieces I had bouncing around in my head, but noping the heck right out of there had to have been the smartest decision I've ever made in my life, and for good freaking reason too.
Now explaining that to Regulus - who was still staring at me like he was considering reenacting a grisly episode of national geographic's top five carnivore maulings - was going to be the mother of all pains in the neck, because I couldn't come out and just tell him what was what.
Of course not.
I was back home, in my birth world, and coming right out with the whole truth without any Chiron-grade protections against scrying and any of a thousand different flavours of long-distance reality bending voyeurism was a mythically bad idea of titanic proportions, because privacy you didn't work for around here was either total make believe or a total joke.
And speaking of the Nemean Lion in question…
"The Old Man Of The Jewels." He tasted the words with something very low and equally razor sharp in his tone. Absolute interest, but with a menacing tilt to it right out of a horror movie or three. "I've never heard that title before."
Be surprised if you had, kill-stealer.
"Who is it- he?"
In a way, I could get why he kept calling Zelretch an it - he hadn't felt natural in a way that not even the gods I'd met could match.
It wasn't a power thing either - my dad was the sun in a way that wasn't literal but transcended ordinary metaphor all the same, and he still didn't feel other in quite the same way as the old man had.
Everything about that encounter rubbed me the wrong way the longer I thought about it, but I didn't have time to focus on something like that now.
"I just told you, I barely have an idea beyond his name - and I don't even know what the title itself is supposed to mean."
Beyond the vaguest idea that it had something to do with his magic, I had nothing.
Surprisingly, Regulus didn't press the issue.
"And what came after that, then? That place he banished us to, and those humans." He said 'humans' like he was humoring a concept he just didn't care enough to argue about. "What's the story there?"
"That's more complicated."
Boy was it ever, but it was Sairaorg that shrugged and went back to leaning against the wall expectantly.
"We have a little time. An hour, right?"
Right.
How do I break this down without dropping anything too dangerous or outright insane?
I thought about it for a second, and.. oh.
Actually, now that I think about it, there was an easy way to lead up to this, isn't there?
"You know what Spirit Inheritors are, right?"
Humans who've taken on the spirits - or just the impression of them, possibly - of former legendary 'heroes' or powerful figures from history in the modern day, and somehow wound up stacking both their own natural born potential and their predecessor's together.
At least in theory.
In practice, the results usually wind up all over the place, but that's a whole other thing to boot.
Sairaorg nodded - after the way Chiron had drilled us, neither of us would forget anything that straightforward for at least a century and a half - and Regulus grunted flatly.
"Do I look like an ignorant fool?"
…Don't take the bait, don't take the bait, don't take the bait.
Me lips twitched, and Regulus didn't miss it.
"Go on. I dare you."
It physically hurt me not to say something cathartic, but I found the strength to move past it anyway.
I could always rib him later and all that.
"The place that we ended up, and the timing of it too… it was pretty much the opening stage for a ritualistic 'war', a battle royale between 'Servants' who're actually the materialised spirits of great figures from across history. Think spirit inheritors, but instead of being… well, inherited, the originals are just outright summoned and manifest from beyond the grave in their own corporeal forms, all while anchored to a 'Master' as part of the magic that brought them back in the first place. It's what keeps them around until the Master can't, or they're killed instead."
Master or Servant, and sometimes Master and Servant both.
They took that in silently.
Objectively speaking, it was a terrible explanation.
The thing was so barebones it was basically a sun-bleached skeleton just looking for an excuse to snap like a twig, but in a pinch like this, it'd do the job.
"Okay." Sai tried to parse through it quickly. "Why, exactly?"
"It's part of the greater ritual. The Servants are supposed to fight, taking one another out until only one remains. The Masters might end up going the same way, even if they technically don't matter in the grand scheme of things. All the while, as the other six bite it, this mechanism I'm not even going to try to explain or understand myself gathers up all their magical energy and piles it up all nice and neatly until the end of the war, and then it's used to grant the winning pair a wish each."
"A wish?"
"Think Aladdin and the magic lamp, only it's a holy grail instead." They both stiffened, and I shook my head quickly. "Not that one. Not even close."
I could understand the reaction though, because who couldn't?
The Sephiroth Graal was a hydrogen bomb of a Sacred Gear and potential disaster and nobody sane took that thing lightly in any capacity.
"It's not even an Abrahamic relic or anything." I'd bet a gold bar on that too, even If I couldn't remember the details with perfect clarity. "Just something cribbing on the name and style."
"And this wish can be anything?"
The curiosity there was totally valid. So was the interest.
Too bad I had to snuff it out.
"No clue."
"Dude."
"I know. Not helpful." I tried not to snicker at the look on his face. "If it makes you feel better, I'm, like, ninety percent sure that it won't matter anyway. No one's getting a wish from that thing no matter how it plays out."
Sai paused as he considered that.
"Again, why?"
This time, it was Regulus that finally snorted.
"Isn't it obvious? If something is too good to be true, it almost always is. Wish granting…" He snorted again. "Please. The number of ways something as moronically open-ended as that can go wrong are nearly limitless."
I thought about that for a second - and then I found myself abruptly imagining burning cities and otherworldly monsters emerging from cursed mud, and I rolled right on back and slammed that mental door shut behind me.
It can always get worse, can't it?
"You're not wrong."
He scoffed pointedly.
"Of course I'm not." Classy. ""How do you know all of this?"
"What?"
The question I'd seen coming a mile away, but he'd dropped it at my feet so abruptly that I'd almost stumbled back on instinct.
"You keep feeding me scraps." the lion said warningly, teeth flashing quickly and back as his head tilted to the side. Still just as nettled as before. "Bits and pieces barely worth a damn. But those scraps had to have come from somewhere."
"You did ask." I muttered, but he ignored me.
"Names and titles I've never heard of, and even if I've never pretended to have any claim to omniscience, something about it all still doesn't sit well with me."
"I guess I can't blame you for that." I had a sudden flash of inspiration, something in between a joke and stroke of genius, and I couldn't help myself. "It does sound pretty out of this world.
Pun, absolutely intended - who do you think I am?
Behind him, Sairaorg started before he hit me with the most deadpanned expression I'd seen from him yet.
Really?
I just shrugged some more.
He knows what I'm about - and on the bright side, I could see something come over Regulus. Not realisation, because I hadn't stressed the words enough to give them meaning, but maybe something like it's third cousin twice removed.
A seed still too faint to grow into anything useful, but it probably would if we kept feeding it.
Assuming I wasn't just reading into his twitching a little too much.
Oh, and there's the growling again.
"That's not an answer, sun-brat."
"Yeah, but that is." I smiled as I started to lie shamelessly - another essential skill for the enterprising Greek hero in the making! "Think about who my dad is and what his domains are for five seconds, and you'll figure it out."
There was a deliberate pause.
"Prophecy? Revelations? Hidden knowledge? Knowing stuff I have no business knowing is basically genetic for me."
As always, the best part was that it wasn't technically wrong - just taken so far out of context the picture it set up was about as easy on the eyes as an Escher painting.
"Really?" Regulus said flatly. "That's the story you're going with."
"That's the only story there is to go with." I argued right back. "Look, I'm going to sum it up for you just so we can get this over with already - I don't know why we ended where we did the first time, no clue why we were sent off to the second, and the only thing on my mind right now is finishing off the quest we actually set of to complete before worrying about any of it. And yes, I know I'm being vague, and while I'd love to tell you that I'm doing it to annoy you-"
He snarled lowly, but I got the feeling it was half-hearted and more for show than anything else.
"-it's actually because the rest of this story is so messy that I just refuse to give you anything else until we're somewhere I'm confident we can't be spied on."
Regulus… actually seemed to consider that carefully.
"The centaur's home."
I nodded slowly.
"Safest place in the universe from where I'm standing."
That universe, anyways.
"..."
"..."
"...Fine."
Oh thank dad.
I almost exhaled relief, until the overgrown cat had to ruin it again.
"You get a pass, for now."
Me eye twitched.
"Every word out of your jaws is so over the top and edgy I'm constantly amazed that you're not cutting your tongue open on every other sentence."
"I am famed for my invulnerability. You have nothing going for you besides a handful of half-baked tricks to stand on." Lions physically can't smirk, but I'll buy a hat and eat it too if that smug, mean expression didn't translate into one anyway. "Keep that in mind the next time you want to run your mouth."
Tricks?
I scowled and turned to Sairaorg.
"You see what I mean?"
"I think anyone can see what you both mean."
"Real helpful, you absolute traitor."
He snickered.
"Honestly, I'm still stuck on the fact that we met… that knight."
I stared at him, and idly realized that he was totally right.
For a devil especially, meeting Arthur Pendragon - who should have been an Artoria, but who even cares about that anymore - would be a big, big deal.
"One of the most famous Holy Sword wielders to ever live, and we saw him up close and personal." Sai seemed almost awed by it, in hindsight. "It's insane."
I huffed a small laugh.
"Oh, you have no idea."
The King Of Knights, who wielded the ever famous Excalibur - one that was never broken, unlike its counterpart in Sai's world.
And, unless I was way off the mark, that difference didn't matter at all.
The reforged fragments could go up against everything up to a god with the right wielder, and the completed thing was an order of magnitude beyond even that, but Arthur's one still made all of them look like limited edition toys in comparison.
Probably.
Still, for all that it would have been… awesome to see, really, we wouldn't be finding out for sure anytime soon, because we weren't going back to that place either.
I might not know the way we were sent there - or if there was any reason to it at all - but even without the quest for the Fleece, we had absolutely no stakes in that hurricane of bad mojo whatsoever.
No.
Just no.
"Ah." Regulus up. "The boy who reeked of dragon, and with a name I did recognise. With him alone, that 'war' of yours seems interesting. That spearman wasn't half bad, either, even if a half-baked demi-brat managed to score a hit on him."
Oh, yeah. The guy I'd magically sucker punched by way of a beam of sunlight.
Cú Chulainn
Irish Hercules, basically, as opposed to… actual Hercules.
Who's also involved in the Holy Grail War.
How terrifying… and also impressive in a way that had me switching tracks again before I started entertaining some especially stupid thoughts, even by my standards.
That was about the point where Sai rounded on Regulus, looking abruptly excited.
"Dragon?"
Then they both turned to me expectantly.
"Well?"
I…alright, fine.
I sighed, before reaching over the counter and snagging another soda can - Aunt Sarah was going to skin me when she realized how many of them I'd downed in one go, but I could just buy a couple of six-packs to store up the fridge and maybe I'd get off scott-free.
Here's hoping.
"I guess we have the better part of an hour to kill. What do you want to know?"
…
Ten minutes before we were due to meet up with Hedge, I finally relaxed the almost unconscious grip I'd been wrapping around my divine power since the second we'd gotten here, more or less.
With the threat of you-know-who's attention falling on me if I tapped into it too much, I'd been wound up tighter than a turtle in its shell, but now I let it unfurl just the slightest-
"Boo!"
I jumped so high my head nearly burst through the roof.
"Son of a- Sairaorg!"
"Sorry, I couldn't help it."
He was still cackling even after I finished glaring at him with enough heat to strip the paint off the walls.
"I want you to remember this moment, when I get even. Remember it real well."
Regulus closed his eyes and huffed out a long, deliberately drawn out breath.
"If you start again, there will be blood."
I wanted to throw something at him, but it'd have just bounced off that golden hide, so I muttered something that'd have all the adults in my life drawing sticks to feed me a bar of soap and raised my hands into the air.
"They Who Walk Amongst Us."
One spell.
Technically, it was still divine thaumaturgy.
Only, this one didn't invoke Apollon or one of his aspects specifically.
Instead, it targeted something different.
See, there were all these myths - stories, I suppose - of the Olympian gods in particular disguising themselves as ordinary mortals and walking amongst the masses every now and then.
Whether they did it because they wanted to judge the people they reigned over all up close and personal, or because they were looking out for a handful in particular, or maybe even because being god-like all the time got boring and they wanted to play the prank of a lifetime on some poor schmuck or something was anyone's guess.
The point is, they did it, it happened, and the spell I weaved tried to piggyback of the idea of it all - the concept of something greater appearing mundane in the eye of the beholder.
The magic settled against my body like a second skin, and then it spread out to cover all of us in quick succession - An added layer of protection stacked on top of the Mist and everything else we'd prepared for beforehand.
Now, if someone glanced over at us from a distance, they'd see nothing they could quite remember, but they'd be convinced it was something totally ordinary.
Completely normal
Nothing to worry about here, no siree
It wouldn't hold up if past a certain point, and definitely not if a god tried to break through it, but they'd have to be looking and trying, and it wouldn't be subtle.
And now we were ready.
"Alright then. The apartment."
I'd have teleported us there myself if I could have, but Reach of Sunlight was nothing like They Who Walk Amongst us - Tapping directly into dad's domain of sunlight like that outside of a life or death emergency was a big no no.
Luckily, I had a workaround.
"Courage?" I grinned down at my shadow. It seemed to grow deeper as I looked into it, and a flash of red glinted in its depths. "Hit it."
Instantly, the darkness warped and surged up to swallow us right as we started sinking into it as well, and we were gone in a rush of sharp, cool air and a single bark.
Shadow Travel, man.
You gotta love it.
Extra:
"He'ssss our prey!"
"Back off, you miserable upjumped worm!"
Gleeson panted as he leaned against the brick wall he'd been back up against, sweat pouting down his brow, ribs aching from a nasty hit, and trusty bat caught so firmly between his white-knuckled hands that it was almost a Zeus-given miracle that the good old girl hadn't already splintered in his grip
Really, if it didn't give out any second now he'd call for a timeout and look for whatever fresh trap was coming his way, because today's just been that kind of nightmare.
The first thing any satyr worth their salt learned before heading out into the real word to do their jobs was that big, bustling cities like New York?
They were crawling with monsters - all sorts of ugly, nasty creeps with too many limbs and scents that could make a sewage plant jealous, swarming and crawling in and out of great big swaths of hunting territory every other way you looked.
Now every one of them was a blight fresh from Tartarus and all that, but the worst offenders - and that bar was already higher than Olympus over the Empire State Building - were the ones that unionised.
Like minded, bloodthirsty things that teamed up and went after everything that so much as twitched the wrong way in packs - Demigods, mortals, and exhausted goat-men too angry to die alike.
Because clearly, a fair fight was too much to ask for - case in point:
The four dracaena to his left reared up as a single wave and hissed menacingly. Reptilian monsters with top halves that looked like mortal women decked out in mismatched armour, but with too-long faces and skin that shimmered in all the wrong ways, and their lower halves stretched out into twin, scaled and serpentine trunks they slithered on like living skis.
On his other side was the Empousa - 'also known as the living proof that it can always get worse, so shut your flapping cakehole'
Just the one, but one was enough.
Satyrs were half goat. Dracaena were half serpent-dragon.
Empousai were what happened when someone took that general idea out back behind the farm, did horrible, horrible things to it until they got bored, and then set it on fire just to be safe.
Flaming hair, white skin, glowing red eyes like evil marbles, fangs that looked two sizes too big for their mouths, one leg made of celestial bronze and the other pulled right off an ordinary donkey.
It sounded ridiculous, and looked terrifying and especially unholy - one of the most dangerous monsters of all, even at their weakest.
And with her on one side and the Dracaena on the other…
He grimaced and shifted on his hooves.
All in all, not the best spot he's ever been in.
And only a block away from the spot he'd expected to meet the kid at.
Evelyn's kid.
Damn it all.
"We found him firssst!" The leader of the dracaena hissed, hefting up a worn, rickety-looking spear tipped with a blade of bone. The others flashed claws and barred their teeth in warning. "Thisss isss our territory!"
"Do you think I care?" The empousa's voice was cold and mocking, but it did nothing to hide the rabid hunger beneath it - this one hadn't fed in a while, and that made her dangerous enough that four on wasn't enough to tip the balance for sure. "We're close enough to the border that no one would look twice, and I'm the one that chased the little goat and tired him out first!"
True.
She'd also backhanded out a first story window and onto the hood of a car, but who's counting?
"He ssstill belongs to ussss!"
Gleeson's nostrils flared, and his bat rose a little higher.
He'll show her belong!
… Hopefully on his way out of this mess, once the freakshows started tearing one another apart.
If they didn't…
He swallowed and gritted his teeth.
He'd figure it out, or his name wasn't monster-thumping Hedge!
"Think, you fools!" The empousa snarled, and her burning hair flared so sharply he could feel the searing heat of it twenty feet away. "He's a satyr!"
"Yesss!" The leader nodded. "Lot'sss of meat."
"Good eating!" A second agreed.
"For the love of the Lady, think!" The empousa snapped. "What do satyrs do, when they're not wandering off into the sunset looking for their pathetic Pan?"
Gleeson's angry curse died in his throat when the demented blood sucker rounded on him, radiating malice like a cloud of cheap cologne.
"They play protector," She sneered. "For demigods."
The dracaena froze.
So did Gleeson.
"Demigod?"
"Halfling?"
"Much better eating!"
The empousa rolled her eyes.
"Finally! Killing him comes later - first, we find out where the real prize is at. Now then, tell us where they are, little goat." Her fangs gleamed as her mouth opened far too wide. "Where's your charge."
… Pan curse it all.
He didn't - couldn't - stop to think before he was crouching at the knees, already winding up to break out into a dead sprint.
One good hit - that's all he'd need to make an opening.
So he opened his mouth to tell the third-rate reject exactly where she and her new friends could shove it-
"Right here!"
And then he heard that, and his blood turned to ice on the double.
The monsters recoiled and made to turn around, but they never had the chance.
"Hurghk!"
The empousa died first, a golden blur sliding in from across the corner of his vision and lunging straight for her with such ridiculous speed that Gleeson didn't even see the moment the glowing spear was shoved halfway through her mouth and punching clean through the back of her skull.
Her eyes widened stupidly, and then she was exploding in a shower of dust and scattering absolutely everywhere.
All in under a second.
The spear retracted, and the blonde haired kid who owned it swung it over his shoulder and slowly turned away from the frozen Dracaena, to the equally dead-still Gleeson.
And then he smiled breezily, and oh, Gleeson would know that half-smirk anywhere.
"Yo!" He waved casually, like he hadn't just taken down a monster that could kill scores of unprepared demigods with a swing of its arm in the time it took him to blink. "I'm Daniel. We talked on the phone?"
It was so nonchalant, so unhurried, that it gave the dracena the time they needed to reboot.
Then the air was filled with wary, enraged hissing, and the first of them lunged, spear aimed at Evelyn's son and his unprotected back in a way that had Gleeson's heart doing high-speed jumping jacks on its way up his throat.
"Look out!"
He didn't.
The kid didn't even have to turn around.
A second blur shot out of absolutely nowhere, and the spear shattered like brittle glass a split-second before the dracaena's spine followed suit.
It died without even a whimper, dissolving into dust that went hurling off to batter the leftover three like a gust from a particularly pathetic sand storm.
That, or something more embarrassing, but Gleeson was too busy playing catch-up to throw proper shade when it was called for.
Daniel Winchester's impossibly fast tag along stood still only long enough for him to realize that it was a second kid - of course, of course - and then he turned towards the remaining enemies and smiled.
His purple eyes almost crinkled and everything.
"Hello."
Then he cocked back a fist.
"And goodbye."
Then he punched forward, once.
And the air itself seemed to explode.
The force of it slammed Gleeson back against the brick wall, the noise deafening, the ground under his feet tremoring, and for a beat, it was like the entire alleyway was coming apart at the seams.
Is this how I die?
What a crappy way to go - He hated it!
Luckily, the universe chose to play ball, finally, because the air settled a breath later, the howling stopped, and careful silence came drifting back down again like a baby being soothed back to sleep.
All that… in about twelve seconds, more or less.
When it was done, and he blink through the stinging in his eyes to, he clocked the fact that Evelyn's boy hadn't so much as twitched from the impact.
His hair wasn't even ruffled.
If anything, he looked mildly irritated, like somebody had poured the milk in his cereal before he sat down at the table.
Or worse - poured the milk in before the cereal.
"Sai, for real?"
The other kid shrugged sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head.
"Sorry. I toned it down, but I didn't think they'd be that weak."
"... yeah, they were flimsy, weren't they?" He agreed, blue eyes tracking the last of the golden dust before he shook it off easily enough. "Guess we got lucky on the first go around. Good thing Regulus didn't follow us, or he'd never shut up about it."
"Probably."
…What the-?
That's when he finally locked on to it.
The scent.
Not Daniel Winchester's - oh no.
His friend's.
One whiff, and his spine turned to stone, and everything got much, much, much more complicated.
"Anathema."
...
Sai and Dan, gearing up to blast their brand of bullshit straight into the unsuspecting Gleeson's Life.