Chapter 3: To each their own
The walk back to the Hall of Whispers felt like a march to the gallows. The taste of Theseus—of salt and resolve—still clung to Athena’s lips, a phantom warmth in direct conflict with the ice now settling in her veins. The cracked mirror’s glow had been an accusation. Hephaestus’s summons, a leash yanked taut.
Theseus walked a pace behind her, his presence a solid, silent bulwark. He hadn’t sheathed his sword. The message was clear.
Hera was not on her throne this time. She stood at the center of the hall before the empty storm-grey chair, her back to them, examining a tapestry depicting Zeus vanquishing the Titans. The hall was empty save for two of her personal, gold-scaled guards who stood like statues by the doors.
“You summoned me, my Queen?” Athena’s voice echoed in the vast space, carefully neutral.
Hera turned. Her gaze swept over them, lingering on Theseus’s unsheathed blade, on the slight dishevelment of Athena’s hair. A smile, thin and knowing, touched her mouth. “It seems my interruption was… poorly timed. My apologies.”
The lie was so graceful it was almost an insult. “Hephaestus mentioned the frontier.”
“Yes.” Hera sighed, a performance of regal worry. She gestured to the empty chair. “His absence grows conspicuous. The stability of Olympus is not a passive condition; it is an active force projected by its king. Without that projection, cracks appear. Rumors have reached me of… unrest. Mortal kings testing their boundaries, old monsters stirring from forgotten lairs, sensing a weakness in the celestial order.”
Theseus shifted. “You believe the threats are connected to the King’s withdrawal?”
“I believe chaos breeds in silence,” Hera said, her eyes sharpening. “Zeus has secluded himself for… contemplation. But the world does not wait for gods to finish their musings. A show of strength is required. A reminder.” She paused, letting the words hang. “He will go to Thebes. It is a seat of mortal power, a symbolic center. His presence there will quell the rising whispers before they become shouts.”
Athena’s heart began a slow, heavy thud. Thebes. Theseus’s new posting. The coincidence was no coincidence at all.
“And my role?” Athena asked, already dreading the answer.
“You will accompany him.” Hera’s tone was breezy, as if assigning a secretary. “In a concealed capacity, of course. Your recent notoriety makes you a lightning rod. We cannot have the purpose of the visit overshadowed by gossip about seers and silver nets. You will go as an anonymous oracle, a minor priestess in his retinue. Your gifts may be useful in interpreting mortal intrigues, and your presence will help shield his identity—a god traveling with a simple seer attracts less attention than a god traveling alone.”
The trap was so elegant Athena almost admired it. Remove her from Olympus, isolate her, and wrap the reasoning in flawless political logic. In Thebes, she would be far from any allies, surrounded by mortals and under the watch of a king who valued silence.
Theseus’s voice cut through her thoughts. “And my orders?”
Hera looked at him as if she’d only just remembered he was there. “Your assignment stands. You will travel as part of the royal guard detail for the anonymous oracle. Your expertise with mortal… insurrections… will be valuable. Consider it a continuation of your duty, albeit in a less lofty setting.”
He gave a single, sharp nod.Acceptance. But his eyes, when they flicked to Athena, were chips of flint.
“You leave at dawn,” Hera finished, turning back to the tapestry. A dismissal.
As they bowed and retreated, Hera waited until the great doors hushed closed. She did not move. A figure emerged from behind the tapestry, a lesser god of messages and whispers, his form barely substantial.
“It is arranged?” Hera asked, her voice devoid of its previous performative warmth.
“Yes, Queen. The bandit clan near the Cithaeron Pass is ambitious and believes the information comes from a rival mortal king. They will see the oracle’s retinue as a rich, soft target. The silver paid to them is untraceable.”
“And the warrior?”
“A complication. But a mortal one. Bandits kill heroes every day. Tragic, but common. When Zeus’s grief erupts at the loss of his seer, his wrath will fall squarely on the mortal world, reinforcing his power. And you will be here to comfort him, the chaos neatly resolved.”
Hera’s smile was a cold, satisfied curve. “A neat resolution indeed. See it done.”
Dawn in the mortal world smelled different. It smelled of dust, of dew on wild thyme, and the faint, ever-present tang of woodsmoke from a hundred cooking fires. The grand chariot of the gods had been replaced by a line of sturdy, unadorned wagons and horses. Zeus, shrouded in a deep hood and the simple, if finely made, robes of a traveling nobleman, was already seated in the lead wagon, an aura of impenetrable silence around him.
Athena, in a plain dove-grey chiton with a woolen travel cloak, felt utterly exposed. The power that usually simmered beneath her skin had been cinched tight, bound by Hera’s compulsion to seem “minor.” It was like wearing a shoe two sizes too small.
Theseus moved through the assembling party with brisk efficiency. He checked harnesses, spoke lowly to the other six guards—all mortal, seasoned men who looked at him with a mix of respect and wariness. He was in his element here, on the earth, the sky-citadel of Olympus a gleaming nuisance on the horizon behind them.
“Your mount, lady,” he said, leading a calm bay mare to her. His tone was professional, distant. The man from the chamber was gone, sealed away behind the wall of duty.
“I can walk,” she said, more to test the bounds of her new role than anything.
“It’s a three-day journey. You’ll ride.” It wasn’t an argument. It was a logistical fact.
She took the reins, their fingers brushing. No spark, just the practical transfer of leather. He immediately turned to bark an order at a guard lagging with his pack.
The Theban Road unspooled before them, a wide ribbon of packed dirt cutting through rolling hills of olive groves and rocky scrubland. The silence was vast, broken only by the creak of wagon wheels, the snort of horses, and the low talk of the guards. The immensity of the sky, absent the glittering spires of the divine city, felt oppressive.
By midday, the novelty of disguise had worn thin, replaced by a crawling unease. Every rustle in the brush, every distant figure on the road, felt like a potential disclosure. She was playing a part, but the part had no script.
They made camp that first night in a shallow valley by a stream. Zeus retired to his tent immediately. The guards built a fire, its light a fragile defiance against the sprawling dark.
Athena sat apart, on a smooth rock by the water, listening to the men.
“...heard the Boar of Calydon’s been sighted again,” one said, turning a spit of rabbit.
“Old news. My cousin says the sea-roads near Pylos are crawling with pirates. No divine patrols anymore. It’s like they’ve all looked away.”
Theseus, sharpening a dagger by the fire, looked up. “They haven’t looked away. They’re busy. Maintain your watch.”
The guard, a young man with a scraggly beard, chuckled nervously. “Easy for you to say, Captain. You’ve walked the Hall of Whispers. We just see the quiet, and the quiet feels wrong.”
Athena watched Theseus. He didn’t confirm or deny. He just went back to sharpening, the rhythmic scrape-scrape of stone on metal speaking louder than words. He was a bridge between this world and the one above, and he seemed to hate both ends of it.
The young guard, emboldened by the silence, glanced over at Athena. “What about the seer? She seen anything useful in her bowl? When’s the King coming back to sort this mess?”
All eyes turned to her. Mortal eyes, curious, skeptical, tinged with a hope she was forbidden to truly address.
Theseus tensed.
Athena met the young guard’s gaze, letting the silence stretch just a beat too long. “My bowl,” she said, her voice softer, less sure than her usual tone, “only shows the ripples from stones already thrown. I don’t see who throws the next one.” It was an oracle’s answer—vague, true, and utterly unsatisfying.
The guard grunted, turning back to the fire. “Worthless.”
Theseus stood, his shadow huge in the firelight. “The watch rotates in an hour. Get some sleep.” The dismissal was final.
Later, when the camp was quiet and only the sigh of the wind and the distant call of an owl remained, Theseus approached her rock. He didn’t sit.
“You shouldn’t engage them,” he said, his voice low.
“They asked a question. Was I to play mute?”
“You’re playing a minor priestess. Minor priests keep their heads down.”
“And what are you playing, Captain?” The question came out with more bite than she intended.
He was silent for a moment. “I’m not playing. This is what I am. Out here. This is the only thing that’s ever made sense.”
“Following orders? Guarding a lie?”
“Protecting the people in my charge,” he shot back, a flicker of the intensity from the chamber returning. “Even if one of them is a frustratingly visible god in hiding and the other is a…” He trailed off.
“A what? A frustratingly visible seer?” She looked up at him, the starlight catching the defiant angles of his face. “They’re scared, Theseus. They can feel the absence. Hera’s right about that much. And they’re looking for signs, for answers. Denying them that is its own kind of cruelty.”
“Giving them false hope is crueler.” He knelt suddenly, bringing himself to her eye level. The scent of smoke and leather washed over her. “That guard, Philippos. He has a wife and a new son in Thebes. He’s not philosophizing about celestial order. He’s worried about pirates raiding his coast and burning his farm. Your prophecies, your silver nets—that’s not his world. His world is steel, and grain, and safety. And I know how to fight for that. I don’t know how to fight for symbols.”
His world. He had said his world, not the world. The separation was profound, and for the first time, Athena saw the true depth of the canyon between them. She lived in the realm of symbols, of fate and threads. He lived in the realm of cause and effect, of blood and soil. And Hera had thrown them both into the no-man’s land between.
“Maybe,” she whispered, “the next stone has already been thrown. Maybe we’re already ripples.”
Before he could answer, a sharp, unmusical bird call echoed from the ridge above the camp. Once, twice.
Theseus was on his feet in an instant, every muscle coiled. It wasn’t an owl. It was a signal. He met her eyes, and in that shared look, the tension of the journey snapped into a different, sharper shape.
The bandits struck just before the change of watch, when the night was deepest and the fire was embers. They came not from the road, but down the scree-covered slope of the ridge, a dozen dark shapes moving with the grim purpose of men who knew the terrain.
Theseus’s shout tore the night open. “Ambush! To arms!”
Chaos, then, of the most visceral, mortal kind. The clang of sword on sword, the meaty thud of impact, a cry of pain. Athena scrambled back, pressing against the wagon wheel, her divine power a screaming pressure behind her teeth. She couldn’t reveal herself. To do so would expose Zeus.
She saw Theseus as a pivot of controlled violence. He didn’t fight with Olympian flourishes, but with brutal, efficient economy. He blocked a downward chop, spun the bandit off balance, and drove his short sword into the man’s side. He moved to the next, a parry, a disarming strike, a pommel to the temple. He was protecting the perimeter, keeping the fighting away from Zeus’s tent and her wagon.
But there were too many. A bandit, larger than the others, broke through the line. He didn’t head for Zeus. His eyes, glittering in the starlight, found Athena. He’d been told about the priestess.
Theseus saw it. He was engaged with two others. “Athena!” he roared, a raw blast of fear.
The bandit lunged, a rusty spear aimed at her chest. Time didn’t slow; it crystallized. She could feel the path of the spear, the weak point in the man’s stance, the exact movement to disarm him—not with magic, but with the mortal physics of leverage and surprise. She’d been trained, once, a lifetime ago.
She started the move.
But Theseus was faster. He abandoned his own opponents, turning his back to them—a soldier’s ultimate sacrifice—and threw himself into a crashing dive between her and the spear. The rusted point meant for her heart skittered across his raised armored forearm, digging a bloody furrow before deflecting away.
Theseus hit the ground, rolled, and came up with a short throwing knife already in his hand. It flew, a whisper of steel, and lodged in the bandit’s throat. The man gurgled, collapsing.
The two bandits Theseus had turned from were on him now. A sword caught him across the back of his thigh. He grunted, going down to one knee.
Athena didn’t think. The scream building inside her wasn’t one of fear, but of fury. A silver light, faint and quickly suppressed, flickered at her fingertips. She grabbed a fallen branch, rushed forward, and brought it down with un-seerlike force on the head of the nearest attacker. It broke with a satisfying crack.
The remaining guards rallied, driving the last bandits back into the darkness. As suddenly as it began, it was over. The clearing was left with the moans of the wounded and the heavy panting of the survivors.
Theseus stayed on one knee, blood sheening his leg, his chest heaving. He looked up at her, his eyes wild. Not with pain. With a terrible, dawning realization.
The bandit chief had been very specific. Kill the priestess. They had bypassed the noble, bypassed the guards, and come straight for her. This wasn’t a random robbery.
He saw the same understanding in her eyes, saw the faint, fading echo of silver at her hands. The mortal world had just reached up, on orders from a realm of symbols, and tried to cut its future short.
Blood dripped onto the dust between them, black in the moonlight. The quiet that returned was louder than any noise, filled with the unspoken truth: the accident had already begun.
The quiet that returned was louder than any noise, filled with the unspoken truth: the ambush had already begun. Theseus pushed himself upright, his leg buckling, and his hand shot out to grip Athena’s arm. “They were here for you,” he breathed, the words not a question but a grim confession. His fingers were iron.
Around them, the guards were binding wounds and checking the dead. Philippos, the young guard, stared at Athena with new, unsettled eyes. Theseus saw it. “We’re leaving. Now.”
“The King—”
“Is fine. They didn’t even glance at his tent.” Theseus’s voice was low, urgent, meant only for her. He limped toward the lead wagon, his movements stiff with pain and purpose. “My Lord,” he called, his tone leaving no room for debate. “The camp is compromised. We need to move you and the seer to secure, local shelter immediately. The men will follow with the wagons at dawn.”
The shrouded figure of Zeus emerged from his tent. He said nothing, merely giving a single, slow nod of acquiescence. His silence felt heavier than any curse.
Theseus didn’t wait. He took Athena by the elbow and a pack from a wagon, his grip unrelenting. “Philippos, you’re with us. The rest, secure the site. Head for Thebes at first light. We’ll find you.”
He led them away from the road, away from the blood and the firelight, into the black maw of the oak forest that climbed the hillside. He moved with a predator’s instinct, choosing a path only he could see, every hiss of breath through his teeth a testament to the gash in his leg. Athena stumbled on roots, her grey chiton tearing on brambles. He caught her every time, his hand a steadying force that never lingered.
“Here,” he finally grunted, pulling them toward a dark outcrop of rock.
It wasn’t a cave, just a deep overhang shielded by a curtain of thorny vines. It smelled of damp stone and old leaves. He shoved the pack at Philippos. “Stand watch at the tree line. You see or hear anything that isn’t an animal, you whistle. Don’t be a hero.”
Once the guard had melted into the shadows, Theseus finally sagged against the rock wall, his face pale in the faint moonlight filtering through the vines. He dragged the pack over and pulled out a waterskin and a rag.
“Let me see your leg,” Athena said, her voice hollow.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding through your greave. You’re not fine. Let me see it.”
The command in her tone surprised them both. He looked at her, then slowly, awkwardly, leveraged himself to sit more fully, stretching the wounded leg out. She knelt in the dirt beside him, her hands trembling slightly as she worked the straps of his armor loose. The metal was slick with blood.
She peeled back the torn wool of his trousers. The wound was a deep, angry furrow across the muscle of his thigh. It wept steadily.
“It needs stitching,” he said clinically, as if discussing a rent in a cloak.
“I don’t have a needle.”
“Then bind it tight.”
She soaked the rag with water from the skin. The first touch of the cool cloth to his heated skin made him flinch, a full-body jerk he couldn’t suppress. “Sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t be.” He watched her hands, her focused expression. “You knew how to disarm that spearman. You were going to try.”
She didn’t look up, concentrating on cleaning the grit and dirt from the wound. His blood was warm and vivid on her fingers. “I was trained. A long time ago. Before the visions became everything.”
“Why?”
“So I wouldn’t be helpless.” She applied pressure, and he grunted, his knuckles white where they gripped his own knee. “It didn’t work. I’m still the thing people fight over. Or try to kill.”
He was silent for a moment, the only sound their breathing and the trickle of water. “They weren’t random bandits,” he said finally. “They were hired. The one who came for you, he had a Thracian dagger on his belt. The clan in these hills are Locrian. They don’t trade with Thrace. Someone equipped him.”
Athena’s hands stilled. The truth was a cold stone in her gut. “Hera.”
“She wants you gone. But she wants it to look like a mortal accident. A tragedy. It clears the board for her.” His jaw worked. “She used me as the deliveryman. Put me right next to you so my presence wouldn’t seem unusual. So I could lead you into the kill box.”
The rage in his voice was quiet, terrifying, and entirely directed inward.
Athena began tearing a strip from the bottom of her own chiton to use as a bandage. “You didn’t know.”
“I should have seen it. I’m a weapon. I know how weapons are aimed.” He caught her wrist, stopping her movements. His palm was calloused, smeared with his own blood. “I won’t let it happen again.”
His touch sent a jolt through her, different from the fear, sharper than the adrenaline. It was the solid, undeniable reality of him, wounded and furious and here. Her magic, always a separate current, stirred in response to his proximity, to the copper-and-earth scent of his blood.
She looked down at their joined hands, at her pale skin against his. A flicker, not of her own making, erupted in her mind’s eye.
Gold. A pouch of gold coin changing hands in a shadowy stable. Hera’s voice, smooth as poisoned wine: “The seer dies. The hero’s death is collateral. Make it look like mortal greed.” The bandit chief’s nod. Then, another image: Zeus, alone in a formless, swirling void of clouds, his back turned, his shoulders bowed by a weight no one could see.
The vision was a stab, not a flood. It lasted only a second. Athena gasped, recoiling as if burned, the strip of cloth falling from her hands.
“What?” Theseus was alert instantly, his pain forgotten.
“She paid them,” Athena stammered, the images crystal clear. “She gave the order. You were… collateral. Acceptable loss.” She met his eyes, her own wide with horrified clarity. “And Zeus… he’s not contemplating. He’s grieving. He’s isolated in his own storm. She’s using his absence, feeding it, to create this chaos.”
Theseus processed this, his soldier’s mind connecting tactical dots. “So removing you isn’t just about jealousy. It’s about keeping him broken. Unreachable.”
“Yes.” The realization crashed over her. “The silver net… the crown… my visions threaten her because they might actually reach him. They might pull him back. That’s the true prophecy. Not that I’ll overthrow him. That I could save him from whatever this is.” She grabbed his forearm, her fingers pressing into his muscle. “We have to get him back, Theseus. Or at least get a message to him. We have to break her narrative.”
“How?” His voice was rough. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, hunted, and he’s a ghost in a cloak who hasn’t spoken a word.”
Athena’s mind raced, threading through myth and memory. “There are ways. Old ways. Places where the veil between mortal and divine is thin. Springs, mountains, groves touched by his power. We’re near the Cithaeron range. There’s a peak…” She trailed off, the plan forming, desperate and thin. “We need to go there. Just us. We need to make contact.”
Theseus looked at her, at the fierce, determined light in her eyes that had nothing to do with prophecy and everything to do with defiance. He saw the blood still on her hands—his blood.
He reached out and slowly, deliberately, wiped a smudge of it from her cheek with his thumb. His touch was astonishingly gentle. “Then we go,” he said, as if stating they would walk to the stream. “We get to that peak. You pull your king out of the clouds.” A hard, determined intensity settled over his features. “And I keep you alive long enough to do it.”