Capítulo 17: Choice and Bargain
Chapter 17: Choice & Bargain
It was a short man, or something reminiscent of one, who stood hidden by a light brown cloak, his twin visages each facing in the opposite direction while he eyed us with the corner of his eye.
"Hello, younglings," spoke one face, covering with a smile the annoyed rumbling of his counterpart: "I am Janus, and I have a choice to offer."
Choice & Bargain
And as he spoke, something in the world changed, and I found myself staring at both faces at the same time, as if the reality had been twisted by a capricious god, and from what I knew, it was exactly like that. The motes of dust suspended in the air and the glint given off by our weapons seemed to still, and I was left staring at the Bifront God, who was smiling widely with both of his faces.
"You should take care of your name better, Icarus." and as my name left the lips of both his faces, I felt like I was a bell struck with an iron rod, and I fell to my knees as I felt my everything vibrate. My sight seemed to expand outside of me, as if I was looking at myself from the roof of the chamber in which we met the Bifront God, only to slam back into myself when I felt my breath return into my lungs with a shudder.
I remained still for a few seconds, trying to actually make sense of what had just happened, only to receive my answer from the too smug God in front of me: "You're not the first to build his own name, Herakles and Alexander were the same, but they didn't risk falling under their own weight."
"...What?" I stumbled to my feet, my hand grasping my brand new weapon so that I could use it as a makeshift crutch in order to rise from the unforgiving ground.
"There is power in names, you know that much. Dionysus warned you, didn't he?" his dissonant couple of voices taunted me as I tried to regain my cool. Never before I had met an immortal that stated so clearly the distance between us. There was no bargaining, no trickery, no quest-completing: I almost felt like I was holding the sky once again, only that this time the fatigue and risk was all mental, there was nothing in the physical realm that I could trace back to my... hopelessness in front of Janus.
I gulped, trying to find my words while my eyes briefly flashed across the chamber trying to figure out a solution to my problem, and it was then that I saw Abigail and Charles rest easily at both my sides, their eyes staring unfocused in the distance while their bodies twitched randomly, as if in a dream.
"The choice is yours, since you're leading them, and I have no interest in talking with them... for now." the dissonant voices of Janus forced my attention back onto him.
"Why are you here?" I asked after a deep breath.
One faced laughed roughly while the other whistled innocently, only for them to switch roles when Janus twirled in place, and even as his back was towards me, the biface head remained impossibly trailed towards me: "I offer a choice like I always do." answered the face on the left; while the one on the right chuckled humorlessly: "Mortals aren't meant to have Powerful Names, of the two I have named, the first ascended, and the second unravelled under the weight of his own shadow."
Herakles was perhaps the most famous example of a demigod ascending to godhood, the other... there was only one Alexander that came to mind: "Alexander the Great you mean?"
"He was positively bursting at the seams by the time he founded a city in honour of his deceased horse!" one face singsonged while the other seemed to weep in grief.
"I don't understand." the admission was stolen from my lips before I could control it, and the knowing grin on my interlocutor's left face, accompanied by the slow nodding of his other head told me that
"You think we're talking with words, little mortal?" Janus' left head taunted me while his left suddenly reprimanded his counterpart: "You can't explain democracy to a neutron star, an ant doesn't understand the tides."
"...What?" I was getting extremely annoyed at my inability of taking charge of the conversation, I had never been so much on the back foot before. Janus made a minor appearance only once in the books, and sure as Hades he wasn't the scary fucker he was being now. But then again, Atlas was different too, wasn't he?
"I offer you the same I offered to another: I can take away your name, you'll be free to start fresh." his left face seriously offered, while his right sing-songed: "You remember the last child of Atlas, don't you?"
My eyes snapped to the latter face, and immediately I was reminded of Atals' comment on Zoe Nightshade: she had fosaken her name. Is this what he meant?
"I can End your name." the face on the left spoke in a kind tone while the one on the right leered maliciously at me: "Don't accept, I want to see you pop under the strain."
My mind seemed to grasp what I was being told for an instant, only for the concept to slip through my hands like water. Dionysus told me my name had changed...
If I'm getting this right, the whole 'Names have Power' thing boils down to the identity tied to the name being able to feel when it's invoked. Or something like that. I thought furiously. But a Name weights upon a mortal differently than it does upon an immortal, and Janus said I was 'building' my name
"Can any immortal just... say my name like you did?" I asked fearfully as soon as I managed to focus on the conundrum I had in front of me.
An amused eyebrow rose on the right face, which mumbled something too low for me to hear while the left sighed in disappointment: "You can name Atlas, but understanding isn't quite enough to exercise power, not on someone like him at least."
"How do I build my name?" I asked tentatively, already knowing that I was either going to receive a confirmation to my suspicions or being dismissed for my far too large curiosity. And while I waited for an answer, my mind focused on his previous statement 'Do you think we're talking with words, little mortal?' What else should we be talking with?
"Shall I End your budding Name or not?" asked the face on the left while the one on the right seemed to distract itself with the mosaic on the ceiling of the chamber, but I could hear it mutter more to himself than to me: "He needs balance, a single trait will shred him..." then he looked at me from the corner of his eye, and I was suddenly once again aware, I felt like exposed nerves, like a sword made of glass, ready to shatter.
I understood what he offered: could I abandon my 'I am free', my self imposed first commandment? But no, it wasn't imposed, it was earned, something that I had made use of on several occasions in order to remain alive. And just like that, if I were to accept Janus' offer to End my name, I could simply... I don't know, retire? Now that the Bifront God pointed it out, I felt somewhat tired, but it had been almost 2 years since we set sail in order to find the damned Golden Fleece, and it had been an endless stream of travelling while being on guard broken only by deadly situations and the occasional smatter of orgiastic relief, without which I sincerely doubted that the Adamas would have lasted that much.
"No." the answer to Janus' offer rose spontaneously to my lips, I kind of understood what the choice entailed: Zoe stopped being a daughter of Atlas when she forsook her name, abandoning her whole life in order to join Artemis' Hunt. Not only I didn't feel like I was bursting at the seams but the 'a single trait will shred him' was a too blatant hint to ignore. In the same way, Atlas was more than simple 'endless determination' I too needed to figure out a way to add another block to my 'identity', lest I ended up like Alexander, who, if I were to listen to Janus, died because his Name outgrew his mortal shell.
Nobody names their children Herakles, but there are endless Alexander across the world, is it related? I distractedly asked myself while I continued to talk with the Bifront God: "Thank you for the offer, though."
"And now you owe me an Offer of Free Choice." chortled the left face of Janus, while his right one made shushing motions that his counterpart couldn't see, "But you'd better learn your lesson, Icarus, it won't do for you to once more fly too high, hm?"
"Well, we're done here aren't we?" the other head sighed when it was clear that I was secure in my decision.
"You already know the solution to my next trick." Janus' right face smiled widely with one face while the other growled menacingly: "So we'll just repeat the same old song, for the benefit of your companions if nothing else."
And only then, the impossible twist in the world that had forced my companions into believing that we were still travelling came undone, like a knot unravelling when you pulled the right string.
The alarmed cries of Abigail and Charles immediately quieted when Janus' faces stared them down: "He always tells the truth." started one face, only to swap with the other that went ahead with a suddenly anguished cry: "He always lies, don't listen to him!"
"One door leads to your deaths." Janus twirled once more on himself, but this time his head followed the movement of the rest of his body, "The other to the next part of your journey." completed one of the two faces as he twirled madly, "But I will open only one of the doors, and I offer you a single question to discern which road is safe crossing."
Abigail's face scrunched in confusion while her eyes abandoned Janus' form in order to land on the door on the left, which sported a relief of a tree spamming nine apples of the dimensions of boars, while Charles frowned in distaste at the leather-covered door on the right. "I've got this." I immediately reassured them as I took a step forward, my mind still reeling with the weight of the revelations that Janus had just thrown on me.
"If I asked him which door was the safe one," I started while facing the face on the left as I pointed at the face on the right: "Which door would he tell me to cross?"
With quiet twin smiles the face on the left pointed at the door on my right, and I grinned in return, pointing at the door on my left: "I choose that one."
With a nod, the door I choose popped open, and Janus vanished in thin air.
"That was... smart." Abigail blinked the uneasiness out of her eyes as she followed me.
"If you asked the truth-face, he would tell you that the liar-face would point to the door that leads to death. If you asked the liar-face, it would tell you that the truth-face would point to the door that leads to death. Therefore, no matter who you asked, he would have told you which door leads to death, and therefore you picked the other door." Charles nodded approvingly as he scratched the base of his horns, following me through the door I had chosen.
For the time being, the Labyrinth isn't proving that much of a challenge, is it? I wondered to myself while I consciously kept myself from uttering said thought out loud: there was trying to be free, and openly challenging Fate, and a bit of caution never harmed anyone.
"We'll need to set camp soon, we walked for almost two days straight." Abigail pointed out after a while, only to receive an incredulous snort from Charles.
"What are you talking about? We met the Bifront God less than an hour ago, and we entered the Labyrinth barely a minute before that."
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose, cursing myself silently for having forgotten that the Labyrinth messed up whatever perception one had of the surroundings, time included. How long did I spend talking with Janus? I quietly asked myself as I felt a headache stomping madly across my brain. It was going to be a long quest, that was for sure.
For lack of a better term, time seemed to either blur or crawl to a standstill since the meeting with Janus. We walked across areas that looked like your standard sewers, to actual stretches of green, lush grass that thrived despite the lack of light, to corridors that seemed made of glass. We crossed rivers, woods and climbed walls that stretched indefinitely towards a ceiling that we couldn't see. We walked in the pitch dark broken only by the torches we brought with us, we shielded our eyes from blinding light that shone uncaringly from the very walls, we braved stretches of desert, faced a veritable snowstorm in which we killed what I suspected were Hyperboreans, and finally, and just as our rations started running thin, we met the first exit from the Labyrinth since we first entered it.
We stopped in a room full of waterfalls. The floor was one big pit, ringed by a slippery stone walkway. Around us, on all four walls, water tumbled from huge pipes. The water spilled down into the pit, and even as I cautiously shone a light down the pit, the bottom remained hidden from my sight: "Okay, let's not fall in the bottomless pit."
And as I spoke, my eyes widened, because I had just realized how apt my description was.
when I shined a light, I couldn't see the bottom.
Charles slumped tiredly against the wall, scooping up some water with his hands in order to rinse his face: "This pit goes straight to Tartarus, I agree with your proposition." he chuckled, making me take a cautious step back.
"I cannot shine light here," Abigail casually replied, "The Sun doesn't shine here."
Even while I stood away from the creepy hole in the ground that led to what basically counted as super-hell in greek mythology, I tried to take a deep breath and simply feel, like I had done once in the relative safety of the Atlantic Ocean just beyond the Camp's protections' reach, and... nothing. While I could tell that there was water running around me, that awareness disappeared just as the water left the range of the light we tried to shine towards the pit.
"Is it common?" I asked, immediately clarifying when Charles's gaze questioned me: "To find a hole in the ground that directly leads to Tartarus I mean."
"I've seen a lot of strange stuff since I first obtained my license as a Seeker," he answered shaking his head, "this weight cannot be an illusion, Icarus, it cannot be counterfeited, cannot be denied, if it grasps you, you're gone, we'd better get going.
I nodded thoughtfully at his answer and led my unnerved companions towards the opening in the wall, hoping that it wouldn't lead us into a place worse than the one we just left. Looking briefly at Charles' face, I wondered if he was thinking of Pan. We'll find him. I silently promised both to my companions and to myself, the memory of Artemis casually threatening me crystal clear in my mind.
We walked through the opening that should have lead us outside only to find ourselves walking down a corridor made of huge marble blocks. It looked like it could've been part of a Greek tomb, with bronze, torch holders fastened to the walls. It had to be an older part of the maze, but we were extremely aware that no appearance could be a trustworthy guide, and so we kept walking until we met yet another promising exit: this time, it revealed itself to be genuine, and not yet another trick.
After ducking into a tunnel, we saw light up ahead, and we finally walked once more under the clear sky, and I blinked repeatedly until I actually managed to get used to the change in atmosphere. I was staring at daylight streaming through a set of bars above my head. We were under a steel grate made out of metal pipes. I could see trees and blue, cloudless sky.
"Where are we?" I wondered, my mind grasping desperately at whatever whisper of still useful metaknowledge I still had.
Then a shadow fell across the grate and a cow stared down at me. And were I less experienced, I would have dismissed it as another clever illusion of the cursed place we were braving, and yet, the cow was cherry red. That, coupled with the relieved sigh that escaped Abigail' lips, confirmed that the cherry red cow was actually one of the beasts from the herd sacred to her father.
Once we managed to climb to our feet, we realized that we were on a ranch of sorts. Rolling hills stretched to the horizon, dotted with oak trees and cactuses and boulders. A barbed-wire fence ran from the gate in either direction. Cherry-coloured cows roamed around, grazing on clumps of grass.
"Red cattle," Abigail smiled as her hand brushed over the nearest one, "The cattle of the Sun."
I took off my helm in order to avoid being cooked alive inside it, since like he always did each time he spotted me under his chariot, I felt the sun rays grow hotter over my form. Annoying cunt. I grimaced as I remembered hitting his stupid Oracle.
I was about to give a smartass' reply when I hear a low 'huff', and as I whirled on myself, I pointed my weapon towards a giant-ass dog with two heads. It looked like a greyhound, long and snaky and sleek brown, but its neck V'd into two heads, both of them snapping and snarling and generally not very glad to see us.
Before Charles could try his Satyr's 'let's-talk-to-the-animals-like-I'm-a-Disney-princess-thing', its master lumbered out of the woods, and I realized the dog was the least of our problems. The god, because I could tell he sure as hell wasn't mortal, was a huge guy with stark white hair, a straw cowboy hat, and a braided white beard.
I blinked repeatedly, his image shifting between the classical Texan Cowboy with jeans and a denim jacket over a white T-shirt and an incredibly muscled greek in a chiton, his bare feet caressing the grass under his feet without leaving a single bent blade of grass.
He held an impressive wooden club with six-inch spikes bristling on its end. And there was where I chose to focus my attention, since it seemed like the only piece of him not continuously shifting between what I assumed was his first form and his present American adaptation.
"Heel, Orthus," he told the dog, making him growl at us once more, just to make his feelings clear, before looking us up and down, keeping his club ready.
"What've we got here?" he asked. "Cattle rustlers?"
"Just travellers," I replied calmly, "do you sell tamed carnivore horses? They'd do well as war-steeds."
"We do," the man's eye twitched as he tilted his head, briefly eyeing the way the Sun angrily shone on me, "Half-bloods, eh? I'm Eurytion, the cowherd for this here ranch. Son of Ares. You came through the Labyrinth like many before you, trying to steal the cattle, I reckon."
I tilted my head: "We really don't steal from people capable of smithing us in the blink of an eye." I reassured him while I eyed his spiked club, being absolutely aware of the fact that we were ridiculously, hopelessly outmatched. There was no tricking him like I did Circe, no understanding him like I did Atlas, and only a small hope of offering an exchange as I did with Prometheus.
"We get a load of visitors from the Labyrinth," Eurytion said darkly. "Not many ever leave."
"We're here to purchase, not to steal." I casually replied, aware that we were loaded. Between our raid on Circe's island and the Laestrygonian War, we had a wide set of magically crafted tapestries and whatnot, that coupled with loads of golden drachmas should allow us to avoid casual dismemberment at the hands of a bored ascended demigod.
Eurytion grunted: "I've got to take you to the boss, I'm not the one that takes care of the business here."
I didn't' feel like we were hostages or anything. Eurytion walked alongside us with his club across his shoulder. Orthus, the two-headed dog of the size of a minivan growled a lot and sniffed at Charles's legs and shot into the bushes once in a while to chase animals, but Eurytion kept him more or less under control.
We walked down a dirt path that seemed to go on forever. Heat shimmered off the ground. Insects buzzed in the trees. Before we'd gone very far, I was sweating like crazy, feeling my celestial bronze armour heating under the unmerciful glare of the sun. Flies swarmed us. Every so often we'd see a pen full of red cows or even stranger animals. Once we passed a corral where the fence was coated in asbestos. Inside, a herd of fire-breathing horses milled around. The hay in their feeding trough was on fire. The ground smoked around their feet, but the horses seemed tame enough. One big stallion looked at me and whinnied, columns of red flame billowing out his nostrils. I wondered if it hurt his sinuses.
"What are they for?" I asked.
Eurytion scowled. "We raise animals for lots of clients. Apollo, Diomedes, and those who can afford the cost."
"We should be able to pay without too many problems." Abigail casually noted, receiving a confirming nod from me.
"That was not what I meant." the god grumbled by himself.
Finally, we came out of the woods. Perched on a hill above us was a big ranch house, made of white stone, wood and big windows. Without another word, and with thinning stamina because of the unforgiving sun, we hiked up the hill.
"Don't break the rules:" Eurytion warned as we walked up the steps to the front porch, "No fighting. No drawing weapons. And don't make any comments about the boss's appearance."
"Why?" Charles asked before I could think of warning my companions about what we were going to witness: "What does he look like?"
Before Eurytion could reply, a new voice said, "Welcome to the Triple G Ranch."
The man on the porch had a normal head, which was a relief. His face was weathered and brown from years in the sun. He had slick black hair and a black pencil moustache. He smiled warmly at us, but the glint of his eyes spoke of another story.
He stood on a single pair of legs with three torsos spamming from his waist. His neck connected to the middle chest like normal, but he had two more chests, one to either side, connected at the shoulders, with a few inches between. For each armpit, there were two opposing arms jointed at the shoulder, making his three chests all connected into one enormous torso, with two regular but very beefy legs.
"They say they want to buy, Geryon."
"Mmmh? Do they?" he leered briefly at Abigail, whose hand immediately shot to her knife.
"We do." I stepped between the two in order to avoid a pointless confrontation. It was the first time we were in a situation where the adaptation towards U.S.A. mentality weighed heavier than the myth that had birthed the immortals around us. Up until now, each of my meetings with the Myth had been more closely related to the ancient legends that first described them, but here evidently it wasn't true, if only because Geryon wore three flannel shirts of different colours. How do we stay alive? I asked myself.
"Do you have a catalogue?" I spoke calmly, my thoughts returning to our recently conquered island: there were some sheep there, accompanied by random animals in the jungle-like environment, but the occasion of setting up a proper high-quality herd wasn't something I was going to miss out of fear because of hazy metaknowledge that could no longer hold true.
When all six of Geryon's eyes focused on me, following the same reality-bending mechanism that had allowed Ladon's hundred heads to attack from the same position and Janus' faces to stare at me directly, I started improvising: "Also, if in your services is present a set of instructions to set up a separate herd, we can discuss breeding lines and see what we can come up with. Besides horses for our three, that I'd buy more as a test run than anything definite, I was curious about any goat breeds."
"I make it my business to keep informed, demigod. Everybody pops into the ranch from time to time. Everyone needs something from ole Geryon." his three faces smiled, "So I'm guessing that the Laestrygonians are actually gone? And that goats would be the most adapt herd you have in mind for your newly conquered land?"
I shrugged as an answer: "It's annoying that everyone seems to always now what we're up to even when we go through the trouble to go incommunicado for long periods of time."
A booming laugh left the three chests of the man: "Ah! Nature spirits are such gossips, my friend! You're quite lucky, if it were anyone else, I would have fed you to my horses! They so love demigod flesh."
A tension that I hadn't truly admitted I was feeling lift briefly from my shoulders: "The Laestrygonians were cunts." I replied with a faint smile.
"Ah! That they were!" Geryon nodded at me while my companions remained on high alert, understandably freaked out by my casual bullshittery, "They never traded with me, worse, they tended to eat those that could buy some of my horses!"
"So, about that catalogue?" I asked tentatively, the more I thought about my improvised request, the more I felt it was a good idea. I was more a foot soldier than an exceptional rider, but given the form of my newly forged weapon, I couldn't really ignore the reach advantage.
"I don't write down that stuff, it's asking for trouble, I tell 'ya, the first thief to know my herds would have a mighty easier time in figuring out a way to steal them, leave here your companions, Eurytion will make sure they're comfortable. I want to give you a tour of the ranch."
Geryon had a pick up ready just beyond the porch, it was painted in white and black, mimicking a cow's hide, and had a couple of giant horn protruding from the front.
"We have a huge operation!" Geryon boasted as the moo-mobile lurched forward, "Horses and cattle mostly, but all sorts of exotic varieties, too."
We came over a hill, and I started the confusing balancing act of praising his cattle without sounding too impressed: "Hippalektryons? I thought them extinct."
At the bottom of the hill was a fenced-in pasture with a dozen or so of very strange animals. Each had the front half of a horse and the back half of a rooster. Their rear feet were huge yellow claws. They had feathery tails and red wings. As I watched, two of them got in a fight over a pile of seed. They reared up on their wings at each other until the smaller one galloped away, its rear bird legs putting a little hop in its step.
"I imagine they lay eggs?"
"Once a year!" Geryon grinned in the rearview mirror. "Very much in demand for omelettes!"
Were I a satyr, I would have probably objected at the thinning of an endangered species, however, I was more or less in business mode, and I simply recognized what Geryon was doing: "Keeping the numbers low in order to control the market?" a triple grin was the only answer In received.
"Now, over here," he said, "we have our fire-breathing horses, which you may have seen on your way in. They're bred for war, naturally."
"I've seen that they basically scorch the ground they run upon, don't they burn their rider?" I asked.
Geryon grinned slyly: "Not if you use our saddles, my friend, of course, the ones that don't get burned within a year cost a little bit extra, we use the hide of Apollo's Holy Cattle for those.
Sure enough, hundreds of the cherry-coloured cattle were grazing the side of the hill we were coasting. "Yes, well, Apollo is too busy to see them," Geryon explained, "so he subcontracts to us. We breed them vigorously because there's such a demand."
"For what?" I asked.
Geryon raised an eyebrow. "Meat, of course! Everyone has to eat, and those who can afford it recognize high-quality food when I present it."
"I somewhat remember that a lot of shit went down when someone ate the Sun's Holy Cattle, I'm guessing that he doesn't exactly know what you do with them?"
"Yes, and if Apollo cared, I'm sure he would tell us." Geryon nodded towards me, his eyes shrewdly waiting for my reaction.
I simply shrugged: "I punched his Oracle once, if you can tweak his nose, I'll cheer from the sidelines."
"Ah! I knew that there was a reason I liked you so! Look over here: some of my exotic game."
The next field was ringed in barbed wire, and the whole area was crawling with giant scorpions. "What kind of market is there for giant scorpions?"
"Ah, well, a Trader doesn't Tattle!" he laughed boisterously, "Here at the Triple G ranch we respect our patrons' privacy! Of course, to be kept off the books requires..."
"Let me guess," I smirked at the unholy three-torsoed man: "It costs a bit extra?"
Another too loud laugh signalled that I pretty much understood the man's reasoning. And I found myself unable to actually disliking him on the account of my metaknowledge.
"Now, over here are my prize stables! Those you must see!"
I didn't need to see them, because as soon as we got within a hundred meters I started to smell them. Near the banks of a green river was a horse corral the size of a football field. Stables lined one side of it. About a hundred horses were milling around in the mixture of mud and horse-shit that reached just above their hooves.
"Well, you don't keep them very well, do you?" I sneered at the sight. I got it that Herakles had to pile a metric ton of horse-shit for one of his labours, but it had been more than 2000 years before, since then, he surely could have built another horse corral in which he could shift this herd while he cleaned the other one? The horses were really gross from wading through their own shit, and the stables were just as bad.
"My stables!" Geryon said. "Well, actually they belong to Aegas, but we watch over them for a small monthly fee. Aren't they lovely?"
"The flesh-eating ones?" I asked getting a nod in return, "You don't sell many of them, do you?"
"All right, perhaps the stables are a bit challenging to clean. Perhaps they do make me nauseous when the wind blows the wrong way. But so what? My clients still pay me well."
"What clients?" I curiously asked, I didn't want to find myself facing a charge of flesh-eating horses.
"Oh, you'd be surprised how many people will pay for a flesh-eating horse. They make great garbage disposals. A wonderful way to terrify your enemies. Great at birthday parties! We rent them out all the time."
Slowly, he stopped the pick-up and he climbed out, before strolling toward the stables as if enjoying the fresh air. It would've been a nice view, with the river and the trees and hills and all, except for the quagmire of horse muck.
"So!" the man clapped after a few minutes spent looking over the horses: "We do have a delivery service, obviously, but I'm guessing that you'd prefer to talk business with your friends present too, wouldn't you? I do so love haggling!"
"To bring here payment, I'll need my people to send stuff over with Hermes' Express, and since you're the one capable of smithing me and mine here, I'll pay everything after the animals I choose are at their destination." I started out before we actually got started with the haggling part of our bargain, "And I'll need an oath on the Styx to keep up your part of the agreement, since you're the only one not risking consequences."
"We'll need to word the agreement carefully, but it seems fair."
I wonder if he can crossbreed rabbits and goats? If I want a herd of carnivore horses on the island, I'll need a herd to feed them with. To be entirely truthful, I was somewhat surprised by Geryon's genial attitude towards those with enough money to pay for cattle he wasn't authorized to sell.
AN PART 1
I've largely explored the building of a name here, I hope I managed to convey how it works without having the MC understand it perfectly.
To be honest, the Janus conversation felt like I was juggling the mechanics of the name, the understanding of the MC, and the words that Janus used.
How did the exchange feel? I wanted to keep it somewhat dynamic, but there really isn't a way to do so in a pacific setting like this one.
AN PART 2
Janus, as I've hopefully managed to convey, is extremely difficult to place in the story. For starters, even if Riordan uses it in the first book series (in the battle of the labyrinth) he's an entirely Roman deity, and so I was stumped about placing him in this chapter or not.
Janus is the god of Beginnings and Ends, of Periods of Transition, traditionally depicted with a face looking at the past and one looking at the future, he was present at the beginning of the world, when the primordials found their way out of Chaos. Above any other god, he represents change and choice, or better yet, the beginning of anything and the end of everything.
The only relevant myth I've found about him, it's about the kidnapping of the Sabines, which he saved by burying the kidnappers under an avalanche of boiling water and volcanic ashes.
Besides that, he's a very passive deity, the equivalent of a detached observer. I've no idea why Riordan used him, but I've found a use for him too.
And on all the well-wishers for Hestia as a patron, I feel like pointing out that Icarus isn't really a Hero, not really. He does shit because he can/wants to. He's no defender of the hopeless, no saviour of innocents. Thalia is one of his two friends, so he set up the whole Adamas Thing in order to retrieve the Golden Fleece without the Gods' approval, which is one of the reasons why the whole thing is taking so damn long.
So... try to think what kind of place Icarus would like to build. He kind of despises that older demigods are tossed to the curb (either that or there is a 100% death rate in Camp after a demigod hits 20 years of age), but he doesn't exactly care about them, he rolled up people thirsty for freedom, for doing something with their divinity, not a bunch of firemen willing to save kittens from trees.
With that in mind, I don't really feel like Hestia is the more fitting choice.
AN PART 3
Geryon is actually described with having 3 of everything but a single pair of legs, in fact, when he faced Herakles, he wielded 3 shields, three spears, and wore 3 helms. I'm bypassing the 3 helms thing because in mythology he was killed by a single arrow in his cranium, but I have to do a mesh-up between Riordan and Greek Mythos, here, it shouldn't harm the narration.
In any case, the only reason he is treated as a villain in Riordan's book is that he had a standing agreement with Kronos and he's a greedy bastard, such is not the case now.
I'm casually reminding you that this crew's roaming started on the 17th of September of 2000, we're now in July of 2002, so almost 2 years. Besides Poseidon's opposition (he doesn't want Thalia to be resurrected, so he can be an asshole), Hera is certainly against Icarus (he cursed him along with Thalia and Luke after their escapade in her garden), Apollo hates him because he struck his Oracle, while on the other hand we have Dionysus who is somewhat passively helping them remain sane, Ares who enjoyed greatly their storming of Circe's island, and maybe Zeus that occasionally sends good winds.
There is a lot of politics behind the delay of a mission that Percy Jackson took a random week to complete, and I'm largely playing it off as the natural randomness of a metaphysical realm when it's not curbed by the presence of a Prophecy.
Estado de energía semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Piedra de
Poder