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The gods had forgotten her.Styx still remembered the glory days. She had fought for the gods, despite not being one of them. Zeus rewarded her, let oaths be placed on her. He thought he had given her nothing, just something to appease her. He hadn’t realized the power he had given away.Oaths are not such a small thing, to be ignored and thrown away. Oaths are binding. They are not to be broken. Styx remembered the first to break. They thought an oath was worth nothing, that it could simply be an empty promise, gone unfulfilled. They were wrong.Styx learned of her power. She turned the god (nameless now, although he wouldn’t have been back then) mad for a year, then exiled him for nine. He may have come back, Styx didn’t know or care. The oath breaker was punished.River of oath, they whispered, river of vengeance.Zeus realized he had made a terrible, terrible mistake, but there was nothing to be done about it. Charon ferried his souls over the river, and more oaths were made on her waters.Soon came the things, the things that showed the hopes of the humans that were never fulfilled. The promises the children whispered to themselves in the dark, the dreams they swore would come true. They may not have swore on her waters, but they swore it nonetheless.
River of hatred, river of dreams.
Her rivers were dirty, from the dreams-turned-nightmares. She liked it best this way. Better failed hope than never to have hope at all.Power rippled on the surface of her waters. She should have known someone would try to use it.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“No.”
“Sister, please reconsider.”
Styx turns.
“This conversation is over. Leave me, Doris.”
She saw a flash of pain in Doris’s eyes. They’d been close, once. They had changed, their differences clear as day. Doris was warm and glowing, Styx was anything but. They rarely ever spoke anymore. She didn’t owe Doris anything.
A tear fell from her sister’s cheek.
“Please, sister. It’s Thetis’s first child. He needs-”
“I do not care.”
Another tear trickled, then another, until Doris was sobbing and had made her way into Styx’s arms.
“The boy will die, Styx,” whispered Doris, “It has been foretold. I can’t bear to see my daughter lose her child.”
“If the fates have decreed it, there is nothing I can do. Do not hurt yourself further, trying to complete an impossible task.”
Styx attempted to pull away, but Doris only tightened her grip. Her expression must have given something away, because Doris began talking excitedly.
“There is something, isn’t there! Something you can do to save him!”
Styx sighed. Doris was bound to find out eventually, and if she hadn’t then Styx would have told her. She took pride in caring more than the rest of the immortals, even if only a little.
“I have a theory,” Styx said carefully.
Doris took her hand, tears streaming freely down her face. “Please, if there is anything you can do, do it!”
“It is only an idea, sister. If it doesn’t work, it will kill the child.”
“Anything,” Doris repeats, “If it gives the boy the slightest chance of survival, I know that my daughter will agree.”
“It will not allow him to live,” Styx told her, “only prolong his life. I cannot defy the Fates. I can only offer time.”
“It’s time we would not have, otherwise.” Doris threw her arms around Styx. “Thank you, my sister, for this immeasurable gift. I could never repay you enough.”
“It could fail, Doris. The boy could die.”
“If it fails, he will die anyway. If it doesn’t, you give Achilles a chance at life.”
“Is that his name? Achilles?”
“Yes, it’s the name Thetis gave him.”
Pain,
Styx mused,
fitting, considering his fate.
“It’s a beautiful name.”
“Aunt.”
“Niece”
Styx studied Thetis. She looked like her mother, her face just as lovely as Doris’s. But there was something else there, something hidden in her expression. If Styx were younger, she might have missed it. Or if she was simply less herself. For that look, it reminded her far too much of Styx’s own reflection looking back at her.
There was a cruelty in it, a desperation. Styx knew, in that moment, that Thetis would have done anything for Achilles. A mother’s love, she supposed. Styx had children too, but they were gods. They popped out and then lived their own lives. Mortal children were different, even to their godly parents. They
needed
, a sensation unfamiliar to most immortals. They wanted things, of course, but they didn’t require the attention that mortals did. Mortal children needed to be held and sung to and spoken to softly. Gods were never children, not really.
There was anger in Thetis’s expression too. Completely justified, in Styx’s opinion. Even in the Underworld, she knew of Thetis’s story. She was raped by a mortal king, as commanded to by Zeus, and fell pregnant with the king’s child. Then the child was prophesied to become a great hero, only to die. Of course Thetis was angry - at the king, at Zeus, at the Fates themselves.
Next, Styx looked at the baby that Thetis cradled in her arms with such care. It was small and ugly, as mortal infants were. It was hard to imagine such a thing would become
Aristos Achaion
in only a few years, but that’s how mortals were. They lived their lives so fast, to make up for dying so quickly. Styx didn’t envy them in that way.
She wondered how Thetis would take the boy’s death. He would die at some point, even if it weren’t foretold, and Thetis would not.
“Please.” Thetis’s voice cracked, and her mask of indifference dropped. “I know you cannot save him, but give me at least some time with him.”
Styx guided her to the river.
“Dip him in, his whole body except for one spot. The river will make him invulnerable in all points except for the singular spot. That spot is his tether to mortality. Do not let go, no matter how much he will thrash. It will burn him, it will pain him, but it will save him.”
Styx watched Thetis dip Achilles in the river, watched her scream when she thought he was dead, watched her gasp when she realized it worked.
Thetis hadn’t realized her lie. Hadn’t noticed when Styx said that it would burn.
Because it would burn and burn and burn. The River’s Curse burned away mortality. If you didn’t have enough ichor in your veins, it would kill you. But if you did, it would turn you into more than a god.
The Curse, without a mortal tether, would turn you into something
other
. Something better, something more.
Styx saw the hunger in Thetis’s gaze. She knew that if Thetis knew there was the slightest chance of the Curse working in that way, she would try it. No matter how much she cared about the child, she was still a god. She would throw him in the river for the glory, then the baby would die because he was only a baby.
The ironic thing, Styx thinks, is that only mortals can attempt to receive the Curse. You have to still bleed red, but to become
other,
you can’t have anything that ties you to mortality. You can’t love, because gods cannot love. Styx included, of course, but she’s seen love. She would turn mortal in a heartbeat to experience an ounce of the feeling she sees in them.
So Achilles lived and died. The Curse saved him a thousand times over, but it killed him in the end. More came to bathe in the river, vying for power. Many tried and failed, not having a strong enough tether but not enough ichor to survive it.
Achilles warned them off every time, never succeeding. Styx knew he went home and cried to his lover in Elysium when that happened, guilty over their deaths. She didn’t understand why he mourned the power-hungry fools, but to each their own.
He always told them they needed a tether, despite long knowing about the other aspect of the Curse. He hoped that one of them would be human enough to live, even if they weren’t god enough to change. They never were.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The gods had gathered.
Styx stood in the back, out of sight. The war had just ended. She remembered that time all too well - so many broken promises, so many soldiers who didn’t come home. The Fates had cut their strings too short. A fight of that scale between gods was very uncommon, and the fight in question being among the Big Three did not help the matter.
But there were more important matters at hand than that. The oracle had spoken, and
Olympus to preserve or raze
echoed throughout the throne room in whispers. A direct threat to Olympus through a prophecy was unheard of. There were prophecies of those who might overthrow Zeus as king, of course, but Olympus itself? A haze of fear hung over the throne room.
A rather sizable part of Styx enjoyed this. She didn’t care whether Olympus was destroyed or not, of course. Preserved or razed, long as oaths were not broken, it would not influence her. That being said, the Olympians thought themselves to be very, very, powerful. Too powerful.
The higher they rise, the lower they fall.
And low they would fall, if the whispers she had overheard from the pit spoke the truth.
Styx wondered if the cycle would continue, with the half-blood of the prophecy.
Son kills father has son kills father has son kills father.
If it was Zeus’ child, it would certainly make sense. It would be ironic if nothing else.
While the speculation was fun, Styx knew she had been called here for a reason. The gods rarely had a gathering of this degree, where the majority of the pantheon attended, unless it was a party. The few times they had met for a reason that discluded an obscene amount of dancing and drinking, Styx had not been invited. That meant there was only one possible reason she had been asked here today.
Someone was to take an oath.
Oaths on her waters were so rare, nowadays. The humans made foolish promises and had foolish hope that they would be kept, despite there being no consequences to breaking them. And the gods, they knew better at this point.
Well, apparently not.
Styx had a sneaking suspicion of what they were going to swear to, what they were going to risk everything for. It was reckless and stupid, to risk her punishment for an oath they knew for certain at least one of them would break.
They were trying to prolong the prophecy, delay it for some time until they could figure out how to combat it. They never would. They would do everything in their power to stop it, but the prophecy would inevitably come true because Fate is tricky like that. The only question was who would break their oath first.
Who would be the one she would punish?
It didn’t matter, not yet.
“There has been a prophecy.” Zeus was always the most dramatic of the brothers. He boomed the words, lightning bolt in hand. The room went silent.
“Me and my brothers-”
“My brothers and I,” muttered Athena. Unfortunately for her, the room had been so quiet before, everyone could hear.
Zeus scowled. “My brothers and I have agreed to take an oath, in order to stop the prophecy from coming true.”
“If I’m correct, I agreed to no such thing.” Hades was visibly angry and exhausted. Reasonable, she supposed, considering he had just lost a war to his brothers.
The fact that he had half-blood children right now certainly didn’t help. If the gods found out, the Di Angelos would be dead in a moment.
“Silence!” Zeus thundered. “We will take an oath on the River Styx to have no more children with mortals. This is not negotiable, Hades. Do not forget your place.” It was slightly comical, seeing Zeus turn red with anger. It reminded her of a mortal cartoon character.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Poseidon sighed, his tone bored. He should’ve known he wasn’t fooling anyone. It was common knowledge he enjoyed his mortals the most in comparison to any of the gods. Styx doubted he’d agreed to this, unless the prophecy had worried the brothers more than they let on.
That would mean they were trying to make the threat seem less. It was a strategy the brothers had employed since the first war against the Titans. It worked, to a degree. It calmed the masses and helped them believe in the competence of their rulers. If the public believed in their power, they were far less likely to rebel. If they were withholding things now, however, then the gods wouldn’t be on guard when the threat inevitably came knocking on the doorstep of Olympus.
“Who will swear first?” asked Zeus.
“I will.” Hades stepped forward.
A half-blood of the eldest gods…
“Do you swear to have no half-blood children with mortals from this point forward?”
Shall reach sixteen against all odds…
“I swear it on the Styx.” Thunder could be heard in the distance. Styx felt the power of the oath in her very core. She closed her eyes.
And see the world in endless sleep…
“Zeus, do you swear to have no half-blood children with mortals from this point forward?”
Hero’s soul cursed blade shall reap…
“I swear on the River Styx.”
A single choice shall end his days…
“Poseidon, do you swear to have no half-blood children with mortals from this point forward?”
Olympus to preserve or raze.
“I swear it on the River Styx.”