The Haunting of Guaritori Diolco, Part 39
Attempting to Rebalance
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Though we soon got out of the darkness of Tartarus, I felt as if I were still wrapped in gloom. I didn’t feel any better when I saw how many grim faces waited for us on Olympus.
Hades wasn’t there. No doubt, he was still working on restoring the Underworld. Demeter and Persephone, who had moved Zeus’s body to the throne room of Olympus, looked a little more cheerful when they saw us, but they were clearly exhausted by their continuing efforts to keep the body alive.
But the grimmest by far were Poseidon, Hera, Hestia, and Hecate, and it didn’t take long to see why. Hermes’s body lay nearby, with sea serpent Hermes wrapped around it. Efforts to reunite Hermes’s body with his soul had clearly failed.
“We are missing something,” said the triple goddess. “The soul reenters the body, but it cannot stay long.”
“It needs the magic that is still in my body,” I said, knowing what that meant. No one had yet figured out how to extract the borrowed magic without killing me.
“We will find a way to address that,” said Zeus, but it was still hard to gauge his true feelings because his words were being filtered through Telchine vocal cords. “It will be easier once I am in my own body.”
Accessing the Telchine magic in his borrowed body, Zeus tried to heal the wound made by Cronus’s sickle. He strained, pouring every ounce of magic he had into the effort. The throat wound twitched, but it didn’t close.
After several minutes, during which I could see Zeus’s magic level drop to almost nothing, he gave up. “I can see how to do it now,” he said in a whisper hoarse even by Telchine standards. “But to complete the process, I must have the sickle of Cronus.”
He might as well have said he needed Santa’s sleigh. Even something nonexistent would be easier to obtain than the sickle Cronus would do anything to keep from him.
“We must reexamine the prophecies of Nyx,” said Hera. “She gave us three requirements to meet in order to save this plane. ‘Paradoxes must be resolved. Iskios must willingly become a member of Olympian society. And Guaritori must die.’ We have satisfied the first and second. Only the third remains.”
She looked at me, not with hostility or accusation, but with a clear plea in her eyes.
“But Garth did die for a short time,” said Medea. “We’ve already talked about this.”
“Evidently, he must die permanently,” said Poseidon. “If nothing else, we know we could restore the life of Hermes that way. His was the first divine death. Perhaps his restoration would pave the way to restoring Zeus.”
“We must not be hasty,” said Zeus. I tried to keep my face neutral, but I was shocked it was he who came to my defense. “Hermes’s death and my near death are not that similar. His is related to a hasty and ill-advised transfusion of magic into Garth. Mine was caused by a wound from Cronus’s sickle, a weapon which no one has used before to inflict a fatal wound on a former god. Perhaps its stroke would always have been fatal. We have no way of knowing. What if Garth dies, and our problems remain? What then? Let us exhaust all other possibilities first.”
“Perhaps we didn’t solve the right paradox,” said Hestia. “We have some paradoxical achievements to our credit, the largest being the union of light and darkness within the new Iskios. But what if there is another yet unresolved paradox that we are missing?”
“My death,” gurgled the Hermes serpent. “An immortal should not be able to die, and I was the first. All of our more drastic problems happened after that.”
“Your death can be resolved by taking your magic from Garth, as he himself has reminded us,” said Poseidon.
“We must find another way,” replied Hermes. “I will not live again at his expense. Nor should any of you want me to. Too often before, we have resolved issues violently and selfishly. That is an important part of what got us locked up on this plane in the first place. We have made some progress. Let us not relapse now.”
“What if we gradually replaced Hermes’s magic with someone else’s?” asked Hecate. “Instead of ripping magic out of Garth, we gently shift from one kind to another. He and Hermes can both live, and the donor’s magic will regenerate because we will handle the process better.”
“Whose magic should we use?” asked Zeus. “If it is of a different type, would it be an appropriate substitute?”
“Both Hermes and I are versatile casters, and I know his magic well,” replied Hecate. “I will be the donor.”
Zeus nodded. “That just might work. But someone besides you will need to supervise. It will be difficult for you to manage the necessary spells while there is a constant drain on your magic.”
“You are the obvious choice,” said Hecate. “You will need to rest a bit after draining yourself in the effort to heal your wound. But with access to Telchine magic and knowledge, you should have both the power and the skill.”
I had to keep reminding myself not to hold my breath during this discussion. I couldn’t believe that the sword hanging over my head could be taken away so easily.
As it turned out, the process wasn’t easy. While Zeus rested, Hecate managed the preparations. She brought in three beds and arranged them in an exact triangle Pythagoras would have been proud of. She would lie on the one that formed the triangle’s base, while Hermes and I would lie on the ones that formed the sides that ended at the triangle’s top point.
Once the beds were set up to Hecate’s satisfaction, she drew a circle around them and created an outer circle of notations in ancient Greek that I couldn’t begin to understand.
As if the design wasn’t complicated enough, she then drew a pentagram large enough to enclose it, with the top point looking like an extension of the top point on the triangle. The finishing touch was an outer circle that intersected each of the pentagram’s five points.
“I didn’t realize the ancient Greeks used pentagrams,” Mateo said.
“The Pythagoreans used it as a symbol for health and mutual recognition,” replied Hecate. “But I’m also using it because of its connection to later alchemy, with which both Hermes and Garth are also connected. The top point represents spirit, while the four other points represent the four alchemical elements. Speaking of which, Garth, can you carefully cover each line and symbol with silver? It’s a good magic amplifier, and it also connects well with the lunar aspect of my magic.”
“I’m not sure I’m up to that level of precision,” I said. I didn’t want to make an issue of my limited experience, but I knew the magic Hecate was contemplating must be exceedingly complicated. Even though intent was crucial to magic, with complex workings, the physical details mattered, too. Sloppily laid out silver might prevent Hecate’s ritual from gathering power in the right way. Much—including my own life—depended on optimizing the process.
“Let my soul into your body for a little while,” gurgled Hermes, who could probably use a break from the serpent body, anyway. I happily agreed, and he helped me lay out the silver in a way that even Hecate at her most picky couldn’t complain.
As soon as the silver completely covered all the lines, circles, and symbols, Hecate empowered it, and it started to glow like moonlight.
“Hermes, you may as well stay in Garth so that you can reattach yourself to your magic more easily. Garth, lay down right here. Poseidon, please unwrap the serpent from Hermes’s body and lay his body on that bed.
“Zeus, are you ready? Good. Take the spirit point on the pentagram. Hera, take air. Poseidon, take water. Hestia, take fire. Demeter, can Persephone sustain Zeus’s body long enough for you to join us on the earth point?”
“I’m tired,” said Demeter hoarsely.
“We won’t need to draw on you too heavily,” replied Hecate. “Persephone?”
“I can make it work,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
“Good! Medea, as soon as I am in position, you will monitor my condition and assist me as needed. Mateo, you will do the same for Garth and Hermes. Heracles, thank you for responding so quickly to my summons. You will stand guard, just in case anyone tries to attack. I need hardly point out to any of you that interrupting the ritual could have grave consequences. The outer circle should protect us from most threats, but we cannot be too careful.”
“What of the Hecatoncheires?” asked Heracles. “Their support would be valuable in such difficult times.”
“They are transporting the captured Titans to the new Tartarus,” replied Hecate. “Until they return, use the available automatons Hephaestus has forged. They should be equal to any likely challenge.”
“It shall be as you suggest,” said Heracles. He rushed off to get the automatons deployed. Hecate waited until he had done so to proceed.
Once everything was finally ready, Hecate lay down. The silver glow brightened, and each point of the pentagram started drawing power from the former god who occupied it.
Hecate hadn’t warned us that the ritual would take several hours, but I should have guessed as much. The Hermetic magic within me became like a million-piece jigsaw puzzle from which Hecate subtracted Hermes’s magic and added her own one piece at a time. Her mental touch felt gentle but surgically precise. She was both careful and skillful. Even so, the situation was nerve-wracking at best.
“So far, so good,” Mateo whispered to me. He kept a hand on me to make it easier to keep track of my vital signs, but it was also good for me to feel his touch, which anchored me and kept me calm while Hecate rebuilt my magical insides.
Suddenly, I heard a storm wind whipping at the exterior of the palace. Did Olympus usually have such rough weather? Zeus’s worried expression told me that this wasn’t normal.
“Stay focused!” commanded Hecate. “Heracles and the automatons will hold. The structure will hold.”
But hold against what? Were we under attack again?
“Cronus is nearby,” said Hera, looking toward the entrance to the throne room. “I thought my curse would have made that impossible, but he has overcome it somehow. We may need to pause this operation.”
“We cannot!” said Hecate. “The spell is too delicate to handle that way. If we stop before we are done, the different magics in Garth’s mind will quickly drift apart, causing—”
Something like an explosion echoed in the distance. I thought I heard Heracles scream—and he was about as durable as any former god. If he cried out, his pain must have been intense. Zeus’s emotions, even filtered through a Telchine face, looked more like panic than worry.
I also heard metal striking metal—a weapon hitting one of the automatons. The sound repeated several times, each time causing my heart rate to accelerate. Some of those blows were followed by a metallic shriek as if the metal from which the automatons had been forged could not withstand the attack.
The silence that followed was even more ominous. My magic senses were somewhat erratic now, but I thought I could sense Cronus nearby. He had breached the palace and seemed to be moving toward us.
“We are under attack!” said Poseidon. “We must defend ourselves!”
“Stay in place!” demanded Hecate. “I’ll try to—”
The door, which must have been adamantine, shuddered as a heavy blow struck it. Cronus was right outside, though how he had been able to get so far into the palace without being stopped, I couldn’t tell. But I could now sense that he was not alone.
Atlas was with him—not a big surprise. They had fled together. But that Tartarus had come with them turned my blood to ice. Even from outside, I could feel the massive power of his darkness weighing on me. The others must have been able to feel it as well.
The adamantine door wouldn’t hold indefinitely against Cronus’s adamantine sickle. But that was the least of our worries. The former gods had drained themselves somewhat to keep the ritual going at full power. They might still have had the strength to deal with Cronus—except that they had to keep most of their focus on the ritual to keep it from failing.
And then there was Tartarus, an elder power. Even outside his normal dwelling, he was formidable. And the other elder powers weren’t nearby, as far as I could tell. Who could oppose Tartarus in these circumstances?
None of us, that was for sure. And if Hecate was right about the consequences of interrupting the ritual, I was already as good as dead.
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