The Haunting of Guaritori Diolco, Part 37
Dilemma
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“There is nothing to gain by fighting Tartarus,” said Zeus, but Iskios didn’t seem to hear him. Rather than deescalating, he made himself even larger and shook his fist at the surrounding darkness.
“Tartarus! Recreate your realm now!”
Tartarus didn’t immediately respond, though the part of the darkness that represented him rippled, perhaps a reflection of the elder power’s agitation.
Zeus looked as if he wanted to reduce Iskios to ashes with thunderbolts but knew he couldn’t. The prophecy that the Olympians couldn’t prevail without Iskios was all that saved my son, though. Zeus was so close to losing control that electrical sparks trickled from his fingers until the area around his hands looked like looked like a swarm of frenzied fireflies.
“What can we do?” Medea whispered to me. Like Zeus, she understood that Iskios’s belligerence could easily backfire.
“I doubt he’ll listen to either of us right now,” I said.
Would Tartarus just back down? His thought processes were so unlike ours that there was really no way to know for sure. But I doubted he would change his mind. If it were inclined to be reasonable, he would already have agreed to Zeus’s request.
“I cannot drive you from my realm because it no longer exists,” said Tartarus finally. His words were much louder than before. “But I can withdraw—and I will.”
“No!” said Erebus, Nyx, and Eros in eerie unison.
I didn’t know why their voices made me see the truth, but I realized that they were feeding Iskios power, making him strong enough to take on Tartarus. Would that be safer for the integrity of the plane than a direct clash? And whether it would be or not, was it safe for Iskios?
At the moment, I was in no real danger, but I remembered what it felt like to be overloaded with power. So far, Iskios showed no outward signs of strain. Perhaps he was exceptional enough to bear such weight. Perhaps not. I wasn’t sure whether the elder powers using him knew or cared.
Reality shifted around us as Iskios used his newfound strength to fashion himself a weapon—a gigantic sword that radiated blinding light. I had to close my eyes against its brilliance, but I could still sense the magic forces around me. Erebus and Nyx flowed behind Eros to shield themselves from the glow. Tartarus writhed as if he wanted to withdraw but had somehow been transfixed by rays of light from Iskios’s sword. The gloomy elder could not retreat as easily as he thought.
“Take care that you do not kill him!” yelled Zeus, still hindered by his Telchine vocal cords.
“I know what I’m doing.” Iskios’s voice was loud as Zeus’s thunder now, even though he wasn’t shouting. I took little comfort from his assurance. There was no way he could be completely used to the new aspects of his magic yet, let alone the might of three elder powers being channeled through him.
“I will not yield.” Tartarus’s voice was more like a whisper than Iskios’s thunder, but there was stone in it, just as there had been in the prison he once managed. I had no doubt he would resist, no matter what Iskios did.
My son looked confused. He had arguably defeated an elder power—but his win meant nothing. Given the emotional roller coaster his recent life had been, I could understand his disappointment, but I had no idea what he would do with it. Defiance seemed to be part of his nature, a leftover from his previous life.
“If you will not rebuild the foundation of this plane, then I will do it for you.”
“What is he talking about?” Zeus asked me as if I had the slightest chance of knowing. “Perhaps I should stop him.”
“No!” I snapped without thinking. “I, uh, didn’t mean to be that abrupt, but I know how fragile this plane is right now—partly because I helped make it that way. Will lightning strikes make it any better?”
“Probably not,” Zeus conceded with surprising calmness. “But does Iskios possess the knowledge to do what he has proposed without making an even bigger mess of things?”
That was a fair question, but Medea shook her head. “All we can do now is wait. We have no way of knowing whether Iskios will succeed or fail. But Nyx and Eros both had prophetic gifts, and both of them seem to be backing him. Surely, that should give us some hope.”
Zeus’s stray sparks swirled about more lazily now, perhaps a reflection of his own confusion. I couldn’t tell for sure because his dead, borrowed face wasn’t as expressive as his real one.
“I will pray,” said Mateo. He was already glowing a little.
Without waiting for any of us to offer an opinion, Iskios had already started. Glowing lines stretched out as far as I could perceive in all directions, reminding me of an architectural drawing, but in three dimensions—the outline of the foundation Iskios hoped to build. He seemed now to be ignoring Tartarus, though the elder power continued to mutter curses at my son as he worked.
So far, Iskios seemed to be doing all right. Perhaps the elders feeding him power were also guiding his work. But this was no simple job. He had to align his new work properly with Erebus’s realm in order to reestablish stability. Developing a new prison was probably the easy part—but it had never been just rock and metal. Tartarus had resided within it to lend the strength that it needed—
And then I realized the truth. Without the cooperation of Tartarus, the elder powers would need someone else to stabilize and animate the place—someone whose spirit would need to inhabit it.
To achieve the right effect, that someone could only be a relative of Tartarus. And the only one the elder powers had on hand, not counting the body of an unreliable Telchine—was my son, my Iskios. I had only known him a short time, but I realized now that the length of time didn’t matter. Nor did the fact that we couldn’t fully understand each other. He was still my son—and the idea of him spending all eternity in captivity every bit as harsh as that of the prisoners he guarded was horrific. I could not allow it.
“We have to stop this,” I said to Medea, explaining quickly what I meant. Zeus, standing nearby, naturally listened.
“What happened to trusting Eros and Nyx?” he asked.
“I was wrong,” I said. “We need to find another way.”
“But what if there is none? I would not want to see a son of mine in this predicament any more than you want to see Iskios in it, but is there another option?”
If there was, I needed to find it fast. The new Tartarus already looked more substantial, and I could feel solid stone beneath my feet.
“Iskios!” I yelled. “Stop!”
My gigantic son looked down at me. “I cannot,” he said. “But everything will be all right.”
I wasn’t convinced. Were his eyes wet with tears, or was that just a trick of the light? Did his voice convey sorrow, or was my fear distorting his tone? I wasn’t sure—but how could he possibly want this?”
“It is his destiny,” Eros said to me. “One of the reasons Nyx predicted that the Olympians could not win without him was this very moment.”
“It isn’t fair!” I said. A tear slid down my cheek, but I ignored it. “He’s not like Tartarus. He’s more…human. The confinement would drive him mad.”
“But the confinement will not be total,” replied Eros. “Tartarus chose totality at first and stuck with it for eons, but Eriopis was able to bring him out of it. Iskios could choose to interact with others without unduly disrupting the natural order. After all, I’m not a prisoner in the Cave of Night. Nyx is not a prisoner there, nor in the night sky. Gaia is not trapped in the ground.”
“But there’s a danger that he’ll become dehumanized over time, isn’t there?”
“I cannot deny that,” admitted Eros. “But if that happens, it will have been his choice.”
“He won’t be able to come back to Earth with me, will he?”
“Even if he didn’t have to rebuild Tartarus’s realm, he is too close in power to the old gods. He can visit briefly if you summon him, in the same way any inhabitant of this plane can visit you. But becoming a permanent citizen of Earth is no longer possible after his rebirth.”
Another tear slid down my cheek. I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t even know if Iskios would have wanted to go back with me or what kind of family we would have made if he had. After all, he’d hated me before his rebirth, and though he was coming to accept me, even calling me Father, I wasn’t sure if he loved me in the way that I loved him. I wasn’t even sure why I loved him. But I knew I did.
I also knew one other thing. He’d lost his chance for a normal life again. Eriopis had raised him as a weapon, not a son. Now, after a ridiculously fast childhood, he was an adolescent doomed to become part of the prison architecture. I didn’t doubt Eros’s claim that Iskios would have some freedom of movement. But how could he have a full life tied to the plane’s worst prison? Would he not in the end revert to the darkness of his first father?
I touched a nearby wall. It was cold and solid. At the rate Iskios was moving, the project might be complete in minutes.
There was one way I could stop all this. I could create a few well-placed banestones, and the new structure would collapse, giving me time to convince Iskios not to condemn himself to such a cold captivity. Maybe then, he would have a life.
But if I did that, the whole plane would keep deteriorating—and it would once again be my fault. Perhaps we could evacuate the inhabitants. Mateo could pray them loose or something. Or we could summon them all and figure out how to hold onto their spirits. If not, maybe we could get Tartarus to relent and take his old job back.
I reached out to the Philosopher’s Stone for the power I needed, but then I hesitated. I was resting the fates of a host of beings on the shaky foundation of perhaps. Could I really do that?
The bigger question was, could I allow my son to be a human sacrifice, even if it saved this plane?
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