Vol.6 Ch.2.2 – Of Travelers And Fire-Bearers II

“Here we are,” Hermes said as we reached the place. He sounded annoyed but I was starting to suspect that was his default way of acting and not a sign that he was actually put off.

We had left my girls behind in his tholos while he'd brought me here. It wasn't as if I didn't want them along but at the same time this was something I'd wanted to do since forever. I wasn't even sure what he would think of me and I absolutely didn't know if he would live up to the pedestal I had put him on but, given the circumstances, I had to meet him.

“Do you need to open a door for me or something?” I asked as we walked towards the building. It was a tholos, like the ones the Olympians resided in, except unlike theirs this one had stone walls in between the pillars, leaving only one entrance. And unlike theirs this one was on the main plateau rather than on a stone spire jutting out of the clouds. I wondered whether it was an issue of space or whether they wanted to symbolize a difference in status.

“He's not some caged animal, you know?” Hermes said. “He just isn't allowed to leave Olympus.”

“Then what's with the walls and the gate?” I asked, nodding at the iron gate that closed off the one entrance to the almost-tholos.

“The gate is just for show. He can open and close it at will. And the walls are because he prefers the shade.”

I gave Hermes a look of extreme skepticism but simply kept walking until I reached the gate. Hermes hurried ahead and rapped his knuckles on the door just before I reached it.

“Who's there?” a deep male voice rumbled from inside.

“You have a visitor,” Hermes said.

“Who is it?”

“The Godsforsaken.”

A stunned silence, then... “Let him in, I suppose.”

Hermes opened the door and I gave him a nod of appreciation as I stepped past him and into the domain of Prometheus.

There were countless stories about Prometheus and all the great gifts he had brought humanity. However, many of them were likely untrue. He was credited with creating humanity but every faith had a god credited with that so I didn't put much stock in such claims. He was also credited with gifting humanity either fire or knowledge that he had stolen from Olympus, the crime that had caused Zeus to have him tied to a cliff so an eagle could feast on his liver every day. Apparently that last part had happened but the Olympians had petitioned Zeus to change his sentence, likely after realizing that the same horrid eternal punishment might await them someday.

But even so I knew next to nothing about Prometheus himself. His association with knowledge and warmth should have led me to believe I had been about to step into a small library or something but I wasn't too terribly surprised to find that his tholos was in fact a potter's atelier.

There was a bed and a desk, yes, but there was also a workbench and a small mountain of packed clay bricks and a tub of water. And on that workbench, forming a vase, sat Prometheus.

Like pretty much all of the Olympians he was a very good-looking man. He had a handsome face framed by red hair, with a short beard that accentuated more than hid a strong jaw, and his eyes were a brilliant blue. The red hair and beard should have reminded me of Ares but the two of them looked nothing alike. There was none of that nasty arrogance in Prometheus. In fact, there wasn't even that strong of a family resemblance between the two. I supposed it made sense; Prometheus was Ares' great-uncle, after all, but still it surprised me. Or maybe it wasn't even about family resemblance but simply how old Prometheus looked. Was he even immortal anymore? Had this punishment so thoroughly drained him of worshipers that he had lost his immortality and was now wasting away surrounded by his immortal peers? Or was I simply reading too much into the lines on the man's face?

“The Godsforsaken,” he rumbled as he saw me. “I'd heard you helped to resolve this mess but I never thought you'd pay me a visit.”

“You've heard of me?” I asked.

He chuckled. “Hard not to. Tina never shuts up about you.”

“Oh right, she mentioned you two play chess together sometimes.”

He raised an eyebrow but didn't comment on it. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Well,” I said. This was a little awkward. I had never met the man. I'd always put him up on a pedestal in my mind but that didn't mean I knew him. “First of all I wanted to ask how you are after the attack on Olympus.”

“I locked myself up in here and didn't come out until I heard some armored warriors cutting down the goblins outside,” he said, then paused. “Wait, are you suspecting me?”

I decided to be honest. “When Athena brought us here and we realized that the traitor was someone with a grudge against the Olympians we did wonder if you might be involved. There are few among the gods who were wronged by the Olympians as much as you were, after all.”

He nodded, conceding the point. “Who did the traitor turn out to be, by the way?” he asked. “Nobody told me.”

I blinked. Wow, they'd really kept him in the dark, huh? And so I caught him up with what had happened. He was shaking his head in horror all throughout my story but when I was done he started chuckling.

“What's so funny?” I asked.

“After everything that happened, it was the Godsforsaken who had to come to their rescue. And they can't even acknowledge it publicly.”

I smiled. Yeah, there was a certain humor in it, wasn't there?

“You know they used to call me the Godsforsaken before, right?” he said, causing me to stare at him.

“Before they gave you that name they called me it. The god forsaken by the gods.”

“I didn't know that.”

“I suppose they were glad they could give that name to someone else, so they wouldn't have to think of me anymore.”

I took a deep breath. “That's actually what I came to talk to you about.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I want to know your version of the story,” I said. “I already know that Zeus' version is bullshit and that you aren't still tied to that cliff. But I also doubt the version of the story where you created humanity is true.”

He gave a hearty chuckle at that and threw his arms wide, indicating his workshop. “True enough, though in a manner of speaking I did create humans, didn't I?”

I took the opportunity to look around his workshop. Like every potter he had his creations on display on several shelves scattered around the workshop. But not all of them were vases. In fact, most of them weren't. Instead there were horses, wolves, orcs, kobolds, and, yes, people made of clay. They were small figurines, only a hand tall at most, but they were incredibly finely detailed, to the point I could see the wolves' fur was textured and the orcs' pig snouts had detailed nostrils.

Moreover, most of them were still wet. He couldn't have made them all recently. And even if he hadn't fired them yet, just letting them sit out to dry should have gotten rid of that wet sheen. He seemed to notice my confusion so he snapped his fingers and one of the wolves leapt off the shelf and started trotting towards us. He held out a hand and the wolf climbed onto it, then he held the wolf out for me to inspect.

“So you can control clay?” I asked.

“Only clay I've molded into shape,” he said.

“Fascinating,” I said, then an idea struck me. “How much clay would you need to escape from Olympus?”

He chuckled, then leaned down to the block of clay he was working with and pinched off a walnut-sized piece. “This would do.”

“That little?”

“Of course,” he said. “It's not like they're trying very hard to keep me here.”

“Then why don't you leave?” I asked.

“I could say that I don't want to incur Zeus' wrath but honestly, at this point I wouldn't even know what to do if I was free.”

I could kind of get where he was coming from but I hated hearing that kind of defeatist attitude. But I decided to move past it. “So, what did you do for Zeus to punish you? Stealing fire and knowledge and giving it to humanity sounds too poetic to be the whole story.”

“True enough,” he chuckled. “But it's not all wrong. You humans discovered fire on your own. I had nothing to do with that. But the rest is true enough.”

“What knowledge did you steal?”

“You have to understand that this was millennia ago,” he began. “Back then the gods kept many things to themselves. The biggest was knowledge of magic. You would only be taught about how magic worked if you studied directly under a god.”

I blinked. “Hold on. Does that mean back then clerics were the only people who knew magic?”

He shook his head. “Not quite. For those who can use magic it comes naturally so people were always able to use it. But the gods kept all the techniques to themselves so their followers were the only ones who understood the theory behind it, the only ones who didn't just use it but knew how it worked. But yes, back then clerics were the only ones properly trained in magic.”

“And you decided to do something about it,” I said.

“I did,” he agreed. “I stole the knowledge and brought it to the mortals. And I was punished for it.”

“Do you regret it?” I asked.

He considered for a long time, then admitted: “Not anymore but back when I was being chained up and waited for the eagle I did.”

I nodded in understanding, then said: “But you still didn't tell me why you did it. Was it a whim? Did you take pity on us?”

“It's complicated,” he said. “Yes, part of it was pity. Part of it was... emancipation. I wanted you to be strong even without the blessing of the gods. And also... This was a time when us Titans still thought we could fight off the Olympian yoke and so weakening their standing with the mortals would have been beneficial to all of us. I'm sorry if I've just ruined your image of the benevolent fire-bearer Prometheus.”

I smiled. “You didn't.”

He raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything.

“You asked me earlier why I was here,” I said. “And you've already realized that Zeus can't acknowledge our intervention publicly. So allow me to tell you what I'm going to demand for his silence.”

“I'm all ears.”

I told him.

He was cackling by the end of it. “If he wanted to punish me for all eternity just for teaching you magic he would have to invent new punishments just for suggesting what you just told me.”

“You're saying I shouldn't ask for it?”

He shook his head. “No, I'm saying this is the most brilliant thing you could demand and I'm jealous I didn't think to steal that instead.”