....
"Allowed the safety of an adoptive family, the boy grew."
The young Dionysus ran and played with his adoptive sister and brother, he studied alongside his adoptive father, all the while the elegant queen observed them with a mother's care. He smiled in each scene, and greeted the world with gleaming violet eyes.
The living shadow adopting the name of Aisha narrowed her gaze. There was a womanly part of her that was being tugged by sympathy, but she cut that connection as soon as she felt it, and replaced empathy with suspicion. Even now, she assured herself, wickedness laid in his heart, but had merely yet to manifest.
The old satyr gave a toothy, sadistic grin.
"What?"
"I sense your trepidation. Perhaps knowing your enemy is too much for you to bear?"
She glowered at him, "Nonsense. All questions have answers and all answers have explanations. Now explain to me how that boy grew into the monster who murdered me."
"If you think you can handle it."
He cast out his staff and the imagery blurred. They were in a circular room. The older man sat at a desk adorned with parchment, his pen moving at lightning speed. Around him, vials floated through the air of their own accord, spinning and pouring their contents into one another. In the man's lap, the girl with curling chestnut hair sat eyeing the vials with wonder. Meanwhile, the young Dionysus stood on tip-toes to read the writing of his adoptive father. A window revealed rolling pastures filled with sheep, and from such a height that they must've stood in a tower.
Aisha recognized the room as an amateur mage's workshop.
She heard footsteps underneath her, and noticed a trapdoor in the corner of the room. A moment later it opened and out came the raven-hued head of the woman she had seen before, and scurrying out from between her legs was a young boy with bristly brown hair. As the vials sank to their place and the father turned, daughter in tow, to regard his son, the boy was already running around the room with a wooden sword in hand, swinging it with childish abandon.
Seeing the young Dionysus, perhaps two years younger than himself, watching attentively to his frantic movements, he pointed his sword in dueling fashion.
"Come on 'Nysus! Let's play swords!"
The younger brother looked to his father with innocent eyes and clung wordlessly to his toga.
The boy turned to his mother with the quick and acute anger that only a child could have, "Mom! 'Nysus won't play with me!"
She placed a motherly hand on his head, "It's alright, Actaeon,"
She turned her attention to her husband, "Don't you think it's time to give the boy some fresh air? He needs to get out of this dusty old room."
Aristaeus gave a gentle chuckle, "It's not as if I locked him in here, Noe. He's here because he wants to be."
She raised an eyebrow, "I remember Macris begging to be let up here when she was his age. It took me ages to calm her down, and now I have to fight you to let the children leave."
He gave the girl in his lap, Macris, a solid pat on the stomach, "When Macris was his age, she couldn't sit still, or stay quiet long enough for me to focus. A mouse would distract me more than Dionysus has. He's not getting in anyone's way- and, these days, neither is she."
He gave his daughter a peck on the forehead, a half-apology for his commentary on her younger self.
"He's a growing boy. He ought to play outside. It's what's normal for his age."
"So? When I was his age I was learning how to thread a needle so I could repair my mother's tunics." He turned a gentle eye to his adoptive son and rustled his curling hair, "What's wrong with being a little different? We both know that even Actaeon inherited his nature from my mother- and she's still the strangest woman I've met."
A scowl besmirched Autonoe's flawless features, her regal demeanor expressing the displeasure of a born queen, "Fine. Come along, Actaeon, I'll play with you."
She opened the trapdoor, and the young hunter slumped down the stairs. She cast a disapproving eye towards her husband, and then to her adopted son, and followed, disappearing behind the closing hatch.
The old satyr closed the scene with his commentary, "Was it a woman's scorn? Was she jealous that the love of her husband seemed to gravitate towards the child not of her womb, the stranger over his own brood? Or was it a woman's intuition? Did she sense the evil laying dormant within his soul? We may never know, but the queen Autonoe never did approve of the child given to her by the gods. Their hatred soon became mutual."
A series of images came in and out of view. The family stood in basins, juicing grapes with their feet. Dionysus held a cupful of honey, which soon expanded and overflowed in his hands. Dionysus was dragged away by his angered mother, an undead dog standing at attention behind them. Back in the workshop, Aristaeus guided Macris's reading through a series of scrolls, while, in the corner, Dionysus was already writing his own. In another, father and mother stood aghast at their adopted son standing in a circle of chalk, hands and torso stained with blood and a slaughtered lamb at his feet. A burnt offering was laid on an altar, and the young Dionysus extinguished the pyre with a bucket of water. He ran through town, assaulted by thrown stones. Autonoe slammed his bedroom door shut, leaving him sulking on his bed; there was another, empty cot beside him.
"As a part of his assimilation, everything he ever witnessed was ingrained into his memory. He could even remember the murder of his mother, and the time he spent within Zeus's body, and the feeling of Divinity flowing into him. He was a sponge, and by the age of ten he was beginning to master the arts of transmutation, illusion and suggestion. His magecraft and his nature were in tandem, and, by combining them, he could suggest things to reality and make them true. He was fascinated by his own power, and secluded himself from those his age, dedicating his time to his studies."
Another scene. Aristaeus sat at his desk, examining a set of tablets. Though she couldn't read the language herself, the script didn't appear to be arcane in nature. She guessed that they had to do with his role as King of Thebes.
With the rolling thunder of footsteps up the stairs, a slightly older, preteen Dionysus swung the trapdoor open, cradling a cup in his hands, "Dad! Dad! Look what I made!"
He turned with tired eyes, disguising his fatigue with a smile, "What is it, Dionysus?"
"Look!" He shoved the cup in his father's hands.
"It's... not poison is it?"
"Of course not! I told you I was trying to make our wine taste better so it would sell more."
"I thought I told you not to do that. I know you mean well, but magecraft is a powerful and... imprecise science. The last thing we need in the midst of this drought is to end up at war with our neighboring cities because we accidentally poisoned them, or cursed them, or turned them into undead by mistake."
"C'mon, Dad, have a little more faith in me. I only altered and accelerated natural processes, I didn't add any foreign elements- promise. I'm sure you could make it yourself without any magecraft at all with just a little reverse-engineering."
Aristaeus took a hesitant sip- and surprise lit up his face, "Is that..." He set the cup down, "Yes, that's very good Dionysus. I'll try to replicate the trend naturally, but still, well done. Although... you probably shouldn't drink any yet."
"Huh? Why not?"
"You'll understand when you're older. Now go to bed, I'll see you in the morning."
The candlelight flickered out, and came alight again on Dionysus's bedroom. In the bed next to him laid his sister Macris, though she was barely recognizable. She was gaunt and skeletal. a cloth was laid over her forehead, her breathing was shallow, and blemishes discolored her arms and face. Dionysus was gently washing her with a damp cloth.
"The city of Thebes was rocked with tragedy. Drought. Famine. Plague. Wild animals and natural disasters. There was no rest for anyone, and they needed somebody to blame."
He placed the cloth in a bowl of water and walked out the bedroom. As he approached the candlelight creeping around the corner, arguing could be heard.
"That child is a curse!"
"Noe, please. You're being superstitious."
"The gods are not a superstition! You of all people should know that. When my father was in control of Thebes, nothing like this ever happened-!"
"So it's my fault, then."
"No! And that's the damned problem! You've done everything right, you've handled this situation the best you could, but things keep getting worse. Ever since he came, there's been nothing but tragedy. Really, Aristaeus, he spits on our offerings to the gods, he blasphemes them at every turn. Do you think the gods wouldn't punish him, or punish us who raised him? The city that shelters him?"
She took a deep breath, "You remember his 'friend' that went missing don't you? They found her the other day. She was in the woods, lying naked on the ground, her eyes being pecked out by vultures while she was still alive. She's still not responding. That child is not human. He's a monster, a devil. A curse!"
"He was a gift from the gods, Noe. From Zeus himself."
"So is free will, and he's used his to curse the very gods who gave him to us. The only way we're getting out of this is to-"
"We're not killing the boy."
"Even to save our girl? Our daughter? Our Macris? A stranger or your daughter, which will it be?"
"He's lived in our house for fourteen years, was suckled by your own breast, and you still call him a stranger?"
"Answer the question."
Dionysus hugged the corner, listening intently.
Aristaeus stood up, "In the morning, I'm going to visit our parents. Between your father and my mother I'm sure a solution can be reached. Her city will surely send us aid in the meantime."
"And if they don't?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it."
"If you don't get rid of that accursed child, then I'm taking Macris to Cyrene. She and I will spend some time with your real son while you waste your time being the devil's advocate. If it comes to that... don't expect us to return."
Dionysus didn't react visibly. He quietly slunk back towards the bedroom, away from the candlelight and into the shadows of the deeper hall.
Darkness fell like a curtain, but was shattered by the blazing light of a morning sun reflecting off of marble cobbles, the young Dionysus standing in an alleyway with a bag over his shoulder. Between the onlookers and him, as if they were themselves members of the crowd, were three boys about his age. One of them, a large boy with curly blonde hair, brandished a knife.
....