Dad, chained to a rock. His guts hung over a cliff.
I choked down vomit.
An eagle tore out his innards, devouring them. It flew off to a rocky precipice, beak drenched in blood.
"Hesione?" dad asked, desperate.
The eagle cocked its head. In an unfurling of its wings, the eagle shed its skin, revealing a golden god. All the wrath of heaven was with him.
"Prometheus," he boomed. He wiped the blood from his lips.
My father shook. His wound steamed, bubbling as it healed.
The thunderous god's gaze was ice. "Anything to say?"
The air hung dead around them.
"The children, Zeus," dad murmured. "We play our parts, old, barren as winter fields. But in the end, even the fields burn. They give way to new blood. Ask dear Demeter," he said, smiling faintly. "Even the proudest stalk falls to Kronos' scythe."
Zeus chuckled. "Crafty Prometheus, you know I don't enjoy this. You bleed a thousand times and never learn." He swooped viciously close to my dad, grabbing his head. Zeus drove it into the ground. "Your silver tongue's just that: shiny like aluminum, useless. I'll ask again: what did you hide?"
My father gave a sputtering laugh. "A flame in a fennel stalk. But you knew that."
"Hephaestus," Zeus sighed. "Bind him. Kratos, Bia, come." Zeus rubbed his temple. "Good day, Prometheus. See you tomorrow."
In a torrent of wind, Zeus ascended. A cripple appeared, cheeks smudged with grease. He was followed by a bleeding girl and an ox of a man.
Hephaestus lingered beside my father's head, tending to his wounds. The others prowled the cliff's base.
"Prometheus?" whispered Hephaestus. He hobbled to my father's side, putting a poultice on his wound. "Can you stand? I'm breaking your fetters. Hermes found her."
My father's eyes widened. "The time's come? It seems like I've languished here forever." He sighed. "Time flows so differently on earth. I suppose she's grown." He watched Hephaestus hammer off his chains. "How can you do this, under Zeus' eyes?"
Hephaestus chuckled. "Through my wife. She's seducing him as we speak." Hephaestus glanced over his meaty shoulders. "And now to dispose of the flies."
Hephaestus struck the final blow.
The chains broke. Dad lay still, following Hephaestus' lead.
"Kratos! Bia!" Hephaestus bellowed. The wraiths scaled the cliff.
The ox-like one: "Go, lame one! Fetter his mouth, gag the traitor. Or should I do it? Have your wits abandoned you?"
He snickered, balling his hands into fists. The woman lingered behind him, following like a shadow. Hephaestus backed away.
"Bleeding-heart Hephaestus," Kratos hissed. He raised his fist, making to pummel my father: "You crippled bastard, freeing this broken sack of Titan shit."
Kratos' neck snapped. Bia shrieked. Her chest cracked as dad drove his heel to her ribs.
Dad stood above them. "You were the best of the Olympians, Hephaestus."
Hephaestus' eyes brimmed. "Fates be with you, Prometheus."
I surfaced from the phantasmagoria. I leaned back in my couch as I listened to a rumbling engine.
I snapped straight up. "Where am I?"
Hermes grinned back from the driver's seat, Starbucks in hand. "Nice nap?"
I stared at him, incredulous. "You abducted me. The god of thieves abducted me. And if any of this is remotely real, my father is- " I gagged on the word.
"Prometheus?" Hermes provided.
I slunk back into the seat. "A Titan." I groaned. "It all makes sense now. Dad was constantly gone on business. And mom just wandered by the sea."
The taste of ambrosia was on my tongue again, like a memory. I wondered if that was what had triggered the visions:
"I have to go to now, sweetheart. Be good."
"But daddy! I'm in the school play! I'm a stalk of corn. Don't you want to see me?"
He ruffled my hair. "Sweet Aggie, brightest girl in the world. Of course." He tossed me into the air. I laughed as he caught me. "If I could, darling, I'd spend every hour with you. Your mother and I both."
I sniffled, clinging to his side. "Daddy, don't go. Daddy, I love you."
He looked out the window, at the dark car beyond. "I love you too. More than you'll ever know."
I snapped back to the present.
Hermes smiled. "So you're familiar with the myths?"
"Of course." The hilly outskirts of Boston rolled by, painted red by fall. "Each night, dad told me a story. I knew the gods like the back of my hand."
"Did he tell you the messenger god drives a 1966 Mercury Cyclone?" Hermes drove his foot into the accelerator, grin wicked. "Welcome home, Aggie."
The road became familiar. We rounded a corner, reaching the dirt road that led to my abandoned house. The wind whipped oak leaves around us, and the clouds parted to let a single shaft of sunlight through. It touched the eaves of the wreckage.
Hermes parked.
I stepped out.
The sight of my house stung like Io's gadfly.
"So I'm Prometheus' daughter?"
"Stranger things have happened," Hermes murmured. He led me to the crumbling door. His fingers lingered on the strange language scorched into the frame. "There's something you should know, Aggie: a legacy, a dream. A riddle, left for you."
I looked at the words burned into the wood. They were fresh as they'd been eight years ago. Indecipherable-
The lettering shifted.
My jaw dropped.
"You can read it?" Hermes whispered.
"Yeah," I said, startled.
He whistled. "You're coming into your heritage, then. Go on," he coaxed.
My voice rattled:
"Go - go, while Phobos still sleeps
To the Stygian black,
through Tartarian deep.
While the Lightbringer's wife
doth softly still weep,
Seek the flame, seek the light,
Find the Lethe."
"This is what I found when I came home," I whispered. "No one else could see it."
"I didn't - no, it couldn't be." Hermes scrutinized the words. He pulled out his iPhone, snapping a picture.
"What?"
"Your mother. Hesione."
"Where is she?" I asked. "Did Zeus torture her? I can't believe I'm saying this. The gods, Olympus, everything," I sunk to the leaf-strewn patio. "This is some broken dream."
Hermes pinched me. I sobbed. "Sorry!" he said. "I was just trying to prove a point. Mortals do that when you think you're asleep. Don't you see? There's hope. You're the key."
"To what?"
"You're the daughter of the wiliest god. Think. Zeus blames his downfall on Prometheus. The rise of man through technology means humanity turned their back on the gods." Hermes' face grew dark. "Zeus doesn't take well to faltering worship. My old man blames man's rise on the fire your father gave them."
"So he decided to torture him?"
"Dad does what's in the best interest of Olympus, not individuals. Zeus didn't hesitate to send a flood. It was only through Prometheus' warning of Deucalion, your brother, that humanity survived."
"Deucalion?"
I shivered. All my siblings were dead.
"In killing all but Deucalion, Zeus let Prometheus' descendants repopulate the world. His blood runs through your veins."
"And that gives him power?"
"Exactly. Every combusting engine, each spark of electricity, is an offering to Prometheus."
"Like my frigging grilled cheeses," I said. "So humans still make offerings?"
Hermes nodded. "Yep. Zeus hates the thought he could be usurped by a Titan. Not that your father would want that. But you," Hermes looked at the rain that had begun to fall. "You're a demigod."
"I don't see how I fit into this insanity," I resisted, looking down at my palms. "How can I even exist? My dad?" I choked back a sob. "How could Zeus do that? I know the stories. You treat mortals like toys."
Hermes hushed me.
"Twelve years. My parents left. They never said anything."
"It was for your protection." Hermes' brow furrowed. "But things - they've gotten worst. There are factions plotting to dispose of Zeus. Twenty years ago, they turned to Prometheus as their leader. He refused."
"And you?"
"Zeus is my old man. I can't go against blood."
"But you're all family!"
Hermes sighed, guiding me up. "Zeus has seen us through dark times. He needed Prometheus for support. Your father went missing at a crucial moment. Zeus could only assume betrayal."
We reentered the car. "I don't know anything about this." I pressed my cheek against the window. "They're not even my parent's anymore. I think of them, and I don't feel anything."
Hermes started the engine. "If that were true, you wouldn't be crying."
"They left me!"
"No. Zeus was a hair's breadth from discovering your existence. You're the reason they fled Olympus."
"That doesn't make sense," I floundered.
"No," Hermes sighed. "You're a miracle. The first child born in a millenium."
"What?"
"You heard me. We're barren, Agalia. It's only through bastard unions with humans we can conceive. The fact that Prometheus, a Titan, and an Oceanid like your mother did - it's a miracle. It means the old power is returning."
"To who?"
Hermes grinned crookedly. "Perhaps the Twelve's time is over. Perhaps it's time for new gods. Adapt or die, they say."