The grilled lizard smelled rather delicious. Though Heracles required Zvezdnyy to skin the lizard with naught but her bare hands and a knife. Showcasing how, Heracles then looked expectantly at Zvezdnyy, like a parent expecting perfect results after showing the process only once.
It was simple enough, and Zvezdnyy is a smart girl. She placed the knife down at a certain angle and then started sliding it underneath the scales, cutting away a thin layer of fat that the scales were attached to.
It was an easy enough motion to replicate.
It took Zvezdnyy only the better part of an hour to fully skin the lizard, but she did manage to do it. With a forehead full of sweat and hands covered in blood from the numerous times the knife dug too deep, Zvezdnyy was finally able to skin the lizard.
"Well done. We can grill the lizard with a sharpened stick." Heracles said. He pulled out a sharpened, relatively straight tree branch that's been debarked, revealing the lighter color underneath.
Wielding the branch as one might a sword, Heracles pierced down its skull and out one side of its tail, skewering it. Bones cracked, and muscles were torn with the force Heracles used to shove that branch down and through the lizard's body.
The demigod then started sprinkling on spices—
"Where did you get those spices?"
"Foraging for edible plants that'll make one's meal more flavorful is something even basic hunters in Greece learn about, and I am their greatest."
There wasn't a single ounce of pride in Heracles' tone. It's as though he was stating a fact rather than an opinion.
Because how lizard meat had low fat, it took a long while for the skewered meat to start sizzling.
But once it did, a delicious aroma saturated the campsite. Carried forth by the smoke and updraft, the meat's smell was practically showering the whole area.
"Who is Makaria?" Zvezdnyy asked suddenly, "You said that name, quietly as if you were scared of it."
"..."
The fire crackled softly, casting a warm, flickering glow across the area. It illuminated the silence that overcame Heracles, his face, and his distant eyes, which were looking at something that was not there.
"Makaria?" Heracles uttered as he took in a deep breath.
The demigod glanced down at the flames cooking the lizard. So familiar the flames were. He could practically hear himself groaning in agony once again from the blood-soaked shirt belonging to Nessus the Centaur. One covered in dried Hydra blood. It was clothing given to him by Deianira.
"Makaria was… my youngest daughter from my third Wife Deianira."
Deianira stood so close to his funeral pyre that Heracles almost stepped out to force her back. The fire was slowly cooking her. That fire wasn't for her but for him.
"She was an oddity among all my childrens. She wasn't extraordinary. She didn't inherit my strength or any of my divine powers. She was… normal."
When the fire fully consumed him, Heracles remembered how he ascended into Olympus as the God of Strength. Never looking back, Heracles took Hebe, the Goddess of Youth, as a divine bride. A daughter of Hera as a fourth wife.
"She wasn't like my other kids in mentality as well. She's shy and, would rather read a scroll or be in a theater play than fight in the training yard like all my other kids. When I asked what she desired, the girl replied with 'a normal and happy life'. At first, I was furious. No child of mine would be normal. No one with the blood of Heracles flowing through their veins should be normal."
He ignored the mortal world, too enraptured by his new wife as she gave birth to Alexiares and Anicetus.
"I died and ascended to Olympus. Though I forgave Deianira for her transgressions, I was too obsessed with Hebes— too obsessed fucking her to realize how my enemies were closing in on Deianira."
Zvezdnyy grimaced at the curse word used, but let Heracles continue as he gripped his fist so tightly it felt as though one of his blood vessels might pop.
"By the time I paid any attention to the mortal world, the bastard Eurystheus had hunted down much of my children with Hera's blessing. Makaria fled to Athens, where she willingly sacrificed herself to Persephone upon realizing how she'll never achieve the dream of a normal, happy life." His voice faltered like a much-neglected house.
Heracles released his fist. His mouth was half-open in a sigh, "Because of how much I've neglected Makaria, I have nothing but memories to remember her by."
Makaria, oh dearest Makaria, it wasn't until after she had died that Heracles realized how much of a peacemaker she was. So many conflicts between his sons and daughters didn't end in bloodshed because Makaria was there.
Heracles eyed Zvezdnyy.
"You remind me of her. Gold of hair, strange of eyes, and a love for theater. But unlike Makaria, you desire to be a hero. I will train you to be exactly that. You will claim the Grail and lay waste to whoever is the origin of these Singularities."
How curiously sentimental for a Hero as famous as Heracles. Then again, her Polkovodets weren't always stoic.
After that long story, Zvezdnyy yawned and went to sleep. Heracles promised that he would keep watch.
"Zzzzzz—"
"Wake up."
With the same abruptness found in a cobra strike, Zvezdnyy was shook awake by Heracles. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, the girl saw how Heracles already grabbed his Bow of Hydra and notched an arrow. The demigod's attention was elsewhere now, to the dark forest beyond this clearing of a pond.
"What are you—"
"Shhh!" In a much more quieter tone, "There's something out there."
Pulling back the strings of the bow, Heracles readied the arrow for release.
He aimed it at a patch of particularly dense vegetation far away. A bundle of knife-like leaves sprouting from the ground and tree trunks obscure what's behind it.
That vegetation began to move. It ruffled, swaying as though something large was moving inside of it.
Heracles stared intensely at it.
It ruffled some more. Heracles waited for the appearance of their interloper.
Just as the swaying bundle of greenery reached even greater heights and the demigod was about to unleash his shot—
A monkey walked out.
It was small enough to be comparable to teddy bears. The monkey had a light grey coat and carried a banana in its tiny arms.
"Aww, how adorable—"
"HISSSSSSS—!"
A screech came out from beside Zvezdnyy. Something moved too fast for the girl to follow—
*Thrack*
An arrow nailed the thing into the trunk of a nearby tree.
Zvezdnyy hurriedly looked at the thing that jumped her. Though dark, she saw how it looked like a man but crossed with a lizard, a scaled thing with bulging muscles and a writhing tail. It had the general body of a human— two arms and two legs— yet it held a long, reptilian snout in the place where a head should be. A long tail ran down its back, with frills flaring outward like the chimneys of a cruise ship.
Before Zvezdnyy could take in more of the lizard-person, several more screeches rang out like tolling bells. More lizardmen ran forth— and Heracles responded in kind.
His hands moved faster than Zvezdnyy could see. He was like a minigun, arrows capable of piercing through a mountain at max power were let loose by the dozens every second. Heracles never missed once.
Zvezdnyy was excited. She finally got her wish for excitement. She then brought a finger up and was about to conjure forth lava before a gold thing gleaming against the fire's glow caught her eyes.
The finger slacked, deflated, as the girl stared at the gold feather at the end of the arrow sticking out of a lizardman.
The girl dismissed the arrow, thinking it to be nothing important. As she always did.
Until she noticed how it stuck out of the lizardman's body, something pricked at the edge of her thoughts. She tried to remember something, yet her mind wasn't providing her with a proper answer.
The way those golden feathers looked… as they stuck out of a humanoid body was eerily familiar.
Golden feathers…
Golden feathers. At the end of an arrow sticking out of the lizardmen.
Golden feathers…
Golden feathers, at the end of the arrow sticking out of her Polkovodets.
"You…"
Zvezdnyy reached out. She saw her fingers trembling like that of someone afraid.
Her hair fluttered as an arrow whizzed by close, leaving a hurricane in its wake. It was strange though, since Zvezdnyy remembered how the arrows hitting her Polkovodets didn't create any sort of disturbances such as these.
Grabbing the arrow and pulling it out of the lizardman, the girl saw how well-made it was. The bird feathers at the end were so sharp their edge came in and out of focus, she struggled to see the depth— it was as though the feather was a two-dimensional object.
Zvezdnyy then flipped the arrow around to gaze at the tip. A sharp thing. A green thing.
Just as she went to touch it, Heracles caught her arm once again.
"Don't. Did you forget I said the arrows are coated in Hydra venom? The fume they produce simply by existing are enough to kill a man."
Heracles then yanked the arrow out of Zvezdnyy's grasp and notched it on his bow. He pulled back the strings and was ready to let loose again.
"You… attacked my Polkovodets didn't you?"
The light from the campfire flickered, and Zvezdnyy noticed how Heracles cast a long shadow on the ground, a long shadow that appeared to veil her in its embrace. She looked up from her kneeling position and noticed how the sky around Heracles was beginning to brighten like a spark catching in dry kindling.
He eased on the bow strings. The demigod didn't look remorseful.
"Yes. I was summoned by Jason alongside Medea and Atalanta. Medea foretold of a way for Jason to become the King of the Seas, but a False Goddess would stand in his way. He first used a Kraken to test how powerful this False Goddess was."
Zvezdnyy's eyes widened at the mention of a Kraken. So that Kraken attack wasn't accidental…
"She easily killed the legendary sea monster. And so, Jason realized he would suffer a loss in a head-to-head confrontation. So the Captain of the Argonauts stopped being complacent and planned with trickery in mind. He steered the Argo into a position where not even the False Goddess could sense. There, beyond the horizon, protected by the planet's own mass, I took position and unleashed my Noble Phantasm."
Nine Lives: Shooting the Hundred Head.
Nine arrows were unleashed. Nine arrows cut through the air. Nine arrows sailed across the curvature of the planet. A hundred kilometers distance was crossed in mere instants— godspeed isn't wrong of a description.
Heracles purposefully unleashed that last arrow with less force, having it go through the enemy's ship before finally hitting the target.
"Then why, did you rescue me if I am your enemy?"
Zvezdnyy's lips quivered. This… betrayal was something entirely new. It hurt like someone had torn a raw wound in her heart.
"You are a child. I refuse to hurt children. So right after I used my Noble Phantasm, I dove into the water and swam to the wreckage of the ship. There, I rescued you and brought you ashore to this island I found."
Zvezdnyy thinned her lips to such that they appeared to have disappeared. Heracles then appeared remorseful. Ashamed.
"I'm… sorry for you finding out like this. If I had known she was someone important to you, I would've apologized to you sooner. I followed Jason out of past loyalties as I was once a member of his Argonauts."
There was something different about reality. The world began to fray around the edges. At first unnoticeable to even Heracles' divine senses— then like the building up of sound in an opera— all came crashing down at once—
Heracles drew back the strings of his bow. Arrows loaded and ready.
The sky rippled like the surface of a pond. Tears formed akin to a piece of fabric strained too much, and within those tears were screaming unreality.
Those tears disappeared as quickly as they formed. Heracles aimed his bow not at Zvezdnyy, but at a bright star in the dawning sky.
That star was growing brighter. Its illumination caught in Zvezdnyy's eyes.
A green star shining like a sun.
"My Polk—"
"
A light that blinded everything fell upon the jungle. A loud rush of wind and a sonic boom echoed forth.
Once the light left, it took several seconds for Zvezdnyy's eyes to readjust to the dark atmosphere. She saw a long section of the forest gone, ripped away like weeds. So was Heracles.
Zvezdnyy grinned, the rage and hatred from before forgotten entirely.
_____
The entire Singularity was lit up. Even the furthest reaches were illuminated with an eerie glow coming from afar. So bright that one can read a book in this light.
A long trail of brilliant green zoomed and zipped across the Caribbeans. It was like watching auroras dance in the twilight sky, the ever-shifting trails that eventually landed on a volcanic island.
The world trembled as if a meteor had just hit. A wave of force blasted outward, dispersing clouds like the fading fog from a person's mouth on a cold day.
The island shattered when the star fell upon its mountainous body, and a second later, an eruption occurred as towering plumes of ash sprouted upwards like trees. Tall geysers of lava shot out into the sky, mixing with the ash like spaghetti and meatballs. A supersonic avalanche of cindering pyroclastic flow surged outward into the ocean.
The 1,000-degree Celsius mixture of hot gas and tephra instantly boiled the water it touched, creating a veil of explosive steam that rose into the air, blocking out the sight of the island except for the tall volcano ash.
Yet somehow, they all stilled.
The pyroclastic flows stopped moving, and the rising steam paused in its ascent. The towering billowing ash tree was flowing off to the side as though its trunks had been sawed off.
There, on the surface of the cooled pit of lava that's known as a volcano's caldera, in the center of this destruction stood an unharmed Heracles.
No, rather, a resurrected Heracles.
In front of him hovered a blindingly bright star. A second later, the brightness was gone, revealing the individual who was hidden underneath that light.
"Yo!"
The False Goddess spoke as if Heracles was an old friend she hadn't met in a long time. She wore a tight, grey bodysuit, the opposite of the loose toga that women would wear in ancient Greece. She was smiling creepily.
"It's been a while…" She trailed off as she took a deep breath methodically. It was as if she was enjoying the simple act of breathing.
Though the Goddess appeared unharmed by his Noble Phantasm, if even more powerful, Heracles could tell by the look in her eyes that something was off. There was a madness in them. An unhinged madness that felt familiar to him. Hera's instilled madness.
Her head bowed. Voice tinged with confusion.
"…has it? I couldn't tell. Anyway, normally I would never enjoy fighting. But what's about to come? Oh, I will definitely enjoy it. Hehehe~"
____
AN: I am motivated entirely by your comments. Give me some comments pls.