Chapter 6: Reprieve?

 

Fleeing through the foreign landscape, Odysseus began to feel light headed, his vision, his body, his thoughts all shaking as his feet stumbled, culminating in him hitting the ground from his injuries preventing him from running any longer.

Still, even as he fell on his broken arm and yelped, his feet kicked at the floor, his arm outstretched and dug into the soil, feeling the soft wetness that was unheard of from his native land.

Tears in his eyes, Odysseus kept crawling, his tenacity burning brighter than his life force that was oozing out and trailing behind him.

Move. Move. Move.

That singular thought, singular action. His eyes were drooping, his vision fading as he dragged himself forward with his body now on autopilot to fullfill the one thought on his mind.

Then he saw it, light, at the end of a long tunnel. One that seemed to expand and get closer, light that was rushing out of the darkness to embrace him.

He had heard of this phenomenon before, the light at the end of life. The synapsis in his mind firing off rapidly as he started to die.

The light was nearly all consuming now, the pain across his body numb as his legs ceased moving yet his hands still clawed at the dirt.

"You shouldn't be out here my friend."

Suddenly, Odysseus could feel a pressure applied to his body as he began to rise. Something, someone had grabbed hold of him and was moving him.

"Must... keep moving." Odysseus groaned, his hands still performing the clutching motion as his vision faded.

*****

Standing in the darkness with the boy in his arms, an elderly man with delicate features frowned, his vision clearly observing the bloodied body of another challenger who dared to enter the tower.

"Να γιατρευτείς από τις πληγές σου. Να γιατρευτείς από τις ασθένειές σου." The man in archaic dress recited, the air around him humming with energy and manifesting his spell, staunching the boy's bleeding and stabilizing him for the time being.

The old man sighed, laying the boy gently on the forest floor before stepping over to where a group of Gnolls lay paralyzed.

"Smart, using the berries to paralyze them. Reckless. But smart." The man said, quickly putting two and two together as he unslung the wooden bow from his back and took aim at the howls in the distance drawing nearer.

 

Six... seven... eight. Nine. Ten. Thirteen gnolls. The archer counted in his mind, his eyes darting back and forth and registering the feral monster's movements in the dark.

"Οδηγός αλήθεια, βέλος μου." The man whispered, a cold visible breath of blue colored energy leaving his mouth as he narrowed his glowing green eyes and released his arrow, silencing a howl in the distance. 

One, two, three, five, eight, thirteen. 

Thirteen targets, thirteen arrows.

With deft hands, sharp eyes, and calm composure, each arrow let loose found their target in the darkness. Ceasing the howls and restoring peace to the forest once more.

 

Satisfied with his handiwork, the archer spun, eyeing the gnolls that lay frothing at the mouth and twitching from having bitten into tainted meat.

 

He walked over, unsheathing an iron dagger from his leather belt where he began cutting and slicing, peeling off the brown-pattern pelts of the monsters who were still alive. 

In the past, he would have spared these creatures the torment of such pain, yet, after an eon of witnessing challenger after challenger succumb to these monsters, the old man had no pity left for these things.

****

In an infinite void of black, Odysseus became conscious, his gaze taken by a middle-aged man looking down at him with indifferent familiar sapphire eyes.

That gaze, it was cold, his eyes tired with no soul behind their pupils. A thousand-yard stare that didn't see Odysseus but unraveled him wholly.

In his hand a flaming sword of bronze, twisted and warped. Whatever beauty it once passed corrupted beyond recognition into something nasty.

"If you think you're a hero. Then die like one." The stranger muttered before stabbing Odysseus in the heart.

Gasping, Odysseus rose, clutching at his chest, sweating profusely as tears fell from his sapphire eyes.

Odysseus screamed, a blinding headache taking over as his emotions boiled. Why? Why was he feeling this way? Who was this stranger that kept appearing to him over and over again?! Why was he here?!

"Interesting first choice of words." Said a voice from across the wooden room.

Realizing he wasn't alone, Odysseus shot up to his feet, smacking his head on the ceiling in the process before hitting the nearby wall, losing his footing, and falling out of the bed and onto the floor.

"And an understandable reaction but an interesting result." The elderly man sitting on a wooden stool playing a strange instrument with strings quipped, smirking as he played a tune.

Odysseus groaned, clutching his head as he looked up at the figure, his eyes settling on the instrument in the man's rough hands that resembled the necklace the so-called messenger of the Gods had around his neck as a pendant.

The man was old, yet somehow youthful at the same time, green eyes fixed to the instrument his muscular arms were lithely moving across.

“Are… you… related to the messenger of the gods?” Odysseus asked, his eyes darted around, taking in the small wooden bedroom that was devoid of any furnishing save for a bed lined with wool and the stool the man sat on.

The man raised a thin brow, his emerald eyes focused intently on Odysseus.

“Hm, so you've met Hermes.”

“He didn't… really give me his name.” Odysseus replied, looking down at his body that was fully healed, devoid of any injury as if he’d never experienced the trauma of being torn apart. “H-how-”

“A spell.” The man replied, already sensing Odysseus’s next question. “I found you bloodied and bleeding, muttering move, move, move, over and over again long after your consciousness gave out.”

Spell? Like in those fairytales?!

“The-”

“Gnolls? I dealt with them.” 

“Whe-”

“A place masked by magic where the gnolls can’t track you,” The man responded as a rumbling sounded out that emanated from the boy as the epicenter.

“Are you hungry?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Here, eat.” The stranger said, waving his hand and summoning a plate filled with bread, gravy, and other delicacies Odysseus couldn't even fathom. 

The moment he heard the command and the smell that was nothing short of divine hit his nose, he pounced, not waiting for a chance for the stranger to change his mind.

Odysseus didn't know what it was he was stuffing into his mouth, only that he knew he was starved. 

The man took on an apprehensive look, a gaze that held a tinge of sadness as he strummed his instrument and watched the young man feast.

“O-oh… em!” Odysseus let out, pausing as he choked down a loaf of golden soft whiteness that was bread. “S-sorry. Thank you…? Uh, I don't know your name.”

“Chiron.”

“Chiron. Thank you Chiron. I'm… Odysseus.” The teen said, causing the man to miss a note and misplay his lyrie.

He cocked his head to the side, narrowing his eyes as silence befell the room.

Tensing up, Odysseus began to get nervous, his gaze slowly drifting towards the door beside the man.

If he made a break for it could he get to safety?

No. 

Odysseus knew that immediately as he eyed the dagger on the man’s leather waistband. 

Talking it is.

“Do… you know who I am?” Odysseus asked slowly. Aiming not to offend the man while probing for answers.

“No. But I knew of your predecessor.”

“Predecessor?” Odysseus asked, his curiosity piqued. 

“Yes. A cunning man and a strong warrior. More guile than muscle and bone. But tenacious, like a honey badger.” Chiron smirked, “It’s not so often we get challengers who enter here with names of tragic heroes.”

“Tragic? What happened to him?” Odysseus asked, still caked in bread crumbs and bits of paste.

“Much. To regale you with the tale would take hours, sadly, we neither the time nor luxury.” 

“Please.” Odysseus begged, his gaze hungry for knowledge, of any hint of who he was and why he was here. 

Chiron could see the boy’s eagerness, one he knew well as a scholar himself, that look of fascination that was child-like and never failed to move his heart. Perhaps the reason he was cursed to be in this place.

“Short version then. After convincing my great-grandson to fight in a war that claimed his life, he spent twenty years adrift from home, bargaining with gods and tricking others, only to return and later die at the hands of his own spawn.” Chiron replied, his eyes downcast with Odysseus processing the words great-grandson and twenty years.

The man before him wasn’t human. That much was a fact, or at least, one that an extreme skincare routine that would put even the Corpos to shame.

“So, what brings you here, hero? Fame? Fortune? Escape?”

“I… don’t know.” Odysseus hesitated.

“You… don’t know?” Chiron replied. Normally when he asked this question he was always met with the typical response of glory, wealth, power, or some form of greed, want, or hidden desire. Every challenger spurred on by their patron to chase after their greed. “You enter the tower of the gods, and you don’t know what you want?”

“I don’t even know what this place is. Or what it’s for.” Odysseus replied truthfully. He had an inkling that it was some form of selection, a smaller part of a bigger thing, but nothing concrete, nothing confirmed. Only that one moment he had gone to sleep in his hovel in Corporate Chicago and woken up in a field of flowers. 

He explained this to Chiron, the man’s face twisting with confusion.

“You… have a system right?” 

“Yes.” Odysseus replied, opening up his support menu.

“Who is your patron?” 

“I… don’t know. When I look at the name it’s all a bunch of random letters and numbers. It says corrupted data.” Odysseus explained, causing the old man to rub his chin.

“Show me.”

“Uhm. Can you not see it?” Odysseus asked, his eyes tracking the green see through screen in front of his face.

“No. Repeat after me. Display Support Menu.” Chiron instructed with Odysseus doing as told.

Support System Menu
SPONSOR: &(1 ERROR! CoRRupted Data!&^
Title: A Strategic Goddess’s Beloved Name: Odysseus		HP: 69/100
CLASS: Challenger LvL 1		MP: 0/0
Free Points	4	AFFINITIES  Divine 150 Chaos 10 Fire 2
STRENGTH	8(5)
VITALITY	10(7)
SENSE	12(9)
DEXTERITY	13(10)
ARCANA	1(0)
EGO	20
[SEALED]
[BUFFS]: Protection of %^!@()[ERROR! Data does not exist!] [DEBUFFS]:  Malnourished (-3 All stats) [RESISTANCES]: Divinity 175%, Chaos 10%, Fire 2%
SKILLS: Shard of Aegis (25MP), Telumkinesis, (10MP)

 

Seeing the teen’s system, the old man went wide-eyed, his mouth drooping as he processed and stared at the screen in front of him.