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(Fate) Chapter 187: Cyzicus
🕑 Added 2024-11-04 15:44:42 +0000 UTCThe next day, cheers erupted among the heroes on the Argo.
Because, the heroic figure they’d all been awaiting had finally returned.
Promise went to the edge of the crowd, where the huntress Atalanta stood quietly watching him.
Looking at her, the first hero he’d ever drawn, the one who held the silver leaf that would one day mark the end of their race, Promise hesitated for a moment before speaking to her.
"Atalanta," he asked, "do you think... I’m a fool?"
Hearing his words, the latter paused for a moment.
Her emerald eyes looked at Promise with a hint of surprise, and then she glanced thoughtfully at Helen in the distance.
She was aware that Helen had been taken away by Pegasus the night before and had returned today with Promise.
After a brief silence, she spoke.
"Of course you’re a fool."
Atalanta answered calmly,
"You always have been."
Some time later, Promise returned to his room on the ship.
"Huh?"
Seeing what lay quietly inside, Promise froze for a moment before tilting his head in confusion.
"Strange... When did I leave this here?"
He walked over and picked up the artifact—Hades’s Helm of Invisibility.
Holding the helmet, Promise stared at it for a long time, his brow furrowing slightly.
"And why do I feel... like I’m forgetting something?"
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The Argo set sail once again.
Promise’s return brought joy to all the heroes on board.
They excitedly recounted their adventures during his absence, while occasionally asking where he had gone.
To this, Promise simply smiled and didn’t answer.
He certainly couldn’t say he’d kept the night sky from dawning for days by carrying along a primordial goddess, or that he’d led a group of gods to storm Olympus and given Athena a well-deserved surprise!
Promise’s silence only confirmed the suspicions Atalanta, Heracles, and Medea had been harboring all along—that the endless night and missing sun were indeed Promise’s doing.
Thus, they tactfully changed the subject.
With Promise’s return, the heroes noticed that they never ran short of food again.
Each morning, the bountiful sea would bring forth fish that leapt right into the ship’s kitchen, eliminating the need for prayers.
Though seafood wasn’t rare, fresh fruit was precious on the open sea.
But soon the heroes discovered that even this wasn’t beyond Promise’s reach.
Have you ever seen clouds that rain down fresh vegetables and sweet fruits?
Seeing Promise being hit on the head by a pile of fruits when he woke up in the morning, and even being piled up, Atalanta felt too embarrassed to continue watching, so she reached out and pulled him out of the mess.
"You...are really loved."
Promise glanced at the elegant huntress in her green robes in front of him and then at the others as they cheered, offering blessings and thanks to the gods.
He pondered for a moment before grabbing a bright red apple and offering it to Atalanta, saying,
"So, does that mean you don’t want any?"
"Hmph!" Atalanta snorted.
She was Atalanta, the huntress loyal to Artemis, goddess of the moon and the hunt.
She believed in earning food through one’s own efforts; after all, she was the heroine of ancient Greece who didn’t believe in taking handouts!
"Make it two more."
With a quick swipe, Atalanta snatched the apple from Promise’s hand.
Well...actually there's nothing wrong with it.
Taking the apple from Promise was still taking it, after all.
As he watched her turn around and disappear, biting into the fresh apple with an expression that gradually softened, Promise couldn’t help but feel a pang of nostalgia.
"What’s on your mind?"
At this moment, the big guy Heracles came over.
"I was just wondering," Promise mused, "how this stubborn little cat has been tamed for so long and yet still stays aloof. Even the cute goddess of fate, Clotho, has finally softened up. When will she finally show some warmth... oh, wait, Clotho has always been adorable!"
Heracles looked confused, not quite understanding what Promise was talking about.
"So, Heracles, what did you want to see me about?"
Promise asked, looking at him curiously. "Thinking of getting yourself noted in my little book?"
"...Can you please not say such terrifying things?" Heracles sighed, looking at Promise with resignation.
Nearby, Jason, Meleager, and the others, who had been about to greet them, quickly turned and disappeared the moment they heard the words "little book," scattering like the wind.
Seeing Heracles’s defeated expression, Promise couldn’t help but laugh, even holding his head high in pride.
Look at that—the legendary hero Heracles himself was now afraid of his little book! How great he had become!
"I came to ask which god or goddess is responsible," Heracles said, pointing to the white clouds drifting away in the sky. "So we know whom to offer our prayers to."
"Hmm...I'm not sure."
Hearing his words, Promise tilted his head, thinking for a while, then shrugged honestly.
"For the fish, it's easy to know.
It’s likely a gift from Poseidon, the god of the sea, but the fruits and vegetables... they could be from Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, or maybe Persephone, or even Queen Hera?"
Well...many things were confusing but one was certain, they couldn’t be from that failure of a goddess, Hecate!
Thinking about how that goddess had not only treated him as the god of plague and avoided him, but had even deceived him later, Promise’s teeth clenched.
If Goddess Nyx hadn’t exposed her deception, he would never have known how thoroughly he’d been deceived.
After all, whether it was the witch Circe or the little witch Medea, he'd always taken good care of them with all his heart, but that stinky goddess!
She was nothing but trouble!
Listening to Promise rattle off the gods' names one after another as if he were reciting a menu, and looking at that self-righteous expression, even Heracles, who knew the situation, felt speechless for a moment.
He opened his mouth to say something but didn't know what to say exactly, so in the end, under Promise's puzzled look, he gently patted the boy on the shoulder, turned back to the heroes, and told them which gods they should direct their prayers to.
The answer? All of Olympus’s major gods, just to be safe!
In the end, their prayers alone took up over an hour.
All in all, the Argo set sail once more with the heroes on board.
Before long, the heroes encountered a new adventure.
This time, they passed by an island named Cyzicus, whose young king was a son of Poseidon, the god of the sea.
Having received an oracle from his father, he knew of the heroes’ approach well before they arrived.
The young king himself went out to welcome the heroes, and hosted a grand banquet in their honor that night.
He also warned them that not too far away, just beyond his island lay another inhabited by six-armed man eating giants who were savage and dangerous, urging the heroes to be cautious.
Those giants had always been eyeing this place covetously, but because of the protection of Poseidon, the god of the sea, they had never been able to cross the sea between the two banks, so this place had always been worry-free.
With this information, Promise recalled the story surrounding this place.
If there was one dark stain on the legends of the Argonauts, it had to be what happened here.
The young, benevolent king, remembered the oracle of the gods.
So, even though the kingdom of this island was not rich, when the heroes arrived, he had slaughtered his few precious cattle and sheep to welcome and entertain the heroes warmly.
But the next day, as the heroes set off, they encountered thick fog and ended up in a fierce battle at sea against the giants from the neighboring island.
Completely exhausted, before they even had the time to have a rest, they were caught in a storm that unknowingly blew them back to Cyzicus’s shores.
In the darkness of the night and dense fog, the heroes mistook the sounds of the young king and his guards approaching as an attack, and they killed them all in the confusion.
It wasn’t until the third day, when the sun rose and the fog cleared, that they finally realized the tragic truth.
The shock and horror of discovering the truth left many heroes returning to the ship, unwilling to step ashore.
Only a few heroes sat here and mourned for the dead for three days.
This event was a turning point.
The young king's wife, already frail from illness, succumbed to heartbreak soon after.
Up to this point, forgiveness might still have been possible; after all, there was a season behind it, and the whole thing happened because of a terrible misunderstanding.
But the heroes, instead of seeking to make amends, departed after three days of mourning, simply avoiding the island of the man-eating giants.
What they hadn't considered was that, with the young king’s death, Poseidon’s protection over the island ceased and the giants soon crossed the sea between the islands, overtook the now unprotected shore, and devoured all life on it.
This included the bodies of the young king and his wife.
Following this incident, Poseidon’s favor toward the Argonauts faded.
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