Page 14 of The Demigod

“Depends on how soon he can get some medical care,” Daemon said. “How far are we from a city?”

“Far. But if you can carry him through the woods, I have a car parked. I can drive him to the local fire station. Someone can get him care from there.”

“I can carry him,” he assured me as we made our way to the steps.

We were both silent as we moved away from the estate, both aware of the home full of gods, of the potential to be seen or heard.

But once we were in the thick of the woods, Daemon turned to me. “What makes you so sure that Nemesis is being held here?” he asked.

“I heard Oizys mention it once when I was sneaking around. They said something about having her bound. But I don’t know by what.”

“Magic?” Daemon suggested.

“Maybe. I just don’t know. Honestly, this is all just… new to me.”

“How is it new to you?” Daemon asked. “You’re practically immortal.”

“Fifty years isn’t that much time. I just barely outlived my father. I… I had no idea what was ‘wrong’ with me that I wasn’t aging. I’ve been to a bunch of doctors who all just tell me I’m in great health and must just have fantastic genes.

“It wasn’t until all of this,” I said, waving out at the world at large, “started happening that I started to put things together.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“Well, I heard about all the things going on. And they kind of… reminded me of this class I took once on mythology. So I went digging in my father’s library for my old books.”

My father never threw a single book away. He had the old manuals for how to work Windows XP and for explaining how the internet itself worked.

“I’m assuming you found more than just your old textbooks.”

“I found my father’s journals,” I told him. “Except they weren’t exactly journals. At first, they seemed like the ravings of a man who was losing his mind. Except my father was sharp right until the end.”

“They were about your mother?” Daemon guessed, tone conversational. He wasn’t even out of breath, despite carrying a large grown man in his arms as we trekked through the cold woods.

“Yeah. Just notebook after notebook. The first ones were mostly just about their, uh, encounter.”

“That sounds… traumatizing,” Daemon said, shooting me a smirk.

“You could say that,” I agreed. “I mean, we all know our parents have had—and likely continued to have—sex. But it’s another thing to see an entire notebook about it.

“Anyway, as the notebooks went on, it became more of an analysis about my mother. Things felt… odd to him about the encounter.

“Then, one day, she showed up again. With me.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would she show up with you? Did she… adopt out all of her children?”

“No. The problem was that I wasn’t a god myself. She told my father that I ‘wouldn’t survive’ with her. Then she just… walked away.”

“Harsh.”

“A mercy, I think. Now that I know about what happens in the primordial realm. It’s… elemental chaos there. I was too soft, too warm, too… human. Giving me to my father was actually the most motherly thing she could have done.”

“Did your father know that something wasn’t… right with you right away?”

“No. I grew slowly, but not even slowly enough for doctors to worry. It wasn’t until I reached adulthood that my aging all but stopped. But he suspected for other reasons.”

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