Page 68 of Patron of Mercy

“I’ve never denied you anything, Father,” she told him softly. She suddenly wished she had. She wished she’d never told him about meeting Lach, or Santorini, or anything at all.

The Fidelis mage next to her father cleared his throat and whispered, “The spell, sir.”

Her father turned to go back to chanting, only to frown down at his hand and shake it as though trying to dislodge something. A dozen red strands had seeped out of the scythe, fine as silken threads, and wrapped themselves around his hand as though to attach the thing to him.

When the flick of his wrist didn’t remove them, he reached over with his left hand and tried to brush them away, only to have them stick to it as well. He started muttering under his breath, increasing in volume and anger until the threads started winding their way up his arms, and his voice turned high and hysterical.

Cronus will not share with your father. He will destroy him. And, dear child, the Golden Age was not what you think it was.

Images flooded her mind: an angry, cruel titan, ruling with an iron fist. Lashing out at any who questioned him—mother, sibling, and other titan alike. Swallowing his own children to keep them from supplanting him the way he’d done to his own father. Say what one might about Zeus, when confronted with the prophecy that one of his sons would kill him, he hadn’t tried to destroy them all.

If that is the Golden Age you wish to see again, by all means, allow this to continue.

“Allow?” Martina asked. She’d have worried she was being too loud, but no one was paying attention to her anymore. Everyone focused on trying to help her father. Or just watching him with horror. A few had even run off. “Allow implies I can do something else.”

I am giving you a choice, child. I have not walked in a form such as yours in many millennia, but I make the offer. Do as your father has attempted to do with my son, and become my avatar. I will end this.

“Will you take me over entirely?” she had to ask. She wasn’t sure it would change her answer, but in a way, Gaia’s response would give her a measure of the goddess.

Such is not my intention, but I do not know. It has been ages since I experienced this existence on two legs.

“Lach said something about a harvest. It’s why he was looking—” Members of Fidelis Filii were starting to glance her way with confusion and mistrust, but it didn’t matter anymore.

I sent him for the scythe because of the coming famine. We will stop this and restore the harvest together, you and I. Perhaps that will be enough of a new world for you.

“Yes. I agree to your terms.”

Yes.

A golden-green light shot up from the ground around her and carried her aloft. She could feel her whole body filling with it, and along with that warmth came a sense of peace and serenity. The millennia were long and vibrant ahead of them if they could stop these fools from destroying everyone with their selfishness.

They would start with their father and their son. Charles and Cronus.

They reached out to their newly combined power and found it to be something new, different, and more powerful than either of them had experienced before. The part of them that was Martina was proud to offer such an ancient creature a new feeling.

Using the energy of the planet itself, they cut the red strands tying their father to the scythe, attempting to summon Cronus from the depths. Charles collapsed to the ground in a heap, and even the part of them that had been Martina could not worry about him.

With a simple motion, they sent the scythe flying high above, only to explode into a shower of a million, million pieces, like a great red-and-gold firework that covered the whole sky, as far as the eye could see.

When they pushed, the energy of the scythe spread across the whole globe, diffused into little more than the odd ember on the wind. Where the specks drifted down to touch the barren ground, plants revived and grew, and the very soil teemed with previously missing vigor.

“None shall dictate my growing seasons but I,” they announced, voice booming and resonating on a godly frequency, that their children might hear it as well as those present on Palea Kameni. The cultists needed to know it, but so too did Demeter, their recalcitrant grandchild who thought to starve an entire world for the sake of a tantrum.

They smiled. For the first time in their existence, no husband or son or daughter would control their fate. They had infused the magic of the scythe into themselves, and they would control their own destiny in a way that had never before been allowed.

“Dammit,” a tiny voice said, apparently uninterested in her newfound power. “You can’t do this to me, Lach. Or to Thanatos! I mean, you’ve spent all these years trying to figure out how to make it up to him. You can’t do that and then bail, can you?”

Their most loyal child and friend was lying on a stone altar, covered with his own blood. They held so much responsibility for this. They had sent him for the scythe. They had brought him to this place to use as their son’s new avatar. He was their friend. Both of their friend.

If all of that hadn’t been enough, the broken expressions on the faces of dear sweet Thanatos and clever little Hermes spoke of how important this single child was to the whole world.

They moved forward, the small and thinning group of cultists parting before them, and went to Lach’s side. So many centuries, he had been their loyal man. So many years, a good friend.

They reached out and laid a hand on his forehead, filling him with their magic, restoring his body to its proper state. Wounds closed and cells repaired—his slow heartbeat gaining strength as his eyes opened.

“We are sorry, friend, for all the pain we have caused you this night. It was not our intention.”

Lach blinked up at them for a moment, closing one eye and then the other, as though he could see each of their halves in turn. “Holy crap,” he muttered hoarsely. On top of him, Hermes collapsed into a fit of hysterical laughter.

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