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Kill.
That was the only thing running through my mind. Apollo the god wasn’t home today. In his place was a wolf. And Ruthlessness.
Maim. Fight. Live. I felt my fangs sink into warm flesh. It gave away so easily beneath my teeth. Everything hurt. Distantly, I heard screaming. I felt flashes of pain. Someone trying to run. The wolf leapt. Its jaws closed around the deer’s throat.
…
It was quiet. When had that happened?
Something warm slowly dribbled from my mouth. My head hurt. I had been in the middle of something. What was it?
“Helloo? Did you hear what I said?”
There was a body in front of me. Or what remained of one. And the smell of mold and blood. A dungeon. They had wanted something so Iー
“You gonna stand there all day? Growling at the air and stuff?”
I turned from where I stood over the mauled corpse of a guard and took in the rest of the room. It was some kind of underground prison, that included all the jazz a prison could afford: dampness, ugly grey walls, and suspiciously dark stains.
My eyes slowed focused on the irritating god trapped with me in this dungeon.
Ares had his wrists chained to the ceiling. Other than a few bruises, he looked mostly unharmed. “Like seriously, you look like a freak. And that’s coming from me.”
Thanks to his kindly reminder, my body remembered it was in critical condition. The burning pain flared across my skull and face, and the various blows the guards had dealt made themselves known with enthusiastic vengeance. My black fur was drenched in blood and gore, but I didn’t think the unfortunate guard I had used as a chew toy would mind. He was dead after all, just like the three others sprawled behind him. They looked like something had ripped straight through them. Which I guess something had. Me.
Ares followed my gaze and of course, decided to comment. “So…, you do this kind of thing often?”
Gods of Olympus, why didn’t the guards bother to gag him.
“Forgive me, I was a little busy being tortured.” I snarled, spitting out a chunk of bloody guard meat, “Where are my manners? I should have fought more nicely, so they could drag me back for round two.” I tried to say all that, but I’m not sure the message was conveyed through my wolf mouth. It probably sounded like: grrr errrr grrr grr.
Ares just stared at me, so I guess the feral noises did not help my case. I decided to focus on finishing my original task: breaking us out. I hobbled on four legs to the door of Ares’ cell. There was some sort of celestial bronze lock keeping the doors closed, but the main problem was his chains, which were made of something that sealed our powers. I decided to deal with the door first. With a snarl, I clamped my teeth down on the lock until it folded under my godly bite strength.
“Not saying that I don’t love violence, but you looked a little desperate there, it’s not a good look. Have you considered going to therapy?”
I rolled my yellow wolf eyes. “You first.”
Ares scowled. I guess he understood that wolf noise from me. I turned to check if the guards had the key to his chains. I don’t know why I was bothering to save this guy. All he did was take cheap shots at my expense. My nerves felt frayed, and for some reason, I heard a mini-Dionysus in my mind say: Wow, you are a mess. Glad I’m not you right now! LMAO. Today had just been gods awful. They had captured both me and Ares, but they specifically targeted me. They wanted to pry the future from my mouth. I felt rage creeping back in to replace the memories of guards and burning acid. I let it.
“I already go to therapy.”
Just like that, my rage evaporated.
I turned to Ares in disbelief. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I just looked at him, stunned. The god of poetry, speechless. In the back of my mind, I registered that I had shifted back into human form.
He smirked. “Ha. I win.”
“You’re pulling my leg. There’s no way. YOU of everyone on Olympus? In therapy?!”
Ares glared at me, looking like he was about to retort.
“Deep breaths Ares, remember what she said about anger management. Some people just take a while to get stuff through their thick skulls,” he muttered to himself.
Here’s some things you should know.
First off, Ares never reins in his anger unless it’s Aphrodite. Never. Ever. You would sooner see Zeus dance the macarena in a hula skirt than Ares calm himself down.
Second, if you had asked me to write down my future predictions of the next couple thousand years, the words Ares and Therapy would have only been on the same page as follows: “The mental damage from being around Ares caused (insert unfortunate soul’s name) to seek Therapy.”
Third, I was starting to wonder if this was all a vivid hallucination and real Apollo’s mind had floated up into the atmosphere the moment acid had hit my skin.
“Why? How?” I fumbled my words. “Why are you in therapy?”
“Losers keep being like: ‘you go to therapy first’ , every time I tell them the sad truth about themselves. Then I had this genius idea. What if I went to therapy first?!” Ares’ eyes lit up, which immediately set off my fight-or-flight response. “You have no argument anymore. So go to therapy, loser.”
I couldn’t believe this. I had just been tortured by maniacs, who I then gruesomely murdered. And now the god of losers was telling me to go to therapy.
I didn’t like the shame that rose in me.
“No. Nope.” I laughed a little hysterically, “No way. What am I supposed to do? Like, go to a super nice person and just be like, ooohh yeah some bad stuff happened to me, like just now when they dribbled acid on my face to try and make me reveal details of the future. Or like that one time Zeus held me down and slowly pressed the lightning bolt into my arm and my flesh started to burn away, and all I smelled was burnt lamb, so now every time someone grips my shoulder in a BBQ shop I want to scream. Oh and let’s not forget about that one time a clown violated my ass. Am I right?! ” I sneered, baring a mouth of sharp teeth. I stomped up to the guard and rummaged in his pockets until I found the key.
“That’s unfortunate. I get you.”
“Huh?” The comeback I had on the tip of my tongue died a horrible death. For the second time today, I blinked stupidly at him.
“I’m trying to be empathetic,” Ares stared at me like I was five. “Did the acid burn your brain as well as your skull?”
“No, I got that part.” I looked at him uneasily, “What did you mean by you get it? Get what? Did someone…”
I saw the moment it dawned on him.
“What? Hell no!” Ares spluttered, “NO. I mean the part about clowns. I hate clowns too.” He looked away from me and muttered, “They are a little scary.”
A surge of relief swept through me. My shoulders relaxed. “I’m not scared of clowns. I was just saying whatever random thing came to mind. But now that I think about it, maybe he was a clown.” I pondered.
“What?! You tricked me into admitting I was scared of clowns!” Ares yelled as I unlocked his chains. “I hate you! You better not tell anyone this!!”
“So you’ve said. Many many times.” I sighed. With a final clank, the chains fell to the floor. “We’ve got to go.” I turned to head out.
The war god flexed his wrist, frowning. He made no move to follow me.
“What?” I scanned him again, was he more injured than I realized?
“You really still haven’t told anyone other than me?”
Now I was frowning too. “Say it like I’m five.”
Perhaps the acid did melt my brain, it felt like my brother was spouting nonsense. It just added to the fact that I still felt like this was all a vivid hallucination my mind cooked up to distract me from my pain.
Ares looked at me, like he was searching for something, “Apollo. It’s been three thousand years. Does no one else know ?”
This conversation was going places I didn’t like. I looked away, glad we were in a place where the gods couldn’t hear us. “Posideon knows.”
“He doesn’t count. He was there. And he barely knows anyway.” Ares snorted. “Old man’s too busy counting the barnacles stuck onto his palace walls.”
My mouth twitched upwards. “True.”
“So what I’m hearing is you kept it all to yourself, discounting that one time you raged about Lamedeon when we were drunk off our asses.” His expression made me draw parallels to Meg’s when she was eating a lemon. Except this was like comparing a slug to a monkey, so I stopped.
“Anyways, in conclusion, you are lame.” Ares finished.
“Wow.” I deadpanned. “Gee thanks.”
“It’s not so bad. You just gotta find a samurai sword-wielding grandma. Who’s also a therapist. They’re tough as nails. And badass. They’ve seen a lot. They got the good advice.”
I squinted. “That is oddly specific. It’s almost like you go to a sword-wielding grandma therapist.”
Ares tried to look casual, which made him look like he was choking. “I swear that is not the case.”
I decided to humor him. Technically, we were wasting precious seconds chitchatting in enemy territory. But I guess that’s on par for us gods. “Well, fine. Let’s say that you go to this samurai grandma, which you definitely don’t, what do you even talk about?”
Ares shrugged. “I went because I wanted to win arguments. So we just chatted about everyday stuff? But surprisingly, some stuff she said helped? So I kept going.”
I felt some weird emotion rise in me. Ares had been different today, almost…considerate. I meant it when I said I believed Ares would never go to therapy. In fact, until a few moments ago, I had wholeheartedly believed that none of my family ever would. Seeing him like this, was odd. I didn’t know what to make of it.
I realized Ares had been waiting for me to speak. Another thing that should not have been possible.
“You know what…you did what everyone in this family couldn’t,” I tried to speak like my world had not tilted on its axis. “Good job. I mean it.”
Another silence.
Ares frowned at me, probably trying to see if I was serious. Or mocking him. Or maybe just deranged.
“Well…,” He said finally, “I guess I am the genius among losers.”
I’m not a loser! I wailed internally.
“But…I mean, if there isn’t a samurai sword-wielding grandma you could talk to, I guess… you could talk to me.” He gave me a non-commital shrug, like he just hadn’t uttered the worst sentence to ever grace my ears.
This was it. My world was ending.
I’d fallen so far that my half-brother, of whom the only thing we had in common was our mutual hatred towards each other, was trying to give me therapy.
“Well!” Ares patted my non-acid-burned shoulder as he walked out, “Let’s get a move on.”