Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

Years Ago

When the Sun Set On the Last Chosen

"AGAIN."

The girl followed the speaker’s orders, picking up another knife from the table and folding her fingers over it, efficiently holding the blade in a delicate balance. Blue eyes flickered to the targets scattered across the range, a disinterested expression on the girl’s face as she raised her hand higher and drew it back—the action almost like nocking an arrow—before sending it hurtling across the expanse with the ruthlessness of a snake. The blade slammed into the center of the target, just a hair’s breadth away from bull’s eye, and the first speaker pursed her lips.

“Almost, Your Ladyship,” the mercenary said, “but not quite.”

Seraphina looked at the other.

Irritation was there, but a hollowed out form of it—the mercenary knew Seraphina could be polite when she wanted to, but most of the time the girl exhibited all the stereotypical behaviors of a noble brat but not. The airs of a scholar in an ivory tower—restrained emotion, unrestrained pride, and almost otherworldly detachment from the world. It wasn’t a glare that the girl shot, but it felt a customized facsimile of it, a sharpening of the eyes and the smile that nailed you to the ground where you stood.

“Again?” Seraphina queried.

“Sit down,” said the mercenary. “Give me the knife.”

And there was that suspicion again.

Searching for some kind of hatred, some kind of vehemence.

“Okay.” The word—and the knife—was tossed casually, and the duke’s daughter settled down on the soil as if it was a luxurious couch.

She was, what, fifteen? Sixteen? (No, lessons had started on her fifteenth birthday—so fifteen, obviously.)

A long silence.

(The sky was grey, and the expanse was too—there were Guards around, but something inside the mercenary had been concerned when they were all studiously ignoring the duke’s daughter. Some of them were even playing cards. Sure, most of them looked up when Seraphina landed a particularly nice throw, but the mercenary had observed one of them elbowing the other and they'd laughed together, like they were watching a circus act. The rest—they’d stared in fear. Some even in hatred.)

What had the girl done?

“Tell me,” the mercenary said, “about your teachers. Before.”

Seraphina’s eyebrows had raised.

“Does this have anything to do with knife throwing?” she remarked mildly.

A silence, before she spoke again, out of interest.

“Which one?”

“I don’t know.” The other settled herself across from the aristocrat. “Whoever you remember. Tell me a story.”

The girl interlaced her fingers together.

“Okay,” she said simply. She said this as if she had nothing else better to do—or something along those lines. But there was genuine interest in her eyes. A longing. (For conversation? Questions? Speech?) “My first Tutor...I remember all of them, and it wouldn’t really be an interesting story if I got at length, I suppose.” Seraphina paused, considering. “But the first was a bald man. He had a mustache, and a beard—it made his mouth seem small.”

The mercenary got settled. (There was a point to this, of course.)

“And?” the mercenary pressed. “What was his name?”

The girl shrugged. “I don’t remember. It was a year ago. What I do remember, though, was that he was a bastard and I wanted to kill him.”

Her lips stretched at that.

The mercenary let the duke’s daughter continue.

“The guy tried to train me like I was some sort of animal. You know, the experiment where you ‘ring a bell when it’s dinnertime, and feed the dogs after’ so they inherently associate that sound with food?” Blue eyes crinkled. “Only he refused to admit he was wrong. I would say something, and he would say, ‘No, you’re wrong,’ and then say the exact same thing when he was correcting me, only in different words. Annoyed me to no end. Hours and hours of him repeating what I said. Slowing his syllables down. Like he was speaking to a child.”

The disdain was evident.

The girl waved a hand.

“And I know, I probably shouldn’t want him dead for that,” she continued with a snort. “But he started getting violent when he wouldn’t get his way. ‘See, this is why they call you a beast! You keep talking back!’ And then he would pick whatever book he held in his hand, and fling it at my face.”

No fear was in her face as she spoke openly.

“My mother came in once, when he was doing that. I didn’t hit back once, you know. Not because I didn’t want to, but because if I did, he would complain and then Theadora or Matthias would say something and remove him and not give me any tutors again.”

Her fists curled, the first sign of anger. She wasn’t speaking directly to the mercenary—more like nowhere and somewhere at the same time.

“Theadora came in and saw him throwing books at me. The first thing she said? ‘Not the face! We have a ball to go to tonight!’”

Sarcasm hid frustration as she laughed.

“And he kept teaching, and kept lecturing me, for the better half of a Daycycle, before I apparently ‘pissed him off to no end’ and he just packed up his bags and went. Apparently he ‘couldn’t deal with it anymore,’ that bastard.”

Coldness settled in the girl’s features.

“And then he went and started spreading rumors about me, saying things about how I was tyrannical, a brat, and arrogant, and how all the rumors about me being creepy were true. Matthias had a field day with that, believe me.”

She laughed again.

An acrid silence, as Seraphina looked from the sky to the mercenary.

A small, lingering smile was on the noble’s face.

“The next bastard,” she informed the mercenary, “had a whip. And knives. Now that was a fun time.”

Now Seraphina searched the mercenary’s face, for some kind of reaction—hate, vehemence, pity. This didn’t seem like deliberate manipulation, the mercenary thought. The girl genuinely wanted to know what a person was thinking. And sure, the gaze was disconcerting—eyes that were wide and expectant, almost unblinking—which explained why Seraphina seemed visibly surprised when the mercenary met the girl’s eyes.

“My name is Pallas,” the mercenary volunteered. “At least, that’s my name here.”

Seraphina tilted her head.

“Like Pallas the Proud? The emperor before?”

Pallas smiled wryly.

“You could say that.”

The mask was rippling.

Yes, you’ll do quite nicely.

Seraphina got scarily better. And it was terrifying, Pallas thought. The first few sessions the girl had treated herself like a hobbyist, throwing only to hit the mark and nothing else. But after that day, Seraphina had thrown herself into the “study of the blade” with a ferocity that was almost manic, and Pallas didn’t know whether or not it was a remedy or a poison.

The study of the blade.

See, the old fogeys in their aristocratic families had their swordsmanship Tutors and all that, but really they were taught only as a defensive skill and usually only in military families. It had been a surprise that the mercenary—who was, one, foreign; and, two, had a less than squeaky-clean reputation—had been chosen, and Pallas had asked.

“I chose you,” said Seraphina. “Not me, not my parents—well, they wanted to choose an ‘educated’ Tutor, but we both know how that would turn out.” The girl smiled. “You have quite a reputation in Notus, you know? I think there was a barony around that area whose caravans you attacked. The daughter of that family was very, very loud when describing your feats. Spinning blades and all.”

Pallas—did remember that stint.

“So you took her word for it, Your Ladyship?” the mercenary asked, surprised.

Seraphina scoffed. “When would I take other people’s words for anything? No, I dug deeper. You interested me. Your...unique sense of humor was what drew me. And the tavern rumors—oh, the tavern rumors.”

Pallas blinked.

“And the Guards...just followed your orders?”

The mercenary wanted to add, No offense, but it doesn’t seem like they have any ounce of respect for you, but it would, in fact, be offensive.

“I made them follow my orders,” the duke’s daughter corrected. “They can call me a witch all they want, but I am the daughter of the man who rules this place. The maids are really more problematic than the Guards—the cowards just need a bit of intimidation, but everyone in the manor itself hates me. They didn’t, before. They just ignored me. But the rumors started becoming more intense, and they started collectively trying to oust me.”

She looked mildly amused.

“I wonder what they’ll think it’ll achieve. If I’m gone, Matthias and Theadora’ll just cook up another baby, and as much as both my parents don’t acknowledge my existence most of the time, it’s time lost. It’s as if some of them want to take my place—and if they’d asked, maybe I would’ve even said yes, poor girls.”

Opportunistic parents. A hostile household that isolated her. It was almost...pitiable, was that the word?

Pallas tilted her head. “You haven’t tried to convince your parents otherwise?”

Seraphina eyed the mercenary for a bit, as if wondering why Pallas was asking, but conceded, as if Pallas was an only option. “Why would I? To them, I’m an irreplaceable tool that needs no other maintenance than fulfillment of a whim every now and then. If I would try to convince them, what would it do? How long would I take, where would I start? I’ve tried to start, but every route’s ended up unfavorably.”

“People would call that fatalistic, you know,” returned Pallas. “Saying you can’t change them.”

“It’s my life,” responded Seraphina. “Don’t I get to decide how I want to live it?” It was almost challenging, childish.

“Never disagreed,” the mercenary said. “It just doesn’t seem like you have much choice.”

The noble snorted. “There’s no point in bringing it up if you’re not going to make a choice for me,” was all she said.

Pallas shrugged. “I guess you could say that.” The mercenary picked up a knife from the ground and twirled it around her knuckles. A parlor trick. Familiar.

Pallas stood up, and offered a hand to the girl.

“Do you want me to teach you how to kill?” the mercenary offered.

The interest was back again, and the hand was accepted.

Blue eyes glimmered.

“And you said you weren't going to make a choice for me,” Seraphina returned with a grin.

The first fight was terrible.

Seraphina was awkward lunging, and was more concentrated on slashing and getting hits in, than tactically doing—well, anything. And Pallas was all for that—who needed to listen to the people walking around and preaching that fighting was an art form, killing had a standard—but, one, the girl’s style was unrefined; and, two, she was barely getting any hits in.

(To give her credit, Pallas had years of experience—and Seraphina, well, did not.)

The mercenary sidestepped arcing blows and viciously timed attacks, and, after a while, when the sun dipped into the earth and Seraphina’s wrist stamina gave way, the noble hissed and yielded.

“Is this supposed to be teaching me a lesson?” the girl asked. Fatigue was wearing away at her brow, sweat beading on the sides of her face, but she somehow still managed to phrase it like an accusation.

“Bluntly speaking, yes,” the mercenary responded, reaching out a hand for the knife. Seraphina eyed the hand, as if the noble was considering whether to chop it off at the wrist, before (reluctantly) surrendering the blade with all the grace of—well, a noble.

“As in, you’re teaching me how to lose? Work hard? ‘Not everything’s fed to you with a golden spoon’?” An acrid disdain—there it was again—came along with her wry smile. “Believe me, I’ve been ‘taught’ that lesson many times. I don't believe it’s a fundamental part of education, but I suppose anything goes here, right?”

Mistrust, anger, irritation.

They were all well-hidden under mildly dry remarks, but Pallas could feel the noble re-assessing her worth. It made you almost want to prove yourself, that feeling.

The mercenary shook her head. “You’ll have to trust me on this one, Your Ladyship. I’m not trying to hit a lesson into your head. It’s unproductive. You can’t learn how to climb just by hitting the ground—I just needed a reference on how to instruct you. And I found it.”

A long silence.

Blue eyes squinted, as if trying to scrutiny the truth out of Pallas, but the mercenary’s apparent earnesty had thrown the noble off.

Seraphina smiled. Not in apology—more like a self-satisfied quirk of the lips.

“And what did you find, pray tell?”

Pallas smiled. “A lot of things.”

Posture, grip, technique—technically, the mercenary had been only employed to teach knife-throwing, but the asleep Guards and the unspoken invitation from the noble meant this was going to be an interesting time.

“You told me a story last time,” the mercenary added suddenly. “I guess it’s my turn now, isn’t it?”

The noble flopped ungracefully on the grass. “An ethical dilemma to hammer your point home? Or a Tale?”

“A Tale, yes,” Pallas agreed. “An ethical dilemma? Arguably. But a friend once told me that you could argue anything.”

Seraphina made a vaguely affirmative noise. “Go on.”

The mercenary shifted, dropping onto the grass but a distance away.

“It starts with the Gods playing God,” Pallas Athena said, “and another playing Hero, as all stories do.”

Empires Ago

When Olympus Stood in the Sky and Bright Eyes Guarded the City

The name itself, Pallas, meant something along the lines of spear-warrior maiden, which sounded quite terrifying if one dwelled on it. (πάλλω, to brandish; and παλλακίς, maiden. Athena herself did not know whether Triton had consulted a seer at the nymph’s birth, but the name was fitting.) Pallas herself was equally as formidable as her name, a granddaughter of Poseidon and his wife, Amphitrite; a daughter of Poseidon’s son, Triton, whom Athena herself had been placed under the care of.

Athena smiled.

Are we having another match, today?

(There were many variations on this specific Tale, but the ending was the same.)

Pallas smiled back. “Of course,” she said. Her nymph features made her naturally beautiful—her dark skin glowed under the sun, sweat added a glistening sheen to her hard face. A spear, long and threatening, was held in her hand. It was sharp like her teeth as her grin grew wider and Athena’s own began to match.

Lake Tritonis glimmered behind the nymph, waves and waves of muted blue that mingled with bright green, and Athena smelled the salt in the air as readily as the salt on her skin. The sun was bright, almost threateningly full, and the sands beneath the two women’s feet gathered on their bruised arms and eroded feet.

Are we going to change it up a bit? asked the Goddess. His Majesty worries that I might be injured, but—

“Come on,” assured Pallas. “When have we ever injured each other?”

Athena knew that they were both formidable warriors—Pallas fought bravely, although not rashly, with the same valiance that you would expect of a seasoned warrior. And the nymph was a seasoned warrior, Athena supposed, in all aspects: hardened by ferocious practice, but never losing what made her Pallas.

They both were on each other’s level, and Pallas was right: Athena and her had never injured each other severely before.

It was fascinating, fighting with each other—spears brushing against each other, iron sharpening iron. She was a Goddess, after all, and war was her dominion.

Iron sharpening iron.

There was a pause, where glances were exchanged, and then the two leaped into action.

Whether it was the sun, the sea, or the wind in their hair, this fight was different. Sharper. More acrid, more tangible. Pallas’ swipes were far more vicious—Athena remembered she’d taken up a new discipline—and wide-reaching, which meant the Goddess expended most of her stamina dodging during the fight. Athena brought her spear outwards in a pointed strike, and Pallas easily dodged—but then the Goddess brought the tail back and let it slam into the nymph’s side.

Pallas was brought to the ground, but only for a second, as the nymph nimbly climbed upwards again.

“Well, that’s going to leave a bruise,” was all she managed to say before she lunged, charging Athena, and the Goddess fell back as the nymph pressed.

The exchange prolonged for a long time under the sun, and Athena laughed in enjoyment as Pallas’ spear clanged against her own—but the Goddess had one more move left.

The two were breathing hard by the time Athena cast her gaze upwards, and Pallas’ own followed—

—and then the Goddess lunged forward, spear in her hands, and landed a blow that took all of her divine might.

The nymph fell to the ground.

Well, Athena said, it seems like I have wo—

Blood.

The Goddess looked at the life draining from her friend’s face, and paused.

Horror on the face of a God.

Empires Later

When She Who Fights in Front Puts On a Mask

Pallas’ mask was slipping. Technically, she was not Pallas—the mask she was wearing was someone by the name of Imogen of Angau, a Gailbraith mercenary who had, in fact, bore the name of Pallas as a Notian freelancer. The original Pallas made up the current mask, mortal and not, grafted at the seams by divine power. (Dionysus preferred to call it possession. There was a better term for it.)

Athena had wanted to descend to see. It was not curiosity, but more some sort of Morai-induced obligation.

The last Chosen.

All things considered, Seraphina...was, in mortal terms, strange. Athena had seen Odysseus himself in Ithaca, Paris of Troy, Ajax the Lesser, the Greater, and every mortal Hero that had existed under the Sky. Athena had not expected the girl to be on par with a young Hercules, or in need of aid like Perseus, but certainly the Goddess had a strange understanding of mortals.

Gods felt mortal feelings, but they were not, fundamentally, mortal. They did not fear death, or divine judgement, and they did not reincarnate. They did not love the same way mortals did, or live the same way they did.

When the Fates foretold the end of Olympus, Athena had felt a strange sort of desire. To see it all end, to see it all crumble.

Of course, she had not paid it any mind before: the Chosen of the Queen’s Cage, whether the process determined by Hera or not, had revitalized the Myths that made up the plane that was Olympus (and it had become a metaphysical plane, and not a reachable expanse, as the years had stretched on). There were no Tales to be made, no braziers or sacrifices to be lit or offered in temples of old, no fervent worshippers in the form of kings and men.

There would be no more Myths to be made.

And, perhaps, Athena conceded, that was why the Gods had retreated from the world. Exits from the plane were few and far in between, and very rarely authorized. The names of lesser Gods were washed away from the world. Nymphs, satyrs, every creature that had once walked the earth and made civilization wild—they had withered away into corners. No more drunk maenads, or pretty naiads—which was probably for the better, Athena thought. At least, for Hera.

Zeus had become increasingly reclusive, almost concerningly so, when the prophecy had been announced. He had sent out a decree saying that Gods were no longer “allowed” to intermingle with humans, and Olympus became less of Olympus and more of a distant entity. A heaven that you could not see. A Sky that was Above, but one you did not look up to pray to.

Gods started dying as their worshippers ceased. Some of them, who had left behind Legacies—like Tyche, and even Helios and Selene—were remembered; but the period before the Cage had changed everything.

That was how the second “Pandora” had been made.

But that was something to be saved for later.

Instead of telling the story she wanted to, Pallas Athena told the story she needed to: about Prometheus, and fire.

Seraphina learned well. Terrifying well, in fact. That ruthless streak to her knives had arrived as they fought more and more, and Pallas had passed on a dual-wielding habit as a contingency: a paragon of Notian and Gailbraith “swordsmanship,” except it was not really swordsmanship because there were not any swords in the process. It was mercenary, Athena thought, observing her mask’s style.

Arrogant.

The Goddess herself had seen many, many styles of war—Carian and Ionian influences were immersed in Eurus’ warrior culture, even some western Thrace. A Mycenaen streak was in Anthinon’s Winterdeath, with Sparta’s shape melting into Notus (it was formerly a Roma city after all), and the names and traditions of many, many old cities bleeding across the modern Empire.

But the Old World was no more.

Athena did teach Seraphina some mortal tricks that she knew, but other than that the teaching was all Pallas’ handiwork.

Of course, a Daycycle or two would not shape a girl into a Hero, but just as Roma was not built in a day, it nearly burned in one. (The keyword was nearly, Athena thought. As it always was.)

The Ability that Athena was about to give the girl was an abomination. An adaptable abomination, saved for the first and the last of the Gods’ Chosen, but it was an abomination nonetheless. Technically, Athena was on the precipice of surrendering two of her divine Abilities: Weave, and Read—with the last gift from all of the Olympians, the premonition Ability Thought, which meant that Seraphina herself was the third (and last) Pandora.

Pandora, the first—“original”—Pandora.

Pantognóstis, the second—and First Emperor—Pandora.

And, finally, what Athena called Pantodýnamos, the third—and last—Pandora, the last Chosen of a very long line and Olympus’ legacy: the Ability that the Gods had decided to give the last Harbinger.

It was a lofty name, but then again all the greats lived up to theirs.

(All standards considered, Pantodýnamos was a Pandora’s Box to Pandora herself. As more and more Empire-shaking events happened as Seraphina rose to prominence, Thought would become easier for the girl to use, and therefore the Box would be slowly opened, releasing all of mankind’s sins to the world. And Olympus.)

It was the power of the Fates—and part of Olympus’ last Legacy.

And it would be what would make Seraphina into a Hero—

—if she decided to be one.

And—

The doors were opened as Seraphina rushed out of the ballroom with a bloodied knife in her hand, weeping. She looked around, at the uncertain Guards, and decided to go down a specific hallway, to a specific residence. She was pitiful, and terrifying at once, knocking and pounding at the door as the knife hung carelessly in her hand.

Athena’s head swivelled.

The knocks came a few seconds later, and the Goddess adjusted her disguise.

“Are you alright, Your Ladyship?” Pallas managed to rasp out, opening the door, before Seraphina burst out bawling in her arms.

The sixteen-year-old was shaking, snot smearing on the mercenary’s armor, as the noble’s face contorted into a scared, almost childlike wail.

“I—killed a boy,” Seraphina said, as if this was not merely an obscene thing, or something unforgivable, but something beneath her. “He—was an idiot, so I killed him, and—” She hiccupped. “They’re all going to know. By tomorrow, by Dayend, by the end of this Dayhept, they’re going to notice, Mo—Pallas.”

Pallas pretended not to notice the near slip-up.

The mercenary coaxed the rest of the background out of Seraphina, and instantly Athena knew.

It was time.

“You are mortal, dear daughter,” Athena said. “It is mortal to kill, is it not? War, death, conflict—to explain the origin of all this as divine, it is utterly fitting. Mortal. It is mortal to blame. Only mortals would find a way to excuse their inherent nature, with or without the Gods. It is mortal to die. It is mortal to rage. Whether it costs lives, or eras, no being—divine or otherwise—can escape the mortal suffering that is life.” The Goddess felt Seraphina still in her arms. “Wisdom is not gained with age. It is not gained with foresight or hindsight. It is gained through regret.”

Blue eyes were glistening with tears.

“Regret this,” the Goddess told her Chosen. “It is mortal to forget, but ‘just because history repeats itself, does not mean you should ignore it the first time,’ yes?” One of her favorites. Icarus had reminded her of both Daedalus and Odysseus, all of them so—beautifully? Terrifyingly?—mortal. “Regret, arrogant one,” continued She Who Fights in Front, grip tightening around her Chosen’s arms. “Fight. Live. Suffer.”

It is mortal to forget.

But Athena remembered. All Gods did. The exact sheen of sweat glistening on her friend’s face, the exact shade of the blood on the sand; the exact whispered tones of her favored mortals as they called out one last time for their Goddess, their savior; the exact words that had caused every war, the exact faces of every death and every Hero that fought to prevent those deaths.

And so the Goddess embraced her last Chosen, and dulled the vivid memories they had together, letting the important parts fade away to obscurity like grains of sand through mortal fingers.

Death, the divine madness. Life, the mortal sanity, like Dionysus liked to say so often.

Life did sober.

Prometheus has given you this ardent flame of mortality, Athena told her Legacy. Suffer until the end, arrogant one.

And with that, the Goddess left.

Years Later

When the Sun Rose On the Last Chosen

You of conflict and desire, Pallas Athena said to the future Empress. Bow before me.