CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN

Pandora Unboxed, Part 1

“I don’t need to see the rest…” Tears were streaming down Sam’s face. “Please, don’t let me watch him die again…”

Apollo waved his hand and the scene of Sam’s dark past vanished, replaced by the white-hot room where the god and hero had their first conversation months ago.

“Tissue?” Apollo asked.

He snapped his fingers and a roll of tissue appeared in his hand.

“No thanks,” Sam said as he wiped at his tears with the back of his palm. It would be a while before he could ask Apollo why he’d brought him into that dream.

“Honestly, I’m not entirely sure,” Apollo admitted. “This was Chiron’s idea. He thought you should remember who your sister was first before meeting her again.”

“What for?” Sam asked.

“We have a saying on Olympus… Chiron works in mysterious ways,” Apollo chuckled. “But if I had to guess, then it’s so you don’t think too harshly of Serena joining the dark side… It wasn’t exactly her choice, was it?”

Sam’s brow furrowed as he glanced down at his feet. “Pandora the 8th really is Serena then?”

Apollo’s silence was answer enough for Sam.

“What do you know of the story of Pandora?” Apollo asked after a while.

The legend of Pandora was easy to recall because it was a parable told at every middle school as a warning to kids who liked to question adults too much or were too curious for their own good. Sam remembered it easily even now because he’d been one of those kids himself.

The story of Pandora the 1st was about a young woman who’d been sent down from Olympus by the gods to give humanity the gift of blessings. These blessings were kept inside her pithos which must only be opened when mankind was ready to receive gifts of the gods. However, Pandora had been a little too curious for her own good. She unsealed the pithos, hoping to get a first peek at these blessings—and that’s when they escaped.

Because of Pandora’s folly, the blessings of the gods flew out into the world. However, with no one to receive them, they grew cold and spiteful, leading to their corruption from an old malevolence that had been trapped deep within the Earth since the time before the age of gods. Thus, were the first horrors born; the elder giants who embodied the very opposite of what the gods represented.

“And from that one mistake did humanity’s fate change forever,” Apollo finished in a reverent tone that felt disingenuous to Sam’s ears.

“I could have done without the narrator’s voice,” Sam said with a shake of his head. Then he frowned. “Wait, you forgot the most important part…”

“Did I?” Apollo asked, feigning ignorance.

“Not all the blessings left the jar… one remained,” Sam remembered.

Apollo had a lopsided smile plastered on his face now. “And what blessing was that again?”

Sam sighed. “Hope… Only hope remained. Only hope was incorruptible.”

“Hope’s a powerful thing, Sammy,” Apollo said as he wrapped an arm over Sam’s shoulder. “With hope, man can do anything. Even reach up to the sky and grasp the stars with their fingers.”

With his other hand, Apollo snapped his fingers. Then, with a puff of smoke, a white dove appeared on the floor of the white-hot room.

“But hope is a fragile thing and it’s easily lost,” Apollo added. “It needs tending. It needs—”

“A nanny,” Sam guessed.

He shrugged Apollo off and then stepped away from the sun god. It wasn’t just because Sam didn’t like hearing a lecture that had been repeated since his days in middle school, but also because Sam was afraid he’d get sunburn from the intense heat Apollo’s body released naturally.

“The first Pandora was punished for her lack of foresight,” Apollo stated while seemingly unoffended by Sam’s brush-off. “Which, ironically enough, is what her husband, the equally foolish Epimetheus’s name stands for.”

Sam waited patiently for Apollo to finish chuckling at his own joke before urging him on because he knew better than to rush a god.

“As for the pithos, the gods brought it back to Olympus,” Apollo explained. Then he frowned. “But the damn thing just refuses to stay put.”

Apollo pointed a finger at the dove that was now flying around the white-hot room.

“Like an eager beaver, the spirit of Hope wants to spread its wings and share its blessing with the mortal world,” Apollo shrugged. “Don’t ask me where Hope gets its can-do attitude. Most of us immortals are more chill.”

“Yeah, it’s not like we mortals need you gods to show initiative and be helpful,” Sam chimed in.

“Exactly,” Apollo grinned. Then he frowned again. “I feel like you’re making fun of me, Sammy.”

“Nope,” Sam lied.

“Anyways,” Apollo was quick to bring those pearly-white teeth back into full view, “every few centuries, Hope gets all uppity inside the jar and escapes back into the mortal world, which is why—”

“You need a Pandora to watch over it,” Sam guessed.

“Um”—Apollo raised an eyebrow at Sam—“can you not interrupt me like that. It’s rude, you know?”

“Sorry. Won’t happen again.” Sam raised his arms in surrender, although he rolled his eyes at Apollo too. “But why do they all have to be called Pandora?”

“Tradition,” Apollo answered.

“Tradition?” Sam repeated with his eyebrow arching up.

“The first two caretakers after Pandora the 1st were also named Pandora in honor of their family’s matriarch. Why they’d want to honor the person who’d unleashed the Gigantes onto the world is beyond me though,” Apollo shrugged. “Crazily enough, whenever a new Pandora’s born, the Spirit of Hope descends from Olympus and attaches itself to her… Favoritism, am I right?”

“But hope’s in a jar,” Sam reminded Apollo.

“Being stuck in a pithos doesn’t mean it can’t work its magic, Sammy.” Apollo wagged a finger in Sam’s face. “Even inside its container, the Spirit of Hope’s presence on the mortal plane fills you, humans, with, well, hope.”

“Seriously?” Sam asked.

“Seriously,” Apollo answered. “Take these last hundred years for example.”

Apollo drew a golden line in the air, tapping on several dots along the line while he was at it. Sam recognized this as a representation of the timeline.

“You know what began in July of 1914?” Apollo asked.

As he tapped on the first dot in his golden timeline, images of a battlefield began to float across the surface of the white-hot room like a projector on its four walls.

“World War I happened,” Sam answered.

“The war to end all wars, they called it—and they were right…for a time. It was worse than even the Peloponnesian Wars or the sacking of Troy.” As he said this, Apollo looked genuinely downcast. “More than twenty million deaths as a direct result of this Great War—you humans made Ares extremely happy. Although we other gods admittedly played a key role in this conflict too.”

“You weren’t—”

“On the bad side?” Apollo interrupted, shaking his head afterward. “Unlike the one that came after it, I don’t think there were any real bad actors in this first world war, Sammy. Just a lot of dead people on both sides.”

Apollo tapped on the next dot, and Sam was greeted by a scene of hospital beds filled to bursting with patients who looked so sick that they seemed beyond saving.

“What happened next, Sam?” Apollo asked.

As a healer himself, Sam visibly balked at these images. “The Spanish Flu Pandemic happened…”

“five-hundred-million people infected”—Apollo raised five fingers—“and nearly fifty million deaths… It was kind of a hopeless situation, don’t you think?”

Sam nodded.

“That’s because it was,” Apollo said, his tone grave. “The world lacked hope because the Spirit of Hope wasn’t on the mortal plane at the time.”

“Wait,” Sam frowned, “Are you saying that whenever hope is on Olympus—”

“The world suffers for it?” Apollo shrugged. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Holy Zeus,” Sam breathed.

“Ugh,” Apollo cringed, “Please try not to mention the big boss’ name while I’m around… I don’t want him finding out about this pirate broadcast…”

“Pirate broadcast?” Sam repeated. “So, you’re not supposed to be talking to me?”

Apollo sighed. “I think I’ve mentioned this before, Sammy, but the gods aren’t supposed to be this direct when dealing with heroes. Why do you think we pay our priests’ outrageous amounts of drachma to represent us?”

“To block us from nagging at you guys all the time,” Sam suggested.

“Well, yeah, that too, I guess,” Apollo admitted with a sheepish grin. “But also, because direct interference is frowned upon… So, let’s try and not get me caught, yeah?”

As Apollo tapped on the third dot, images of thousands of soldiers gathered in front of a podium decked in the colors of Nazi forces enveloped the white-hot room’s walls.

“I’m sure you remember this little scene from the documentaries,” Apollo winked at Sam. “The moment Hitler seized absolute power and sent humanity down a path that—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—was even worse than the great war of the previous decade.”

“But there was one big difference between the first world war and the second one,” Sam realized.

Apollo grinned. “Yeah, there was.”

He tapped on the dot that was nearly touching the dot before it, and a scene of men and women in colorful costumes came to life on the walls of the white-hot room.

“Whereas World War One barely had any gifted fighting in the trenches…” Apollo let his last sentence hang in the air before his big reveal. “…this second war also marked the beginning of the seventh age of heroes.”