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Hera's Odyssey
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Hera's Odyssey
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===Chapter 6 - Arrival=== [[File:Graphic Lore Chapter 006.png|350px|right]] There was a rush of static across her skin, and an instant's nauseating stab of dislocation, and Hera was in another place. The sea enfolded her senses, salt spray and warm sand. The ground no longer bucked beneath her feet, the earth ceasing its efforts to rend itself apart, at least for the moment. But where she stood was no hidden vault of Ra, or some mist-shrouded place never before travelled. This was familiar to her. Hera frowned, looking up to see her arena hanging in the sky. She was on the beach, with Argus, Ra and Thor beside her. “What is this?” Thor asked the Sun God. “Seemed like a great deal of effort when I could have just jumped.” Ra contorted his beak in his best approximation of a smile. “The portal was less for us, and more to bring her to me.” “Her?” Ra pointed out to the sea, where a sleek vessel of lacquered wood and billowing sails rocked gently upon the waves. “Yes, my solar barge. She will take us where we must go.” The boat glided across the surface of the sea, drawn to the subtle radiance of the Egyptian. She came just shy of grounding herself upon the beach, coming to a halt in the shallows before the assembled gods. Ra began to wade into the sea, looking back and giving a wave to Hera. “Come, the seas are calm but they may not remain so for long.” Thor sloshed into the water toward the solar barge. Hera looked to Argus, who stooped down to gather up his mistress and set her carefully upon his shoulder. The giant proceeded to Ra's ship, mindful not to splash the water with his ponderous bulk, before lifting Hera up to place her upon the ship's deck. Hera took hold of the barge's railing, ornately carved with stylized glyphs and depictions of Ra and his many deeds. The barge lurched to one side as Argus hauled himself aboard, rocking back and forth from his weight until he plodded to the centreline of the vessel and knelt beneath the main sail. “Best you stay there, friend,” Thor chuckled. “I'd like to get where we are going without having to swim there.” Ra raised a hand, and the glow emanating from him intensified. Hera felt a current of warmth wash out over the deck. The seawater dried from the party, leaving behind a delicate rime of salt that shivered away on the wind. The gentle heat withdrew, gathering to fill the bright white rectangle of the solar barge's main sail. The vessel turned toward the open sea and leapt out onto the waves. The solar barge bore them across the great sea, carrying them through the narrow straights that led out to the vastness of the ocean beyond. Hera looked out upon it from bow of the ship, an unbroken horizon of deep blue. Argus growled, and Hera turned back to see her champion hunched in a crouch under the main sail, his immense arms crossed angrily over his broad stone chest. A flock of gulls was orbiting above him, a winged halo to mirror his own wheel of faces. The imagery was lost on her giant, she then realized, as the birds seemed set on treating him as they would any ordinary statue. Argus remained unmoving despite his growing anger, for fear that any sudden movement to exercise his ire might capsize the ship. Hera smirked, focusing her mind across her connection to nature. The birds twitched, and departed from above Argus to soar away toward the horizon. The giant offered her a grunt of thanks, scraping away at his shoulders to rid himself of what the gulls had left behind. “Could have let me see to them, big guy,” said Thor, sending a quick wave of lightning rippling over Mjolnir. “Gulls aren't bad eating.” “Just as well this way,” said Hera. “Until I know what it is we are facing and how to stop it, I'll need your strength undiminished.” “Aye,” the God of Thunder ceded. “We go to find my true destiny, and I'll be ready to meet it.” Hera watched Thor as he slowly paced the deck. Tension was writ across him as though he were a coiled spring. The worn leather wound about Mjolnir's grip creaked in his fist. “What is it?” she asked. Thor stopped, his usual affable manner gone. “Ever since I was old enough to stand, the Allfather prophesied my destiny. Thor, son of Odin and God of Thunder, the one who would rise to meet a darkness great enough to eclipse all the realms. Ragnarok was always foretold to be that darkness.” “Was it not?” asked Hera. “Ragnarok very nearly destroyed us all.” “And yet here we are,” replied Thor, “with Ragnarok ended, and in spite of all that was lost, of all the blood shed to end its madness, I find myself unfulfilled. Hollow, even. It was meant to be my greatest challenge, a moment where the fate of creation rests on a knife's edge, and that I would be the one to decide it. But that was not what happened.” “It was Hel and Fenrir who unleashed Ragnarok's devastation. They would never have been defeated without you.” “A family squabble,” Thor shook his head. “If Ragnarok was not truly the ground where my destiny will unfold, where my deeds will be the stuff of songs sung for all time, then perhaps this is. Fortune is in the wind, I can taste it. Whatever it is that is coming, I feel bound to it. Our fates are intertwined.” “Then it is good that you are with us,” said Hera. Thor paused, lost in thought, before giving a short nod and returning to his pacing. “The air has taken on a different weight,” said Ra. “Has it not?” “Tell me,” said Hera. “What is it that we are seeking?” Ra took a step forward to stand beside her. “In truth my Queen, I do not know what it is.” Hera gave the Egyptian a sidelong glance. “Then how do you know that this is even the right course?” “Light.” She blinked. “What?” Ra extended his hand out, looking down upon the shadow that it cast upon the deck. “Shadows cannot exist without light, they are kindred after a fashion. Each and every one of them is defined by the light that surrounds them and gives them shape. The danger that is coming, that is making its arrival known through the torment of the land and seas, is no different. It is darkness, and thus there is a light to confront it.” Hera watched the eye at the end of Ra's staff, imagining an invisible chain linking it with their destination. “That is how my Eye sees, my Queen,” said Ra, guessing at her thoughts. “In light, and in shadow. I may not know what we will find when we reach the end of the path it has laid out for us, but I am certain that it will be the key to our triumph.” Their voyage continued across the ocean, bearing upon the course dictated by the Eye of Ra. Even as the sun dipped beneath the horizon and night draped the waves in darkness, the Sun God's luminescence continued to infuse the sails of the solar barge, making them shimmer like spun gold to carry them on. Night passed into day, and the barge ended its western course. She turned north, and the air slowly grew colder as they left the lands of the Grecian and Roman pantheons behind. The mainland appeared as a hazy stripe across the eastern horizon, kept just within sight. Hera descended into the ship, seeking to rest out of the sun's reach. There was much to consider before they arrived wherever the Eye was leading them, and Hera needed peace and solitude to examine what the proper course of action was to be. But she would not get the chance. The solar barge gave a sudden, violent heave that threw Hera from her feet. A crate snapped loose from where it had been secured behind her, exploding as her protective barrier flashed into place. Teeth clenched, Hera snapped up her sceptre, swiftly climbing the stairs leading back up to the top deck. “What has happened?” shouted Hera over the spray and crashing waves. “A storm?” “No,” bellowed Thor, looking up from where he gripped the ship's railing. “This is no storm!” Hera joined his gaze, and then his confusion. The sky above them was still, a tranquil, blistering blue studded with only the barest wisps of cloud. And yet the ocean around them churned as though seized by the malice of a hurricane. Waves reared up to colossal height, the smallest easily four times the ship's mast, before rolling and smashing down against one another like burbling thunder. The barge jerked and bucked as it was tossed between the immense breakers and caught within the violence of their collisions. “Steel yourselves!” Ra called from the bow of the ship. He rooted himself at the very front, his every ounce of concentration devoted to the staff he held raised in both hands. The Eye pulsed, shining like a beacon amidst the chaos. Hera felt the breath forced from her lungs as the barge was caught up upon the back of an ascending wave. They rose with alarming speed, the lacquered timber of Ra's vessel squealing and cracking as it flexed. Hera looked down, fighting the wash of vertigo to see the tempest lashing across the ocean's surface in a long, winding stripe. Argus cried out with a sound like granite splitting, one arm wrapped about the ship's mast, the other stretching out toward Hera. She extended her hand, trying to reach his, but unable to from the railing she clung to. She crouched, lowering her center of gravity as the ship threatened to hurl her loose. The wave reached its apex, momentum bleeding away as gravity fought to reassert itself and tear the mountain of water back down. Hera heard the ship groan like an anguished beast as it rode atop its summit, beginning to spin as the whitecap beneath began to dissipate. The bow tilted down toward the ocean's surface, and they fell. The solar barge plunged down like an arrow, the light of its sail masked by the walls of shifting water churning around it. Hera felt her stomach fly up into her throat, nearly flung into the air a dozen times as the ship was buffeted by spray and the force of other colliding waves. The roiling surface grew closer, a swirling mass of water rushing up to meet them and dash them apart. Another smaller wave surged up, taking hold of the barge like a clumsy fist. Water sprayed across the deck, falling in sheets heavy as lead. It stole the inertia of their dive, though, and saved them from striking the water at a speed that rendered it little different than stone. But the impact was still severe enough to overcome Hera's grip and send her spinning across the deck. Hera cried out in pain and anger, any sense of direction stolen from her as she rushed over the slick timber. She twisted around as the tempest of waves smashed above her. She scrambled for a railing, a rope, or a gap of torn ship lathe, anything that could secure a handhold and keep her from being thrown overboard. The barge spun, now flinging Hera in the opposite direction. The wave carrying them failed, dropping the ship and leaving the Queen of the Gods hanging in mid-air. Argus reached out, plucking Hera from the air. He drew her to him, one massive hand still clamped around the barge's mast, and brought her protectively to his chest. A torrent of water slammed into the barge as they rolled up the center of a wave. Hera heard Ra cry out, growing too bright to see without blinding her. She looked away, feeling a moment of searing heat as a massive oncoming wave boiled away into steam. Hera blinked the afterimages from her eyes, seeing Ra visibly sag at the bow as the barge passed into a patch of calmer water. For a moment, the ocean was merely violent, rather than lethal. Gasping for breath, Hera was able to collect herself and take in her surroundings. The barge had travelled a great distance, through Ra's power somehow able to carve her way through the storm without reducing his ship to splinters. Hera could no longer see the mainland to the east, but there was a loose impression of land before them. There were what appeared to be isles ahead in the distance, barely visible through a bank of dense fog. “Beneath us!” Thor roared, gesturing wildly to the ocean with his hammer. “Look!” Argus released Hera, and she hurried to the ship's railing. Had it been night, or in the midst of a storm that choked the heavens with thunderheads the shade of dark iron, she might have missed it. But the sun shone brightly, and the clear sky lent the ocean's surface a striking clarity. There was something beneath the water. Hera could not determine any clear shape, only able to glimpse the impression of some vast object moving in the darkest depths. It covered an incredible distance, as though a mountain chain had detached itself from the ocean floor and now ground along by a will of its own. Judging from the distance between them, whatever it was, its scale was unimaginable. All of the ruin inflicted, the seas in boiling turmoil, the land splitting and fissures swallowing entire cities, it had all arisen from the thrashing of this entity from somewhere deep within the earth, like a hatchling emerging from an egg. Or a prison. The thought turned Hera's blood to ice the instant that it dawned. What if that were the truth? That someone, or something, had captured this evil and confined it within the earth's core, as though the planet itself was its cage. Now, it was trying to break free. And it was succeeding. At the same moment Hera realized this, an immense shadow fell over her and the ship. She looked up, seeing nothing before them but a wall of foaming ocean. A liquid mountain had exploded into being, and time seemed to slow as it reached it zenith, and then came hurtling down. The solar barge rolled up the tsunami a full ship's length before it was thrown at an angle and the hull snapped in half. The surf smashed the two halves into splinters, flinging the gods into the frothing deep. Hera struck the water like a stone. Sound stretched like honey, muffled within a rushing cloud of bubbles. Icy cold seized hold of her despite the blazing sun she glimpsed above the surface, slowing her movements and her thoughts. Her vision narrowed like a closing door, the temptation to relax and sleep nearly overwhelming. She had travelled so far, and fought so many battles. All she needed was a moment to rest. She had earned as much, just a moment. No. She refused to let the ocean carry her down into its depths, where the newly emerged darkness was spilling out like a living shadow. Whatever that entity was, it must be opposed. It must be defeated. She would not allow her odyssey to end here. Hera shook off the lingering concussion of the impact, summoning her barrier that coated her body and expanded outward into a sphere. Hera released the breath she had been holding, drawing new air into her lungs from what she had conjured within her bubble. As her vision cleared, she oriented herself, rising toward the surface. The sun's heat felt like paradise to the chilled flesh of Hera's face. She allowed her barrier to extinguish, using her sceptre to support herself as she swam for land. The misty isles were not far, and though she was exhausted, Hera's determination would see her to their shores. Hera collapsed onto the beach, fingers carving grateful channels in the wet sand. After a moment's respite she hauled herself upright, scanning around her and seeing that the other gods had already made it ashore. Ra crackled as his heat boiled away the water soaking him, while Thor stood next to him, almost completely dry. “I flew,” said Thor after reading her expression. He looked down at Mjolnir and frowned. “I should have just flown.” “Argus,” Hera looked across the beach, then into the rolling surf. “Argus!” As if on command, the brutal fingers of a massive stone hand shot up from the surface of the water. The full hand emerged, followed by the arm and then the many faces of Hera's champion. Argus trudged forward across the beach to them, spinning his wheel to dry his faces of seawater. “Well done my friend,” said Hera, reaching up to pull a strand of seaweed from the giant's armour. She looked to Ra. “I am sorry for what happened to your ship.” Ra dipped his head. “It is regrettable, yes. But fear not, her sails shall bear me across the waters of this world once more.” Hera's curiosity was peaked by the Egyptian's answer, and had this been any other time she would have pressed him further. But for now it was irrelevant, and time was of the essence here. “So,” Thor looked to Ra. “This is where we will find what we have been searching for?” “Quite so,” the Sun God lifted his staff, the Eye blazing like a torch. “The closer we come, the stronger the Eye's light.” “Let us not tarry here, then,” Hera looked back at the chaotic waters behind them, and her companions did the same. “We are out of time.” They crossed the beach in silence, each of them working to collect their own thoughts as they ventured deeper into the isle. The thin strip of coarse sand quickly gave way to high rocky hills, green with dew-laden grass. Mist clung to their walls and in the valleys between them, broken only by the scurrying of wild herds. “There is a high ground, just ahead,” said Ra, pointing with his staff. “Those cliffs. From there, we can gain a sense of the geography of this place.” The group began to climb. The rocky, hilly terrain of the isle was deceptively difficult to traverse, slick with the ever-present fog that hung over the ground like some obstinate spirit. The wet climate ensured that the ground was thick with sucking mud, and a chilling wind howled through the valleys and cut deep to the bone. Stretches of hills that had appeared at first to require little time to negotiate took hours, as though the isle itself was punishing them for every uninvited step taken upon its surface. Despite it all, Hera found a thin smile lingering upon her face. To think what she would have said of herself before, trekking across the world, the sights she has seen, the battles she has fought. What would the old Hera, bored and aloof upon her throne atop Olympus, have said to her now? What would Zeus have said? She stopped. Hera's eyes drifted upward to the sky, where a pair of darkening clouds was grinding together to the north. She glimpsed the tiny sparks of lightning as they blinked between them, and she felt their distant thunder within her heart. She believed her husband would have been proud of what she had done. “Are you alright my queen?” asked Ra, the party coming to a halt. “I am well,” Hera replied, still bearing a thin but warm smile. “Let us keep going.” Another hour's climb saw them atop the cliffs. As Ra had said, they offered a bird's eye view over much of the isle. From here, they would be able to chart a path leading to their prize, and not a moment too soon. It was Thor, as Hera had come to rely, who finally put voice to the question that each of them shared as they looked out over the cliff. “What is it?” “I do not know,” Ra shook his head slowly. “But I believe that it is safe to say that is the darkness we have been awaiting. And now it has arrived.” “The size of it,” said Hera. “It was the cause of those waves, just moving itself did that. Like some kind of incredible serpent.” “Or a wyrm,” Thor looked at Hera. “A dragon.” That last word echoed in Hera's thoughts, ricocheting off the walls of her mind. She spared a last glance at the ocean, its surface growing more tumultuous by the moment, and then back to the interior of the isle, where their only hope waited to be found. What could possible be there that could help us? Hera found herself wondering again, fighting to keep back the despair threatening to take hold of her heart. What slays dragons?
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