[DanMachi/Percy Jackson] Prytaneum

Interlude: The Goddess of the Hearth (1)

"Here," Hephaestus said. "It's done."

"Oooh," She drew out, looking at the large case she was handed, almost too large for her to carry properly. It was polished wood, surface as smooth and reflective as steel, and just looking at it made her sure that it had been carved by a master in its own right. But...however beautiful the case, it was nothing compared to what was held inside—a fact she confirmed as she opened it, for inside was a large shield of perfect black, its surface catching the light of the room in odd ways. Its surface seemed smooth at first, but a careful look seemed to hint at something within it, black on black.

In truth, the metal had started off the color of purest silver, fashioned from mithril. At once lighter and stronger than steel, Hephaestus said she'd chosen it because it was easier to forge with the strength of a human woman, but it's mirror like surface had been dyed steadily black in the process of its making. She'd helped by supplying several of the 'ingredients' for the shield; the blood and hair of a goddess, as well as her Blessing, written over the shield's surface again and again until it was entirely covered.

"What do you think?" Hephaestus asked, watching her closely. "Is it everything you expected?"

"Yes, it's perfect!" Hestia said, beaming at her friend brightly. "It's amazing, Hephaestus!"

Her friend closed her eye and nodded, relaxing slightly and looking exhausted. Even the one known in Heaven as the Goddess of Smiths was no more than an unblessed human woman here on Earth, and lighter than steel or not, it had taken many hours of forging to properly craft this shield. There was no magic involved, none of a gods Arcanum or even the power of an adventurer's Blacksmith ability—Hephaestus had crafted it with nothing but her own strength and skill, with at most a little help from her.

But that just made the shield even better in her eyes, as something crafted by her friend, the greatest blacksmith in this world or the next. Limitations of the mortal form or not, anything crafted by her hands was certain to be the best.

"You should rest," Hephaestus said after too long of a pause. "It's been several days now, hasn't it? You must be tired."

She was tired. Three days of begging on her hands and knees for help from her friend, followed by most of a day spent in the intense heat of a forge, helping Hephaestus make this masterpiece...it left her feeling more exhausted than she ever had, even since coming down to the mortal world. Her arms and legs felt like lead weights and her eyelids felt even heavier. When she let herself be distracted, her mind would wander and her thoughts were slow and she must have thought longingly of returning to the comfort of her bed a thousand times.

But now, she was so giddy that all of that felt secondary, like something far away. Because even if it had taken three days, had required the use of Take's fearsome 'dogeza,' little food and water and less sleep, she'd done it. Even if it had taken all of that, she'd done something that could help that boy, the child who'd joined her Familia not too long ago when everyone else had declined. The moment he'd accepted and she'd granted him her blessing, she'd vowed to herself that she would do everything in her power to protect her new Familia and to behave as appropriate for a goddess.

Except...things weren't that simple. The boy who'd become a part of her Familia was something special—something impossible—a fact that she'd been reminded of again and again. He claimed to be a demigod, the son of Poseidon and a mortal woman, and as far as she could tell, he wasn't lying to her. No mortal could lie to a god and everything she'd seen pointed to him telling the truth, so he wasn't simply delusional, either. He was a child that had somehow been born, even though the gods couldn't have children. They'd all been born as they were, without brother and sisters, mothers and fathers, or anything else of the sort, coming into existence in Heaven so long ago that she could barely remember. Some were older than others and they were all different, but they were gods. From the very start, having children, whether with each other or a mortal, simply wasn't possible for them.

And yet, Percy was. More than that, he was something else, too, and that was another claim she couldn't quite doubt. He claimed to come from a place before Orario, when things were different, making her wonder for the first time in a long, long while might have come before her. There were gods that were her elder, of course; Uranus, Zeus, Odin, Ra, and even Poseidon had always seemed somehow older than she and most of the others and by the time she'd been born, Mankind itself already existed, if very differently than they did now. She'd never paid much attention to the affairs of the mortal realm until a mere thousand years ago, when it became a matter of interest to the gods, but by that time both monsters and men had existed for a long, long time.

But that far back, everything was blank—the time before the gods came down from Heaven was a time mortals now referred to as 'Prehistory.' It was a time when monsters had been relatively free to walk the mortal world, being born from and escaping the Dungeon to run rampant. Slightly before the gods descended, Orario had been built as a fortification to try and hold back the threat, a united front of the many races of the world that had itself seemed doomed to failure. After that, with the god's Blessings and the strength drawn from the Dungeon, things had changed for all of Mankind, but even as little as two or three hundred years before that, history grew vague, leaving little more than myths and legends of what might have occurred. Perhaps the only people who'd know the truth of that time now were the spirits of this world and those gods and goddesses that had made a point to collect human souls.

She, however, wasn't one of them and having descended to this would only a few months ago, knew even less about those times than the average person. For all she knew, it was entirely possible that he was telling the truth and was a hero reborn from those times. Poseidon was one of the elder of the gods, enough so to be considered old even by their standards, and he was...himself, so that was possible as well. But what did that imply about this world's history and theirs? And what of the fact that he'd been reborn within the Dungeon?

And what was the Dungeon, then, for someone to be reborn into it in the first place? Even they, the gods, didn't know all of its mysteries, and that was why so many sought to create Familias of adventurers. But...although it was nothing more than a theory, even between gods...it was known that the souls of monsters did not go up to Heaven. The gods did not tend to them or guide them to rebirth—indeed, many wondered if they even had souls. Yet countless monsters were born every day and the populations of the Dungeon's floors remained the same. Could it simply be that instead of the gods handling their souls, something else did? But then, why would Percy be reborn in such a place?

Even to her, Percy was a mystery—something 'unique' and 'unknown.' Something that, to the gods, would have been considered priceless for that fact alone, something one of a kind to examine and boast of and play with. If her fellow gods, with a few rare exceptions, were too find out the truth about that, they'd be certain to take an interest in him. And it seemed almost as if the Dungeon, the place he was so focused on exploring, already had.

In the end, no matter what she wanted to do or be, she was a worthless goddess. From the very beginning, there'd been nothing she could do to help him but hide the truth and hope. She had no money, no other members of her Familia, no clout—nothing to offer or use to protect him, no way to help him, no way to do anything but worry and wait.

Every day, he came back more and more harmed—and every day, he seemed to drift further and further away, making her wonder if one day he might not come home at all.

But after what he'd said to her the last time they'd spoken, she knew she needed to do something as his goddess, to make sure that didn't happen. To help him, even if it meant begging for someone to help her in turn.

And she had. And whatever else it may have been, it was something.

"Hestia?" Hephaestus' voice drew her from her thoughts and she saw her friend giving her a concerned looking. "What's wrong now?"

"Nothing," She said quickly, smiling at her friend again. "Hephaestus...thank you for everything! Really! I'll pay you back for sure!"

"You'd better," Hephaestus replied, seeming unconvinced but sufficiently distracted. "I'll make sure you pay back every single valis that thing is worth, Hestia—it's not a gift. I made it because of the words you said and because of our friendship, but you will pay me back."

Even Hephaestus' stern voice wasn't enough to get any more than a shiver out of her right now, but she nodded quickly.

"And for that child as well," She said to distract her and change the subject, making Hephaestus grimace and make a somewhat embarrassed face.

"And for that boy's sake, as well," She admitted reluctantly, looking away. "One day, that boy will make amazing things, I'm sure, and the spark has been back in his eyes since he met that child of yours. He's fought and forged higher, bending his pride, and struggled to advance when he'd begun to doubt. He and your child have a contract that I don't wish to cross and someday Welf will forge something amazing to protect your child, but in the meanwhile...this should be enough to keep him alive until then, without causing either of them to stagnate. Give it to him along with my thanks."

"Yes!" Hestia said, perking up even more as her happiness helped push aside even more of her exhaustion. "I'll run home quickly and rest there, but first I want to—"

The door to the small room behind the Hephaestus Familia's main store swung open with a bang loud enough to startle them both and a muscular, dark-skinned woman—a half-dwarf, if she wasn't mistaken—entered quickly, shoulders sagging with relief when she saw them.

"You're done," She stated, seeming reassured by that fact. "I arranged to have someone send for me the moment you were, but..."

"Tsubaki," Hephaestus said, frowning at the woman. "What's wrong?"

"Something happened yesterday..." She began before pausing and frowning. "Yesterday night? I'm not certain but I was called into the Guild to help deal with it and...it's about Welf."