[DanMachi/Percy Jackson] Prytaneum

Chapter 47: Brewing part 1

"Hestia, you would know better that I would, but...is it supposed to be doing stuff like this?" I asked, frowning down at it as I met with the goddess. For all her claims about me overworking myself, less than a day after collapsing she was hard at work on North Main. Granted, selling snack food wasn't quite as dangerous as Dungeon-diving, but still.

My goddess frowned slightly, looking down at it with an odd expression. I'd swung by quickly to get her advice, my shield glowing all the while, simply because...well, because I had been able to figure out what was causing it or how to make it stop. Or if I was supposed to make it stop, even. Needless to say, I'd gotten even more weird looks than usual.

"I suppose it's a possibility," She said after a long moment, fingers tracing the surface of the shield as she considered it. If there was one upside, it was that the glow had dimmed somewhat after completing, sinking into the metal in a way that was hard to describe. Against the black metal of the shield, the designs looking like they'd been inlaid in polished marble or liquid pearl, only slightly luminous. It made for an odd contrast. "This shield has a Falna of its own, after all; it's not impossible that it would gain abilities in its own right by growing alongside you. However...from what I can tell, I don't believe that to be the case. If I had to guess, it's probably because of that strange skill."

I nodded, listening to her whispered words as we stood in an alleyway nearby Hestia's workplace.

"Thetis, right?" I replied. "I guess I thought as much—it grew over time, so I thought that it might have been charging. But...do you have any idea what it means?"

"I...can't say I do..." Hestia murmured, seemingly disappointed by that fact. "The truth is, even in the Sacred Text, there wasn't much to be found about it...Percy, do you know anything?"

"About Thetis?" I asked before shaking my head. "Just that she was the mother of Achilles."

"The mother of...Thetis was a person, then?" Hestia asked, sounding surprised.

"You didn't know?" I replied, even more confused than she was. "I figured that since you wrote it..."

Hestia shook her head.

"Even the gods don't completely control the Falna," She said before pausing. "Or rather, we don't want to. The Falna is a mystery, from which countless possibilities could develop, based on the changing lives of mortals. When I drew out your skills, I just translated them as closely as possible and I added their 'true' meaning in the hopes of clarifying things. Hope and Despair's I thought were rather pointless, but with something as cryptic as Thetis especially..."

"What were Hope and Despair's meanings?" I wondered.

"'Provide Hope' and 'Bring Despair,'" She answered.

"Oh," I answered, frowning. "That is kind of useless..."

"But you said Thetis was an actual person?" Hestia asked, bringing me back on track. "Was she a hero?"

"Uh...I'd consider her one, I guess?" I replied. "She was a nymph—a spirit—who was Achilles' mother, like I said. She did a lot to protect him."

"Achilles...the name seems vaguely familiar, but I can't say why..." Hestia murmured, shaking her head. "What did she do?"

"Well, she made him invincible, for one thing," I said. "Mostly invincible, I should say. Gave him her blessing and then did a lot to try and keep him safe during the Trojan War and stuff."

"'Invincible,'" Hestia repeated. "How?"

"Like I said, mostly invincible," I corrected. "It's kind of important in this case. But she held him in the River Styx and burnt away almost all of his mortality, leaving him invulnerable except for his heel. Do you know what the River Styx is? It's a river in Hades, or at least it was last time I checked."

"In Hades," She said. "As in, his realm in Heaven?"

"I guess?" I replied, causing her to purse her lips.

"If...if it was actually a river in Heaven, especially one ruled by a god of death like Hades...it's not impossible that such a thing could work..."

"Oh, it works all right," I said. "I mean, I did it and I've met the guy, too."

"You did it?" Hestia asked, sounding surprised before narrowing her eyes. "You get hurt surprisingly often for someone who's 'mostly invincible.'"

I gestured dismissively.

"Before I died, I mean," I said. "Which is kind of why 'mostly invincible' is important. When I had the Curse of Achilles, I could brush off nearly anything, but not actually anything, just like Achilles got shot in his...well, his Achilles' Heel."

"Achilles' Heel...that sounds familiar, too..." Hestia murmured before brightening. "Percy, do you think—"

"That it makes me invincible again?" I guessed, shaking my head. "No—that's sort of the first thing I thought of and trust me, I don't feel very invincible."

"Oh," She said, shoulders sagging. Maybe she'd thought that being invincible might keep me out of trouble. Hestia was kind of an optimist. "Then I don't know. Do you remember anything else about this Thetis?"

"Uh...I think my dad hit on her for a while? Him and Zeus, I think," I tried, reaching back to my mythological history lessons. The truth was, I probably had covered almost all of Greek Mythology across my various classes; Chiron was a good teacher and it was sorta, kinda, extremely important for any demigod to know. The only issue was, when you're the son of a god, a lot of myths get a bit too...informational, especially if you have a dad like mine.

Simply put, I have so many half-siblings, I can't even come close to remembering them all. As in, literally can't. There are at least a few hundred. And if you add in their children, relatives, and so on...it was a mess, even before you got into stuff like 'my dad seduced my aunt by turning into a horse' or 'my dad had a son with his grandmother' or 'my dad had a thing with Medusa' or...you get the idea. I'd trained myself to zone out whenever I heard keywords.

But hey. At least I wasn't Thalia.

"Yeah, they do that," Hestia said flatly, making a slight face. "And that's it?"

I nodded again. I vaguely remembered something about something happening with her in the Iliad, which I'd actually had to read, in the original Greek, for a paper. But even if I didn't have to deal with my dyslexia while reading it, that book could get a bit long, so I'd just used the internet, like everyone else who had to right a paper about some ancient epic.

"Then...if you think it's charging something, have you tried unleashing it?" Hestia asked, looking at it and I followed her gaze to the shield. "That might be the simplest way of finding answers.

The design on it had stopped growing shortly after starting, forming what I assumed to be a completed image. The entire thing seemed to be made of a series of circles inside one another. At the center was something I guessed to be small images of the Earth, sun, moon, and stars, forming a small disk in the middle of the shield. Then, a split ring showing two cities. A wide field, a harvest, a vineyard, a herd being attacked and defended, a farm, a party, and then a wide ring that seemed like the ocean. There were nine layers in all and the entire thing reminded me of the shield Tyson had made for me after our first adventure, which I'd then ruined in short order.

In fact, it reminded me of a lot of things. The designs were a vague, being not only small enough to put on a shield, but written in white light. The lines were dull, the pictures seeming muted in some ways and exaggerated in others, but also familiar. The two cities each seemed to be built around a massive central tower, but one was a cylinder, reminding me of Babel, while the other was like a blade aimed for the sky and made me think of the Empire State Building. The fields and flocks made me think of the Camp and Orario, the party of celebrations that seemed both recent and so long ago, the whole thing like...I don't know. But it felt like it all fit together, even if I couldn't explain how or why. It was something almost comforting.

Having said that—

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," I said out loud. "It's hard to explain, but...there's a lot of power in this shield now. I don't want to release it inside Orario without being sure of what might happen."

"How much power?" Hestia asked and I paused to look at her seriously.

"I don't want to release it inside Orario without being sure of what might happen," I repeated.

"Ah," She said quietly, nodding in reply. "Then...I'm not sure if I can help you, Percy. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," I answered quickly, regretting bothering her when I saw how disappointed in herself she seemed. "I just wanted to ask because it was a bit startling, but it's not like I don't already draw attention. Anyway, Welf, Lili, and I were going to go to the Hostess for lunch since we're taking some time off and to...well, celebrate making it through everything okay. Do you want to come?"

"Yes," Hestia answered quickly before grimacing slightly and shaking her head in irritation. "But I can't. I've...missed so much work already."

"Oh," I said awkwardly. "Right. I...really do make you do a lot of work."

She poked me in the chest, giving me a hard look.

"Don't worry about things like that," She commanded. "Because...we're a Familia, right? Then stuff like this should be nothing."

"Right," I said again, but still felt bad.

"Thank you for offering, though," Hestia said with another smile. "I hope you have a good time. You could all use a break."

"Yeah," I said. "Thank you, Hestia. I'll see you back home, okay?"