FATE\Deus Decipit

Chapter 105: Life in Violet

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"Allowed the safety of an adoptive family, the boy grew."

The young Dionysus ran and played with his adoptive sister and brother, he studied alongside his adoptive father, all the while the elegant queen observed them with a mother's care. He smiled in each scene, and greeted the world with gleaming violet eyes.

The living shadow adopting the name of Aisha narrowed her gaze. There was a womanly part of her that was being tugged by sympathy, but she cut that connection as soon as she felt it, and replaced empathy with suspicion. Even now, she assured herself, wickedness laid in his heart, but had merely yet to manifest.

The old satyr gave a toothy, sadistic grin.

"What?"

"I sense your trepidation. Perhaps knowing your enemy is too much for you to bear?"

She glowered at him, "Nonsense. All questions have answers and all answers have explanations. Now explain to me how that boy grew into the monster who murdered me."

"If you think you can handle it."

He cast out his staff and the imagery blurred. They were in a circular room. The older man sat at a desk adorned with parchment, his pen moving at lightning speed. Around him, vials floated through the air of their own accord, spinning and pouring their contents into one another. In the man's lap, the girl with curling chestnut hair sat eyeing the vials with wonder. Meanwhile, the young Dionysus stood on tip-toes to read the writing of his adoptive father. A window revealed rolling pastures filled with sheep, and from such a height that they must've stood in a tower.

Aisha recognized the room as an amateur mage's workshop.

She heard footsteps underneath her, and noticed a trapdoor in the corner of the room. A moment later it opened and out came the raven-hued head of the woman she had seen before, and scurrying out from between her legs was a young boy with bristly brown hair. As the vials sank to their place and the father turned, daughter in tow, to regard his son, the boy was already running around the room with a wooden sword in hand, swinging it with childish abandon.

Seeing the young Dionysus, perhaps two years younger than himself, watching attentively to his frantic movements, he pointed his sword in dueling fashion.

"Come on 'Nysus! Let's play swords!"

The younger brother looked to his father with innocent eyes and clung wordlessly to his toga.

The boy turned to his mother with the quick and acute anger that only a child could have, "Mom! 'Nysus won't play with me!"

She placed a motherly hand on his head, "It's alright, Actaeon,"

She turned her attention to her husband, "Don't you think it's time to give the boy some fresh air? He needs to get out of this dusty old room."

Aristaeus gave a gentle chuckle, "It's not as if I locked him in here, Noe. He's here because he wants to be."

She raised an eyebrow, "I remember Macris begging to be let up here when she was his age. It took me ages to calm her down, and now I have to fight you to let the children leave."

He gave the girl in his lap, Macris, a solid pat on the stomach, "When Macris was his age, she couldn't sit still, or stay quiet long enough for me to focus. A mouse would distract me more than Dionysus has. He's not getting in anyone's way- and, these days, neither is she."

He gave his daughter a peck on the forehead, a half-apology for his commentary on her younger self.

"He's a growing boy. He ought to play outside. It's what's normal for his age."