More Greek Times

The Gorgon

A solid five days had passed since Hercules freed Prometheus, and all was starting to feel pretty tame for my friends and I. It was the usual Wednesday afternoon. Bright day, few spotty clouds in the sky, and Apollo was making his afternoon rounds in his solar chariot. All seemingly normal, that is, if you exclude three teenagers racing each other to see who could outfly the other and pass the solar chariot. Yeah, this little race between Hercules, Icarus, and I just something for fun we did after school.

"Hello, Sunshine!" Icarus grinned wildly as he kept flying towards the sun, again, with his wax wings.

"Icarus, pull back!" Hercules called towards him as he rode on Pegasus. "You're getting too close!"

"Negatory!" Icarus replied back as he kept flying. "I'm like a moth. I must maintain an intercept course with flame!"

"You're gonna be a moth on flames if you don't pull back!" I yelled as I flew in on the imps in their two-headed dragon form.

Okay, so, a bit of backstory on the imps' inclusion here...

Usually, I would've ridden on Pegasus with Herc during our races, but since Hades had been watching me like a hawk ever since the 'incident' and me still being grounded after the trial by fire during the whole Prometheus affair, he made the imps my little chauffeurs and makes them pick me up from and drop me off at school. They usually don't like coming out in public in their normal forms, so disguises are much needed. But today when Icarus betted that he could beat Hercules and I chasing after Apollo's chariot, the imps wanted to get in on this action.

And so, we raced against Hercules and Icarus to see who could outfly Apollo, and Icarus was proving to be quicker with his wax wings. Unfortunately, he still didn't learn his lesson from both the first time he ever used the wax wings and when he accidentally fell into Rome, because the moment he got close enough to Apollo's chariot, the wax started melting off and was sent splattering at Hercules, the imps, and I. Thankfully, the wax wasn't as hot as you'd think, so it was easy to scrape off, but unfortunately for Icarus, the melted wax only meant one thing...

"Oh-no, I did it again..." I heard Icarus say right before he fell down to the river below. "MAYDAY! MAYDAY! I'M GOIN' DOWN! AW, MAN!"

"We warned him." I shrugged at Hercules before giving an order to my imps. "Let's go, boys!"

"C'mon, boy, dive!" Herc ordered his horse.

Pegasus gave a whinny and dived down right as the imps dove after Icarus. As we flew, we saw that Icarus had landed in a river and was swimming -yes, I said swimming. He took lessons after the whole River Styx incident- around like he didn't just fall like three hundred feet in the air. Thank God for cartoon logic keeping him unharmed, but there was no cause for celebration just yet. As Icarus was swimming, the river's speed started picking up. And I noticed that the water was falling right off a very high edge.

"He's heading for that waterfall!" I pointed as Herc and I flew over the water.

Hercules noticed and immediately took action. The imps and I watched as he jumped off Pegasus, grabbed the horse's tail, and partially skied on the water as Pegasus flew faster. Picking up the pace in order for Hercules to grab Icarus before he got too close to the waterfall's edge. A risky thing to do, but this was also Herc's duty as a her-in-training: To help and save his friends when they needed it.

"Hold on!" Hercules called out.

Herc was then able to grab Icarus by the collar of his chiton and flung him onto Pegasus' back. Icarus was safe, but Hercules wasn't so lucky. Not long after he got Icarus out of the water, Hercules tripped over a rock and lost his grip on Pegasus' tail, and he was sent falling into the river. Thankfully, Icarus and I saw this all happen, and went to try and save our friend before he went over.