Maratona

Chapter four

To Euterpe, the muse of lyric poetry. I just wanted to say I'm a huge fan of her work.

                            Hermes

Getting a vision from the oracle was actually quite simple: one just needed to ask.
Of course Pythia was a very unique exception. Every other prophetic-gifted priest or priestess Hermes had met had quickly gone from asking for the job to absolutely despising it.
But, weirdly enough, the Oracle seemed to really enjoy her own curse.
She said she was off to set up the ritual to get her vision right, insisting that it was her job and her job alone, so he remained in the Delphic cave.
Awful place.
He didn't have much of a choice though: it was either the cave, or staying still until the kid showed up.

Pithia returned after a while, carrying different kinds of herbs, a white veil and a jar.
The oracle's rituals were sketchy to say the least, Apollo had always said so.
He said visions should never be induced willingly, and to forcefully do so against the established rules was absolutely brutal and horrifying.
Honestly, how bad could it have been?

"Ready?" Pithia asked, opening the decorated vase's lid. She was asking just to be polite, because she was already dipping her hands in a thick red liquid.
She traced a dark line on the shrine's perimeter, almost emptying the whole jar.
"I'm about to go into a trance," she explained as she picked up her veil and dipped it into the remaining mixture.
"But, in order to find anything at all in the future, I'm going to need some sort of compass, to find my way to the desired information," she added.

"Meaning what?" He asked, as she guided him to sit, facing the shrine.

"Meaning I need your blood," she smiled.
Ok, Apollo was right. It all was quite off-putting.

He sighed.
"How much of it?" Hermes forced the words out of his mouth. If he knew something, it was that a god's ichor was never to be wasted. It wasn't tradable. It was just too powerful to be spilled.

She chuckled thinly. The heavy smell of the mixture she had spread across the room was definitely awful, and the cavern wasn't a nice place to begin with. It was dark, and cold and every turn, every table, every corridor or shirene, everything was as sharp as stone could be.
"I need it to navigate the future, so I can't just walk in there with a single drop. I'd get lost in a matter of seconds," she started crushing different kinds of herbs into a golden plate.
"Don't worry Hermes, I'll try not to let you bleed out," she smirked, sitting in front of him.
She grabbed a rusty dragger, showing it off. The blade was blunt and it was almost stained.
"Shall I begin?" She smiled.

He paused for a moment.
She was holding his arm, the dragger in her hand.
He was about to spill a whole bunch of ichor, and chances were it all could lead to nothing.
Still, it sounded way better than doing nothing.
He nodded uncertainly, feeling his mouth too dry to answer.

She proceeded to put her veil on, the dark liquid dripping down her face and soaking her hair.
Then she chuckled menacingly as she raised her dragger and quickly cut his arm.
As ichor started to drop from the wound, she quickly inhaled the crushed herbs form the golden plate, and she quickly passed out.

                                Apollo

There it was.
Delphi.
Very pretty oracle, but I never really liked Pithia. She was a bit... Extreme? Careless? Completely driven?
Honestly, her main problem was that she liked her job too much. Always going out of her way to get even a tiny bit of knowledge, even by using the most horrifying rituals in existence.
As much as she liked to deny it, there was a reason visions were uncontrollable, and it was good enough to leave things that way.
Just thinking about everything that could go wrong while forcing prophecies... The price was much too steep to pay.
All I could do was hope I had gotten there on time, and of course I hoped Hermes had realised what he was getting himself into.
But I knew him.
So, as optimistic as I could be, I walked in the darkness.