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"Your job isn't as fun as mine. Your chariot can only go straight," Ares brags as Apollo stares slack-jawed at the god of war.
"Next sunrise, I will show you tricks," Apollo responds arrogantly.
The next morning as dawn is approaching and the moon chariot driven by Artemis slowly descends closer to the ground, Apollo harnesses his horses, preparing to show Ares what he can do. Up in the air, Apollo pulls on the reins of the flaming horses, telling them to go off course. The lead horse, a blazing stallion, snorts out a stream of smoke, yet complies with his master's request.
Ares watches from the edge of Mt. Olympus as the ball of light that is the sun chariot swerves left and right, up and down, does loops and figure-eights, until it finally comes to a rest at its stopping point and quickly drives to the very spot the god stands.
Apollo egotistically says, "How is that for tricks?"
Being unarguably the most stubborn god of them all, Ares stalks away from his half-brother who has a smile splitting his face as bright as his chariot and an ego as big as the mountain upon which they stand. The sun god, once returning his horses to their respective stalls to rest and feed, receives a summons from the ice goddess Khione.
Apollo shifts uncomfortably as he glances around the walkway to the goddess's palace. Water drips down from the melting ice trees, buildings and statues into the crystal clear puddles accumulating underneath them.
Coming to a fairly large pool of water, the god of light looks down into it, seeing what happened in the past almost as well as Epimetheus, Titan of afterthought. People in clothing as white as the evaporating snow surrounding them, run amongst homes and nurseries collapsing from unknown causes, although Apollo has an inkling as to why they are falling.
Unbeknownst to the god, Khione, from the entrance to her castle mere yards away, watches his reactions to visions from the Oracles' mind itself. It still surprises Khione that Apollo was so ignorant to this travesty in her realm, seeing as how he is the keeper of the Oracle.
As the scenes end, the water ripples and the snow goddess clears her throat, jolting the clumsy god from his thoughts and sending him tumbling head-first into the ice-cold water. Cold. Apollo, for fair reasons, hates the cold with a passion, and immediately pulls himself from the shallow pond, using his godly powers to warm himself.
"K-Khione," he stutters as the cold seeps from his bones, and continues once he gathers his wits. "What is it you request, goddess?"
"Oh, don't pretend to be so ignorant. Look what you did!" Khione screeches, waving a pale arm wildly towards her thawing realm. Khione's pure white chiton resembling the cold of her fortress and reflecting the cold of her heart, which, quite figuratively, is made of ice as well, but has not thawed because of Apollo's little trip in his chariot.
"Can't you just fix it?" Apollo suggests.
"Just fix it? Just fix it?!" Khione paraphrases, her voice rising as her pale silver eyes turn from the window to the sun god. Icicles sprout from the ceiling, threatening to fall on the Olympian, although they stick as Khione knows that the god would still be there, merely bleeding golden ichor and getting Zeus angry at her once again. "You torch my home and all you have to say is 'just fix it'?" Apollo opens his mouth to say something, but the snow goddess cuts him off, "For your foolish deeds, I curse any and every of your followers whom turns to the sun to give you praise. They will be frozen until the heat from your own realm melts them to oblivion. Their souls forever stuck in the fields of Asphodel, their memories lost in the River Lethe, mixing with all the many others."
After leaving the snow palace, the cold, heartless white burned into his eyes, Apollo went to his father, god of the gods, asking him whether he could remove this most wretched curse or if the god was stuck being punished for eternity. Sorrowfully, Zeus explains to his son that it is up to the snow goddess to remove her own spell, that it is not his place.
Returning to the nearly restored ice realm after taking the sun across the sky for another time, sticking to the path like glue, Apollo begs Khione to revoke the curse, thinking the entire time about his poor followers whom have done nothing wrong. Khione, albeit takes her time to revel in seeing her polar opposite groveling at her feet, refuses any and all attempts or bribes Apollo makes to her.
Far away, in a land stricken with frost and famine, a small village gathers in a field larger than the town itself which, during a normal spring, would be green and ripe, but is barren and icy, the soil packed tightly into the earth. The upwards of twenty people, a meek number, but is painfully great for a community without any food, kneel down, facing the sun that peeks through the cold, white clouds accumulated around it. Mothers struggle to keep their children still, their babes silenced; elders work hard to drop to their knees without injuring themselves.
"Great Apollo," the leader of the society begins, but is never able to finish as a sudden freezing feeling roots him and the others into place. Growing fast and efficiently, ice creeps up their bodies, spreading out to cover every square inch as the souls go without fight to the River Styx, waiting aboard Charon's boat for them to arrive at the massive, obsidian black gates which will lead them to the Underworld, where they will spend eternity, innocent souls cursed because the god they chose to praise had let his ego take over for one day and he didn't take the time to stop and think.
