Helix

Prologue - Lightning's Wrath

11 AD

Lighting bolts lanced through open windows, in spite of the bright sunlit afternoon, turning everyone they struck to carrion. Screams of fear encouraged the pandaemonium fast taking hold. It was a scene so terrible that no one not in witness would believe or understand.

For eight-year-old Helix, the day had started out like any other. His mother had awoken him, he'd eaten breakfast, played with his close in age brothers then set to studying with the family's tutor. After studies, he'd gone to the woods to work on his new tree fort. Then he'd been summoned to dinner on the garden dais. His father had firmly instructed all fifty of his sons to be on their best behavior. Helix assumed he wanted to impress their foreign guest, a strange intense man.

A few minutes before dinner Helix had seen two of his eldest brothers Nyctimus and Maenalus talking in hushed voices near the kitchens. Just as he was about to go ask them what they were doing he noticed Nyctimus's hands were covered in red. It looked so much like blood that Helix had run to find his mother but she was already entertaining his fathers guest at the table. Helix hadn't gotten a chance to talk to his mother as his older brothers, hands now clean, entered the dining hall. In the midst of food arriving Helix all but forgot about his oldest brothers strange behavior.

Now he remembered, and somehow he knew Nyctimus and Maenalus had caused this. He wasn't sure how he didn't care, because right now all that mattered was the death around him.

A booming voice cracked like thunder making the stones shudder, "I will kill you all for this deception!"

Trembling Helix hid under the table. He could just barely see the guest, a tall broad-shouldered man, lighting bolts crackled in each open hand. Even living deep in the mountains of Acadia, Helix had been taught about the gods and goddesses his mother and father worshiped. This man, no this god, was certainly Zeus. Out of all beings, only Zeus could call lighting.

More bolts shot from the god, killing his family one by one. His father and many of his brothers had already perished. Helix's heart skipped a beat as his mother dashed past his hiding place trying to make it to the garden wall. Right as he was about to follow her, a bolt struck. She stumbled landing with a sickening thud on the marble floor of the raised dais. Tears sprang to Helix's eyes as he crawled toward her. She was still breathing but it was ragged and shallow. As her eyes met his they flickered with love and terror.

"Helix," she whispered hoarsely, "Run."

"Momma?" He reached toward her hand but it was too late. The light in her soul winked out of existence leaving nothing but a husk.

Holding in a sob Helix scrambled away. Zeus's back was to him, his gods' eyes trained elsewhere on the destruction he was delivering. Ducking out from under the table the boy ran. And ran, and ran, each breath coming faster, harder, into his young lungs. Onward down the hill, he rushed, heedless of the precarious loose stones underfoot. At the base of the hill the city, his family's city of Trapezus stretched out into the valley.

A sickening crunch sounded as his ankle twisted over an upraised root. Air rushed out of his small lungs as he fell face first into the ground. Pain from his ankle was quickly drowned out by a splintering pain in his head. Blackness descended upon Helix's vision his last conscious thought of the thundering sounds of death behind him.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Muffled, unintelligible words swirled in the darkness. The pain ebbed and flowed overwhelming the sounds again. When at last his eyes opened Helix didn't know where he was. He noticed his strange clothes, an oversized shirt, and pants that were to loose and couldn't remember how he got into them. He could hear voices again. This time though he could understand them.