Eros

Chapters 9 and 10

Chapter 9

Hours bled into days. Days bled into weeks. Weeks bled into months. It felt like torture being on Olympus for this long. The memories hurt him. But he had work to do. He always looked after the mortals. He treated them with kindness and care- he wanted to treat them better than Zeus ever would. Soon after, on his twenty-second birthday, Athena gave him a sack of gold arrows that could never run out which made any two mortals fall in love with each other. Ares gave him a sack of grey arrows that made any two mortals despise each other, also that would never run out, in hopes of starting a war. Eros still took the gift but wasn't very happy with it, nonetheless, he loved Athena's as he saw many mortals that loved someone else, but it was a one-sided love and he saw how much pain it brought to that mortal. He tried to use his power as much as he could, but it would never work as well as he wanted it to. Now, he would see the humans be happy and content.

He used the golden arrows a lot, but he seldom used the grey arrows as he did not think them to be ideal, nonetheless, he only used them when he knew a relationship would only end in sadness.

Weeks later, when it was the night, he couldn't sleep again and was tossing and turning. Olympus was more silent than ever.

'Kid, are you not sleeping?' the Primordial Eros asked him. Eros was used to him saying things at the most random of times, so he wasn't scared of it anymore. He replied with haste.

'What does it look like to you?'

'Right, well let me try something.'

'What?'

'It will help you go to sleep; I promise.'

'Alright then.'

All Eros could remember from that night was seeing a bright purple light flashing before his eyes, before falling into a deep sleep.

"Paramount Detective! Paramount Detective!" He woke up to the sound of some gods shouting.

"What is it?" he asked, groggily.

"You are needed! A crime has been committed!" Curious, he immediately got out of bed and changed into his normal day clothes after they left.

"Let's go." He was surprised to find that the crime did not even happen on Olympus, but in the forest he took shelter in a few years ago. He saw Artemis, crying, her head bent down as she was glancing at a black patch on the ground, all the other gods and goddesses looking at her. Eros got on his knees while putting his staff on the floor and asked her quietly:

"What happened?"

She sniffled. "Apollo... he's been kidnapped."

"Kidnapped?"

"Yes!"

"How can you be so sure?"

"I heard him screaming, but it was after he was kidnapped. I heard it in my mind and saw a dark, gloomy place where he was taken hostage, oh how it frightened me!"

"Calm down. We'll fix this and we'll find out who the kidnapper was." Eros suddenly felt warmth coming from the ground. "Can you feel that?" he asked her.

"What?"

"There's this... warmth underneath the ground."

"No, I can't feel anything," she replied. He took his staff and squashed it into the ground, quite deep, and brought it up. The deities gasped as there was purple fire on the tip of his staff.

"This is Greek fire," he said, "only this fire can be lit forever under the ground, and, judging how far it went, this fire was used on Apollo about an hour after midnight. No one would've heard his scream as they would have all been sleeping and, after all, this is not even on Olympus."