The Daughter Of Night (Original Version)

79- Apollo Hums A Tune

Apollo

I did not know much about Tartarus, not having been there myself, but I certainly knew more about it than my son would. Ri had told me about her childhood there, but she had kept a lot of the worse things from me as I quickly found out when I arrived in hell.

One thing that Ri had described in great detail the shrine to Hermes. It had come up in a discussion quite early on in our relationship when she asked me why I didn't have a shrine in Tartarus (to which I responded by immediately ensuring that one of my temples fell into Tartarus). 

As I remembered it, Ri had said that the shrine was on the way to Nyx's mansion, so I decided that my best bet would be to stake out the shrine and stay there until my son showed up.

The only problem that I was facing was that I had no idea which way the shrine of Hermes was. I didn't know if I should go uphill, downhill, diagonal or off of the cliff beside me. I sighed, deciding that it would probably be down the cliff. 

Despite being back to my full godly powers, I was unable to flash in Tartarus because of the terrain and the unknown dangers that lurked around every corner. This meant that I was stuck scrambling down the cliffside as if I were Lester again. 

My feet touched down on the rocky floor a long time later, and I shook my hands around in the air, feeling them aching from all the climbing. This place was not designed to be kind to gods, I had scratched my palms, and a small amount of ichor was trickling from my left palm where I had slipped on a particularly jagged rock.

I began to follow the fire river that snaked along the bottom of the cliff, I hummed the Jurassic Park theme tune to myself as I walked in an attempt to make myself feel better, I had always been a big fan of John Williams' music. I had noticed his talent early on, and I assisted him when he got stuck on a score, for example, I pretty much wrote 'Imperial March'.

I made my way through most of Williams' portfolio before I came across anything that interested me. I practically walked straight into a white building, which had seemed to appear all of a sudden from nowhere. I looked around and realised that I had deviated from the river without even realising it. Something (or someone) had drawn me towards this shrine, which meant only one thing. I was in the right place, I was about to meet my son.

Sure, I had a lot of children, but all of them were important to me. With Ri gone, Caius was all that I had left of her. I imagined him with her eyes and her sarcastic approach to life. I was about to meet my son. My son.