#OH MY GOD ITS CTIMENE

[yescallmejosey]

may a clay dagger strike the prince

Clay is molded. It takes the shape of whatever the user wants it to be and it hardens, taking that shape forever. It can be a figurine, carving memories in a child’s life who will always remember it as his favorite toy. It could be a bowl in which a woman cooks her favorite dishes for her husband with love and with the hope of comforting him after a long day of hunting. 

To Ctimene, clay takes the form of all her sorrows and all her pain. She moves her fingers down this new jar, shaping feathers across the handle. Her nails drew the lines, every pulse of her heart making them less steady. Feathers, for Lord Zeus, king of gods. He is greatness incarnated, respected by both gods and mortals. And unlike her, no one dares to question him. 

Time and time again she had prayed to the father of all in hopes that he would take pity on her. Time and time again she has begged for not even greatness, but a place in her family. Ctimene was merely born in it. The princess, yes, but never their princess. 

Anticlea teaches her how to weave, an art that should be simple for the princess. But the queen’s piercing gaze on her back and lack of words of encouragement made the threads tangle around her fingers. They tangled to her arms, to her throat as she struggled to apologize for her mistake. There was an apology for everything. For messing up the weaving every sunset, for turning the conversations at dinner uncomfortable with her direct words, for snapping at her father when he talked about Odysseus’s new achievement. 

There was an apology for being born. Because perhaps if it never happened, perhaps if Anticlea and Laertes did not try to have another hero, they would not have a parasite leaching to their royal wealth. Ctimene was not an embarrassment, because that would mean being someone who makes themselves noticed for a mistake. No, Ctimene was the dark corner that candles never illuminated, the stories lost through years of talking, she was a nobody.

The thoughts swirled through her mind, like sharp rocks tearing a ship at sea, paralyzing her like the eyes of Medusa. Her pulse quickened, the lines became blurry and the feathers became a phantom of what they were supposed to be. 

Her hands curled into fists and she tore her work, standing up and kicking the clay before clutching her hair in frustration. Hot tears rolled down her eyes, tears of jealousy, tears of hot rage. Rage of not being good enough, rage towards her brother. 

She wishes she could simply take the threads of her failed weaving and wrap them around his neck. Perhaps then she would finally stop hearing about his great achievements, about his future golden reign of the island. 

Ctimene’s eyes widened, her hands on her mouth now as if the mere thought of articulating her words would get her in trouble. She could not think like this, she could not-

She could not wish death upon her own blood. 

Oh but she did, and she craved the carnage so badly, more than her bitter heart could accept. And so she sat in a corner, the candles of her room not being bright enough to illuminate it. She wept even after dawn with rosy fingers painted in the sky. She let her dress and cheeks be stained by salty wrath and green envy. 

Clay is molded, it takes the shape of whatever the user wants it to be. And Ctimene’s heart was slowly being molded into a decorated dagger of anguish and desperation, a dagger that was pointed to the chest of her own brother. 

Odysseus.

[protagaster]

Part 4 of the Warrior!Penelope Swap AU

DID YOU GUYS SEE THE NEWS!?

VENGEANCE SAGA RELEASES ON OCTOBER 31ST!!!

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Editor/Co-Author: @somereaderinblue (GeminiWillow on Ao3)

(Cross-Posted on Ao3)

Remember Them

528 left under her command… 

~

The scent in the air was full of metallic must. A river stream of thick red liquid flowed down the dirt floor, forming itself into a small lake made with that oh-so precious liquid life. 

Pebbles scurried down the cave walls, broken apart from the crumbling rock they were once one with. A cloud of dust, a combined mixture of rubble and sand, slowly built itself up and infiltrated the entirety of the cave. 

The origin of all this havoc, the very reason behind this devastation, slept soundly on the cave ground without a worry in the world. A cyclops, his one eyelid lowered in complete and utter peace; not a single nightmare plagued him once his eye shut.

If one had just arrived they would have not known of the events that transpired mere seconds ago. 

They would not have known this cyclops to have declared war on 600 soldiers. They would not have seen him wielding a club, striking and killing 72 women in the name of the livestock they needed so desperately to keep going. They would not have dove out the way of his collapsing figure, the impact of his fall so severe it left devastating consequences to his cave. 

Or perhaps they would have. After all, isn’t it obvious from first glance when looking into the eyes of a monster?

“...captain...”

Penelope stood mere feet before that sleeping cyclops. She couldn’t move. Frozen in her step, every muscle in her body painfully constrained… 

72. 

72 women she had kept safe in Troy and yet couldn't keep safe on the way home. 

72 women whose screams kept ringing in her ears.

72, including her Circes. 

“...captain…”

Penelope no longer felt like herself.

Right now, at this very moment, the captain was nothing more than a shell; a shell that found pain in its wholeness, for her kin were reduced to fragments left to rot like rubbish, like nothing. By the gods Circes wouldn't have a funeral or an obol, how would she get to the Underworld-

Suddenly, Penelope felt something from the real world make contact with her shell. 

Ctimene gripped her captain’s arm and pulled her close, forcing the leader to look away from the dreaming monster.

“Captain!”

Ctimene’s voice, finally louder than the silence, snapped Penelope out of her detachment. 

“We must move quickly, we don't have much time.” Penelope spoke with a monotone voice, not an ounce of emotion on her features. 

She spared a fleeting glance to the abandoned amphorae, the wine vessel from which the Cyclops drank. 

“He didn't notice I mixed lotus in his wine.” 

Penelope was still in a strange state, one she’s never experienced before in all her life. But, by some miracle, her limbs were no longer anchored to her state of mind.

She wasn't ready for battle. She was ready for vengeance.

She released herself from Ctimene’s grip. 

Penelope moved to walk past her best friend. The only one she had now. 

“Mark my words now, this is not the end…”

Ctimene, whose red puffy eyes were only just beginning to clear, looked up with a gaze filled only with worry and concern for Penelope, whose eyes were distant and far away. 

Ctimene placed a hand, so small but so scarred, so strong and yet so gentle, on her sister’s shoulder. 

“But captain, what'll we do with our fallen friends?”

Penelope paused, both from her sister’s action and words. 

72 women fallen at the hands of hunger and hubris. And yet it was 1 whom both women knew this question referred to. 

There she was, not so close but not far enough, laying on the dirt floor; pale and dirty and cold. Her signature ribbon was stained with her own blood; the light pink did not mix well with sinful red. 

Just like that, their group of 3 became one of 2. 

Just like that, the feeling of emptiness inside Penelope filled with a searing rage both familiar and not. 

Just like that Penelope’s impassive eyes slowly morphed into one of determination, welling up with tears that longed to make themselves known. 

“Remember them.” Penelope said with no waver in her tone, despite the few stray tears now streaming down her cheeks. 

Some thought her reaction to have been too late, whilst others knew it came when it was needed. 

Regardless, Penelope was no longer disconnected to the moment at hand. 

She was there, she was pissed. 

And she was not alone.

There were still 528 left under her command. 528 who still had the chance to return to their most sacred place. 

528 who were still counting on her.

Turning to face the ones who had not fallen to this monster, addressing them with her head hung in respect for the dead, Penelope spoke with no falter in her voice. 

“When the fire begins to fade, for the fallen and afraid, we are not to let them die in vain…” 

Finally their captain lifted her head. There it was, that raging flame in her eyes, the same one that got them through the war in the first place. The reason behind stroking those flames had changed, but the desire to burn was still the same. 

“Remember Them!”

Now, with her spear in hand, Penelope stood tall and regal with its support. Her spirit may have taken a blow, but the Gods and their creatures were foolish if they thought they could waver this mortal from finding her way. 

“We're the ones who carry on the flames of those who've gone,” Her voice was now booming, crying out her words like a lioness’ war cry. “And our comrades will not die in vain!”

Penelope strode to the Cyclops’ stray club, having fallen with its wielder upon his collapse. 

“I need all our hands on his club! This is how we're getting out of here!” 

Slicing its wooden flesh with her spear-point, Penelope unconsciously mimicked the action she had seen her husband perform many times whilst perfecting his craft. 

“Use your blades to sharpen the stub, and turn it to a giant spear!”

The rest of the soldiers had seemingly recovered from watching their sisters die, all thanks to their captain’s speech. 

Upon hearing Penelope’s command, each woman’s inner volcano built up to near eruption. Their anger, as hot and searing as molten lava, flowed amongst them all. Whether it be men or monsters, all in their path were naught but kindling for their flames.

These women wanted to avenge their friends. The only way to do this, they silently agreed amongst themselves, was to take an eye for an eye.

“Let's kill him!”

Penelope, though, sternly placed herself in front of their anger. 

“His body is blocking the path!” She pointed to where the Cyclops lay, behind him the cave’s only source of light and fresh air.  “If we kill him we'll be stuck inside!” 

Ctimene, the voice of the crew, looked to her captain for a solution to their dilemma. “Captain, where do we attack him?”

Penelope glared at the Cyclops, both angered and amazed at the serenity of his sleep. “We gotta stab him in the eye!”

“Yes ma’am!”

The crew immediately put themselves to work carving their wooden spear, knowing their time was running out.

“Remember them!” 

Thanks to their determination it took almost no time for the cyclop’s club to be no more. Now, reshappen to look like a crude replica of Penelope’s spear, the wooden weapon longed once more to feed on liquid life. 

“When the fire begins to fade for the fallen and afraid, we are not to let them die in vain…” 

The women carried the wooden spear to where their one-eyed adversary slumbered defenselessly. Along the way they passed by 71 bodies, unable to bear looking them in the eyes that are now forever filled with fear. 

Penelope paused her step at body 72.  

“Remember them…”

It was unfair. Nobody deserved to die today, but Circes was the least deserving of them all. 

Beautiful, optimistic, loving Circes…

Even though she had been given the right to bear a Goddess’ name, something that anybody and everybody else would use to their endless advantage, she only ever used it to emphasize the importance of mercy; of greeting the world with open arms…

“We're the ones who carry on the flames of those who've gone, and our comrades will not die in vain…”

Penelope removed that pink ribbon wrapped tightly around Circe’s hair. She then collected most of her own loose and wild hair in one hand, using the ribbon to tie it up in a messy but functional ponytail.

Before returning to the living Penelope leaned down, gently shutting Circe’s eyes to spare her from the view. 

“NOW!” Penelope ordered.

The entire crew, Ctimene at the front, thrust the wooden spear inside the Cyclop’s closed eye. 

“ROOOOOOOAR!”

The Cyclops woke with an ear shattering cry, one that dripped with pain in its rawest form. He sat up straight away, blood dripping down from his speared eye and mixing with that little red lake.

Quick to get a grip on himself, Polyphemus immediately took hold of the second possession stolen from him that day and ripped it from his socket. No longer able to rely on his sense of sight, Polyphemus tried to feel around and grab one the monsters that intruded on his home.

However, their leader had already suspected this.

“Scatter!”

The Cyclops heard this and attempted to stop them, trying to hear and feel his way toward their direction. But ants lack sound as much as they lack size and these women have long since learnt to hone stealth into an asset more deadly than any weapon.

The women ran toward the cave opening from whence they came, large rocks and the sheep surrounding them. Behind them, the Cyclops continued to roar and cry out in complete and utter anguish. 

Suddenly, another voice called out from deeper within the cave. 

“Who hurts you?”

The women froze in their tracks. Their blood ran cold, their breaths grew short, and goosebumps tingled from the back to their necks. 

Penelope and Ctimene were the only ones brave enough to look back. 

Right there, in the tunnel leading further down the cave, a single giant eye emerged from the darkness. 

“There are more of them?” Ctimene’s voice shuddered in realization. 

One monstrous voice became two, then two became three. More and more voices joined the original, more than could possibly be discerned by ear. 

With each voice came another eye appearing out of the darkness of that tunnel entrance. Just like with the voices, so many eyes emerged from the shadows.

“Who hurts you?”

Penelope placed a firm hand on Ctimene’s arm, looking from her second-in-command to the rest of her crew.

“Hide." She whispered. 

Each woman ran to hide behind one of the many giant rocks. They were clustered in groups of two or three, most holding onto each other in a desperate attempt to sate their fear. 

No one so much as took a breath. They were afraid that even the slightest movement, the quietest sound, would be all it took to alert the Cyclopes of their presence. 

“Who hurts you?”

Penelope and Ctimene hid together behind the rocks closest to the Cyclopses, closest to Polyphemus. 

Ctimene couldn’t take it. They had lost 72 women to only one Cyclops; how on earth would they be able to survive against an entire clan of them?

They couldn’t, Ctimene knew this. 

“Captain, we should run-” 

“Wait…” Penelope interrupted the other. 

“Who hurts you?”

Even more Cyclopses than before, how was that even possible?!

Ctimene tried to ground herself by gripping tightly onto Penelope’s arm, but it didn’t work. There was this genuine look of horror in her eyes, as if she just realized that her life was on the line with no choice in the matter. 

Ctimene had never felt this even when she was drafted to war in her husband’s stead. She had never experienced this even when fighting in the battlefields of Troy for over a decade. 

But now, with the weight of her soul in another’s hands, Ctimene couldn’t shake this newfound fear of death. 

“Captain, please!” She begged.

However, even with Ctimene’s hand gripping her flesh so tightly it would no doubt leave a bruise, even with the voice of her partner in crime pleading in her ear, Penelope did not falter.

“Wait.” 

Polyphemus, hands over the empty cavity that once housed his single eyes, answered the question his brothers demanded to know.

“It was Nobody, Nobody…”

With that as his answer, Polyphemus’ kin backed away from the dark entry. 

“If nobody hurts you, be silent.”

 And with that, the Cyclopses returned to the deepest recesses of the cave one after the other. 

“Don't go!”

But it was too late. Just as it had been his entire life, Polyphemus was left alone with no other Cyclops willing to stay by his side. 

And so, the blind Cyclops kneeled defeated in his lonesome. 

Penelope, seeing that their biggest threat was now broken, pointed in the way of the cave’s opening. 

“Let's grab the sheep and away we go.” 

The crew did just that, grabbing every single sheep the Cyclops had in his flock. By the end, almost every single woman ran out of that cave holding a sheep in her arms. 

Not every woman who entered that cave made it out. Every woman who did manage to escape with her life intact had her outfit stained with blood. For the first time in an entire decade, that blood belonged to a dead Greek. 

Penelope was the last to run out of the cave, and by definition was the last to board her ship. 

She had ordered the anchors to be lifted, commanded the rowers to set a course for open waters, was prepared to forever leave this awful place and once again be reunited with her old companion that was the sea.

 Only to feel a familiar dose of adrenaline rush through her blood. 

A sense of blind courage invaded her thoughts. It was different from normal though; this kind of divine courage was supposed to feel empowering, but right now it only highlighted her desperation. 

“Have you forgotten the lessons I taught you?” Ares manifested himself in front of Penelope, housing himself in her mind and thus visible to only her eyes. “He's still a threat until he's dead!” 

Ares aimed his spear back toward the direction of the cave. 

Though his eyes were covered to all the world, anyone who could look into them in that moment would see the expression of a man who cared only for the glory that would emerge upon the aftermath of bloodshed. 

“Finish it.”

But there was something the God of War just couldn’t comprehend, something that mortals knew to be all too true: once blood is shed, defeat comes quickly after. 

“No.” 

Ares stilled, dangerously so. He slowly turned to face his mortal, eyes alarmingly narrow from inside his helm. 

“No?”

Penelope knew her hands were not free of sin. Back then, during her time fighting the war, so many people who called Troy home had lost their lives thanks to her, be it her weapon or mind.

Men who bore arms for the sake of their honor, women who refused to stand idle and let their homes be destroyed, even a defenseless baby whose only sin was being watched by the Gods… 

All of them were probably cursing her from the moment they set foot in the underworld. 

But, even if her hands were stained with their blood, Penelope could at least justify it to herself at night by saying it was necessary. She was drafted from the Heavens themselves.  She didn’t have a choice. 

Here…

“What good would killing do? When mercy is a skill more of this world could learn to use…” 

Penelope looked down at her hands, faintly stained with the dried blood. Belonging not to the no-eyed monster, but to her dear, precious friend. 

“My friend is dead, our foe is blind, the blood we shed, it burns so hot!”

Penelope couldn’t handle it. The blood of 72 women who had thought their lives now secure, all on her hands. 

How many more would bleed out as a result of her desire for bloodshed?

 “Is this what it means to be a Warrior of the Heart?”

Penelope couldn’t let it end like this, she couldn’t let her sisters’ death end in such a meaningless way. 

The captain immediately grabbed hold of her spear, the very same one that granted her the gift of Ares’ guidance. She turned around, walking to the end of her ship. Walking where the cave stayed ominously quiet, fading slowly as 12 ships sailed away from its rocky hollow. 

Ares realized what she was planning to do. 

“Don't!” 

Penelope pushed his presence from her mind, but not from her body. She could still feel that rush of adrenaline course through her blood, sense that touch of mettle grounding her spirit. 

“Hey, Cyclops!”

Now, filled to the brim with pure resolved boldness, Penelope felt nothing but the high of courage. Courage to face the Cyclops one final time. 

“When we met, I led with peace, while you fed your inner beast! But my comrades will not die in vain, Remember them!”

The crew listened to their captain’s words, defeat and exhaustion trickling amongst them. Many shed tears of loss for their fallen friends, some still held on to each other for fear that if they let go they would lose even more of their sisters-in-arms. 

Ctimene was the only one who still had the strength to look up at her captain. Her eyes were wary and her fists were clenched. A strange cynic look, faint but still there, momentarily revealed itself; only for a second. 

“The next time that you dare choose not to spare Remember Them! Remember Us!”

Penelope held her head high and proud, her posture tall and straight and regal in all its glory. She lifted her spear…

“Remember Me!” 

And stabbed the wooden floor of her ship. A small crack in the foundation resulted from the captain’s attack. 

“I'm the reigning Queen of Ithaca! I am neither man nor mythical! I am your darkest moment! I am the unyielding…”

Penelope’s stray bangs, which could not be held back with the ribbon, flew in her face and framed her sharp, glaring eyes. For that one single moment, her face was unforgettable. 

“Penelope!”

With that, the boats were quick to sail away, not a sound or a song uttered amidst the giant sea. 

Nobody noticed Polyphemus' mouth split into a cruel, forboding smile.

[kindred-spirit-93]

OH. OHH. OH BE STILL MY ACHING HEART. OH MY BELOVEDS.

non exhaustive things of all the things i adore:

THE LIGHTING IS SO PRETTY GIRL HELP

the fireplace scene is literally the artistic representation of a mug of hot chocolate topped with mini marshmallows. its so soft!!

speaking of which u cant convince me the daggers hanging arent ctimenes >:)

BABY TELEMACHUS AAAAAHHHHHHHH

asdfghjkl eury blushing is sending me

mene having to kinda sit down to ground herself so she doesnt fall/ pass out is hilarious. oh god i love them all so much

CTIMENE MY STRONK GIRL! SLAY QUEEN XD

very random but ur handwriting is so nice & even omg i love it :D

love how the siblings wear red robes whereas their spouses wear cooler blues

ITHACA LOOKS BEAUTIFUL AAHH!!! so majestic

i go feral for wedding rings. so simple, so elegant. so heartwrenching

polites my sweet boi :')

also pls marry me

*taps the mic* Greatsword Lore *leaves*

Based on something Jorge dropped in a stream once