#vision hero nymph

[blondejellykitty]

₊ ♡ ˚⊹ I'll be there on their side ₊ ♡ ˚⊹

୨୧ multi demigod x goddess reader ୨୧ the goddess of heroes and the protector of demigods was thought to be a mere myth and that was how she preferred it to be, until the time came when she could no longer stay away. a/n: (1.8k words) my first fic posted !! the title is from 'i bet on losing dogs' by mitski. the ending isn't exactly how i wanted but that's okay :)

Mortal children are told myths just the same as demigods. Usually mortal parents will tell them said stories to help themselves parent them like Jack Frost, to remember to put your jacket on or Santa Claus who won't show unless you behave well.

Parents of demigods however tell them for the child's benefit. Many legends aren't told but are taught at camp, once again to protect the demigods. Very few stories are able to be told without alerting any unwanted attention.

The entirety of the fall of Kronos from Zeus' beginning to his victory and the story of his earliest children. All revolving around Zeus in his prime, probably to keep himself ego inflated and unfaded.

Nevertheless this is another story that circulates the young ears of all demigods. The legend of the protector of demigods. Much is lost to time of the story but not even time himself can rip the hope that the lost goddess can give to the young heroes.

Very few things shocked the Olympians anymore, not in this century anyway. Of course Kronos and Gaea rising was one thing and Percy Jackson himself was another but the whispers from their children that after two titan wars sightings of their lost protector was becoming more frequent seemed to truly shock them.

After a few millennia of no contact from the goddess more than a few gods had assumed she simply faded quietly but now it seemed that wasn't the case at all.

It started as a mistaken identity.

With the son of Poseidon, Percy Jackson had thought she was nothing more than a helpful nymph.

Although the poison from the pit scorpion that Luke Castellan gave him was more than enough of a reason for Percy to not fully take in the figure in front of him.

He could faintly make out the outline of her dress but even that went blurry as quickly as he could blink. After struggling to get to the river in the middle of the deserted forest, he called for help, anyone's help.

So she answered.

In a daze of pain he recalls the feeling of being carried much like his mother used to do when he’d trip and hurt himself. He would have felt embarrassed but with a fading pulse he just mumbled best he could thanks to the tender nymph before his vision was lost to darkness.

After he’d recovered, Chiron told him if he'd been found any later he'd have been dead.

Thirty seconds, he thought.

After he had told everyone, everyone meaning Annabeth about Luke, he went back out to said woods to find the nymph who had helped him.

All he found was a few river spirits nearby who told him that no nymph went that close to the border that day. He’d made the river spirits promise to let him know if the mysterious nymph came back, she never did.

But nonetheless Percy remembered, and held thanks to the helpful nymph.

Mistaken identity shifted to a hallucination.

The son of Hermes, Travis Stoll had sworn himself to secrecy under the impression he'd have imagined the whole encounter.

An embarrassing thought he often let himself drift back to on more than one occasion. It had started when he and Connor had been setting up traps in the woods for the next capture the flag game.

They'd been out there all afternoon, they decided to turn back for curfew, best to not tempt the harpies when he'd tripped on a lodged rock in the ground and managed to roll down and crash into a further down tree.

A thick root from the tree he'd fallen against impaled his side making his shirt and the dirt around him to turn a dark red colour. The sight of the root appearing out his side Connor ran towards camp faster than he'd ever seen him run during their pranks yelling for healers and for Chiron.

When he'd think back on it he wasn't sure if it was the quiet of the forest or the numbness of his body but dark spots began to invade his vision and he couldn't help but embrace them without caution.

Until the most beautiful woman came out from behind a nearby tree, rushing towards him in a fuzzy blur. Her elegant hair falling past her face almost making a blanket of warmth and safety around the two of them.

She was the most stunning thing he'd ever seen. Better than the full moon, the sunrise and sunset. Better than the ocean or a flower. He could hear her softly speaking to him but he couldn't make out the words.

He didn't know how long he'd been staring in awe at the woman. Travis was sure he'd be red with embarrassment if all his 'red' wasn't currently bleeding out of him.

He looked over towards where he heard his brother's frantic voice getting closer to him. The sight of him and a few cabin 7 campers not far behind him did well to ease his own worry. He looked back for the woman but she was gone.

He doubted if he'd seen the woman but shook it off as nothing more than pain induced illusion.

Then from a hallucination to a mortal.

The son of Hades, Nico di Angelo should've known better than to assume that anyone who approached him was 100% mortal.

After spending more time in the demigod world he realized that mortals don't ever come over to talk to demigods, or maybe that was just his problem.

Nevertheless even mortals can see some kind of underworld aura around him even if they don't understand what they're seeing.

Which makes it all the more irritating that his younger self didn't realize the woman who helped him was probably not entirely mortal. He could still remember it so clearly, she was after all one of the few at that time that had been kind to him.

He had spent the night searching for an entrance to the underworld, his father had told him in a dream a few nights prior that it was in the area. He also mentioned that it was supposed to be easier to find for children of his.

Well that turned out to be crap.

Nico had spent all day and now late into the night walking around New york city trying to find a specific street corner. He was tired and hungry but most of all angry.

He called off his search once his eyes started to sting. Finding a bus stop bench to rest at. He pulled his knees to rest his head against. Tears stung his eyes more than his fatigue when a smell of food wafted near him.

Lifting his head he saw a woman, dressed in a cozy cardigan, the beige kind a mother would wear. She was carrying a bag, he could faintly make out the logo of the logo of a restaurant he remembered passing on the contains inside.

She never spoke but her eyes almost made him cry, a look of care and worry. one he'd imagined his own mother having from the stories Bianca would tell him.

She leaned over and rested the beg softly on the bench next to him, he could feel the heat from it warming her leg. He asked her who she was and why she'd given him her food but all she did was smile and ruffle his hair like Bianca used to do.

He could feel his tears roll down his neck as he watched her keep walking down the street until she eventually walked out of vision. He was just glad someone was kind to him.

Even if it was just a friendly mortal.

Then from a mortal to a mother.

The son of Hermes, Chris Rodriguez couldn't believe he could see his mother in the middle of the haunted Labyrinth.

It had been Luke who ordered him to go into the traumatizing maze and he'd done it willingly, so eager to help his older brother for the cause of getting revenge, justice, to be noticed.

But as most things in Chris's life it had gone horribly wrong. He couldn't even remember most of the horror he'd seen in there, the human brain forcing him to forget just so that he can move on from it all.

But one of the few things that stuck with him was the memory of his mother. Now, he knew it was completely impossible his mother, who'd died just helping him to get to camp, was in the labyrinth with him but his vivid recollection of those moments left little doubt.

He remembers leaning against one of the ever shifting walls, ready to give up on getting out for good.

When he felt a warm hand on his shoulder, he recalls not even flinching from it because of the calming ease it put him in, he could feel himself slurring his word and frantically almost magically speaking but it wouldn't reach his ears.

He had a light aura around her, and a gentle smile as she carefully lead the way through the twists and turns of the darken maze.

He relives the memory as best he can, he could still hear the faint whispers from her mouth, promising she wouldn't let him go and that it would be alright soon.

In hindsight that was something his mother would never do, his mother cared for him not was anything but emotional.

Part of him likes to think that Thanatos had lost her soul for a moment and she'd come to help when he most needed her.

He was just glad that someone had helped him because he hated the thought of what had happened to him if they hadn't.

Finally from a mother to a mourner.

The son of Jupiter, Jason Grace was the lost goddess' last straw.

Too many had already lost their lives in wars fought in seemingly vain. No matter how she felt for them nor how she longed to help them, rules were rules as the King of Olympus loved to remind everyone.

But when the fate meddled day approached and her sweet kind hero had perished, some rules were to be broken in order to do some good.

The day Jason Grace died was a day every demigod remembers, they felt the sadness draped over both camps and everyone in them.

Even demigods who had never even met the fallen hero were mourning him with such intensity.

The lost goddess knew it was because of her her grief was spilling into their own lives, her sadness swallowing them up with it.

Part of her wanted to stop, knowing it was affecting the little heroes but another darker part wanted it to spur them into action, she wanted it to make them want change.

But look how that had turned out the first time. As much as she wanted to change she settled for a medium, she’d change and she'd do what she was meant to.

Help the young heroes live and thrive, no matter the cost to any other immortal in her way...

[jesuisgourde]

A list of all the books mentioned in Peter Doherty's journals (and in some interviews/lyrics, too)

Because I just made this list in answer to someone's question on a facebook group, I thought I may as well post it here.

-The Picture of Dorian Gray/The Ballad Of Reading Gaol/Salome/The Happy Prince/The Duchess of Padua, all by Oscar Wilde -The Thief's Journal/Our Lady Of The Flowers/Miracle Of The Rose, all by Jean Genet -A Diamond Guitar by Truman Capote -Mixed Essays by Matthew Arnold -Venus In Furs by Leopold Sacher-Masoch -The Ministry Of Fear by Graham Greene -Brighton Rock by Graham Green -A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud -The Street Of Crocodiles (aka Cinnamon Shops) by Bruno Schulz -Opium: The Diary Of His Cure by Jean Cocteau -The Lost Weekend by Charles Jackson -Howl by Allen Ginsberg -Women In Love by DH Lawrence -The Tempest by William Shakespeare -Trilby by George du Maurier -The Vision Of Jean Genet by Richard Coe -"Literature And The Crisis" by Isaiah Berlin -Le Cid by Pierre Corneille -The Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon -Junky by William S Burroughs -Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes -Futz by Rochelle Owens -They Shoot Horses Don't They? by Horace McCoy -"An Inquiry On Love" by La revolution surrealiste magazine -Idea by Michael Drayton -"The Nymph's Reply to The Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh -Hamlet by William Shakespeare -The Silver Shilling/The Old Church Bell/The Snail And The Rose Tree all by Hans Christian Andersen -120 Days Of Sodom by Marquis de Sade -Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke -Poetics Of Space by Gaston Bachelard -In Favor Of The Sensitive Man and Other Essays by Anais Nin -La Batarde by Violette LeDuc -Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov -Intimate Journals by Charles Baudelaire -Juno And The Paycock by Sean O'Casey -England Is Mine by Michael Bracewell -"The Prelude" by William Wordsworth -Noise: The Political Economy of Music by Jacques Atalli -"Elm" by Sylvia Plath -"I am pleased with my sight..." by Rumi -She Stoops To Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith -Amphitryon by John Dryden -Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellman -The Song Of The South by James Rennell Rodd -In Her Praise by Robert Graves -"For That He Looked Not Upon Her" by George Gascoigne -"Order And Disorder" by Lucy Hutchinson -Man Crazy by Joyce Carol Oates -A Pictorial History Of Sex In The Movies by Jeremy Pascall and Clyde Jeavons -Anarchy State & Utopia by Robert Nozick -"Limbo" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge -Men In Love: Masculinity and Sexuality in the Eighteenth Century by George Haggerty

[arbitrary line break because tumble hates lists apparently]

-Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky -Innocent When You Dream: the Tom Waits Reader -"Identity Card" by Mahmoud Darwish -Ulysses by James Joyce -The Four Quartets poems by TS Eliot -Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare -A'Rebours/Against The Grain by Joris-Karl Huysmans -Prisoner Of Love by Jean Genet -Down And Out In Paris And London by George Orwell -The Man With The Golden Arm by Nelson Algren -Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates -"Epitaph To A Dog" by Lord Byron -Cocaine Nights by JG Ballard -"Not By Bread Alone" by James Terry White -Anecdotes Of The Late Samuel Johnson by Hester Thrale -"The Owl And The Pussycat" by Edward Lear -"Chevaux de bois" by Paul Verlaine -A Strong Song Tows Us: The Life of Basil Bunting by Richard Burton -Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes -The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri -The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling -The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling -Ask The Dust by John Frante -On The Trans-Siberian Railways by Blaise Cendrars -The 39 Steps by John Buchan -The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol -The Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol -The Iliad by Homer -Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad -The Volunteer by Shane O'Doherty -Twenty Love Poems and A Song Of Despair by Pablo Neruda -"May Banners" by Arthur Rimbaud -Literary Outlaw: The life and times of William S Burroughs by Ted Morgan -The Penguin Dorothy Parker -Smoke by William Faulkner -Hero And Leander by Christopher Marlowe -My Lady Nicotine by JM Barrie -All I Ever Wrote by Ronnie Barker -The Libertine by Stephen Jeffreys -On Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts by Thomas de Quincey -The Void Ratio by Shane Levene and Karolina Urbaniak -The Remains Of The Day by Kazuo Ishiguro -Dead Fingers Talk by William S Burroughs -The England's Dreaming Tapes by Jon Savage -London Underworld by Henry Mayhew

[shady-scripter]

Zag and Achilles bonding?? Father and son?? The lights of my life??

Also zag teasing Achilles about his husbannndddd heheh

The River Styx Promise

(I know you sent this a while a while ago, but I just had an idea for them so it’s here now😌)

Everytime he looked at him, he remembered that he had a son. A son that never knew his father. He was a father that will never know his son.

Maybe Zagreus knew that. Maybe it was the way he talked to him or the way he never went fully onto Zagreus when he was teaching him.

After all, he was Aristos Achaion, Greatest of the Greeks. He was the strongest of his generation. He didn’t want to hurt Zagreus.

Achilles, son of Peleus and the nymph Thetis. Known for his famous rage. Known for dragging a corpse around the walls it should have been buried or burned in.

Achilles, the man who’s hubris cost him the love of his life. Achilles, lover of Patroclus. Achilles, father of Neoptolemus. Achilles, mentor of the son of Hades.

He didn’t have his spear with him this time. Zagreus had found the twin fists, Malphon. They were essentially gloves, so he thought that him wielding a long ranged weapon wouldn’t truly be a good way of training.

Zagreus moved with a precision like his own. Though, unlike Achilles, who’s battle prowess came from how nimble he was, Zagreus’s strength was in his arms.

Achilles didn’t finish training untouched. Zagreus had gotten a few good hits in, creating dark purple blotches on his form.

While Zagreus caught his breath, Achilles took off his cape and shirt, leaving him with only his bottom. Zagreus had paused then.

“You have bruises?” The question came out as if the boy was quizzing him. “I thought…”

“You’re right, lad. Shades shouldn’t bruise. However, I am, more or less, closer to being alive than most shades,” Achilles said, taking a seat on the floor next to the Prince.

Zagreus’s eyebrows furrowed as he stared at his water. “Is something wrong?” Achilles tried his best to study him.

“I will get you back together.”

Achilles gulped. “My Prince, you shouldn’t meddle with-“

“I promise-“

“Lad?”

“-on the-“ Achilles covered his mouth so fast, a loud smack echoed off the walls. Zagreus groaned under Achilles’s hand.

“Do not ever promise anything on the Styx!” His voice rose louder than it has in a while. “Or you will curse yourself!”

Zagreus shoved his mentor’s hand away. “I mean it!”

“We mean a lot of things!” Memories of holding a hand on top of a mountain, staring off into the sunset, flashed behind the shade’s vision. A memory of a promise. A promise that put them both in this mess in the first place. “But we can’t keep every promise we make. No matter how much you wish you could, some things just won’t happen. The fates do not ordain them.”

Zagreus hugged his knees, pulling them to his chest. “What was it?”

“What?” His eyebrows furrowed.

“What did you promise?”

A breath caught in Achilles’s throat. He let out a dry laugh and looked down at the colorful tiles that created a picture on the floor. A picture depicting a skull that looked to be screaming.

“I was a kid. Seventeen, I think. I’m not sure, but I was still training with Chiron on Pelion.” Achilles sighed, the centaurs form passed in his mind. “It was there that I promised Patroclus that I would marry him.” He let out a dry laugh. “I told him that I would live happy with him in the end. I thought I would.”

Achilles turned to face Zagreus, a look of worry on his face. “Zagreus, my prince, please know this. They never let you be famous and happy. Something always happens to heroes. I should have known that I would be no different.”

“I don’t want to be a hero. I want to find my mother.” Zagreus huffed.

“You don’t sound that way. You free Orpheus, reunite him with his love. Now you try the same with me. You must focus on your mother, not those around you.”

“I just want to help.”

“So did Theseus.”

“Do not compare me to that guy!” Achilles laughed. A real laugh. Zagreus joined, but died down soon enough.

“I’m sorry for scaring you,” Zagreus nearly whispered. Achilles patted his shoulder.

“It’s fine.” He hummed and stood on his feet. “How about we resume practice?” Achilles held out his hand. Zagreus smiled and put the twin fists back on. Then he took his mentor’s hand.

“You’re on.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Bronze Head of Medusa, Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli, Italy. The large villa complex was built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian around 120 CE. It is the most magnificent and intricate Roman villa known.

[Robert Scott Horton]

* * * *

“The Gorgon Medusa presents herself to us here and now, requiring us to be fully present, to listen deeply—past the noise of accumulated judgments—to the Ancient Wisdom that is our true inheritance. As the Great Awakener, She reminds us of our mortality and encourages us to reclaim whatever has been silenced or diminished within us while we are privileged to be alive. We are admonished to have the courage to act and speak what is true, to trust ourselves to hold her gaze and know we will not be turned to stone.” ― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

+

“In ancient times, the Gorgon Medusa lived on the far side of Oceanus in the land of Night. She was an awesome dragonlike creature with bronze claws, great golden wings, and fierce eyes that turned her beholder to stone. At one time she had been a beautiful young woman who filled the world with joy, not death, but in a moment of foolish pride she had compared herself to Athena. Such arrogance enraged the noble goddess, and in revenge she turned Medusa's lush hair into a tangle of vile, hissing snakes. From that moment on, Medusa's stare brought the stillness of death to anyone who dared look into her eyes. Meanwhile Polydectes, King of Seriphos, wanted to destroy Perseus, so he sent him off to bring back Medusa's head, knowing that her gaze would kill the young hero. But Athena heard the king's command. Still angry with Medusa, she gave Perseus her bronze shield to defend himself when he attacked the Gorgon. Holding the shield as a mirror, Perseus saw only Medusa's reflection, and her deadly stare did not harm him. He cut off her head and put it into a cloth bag, then flew away with the aid of a pair of winged sandals given to him by Hermes. As Perseus soared over the African desert, blood seeped through the bag and fell to the hot sands below. As each drop hit the scorching ground, it turned to steam, and the rising vapors transformed into three dangerously beautiful nymphs.” ― Lynne Ewing, The Choice

[littlesparklight]

Helen marrying Achilles on Leuke for her afterlife. What is this, where is it from, how,

:) An abomination upon this our fair Earth, is what it is.

No, ok, so. Don't consider this exhaustive, but here is some sort of accounting:

The origin of this version of Achilles and Helen's married afterlife is definitely found in the Kypria, or rather, Proclus' summary of the Kypria: "After this Achilles longs to have a look at Helen and Aphrodite and Thetis arrange a place for them to meet."

A meeting while they're both alive, somewhere early in the war. I'm unsure if we have any other sources between the Kypria (~7-6th century BCE, is the general assumption, some scholars put it later, but like with all the epics of the Epic Cycle, the material itself would be earlier either way) and Lykophron's Alexandra (~3-2 century BCE?).

The Alexandra has the next mention I'm aware of, line 170ff. Here Achilles is called one of five husbands to Helen, despite the fact that the Alexandra also makes Helen's "marriage" to Achilles something merely in a dream! (He is left pining for her in his bed.)

Again, I have no idea if there are any sources between the Alexandra the mentions post-0 CE, when the Achilles/Helen post-death marriage afterlife has clearly gained it's fullest shape. (If someone knows, please share!)

In Conon's Narrations (tail end of the last decades BCE into 0 CE): "[...]Tormented by a ghost he turned his thigh and was becoming gangrenous, until, in accordance with an oracle, he showed up at the island of Achilles in the Pontus (reached by sailing past the Ister river beyond the Tauric peninsula) and appeased the other heroes and particularly the soul of Ajax the Lokrian. He was healed, and returning from there he conveyed to Stesichoros Helen's command that he sing her a retraction if sight was dear to him. Stesichoros straightaway composed hymns to Helen and recovered his vision."

The above elaboration of the Stesichorus story is also mentioned by Pausanias (3.19 11-13); earlier sources do not connect this to Helen being in Leuke [and married to Achilles], merely that Stesichorus was supposedly blinded by Helen for his earlier treatments of the Trojan war and that he composed the Palinode(s) in recantation.

In the work of Ptolemaus Chennus/Ptolemaus Hephaestion (containing a lot of uh, very strange variations), Helen and Achilles have a child: "There was born of Helen and Achilles in the fortunate isles a winged child named Euphorion after the fertility of this land; Zeus caught him and with a blow knocked him to earth in the isle of Melos, where he continued the pursuit and changed the nymphs there into frogs because they had given him burial."

Lastly, we have Philostratos the Elder/of Lemnos, who has a pretty long section for Helen and Achilles and their afterlife marriage.

Helen isn't actually the only/even the most usual afterlife wife of Achilles. That "honour" goes to Medea, "According to the Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.815, the first to affirm that Achilles married Medea in the Elysian Fields was the poet Ibycus [6th century BCE], and the tale was afterwards repeated by Simonides." (Quoting from note 113 to the Epitome of the Bibliotheke on Theoi, but if you have Loeb's Greek Lyric III it's in there too.) Medea as Achilles' future/last wife also gets a mention in Apollonios of Rhodes' Argonautica (3rd century BCE; Hera to Thetis), and then in the Bibliotheke, which is a post-0 CE handbook building on earlier ones (earlier handbooks as well as just earlier sources).

And in at least one source, Antoninus Liberalis' Metamorphoses, (somewhere between 100-300 CE), in #27, Iphigenia is Achilles' afterlife wife.

If you want my opinion, both Helen and Medea seem, ah, extremely unsuited for Achilles and the possibility of some sort of ~marital harmony~ (no matter what Philostratus makes of their marriage lol). Achilles' temper would probably be unable to deal with either of them!