Perseus's Story - (1)
Lately, Mente had changed quite a bit. As I wandered through the Underworld, I would often spot her shuffling past with hollow eyes, muttering to herself. “Ugh… I want to go back… No, but still…”
Sometimes I would find her squatting at the outskirts of the Underworld. When I asked what she was doing, she would lift her head with tears brimming in her eyes and plead with me.
“Lord Hades… I… I can’t live like this… A reward! Please, at least give me a reward!”
The real problem wasn’t the begging—it was that she would suddenly try to throw herself into my arms. I kept dodging her, but one day my resolve weakened and I let her hug me. That was when the trouble started.
While she cried in my embrace about how difficult her work was, a pair of voices cut through from behind her.
“Eeeek?! I-I’m sorry!”
The Goddess Styx and Goddess Lethe appeared, radiating murderous divine power, and promptly dragged her away. From that moment on, Mente—who had worn the exact expression of a mortal arriving in the Underworld—began flinching away whenever she came near me. It was as if she had received a thorough scolding or lecture.
As these incidents kept repeating, I summoned the God of Sleep, Hypnos, and asked him directly.
“Are the goddesses perhaps tormenting Mente? She looks completely buried in work…”
“…? As far as I know, Goddess Styx isn’t even handling half her usual workload.”
Wondering if that could be true, I secretly followed Mente one day. She ran around the Underworld diligently from morning until evening, yet…
‘Isn’t this actually quite lenient?’
Mente’s workload was far lighter than the average duties given to gods residing in the Underworld. Other deities even deployed clones and worked several times harder, while she couldn’t create duplicates and had to handle everything with her main body alone.
After that observation, I figured she would adapt quickly with such a manageable amount of work and stopped paying it much attention. After all, even while tailing her, I had been moving my own clones to issue judgments.
So I watched with a satisfied eye as Mente adapted to the Underworld day by day…
One day, the Goddess of Wisdom Athena visited the Underworld.
“Greetings, Uncle. Cough. Cough.”
“…? Why are you coughing?”
We gods do not fall ill. Aside from hair loss—which even the God of Medicine Apollo cannot cure—most diseases cannot invade our robust divine bodies. Yet here was one of the Twelve Olympians, the Goddess of Wisdom, coughing?
Athena gave an awkward smile at my question.
“Ah… it’s because… sniff! The intense mint scent from the entrance of the Underworld all the way to the River Acheron…”
“Is it that bad?”
“Even Ferryman Charon was pinching his nose while piloting that massive barge… or rather, his steel vessel.”
Mint, my symbol and a plant used to ease the odor of the dead. Originally it had only been used during funerals in Thebes, where my temple stood, so it hadn’t been an issue. Thanatos, who reaps the souls of the deceased, and Charon, who ferries them across the Acheron, had both enjoyed the refreshing fragrance at first.
But if mint had spread across the mortal world to the point where Mente was being worshipped as a goddess… how many of the newly dead would now carry that scent?
“Oh dear… Mint has spread far too much in the mortal realm lately.”
“Yes. Once souls cross the Acheron the river dilutes the smell, but until then…”
“We’ll need to find a way to reduce the mint growing in the upper world.”
It was good that my symbol had spread widely, but not if it caused suffering for the gods. I needed to come up with another solution.
“Um… Uncle. The reason I came to the Underworld is…”
“Athena, do you have any good ideas? A natural way to reduce the mint used in mortal funerals without forcing it…”
“You want a natural reduction rather than a divine prohibition? Of course. Declaring through oracles that the amount of mint used in funerals must be limited after you yourself bestowed the plant would be excessive interference in human affairs.”
“Then how about spreading mint as a food ingredient? If humans consider it a precious herb, they might stop wasting so much of it on funerals…”
“…! That’s not a bad idea at all. Now that you mention it…”
That was right. The last time Mente had created mint, I had officially recognized her as its creator and promised to spread mint-based foods across the world. I had been so busy that I completely forgot. I should have done this from the beginning.
Rather than trying to eliminate the strong scent, if people started consuming mint in teas and dishes, the amount used in funerals would naturally decrease. Since food ingredients were precious in this era, far less mint would be discarded with corpses, and the souls arriving here would no longer reek of it.
“…Uncle?”
Honestly I was fine with it, but if it was causing Charon on the Acheron to suffer, I could not ignore it as the King of the Underworld. Therefore, the reason I was turning mint into a food ingredient was entirely thanks to Charon… or rather, because of him.
I was about to summon Mente and assign her the task when Athena called out to me again.
“The reason I came here is to borrow your Kynee.”
She wanted to borrow my Kynee—the helmet of invisibility crafted by one of the three Cyclopes, Arges? It was no different from asking to borrow Zeus’s thunderbolt or Poseidon’s trident. I straightened my posture and looked directly into Athena’s eyes.
“The Goddess of Wisdom must have a reason for making such a request of me. Explain yourself.”
“Yes. I wish to lend it to a human named Perseus who is fated to become a hero.”
“…I have heard of him. You mean the pitiful human destined to kill his own grandfather.”
The king of Argos, Acrisius, had no sons—only a daughter. When he visited the temple at Delphi to ask about children, he received a terrifying prophecy.
“Not only will you never have a son, but you will be killed by the son your daughter bears.”
“W-what did you say?!”
Upon hearing the dreadful oracle, King Acrisius locked his daughter Danaë in a tall tower. But Zeus transformed into a shower of golden rain, entered the tower, and lay with her. The child born from Zeus and Danaë was Perseus. Acrisius set both mother and child adrift at sea inside a wooden chest. They were rescued by a kind fisherman and lived on the island of Seriphos.
But then—
“Perseus. It is the king’s command. Bring me the head of Medusa.”
“M-Medusa’s head, you say?”
“Refuse and you will be executed for defying a royal decree. What will you do?”
“Damn it… I understand.”
Polydectes, the king of Seriphos, had fallen for Danaë’s beauty and sought to eliminate her son Perseus by sending him after Medusa—one of the three Gorgon sisters, a monster whose snake-haired gaze could turn men to stone.
“So you already knew about him, Uncle.”
“No matter how much time I spend in the Underworld, I can hardly be ignorant of a human fated to become a hero.”
With the threat of the Gigantes still looming, I had made sure to keep track of humans born with heroic destinies. Especially one who was Zeus’s son.
Fate. An absolute law that even immortal gods dared not change. Altering a destiny revealed through prophecy was impossible—even for Zeus, King of the Gods. That was why I knew Perseus was destined to kill his grandfather, yet I had never dared try to change it.
“Since he is Zeus’s son, that makes him my nephew. I cannot simply let him die.”
“Then you will lend him the Kynee?”
“Well…”
Perseus was indeed the human fated to become a hero, and he might prove useful in the war against the Gigantes. Lending him the Kynee could be a worthwhile investment for the future. If that was what fate dictated.
But…
“It is true that Perseus is the one who will slay Medusa and become a hero. However…”
The single reason I did not immediately agree to Athena’s request was this.
“Was it not you who turned Medusa into a monster after she was raped by Poseidon? As I recall, she was originally a priestess who served you.”
Medusa had been a priestess in Athena’s temple. Poseidon, lusting after her beauty, violated her inside the sanctuary. Athena, like Artemis, was a virgin goddess. For such an act to occur in her temple was a grave desecration. Unable to confront the powerful Poseidon directly, Athena instead transformed Medusa into a monster.
“Your temperament is no different from Artemis’s. It may have been difficult to protest against Poseidon… but to take it out on a human?”
“Uncle, that was…”
“You say nothing to Poseidon who raped her, yet you come asking to borrow my Kynee so you can give it to the hero fated to kill her?”
Perseus was indeed fated to kill Medusa and his grandfather. But it was Athena who had turned the rape victim into a monster in the first place. While I could not let my nephew die and was willing to lend the Kynee, she would need to persuade me a little more.
“Go on, then. Show me that famous wisdom of yours that echoes throughout Olympus and try to justify yourself.”