After Coming This Far, I Ought to Land at Least One Slap
“…Mom is… no… that woman might be in danger?”
“Yeah. Looks like the gods of the Night’s Abode are plotting something.”
“…”
The story we had pieced together from the letter. Kedalion fell silent for a moment after hearing it. Her face darkened; her lips parted and closed several times as if she wanted to speak. Then she bit down hard, and when she finally spoke her voice was ice-cold.
“Ha! Well, isn’t that just perfect. That woman? She can go die for all I care!”
“…”
“Come on! Let’s go already—we have to save Dad and my uncles!”
The little Cyclops girl seized my hand and tugged me forward. I let out a quiet sigh and followed where she led, feeling the faint tremor in her grip and the tangle of emotions it carried.
-Clang! Clang! Clang!
The ring of a hammer filled the room. Even through the thick fog of exhaustion it never stopped, striking down again and again upon iron stained the color of blood. Under that endless assault the metal slowly took shape. The one-eyed giant whose legs were still shackled—the Cyclops Steropes—watched the piece take form with a dark expression, then plunged it into water.
-Hissssss…
White steam billowed up as the glowing metal cooled. The fire that had burned so fiercely vanished in an instant—just like his life. Once his eyes had blazed with hope and resolve; now not a single spark remained. The wife he had loved had left him for another man. She had become the most notorious harlot in the district, parading the streets every day so that every tongue wagged about her. And the daughter who had been his greatest treasure, his entire world, was gone without a trace.
After everything had been stripped away, all that remained was a hope he himself no longer believed in. He knew the work was meaningless. He even suspected the whole thing might be another cruel trick. Yet still he could not stop swinging the hammer. Without it he had nothing left to live for—nothing except cursing this undying body while he rolled on the floor. So he raised the hammer once more to continue the empty ritual he had repeated for years.
That was when he heard it.
“Da…d?”
“…?”
The voice brushed his ear. The hand that had been about to lift the hammer froze in mid-air. It was the voice that had come to him every night in his dreams for years—the voice he would have given anything to hear just once more in the waking world. For a heartbeat he thought he must be mistaken, that longing had finally driven him to hear phantoms.
But then—
“Dad…”
The sound sank into his ear again. Steropes’s whole body began to tremble. Slowly, carefully, he turned around.
And—
-Clang!
The hammer slipped from his fingers and struck the floor. The tool he had once valued more than his own life rolled away unnoticed. In that moment his single eye, his ears, his entire mind were fixed on the one small figure looking up at him.
“…Ke…Keda…lion?”
He spoke the name in a shaking voice, terrified that, like every dream, she would vanish the instant he looked away.
“Dad!!”
She threw herself into his arms. She had grown so much taller than he remembered, yet against his giant frame she was still impossibly small. Feeling the warmth of her body, Steropes’s single eye overflowed with thick tears.
“My daughter! My little girl!”
“Dad… Dad!”
For the first time since that nightmare day he felt joy—so fierce it felt almost like a dream. The giant of the forge simply held his daughter tight. Only a little later did he notice the gods standing nearby, quietly wiping tears of their own.
“…”
She rose from the bed and pulled on her clothes as if nothing at all had happened. Watching her unshaken composure, the man with dark-purple skin, a black beard, and a massive, muscular frame—the ruler of the Abyss, Tartarus himself—smiled coldly.
“Your face has been dark all day. Is something the matter?”
“…Nothing.”
Her voice was as faint as a ripple on still water, heavy with darkness. She turned to leave.
“Wait.”
“…”
At Tartarus’s single word she stopped. Slowly the woman known throughout the district as the filthiest harlot—Nux—turned her gaze back to the master of the Abyss.
“Hah… I feel almost human again.”
“Never thought we’d get help from the gods of the surface.”
“Truly, we are grateful. How can we ever repay this debt…?”
After hearing everything that had happened, the three Cyclops brothers—Brontes, Arges, and Steropes—offered their heartfelt thanks. The chains that had bound their legs had been shattered by the hammer we brought from the surface, the one that carried the power of the sun. Relief they could no longer hide shone on their faces. They thanked us again and again. Their appearance might have been repulsive to ordinary eyes, just as the old myths described, yet standing before fellow blacksmiths I felt an instinctive kinship. The same feeling was plain in the warm smiles they turned on me.
“Indeed… just as my daughter said, you smell of iron like us.”
“Hephaestus, was it? To think a comrade like us would come to our aid—I am deeply moved.”
“Er… if you don’t mind, those gauntlets look like your work. May I take a look?”
“Of course.”
Brontes showed interest in many things, but above all he was fascinated by my gear. Even in this situation the eldest Cyclops could not hide his curiosity; I could tell he was every bit as devoted to the craft as I was. Unlike his half-dead brothers, a spark of life still burned in his single eye—a born blacksmith who could survive even at the bottom of hell. When he finished examining my gauntlets his reaction was nothing short of dramatic.
“Wh…what… how can such armor even exist…? The craftsmanship is superb, and the divine power sealed inside is no ordinary thing! And this isn’t bronze, nor gold or silver—not even iron! Yet it’s light and hard at the same time! What metal is this… what in the world is it?”
“A metal I made.”
“Y…you made it?”
There was no point explaining titanium alloy; the concept would be meaningless to him. In this ancient age titanium was a metal no one even knew existed, let alone how to refine. So for all practical purposes it truly was a metal of my own creation. Brontes kept peppering me with questions, even asking if I would teach him the smelting method, but I had to cut the conversation short.
“I’d love to talk shop all day, but that’s enough for now. The important thing is getting out of here as soon as possible, isn’t it?”
“Ah… well… y-yes, you’re right. But…”
“Brother, he’s right. This isn’t the time.”
“Our nephew and his friends have gone to all this trouble. Let’s leave this wretched place already.”
“True enough—I’ve had my fill of being Tartarus’s slave. But… not yet.”
“Huh?”
“Wh…why not?”
“!… Ah…”
We all looked puzzled at Brontes’s words. Kedalion and the Cyclopes, however, seemed to remember something and quickly explained.
“That’s right—full lights-out is coming soon.”
“It lasts about four hours. When it hits, total darkness covers everything and Tartarus’s barrier rises around the outer edge of the district.”
“From that moment no one can leave the streets of the Abyss. The barrier itself is tough, and the second you touch it the guards will swarm like hornets. Worst case, Tartarus himself shows up.”
“We still need to pack our things anyway. Wait just a little. The moment the barrier drops tomorrow morning, we leave.”
“Mmm…”
“Then we have no choice.”
“…”
Honestly I wanted to get out of this place without wasting another second, but even I wasn’t confident I could punch through Tartarus’s barrier easily. The risk of being trapped and surrounded was too high; waiting a little was the smarter move. Once the decision was made the Cyclopes bustled about gathering their belongings. Leaving them to it, I walked over to where Kedalion sat alone in a corner of the yard, staring up at the sky—or rather, at the black ceiling overhead.
The reunion she had longed for had gone smoothly. There should have been almost nothing left to worry about. Yet even now a shadow she could not hide lay across her face. And I had a pretty good idea why.
“…Still thinking about her? That woman Nux.”
“!”
Kedalion’s eyes widened in surprise. She quickly schooled her expression and answered in a cold voice.
“I… not at all! I told you—I don’t care if she lives or dies. As long as I have Dad and my uncles…”
“Really?”
“…”
My second question left her unable to answer so easily.
“I… I…”
Her lips trembled. I understood, at least a little. Like me, Kedalion had been abandoned by her mother. But where I had been cast aside before any real bond could form, she had known her mother’s love. For me it would have been like being abandoned by Eurynome rather than Hera—the shock would have been far greater, and a lingering attachment would have remained. No matter how rationally she tried to deny it, a young girl’s heart still yearned for a mother’s love. And the knowledge that that mother might be in danger was something even a discarded child could not simply ignore. Yet she could not voice those feelings. We had already done so much for her; insisting now might ruin the entire plan.
Even so—
“Four hours… that should be plenty of time.”
“? Lord Hephaestus…?”
If I ignored this, the wound in her heart would never heal. As someone who had come this far to help her, I couldn’t leave things half-finished. A real man simply couldn’t stand by and watch.
“This is the last chance anyway. Since we’re already here, I’ll make sure you get to meet her face-to-face and slap her at least once.”
“! Ah…”
At those words Kedalion could no longer hide the bright smile that broke across her face. Setting aside all the complicated emotions, she was simply happy at the thought of seeing her mother. I let a small smile of my own touch my lips.
“Wait here.”
With that I vaulted the wall and set off at a run. My destination was the place written on the scroll—Nux’s mansion, not far from here and easy to spot.
“So he went after all?”
Watching Hephaestus disappear over the wall, Thetis wore an expression that said she had expected nothing less. Her little brother had always been the type to charge straight at anything that bothered him. He must have sensed Kedalion’s tangled feelings just as she had. And since they only needed to rest quietly until dawn and then run, finishing things off with one last grand gesture before leaving seemed only natural.
“Well, after coming all this way we can hardly go home without smacking that bitch across the face at least once.”
“The slap’s secondary… I just want to see the look on that high-and-mighty woman’s face when she sees her daughter.”
“Ah…”
Aphrodite spoke with genuine feeling while Nerites smiled and gently ruffled Kedalion’s hair. A different kind of calm settled over them than the one that had followed Hephaestus’s departure. Kedalion could no longer deny the quiet hope rising in her chest. She, too, had things she wanted to ask her mother once she saw her face.
“All right then—shall we go help them pack? We’ll all be leaving together tomorrow anyway.”
“Yes! I’d like that.”
Kedalion beamed. Looking at that smile, Nerites felt an unexpectedly maniacal surge of fondness and rose to his feet.
“Hey, Thetis, Aphrodite—you two come—”
-Thwack!
In that instant a sudden, bone-chilling sensation struck. The next moment his vision flooded crimson. Nerites’s hand moved toward his face of its own accord.
But—
“…Huh?”
“!”
Before his fingers could reach it, something rolled into his palm. Through the swirling red haze he finally saw what he was holding.
It was his own headless neck, still spurting blood.