[Hephaestus's Predicament]
What is the most important thing for a creator?
Is it a budget that allows them to bring the inspirations in their head to life to their heart's content?
Or perhaps a technique that can pull any shape or casting out of the void?
If not that, is it an environment where they can build and break any scale of plan or design as they please?
It was none of these.
In Hephaestus's opinion, if one were to pick the single most necessary thing for the tribe of creators, it was only one.
It was inspiration.
No matter how much gold and silver one possessed, like a mountain, if one could not conceive of the treasures to be forged from them, they were nothing more than shiny rocks. And even if one possessed an incredible technique capable of making the dead breathe and mimicking the very harmony of heaven and earth, if there was no goal to achieve with it, it was merely a hollow display.
Hephaestus, the only blacksmith capable of forging the most beautiful woman in the world and tuning the divine artifacts of the three great gods—which the three Cyclopes elders had personally cast—was a god revered by many blacksmiths and artists for his overflowing inspiration, as much as for his miraculous hands.
But who would know?
That Hephaestus, who had forged countless treasures and divine artifacts for thousands of years with endless creative desire and inspiration, was actually in a terrible slump.
“Haaah....”
Always, always his daily life was the same.
As if they didn't know what the sunlight and moonlight he personally forged were worth, his twin half-siblings would just waste arrows pointlessly slaughtering humans and come to him every day with empty quivers. His wife, the beautiful Aphrodite, would roam about everywhere without a care for him, wearing the belt he had gifted her, busy having affairs with his brother or flaunting her affection with other lovers, spreading scandals.
Unless some gods visited his workshop to have their weapons repaired, or it was a day to attend the Olympus Council, he had no reason to leave his workshop. And even then, in Greece and Olympus, which had entered a long period of peace after Typhon's invasion, he could not find any event or inspiration that truly made his eyes sparkle.
Occasionally, some so-called heroes would burst into his workshop and beg for weapons to fulfill their wishes, but to him, the wishes of such greenhorn heroes were too trivial. He would chase them all out, begrudging even a small scrap of iron.
-Clang! Clang!
He would just repeat the cycle of making and breaking, making and assembling, thinking it better to do something than to just sit still. Hephaestus was always thirsty. For that moment of inspiration that would drive him mad and make him focus intently.
'When... when was the last time I pounded the hammer and burned the furnace like a madman?'
It was when Hephaestus had thrown down his hammer and was lost in thought, staring blankly at the flickering furnace.
“Master.”
“What is it?”
The golden handmaiden, the only one who could enter his workshop, where even his own half-gods struggled with the intense heat. At the call of the only handmaiden he kept by his side, Hephaestus rose from his contemplation.
“A message from Lady Hera.”
-Whirrr!
Clearing her throat with a strange mechanical sound, the golden handmaiden straightened her posture and stared straight at Hephaestus, her eyes flashing.
“Mother! Are you alright?”
The voice flowing from her mouth was none other than the kind voice of the Queen of the Gods, his mother, Hera. She was a mother who occasionally visited his workshop, perhaps concerned for her son who had locked himself away, tired of both the gods and Olympus. However, she was a mother who had not been able to exchange even a letter, let alone see his face, due to his father's self-righteous lockdown order, and she had reached out for the first time in a long while.
“Haha, it’s quiet these days. Are you alright, Mother?”
“Father, really...”
Even now, Hephaestus’s leg, which had been shattered when he was cast down by his father, would ache. It was a matter buried long ago, as it was too old to feel anger over anymore, but his father, who had left him with an indelible scar, was truly a complex existence to Hephaestus.
“Haha, I understand.”
“Haha...”
Aphrodite, the goddess who was Hera's daughter-in-law and Hephaestus's wife, had her union celebrated by Hera herself at Zeus's arrangement. But the situation of this couple was a secret shared by all of Greece.
“...Isn't that a long time ago now? Don't worry about it.”
In fact, the goddess Hephaestus had hoped for from Zeus as a partner was not Aphrodite, but Athena. Athena, the idol of all technicians, the wise goddess who draws out fundamental inspiration and the brilliance of the soul. It was natural for Hephaestus, a born technician, to fall for such an Athena, but his proposal was not accepted by Athena, who had sworn her virginity to the Styx. Instead, the person he put a ring on the ring finger of was the beautiful goddess Aphrodite.
Aphrodite's endless charm and beauty also brought quite decent inspiration to Hephaestus. The Cestus Himas, a magical belt that seduces any man, was the result of inspiration that burst forth to capture Aphrodite's charm. Pandora, the most beautiful woman in the world, was the result of inspiration that burst forth to catch up to Aphrodite's beauty.
However, as Aphrodite presided over free-spirited eroticism and love, and Hephaestus over endless inspiration and tempering, their married life was close to ruin from the start.
At first, he was enraged at Aphrodite, who would take his gifts and have an affair with his brother Ares, and he had even exposed their affair to all the Greek gods, putting them to shame. But now, Hephaestus just let it be, and Hera was the one who felt the rage at the sight of her son.
“Oh, Mother. Why are you like this after contacting me for the first time in a while? I'm fine.”
Does Hera know? That if his father Zeus was 80% of the reason Hephaestus was reluctant to go up to Olympus, the remaining 20% was because of Hera's lamentations like this?
'I'd rather pour lava on my head.'
Sigh.
It was when Hephaestus sighed softly and shook his head.
'Ugh...!'
Is a mother always a mother? Or is it proof that his chronic illness has lasted that long? He couldn't tell his worried mother that he had been staring blankly at the furnace until just a moment ago.
“Ahem, I'm fine. Work has suddenly increased, so I don't have time to think about other things.”
That statement itself was true. For some reason, the sea kingdom had greatly increased its order volume for spears, shields, and harpoons, so his workshop had no rest. Of course, such trivial mass orders were being handled by his disciples or sons, so he had no reason to step in, but Hephaestus just wanted to end this uncomfortable communication as soon as possible.
“Yes, yes?”
“....Yes?”
What did he just hear? His mother, that Hera, the Queen of the Gods who was the trial of many heroes and breathed fire day after day because of his father's half-gods. Is she introducing a hero to him now?
'...Gaia help me.'
“...Ah! That guy?”
Dianes.
According to what he heard from Hermes, who came to repair his talaria the other day, he was a madman who punched Apollo in the face, a hot-topic divinity causing waves all over Greece. And according to Triton, who came to order weapons from him, he was a lucky guy who snatched the last daughter of Nereus, caused a ruckus in Poseidon's palace for his lover, and was a legendary adventurer who drove out the king of the declining Arcadia and enthroned his lover Atalanta as queen.
Even his Cyclopes masters, whom he visited before returning to his hometown, were fighting over who would be in charge of the guy's equipment.
Even Hephaestus, who was ignorant of worldly affairs, remembered the name, but for even his mother Hera to mention that name...
“Hoho...”
Beyond the golden handmaiden conveying the divine word, Hera’s voice was pleased at her son’s satisfied snort.
Hera had even prepared an excuse for Hephaestus, who was strangely shy, to go find Dianes. With his mother taking such care, it wouldn't do for him as a son to hold out any longer.
“Erytheia Island is not far, so I shall go and see.”
“Yes, I will visit you later when the lockdown order is over.”
-Whirrr!
The golden handmaiden, who finished the message while making a mechanical sound again, bowed politely.
“Then, shall we prepare? Lord Hephaestus?”
“...Yes, it is about time I checked on Antaios’s equipment as well.”
Thinking that something fun had finally happened, Hephaestus clutched his pounding heart and left his workshop for the first time in a long while.
And in that light outing, Hephaestus would face a life-altering upheaval that might shake his very values to their core.
-Chirp! Chirp!
“...Haa.”
It was quite a shock that his flame, which had dwelt in Corynetes, had taken shape through the power of someone named Dianes. He wanted to grab the guy named Dianes right away and ask how such a thing was possible. However, when he saw the strange half-god named Dianes in person, Hephaestus felt as if a fresh shock was striking his head for the first time in a long while, and he couldn't say anything.
'How, how can such an existence be?'
Hephaestus was an artist, a sculptor, and a technician. But he was a blacksmith who forged the weapons of the gods.
Therefore, his eye for seeing a warrior was far superior even to that of Ares. But even to such a Hephaestus, a warrior like Dianes was something he was seeing for the first time in his life.
'Sword, spear, bare-handed combat, greatsword, archery, assassination, and even magic and weapons I don't know—all talents are blooming and growing?'
This surpassed even Athena, whom he revered so much, and his pathetic brother Ares. And to think that the blooming talent was evolving continuously without a single flaw?
'Even if you brought all the heroes of history, Perseus and Bellerophon of Elysium, right now... even Athena and Ares could not guarantee victory against this unprecedented warrior!'
He was truly the best opponent for a blacksmith!
'What kind of equipment should I make? So that this hero can perform at his best.'
A weapon worthy of a warrior who had mastered all the weapons of Greece, even those that did not exist. Faced with an unprecedented challenge and a challenge close to impossible, Hephaestus felt his blood boiling for the first time in a while.
“...Ahem.”
However, he was also a high-ranking god of Olympus. Since it wouldn't be good for his dignity to just blurt out that he would make a weapon, he was about to open his trembling mouth to talk, when—
“The weapons of the hunters sent by the king of Hyperborea, where I was...”
Stories of foreign weapons and armies that even Hephaestus couldn't have imagined began to flow from Dianes's mouth. And as soon as the honey wine prepared as a gift for Antaios went down, Dianes's extraordinary stories began to completely captivate his soul.