Exclusive Preview: The Prologue

Enjoy an exclusive preview of the first, enthralling chapter of The Other Olympians...

"Olympus mourned in silence. Weighted quiet hung like a burdensome, rain-drenched cloak. Dreary, black shrouds fluttered from the rafters like flags in hollow ceremony. And Hestia, as she had done for all her countless days, stoked her Hearth.

She hunched over the immense brazier, as she knew a Goddess should never be seen to. But in the inner most sanctum of the Halls of Olympus and in times like these she need not fear chastisement. Coaxing the embers in more habit than need, indulged herself further in the simple pleasure of the fire. Her solace against the silence lay in the snaps and crackles as amber tongues lashed and danced. The ever-rising blaze beat against the descending twilight in farcical replication of the idle chatter and easy joys that used to fill the Halls around her. Now, she had only the chatter of flame and a depression veiling with the ease of nightfall.

Hestia had never resented her solitary duty before. It came to her of her own choice, a rarity amongst her kind. Now, if this unbearable quiet dragged on she could see herself coming to loath it. An approaching reality which may break an old Goddess’ heart.

She was not meant to be alone. Not like this. Hestia had come into the world along with her five other siblings, in the incident which had slain their father, drove their mother to madness and won her brother his crown. This silence, this absence of life around her, was as unnatural as her Great Hearth going out.

To the extent she had ever in her long life imagined the demise of their rule, it was certainly not so un-signified. But then what had she imagined? Perhaps a grand battle of revenge wreaked by the Titans; a savage betrayal from beneath their noses; a mysterious assault from forces foreign and unknown? Grand, all-consuming and with the dignity of defeat by an enemy. That was deserving of being stitched into a rainbow of boundless tapestry, to hang aloft forever more. This was an ending fitting of Gods.

Not this trickling, slow destruction. In the world beyond her mind’s eye, her kin had met the shadow of Thanatos like the final dregs of a long dried riverbed.

Though perhaps even in her imagined fate for them all, it may have been still that Hestia was not saved from the heft of a lonely grief. As she had been condemned so many times by others and as many times she had condemned herself, she had selected of her own volition a life on the sidelines. She was Goddess of swept cinders and ash, of the warmth of sanctuary and the crackling flames where sent the libations, sacrifices and over-sworn the most abiding oaths. Not of glories in battle. Not of thunderous skies. Not of the thrill of the hunt, nor sneaking thief nor tender-hearted poets. Of this thread, to be the watch-woman of her kind’s doom may be what the fates had always intended to spin.

For millennia it had been a relief to not be ensconced in the many comedies, tragedies and absurdities which befell her more dramatically inclined family. She had provided a sanctuary, as much as for herself as for that she conjured for mortals. What a vicious way of twisting what she had guarded so tempestuously. But then, the fates had never claimed to be kind. 

Was this how it always ended, in these pangs of guilt with nothing around to distract her? Her thoughts roving to the whims of those mysterious, Mistresses of Destiny and what they might have lying in wait for her, now that the path ahead was so unclear.  After so many millenia of barely interrupted routine, perhaps one which had slowly decayed her kind into complacency, the recent turmoil had been a splash of frigid water. Even mountains shifted. Seas went dry. Permanence was an illusion. From which they had all desperately needed awakening. Perhaps none more needed than her. 

She had grown ungrateful in her old age. In not cherishing the comings-and-goings and simple bustle of Olympian Court life, she had allowed it to slip through her fingers. And, more than the scent of incense and perfumes pouring from every hanging diffusion, more than the bursting abundance of finery and flowers; what she decided she had missed most about the previous season of her life, on this cold and despondent night, was the privilege of wallflowery and being privy to the metered cacophony of such a lively place. Such a joy is held in Olympus no more. And Hestia, as the world, was all the poorer for it. 

The hush burying her contemplation was so total that even the air, high above the world of man, seemed still. Until it was violently interrupted. 

A long shadow flew against jewel-incrusted and heavily mosaiced facades only to be intermittently severed, consumed and released by those draping from thousand-stretch columnades. Bare feet slapped staccato against the marble flag stones. The echo rang as loud as it did clear and jolted the Hearth-Keeper from her thoughts. As startled as she might have been by the interruption, fear soon melted to delight when she turned from her Hearth-side to receive her guest. A frantic one at that. 

The youth gripped the ivory door frame with one hand as the other went to her knees to steady herself as she panted. Hestia’s mind raced through a list of accommodations that a good host should impart to make the visitor welcome. But any hopes of amicable company were shattered as she took in the stricken look on the maiden’s face. 

It was Teresé, a young Nymph hailing from one of the many waterfalls which wept from Mount Olympus’ great summit. The girl had taken up the unofficial capacity of relaying messengers and news among the Olympian Court’s few remaining inhabitants. And by the hesitance and glassiness to her eyes, a message of a very particular nature. 

“Forgive my interruption, Great Lady,” Teresé panted and sniffed, Hestia motioned her past the drapery and in from the cold. 

“None needed, child. I bid thee, what news?” Hestia smiled encouragingly at the little Nymph, still laboured in her breaths, hoping that would be enough to calm her pace and deliver her message in full. It was not. 

Tears sputtered then poured down Teresé’s sweet face, crumpling it like parchment. She made multiple attempts, but in the end the only intonable phrase heard was “f-f-from the f-f-forge,” the poor girl stammered out. 

“Hephaestus?” Hestia whispered beneath her breath. Teresé nodded in equal distress. 

Teresé had earned a reputation since her informal undertaking of Lord Hermes’ duties. She had once been soundly assured and overflowing with light-hearted wit as sweet as the water flowing from her abode. Then, in the wake of her home being shaken by one tragedy after the next, all her surety collapsed and herself along with it. A heretofore favourite of Queen Hera, for her brightness and humour, she now stood reduced, a permanent waver to her small voice and no humour to be found at all. 

Hestia found that tears flowed easily among the young and sheltered. Though she was far from the former, she would readily admit the sequestered nature of her Domain made each successive announcement of this kind heated her eyes and wetted her cheeks with greater and greater ease. She suspected one day the tears would simply never stop. She feared worse the day she had no more to shed at all. 

The Oath-Binder rose from her kneeling stool, strode across the room and engulfed the shaking Nymph in her embrace. After a moment of shared intemperate sorrow, Hestia pulled back. In what may have been a futile attempt to project the strength Hera might have shown, Hestia sternly used her long veil to evict the tears stains from both their faces and took Teresé’s shoulders in her own unsteady grip. 

“Take thee, Flight-foot, in the business of your undubbed craft. Spread word only to those who I command thee, as no other need know. Certainly not on this dark night.” The amber fingers of dawn were slow to spread their markings upon the sky above them, deepening her words, so she pressed, “Take this missive of Lord Hephaestus’ condition to Lady Agleia and their daughters. The Maids of Ereikoussa wouldst be found interned amid the Library, upon the furthest eastern cliffside of the Mount where Helios’ Gift shines brightest. Go there. Heed my command and speak thy message to not a soul, not Spirit, Divinity nor Mortal, further. 

Teresé sobbed again and Hestia gentled her downturned face to her sight like a startled mule. Teresé cherished the attempted soothing from the Great Lady of the Hearth, even as she wrecked and reeled from every memory of every other night so like this before. She shook with sorrow that Lord Hephaestus, however much he may have frightened her in the past, should succumb to such a fate. But most of all she sobbed for the crone before her; her salt-and-pepper hair fell in wispy ringlets from where they had become disordered out of her veil and elaborate stylings and the lines deep like tree-ring emanating from her eyes and mouth deepened the kindliness to every small smile. In her bearing, Lady Hestia recalled to Teresé the vision of the gentle elderly aunts and generous grandmothers of the youths who made sport of playing in her waterfall upon the Mortal Realm. But cradling her face and wiping the salt-stains from her cheeks that despite all her might Teresé could not cease, was no mortal. Who stood before her was a Goddess, an Olympian no less, humbling herself to the craft of comforting a silly girl who had best get on with what she was bid. 

The Nymph had known plenty of cruel and capricious Goddesses in her short life. Such was none before her. None was the one who commanded her now. Having no desire to exhaust the Great Lady’s patience, Teresé took one final, shaking deep breath, bowing her head, curtseying and turning on her heel to race across the Hall’s agora once again. 

Hestia watched the little Nymph flee to perform her bidding with as much disquiet as amusement. By now, the tidings the young messenger had come carrying gave her no shock. Still, it hurt no less each and every time. 

There were so few of us already, she pondered. Now we dwindle like embers left unsheltered from the wind. 

She allowed herself a few, lenient moments of quarter to find her own calm. Then she looked about her, at the state of what she would have to leave to embark where she must. 

In times past, at this hour the rooms would be filled with the soft-emanating, warm glow of oil lamps and companionship. Now, only the centre-piece, her mighty Hearth radiated a consuming lambency that cast the shadows into sharp relief. Gifts of fragrant wreaths, tapestries and many other fineries draped her muralled walls. Beautifully lifelike statues, almost alive in their vibrantly painted colours stood somberly amid richly decorated vases, flowerbeds and calligraphy birdcages littered her floors and hung from her high, domed ceiling. 

In that halcyon golden age, she had attendants aplenty in the many Minor Gods, Nymphs and Spirits who would trifle away their youth in the service of the Olympian Court. When such newcomers were turned away by even Hermes, they came stumbling to her Hearthside sniffling, gifts of patronage tucked under or slung over their arms. Often they either did not initially notice Hestia’s guardianship over her duty or confused her simple dress for that of a fellow of Minor status. It was a comedy she would often recount to the Foreigner God in the midnight tipples they used to share, on warm nights such as these. Her more modest vestments allowing her to adopt a guise among Divinity as she would among Mortals was a jest that never ceased to crease the vain Lord of the Vine’s cheeks. 

In playing this game, she would beckon them over, playing the part of the guileless crone warming herself by the Immortal Flame. They, consumed by the misery of their failings,  would bemoan their lot in life, even dare a curse or two before realising themselves, remembering their manners and ask what she was doing there. If this did not follow a humorous realisation on the youngster’s part, she would continue her play-act and claim to be a beggar from a distant waning Pantheon seeking the charity of Olympus. The youngster would either harrumph their way from her presence, never to be invited to court again, or make an offering of whatever trinket they have brought with them in an attempt to curry favour. She would accept the gift, revealing herself and welcome them into her service. If their look of disappointment was carefully enough concealed they may even last a year.

It had not escaped her over the centuries that increasingly many of such ejected and dejected candidates to arrive at her Hearthside had been the would-be attendants of the God-Queen.  To duel purpose, Hestia suspected: to solicit her to provide a watchful eye on the young ones most predisposed to mischief had they come into the service of Hermes, or even Aphrodite; as much as to keep watch upon Hestia to ensure she did not drown in souvenirs. 

For as many of the treasured keepsakes around her had been brought to her in memorialisation of the adventures of her Nieces, Nephews and other visitors. They chimed now, with the stories they held. A wondrously soft Liger pelt, slain in a distant jungle. A tortoise shell strung against bovine horns which dripped with unplayed melodies when the breeze wafted by. A single onyx pearl, beheld upon a silken cushion, which Hestia still could not intune why it had excited her dear Niece so much. And on and on her collection poured about her like a river, long overtaken its banks. 

As a result of such an enterprise, her apartments were somewhat cluttered. She had been compared to a crow and its nest once or twice by Apollo when he donned one of his unpleasantly “witty” moods. She had tried in vain not to take umbrage at such a comparison, for a crow’s nest was better than a dragon’s hoard. 

Now, the shadows of these treasures amalgamated together like the silhouette of some terrible beast. The cheerful, delicate, gilded ornamentation twisted like a sneer as it flashed a conflagrated reflection. Mocking her. For these were just things. Littered about like the petrified carcasses of her former joy. They jeered the mundanity of her grief and flouted their own lifelessness. 

Her eye settled upon a small, bronze bird, affixed to an elegant perch in the Kemeti-style. When warmed by her palm, the songbird would spring to life, soaring around the room and would chirp her favoured melodies. It was a delicate, transfixingly complex and beguilingly simple thing, as all such automatons were. There was but one craftsman in all the cosmos who could produce such a work of art. 

Her brow narrowed in resolution as she returned the pretty machine to its perch. 

She decided: for as long as it was in her power to do so, that pretty little machine would not be all she had left to act in remembrance of the last of her Kin. But she must act quickly. 

Teresé had not specified the nature of the consumption to befall the Smith God. Therefore, she reasoned, it was may be a simple matter to rectify. Ambrosure to restore his strength; nectar to reunify him with his Domain; prayers, veneration and festivities in his name to restore his spirit. She could not be sure of the range of available treatment until she lay eyes upon him. So that would be her task. 

But she had to hurry. She did not know how long she may be occupied by her dear Nephew’s recovery and her Hearth did not fare well in her absence. Her constant presence at its side was the very thing which had kept it steady in its enlightenment for all these many, many millenia. To leave it unattended was no small thing. 

But neither was the risk that Hephaestus slipped beneath Thanatos’ Shade before she had a chance to speak with him. That, she could not risk. She could not bear it. 

Hestia made haste taking a catalog of all the things a substitute Hearth-Keeper in her stead would need: coals from the bowls of Yggdrasil; dried shrubbery and kindling from the Bodhi and magnesium spark-stones from deep beneath the ruins of Atlantis. Of each she left enough to be gone three days, wrapped in beeswaxed linen at the foot of the Firebank. She rose morosely, caressing the flames as they spat and hissed in protest. She chuckled as she cosseted the molten radiance, which leapt to her touch, tickling the embers and petting the Hearth-fire deeply as one would a spoiled hound. At the disciplinary click of her tongue, they receded to their normal burning. The whine-like crackle did not go unnoticed. 

The thought of leaving it, abandoning her duty -however briefly- that she had revered for all her conscious existence pained her like no blade or poison could. 

She had lit her Hearth with the spark of her very Godly Essence, in the aftermath of each of her siblings each declaring their Domains. She was as much part of it as it was a part of her. And tenderly, she had maintained its light, its warmth and its comfort and offered it to all who were in need, for the subsequent three hundred millenia. Her Hearth had been the cradle she passionately rocked, her source of Divinity and Seat of Power, as much as it had been her most constant companion for all that time. 

To leave for a moment scorched her soul. To leave for an indeterminate amount of time…

With finality, she basked in the blaze for as long as discipline would allow. Then, before sentiment compelled her back, she turned and enshrined her conviction to attend her Nephew’s side. 

She gathered the instruments of distillation and set about pouring the smoke of mortals’ recent prayers, the residuals of their first-and-last libations and plucking the embers of their faith from the heart of the Hearth. After much labour and intentful ministrations, she strung the resultant three glass vials on a cord around her neck. The liquid ambrosia sang golden against her olive skin. The vials pulsed with divine vigor. While the precision had cost her much needed time, she knew it would be worth it for the few drops in which it could restore her patient’s health. 

She called out for Mynora, a lowly serving spirit. The waif appeared in an instantaneous apparition, eyes wide and curious as to why she had been called at the finger brushes of dawnbreak, when her mistress liked least to be disturbed from her craft. Hestia turned to the spirit, bidding her attend the Hearth in her mistress’ absence. The spirit’s wide eyes practically bulged from her spectral face as she blanched at the command. Excuses and false humilities tumbled from her lips but Hestia had no time for such indulgences. 

She pinned her veil more securely to her hair, booming, “My mind is made. Do as thou art bid. If thee perform thy commanded task well, thou shalt be duly rewarded. Obey goodly, for now I doth depart.” 

Hestia wrapped the train of her veil about her and swept from the Hearth Room. Cloth-of-gold garments and Mynora’s protestations trailing behind her. 

A choking hand of worry briefly clasped around her throat, but she unfurled it as easily as parchment. But she need not worry. Concern was for powerless mortals, lacking the wisdom and might to change their fates, who grasped at the fraying threads in the constantly unravelling tapestry of their short lives daily. Thus their small minds whirled with uncertainty. She was a Goddess. An Olympian, no less. She had no need for uncertainty. If an outcome suited her, she would make it so. 

A whisper on the mounting wind uttered: to thine own despair. She ignored it. 

Hestia hurried through the long, muralled hallways from her wing to through the Great Hall and out into the haze of early morning which misted the palatial agora lilac. She crossed the many fine mosaics and cobblestone engravings until her gossamer slippers met the sure path on the basileion of the Archiatros. 

She arrived at her necessary detour. Apollo’s grand megataron was bursting from the facade with as much pomp, circumstance and ostentatious panoply. As befit his reputation. But as Hestia stole deeper, the shimmer of gilding, lazuli and fine masonry gave way to the far simpler quarters of the Physician God’s Apothecary. Though his many half-strung lyres, flutes and sand-drums well-suited the facade of excellence, it was in the intimacy of the Apothecary a truer nature was revealed. Drying herbs wafted their perfumes as they hung in neat rows from scantlings. A dark-stoned mortar and pestle laid abandoned upon a stained worktop. Atrociously scrawled notes on thousands of reams and scrolls cluttered every available surface. She smiled. 

Not so unlike each other as they would have themselves believed, her two nephews. One shining in the Light of Helios. One lit only by the churning blaze of his Forge. Both, incapable of cleaning up after themselves. 

Hestia picked through the remnants of half-formed pultaces. Various herbs, spices, minerals and medicinal features she sought ended up in mislabeled drears or illegibly demarcated. But after considerable scrounging unbefitting of a goddess in the best of times, she collected all she had set upon. The list made up the potions she had heard the Lord of Light rant so passionately about as he was commissioned to reinvigorate so many mortal kings at Zeus’ behest and his own chagrin. For his own engrossment in both medicinal and artistic experimentation, these commissions were usually paid for by the poor customer’s endurance of his latest sonnet. His commissions were few and only taken in dire times of need. 

Nevertheless, the potions themselves were effective. Hestia took stock of her pillage and carried on. On her return through the gaudy megataron, she stepped out into the courtyard, then to the flagstoned path which made up the spine of Mount Olympus. Ridging along its high curvature, were the estates occupied by the most esteemed members of the Olympian court. Among which the Seated Twelve and most honoured Minor Gods had once called home. 

It was along this path that Hestia made a hurried collision with one of the young muses. The cluster of Goddesses were themselves exiting one of the many empty abodes that turned the once testimonies to Godly splendour into husks. These vacant monuments were draped in heavy cloth at each mouth and window. Extently, they were painted with symbols and hung with talismans. Such was the recent fate of the basileon of Lord Hermes. The mouth of which the muses froze at the sight of Hestia..."

Hestia's thrilling journey continues in The Other Olympians. See our homepage for purchase details.