Questioning Persephone, left me probably with more questions than answers. Moreover, it would be possible to spend a whole day, or perhaps even days asking more things, since she divulged crucial information quite easily. And I fully planned to query her on many different topics, in the following days and probably months, since she had no plans of leaving, and forcing her to do so would be highly unproductive.
After all, she did mention that she had not had a vacation in quite some time and that she fully intended to enjoy the time she was doing her job of earning my and Medusa's trust. This left me with no other option but to accept the fact that an Olympian would be following me around, for the foreseeable future. Which of course resulted in my plan of going back to the island of Lesbos, being scrapped, since my hiding place on Lesbos could be potentially compromised. Either by bringing Persephone there, or it already was compromised, by the fact, that she and Hades could look through the memories of the deceased. And as the facts stood, there was one dead person, who knew of my abode on Lesbos quite well, Sappho.
I knew, that she would never willingly give any information about me, to anyone who could potentially cause harm to me. Alas, she would not be exactly a willing participant, while these god-pretenders went through her memories. If they did, I would have to accept the job at the Underworld, in order to be able to file a formal complaint for a breach of privacy, as I highly doubted, that there was some form of law enforcement authority for Olympians. And enforcing it by strength would only result in ruining my prospects of a quiet career. Yet, Sappho's memories were her own, moreover, she was a great poet and her work would not be under public domain for the next seventy or so years, until then, I was the only one with the rights to her intellectual property, as her closest person.
A new plan had to be made according to facts recently acquired. Lesbos was not an option, and neither was returning to Mount Athos since that place was well-known to god pretenders. An island of Lemnos might have been an option due to my loyal troops originating from there, but the local ruler, queen Hypsipyle, had an unreasonable dislike for me. Even after I did save her people from mortal danger, by playing bait. With Persephone and Orthrus tagging along, my initial plan to go by sea, as a means to cover my group's tracks was not possible, since Persephone was vehement about tagging along and there was no ship, that could carry Orthrus, even if he was quite an obedient dog.
This left me with the least favoured option of all, and that was to constantly travel, in order to create a distance between myself and any potential pursuers. Yet, there was a prospective goal of this journey, the Underworld. But this information I would keep only for myself until Persephone earned my and Medusa's trust, otherwise the the job offer would have to be rejected.
"Where exactly is the Underworld located?" I asked for the vital information, in order to be able to plan the next step appropriately.
"Well, the Underworld is located westward to Mount Olympus, on an island next to an elongated peninsula. In more detail, it is located under the active volcano named Aitna. But don't worry, it is not as bad as it sounds, there is no magma or flowing lava anywhere. No, no, that could damage all the devices, that are used for the recycling process, as well, as many of the research centers that are there. For exactly this reason, the whole Underworld is well isolated and has its own artificial climate system. It is even possible to set your own personal residence to a specific temperature and humidity. And I personally love the view from the top of the mountain. Technically Aitna is even taller than Olympus, but don't tell that to Zeus," she joked at the end of her explanation.
This was surprising, I certainly did not expect the Underworld to be located on the island of Sicily, or whatever its name was in this world at this point in time. But this was excellent news since it was away from the main population centers of the ancient Greek world. Moreover, the distance itself provided several perfect opportunities to hide tracks myself and my group left behind.
"Very well, we will continue east," I said, which earned me several surprised faces.
But that was to be expected since my plan was not so straightforward. In order to reach the Underworld, while also having a way out, should the whole business with Persephone not work out in the end, I elected to follow a southern path. All the way through Anatolia, Egypt and Libya, either exiting through Carthage, using a longer way across the sea, should anti-sea-monster measures be learned from Persephone, or by crossing Gibraltar, where the sea distance was shorter. Although, I certainly was not looking forward to having sand everywhere.
He, after several days' worth of searching and not being able to do his job properly, was not amused. Not amused at all. The work was piling up at an incredible rate, and he just sent his assistant to a high-profile job, while he was searching for one particular human soul. But the problem was, that he could not find it. It was not anywhere, despite him looking at all stages of the recycling process several times. He felt like a fool, for doing so.
Of course, he even looked into the logs, to see if the soul was not processed faster than usual, but even that was not the case. Therefore only one possibility remained. One option he did not like at all. But also the only possibility that remained. That was the fact that the soul, of an individual known as Sappho, at least in her previous human life, never entered the process of soul recycling.
And this became a problem for exactly two reasons. One of them was the more personal, and quite important one for him and the whole Underworld. Which was that the poet Sappho, knew very closely one of his potential future colleagues. Admittedly it was perhaps too personal for him since Arachne was quite an alluring individual and not because of the spider legs she possessed, as his idiotic brothers thought. No, it was certainly all the other reasons.
Secondly, the missing soul was a problem, because it showed that the Charon system was no longer capable of working at full capacity and desperately needed upgrades. Because who knew, how many souls it already missed to carry into the Underworld. Quite frankly, if it was not for the one important soul to be found missing, he might not even discovered the problem with the system so soon. In the worst case, it would be found only after some critical failure and he rather not want to imagine, what that would lead to. Nothing good he imagined.
Therefore, it was the best time to upgrade the Charon system. Luckily for him, he did not have to do the whole upgrade from scratch, since his colleague, Persephone, already prepared it. All he had to do was review it, possibly make some adjustments himself if needed, and then upgrade the system. Of course, he had to do this, while also working on the soul recycling on his own. This reminded him so much of the old times when he was building the first Charon system while doing most of the things manually on his own. Yes, good old times, let's just make sure that this kind of crunch does not repeat too often.
And so Hades started working on the Charon 2.0 review while sending his brothers' message, that he was in the middle of a critical system update and should not be interrupted even if the world was on fire, he had no time for that.
She knew it was a bad idea to take Princess Medea with them, alas there was no time back then to argue about it. She was just dreading when something bad would happen, because of the princess's presence.
And it happened rather soon, several hours after their escape, the forces of King Aeëtes caught up with them. There was no escaping such overwhelming numbers. Luckily for them, the prince who was leading this armada was reasonable enough and agreed to parley.
He did demand Golden Fleece and the princess to be returned, while those who participated in the theft were to be put under his control. Of all of these demands, only releasing the princess was viable though.
She was certain, that the negotiations would be more than complicated because she could neither afford to return the fleece, nor give some of the Argonauts to the prince, even if they were idiots and deserved it. Alas her mission was quite clear, recover the Golden Fleece and return along with the Argonauts. That might not have implied returning with all of them, but in order, to achieve her and Aphrodite's plans, she had to aim for perfection.
But before she could do much, the princess started spouting some nonsense about how much she was in love with Jason. When did such a thing happen? They had no time to get to know each other well enough to fall in love. It was possible, that there was some mutual attraction between the two, but that was certainly not love, more likely those were hormones.
Alas, it was what it was, and she could only hope that the princess did not decide to do something too stupid and ruin the negotiations before they properly started.
But after several moments her hopes were very brutally dashed. The princess came back, alone, dragging behind her, in a spare sail, her brother's corpse neatly cut to tiny pieces.
Prince's guards were shocked, but only for a moment, then they struck. But since they were only humans, they stood no chance against some of the Argonauts and thus were quickly dealt with.
Then the princess started shouting in an extremely loud voice, which she would not have guessed human could possess, at the pursuing ships, about how they were going to be punished by her father if they did not recover all of her brother's body pieces. After which she started throwing the slices overboard feeding her brother's body, to the fish.
Even when shocked, none of the Argonauts were stupid enough, to cluelessly stare after she shouted an order to immediately leave. As it was, the gruesome display of Princess Medea, had an effect on the armada, since they did not follow, instead many men dived into the waters, to collect the pieces of their prince.
"What have you done!" Nike shouted at the princess.
She was so much angry at the stupid murderous idiot for completely outdoing everything, she so far had to suffer from the rest of the Argonauts. That was it, wasn't it? This ship was cursed, causing every mortal that sailed on it, to become an idiot. She did not even need any hard evidence, because she had plenty of proof, in the form of the Argonauts and Princess Medea.
"Nike, we do not know what happened on the lower deck. He could have assaulted her and Medea just protected herself," said Jason wrapping his arms around the murderous princess.
"Huh? You call THAT, protecting herself?!" Nike said raising her voice.
"Of course!" shouted back Jason, protecting his princess.
"Yes, sure! And pigs fly!" she seethed between her teeth at the ridiculousness of her current predicament.
"Actually..." directed attention one of the many argonauts to himself.
"Not now! We don't need an historical lesson but a plan, how to deliver the Golden Fleece, since king's Aeëtes is not an idiot, unlike you lot, and will have us blocked at Lygos," uplifted human said, wanting just a moment to think while stating what most likely did already happen.
"Argo could certainly make it through the blockage and in the worst case, I could wrestle all the attackers that might board us," said the usual problematic person, with anticipation.
"No Pollux! No more wrestling! Fine! Once we lose the fleet over the horizon, we are going north," Nike said once the idea occurred to her.
"North?" asked confused Jason.
"Yes, Jason, north. We will sail the Ister upstream," she explained cradling her poor head in her palms since it hurt from all the surrounding idiocy.
"It is time, my student, we are nearing land," she heard the beautiful voice of her teacher.
Medea responded wordlessly, by going to the chest, where her teacher was locked away, hiding. On her way, she saw the delta of Ister, it looked brilliant in the moonlight. Soon they would reach there, and at that very moment, her teacher would be finally free.
Several steps more and she easily reached forward, opening the chest. In it the golden form of her teacher, Hecate. Her hands moved forward with single intent and she grabbed the soft material in her hands.
"Put me over your shoulders," said her teacher's voice with pristine purity, like she never heard before.
Her eyes opened like never before and Medea saw, she saw everything, knew everything and heard everything, so much more than any regular mortal could.
"Excuse me princess, but would you kindly put that thing back into the chest? Before anyone gets hurt," said the hateful voice of the Olympian.
"I'm not a thing, Olympian," her mouth spoke, but the voice of her teacher came through, as her body turned around, her eyes shining gold.
Without giving the Olympian a moment to realize what was going on, her teacher moved like lightning, dragging the Olympian through the ship's upper deck, into the air and then gracefully landing on the shore. Never did she feel a bit of discomfort with her teacher using her body to do these godly feats.
The Olympian landed a moment later and lot less gracefully, her wings fully spread softening her fall. But that did not change the fact, that one of her hands was torn to pieces sprinkling sparkly liquid, while her teacher licked one of her hands, which tore the Olympian open, tasting the sweetness.
"You are not the girl. You are the Golden Fleece!" said the hated Olympian between breaths.
"Heureka! You are as not as stupid as the rest of your Olympian kin. I will enjoy eating you, so much more then," said her teacher.
And so they fought, her teacher having the upper hand in the fight, barely toying with the Olympian. It was easy to observe, since her teacher avoided any and all strikes from her foe while inflicting more and more wounds on the Olympian, while the moon shone over them.
It was not hard to find Nike, after all, she was to babysit the Argonauts and make sure that they recover the Golden Fleece without any problems. At least not more than they already caused.
Her idea was to wait for an opportune moment, distract the Argonauts and Nike, overpower her and then bring her to the primordial. That was her plan, which never came to fruition though.
No, the reality was far more wilder than she could have imagined. The Golden Fleece, which was supposed to be inert and pose no danger to anyone, was anything but. If she were to describe what was occurring in front of her, it was a very one-sided massacre.
Nike was all bloodied, with many wounds oozing blood, her wings were completely shredded, and even from the distance she was sure, that some of the uplifted human's limbs were bent in the wrong way.
This was not good. Not good at all, because she was supposed to bring Nike alive! And she would dare to fail this task of hers. The being that gave it to her, would not suffer any failures and her brother's relief was also on the line.
Yet Golden Fleece, would not just let her take Nike. She would most likely sustain very similar injuries to the uplifted human if she engaged directly. But she was not presiding over discord for nothing, making others do her bidding and causing chaos was her expertise.
And all she needed to succeed was a small distraction. A decoy did suffice, in this case. She projected herself in the opposite way where Nike was, which caught the attention of the Golden Fleece, who immediately attacked the illusion. At the same time, her real self grabbed Nike and teleported back to the meeting place before Golden Fleece could realize it went after a fake.
"Target escape vector acquired. Recalculating optimal route..." said a giant man, with shapely cut facial features, once he detected a tiny droplet of highly viscous silvery substance.