Chapter 54: SPARTOI
'This isn't going to be easy', Athos thought as he stared at the draconic monstrosity before him.
"It's a good thing I came prepared", he muttered.
"That's what they all say....", an angelic voice whispered back.
Four figures shimmered into existence. Their caramel skin was covered by pure white chitons whose loose ends floated as though they were underwater. Silky black hair, not unlike his own, tumbled loose around their shoulders. Four pairs of volcanic-black pupils playfully stared at him looking him up and down.
"The Hesperides", Athos said, looking at the women in front of him. They were gorgeous and looked as if they would never hurt a fly but he knew they were anything but harmless.
"Oh my! I can see why Zoe fell for that brute", one of the girls said, running her fingers through her hair.
"Do not speak of her name!", another chided.
"Only if he were older....", the first Hersperid said dreamily.
"Thou art disgusting sister"
"Ummm...hi", Athos interrupted them. The Hesperides were the nymphs of the sunset and evening who tended to the Garden of Twilight. They usually danced intruders to death and kept them from stealing Hera's apples...unless it was a man. They were quite fond of men as they aren't allowed to leave the garden and rarely get to see them. That was the reason Hera didn't trust them all that much and had Ladon guard the tree.
"Greetings half-blood, does thou wish to die?", another Hersperid said cheerfully.
"No, of course not", Athos replied.
"Then Thou must leave with haste. Ladon does not take to intruders all that well."
"I can't do that. I need the apples"
"So heroic...", mumbled the first Hersperid.
"Oh shut up, would thee?", said the second Hersperid before turning to Athos, "Thou must go back, else we shall be forced to wake Ladon, but if thou wants to approach the mountain we shall have nothing to say. He shall kill thee - thou are no match for him."
"Isn't he like holding up the sky?", Athos asked. The weight of the sky was as psychological as it was physical. Even Zeus himself would struggle to hold it. There was no way Atlas could do anything even if he cut out his heart in front of him.
"We have said too much. Now leave lest thou wishes to face Ladon. Even thine father stood no chance against him- not even with Anaklusmos", the second Hersperid warned.
"That's because he fought alone", Athos grinned and took out the teeth he stole from the Museum of Natural History, but the moment he did so, he frowned. There were supposed to be twelve teeth - but there was one extra, making it thirteen - not the luckiest of numbers. It would've been fine if it wasn't for the fact that it looked nothing like the other ones. It was much longer and pointer. Did Hephaestus sneak one in? But why?
'Wait...is it a sabre-toothed tiger's tooth?', he thought, his eyes widening. It too would give rise to spartoi but a more....cuter kind.
He shook his head and brought out six teeth. He would keep some safe for any future conflict. He inserted the teeth into the wet soil of the Garden of Twilight while the Hesperides looked at him with amused expressions. They probably believed Ladon was enough to finish him off and with good reason - even the most famous of demigods had failed to slay the beast.
He sprinkled his blood on the dirt before putting the flask away and standing up. He put on his most maniacal expression and held his arms out wide.
"Arise!"
The dirt trembled. A single skeletal hand shot out.
"A..Aren't spartoi supposed to be grey?", the first Herspedis muttered staring at the hand.
As she said that the skeletons erupted from the ground. They clawed their way to the surface before standing straight with longswords made of stygian Iron. All six of them stood at a towering two metres but instead of having grey bones and yellow eyes, they had pitch-black bones while a blue fire burned in their sockets. They seemed incredibly powerful. A few seconds later, transparent grey flesh began growing on their bones and they turned into men with dull grey skin and modern clothes - grey muscle shirts, camo pants and combat boots, yet the dancing blue flames that replaced what should've been yellow eyes, remained.
Spartoi should've had grey bones and animalistic yellow eyes, but they were different. Was it because he used his blood or was it the soil of the Garden of twilight? Perhaps it was a mixture of the two?
'Nothing I can do about it now', he thought and stared at the spartoi before him.
"We are going to fight that...thing", Athos said, pointing at Ladon. All the spartoi turned around and spotted the slumbering dragon. Immediately, the flames in their eyes burned brighter as though excited at finding new prey.
"Hold on. Don't fight just yet", Athos said and took out his bow and nocked an arrow whose tip was laced with celestial bronze - just enough to affect monsters. He had a LOT of them, around thirty or so, as they didn't take much magical metal to produce.
"You there!", he pointed at a random spartoi. "You're in charge of bringing my arrows back to me". He then pointed to four other spartoi."You're in charge of distracting the heads."
"And you", he said, pointing at the biggest spartoi. "You're in charge of slicing the heads clean off. Make sure to target the blind ones."
The man tilted his head in confusion as though asking what the blind ones meant.
Athos grinned and turned invisible.
"You'll see."
***
Once he'd found himself a suitable position where Ladon probably couldn't smell him, he took a deep breath.
"Ladon, Wake!", he yelled and the sleeping dragon moved, glittering like a mountain of pennies.
"Crazy bastard!", the Hesperides yelped and scattered back into the evening light.
"GRRRRRAAAAAARRRRGHH!", the dragon writhed, its hundred heads whipping about, tongues flickering and tasting the air. The ground trembled from both its growl and underneath its weight and it looked around for the culprit who disturbed its slumber but suddenly, a rock smashed into one of its heads. It looked down finding four grey-skinned men with flames for eyes staring it down.
The Audacity!
Ladon opened his mouths and the sound of hundred heads hissing at once echoed in the garden.
*TWANG*
"GGGGGGRRRRRRAAAARGHHHH!"
Two arrows sunk into the eyes of a lone head, blinding it. Ladon's red irises reddened further and directed its anger at the spartoi.
*BOOM*
Ninety-nine heads smashed into the spartoi causing a mini-earthquake while pulverising them. Two other spartoi crawled out of the ground the moment Ladon's heads met the dirt. The biggest one with a longsword used a head as a stepping stone to boost himself up and bring down the sword on the blinded head, lopping it clean off while the other yanked the two arrows from the fallen head before running off to the side.
"GRAAARGH!", Three other heads instantly tore the biggest spartus to pieces.
*TWANG*
Two more arrows sank into another head as the spartoi began reforming. The black bones reconnected and grey flesh regrew.
'One shall be struck down by a poisoned claw', Athos remembered the line from the prophecy.
"We'll see about that", he whispered as he nocked another arrow.
***
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