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There’s a new warrior on Zagreus’ path through Elysium.
He’s met her several times so far—on nearly every run since a new upgrade from the House Contractor opened more of Elysium for his exploration.
His father doesn’t say a word about it. He doesn’t say why he approved it, or who gave him the idea to authorize Zagreus for passage through a part of Elysium that conveniently includes Achilles and Patroclus’ house.
Maybe Zagreus should thank him, but he still isn’t convinced his father isn’t holding all these niceties over his head to throw in his face if he steps out of line, so he doesn’t bother. He just enjoys it while it lasts.
‘It’, of course, being the change of scenery, and the chance to spend time with Achilles and Patroclus. There are few chores to be done in a house in Elysium, so more often than not they take Zagreus to bed, and put him to work there.
(Another reason not to put words to his gratitude. Zagreus is more or less unflappable at this point, but implying his sex life to his father would be too much even for him.)
Nearly as invigorating as the pair of goodbye kisses from his mentor and his mentor’s lover is sparring with the strange warrior he’d started to encounter on his path.
He always finds her alone, or nearly alone, in a chamber with a fountain, armed and armored, and she always challenges him to a spar.
They never fight to the death, only to retreat—and it’s always been Zagreus’ retreat, so far.
She’s fast and sure of herself, and like Zagreus favors more than one weapon, cycling through them depending on her mood. He hasn’t fought her enough times to learn her patterns with any one in particular, much less all three.
He still doesn’t know who she is—she’s not in the Codex.
“Will you ever tell me your name?” he asks her afterwards, not for the first time, washing the blood from his face in the fountain while the warrior perches on the stone rim, leaning over to dip her fingers in the water.
“You’ll have to win it from me,” she replies, smoothing her wet hands through her hair, taming it and gathering it back, removing and replacing the hairpiece at the nape of her neck.
It had been Zagreus’ own fault that he lost, that time. The bow she used was larger than Coronacht, and a longbow rather than a recurve. Zagreus had been so distracted watching her draw it—the way the muscles of her arms flexed beneath the drape of her cloak—that she shot him in the face before he managed to pick up his jaw.
In his defense, Zagreus has a noted weakness for women who could kill him if they wanted to.
But she doesn’t want to kill him. Which is nice, too. She’ll back off when Zagreus falters, let him drink from the fountain and heal up, and make pleasant conversation as they both catch their breath.
“Would you like some nectar?” Zagreus offers, already holding out the bottle. “Please say yes, you’ve been so polite to me. Most everyone out here tries to kill me.”
“That’s generous of you,” the warrior says. “A bit too generous, I think, just for sparring and making conversation. Here. At least take this.”
Zagreus recognizes what she hands him. The metal is duller, and the leather is cracked, but it’s a Myrmidon bracer. Slightly different in design from the one Achilles gave him, but similar enough to be immediately identifiable.
“Would you believe me if I told you that this isn’t the first time I’ve been given one of these?”
The warrior’s hands go still on the nectar bottle. “A repayment for your generosity?” she asks, after a silence that lasts a moment too long.
“A Myrmidon’s bracer,” Zagreus corrects.
He barely manages to catch the nectar bottle before it hits the stone edge of the fountain. He sets it down carefully, not making any sudden movements. Her bow is still within reach, and he knows now how quickly she can draw.
She’s still staring at him, her eyes wide, fingers still frozen midair where the bottle fell from her hands.
“I’m sorry—” Zagreus starts, forcing himself not to rematerialize Stygius. She’s upset, not threatening him. Those aren’t the same thing. Not always.
“Who,” she starts, then stops. “Which—” she tries, then stops again. Her eyes are hard and shining, like bronze, sharp as a spear-tip.
“Achilles gave it to me, if that’s what you’re asking.” Zagreus says, forcing his palm flat on the fountain rim until Stygius stops pushing its hilt into his palm.
The warrior’s mouth tightens, like she’s bitten into something sour. “Achilles. Is he here?”
Zagreus wants to go to Achilles’ defense. He wants to tell this warrior, whoever she is, that Achilles is kind and gentle and would rather walk across the magma of Asphodel than cause harm when he doesn’t have to, but…
But the Achilles that Zagreus knows is different than the Achilles that lived as a mortal. Achilles told him that a long time ago, when he was still too new (not young, not exactly, but new to life and godhood) to understand why his mentor’s expression went taut and fragile when he told stories of the surface.
Zagreus knows even better now, from conversations with both Achilles and Patroclus, together and separately, that he doesn’t know Achilles. Not the way Achilles was known, will be known. He has no defense of him grounded in reality.
By the time Zagreus has reigned in his defensiveness, the warrior’s gaze falls. She picks up the bottle of nectar, uncorks it, and takes a long sip. “Is he here?”
Zagreus nods. “Maybe not right this moment, but he’s usually with Patroclus.”
At Patroclus’ name, the warrior’s eyes light up, the bronze of them suddenly molten with emotion. “Where is he?”
You take others’ trials as your own, Achilles had told Zagreus, once. Be cautious of that. An empty cup cannot fill another.
Zagreus doesn’t feel empty. Not when he’s helping.
He reaches out, grasping the warrior’s hand. “I’ll show you.”
It took longer than it should have to find Achilles and Patroclus.
Even with most of Elysium open to Zagreus, the chambers still shifted around him, just misleading enough that he spent more time backtracking from dead ends than actually progressing toward the glade.
It would be easier if they were at the house, which Zagreus always seemed to be able to find. Achilles said that it was because Elysium thinks he belonged there.
(Zagreus can’t think about that for too long without feeling somewhere between choked up and smothered, so he tries not to.)
The glade is more of a struggle, and the Underworld doesn’t like him to backtrack. Elysium hounds Zagreus toward the Colosseum, but the glade always finds itself far from it, no matter how the passages rearrange.
Achilles might be drawn at times to the spectacle, but Patroclus only goes there when Zagreus calls him, and only for a moment. He stays away, otherwise, and Elysium obliges him that.
But they do find it eventually. The door slides open, and Zagreus can faintly hear Patroclus and Achilles, talking with such lightness in their voices that Zagreus aches a little.
He hopes he hasn’t made a mistake.
The warrior must hear them too—she rushes in before Zagreus can reconsider, and he has to dash to catch up with her, following her through the grass and across the bridge over the Lethe.
The talking stops. Patroclus leaps to his feet, leaving Achilles half-sprawled on the paved spot by the river that the two of them still favor.
“Briseis,” Patroclus says, in a wounded gasp of a voice, like a blade between ribs. His cape flares behind him as he runs to her, sweeping her into his arms and spinning her in a circle, a laugh breaking the shock on his face.
The warrior—Briseis—laughs in turn, wrapping her arms around Patroclus’ neck.
There’s a clatter of armor colliding as they settle against each other, more laughter.
“You fight, here?” Patroclus asks, laying a hand on Briseis’ breastplate.
Briseis shrugs off her bow and quiver, tossing them in the grass. “I was always fascinated by combat, in the camp. With eternity in front of me, why shouldn’t I pursue it?”
Patroclus’ laughter rises, even as he half-collapses into Briseis’ side. “Indeed.”
Zagreus feels old, suddenly. He usually feels young next to Achilles and Patroclus, his small eternity within his father’s house small beside their wide-ranging human lives.
But Patroclus sounds so young when he laughs. Not chuckles, but laughs , bright as the sun over the ocean, muffled by the way his face is pressed into Briseis’ neck but no less piercing for that.
Then Patroclus’ shoulders heave the way they do when he’s trying to hold down a sob, and Briseis must recognize it as well as Zagreus does, because her arms slide from his neck to wrap around his back, and she cradles him against her chest.
“I’m here,” Briseis says, gentle but firm, the same way she says that’s enough, I think to Zagreus when their spar has pushed him to his limits. “I’m here, and your Achilles is here, for all he and I agree he doesn’t deserve you.”
“Don’t,” Patroclus starts, choked up and damp. Then, sharpish, like Zagreus’ mother calling Cerberus to heel: “Achilles, come.”
Achilles is still sitting, one hand pressed to his mouth, eyes overbright with tears. Zagreus can see his lips trying to move under the pressure of his fingers. He’s probably apologizing. He always seems to fall back on that.
But he’s as trained to Patroclus’ commands as Cerberus is to Persephone’s, so he rises and goes to them, like he’s—well, like he’s walking to his death.
Briseis grabs his chin, tilting it back and forth, examining him. He permits her, already halfway to flinching and with nowhere to go. “I didn’t know the dead could age.”
“He feels old,” Patroclus says, somewhat steadier. He unwraps an arm from Briseis and winds it around Achilles, pulling him close. Briseis gets a hand on him too, and Achilles shudders hard.
They all go down into the grass, gently.
It feels wrong for Zagreus to watch, but he can’t pull his eyes away from the sight. They’re laughing, all three of them, laughing and crying in the same shuddering noise, faces damp and eyes alight.
“I’m sorry,” Achilles says.
“Damn right you are,” Briseis replies, and they all laugh again.
Zagreus steps past them on his way to the door, bending just slightly to press a kiss to Achilles’ temple, and then to Patroclus’.
“Thank you, Zagreus.” Briseis says.
“Don’t forget your trinket,” Patroclus says, turning his head to catch Zagreus in a proper kiss before he can straighten up. “And, yes. Thank you.”
There’s a silence before Achilles says anything, and then he smiles, leaning his cheek against Zagreus’ bare shoulder. “And to think I believed myself despised by the gods.”
“One god loves you, at least,” Zagreus promises, kissing him soundly. “Take care of each other. I’ll be back soon.”
He takes a helping of Cyclops jerky from Patroclus’ collection by the river, summons Stygius back to his hand, and props it on his shoulder.
The door opens. He leaves them to their reunion.