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Day 16: Laughing to Keep Me Sane
Hours. It had been hours since he killed her.
Her. Meg McCaffrey. Slain by a bolt. All because he couldn't stand it. The constant affection. The teasing. He didn't like it. Said that it was all 'against the Ancient Laws.'
Well, Apollo mused, Zeus was getting bolder. He was getting more paranoid. The festering fear of a son overthrowing a tyrannical father must have caught up with him over the eons.
Like with all whims of prophecy, anyone who tried to thwart it would be the one setting the trap. As the god of prophecy, Apollo understood this rule the best. It was only by sheer coincidence that he would be the one to end Zeus's reign, like a reminder that one can never ever escape a prophecy, be they a god or a mortal.
It was funny, Apollo thought, as he watched the residents of Aeithales reel from the loss of their founder. How they didn't know how to break it to him when he came for their weekly piano lessons. It was funny how Zeus was a coward, unable to face him like a man and instead took it out on his loved ones.
He wasn't the great king that the stories talked about anymore, just a sad, pathetic man left clutching the remnants of control. Or rather, an illusion of control, for it has been a while since Apollo truly feared him.
The dryads were still talking to him, trying to fill the silence between them. They were crying and shaking, and he was supposed to do the same. Except he can't. He can't cry right now, because Zeus would think him weak.
What was it that he said eons ago? When he slayed Asclepius? 'This was unfitting for a god'?
Yes, Apollo laughed. Yes, he did say that.
The dryads were backing away from him. He didn't care anymore. He would grieve later.
All that mattered now was to kill the god that he used to call his father.