After nearly a month of anchoring at Lemnos, the Argo finally set sail once more.
As the mooring ropes were untied and the sails caught the wind, the ship slowly drifted away from the small island.
Behind them stood a group of radiant women, tearfully bidding farewell to the heroes of the Argo. At their head was Princess Hypsipyle herself.
"Go, and may the gods bless you and your companions with a safe return," Hypsipyle called out sorrowfully.
"When the time comes for your journey home, if you still wish to return, this island and my father's royal scepter will await you. B
ut if you do not… though I dread such a fate… whether you dwell in a faraway land or your native soil, remember Hypsipyle truly and dearly."
Her words were clearly meant for Jason. The other women too voiced their own tearful farewells.
To any onlooker, such parting would seem soaked in mutual affection, heavy with longing and regret.
But the truth was… far from that.
Aboard the Argo, Alaric noticed that his once broad-shouldered, strong-limbed companions now looked utterly emaciated, faces pale, eyes sunken, dark circles etched beneath them.
Many held their backs or rubbed their waists as though even standing upright was a trial.
Even mighty Heracles was no exception.
It was clear that their month-long "experience" on the island had sapped them to the bone.
And their feelings toward the island and its women were anything but sentimental. In fact, they seemed terrified of both.
Many even rowed with a desperate fervor, as though the faster they escaped Lemnos, the safer they'd feel, despite their near exhaustion.
To avoid divine suspicion over his "interference," Alaric had designed the Pink Plague spell to dissipate automatically after enough time had passed.
That was why the Argo had remained stranded for a month before it could finally depart.
Still, the heroes had been utterly done in by Alaric's scheme.
After nearly thirty sleepless days, they had developed not desire, but fear, toward the opposite sex.
In short, they were now suffering from a severe case of gynophobia.
Who could blame them? Anyone forced to perform the same exhausting act dozens, hundreds, of times a day for an entire month would lose any semblance of enthusiasm.
If not for their exceptional constitutions, and the energy provided by the Pink Plague itself, some of them might not have survived at all.
Now, whenever the men even caught sight of Atalanta or Circe, they instinctively flinched and backed away.
Seeing them like this, even Alaric began to feel a twinge of guilt.
What if some of them could no longer marry, or worse, could never bear children again?
After all, among these Argonauts were the future fathers of legendary heroes, such as Achilles and the two Ajaxes of the Trojan War.
Of course, those particular heroes were already born, so no danger there.
But even if some future heroes never came to be, Alaric doubted it would matter much, since nearly every woman on Lemnos capable of conceiving was now likely pregnant.
When all was said and done, every man aboard would surely have left behind some "descendants" on that island.
The only real problem was figuring out which child belonged to whom, no paternity tests existed in this era, after all.
Aside from their newfound fear of women, Alaric also noticed that their overall strength had dropped several levels.
It seemed they had burned through years of training and life force in that one disastrous month. Whether they could ever recover remained uncertain.
He even saw Asclepius, the ship's physician, already experimenting with tonics and aphrodisiacs, asking Alaric for advice on ingredients like bull and stallion organs.
Poor soul.
As for Circe and Atalanta, their attitudes toward men had also… shifted dramatically.
They now looked at the other crewmen as though they were insects, and the men, in turn, went out of their way to avoid them.
Both women seemed perfectly content with that arrangement.
But when it came to Alaric, things were different.
Circe's gaze had grown positively feverish, almost obsessive. After what had happened, her teasing and advances toward him became even more shameless.
Atalanta, on the other hand, remained awkward around him.
The reason was simple: "I saw you as a father (or daughter figure)… and you still wanted to bed me?"
Things had cooled down somewhat, but they both knew, they could never return to how they once were.
Atalanta even felt a strange sense of guilt, as though she had betrayed her goddess, Artemis.
The loss of her chastity wounded her deeply, and Alaric had to comfort her for a long time, hinting even that he was "quite familiar" with the Moon Goddess herself, before the little huntress finally relaxed.
Once the Argo had sailed far from Lemnos, Jason gathered everyone and made them swear never to speak of what had happened on that island.
They would erase it from memory, and from history.
The tale of the Argonauts' glorious voyage would not include this shameful chapter.
He especially implored Alaric, Atalanta, and Circe, who had stayed clear of the madness, to keep silent.
Even Heracles begged Alaric earnestly.
Alaric, of course, readily agreed.
But their silence did not mean the secret would stay buried.
Because there were witnesses, an audience of gods who had seen everything from on high.
The Olympians.
Though the gods did not watch the Argonauts' every move on their journey to Colchis, that didn't mean they were oblivious.
The debauchery on Lemnos had not escaped divine notice.
When word reached Olympus, the gods were furious, especially Zeus, who found the heroes' behavior utterly disgraceful.
The chosen champions of Olympus, invited by the gods themselves, had spent an entire month hosting an island-wide pink orgy.
News spread across the divine realms of Greece, and Olympus became the laughingstock of every pantheon.
Many of those heroes, after all, carried the blood of the Olympian gods, sons of Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Ares, and others.
The goddesses, meanwhile, mocked their male counterparts mercilessly, saying the heroes had truly inherited their fathers' "virtues."
Even normally dignified gods like Apollo could only hang their heads in shame.
In Greek myth, it was almost always the male gods who spread their seed among mortals.
Only Aphrodite had ever been known for such behavior, and in this era, even she had become a paragon of fidelity.
The goddesses' resentment toward their promiscuous brothers had festered for ages; now, at last, they had the perfect excuse to ridicule them.
In short, after the incident on Lemnos, the gods began to realize, perhaps they had made a grave mistake.
But little did they know… the debacle on Lemnos was only the beginning.
For they had provoked someone they never should have crossed.
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