"Leaving so soon, brat?" Circe's voice echoed from her puppet as he stood at the water's edge. Her tone was laced with its usual mockery, but he'd learned to detect a faint thread of genuine curiosity beneath it.
Nick replied, his staff felt cool and solid in his hand, the ever-burning flame at its tip flickered with a calm, steady light. "It's time to acquire the cornerstone component for my artifact."
"The spinners of fate?" she said. "Ambitious. And foolish. You think you're just hunting a pair of weaklings, but you're sticking your hand into a hornet's nest. Their domain, however faded, is a subsidiary thread woven directly into fate's grand tapestry. An intrusion into it will be noticed. You cannot pluck it without the Weavers noticing the vibration."
"Let them," Nicholas said, a cold smile touching his lips. "By the time they do, I'll be long gone. Besides, a little chaos only helps with my long-term plans."
He felt her gaze on his back, a mixture of appraisal and something almost like faint worry. "You truly are your mother's son. All cold calculation and grand designs. Just remember, even the best-laid plans can be snipped short. Don't let your fatal flaw be your undoing before you've even begun."
The warning was pointed, and he acknowledged it with a slight nod. Arrogance. He would be mindful.
Without another word, he stepped off the island. The wind gathered at his command, a gentle yet powerful current that lifted him across the waters.
The Common-ranked speed spell was second nature now, a mere whisper of intent amplified by his authority. The world blurred beneath him, the blue expanse of the Atlantic giving way to the patchwork fields and forests of Northern Europe.
He traveled for hours, a ghost riding the streams of air. His enhanced senses and prescience kept him clear of any significant mystical presence. He was a shadow, a ripple in the Mist, moving with a purpose that was beneath the notice of the mighty.
The vision from the divination ritual he performed before was stark and clear, a stark contrast to the blurred fragments he was accustomed to when probing weighty topics. It was a sign of their profound weakness.
In it he saw a dilapidated wooden farmhouse, its roof sagging like a tired spine, nestled in a dense, snow-dusted Latvian forest. The image was devoid of color, a monochrome snapshot of despair. There were no glowing words, no mystical guardians, just the crushing weight of silence and the slow, inevitable decay of forgotten things.
Two presences huddled within; their auras so faint they were like embers on the verge of being extinguished by the wind. Karta and Dekla.
Finally, a few hours later, the landscape slowly began to match the monochrome image in his mind. Latvia. He landed silently at the edge of a vast forest of pine and birch, their branches heavy with snow. The silence was profound, broken only by the crunch of his boots on the frozen ground.
His prescience reached out, a silent sonar pulse. There. The farmhouse was exactly as he had seen it, perhaps even more decrepit in person.
He could feel them now, two faint, flickering sources of interference huddled together inside. Their essence tasted like endings, of completed cycles and faded memories. It was a pathetic, desperate kind of power.
He didn't bother with stealth. They would have sensed his approach the moment he entered their "domain", such as it was.
Instead, he walked forward, his staff tapping a soft rhythm against the frozen earth. He stopped a dozen meters from the door, his grey eyes taking in every detail of the rotting wood and grimy windows.
He could feel their fear. It was a palpable thing, seeping from the walls of the house.
Raising his voice, he spoke in Ancient Greek, his language of origin, his words cutting through the silent woods like a knife. "Karta. Dekla. I am Nicholas, son of Athena. I have not come to destroy you. I have come to offer you a covenant."
For a long moment, there was nothing. Then, the wooden door creaked open a fraction. A single eye, wide and silver like a polished moonstone, peered out. It held an age that dwarfed civilizations, but also a fragility that was heartbreaking.
"Son of Wisdom," a voice whispered, dry as dead leaves. It was Dekla, the guardian of children. "You bring the stench of ambition to our doorstep. There is no covenant to be made with the dying. Only an ending."
"An ending is what you will get if you continue to hide and fade," Nicholas replied, his tone calm and logical, as if discussing a mathematical theorem. "Your faith has dwindled to nothing. Your authority consumes your essence to sustain itself. You are starving to death. A slow, inglorious end."
The door opened wider, revealing the speaker. She appeared as a young woman, but her form was translucent, flickering like a faulty hologram. Her sister, Karta, stood behind her, a slightly older-looking figure clutching a shawl around her shoulders, her face a mask of weary defiance.
"And you?" Karta's voice was stronger, edged with the bitterness of one who has witnessed countless adult follies. "You would be our savior? A demigod, barely a flicker in time's gaze, offering salvation to beings as old as the stories of your people? The arrogance is staggering."
Nicholas didn't flinch. He met her gaze squarely. "Call it what you will. I offer you a choice. Fade into nothingness, your consciousness scattered and absorbed by the void… or become part of something new. Become the core of an artifact that will shape the fate of nations."
He let the proposition hang in the frozen air. He saw the revulsion in their eyes, the instinctive rejection. To be bound, to be used.
"You would make us slaves," Dekla whispered, her voice trembling.
"No," Nicholas countered, his prescience feeding him the lines he needed to say. "I would make you partner, sentient architects of a new power. Your consciousness would be preserved within the artifact. You would not be a battery; you would be the engine. The faith I gather will flow through you, sustaining you, empowering you. You will not fade. You will become the foundation of a new order."
He took a step forward, his presence expanding, the four-colored halo of his elemental authority shimmering faintly behind his head.
The air around him stilled, the very forest holding its breath.
"This is not a threat. It is the only logical path forward. Join me willingly, and you will have a voice in what is to come. Force my hand, and I will take what I need by force. The result will be the same, but the process for you will be… unpleasant. Your choice."
Nicholas stood there, a boy of fourteen, with the calm eyes of a king, offering two forgotten goddesses a deal with the devil.
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