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You set your feet lightly upon the grass. These long nights of exploration have dulled the memories of those first painful attempts at the surface, but cannot fully dismiss them.
Still, the waxing light of the Moon is gentle on your skin. Beams of it shine through your left arm, illuminating the structures of bone as much as the ground beneath.
The city beckons you. It is easy, simple, on those shorter nights to wonder at what it was whole. If it once stood as bright and gleaming as the depths Chronos now oversees.
None of the shades have been able to tell you, or indeed to offer anything more than scattered fragments.
Nor has Hecate encouraged that particular sort of dwelling upon the past.
Onward, then, past the lumbering undead, with Lim and Oros gleaming in your hands. Surely it is the favor of the Moon that keeps you from being obvious with reflected light, though you have been told the beings here see poorly by any light weaker than that of the sun.
You find Medea in the second ruined structure. The wards have reset once again; an endless repetition that so few seem to notice. As always, you inhale deeply of her cauldron. The secrets there are not yours to ask, but every subtle scent of herbs is another detail to test on your own. Another way to fortify your will.
Still, you doubt your own aptitude for such fervent curses. Perhaps they are too woven into your duty to be separated and called forth.
Medea catches your gaze, staring back into your mismatched eyes.
Her lips are so very red.
She laughs, breaking the focus that has so enraptured you. “Perhaps I will have to expand my selection, just for you.”
You stumble through choosing from her cauldron after that, barely paying attention to the choices instead of the green of her eyes.
The next time you visit Medea the Moon is faint, the shadows deepened in the City of Ephyra. You’ve been through several rooms already, leaving you bruised and winded, the strength of your incantations fading before the onslaught.
“Back so soon,” Medea says, and there is something cutting beneath her words. The steam that billows out from her cauldron has changed, turned softer, soothing. You can feel how it dissipates the tension in your limbs.
There’s a new curse there, among the others. Of course you’ll test it. Of course.
The curse doesn’t kill you. It just distracts you enough, the heat on your lips, within your chest, that you misstep amid that cursed fleet, fail to dodge, find your strength worn down beyond repair.
The shadows take you, and there is time afterward for rest. Enough time to—
Somehow, the curse lingers still. A tug pulling you back to Ephyra, to Medea, and you’ve been drawn back so many times but not quite like this.
It isn’t a surprise to find her again, despite how rarely you encounter her twice in a row. There are others amid these ruins, the echoes of gods and mortals alike, but none of those others find you on this visit.
“How does it feel?” Medea says, her gaze sweeping down from the crown of laurels on your head to where the saffron of your dress ends, reveals a hint of your thighs.
“Strange,” you say. Not accusatory, not yet, not when you’ve seen the pain and reward Chaos can offer. “Distracting. I am learning to block it out.”
No doubt there’s an incantation for that as well, if only you can discover it.
Medea laughs, a blur of black and green as the world spins, a hint of gold behind her. A dizzying moment that makes you think of Chronos—but no. Only your own heartbeat in your chest, ever faster. Air flows between the gap of your lips.
“I’ve another suggestion for alleviating it,” Medea says. She raises her hand, as if stretching out to touch you, and the steam from her cauldron half-hides her face. Whatever shadowed thoughts she has are hidden from you.
And she is an ally, still.
“Show me this incantation, then.”
She steps around the cauldron, face a fraction of expressions: a widened eye, the deep color of her lips, an upturned corner of her mouth. Only when she emerges fully from it does her hand dart forth, to pull you toward her.
To kiss you.
Her lips are warm. Her every touch sends heat across your skin, so different from the barely-present coolness of a shade. Perhaps she is always this warm. Perhaps it is the fire laid beneath her cauldron.
You do not give yourself time to care. Instead you kiss her back, your ghostly arm wrapped around her. Your bruises reassert themselves as you draw her close. Your usual grace has abandoned you; the staff on your back felt stiff and cold beneath your grip.
“It is a simple matter. I merely ask that you make me no promises,” Medea says, once you break from the kiss. Only then do you realize her need for air; she is far more mortal than you, no matter the color of your blood.
“I begin to understand the rite,” you say, with more certainty than you know. Such is the way of incantations; forcing yourself to set aside such doubts. To frame the world through ritual and will. To frame the space you both occupy. And will occupy.
She draws a hand down across your breast until you lean into her, impatient. You’ve had enough of training; now is the time to prove yourself.
When the cloth comes loose from your body you lose yourself between her breasts, your head resting there, her reaching one hand between your thighs even as the other guides your fingers downward.
It is not such a hard ritual to learn. The rhythms of her body, the way your fingers slide in, wet, one still resting against the nub of her clit. How she breaks your movement with the pressure of her own fingers, an unspoken request to slow, or move faster.
Your will, at least, bends to this well enough. Even if you feel there could be more grace to your hands. An ease, such as those you hold toward your weapons. The grace of long practice.
Still, your journey toward Olympus will take you past here so very many times.
You intend to learn every art of this.