In life, some people one meets just look like they’d have a story to tell. Medusa and her crew had been footnotes in mythology, each ending in tragedy on the whim of a capricious god. But for the last few months, the five of them had been writing their own.

  Medusa walked in front, her half-dozen hair vipers peering at something in each direction, tan and gray scales winding down her from head to toe-claw. The crew couldn’t agree on a leader for even a day straight, but she tended to pitch an idea before most of them would’ve. She was also in front so she didn’t make eye contact and turn anyone to stone. It only worked on magic-less mortal men, as far as she’d been able to tell, but she didn’t want to try and find out.

  “Welp -” she said abruptly, “- sorry about that last trip. Really didn’t see the whole getting-run-out-of-town thing coming. They’re usually a lot nicer than this!”

  “Eh, I have that effect on people,” Sisyphus grunted with a stretch as he walked, his boulder-pressing muscles creaking like leather. “Plus, I mean, look at your face.”

  “Don’t!” she yelped, just in case one of the others would look.

  “((Look at your face!))” Echo copied his voice, a silent laugh on her face. She was a frail little woman, long black hair combed straight down, often leaving a veil of it over an eye to peer out from. She could only say anything by copying what other people said, for reasons she couldn’t explain. Sometimes it was cute, even endearing; other times it came off like sibling mockery. Medusa processed in a few seconds that it was all of those at once.

  “That’s what happens when you speak truth to power, though,” Arachne muttered gravely. She clutched her dark-brown shawl against the biting sea breeze, as it batted at her many ornamented braids like wind chimes. The middle-aged crinkles in her copper tone skin left her eyes and lips seeming narrowed, like slits in a mask. "Hold up a mirror to a god, and they’ll think you’re the one getting ugly.”

  “There is…an etiquette to bringing up problems to an Olympian,” the giant Argos spoke crisply, choosing his words like he would have to live by them for eternity. He stood a head or two taller than the rest of them, and tended to be gentle and hesitant to speak or even move much so as not to panic anyone. “You cannot simply tell them when they are wrong; now the rest of you know why. I would know; I served under them for seven hundred and eighty-one years.”

  “Really.” Arachne turned to him; she'd been making eye contact with the eyes on his forearm, but she wanted his face. “And how did they repay you?”

  Argos made one on his back-of-the-throat groans, the rest of him unmoving. Most of the hundred eyes spread over his body peered into her eyes now or stared pensive into the distance; the rest remained hidden shut among his muscles and scars. “That is not a question to ask of them. I have walked with the most powerful people in history. I have overseen the rise of humankind since the sculpting of the first man. There is no price for such a life.”

  “Too bad they left you broke now. So why did you leave?”

  “Ok-kaaaay, that's enough backstory for one road trip, right?” Medusa jumped between them with her palms out, trying to keep everyone happy in spite of each other. “So. We've got a few days’ worth of leftovers, most of it not too perishable, and…eleven drachma, between the 5 of us? Silver coin’s accepted most places, we'll just have to decide together how we spend it. Together. The guard with the eyes that never sleep has the knapsack, so…”

  Arachne scrunched up her face like she knew that last warning was for her. She was the newest one here, and they had started out on opposite sides of an attempted coup, before they actually got to talking. Medusa liked to think it was her winning personality softening her up. Arachne liked to think they were a means to an end, to get her close enough to the gods to tear down a piece of the Pantheon. She had waited some twenty years since she started her vendetta; she was a patient predator.

  “Does anyone else… see the name on that sign?” Argos asked all-of-a-sudden.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  He gestured ahead, at a small wooden post, just a highlighted dark rectangle at the top of the next hill.

  “Argos, none of us have eagle-eyes but you,” Sisyphus reminded him. “I’ll have to answer that in a minute.”

  “I'll scout ahead,” Arachne decided, wanting some space and to burn off the stress of being around this crowd. She sprinted to the hilltop, stopping just before the end to scour the horizon. Coast was clear. As for the sign:

  “Argos!” she cupped her hands and called back.

  “Yes?” he answered, as if readying to be asked a favor.

  “We're in Argos,” she explained.

  “I mean, he's big, but he's not land-mass big,” Sisyphus prodded, afraid to actually jab the giant like he'd intended to. “You know, signs saying your name are only accurate if you're standing there.”

  “You didn't mention owning your own town,” Medusa said to him, audibly impressed. “Actually wait, I know this place! I just never bothered to visit.”

  “There is a town…named after me,” Argos repeated, mulling over what this meant to him. “But I…have been gone from this world for most of a century.”

  “People are easier to idolize when they're not there,” Arachne observed cynically. “It lets them project on someone.”

  Argos’ voice sounded farther away now. “...I have done nothing to deserve such an honor…”

  “Uh, heck yeah you have!” Sisyphus jumped in right as Medusa was about to. “I mean, even just since I met you, you've been looking out for us, like as good as if we were paying you! And you've been a human shield and taken hits for us that would've killed us, again. You can't pay a man to do that.”

  Medusa’s words had been bubbling up in her throat waiting for her turn. “Argos, you picked Echo and I up when we were at rock bottom. We weren't any good to anyone, and you took care of us anyway. Now we get to look after you too.” She'd never been much of a crier, but she was giving herself a sore throat.

  Arachne didn't know if she needed to say anything, since she'd met him when telling her guards to aim for the eyes. But he'd fought clean and still held up against her arsenal. Game recognizes game.

  “I think I know every story that's been leaked to the public about the gods. I know at least half a dozen about you. And I can't find one sin in your name.”

  Echo just looked at him. Her eyes made their way down him, as if to look each and every part of him in the eye.

  “Rarely have I ever felt so seen,” the words slipped past his lips, as if thinking them more than speaking, “for all of me.”

  Seconds trickled by, and no one wanted to speak or move to break the moment. But Arachne didn’t mind.

  “Right then - glad we got that sorted out. Come now, you can bask in your warm-and-fuzzies while we walk now.”

  Argos and Sisyphus, the guy-est of the guys, shook themselves out of the sentiment and went back to life in a hurry, as if embarrassed to have addressed the friendship at all.

  Over the hill, the road split. To the right, the bustling town of Argos, boasting mule carts and chariots, multiple-story buildings, and an open-air aqueduct that led right out to sea (i.e. the beach). To the left…

  …a palace. Walls snaked their way across the mountaintop, with rounded turrets wide enough to fit a home and several stories tall. Pillars lined its open-air pavilions, displaying tailored forests in private gardens. Level after level stacked up the mountainside like a wedding cake, at least four stories in all. And, leading there for nearly a kilometer, was a path lined with trimmed hedgerows and the world’s longest red carpet.

  Argos paused to take a poll: “Which way do you thi–”

  “Left!” “Leeeeft!” “Definitely Left.” And Echo at the end parroting Arachne: “((Left!))”

  “The aye’s have it. Left it shall be. Mind you, I would have headed left even if you had not.”

  “Hey, you’re starting to talk like us now!” Sisyphys declared. “One of us! One of us!” Medusa jumped into the chant after the first syllable.

  “One of us,” Argos sighed wistfully.

  “((The aye’s have it,))” Echo repeated, pulling an eyelid wide to give Medusa the hint.

  “I mean, yeah, I heard, but what’s so… a-HAH! The eyes! Argos, did you say that on purpose?”