The Cult of Dionysus

Apollo

Gee Apollo, you may be thinking, why don't you simply pull out your bow and shoot her? Or charm her with a song from your combat ukulele?

True, I have both those items slung across my back along with my quiver. Sadly, even the best demigod weapons require something called maintenance. My children Kayla and Austin explained this to me before I left Camp Half-Blood. I can't just pull my bow and quiver out of thin air as I used to when I was a god. I can no longer wish my ukulele into my hands and expect it to be perfectly in tune.

My weapons and my musical instrument are carefully wrapped in blankets. Otherwise flying through the wet winter skies would warp the new bow Calli gave me, ruin the arrows, and play Hades with the strings of my ukulele. To get them out now would require several minutes that I do not have.

Also, I doubt they will do me much good against blemmyae.

I haven't dealt with their kind since the time of Julius Caesar, and I would be happy to go another two thousand years without seeing one.

How can a god of poetry and music be effective against a species whose ears are wedged under their armpits? Nor do the blemmyae fear or respect archery. They are sturdy melee fighters with thick skin. They are even resistant to most forms of disease, which means they never called on me for medical help nor feared my plague arrows. Worst of all, they are humorless and unimaginative. They have no interest in the future, so they see no use for Oracles or prophecies.

In short, you could not create a race less sympathetic to an attractive, multitalented god like me. (And believe me, Ares tried. Those eighteenth-century Hessian mercenaries he cooked up? Ugh. George Washington and I had the worst time with them.)

"Leo," I say, "activate the dragon."

"I just put him into sleep cycle."

"Hurry!"

Leo fumbles with the suitcase's buttons. Nothing happens. "I told you, man. Even if Festus weren't malfunctioning, he's really hard to wake up once he's asleep."

Wonderful. Calypso hunches over her broken hand, muttering Minoan obscenities. Leo shivers in his underwear. And I...well, I am Lester. On top of all that, instead of facing our enemies with a large fire-breathing automaton, we now have to face them with a barely portable piece of metal luggage.

I wheel on the blemmyae. "BEGONE, foul Nanette!" I try to muster my old godly wrath voice. "Lay hands upon my divine person again and you shall be DESTROYED!"

Back when I was a god, that threat would be enough to make entire armies wet their camouflage pants. Nanette just blinks her cow-brown eyes.

"Don't fuss, now," she says. Her lips are grotesquely hypnotic, like watching a surgical incision being used as a puppet. "Besides, dearie, you're not a god anymore."

Why do people have to keep reminding me of that?

More locals converge on our position. Two police officers trot down the steps of the statehouse. At the corner of Senate Avenue, a trio of sanitation workers abandon their garbage truck and lumber over wielding large metal trash cans. From the other direction, a half dozen men in business suits tromp across the capitol lawn.

Leo curses. "Is everybody in this town a metalhead? And I don't mean the good kind of metalhead."

"Relax, sweetie," Nanette says. "Surrender and we won't have to hurt you much. That's the emperor's job!"

Despite her broken hand, Calypso apparently doesn't feel like surrendering. With a defiant yell she charges Nanette again, this time launching a karate kick toward the blemmyae's giant nose.