#pan-hellenic warzone

Creon: By all means, Creon is a decent enough king. Heracles's (first) father-in-law, caretaker of Thebes in the absence of its rightful king as long as it took, and graciously gave the throne to Oedipus when the time came. On the other hand. On the other hand. After Oedipus fucked around and found out, and his sons did much the same, Creon is the one who refused to give Polynices a proper burial, choosing the law of man over the law of the gods and fucking over his entire family in the process -- wife dead, son dead, absolutely ruined. Should you feel bad for him? Maybe. Maybe not. That's up to you.

Hegelochus: A wonderful actor whose career was cut tragically short by a mispronounciation during a performance during the City Dionysia. He never worked again, and everyone made fun of him for centuries to come. Including me, but hey. This one's for Hegelochus.

Oh dear. Well, we should have expected this, shouldn't we? As soon as the great Minotaur escaped the Labyrinth, he would run into his opposition. The ruler of Crete, sat on the throne. This king looks different than he remembers, the great hulking man who locked him away. His eyes try to adjust to the light, but he feels as if he remembers this one from somewhere else. He's afraid. He doesn't want to be here anymore. All he wants is to be free.

History keeps repeating. Over and over and over again. Has Patroclus felt this before? Has he told Hector of the death that awaits him? They've killed before. They're warriors, both of them. They're wearing the same set of armour.

Hector: The breaker of horses. The one who holds fast, the stalwart defender of Troy. The only decent man in the entire Iliad. Hector loves his family -- his wife, his son, his siblings, basically everyone except Paris, his fuckup little brother. Described by numerous sources as having a lisp, and also apparently 'blinking attractively,' whatever that means. Sorry I'm trying to find his negative traits by a quick Wikipedia search and I don't think he has any. Everybody loves this guy.

Asterion: Alas, poor Minotaur. Asterion never asked to be a monster. Born from a cursed union of Pasiphaë and the Cretan Bull, Asterion was given a taste for human flesh and blood, and forced to live in the Labyrinth for the terrible crime of being born an abomination. I realise that he's a monster. I realise he ate people and was never socialised properly. However, I still think he deserved better. What would you have done, in his place?

The final battle is here. Two groups stalk out on either end of the battlefield, and stop. Achilles sees him from across the way, and needs to be held back by Eurydice and the ever-helpful Alcibiades before he bounds across to grab the enemy, to embrace his lover and beg to know what's happening.

He calls out. Patroclus, he cries. Patroclus it's me, speak to me. He wants nothing more than to be reunited with his lover, and he screams at Eurydice to let him go, doesn't she understand, doesn't she know how hard he's worked for this? She has Orpheus now, at least a part of him. Achilles has nothing.

And then. Opposite them, Patroclus is frozen. His Achilles. The man he loves, his leader, his friend, his brother in all but blood, the man who refused to fight and who Patroclus died for in his stead. Is this real? Is he real?

Penelope stands in front of him, shield raised. She's learned a lot from Patroclus these past several days. She's learned that he killed her son, when she clearly remembers leaving Telemachus with Odysseus. She's learned that Hector killed him, and then he killed Hector, and now he's alive still. She's learned that the gods like to play pretend with people like them, to see what happens.