by Morgan Landry 7/12/2013, 8:53 am
Khione's words hit Lakisha like a backhanded blow. 'Prove yourselves'. 'Choose sides carefully'. 'You won't be my daughters anymore'.
Gazing down, the young woman reflected on that for several moments. The choice seemed rather easy, in fact: she just had to join her mother. The Olympians were of course powerful, but what could they possibly do against an entity as powerful, as old, as enormous as Gaea? They had triumphed once against the giants, and it hadn't been an easy victory -- in fact, it had been pure luck, and they knew it.
Furthermore, back then, the gods were united, and Heracles had helped them. Now, Olympus was closed, and the gods had to suffer a kind of schizophrenia; in addition, Hera had made a plan that had almost lost them.
The Olympians were everything but united. Gaea would swallow them whole.
But if Gaea's side was the right side -- why did Khione have to threaten them in order to join? She clearly had said: 'join me or you aren't my daughters anymore'.... It was a threat.
Positioning herself into Khione's point of view, Lakisha saw what she was probably seeing: on the one hand, a group of tyrannic, self-absorbed rulers who had been on the throne for too long. On the other, a huge and immensely powerful deity who promised to destroy those rulers.
If she had daughters, how would Lakisha react if they turned against her, if they served her enemies? Would she still see them as her children?
Of course she would. She wouldn't be talking to them, though. Or she would do everything in her power to convince them of joining her -- what Khione didn't do, Lakisha observed.
"Mother, if I should join you," she carefully stated, "how would I be treated? How would demigods in general be treated? I have heard that, even though they are plenty of monsters in the giants's armies, there are no demigods to be seen..."