Days on the ship made me restless, sadly the current technology did not allow for a faster traverse of this relatively short segment. Yet thanks to my planning, most of the journey was made during the day, when the visibility was good enough to spot looming underwater dangers. And thus in less than two days, after departing from Carthage, I stood on the shores of the island of Sicily, in one piece, without any unexpected events occurring this time,
Maybe the only exception is Gorgons who decided to stay for a while on the island and possibly even in the Underworld, Stheno explaining it in the line of thought that there might be some entertainment there. And I just hoped the the Underworld would not turn into an amusement park and instead stay a serious company it was described to me.
Nevertheless, my mind was tired from keeping a constant vigilance over the waters of the Mediterranean Sea and two POWs, who I was forced to unbound by my close acquaintance. Luckily I had assistance with overseeing the POWs, in the form of a headed dog.
Then the air shifted, similarly to a change of attitude, but that was not the case at this very moment, something had changed. I decided to forgo the transformation formula and instead elected to use a full combat enhancement suite along with protective spells. My action earned me wary looks from my companions and both Gorgons.
"Miss Persephone is the shift in the air pressure normal?" I asked the person who should know, whether I was overreacting at this moment or not.
"I'm sorry I did not notice anything unusual... Although now that you mentioned it, the air seems to be quite heavy," she said.
Great! Since the local inhabitant did say there might be something unusual about the environment, I was proven right in reacting to possible enemy action.
"Then ready yourself for possible enemy encounters," I said while looking around for any signs of danger.
Alas, there was nothing around that would give away hiding the enemy. Absolutely nothing, unless the enemy was using an illusion spell. Without as much as a moment of hesitation, I checked for any illusion. Attempting to disrupt them did not yield any results, meaning the immediate surroundings were safe.
Only to immediately prove me wrong, as a man and a woman appeared out of nowhere in front of my group. The woman was already barreling straining towards me at a speed, her intentions unknown, just as was she, but her approach was anything but professional. Whether she posed a danger to me or not was irrelevant, as I immediately prepared to defend myself.
And then it happened. The time came to crawl, as I could see my companions clearly in slow-motion as their faces were morphing into surprised grimaces. The only other person besides me who was not affected by this change of flow of time was the woman approaching.
I partially expected him to start taunting me in a somewhat familiar tone of voice, but nothing like that happened, no taunting voice of Being X was heard. And as she was nearly upon me I acted and protected my personal space by pinning the woman to the ground, by my front spiderly limbs. Surprisingly she did not put up much of a fight, and her face looked rather shocked.
"A-Arachne?" she uttered my name.
"How do you know my name!" I said angrily because this unknown woman knew my name and my immediate thought was that the job offered in the Underworld was compromised, because of her presence.
At the same time, my companions and the man who appeared alongside this woman came back to motion.
"Aphrodite!" shouted the man, while my group called for me.
Perhaps he should have informed her later, not realizing how badly she took the news about Nike, though how was he supposed to know the two of them were involved? But the moment he mentioned the arrival of Persephone and their new company, to woman came to life from her catathony. Such a sudden shift in Aphrodite's demeanor could not mean anything good for the subject of her attention.
He, sort of, expected Aphrodite's sudden enthusiasm to cause some problems and readied himself to make appropriate amends afterward. But never in his life, he would have imagined that the primordial being would act so childishly and try to tackle his new colleague, Arachne. Except Aphrodite did just that, or at least attempted to do so.
Before his "mother" could attempt an improper wrestling move, in the blink of an eye, there stood the woman with a dangerous look in her eyes and the spider for the lower half of her body, looming over Aphrodite, pinning the would-be attacker to the ground.
In the first moments, he had no idea what happened, but then it clicked, Arachne was capable of time dilation after all. His own brother Zeus ended up on the sharp end of the spider lady's sickle-shaped legs.
What in the Tartarus was happening? What was Aphrodite here and why was she trying to hug Miss Arachne?! But more importantly, how dare she get herself in such envious positions before she could do it?!
"Damn Eury, is that Aphrodite?"
"Must be... But what an envious position,"
"Yeah, Arachne sure has it handled, so to speak,"
"I was not talking about her,"
"E-Eury?!"
"What?"
He felt a disturbance, a tiny unremarkable, and insignificant ripple in his perception, but that was all he needed. He found her! Gaia made a mistake and revealed her location, her hiding tactic of disrupting a perception was no longer working.
And so he moved his gaze towards the place he expected Gaia to be cowering herself before him. But he did not expect to find one of Gaia's own kind, her closest one, Tartarus!
That should be impossible for another primordial to be indivisible for him, yet here it was. Impossible! What sort of trickery did Gaia use this time! How did she conceal her brother and how dare she hide behind him!
It was against his grand plan for this world and the humans for there to be another one of his distant kind. Especially one that could easily match in power! Such an insult!
"Tartarus!" he roared at the other primordial!
But no response came. How dare that dimwit ignore him!