BOOK OF ASTYANAX
CHAPTER 2
“THE FUTURE TO COME”
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In silence, Odysseus dared not move. As if the slightest motion could shatter whatever illusion deceived him, he didn’t even allow himself the luxury of breathing. Even so, his hand still grasped the ghost of the wound he should have been dealt with a tight grip.
…Until finally, he breathed in. Slowly and shallowly he inhaled, and the air gave him life. The warrior he saw, or at least thought he saw, remained gone. Relief washed over him, but there was no shortage of confusion dwelling within his mind.
“Who… was that?” He finally thought to ask.
It was a simple question, directed at nobody in particular. Strangely, there wasn’t a soul in his vicinity—not even the warrior who should have taken his life from him—so there was no expectation of an answer. His words shouldn’t have been heard; they should have faded with the wind and returned to nothing, as if they were never spoken.
And yet, even so, they were heard. Answered by the shrill, piercing whistle of a bird.
Nearby, only meters away, an eagle perched and caught his eye. Its silhouette was a majestic one; it was the frame of a being that dominated the heavens as its birthright with divine permission. Its gaze pierced Odysseus’s soul like a spear.
“Odysseus of Ithaca!” a voice boomed. It reached his ears like a thunderclap, catching his mind’s attention and stopping his breath without even a modicum of effort. Although it seemed like only a bird on the surface, its presence could not be mistaken.
The eagle was a sacred animal, and the messenger of only one god. When one encountered this god, the proper thing to do was afford him the utmost respect.
Odysseus jumped to his feet the moment he heard the bird’s calling and stepped forward, granting the voice every last fragment of his attention. It was this moment that he understood—that he realized the phantom he saw, whose skill rivaled Achilles himself, was not a figment of his imagination. He wanted to charge the voice, to question it, and he tried. He desperately tried, but no matter how much effort he put into it, he produced no sound. Even with all his experience, the god’s presence seemed to suffocate him, and his words were trapped in this throat without any hope of escape.
“Speak,” the voice commanded, as if the god noticed his reluctance. The edict was once again accompanied by the sound of crashing thunder. The sound of divine will.
He grasped the armor that guarded his chest as if to clutch his own heart, and pleaded with his soul. Steel yourself, Odysseus! A king can’t be brought to speechlessness! he shouted within his own mind, and he pried his confidence back from the void by force.
He fell to his knees and kneeled, trading his legs for his voice, then addressed the god.
“God King, Zeus! Why have you appeared before me? What is it that you’ve shown me? Is there some kind of divine purpose? —Some kind of will I’ve been charged with?”
Zeus replied quickly. “A vision,” he declared. “A vision of what is to come. It is a ghost of the future that has not yet passed… but one that we will eventually reach.”
The meaning of this message was not lost on Odysseus. He looked up at the bird whose presence dwarfed his own existence and grasped the top of his helmet. He ripped it off with force, without a care for where it’d land. With a metallic clatter it hit the ground, rolling on its side until it stopped, and the king of Ithaca’s face was exposed.
His spirit was roused by something that vastly overpowered the fear he felt at the god’s presence, and he forced himself to his feet. He approached, an expression of anguish written on his face as he processed the message that was given to him.
“If that’s the future to come, then…” he started as his heart beat like a drum within his ears. The blood drained from his face and left him a pale white. His shallow breaths quickened. The feeling of that axe, which pierced his shoulder, could still be felt.
“—I’m going to die? But I can’t!” he refused. As if forgetting who he was speaking to, he continued. “If I die here, then what was the point of all those years!? All that blood!?”
“Your death will find you far away from here, past the shores of Ithaca,” the voice said.
Even with Zeus’s prophecy he felt no relief, because something about it didn’t make sense. It was something he noticed immediately; a detail he would be hard pressed to forget. “But that can’t be,” he interrupted. “The warrior I saw was wearing Trojan armor!”
“I’ve made no mistake.” Simple words, they struck him as a veiled ‘threat’ of sorts, or perhaps a warning to not question the god’s foretellings again.
“But then, how can this be?” Odysseus inquired after thoroughly considering his words, so as to not offend the higher power he was currently speaking with. Based on the stories, Zeus was a god who could easily be provoked. His ire was not fickle, and his wrath was as destructive as the very war they currently fought, if not more destructive.
“It’s a long story. One I don’t think you’re ready to hear.”
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Even with the difference in power between them, Odysseus couldn’t accept that answer. Now that he saw the future—saw the fate that awaited him back home, he couldn’t just go meet it. “If that’s the case, then why appear before me like this?” he asked.
“There’s more you do not understand. Allow me to show you.”
He hesitated. He wasn’t sure if accepting that offer was wise. But now that he was aware of his ultimate fate… of his predestined death, he had to know more.
“Show me,” he said.
The next moment, immediately after that resolution, Odysseus felt his footing disappear, and then his body fell. Soon he would see something awful, something truly awful, and the course of his life would change… whether that was for better or for worse.
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Falling. Forever he fell, not knowing when he would hit the ground, or which direction the ‘ground’ was even in in the first place. His sense of being was confused; he no longer knew the meaning of the ‘ground’ or ‘sky’, or if he was even alive to see either.
All around him, the world was dark. He had no idea where he was. But repeatedly, now and then, he heard things from the shadows. Words. Voices. Were there people?
“Odysseus!” a woman’s voice called. It struck a familiar rhythm. It couldn’t be mistaken.
“Penelope.” His mouth moved before his mind could realize it. The name he uttered without thinking was a precious one, attached to the woman who mattered most to him.
“Father! Get away from him!” someone else shouted. The person’s voice was strange… not entirely there. Unlike Penelope’s, the pitch of that voice was unclear. Anomalous. Even so, he felt his soul being rended apart as soon as the sound reached his ears.
He didn’t know why, didn’t understand the source of the emotions welling up within him, but still he called out to the voice. Like always, no voice called back.
Suddenly, his vision was washed away by a white light from underneath him. As if to stop himself from being blinded by the light, he squeezed his eyes shut by instinct.
Finally, he felt his feet touch solid ground after falling for… however long that was. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that he finally felt the ground he already reached, as if he was there the entire time and he just wasn’t able to comprehend it.
He allowed his eyelids to open slowly, assuming the light was gone. The first thing he noticed was that he was back home. The room he was in was distinctly of his palace; he could tell, even after ten years spent away from it, but it was different. He could tell that even though it was the same palace, there were small changes made. It was nothing major—things the untrained eye probably wouldn’t have noticed, as simple as advanced wear and tear or moved furniture, but Odysseus could see every minute difference.
It was definitely his and Penelope’s bedroom, but something about the ‘atmosphere’ was also different… as if the world faded in color just a little bit. Was this the effect of whatever Zeus was doing to allow him to ‘see’ what he wanted to show him? He felt disconnected from the rest of the world… like he was a ghost. But most importantly…
“No… Penelope, why!?” a voice cried.
It was a familiar voice, attached to a kneeling figure in the middle of the room. His crouched body obscured Odysseus’s view, so he moved to get a better look. He walked around, his eyes settling on whatever it was that was he couldn’t see.
“—What? T–That…” he stuttered, unable to find the words.
In front of him, lying on the ground in a pool of her own blood, was none other than Penelope. A fatal blow was dealt to her; the wound left behind, a gouge in her abdomen, was left behind. Her eyes were closed, but after the fact. Her death was not a peaceful one, inappropriate for one of her visible age… older than she was when he last saw her, and indeed far older than she should’ve been now, but her beauty remained.
He couldn’t find the words. It seemed the other one in the room, kneeling over her, felt the same. Now that he got a good look at his face, he could tell who it was.
His own face stared back at his… but different. Significantly older, about as old as his father was when he left or even older, and coated red with blood. His eyes were wet, plagued by tears and shaken by the shock of the moment. It was the very same shock he was feeling, but probably a hundred times worse. Even so, both hearts shattered.
Odysseus felt his own eyes sting with the sensation. Every breath trembled. “I thought it was just me,” he muttered. “The death I saw—it wasn’t only my own…?”
There was little time to reel from the sight. The door to the room opened with an audible, crashing slam. His eyes darted to it and registered the sight of a newcomer, garbed in the armor of his people… but his eyes, like the world, were faded. Wispy, his face twisted and contorted like the wind, its structure never settling.
Even though Odysseus couldn’t see his face, he noticed that everything about him was the spitting image of himself, his father, and his father before him. His height was identical. The way his hair was worn reminded him of his own when he was younger. His stature was more reminiscent of his wife’s slender frame. It can’t be…
“Telemachus.” The name left his mouth immediately. No one heard it.
The world returned to nothing as a sea of black washed it away, including his own self. As the dark engulfed him, Odysseus reached his hand out, trying desperately to take hold of what he saw… the people who were so precious to him, who he hadn’t seen in so long. He wanted to hold them, to embrace them. But they were so, so far away.
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When the world returned, he noticed that he was somewhere else. He was outside, but it was definitely the island of Ithaca. Even after so long, it looked remarkably similar, and even though the world appeared faded to him, the forests and plains of his homeland were as beautiful as ever. Or, at least, they should have been.
Ithaca was engulfed by orange flames that burnt and raged as far as the eye could see. In the distance he could see his own palace, reduced to rubble and swallowed by fire.
“Burn. Suffer, just as I suffered.” The voice, fumed by an intense hatred that burned as hot as the flames that engulfed Ithaca, belonged to a familiar individual.
Armored from head to toe in Trojan armor, with a stature that dwarfed Odysseus’s own, was unmistakably the same man he saw before. It was the warrior destined to take his life, according to what Zeus said, whose talents matched the strongest man Odysseus ever knew. Buried into the ground was the head of the very same battleaxe.
Behind the warrior, Odysseus saw himself approach, his face contorted with a visible rage that couldn’t be mistaken. In his hand, he gripped the handle of a peculiar spear, fully composed of metal and sharpy tipped on both ends rather than one. Both ends were coated red, no doubt with the blood of his enemies. “Face me!” he shouted.
That spear! It can’t be… he realized immediately. It once belonged to his father. It only made sense that the great Laertes, already increasing in age, would be dead at this point in the future. The thought pained him; was it a natural death, or a brutal one?
The warrior turned. The other Odysseus’s eyes and his own, beneath that helmet, locked. Surely, this was the moment he saw, that was shown to him.
The moment of my death. His ultimate destination.
But as he realized that, the world around him faded to nothingness again.
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He was left standing on that rooftop again, in the same instant he ‘left’, but the shock and the emotions of the horrors he experienced remained. Under the weight of the world, which was too much for him to bear, his knees buckled. He fell to the ground.
“What… what am I supposed to do?”
His question echoed throughout the world, fading with the wind.
The world conspired against him and those he loved. His entire kingdom, even.
When the odds were stacked against him in such a way… how was he to act?