Heroes of a New Age

Lost in the Wind

Dio floated in the mist for what felt like an eternity. He didn't remember how long it had been the last time. This part of the journey was... obfuscated.

He remembered more of his past lives than he had when he had actually lived them, from his own birth to the moment of his death each time. But the moments in between death and living again, those were gone.

It was like he was here for the first time.

The mist parted, and he saw the world as if from a great height. He floated above a city with buildings taller than he could have ever imagined, spires of glass and steel that stretched up to pierce the low clouds that scudded around their tops.

He felt himself being pulled down into that city, and as he floated lower, he saw crowds of people, and vehicles in the streets, and that looked more familiar. In a way, it looked very much like Rome had looked, during his second life, full of hustle and bustle. Everyone going about their own business.

Above the crowd floated another figure, he laughed and spun over the heads of the people, invisible to them. Though he wore similar clothing to the mortals, his hat and shoes sported small pairs of wings.

"Hermes!" Diomedes found himself calling out to the god, who paused in his laughter and floated over.

"Who's there?" the god asked. "I can barely see you. Some wayward soul caught in the traffic? Do you need passage to the underworld? I'm a little busy right now, but I could come back in an hour or two, once things on Wall Street calm down a bit."

"No, I don't need passage back, I'm—" Diomedes found himself caught up in a spurt of steam from an underground vent, and was blown off into the air again. The wind pulled him through an alleyway and down another long street lined with impossibly tall buildings.

He floated for hours, untethered like a scrap of cloud being pulled in all directions by the winds. He thought he could hear the laughter of the wind gods in it, but saw no one else.

Finally, he came to rest outside the window of a large glass building, where a woman lay in a bed, crying over a baby who lay too still in her arms.

Someone laid a hand on Diomedes' arm, and he jerked in surprise to see a hooded figure. His hands were mere bones, and the hood was too deep to see his face. In his other arm, he carried the nearly indistinct figure of a sleeping baby.

"She wasn't strong enough," the figure said. "Will you be stronger?"

"She?"

"The child. The mother is an addict. I'll return for her shortly..."

"Return?" But the figure was gone, and Dio found himself pulled through the glass of the window until he floated above the pair. He didn't have much time, the child's empty body was growing cold. A little girl, with a rough life ahead of her. But beggars couldn't be choosers, and he had to find Odysseus.

He reached down to touch the child... and breathed the first breath of his new life.