TAMING APOLLO | completed

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A P O L L O

IF I HAD KNOWN that trying to save everybody's asses would win me a one-way ticket into Tartarus, I would have gone on vacation instead. I hear Paris is very nice this time of year.

Alas, I was a desperate fool in love, arduous in my desolate quest to prove to the girl of my dreams that I was the one for her.

Time in Tartarus really puts things into perspective; things like how I was entirely delusional to think that I had ever stood a chance against Ares in the pursuit of Ariel's heart.

It's almost comical, really.

Here's a brief summary of what I've been up to lately;

1. The arrow in my chest did not kill me, how could it when it was specifically designed to kill Zeus?

2. To make up for that little discrepancy, it shot me straight into the lowliest pit of hell, Tartarus (land of the condemned and prison to the Titans — fun, right?).

3. The arrow must have broken after ending me, because Zeus came jetting in after me, and boy was he happy to see me.

4. Not to mention grand-pappy Kronos was more than delighted to receive two new victims of his grueling wrath.

Fast forward a few decades, give or take, and I wasn't sure how much more of the torture I could take. I was nearing the breaking point, my mind lingering on the peripheries of insanity.

I know this sounds pathetic, but the only thing keeping me going was Ariel's image, deteriorating slowly on the crevices of my memories – every time I pictured her, the pain would become a little less unbearable.

Then it didn't matter how many times I tried to see her face, the pain and turmoil was becoming too much.

They almost broke me, too.

Until this one fine day, in the midst of the burning, and the screaming and the crying, I saw a light.

Yes, a light.

Bright and white in the distance and nearing my tortured soul, then, a sharp pain in my chest. It was like the light had reached into me and was wrenching on my heart, pulling it out incautiously.

And then, darkness.