A Change of Heart

Night of Thursday March 11, 1490

A low groan from the floor stopped us before Ynez could start lugging her armory out the door. Rolling over onto his side, Thanos said in a defeated voice, "You don't understand. You just don't understand. Aphrodite, Ares, Poseidon — they're all still here. You can't stop them."

Without releasing either the sword or the spear, Ynez knelt beside him. "We don't need to. All we need to do right now is stop Hestia."

"You can't," he said flatly, and although she waited a moment longer for him to elaborate, he only closed his eyes and turned his face away.

Looking at Jamie, who had after all rejected Ascension in order to help us, she asked for his advice. "Oh, I don't know much about what you should do right now. I'm here for what happens after," he said with infuriating — and familiar — vagueness.

"Okay," Ynez informed him in utter exasperation. "The time for secrets is past. Tell us what you know!"

At the same time, I snapped, "All of this — " I swept my arm around the chamber — "happened because none of you would tell me anything! You tricked me into thinking that we were fixing the Plague when it was all about Astera Ascending, and now Hestia is loose and Thanos can't do anything to stop her! You got us into this mess — now get us out of it!"

Blinking at us in an injured way, the fox god explained, "But I don't know what to do about the Plague. I just know about the other gods — where they are, how to find them, how to stop them. That's why I stayed." He pouted at us, pushing out his bottom lip and wriggling out of my arms with (barely justified) resentment. "If you don't even appreciate my sacrifice, I should have Ascended with all my friends."

He did have a point, even if he and his friends had precipitated the crisis in the first place and really should have stayed long enough to resolve it. But I could feel the loneliness that filled his eyes and burrowed into his heart, and I said no more.

Ynez blew out a very frustrated sigh but nodded and ordered, "Keep Thanos safe then. You can hide him somewhere, right?"

"Yes, Prima," he said meekly. Crouching beside Thanos, he took the newly orphaned god's hand and began to urge him to take heart.

"Wait!" Ynez said suddenly. "What are you doing to him?" Jamie was using Ars Mentis to hypnotize Thanos and extract all his knowledge — not just his knowledge of the paths to the underworld that Astera had coveted — and Thanos, of course, no longer had any way to resist. "Stop that!"

Jamie protested, "I'm making him a mouse," but he did cut off his Effect. However, he couldn't quite conceal a sly smile that suggested he'd finish it later, when Ynez had her hands full with world-shattering crises.

Drawing herself up straight, and gripping the sword and spear menacingly, Ynez commanded in a low, intense voice, "I am the Prima of House Criamon and the warden of the spirits, and you are not going to hypnotize Thanos."

Actually cowering back a little, just as Mel had when Ynez exerted her authority, Jamie bit his lip but nodded obediently this time. He took the still-dazed Thanos by the hand, coaxed him to his feet, and led him away to one of the mice's many boltholes within the Hearth.

"Well," Ynez sighed, her authority draining away and her shoulders slumping back into the poor posture of an exhausted fourteen-year-old, "I guess we should go outside and see what's going on."

Outside the loom chamber, we found Tel — who obviously hadn't obeyed my order to "get out" very well. He was just lifting his hands from Gus' side with a satisfied air, and his father sprang to his feet, shook himself experimentally head to tail, then bounded in a circle like an excited puppy. The wound had healed entirely, and even the blood had vanished without a trace.