Demigod AU I Never Got to do Anything With but May Continue Some Day
He takes aim, letting out a careful breath, then lets his arrow fly. The stag lets out a cry, falling over as death claims it, Laurent's arrow having flown true and hit its mark in the eye. A good kill, clean, quick.
"Well done, my son," his mother says, petting his long, golden hair.
Laurent beams up at her, happy to have pleased his mother in the gift she cherishes most. She moves forward, sandalled feet soft as a whisper as she glides over the forest floor. She hefts their kill over her shoulders, effortless, and leads Laurent back to her temple.
He and the priestesses live there, and they watch him, teach him, fawn over him. It's like having many older sisters, his mother once said. He should be proud to have so many.
His uncle comes by some times when his mother visits; mostly to teach Laurent instruments. He says Laurent has a divine singing voice, and little Laurent preens under the praise.
Laurent never learns of his father; some man good at hunting his mother deemed would have seed fit to produce a child with. But that's where her interest ended. She'd wanted a child, had told him honestly but not unkindly that she'd prayed for a girl. But she didn't love Laurent less for who he is, for he is everything she could have wanted in a child.
So Laurent only ever knows of his 'sisters', his mother, and his uncle. And it remains this way for many years, well into Laurent's adolescence. And as he grows older, his mother visits less. His sisters say it is because he is grown now, and does not need the same careful guidance. It doesn't lessen the abandonment he feels. The loneliness. The isolation.
So Laurent hunts. Small kills to justify the need to go out more. He was taught to only kill out of necessity, not for sport.
It's on one such hunt that he feels his life took a drastic turn. A man, one he'd never seen in this forest before, is checking a trap for a rabbit, and holding his trophy by its ears.
Neck snapped, the man stands, tall as a giant and dark as the dirt, and Laurent feels his pale face flush.
Dark eyes catch his, staring stunned for all of a moment, before the man is moving towards him. Without much thought, other than for that of the safety of his home and sisters, Laurent lifts his bow and aims his arrow for the man, the threat clear. "Come no closer."
The man's lips quirk, but he stops. "You must not have heard of me."
Laurent frowns, glares. "I need not know who you are to put this arrow through your eye."
The man's smirk stays in place, and he looks amused at Laurent's show of aggression. "I'll warn you: that won't stop me."
Laurent bristles at the threat, but doesn't show the man how much he's affected him. "You are trespassing into territory protected by a goddess. This is your final warning."
"A goddess?" the man asks, looking intrigued. Gone with the teasing look, he glances about, though Laurent knows not what he hopes to find. "Which?"
Laurent's lips pinch. Why should he tell the intruder anything? He's only proven to be hostile and arrogant.
Bolts of lightning hit the ground before the two of them, knocking Laurent back and unbalancing the man across from him. Laurent gasps, getting his feet back beneath himself, the bluish moonglow of his heavenly skin returning with the vicinity of his-- "Mother."
Artemis stands before him, posture protective and spear in hand. She's adorned a war helm and leathers, her stags at her sides.
Across from her, Laurent sees a man who could only be Ares, his twisted smile and blood thirsty eyes locked with his mother's. "Long time, no see, Arty. You don't visit Olympus enough. The old man misses you."
Laurent sees the way he stands, broad shoulders protecting the man who'd been hunting in his mother's forest. He's frowning, rabbit forgotten, as he watches what unfolds between them. His skin glows a haunting red.
"Take your spawn and be gone, Ares. This land is sacred. I will not have it sullied by your kind."
That only seems to enrage the war god. "My kind?!"
He strikes with no further provocation, and Artemis manifests a shield, blocking the blow of Ares' greatsword. "Your chastidy is defiled! Your vows broken, Artemis! Your child is forfeit!"
Laurent flinches, holding his bow closer. The man cross from him looks just as surprised, and perhaps even a little betrayed. Laurent doesn't stay long enough, fleeing back to his home and away from the fight.
It's just as he's coming upon his mother's temple that he hesitates, thinking of what harm could come to his sisters. His mother wouldn't fall, but should Ares get around her, he could destroy their home and everyone within while looking for Laurent. So Laurent turns tail and heads for the alcove the nymphs call home.
"Laurent? My son, Ares has left and taken his son with him. You can come out now," his mother says, speaking to his Laurel tree. A gift from his birth, from the nymphs. They'd called it a safe space; he hadn't known why until now.
So Laurent spreads the bark as the nymphs taught him, and peeks out. Sure enough, it is his mother, smiling kindly.
Except his mother doesn't give him that smile, not anymore. She wouldn't hold her hand out to him like a lost child, wouldn't lean down to his level in her towering, godly form. Laurent doesn't even have the glow of his skin that comes with the presence of his mother. So he wordlessly closes his bark, and whoever it is outside his tree makes an angry sound from deep within their throat.
A sound, like ripping paper and the tides during a storm. "I've found you, and if you do not come out of that tree, I will simply rip the tree from the ground by its roots."
Aphrodite. She can change her form, as the goddess of beauty. Men have all different tastes, why should she be confided to a single one? But little know that she can be worshipped in times of war, and that gives her powers unlike the love and pleasure she is known for. A different kind of passion. Bloodlust.
So Laurent prays to his mother, prays to Apollo, prays to Zues, that he will make it out of this alive, that his sisters are fine, that whatever has provoked the wrath of these gods will dissolve like snow in spring.
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