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”There is not a man in the world more blest than you.”- The Iliad, Homer
Achilles is born to the world with shrieks and yells booming from his blood-slickened body and a Nereid looking down upon him, seeing not her child but a mere mortal. Peleus is not there for the birth, busied by heroic duties and gallivanting. Both are absent when it comes to raising the child, leaving that to a religious fanatic-bursting to the brim with instability and reverent admiration.
When he is twelve, doing nothing but committing follies of youth and lack of sense, darting in and out of temples, Thetis appears before him, cold and still as she were a marble statue, made to look down upon others and remind them of their inferiority. Black tendrils hang limply around her green-tinted face, droplets of salty water quiver and fall to the ground, as if they could not bear to be close to her. A strange emotion flits across her face, momentarily twisting it into a terrible expression that could not be looked at for more than a few seconds before one would turn away in sudden shame, as if they had committed a heinous act, sin. Oh, Achilles thinks, glancing at the perpetual snarl that marred her face, he does not have a sacrifice to gift the temple.
Chapped lips move and suddenly snap shut as an awkward blush stains Achilles’ cheeks. He quickly bows in a gesture of respect rather than attempting to speak. The aura that surrounds her is incandescent, rippling with power. She leans onto a pillar, lounging lazily, but Achilles knows better. He can sense the power of the woman from where he stands, the power of the sea running through her veins; a swift churning current that could suck him in a second.
Maybe she had come to claim him. Achilles does not voice this thought-this possibility- because if he were to do this, the truth would strike-stabbing him in the heart with warm blood gushing out in desperation. She is here for something and it is not to mend a relationship between mother and son. Gods choose to never hold themselves at fault, it is one of the many privileges that they possess, accountability is almost synonymous with vulnerability in their old eyes.
Webbed hands spread out, as if encompassing the greatness of the sea. Anything that he would say would be inadequate. And it doesn’t matter, because a brisk, no nonsense voice rings out, its harshness clear for all to hear.
“A war is coming,” she says with cold eyes that reflect the ocean’s surface-winds gusting over it, giving it the look of shattered glass. And he is to become a soldier. He doesn’t question the resoluteness of her voice, of how she could know this despite the lack of word about approaching conflict. Gods do not exist to be understood, only worshipped. This fact is proven to be true as a dangerous austerity leaks into her words.
Absentmindedly, his thoughts flicker to the warmth that mothers exuded when they took care of their children in his town. Thetis does not offer unconditional love, but disgusting glory in the battlefield. Crimson of dripping wounds, not rosy cheeks of childhood.
Suddenly, she is leering at him, edging closer to scrutinise his lopsided face. Instinctively, he backs away quickly and a harsh, grating bellow emerges out of her mouth. Mocking amusement adorns her eyes as she watches his fearful expression and she moves to grab him- and
Like the rapidly dwindling sand grains in an hourglass, they disappear in a whirlwind, the only constant, unchanging thing being the firm, damp fingers grasping his arm, until she drops him in a vat, boneless.
Liquid gold. He is drowning in a sea of shimmering-suffocating gold, glancing with an ethereal sheen and he’s breathing it in and hacks up gold and gold and gold until he becomes gold itself. As if Thetis took pity on him, she removes him out of the ambrosia and he blindly lurches forward, desperate to thump the last remnants of it out of his chest.
She makes quick work of tying him up, slender fingers flying and knuckles bulging with the effort. When she had finished, Achilles was bound to the rock, pale, narrow features illuminated by the thin slivers of firelight and twitching faintly.
Flickering embers of wood and flames snake up his legs, dancing away from the soles of his feet and curling intricately. It burns-burns as bright as his rather short life, his rambictious laughter and intensity in his adoptive father’s eyes when he regards him whilst sniffling- and so pleased-infinitely honoured- to raise the child of higher entities. A lump suddenly wedges itself in his throat and fear festers in the bottom of his stomach. Flames steadily grow in height and smoke forces itself down his throat and he’s coughing and suddenly-
a burst of white clouds his vision.
Muted raw screams penetrate the sky and Achilles thinks that whoever’s screaming must be so terribly sad to make such a noise until he numbly realises that’s it’s him. He’s the one screaming and he swears he can see the dusty depths of the Underworld, the dark harbour of Hades’ arms and the crowd of anguished souls that he screeches and sways with mindlessly.
Morose Persephone with a tiara of dead, wilting flowers and eyes that are just as dead holds a palm out; full with pomegranate seeds as if to say, I am doomed to forever stay in the Underworld, and so shall you. The screaming doesn’t stop. The ghostly apparitions that circle around him, telling him to join them in an eternity of misery don’t either.
Gnarled, calloused hands impales sharp steel -almost as sharp as the bared teeth that the man presents-into soil. “You may have consulted the Oracle and Seen his fate but that is no reason to meddle with it,” Peleus growls out, his onyx orbs glittering angrily. Thetis scowls menacingly until he slinks closer and her expression falters and she sprints away with hot heels. Toxic parting words spill from her tongue, “Say what you will, think what you will, but that boy will die a war hero. His string of fate will forever be connected to a fatal battle and no matter how hard you try, even with great Kratos’ strength, you will never be able to cut it.”
Peleus unties Achilles’ bounds with a pitying sigh and extinguishes the fire.
Everything comes flooding back to the once delirious boy, with a cool, clear certainty and sharp relief. He stands up, with renewed strength and energy as if he were blessed by Zeus himself. Above, the sky placed over Atlas’ straining arms rumbles pleasantly, as if it heard his thought. His heel aches.
Years later when Achilles is an established name, a lithe hero of unrivalled speed, a war begins in Troy. Soldiers scream with uncontrolled bloodthirstiness and excitement whilst his mind travels to a faraway place. To a temple, with shadows of burning wood dancing across it and ashes and gold that squelches and slithers in the crevices of the body. A woman, tall and proud until she’s not-until she’s cowering before a blade and onyx eyes and Achilles is still covered in gold and his heel aches. It aches.
He hacks at flesh, stabbing and legs dancing across soil as a painter would flourish their brush across paper. Many attempt to defeat him and die with a permanently frozen expression of shock.
Swathes of the enemy’s blood, and regret paint his body, silvery and smooth as the pads of a babe’s feet. Heaving and panting, he takes a look at the corpses that lie at his feet and wonders if they feared him, as he once feared Thetis. Her face is blurred to him now, just a flash of scaly green remains but he still remembers the terrible expression. A throaty bitter laugh erupts out of his mouth and for a split, terrifying second, his face looked the exact same.
Paris approaches. For a moment, the battle comes to a standstill and Achilles releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding; at the sight of his pathetic form, wracking with nervousness. His bow and arrow is taut, ready to fly and Achilles is uneasy, despite his invulnerability. The heavy set of Paris’ brow and determined expression is unsettling, and his heel aches.
Jumping into action, Achilles dives away from the released arrow but it hits its target. The metal nib of the arrow drips with poison as it delves into Achilles’ heel, obtrusive and piercing. Paris’ voice is a whisper but the soldiers on the battlefield hear it clearly, as if it were shouted out. “Fall. Achilles, fall.”
And the great Achilles, better than Heracles himself, who once burned with passion heeds Paris’ request. With one last ache in the heel of his ankle and silvery tear on his cheek, voices whisper to him, worry not brave Achilles, for there is no man more blest than you. Worry not brave Achilles, you have lived a good life.
“I have lived well.” The lie sits heavily on his tongue, a burden to bear. Blood is on his hands and bruised, limp bodies with glassy, unfocused eyes press on his heart. It hurts to say it, but he does it anyway, in one last attempt to fool himself. He is the devil clothed in a hero’s armour, but these last words wrap around him gently, almost make him believe that he has a place in Elysium.
He falls.