chapter 9

Harry absently scritched and scratched around Hoss the Donkey's ears as the small equine closed his eyes and leant into the monster's left side, under his arm, lower lip quivering in ecstasy. On Harry's right side, he was once again babysitting Callie's twins while Triton visited, as well as a further eight children under five and so too young for schooling or work.

They were seated in the gardens in the Aleta Dorms courtyard, most of the children drowsing in the shade in a grassy clearing or playing quietly while the twins chased a school of large koi fish in a sun dappled pool nearby, requiring Harry to keep an eye of the other children so they didn't try to join the semiaquatic toddlers.

Somewhere deeper into the gardens, he could hear the sweet crystalline song of the songbird he'd made for Persephone, indicating she was about. Her Shrine had turning into a bower of flowers and vines of both organic and metal plants, seeing as how she had planted a few flowers from her Flowering Jewellery bush, as she had named it, around the trellis attached to the Shrine.

On the other side of the courtyard from Persephone's Shrine, her husband was lounging in the shade of an old fig tree the goblins had built around, chatting with his elderly daughter, Brona, and her family. There was something about his laugh that Harry found familiar.

Still, the garden was lovely and, he suspected, expanded by the goddess's power to a ridiculous size. Everything was always blooming or bearing fruit and nuts, the birds always singing and the bees humming and at night, the fireflies always put on a show. Essentially, the Spring Goddess always kept everything in season.

In the moment it took for Harry to glance over at Hades' laugh, then back again, a man in an expensive black suit with oddly coloured black hair and bright, nearly glowing, red orange eyes was seated on the other side of Hoss, absently leaning onto the donkey's stomach.

"You have his laugh." The man commented calmly, voice deep and soft.

Harry didn't startle, nor did the donkey or any of the children around them. After all, there was nothing to be alarmed about since the man was always there, so there was no point in making a fuss.

Harry hummed, thought for a moment, then nodded in agreement. "I thought it was familiar."

They regressed into a companionable silence again.

After a time, broken only by the occasional splash and squeal of the twins and the background murmur of a spring garden, the man spoke again.

"I don't usually get involved," He admitted softly. "But I am all about change, and I like how things have turned out so far, so I shall assist you to an extent. Had I thought you would be interested," He added. "I would have made you a god by now, but that would have just made you miserable."

Harry hummed his agreement, watching as Lumiere, a very young daughter of Greek Apollo, looked up from where she was drawing and her mouth dropped open in awe.

The man smiled at the little girl fondly and she blushed and looked down, smiling, only to peek up at him every so often."Humans have always had brilliant imaginations, and it seems a waste not to put some of their dreams to reality, so I shall expand on the Marble Reality and add things, but do not be alarmed. I will not yet create anything that will harm this budding society, merely make it a world worth abandoning the other for. Perhaps, in time, new gods shall arise, but that is rather far off yet."

Harry tilted his head at the man in question and was rewarded with a warm chuckle and a hot/cold/warm, soft/hard/rough hand sliding over his snakes.

"You shouldn't hide yourself. You are quite beautiful, you know? Both inside and out."

The Gorgon blushed and ducked his head, only looking up again when Lumiere got up and shuffled over hopefully, offering a picture to the man, who smiled and took it.

"I shall treasure it eternally, Little Sun." He said solumnly, a hand brushing over her forehead. "And may you always burn brightly, even in the dark."

She giggled and then the man was gone.

Lumiere threw herself into Harry's lap, still giggling.

"He was so big…" She confided in the Gorgon, who suddenly frowned and sat up straight.

He hadn't known that man, but he had been comfortable with him. Or rather, Him.

Harry had the sudden, worrying suspision he'd just been visited by Chaos.

(space)

He had the sinking feeling he knew what Discordia wanted these statues made for, but he wanted to be clear.

"So you want them to hunt wolves?"

"Yes." She smiled widely, teeth shifting from human to cat to shark to something else.

"Any kind of wolves, or just supernatural wolves?" He tried to specify.

She raised a golden blond eyebrow, crossing Her arms under Her chest. "Are you going to be difficult about this?"

Harry sighed but shook his head. "No. I'm just trying for plausible deniability. I'm going to have enough enemies amongst the gods once they figure things out without adding a Blood Feud with Lupa's Wolves to things."

Discordia rolled Her abyssal black eyes in exasperation, blowing Her bangs out of Her face. "Very well. But I doubt you'll really be fooling anyone."There were six wolfhounds made from formerly Hellhound Stygian Iron with some Celestial Bronze or Imperial Gold markings. They were big, solidly built sighthounds with goatlike horns and scales beneath their wirey fur.

Three males and three females, all capable of breeding and had the same slightly higher than animal mind as most Immortal animals and the deer he had previously made.

And, while they were allowed into Home, they were forbidden from harming anyone in Home so long as they weren't declared enemies or were breaking a law that would cause harm to the residents of Home.

Discordia ghosted them back to her Temple in the House of Nyx.

(space)

The children of Eros/Cupid were easy to spot due to being invaribly beautiful and having goldtipped wings that were hidden by the Mist.

And, without Asher to keep them in line as he had been for centuries, they were even more disruptive than Eris' teenage twins and the children of the War deities put together.

Of all of the demigods in the Greek/Roman Pantheons, they were amongst the most fucked up.Eros/Cupid was all about Love and Sex of every kind, and his children had this horrible tendancy to manifest the worst of those aspects while the children of Aphrodite/Venus often got the good parts. As such, these winged progeny tended to be completely amoral and, while their full demgod abilities usually manifested about puberty, there was also the odd unfortunate child who gained sexual cravings as a prepubescent or attracted pedophiles.

On a side note, a genuinely distressing number of demigods born to deities of love, sex and beauty ended up being sexually assaulted and/or used as sex slaves before adolesence, often by foster parents. Many resorted to prostitution after running away.

An entire wing of the Aleta Dorms was set aside for those recovering from abuse or sexual programming.

But the children of Eros/Cupid were different in that they were more distressed by physical abuse than sexual, and hit sexual activity, with a whole host of kinks (from the soft to the hard to the cringeworth), as young as eleven, so, as much as he hated to do so, Harry had to make exceptions to the Laws and put in sex ed classes for them every month.

Fortunately, there was only six of them. Which was kind of odd since their sire was the God of Love and Sex.

Unfortunately, he'd had to separated them into their own little dorm so they would stop trying to climb into bed with people and so the newcomers would stop freaking out about pedophiles.

Because, while little Nicole may have been only eight, her stepfather had been a pedophile and had awakened her sexual appatite early, so she was essentially a sexually mature female in an immature body, and she wanted her itch scratched now thankyouverymuch.

Even managing them for the week and a half Asher was out of commision was more than mentally taxing for Harry, and he didn't know how he did it.

Turned out that Asher was a bit of a prude where his siblings were concerned. In fact, most of his siblings were accidentally on purpose passed over for the Camps for exactly this reason.

Eros/Cupid, as a God of Love, cared enough to nudge Asher towards them whenever a sibling was born, so, despite being a cruel bastard, that particular god was head and shoulders above most of the Olympians as far as Harry was concerned.

Which didn't mean he ever wanted to see what would be spawned if Eros/Cupid knocked up Eris/Discordia.

Probably the Apocalypse.The colt Vashti dropped near the One Year Anniversary raised a few eyebrows when it proved to be made of living lava, the molten slag cooling on its coat to a rough greyish black texture while the ember glow blazed out of every crack that appeared with the shift of muscle, his points still blazing orange fire and his mane and tail streaming soft black ash.

No one quite knew how Vashti was able to carry and nurse him until, a few days after his birth, the colt plonked down beside Harry for a nap and felt, to the gorgon, no hotter than a heated blanket, but was still clearly letting off heat haze and was burning the ground.

The people in research hypothesized that the colt could both consciously and subconsciously control his heat field so the people he liked and trusted wouldn't be burnt by him.

He was of a pretty stocky, sturdy build, almost pony shaped, but would probably reach about the size of a coldblood, built more for strength than speed, but would be able to stream roll over anything in his path.

Vashti mentioned that her baby looked nothing like his sire, but that he was rather adorable, wasn't he?

Everyone thought he was cute. Which is to say, ugly in an adorable sort of way.

No one clarified to the proud new mother.

It took a bit of renewed questioning, but a description had the stallion sire pegged as one of Mar's Chariot Steeds.

Harry hoped the colt, his grandson, inherited his personality from his side of the family.