The Wager: Epilogue

Epilogue

Νενικήκαμεv

(“We have won”)

Hephaestus bowed slightly to Aphrodite. “Declare the terms of your victory.”

Aphrodite smiled triumphantly. There had been times when she doubted this moment would come.

“You will work for women. You will treat them equally to men. And you will grant me my freedom.”

Hephaestus looked at his wife, and sighed. He looked down at the ground, and wiped a tear from his eye.

“I only ever loved you, Aphrodite. But I gave you my word. And so it is. You are free.”

Aphrodite let loose a big sigh, three thousand years’ worth of guilt exiting with it.

She walked over to her ex-husband, and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“What was that for?” Hephaestus asked.

“Because I did love you, once,” Aphrodite said, “despite your flaws. And because maybe, some day, you may realize the error of your ways. When you do…come back to Olympus, Hephaestus. I may be willing to greet you there, if not as a wife, then as a friend.”

Hephaestus frowned. “My place is in Hell.”

“For now,” she said. “For now. But you know the Unspoken Principum. You know you may one day return.

“But now is not the time to discuss that. For now…I have one last duty to attend to.”

“Give them choice,” Hephaestus said.

“I will,” Aphrodite said. “I will.”

The Wager, Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

Καλλίστῃ
(For the fairest)

The American poet Benjamin Gibbard once noted, quite accurately, that love is watching someone die.

“You two ready?”

Adam sat outside the plexiglass box that had become his home within his home in the past few days. It wasn’t a bad idea, mind you, the box – it would allow him more time with Stephanie. The world was becoming a very dangerous place for him, not that it hadn’t been before.

“Okay. Two minutes to air.”

Two weeks, it had been. Two weeks since the night that Adam had made it home, the night he and Stephanie had made love to each other despite the gulf between them, the one that had been widening for months.

“Do we have his mike up? We’re ready to go to him?”

In two weeks, the gulf had widened further. He was now just a centimeter tall, a bit less than four-tenths of an inch. The size of an ant.

“All right, camera four – the image is good. We’re just going to stay on that. 90 seconds.”

Stephanie loomed four-and-a-half times larger than she had that night he’d explored her. She appeared almost a thousand feet tall, over three hundred meters. There was no question of whether she was a skyscraper now. She would have been the tallest building in the state, by his lights. Her legs alone would have been smallish skyscrapers.

“One minute to air. Jayne, stand by.”

She sat by his side, on a chair that had been placed next to his table in the living room.

It wasn’t a prison. Stephanie had seen to it that he could open the doors to the enclosure that had been constructed for him, a feat of quick and intelligent engineering by a couple of engineering students at a local university. There were buttons that he would be able to press for another few weeks, anyhow.

But he wasn’t going to leave it much, he knew, and certainly not on his own. The world was a big place now. He only would leave if she was there.

“Thirty seconds.”

She looked down on him and smiled, squinting from her distant perch. She was trying to make out his features, he knew. He was too small for her to read him from more than a few inches away. And when she was a few inches away, she was too big.

He couldn’t integrate the enormous pool of an eye, the cliff of a nose, the rough terrain of her lips. He still ached for her. And they had kept making love these two weeks, as best they could. But each day had taken her just a little bit more beyond him. Each day, she became tougher to navigate.

The Wager, Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν (Kingdom of Heaven)

It would be nice to say that from that instant, Adam and Stephanie lived happily ever after. That the curse was broken, everything went back to normal, and they lived out their lives, happy and perfect.

But that wouldn’t be quite right. For one thing, nobody is really happy ever after. One suspects that Cinderella bickered with her Prince; one feels certain that Snow White and Prince Charming had to spend much of their first year of marriage simply getting to know each other. And how readily did Beauty take to the Beast, once he had become human again? The story is silent; we can only guess.

For another, the curse wasn’t broken. Adam was the size of Stephanie’s thumb. Whatever fate had brought him back to her had not cured him. The resumed their countdown to their separation, only now knowing just how painful it would be.

Adam and Stephanie desperately wanted just to melt into each other, but both knew within minutes of their uniting that simply being with each other would have to wait.

In real life, even in the happiest of real lives, there are still moments of doubt. There are still responsibilities to attend to. There are still promises to keep.

Adam had been the first one to broach the topic, some time after Stephanie had held him to her bosom.

“So…before we do anything else, we need to get you cleared,” Adam said.

Stephanie raised her eyebrows at this. “I don’t need to be cleared. I didn’t do anything.”

“I know,” Adam said. (Stephanie strained to hear him. He was so much smaller now. She wondered if they could rig a microphone for him. She wondered if that would help.) “Of course you didn’t do anything. Only now, you have proof. Me. And I want you cleared immediately, because…Stephanie, you’re everything to me. I don’t want you getting attacked because I can’t keep myself safe.”

“I should have kept you safe,” Stephanie said, darkly.

“I don’t know if you could have,” Adam said, his eyes focused somewhere beyond Stephanie’s lovely, imposing visage. “The people who took me….”

Adam let the words trail off, because he realized to his horror that he would have to explain what had been done to him. He’d have to tell the police about the torture that was inflicted on him. He didn’t want to.

The Wager, Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

“Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὖν πάντες ὅσοι τε περιπολοῦσιν φανερῶς καὶ ὅσοι φαίνονται καθ’ ὅσον ἂν ἐθέλωσιν θεοὶ γένεσιν ἔσχον, λέγει πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὁ τόδε τὸ πᾶν γεννήσας τάδε” ¹

Aphrodite swallowed as the thirteen members of the Council filed in, each sliding behind their chairs – well, all save Kunapipi, who simply floated in the space afforded her. They sat as one, as if they had choreographed their motions; as they sat down, the sober, dark man at the center of the semicircle spoke.

“You may be seated,” he said, in an accent not very different from the one Mami Wata affected. “The Council of Thirteen is now in session, a majority of its members being present, we shall first open with daily business, followed by the expedited petition in the case of Aphrodite v. Hephaestus. The Chair recognizes the distinguished Chair Emeritus.”

“Thank you, Mr. Chair,” said Yhwh, stroking his long, white beard. “I request the call of the roll.”

“To what purpose?”

“We have quite a full house today, and I believe that a more formal introduction is warranted.”

“Because we are Gods, and we wish to be loved, you mean,” Anansi said, waggishly. “Very well, the distinguished Chair Emeritus has requested a formal call of the roll, are there three seconds?” Eleven Gods raised their hands. “Clearly three second, the Chief of Staff shall call the roll.”

The Wager: Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Λάθε βιώσας
(Live Hidden)

The great American philosopher Thomas E. Petty once observed, “The waiting is the hardest part.” Certainly, Aoibheal found this to be true. Standing, ready to defend against the Prince of Darkness, the goddess was quite certain that she was about to be destroyed.

“What stakes do you demand?” she asked, as the ritual required. She showed no sign of fear, but inside she quaked, as she expected the Ruler of Hell to demand her soul.

“I demand your obedience on an issue of importance,” Satan said, calmly. “And should you win, you will have the same of me.”

She frowned a bit. She wasn’t sure that being bound in Satan’s service was a better fate than being destroyed.

“You do not choose destruction?”

Satan laughed. “No, friend, I do not. If I start destroying other Gods, then other Gods will get angry, and come try to destroy me. Oh, I’m not saying I haven’t done so in the past, when things were a bit rougher. But these are better times. And so I ask merely your obedience. Nothing more.”

Aoibheal was briefly dubious; she was dealing with the Prince of Lies. But she nodded to the Devil. “My word is my bond,” she said.

“So let it be,” Lucifer replied, and bowed, respectfully, a motion Aoibheal mocked.

“Aye,” she said. “Let us begin.”

In Which I Go Begging

Hello. I’m D.X. Machina. You may know me from such posts as “Post I Can Fap To” and “Snarky Post That Makes No Sense Part V: Electric Boogaloo.”

Anyhow, I’ve been around the GTS community for a long time, and I’ve never asked for a dime for my work, because, well, I figured I’d write the stuff anyhow, so I may as well share it for free. And I’m pretty happy with that decision. Which is why I’m not going to ask for a dime for my work.

However, in the past month I’ve been diagnosed with testicular cancer. Happily, it’s a very treatable cancer, and one that hasn’t progressed very far; my chances of beating it are very, very good. Unfortunately, I live in America, and currently lack medical coverage. And that means that I’m already getting killed by the amount of money I’m having to fork over, and am only going to get killed now.

I know, things are tough all over. And I’m not the only charity case out there, nor am I the most important; if you have just $1 to give to charity, I urge you to give it to Haitian relief efforts.

But if you do have some spare money, and you’d like to share it with a guy who’s posted the occasional entertaining yarn on the internets over these fourteen years, then I wouldn’t mind if you found a way to share it with me. Consider it a tip. And if anyone asks what that payment was for, just tell them it was for a poor guy with cancer; telling them that it’s for a macrophile writer will get you looked at funny.

At any rate, the link to donate via PayPal is here.

If you can share, I’d appreciate it. If nothing else, it will keep me free to keep producing the giantess material you’ve come to expect for free. And if you can’t, well, I won’t hold it against you; things are tough all over, and I’m not the only one pinching pennies these days.

No matter what, I appreciate your time and consideration. Thank you for listening.

The Wager: Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Σὺν Ἀθηνᾷ καὶ χεῖρα κίνει¹

The Great Hall of the Palace of the Morning Star was awe-inspiring, even for one who had grown up on Mount Olympus. Easily the size of a large stadium, the hall rose eight stories into the air, topped with a massive series of frescoes depicting the start of the rebellion in Heaven, the attack of the rebel angels, the fall of Lucifer and his cadre, and the establishing of the Kingdom of Hell. If an observer didn’t know better, she would have thought the frescoes looked like they could have been Michaelangelo’s work; if she thought further about it, she would realize with shock that this was because they were Michaelangelo’s works. And what works they were! Compared to them, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel looked rather drab; Michaelangelo had labored two hundred years on this ceiling, or perhaps two thousand; time has no real meaning in Hell.

The hall itself was astonishing, decorated in chandeliers that blazed forth with constant cold fire, illuminating statues and monuments aplenty to the angels who had rebelled, and to Hell’s best agents on Earth. The obsidian columns that supported the great ceiling were crowned in gold, and silver stripes two feet wide bordered the main walkways into and out of the chamber. It was more opulent than Olympus, or Yhwh’s palace in Heaven, but then, Lucifer had always been rather keen on proving his worth.

The most shocking thing to Eros would have been seen as almost mundane to the casual observer. Halfway through the hall, columns arranged themselves into a rotunda the size of a football pitch. The ceiling here rose over a hundred meters to a domed ceiling painted with the morning sky, a single star blazing forth in the east, right above the purplish-red of sunrise. Well, not a star; not exactly.

The star’s identity was given by the gold symbol inlaid in a platinum circle on the floor of the rotunda. It was a symbol that Eros knew well:

♀

His mother’s symbol, the symbol of Venus. He hadn’t thought of it before, but it was Lucifer’s symbol, too: the symbol the planet Venus, the symbol of the Morning Star.

He and Virgil stopped right at the point where the cross of the symbol met the O, for two figures had entered the rotunda from the other side.

They were two demons. One was clearly a minor functionary, off to the side, carrying parchment; he did not draw attention. No, Eros’s attention was drawn by the other figure, another demon, and a high-ranking one at that. He wore black vestments trimmed in red, and an ostentatious robe made of peacock feathers. He wore a heavy medallion on a gold crest bearing the open-pentagram Seal of Satan. The demon leaned his bulky upper body on an exquisitely fashioned copper cane

The functionary cleared his throat, and said, “May I present His Excellency, Polymitis Adramelech, Chancellor of Hell, President of the Senate, High Councilor to Shaitan Lucifer Iblis.”

The Chancellor smiled. “Hello, son,” he said.

“Hello, Hephaestus,” Eros replied.

* * *

The nightmare was all-consuming. Marbas was assaulting Stephanie, raping her. But Adam was his tiny self, and though he tried over and over to stop Marbas from defiling his wife, Marbas simply swept him aside each time as an afterthought. Adam screamed in fury, and rose again, and again, and again….

His eyes popped open. He heard a sound, a rustling, scratching sound. He rose gingerly, body feeling fine, but soul still wounded from Tanith’s assault the afternoon before.

“Hello?” he called into the empty lab. The room was dark, save for a safety light in the corner. He shrugged. Must be hearing –

No, there it was again, a scuffling, scampering noise from the floor. He put his ear to the bars, and tried to listen, tried to hear what it was.

He screamed and jumped backward as the monster leaped up onto the counter top, and ambled over toward his cage. It was a rat, a giant, black rat the size of two bears.

Adam rushed to the middle of the cage, eyes wide. He had to hope the beast wouldn’t pay him attention, because there was no way he could fight the beast. No way. He just had to hope the creature wouldn’t be interested in him, or at least, that it wouldn’t be able to break into his cage.

His first hope was immediately dashed, as the rat snorted, and looked around the side of the cage, moving quickly toward the cage door. Adam watched in horrified fascination; the beast almost seemed to be looking with intelligence, as it reached out with its paw for the latch.

The Wager, Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Ου με πείσεις, καν με πείσεις¹

 

In a well-apportioned mansion in Dublin, an old woman ran a hand idly over her desk. “I do not see how helping an Englishman helps Eire,” she said, finally, “and I see no reason we should interfere.”

 

Aiobheal sighed inwardly; this conversation was going much as she had feared it might. But she had no choice but to persist; she was not strong enough to free Adam on her own. It had taken some time to gain an audience with the High Queen; The Morrígan would have to help her; if not, she had no time to find someone else.

 

“Highness, Adam White is not English. He is American.”

 

“English, English colonist, it matters not. It still has nothing to do with us.”

 

“He is prisoner of The Adversary, Highness. We have an obligation to fight evil, aye?”

 

“Aye, we do, but only when it affects an Irishman.”

The Wager, Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά (Πλάτων, Πολιτεία)¹

The city of Mopti stood on three islands in the Niger River. In the narrow streets of the dense city, vendors busily readied themselves for the tourists and townsfolk who would soon crowd the streets. Aside from being unusually beautiful, the young woman walking down the streets toward the port did not draw particular notice, despite not being African; those that did notice assumed she had come from the north on a trip to see the Inland Delta; many Moroccans, Algerians, and Egyptians did, and even a few Europeans would show up from time to time. Mali had been stable for almost two decades – enough time to begin to slowly break free from the stereotypes about Sub-Saharan Africa’s neverending political turmoil.

The woman walked a good long way, until she reached the outskirts of the city; she was heading toward a house on a corner of one of the islands, one that was well-appointed by the standards of the city. She reached the door around mid-day; she supposed she could have come here by a more direct route, but the walk had given her time to think. And it did not tire her. Nothing could.

She reached to knock at the door, when a slight hissing noise drew her attention. She turned to her left, and saw a nine-foot-long python. The great serpent drew itself up, until its head was almost even with hers. And then, it did a most peculiar thing.

It bowed.

The Wager: Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

 

Aνάγκᾳ δ’οὐδὲ θεοὶ μάχονται¹

 

Queen Aoibheal of Thomond streaked through the morning sky, headed southwest, toward a smallish suburb of Houston, in the American state of Texas. It was, she thought, the absolute last place on Earth she would expect to be heading.

 

It was not that Aoibheal had never left Éire; like any Fay Goddess, she had been ’round the world and deep in the heavens and through the back beyond far more times than she could count. But that said, she had little reason to leave the southwest corner of the Emerald Isle these days. But the God who had asked her was persuasive, and she owed his family much.

 

As she traversed the turbulent jet stream, she mused on the conversation they had enjoyed, not long after dawn.

 

“Well, by Auberon’s crown, ’tis Eros!” she’d exclaimed, flying up to meet the eye of the beautiful giant. Well, to be fair, he was sized as a mortal human, and he offered quickly to drop to her scale; she demurred. She enjoyed the pretty god’s visage quite enough to entreat him to remain at his height. (Indeed, it would have been easier for her to join him at his height – she was Goddess of Love and Size, after all.)

 

“Your majesty, I have come to ask a favor,” he had said, and he had explained the convoluted dealings his mother, Aoibheal’s rival and friend Aphrodite, had been involved with – and that The Corrupt One had inserted Himself into.

 

“I cannot ask you to go,” he had said. “I cannot ask you to follow Adam White, to work to safeguard him. My mother would be furious if she knew I had asked you. And yet – I believe that the interests of love are best served by you doing exactly that. He is a good man, from what I can find. He honors his wife well.”