Chapter 58: Dionysus (2)
Thanks to all these precautions, Dionysus was able to grow safely without being discovered by anyone.
However…
“Haa… I really don’t get why everyone keeps preventing me from going out…”
From the perspective of Dionysus, who was getting bigger day by day, everything Ino did felt unbearably stifling.
“Huh? That looks like a small hole.”
One day, while Dionysus was constantly thinking about how to escape, he finally found a small hole.
The young Dionysus naturally slipped out of the castle through that hole.
Of course, a nymph happened to see him.
“Huh? Isn’t that child one of Zeus’s illegitimate offspring?”
The nymph who saw Dionysus was sensible.
She knew the kind of retribution that would follow if she reported to Hera that Zeus had an illegitimate child or spread the rumor around.
So the nymph pretended she didn’t see anything and quietly told only a few very close friends what she had seen.
But those few told others they were close to, and those people told others they were close to, and in no time everyone knew that Dionysus was alive.
Once every race in the world found out that Dionysus was alive—
Even Hera, who had been willing to overlook Semele before, could not leave the child alone.
It was a matter of Hera’s prestige.
Still, for Semele’s sake Hera showed a small mercy: she didn’t punish directly but ordered Artemis to take action.
“Artemis, you dislike Athamas — drive him mad.”
“Really? Understood!”
Artemis could barely hide her delight at Hera’s order. She had already been looking for a way to punish that Athamas.
Although she was the goddess of the hunt, Artemis loathed hunters like Athamas.
She had been unable to act because he was the king of Boeotia and she couldn’t punish him unless he committed some great crime.
Artemis visited Athamas in his sleep and with her breath drove him insane.
“You are a hunter, but an evil one who does not know a hunter’s honor. Hunt to your heart’s content until you die.”
Athamas loved hunting, but his bad habit was that once he entered the mountains he would wipe out entire populations of game.
He also had no qualms about hunting non-human races, so Artemis, the hunting goddess, always wanted to punish him.
Awakened and maddened, Athamas began to see everyone in the palace as prey — deer or boar.
True to his nature as a hunter, his first thought was to kill them.
“Oh—what luck, a fawn wandered into the palace.”
Whack.
Athamas, a skilled hunter, shot the fawn’s heart with a single arrow and ended its life.
“Haha, my skill is as sharp as ever.”
He picked up the dead fawn to butcher it.
Ino saw that sight and took it for her eldest son, Learchos, being shot dead by arrow and carried off to the slaughterhouse.
Gasp.
“It’s… a goddess’s curse.”
Ino quickly realized the danger and hurriedly grabbed her son Melycerus and Dionysus to run out of the palace.
She had expected something like this might happen and had prepared a secret passage inside the castle.
“Kids, run away now!”
Just then, Athamas — who had left his kill at the slaughterhouse and come to the palace to boast of his catch — found them.
“What? Goats this time? Well, they’re small, but they’ll do for a hunt.”
As Athamas calmly notched an arrow to his bow like before, a swarm of bees suddenly attacked his eyes from nowhere.
“Aaah!”
Ting.
The arrow bounced off a palace pillar, and Ino seized the chance to flee the palace.
In her panic she lost Dionysus and, terrified, she could not even think to look for him and kept running.
Chased mercilessly by Athamas, they reached the cliff of Molurian Ridge by the sea and could run no farther….
“There you are, you goat fools. I’ll catch you and feast on you today.”
Ino made a decision.
The bees earlier and the fact that they had escaped a skilled hunter and reached this far — surely this was the will of the gods.
‘Ah… may the gods save our lives.’
Meanwhile, separated from Ino and Melycerus, Dionysus — transformed into a kid goat — was hiding among the grapevines.
Luckily for the hiding Dionysus, he was discovered by Hermes, whom Zeus had sent.
“You’ve had a hard time. You mustn’t be noticed by Hera. If you’re noticed, even Hera won’t be able to do much about it.”
With that, Hermes took Dionysus far away from Greece to Mount Nysa.
Thanks to its dense pine trees, Nysa was a place so thick with shade that sunlight barely reached its interior even at noon.
Because of that, it was very difficult for anyone looking from the sky or outside to know what lay deep within the mountain.
Hermes entrusted Dionysus to the seven nymphs who cared for and tended Nysa.
“Nymphs of Nysa, please take care of this child.”
“Huh? You want us to take a child all of a sudden?”
“Yes. This child is Zeus’s illegitimate son. He must not be seen by Hera.”
“…….”
Seeing the nymphs hesitate, Hermes presented them with Zeus’s gift.
That gift was a promise: that they would one day be made star-gods who tended the Hyades cluster.
“All right. That’s worth trying for.”
After that, Dionysus safely grew under the nymphs’ care.
He spent his youth among the satyrs and with his teacher Silenus, and grew into a respectable young man.
Dionysus had special abilities from a young age.
He was, as Zeus intended, a being who bore Zeus’s blood strongly—almost godlike.
He could easily tame even the fiercest beasts, and his strength and magical powers were considerable.
He also had a bit of a claim to fame: he’d once discovered a grapevine as a child and invented the first wine.
“What are you doing over there, Dionysus?”
“Oh—Ampelos. I was composing a piece.”
“Ugh, enough of that—come here. We’ve got a meeting with the nymphs.”
“No thanks. I’d rather not cause trouble this time. You should stop. The gods are watching.”
Ampelos paid no heed to Dionysus’s advice.
He thought a satyr’s duty was to indulge with many women.
Granted, his fairy blood was stronger than a typical satyr’s, so he was treated like an honorable satyr of sorts.
“That’s absurd. If you would rather die than show proper reverence and manners—”
Dionysus sighed as he looked at his friend Ampelos.
“He’s going to get himself in real trouble,” he thought.
Despite Dionysus’s refusals and warnings to be careful, Ampelos and the satyrs indulged in orgies throughout the forest.
They left traces everywhere and, driven by desire, even went on expeditions beyond Nysa to other mountains.
While they wandered in their stupor, they happened to trespass onto Artemis’s mountain.
The problem was that once the satyrs and the nymphs of the forest were drunk on wine, they had no head to judge anything properly.
They simply drank and moved their hips.
Artemis, forever a maiden goddess who kept herself pure, smelled something foul on her mountain.
She had been tending the mountain, controlling the population of plants and animals, hunting and gathering with elves — and the source of the vile stench she detected was her mountain, turned into a mess of bodily fluids and such.
It looked like It had been left in that state for quite some time; the mountain was far from normal.
“@#$%^&*!”
Her rage, of course, pierced the sky.
“Find them at once. Those… filthy creatures who were here.”
To show how furious she was, everything within a ten-kilometer radius around Artemis froze and shattered.
All beings within that zone were struck by a sudden catastrophe.
“I will find them… and make them suffer more painfully than the embrace of the goddess Nyx.”
Completely unaware, the satyr group returned to Nysa as if nothing had happened, spending their days wrestling or practicing combat.
“Dionysus, composing again today?”
“No—today I’m tending the flocks. I have to perform rites for my parents and the people who raised me.”
“Haha, you’re the most restrained and upright one I know. How can someone who makes such delicious wine be so proper?”
Dionysus gave a small smile at Ampelos’s words.
“Ampelos, that’s a misconception. If I weren’t restrained and proper, the things I make wouldn’t come out right.”
“…….”
Whenever Ampelos talked with Dionysus about wine, he always felt chills from the faint madness glimmering in Dionysus’s eyes.
‘I messed up. I shouldn’t talk about things like this in front of Dionysus.’
He quickly changed the subject.
“Oh—right. This time we’re supposed to meet not forest nymphs but sea spirits. Want to come with me, Dionysus?”
“Ampelos, I’ve told you already. I cast lots with the grapevine, and the omen was bad. This is not the time to act rashly. You need to keep your head down.”
‘There he goes again.’
Ampelos secretly sighed as he listened to Dionysus repeat things like “the omen is bad” or “you must endure.” He wondered how he could possibly drag this friend along.
No matter how he looked at it, his friend needed to meet people and have fun.
Besides, whenever Dionysus joined them, the quality of the partners in their meetings improved dramatically….
‘Hmm… what should I do?’
As each was thinking different thoughts, a satyr came running toward them in a panic.
“Ampelos! Dionysus! It’s terrible—there’s a plague!”
“What?!”
A plague? But Mount Nysa was managed and protected by the Hyades nymphs.
Shocked by the news, Ampelos and Dionysus followed the satyr immediately.
When they arrived, many satyrs lay collapsed, groaning.
The only relief was that none had died.
“Master, what happened?”
Dionysus rushed to Silenus, who was tending to the fallen satyrs.
“Hm… this is a curse.”
“What?”
“Not an ordinary curse. Someone deliberately spread it.”
“…….”
Dionysus was surprised, but quickly accepted the explanation. Satyrs lived so instinctively that they had many enemies.
“Is there a way to cure it?”
“This isn’t something cast by just anyone. At minimum it’s a witch, at maximum a god’s curse.”
Dionysus’s face hardened at the mention of a god’s curse.
If it was a god’s curse, everything depended on which god cast it—the result and the remedy would be entirely different.
“Can you guess the level of the caster?”
At Dionysus’s question, Silenus extracted the cursed energy from the satyrs and examined its components through magic. Then he let out a long sigh.
“If it’s a witch, it would be someone like Circe. If a god… at least someone on the level of Iris.”
Dionysus was horrified by his master’s words.
Just what had these idiots provoked?
Circe was a witch trained directly by the goddess Hecate—far beyond the reach of most gods. And Iris was Hera’s messenger and secretary, of a level incomparable to anyone except the Twelve Olympians.
“Ampelos! What in the world have you been doing?!”
Ampelos, who had been listening beside him, was just as shocked.
No matter how instinct-driven they were, they would never dare to offend beings of that caliber.
“N-no, Dionysus, no matter how bad we are, we would never touch someone like that….”
“Do you think that’s an excuse?! Get over here!”
“Aaaagh!”
As Dionysus exploded in anger and began beating Ampelos with a wooden club, Silenus noticed one more detail in the curse.
‘Hm? I’ve seen these curse patterns and sigils somewhere….’
“Ah! FUCK—!”
Silenus involuntarily spat out a crude curse.
If what he knew was correct, the sigils and pattern of the curse belonged to the goddess Gaia.
“What?!??!!”