Centaurian Ch. 08

He had envisioned erotic scenarios with the handsome limo driver en route to the Miami airport, the hunky co-pilot of his private jet in his fetching uniform, the White House intern who—at the president's request—ensured a rapid replacement of the passport he lost in the hotel's destruction, the FBI investigator who questioned him about the incident at the hotel, and even his own broad-shouldered administrative assistant who stood before his mahogany office desk that morning. He held a curious expression when asked how he and his husband were faring.

"Okay, who are you, and what have you done with my employer?"

Elias laughed. "Carl, how long have you known me?"

"Seven years, sir."

"And in all that time, have I ever asked about you and your husband?"

"Not once, sir."

"Well, I do beg that you forgive me that neglect and those years of my Scrooge-like behavior. It had evolved over a lifetime, but it hasn't taken a fright from three spirits and a major holiday to help me see the error of my ways. Oddly enough, I credit the giver of a pink business card and the care of a nineteen-year-old Puerto Rican bellhop named Felix Raposo for saving me.

"It seems that I had acquired more power and personal wealth than I could ever know what to do with, and I have come to the terrifying conclusion that the allure of power is like a black hole. It has a pull so strong, that it twists and distorts anyone who seeks it, until they grow so warped it sucks the light from them entirely. That captivating singularity held me in its clutches for too long, and I have a lot to make up for, but...I know that it could never happen here. As an independent lobbyist for corporate interests, this company is morally irredeemable. Its clientele is a corruption of scoundrels, and you have no idea of the weight I bear for having hurt so many people over the years by pandering to venal politicians. So, as the sole owner of Adrianicus Ltd., I have no public investors to answer to, and I'm shutting its doors for good. However, I am doing right by my employees, and this morning I have given a generous severance package to all the others, but you are my last." He handed him the final Manila envelope from his briefcase and held up a white one the size of a personal letter. "Only you receive one of these, and this is added to the top of your severance. When was the last time you took a real vacation, Carl?"

"Never, sir," he said. "Something always got in the way."

"I want you to know that I like you. I have always liked you. And I know when this conversation ends, I have no right to ask you to do anything, so I won't ask. I beg you and your good husband to take a proper vacation to unplug." And this," he said, shaking the white envelope, "is to make up for the last seven years of underwhelming bonuses I have given you. They devalued what you have meant to me and this company. I took advantage of you even when I knew you performed most of the heavy lifting here. I sincerely apologize, and you have my word that I will never do that to anyone again." He handed him the envelope, and Carl pulled a check from it.

"You're giving me forty-million dollars."

"That's right. This company functioned well because of you. I wanted to give you four million for every year you've worked here, but they will deduct an extraordinary amount of taxes from it, so I rounded up to ensure you get the full twenty-eight million you're due, but it's more than that after taxes. Please, take some of it and go on the best damn vacation you've ever had, and I hope you have a marvelous time."

Completely flummoxed, Carl asked, "Sir, why are you doing this? Are you dying?"

He smiled and laughed. "I understand why you ask, but it's funny to give a man forty-million dollars only for him to ask why. And no, I'm not dying, not yet anyway. It's just this is a new world, Carl, and this is a new me. I'm about to take a flight to Milan to meet someone who I think will give me what I have needed for a long time."

Off to the side and several paces behind Carl, a ponytailed blonde woman wearing a white button-up shirt and skin-tight jeans faded into the room, and Elias saw it happen.

"Ah! There you are," she said. She took a moment to concentrate and said, "Ronan..." in a voice that she knew Ronan would hear.

Carl turned. "Ma'am, you can't come in here."

"It's alright, Carl," Elias said as he ushered him from the room. "I'll take care of it. Thank you for all you've done over the years." Carl shook Elias's hand, and the moment the door closed behind him, Elias asked the woman, "And you are which goddess?"

She smiled. "It's complicated. I call myself Erastís, but for the moment, you may call me Emma Nordström."

"You're Swedish?" he asked.

"Just for now. Ronan sent me to find you. He'll be along any time now."

"Why? I thought I would meet all of you in Milan. I looked forward to being there, actually."

"Zeus tried to sink the container ship we traveled on, and almost killed someone I care about, so our plans changed. Ronan left to save Poseidon from Zeus's torture, and I don't know much beyond that. Things have moved rather quickly."

"Is Ronan angry with me, after what happened?"

"No, not at all. And we're sorry to hear about Felix Raposo. Many of the gods loved him, including me, and I've not heard the slightest hint of grief over the destruction of Kakia. And you couldn't have known what would happen when you stabbed her. I'm not sure that anyone could blame you, not even Ronan. Did you know that you and Ronan are the only two people to ever destroy a god?"

"Ronan destroyed a god?"

She nodded. "Kratos, the god of brute strength."

"Did he use a blade like the one I had?

"Oh, no, he wouldn't need it. I hope you get to know Ronan. He is the kindest, most thoughtful, loving, and compassionate being I've ever known, and that's just scratching the surface of how wonderful he is, but he's also deadly dangerous to anyone who would harm the people he loves and cares about. Kratos threatened the lives of everyone aboard the ship and had threatened Liam in particular. He is Ronan's protector, his lover, and no doubt, his future husband. So, Ronan vaporized Kratos."

"Vaporized?"

"There are temperatures that not even the matter and energy of a god can withstand, but only Ronan is capable of producing."

"So, he's that powerful?"

"There's every reason to believe he's the most powerful being in the universe, but he wouldn't want you to think of him in that light. He's just Ronan. So, do him a favor and never mention how much power he has. He prefers not to talk about it."

"Why would you tell me about it?"

"You must not realize how special you are."

A moment later, Ronan—wearing only pants and shoes—and a naked Hephaestus teleported into the room.

Looking a bit frantic when he arrived, Ronan made a gasp as his eyes went right to Elias, and he never deviated from looking at him. He snapped his fingers and stopped time while giving the four of them a time-field. "Thank you, Emma, for finding Elias. I have discovered that Zeus has done something, and I worry that he's done something to Liam. However, I can't be everywhere at once, and I must do this, Elias has waited over nine hundred years, and this is well overdue. Elias, Emma, please meet Hephaestus. Hephaestus, this is Erastís but, you can call her Emma. And this man standing before me in this beautiful Armani three-piece suit is Elias Adrianus...my son."

Hephaestus and Emma, who spoke to one another for a moment about the blacksmith's appearance, stopped as Ronan had drawn their attention. Elias, whose head reached Ronan's shoulders, couldn't take his eyes from Ronan, who stood there staring down at him with a little smile. "Your son?" asked Elias.

Ronan nodded. "I've never seen you before, but I remember your mother through Chiron's memories, and I knew Henri. Looking at you now, I realize that you resemble neither of them. You look like Chiron. Chiron and my former human self are not only fully bonded, but unlike the others, they're fully merged. Apparently, Henri couldn't feel you out in the world. If he could have, he wouldn't have believed you died long ago. Standing this close to you, I feel you so strongly, it's almost overwhelming."

Emma spoke up, "But I thought that Henri and the others were bound to Chiron."

"They were," said Ronan, "but it couldn't have been in the way I am. Chiron and the flame would be transferred every thousand years, so it couldn't be permanent, so a difference had to exist. With me, it's permanent, and there's no going back."

Elias told him, "You're bigger and taller than I thought. I'm sorry I allowed Kakia to entice me into thinking that murdering you was the best solution to my problems."

That's okay," said Ronan as he smiled a little, "Kakia had a reputation for tempting people into doing evil and horrible things, so I would never hold it against you, but I hear you wanted to speak with me."

"Yes, I had wanted to ask if you would take my immortality, so I could grow old and die."

Ronan hesitated. "I see. Why don't we sit and talk for a few minutes?" He gestured to the couch in the seating area. Emma and Hephaestus stood by and listened to them.

Once seated, Elias asked, "Why can't I feel you? If you're my father, shouldn't I be able to feel you too?"

"That's a fair question," said Ronan and turned to Emma and Hephaestus. "Why do you think that is?" Ronan waved them into the wingbacks across the seating area from the couch, and they took a chair.

"He needs Ambrosia," said Hephaestus. "If he's Chiron's son, he can carry power, but he must have just enough to protect his body and make him immortal, and nothing else. Ambrosia should fix that problem."

"I agree," said Emma. "He needs charging up."

"He just asked me to take his immortality from him, so he could die one day. Ambrosia would carry him in a direction, he may not wish to go."

"Why did you leave us?" Elias asked. "Mother was heartbroken, and I have needed you the last nine hundred and seventy years."

"I'm sorry." Ronan shook his head a little. "I probably have no satisfactory answer for that. From all that I remember, Henri and your mother had been together for quite a while, and she had reached the end of her ability to have a child. She used to beg Henri to have his baby. And this may be supposition on my part, but because of Henri's nature—he wasn't really human anymore—he had no control over having children. However, as the one fully bound to the creative power of the eternal flame, Chiron did. He could have made you fully human and mortal, but he had experienced what it was like to almost die when Zeus took his immortality, and Prometheus saved him. Having gotten that second chance, he knew that life is invaluable, and so long as someone had their health, it's invariably better than death. To a mortal, nine hundred and seventy years sounds like a long time, but as an immortal, you've not even experienced a drop of time in the ocean of eternity. I cannot undo what you've gone through, and I cannot make up for my absence. Unfortunately, atrocious childhoods and intolerable periods of time are ubiquitous among the gods."

"Among the gods..." he said.

"I'm sorry," said Ronan. "Do you even know what you are?"

"Not really. All this is still new. You would need to be specific and spell it out for me."

"You are the immortal demigod son of Chiron the centaur, so you are half human and half centaur. My name is Ronan Stallion, and Chiron is the Stallion part of me, which makes you my son. You are grandson to the Titan Cronus, and nephew to the six main Olympians, Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Demeter, Hera, and Hestia. You are first cousin to all their children, like Hephaestus sitting there. You're also a distant cousin of Emma. If I were you, I wouldn't trust all my relatives, but you could trust those who stand with me."

Elias sat there beside Ronan in a daze. "So, I have an actual family."

"That's right, and to ask me to take your immortality is to ask me to sacrifice you when you have an opportunity from this point onward to have a life with your divine family that mortals could never dream possible. However, this decision must be your own."

Elias watched in wonder as his father manifested on the coffee table before them a transparent sixteen-ounce crystal goblet. Ronan ran his finger around the rim as he spoke to Elias causing it to vibrate in a musical tone, and as it filled from the bottom in a line of embering with a honey-colored liquid suspended with gold flecks of pure creative energy, the tone rose in pitch as the glass filled to three-quarters full. "If you embrace who you are, you can have a brand-new experience of your immortal life, one with all the things you could want in abundance, a father, a family, love, stability, support, an opportunity to grow, and a new name that has a connection to who you are. You could put the past behind you, we could pick up from here, and I could show you what a beautiful and fulfilling life you could have. Or..."—Ronan sat back with his hands in his lap and turned to Elias—"or you can have what you said you wanted. You can reject who you are. I could make you fully human with mortality, vulnerability, and all that entails. To do that, I would have to remove from you all that makes you divine. At that point, you would experience occasional illness, injury, suffering, and one day you would die."

"Wow, you make mortality sound like fun," said Elias in sarcasm. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because you're my son, and if I love you, then I should not control you, but at the same time, it would be heartless of me to not give you this chance. I couldn't be here before, but I'm here now, and I would love for you to stay with me."

"If I choose to be with you. What if one day I change my mind?"

"That's another benefit of being my son. It would break my heart then, rather than now, but I would give you what you want. At least then, I would know you had tried, but I suspect, just a little time with me, and you would never want to leave. All the things that have made life so intolerable for you would end. I can't give you the perfection of a placid life, there would be challenges, good times and bad. But you will not be alone, and I will love you more than any son could hope of their father."

Elias sat there a moment trying to control his breath and his emotions, blinking away the wet from his eyes. "That's all I've ever wanted," he said, and Ronan hugged him as Elias sniffled. "If I drank the Ambrosia, what would it do to me? You said I'm half centaur. Would I end up with hooves?"

He sat back and thought about it. "I don't know. Fortunately, you wouldn't have to go through the unpleasant process of apotheosis as Liam had; being my son, you are already a demigod. I suspect that most of the typical demigod powers and centaur characteristics are lying dormant until you power up. At that point, they should manifest themselves. I don't know how much ambrosia it will take to fully charge you or how fast the changes will manifest, but I can pretty much guarantee changes will occur. I can have hooves if I want them, and they're pretty cool, but I admit, they're less versatile than human feet, so if you end up hoofed and don't want them, I can change it."

"If I end up with drastically apparent changes, how would I explain that to anyone who knows me?"

"Don't worry about it; I'll take care of it. If you want, you can leave Elias Adrianus behind. You can take on a new name with this new life, and I can make it where no one remembers you other than with the new name and appearance, all else will remain the same."

"So, you can do all that," said Elias, "...and you're my father."

"Yep. You're welcome to take my surname if you want. But please, never be afraid to tell anyone that I'm your father because I will never deny that you're my son. Being my son means you no longer have to run when people wonder why you're still in your late 20s. I won't get older, none of our family will get older, and neither will you, which means everyone will just have to accept us as we are and move on."

"I hated having to reset my life every so often."

"This time don't think of it as resetting your life. Think of it as finally leaving all that behind to join the family that loves and wants you. If you want this to be permanent, it is."

Elias took a deep breath and laughed a little. "I can't believe I'm doing this because I had my mind set on dying one day, but okay, I'll take the Ambrosia."

"You might want to get out of that suit first. It could grow tight rather quickly."

"What about Cousin Emma over here?"

"If you're shy, she's a goddess, she's seen more cock than you can imagine. You might be surprised at how many gods never wear clothing."

"I never do," said Hephaestus.

Ronan asked him, "If I asked you to wear clothing when it was important, would you?"

A broad smile bloomed on Hephaestus's handsome face. "After what you've done for me, I will do anything you ask of me."

Emma told Elias, "I saw you naked on the beach when the hotel was destroyed. It would be nothing new."

"Oh, very well." He stood and began removing his clothing. He laid his jacket on the back of the couch. "I'm glad you stopped time, so no one will interrupt this."

"I should tell you, I have only one rule for anyone I help this way. Never use the power I give you for evil. So, don't go out of your way to hurt people, you can lose what I give you."

Elias unbuttoned his vest and nodded a little. "I understand. You have people to protect, just as you would protect me. That's a rock bottom, bare minimum thing to ask, and I think that's more than fair."

"Thank you for saying that son. That means a lot to me."

"I think I like you calling me son." Elias tried to smile as he loosened his tie and removed it. "May, I call you Father?"

"You sure can."

Elias began unbuttoning his shirt, smiled, and shook his head a little. "All this feels so strange, and you're right, if I'm going to do this, why not go all the way and just change my name as well? Over the years, I invented so many names for myself, and I often wanted to break up the monotony by going with something unusual, but I always chickened out and went with something sedate and boring. When I chose Elias Adrianus, I just liked the sound of it."

"It's a nice name," said Emma.

He shrugged, and nodded a little, removing his shirt. "And I'm not attached to it any more than my previous names, and I've had so many. They held no meaning for me, and the name Aquila was awful. I couldn't imagine why mother named me that."

"I'm certain Zeus made her do it," said Ronan. "It means Eagle, one of Zeus's symbols."

"It figures." He untied his shoes, kicked them off, and removed his socks.

"So," said Hephaestus, "what name would you like to have?"

"If I'm half centaur, Something Something Stallion seems appropriate." He pulled off his pants and underwear together, and his penis dangled a bit more than halfway down his thigh.

"Well, aren't you just a chip off the old cock," said Ronan. "Is that what, ten inches?"

Elias nodded. "And twelve erect."

"That's a decent size for a colt like you, but don't be surprised if that changes with the Ambrosia."

"Really? How big are you?"

"Sixteen."

"Wow...that's definitely horse-like, but I'll accept whatever happens with it."

"You have no body hair at all," said Hephaestus.

"Yeah, and I never understood why," said Elias. "Also, I've always just had the average body type."

"I suspect," said Ronan, "all that was intentional. It makes you look more human."

Elias picked up the Ambrosia.

"That's a special glass," said Ronan. "Drink it all, and it will refill itself, so keep drinking entire glasses of it until you just can't drink more."