Icarus Fights Medusa Angels

The early-summer sun hangs low and hazy over the tall grass and the chorus of wood pigeons beckons you home. The day was long, but you endured. Tracing homeward through fields and over fences, you stuff your pockets with the clandestine cartography of distant stars and your brothers-in-arms trade the songs of past adventures; of fungal kingdoms, salamanders and horse-headed knights.

You part ways at the village boundary not knowing that, for some amongst your party, this will be the last time that you meet. Your journey continues alone now, over ditches and byways, led on by the heady scent of oilseed. With a sword of stripped hazel gripped tightly in your sunburned hands, you hone your skills, miming your many great battles as you walk. When you at last cross the threshold of your home, you’re given a hero’s welcome with music, laughter and a banquet by candlelight.

After the feast, you retire with a treasured gift passed from father to son. Though weary from the day, you perform the necessary rites with gusto, as if your breath might give life to legends. The ritual completed, the mechanism clunks into place and the cathode glow of Palutena’s sky floods into the room. If you were only to turn around, perhaps you might catch a shadow of yourself decades from now, projected like a ghost onto the wall and quietly wishing for the Sacred Words to bring back the innocence of this moment. Soon you will all leave this place, and only the stories will remain. But what stories they will be.

You play on, unaware.