The Tyrant's Tomb

These were the personal fasces of the two emperors, being used to drain
Harpocrates’s power and keep him enslaved.
The god glared at me. He forced painful images into my mind: me
stuffing his head into a toilet on Mount Olympus; me howling with
amusement as I tied his wrists and ankles and shut him in the stables with
my fire-breathing horses. Dozens of other encounters I’d completely
forgotten about, and in all of them I was as golden, handsome, and powerful
as any Triumvirate emperor—and just as cruel.
My skull throbbed from the pressure of Harpocrates’s assault. I felt
capillaries bursting in my busted nose, my forehead, my ears. Behind me,
Reyna and Meg writhed in agony. Reyna locked eyes with me, blood
trickling from her nostrils. She seemed to ask, Well, genius? What now?
I crawled closer to Harpocrates.
Tentatively, using a series of mental pictures, I tried to convey a
question: How did you get here?
I imagined Caligula and Commodus overpowering him, binding him,
forcing him to do their bidding. I imagined Harpocrates floating alone in this
dark box for months, years, unable to break free from the power of the
fasces, growing weaker and weaker as the emperors used his silence to keep
the demigod camps in the dark, cut off from one another, while the
Triumvirate divided and conquered.
Harpocrates was their prisoner, not their ally.
Was I right?
Harpocrates replied with a withering gust of resentment.
I took that to mean both Yes and You suck, Apollo.
He forced more visions into my mind. I saw Commodus and Caligula
standing where I now was, smiling cruelly, taunting him.
You should be on our side, Caligula told him telepathically. You should
want to help us!
Harpocrates had refused. Perhaps he couldn’t overpower his bullies, but
he intended to fight them with every last bit of his soul. That’s why he now
looked so withered.
I sent out a pulse of sympathy and regret. Harpocrates blasted it away
with scorn.
Just because we both hated the Triumvirate did not make us friends.
Harpocrates had never forgotten my cruelty. If he hadn’t been constrained by