Prologue
Twenty years. Twenty long, brutal, pain-in-the-fucking-ass years of:
Jumping to the ancient past. Living there.
Becoming Achilles’s mentor. Maintaining this false identity.
Participating in the Trojan War.
Offering advice in the Greek war councils that sounded reasonable but was either fluff or nudging them in the direction he needed.
Making sure Agamemnon rallied all the nations of Greece to his cause.
Making sure the war was maintained in as exact a way as historically recorded as possible, despite conflicting myths and legends.
Making sure Achilles was properly motivated to fight. And properly ready to die.
All down the drain. His carefully laid plan was all going to shit. Now, standing before Pearse was his adoptive son, the famed warrior Achilles. According to ancient Greek myth, Achilles was set to be killed by an arrow to his heel any day now. An arrow shot by the great prince of Troy, Paris. Achilles’s death would lead to the final days of the Trojan War.
And yet here Achilles was, holding Paris’s severed head in front of him, gleaming with joy. The roles of murderer and murdered reversed.
Shit, he thought.
“I did it, Phoenix, I finally killed that bastard,” Achilles said, almost loud enough to wake the sleeping Greek soldiers in the nearby tents.
Phoenix. The false name Pearse used. Not that he had chosen it; it was the name of Achilles’s mentor in mythology. In order to seamlessly pull off this ruse without upsetting recorded history, he was stuck with it.
What was he going to do? Pearse needed Achilles to die in order for the series of events to unfold just right. Just as the myths went. Achilles killing Paris was completely wrong and would upend the plot he had been working towards for the last twenty years. He mentored Achilles from when he was a boy to bring him to the present moment. Now, with the finish line in his sights, he encountered a giant barrier blocking his way. A nearly impenetrable one.
Nearly.
He realized that he had left a suspiciously long pause hanging in the air since Achilles gave him the ‘good’ news. Achilles began giving him a concerned look. Shouldn’t he be overjoyed that their main foe, the whole reason they had sailed to Troy and fought for 10 years, was dead? He needed to say something.
“Good job, my boy! I’m proud of you,” Pearse feigned. “Praytell, how exactly did you encounter the prince at such an hour? Don’t tell me you used some cowardly, dishonorable tactic?”
“How could you even think that, Phoenix? No, I was speaking to one of our perimeter guards when I saw the prince trying to sneak into our camp, probably trying to kill me himself to avenge his brother’s death!”
Shit. Someone else saw this. That complicated matters. He’d need to take care of him, too.
“And what of your brother in arms?”
“Paris unfortunately shot an arrow through his throat before I could spear the bastard.”
Good. No one else witnessed Achilles’s feat.
“Thank you, Phoenix. I must admit, it has been difficult after Patroclus's death. But time and time again, you have helped me weather the storm. Thank you.”
“It is the least I could do, Achilles. You and your father have shown me such kindness over the years. Despite coming to you a vile man, both of you have given me a home. A purpose. A family.”
Quite frankly, it was hellish. Eating ancient food. Sleeping on hard beds. Having nothing to do day in, day out. No technology. No electricity. It was so primitive. When he was a Temporal Scout, it was always temporary. A few days in a new period in the past, then bam, right back to The Dock. It wasn’t so bad. But twenty years of this consistency drove him crazy. It almost made him think he was of this time, not a man from the distant future.
The only thing that jolted him back to remembering who he truly was was his frequent little time hops. After all, he only needed to appease Achilles, be with him throughout the years. No one else, nothing else truly mattered. So, he was able to hop forward a couple of days here, a month or two there—nothing too big. And he made sure to do it in such a way that they wouldn’t catch it as a time anomaly, which was a bit tricky.
“Least? Old man, you have been with me since I was a boy, mentored me. It’s only us two left. I believe now the Trojans will be so demoralized that they'll be forced to surrender. Either that, or I’ll kill every last one of them myself. I will show them no mercy.”
Pearse nodded along. This was not good. In order for his plan to work, he needed Achilles's son to be brought into the war. He needed the Greeks to build the wooden horse. He needed the Greeks to trick the Trojans and then lay waste to their city.
Therefore, he needed Achilles to die.
Pearse grabbed his akinakes dagger and sliced Achilles's heel, severing his femoral artery. This way, when the body was discovered tomorrow, he would make sure to point out the heel. To retain the myth as it was passed down for thousands of years.
The warrior was so dumb-stricken he didn't think to react save for falling to his knees. This was the first time in his life he was taken off-guard. This was the first time he was betrayed.
As blood sprayed from Achilles’s arteries, he looked up at his mentor. “Phoenix, why?”
“You can't change fate, Achilles. And you are fated to die.”
But he also needed Achilles to die quickly, lest he alert anyone else or have a chance at fighting back. God help him if Achilles managed to fight back.
Pearse plunged his blade into Achilles’s chest. The warrior instantly died and fell to the ground.
Since he met Achilles as a boy, he always knew he was set to die. He just never thought he'd be the one to do it. In his mind, Achilles was already dead the moment he saw him all those years ago. For twenty years he had been looking into the eyes of a corpse.
Pearse began reciting verse, “‘Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.’”
Overlooking the body, Pearse readied himself to stage the scene of Achilles’s famed death. This cleanup was going to be a bitch. His tent was soaked in blood. And that didn’t even factor in that Paris was still dead. A minor hiccup, but a hiccup to be dealt with later.
For now, the plan was back on track. The future was preserved. The heist was intact. Now he just had to wait for his team to arrive.