Anything Less

Heracles breathed heavily, clutching his stolen scroll tightly against his chest. His lungs stung and his skull ached from the blow he had received.

"Where are you, you little bastard?" A raspy voice hissed laboriously through clenched teeth. Heracles struggled trying to hold his breath as he heard his aunt's dragging, scraping talons almost directly above him. He heard her pause, the floorboards creaking and feathers rustling as she shifted her weight.

Heracles couldn't take it anymore. He covered his mouth with his hand in an attempt to muffle the sound and gasped for air, clawing at the dirt and trying to drag himself away from detection as quietly as possible.

"I know you took it. I know you're here." She rasped, her breathing evening out. Heracles heard an awful scraping noise. The sounds of talons against wood. "Give back what you stole, little bastard, that doesn't belong to you." Heracles could almost hear a smile in her voice. A sense of terror gripped him, overpowering his need for stealth. The scraping grew louder and faster.

Heracles cried out in surprise as the floorboards above him suddenly rocked as his aunt slammed her weight against them. She cackled, a horrible, almost rattling sound, as she dug and pried at the wood with her long sharp talons. Heracles crawled even more frantically through the tight space.

There was a loud cracking sound as a floorboard was split and ripped away. Heracles screamed as a pair of gnarled, dagger-like talons closed around his wings and waist, digging into his ribs. He tried to stretch out his wings and flap to escape, but her grip was unbreakable. She dragged him back up through the floor, the broken wood scraping at his arms and sides.  "There you are, you little rat." She grinned.

"Wait! Wait! Aunt Mycenae! It's me, it's me!" He cried, trying to pull himself out of her grasp. The weathered old avian laughed harshly at him, twisting his arm. Heracles cried out in pain again.

"That's funny," Mycenae turned Heracles around to face her, bringing her matted feathers and cloudy, unseeing eyes fully into view. "I don't know anyone named 'Me'." She taunted, her talons digging deeper into his side. "I do know a little thieving rat though, he's right here." She hissed at him. "Now where did you put it?"

"I don't have it! I don't have anything!" Heracles protested, tearing up. He'd left the spell scroll in the crawlspace. Mycenae slammed him on the ground suddenly, knocking the breath out of him. His head spun and throbbed in shock as she placed a heavy, taloned foot on his chest, holding him there.

"I've already told you, Heracles, that spell scroll doesn't belong to you. I don't care who you said gave it to you, I know you stole it." She loomed over him. "From me." Her oily green feathers seemed even darker with her body blocking the light.

"I- I didn't! The priest, he-" Heracles spluttered. Mycenae pressed her talon down harder on his little chest and Heracles shut himself up.

"We mustn't tell lies, little rat." She hissed. Heracles did not say another word. But in his own mind he bitterly protested that she couldn't even read the scrolls she did own.

"...Yes, Aunt Mycenae." Heracles finally hissed out. Rage building quietly down in his gut, behind the pain and helplessness.

Mycenae scrutinized him unseeingly for a moment, but seemed to be satisfied with this answer. She removed her foot from his chest, and more gently hauled him to his feet. She sat him down in a chair beside her little table and ordered him to stay there. Not that he had a choice, she'd magically glued him there.

"You stay there until Aulus gets here." She stated, kneeling down on the floor and reaching her arm down below the floorboards, feeling around for the scroll. "That brother of mine has too many kids for his own good. Or for my good." She huffed. Heracles watched in dismay as she discovered the scroll with a cry of triumph. She stood up straight and brushed off her feathers, doing nothing to truly unruffle them, and wagged the scroll at Heracles. "Silly rat."

She disappeared into the next room, returning it to its previous place while Heracles seethed. His tiny frame perched on the chair with aggressive dignity, as if he was seated completely willingly.

Instead of trying to escape Heracles focused his mind on the spell holding him stuck to the chair, and simply observed it. Examining it, coaxing it to divulge its secrets. Not so he could break it, simply so he could understand.

Heracles's father, Aulus, did not arrive for several hours. Several hours Heracles spent glued to his aunt's chair. She spoke at him as she went about her chores. Chirping and droning on. She was an unstable curmudgeon that had long ago forsaken the company of other avians.

"You're all skin and bones. You should eat more." She commented in her usual rasping, harping tone. She snapped her fingers and a soiled looking wooden bowl materialized on the table in front of him. Its contents an unidentified stew that had long ago gone cold. Heracles did not speak but he ate.

She spoke of his father, his mother, his siblings, her parents. On and on and on. But magic. She also spoke of magic. And of the world. Heracles listened eagerly to that. Soaking up everything he could. He'd come here before. And after this occasion he would come again. The moldy, musty scent of Aunt Mycenae became familiar to him, comfortable, free.

But beneath there always boiled defiance. He would endure subgiation from her, because he knew he would get that spell scroll back. Not just the one she'd taken from him. He would read them all.

A fire burned in the little usogi's eyes that none of his family would see, and that fire would not let this little boy settle for anything less than greatness.