Let's see what transpires now that Rider is finally arriving at Argos...

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Scene 2: The Fight

2020 B.C.

Argos. The champion and his company had finally reached Argos. The sun stood still, the wind holding its breath as they approached.

And now that he'd at long last reached his destination, Rider would not stop for anything, nor be hindered by anyone. Ordered his company to set up camp, some distance away from the city, to stay behind as he forged on - he was determined to confront the king alone. Given the recklessness of what he was about to do, if he were to bring others with him, that would only pose a danger to them.

For Rider knew chances were high that he might not emerge from this alive; this was his mission, worth pursuing even if he died, but he was not about to risk anyone else's life.

As he prepared to leave, he did not bother bidding farewell to his wife. She would have tried to stop him, but she knew he wouldn't listen. Rider addressed his followers once more before hefting his sword and heading toward the city: if by nightfall he had not yet returned to them, he said, they should presume him to be dead and leave this realm.

Lachesis shuddered at the thought but reassured herself with faith in her husband's invincible heroism. On the pedestal he occupied in her heart and her mind, Rider stood above everyone and everything, such that it seemed nothing could kill him.

Dictys watched with a desolate heart as the man he had raised and cherished for so long ventured off. By this point the old mentor had spent many tireless hours striving to pull Rider away from this path, to dissuade him from chasing these meaningless aims. All in vain. It was all he could do now to hope desperately that he'd see him again.

Rider strode forth into Argos, leaving everyone and everything behind. Went toward the palace, the site of royalty and power usurped by Proetus, and approached the first guard he could find. Spoke plainly, wasting no time. "Tell your king that his son has arrived."

The message was relayed from one man to the next, up to the ruler of Argos himself, and soon enough - though not nearly as soon as Rider would have liked - a host of the king's men came to collect him and escort him to court.

As his alleged son entered the throne room and stood tall before him, giving his name as Perseus when instructed to announce himself, King Proetus reacted to his presence with a chuckle and a snort.

"So you claim to be my son. Supposing this is true, though it cannot be proved, why should I even care, do you reckon?" he asked. "I've bedded many whores, who bore many sons of mine before, I'm sure - but to a king like me, none of those bastards ever mattered."

Rider flexed his jaw, fixing his blue gaze on the cold, callous monarch. "My mother was no whore. She was a royal of this land, the daughter of a man recently murdered by an assassin of yours."

It took a moment for Proetus to put the pieces together. His dark grey brows arched high into his wrinkled forehead once he did. "Ah, yes, good old Acrisius. I was most delighted to learn of my assassin's success. So you're the child of Danaë, the poor imprisoned princess?"

Affirmation came in the form of steady, seething silence.

"I must say, she was perhaps the sweetest of my conquests," the king recalled with a salacious grin. "Almost as pretty as she was stupid, you know - the daughter of my greatest enemy, so fun and easy to seduce, brainless enough to actually believe that I was Zeus."

With each word Rider heard, his dark, deep-seated hatred grew.

"Although..." Proetus continued, "...according to the prophecy that her cowardly father feared so terribly, you were the one destined to kill Acrisius, foretold to end his life - weren't you, Perseus?"

Rider once again affirmed with silence.

The king's toothy grin widened, scornful and complacent. "Does this mean that one of my men seized and thwarted your destiny?"

It was time now for Rider to speak. "Prophecies mean nothing to me. I have come today to forge and to fulfill a different destiny."

"And what, pray tell, is this?"

"To end your life, King Proetus."

A coarse series of cackles scraped past the king's throat as he clapped his hands twice slowly, briefly sinking further back into his throne. "Oh, my," he sighed after the fit of laughter, voice scratchy and dry, "how I would like to see you try."

"And I would like to see you die," Rider candidly replied, not flinching for a second as the men who had escorted him brandished their weapons. "Before you spinelessly order your men to execute me, let me make an offer, so that you at least won't have to die a coward."

Proetus raised one hand to signal his men to desist, still wiping laugh-induced tears from his eyes with the other. "Let him be heard."

"Hand-to-hand combat," Rider offered. "And so that you can stand a chance, I'll let you send your finest champions on your behalf."

The tyrant stroked his beard and pursed his lips. "Interesting terms. How many champions would you have me send to fight you?"

"However many you're willing to lose."

The court let out a chorus of snickers and hoots, quite amused.

"Well, Perseus, you've made me an offer too delicious to refuse," the king responded. "Let's say ten. You against my ten strongest men. And - just for amusement's sake, to entertain the inconceivable hypothesis - should you prevail against them... what, then?"

Rider felt his boiling blood rush at the notion. "Then you will step up to contend with the man who killed all of them."

With no apprehension of such a preposterous outcome, Proetus readily agreed. He also proclaimed that this event would be a public spectacle, taking place at high noon for the entire city to see.

Before making final arrangements and advancing toward the battlefield - the outdoor theater at which public spectacles in Argos were always held - the king had one last question for his challenger.

"I am quite curious, Perseus: in the impossible event that you vanquish my men, what makes you think I'd even keep my word?"

Well aware of the answer, Rider took the question in stride. "Your pride," he replied. "Acrisius, your greatest rival, was famous for being a coward. If you want history to remember your name any differently, then once I've singlehandedly slain every man you send, you will step forward."

Proetus leered and steepled his fingers. "Let us see who is remembered. The proud king or the pitiful bastard who never mattered."

The sun climbed to its peak in the sky as the people of Argos sank into their seats, their muted murmurs whirring all throughout the open-air theater. Aside from what they'd only just recently heard, they knew nothing about this mysterious challenger. But across the audience in the minutes leading up to the event, word spread like wildfire - this man was the alleged son of Proetus, the grandson of Acrisius, who had been prophesied to kill one king of Argos and was now out to kill another, apparently... by the rapid circulation of such truthful rumors, the crowds came to know more and more about this fascinating stranger.

And, although none would admit it in more than a whisper, they grew fonder and fonder of him, the more they discovered. For Proetus was far from a well-favored ruler. His reign was unjust and oppressive; few kings in the history of Argos had ever been crueler.

Thus, the emergence of a man descended from the royal bloodline of this land - or bold enough to claim to be, and to oppose the present king so fearlessly - was an exciting event, to say the least.

Before the fight commenced, a presiding official laid out all the terms, just as Rider had stated in court. The spectators gasped in wonder - how could one man stand against ten? No less, the king's ten strongest men? Whatever hopes they'd held began to dwindle then.

The king could sense the undercurrents of support for Perseus throughout the audience. From his regal seat, he scowled, hoping that the bastard's death would be painful and bloody, so that these seditious whispers in his country might be silenced more effectively.

Meanwhile Rider, for his part, was just itching for the fight to start.

And as the noonday sun at last ascended to its summit, so it did.

All ten of his opponents, naturally, were big and strong - towering over him, with bulging-veined necks that were almost as thick as their muscle-bound limbs - but he could tell right away that, luckily, they were also slow and stupid. The sword that Rider gripped was an extension of his arm, its movements fluid, whereas these oversized oafs wielded their weapons such that every swing was basically an accident, and Rider knew it. As he confronted all of them at once, the fibers of his body bursting with adrenaline, he grinned.

In a matter of seconds, Rider's blade slicing clean through a tangle of tendons, the first of the king's men had fallen.

The crowd roared, their ovation spurring the champion on to kill more. Rider answered the call. Given the speed and seeming ease with which he toppled each of his opponents, one by one, soon enough it was as if the men approached him knowing they were doomed to fall.

The feat witnessed by all the people of Argos today should not have been humanly possible. The odds had seemed insurmountable. Yet by some combination of breathtaking skill and unbreakable will, built on a mission in his soul that dauntlessly demanded victory and fueled the drive to kill, the champion achieved the inconceivable.

In the end, ten men lay dead, and one stood tall.

He'd killed them all.

The crowds seemed to have gone insane, chanting his name, fists raised high in triumph toward the sky because every soul present knew what this meant: a new champion of Argos had risen, and the despicable old king was finally going to die.

Even those who had been closest to the throne turned against Proetus in this moment. The king could not even appeal to their sense of duty, let alone their sympathy - after all, these were the terms to which he'd openly agreed. And besides, any who might have wished to stand by him, for whatever reason, knew it would be useless; in the contagious madness surrounding this event, any supporter of Proetus was sure to be trampled to death by hordes of hot-blooded citizens.

A group of them pulled the king out of his seat to haul him over to the victor's feet, dragging him across the floor over his champions' dead bodies till his royal robes were all obscenely bloody. Proetus sank to his knees, a far cry from his throne, reduced to nothing but a sad old sack of bones. And what was worse, the pitiful sack of bones started to plead for mercy.

"P-please," Proetus sputtered. "Any fate but death, I beg of you - please. I am completely at your mercy, a sorry old man bowing down before a champion, a father before his son, ceding my kingdom and my throne and all my dignity, simply begging for my life upon my knees."

Over the deafening uproar, Rider knew he was the only one who heard the desperate words. He wasn't sure why he was even listening, when mercy was so clearly undeserved.

He raised his blade. As he did, the crowd grew quiet then fell silent, grasping and weighing the gravity of the event.

Rider steeled himself against his victim's abject pleas. Fought within himself to block them out, for he could not afford to have misgivings now, as to whether he was the type of person who would take a life this way, so heartlessly. There was no place now in his heart for mercy, sympathy, for doubt or hesitation - or honestly for anything, in a heart so lost and so hopelessly broken.

But then, in spite of everything, something did stop him. The only thing that could, in this moment. Beckoned by a brush of wind or by something that stirred within him, he looked up then, and his heart, the heart he'd lost, was found all of a sudden and began to beat again.

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Next scene, we may see all three of the Fates - and their fellas - in modern-day Greece...

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