Perhaps for Aphrodite, the quarrel between Athena and Poseidon was nothing more than a bit of gossip, something amusing to be mentioned later in casual conversation.
But Alaric immediately understood what it truly signified.
Wasn't this the story of the birth of Athens itself?
In Greek mythology, the founding of Athens marked an important symbol: the beginning of the Heroic Age.
Of course, the city's founding and the dawn of the Heroic Age were not directly linked, but for Alaric, it was still a key clue to determine the timeline he was in.
The legend told how Athena and Poseidon fought for the right to be the city's patron deity. The people of the city would then name it after their chosen protector.
After a bitter contest, the two gods left the decision to the citizens.
Both displayed their divine powers before the people of the city.
Compared to Poseidon's gift, the warlike horse, the citizens chose Athena's offering: the olive tree, symbol of peace.
Thus, Athena became the guardian deity of the city, and the city was named Athens in her honor.
But from this conflict, enmity was born between the sea god and the goddess of wisdom.
Later tragedies, such as the fate of the three Gorgon sisters, particularly Medusa, were rooted here as well.
To spite Athena, Poseidon deliberately gave to Medusa a gift he had originally intended for the goddess. Athena, in turn, cursed Medusa, leading to her fall.
And the slaying of Medusa by Perseus would become one of the earliest tales in Greek heroic epics.
So the moment Alaric heard of the contest for Athens, he knew the Heroic Age was about to begin.
An age when ancient Greece would enter a glorious era overflowing with heroes.
For Alaric, this was the perfect chance to spread magic, to establish an organization of mages, and to expand his influence.
He also held a bolder idea still, a thought about reaching for divine power itself.
But that ambition had to wait. Before magic was widely spread and accepted, it was far too early to speak of it.
As for how to build such an organization of mages, Alaric had carefully studied examples: Dalaran from World of Warcraft, the Clock Tower of the Nasuverse, Hogwarts of Harry Potter's world, and even the Red Wizards of Thay from Dungeons & Dragons.
In the end, he chose to combine the governance models of the Clock Tower and Hogwarts.
The reason was simple.
Here, some people might have a natural instinctive grasp of magical energy, but no one truly wielded structured, systematized magic.
If Alaric wished to found a magical organization, he first had to become a teacher, to build everything from the ground up.
Thus, the most reasonable beginning was an academy.
And since Alaric harbored intentions of standing against the gods themselves, even if the gods might not immediately view mages with hostility, he decided to keep his organization hidden.
In this sense, the Hogwarts model of student recruitment was perfect: use prophecy and divination to find those with talent, then personally approach them to bring them into the academy.
This approach was less efficient than a public school that simply advertised for students, but it offered secrecy, and ensured quality.
With the plan set, the first question was where to place the academy.
Naturally, a mage academy must be built atop a place saturated with magical energy, a convergence of ley lines, as it would be called in the Nasuverse.
For this, Alaric and Pandora spent great effort, flying across the land in search of such a place.
He even asked Artemis and Aphrodite to watch for useful intelligence on his behalf.
Months passed. Together with Pandora, Alaric had flown across nearly all of Greece's divine domains, discovering many powerful ley lines.
But most were either too close to cities, or not strong enough to satisfy his needs.
In the end, it was Aphrodite who brought him a vital piece of intelligence.
The information came from her acquaintance, the Oceanid Perseis, who had discovered an island called Colchis, upon which lay an immense and astonishing ley line.
Normally, land blessed with such power would have become the domain of some god or the site of a city.
But Colchis was remote, out of the way. Despite its strong ley line and its fertile land fit to sustain a city or even a kingdom, no one had laid claim to it.
To this day, only a few villages dotted the island, home to scarcely more than a thousand people.
The moment Alaric heard the name Colchis, he understood. Wasn't this the homeland of the sorceress Medea, the famed destination of the Argonauts?
In myth, by that time the island did indeed hold a kingdom, ruled by Aeetes, Medea's father, himself the son of Perseis and the previous sun god, Helios.
It seemed likely that Perseis, upon discovering the island, had kept its secret to herself, and later bestowed it as a domain for her son.
Now, it conveniently fell into Alaric's hands.
As for whether the intelligence was true, or whether Perseis was reliable, Alaric had no doubts.
For Perseis was one of the Oceanids, daughters of Oceanus, the ancient Titan god of the rivers and seas, and his sister Tethys.
During the war in which Zeus overthrew Cronus, Oceanus had wisely chosen not to aid his brother, but instead sided with Zeus and the younger generation of Titans.
Even so, Zeus later granted dominion over the seas to Poseidon, not Oceanus.
Clearly, Oceanus's old line of sea gods and the Olympians were at odds.
Moreover, Perseis's lover Helios, the former sun god, surely resented Zeus's decision to pass the title of sun deity to Apollo.
Perhaps it was for this reason that, in myth, Zeus and the Olympians incited Jason and his Argonauts to sail for Colchis, to trouble Perseis's line and steal Medea away.
It was simply another blow against those old powers who bore grudges against Olympus.
Convinced Colchis was the right choice, Alaric immediately set out with Pandora for the island, intending to survey the land and build his academy upon the ley line.
Yet after crossing the vast sea and finally reaching Colchis, Alaric discovered he was not the first to set eyes upon this treasure.
Someone had beaten him to it.
Or rather, something.
A dragon.
Its long head, wide wings, four clawed legs, and tail bristling with spikes, its body armored in scales from head to tail, left no doubt.
The dragon lay coiled atop the ley line itself, nestled in a forest grove, fast asleep.
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