The servants' quarters were quiet when he finally returned, most of his fellow workers already collapsed in exhausted sleep. His small room felt different now—no longer just a humiliating prison but a sanctuary where he could drop the mask of servility and remember who he truly was.
Donatos sat on the edge of his cot, muscles aching from unaccustomed labor, mind racing despite physical exhaustion. He withdrew the Forbidden Time artifact from its hiding place in a small tear he'd made in his mattress.
"One day," he whispered to it, "one day no better than this one. But it's a beginning."
He'd survived. He'd observed. He'd begun to map the rhythms and weaknesses of Olympus from a vantage point no ambitious immortal would ever consider—from below, from the shadows, from the ranks of those considered less than nothing.
Even gods needed servants, and servants saw everything.
Tomorrow would bring more of the same—degradation, invisibility, menial labor beneath his talents and destiny. But each moment brought knowledge, each interaction a potential weapon for his arsenal.
Donatos lay back on his thin mattress, eyes fixed on the ceiling as he mentally reviewed everything he'd learned. The politics between gods. The schedules and habits of key figures. The locations of important artifacts and access points. The hierarchies among servants that could be exploited.
As sleep finally began to claim him, he permitted himself a small, dangerous smile—one that would have sent immortals scrambling for their weapons had they witnessed it.
"Enjoy your nectar and ambrosia," he murmured to the distant gods. "Your days of feasting are numbered."
The Forbidden Time artifact pulsed once against his chest, as if in agreement, before falling dark once more.
***
A week of servitude had passed, each day a test of Donatos's patience more grueling than any battle he'd fought in his previous existence. The routine had become familiar—wake before dawn, serve without being seen, sleep with aching muscles and wounded pride.
Yet behind the facade of the perfect servant, a dangerous mind plotted.
His current body was pathetically weak—trying to train it through conventional means would be as effective as attempting to carve Mount Olympus with a feather.
Mortal limitations required immortal solutions.
"I need catalysts," he murmured to himself while polishing a statue of Zeus that stood taller than most mortal temples. "Divine elements to accelerate what would otherwise take years."
His mental inventory was precise: Divine Spring water from Zeus's bathing chambers, the Nectar Lily and Elysian Blossom from Hera's antechamber, and the most dangerous acquisition of all—the Blood of Atlas, kept carelessly secure in Ares's personal armory.
Each item alone could kill a mortal foolish enough to mishandle it. Together, properly prepared... they could forge something greater from his current pitiful form.
All he needed to do was steal from the three most dangerous immortals in existence. Donatos permitted himself a grim smile. Compared to challenging Olympus openly, this would be child's play.
Or so he hoped.
*
Zeus's bathing chamber gleamed with oppressive perfection as Donatos methodically cleaned surfaces already spotless. Divine servants were expected to maintain rather than clean—the mere suggestion that divine spaces could become dirty was blasphemous.
As always, he wasn't alone. Pelops, an older servant with one eye permanently squinted from decades of watching for the smallest imperfections, supervised from the corner. The man took perverse pride in his position, considering himself elite among servants for his proximity to Zeus's most private chambers.
"Don't forget under the golden dolphin spout," Pelops called, his voice the perpetual wheeze of someone who believed criticism was the highest form of instruction.
"Last boy who missed that spot was turned into a washcloth. Still cleans these floors every Tuesday, poor lad."
Donatos nodded deferentially while mentally calculating angles and timing.
The Divine Spring water wasn't the regular bathwater that filled the enormous pool—that came from enchanted clouds and could do little for his purposes. What he needed was the source water, kept in a crystal decanter on a shelf of rare essences. Used only for Zeus's post-bath ritual, a single drop behind each divine ear to ensure thunder responded to his commands with perfect pitch.
The decanter was never more than half-emptied before being magically refilled each dawn by naiads who owed allegiance directly to the king-god. Taking too much would be noticed immediately. Taking any at all risked obliteration if caught.
"The shelf needs reorganizing," Donatos observed casually. "The ambrosia oil has left rings on the marble."
Pelops frowned, his supervisory instincts overwhelming his suspicion. "Impossible. I checked it myself this morning."
"Perhaps in this light it wasn't visible," Donatos suggested, gesturing toward the shelf where dozens of precious bottles and vials caught the enchanted sunlight streaming through crystal windows.
With a huff of irritation, Pelops shuffled over, bending to examine the immaculate surface. "I see nothing..."
In that moment of distraction, Donatos palmed a small glass vial he'd stolen from the kitchen healers—used for storing concentrated herbs for treating servants' ailments. With practiced sleight of hand that had once won him a friendly wager against Hermes himself, he uncorked the Divine Spring decanter and extracted three precious drops.
The water defied normal liquid behavior, moving with deliberate purpose into his vial as though choosing to follow. It glowed with inner light, casting tiny rainbows across his palm that he concealed with a subtle shift of his cleaning cloth.
"—wait, yes, there is something," Pelops muttered, now fully committed to finding the nonexistent stain. "Bring the special polish, boy. The one with crushed moonstone."
"Right away," Donatos replied, already recorking his vial and slipping it into a hidden pocket sewn into his undergarment.
The Divine Spring secured, he retrieved the polish and set about helping Pelops clean an imaginary imperfection for the next half hour.
The water pulsed against his thigh, warm and somehow aware, like a heartbeat not his own. First ingredient acquired—and the easiest of the three tasks completed.
*
Hera's antechamber presented a different challenge entirely. Unlike Zeus, who viewed servants as animated furniture at best, Hera noticed everything—especially anything amiss in her domain. The queen of gods was known to transform servants into spiders for misaligning the pleats in her gowns or placing a single blossom at an improper angle.
The chamber was a study in controlled beauty—every element arranged to reflect Hera's dominion over marriage, family, and regal authority.
Peacock motifs adorned the walls, their enchanted eyes following visitors with judgmental gazes.
Foundations of jade and pearl supported delicate structures that defied mortal architecture, all designed to make visitors feel simultaneously awed and inadequate.
At the center stood a floating garden of divine specimens—Hera's most prized botanical collection. Among them, kept under a bell jar of pure crystal, grew the Nectar Lily. Its petals shimmered between states of matter—sometimes solid gold, sometimes liquid honey, sometimes merely the concept of sorrow given floral form.
Legend held it had sprouted from the very first tears Hera shed upon discovering Zeus's infidelity—tears of such potent rage and betrayal that reality itself reshaped around them.
Beside it, equally impossible, bloomed the Elysian Blossom—a flower not meant for the realm of the living. Its petals were the precise blue of a perfect afterlife, its scent the distilled essence of well-earned peace.
How Hera had acquired a specimen from Hades's jealously guarded paradise fields remained a topic of nervous speculation among lesser immortals.
Donatos had been assigned to tend the lesser plants in the antechamber, a task normally reserved for nymphs rather than common servants. A mysterious pollen allergy had swept through the nymph quarters, however, leaving the queen's personal attendant, Kleio, short-staffed and irritable.
"Touch nothing important," she'd snapped before rushing off to attend Hera in her inner chambers. "Water only the marked plants. Speak to no one. Breathe as little as possible."
Alone—temporarily—Donatos moved with swift efficiency, watering the designated ordinary flora while keeping his senses attuned for approaching footsteps. The peacock eyes on the wall tracked his movements, but they were enchanted to watch for intruders, not to monitor trusted servants already admitted to the chamber.
The bell jar presented the first obstacle. It was warded with protective magic that would trigger should anyone unauthorized attempt to lift it. But Donatos had not survived eons of divine politics without learning a few tricks about divine security.