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Thunder crackled in the sky, now a mass of dark clouds. Odysseus looked up at the towering, intimidating form of Zeus in the sky, whose glowing eyes looked back at him, judging him. What was left of his crew looked on nervously behind their captain. For a moment all he heard was the crashing of thunder.
Then the god boomed “Tell me, Odysseus. If I were to make you choose, the lives of your men and crew or your own, why do I think they’d lose?” The god king seemed to smirk as he continued, “Enlighten me, King of Ithaca, since hunger was far too great, I wonder who’d take the weight of the damned and suffer a gruesome fate?”
Odysseus was speechless for a moment. He didn’t know how to get himself and his crew out of this, didn’t see a way to avoid death once again. Zeus didn’t appreciate his silence, as the god narrowed his eyes at him and demanded, “Choose.”
“Choose?” Odysseus replied, hoping to stall.
“Someone’s got to die today, and you have got the final say: you, or your crew?” Zeus asked again as he gripped his lightning bolt tightly.
Odysseus thought about pleading, but he could feel that the god would not be swayed. Someone had to die, to answer for their crimes against the sun god. A part of him, the part that he’d started calling ‘the monster’, wanted him to choose his crew. After all, he was so close. So close to home, to his wife and son. That was more important than his men, right? But then he remembered Eurylochus’s face after Scylla. The pain and betrayal on his brother’s face. The determination to knock sense back into him. The shock when Odysseus was about to kill him for getting in his way. When he thought about all that had happened, he could only think ’That isn’t me. Can’t be me. If Polites saw me now… What have I done? What am I becoming?’. And his choice was made. He would not sacrifice any more of his comrades, his brothers, for his own gain. He turned to Eurylochus. The man looked back at him with fear, dread and resignation in his eyes. It sent a wave of pain through his heart. Taking a deep breath, most likely to be his last, he said “Eury, take care of Penelope and Telemachus for me, will you? And get everyone home safe.”
His brother’s eyes widened and he gasped, “Captain? What- ”. Then he seemed to steady himself and said “Yes, of course I will, Ody.”
Odysseus nodded and turned to Zeus, who was still watching all this, now with a faintly surprised look on his face, before it hardened again. “Very well, true nature had been revealed.”
Then Odysseus’s world was pain. The intense shock of the lightning bolt that was thrown at him overwhelmed him in just a second. He felt like he was burning from the inside out, and all he could see was a blinding white light. His ears were ringing and his body was seizing. And then, blessedly, there was nothing.