Episode 3.2.d
>In the TSTT, Troy, Bronze Age<
Hercules raises the club. He holds it there for a moment. Then he hears you out, and he lowers it.
He stands for a while looking at what he has done, and the fierceness drains out of him slowly, the way heat drains out of a room after the fire goes down. He is not a man who does uncertainty comfortably. He almost says something that would be an apology, if the word came more naturally to him.
He turns and calls out. The boy steps away from the gate post and comes forward, carrying the folded golden robe pressed against his chest with both arms, moving the way someone moves toward a large animal that has recently become calm. Priamus. He stops a few feet from Hercules and holds the robe out.
Hercules takes it. He turns it over in his hands, looking at the gold thread, then at the boy, then at a point somewhere in the middle distance that does not appear to have anything in it. "Someone has put me in a new play," he says quietly. He folds the robe and puts it in his sack.
Then he looks at Priamus with the full weight of his attention, and his voice is serious. "There is a stone in these walls." He points to a place near the gate, close to where the largest foundation blocks meet. "Guard it well."
He picks up his club and walks back toward his ship without looking back.
Priamus watches him until he is gone. The shore is very quiet. Then Priamus turns to you: the robe is gone, the creature is gone, his father's court is in ruins around him, and he is standing in the middle of it all holding the responsibility for a very old stone he has just been told to protect. He looks at you the way people look when they are trying to appear less frightened than they are.
"What am I supposed to do now?" he asks.
Prompt: Help Priamus plan for the future of Troy and for protecting the Lapis. Advice about being wary of strangers bearing gifts is appropriate here, though whether Priamus takes it is another matter entirely.
