By Zenia deHaven
The Trojans believed that Achilles’ heroics were exaggerated.
Many tales of demigods were thrilling. Perseus slaying the gorgon monster Medusa? Incredible! The children frequently requested a retelling of that one. The older ones loved hearing about Perseus defeating the behemoth Minotaur in Daedalus’ dark labyrinth. The stories of demigods were not new to Trojans, but the rumors of Achilles were absurd. There were whispers that he slayed his foes without looking at them. That his flesh was as impenetrable as stone. That he could face down three phalanxes at once by himself and emerge unscathed, leaving the waste of his enemies on the battlefield.
The Trojans scoffed.
Achilles was the product of the sea nymph, Thetis, and the mortal king, Peleus. While Thetis’ entrancing beauty was admired by the mightiest gods, she was not known for her physical prowess. And the mortal Peleus, a well-to-do king, was even less remarkable. If Achilles were the son of a greater Olympian, like Zeus or Poseidon, perhaps there was some validity to the tales.
But no, the Trojans thought. The Greeks were merely trying to frighten them with stories of an unstoppable enemy. It was an absurd tactic and one that they mocked while deep in their cups.
They stood under Apollo’s blistering chariot, the air breezeless and stifling. They wore the standard armor of infantrymen: hefty, bronze breastplates cut at the shoulders for mobility, greeves to protect blows aimed at the shins and ankles, and feathered helmets that cupped their cheeks. They waited, motionless, for the Greeks.
The enemy approached from the sea, their sails limp on their masts. They cut through the ocean with their oars, dipping into Poseidon’s territory with wooden fingers, in and out, in and out. They would make landfall soon.
With a collective breath, the Trojan archers nocked their bows.
Bustling like ants, Greek men dropped planks against Troy’s craggy shores. Their sandaled shoes sunk into the sand, faltering their steps for a moment, but just a moment. After getting their bearings, they raised their spears and howled like wolves catching the scent of a wounded doe.
The archers fired. A black, sharp rain fell atop the Greeks. Some arrows landed harmlessly in the sand, but many struck true, and the soldiers collapsed with startled cries, surprised that Thanatos had claimed them so early. Rejuvenated from the fresh wave of death, the Trojans cheered, hoisting their weapons as they rallied themselves to war. The Greeks would not surpass the great walls of Troy at this rate. And where was this hero Achilles that they cherished so much?
Then they stopped, their eyes wide beneath their helmets, as they beheld something their minds could scarcely comprehend.
A glimmering, upright insect, its blue shell blinding under the sun, stomped onto the beach. Each step rumbled the ground, sending ripples through the earth that the Trojans felt beneath their feet leagues away. It was man-shaped, with two arms, two legs, and a head upon its large shoulders, but donned with flexible, yet thick, alloy plates. A dome masked its entire head and a bronze visor covered where its eyes and nose would be. It looked like a man had been dipped in molten metal and emerged with a thick carapace of armor.
Armor. It was a suit of armor, they realized with creeping horror, with a warrior puppetting it from the inside.
Though the Trojans were too far away to see, an onlooker could read “ACHIL-1” painted in gold alongside the mechsuit’s left leg.
The Trojans, following the only rules of war they knew, charged at the Greeks and the glittering shell of Achilles at their head.
Their efforts were hopeless.
Just as the legends warned them, Achilles’ skin was impermeable. Arrows dinged off his armor like they were made of papyrus. The Trojans’ spears came down on him but bounced away harmlessly, not even leaving a scratch on the paint. Their failed attempts left them vulnerable and ripe for Achilles to tear them down with his gauntlets. Though he was swarmed by Trojans on all sides, their attacks were fruitless, and their frustration made them fight sloppily. While Achilles served as the shiny distraction, the remaining Greeks encircled their opponents and picked them off the traditional way, with sharp swords and spears.
As more and more Trojans fell like wheat to the scythe, the Trojans wondered, What could have created such a monstrosity?
The answer, as the Greeks knew, was Hephaestus.
Paris, the prince of Troy, who was currently cowering in the city trying to mask his rising terror, was a favorite of Aphrodite, the wife of Hephaestus. Aphrodite’s affair with the much handsomer god of war, Ares, was known by every mortal, nymph, and god, much to Hephaestus’ displeasure. Upon learning that Achilles was joining the Greeks in their war against the Trojans, a plan had burst to life in Hephaestus’ mind.
What if he made the greatest of the Greeks unkillable? What if Aphrodite’s favorite died at his hands? What if he got revenge on his cuckolding wife?
For six days and nights, Hephaestus did not sleep. He tinkered, welded, and soldered in his blistering forge, though, being the god of fire, he never broke a sweat. On the dawn of the seventh day, he had it: a mechsuit for the finest warrior Greece had ever known.
Though the suit was a feat of engineering, with an interior cooling system, an infrared scanner, and an air filtration unit, it could only be operated by Achilles. The son of Thetis was strong, quick, and possessed godly, nimble reflexes. He could disarm a full-grown warrior by his sixth name day. Though he was trained with a spear, upon receiving the magnificent gift from Hephaestus, he learned the way of the fist. He jabbed, clobbered, and smashed his way through his foes.
From Olympus, Hephaestus laughed with a full belly as Achilles swatted away the Trojans like gnats. A few seats over, Aphrodite seethed.
Realizing that they were hopelessly outmatched, a Trojan commander bellowed the horn for retreat, and the soldiers readily complied. They fled back to the walls, the Greeks hot on their heels and slaying any stragglers. Achilles was too burdened by his armor to give chase. He watched as the last of the Trojans disappeared behind their iron gates. He sighed, the cloud briefly fogging his visor before the internal fans whisked it clean, and left the field of the dead and the dying, his metallic joints whirring at each footfall.
He found Patroclus standing before a tent, his dark hair flat against his sweaty face. His lover brightened at the sight of Achilles’ metal carapace, beckoning at the space.
“I found a spot by the ocean,” Patroclus said, gesturing to the lapping waves a few meters away. Beneath the thick shell of armor, Achilles’ heart warmed. Of course, Patroclus remembered that Achilles enjoyed falling asleep listening to the sea. It made him feel closer to his mother, though the two were hardly amicable. But he liked it, regardless, knowing that she could speak to him if she needed to.
That’s just the man who Patroclus was. Caring. Selfless. Kind. Qualities that Achilles struggled to reciprocate.
“Thank you,” Achilles’ metallic voice said from the speakers in his chest plate. He stooped into their tent, noting their shared bed and Patroclus’ books in a heap of disarray in the corner.
“Remove armor,” he said, reciting the passphrase Hephaestus told him. The suit hissed and moved. The plates alongside his back folded in on themselves in a calculated dance until there was a gap that Achilles could step out from. The moment the armor recognized that it was no longer occupied, it closed itself again. It would only open to Achilles’ voice as a security measure. Of course, anyone foolish enough to try to steal it would quickly realize it was far too heavy to wield. Even if the suit’s algorithm glitched and allowed someone inside who wasn’t Achilles, Hephaestus installed a toxic gas that would fill the suit and smother the intruder.
Achilles lay with a graceful flop on his bed and let his eyes close, eager to breathe in the non-recycled air.
“How was it?” Patroclus’ voice asked from behind his eyelids.
“Lay with me,” Achilles said, ignoring his question. He didn’t want to think about Troy right now. He was not squeamish about gore and didn’t mind killing, but it was pathetically simple. Even without the mechsuit, killing was as second nature to him as blinking. Now, it was so effortless that it was almost a joke.
It was boring.
A weight slumped the bed to one side, and Patroclus’ hands fiddled with Achilles’ golden curls. Achilles leaned into his touch, drinking in his musk of seawater and smoked sage. Patroclus didn’t ask him to speak again, and Achilles’ gratitude swelled further than he could imagine.
The greatest of the Greeks slept with his lover at his side, his glittering mechsuit keeping a silent vigil over them.
Author Bio
Zenia deHaven is a writer and teacher from Virginia. They are a graduate student in Emerson College’s Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing Program. Zenia primarily writes fantasy but enjoys exploring horror, science fiction, and nonfiction. They have published short stories in SIEVA Magazine, Stork Magazine, and Page Turner Magazine. Their critical essays, which cover issues from LGBTQ+ rights to animal conservation, are published in FruitSlice and Lit Shark Magazine. When Zenia isn’t writing, they enjoy group exercise classes, video games, and giving their dogs scritches. You can find them on Instagram @zeniadehaven_.