Some trims are easy—adverbs, dangling metaphors, my fondness for commas. Others fight back. This one hissed like a mother goat. Consider it salvaged for your enjoyment (and for Dunlop’s HR file).
The setup: Dunlop vs. the Dean, or, Why Shields Were Invented
In The Angelus Key, Dr. Stephen Dunlop occasionally behaves like a man who believes his tenure is a force field. (Academics call this “job security”; the rest of us call it Aegis cosplay.) Before the Order of Wisdom and Light Seekers drag him into a mess involving manuscripts, angels, and people with unnerving candles, Dunlop imagines his faculty status would deflect consequences.
Spoiler Alert: paper shields don’t stop spears.
While I was writing that scene, I tucked in a footnote—too delicious for the main highway—about the Aegis, the original “you can’t fire me” accessory.
Athena’s HR policy (abridged)
Classically, the Aegis is a protective goat-hide shield or cloak. It’s usually Zeus’s to wave around—he loves a branded moment—but the real owner-operator in many myths is Athena, goddess of wisdom and competent management.
The cut passage leaned on a recently “translated” (and delightfully dubious) papyrus: Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 5743, mid–2nd century BCE, attributed to Pseudo-Eumelos. The scroll reads like office gossip from Olympus: Zeus grandstanding, Athena rolling her eyes so hard the Parthenon shifts.
According to our papyrus, Zeus was in his cups at Artemis’s birthday and boasting about being the font of all excellence. Athena, who knows the limits of both wine and fathers, challenges him to a battle of wits:
- Each must invent a new beast,
- The Olympians will judge,
- Prize: the Aegis for Athena if she wins; penalty: banishment to Hades if she loses. (Olympus HR had… flexible policies.)
Zeus, being Zeus, makes creatures that look suspiciously like… Zeus. A giant thunderwolf. Akranos, a gilded sky-serpent that spits lightning and arrogance.
Athena, meanwhile, plays long game. She designs for ἀρετή (arete—virtue, excellence), not vanity. Her entry: the Calydonian Boar—not indestructible, but consequential. To defeat it, mortals must cooperate. Heroes level up; communities learn. It’s practically a grant proposal.
The judges (never immune to Athena’s bullet-point clarity) award her the win. She gifts the boar to Artemis, who later looses it on Calydon when King Oeneus forgets to send a thank-you note after harvest. Atalanta and Meleager team up to solve the porcine problem. Zeus sulks. The Aegis changes shoulders.
Moral for mortals
- Zeus’s model: Power that proves nothing.
- Athena’s model: Challenge that cultivates virtue—a shield earned, not issued.
What this has to do with Dunlop (and tenure)
Back in our story, Dunlop imagines his tenure is as powerful as Zeus’s thunderwolf: a loud deterrent that scares trouble off. But the Dean of the History Department at Ashbury College didn’t get the memo. Dunlop will soon be clearing out his office and radically revising his life plan.
Writing craft aside (because some of you ask)
Why cut this from the main text? Pace. A thriller is an arrow; too many asides turn it into a porcupine. But as a “From the Cuts,” it earns its keep: it sharpens Dunlop’s arc (paper shields vs. earned shields) and tees up a theme the series keeps worrying like a prayer bead—what kind of protection do we trust, and who paid for it?