Chapter 9 The Cerberus
The Cerberus
Theron
The ritual had failed. Silver slag pooled under my paws, the only thing that remained from the payment that should have brought back Callista’s memories.
Reality splintered and reformed around me in angles that both made sense and didn’t. I stood on four paws that felt huge and unfamiliar, like someone had replaced my legs with tree trunks. Everything hurt, but I couldn’t have cared less.
My last chance. Gone. They took her. Again. They’ll pay.
Heat built in my chest like three separate furnaces, each one burning hotter than anything I’d experienced. When I tried to speak, what emerged was a snarl that came from three different snouts.
In front of me, Skaros stared at me, his pupils dilated with something akin to… fear. “Theron… What’s happened to you?”
I couldn’t reply, but Charon did so in my stead. “Skaros, you need to stay back. The extraction went very wrong.”
Wrong. Yes, it was all wrong. Because of him, I’d lost my mate. My beautiful Callista.
Images flashed through my mind, too quickly to properly interpret.
Callista, leaning over a loom. Callista, cradling a basilisk against her chest. Callista’s tears, her laugh, her joy, her anger.
Her past, present, and future. I’d lost all that, and Charon was just standing there, like he didn’t care.
I lunged forward without warning, my three sets of jaws wide enough to crush a man’s skull. Flames erupted from my throats, filling the air with heat.
Charon raised his ferry pole, but the weapon looked pathetically small against my new size. My fangs closed around the wood, splintering it like kindling. He twisted the broken shaft toward my eye. I jerked away, feeling splinters score deep furrows across my right muzzle.
“I know what you are, you beast,” Charon hissed. “You don’t scare me.”
He dropped the ruined pole and reached into his robes. Black iron chains emerged from the fabric, their links gleaming dully. Stygian iron, common enough in Asphodelia. But when the metal touched my transformed flesh, it writhed like a living thing.
I snapped at the approaching chains, but they wrapped around my chest. Pain exploded through my body and echoed into my bones.
“Father, what’s happening?” Aion looked from me to Charon, clearly unsure what to do. “What is he?”
“Something from the old world.” Charon didn’t look away from me as he spoke. “The original.”
The metal grew heavier. It seemed to taste my emotional state, feeding off whatever transformation was happening inside me. But it couldn’t contain my power, not really.
I attacked from multiple directions simultaneously, each mind directing its own attack. Charon leaped backward, trying to avoid my assault. He wasn’t fast enough, and the fabric of his cloak ignited instantly under my hellfire.
As Charon shed the burning material, Skaros bounded closer, ignoring the danger. “Charon, you’re talking in riddles. The original what?”
“Cerberus,” Charon answered, not deigning to give Skaros a single glance. “The Moirae weave the powers of time in separate beings now, and never more than two at a time. Past and future. Past and present. Present and future. Never all three. But the original Cerberus was master of all time.”
He gestured toward the lake, and the water began to boil. Tentacles of death energy emerged from the mist, responding to Charon’s command.
“What does that mean?” Aion asked, and for the first time in memory, his voice was shaking.
“It means he can destroy the weave itself.” Despite the gravity of what he was saying, Charon didn’t falter. “He can defy the Moirae. Maybe even Thanatos himself.”
I roared my anger at the approaching tentacles, and hellfire met death energy in a violent collision. Steam erupted around us, thick enough to blind normal eyes. For me, it was no obstacle. I didn’t need eyes at all to see.
Charon would move aside, away from his previous position. He’d try to attack me from a different angle. The knowledge came to me with crystal clarity, like something that was always supposed to happen.
The tentacles dissolved under my sustained assault, death energy boiling away like mist. I charged through the dissipating steam, my massive bulk bearing down on Charon. Toward his clever new hiding place.
Charon raised more chains, but I was already too close. I slammed into his chest, sending him sprawling across the stone pier. “The Stygian iron remembers,” he croaked out, even as he dropped his weapon. “It was forged in the old world.”
Maybe, but it would do him no good. I planted a paw on his chest, pinning him to the stone. My jaws opened wide above his face, and his flesh began to sizzle under my touch.
This dock had witnessed so many new beginnings, humans trading their past for a future in our city. Now it would witness justice for what Charon had stolen from me and Callista. Now, it was the ferryman’s turn to pay the price.
“Theron!” Aion threw himself at me, wrapping his arms around my torso.
The impact sent us both crashing into the dock’s torch stands.
Ancient metalwork bent and snapped under our combined weight.
The masonry cracked, and my mind seized under the weight of this new betrayal.
Aion had been my companion for decades. I’d trusted him more than I had my own brother.
And yet, he was protecting the one who’d destroyed my bond with my mate.
Make him pay, my inner beast howled in three different voices.
I twisted in Aion’s grip, bringing my jaws around to clamp on his torso. Fire poured between my fangs as I bit down, turning the bronze a bright crimson. His scream echoed across the water, but he didn’t release his hold.
Molten metal dripped from the wounds, hissing as it struck stone. “You’re killing him!” Skaros roared, but I could barely hear him anymore.
Skaros shifted into his four-legged form and launched himself at my back. He landed hard, digging his claws into my hide. It didn’t work, but he must have already expected that. Instead of trying to gut me like he had countless others, he drove his weight down, trying to throw me off balance.
Another traitor then. Someone else who was getting in my way, keeping me from Callista. Snarling, I bucked underneath him. It took a single, stronger motion for his claws to lose purchase.
A vision flashed in my mind, unbidden, but crisp. Skaros launching himself skywards in desperation. Diving toward me in a final attack at my heads. I could already see it happening, the future as clear as a memory.
I released Aion and spun toward Skaros. The manticore took off just like the vision had shown, his wings carrying him out of my reach. Or so he thought. He lunged at me, no doubt intending to snatch Aion from me at all costs.
But I was no longer the creature he’d known, the monster he’d fought with in sparring matches.
A concentrated wave of hellfire erupted out of my three throats.
The blast should have incinerated him instantly, Moirae-woven or not.
But Charon’s chains wrapped around Skaros mid-dive, yanking him aside just as flames roared through the space where he’d been.
He hit the dock hard, his eyes wide with the realization of how close to destruction he had come. “Sleep,” he growled, desperation and instinct warring in his voice. His barbed tail curved over his head and struck my flank. “Just sleep, Theron.”
Manticore venom could melt a human’s veins in seconds. To me, it was only an irritant. I shook off whatever effects tried to take hold, the hellfire in my blood burning through the toxin in seconds.
How could I sleep, when Callista was still in the spire, still stolen from me? The mere idea almost made me crumble under the weight of my own fury.
And then, it happened.
Despite the agony that must have coursed through him, Aion stirred from where he’d fallen. He reached for my middle muzzle with one trembling hand. His touch burned against my fur, but he managed to speak through gritted teeth. “Friend. Please, not like this.”
The word cut through rage like nothing else had. Friend. Yes. Beneath the transformation, beneath the fury, something remembered. Aion and Skaros were my friends. They’d risked everything to stop me from destroying myself.
Horror washed through me as I realized what I was doing. Bronze blood pooled under Aion’s battered form, staining my paws. Deep gouges marked his torso where my fangs had penetrated, cracks spreading along his arms.
Charon rushed to Aion’s side, completely ignoring me and dropping to his knees beside his creation. His hands examined the damage with the familiarity of someone who knew every inch of the metal. “I’m so sorry, son,” he whispered. “This happened because of my failure.”
“The ritual...” Aion shook his head, his voice so thin I almost couldn’t hear it at all. “You tried to help.”
“I should have known better.” Charon pressed his palms against Aion’s chest, death energy dancing along his fingertips. “The skill extraction was too dangerous.”
Skaros limped closer, his fur a little singed from my attack. “Will he survive?”
“His soul anchor doesn’t rely on the weave,” Charon replied, not looking away from Aion. “He has a chance.”
Aion didn’t seem to hear his father, not anymore. He reached out and pressed his shattered fingers against my paw. Once, that hand would have rivaled mine in size, maybe even dwarfed it. Today, it seemed so small, almost fragile. As fragile as the broken bonds I’d betrayed in my madness.
But Aion refused to give up on me. “Still friends,” he managed as the blue light under his bronze skin began to dim. “All three of us. Always.”
“Always,” Skaros agreed. If he resented me for attacking him the way I’d done, he didn’t show it.
I couldn’t bring myself to apologize. The words refused to come. My voice didn’t work properly, this body unsuited for proper communication.
Helpless and useless, I watched as Aion’s consciousness started to fade.
Charon clutched his creation to his chest and turned toward me.
“There is nothing left for you here, Theron. But even if our trade failed, you have the power of the original now. There are few things a true Cerberus cannot change.”
“Charon’s right, Theron,” Skaros said. “You can do this. Find her. Bring her home.”
Home. That’s what this had all been about. Not revenge against those who’d tried to help, but bringing Callista back where she belonged. With me.
The killing rage drained away, replaced by something far more dangerous. Purpose.
It was the same goal that had forced me to leave my brother behind in the Erebus Cells. It had brought me here, had made me reach out to the ferryman to try to get her memories back. Nothing about it had changed.
The coins were destroyed. Charon’s trade was finished. But that didn’t mean I’d lost my chances to claim what belonged to me.
In the end, the answer was obvious. My bond with Callista transcended every single arbitrary rule in Asphodelia. If she no longer remembered me, we’d just have to make new memories.
They had taken her through politics and manipulation. I would take her back through fire and fangs. Charon’s ritual hadn’t given me back Callista’s memories, but it had granted me the strength to challenge everything that dared to stand in my way.
I turned away from the destruction, my paws sending tremors through the entire pier. Behind me, Charon’s voice carried across the dark waters of the Acheron. “The true claiming begins.”