Chapter 37 #2
“Ah!” I cried out as a fist hit my unsuspecting abdomen. Doubling over, I gasped, panic exploding within me at the sudden lack of air. I clawed at the ground, like my fingers thought they could carve oxygen out of the ashes.
Nightshade, where are you?!
“Shadows are but the absence of light. And in case you hadn’t noticed, light is plentiful here. My power renders yours… useless.”
A swift blow to the side of my head punctuated his point, catapulting me through the air and sending me sprawling in the dirt what felt like a hundred yards away.
Nightshade!
Even now, I still stubbornly refused to open my eyes lest Hyperion blind me.
Somewhere in the far-off distance, an explosion sounded, and I hoped it was from us. I hoped we were tearing their army apart, piece by fetid piece.
I don’t know exactly. Apollo does.
I had no way of knowing if a Titan’s power would affect me permanently and I wasn’t about to test that theory out in a very one-sided fight.
And therein lay the truth, and my fear behind it: I had absolutely no idea how I could best Hyperion when my shadows were effectively pointless, Life had no place here, in the destruction of things, and would Death even work against a Titan?
Time to find out.
Spitting a clump of sweet-tasting ichor and one of my molars out onto the dirt, I reached deep down inside myself, calling upon my most dangerous of abilities. Death answered swiftly and heartily — like she’d only been waiting for me to ask.
She cast an invisible net out over our immediate surroundings, capturing the essences of souls in the vicinity.
Every living thing caught within it, lit up like a thousand tiny stars in my mind.
From the vultures circling overhead awaiting their next meal, to the ants burrowing in their nests below the surface.
An owl drifted by, followed swiftly by a dove.
A deer lapped the outskirts of my mind, while a wolf snuffed out another life — blacker and colder than the rest.
I assessed them all quickly, looking for the largest, brightest soul among them.
My brows twitched when I found it — when I realised what the Titan had tried to hide from me — but I quickly schooled my expression into one of neutrality so as not to give myself away. I just had to hold out long enough…
The most dazzling soul in the vicinity was not Hyperion as I’d expected, but one belonging to a large violet dragon some leagues away.
Velira.
She lit up like the sun, drowning everything else out, even the Titan of light standing startlingly close to me. Letting me know that I was not, in fact, alone as he’d have me believe — that I was still in Hellespont, in the middle of a furies-damned battle after all.
Death rushed him. Ensnared him. Curled her black-stained fingers around his peach-sized soul, glowing with barely enough light to illuminate even a rabbit’s warren. She was ready. All I needed now was physical touch.
“What are you doing?” he hissed, fish breath reaching my nostrils. “Why is your face doing that?”
Now.
I snapped a hand out, wrapping my fingers around his ankle, before he had a chance to figure out where he’d seen this trick before. I yanked on my power and the tiny soul Death grasped so fiercely.
And nothing happened.
Not one tiny budge, nor suggestion of movement. I reefed again and Hyperion laughed.
“You think the power of Hades is enough to defeat me?” He laughed again, even as I fought desperately to dislodge his soul from his body and end him permanently.
“I am the Titan of Light! You cannot destroy me for I am light.
I fathered your sun, your moon, and your dawn.
I am one of the four pillars of the world.
Everything you know and understand would cease to exist, and therefore I am unconquerable.
“None exist who can oppose me. None exist to take my place. A little death-trickery will never defeat a Titan, and you had best heed my warning now. I know you thirst for my brother’s soul, too, just as I know that in this endeavour, you will also fail.”
I offered up a silent prayer to any who could hear it, who could help.
Golden? I could use your help now.
We’re on our way. Don’t give up, he pleaded.
But Life answered where Death could not. My hopeful little friend rushed to the surface, flitting all the way down to my fingertips. As if she were silently saying ‘one last time.’
Perhaps futilely, I pulled once more.
Hyperion hissed. He bent down to grab a fistful of my braid and dragged me away so that I had no choice but to release his ankle lest he tear the skin from my scalp. Without even allowing me a second to struggle, he had me pinned against the ashen dirt with his own body.
I writhed beneath him, using every trick Charon had taught me to dislodge an assailant from below, but his one piece of advice remained useless to me: don’t get caught here in the first place.
Too late, Char.
I shifted again, trying to manoeuvre my legs in a way that would allow me to throw him off, and Hyperion grunted. Something twitched against my thigh and suddenly the reek of olives overpowered his halitosis.
I stilled, realising there were far worse outcomes here than a knee to the eye-socket.
He huffed a foul breath, sneering, “I do not have to resort to force in that regard, little Hades. There are more than enough willing participants in Othryx, including your once-queen whore.”
“Gross,” I muttered.
He chuckled. “She did not seem to think it gross when Kronos and I shared her holes. She rather enjoyed it actually.” His cock twitched again and bile burned my throat in response.
“Funny, I never pictured Kronos as a sharer.”
Hyperion ignored the dig. “No,” he mused. “What I have planned for you is far less enjoyable than a turn on my Titanic cock.”
I grinned. “You forget that I can feel it, even now, pressed against my leg. And it’s rather an obscene overexaggeration to refer to it as titanic.”
Hyperion snarled, then shifted so that his legs straddled mine, leaving his diminutive cock, beneath the scrap of a periskelis I’d glimpsed earlier, wedged firmly against my core — which I could have sworn shrivelled and dried up like a wilted flower at his touch.
Next, he dragged my arms above my head, ensnaring them both in one meaty fist, leaving the other free to do… whatever it was he intended on doing.
Golden? I’m so sorry.
Almost there, don’t you dare give up.
“Clever, dainty, little Hades — keeping your eyes clamped shut this whole time.”
One thick, hot finger trailed down my left cheek. I fought the impulse to peek — but failed in fighting the impulse to bite said finger.
Hyperion hissed, snatching his hand away from my ichor-stained teeth. His blood, as sweet and thick as syrup, trickled down the back of my throat, sickening me. Bile rose again as I jerked my head sideways and retched.
The Titan made a repulsed sound, allowing me the slightest reprieve so as not to vomit on him.
When there was nothing of substance left in my stomach, his grip tightened and his free hand snatched my chin, jerking my face back up to his.
“Now, where was I? Ah, yes.”
Even behind my closed lids, I could see his power intensifying. Multicoloured orbs danced behind them, twinkling as my eyes flitted about.
His thumb pressed down on the fragile skin beneath my left eye — gently at first, then sharper. A finger grazed my eyelid as he spoke again, barely more than a whisper.
“It’s foolish to fight against me. To throw your lot in with them, just as your father did. We are inevitable. You will see.”
And then he forced my eye open — and see, I did.
Hyperion was a vague person-like shape behind a screen of pure, merciless white. Light tore through my sight like flames engulf straw — quickly and without kindness. Pain split me open, or so it felt, as Hyperion’s power consumed me right down to the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind.
I screamed, tearing my vocal cords to shreds until all that was left was a guttural keen.
Eventually the pain tapered, but the light — the light never fled. The only thing left for me to witness was white. Stark, empty, white.
“A shame, really, to ruin such a beautiful iris. I’ve never seen that shade of green before,” he said as if to himself. “Oh well. The only thing worse than one ruined eye is a mismatched set.” His chuckle was all broken glass and sharp daggers as he pressed his fingers down around my right eye.
“No,” I whimpered. “Please, don’t.”
“She begs!” He roared a laugh. “Oh, my brother will love to hear it. Worry not, my child, it will only feel like a pinch.” And then he forced it open, too.
Agony overpowered every other sensation. Gone was the knowledge that a Titan was perched on my chest. Gone was the battle and the war. Gone was every shred of who I was, am, or ever would be.
I was pain. I was torment. I was suffering.
And I was nothing else.