Chapter 10 Hades
Hades
My chambers have never seemed as dark as they do now. And silent. Devoid of any soul. Even as I stare at the fireplace.
In Persephone’s absence, everything is dark and lifeless, so there should not be blazing fires. There should not be lights. Not until she’s in my arms.
I stand near the windows, my feet planted, looking up at the sky and casting directly into the mortal realm.
It takes a great deal of power to send demons to Earth, and it moves through me like the hottest fires that burn in the Underworld; the pain provides a needed distraction but as the darkness consumes me, it’s numbed.
The mortal realm will suffer greatly. It may never stop suffering. It is not my wish, but it must be done. The pendulum swings.
With a heavy inhale and my eyes half closed, I cast again, another wave of baneful power blazes through me, and through the sky, and through all the realms between the Underworld and the mortal realm. Gritting my teeth, I bare the agony.
This is what happens, I think with resentment as I send another fierce demon through the realms to wreak havoc on the mortal realm.
To lurk in the shadows and release the fears that consume the souls.
This is what happens when you play your games with me.
This is what happens when you keep my queen from me. This is what will happen.
It is law that she belongs here. If they do not abide by the law of the gods. If the king of gods ignores the truth… All hell will break loose.
I can do this for centuries. For eternities.
Why do they think I cannot? What has given them that false idea?
Do the other gods think I learned nothing from all those years I spent alone in pits of despair?
Do they think it taught me nothing? I know how to live in pain and how to bestow it.
That is why this is my rightful place. I can stand the depths of depravity. I can endure it.
I learned more than the dark. I learned more than hopelessness. I learned how to survive both and feel content within them. I learned how to bide my time until I could take revenge.
I learned how to go beyond what gods and mortals expect. To deliver horrors. I learned how to keep storing up my anger and my hurt until it transformed into unfathomable power.
They should know that kings will do unfathomable things for their queens.
Is it unfathomable if I can fathom it? Is it unfathomable if I can do it? I cast another demon into the mortal realm and watch it go without feeling anything but resolve.
My anger still burns. It rages. It howls.
But I contain it. I turn the wretched feelings into demons and send them to haunt souls in the mortal world on my behalf.
I let it rain down on the Underworld as ash.
The silence that fills every corner of the Underworld does not go unnoticed.
It’s as if they are afraid to even whisper their dissent. As they should be.
There’s no longer any part of the Underworld that is not covered in the evidence of my loss.
Ash coats every wall. Every intricately carved stone.
Every valley. It coats every surface that’s in any way open to the sky.
Perhaps it is my sickness, but I find beauty in the way it cloaks the roofs.
It is even beginning to blow in through the windows of my home.
If Persephone does not return soon, perhaps the entire Underworld will be buried in it.
No one will be able to see what lies beneath.
We will build atop the damage or give way to a new kind of death.
My realms have already been transformed in another way.
Fear has crept into every corner and crevice.
It seeps into the places that ash cannot reach.
For the first time, there is no peace. There is no comfort.
There are no voices. Silence covers every realm like a thick, invisible layer of ash.
The souls who pray to me pray that I will forget them.
They do not wish for me to remember they exist. To be left alone in the state of war.
I sneer at that silent plea. Forget them? Forget the souls I have tended to with fairness and compassion all these centuries? Forget the duty I have crushed under my powers? I cannot forget them. I could not forget them any more than I could forget Persephone.
An inkling occurs to me that I may one day become riddled with guilt. If she is returned to me, then I will have to repair the damage I have done to these realms. I will do so if she requires it.
But forget? Impossible.
If these souls truly wanted me to forget, they would stop their prayers.
Another plea whispers into my ear with a gentle hiss as I gather more of my power and send another demon, this one gaunt but more ravenous, into the mortal realm.
They must assume I cannot hear them if they do not speak out loud.
Absurd. I can always hear them. I will always remember them. I am their god, and they will not forget it.
“Send her back to me,” I snap at the sky, which is shaded in gray with speckles of lit ash, creating a speckling of lit red in the darkness.
All this talk of imbalances between the realms, and yet Persephone is not here.
That is the first imbalance that must be fixed.
With every minute that passes, I become more and more desperate.
More and more enraged. Zeus caved to Demeter because of her wrath. Now they will all suffer mine.
With my fists clenched and my blood throbbing through my veins, I summon more magic, waiting with my eyes closed while I draw on the deep pools of power in the Underworld.
This will be a demon larger and more powerful than any I have sent before.
It will stalk people’s nightmares and send them fleeing to me in their sleep.
Praying for death. They will not be safe while they dream, and soon everyone left on the Earth realm will know it.
“I will take everything,” I say to the sky. “I will take your dreams. I will take your souls while they still dwell in the mortal realm. I will take your hopes and your fears. I will take everything, and then I will rip apart your only chance to be mortal again.”
I send another demon.
“You do not hear me, but you will understand,” I say lightly. “I will make you understand. All of you, in every realm. You have spent too long refusing to see. Pretending you did not know. But you will know.”
I send another demon.
“Do you hear your doom approaching? Have you noticed the demon standing above your bed? Did you wake up screaming?”
I send another demon.
Time passes and I refuse to sleep. I refuse to acknowledge Minox hiding in the shadows.
I refuse to take leave given I am at war.
Ash falls to the Underworld like snow. It forms drifts and piles.
It is the residue of all these spells. All my power.
I have been so restrained with it, and not a soul has ever known.
I’ve held back my rage and my pain and been considerate in my judgments.
The Underworld has never seen my powers like this.
I imagine Persephone standing beside me, looking out at what I have done. At what I am still doing. She will not need an explanation of what is happening to the mortal realm. She will know what it means to send demons there to drive people to their deaths.
She will understand that I had to do this.
But…
She will also touch me.
My whole body shivers at the memory of her touch.
Persephone will not play games with me. She will lay her hand on my arm and say my name and ask me to come to bed with her.
She will say, you do not have to do this anymore, I have returned to you, and I will not leave again.
She will put an end to the choking terror that grows in the back of my mind.
My queen. Not only do I need her, the world needs her to balance me. For they allowed me to love then took her away. Now they will receive my hatred.
I push that promise into the next demon, giving it the features of the fear in my mind.
Horns rise from its skull and a tail whips behind it.
Grant it the color of passion: a deep red.
Give it the name: the devil. It will send mortals fleeing from their houses and into dark waters.
It will send them tumbling off cliffs. They will run for their very lives, and they will be right to do it, because they will see all their worst fears in this demon’s face.
More demons shudder out of the palms of my hands, faster than the last. I will send them until she returns. I will not sleep. I will not eat. I will do nothing but pull my power together and send it screaming into the mortal realm.
“I’m living in a nightmare.” I send that thought with the next demon.
“You will live in a nightmare, too. Zeus would do well to pay attention.” They will blame him, eventually.
It will all come back to him, and he will have to pay the penance for it.
When they have had their fill in the mortal realm, these demons will be starved for Olympus.
Demeter floods the Underworld with souls, I return them as demons. This is justice. This is righteous. It is earned. And Zeus allowed it!
Thump, thump, thump. The steady but slow pacing is easily heard between the thunderous births of my undead army.
Footsteps approach from somewhere in my home.
The door to my chambers opens with an eerie creak. It’s gentle yet firm.
With a scowl marring my face, I lower my hands and turn to look at whoever dares disturb my work.
A guard. I used to know his name, but in this moment, it does not come to me. Rage blinds me. I turn away from him.
A moment later, he dares to clear his throat. “My Lord.”
Slowly, seething, I drop my hands again, the demon I was creating disappearing into a cloud of ash, and turn around to look at the lone guard.
His face is ghastly and sunken in. Nearly skull-like.
A guard of the dead. Although his gaze is a piercing blue and as his head turns his mortal features come and go.
The cloak he wears is torn but still drags on the ground.
It’s edges dirtied from the ash against the light gray coloring it once was.
He stands as close to the door as he can get.
Does he not know that it makes no difference?
The door could not save him if I decided I wanted his soul erased for good. Perhaps that’s his desire.
Anger simmers within me.
He clears his throat again. “She asks for time.” His tone rises a little at the end of the sentence, as if his statement is a question.
The guard must see my impatience, because he squares his shoulders although his voice wavers. “She asks for time, my Lord.”
“Who is she?” I spit.
“Your queen.”
“Our queen,” I shout. My harsh correction echoes off the stone walls.
“Our queen,” the guard repeats quickly, his voice trembling. He stands stick straight, attempting to appear as if he’s not terrified, but it is obvious that he is.
It’s then I remember his name. His story. What brought him to be a highly stationed guard. Swallowing thickly, I know I cannot go on like this for eternity. I know that. But the knowledge only makes me want to end it faster. To be more extreme.
“How much time?” I question quietly.
“She did not say,” he answers. “She simply asked for time.”
His answer leaves me wanting. Snarling, I crave to shout at him. To rage at him. To unleash every barbed word from my mouth onto this guard.
This messenger.
I do not.
“I will not deny her anything she asks for that is in my power to give. In that time, I will continue what I have promised Hecate,” I tell him, then turn back to the window. “Pass along that message to my queen.”
“My Lord,” he says. The door opens and shuts the very next second, and his footsteps fade quickly down the hall.
A shuffling sound distracts me. I stop gathering my power to send another demon to Earth and turn again, more rage lighting in me like a new fire.
Was I so unclear to that guard? Does he need me to explain a second time?
My queen’s message was simple. Mine was even simpler. There is nothing more to say.
But it is not a guard pushing open the door to my rooms with his shoulder.
It is Cerberus.
He pads in, his head cocked slightly as if something is wrong in the room, but he does not know what.
“Come,” I command.
Cerberus comes, his tongues lolling from his mouths. He pushes his body next to my legs, whining softly to be petted, so I get to one knee and do it properly. I ruffle the ears on each head and stroke his crowns several times each. He has stopped whining by the time I’m finished.
With Cerberus, it is easy. Concentrating on him for a minute has let my rage simmer down until it is embers.
It’s not gone, however. I’m not finished. I’ll take that heat and make the demons burn with it, and they will carry it to the mortal realm.
“Do you see?” I ask Cerberus. “This is what all this has come to. Demons in the mortal world. I will send more and more until Persephone is returned.”
He lets out a chorus of loud barks at her name, wagging his tail.
“Not yet,” I tell him. “Soon.”
Cerberus stays close to me, his side against my knee, while I send five more demons to the mortal realm. Then ten. He wags his tail without stopping. He must think the demons will bring her back.
In one way, they will. They must. Or else it will be all-out war.