Chapter 95
Burning Down The House
LYRA
Let Hades see me.
That, I already figured out. Hopefully he believes it’s the current-day me who escaped and not the future me who disappears on him all the time.
“I don’t know how to get out of here.” When Hades brought me down, it took him three teleports.
“He cannot see me,” Cer says in his serious way. “He thinks I am attempting to stop him. Already took several swipes at me, and he was not joking around.”
Urgency shoots up my spine. It’s that bad? I mean, Zeus is one thing, but Hades loves his dog. I can’t picture Hades going after Cerberus like that.
“I’ll take you,” Hermes says, moving to stand in my line of sight.
I blink at him. “Seriously? You’re not going to try to dump me in a pit somewhere or—”
“This is more important.” Hermes doesn’t love it any more than I do, but at least he’s being less of an asshole.
“We don’t need anyone else stopping us. Hecate can’t leave the Underworld anymore, and the others are supposed to be down here guarding Tartarus.
But no one will question me coming back topside. They’ll think I have news.”
Right.
I look at Rhea, who raises her eyebrows back at me. The decision is mine.
I hold my hand out to Hermes. “Please take me to Hades.”
Hermes makes a face at my palm and clasps me by the forearm instead. “Hold on tight. I’m not as smooth at this down here as Hades is.”
Honestly, with the first teleport, I’m still expecting something nefarious, but he truly is taking me up to Olympus.
It takes Hermes closer to nine teleports to navigate our way out of the Underworld.
The god is breathing hard with sweat trickling down his temples by the time he says, “Last one. Prepare yourself.”
“What’s that supposed to mean—”
My question gets cut off by us blinking out of existence. When we blink back in, all it takes is one quick glance around before I’m blindsided with a whopping dose of terror.
“Holy mother goddess Gaia.” The words rip from my mouth in a harsh whisper as shock closes my throat around them and cuts them off.
Hermes has brought us to the top of the mountain in Olympus where he held his Crucible Labor. Not the very top, but to the path just underneath where our planks were. From this vantage point, I can look out over most of Olympus.
And what greets my eyes is a shitshow of horror. Apocalyptic proportions.
The three waterfalls that pour from the carved statues of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades are decimated, water bursting into the sky in white, blue, and black plumes that rain down on the buildings below.
The source of the tentacles digging through Tartarus is clearly the main temple that sits up high.
Black-smoke-encased arms of bright-blue flame have blown the roof off, and they wave around like the heads of a hydra.
One tentacle is shoved down the statue of Hades’ throat, and the waterfall is making less of a plume in the air, instead spraying out in all directions. That must be what Hades is using to dig down to Tartarus, forcing the fire through the bowels to the gates of Tartarus and now into that hell.
Three more waving tentacles have wound their way through the streets of Olympus, leveling everything and setting it all ablaze.
All I can make out under the smoke and flames is ruins and rubble.
He set the entire mountainside ablaze with that blue fire, leaving a trail of bleak annihilation across one of the most beautiful places in existence.
A scar. Given how he cried in my arms after destroying it the first time, he’s going to hate himself after we stop him this time.
Meanwhile, at least five other tentacles of flame wave wildly in the air around the temple as gods attack the fortress of smoke that Hades has built around himself. They are making zero headway as the tentacles keep knocking them back and flinging them away.
No wonder they need me.
No one—none of the gods, even with all their power—can get near him.
“Teleporting is useless. None of us can get beyond the outside of the temple, and his smoke finds us immediately that way. So don’t try that.” Hermes gives me the side-eye. “You better fucking be able to get to him,” he mutters.
“Yeah,” I whisper. I don’t even care that he’s back to being a dick and that that was basically a threat.
No teleporting? Of course my god of death wouldn’t make it that easy.
Hades is doing this for me, though. To protect me from the gods trying to destroy the Titans and me with them. So if anyone has a chance…
At least I’ll keep telling myself that.
“See if you can get the others to stand down,” I say to Hermes.
I ignore the affronted look he tosses my way because that came out as an order, but I don’t have time to coddle his ego. I’m already teleporting away. I land on the paths just below the main temple and, with epically bad aim, within feet of one of the fiery barriers that encircle it.
“Shit!”
Before I can pull out my axes to cross them and put up the invisible defensive shield they create, I’m tackled from the side by something hard and moving fast. If arms didn’t wrap around me to take the brunt of the impact as we both plow into the rocky mountainside, rolling over and over, I’d have thought Hades’ tentacles had gotten me.
It’s not until we finally roll to a stop and he jumps up to loom over me that I realize it’s Ares.
For a minute, I picture him shattering my token in the pre-game challenge during the Crucible when we all had to earn our gifts.
But he’s not the vindictive, competitive god he was in that moment.
This Ares isn’t worried about winning. He is still in full armor, but his helm is missing a portion of the face plate, and golden blood drips down one arm.
His one remaining eye grows wide as recognition sinks in. “Lyra?”
Even the god of war sounds shaken.
“How are you here?” he demands.
“I got out.” I don’t tell him that we all did. That won’t help yet.
Ares scrubs a hand over his jaw. “Thank the gods.” He glances back up the incline we rolled down, toward the temple. “Can you stop him?”
“That’s why I’m here.” I hold out a hand, and he pulls me to my feet. “He needs to see me. I don’t think he knows I’m out yet.”
Ares’ jaw goes hard. “It’s impenetrable. We’ve tried attacking in force, in waves, sneaking in one at a time. He’s battered us all away.”
“You shouldn’t have been fucking attacking at all.” The snarl that comes out of me fast and hard is pure Hades, and I swear Ares blanches.
“We’ll deal with that later,” I say. Definitely a threat.
He glances over me. “Your weapons will do no good, and teleporting doesn’t work.”
The teleporting, Hermes already told me. “I don’t plan to need weapons.”
The god frowns. “I can’t let you go in unarmed.”
“Hades is fighting to protect me. As soon as he sees I’m out, he’ll stop.”
Ares blows out a sharp breath. “Maybe. I’ve never seen him like this. Wild. Unhinged. Even when he leveled Olympus before.”
Because that was a controlled burn. I don’t say it out loud. “He’ll stop.” I believe that with all my heart. “But first he needs to feel safe from attack. I need all of you to stop fighting. Hermes is telling the others. Go help him.”
“I can’t leave you defenseless.”
I’ve always thought of Ares as one of the most handsome of the gods. Rugged in the way one would expect, but leanly muscled rather than bulky. Right now, he’s not the god of war, but the protector that many mortals forget he is.
“I’m not defenseless.”
“Lyra—”
He’s not letting this go.
Fine. “Can you send me Aphrodite, then? I need you out here if it doesn’t work.”
Indecision ripples over his face for only a heartbeat before his expression settles into determination. “Don’t get too close until she finds you.”
Then he’s gone.
“Right,” I say under my breath as I think through my next steps. “Don’t forget not to hum.”
I’m just about to teleport closer to the temple when a sound like a whimper comes from the bushes, followed by a rustle.
I crouch, axes ready, prepared to defend myself.
But when my panther tattoo emerges, limping hard, keeping her visibly broken left front paw off the ground, I run to her in an instant. She butts her head into my hand with a tiny chuff.
“Poor baby. Hades wouldn’t let you near?”
She shakes her head.
The others?
She turns, limping away, and I follow her, not too far down the mountain, to find the fox unconscious.
I run to him, dropping my axes on the ground to check him over, then let out a gusty sigh of relief when I find his chest moving.
The owl hoots, and I look up to find him in a tree, one wing also broken.
The tarantula, sitting on the owl’s good shoulder, at least looks unharmed.
I can’t risk Hades’ defensive system of fire and smoke hurting them further. “Thank you,” I say. I want to say more. Assure them that he wouldn’t have hurt them himself, that he had to be unaware of what was happening outside of where he’s trapped himself in the temple.
Instead, I recall them to my arm, where they can rest and heal.
Picking up my axes again, I make my way toward the temple path where Ares tackled me, stopping farther back. “Hades,” I call out. “It’s Lyra.”
A tentacle comes for me, making the air whistle it zeroes in so fast. I cross my axes in front of me, and the tentacle bounces off the invisible shield.
This time, though—unlike during Zeus’ Labor in the Crucible—I’m a goddess.
While I have to dig my feet in as I’m propelled backward, I’m not thrown to the ground.
“I guess you didn’t believe me,” I mutter under my breath.
Okay. He’s not going to just let me walk through. I kind of guessed that when he didn’t stop trying to dig me out of Tartarus.
I wrestle with panic that wants to take over. A thousand fears are shouting in my mind over the roar of my slamming heart. Is he this far gone? Can he be stopped? I have to get to him.
“Lyra! Thank the mother goddess!”