Chapter 2 Hades
Hades
I am nothing without my Persephone.
Nothing.
The pieces inside of me are hollow and empty. A shell of what I once was.
My power is meaningless without her beside me.
Anger and contempt are all that remain. My self-control has nearly gone. All the rage I have held inside me for so many years threatens to unleash itself on any poor soul who dares confront me.
I cannot tolerate this feeling. This emptiness. The places where she should be. She is missing from everywhere I look. She should be there, at the table. She should be there, in the bed. She should be there, in the hall.
She should be by my side. At this very moment, I need her.
Persephone should be kneeling at the grate, her gaze glinting at the magic she has worked.
Persephone should be pacing the room, a book in her hands, reading as she walks.
Persephone’s enchantments should still hold, but the bell she spelled to the door has fallen silent.
It has no one to protect anymore. The chill in the air notes her absence.
I cannot stand this room and leave it without looking at the bell.
I cannot tolerate being without her. I should’ve fought my way out of the Underworld. I should’ve gone to Olympus and shattered all its pretty white columns. I should’ve reached to every other realm, pulled it into the Underworld, and made it mine if that’s what it takes to have her.
Fate betrays me as I cannot. It is not possible to cross the realms. A sickness settles deep in my gut as my hands tremble with anger at my own doing.
I cannot do those things, and it does far more than infuriate me.
It makes me grieve. An emotion I have never felt.
She is lost to me. I cannot speak to her. I cannot touch her. I cannot even see her. As I stare into the abyss, I ignore the remaining screams, although they have slowed. Instead I focus on the memory of her touch and her voice and the beauty of her very existence.
I crave her. I’ve never desired anything. I knew not what it was to want.
It’s worse than losing my power. It is worse than losing my title. Sharper than any pain I have felt.
It is worse than war.
I stalk through the halls of my home, Cerberus at my side. He butts his noses against my leg and goes ahead of me so he can get underfoot, letting out low, worried barks until I drop to one knee near one of the garden exits.
“It’s all right,” I tell Cerberus, stroking the ears of one head, then the next, then the next. “It will be all right.”
I’m lying through my teeth, and Cerberus seems to know that, because he whines again.
Does he miss her as I do? Does he know that I cannot live without her?
I cannot say. But I do not want him to witness what will come next if she does not return as promised. Patience is a virtue that betrays me with this grief.
I get to my feet and move, ordering Cerberus to stay behind.
There is still unrest in the Underworld. Still crashes of rock and violent winds and souls lighting up the sky, crying out as they go.
I storm through my realm. I can barely control my fury. My teeth clench; my muscles coil, begging me to tear the ground apart. Destroy everything that meets my eyes. What does it matter without Persephone?
We had a deal. The betrayal only threatens the belief that she will return.
I picture her face as she turned to look at me, one final time before Hecate took her away. Her beauty and innocence are unmatched.
I wish I had given her more morsels of the truth I know.
If she does not return, there will only be one realm. And I will rule it in its entirety.
They wish for me to live in a hell of my own making.
The gods have created an imbalance.
If they do not return her… Anger bristles. I’d rather they destroy my own soul than to live a single moment of peace knowing she is not by my side.
She is my queen, and I cannot even speak to her!
I let out a howl of pure anger. It’s rough on my throat, burning as it leaves me. I thought my self-control was already gone, but now it is splitting. Now it is crumbling under the force of my loss. The demons of the realm return the howl. Ready for war. Ready to fight where I command them to.
Persephone should never have had to leave. A queen should never have to leave her realm.
It is a cruel trick that she has.
A trick I have, in part, played on myself.
My own mind seems to split from the pain of what was and what could have been. What should be. Again, my body trembles, the power within me barely contained.
Crazed perhaps. Will I lose my mind without her?
I love her. I spoke the words. She knows, and now she will have that truth with her in Olympus, where it is dangerous.
Deadly.
I turn around on the path simply needing to move. Every hall is suffocating. I’ve been moving without paying attention and have crossed great swaths of my realms, leaving me alone in a wide, foggy field. The place of a thousand years of memories.
This is not where I need to be.
I need to be at Persephone’s side, with her hand in mine and our realms spread out before us, but I cannot go to her.
Instead, I go to the river.
My realms blur as I move through them again. My heart pounds and what rushes through my veins is not blood. It must be oil or acid. It feels like it should melt through me, reducing me to nothing, but it does not.
I let out a horrible, bitter laugh. Of course this feeling will not kill me. Of course I will keep surviving. I did that before when I had no hope of seeing the sun, and I will do it now, against my fucking will.
In the meantime, someone else will pay. Anyone else.
I set my sights on the vision before me.
The banks of the river teem with souls. The blue hues seem to melt together.
The souls in the water fade to a gray as the life leaves them, and on the shore, pushing past one another, confused and looking for comfort.
Searching for peace and an end to their suffering.
I am not here to comfort them.
I lunge at the nearest souls, hate and grief overwhelming me completely. If I cannot have Persephone, these souls will not have a life in the Underworld. If I am to be denied the only touch I have been able to stomach in a thousand years, then I will deny them everything.
I rip souls in two with my bare hands. Ash coats the roughness of my palms as they fall to pieces beneath me.
The souls are less substantial than their mortal bodies, but not by much.
This is why the Fates carry shears. Most souls have strength in them—a strength that grew from their will to survive in their mortal existence.
The cord of their strength resists being cut. It fights against the shears, too, but the Fates are determined.
I am not determined. I am obsessed. I cannot see past this pain. It is red and black. The color of fire. The sound of a scream. Is that the souls, or does the wretched sound come from me?
I do not care. I do not need to know either.
Demeter and Zeus are not the only gods who can create an imbalance. It is within my power too, and they would do well to remember that. I picture them as I end the souls’ existence before me. They will pay for this pain. If they do not return her, I will allow the imbalance to destroy us all.
“Hades.” The voice echoes behind me. A chill runs down my spine as my body is paralyzed.
The voice is three-toned. I know it at once, but the anger cannot be tamed for me to return attention to them.
I destroy another soul. It fights, digging its nails into my skin, forcing blood to spill, but I hardly feel it. I ignore the ferocity in the soul’s eyes and pull until it comes apart with a last, dying scream.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see them.
The Fates. Standing there in the gowns that shift and change.
Their clothes seem to match, then shift again.
Part of their trick. They are of the past and the future.
They are of the present. They are of fate and prophecy, and yet they have given me this.
I sacrificed my life for all. To be condemned here within the confines of the Underworld. Alone and yet surrounded by all.
The only thing that matters to me is gone. My soulmate. My love. My queen. My everything.
This is how Zeus wanted it. How the Fates allowed it.
He wanted me to rage and suffer and despair. I know that I am playing into his hands by feeling these things, by acting on them, but I cannot stop. The pain is too great.
He will pay. They will all pay.
“Hades,” the Fates cry out again, their tone demanding this time. I do not look at them although my body stills. I reach for another soul and destroy it without registering any of its features. This soul barely had any fight left. Perhaps it had been tortured enough.
“You act as if Persephone is gone forever.”
“She very well might be,” I spit in the direction of the Fates. I cannot make out their features clearly, but I can see that they judge me. That they find me lacking. As losing my mind. As evil. “There must have been a way where she did not need to leave.”
There must’ve been, the thought hisses in the back of my mind.
There is silence. Nothing but silence between us.
I turn away and reach for another soul. This one is strong and determined and tries to wrench itself out of my grasp. I will not let it go. I dig my fingers in and pull with all my strength and all my wrath. It splits with an anguished howl.
A small, quiet part of me points out that it is my anguish the soul has died for. That what I feel is heartbreak, not a thirst for blood.
I do not listen. I cannot listen. What else do I have, if not the power of death after life? What else do I have?
Nothing.
“You gain the attention of war,” the Fates say, stepping closer.
It is a brave thing to do when my hands are not my own.
When my strength is not my own. When my only wish is to destroy, so that the realms around me can be as broken as I feel.
I do not dare to look at a peaceful scene.
I do not want to look at things that are whole and untouched.
I want my vision to reflect the carnage inside me.
“Hades,” they warn, “the attention of war,” they repeat.
I’m always gaining the attention of some entity that wants to torture me. And yet I have always taken it in my stride. I cannot hide. I have never been able to hide.
I could not even hide from Persephone, who saw me. And touched me. And let me love her.
And walked away.
She had to walk away. I know that. No matter how many times I remind myself that I know, it does not help.
Not tonight. Not when my heart has been torn from my chest just as surely as I tear these souls apart. I did not know my heart could be shredded like this.
“Demeter has not stopped,” the Fates say.
I whirl around, breathing hard, and force myself to focus on them. They stand by the banks of the river, and suddenly I cannot bear the sight.
I find myself standing in the shallow water, chill seeping into my feet.
While the Fates watch, I slosh out of the river and leave.
I am not aware of traveling along the path, nor am I aware of descending into the caverns where souls are punished. I only come back to myself when I find a screaming, bloodied soul and split him into ragged pieces.
When I look up from my work, the Fates are watching, expressions impassive.
“She has not stopped,” they repeat.
“I know that!” My head aches. A mother’s pain is brutal, and I feel it etched in the souls I hold in my hands.
It is my doing. I need more to ruin. I need more to destroy.
I need more to end, since I cannot end myself.
“I know. The souls are Demeter’s doing.” I gesture to the remains at my feet.
“And this is mine. Do you have a point? I am growing tired of waiting to reach it.”
“You wish for war. We have warned you, Hades. Zeus will win.”
“I wish for Persephone,” I growl, and then I cannot stop. “If war is what must happen, I will meet it. I will not live without her.”
A scream of pure fury, pure rage shakes my teeth. My throat cannot possibly sustain it, but it does. My anger is too deep, too raw, never-ending. Until she is back in my arms.
Zeus will not win. And if he wins, as the Fates seem to think he will, then it will be an empty victory, because there will be nothing left for him to claim.
I move through the cavern like a whirlwind, destroying every soul that crosses my path. There is not enough blood in all the Underworld to satisfy me. There is certainly not enough in these caverns, so when I find myself at an exit, I leave.
But I will not stop. I cannot stop. Every time my mind grasps for calm, a memory of Persephone resurfaces. Persephone, ill and afraid on the rug in my rooms. Persephone, sated and pleasured in my bed. Persephone, beside me at court, looking upon the souls to be judged with empathy and care.
Persephone, looking back at me as she left. As she left me.
Regret is a horrid thing.
These memories are so painful in her absence that others force their way into my mind. I do not want to think of my years of torturous isolation, but each one of them plays out in my thoughts. The hopelessness. The dark. The knowledge that I would never be free.
No one gave me mercy. No one could understand. I didn’t know that what I needed was love until I had it and then lost it.
Before her, nothing mattered. There was no one to miss me. No one to wait for my return home. No one to love me.
No one to touch me.
There is no one here to touch me anymore. Not the way she did.
I rage through the Underworld, screaming her name, ripping and tearing. Biting and clawing. Destroying and destroying and destroying. Hundreds of souls. Multitudes.
I cover the entire Underworld in a layer of ash.
I have been burned to the ground. Imbalance is what Demeter wanted, and I will level it all, death will be her legacy as well. Unless Persephone returns to me, all that will exist is death. So mote it be.