Hades
Chapter eighty-eight
The scream hit me harder, sharper than the moment a heart gives way.
Persephone’s scream—raw, terrified—cut above the laughter, the music, the hiss of flames. The goblet in my hands shattered, spilling the wine across my hands like blood. Something was wrong.
For one single heartbeat, nobody moved save for me as I charged towards the double doors to the rear lawn.
“Hecate.” I summoned her, and my trusted ally manifested to my side, already in motion. Her eyes were wide, non-comprehending.
“Hades, the wards—”
The wards were clean mere hours ago. How could they falter? But falter they did. I felt it in the shudder the ground did. The underworld itself convulsed, trying to shake off the corruption that clung to it like a layer of ash.
“Remember our earlier strategizing? Our preparations?” At her hesitant nod, I continued hastily before she could interject,” Get everyone out of here.
Out of House Hades and sever all ties.” I stopped, bringing her stride short when she stopped with me, a strong, questioning gaze on me. “Do you understand?”
Her jaw ground with great reluctance. “I do.”
“Go now.” I didn’t wait for her reply. I ran. “Persephone.” Her name left me as a growl, dangerous and low amidst the growing sounds of panic. “You’d better be okay when I find you.”
The sound came again, fainter this time, nearly swallowed by the shifting walls of ivy and greenery.
I didn’t wait. The mouth of the maze we’d previously entered was unrecognizable.
The frame of hedges that was so unassuming before with its white flowers that now wept black ichor, strange sigils glowing and burning out one by one.
The air reeked of sulfur, fire, and desiccation.
I could feel it. Like the Underworld was sick. Weakened down to the very bones of the realm. Like it was rotting.
Like a corpse left in the sun.
The ground trembled again, threatening my footing as I strode forward into the maze. The rivers all wailed in unison, a thousand anguished whispers screaming at once. Darkness bled, spilling from cracks that shouldn’t exist.
“Persephone!”
She didn’t answer.
But someone else did.
A laugh in the dim. Female. Low, melodic, spreading through my mind like the rot through House Hades.
“You patch the wound, and still, it festers.” The whispers came, echoing the words of the Morningstar.
My power surged, desperate to meet this new threat, terror undulating with pure desperation to save Persephone. I moved fast, but the corruption beneath my feet was faster, greying out the green that Persephone had lovingly tended.
I bared my teeth, a snarl tearing loose as I twisted left, following the echoing laughter. The maze itself convulsed, every branch, twig, and vine cracking. In that moment, before the storm took hold of me, before I lost myself to the very violence for which I was known, I heard her again.
Faint. Too faint.
“Hades….” Her voice was fading, like color leeching and weathering with age.
Like the slow retreat of life.
Darkness could have swallowed me whole when I turned the next corner.
I fell to my knees at the sight of the limp body before I’d even realized I’d fallen.
Death, on his knees for Life having lost. The world narrowed to this moment, this stillness, this paleness as the buzzing in my ears hit a crescendo.
A scream cleaved the very air around me, wordless, senseless, grief-stricken.
A female being stood triumphantly, with my beloved’s head in her grasp, hanging from her hair.
Even in death, Persephone’s final scream showed on her face.
Her final moment of agony immortalized in the way her lips wrenched open like her last scream tore its way out of her.
Her storm meadow green eyes were dull and lifeless.
My heart staggered in time with my knees. I had failed her.
I held dominion over death, and still I failed her. I was its king, yet this was the one thing for which I could not bargain. I would have given anything, a life for a life, any magic. The Underworld’s law was absolute.
I understood now why Demeter hated me so much. I hated myself even more.
The Underworld shook catastrophically now and didn't stop—whether from the force of my wrath or from the corruption, I couldn’t tell—but the realm became violent.
Stones fell around us from the castle landing with a crash.
Her name broke free from my lips on a shriek, the sounds too small for what it meant.
Something inside me, something eternal, stopped.
“Name yourself, vermin.” The growl was a command, the last thread of my restraint fraying beneath my grief. Even the shadows sought refuge from the fury pouring off of me in waves. My eyes found the female again, grinning her glee. I was a storm turning all to ruin.
“How tragic. All that power, sweet Lord of the Dead,” she purred, her corruption leaching the ground of color. “And you still couldn’t keep her. We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Lilith, the first demon.”
I bared my teeth. The shadows around me shifted, alive, vengeful, and screaming for retribution. My eyes snagged on something metallic catching the light.
A bone saw.
Red colored my vision as rage flooded me, pushing grief and despair to the side.
“You mistake my grief for weakness.” The air thickened as it cracked, audibly booming in my ears as the maze came down around us, opening my eyes to the devastation.
Fire erupted, sending fumes to the sky where the freshly patched breach cleaved open.
Wider, bigger than before. My shadows exploded, shaking the ground, and fissuring out around me.
“You’ve lost.” The female laughed.
“You think yourself immortal.” Not a question that I asked.
An observation. I stepped forward, my bident coming immediately out of the ether to my aid.
My hands shook with the need to avenge the goddess of spring, whose blood soaked the ground mere feet away.
“I am the end of immortals. I am the silence that becomes even the titans.”
She faltered, that triumphant mask cracking for a breath.
“I will unmake you slowly,” I vowed, pressing closer, my bident demanding blood. “Not with flame. Nor a blade. But with my bare hands. With hunger. With vengeance. Death takes all paths, opens all doors. There is no corner of creation in all the cosmos where I cannot find you.”
A boom thundered as her tendrils rot collided with my shadows, and I lunged.
Metal shrieked, the impact shuddering through my arms. Her sword flashed in hues of orange as the flames danced, razed everything around us.
The sword came for me. I didn't evade. I didn't parry.
I didn't feel it, didn't acknowledge it.
I welcomed it. Anything was better than the sight of her blood still trickling into the ground.
The bite on my shoulder would be nothing compared to what was coming and when I made Lilith bleed, all I could do was savagely smile through the spray on my face and lunge again.
This wasn't sense. Wasn't strategy. This was bloodlust marrying grief and setting the entire underworld ablaze.
“And yet, she belongs to me.” Lilith preened. My bident shot out in fury for her shoulder as she twirled away, the prongs destined for the back of her torso. Steel shot out in an impossible feat of strength, her arms over her head staying my blow.
I refused to stop, hacking, slashing, shockwaves abounding with every clash.
“You have her body.” My voice shook, despite myself. I swung again, missing when she leapt backwards to the edge of the inferno that surrounded us, her grin widening. "You will not keep it."
“Does this look like her body to you?” She threw a hand up, showcasing a white ball. Everything inside me froze.
Persephone’s soul.
I could feel her, like a light burning away a shadow. A tear slid down my cheek. Even in death, my beloved would fight.
If she could fight, so could I.
I railed into this demon of corruption with everything I had, unleashing myself in a torrent of rage and despair, laughing when her knees buckled against my might.
“You cannot hold her. She’s the spring goddess, crafted from sunlight and pure life. She will carve through your rot. She’s mine. In every lifetime. Every death, every life of hers belongs to me.”
Above the clashing of steel and shadow and rot, a single word rang out. A voice that had anguish flooding in again, more crippling than before.
Run!
My eyes stung with tears.
Persephone.
I’d never run. A war cry tumbled from my mouth as my bident moved, swinging towards the first demon’s head.
In one sickly shimmer, the rotting vines pulsed with corruption, winding their way around Lilith, around Persephone’s soul like living veins in a claim.
The realm cracked down the center.
My power flared, a monolithic display of violence and wrath descending over them both. I would free Persephone’s soul, if nothing else.
But my wrath did not hit its target. Lilith vanished, retreated, disappearing into the veins of her corruption, spreading into it like the rot she was. I through my bident, honed in on her smug, triumphant face, seething when it sailed through, flames licking where she had been standing.
There was no time to chase. I called, my bident returning to my hand.
I turned, my shadows crawling over my body like armor as the inferno, as the cleaved, uneven ground gave birth to nightmares.
This was it. A war I was the sole soldier for.
My bident swung, dispatching three before they drew a second breath in my realm.
Another raked its claws down my arm, sending blood pulsing to the ground.
Ignoring the pain and shoving it to the fringes of my mind, I ripped its spine from its chest, discarding it just as quickly as it appeared.
One with two mouths full of razor teeth and broken limbs lunged for my throat.
My bident speared it midair, driving it into the ground so hard the ground fractured outwards in a spiral.
I grit my teeth. This was a horde like a living wall of monsters, an army with only one purpose; to destroy the underworld and its king.
There is nowhere to hide that death cannot chase, I silently vowed. Demon after demon, monster after monster, I slew without hesitation as they erupted from the rot that now pulsed like a throbbing wound. Without thought. Without mercy.
Even when teeth met the flesh of my shoulder, even when I bled, I uttered no scream of pain. There was only vengeance. The Underworld itself trembled more, partly in agony, partly from seeing what its chosen king had become.
“The wards have failed. The corruption seeks the rest of the Underworld. We’re out of time!” Hecate shouted from above, riding the chariot and by her side whined Cerberus. My heart ached. “You have to run.”
“There’s no time!” I yelled back, dispatching another demon. “Go. Seal it all off.”
“You’ll die!” Hecate's desperation, something I'd previously thought impossible, screamed into the empty air between us. “If I complete the seal of the barriers over the rest of the Underworld, you’ll be lost to the corruption!”
“I’ll be with her. They can take House Hades, but they will not have the rest of the realm,” I swathed through another demon, dispatching it in fury. “It all falls to you, Hecate!”
Get everyone to safety, I mentally begged of my dear friend.
“Yes, my king.” Hecate gave one tear, a great honor if I had ever seen one. So many things passed unspoken between us in that moment. Familial love. Respect. Allegiance. “I hope you find her.” Her words floated on the breeze down to where I swathed a path of destruction.
I hoped so too.
Hecate was gone. The nymphs were safe with her. I knew they were sealed off when I could no longer feel the heartbeat of the realm. The heart of the Underworld was a cancer, excised and defeated.
I felt the air rattle with expectancy, with triumph turn to anger.
I smirked. Anger that wasn’t mine.
The Morningstar’s voice bellowed around me like the sudden crack of thunder. “What did you do?”
“I did what any good king does. I saved the realm.” I grinned widely at the sky, laughing maniacally. “The corruption was contained here, so this is all you get. No souls, no expansive territory. You’re stuck here. Congratulations on the new graveyard!”
“Your head will roll for this!”
The intentional choice of words was a blow. The monster who called himself a god laughed as he watched it land with the unbidden image of Persephone’s head rolling at my feet. And then, he did the only thing he could do.
He sent every demon he controlled after me.
I swathed a pile of bodies high enough it littered the sky. Demons and gore fell from mountains made entirely of corpses, but at last, the king of the Underworld, the king of the dead, breathed his last.
In a fury, surrounded by death, protecting the realm I grew to love against my will, the shadows I had forever commanded finally came looking for me.
I couldn't even bring myself to feel anything but relief as death darkened my vision.
I'd be with her. Wherever our souls would meet, I could care less.
I surrendered to them gladly.