Receiver of Many

by Rachel Alexander

  “That’s the real reason, isn’t it?” Hypnos nodded toward the doorway as the priestess grew quiet.

  “Why we despise each other? No, it’s more complicated than that.”

  “What Hecate’s doing isn’t all bad. If our ways ever die out, they might be the only ones left who honor them.”

  “I’d hardly called what the mortals do ‘honoring’ our ways. And Mother agrees with me, anyway.”

  “Hecate doesn’t care what Mother thinks about her work. And she wouldn’t care one way or another about your opinions if you could just refrain from fucking the Lampades nymphs for—”

  “Well, where’s the fun in that, brother? Of course I leave them alone when they’re intact, but beyond that I don’t hold sacred anything she teaches them. Also, there are very few ways I can get under the white witch’s skin,” Thanatos said as they walked through the courtyard, “since she’s a sworn virgin.”

  A gold-painted statue of a goddess with perfect waves of hair and the crescent moon crowning her head stood where Hestia’s altar would have been if the kedeshah were from Hellas. He gazed up at the flawless folds of linen carved to drape over the relief of her perfect marble bust. Throughout Hellas, this goddess was called Aphrodite. But in this aspect, and to the priestess who owned this house, her name was Astarte. Gasps and the rhythmic groaning of the floorboards could be heard from the bedroom upstairs. The ritual coition had begun.

  “It doesn’t mean that you have to turn the only one who could have helped capture him against us!” Hypnos whispered sharply. “If you weren’t so busy with your amusements we wouldn’t have been wandering the frozen wastes for—”

  “Shh,” Thanatos quieted him. “It’s time.”

  Thanatos cast a glamour of invisibility over himself. It would have made no difference to the sight of a deathless one— only Hades’s helm could do that— but his mortal quarry wouldn’t see him until it was too late. Their preoccupation with the rite would aid Hypnos and Thanatos; it was why they chose this night. The hieros gamos in progress above them was a pantomime, a play-acting of the divine rite of the gods. Thanatos remembered long ago when he had scoffed at Hecate and her decision to teach the nymphs and mortal priestesses a rite in which she herself could not engage. The words she had shot back were painfully true, intended to wound him, and would have if he hadn’t already long passed beyond the point of caring what his mother’s strange little student thought about him.

  He forgot about the white witch and focused on their current impediment. The ladder leading up to the bedroom above would squeak. Flying in would rustle wings and disturb the air. Their quarry could be gone through the ether before they even caught sight of him. Thanatos listened to the hard push against the floorboards just above their head, and smiled. He glanced back at Hypnos and softly tapped on a rung of the ladder, his finger moving in time with the rhythm of the rutting above them. His brother nodded in agreement. They placed one foot after another in time with the grinding of the boards, the squeak of the rungs masked.

  When Thanatos reached the top of the ladder, he bit back an amused laugh at the scene before him and shook his head. The Canaanite priestess lay sprawled beneath her consort, her body covered from head to toe in gold dust. Her eyes were heavily lined with black kohl, the tips of her breasts and her lips stained red with ochre. A golden moon headdress, much like the statue in the courtyard, was precariously perched atop her head. It shook with each rock of her consort’s hips into her painted thighs.

  If her costume for this farce was garish, her partner’s was obscene. The man was likewise dusted in gold but his head was covered with the heavy gold mask of a bull decorated with carved ebony horns. Death imagined that he must look a bit like Asterion, the fearsome creature one of Minos’s forebears put in the labyrinthine tunnels underneath Crete. Thanatos had never seen the beast, but had collected his share of mortal souls from the sacrifices made to it. For all the abomination the very existence of Asterion was, it didn’t fairly compare to what he witnessed now. Thanatos ground his teeth at the sacred symbol of the Protogenoi drawn into the floor with gold dust and herbs. His grotesque quarry profaned it with every flex of his hips.

  Hypnos climbed the last steps next to him and raised his eyebrows at the scene before him before glancing up at his brother. Thanatos tilted his head toward them and motioned Hypnos to join him. Both unwound the chain from around Thanatos’s shoulder. They stepped carefully on the floorboards, but the mortals’ wild mating was too frenzied now for any rhythm to be necessary. Death felt blood coursing through him in anticipation, as alive as he usually felt when he was with Eris. He wondered as they drew out the long chain if this was how Aidoneus felt when he silently stole upon and garroted the sleeping Tyrant with the Chains of Tartarus. No, he thought. This was different. Kronos had destroyed everything Thanatos had ever cared about— forced his mother and father into exile, ruined and enslaved his family. This pithy mortal that thought himself a god, his attention diverted by the wealth of sensations overtaking his body, was no threat to them.

  It was nearly time; they were close. The woman’s moans were contrived. Thanatos had had enough women to know that for certain. So many of them were so used to putting on a show that they’d forgotten how to come, or worse, had to ignore their pleasure under the guise of ladylike respectability, lying still as their husbands used them. He took particular delight in helping them remember, or teaching them, before he took them. What little he’d seen of Merope’s olive skin flashed through his mind before he shook himself of his distraction and focused again. The priestess’s body arched too dramatically. Thanatos wondered if her cries were for the benefit of the man pumping away on top of her or the gods she served, or the neighborhood for that matter. The series of grunts from under the metal mask became ragged and his hips lost their tempo. Hypnos and Thanatos quietly looped another length of chain under and one length around the bull-headed man, careful not to touch him just yet. Hypnos took position on the other side of the pair and waited for Thanatos’s signal. He waited. He nodded.

  With all their might, they pulled. The chains stretched taut, the brothers straining to secure him in its bonds. They lifted him, uncoupling him from the woman at his moment of climax. His penis was violently pulled out of her, ropes of his seed landing on her gold painted stomach. Her squeals of feigned ecstasy turned to silent confusion as he convulsed against the invisible chain above the kedeshah’s supine body.

  “Now!” Thanatos yelled. Linen burned off into flying embers and the binding potency of Tartarus surged through the iron chain. The brothers let go of the ends. Suspended in the air, the links rattled and whipped around the kedeshah’s consort, ensnaring him. The Canaanite priestess lay on the floor, shielding herself. Her eyes grew wide as the Chains of Tartarus, Hypnos, and Thanatos appeared before her.

  She opened her mouth as far as she could, her blood-curdling scream echoing through the room and courtyard below. Hypnos swept his silvery hand through the air to guide the chain around the bull-headed consort. The man’s feet lifted off the ground, kicking fruitlessly in the air as it wound around his legs. Thanatos mimicked his brother, then closed his bony fist. The chains responded, binding the consort’s arms to his sides. Finally, the loose ends wrapped themselves around a wood beam above his head, suspending him from the rafters.

  The kedeshah scrambled on her palms and feet, backing up against the wall. A smear of gold was left in her wake; the six-pointed symbol she and her consort had laid in moments before was broken and distorted. When she couldn’t retreat any further, she started a new round of piercing screams, the back of her head smacking the wall.

  “Will you shut her up?!” Thanatos yelled over his shoulder.

  Hypnos brushed his palm over the dripping poppy he kept in the folds of his himation. He walked to the priestess and lightly pushed on her forehead with two sticky fingers. She slumped against the wall and fell to one side, unconscious and unmoving.

  “I said ‘shut he
r up’, not send her into an opium stupor!”

  “What did you expect me to do, Thanatos? Besides— now she won’t remember anything beyond getting fucked and passing out.”

  “Is she still breathing? The last thing I need tonight is to come all the way back here and harvest her shade.”

  Hypnos walked over to the kedeshah and lifted her wrist off the ground.

  “If I have to come back to this godsforsaken place, so help me, I’m dragging you back here with me!”

  “Quiet!” Hypnos pressed his thumb into her glittering flesh until he felt her pulse. “She’s alive.”

  A loop of the chains smacked the ground behind them as the man struggled and writhed one last time, testing the Chains of Tartarus. Thanatos pulled his sickle from his belt, and walked to within an inch of the bucking golden bullhead. Looking at the dangling man, he smirked, then pushed him with the blunt metal curve until he swung forward and back. His struggles waned.

  Thanatos chortled. “Those chains were crafted to bind Titans, you fool.”

  The bull mask slumped to his chest once he realized, humiliated, that any more struggles were in vain.

  “Well,” Hypnos smiled, “you almost made this look easy.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without you, brother.” Thanatos concentrated and appeared angelic once more, having heard enough screaming for one night. He raised his voice in melodic glee to speak to their prey. “Now— who have we here?”

  He pulled off the heavy mask by one of the dark horns and threw it aside, the gold nose of the bull denting in as it hit the floor with a hollow clang and rolled away behind them. Thanatos raised the mortal’s chin with the flat edge of his sickle. He was met with fear and fury and eyes as blue as the Aegean.

  “Sisyphus, I presume?”

  23.

  The first thing Persephone realized was that Aidoneus would prefer to avoid the Pit unless duty called him there. From the tension in his face and shoulders all morning, and the way he’d clung to her body last night, she guessed that he hadn’t been called there in quite some time. The second thing, and the very clear memory she tried to force from her mind as they made their way to the Phlegethon, was that she was standing on the very spot she had lost her innocence to him.

  He wore the same gauntlets and greaves they’d trained in the past month, the same cuirass she’d clung to as they plunged through the bowels of the earth, the same cloak he’d wrapped around her after he pierced her maidenhead. Kore had descended into Hades and burned away with her flimsy chiton. Persephone stood tall in her place, her silver cuirass binding a black peplos to her body. The helm Aidoneus gave her yesterday was raised and pulled back, set on her head like a crown. Her sword was slung across her left hip. Aidoneus wore his on his back in the way he had during the Titanomachy, saying it made for a quieter and quicker draw. He’d spent the last month teaching her the classical stances, and said that he would show her his own variations one day. When she had pressed him to learn his way, he’d smiled at Persephone and told her that she needed to know how to walk before she could learn how to run.

  The chariot rocked gently, flying over the vast river lands and marshes of Acheron, then turning to follow the snaking red rivulet of the Cocytus. Not a single one of the shades that lined its shore looked up to watch them pass overhead. His arms were on either side of her, tugging the reins every so often to guide the black steeds— and to keep them from spooking as they neared their destination.

  “You’re very quiet,” he said. Aidon had been silent himself before he said it, and she suspected that he was trying to ease his own trepidation as much as hers. She wondered if their last journey in this chariot played as prominently in his mind as it did in hers.

  “Just taking in everything.” She looked back at him with a forced smile that she hoped was reassuring. His eyes regarded her softly, though the rest of his countenance remained set in stone, his hair tightly pulled back from his face. His helm rested between her feet. She thought of the crack of his staff when he had hammered it into the center of the courtyard not an hour ago. Persephone had stood next to him as the beasts and chariot sprang out of the crumbling ground with a billow of smoke, so very much like her last day in the sunlight. The girl that was Kore reached upward for the sun even as the chariot descended, knowing that where they were headed she would be even further removed from its warmth. Even the woman that was Persephone shifted back and forth, knowing that the meager light that reached them through the Styx would be absent in Tartarus. She swallowed, imagining the possibility of never escaping, trapping her in crushing darkness, then shook the thought from her head. “Where do the horses live?”

  “Living might not be the right word. They are creatures of the ether— bound to my will. Each of the Children of Kronos had a chariot during the war. Gifts from Helios and Selene.” He smiled playfully, trying to lighten the mood. “Your mother’s chariot was drawn by a pair of flying serpents.”

  Persephone looked back at him in surprised delight. “Really? What happened to them?”

  “I wish I knew,” he shrugged. The mists started glowing with fire as they got closer, and the smile faded from Aidon’s face. “If you wouldn’t mind picking up my helm for me…”

  Persephone turned to him, watching him smooth back the couple loose curls of his hair that never seemed to obey his comb. He bent down to her height and she slid the Helm of Darkness over his head. Aidoneus straightened and looked down at her, only his bearded chin and mouth visible underneath the golden faceplate.

  Hold on!

  She froze, remembering the first words Aidoneus had said to her when she saw him— touched him— real and in the flesh, in all his dark glory, his arm closing around her waist and her fists bruising against his armor. It was yesterday; it was an aeon ago. The same hidden face of the Lord of the Underworld looked back at her now. He didn’t smile, but brought his hand up and trailed the back of his fingers across her cheek to reassure her, though both knew that there was no comfort where they were going.

  Persephone faced forward once more and steeled herself. She saw the great fiery ring of the Phlegethon at last. She’d created a likeness of it each time she traveled through the ether, and woke up every morning in Aidon’s arms feeling the steady warmth of the River of Fire emanating from the hearth. The River Phlegethon was new yet familiar, its orange fires licking and swirling above a gyre of molten stone. A vortex of flame from its edges swirled toward the center, covering the entrance to the Pit of Tartarus. The coursers started to snort and pull on their reins, their feet skipping rhythm. Persephone felt her heart beat faster as the chariot angled down, and tried to stay calm so she wouldn’t further spook the horses. She felt her husband’s arm protectively circle around her waist, holding her fast against him.

  “Do you remember Nysa?”

  She shivered. “Wh-which time?”

  He sighed, and held her closer. He should have phrased it differently. “The last time; at night in the grove. The thing that I… reacted to… was the change that Tartarus made in your appearance. In the same way that Chthonia changed us when we became its rulers, Tartarus changes you when you descend into the abyss. When it happens, don’t be afraid.”

  Don’t be afraid, sweet one… We’re only passing through Erebus… the light will return…

  Where they were headed there was no light. Except Ixion’s Wheel, she thought, remembering the mysterious things Merope spoke of. She looked back at Aidoneus, whose face was fixed and solemn, his persistent barrier returning, so strong it blocked out even her. “How do we get through to the Pit?”

  “The Phlegethon will part for us, and only us,” Aidon said.

  “They call me Praxidike down there. What do they call you?”

  He was silent for a moment, his breathing measured, before he spoke again. “I have many names in Asphodel and in the world above. But in Tartarus, I’m only known as The Unseen One.”

  The Unseen One. Hades.

  Hades held
her against him, the heat of the fire below warming her face. As he said it would, the vortex spun a narrow, dark eye into its center, just large enough for the passage of the chariot and nothing more. The winding River of Fire circled deafeningly about them, then above them. Persephone pulled her shoulders back and drew in long breaths through her nose, not willing to let any fear crowd into her mind. If it did, she would be lost. She remembered why she was here— to speak to the Hundred Handed Ones. To see the darker half of her realm. To know who she was; why she was. A rail of light from above pierced the darkness, lighting their way before the fiery seal over Tartarus lensed shut. The rusty, wavering glow of the Phlegethon fire was now their only illumination.

  The chariot leveled, and she felt lighter, as though the whole thing were falling in slow motion. It took Persephone a moment to realize that falling was exactly what they were doing. Filled with a sense of vertigo, she turned around to face her husband and get her bearings. The passageway to the Pit yawned on every side of them, a hollow cylinder of jagged obsidian that stretch forever into the abyss. Holding Hades’s arm, she looked over the edge of the chariot. A circle of sharp white teeth stretched out from the walls, their points framing the entire passageway.

  “What is that?”

  “The Ouroboros of Kampe,” he said. “The true boundary between Asphodel and Tartarus.”

  They descended further, the teeth growing larger in their view. It wasn’t until they got closer that she could see that they weren’t in fact teeth, but the protruding edges of an immeasurable serpentine ribcage, glowing in the dimmed light of the Phlegethon fathoms above them. The bleached skeleton was coiled around the entire passageway, each rib larger than the one before it. The spine ended in a horned skull with teeth as long and as sharp as the sword at her side. Stuck along the length of the Ouroboros were bronze and iron spears. Its neck was broken and pinioned to the rock by a heavy iron bident, and its tail sat lightly clasped in its jaw.