Receiver of Many

by Rachel Alexander

  “She once guarded Tartarus. Kronos sealed the Cyclopes and Hundred Handed Ones here for nearly all the aeons of his rule, so your father, Poseidon, and I had to destroy Kampe to free them and make them our allies. But the barrier between Tartarus and the rest of the cosmos was still bound up within her, just as it is now,” he said as they passed level with the vanquished serpent’s spine.

  Persephone watched his armor tarnish and dull to charcoal black, unreflective, as though the light itself was trying to escape him. Hades’s skin paled further than his usual pallor, appearing bone white, any vestiges of the few years he spent in the sun obliterated. Behind the slits of his helm, each of his dark irises lit up with a rim of orange fire. Persephone shuddered, knowing at once that this was what he saw in her when she reached through the ether in Nysa. She looked down, her silver armor also turning black and dulled, her skin looking as lifeless as his, shadowy veins wending their way across her wrists. When his jaw clenched minutely, she knew it was because her eyes were cast in the same fire as his.

  “Below the dark of Erebus, there are no Olympians,” he said solemnly. “Below the Ouroboros, there are no gods.”

  “No gods…” she repeated. Persephone looked up at the Ouroboros, its bones silhouetted against the vanishing light of the Phlegethon. The River of Fire reflected in their eyes became the only available light and the passage widened immeasurably. The obsidian walls on either side of them faded into the encompassing black.

  “The Hundred Handed Ones and the Erinyes aren’t gods, but they preside over the Pit of Tartarus,” Hades reached to the side of the chariot and raised a long metallic torch. “You may want to avert your eyes when I light this.”

  Persephone squeezed her eyes shut, then blinked them open, tears welling in response to a light so harsh it was like gazing into the sun. The torch flared hot white, blindingly bright against the darkness. Hades squinted as well while their eyes adjusted. “I’ve never seen light like that before.”

  “White magnes. This is the only way to produce light in Tartarus.” He held it aloft, but its glow touched nothing but them. Persephone didn’t know if the walls were absorbing all light or if they were so far away that even the blinding torch couldn’t reach them. “Any other flame burns black down here.”

  She saw twisted stalagmites of razor-sharp obsidian and hexagonal columns of basalt appear below, like great jagged teeth threatening to snap shut around them and trap them here forever. The chariot jarred to a stop as it touched the ground. Their horses whinnied quietly and nervously, one of them stamping their feet. All else was silent.

  “Keep close and stay behind me,” he said in a hushed voice as he jumped down from the back of the chariot. He offered her his hand. Persephone lifted the skirt of her peplos and set one sandaled foot, then the other in Tartarus.

  She had imagined that it would be unbearably hot. ‘May you forever burn in Tartarus’ was always the curse mortals made against their enemies. However, it wasn’t scorching flames and acrid smoke that greeted her but… absence. No light, no sound, nothing to touch. Isolation.

  It was cold, save for a prickly electric vibration that shot through her, making her shiver. She wondered if that came from the Pit, or from the fear she felt. She wondered if there was a difference. A jaundiced glow emanated from far away in the wide caverns, twisting around the rocks, too faint to produce shadows. The metal torch Hades held in his left hand lit their way.

  They walked on in utter silence. Persephone could hear her breath and her husband’s near-silent footfall. Her heel slipped on some small rocks, and the stones bounced off the side of a precipice beside the pathway. She hadn’t noticed the steep drop, and listened closely, but didn’t hear the pebbles land anywhere.

  “Careful,” he whispered, and lowered the torch to their feet so she could comprehend how precarious their journey was. They were on a stone path no wider than the hallway outside their private rooms. As her eyes adjusted, she saw it meandering labyrinthine through the immense cavern, either side of it dropping sharply into the darkness. The path they had already walked also angled and swerved in a pattern that made no sense, but she hadn’t remembered them turning in any direction as they’d walked it. Its edges wavered, as if it were a sandy road baked by the midday sun. Looking at it made her eyes hurt.

  “What is below us?”

  “Nothing,” Hades said pointedly.

  Persephone shivered. She followed him to the center of the stone bridge— if it could be called that— and stopped when he did. He tensed, his heels digging into the ground, alert. Then she heard it— a soft hissing and staccato shallow breathing. They looked up at a crack in the ceiling far above and saw pupilless white eyes set in a shadowy gaunt face staring back at them. The creature clung to the rocks with wiry limbs, its black leathery wings fanning out, beating without flight. Its head was turned completely around like an owl’s. The daimon stopped breathing and stared right at her.

  “Persephone…” Hades took a step back to shield her. She stared up, as transfixed and frozen as the creature, then startled when it skittered into the crack, its claws loosening gravel that pelted the pathway ahead of them.

  “Th—” Her mouth went dry. “That was—”

  “One of the Keres,” Hades finished. “Daughters of Nyx. The daimones of violent death.”

  A whistled shriek tore through the cavern, echoing off the walls, lost in the nothingness below them. They heard it answered by another wail from ahead, and a third from behind them. Then they stopped. All fell silent again.

  A high-pitched ping sounded against her helm, then a steady rain of dust and small pebbles fell from above. Hades and Persephone looked up, the ceiling alive, crawling, running, from every crevice a mass of thin wings, whispered hisses, and tapping claws.

  “Persephone, get back and lower your helm.”

  She stood frozen as he quickly pulled his sword off his back and held it ready, the torch in his other hand. Silence. The Keres had stopped moving.

  A shrill in a thousand voices— an earsplitting chorus— filled the cavern. The daimones peeled off the walls and ceiling, flapping madly toward the light of the torch.

  “Lower your helm!” Hades yelled back at her.

  She pulled it down and stumbled back from him, watching her husband disappear into the darkness with the light of the torch. Everything around her moved and swirled dark and chaotic, the Keres’ shrill cries unbearable. A wail sounded behind her, getting closer. Persephone dropped to the ground as it flew past where her head had been moments before, the Ker sailing, claws outstretched, in the direction of where Hades stood invisible. She backed up and lay prone against the cold rocks. Screams and trills filled the darkness, punctuated by the nauseating wet slice of a sword cutting through flesh and bone.

  Persephone heard him yell and saw the flash of torchlight appear again. A Ker chewed on his arm above the gauntlet, and he appeared, his ability to remain invisible momentarily lost amidst the pain. With gritted teeth and wild eyes, he pushed his blade through the daimon’s skull, shaking its body off of his sword and casting it into the abyss. On the backstroke, Hades sliced clean through the wings of another, then slashed in wide circular arcs as the black mass of Keres swarmed around him, eclipsing the torchlight. He disappeared again and all went darker than before, her night sight ruined by the white torch. But it was too late. The Unseen One had been seen.

  Persephone blinked hard as the burning light trailed across her vision again. She muffled a shriek with the back of her hand as a Ker grasped at Hades’s helm and threw it clear of his head. It landed on its side and rolled next to her, the empty faceplate and eye slits staring at her accusingly. You did this, it said to her. You wanted this.

  The daimones attached themselves to Hades like iron to a lodestone. Their talons scratched at his head and arms, tearing his cloak. He used the torch in concert with his blade to beat them off of him. Its lit end swung through the air and shattered a Ker’s face. Against the burning
white light, he turned and she finally saw him. Bites and gashes lacerated his arms. A dark scratch stretched from his eyebrow to his jaw leaking a stream of gold-flecked blood down his neck. Ichor. She stopped breathing.

  Gods above, what have I done? Why didn’t I listen? Persephone panicked. We should never have come here. I shouldn’t be here… Aidoneus, my love, what have I done?

  She was about to draw her sword and rush in to help him, heedless of falling into nothingness or being slashed to ribbons by either the Keres talons or her husband’s blade. Hades fell to one knee and Persephone watched helplessly as he fought them back and rose to his feet again.

  Praxidike?

  “Who’s there?” She looked around her, seeing no one.

  Not so loud, Praxidike, the many voices said in unison. They should not hear you before they see you.

  “Make them stop!” she whispered. “Make them stop hurting him!”

  They do not hold allegiance to us. Or to him, Praxidike.

  “What do you mean?! Hades is their—”

  The Keres do not recognize him. He bears the likeness of the Enemy.

  “…Kottos?”

  No, Praxidike, I am Gyges. Kottos is my brother. He’s the pretty one. The many-voiced one chuckled at his own remark.

  Hades bellowed in fierce determination, fighting his way above the twisting fray of black limbs and wings. He swung his sword overhand, cleaving through the daimones, separating wings, arms, a foot, a neck as it sliced down. The torch fell from his other hand and rolled away.

  “This isn’t funny,” she whispered to Gyges. “Do something!”

  I cannot. Only you can. You are their queen, after all…

  “What?!” Persephone said in disbelief. Their queen? “What do I do?”

  Stand. Take off your helm. Let them see you.

  “Are you mad?!”

  Not so loud, Praxidike. Please trust me, my queen; they saw you disappear and thought he was to blame.

  “Run! Persephone, run! Ruuu—” her husband screamed out into the cavern. His words turned into a cry of pain as a Ker buried its claws into his neck.

  Gyges spoke gently, if such a thing were possible for the many-voices that personified the abyss. It is the only way to save your consort, Persephone. They will recognize you.

  Tears formed in her eyes. She watched Hades fall to his knees once more, faced away from her. He didn’t rise. The Keres dove in over him, their mass pushing him closer to the drop off. There was no time. Persephone stood tall and pulled her helm off her head.

  “Stop this instant!” she yelled out over the fray. “I command you to stop!”

  They ceased and stilled, as though she had bid time itself to halt instead of these creatures. A thousand pairs of eyes turned in her direction. She held her breath as they cleared away from the path. All fell silent. She heard Hades breathing hard, his body shaking; his sword paused in mid air before it clanged at his side, his arm no longer able to hold it aloft. She took a step forward and watched the Keres retreat in kind. They scattered away and formed a wide circle around her as she made her way toward her husband. He crumpled forward.

  “Aidon!” Persephone ran the last few steps and fell to her knees in front of Hades, catching him. She cradled him in her arms, his form slumping forward onto her shoulder. His hand came up and smacked against her cuirass, trailing a crooked smear of blood down the breastplate.

  “No… run…” he quietly slurred against her neck between pants, disoriented. “ ‘S-sephone, run…”

  Her fingers ran through his disheveled, bloody hair as she held him close. “Aidon, it’s over,” she whispered in his ear. “It’s over. Look.”

  Still trying to catch his breath, he weakly brought his head up and looked cautiously from side to side. The Keres held their positions, almost motionless, soundless, waiting. He brought his eyes back to his wife’s face. She was safe, unmarked by the violence, so very beautiful, so very worried for him. Hades smiled at her. “Persephone…”

  “My sweet Aidoneus, I’m so sorry!” she said, shaking, tears welling up in her eyes again. “Please forgive me, I should never have asked you to—”

  “No, no, it’s not your fault. I’ll be fine. Here, see?” he said, holding a shaking hand up. The cuts from their talons and the punctures from their teeth were already closing. The angry gash across his cheek, precariously close to his right eye, quickly knit itself shut until the only evidence it even existed was a thin trail of blood left in its wake. She wiped it away with her thumb, crying in relief as Hades gave her a weary half smile. “There are… many benefits… to being one of the most powerful gods in the cosmos.”

  She just held him and wept, kissing him on top of his head, her lips staining with traces of his blood.

  “Not many benefits today, but some,” Hades said, his face somewhere between a wince and a grin. Persephone dried her eyes with the edge of her peplos and stood him up slowly. The frenetic terror of fighting the Keres still raced through his veins. She picked up the fallen torch and held his hand within hers. He looked around again, disbelieving his own eyes: creatures that had been slicing into him without provocation a moment ago were standing back in… reverence. “Why did they stop?”

  “I…” she began, meekly, “I told them to.”

  He stared at her, his lips parted in shock. A whisper went up, filled with ancient words from dead languages.

  “Wanakt-ja!” the hollow voice of a Ker called out above the others. The word echoed in whispers through the throngs of daimones.

  “What did it just say?” Persephone whispered.

  “Queen,” Hades replied. Persephone stood tall, her stomach turning in circles, her skin prickling, blood thrumming in her ears. Kore no more. She was Queen of the Underworld.

  “Listen to me!” she called out to the Keres. “I am She Who Destroys the Light!” They ceased their chatter. “I am Persephone Praxidike Chthonios, your undoubted Queen, and you will heed my words!”

  “Wanakt-ja! Praxidike!” the Keres chanted in high-pitched unison, “Wanakt-ja! Wanakt-ja! Wanakt-ja!”

  They nearly drowned out what she said next. “The man before you is my husband, Hades Aidoneus Chthonios, Polydegmon; your king! You will give him the same respect you give to me!” Persephone held his hand up in hers, watching the Keres retreat to the walls of the cavern. Their parchment-thin wings flapped and they soared in a wide circle around Hades and Persephone. Blank eyes flashed from the weaving mass, glinting in the torchlight.

  Hades just looked at her dumbstruck, fearing he’d gone mad. He wondered whether or not he’d actually fallen off the bottom of the cosmos into oblivion, that his mind was lost to reality and simply cajoling him. If he had fallen, he would fall forever into nothingness just as Menoetios, one of Iapetos’s sons, had— as near a thing to death an immortal could ever achieve. He blinked again. This was no illusion. His wife stood next to him. The Queen— no— the Goddess of Tartarus.

  “Wanakt-ja! Wanakt-ja! Wanakt-ja!”

  A deep rumbling laugh sounded from the hallway ahead of them and echoed in her head. Persephone shuddered.

  Heartfelt and sweet, my queen. But they do not speak Theoi. They only needed see you to recognize that you are Praxidike. But, fear not. They know that they mustn’t attack your consort anymore.

  Theoi. The language of the gods. Below the Ouroboros, there are no gods, her husband had said. She doubled back and collected their helms; delivering his first before angling hers to balance and tip back once more on top of her head.

  “That one speaking is Gyges…” Hades quietly told her, under the continuing chant of the Keres.

  “I know,” she answered him with a nod.

  Come toward the light, my Queen. We have much to show you.

  Persephone looked to her husband. His eyes said everything. She would lead the way from here. One of her hands clasped tightly around Hades’s fingers, the other held the torch.

  As they walked on, he muttered under his bre
ath. “All this time…”

  “What’s the matter?” she whispered to him.

  “Nothing, sweet one.” Hades gave her a strained smile. He had journeyed here many times throughout the aeons of his reign. Each time, he had lived up to the name Tartarus and its denizens called him— The Unseen One. An attack like this had happened only once before, not long after he had arrived in the Underworld as its new ruler. The Keres had mistaken him for Kronos. He’d learned well from that experience, and had taken the Helm of Darkness with him to Tartarus ever since.

  Hades dominion over this realm was total and unquestioned— this was his third of the cosmos, after all. Still, he couldn’t shake the churning in his stomach right now, and knew it had little to do with being attacked by the Keres. He stayed silent, not having been this ill at ease since the moment he stepped off Charon’s boat aeons ago.

  Persephone walked beside him, the wan light of the passageway getting closer, brightening and dimming in waves. The sustained scream of a man oscillated in time with each pulse of the light. She could barely hear him over the continuing chants of the Keres.

  “Wanakt-ja! Wanakt-ja!”

  The daimones’ voices faded back into the cavern as Hades and Persephone made their way toward the light and the many-voiced Hundred Handed Ones.

  “What do the Keres speak if not Theoi?”

  They speak the tongues of the dead. Of the ancients of Crete and the bloodline of Minos, of fallen Mycenae, of farther lands and places lost… To them and to the mortals whose languages they speak, my brothers and I are known as the Hekatonkheires.

  “Where are you now?”

  Not much further, my Queen.

  “And then I will finally see you, Gyges?”

  We will see you soon. His voices changed to an almost singsong tone. Just a bit closer, my queen.

  She swallowed hard as Gyges chuckled again. Hades and Persephone rounded the corner. The pulse of light wasn’t her imagination. Set high above them was a burning disk, its fire yellow, but far more dim than either the sun or any light emanating from the Styx.