Titan_Kingdom of the Dead_An Epic Novel of Urban Fantasy and Greek Mythology

by Daniel Mignault

  Cerberus raises his shaggy heads and breathes triple cones of fire. The bird-women become skyborne torches. Two of them plunge wildly into the moat, while the third lands near the dog’s feet. Cerberus’ heads fight over the flaming morsel, snapping and biting.

  “I didn’t know he could do that!” I say, half in surprise, half to announce my presence.

  Ares and Hannah turn to face me. The witch runs and takes me in her arms, kissing me before I even have a chance to react. I find myself falling into it, matching her heat despite my guilt, despite my gloom. It all falls away in her arms, and I dare to hope again, to dream everything will work out.

  “Andrus, you made it!” she says, then hugs me again.

  “Was there ever any doubt?”

  Ares walks up. “Not by me. Look at you! My star student.”

  “And Gyges?” Hannah asks.

  “I dropped him off the bridge. I also dropped the bridge, so I hope there’s another way back to the Styx.”

  “We’ll think of something,” Hannah says. “Let’s not worry about that now.”

  I point to the island. “Is that it? Is that where Cronus has your father?”

  “Cerberus thinks so. He picked up the scent again and the trail ends here.”

  “Her familiar’s scouting the island,” Ares says. “Should be back any minute. In the meantime, tell us about your victory. Don’t leave anything out.”

  I recount the battle as best I can, though I take care to leave out the mixed feelings I had at the end. I do this for them as much as for myself.

  “Glorious!” Ares exclaims when I’m done. “I told you, the eyes were the weak spot. Too bad you couldn’t pop them all and blind that bastard.”

  “I popped enough.”

  “So you did. Well done! Your powers are growing.”

  “And your control,” Hannah adds. “Power without control is… well, less than ideal.” In a rush of wings, Shadow lands on her shoulder and squawks his report. The bird seems agitated. That’s confirmed a few seconds later when Hannah translates, “The entire island is warded; it’s the same kind of magic we faced in the Garden of Bone.”

  “So?” I say. “That’s good news.”

  “Good news how?” she demands.

  “Because that must mean this is the place, right? Besides, we beat this kind of magic before… That antipathy/sympathy thing.”

  “This is stronger,” Hannah says. “The kind of magic needed to hold Cerberus is not the same strength as that needed to contain a God, particularly one as powerful as my father.”

  “So I’ll break through the ward, just like last time.”

  “Andrus, it’s not that simple…”

  “Sure it is,” I insist. “I’ll just tunnel under the moat to get us over there, then break through the wards. Easy!”

  “You’d have to tunnel pretty deep,” Hannah says.

  “Because of the lava? Good point. We wouldn’t want that falling on our heads and flooding the tunnel. Can you fog up and fly over?”

  “I wish, but the wards prevent that. I mean, I can fly over it, but can’t land. That’s the same problem Shadow had.”

  I nod. “All right, then let’s tunnel. We’ve come too far to turn back now.”

  Hannah bites her lip. “Getting over there is one thing, getting inside…”

  “It’s OK,” Ares says quickly. “Hannah, if Andrus says he can do it, he can. He hasn’t let us down yet, and he won’t let us down now.”

  I turn on my most confident smile. “You’ll see. I got this!”

  Ares casts a warning gaze over my shoulder. “We’ve also got something else.”

  I turn to see twin dust clouds on the horizon, coming from east and west. The centaurs have found us.

  32

  SACRIFICE

  Cerberus pads up and down the banks of the moat, pausing only for each head to take another drink of lava. Refueling his breath weapon. He’ll need it. We’ll all need it, and I’m glad he has it.

  The centaurs are minutes away.

  “You want me to start digging?” I ask. “Or are we making a last stand here?”

  “No cover,” Ares says. “No terrain advantage, except the moat prevents them from attacking us from behind.”

  “Not much of an advantage if they push us into it,” Hannah mutters.

  “True,” I say. “Let me get a feel for the land before I start digging; I don’t want to miscalculate.”

  Hannah nods.

  “Sixteen centaurs,” Ares muses, counting the enemy. “If I had my old vessel, I might have taken them.”

  “Yeah, well, you’ve got this one,” I tell him. “You’ve got Mark, and you promised to take care of him, remember? No heroics.”

  “You mean no unnecessary ones,” Ares corrects me.

  Hannah rests a slim hand on my shoulder. “He’s right, Andrus. We can’t hesitate to sacrifice any of us when the time comes…”

  I shrug her away. “Nobody’s sacrificing anything! I’m going to get us to that island, we’re going to free Hades, and we’re all going to live happily ever after.” I step away from the moat, back to what I feel is a safe distance. I close my eyes and reach out to the land, to Gaia, and into the future.

  You want me to be the Bridge, I pray to her, so please, Mother, let it start here.

  There is no voice from on high or deep below, just a gradual tingle, a slow-spreading shiver as my consciousness flows down through my body, through my feet, into the rock. It feels weird, yet feels so right. I see myself as not just inside the rock, but one with it. I see the perfect spot to dig, the perfect depth. But that will take too long, and besides, I have a better idea.

  More dangerous, but ultimately more satisfying—if it works.

  I kneel down and dig, hands scooping, shifting rock like child’s toys. It’s a good start. I widen the entrance. I widen it so it’s large enough to fit Cerberus, which also means it’s large enough to fit centaurs…

  I’m dimly aware of the enemy’s thundering hooves, more through the vibration than the sound, and far away, I hear something that sounds like “Hurry up!” in a sharp female voice. Hannah. The thought of her, the thought of everyone and everything at stake spurs me on to dig faster, drive harder, blending, blurring my way forward.

  The tunnel widens, lengthening down, beneath the moat, into the earth and through it. I have to pause to get my bearings a few times, to adjust my course, my depth. This isn’t a perfect tunnel, but it’s perfect for the purpose I’ve built it for, and in the time that I have, with the skills that I have.

  The gifts, the talent.

  I’m aware I’m not alone now. I sense my friends are with me. And by the increasing power of the vibrations, I know the centaurs are here now too. When the vibrations stop, I know they are at the mouth of the tunnel. Debating about whether or not to follow us in.

  I keep digging, digging like mad because I know the time is short. The time is now. Everything, everything is riding on this trap I’ve made. When I sense the the centaurs are in, when I know they’re far enough along—and more importantly, I know we are— that’s when I build a wall behind us. That’s when I build a wall, and once I’m sure it’s strong, that’s when I collapse the roof of the tunnel behind us.

  Screams, screams, centaur screams baking in the heat.

  And then another type of scream joins them, the screams of my friends, warning me the wall I built wasn’t strong enough, and now there are cracks in it. Cracks like a dam. Cracks that ooze, cracks that melt, and I have a choice: I can either try to reinforce the wall, or I can keep tunneling forward.

  I keep going.

  Don’t stop. Never stop.

  Up, into the light. Up, out of danger!

  We burst out of the tunnel, onto the dismal black rock of the island. We burst out, and behind us, from out of the tunnel, spews a geyser of pure liquid hell. The oil of the underworld. It fountains into the air, then rains down on us, as I desperately try to seal the breached tunnel
.

  Hannah works some kind of spell, shrouding us in an invisible shield of protective force. The lava splashes against that, then, when I yell it’s safe, the fountain subsides and Hannah lets her spell go.

  “You getting sloppy?” Hannah asks angrily. “Or did you plan that?”

  I shrug. “It got us here, didn’t it? And it got rid of the centaurs. Two-for-one.” Only when I look to the far shore, I see I didn’t get all the centaurs, only ten. Captain Nessus is still there, along with his brothers, Democ and Ruvo, and three others. They don’t look happy, though it’s hard to make out details at this distance. I let my imagination fill in the looks on their faces, the curses on their lips.

  I wave to Nessus, and when I’m sure he’s watching, give him the finger. “Next time,” I promise. “Next time we meet, I’ll kill you, because next time, you’ll be able to die.” I turn back to my friends. “OK, we’re here. Now what?”

  Hannah look around the desolate island. “The cell must be underground. You couldn’t have gotten us to it like you did with Cerberus?”

  “I was in a hurry.”

  Her expression softens. “Right, sorry.”

  “I need a minute to recharge, but after that, I can start digging around. Or maybe Cerberus can sniff out the right spot?”

  Hannah whispers something in the beast’s ear, and it plods off, nose to the ground. “Now we wait.”

  I stretch my weary body and lay down on the rocks, closing my eyes and feeling one with the stone. “The adventure’s almost over,” I say. “What do we do next?”

  “Whatever it takes,” Ares says.

  I open my eyes to stare at the War God. He seems deadly serious, even more than usual, but I decide to ignore it. It’s just tough talk, the kind you expect from a guy like that. I shut my eyes and let myself drift, flicking through memories of happier times.

  Were it not for the accident of my birth, I’d be a warrior now, proudly serving the New Greece Theocracy. Doing my duty. And then, after my military service was up, I’d join my father—foster father—at Eaves Oil. I’d be an executive. A rich playboy, though I’ve never been much for parties or people. And, let’s face it, I’ve been hopeless with girls. I’d never found any that understood me until Mark’s sister. Lucy, who had sacrificed herself to make sure Mark and I escaped. Lucy, who made all this possible.

  Well, not just her… there’s Hannah too. Hannah the witch, she of the dark hair and even darker eyes… We make sense together, don’t we? Maybe we do, maybe we don’t.

  Maybe nothing makes sense, and we only fool ourselves into thinking things do. People, places, powers… I’m seventeen, standing on the bridge between the boy I was and the man I’ll become. No, not the man. The Titan. And I’m not just standing on the bridge, I am the bridge. The Bridge Between Worlds, and I’m about to cross it. We all are. What waits on the other side?

  “The prison,” Hannah says, interrupting my thoughts. “Cerberus found it.”

  33

  FAMILY IS HARD

  Hades’ prison is in the center of the island. We trudge across the rocky surface, each step bringing us closer to the end of our quest. Cerberus barks excitedly, eager to be reunited with his master. Hannah has a similar sense of eagerness, one Ares doesn’t seem to share. The War God looks what? Not angry, not sad. Resigned.

  “Everything all right?” I ask him.

  “It will be,” the brooding God replies. “Soon.”

  “I always get worked up before a big event,” I say, trying to lift his spirits. “Really pumped, you know? But after—or even near the end, when I feel it’s slipping away—it gets hard.”

  Ares grunts.

  We keep walking, hanging back now as Hannah and Shadow surge ahead to join Cerberus.

  “It’s not always getting lost in daydreams or the next event that spoil the end for me,” I say.

  “No?” Ares replies.

  “No. Sometimes, it’s just the enormity of the thing I’ve done, how hard I fought to be there, in that moment. And then I see it all slipping away, and I can’t hold on, can’t change or stop it from being over.”

  “The heat of battle,” Ares agrees.

  “Yeah, though it’s not always a fight.”

  “Isn’t it? Isn’t everything in life a fight, Andrus? The struggle to be recognized…”

  “By who?”

  “By yourself, by others, by… family.”

  “Family is hard. Especially family like ours.”

  Ares nods. “My father, Zeus, was a hard man to love. My mother, Hera, was even worse.”

  “I’ve heard stories.”

  “Hearing isn’t the same as living them,” the War God says. “Trust me on that.”

  “At least your father wasn’t Cronus.”

  Ares snorts. “There is that, but at least with Cronus, you know what to expect. As a Sky God, my father was… capricious. A tyrant one minute, generous and loving the next. I never knew how to please him.”

  “You did,” I say. “I’m sure of it.”

  Ares stops, and I stop with him.

  “What is it?”

  “I want to tell you something, Andrus. Something important. I may not get another chance, and you deserve to hear it.”

  From fifty feet away, Hannah waves at us. “Hey, you two! What’s the hold up?”

  “Nothing,” Ares calls back. “The boy needs a pep talk!”

  Hannah shakes her head and I can’t see it, but I can imagine the eye roll she must be giving us.

  Ares says, “Did you know that Gods take on the quality of their portfolio?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The things we represent. For example, my portfolio is War, Security, Virility, Revenge. Each is a different aspect of my godhood.”

  “So when you split into avatars, there were four of them, one for each aspect?”

  “Correct.”

  “And the other three are dead?”

  He nods.

  “So which one are you?”

  “I am War, first and last of my powers. But War is not just the glory and terror of battle, it is also change. Change and sacrifice.”

  “So is Death.”

  “Yes, in its own way. The difference is passion, of course, and duration. War requires passion, but the change can be fleeting. Death, however… Death is cold, passionless, permanent. It requires logic, the long view. I was never great at that.”

  “You’re great at a lot of things.”

  “I was always a disappointment,” Ares says, as if my praise doesn’t matter. “A disappointment to my father, to my uncles—Poseidon and Hades—to my brothers and sisters, and all the rest. And why not? In the end, I disappointed them all. I couldn’t save them! I could barely save myself.”

  “But you saved Hannah! You saved me. And you’re still here.”

  “I’m still here,” Ares agrees. “For now.” He stares across the rocks to Hannah and Cerberus. The beast is pawing at the rocky ceiling of his master’s prison. Scratching to get in, to wake Death after its long sleep. Ares turns his gaze back to me. “You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this.”

  “Well, yeah. Kind of.”

  “I have my reasons—not that I need any. I’m still a God, even reduced to being an avatar.” He looks down at his hands—Mark’s hands, the hands of a priest and scholar—and Ares seems lost in thought. Just when I’m about to ask what his reasons are, he continues. “I want you to understand something: You either control your portfolio, or it controls you. It’s easy to lose yourself in your powers. It’s also easy to lose yourself in your experiences, to let them drive your decisions. Like my father, and like yours.”

  “You’re saying don’t become like Cronus.”

  “Yes, but you have a mother too.”

  “Gaia? What’s wrong with her?”

  Ares shrugs. “We should join the others. No matter what happens, I want you to know it has been an honor to be your teacher.”

  “And my friend
.”

  Some fierce emotion passes over his face, there like a storm, then it’s gone. “War doesn’t have friends, Andrus. War has allies.” And with that, the God walks away.

  34

  HARD LESSONS

  I’m left standing there. Speechless. Ares opening up to me like that was unexpected and out of character. Not that I really know him that well. He’s a complicated guy—God, whatever—and I suppose the pressure is getting to him.

  I walk over to the group. Shadow circles overhead. The rest of the sky is clear. No harpies. Across the moat, the centaurs gallop away. Nessus knows he’s lost, and sticking around now will only get him and his brothers killed.

  Speaking of killing, I can’t wait to get back to Earth and kill Inquisitor Anton. After that, after I’ve avenged Lucy, maybe I’ll work my way up the Theocracy food chain, all the way to its high priest, Archieréas Enoch Vola himself. It will be weird being back on Earth after this trip. Part of me is desperate to go back, yet part of me wouldn’t mind staying here, with Hannah. At least for a little while. There’s something liberating about Tartarus. I don’t have to hide who I am or what I can do. On Earth, even an Earth without the NGT, I don’t think I could ever be myself like I can be here.

  Not if I want to walk among mortals.

  And I do, don’t I? I do want to go back and make Earth better. But after that, then what? Cronus mentioned new worlds. New worlds—not to conquer, but to explore. If I’m the bridge to them, then I could have endless adventures. I’d never have to stop being the hero. And that’s the trick—to just keep going, never putting down roots, never trying to rule. Maybe that’s where Cronus and Zeus and all the rest went wrong…

  “You done daydreaming?” Ares asks.

  “What? Oh, ha ha! Yeah, sorry. Old habits.”

  Hannah sighs. “OK, if you two are done male bonding, can we please get back to work? We don’t know when Cronus is going to send more monsters.”

  “He won’t,” I say with more confidence than I should.