“You have maimed a god!” Sobek screamed. His two artifacts quaked, and an emanating dark glow swallowed his body in black as he disappeared in the growing and tremoring shadow. “I will erase your solar birthright and send you falling down to the darkness. You will become like a moon buried in its dark nature without any sunlight to reflect.”
The crocodiles pushed forward and Hesiod yelled to me. I quickly glanced behind me at his voice. He frantically waved me over as he shouted for me to run. I shook my head. This wasn’t finished yet. With a deep breath, I suddenly sprang forward and into their attack, scraping through their chomping jaws and scratching claws, grunting as they tore off bits of flesh from my lowered shoulders and arms. I burst out of their grasp and leapt one last time at Sobek’s dark-shrouded body. The black shadow burned and froze, the icy heat somehow pushing through into my soul. The darkness! The despair! I cried out in pain, yet plunged deeper into the strange abyss until I saw his glowing green serpents. Sobek laughed as his mouth snapped at my neck, and I desperately ducked my head. I propelled myself onto his chest and thrust my arms out to grab the two snakes by their throats. With my feet planted on his chest, I flung myself back and pulled as hard as I could. The snakes snapped off from under the blue headdress, writhing in my grasp as Sobek screamed in fury.
I broke free from the dark, swinging the still hissing snakes like whips, holding them by their heads while the crocodiles backed away in terror. Blood spurted from the two snakes’ torn ends, and their black spew burned the crocodiles unable to avoid their spray. Free from their clutching claws, I slammed the serpents to the ground and crushed their heads under my bare heels.
Sobek was gone. All that remained was his tortured screaming and the ever-growing black cloud, which flashed and billowed, about to explode. I turned and ran back to Hesiod and the boat. Hesiod had already pushed it into the water. As I hopped on, I looked back at the black bloom of glowing taint and it erupted, consuming the remaining crocodiles. Its shadow rapidly expanded outwards and towards us.
“Go! Go!” I yelled.
Hesiod sliced his oars through the water as the shadow grew longer, a floating river of oily black that came closer by the moment.
“Use your marks, fool!” Hesiod yelled. “You won, and your honor demands you don’t let us die out of pride.”
I stood at the back end of the ship and held my arms out, bathing them both in a reddish-blue light that covered my flesh all the way up to my elbows. I pushed out and unleashed a single beam of bursting, purplish-light that tore the darkness apart and exploded it into a shine of gold that hung there like the abiding desert sun. With the darkness diffused, sparkling white embers danced in its place as if to celebrate the banished corruption and purified air. Hesiod slowed his rowing until he dropped the oar in the boat and breathed a heavy sigh. I stumbled back and sat down on the ship’s deck.
“What is this black taint?” I asked after several minutes of silent and labored breathing. My shoulder festered black and rotten, and my palms were printed with dark stains. My wrists ached from where the snakes had bitten me.
“Corruption has mingled with your light. We must have Ra burn it away.” His strained and red face drained pale at the sight of my wounds. With his voice shaking, he said, “That black is the corrupting darkness of eternal surrender. That surrender to the weakness of the lightless beings who live as mere shadows and silhouettes instead of embracing solar divinity. Sobek was false, and his falsity is festering within you. We must hurry.” He quickly turned to grab his oars.
“Then let us move forward.” I took a long and labored breath to steady my stuttered mind.
Hesiod rowed forward with impressive haste. I stared at my blackened hands and wondered if this taint would pollute my yet unborn nation. This black burned.
***
Apollo Awake
The three-headed hound was sleeping. Old Cerberus was at long last leaving the gates of Hades open. The immortal guardian had seven serpents branching out from his black fur, and even they too were limp and asleep. Cerberus slept for one reason—the gates of Hades were no longer used. He slept because the way of antiquity that he’d so proudly protected had vanished. Men of power and heroism seemed absent to the hound who’d seen just about every kind of soul walk through his doors. I knew the truth of his gate and duty. Most assumed he was there to keep the dead within. But truly he was there to make sure that only the worthy stepped through the gilded doors of Elysium. Cerberus was the first and truest judge of the underworld. He knew the scent of truth.
And next to Cerberus was the god of sleep, Hypnos. No doubt the two had conspired together to dream in that blessed land of eternal slumber. Most gods couldn’t quite kill themselves, but they could give up. They could become of nature and like the animal, forgetting their personhood and bowing to the beast inside. Or there was this sad alternative. Sleeping with eyes closed to the decay of a weak world. A dream of remembrance based on what once was, what might have been, what should have been—or whatever else a resigned mind might imagine.
The fair-skinned Hypnos looked like a youth just ripening to adulthood. His boyish and fresh-faced appearance was no doubt due in part to his nearly constant state of rest. As the old gods quaked and hid, driving themselves into an unsalvageable madness of despair, Hypnos slept deeper and sounder than ever before. And now the Elysian Fields were empty. No more heroes to populate the shaded meadow and sing songs of glory and might. And the torture regions were useless. In an age where people preferred nothingness instead of an eternal perfection of being and becoming, the gates of Hades might well be shut. Cerberus and Hypnos slept because their way had dissipated like the lingering remnants of a dream as the whole of it was forgotten. They slept because to be awake and a part of this time was to embrace the modern rot of chosen slavery. So, Cerberus slept with the god of sleep. There was nothing left to guard here. At least, that was what they thought.
I watched the two slumbering immortals and shook my head. The last bastions of our once great pantheon. At least those who belonged with me in the solar reaches still fought to exist. At least we were not allowing ourselves to fade into the forgotten. We had chosen our champion, when he had chosen us. He was to be our avatar, our vessel. I licked my lips and tried not to get ahead of myself. There was much work yet to be done. I pulled my blonde hair back, the curly locks loose and hanging just past my neck. I straightened my white mantle and tugged at my golden robe, knowing there was nothing I could do yet but wait. Wyrd sang louder than the Fates, and Rangabes weaved his own indifferent web. My wisdom’s weakened reach was irksome, and it took a glance down at my exposed ivory-white arms to remind myself that these muscles were as lithe and strong as ever. I was still me. I let out a lengthy breath of relief just as I heard soft steps scuttle out from the shadows behind me.
“Apollo? What are you doing here? Come to gloat?” a cold voice called out.
“Hades,” I said, without turning around.
“Your gamble on this mortal is wreaking much chaos. Hesiod belongs with me. Tartarus is not meant to be trifled with. What if Typhon were to break loose?”
I turned to face him, his insolent tone forcing me to frown. The god of death slouched there before me in a ragged black robe, his skin pale like a corpse and his eyes hollowed out and tired. He had once stood tall and proud but the years alone in his diminished realm, which had once been so great, had worn him thin. He now looked like the dead he had once lorded over. Even his long black hair had thinned; it hung in stringy strands, clumped together in knots where it hadn’t fallen out. In short, he looked mortal—like a sickly mortal on his last throes.
“Typhon is a stooped shadow of what he was, please. Maybe you should tell your hound to wake up. Anybody could come and go as they pleased.” I softened my glare and looked at my low-fallen kin with pity.
“What happened? How is it that we are forgotten?” Hades said as if our fading away had only just begun. He turned away from me and walked o
ver to look down at Cerberus. He gently stroked the hound’s middle head.
“How is it?” I crossed my arms and stared at this sad excuse of a god. My pity evaporated at such a pathetic display of mortal victim mentality. “Please, we Greek gods ranted and raved, ravaged and raped, and what have we to show for it? Offspring that are either monsters or halflings—mere shadows of ourselves? We grew distant in our profanity. We forgot what we once were.”
“Apollo, you blaspheme us. If Zeus hadn’t gone the way of Dionysus, pretending his madness was the way forward...” He stood up and turned to me, his shoulders stooped and his eyes looking everywhere without seeing anything. “Maybe it was the way forward. Better than this.”
“There is virile madness, and neither of them possessed it. Drowning in drink and hedonism and proclaiming that as an affirmation of life is degenerate madness. Virile madness is smiling at the sodden sun and soaking up its scorching drip. It is setting in the burning black of tomorrow, sinking so low with such weighted power that whatever rises next will be something entirely new. Ra reborn, but no longer Ra... no, but something more. Much more. My virile madness is not the decay of Zeus and Dionysus. If they aren't gone already, their minds are.”
“And what is this setting sun? Is the age of the gods finished? You speak with assured airs yet you still stand here alone. You are no different than I. I intend on staying right here—empty realm or not, it is still mine.”
“I smile at this sun, because I have sons of my own. Not these filthy aberrations you and the rest of the gods have vomited forth. I’ve left behind my own atrocities and now my sons shine. They possess my wisdom. Hyperborea froze as nature breathed her icy breath. But when my children went forth pregnant with power, they birthed the greatest of peoples; the light of their blood couldn’t be snuffed out. There are those who walk among the living still with that light locked within, leaking out in individual acts of greatness and glory. And there is Rangabes now living among the dead. He might just be this new rising sun—or at the very least, its shining ray,” I said, my eyes shining gold and my voice pronouncing each word like a poet. Hades appeared unaffected.
“Egyptian beast-deities forcing my hand.” He shook his head. “You overstep your shrinking bounds. This is my domain.”
“What remains of it. Hypnos looks as if he’s at last taken on the sleep of the dead. Even though he is not one for ever being much awake... this time it seems as though he might remain forever with eyes shut. Perhaps better than madness. Perhaps not. And Cerberus? Hades, you can’t see what kind of hound he is meant to be. Your eyes are too dark to see the light there. He has his part to play.”
“Leave my hound alone. First you mock him, and now you threaten to use him in your plots? What? Is this heathen Rangabes going to pilfer him like a prize the same way Hercules robbed me of him so long ago? Zeus is no longer here to protect you. Do not make me imprison you here, fool. I cannot kill a god but I can make one suffer.”
“Hades, you are the fool. No, you did not go mad but you cower here in your dark realm. Persephone left you ages ago and you didn’t even care to take her back, so afraid of the light have you become. You say a god cannot die, but you look as though you’ve already dug your own grave. Have you chosen a nice spot for yourself to be unseen in, here in your fading realm? So much knowledge and nobility to be buried! How grave!”
“That does it!” he roared.
He stood up straight and squared his shoulders as if he were his old self. His eyes blackened and shadows dripped out, dipping his face in an inky darkness. Black wings of shadowy mist stretched outward and the fog from his eyes poured out to encase his body, enhancing it until he towered to four times my height and width. Only his sickly head remained uncovered, and the rest of his body was now a hulking, black-fogged beast with misty talons for hands and feet.
I grinned at the transformation, for now we’d have a worthy fight. His pale face twisted as he screamed at me. A shrill shriek from a man who had nothing and blamed the world for his own deserved misery. An insolent child: that was what Hades had devolved into. That was what most of great Olympus had become. Disgustingly weak and profane.
“At least you remained a god, however lowly and shadowed. At least you are willing to fight,” I said calmly, the even respect of my voice smoothing the rough wrath of Hades' features.
“Let us fight. I am tired of this nothingness that I and so many of us have become. I will not become an animal. I need to fight. I may be forgotten but I cannot forget.” His eyes and features softened, a spark of divinity and life shining in the once-great god’s features.
I nodded up at him, knowing there was no other path for him to walk. This was his setting sun and I approved of his brazen leap into its fire. Better to burn than flicker. He breathed in deep and yelled—a deep and worthy roar. I loosely shook my arms and stood crouched and ready as he soared up into the air like a bat. He scraped the miles-high cavern roof and flung himself back down at me.
I waited, watching his now-alive face, passionate with purpose at long last. In a burst of light, my golden bow shined in my hands as I called it forth from the heavens. Crouched on one knee, waiting as long as I could, I pulled back the string and let loose an immaculate white arrow of light, the snapping bow singing aloud like the pluck of a heavenly harp string. The arrow headed straight for Hades' head. Not one to ever miss, I confidently rolled away from his crashing form.
Safely out of reach, I could only smile at the sight before me. In his shadowy pincers he held my arrow. He tossed it aside and sped towards me through the air, his talons reaching forward as if he were an eagle coming to snatch its prey. I let out a flurry of arrows, the golden bursts of my volley sizzling holes through his dark form. I dove to the side a step too slow, and he gripped my body. My surroundings whirred as he flew upward, crushing me in his grasp. My eyesight dimmed and my fingers froze as my legendary bow fell from my hands and faded into the black mist.
As we soared upwards, his claws dug into my skin. I kicked at his one claw and held the other at bay with both my arms pushing it away as if I were Atlas painfully bearing the weight of the heavens. Not seeing any obvious way out, I decided to risk an approach of artifice. I closed my eyes and let my form go limp. Just as his claws scraped my skull, I focused inward on the solar glory within me. The pain of the tearing talons brought forth the eternal light of my being. In a bright torrent my light burst through my skin and erupted over his shadowed body as I screamed in a fit of power and pleasure. His form bubbled and blistered, scalded by my pure light that kept pouring out. My screams rose higher as ecstasy mingled with a perfect harnessed eros, as if it were being gathered and released all at once—a finite moment of eternity, blinking brilliantly in white-gold flashes. With both of us ablaze in my divine light, we spiraled down, yet Hades still held me in his stony grip.
We crashed to the rocky floor and his grip at last went limp. I pushed myself free, panting and ragged from my expended eternal energy. Hades' fearsome shadow form was stained gold by my light. Riddled with tears as it was, it wafted away like dust in a sunbeam.
“Hades?” I said, stepping over to him as he lay there in his tattered robes.
I gasped at the sight of him. He was nothing but a skeleton now, his bones brittle and brownish as if he’d been laying there that way for centuries. His hair hung in rotting patches on his skull.
“I see it. I see it now. How could I not see where it all was heading, where it had always been heading?” His bones rattled and his jaw ground as he spoke while still lying there on his side. His cavernous eye sockets stared up at me. “I see it at last because now I cannot see. I needed this darkness. I needed the light to burn my folly away. I am the nothing now.”
“Hades,” I said, getting to one knee and reaching out to embrace him.
“No!” he hissed, his voice whipping from all around me as if the very cavern had spoken. I froze and stared. “Do not corrupt yourself by touching my unworthy darkness. An a
bsence of light is what I am. To touch me is to blot out your being.”
“But light banishes the dark.”
“And dark swallows the light.”
“It depends on how strong the light is.”
“As does it for the dark.”
“How is it that you speak? You cannot die. What happened? Are you suffering?”
“No... you’re wrong. And I cannot feel. All I am now, is... is nothing. Like the air you breathe but cannot taste. I will not decay into an animal, forgetting myself. But this... what I am right now. Apollo, at last I’ve become Death. My bones are vacant now.”
“But you speak. You live.”
“No. I die and am dead. I’ve chosen this. I live on whenever another dies. That is where I go and will always be.”
“I will watch Cerberus for you. I know you loved that hound.”
His jaw shifted and his skull stretched, creaking itself into a grimacing smile. “Thank you.”
I bowed my head as his whispering voice echoed away, slowly decreasing till the only sound was the steady breathing of the still sleeping Cerberus. I kissed his bones and they crumbled to dust at my touch. I nodded, my work here in the land of the dead almost done. My light was my own. I would overcome.
***
Emerald Light
The swirling gray ocean peaked and valleyed like a desert of liquid granite. It pumped against the cliffs, a thunderous heartbeat of power painting the backdrop with life and death. No matter how much my people had forgotten my divinity, this realm remained tied to the eternal reality of our old Emerald Isle. This was one of the first lands the Hyperboreans conquered when they fled the frozen north. I nodded, assured as ever of the path I now walked.
In the distance, a man in emerald-jeweled armor shimmered over the grassy slopes and peaks that spread out before me. His green garb so naturally belonged to his surroundings that his outline was fuzzy; his body seemed to bleed out from the landscape. He casually walked forward as if I hadn’t told him that our meeting was of the utmost urgency. We stood on strange soil here, a reflection of the mortal realm that was not quite truly there but as close as we could come. I knew no mortal could see us any longer. Not here. Crossing my bared arms that were wide as a bull’s neck, I glared impatiently at the proud king. Arawn, the immortal god-king of Annwn. He was lord of death. He ruled over his once lively land of the dead with justice, but now there was nobody left for him to judge. Little life remained in our world.
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