by Melody Rose
Just as I was about to answer, I felt a sudden tap-tap-tapping on my shoulder. Confused, I turned around to see an ethereally beautiful woman with a crown of cascading golden curls. She smiled at me, her gloss-coated lips shimmering beneath the strobe lights. The woman wore an immaculate white gown with a deep v that cut straight down to her navel, and I couldn’t help but wonder how her large bosom was so perfectly contained within the dress. The goddess stood at an even height with me, her pale turquoise eyes leering into mine.
“Hello,” she said with a wide-toothed grin. “You must be Persephone, right?”
“Y-yes,” I replied nervously as Artemis came to stand directly behind my right shoulder. The goddess extended a manicured hand out, and I took it into mine, shaking it lightly as she inspected me with a quick once-over.
“I’m Aphrodite,” she purred as she withdrew her hand with a snap of her wrist. “I’ve heard so much about you. You are just as beautiful as everyone has been saying. How was your first night in the human world?”
I smiled softly as I quickly peered back over my shoulder to Artemis, who was standing rather defensively behind me. What’s gotten into her? I wondered as I turned back to Aphrodite and said, “I had a wonderful time. The human world is a lot better than I could have ever imagined. Everyone is so friendly down here.”
“Yes, indeed…” Aphrodite replied, her voice trailing off. As Aphrodite raked another cold gaze over me, I shivered. Something in the way she was staring at me made me almost as uncomfortable as the way Apollo did. But when she smiled at me again, her smile seemed to soften the harshness of her stare. “So, listen, dear, I hear that your mother has kept you hidden away from us all this time. You pitiful thing. I can’t imagine being locked up like some sort of pet. How would you like to meet everyone on Olympus properly?”
Artemis scoffed over my shoulder. “You’re being awfully nice, Aphrodite. Did you bump your head or something?”
Aphrodite shot daggers at Artemis. Even though Aphrodite didn’t answer the question, I could see the anger burning behind her startling blue eyes. Her lips quivered as though she were going to fire back a retort, but instead, she met my gaze once more and smiled brilliantly.
“I’m having a small get together next week in my temple on Mount Olympus. There’s going to be food and drink available and also a few members of the Pantheon that you positively must meet. It’ll also give us girls some time to bond, don’t you think?” Aphrodite asked, tilting her head cutely, allowing a few of her curls to fall delicately onto her rosy cheek. This time Artemis snorted from her nose in disbelief.
“Since when do you care about anyone else, Aphrodite? You’re not one to just go around making friends unless it benefits you. So, what’s the end game here?” Artemis said, her tone rising. I whirled around, placing my hands on her shoulders to calm her. I had never seen Artemis act like this before. Surely whatever her brother had been whispering to her had riled her up. Either way, I needed her to be calm.
This was the opportunity I needed to be able to acclimate to the world outside of my mother’s temple. Not only would I make friends this way, but I would also learn how to socialize better with someone other than my mother’s handmaids or just Artemis alone. I wanted to do this. But if Artemis kept harassing Aphrodite this way, she was sure to rescind her invitation.
“Hey,” I said, bringing her attention down to me. “Can you relax, please? She’s inviting us to a party she’s having. She’s not asking me to sacrifice a goat. Just tone it down, okay?”
Artemis rolled her eyes before replying, “Aphrodite is the Goddess of Love and Beauty, Sephie. She’s never this nice to anyone. And whenever she hears that someone thinks another woman is more beautiful than she is, she always finds a way to fuck with that girl and ruin her fucking life. Trust me.”
“That was ages ago, Artie,” Aphrodite snarled. “I’ve grown since then. But you wouldn’t know, would you? Always running behind your daddy and your brother like some sort of lost little puppy.”
Artemis lunged at Aphrodite with murderous intent, but a second woman appeared as if from nowhere and restrained her before she could reach the blond goddess. Aphrodite smiled victoriously as the woman shoved Artemis back beside me. Before Artemis could make another move to attack, I grabbed her arm and held her firmly in place.
The woman stood a head taller than all of us and had dark amber eyes that matched her short-spiked hair. She wore a sleeveless black t-shirt with acid-washed skinny jeans that were tucked into a pair of scuffed black combat boots. Her arms and chest were riddled with muscles and scars, and her presence was overwhelmingly intimidating.
“Hey, Athena,” Artemis responded rather coldly. Athena furrowed her brow and looked from Aphrodite to Artemis.
“What the hell is going on here?” Athena snapped.
“We were just talking,” replied Aphrodite in a sing-song tone. “I was just telling little Persephone here about my party next week before Artemis lost her fragile little mind.”
Artemis struggled in my grasp, but it didn’t last long. Athena rubbed at her face with her hand before she turned to Aphrodite and mouthed something I couldn’t see. When Athena turned back to Artemis and me, she let out a deep sigh. Athena was beautiful, but her calm posture betrayed a certain sense of exhaustion that she was trying to keep hidden. When our eyes met, she offered me a small apologetic smile.
“It’s nice to meet you, Persephone. I’m Athena. I’m sorry about these two. They get like this every single time they see one another,” Athena said with exasperation. I snorted delicately and waved a hand at her apology.
“There’s no need to apologize. Everything is fine,” I answered quickly as I let go of Artemis’ arms. At that moment, Aphrodite came around Athena and took my hands into her own.
“I really hope you’ll consider coming to my little gathering next week, Persephone. You can bring your little dog too if you’d like,” she said, cutting a glare at Artemis.
“Knock it off,” Athena warned as she swatted at Aphrodite’s arm.
The tension in the air started to intensify again as Artemis grabbed my elbow and pulled me away from Aphrodite. As the blonde goddess straightened herself, I couldn’t help but notice the silent glare that she and my friend shared. I balked, afraid of how Artemis would react if I said yes while they were mentally threatening one another. I would have to warm her up to the idea, I thought to myself. Thankfully, there was a week before the party was being held, which gave me plenty of time to convince Artemis to not only take me but to join me as my plus one.
“We have to go,” Artemis snapped before I had a chance to respond. Athena offered me another apologetic smile and shrugged lightly as Artemis forcefully began pulling me with her to the alcoves. Behind us, Aphrodite smiled and waved a farewell, the corners of her full lips turned up into a smile.
Once Artemis and I were safely within the shadows of the alcoves, Artemis flashed us back home in silence.
7
Hades
I had buried myself in my work in order to distract myself. It was the only thing I could do, the hardest thing to do, just to be able to keep Persephone out of my thoughts.
By the end of the week, I had almost started to feel some semblance of normalcy again. Only while I slept was I plagued by the scent of violets and the hazy image of lavender eyes. Twice Hephaestus came to check on my emotional well-being, and twice he reprimanded me for my unusually cranky disposition.
I sighed.
It shouldn’t have been this hard for me to just get over Persephone. It wasn’t like I had actually had any sort of interaction with her. But all week, I had been forcing myself to hand out harsher punishments than usual to the souls that were ferried into the underworld just so I could focus on something other than the memory of her eyes. Every cell in my body demanded that I go up to Olympus, find her, and ravage her until we were both spent and panting. But I wasn’t that kind of man.
So, what kind of man was I t
hen? I couldn’t get her out of my mind. And even when I finally did stop thinking about her, she would appear in my dreams to seduce until I couldn’t sleep anymore, my body tight with longing. It was maddening.
I have to get out of here, I had thought to myself.
On the occasions when I couldn’t sleep, I had taken it upon myself to patrol the mortal world for any and all creatures that were being far too conspicuous in a realm in which they no longer belonged. In Ireland, a flock of sheep had been slaughtered in the quiet countryside shortly after my encounter with Persephone. At first, I had merely ignored the issue as humans sometimes slaughtered the flocks of neighboring farmers in order to be rid of the competition. But the following day, Alecto, one of the Erinyes, a Fury who was charged with collecting souls to put on the ferry to the underworld, had informed me that three other flocks in the area had also been massacred, along with their respective owners.
I traveled to Ireland shortly after that and found myself face-to-face with an ancient minotaur. The grizzly man-beast had one horn and was blind in one eye, and battle scars marred his dark hide. Normally, I would have just relocated the poor soul to the underworld where he could roam and feast on the souls of the damned for the remainder of his days. But instead, I had ripped him limb from limb, delighting in the feel of his blood coating my hands. As I drenched in the minotaur’s blood, I realized that I was no longer consumed with thoughts of Persephone.
That was how I continued to distract myself for the remainder of the week. During the day, I would pass the time judging souls and subjecting the worst of the lot to extreme forms of torture. At night, when I was awakened from my sleep, I would venture into the human world and eradicate the creatures that were causing strife.
One evening, as I dragged a cyclops behind me into the underworld, I whistled for Cerberus. The cyclops screamed, begging me for mercy as I left him in a sobbing heap on the floor. I had found the cyclops hiding deep within the Alaskan wilderness, eating the human hikers that ventured too far into the territory in which he was hiding. While I waited for Cerberus to arrive, I glowered down at him with ice coursing through my veins as I climbed the stairs towards my throne.
The cyclops was a hideous sight to behold. His large egg-shaped head was sparsely covered in wiry white hair, and his large blue eye was rimmed with fresh purple bruising from where I had punched him moments earlier. His blood-stained lips were dry and thin, and his broken teeth were blackened and cracked almost beyond recognition.
“Please, Lord Hades,” the cyclops pleaded as I took my seat on my obsidian throne, “I’m sorry! I won’t do it again! I was just hungry and afraid. I can be of use to you, my Lord! Please have mercy! I beg you!”
Cerberus stalked into the room at that moment, his black fur glistening under the firelight of the sconces that lined my temple’s main chamber. All three of his heads snapped and growled, his teeth dripping thick saliva as he licked his jowls in anticipation. The cyclops turned towards the sound and screamed, then turned back to me as he struggled to get to his knees.
“Please, Hades! Don’t do this!” he cried. But his pleas fell on deaf ears as I snapped my fingers.
Perhaps you should have had mercy on those humans you butchered, I thought to myself.
Cerberus lunged at the cyclops without hesitation and clamped his large white teeth around the monster’s throat. As Cerberus thrashed the beast, the cyclops’ cries turned into gurgles. It wasn’t long before he was choking on his own blood.
I watched passively as Cerberus made quick work of the cyclops’ corpse. Cerberus, my most trusted friend and guardian of the gates of the underworld, was a large hulking beast. On all fours, Cerberus was the size of a dire wolf. On his back paws, Cerberus stood well over seven feet tall. He lapped at the blood that coated the black marble floor with all three heads.
He was truly magnificent.
Along his back, sharp black spikes of bone protruded from Cerberus’ spine. His tail, which snapped left and right like a whip, was barbed at the end with another deadly spike. His lean body was coated in a fine fur coat of dark gray, and each paw had large silver claws.
I pitied anyone that tried to get into the underworld and encountered him instead. Cerberus was as merciless as he was beautiful. As Cerberus finished polishing off the remnants of the cyclops, the entire underworld shook violently. Cerberus and I froze, our gazes locking for a moment before he continued to eat. I brushed it off.
It was probably just a volcano, I reassured myself. It happened all the time.
Suddenly, the underworld shook again. This time, the tremor was much stronger than the last. I jumped to my feet and quickly made my way towards the entrance of my temple. Cerberus patted along beside me, snarling at the quakes as they started to come more frequently. I couldn’t understand it. Normally, when there were an earthquake and aftershocks, they couldn’t be felt this intensely. So what the hell had changed?
When I reached the entrance to the temple, I paused to survey the area for signs of an eruption or an explosion. To my surprise, there was nothing there.
“What the hell is going on?” I whispered to Cerberus as I tilted my head back to look at the shifting sky above us. As another quake struck, the hardest one yet, blue and lilac stalactites came crashing down around the underworld. Cerberus jumped back into the temple, barking loudly to show his displeasure. As I watched the crystal columns fall, my gaze fell upon Mount Tartarus. I felt my body grow cold.
Earthquakes were normal for the underworld and the human world alike. But the intensity of the earthquakes that shook the underworld was far from normal. There was no way a Titan couldn’t have escaped, could there? I shook my head. No, it couldn’t be. If a Titan had broken free from its prison, the underworld was sure to have been crawling with the ancient terrors by now. It had to be something else, but what?
“My Lord!” someone called. I turned to find that Megaera, Alecto’s sister, was kneeling behind me. Megaera’s large bat-like wings were folded closed behind her, and her head bowed low before her chest.
“Meg? What’s going on? Report,” I ordered. When Megaera came to stand, I met her pitch-black gaze. Like her sisters, Megaera had long silky black hair and black battle armor. Her skin was pale white, and when she spoke, her fangs brushed against her bottom lip.
“My Lord, there seems to be a disturbance going on outside the entrance of the underworld. I’m afraid that if this keeps up, Mount Tartarus will collapse, and the Titans will be freed,” she explained.
“What kind of disturbance?” I asked, my brow furrowing with confusion.
Megaera hesitated for a moment before bowing her head apologetically. “Forgive me, my Lord, but I don’t know. I should have checked while I was guarding the post for Cerberus, but I… I’m sorry, my Lord.” Megaera didn’t look up at my eyes again, probably for fear of the anger that she would find there.
I groaned internally as another quake struck, leveling a small maze at the base of Mount Tartarus.
“It’s fine. I’m going to need you and your sisters to keep an eye on things here while I go find out what the hell is going on. Cerberus, go stand guard at the gate.” Cerberus barked in acknowledgment before he took off towards the direction of the main entrance to the underworld.
Megaera clanged a fist against her armor-plated chest. “Yes, My Lord,” she said as she bowed low.
I snapped my fingers and traded my blood-stained sweater and jeans for a clean pair of dark blue jeans, black boots, and a black t-shirt. When I was satisfied with my wardrobe change, I snapped my fingers again and flashed myself into the human realm.
The entrance to the underworld, while not easy to access from the mortal world, was hidden deep beneath the San Andreas Faultline. It was dark and raining in the mortal world, which made it a little harder to see the extent of the damage that the Faultline had accumulated. From what I could see, the large gorge that ran through the Californian coast had gotten exponentially larger. Luckily, it wasn’
t anything that I couldn’t fix.
I waved my right hand over the gorge, repairing the damage as best as I could. How odd, I thought to myself. This particular area of California had never seen much rain before. So why now was there a storm of this magnitude raging here tonight? As the earth mended itself, there was a blinding flash of lightning and a large accompanying boom. I paused my repairs and glanced up at the sky with a scowl. It sounded as though my little brothers were having the time of their lives in Olympus. I rolled my eyes and huffed to myself.
Typical.
As I set about to resume the repairs to the gorge, a small shining light caught my eye. I lowered my hand and frowned. What in the hell could that possibly be? But even as I asked myself, my subconscious already had a clue. I made my way towards the golden pulse of light and jumped down onto the nearest shelf of the gorge where it sat buried in the rubble. As I neared the light, I could hear it buzzing with every pulse of light.
Finally, I reached it. I crouched down and plucked the small light from the ground with a curse. As I turned it over in my hands, I realized that it was a shard from one of Zeus’ lightning bolts. My rage simmered beneath my skin, barely under control, as I stood once more and examined the gorge a little more carefully. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I could see black scorch marks from where Zeus’ lightning had struck the Faultline in various places.
Of fucking course, I snarled. I should have known that this was all his doing. If I hadn’t caught this in time, the Titans could have escaped their prison and killed us all. But my brother didn’t care about that. He barely cared about his own family. I closed my hand around the small shard and crushed it in my palm. When I opened my hand again, I allowed the billowing breeze to carry the glittering dust from my hand.
It was then that I had decided that I was going to make a rare trip to Olympus as soon as I finished repairing the gorge. Zeus had almost destroyed what peaceful life he and the other Gods had, and all for what? To have a dick measuring contest with Poseidon? What the hell were they even doing up there to be brewing such a storm?
