Malevolent

by David Risen

  Rider recovered and swung again after Hades head.

  As he did so, Hades’ eyes turned blue.

  The moisture in the air froze around him into a large crystal.

  The muse – grows into her giant form and charges across the lava glass drawbridge.

  Persephone gasps and backpedals toward the steps leading to the towering, black Parthenon.

  Merissa rolls her eyes and assumes a parade rest stance with her legs spread shoulder width and her arms folded behind her back.

  Massive amounts of power buzz through her, and her eyes blaze with heat.

  Halfway across the drawbridge, the muse levitates ten feet in the air – her legs still working in the running motion at first, but then kicking and flailing at the air like a flea drowning in the sink.

  Her body turns vertical. She looks as though she’s lying on her back.

  The muse screams in anger and fear.

  Merissa approaches her and nods. “There’s always an animal out there who’s big enough to eat you back.”

  The muse slaps at her and curses unintelligibly.

  Merissa shakes her head.

  At once, the muses back bends in two the wrong way. A loud crack resounds through the caverns.

  A blood-curdling scream erupts from the broken Goddess, as the last vestiges of life drain from her, and then her body explodes into ash just as the Minotaur had disintegrated before. All the souls she ingested flood from her disintegrating body like a cloud of smoke.

  As the ashes settle into the dark waters, Merissa turns and spots Persephone looking on with terror.

  Merissa rolls her eyes again. “Shake the shit out of your pants and let’s go.”

  Persephone only stares at her for a moment, and then she rises to her feet and leads her across the drawbridge – giving wide berth to the spot where the muse bought the farm.

  Once they reach the opposite bank, Persephone approaches the tall vertical wall and looks up. Merissa angles her head upward and surveys the giant cliff. It rises at least 40 stories above her head.

  Then she looks back at Persephone.

  “We must scale this cliff. Are you able to climb?”

  Merissa gives her a glib look.

  Persephone nods. “At the top of this cliff is the launching pad through which you may leave Hades, but it’s not without peril.”

  Merissa rocks her head from side to side.

  Persephone touches her shoulder. “You don’t understand. The gates of Hades are guarded by a beast whose foe surpasses all but the Great Spirit himself. Not even you can stop him.”

  Merissa licks her lips. “Then how did it end up here?”

  Persephone sighs.

  “Cerberus, the hound of hell was created here using the power of The Great Spirit. Hades and Zeus made him so that no spirits within the underworld could escape and no mortals could enter here.”

  “Then how were you able to get out?”

  She shakes her head. “Hades lulled the beast to sleep so that I could pass, but we have no such option here. I will climb up first and distract the beast. You must hurry and fly up through the cavern, for the beast will make short work of me.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  She sighs, “Your escape will destroy Hades, and all souls within, including the ones devoured will be freed. I’ve been devoured millions of times by Asterion, what’s one more?”

  Merissa shakes her head. “Thanks.”

  Persephone tightens her grasp on Merissa’s shoulder. “You must do exactly as I say, or you will be eaten as well. Do not underestimate the power of the Cerberus.”

  A low rumble causes the ground to tremble beneath them.

  Many boulders break free from the cliff and plummet down toward the back, and dust from the ledge sprinkles into their hair.

  Merissa and Persephone steady themselves against the bank for the twelve second tremor, and once it subsides Merissa regards Persephone with wide eyes.

  “What was that?”

  Persephone says nothing at first, she immediately begins climbing the side of the cliff. Five feet above Merissa she looks back down.

  “We must make haste. Your presence here is causing Hades to fail. We must reach the top before the underworld implodes.”

  Rider watched Hades from within his prison of ice. He felt the water heating up around him.

  Hades doubled over in obvious pain. A large crater rose on his right temple as if the bone beneath were bulging and about to burst. The crater exploded throwing a mass of pus and blood three feet out, and then the wound healed over only to blister and bubble again.

  Hades shook it off, rose and retrieved his Warhammer from the ground, and then he approached Rider casually – blisters on his face appearing, bubbling and popping.

  Hades squinted through pain. “I can’t put into words how much I’m going to enjoy this.”

  He cocked the Warhammer over his shoulder like a lumberjack.

  The ice crystal around Rider shattered. Rider swung his fist at Hades face – connecting hard with his left eye.

  Hades fell to the ground and rolled over on his stomach.

  Rider kicked the rest of the ice out of the way just as Hades pushed his way up to all fours.

  Rider dove onto his opponent’s back, slamming the weight of the physical abysmal spike into the back of his head in fast and hard repeated blows.

  Hades’ arms and legs buckled, and he sank to the dusty concrete unconscious.

  Rider stood and circled Hades, until his feet were even with the Hell God’s head. He raised his sword over his head and swung hard for the God’s neck.

  Hades’ kicked after Rider’s legs.

  Rider stumbled and fell to the dust.

  Hades scrambled to his feet, and Rider followed suit.

  The two men circled one another.

  Hades snarled at Rider. “You think you’re clever.”

  Rider grinned humorlessly. “Why don’t you come over here and find out?”

  Hades roared and swung the Warhammer after him blindly. Rider stepped to the side, and the hammer skipped off the concrete.

  Rider swung his sword after Hades.

  Hades gasped and backpedaled just enough to avoid the kill shot, but the sword opened a large, jagged gash in the skin of his right arm.

  Hades yelped and stumbled backwards. Rider swung his sword back the other way, but the blade missed – clearing the God’s nose by only a millimeter.

  Thunder clapped behind Hades’ eyes.

  Hades shuffled his feet and swung his Warhammer blindly at Rider – missing him completely.

  Rider, still advancing, swung the abysmal spike hard and fast at Hades’ exposed wrist. The blade of the sword cleaved through muscle, tendon and bone slicing his left hand from his arm.

  Hades screamed raising his stump up to eye level.

  Rider cocked his sword once more to finish the job.

  Hades glared at him.

  A pillar of fire exploded from the God’s eyes surrounding Rider and blowing him backwards past the body of Merissa Irons. His back crashed into the shelving behind him, and he dropped to the concrete floor in a heap.

  His face and hands felt as though someone had tried to cook him alive.

  He looked down at his left hand lying uselessly on the pavement to find that the skin was burned to a crisp.

  Hades appeared over him, smirking through his own blistered and burned face wielding his trident. He cocked it over his head and stabbed Rider in the gut.

  Rider grunted as the tines of the trident tore through his body.

  Hades planted his foot in Rider’s chest and ripped his weapon free, and then he sat it down and retrieved his severed hand from the floor several feet down.

  He jammed the ruined appendage into the stump and released, but the hand fell uselessly back to the concrete floor.

  Hades cursed, picked it back up and jammed it hard into the stump once more shrieking in agony. This time, he saw the fissure
seal halfway around his wrist.

  Hades pointed his hateful eyes back at Rider.

  “As you die, you will watch me break through whatever barrier protects your woman, and then I will seal her back in one of these vaults.”

  Rider looked to his right and found the physical abysmal spike lying useless ten feet away, but beside it, he saw another chance to beat the hell god. The helm of invisibility Hades had worn into the old refinery lay beside his sword.

  Persephone – the beautiful and fair-haired maiden – looks down at Merissa just before climbing up on the ledge of the cliff, and her eyes say it all.

  Terror.

  “I’ll distract him. Do not attempt to engage him regardless of what comes of me. Fly up the vertical shaft, and your escape will free us all.”

  Merissa nods noncommittally.

  Persephone sighs and hurls herself up the ledge.

  A moment later, the silence on the side of the cliff is broken with a blood-curdling scream followed by a roar that sounds a lot like the growl of a dog, the growl of a bear, the hiss of many serpents, and the laughing of a hyena simultaneously.

  Merissa reaches up and grasps the same stones that Persephone used on her way over the cliff, and pulls herself up and over the edge.

  But when she rises the creature she sees is the worst yet.

  It is the length of a school bus and as wide as a small house. It soars twenty feet above her head and looks like a horrific montage of the world’s most dangerous creatures.

  The Cerberus has three heads at its front that don’t look like dogs exactly – more like mangy wolves with black fur and several rows of shark’s teeth.

  Its paws look more like the talons of eagles. A tail that is at least the length of its body with a pointed end like that of a dragon’s trails behind it. Hundreds of serpents connected to its back like hair slither and writhe in the air above it.

  The beast’s left paw pins Persephone to the ground. Her ragged robes have turned red with her blood where the three claws of the beast have dug into her torso. She pushes at the beast’s paw with her hands and kicks with her feet in vain – trying to pull away from the terrible attack of the Cerberus.

  The left most head of the creature taunts her – snapping its jaws after her head, and dribbling its thick saliva all over her.

  The middle-most head catches a glimpse of Merissa, and all three heads look up.

  For a moment, the beast lifts the talon holding Persephone to the ground.

  Persephone scrambles to her feet and charges back toward Merissa.

  The mouths of the beast open again, and it unleashes another of its terrible roars.

  A tongue shoots from the mouth of the left-most head and wraps around her legs.

  Persephone crashes face-first to the ground bumping her chin hard on the rocks.

  Dazzled, she looks up to Merissa and mouths the word, “Go.”

  Merissa snaps out of it and looks straight up. Above her she finds a long cylindrical cave that extends up vertically, and at the distant end of it, she sees a faint, pink light – like sunlight filtered through eyelids.

  She flings her hands straight downward and rises like a rocket from a launching pad.

  As she ascends she looks down below and watches as the Cerberus drags Persephone with its frog-like tongue back toward its mouth, sucks her halfway in, and chomps down on her with its razor teeth.

  Even as the light in Persephone’s eyes dies, her hands still beckon.

  Merissa looks away.

  The light above her grows brighter....

  Hades turned his back to Rider and sauntered three steps toward Merissa’s body.

  Now was his chance. Rider trained his eyes on Hades’ back and scooted toward the helmet and his sword.

  He looked left for an instant in time to see Hades hurl his trident over his head. His hair turning from black to red to black again whipped and snapped in a phantom static field. He stabbed downward after the invisible barrier surrounding Merissa’s body.

  Rider risked a glance back at the helmet and sword.

  Still too far away.

  He looked back toward Hades, and scooted thrice more.

  Hades strained so hard against the invisible barrier that his entire body shook from the exertion.

  A grunt escaped Hades which turned into a growl and then a roar.

  Rider extended his hand toward the skull cap, splaying his burned fingers. As he did so, the skin on his fingers cracked like skin on burned chicken. White-hot pain shot through his arm.

  Rider’s burned mouth opened and an uncontrollable yelp escaped him.

  His hand landed on the top of the skull cap, and the sensation was the same as it may have been if he’d placed his palm down on a hot stove eye.

  His face contorted in agony, and the motion made his face feel as though he were being cooked alive all over again.

  He muscled through it and dragged the skull cap beside his right hip, and trained his eyes back at Hades just as the broken God retracted from the barrier, panting.

  Hades glanced backwards at Rider and smirked.

  “Not long now, and your little girly will be tucked in to one of those metal prisons.”

  Hades turned back to face Merissa, cocked and plunged the trident into the bubble once again.

  Rider took a deep breath, glanced at his sword, and grasped the handle.

  The skin of his right hand cracked open, and blood and infection spilled out onto the black cuff of his leather coat.

  He dragged the sword across the concrete, bringing it to a rest beside him, and then he found Hades again.

  Hades entire body shook with toil.

  Hades’ partially severed hand snapped off. The trident soared over his head like a launched javelin with the hand of the God still clutching it, and it clanged to a rest somewhere deep within the old refinery.

  “DAMN,” Hades roared. In half rage and half anguish.

  He shot Rider a sharp look.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” and then he turned and stalked off to find his hand and his weapon.

  Rider clutched the skull cap in his hand growling in agony, lifted it, and placed it on his head. As he did so, his head felt as though he doused it with gasoline and lit a match.

  His body disappeared.

  Rider clutched the handle of his sword in his right hand, rolled over on his belly and dragged himself toward Merissa. The skin of his face and hands felt like rotten fabric ripping with each motion, but he fixed his eyes on Merissa.

  She lay on her belly with her head turned toward him. Her right hand – the fingernails still covered with scattered flakes of the black fingernail polish she must have worn at the time the sisters took her lay slightly before her face on the concrete floor.

  She looked almost normal now. Like a strange, nude woman who decided to take a nap on the dusty concrete floor.

  Rider stopped dragging himself inches away from her hand.

  He reached upward with his left hand and placed it on top of her right hand.

  A sudden jolt of power surged through him.

  His head snapped back as the electric sensation of it coursed through his body. He cried out as every inch of burned skin on his head and hands blazed white-hot simultaneously, and then it was over.

  He lay panting on his stomach with his eyelids clenched and his head pressed into the dust.

  His eyes popped open as he heard Hades approaching once again.

  Rider looked at his hands.

  Perfect, healthy skin.

  He grasped the handle of his sword. The spirit sword snaked around his arm. He crouched, straddling Merissa’s waist.

  Hades approached the bubble this time from above Merissa’s head.

  He cocked the trident over his head with bulging eyes exposing his body.

  Rider stabbed hard and fast at the Hell God’s golden breastplate.

  Hades yelped as if someone had punched him hard, in the stomach.

  With bulging
eyes, he looked down to find dark blood gushing from his belly.

  Rider flipped the skull cap off his head to reveal himself.

  Hades glared back at him with fear and hatred and stumbled backwards.

  His skin was boiling and blistering much more quickly now.

  Hades’ head snapped back.

  Rider gasped as he realized what was about to happen. He flung himself over Merissa’s body to shield her from what was to come.

  The last thing Blake Rider heard as a mortal was a rapid succession of three explosions – each one worse than the one before.

  Blake Rider finds himself looking down at his own body.

  He somehow managed in his last moments of life to completely cover the small form of Merissa Irons, and he paid dearly.

  His black, thigh length leather coat – that his wife, Lauren, had given him as a Christmas gift the year before – remains intact except for the tearing at the hem and the cuffs from the grenade shot he took on his way into the ghost town.

  But most of the back of his head is missing. Jagged shards of skull poke outward as if someone had shot him in the front of the head with a high-powered rifle.

  The skin on the back of his neck is gone revealing the muscle and parts of his spine.

  Rider looks up to find that Hades’ explosion had torn a hole through all four floors of the old refinery and blown away part of the roof at the top. And through this new skylight, Rider sees the dome of souls rotating overhead like a thick cover of angry storm clouds. And in its center a glowing pentacle that he’s come to associate with the power of the sisters of divinity.

  “What happened,” someone says in front of him.

  Rider looks down to find Hades looking about in awe, completely oblivious to the blood, gore, and meat surrounding him that had moments ago been parts of his body.

  The spiritual abysmal spike snakes around Rider’s arm.

  “Let’s finish this,” Rider growls.

  Hades snarls, and reaches down to grasp his trident, but his hand passes through it.

  “What’s this?”

  Rider nods. “You’re dead.”

  Hades glares at him for a moment and then bursts out in humorless laughter. “And you think I should be afraid of you now? What could you possibly do to me that you haven’t already done.?”