Separated from Yourselves

by Bill Hiatt

  “Why doesn’t it work better?” asked Shar, still looking accusingly at his until-now unbeatable sword.

  “From what I can tell, there is what we would think of as magic in the adamantine, but it’s buried inside, beneath what would be a really hard surface even without magic, so Zom’s antimagic effect does little to it. It’s almost as if it was designed for that exact kind of challenge. As for Stan’s sword, whatever blessing David brings out of it may be intended for living beings, not inanimate objects.”

  “Maybe we have another option,” said Alex, pointing at the sword of chaos whose scabbard was hanging from his belt. “Even adamantine shouldn’t be able to resist the raw power of chaos.”

  “Let’s not try a full sword blow, though,” said Tal. “It might work too well, and I don’t want us getting sprayed with adamantine splinters or something. Let me see if I can give it a gentle nudge instead.”

  Alex handed the sword to Tal, who had a gift for repurposing the energy in magic swords. He stood well back from the boulder-like mound and let a thin stream of chaos flow into the door. Nothing visible happened.

  Frowning, Tal put his hands on the door again.

  “There is damage, just not very much. I’m going to have to risk trying a little more powerful stream.”

  He stepped back even farther and raised the sword.

  “Isn’t its natural tendency going to be to burst inward, maybe injuring the prisoners we’re trying to rescue?” asked Stan.

  “Normal physics may not apply,” said Tal. “Whenever the sword of chaos has been used before, it has caused transformation of matter into other forms and a small explosion that spreads debris in all directions. The adamantine doesn’t seem to be transforming, though, so I’m not sure what will happen if it breaks. I’ll have to try upping the power very, very slowly.”

  Magnus started strumming the lyre of Orpheus. “Just in case it looks as if the door is about to explode, I’ll try to reach through the weakening structure and hold it from the other side, so it doesn’t blast the Olympians—at least not too much.”

  I was beginning to realize why the myths didn’t have any stories about escapes from Tartarus. The situation made me wonder how Nicneven had pulled off her rescue. She must have had some insider information from Hecate that enabled her to get the job done.

  Tal and Magnus worked together for two hours trying to get the door to break without exploding. That long delay gave me time to think—really the last thing I needed.

  I glanced at Jimmie. He winked, and I winked back. That was about the most intimate communication we’d had in a while. Without really talking much about the situation, we’d reached an agreement not to go out of our way to rub our relationship in the faces of Tal Times Three. I couldn’t get that name out of my head ever since Jimmie had jokingly suggested that Tal could now form his own boy band and call it that.

  Tal himself had told Jimmie he was OK with our being together, and maybe he really was, but I was no longer sure. Magnus was definitely not, and I shouldn’t have cared about that, but Magnus 2.0, despite his hijacking Jimmie’s body for Atlante, seemed more interested in trying to be one of the good guys, even if he was far from being all the way there. If Tal was right, and the balance between good and evil in Magnus had shifted a little, I didn’t want to give him an excuse to backslide.

  Tal and Magnus were both busy most of the time anyway. The one I was really worried about was Michael, who still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that he and I weren’t together, who watched every move I made with raw ache in his eyes.

  Finally, the door started to crack visibly, Magnus sent music through the cracks to contain any possible explosion, and the door collapsed into tiny pieces instead of showering us or the Olympians with all those incredibly hard fragments.

  As soon as the dust cleared, the Olympians I had met came pouring out of their prison: Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes, Dionysus, Athena, Hestia, Hades, Persephone, Hercules (not the original, but the Olympian he became after his death), and several lesser gods, including someone in the shape of a handsome teenage guy who made my heart beat considerably faster. I had to focus on Jimmie really hard to avoid taking the stranger in my arms right there. I knew the attraction was just physical—at least, that’s what I needed to tell myself.

  “Friends, we hardly dared to believe you would rescue us,” said Apollo. “Given your other exploits, I suppose we should have known you would achieve the impossible yet again.”

  “Zeus, Hera, and Demeter are not with you?” asked Tal, looking at the mob of former gods that now surrounded us.

  “Alas, no,” said Athena. “If they are here, they are in another place.”

  “They are not here,” said Hades. “Now that I am free of that cursed prison and have my powers again, I have knowledge of all who are imprisoned here. My long-absent brother and sisters are not among them.”

  “Then the question is, are all of us and all of you together enough to retake Olympus?” asked Shar. It was so like him to move straight to the battle plan.

  “Perhaps,” said Athena, who had noticed the presence of three Tals. “Your party has grown somewhat since last we saw it, and we do not know all of your abilities. Nor, perhaps, do you know all of ours.”

  That led to a long but interesting round of introductions and explanations. The cutie I had to struggle to keep my eyes off turned out to be Eros, more commonly known by his Roman name, Cupid.

  From time to time I had heard the guys tease Tal about almost being overcome by Aphrodite’s charm. Now I totally knew how he felt.

  Eros excited Tal, Magnus, and Alex considerably, though not in the same way Eros excited me. Alex had asked what seemed at first to be a random question about Eros, the son of Aphrodite, and Eros, the primal force of love. To their surprise, Eros claimed to be both, his body but a smaller-scale incarnation of the original. Given enough time, he could channel the original’s much-greater power.

  “Which is why love rules all,” said Aphrodite, earning a predictable scowl from Artemis.

  “I was taken by surprise,” said Eros in an unforgivably sexy voice, “or I could have put up much better resistance.”

  Though he was less experienced than many of the others, I understood why Eros’s nature was so critical: he had access to power like that of Erebus. Well, much warmer than Erebus’s, but potentially enough to tip the scales in our favor if we could figure out how to use it properly.

  When the introductions were finally over, Tal asked if there was any place we could go to formulate our battle plan.

  “Without knowing what the usurpers are doing, this may actually be the best place,” said Athena. “No one will expect that we have been freed. If we venture anywhere else, I fear we risk detection.”

  “Here it is, then,” said Tal. “Who exactly are we up against?”

  “Aside from a few lesser Olympians who may be serving them out of fear,” said Apollo, “the ones who captured your party when you came to Olympus. There is a false Zeus—”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, Lord Apollo, but you can tell the difference? Because—”

  “Yes,” Apollo said, “perhaps the spell has not been perfected, for this Zeus is not as like Zeus as you and your…twin are alike. In any case, the false Zeus is joined by Hecate, Cronus, Poseidon, and Ares. Unfortunately, the false Zeus seems every bit as powerful as the real thing.”

  “For that very reason, the element of surprise will be crucial,” added Athena. “If this Zeus sees us coming, he can destroy us with thunderbolts before we even get close enough to do anything effective against him.”

  “It appeared to me before I was overwhelmed that Ares and Poseidon were…not fully themselves,” said Alex.

  “We too believe now that Hecate is controlling them in some way,” said Hermes. “Ares was never exactly admirable, and Poseidon has always had a fierce temper, but while most of the rest of us were trying to find ways to please God, they hung back
, and after Zeus vanished, they tried to seize power, as you know. I would like to think they are both better than the acts they have recently committed.”

  “Then our enemies are weaker than we feared,” said Magnus. “If Hecate has to expend the kind of energy it would take to control such mighty individuals, that will leave her less to do anything else.”

  “Possibly,” agreed Hermes, “but I think she has built up her influence gradually. More subtle control would require less power to maintain.”

  “Even so, I agree with Magnus that it’s a potential weak spot we can exploit,” said Tal. “What else might we be able to use against them?”

  “It may be that Poseidon and Ares are not the only ones under some kind of spell,” said Apollo. “Cronus is a natural enemy of Zeus and Poseidon, and all of them seemed to me to have the desire to rule themselves. Yet against all logic, they worked together. Surely there is something unnatural in that.”

  “This new Zeus may be Hecate’s creature to begin with,” observed Dionysus. “Whether he is or not, her recent acts suggest she wants sole power herself. Perhaps she is tricking each of them into believing he will end up as sole ruler, when in fact she will betray them all as soon as her own position is secure.”

  “It’s going to be hard to know in advance which of those theories is true,” said Tal.

  “Let’s assume Hecate is influencing at least some of them,” said Shar. “In order to exploit those weaknesses, we need to get close, so perhaps the first order of business should be figuring out how to overcome Zeus’s thunderbolts.”

  “Our collective magic could probably shield us enough to take a few hits,” said Magnus, “but at best that will leave us weaker than we should be starting the battle.”

  “If only we can reach Olympus in the first place,” said Athena, “we could reduce the effectiveness of the thunderbolts. Zeus is hardly going to fire on us full force if we are standing too close. He might bring down the palace on him and his allies, perhaps shatter Olympus itself.”

  “We might be able to get a few of us in unnoticed,” said Hermes, “but we can scarcely move our entire force that close without being spotted, and a small force would be slaughtered immediately, even without thunderbolts.”

  “I can take you there through shadow,” said Umbra.

  “The last time we saw the throne room it was darker than usual,” said Tal. “It should be possible to find a suitable shadow. We’d emerge right in their midst, without any kind of warning.”

  “That would at least give us a chance of victory,” said Athena, looking somewhat less grim. “However, each of our opponents is formidable. We must have an appropriate plan for overcoming all of them, or we may yet lose.”

  If you had told me a year ago that I was going to listen to a war council with rapt attention, I would have laughed in your face. Now I found it hard not to be interested. Considering our survival was on the line, I supposed my reaction was natural enough.

  Take Athena and some of her more warlike siblings, and stir in the reincarnations of Hephaestion/Patroclus, Alexander the Great/Achilles, and King David, and you have the recipe for more than just a battle plan. You have something even a pacifist could admire as a work of art.

  Umbra would bring us through in a shadow behind the thrones, where we might spread ourselves out to best effect, though we would only have seconds to get positioned before our enemies struck.

  The archers of the group (Apollo, Artemis, Khalid, and I) would stay in the back and start shooting as fast as we could. All of us had arrows powerful enough to do damage, though in the early stages we would serve more as a distraction to prevent our enemies from focusing all their attention on the spell casters or frontline fighters.

  Also in the back would be Magnus, Lucas, Tal, Michael, and the muses. Tal would be shooting flame with White Hilt and singing. Magnus would be playing the lyre of Orpheus and singing. Lucas would presumably be dancing again, though he seemed not to be able to control that. Michael would be blowing the horn of Astolfo, which didn’t require musical ability in the same way the lyre did. Nearby would be Aphrodite and Eros, channeling love like crazy.

  No one expected that Astolfo’s horn would immediately break our enemies with fear, but Hermes was pretty sure that if Michael just kept blowing, he would wear them down over time. Meanwhile the other music would blend with the magic of Aphrodite and Eros, focusing on one objective: reinforcing the bonds of family love. That sounded incredibly corny, until I thought about how much power Eros in particular could bring to the table. Since the Olympian combatants were all related, if somehow the positive emotions from those bonds could be restored, at the very least it would slow our attackers, but it might even break some of them free from Hecate, if she was actually controlling them. Should that approach fail completely, plan B was to use all the energy Aphrodite and Eros could generate for whatever attack magic Tal and Magnus could come up with. Nearby were the others ill equipped for combat but ready to lend their energy through our psychic network: Hephaestus, Hestia, Gabriela, and Persephone. Hestia had the added responsibility when the battle permitted of trying to relight the sacred hearth, which should weaken our opponents.

  In the front line would be attack groups, one designated for each major opponent and carefully selected to be to give that opponent the most trouble possible. With any luck, this combination of such a variety of attacks would be enough to win.

  The plan was so good it made even the perpetually worried Tal look almost happy. In a short few days we had gone from being hunted refugees, some of us warped by magic, all of us waiting for certain capture or death, to being a force capable of retaking Olympus—the first step in restoring balance to the universe.

  How many people could put that in their Facebook status?

  Of course I knew I could never tell anybody, but I would have the satisfaction of knowing it myself.

  Hades told us where to find all the Olympian gear, the last piece the plan needed to operate properly.

  “Foolish pride!” he said with a sneer. “Our captors left it all nearby, so confident were they of their victory.”

  But then, as it turned out, there was one more piece that needed to fall into place, and it didn’t.

  “I can’t enter the shadows,” said Umbra, looking more emotional than usual.

  We had planned to shift from Tartarus to the Land of the Shades, and from there to Olympus.

  “Damn it!” said Tal, who hardly ever cursed—at least not when I was around. “I forgot to stipulate safe passage to and from Tartarus. I negotiated a one-way trip without realizing it.”

  As it turned out, that was not the only problem with the revised contract we made with the Populus Umbrae. By testing, Umbra discovered that she could no longer use shadow magic at all.

  “We asked for her freedom,” said Dan. “We didn’t ask for her to retain her powers.”

  “I’ll take us out by portal,” said Tal, who then immediately discovered he couldn’t.

  “In the unlikely event that someone escapes a cell, the atmosphere of Tartarus impedes magical travel,” Hades explains. “I would suppose shadow magic works because of the affinities Erebus has with Tartarus. If we want to use some other kind of transportation, we will have to get out of here in the usual way.”

  “I dread the answer,” said Magnus, “but what is the usual way?”

  “Up a very long passageway, hundreds of leagues in mortal terms, to an adamantine gate. It is thicker even than the cell doors. Once we break through that, we have to face Campe, guardian of Tartarus. So far, only the thunderbolts of Zeus have successfully brought her down. I believe we can defeat her if we work together, but by then—”

  “We will have lost the element of surprise,” Tal finished for him.

  And just like that, all those hours of careful planning went down the drain.

  Chapter 19: Mishaps on the Mountain (Tal)

  “There has to be some way to get out of here without giving ourse
lves away,” I said. Once again I had made a mistake on an agreement with a supernatural force. I had to redeem myself by finding a way to get us to Olympus unobserved.

  “There could be one…maybe,” said Alex. “Lord Hades, obviously Tartarus is a place, but isn’t it also a being, one of the children of Chaos?”

  “You are learned for someone from your society,” Hades replied. “Yes, Tartarus is the brother of Erebus, whom you dealt with earlier, and one of the original children of Chaos. Even I have not seen him for centuries, however, and he lacked what you would think of as a personality even then.”

  “What does that mean to us?” asked Magnus.

  “It means he will not care whether we are trapped here or not.”

  “Are you not lord of the Underworld?” I asked Hades. “You can open the gate to Tartarus and order the guardian to let us pass.”

  “Had it been so simple, I would not have bothered to raise the issue in the first place,” replied Hades, eyeing me coldly. “Hecate assumed the rulership of the Underworld before she imprisoned me. I could probably regain it—but I would have to be out of Tartarus to accomplish that. Do you perceive the problem?”

  There is nothing more confidence boosting than having an elder Olympian treat you like an idiot.

  “Eros—I mean the vast, original version of me—is a brother of Tartarus,” said Eros, looking around as if he expected everybody to get his point.

  “Perhaps I could get Tartarus to listen,” he continued when it became apparent we were just going to stare at him blankly.

  “If you could invoke your larger self, perhaps,” conceded Hades. “However, you probably cannot do that from here, either.”

  “Let me try. Of course, I’ll need to make love first to be fully energized. Perhaps you would do me the honor, Lady Eva.”

  Simultaneously Jimmie, Magnus, Michael, and I all had to restrain ourselves from punching Eros in the face.