Hellequin Chronicles 4: Prison of Hope

by Steve McHugh

  Each person we passed eyed us suspiciously until they realized that Sky was in our ranks and decided we were no longer a threat. Most of the people in Tartarus would recognize Hades and his family by sight, and their regular appearance in the realm meant that there was probably nothing to be concerned about. Even so, a certain tension was in the air. The fact that Cronus had escaped had probably not been lost on the inhabitants, and they were likely worried about the reaction that it would cause.

  We reached a large town square where a number of market stalls had been set up along one side, closest to the ocean. Various foods, some of which I’d never seen before, were being sold and bartered for by dozens of people.

  Farther down the street I could see the blacksmith who made many of the weapons used by both the griffins and inhabitants of the town. Owning weapons was not considered a transgression because many people still hunted for meat and fish.

  An ornate fountain stood in the middle of the square, water rising up through the blowholes of five large whalelike creatures, the sprays crisscrossing over one another before returning to the basin below to begin their journey anew.

  We passed by and I ran my hand through the cool water. From the moment we’d made our way through the fog, the sun had beat down on us, unrelenting, but never unpleasant. A lovely breeze came over the town from the ocean, bringing with it the scent of saltwater, something I’d always really enjoyed.

  “You okay?” Sky asked.

  I nodded. “I’d forgotten how amazing this place is.”

  “It is beautiful,” Lucie said and smiled at a few teenage children who ran past, shouting to one another in ancient Greek; one of them nearly bumped into her and gave her a nervous grin. Everyone who lived in Tartarus was required to learn some of the modern languages, but most dropped back to their traditional language whenever possible, as though it were a safety blanket made entirely of words.

  “What did they say?” Lucie asked.

  “ ‘Who’s the pretty lady; she must be very hot,’ ” I said.

  Lucie looked at her bandaged hands and arms, and then down at her long dark dress that would soak up heat like a sponge. “It is a bit warm,” she admitted with a slight smile.

  “The houses are cooler,” Sky told her. “They use runes to remove most of the heat.”

  Lucie’s eyes opened wider. “Really? How interesting, I’d love to talk to people about that. Do they have an enchanter in town?”

  Sky shook her head. “Apart from you, I’ve never met one who lived longer than a human.”

  Lucie shook her head as if that were information she should have guessed, and we started off again.

  We’d almost made it to the edge of the square when a deep, booming voice called out, “Nathan Garrett, you goddamn cur.”

  I stopped walking and turned to see Atlas standing in one entrance to the square. Everyone between us stopped what they were doing and quickly moved aside or dashed past me.

  “I knew you’d be back one day, you pissant,” Atlas roared. He was well over seven feet tall and probably weighed over four hundred pounds of pure muscle. His gargantuan arms and chest were covered with dirt from the mines he worked in. They were bare, except for a leather strap across his chest that held his battle-axe in place on his back. His brown hair cascaded over his shoulders. He looked every inch the god people used to consider him to be.

  He unstrapped the battle-axe from his back and swung it lazily onto the ground with a resounding crunch as it split the bricks the blade touched.

  “Can’t we do this some other time?” I asked him.

  “You’ll make time now,” Atlas roared. “You took her virtue and will pay for your transgression.”

  “To be fair, her virtue was a distant memory well before I ever got near her.”

  To the shock of no one, that didn’t help matters at all.

  Atlas roared with anger. “Face me in combat, little man. I’ll even tie my hands behind my back if you like.”

  “Atlas, this is a bad idea,” I advised.

  The big man laughed. “You think you can take me?”

  “If we were back in my realm, I wouldn’t have a hope in hell. But here, in Tartarus—well, I wouldn’t put money on you coming away unharmed.”

  “You arrogant little shit.”

  “You misunderstand,” I said and took a step toward him. “You’re not at full power here. For thousands of years, you’ve not been at full power, and while your half-giant side allows you to retain your permanent bulk and strength, you’d be fighting me, a sorcerer who just arrived and whose power hasn’t yet been affected by this realm. I think the fight would be a lot closer than you’d care to admit. I think if you took a moment and allowed yourself to consider this, you’d agree that fighting me now would be dangerous.”

  Atlas took a step toward me, radiating hatred at my words. I sighed and removed my T-shirt.

  “Ah, you can’t possibly match these.” Atlas laughed and flexed his biceps.

  “No, I just don’t want blood on my clothes twice in one day,” I explained as I tossed the shirt to Sky.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Sky said.

  “No,” I agreed. “We don’t.”

  “Can you take him?”

  I shook my head. “Probably not.”

  “So, why try?” Lucie asked.

  “I might not be able to win, but I can lose with style. You two go on and find Rhea.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Sky said.

  I turned back to Atlas, who had a big grin on his face. “I’m going to break every bone in your body.”

  “You’re welcome to try.”

  Atlas dropped his axe to the ground and sprinted toward me, swinging his massive fists—and hitting nothing but air. I used my air magic to increase my speed and dashed around the angry Titan, slamming a ball of fire into his ribs, forcing the flames to engulf one side of his body.

  Atlas jumped back, but instead of putting out the fire, he just swung another punch, something I wasn’t expecting at all. I didn’t move quickly enough, and he caught me on the shoulder with a blow that took me off my feet and threw me back against a nearby wall.

  The flames immediately vanished, and a murderous glare settled in Atlas’s eyes. He took a step toward me as I readied my lightning.

  “What the hell is this testosterone-fueled nonsense?” shouted a woman who’d walked into the middle of the square, between Atlas and me.

  “It’s my right,” Atlas told her.

  She spun on the much larger man, and he visibly shrank. “Get out of my sight, Atlas! The next time you feel the need to threaten guests in our realm, you’ll spend two weeks working out on the fishing boats.”

  Atlas shook his head violently. “Rhea, he took my woman’s honor!” he shouted and pointed at me.

  “Your woman wouldn’t know her honor if it came up to her and bit her on the ass. Now get out of my sight before I lose my temper.”

  Atlas retrieved his axe from the ground, glared at me, and stormed out of the square.

  Rhea walked over toward me. Her long, almost white hair fell down her back. She wore a thin blue dress that hugged her figure. In human terms, she appeared to be maybe in her late forties or early fifties, although she was probably close to ten thousand years older than that. “Nathan,” she said, “you’re a goddamn idiot.”

  I nodded my head slightly and got back to my feet, wincing slightly as I moved my arm. “In my defense, I had no way of knowing that Atlas would marry the girl a decade after I slept with her.”

  “Your defense nothing,” Rhea snapped. “You antagonized him back then, all those years ago, and he doesn’t soon forget. You’ll have to fight him one day. And when that comes, no one will be here to stop him.”

  “A day I’d like to avoid for a while if I can.”

  “Yes, today we have other matters to discuss.” She turned to Sky and hugged her tightly before introducing herself to Lucie.

  “Come, the three of you
. I assume you wish to discuss my husband’s recent absconding. And how I’d quite like him back without him being killed.”

  CHAPTER 20

  We rode horses to Rhea’s villa at the far edge of the town limits. Any notion of remaining undetected had ended the second Atlas had decided to single me out.

  The villa was a sprawling three-story structure with more rooms than I could possibly think of uses for, and gardens inside which you could have easily fit a football stadium. It was the very definition of opulence, a fact that was even more obvious as we made our way to the side of the building and noticed the view from the cliff top we found ourselves on, looking down at the clear ocean two hundred feet below us.

  “This must be the biggest house in the town,” Lucie said as we took our seats under the shade of several huge trees.

  “One of them,” Rhea told her. “All the Titans tried to outdo each other when we first arrived. When the dust settled and everyone decided to behave with dignity, one of the first things we did was create a government. The griffins, our jailers, weren’t really up to the task, and we couldn’t wallow in self-pity forever, so it was up to Cronus to lead. Toward that end, he decided that our house should be apart from the rest of the Titans’ and closer to other groups who had supported us.”

  “The griffins aren’t your jailers,” Sky said. “They haven’t been for a long time.”

  “We are not permitted to leave this realm. They stop us. Therefore, they are our jailers. Doesn’t matter how pretty the scenery might be; if you can’t leave, it’s still just a jail.”

  “Did you help Cronus leave?” I asked, deliberately stopping myself from using the word “escape” instead.

  “No,” Rhea said softly. “I like it here. We’re left alone to live our lives.”

  “But you just said this is your jail,” Lucie pointed out.

  “And so it is, but it’s also my home. We either deal with that or go mad wanting something we can never achieve.”

  “Hyperion got out of here; why can’t others?” Lucie asked.

  “Hyperion was a special case. He had something Hera and her friends wanted. I assure you, Hera doesn’t want anything from Cronus or myself. Most of the people who live here would rather tear out her heart than work for her.”

  “Apparently Hyperion doesn’t have that complaint,” I said and could hear the anger in my voice.

  “So I hear,” Rhea said. “You should be careful around him; he’s incredibly powerful. Even my husband would have thought twice before engaging him in combat.”

  “I’m not going fight him,” I admitted. “Doesn’t mean I have to like him, though.”

  “Okay,” Sky said, “we need to know why Cronus escaped and where he went.”

  Rhea poured herself a glass of something that looked like cloudy lemonade and took a sip as blue glyphs appeared on the back of her hand, creating ice cubes that clinked together as they fell into the drink. “I have no idea,” she said eventually.

  “Bullshit,” Sky snapped. “You expect me to believe that Cronus told you nothing about his plans?”

  Rhea raised an eyebrow and placed her glass back on the table that sat between the four of us. “If he’d told me his plan, I would have stopped him. I do not know where he is.”

  “How’d he escape?” I asked.

  “Do you want facts or my theory?” she asked me. “Because I have very few of the former, but quite an interesting latter.”

  “What facts have you got for us?” Lucie asked.

  “Cronus had help in getting free. There’s no way to cross that lake without taking in at least a little of the water that ages you. Only Charon has a boat. And no, before you ask, Charon did not help my husband escape. Charon is loyal to those griffins and would see it as a gross betrayal.”

  “Did the griffins help?”

  “Not a chance. After Pandora escaped, none of them would dare.”

  “So, how do you think he did it?” Lucie asked.

  Rhea shrugged. “No idea. He wanted out of here long ago, but until Pandora escaped, he was content with his life. Once she got free, he began working in secret. He didn’t think I knew what he was doing, but I’d see him trying to figure out how to get across the lake.”

  “Did he have any visitors recently?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t Hades keep a log of those who come and go?” she asked me.

  I nodded and Rhea smiled; she knew that I just wanted her to confirm what I already knew.

  “We don’t get many. But Hyperion would visit Cronus fairly regularly. They’d chat away for a while, and then Cronus would seem calmer after. For a few days anyway.”

  “What did they discuss?” Sky asked.

  “I assume Hyperion was telling my husband about his life outside of here and working for Hera. They remained friends even after Hyperion left.”

  “Could Hyperion have helped him escape?” I asked.

  Rhea laughed. “Hyperion works for Hera, who would be the last person on earth to want my husband free. I doubt very much that he helped Cronus do anything except discuss the good old days.”

  “So, is that it?” Sky asked. “That’s all the facts you have?”

  Rhea nodded. “But the theory is much more interesting.”

  “Regale us,” I said and drank some of the cloudy drink, which tasted more like strawberry than lemon.

  “I think my husband has been working on his plan for a long time, since well before Pandora escaped. I think her escape was what lit a fire under him.

  “I think if you walk along the coast for long enough, you’ll come to a forest. In there, I think you’ll find something that shows how Cronus managed to escape the lake. The answers are there.”

  “Do you know where he would have gone once he escaped this place?” Sky asked.

  “I don’t know exactly where he’ll be, but I’ll tell you where you can find him.”

  “And where might that be?” Lucie asked.

  “Wherever that bitch Hera is. She murdered our son, and for centuries we’ve wanted justice. My husband will undoubtedly be close to Hera, tracking her wherever she might be. That way he can cut her fucking cunt heart out for what she did to our son.”

  We all sat stunned for a few minutes after Rhea’s outburst and her subsequently walking away from us.

  Lucie was the first to break the silence. “If that’s true, we can’t let him get to Hera.”

  “Don’t see why not. Let him have a shot,” Sky said. “The world would be better off without her in it.”

  “You think so?” Lucie asked. “Because I think the world would descend into war without her in it.”

  “How the hell do you get that idea?” Sky asked.

  “Hera has one of the largest and most powerful groups on earth, comprising roughly fifteen percent of all voting power at Avalon. That’s only second to the knights. In her group are Demeter, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Dionysus, various children of each of those people, and their families, who include people like Selene and Eros.

  “Many of Zeus’s old allies were merged into Hera’s conglomerate when he vanished. In that group, you’ve got powerful people from the Egyptian, Chinese, and Japanese lines. There’s also the matter of the witches, who still get a voting block in Avalon; they’re almost always allied with whatever group Demeter prefers. In short, Hera controls a huge amount of power and influence in the world, probably more than any other single person who isn’t Merlin. If she dies, it will create a vacuum that will be fought over by everyone who thinks they have a chance of filling it. You really believe that Demeter or Ares would be willing to let someone else get that spot? There would be a massacre the likes of which we haven’t seen in centuries.”

  “When Zeus went missing, there was nothing like that,” Sky pointed out.

  “There was still a mass exodus of people who didn’t trust Hera and a lot more people whom Hera decided to get vengeance on for whatever slight they’d once given her. A lot of people died, and many mo
re were cast away.

  “If it happens now, with Hera’s organization being so involved in the world market, it would make the recession of a few years ago look like a slight blip. Currencies would cease to exist, and countries would go to war, because any human who has a position of power in a government and who also happens to be Hera’s puppet will be very quickly dispatched by those seeking to gain favor with whoever takes over after her death. It might only last a few years, a decade at the most, but in that decade a lot of bad things would happen.”

  “That’s a worst-case scenario,” Sky told her.

  “We have to stop Cronus,” I said softly. “There’s no good scenario in which he kills Hera. The only way to stop what Lucie described from happening is to completely replace Hera and her immediate allies, like Demeter and Ares—to take them all out at once and replace them en masse. Cronus won’t do that. And if he tries and fails to kill Hera, and she discovers he’s escaped from here, she’ll petition Avalon to get power in the dealings at Tartarus. She’s done it before, and Avalon almost agreed. I doubt they’d be so keen to say no with Cronus running around.”

  Lucie and Sky stared at me. “Have you been considering how to take out Hera?” Lucie asked.

  “When I was with Avalon, it was my job to figure out the weaknesses of other organizations. Hera’s weakness is that she has no natural successor. She’s privately named Ares, but that doesn’t mean shit to the rest of them. You want stability, you remove the Olympians as one and have people you trust placed in their positions. There will still be a time of crisis, but without the constant in-fighting taking precedence over the running of her empire, it won’t be so noticeable to the world market or Hera’s other enemies.”

  “It scares me that you think about stuff like that,” Sky said.

  I shrugged. “It would be impossible to do. Or at the very least, impossible without the help of every other Olympian not tied to Hera, along with a sizeable portion of Avalon. Those groups aren’t likely to band together anytime soon. Anyway, back to the problem: Cronus. He’s after Hera, but where is Hera? And who helped him escape in the first place?”