Destroyer of Light

by Rachel Alexander

  She was caught between her mother and her husband, and the fate of the world was bound up with her, just as the Hundred Handed Ones said it was. No, please Fates, no…

  “Please, I didn’t mean to—”

  “My Dimitris was right,” the shade hissed. “You weren’t there to bless us. You did nothing but curse us!”

  Carrier of curses…

  “I didn’t… this wasn’t… Please, you must believe me,” she cried, nearly hysterical. “I had no idea that it had become so terrible! It’s why I’m going back. I— Please, tell me what I can do to help you; to take away your pain. Please!”

  “Take me with you.”

  Persephone blanched. “I am sorry, I cannot.”

  “I must see Dimitris. He needs me!”

  “You cannot ask that of me. You know there’s no going back to the world of the living.”

  “Please, Soteira, take me back!” she cried frantically.

  “Do not ask this, please…” Other souls began to take notice.

  The shades around them began to cry out to her, their voices a cacophony. “Aristi, my children!” “Metra, please, spare me…” “Just once more, Thea, let me see her once more…” “Soteira, voithiste me! Voithiste me!” someone cried out in the common tongue.

  The shades circled her, begging her to spare them. The Eleusinian woman backed away from her, fading to translucence. “My lady, I will not go. I’m not ready. I must see Dimitr—”

  And with that she was disappeared— a soundless ghost bound for the world above.

  Persephone crouched and shut her eyes. She clapped her hands over her ears to block the wandering shades out, crying loudly to drown their voices. They stopped their petitions and started weeping as she was. They milled about, wailing and moaning, their cries incessant as she huddled close to the ground, too distraught to rise.

  My mother isn’t strong enough to undo this on her own, she realized. The weight of it sat on her shoulders like the punishment that had been doled out to Atlas. She needs me.

  It wasn’t as simple as talking to Demeter. It was easy enough to blame her mother, stay implacable and do nothing. She needed to restore balance. Persephone was a goddess of the earth, like her mother, her grandmother, a lineage stretching all the way back to Gaia herself. Even if she was Queen below, the earth was still her domain. A reality, cold as the world above, struck her.

  Caught between her love for her husband and her mother’s love for her, she’d forgotten why she existed in the first place— for them. The mortals. To look after their eternal souls, not just when they were here, but during their brief time in the sunlit world. To feed them. To protect them.

  If Demeter would not take responsibility for what had been done and, she thought woefully, if Hades could not, then the obligation fell to her. She would need to stay above far longer than a few days— months, even— to truly right all that had gone wrong. She would have to break her promise to Aidoneus. Persephone slowly stood and stretched forth her hand, ready to create a path back to Eleusis.

  “Kore? Persephone?”

  It was a high tenor voice, almost lost to her amidst the weeping shades. It sounded so clear and distinct that she thought that it was an illusion.

  “Lady Persephone!”

  She looked up through her tears to see a young man wrapped in a chlamys, his face hidden by a golden petasos. He descended from above and landed next to her.

  “Wh-who…” She knew who he was. Hermes. Persephone blushed hotly, thinking about the last time he had caught a glimpse of her. “Why are you here?”

  He lightly took her hand, barely touching her fingers. “You’re free.”

  “What?”

  “Persephone, I was sent here by our father to bring you back to your mother, Demeter.”

  “We never asked for you to— what…” she drew in a breath as he grasped at her wrist. She wrenched it away from him. “Let go of me! What are you doing?!”

  “You’ve been freed from Hades’s captivity. I’m here to bring you back to your home in the living world.”

  “Freed from— Hermes, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but—”

  “There isn’t much time. Please! Zeus insisted I take you back at once.”

  “No!” She stepped away from him and backed toward the Styx.

  He looked at her, bewildered. “What do you mean?”

  “Who gave you the right to haul me away from here? From my realm?”

  “Your—” he looked at her dumbfounded. “The King of the Gods! Are you going to obey him or not?”

  “But… Zeus said…” she stilled, her blood freezing. If her father, the one who had permitted her union with Aidoneus, had told Hermes to take her from here then that meant… “Hermes, you need to talk to my husband right now and get this straightened out.”

  “I’d rather not,” he snorted, then smiled to cajole her. “Look; it will be easy. I’ll fly us back, quicker than you can fathom. You’ll be gone from here before he even knows you went missing.”

  “No!” she cried out. This isn’t happening! She felt her limbs go slack, felt helpless and crushed. “You need to tell him—”

  “Please, Lady Persephone,” he pleaded, “If we do that, it will only complicate matters.”

  He grabbed her wrist again and closed his fingers tightly. She struggled against his grip. “Let me go!”

  “Persephone, you’re already on this side of the river—”

  “Let go of me now!” she cried out, finally wrenching away.

  “You and I can avoid all that and—”

  “While you are here, God of Thieves,” a gravelly voice said behind them, “I suggest you follow the rules set out at the division of the cosmos.”

  Persephone stifled a cry of relief when she saw Charon, whose long oar stood beside him. His jaw was set grimly, his eyes steely, his skin frighteningly pale underneath his hood. Though thin of frame, he towered over them both from his place atop the stern bracing. She relaxed her shoulders as Hermes took a step back.

  The Messenger swallowed. “I-I have my orders, Charon. You cannot stand in my wa—”

  “The realms were divided equally, Thief, and this domain does not belong to your king. You know that, I know that.” His voice sank into a low growl. “And if you touch our queen again, boy…”

  “You’ll what?” Hermes said, narrowing his eyes as Charon tightened his hand around his oar. Hermes rose an inch from the ground.

  “Enough!” Persephone said. “Both of you!”

  The Boatman inclined his head to her. “Say the word, my lady and—”

  “Charon, thank you.” She gave him a relieved smile and turned to Hermes, her eyes narrowed. “Hermes Psychopompos, you have no right to take me from here unwillingly. If you have orders from Zeus, you are to bring them before my husband!”

  Hermes set his lips in a line, his worst fears realized. “Give me a moment then. I’ll fly to—”

  “No, you will not,” she said with a scowl. His eyes widened.

  “But—”

  “From now on, if you come here on official business, you will enter our realm as all do.”

  A smirk curled the Boatman’s lips as Hermes stared at her in disbelief. “You cannot be serious…”

  “I suggest that you make your peace with the fact that your only path across the river is through Charon. And since I am empowered by my husband to speak on his behalf, I suggest you not disobey me,” Persephone said, raising her voice.

  Hermes stared at her blankly, trying to form words, then jumped back in fright when a blazing ring of fire appeared in front of the little flower goddess, pointing her way through the ether.

  “We will see you in the throne room once you arrive.” With that, she stepped through and waited until the gateway closed. When it shut, she curled into a ball and cried until she screamed. They were going to take her away. Forcibly.

  Captivity… Obey…

  She grew nauseous. Persephone wouldn’t get t
he chance to speak with her mother or fix anything. They were dissolving her marriage. She felt as though the very walls around her were collapsing and disappearing, and realized that she wasn’t in the throne room or the palace, or the Underworld itself, even. She was still in the crimson and silver twisting vertigo of the ether.

  What if she just stayed here forever? Hermes didn’t come here. Hecate would surely welcome her, and no one couldn’t pull her from here. She held a Key that gave her access to every corner of every realm.

  She chided herself. Hiding like a little girl, are we? Aren’t they trying to take me away from because they still believe me to be little innocent, ignorant Kore?

  Persephone wiped her tears away and focused. She had to speak to Aidoneus. Quickly. She willed herself to open a pathway to the palace, and stepped through. Persephone stood in the pomegranate grove.

  Fates! Why have I been carried here again? She picked up her skirts. Her sandals crunched across the gravel as she ran past a confused Askalaphos, her shoulders knocking against the carefully manicured asphodel, racing for the portico and the palace beyond. She had to find her husband. She had to get there before the Messenger.

  ***

  “Delaying this isn’t going to make me disappear, Boatman,” Hermes said, shifting from one foot to the other on the center bracing.

  “Would that it would.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Charon had remained silent, pushing slowly off the banks of the Styx and winding his way through the shallows into the river. “Is there a problem?”

  “It’s not me you have to worry about, Charon.”

  “How fortunate are you that it was I who discovered you, and not Hades? What could you have said just then, with your hand around his wife’s wrist, to keep him from tearing you limb from limb? I wonder…”

  Hermes mouth went dry. “Wh-when Zeus—”

  “And who am I to argue with the currents of the river?” he said slowly, deliberately aggravating the Messenger. “Or argue with the Queen?”

  “Kor— Persephone is Hades’s consort. His— his duly acquired bedmate, for Fate’s sake. Not a Queen. Not in any real sense— she has no power. And I don’t care what your mother says.”

  Charon lifted his oar out of the water and let the boat drift to stillness. The bow turned in an eddy and the Boatman turned with it to look back at Hermes. “Really, then? In your heart of hearts, I wonder… which one of our sovereigns would you rather deal with, coward?”

  Hermes opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t get a word out before Charon continued.

  “Answer her name, and you’re a fool. Answer his, and you’re a liar. You came here thinking to take her right out from under her honored husband’s nose and thought none of us would mind?”

  “This goes beyond what any of you should be concerned with.”

  “Perhaps I am wrong about you, Hermes. Perhaps instead, you are very brave if you think you can lay your hands on the Iron Queen without consequence?”

  Hermes stayed silent. Charon plunged his oar back into the water, pushing the boat forward, a tiny wake the only disturbance on the crystal clear surface.

  “Or perhaps, you are exceptionally stupid?” Charon added with a grin.

  Hermes face grew red. “I only wanted to… speak with her. This is extremely urgent.”

  “Urgent?” He slowly sunk the oar into the water again, the opposite shore growing minutely closer.

  “Yes, urgent! Do you think this is amusing?” Hermes said, gesturing back at the rows of shades awaiting passage to the Other Side.

  “I am the one who must deal with the shades you petty Olympians send down here every day,” Charon spat back at him. “Why would I find any of this amusing?”

  “Your people call me Psychopompos! I am the one who has to find lost souls and bring them back here. Don’t act like you’re the only one who has to deal with this, Charon!”

  “Then you should keep to your business and let us to ours. Why waste our time and intrude on us? Why try to spirit away our queen, God of Thieves?” Charon asked as he rowed the boat through the currentless marshes.

  Hermes impatiently looked at the emaciated souls waiting at the river’s edge. “I wasn’t trying to spirit her—”

  “You’re a poor liar for a thief.”

  He snorted and rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why I’m even answering your questions, Boatman. I outrank you.”

  “Did you come here as Zeus’s errand boy or as a cut purse to steal our beloved queen, you half-hardened prick of an immortal?”

  Hermes bit the sides of his cheek.

  “One or the other.”

  “I have no time for this, Charon. And I know you can get us there faster than this!” he said, shifting again from one foot to the other. Charon looked behind him with wide eyes and a threatening grin and removed his oar from the water once more. The boat drifted slower, at the mercy of the current. “I come as the voice of the King of Gods.”

  “And which king of the gods would that be?” Charon said with a smirk. “I only recognize the one.”

  Charon rowed forward, silently delighting in the Messenger’s shocked expression. Hermes bristled. “That’s… heresy! When my father—”

  “I do not see him here. Do you? Or are you merely seeing his handiwork,” Charon rasped, pointing a thin finger at the droves of souls standing on the banks of the river, “and calling that power?”

  Hermes faltered, swallowing, and looked around him, “I—”

  “This is Chthonia, boy. The eternal realm. You are an interloper from the corporeal world. And if you doubt my prior question, then remember that we didn’t come begging you for the flow of shades to stop. If Hades were to consign you to the Pit, there wouldn’t be a thing your lofty king could do to stop it. If our queen decided to have you flayed and scourged by the Erinyes for daring to touch her…” he said as the prow raked the shore and lurched underneath them. “…I would only be too glad to watch.”

  Hermes paled and stared up at the black marble monolith of the palace, the towering gates, and golden poplar looming above them. The Messenger swallowed.

  “Best remember those things, Psychopompos, when you stand before him who rules over the souls of all mortals, living and dead.”

  9.

  “Who’s next?”

  “The last one today. Inachus of Argos.”

  “Your scrolls are out of order, Minos,” Aidoneus said with a measure of annoyance. “We received him a week ago.”

  “Yes, my lord, we did,” the judge said, not looking up. “This is his son.”

  Hades sighed and leaned back in his throne, recalling the judgement of Inachus the Elder, third in his line: sent to Asphodel. And his wife, Chryseis: Asphodel. Their son had been five years old, and with no suitable living regent, the prince was crowned king. Now he was dead as well, and his bloodline with him. It had been ages since a small boy had come to this room of judgement— ages since Aidoneus had even been in the presence of a child who wasn’t already a resident of Asphodel. A trial felt unnecessary, as there was nothing one so young could have done to warrant it.

  Perhaps his wife was right. When the glut of newly deceased had been dealt with, perhaps he would turn over all hearings to his judges and only have a hand in the most disputed decisions. But right now, the child was his responsibility. “Get me the waters of the Lethe.”

  “Doesn’t Aeacus usually—”

  “Just do it!” he growled. “Scores of thousands of common folk wait on the Plains of Judgement, and the four of us sit here coddling the few souls of the rich and powerful! Take Aeacus and your brother. I’ll handle this myself.”

  “Should I summon Inachus, then, my lord?”

  “Yes.”

  Minos left one of the ebony doors wide, and stepped outside to murmur some words to Aeacus. He returned with an earthen bowl, handed it to Aidoneus, then quickly retreated from the room. Hades held the red clay kylix and stared into the clear, dark water
from the River Lethe. Nothing. The water itself couldn’t even remember a reflection.

  Hades saw a pair of brown eyes and a small hand poke out from around the door, then a thin boy with dark curling hair slowly walked into the room, terrified. A tiny indigo chlamys clung to his shoulder, pinned over a child’s black chiton— the garments he’d been buried in.

  The child crept into the room, his eyes cast down. He was too fearful to look upon Hades, the dark god his family had told him scary stories about whenever he fussed or talked back to his wet nurse. The boy’s face crinkled up as though he were about to cry.

  “I’m sorry you had so short a time,” Hades muttered.

  The little shade didn’t make a sound, trying to be brave, trying to hold back his tears and be a man like his departed father told him to be. Aidoneus stood, and the little boy gulped and took a step back.

  “Don’t be frightened,” the dread King of the Dead said gently. The child’s lip trembled, and Aidon realized that Inachus didn’t understand. He awkwardly started again. “Mi me fovasai.”

  The boy looked up in silent recognition. The Lord of Souls walked slowly, descending the dais with the kylix in his hand, his robes trailing behind him on the steps.

  “Ksereis poios eimai?” he asked in the common tongue.

  The little boy nodded. “You’re… you’re the Invisible One, m-my lord.”

  Aidoneus knelt down, his gaze level with the child’s wide, fearful eyes. “But you can see me now, no?”

  Little Inachus nodded again and brushed a knuckle past one of his eyes before looking up.

  “Ela,” Aidon said, motioning him forward. The boy remained rooted where he stood. “It’s alright. I’m not as scary as you’d think.”

  The shade took one cautious step, and then another. “But you’re scary sometimes?”

  “Only when I have to be,” Aidon said, the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his eyes. He held up the bowl. “You know what this is?”

  “They told me it makes you forget. And stop being sad.”

  “Yes. They were right.”

  “But I don’t want to forget Mana!”

  “Was Mana your nurse?” The boy nodded. “You loved her very much, then.” Another small nod. “Well…”