by David Risen
At last, he flipped the top part of the vault off the lower and gasped at the horror within.
A large upright pentacle traced in gold lay inside with each of the points of the star corresponding to the body within.
And the body looked like that of a holocaust victim.
Decimated.
A human skeleton with nothing but discolored, tight skin stretching over bones.
His only clue as to the gender was the lack of a penis. And the only way he knew that the person within was Merissa Irons was the long mane of died blue-black – raven – hair protruding from her skull.
Platinum manacles clasped her arms in place at the wrists and ankles, and upon closer inspection, Rider saw that the witches drove a sharp pen made of gold all the way through the skin and bones of her wrists and ankles, eternally binding her body to the vault.
They drove another golden pin the size of a stake through her naval.
They stitched her mouth together with a thin thread that looked like gold leaf.
She looked like a frog pinned to a dissection tray.
Dark dirt-like stains dribbled from her wrists and abdomen.
Rider shook his head in disgust and cast hateful eyes upon Dorothy.
“In what alternate dimension is it okay to do this?”
She furled her brow and bunched her lips in an elaborate frown.
“They drove the pens through her wrists and abdomen so that they could bind her powers to the soul stone, and they sewed up her mouth so that her soul couldn’t escape her body.”
Rider glared at her. “And I’m sure that the way they did it was perfectly humane.”
She shook her head and looked down at the dust coated concrete. “I’m sure it was terrifying and excruciating.”
Rider sneered at her. “I’m glad you said that. If you said that she felt none of it, I would have nailed you in there just to see if it was true.”
She shook her head. “You think I had a part in this?”
Rider glowered. “You certainly didn’t try to stop it.”
Dorothy looked away from him.
Rider stared after her for a moment and then looked back at the body.
“So, the body is dead, but her soul is still bound to it. What am I supposed to do here?”
Dorothy sighed. “Do I look like an instruction book?”
Rider stepped close to the body and inspected the thin, gold wire suturing her lips shut.
The thin strand was drawn as tight as it could be without ripping through her lips. And at the left corner of her mouth the witches tied a small knot in it to hold it in place.
He looked back at Dorothy.
“I need wire cutters.”
Dorothy nods.
She turned and disappeared.
In a moment, she returned with a rusted out, almost-used-up set of dykes.
Rider took the tool, pinched the knot at the end of the wire taking care not to touch the cadaver, and clipped the knot off the end.
Then he pulled the wire through the mummified, leathery skin.
Her jaw popped open releasing the last breath drawn in by Merissa Irons – carrying with it the odor of rot and decay.
Rider shook it off, looked back at Dorothy, and glared, and then he turned his attention to the gold manacles. Each one locked on the outside, and Rider found a button by each.
He pressed the button by her left wrist, and the manacle snapped backwards revealing the head of the gold pen the witches drove through her wrist.
He sighed and shook his head. Then he took a deep breath as the Abysmal Spike snaked around his arm.
He touched the tip of the spike to the domed end of the stake.
The gold glowed red hot and liquefied, and finally it fell to the concrete floor.
Rider repeated the process with the other three manacles and stakes until finally he sheared the domed head off the large stake they drove through her abdomen.
He stared at his work for a moment and then looked back at Dorothy and shook his head.
“As if I needed more reasons to hate you bitches.”
Then he turned, wrapped his arms around the naked, decimated body, and pulled her free of the vault – his face contorting with disgust.
Merissa grins humorlessly at the miscarriage of creation that Persephone called Asterion.
Asterion snorts and grasps the great handle of his axe. His cloven hoof clopping on the lava glass as he turns.
“Leave her alone, and go back to whatever shit-smelling cave you came from,” Merissa says.
He raises the axe. “You’re quite robust. I think I shall ravage you before I make you my meat.”
Merissa snarls at him.
A blast of fire and heat erupts from her blowing Asterion backwards, catching his short course hair and his skin on fire.
His back slams into one of the great pillars of the mock Parthenon, and he falls into a defeated and flaming heap onto the lava glass tiled floor.
Merissa slumps for a moment. The power she expended in combating Asterion weakened her. Just now, she feels as though she may faint. She steadies herself on one of the columns and shakes her head.
“Please hurry,” Persephone cries.
Merissa looks up to find Asterion in the same place on the tiled floor. She steadies herself and closes the distance to Persephone.
Merissa eyes the platinum chains binding her, and then she pulls the blindfold from Persephone’s eyes.
She nods toward Asterion.
“What is that thing?”
Persephone casts a fearful glance in the direction of Asterion. “They call him the bull of Minos or Minotaur.”
Merissa shudders and nearly falls from weakness.
“You must free me from these chains!”
“How?”
Persephone nods toward the bonfire burning in the center of the temple.
“That fire was lit from the fire of Olympus. Hades placed it there to taunt me. It is the only fire in creation hot enough to burn through my bonds. Take the Axe of the Minotaur. Its metal is strong enough to withstand the fire for a few moments. Set the blade alight, and hack through the chains.”
Merissa shakes her head. “I don’t have the strength to fight him again.”
Persephone squints at her. “You,” she says with shock. “You are the mother of Chaos. How is it that Hades defeated you, and you don’t have the power to push off Asterion?”
Merissa feels her eyes drifting shut. She feels as though she hasn’t slept in weeks.
“Sisters of Divinity,” she says.
“You have but a few moments. You must try!”
Merissa turns and approaches the burning minotaur slowly.
Her eyes find the axe lying a few inches from the beast’s deformed body.
She reaches down.
Her fingers touch the rough and grainy surface of the handle.
A hard hand with inhuman strength clasps her wrist.
Her eyes trace the deformed arm back to the hideous face of Asterion – his hair still smoldering from the fire.
“What sort of spirit are you?” Asterion says again.
Merissa yanks her hand backwards but Asterion’s grip is of iron.
With his deformed left arm, Asterion shoves her backwards. She lands on her bare back on the smooth tiles.
She kicks hard at his face, but Asterion only laughs – a chilling, nasal sound.
The beast climbs on top of her, and forces her legs apart with his own. The muscles in her thighs strain against him and burn, but the powerful beast is much stronger.
Merissa whimpers and clenches her eyes shut.
Deep inside her, something breaks. A surge of raw power – the likes of which she’s never felt before – course through her form like a surge of electricity. All weariness evaporates.
Asterion squeals and shrieks.
Merissa opens her eyes to find the beast burning in a white-hot flame, and that her own aura appears to be a blue and white-hot
blaze.
Nothing was left of Hades beautiful sister and lover on the broken pavement leading to the old refinery but a large bloody and burnt spot. The only way he knew the remains belonged to Aphrodite was her head which still lay sideways on the road.
The skin was burned and discolored covered by hundreds of lesions and blisters. The only aspect of her that remained intact was her purple and blue eyes – still contorted in a final expression of pain and fear.
Hades shook his great head and averted his eyes, and that’s when he saw his war counselor, Vlad Tepes – or the beheaded remains of him, lying on his belly off to the side of the road.
Hades growls with disdain, and he notices the open gate of the old refinery.
“You’ll pay for this, Fury.”
He squared himself in the road, and started for the open gate, but a sharp stabbing sensation in his stomach caused him to double over in anguish.
He peered down at the broken asphalt for a long moment clutching his abdomen.
And that’s when he realized what was happening.
Father Fury had freed his spiritual other from whatever device the witches contrived to rob her of her power, and now she was tearing her way through him.
Another sharp stab, and he grunted.
His skin burned as if it were on fire.
He looked at his hands to find the skin bubbling and blistering – boiling like water on a fire.
He pointed his eyes back at the gate.
He had one chance.
He had to kill Father Fury and trap the body of the mother of chaos just as the witches had done before.
“Look at her,” Dorothy said.
Rider’s eyes fell on the decimated body of Merissa Irons.
The holes in her wrists were not quite as large now. The gray color of her skin seemed whiter. The holes above her lips where the sisters had sewn her mouth shut had closed and disappeared.
Rider shot a baffled look at Dorothy. “What’s happening to her?”
“You touched the body. It’s been said that when the shards of chaos and fury are near full power, their very touch heals the other.”
Rider shakes his head. “Are you sayin that she’s going to come to life right in front of us?”
Dorothy opens her mouth to respond but instead, she grunts as if someone has punched her in the stomach.
Rider frowns. “What’s wrong with you?”
At the same time as he asks, blood dribbles from her mouth. He looks down at her abdomen to find three open holes in her belly with blood gathering on her gray blouse and black blazer.
Her body lurches forward and falls face down on the dusty concrete as if someone has kicked her from behind, but Rider sees nothing but the shadowy brick walls behind her.
“What the fuck?” he says.
His words only hang in the air for a beat before something crashes hard into his right temple, and Rider falls to the ground, unconscious.
Merissa rises to her feet and scowls at the blazing and screaming bull man.
“You will be punished for the anguish you have caused,” she said. This time her voice sounded like that of an old woman, a little girl, and a young woman in her prime simultaneously.
“I release you from your defiled form.”
The Minotaur explodes into ashes.
Merissa looks at Persephone who gapes on with astonishment.
“Please free me?” she says.
Merissa smiles. Her white-hot aura rescinds as do the glowing orbs around her hands.
“Touch his axe to the fire of Olympus and use it to burn through my chains.”
Merissa approaches her and eyes the thick platinum chains once again.
“Please don’t leave me here, I beg you!”
Merissa grasps the central chain connected to the manacle around her neck and it turns to molten metal in her hands, and then she repeats the process with the two others.
Persephone falls to the floor. She looks back up at Merissa with fear and amazement.
“Those chains were crafted in the forge of Hades. Only the fire of Olympus could destroy them.”
Merissa shrugs. “Guess you shouldn’t piss me off.”
Persephone stands, wraps her ragged garments back around her and fastens the brooches that held it in place at her shoulders.
“I’ll show you the way out of Hades.”
Without another word, Persephone leads her back through the gargantuan columns made of lava rock, down the steep stairs and back to the docks. When she reaches the docks she stops, pressing her hand over her lips and looks back at Merissa.
“What?” Merissa sighs impatiently.
Persephone points across the black waters of the moat to the opposite bank where the muse that chased Merissa through the chasm trying to devour her paces – her drooping golden chiton soaked with the caustic waters and blood soaking the side of her face from the hole where her left eye had been.
“She’s one of the three muses. The lore speaks of beautiful women who bring inspiration to artists, but they’re fearsome man-eaters. Here, they devour souls.”
Merissa pushes her aside and grasps the giant wheel that controls the lava rock drawbridge with both hands, and then she spins it right.
At once the drawbridge rises from beneath the dark waters of the moat.
Merissa gives Persephone a smug look.
Rider didn’t recall where he was at first. When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a damp, cold and shadowy area that smelled of rat urine, and he seemed to be lying on a concrete floor coated in a thick layer of dust. Drops of his own blood dotted the concrete below where his head had rested.
As his eyes gradually came into focus he saw the body of the woman who had led him inside this macabre warehouse and his memory returned.
Dorothy lay on her belly in a dark pool of her own blood. Her eyes frozen eternally open in a defeated gaze.
Rider looked further left and up and saw the body of Merissa Irons still lying on the floor where he left her.
But she was changing.
The blue gray color of her skin had disappeared, and now a pink hue had returned to it. The open holes in her wrists, ankles and abdomen had scabbed over. Her body no longer appeared decimated, she merely looked like someone who had a bad case of anorexia. Her face was beginning to resemble the mien of the girl the public simply knew as Raven – wife of the rock star Rhett Mueller – who made it on the cover of many magazines when Rider was a teenager.
A grunt below his feet caught his attention.
Rider craned his head and peered in the general direction of the ruckus but once again he saw nothing.
Then, swift footfalls pounded the concrete disturbing the dust-coated floor in the shape of footprints barreling directly after Merissa.
Rider gasped and climbed to his feet.
But just as he rose to his full height, a flash of light followed by a thunderous boom like the rapport of a high-powered rifle reverberated through the old refinery. An ornate, metal skull cap flew off to the left, landed a foot away from Merissa’s body, and clanged to rest somewhere behind the old shelving that housed numerous different versions of the vault that had contained Merissa.
And the hulking form of Hades flew backwards crashing into the red brick wall behind him and sinking to the dusty concrete floor.
Rider unsheathed the physical abysmal spike. The spiritual version snaked around his arm and joined the sword.
Rider stared at his opponent in disgust.
Hades’ red beard turned black in places and appeared to be falling out. The skin of his face was swollen, undulating, blistered and discolored just as Aphrodite’s face had been before Rider finished her off.
“Hey, douchebag,” Rider growled.
Hades looked up at him, and a low, humorless chuckle escaped him.
“You can’t kill me,” he boasted. “I wield the one power that can destroy you forever.”
Rider sneered. “Ya think?”
Hades crumpled his nose. “I stripped your little girlfriend and swallowed her whole.”
Rider huffed. “And how’s that working out for you?”
Hades roared, grasped his trident, and thrust it toward Rider. A pillar of white and blue flames shot after him – the heat and force of it burned against the skin of his face and his eyes.
Rider pointed the abysmal spike into the flames. A shield of golden light formed around him, and the flames licked and tore at it.
The power of the force knocked Rider backwards ten feet.
His arms trembled with exertion against it.
A light film of sweat broke out on his forehead.
His face contorted with strain.
The shield of light around him began to shrink.
Rider roared and with every ounce of strength left in his arms he thrust the abysmal spike toward the flames.
The power ricocheted backwards, and Hades’ trident flew from his hands and clanged on the floor thirty feet away.
The Warhammer Hades wielded in his dream back in the sewers appeared in the God of Hell’s hand.
He erupted with a scream of inhuman rage, and he charged Rider like a bull swinging the hammer through the hot, damp air after Rider’s head.
Rider pivoted out of the way.
The head of the Warhammer skipped off the concrete roughly where his feet had been only moments before – throwing sparks and knocking a chunk of rocky concrete from the flooring the size of a softball.
Rider assumed a swordsman’s stance and slashed after Hades’ head.
Hades’ eyes bulged. He ducked and the sword swooped through the air so close to the back of his head that it shaved off a lock of his hair.
Hades punched him hard in the gut.
Rider doubled over gasping for breath, but before he could suck any air into his lungs Hades’ elbow crashed into his cheekbone.
Rider fell sideways and rolled over on his back.
Hades swung the Warhammer again strait down after him.
Rider rolled out of the way and skittered to his feet – blindly swinging his sword at the hell God’s weapon.
The Warhammer flew from Hades’ hand and skidded on the floor ten feet away.