Designed by Death

by Melody Rose

  1900 - 1928

  “Holy shit,” I exclaimed as I put a hand to my mouth.

  Never in a million years did I ever think that the Eternal Flame would lead me to another child of Hephaestus. I was standing over my half-brother’s grave. I knew there had been other demigods who shared my father with me, but even in the myths, they were few and far between. Unlike Zeus or Poseidon or some of the other male gods, Hephaestus rarely sired any other children. It was such a strange sight that I didn’t quite know what to say or how to handle it.

  My eyes flicked up to the Eternal Flame, who changed to a yellow color, like a lightbulb. It was the first time I had ever seen it shine so bright or so yellow. The sunny disposition surprised me, but it also burned against my eyes. I squinted against the Flame’s new form.

  “Could you turn it down a little bit?” I asked. “We’re the only ones here, and I can see just fine.”

  I didn’t know if the Flame responded to my request or what, but suddenly the thing went berserk. The Eternal Flame slipped into some sort of rave mode. The whole thing blasted a rainbow of colors in quick succession.

  Blown back by the violent changes, I fell over and scooted away from the Flame, suddenly afraid. I didn’t know what had provoked it or why it was doing this. Plus, while I had seen the Flame change colors, I had never seen it change so frequently or so quickly.

  My back collided with a gravestone. I quickly dove behind it and used the solid rock as a shield from me and the spastic Eternal Flame. I curled into a ball behind the gravestone and watched the shadows around me dance and shift as the light show went on behind me.

  I closed my eyes and pressed them into my knee caps, wrapping my arms around my shins. I held tight to myself, holding my breath until the whole thing was over. There was no sound, no explosion to accompany the fireworks, only the light bursting over and over again.

  I panicked, thinking that someone was bound to see the rave happening up in the cemetery. I wasn’t sure the cover from the surrounding trees would be enough. We were on the far end of campus, sure, but if there was a couple out for a midnight stroll, or Mac was out tending to some of the scattered cows, then I would be discovered for sure. I didn’t know how I was supposed to explain this to anyone.

  Oh yeah, I just released one of the dangerous pieces of Eternal Flame, and it led me up here and decided to go all nightclub on me. No idea why.

  That didn’t sound like it would go over well with anyone.

  But then, suddenly, my fears came true when I heard an unfamiliar voice come out of nowhere.

  “Well, that was quite an entrance, thanks for that.”

  I lifted my head in surprise. The light was back to the Eternal Flame’s happy blue, swirling like a fish tank. However, it was more subdued this time, not covering as much distance as before.

  Even in the limited light, I didn’t see anyone. That meant that the voice, whoever it belonged to, was behind me. Back where the flame was. But I couldn’t see his shadow against the light of the Flame. As much as I wanted to figure out all of this, I knew I would have to turn around to get my answer, which I really didn’t want to do.

  “I can see you, you know,” the voice said.

  I squeezed my eyes shut as though that would help me hide better. I thought about the voice itself. It was a crisp voice with a British lilt to it. Definitely male, though it wasn’t super deep like a bass or gruff like a smoker.

  “Do you plan to sit there all night, or are you going to come out and greet your big brother?”

  “Big brother?” I exclaimed unexpectedly. Immediately, I scrambled to my feet, wanting to see what the hell this person was talking about. Needless to say, I was not prepared for what was on the other side of that grave.

  Standing before me was a young man, a little older than me. He possessed normal features: two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. But instead of having a normal complexion, his skin glowed with the same wavy blue as the Eternal flame at moments before. Also, he was slightly transparent. His clothes, the same long-sleeved and tight pants of the Academy uniform, were also the same blue color.

  He stood formally with both hands behind his back and an upright posture, chest pushed out. He lifted his chin ever so slightly, which was completely unnecessary since he was taller than me, wider too with a hefty frame, built like a lumberjack.

  “Are you… a ghost?” I balked, unable to think of the word at first.

  “Really? Out of all the questions in the world, that’s the first one you think to ask?” the ghost-man-soldier said as he cocked his head at me.

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of stuff,” I snapped back, feeling indignant as he insulted my question. “So yeah, that’s my question.”

  “I guess you can call me a ghost if that is easier for you to process,” he said with a shrug. “I am dead, and I am a spirit visiting you in the mortal realm by the grace of our father.”

  “Our father?” I repeated, drawing out the first word into two syllables. “You’re a son of Hephaestus?”

  “In the flesh,” he said as he removed his hands from behind his back and gestured at himself. Realizing what he said, he paused and then corrected himself. “Well, sort of anyhow.”

  “That must make you…” I looked down at the gravestone for reference. “Erich Thompson?”

  “Indeed,” he said with a tilt of his head, though he didn’t wear a hat. “And you are?”

  “Cheyenne Paulos,” I said automatically.

  “Pleasure,” Erich replied as he held out his hand.

  I just eyed the gesture, unsure what to do with it. Erich sensed my hesitation and chuckled while he extended his hand a little farther. “It’s alright. You won’t fall through me or anything.”

  I didn’t know why I trusted him, but I took the son of Hephaestus at his word. I clasped his hand in mine. It felt like it did when I reached my hand into a fire, smooth like silk. I shook his hand, a sense of familiarity washing over me.

  “How did you know I was a daughter of Hephaestus?” I asked as Erich finally pulled away from me.

  “Ah, well, I wouldn’t be here otherwise,” Erich said with a shrug. “Tis my curse.”

  “Curse?” I repeated, curious about his word choice.

  “Or redemption, call it what you like,” Erich replied. His voice talked with such ease and casualty, like a soft jazz song. As though he didn’t have a care in the world.

  My eyebrows pinched together, asking for him to elaborate without saying it aloud.

  Erich released a sigh and stuffed his hands into his front pockets, his shoulders tensing. “I did some shady shit during my time in the mortal world. Hephaestus wasn’t too pleased. So when I died, he trapped me in my headstone.”

  “He what?” I balked. I couldn’t believe our father would do that. But then again, I had never met the god, so it was entirely possible that he was more vengeful than I thought. But trapping your son’s soul in a headstone just seemed beyond cruel.

  “Yeah I know, didn’t exactly win him the Dad of the Year award, if you ask me.” Erich tilted his head back and forth, clearly uncomfortable talking about this and doing a poor job of hiding it. Still, he continued his explanation. “As punishment, he said that one day I would come back to help another child of his sometime in the future. I didn’t know when, but in order to make it to the Elysian Fields, I would have to do everything within my power to help them.” He took another sharp breath in and crinkled his nose. “Since I’m here, I figured the time had come. I was up to bat.”

  “You’ve met Hephaestus?” I said, a little too eagerly.

  Erich raised an eyebrow at this. “You haven’t?”

  “No,” I said as I shook my head. Though something caught in the back of my throat, unsure of how much I should tell him.

  “Strange,” Erich mused. He looked off into the distance, as though he remembered something. “He was so active in my life. He might have seen how much it
screwed me up, and he changed his parenting strategy.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t speak for a moment. I just continued to stare at this anomaly before me: a ghost who claimed to be my half-brother from nearly one hundred years ago, wearing the skin of the Eternal Flame.

  “So, what happened to the Eternal Flame?” I asked, finally thinking about the nuisance of an element that led me here in the first place.

  “It’s how Hephaestus was able to bring me back,” Erich said, holding out his hands, turning them over and over so that we both could examine his weird, glowing skin. “I promise I didn’t eat it or anything, but it’s how I am able to communicate with you and how you are able to touch me when others cannot. It’s a perk of being a child of Hephaestus.”

  “I see,” I said, my voice a hesitant whisper because I still didn’t understand, nor accept, what was going on. Out of everything I had every experience at the Academy in the last two years, this was by far the strangest.

  If what Erich was saying was true, and I had no real reason to doubt him at the moment, then Hephaestus knew I would need his help in the future. Before I even asked the question, I had the answer.

  “What did the prophecy say?” I asked.

  Clearly, I surprised my half-brother with the question because his mouth popped open slightly, ruining the casual vibe he had going for him.

  “How did you know there was a prophecy?” Erich questioned suspiciously.

  “I have a bit of experience when it comes to prophecies,” I said, keeping purposely vague.

  “Did you get one too?” Erich said sympathetically, as though he were asking me if I got a bad grade on a test like him.

  “Actually, more than I can count,” I replied cryptically, thinking about all of my mom’s predictions.

  Erich’s face flattened in utter shock. “Who are you?”

  “I told you,” I said, gathering strength as I spoke the words. “I’m Cheyenne, daughter of Hephaestus. And I want to know what the prophecy said.”

  “I don’t know,” Erich said, returning to his blasé attitude. “I didn’t memorize it.”

  I rolled my eyes and slapped my hands against my thighs. “How could you not know it?”

  “I’m sorry,” Erich said, though he wasn’t apologetic in the slightest. “But not everyone has a fantastic memory where they can remember a prophecy after only hearing it once.”

  His defensive and apathetic tone were instant turnoffs for me. I started to see why Hephaestus might have been disappointed in this particular son so much.

  “Okay,” I said slowly, thinking carefully about my words before I said them. “Then what exactly are you supposed to be helping me with?”

  “I don’t know,” Erich said in the exact same tone. This time he emphasized his uncaring nature by picking at his nails as though that were more important than coming back from the dead to help his half-sister. “You’re supposed to tell me.”

  I opened my mouth and then closed it again. I was about to argue with him, demanding that he tell me everything he knew. However, as I thought about it, I did know what I needed help with. Erich presented a potential solution to the question I had been asking myself, and the Eternal Flame, this whole time. Something about my doubt and my situation triggered the Eternal Flame to seek out Erich so he could help me. Because he might have been the only one that could.

  “I need you to take me to the Underworld,” I said, voicing my desire aloud.

  7

  Erich blinked at me several times before saying anything. I held my ground and waited for him to speak first, knowing that he heard me the first time. I didn’t think there was any way for me to be clearer.

  “And why, my sister dear,” Erich said, his tone adopting a condescending nature, “why would you want to go there?”

  “Because I need to rescue a friend who died too soon,” I answered. “Are you going to help me or not?”

  “I’m not sure you know what you’re asking,” Erich hesitated.

  “I know exactly what I’m asking,” I confirmed, unwavering in my own affirmation. I held my legs slightly apart, my shoulders back, my chin raised. I even put my hands behind my back, mimicking Erich’s posture from before, when he had been the confident one, the one with the winning hand.

  “I don’t think you do,” Erich said, his nose twitching in irritation. “Do you even know what the Underworld is like for mortals?”

  “I know the myths,” I defended. “I also know that heroes made it out alive, so I can too.”

  “Oh, you think yourself a Hercules, an Odysseus, or Theseus, do you?” Erich sneered, doubt seeping through his gaze as it locked onto mine.

  “I don’t know, maybe,” I said, having never really thought of it that way. I’d never pictured myself as that kind of hero. I always thought I would be the blacksmith in the background, making weapons for other people to wield. But more and more lately, I'd been thrust into hero-like situations, where I had to save my fellow soldiers, my school, and my friends. As much as I didn’t want to be a hero, life and fate weren’t giving me much of a choice at the moment.

  “Maybe is a half-hearted answer,” Erich scoffed. “How do you expect to survive the treacherous Tartarus and retrieve your friend with a maybe attitude?”

  “What are you, a life coach?” I clapped back. “I didn’t think it was your job to question me. I thought you were brought back to help me. And this is what I need help with. Can you take me to the Underworld or not?”

  Erich released a weighted sigh as though my request were a Sisyphean like task, unwinnable and exhausting.

  “There is a way I can take you,” he answered, though he sounded as though I was pulling teeth out of the back of his mouth as he did so.

  “Which is?” I prompted, shifting my arms from my back to my hips.

  “I can’t tell you yet,” Erich said as he held up a finger. “We need to make sure you’re prepared.”

  “And how am I supposed to be ‘prepared’?” I said, using air quotes around the last work in order to mock my half brother.

  “You can’t just venture into the Underworld, as a living being without something tying you back to the mortal world,” Erich explained. “Also, we’ll need something to hide me in so I can come with, but so Hades doesn’t know he’s missing a soul right now.”

  “And that would be bad?” I checked, though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.

  “Very bad,” Erich said with a definitive nod. “So when you get all of that together, then I’ll take you down there.”

  “But when you say ‘something tying me back to the mortal world,’” I began, brainstorming as I was talking, “do you mean like yarn or string like Theseus used with the Labyrinth?”

  “No, not like that,” Erich said as he waved his hands, dismissing my idea as though it were an annoying fly. “Something physical and memorable. Something that reminds you that you are alive.”

  “A physical object?” I clarified.

  “Isn’t that what I just said?” Erich blinked at me with round, irritated eyes.

  I paused and bit the inside of my cheek, thinking of a physical object. The main problem was that I didn’t have a lot of things when I was at the Academy. We weren’t allowed a lot of personal items. Even our clothes were mainly limited to our uniforms and pajamas.

  My mind filtered through some of the most important things in my life. I thought about my tools in the forge, but lugging the hammer around seemed threatening, and I wasn’t trying to have a bad first impression when I ventured down into the Underworld.

  There were other items that I had made, like the kopis I made during my first year or some of the scythes that were prototypes for the Ultimate Weapon. My thoughts traveled to the Necklace of Harmonia or the pieces I had locked away in the safe. They were powerful pieces of metal, but they were also rumored to be dipped in crime, and I didn’t need any bad luck during this mission.

  The faces of my friends cam
e to mind. I wished I had a picture or something of the four of us that I could take with. But since modern amenities like phones and cameras weren’t allowed on campus, we didn’t have any momentos of our friendship. Same went with Ansel and I. I had some pictures from over the summer, but Ruby’s death took everything over at the end of break. I had planned to print some of them off and stuff them into my bag, but I was too preoccupied to remember.

  I did have a picture of my mom and me, but something in my gut warned me against bringing that. A picture of the person I loved most in this world was valuable, yes, and did make me feel alive, but it was also easily destroyed. Paper only had to touch a single flame before it could be completely ruined forever.

  I needed something sustainable while simultaneously memorable. It was tougher than I thought.

  While I was in the middle of contemplating, there was a sudden pop, and Khryseos and Argyreos appeared on either side of me. They both looked rather grumpy, which made sense considering they teleported to find me, and I was not where I said I would be earlier this evening.

  The two of them snarled at me in disappointment, and I huffed in exasperation. However, while I knew that the dogs were scolding me, Erich had no idea what had just happened. To him, two large black Dobermans appeared out of nowhere and were growling for no reason. To someone who didn’t know Khryseos and Argyreos, their growling might have come off as aggressive at that moment.

  So Erich launched himself over his own gravestone and cowered behind it, not unlike how I had been crouching only a couple of minutes ago when he first appeared.

  “What in the name of Hades are those?” he said, his voice quivering with fear.

  I gestured to both Khryseos and Argyreos to back down and sit. While they clearly weren’t happy about it, they complied. I stepped forward and looked over the top of the gravestone at my half-brother.

  “They’re Hephaestus’s dogs,” I said suspiciously. “Didn’t you recognize them?”

  “Hephaestus has dogs?” Erich said as he peeked out over the headstone, his eyes shifting from dog to dog.