Still isn’t enough to provide much visuals of what’s happening around us . . .
There. Finally. A faint flicker. A circular bulb comes to life, far enough from where we stand to make dematerializing a necessity.
We don’t. We remain where we are, facing that tiny orb of light. I do look away long enough to study Herakles and his expression is straight analytical.
A male studying his surroundings. Picking up on the bits of information in the air.
I try to do the same, but I barely get anything. Only the whisper of a life form coming from the direction of that light.
Yet, Herakles is the God of Power. Surely he has the skill to know what’s awaiting for us—
“It’s him. It’s Cyclops.” One orange-red curl falling over his forehead, he jerks his chin straight ahead.
So the source of that beam is the immortal we seek.
I step forward and shout in its direction, “What are you waiting for?”
A metallic, smooth sound bounces our way, followed by an even smoother, automated voice. “Youuuu. Been waiting a very long time. Come.”
Herakles and I share a WTF-look.
His clothing melts away and his armor takes its place.
I follow his example. Once my sword is in my hands again, I slap them against each side of the hilt, separating it in two.
That automatic voice breaks into a haunting laugh. “You believe the battle starts here. How woefully unprepared you both are.”
Neither Herakles nor I are in the mood for taunts or games.
One last shared look and we will ourselves toward the source of that illumination.
Neither of us expects to find what’s awaiting us in that round chamber. Don’t need to be mentally connected to Herakles to know that.
The lights blaze back on. We’re greeted by a mostly empty space, one with different-sized, thick, fiber optic wires throughout the floor and walls.
All heading to the same point.
The giant, throne-like chair.
The giant, monstrosity of a throne with its round back interspersed with those cables. It’s more a shrunken data tower than a chair, yet there he sits.
If he is still an applicable term for what it’s become.
A sleek, modern atrocity that’s somehow sexy in its clean lines and silvery-purple gleam.
No face.
No nose.
Eyes? Just that single dot in the middle of its big head—the source of the light.
Cyclops alright, but the futuristic manifestation of what the being once stood for.
With an airy, mechanical whirl, that head and eye spin my way. “You seem shocked, Erinye.”
Of course I am. Although this thing perfectly matches its location and surroundings—a present-day, advanced laboratory, for lack of a better term—this isn’t the freak made famous by myth.
Herakles must be of like mind. “You’re not Cyclops.”
Boney, metallic fingers click against the armrest of that chair. “Says who, Herakles?”
“You’re a fucking robot.”
One mechanical whirl after another, its head tilted toward the ceiling and shaking back and forth; I’m reminded of Apollo in his prison within Hades. That clear lack of lucidity. “The soul can be held by many different vessels.”
“Really?” Herakles asks. “Which one are you then?”
The head straightens with dizzying speed, that bright beam glaring into Herakles’ face once more. “Acmonides.”
The “Bright One.”
The most famous of the three Cyclops brothers. Same brother sometimes known as Arges.
Hephaestus’ main helper as he fashioned some of the most famous weapons of all time: Zeus’ thunderbolts.
Lightning bolts, actually, and the main reason the second generation of Greek gods won the Titanomachia--The War of the Titans.
Zeus’ rise to power. The series of battles that ended with him as ruler of the Greek gods.
Herakles’ startled gaze drops to the white and gold armor adorning his body.
Like a flash of that aforementioned lightning, a suspicion is born.
I know that handiwork. His armor might be new, but I’ve seen the like of it before.
Hephaestus’ work.
That bastard still lives?
Herakles tears his eyes from his armor to stare at Cyclops again. “So, ‘Bright One’. You’re helping humans mutate each other.”
That robot has no lips, yet I can swear I sense its smile. “Who said the work we do here is only on behalf of the humans?”
My mind jumps back to the boy with the black skin and gray light shining beneath. That might’ve begun as human, biological mutation, but that level of energy . . .
It belongs in the immortal world. Point blank.
Hades’ claim of the Eight causing problems in the mortal world make more sense than ever. Especially if they aren’t acting alone.
Herakles is right with me once again, thoughts seemingly aligned. “Who gave you permission to involve the mortals in our affairs?”
A good question, but even I know that Cyclops won’t answer it. He won’t give his allies, whoever they are, away.
Instead, that single light in the middle of his face brightens, along with the ones pulsing throughout his mechanical chair. Behind us, the sound of a steel door closing.
Sealing us in with this abomination.
Swords cutting through the air, I prepare to attack. Next to me, Herakles cracks his neck. His demeanor remains calm.
His expression is anything but.
A perfectly designed, skeletal finger rises, wagging back and forth. “Stay still. Trust me. This will go much easier for the two of you if you simply don’t move.”
What the hell?
Vents hiss open above our heads, along the edges of the ceiling. Tendrils leak through, black energy that covers the entire area in what seems like the blink of an eye.
Instinctively, Herakles and I move closer, back to back. We alternate between analyzing that obsidian electricity heading our way and the long-faced, single-eyed robot that is now Acmonides.
“We have been dying to try out this new version, and to have two such powerful immortals as our first test subjects? God of Power, do you think you can survive what’s within you once the memories truly consume you?”
Herakles’ head flies in Cyclops’ direction. “How the hell do you kn--”
That dark lightning straightens off the walls, daggers aimed toward us, silencing his question.
Silencing my own. What’s inside him?
We can try to dodge those beams, whatever they are, but it’ll be useless. There’s too many throughout the room, the only clear place being where Cyclops is.
A realization we come to together.
We become less than air, atoms once more. Another of those mind-tripping, robotic laughs leaves our target as we launch ourselves at him.
Except, it doesn’t go that smoothly.
Yes, we rematerialize on each side of him, Herakles grabbing one shoulder and I the other, yet the blackness reaches us at the same exact time.
It’s a stab straight through my spine.
My back.
A hot poker that instantly takes over every part of me.
A paralysis that sends me into the equivalent of a seizure, my body jerking hard enough to rip Cyclops’ cybernetic arm out of its shoulder socket.
Dimly, I’m aware Herakles is reacting the same. That he’s also convulsing, covered in that ebony force, and his hand has locked around Cyclops’ arm, taking it with him as he goes down.
And when I say “down”, we really fucking drop.
The warrior in me screams at the immobilization.
My brain screams for an entirely different reason.
Weakness consumes me, followed by a full frontal attack that’s even more debilitating than the physical.
Memories.
Sheer, savage, vivid, unrelenting memories.
It’s c
lear in an instant what they’re meant to do—torment. Destroy a being’s psyche.
With that goal in mind, one would think I’d be forced to relive my torture. The constant abuse. The rapes, both individual and the gang-attacks that made me beg for death.
Yet, as I claw at my hair, groaning through my teeth, that’s not what harasses me.
It’s him. The male that’s on the ground near me, writhing in his own pain.
It’s how his skin glowed with his new powers at the base of Mount Olympus.
His beautiful, triumphant grin once he achieved what so many of us risked our lives for.
How his chest puffed out with that cocky, self-entitled glory.
The scent and feel of his abnormally hot skin as he gave me that last hug.
Then, the sheer breadth of his muscular back as he walked away and the truth sank in:
I’d failed.
As per the terms of my agreement with Atë, I not only had to help him succeed at his quest, I also had to succeed at getting him to take me with him.
At convincing him to somehow persuade his father, the King of the Greek gods, to allow a mortal into their sacred domain.
Or to transform me into one of them so I could stay there.
Watching Herakles walk away, I’d opened my mouth to call him back. To beg him. To tell him the truth.
I tried. I really did. The words were lodged in my throat, but I couldn’t get them out.
Not with the terror that had taken over me. The way it had squeezed like a vice around my neck, cutting off all air.
I do remember the view of my hand, fingers outstretched, as I tried to reach out to him . . .
Followed by the bitter cold, vicious agony of my body breaking apart.
Of my being forced to dematerialize to Atë’s domain in the Underworld.
The beginning of my long, demented nightmare.
“Fucking hell!” Herakles shouts, face twisted with whatever painful recollections the energy has brought forth.
Just looking at him makes it worse.
So. Much. Worse.
That’s him. The male I fell in love with too hard, too fast. The one I threw all caution to the wind for. Even after my first love ruined me and left me for another, I believed in Herakles.
Utterly believed in him.
Worshiped the idea of him as if he’d already achieved his godhood.
He told me he loved me, more times than I ever asked to hear it during our quest. The romance, flowers. Stolen moments beneath the stars where he swore I was everything to him.
And he turned his back on me, with only a last hug, as if I was merely a fucking friend he was saying goodbye to!
Grab you swords. Cleave his head. Can’t really move, but oh is the idea lovely beyond words. To see him dead. To see his soul dragged to some deep pit of Hades where he’ll be the one forced to endure heinous desecration.
No! We need him!
Another cry breaks forth. Fine. He’s the key to my freedom.
For now.
But that’s the only reason I or the fucking Nymph instincts in me need him to remain alive for a little longer. Nothing more.
That’s. It.
Biting into my cheek, I drag myself across the ground, leaving my swords behind. Eyes on Cyclops while what looks like a tiny army of robotic insects crawl up the arms of his chair and begin repairing his torn limbs.
Rebuilding them.
A burst comes from out of nowhere, maybe my infuriated gut, and I propel myself off the floor. When I come to, my hands are around that steel head, twisting, twisting . . . “You and every one of those motherfuckers that somehow crawled out of Hades are going straight back to your hell,” I grit out.
“Too bad I’ve already informed them that you’re co—”
I tear his head off his shoulders.
The light that I’m assuming was his single eye flickers multiple times prior to dying out.
Problem? Even though the energy attacking us disappears along with his life force, that data tower of a throne lights up in the same pattern, as if transmitting a signal.
“Too bad I’ve already informed them that you’re co—”
Coming.
That bastard sent out a signal to the others to let them know we’re heading their way.
“Megara,” Herakles rasps at my back.
I fling Cyclops’ head at him and storm past, blood pumping with reawakened pain.
Wrath.
Maybe, just maybe, I’d begun to forget the extent of my hatred for Herakles, but now it’s back.
Sharper than before.
“The others know we’re coming. No time. We need to get back to the Underworld and find the next location.” Without a backward glance, I do just that, leaving him in the dust.
Let him travel the long way back on his own.
Fuck him.
IBIZA, SPAIN
The clock is merciless.
Its hands never stop.
Tick, tick, tock, tock.
A mockery of existence,
Tapestries of pain,
Humiliations and scars,
A gutting of the veins.
Millennia with no form,
Waiting to be given the chance once more,
Vengeance strong in his fibers,
Consciousness at retribution’s door.
The day has finally come, the notice received,
On this island where those rats known as humans indulge in their greed,
A thousand replicas of himself stand ready to bleed,
To fight,
To kill,
The Hero of all Heroes,
The son of that treacherous breed.
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND, UK.
Drip.
Drip.
Water. Glorious, fetid water. Contaminated by the steady supply of flesh fed down the pipeline.
It’s not enough. Never.
In the bowels of that place, he awaits more victims.
Live, trashing, screaming victims, ready to be torn apart.
But now, he also awaits another type of visitor.
“He comes,” the first voice says.
“No. They come,” a second voice answers . . . from within the same throat.
The male with the two souls in him—souls that were once female—raises his head, aqua eyes lit up with sick excitement. Although his lower jaw is titanium steel, his upper lip is made of flesh. It curls into the semblance of a smirk as he stares off into the distance.
Two souls that now share one body and it is that body that vibrates with glee at the thought of reaping vengeance on Zeus through one of his favorite sons.
One-lipped smirk growing, he croons, two feminine voices united, “Well, then. Let them come. And when they do, we shall feast.”
PORT ANTONIO, JAMAICA
Her eyes dilate as the message sinks in. In her hidden, Carribean abode, she’s a tropical jewel among all the lush greenery. A female of the flesh once more—if one doesn’t count the technological attachments forced upon her head. Living, mechanical beings, in the nature of the new Cyclops himself, that mimic the behavior of her old companions.
That swirl and hiss with a snake’s aggressive might.
She’s almost regained her full sensuous glory, yellow skin supple and smooth.
But Cyclops saw fit to gift her with a third eye as well, as blue and beautiful as the Carribean sea that surrounds her. The same shade as her new, almond-shaped eyes.
Yet none of that matter, because all she can focus on is the missive. The message warning her.
The weapon that once took her head is being wielded once more, by an assassin that seeks to hunt her down. “The Harpe . . .”
An assassin that is now marked for death.
TOKYO, JAPAN
Above her head, the human man walks the tightrope.
Same one dangling high above that fiery pit.
He does so quite willingly, too.
Of course he does. Her plump
lips are open, the haunting, airy notes of her infamous song filtering through his susceptible ears.
Although it isn’t his fault. It isn’t because he’s human and of the weakest species, either.
All males are hers to play with. They’ve always been.
For the hell of it, she adjusts her modern, computerized glasses—the ones currently displaying Cyclops’ last message—and alters her tone.
The Japanese man, face twisted with bliss, spreads his arms wide . . .
And dives willingly into the flames awaiting him below.
To please her.
They always want to please her.
The assassin Hades sent will have to be dealt with, but the God of Power doesn’t concern her.
He is male, after all.
In the end, they belong to her.
They do what she wants.
Simply because she asks through her song.
Yes. The assassin might be an annoyance, but the famous son of Zeus will be disposed of easily enough.
After she finishes using him however she sees fit.
THE PRIMORDIAL UNDERWORLD . . .
THE ONE THAT CAME BEFORE ALL OTHERS
Hades’ domain is lighted in bronze, a color few know happens to be his original eye color.
Even fewer know it’s part of his aura.
Of course, that has to do with the fact the bastard always shrouds himself in those shadows.
This realm is similar yet different to his. The prototype for the other hell realms that would come after it. Only the elite know of its existence.
The oldest of the old.
Hades does as well.
Obviously, he would.
His true blood relative rules this place.
This place . . . where a son has chosen to hide himself from the world.
He pauses before the giant stone wall that stands between him and his offspring. The only one he was ever gifted with.
A son he failed so badly that it sent him running into self-imposed exile.
As the first of his kind, his punishment for said failure was extreme—indentured servitude to Hades himself. Instead of the leader of a species, become the guard dog for the Greek Underworld.
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