Thanatos

by Carmen Kern

  “I made this world for me—”

  “Did you?” Hades’s laugh was a chainsaw cutting steel. “Here’s what I think. You spent decades writing and illustrating a story for yourself and your nightmare of a brother. A story where you’re the hero. One where the Olympians would be banished or crushed or whatever nightmare scenario you came up with. If you’re in control as you think you are, then you orchestrated all of this so we would end up right here.” Hades pointed to the cracked cement beneath them. “In making this ending for you, you made it for me.” Hades smiled, a genuine god of the Underworld smile that he might have saved for the last politician to enter his gates before he tortured their soul.

  Thanatos chewed on the god’s words for only a moment before Hades launched himself at the god of death, all snarl and shadow.

  All around was a cauldron of confusion. Armed rebels ran out from alleyways and dropped down from roofs, shouting and aiming their weapons upward at the flying shadows that blurred through the skies, dark streaks under boiling clouds. Shots rang out. A group of hardened soldiers ran to intercept the rebels, firing at them from the sidewalks. Bullets pinged and zipped from rooftops, slicing through the rebels as they surged from hidden places.

  Throughout the downtown core of Necromourn, soldiers converged on the citizens they’d herded into the streets, their prayers stilted with moans of terror and anger and given up as half-hearted prayers at best. They shook with cold, their clothes wet and clinging. Many were forced to kneel in deep puddles, and if they took too long to fall to their knees, a rifle butt met the back of their skull. Under their breath, many cursed the god of death, while others paid half-hearted lip service to their maker. None dared to look up when shots rang out, even when the ones next to them fell over, their eyes still open, still seeing, their bodies useless but alive. The prayers forced from the peoples’ lips were less than tokens.

  Howling winds, raw-throated screams, cries of pain, and thunder boomed when characters who had waited much too long for this moment threw aside manhole covers and spilled out from the sewers, silent and fierce, taking down the soldiers who did what they were created to do, and who also stood between them and the freedom they fought for.

  Rebel monsters shrieked and hurled themselves through walls, ripping through plaster and bricks, bursting out into the streets.

  The soldiers’ grenades arched overhead, blowing through the brutish monsters, ripping into flesh and talon and barbed tentacles.

  All hell had broken loose.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Persephone, Bob, and Hecate ran around a final corner and fell into a panicked throng that picked them up like a wave. Characters bumped and fought their way forward, some grunting and stumbling and falling beneath the feet of the crowd. They fought against the current, arms pinwheeling as they swam over other beings.

  A series of deafening booms split through the other noises. Tanks blew craters into the streets, cutting off the soldiers’ escape.

  Persephone pushed out of the crowd. She’d barely gained her footing when she spotted Bob going past, Ferret clinging tightly to his throat. She reached around a giant skinless beast thrashing its way over other beings and grabbed Bob’s arm, pulling him out of the throng.

  Bob’s eyes bulged, his face a deep red that verged on purple.

  Persephone, breathing hard, gasped. “Ferret…you’re choking him.”

  The creature, wild-eyed and coiled tight, chittered and loosened his tail. He brushed Bob’s cheek with his own while the demigod gasped in air, gulping it down like a starved man.

  While Bob caught his breath, Persephone hopped up on the base of a lamppost and scanned the street. She spotted Hecate half a block down. Looking further, she saw them. Thanatos. And Hades. In a tumble of arms and wings and weapons spewing sparks of energy. Her hand made a smooth sweeping motion over the crowd of beings, as if trying to part a sea. “Hades,” she yelled, but it came out as a whisper. She leaned against the lamppost for support, her body swaying. The air around her contracted and squeezed her lungs and then let go in a space of seconds. “I found you.”

  Persephone braced herself, took a long look at Hades, and jumped down. “I found him.” Persephone seized Bob’s wrist and pulled him along. They kept to the edges of the throng but didn’t make much headway. “Can you, I don’t know, blast a path…in a nice way, like, not to kill?” Persephone yelled in Bob’s ear.

  “How do you blast something nicely?” He adjusted Ferret’s tail for the hundredth time.

  Persephone grabbed the front of his jacket. “Can you get us to Hades?”

  “I can try.” Bob put his hands out. Flames sprouted from his fingertips. He turned up the heat, and the flames grew in width and height, flickering and converging until he held a bonfire in his hands. The creatures jerked away, scrambling to put some distance between them and the fire. Bob stepped off the curb, and the beings split apart as if he were Moses. Persephone held on to the back of his jacket, staying behind him as they walked up the center of the street.

  It seemed forever until the crowds thinned and all that stood between them and the battling gods were a crater, piles of debris, and trampled beings, some of them still writhing in agony beneath bricks and walls.

  Hecate ran up behind them. “Thanks for the beacon.” She slapped Bob on his back and then leaned back to take in a few deep breaths. “What’s with all the people? It smells like civil war. What the flames did we walk into?”

  “No idea,” Persephone whispered.

  The three of them stood at the edge of the pit, watching as Thanatos converged on Hades with a massive wing, his other one torn at the edge, blood dripping with liquid bronze. Hades’s bident swept down in an arch above Thanatos’s head as the death god dove out of the way and out of sight behind a pickup truck.

  Hecate grinned, soot and ash dirtying her face, her teeth flashing white. “How about I build a bridge? Reform a little of this and that?”

  Bob stared at her smiling face. “Are you actually having fun?”

  “Always,” Hecate replied before thrusting out her hands, calling bricks and wood and rebar from the piles of debris scattered about. Objects flew. Dust and dirt sprayed while pieces soared and collided, melding together in a slapstick path over the crater that split the street.

  Persephone turned to Bob, reaching for Ferret. “All right, buddy, let’s get those things off of you.” She felt around for a few seconds before finding the release clasp on the tiny cuffs. There was a soft click, and the weight transferred from Ferret to Persephone’s hands. They grew larger and heavier, transforming to the wearer. She slipped it over her wrist and left the other end dangling.

  She nodded and took off seconds before a massive wolf tackled Bob, coming out of nowhere, bowling him over and over, somersaulting until they landed and the hound’s snarling, snapping teeth ripped through Bob’s clothes and skin.

  Persephone saw the blur of motion out of the corner of her eye. She turned, slowing her run.

  “Go!” Hecate yelled as she flung a final row of bricks into place on the far side of the bridge. The witch goddess spun around while reaching into her coat. She popped open a vial and sent it hurling over the top of Bob and the wolf, purple vapor streaming behind. Glass splattered on impact. The gas spread, bursting out and up in a colorful cloud. Hecate ran for the purple haze with a throwing star in each hand.

  Thanatos’s scythe ripped a thin line across Hades’s chest. A massive arc of power snapped through Hades’s body, his back arched and rigid against the poisoned blade. His face glazed over with pain and rage. Quick as it took the god of death to sweep his weapon around, Hades’s body ejected the taint, releasing him from its hold. He fell forward, tumbling into a graceful roll. The end of his bident slammed down, shaking the earth, calling to the shadow forms.

  Thanatos raised his arms to the sky, they trembled under the weight of the night. There had been no sacrifices and only half-hearted prayers, nei
ther of which had filled his god battery. Not even close. “Damn you,” he mumbled. His skin prickled with exertion as he called on what little power he had left.

  The god of death became a pillar of fire, flames spreading across his outstretched wings, brilliant and terrible. There was a stench of burning flesh as wild fingers of fire spewed from the god’s body, consuming everything around him. And in a moment, he was gone, flying upwards in a blaze of blinding light, crashing against the roof of the nearby town theatre and up to the night skies.

  The air was thick with smoke and drifting debris, and the stink of burning bodies. Buildings exploded, blown apart by bullets and bombs.

  Thanatos flew in a great spiral overhead and then fell, a brilliant stream of light against the dark clouds. He was a blur of movement above, and then behind Hades, slamming into him.

  The force of the impact lifted Hades off his feet and sent him tumbling through the smoky air. He fumbled and then caught the end of his bident with one flailing hand before crashing to the ground. Hades scrambled to his feet, his fingers finding the trigger on his weapon. Blood gushed from a cut above his brow, clouding his vision. He scanned the streets through red tainted eyes.

  A whoosh came from behind him. He dropped to his knees as his jacket blew apart in an explosion of goose feathers. More blood poured from a fresh cut across his ribs, soaking his side and his leg.

  Thanatos swept his now bloodied scythe up and over his head and landed before Hades in a puff of ash, his blade in a downward arch.

  Scythe and bident met in a clash of flame and shadow. There was a punch of thunder and heat, and the two of them blew back and away from each other. They banged down hard.

  The ground rocked from a series of explosions. Debris poured down on the gods, shards of glass flew, exploding on the cracked pavement.

  Hades rolled over and pressed up to his knees. Through the haze, he spotted his bident a few yards away. He lunged for his weapon and stood, breathing in ash and smoke.

  A few yards away, Thanatos braced himself against the ground with his wing and rose a few seconds too late.

  Hades released the trigger, pouring out his darkness from the ends of his bident, streams of black sucking in, unraveling, undoing anything in its path. Unleashed, the dark matter from the Underworld converged into a single beam of power aimed at the god of death.

  Thanatos flared his wings around his body, shielding him against the bident’s burst, but the force pressed him backward, his heels digging into dirt, skidding. His balance failed, and he tumbled backward and over the lip of a crater blown into the street. The death god plummeted to the bottom, his broken wing bent and torn beneath his body.

  Overhead, the darkness of the Underworld continued to pour from Hades’s bident, consuming everything in its path.

  Thanatos tried to scream, to call to the brother he had doomed to the monsters in his abyss, or to his mother who had never shown him favor.

  But the streets—the concrete he had formed with his pencils—curled around his feet, his ankles, his calves, sucking him down until his mouth filled with gravel and dirt. Water from the gutters poured in and down his throat, into his lungs, and with every heartbeat, his body stirred the mixture into a gray sludge that hardened quicker than it should. All this as he tried to utter a sound, but nothing came out. He burst from the inside out, his cement heart beating for the very last time. He reached up and up through the sludge until there was a grasping, a clutching, a snapping, and a mighty pull.

  Rain began to fall again, quite suddenly. Huge, lazy drops, breaking open all around them.

  Hades ran to the edge of the ravaged street and peered over the edge. He flipped his bident, the tips facing down, and as he drew himself up to unleash another burst of energy, he heard his name and a most familiar voice.

  Persephone, covered with dirt and ash, her skin gray, hair matted from rain, ran to him. “Fancy meeting you here,” she shouted.

  He looked up as his bident spun around in his hand and thrust out toward the voice. Blinking against the rain, he stared. The bident lowered until both tips touched the ground. “I’m dreaming,” he whispered. And he believed it, until she grabbed his wrist and pull him back from the edge of the pit.

  “Heph made shackles from the same metal as your helmet.” She thrust out her empty hands. “Trust me, they’re there.”

  “What… Where did you come—”

  “Later,” she said, releasing the cuff around her wrist and holding the pair out to Hades.

  “I see them…just an outline, but I see it.” He touched their invisible surface, running his fingers over the cool metal.

  “Let’s get the bastard,” she whispered, her grin dirty.

  The ground rumbled. Buildings shook. Glass fragments flew on the air like shrapnel. Shopfronts blew out. Large pieces of metal and wood and steel fell off in large chunks and tumbled to the ground, shattering and clattering to their new resting place. From a few blocks away, the city churned, rolling in on itself while one blast and then another tore through the streets. “The rebels are bringing down sections of the city.” Hades held on to Persephone’s arm, the earth rolling beneath them.

  “We’ve got to get him out of there.” Persephone made for the edge. “As much as I’d like to bury him here for eternity, we need him.”

  A dark figure emerged from the smoke.

  Hades raised his bident, but Persephone pushed it back down. “It’s Hecate,” she said.

  The witch goddess was covered in dirt, the rain washing the ash on her face to a slimy paste.

  “Did you bring the whole damn cavalry?” Hades asked Persephone.

  Hecate staggered over uneven ground until she stood next to them. A cut on her cheek bled, leaving a trail of red beside her lips.

  “Do you two have some power left?” Hades looked briefly at Hecate and then focused on his wife.

  “What,” Hecate coughed out, “no hello and thank you very much?”

  In a blur, Hades stepped in front of Hecate, the edge of his bident tipping her face up to meet his dark and twisted eyes. “Hello, witch.” He lowered his bident, catching a disapproving look from Persephone. He cleared his throat and settled on a lighter tone. “Thanatos is down there.” Hades pointed to the crater with his bident. “And he needs to be up here so we can slap these cuffs on him. Binding Thanatos would go a lot smoother if we combined powers.”

  Hecate’s eye twitched. “You could have led with that.”

  The three of them stood at the edge of the widening chasm, careful to keep their feet under them as more explosions rocked the city. Behind them, several buildings burned bright and hot. Winged shapes and creatures and characters came and went through the smoke. And still it rained.

  Hades stood between the goddesses, each of them with a hand on his back, channeling their remaining power through him. His bident erupted, shooting out a black stream. The rock and brick covering Thanatos fell away, devoured by the darkness in the stream of power. Thanatos rose, his broken wing and arm twisted and hanging limp. The three gods raised death from the pit and set him on a slab that had been blown from a nearby balcony.

  Persephone and Hades approached Thanatos from opposite sides, each of them holding an end of the invisible cuffs. Thanatos had turned his usual gray. The bronzed god skin had faded along with his empty powers. Persephone reached for his ankle. In that moment, Thanatos swung a vicious black talon upward. But something hard and fast slammed it away, knocking Persephone to her knees.

  Hades took fistfuls of Thanatos’s feathered coat and lifted the god up and off the slab, “You will never touch her again. Not ever.” And while Hades held the god of death, Persephone slipped the cuffs over Thanatos’s ankles. The thick band of metal snapped into existence.

  “Your bident!” Persephone called out over the noise. “It needs the touch of your bident.”

  Hades slammed Thanatos on the slab and forced another stream of power from his
bident to the cuffs.

  Iron turned red with a heat infused by the god of fire. Intricate designs of a thunderbolt, the two prongs of the bident, and the three prongs of the trident were laid over each other, binding together ancient words and symbols etched on the inside of the shackles. Red lines turned white and then blue.

  Thanatos moaned and then howled, his voice cracking, neck straining against the spells of ancient tribes and cults cutting through his veins, claiming him with every beat of his heart. The binding consumed him, compelled him to do what he was born to do. Thanatos looked up at them with a mad stare. His mouth worked to spit out words, but no sound came. He tried to close his eyes but couldn’t, and the rain he had called forth fell into them.

  “Remind me to buy Heph a case of beer when we get back.” Hades leaned on his bident like a man on his crutch. “The Olympian kind.”

  Persephone got off her knee, walked around the slab, and took her husband in her arms, kissing him long and deep. They tasted each other’s relief, their anger, and their filth.

  “And…break,” Hecate called out, and then turned away from the gods of the Underworld.

  The rest of the city was putting out fires and digging out from under the ruins. A large group of characters armed with axes and machetes came ambling down the street.

  “Is this something to worry about?” Hecate asked over her shoulder.

  Hades reluctantly pulled away from Persephone. He looked past Hecate. “Nope. They’re the ones blowing up the place.”

  “Why, exactly?” Persephone asked.

  “This part of the city is the oldest, and the first of Thanatos’s drawings. Apparently inked with his blood. They want it gone.”

  Arle called out from across the bridge Hecate had conjured. “Looks like you got your man…and ours. We’re setting dynamite around Corvus Tower. You wanna come watch the show?”

  “You might not want to do that. It’s our only way out,” Hecate yelled back.