by Nicole Thorn
“Because it’s not a what,” Heracles said. “It’s a him.”
A gasp went through the crowd as they started whispering about who it could be. All kinds of monsters ended up in Tartarus. Any one of them could turn the tides of the war.
Heracles didn’t pay attention to them. He focused on us, his focus unwavering.
“Who?” Zander finally asked, giving the barest glimpse to the camera. The gods must have wanted this to come out, or they wouldn’t have set us up like this. But I couldn’t help feeling that we were about to get attacked by the crowd.
“Years ago,” Heracles went on. “A child of Hermes decided that she was above the rules the gods had placed her under. She could go anywhere she wanted, do anything she wanted, or so she thought. One day, for reasons we don’t know, she decided to go into the underworld. We believe that she got lost after that because she ended up in Tartarus.”
My stomach plunged through the floor, just imagining that.
“The gods decided to leave her there,” Heracles continued. “She had disobeyed them, she had crossed into boundaries that she should have avoided. And… she had done this to herself.”
My teeth ground together, but Verin said what we all had to be thinking. “That’s bollocks. The gods were just lazy and angry.”
Heracles inclined his head as if he agreed with us, but he didn’t say so. “A couple of years went past. The gods had forgotten about her, but for those that knew her fate, they all assumed that she had died in Tartarus. But then, Hades sensed something that shouldn’t have existed. A new life, down in the darkest part of the underworld.”
My heart twisted around with fear. The crowd held its breath, waiting for Heracles to explain. Callie gripped her microphone so tight, it should have shattered.
Heracles looked down at the ground, as if ashamed that he hadn’t done something sooner. “A child born in Tartarus, a boy born between a demigod and… a Titan.”
And the crowd went crazy again, but I just stared at Heracles, my heart thumping. “How long ago was this?”
“Sixteen years.”
“He’s been down in Tartarus for his entire life?” I clarified because I needed to hear the words. I needed Heracles to tell me that the gods had left a child down in Tartarus to be tortured by monsters and Titans and Tartarus it/himself. I needed to hear him explain that the side we fought on, the people we would defend in this war, had left a baby in the worst part of the universe.
“Yes,” Heracles said.
I felt Zander’s fury burning through me like he had lost control over his emotions.
“How could you do something like that?” Juniper asked, horrified.
“I did not get a say,” Heracles clarified. “The Olympians held council, they decided what to do with the boy when they figured out that he existed. They couldn’t even fathom what he would be. A child born between someone who is half god and a Titan? He’s more powerful than you could imagine, and he is a weapon that could turn the tide of the war.”
“He’s a person!” Zander shouted.
My own fury burned within me. The lights all around us started to flicker. Some of them exploded, though I didn’t feel that pull in my chest. Somehow, I just knew that my siblings’ anger had done it.
“I did not decide his fate,” Heracles said, lowering his head. “I did not choose what happened to him. He is down there, and you could break him out. But you have to agree to do it.”
“Yeah, like we’re going to leave a sixteen-year-old kid down in Tartarus,” Verin barked, turning around. We had all started moving like we couldn’t handle the fury that we felt.
I just… couldn’t fathom what that kid would be like. What he would think like. How he would react to some demigods and gods trying to grab him.
Heracles breathed out. “Then you accept?”
“Yes,” all of us said.
“Then select three people that will go down to Tartarus to retrieve him,” Heracles said. “And prepare yourselves for the journey.”
The crowd had gone silent again.
I turned my back on them, my teeth ground together. “Let’s figure this out,” I said.
Zander
I had to keep a handle on the fire that burned in my chest. If I lost it in front of all these people, I really didn’t know what would happen. My family had crawled their way through hell—almost literally—and I didn’t want to blow it now. We needed to get home, and then I could lose my mind. For now, we had a boy to save. A young, broken boy.
I stood silently as Jasper took the lead, quietly discussing what we should do with the others. We stood in a circle on the stage, speaking softly though we knew everyone could hear us. I didn’t care so much about that at the moment. I was too busy seething.
“Gods, what do we do with him?” Kizzy whispered, rubbing her arms. “He must be so scared. Are we just going to rip him from hell and then send him off to fight a war for us? He’s sixteen.”
The pain in her voice resonated in my chest, amplified ten times by my own inability to control my powers. I couldn’t keep out all the emotion around me, feeling the grief, shock, fury, confusion, and excitement from the crowd. Plus, my own anger when a cameraman got too close. I snarled at him, willing to take a life if he moved closer. He got the picture, staying back.
Sixteen. That number stuck in my head like nothing else could have. It was about three years younger than me and Kizzy, and one younger than Aster and Callie. He was a kid in almost every sense of the word. A kid raised in this awful place, never knowing anything else. A kid called it. I’d even called him that, not knowing that he was a person. Worse, the gods never presented it like we dealt with a person, and I could only think they didn’t see him as a person. Only a threat that they had to lock away. Did they not realize that what they’d done had a better chance of making him a monster than his existence did?
“I think we should bring him home,” Verin said. “We’ll save him, then put him in a place where he can actually take a breath.”
“In the house?” Juniper asked. “He’s only ever known Tartarus. I think it would be jarring.”
“What are our other options, luv? We need to get him out of there.”
I agreed, but he’d been in Tartarus his entire life. I didn’t want him suffering, but what was another few minutes of discussing it going to do? We needed to figure out what would be best for him.
“Then what?” I asked. “When we get him home? We use a kid to fight a war for us? I… I can’t…”
“We can talk about that later,” Jasmine said, her eyes looking at the crowd watching us. “For now, I think we need to get him. Maybe we should bring him here.”
I swallowed hard. “In front of all these people?”
She put her hand on my arm, silently asking me to give her the benefit of the doubt. Quietly, she said, “Here, where there are no humans. Where if something happens, these are the people who he’d be surrounded by.”
An awful thought, but one that I understood. Humans couldn’t protect themselves against even the weakest of demigods, and this boy was so much more than that. “What if they hurt him?”
“They won’t,” my sister growled. Power bubbled in her, barely reaching my insides. I nodded at her, agreeing on who we would protect.
I held my hand out to her, and she knew to give me the coin. When she placed it in my hand, it felt too heavy. It looked exactly like the one we’d had the last time we marched on the underworld. I made myself stare at the seers, letting it soak in that they were fine. This time wouldn’t be like last time. It would never be like that again.
“Who’s coming with me?” I asked.
Jasper stepped forward, the god willing to help me with this terrible task. I didn’t want any of the girls down there, as shitty and sexist as it sounded. I didn’t want my sister to see the boy in Tartarus, and I thought Jasmine and Juniper had been through enough. Thankfully, no one fought when Verin stepped to my other side.
“I’m not bleeding f
or you,” I nearly roared out into the open. “Hermes, get over here.”
I threw the coin to the middle of the stage, unwilling to do much more than that. We were the ones doing the gods a favor, and I wouldn’t grovel or beg for them to help us. It would’ve been pointless, and they didn’t deserve it.
Hermes showed up, silent as he bent to pick up the coin. He flipped it in his hands, Heracles stepping back and out of the view of the cameras. He stood close to Callie as she held her mic, watching everything unfold. Her family couldn’t even stand around her, leaving the girl pretty much alone. I was really, really ready for that to be finished.
Hermes cleared his throat, looking to me and the boys. “You ready?”
Ready to fucking kill you. “Yeah,” I said coldly. “Let’s get this over with.” I looked to Jasmine, nodding toward Callie. She hurried over and dragged our friend into the cluster of girls, keeping her safe from yet another person I wanted to hurt. It. Even Heracles had called this boy it. I wouldn’t forgive him for that.
The world shifted around us, throwing me off kilter to the point where I almost fell over. The only problem being that I didn’t know which direction to fall if that happened. Nothing felt solid and I couldn’t even tell where my feet landed. The world turned black around me, and I couldn’t feel anything when I reached out.
Falling. Am I falling? I moved my arms and legs and they didn’t meet with anything. It wasn’t real; this fake reality as we went to a part of the underworld I truly thought I’d never see. I wouldn’t have to stay. I knew that. It still left dread in my chest as I worried I would never see Jasmine again. I tried picturing her face, but could only imagine her eyes.
That blackness didn’t fade away when it felt like the moving had stopped. I thought I might have been wrong about the moving because I couldn’t see a thing. Everything was black, with vague shapes floating through it. They shifted, making noises that sounded like my friends.
“Forward,” Hermes said. “Walk only where I tell you.”
I took a step, though it didn’t feel like I moved. I made my body go, that dread in my chest growing. I tried to picture Jasmine again. If I could hold onto her eyes, then I would remember that this wouldn’t last forever. Jasmine, Jasmine, Jasmine. My girl waited for me, and I was so, so grateful that she didn’t come with me.
Her image began to slip from my mind, vanishing like sand between my fingers. No more Jasmine. No more Kizzy. No more house. No more life to get back to. Only this pit of blackness and my body moved like I was trying to walk through water. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t scream. My insides had been scooped out and left on the dirt.
Why… why had I come here? There must have been a reason for it, but I couldn’t find it no matter how hard I searched. Then I lost the will to search for it, the reason not mattering anymore. It seemed so perfectly pointless. Everything lacked a point when you ended up here in Tartarus, no matter what you did.
Something started to glow in front of me. I felt them. The emotions were so strong that I could make out a picture in my mind. I moved faster, feeling the ground under me for the first time, and then I heard metal shifting.
“Get him, get out,” Hermes ordered as the scene became clearer. “Go.”
I moved with Jasper and Verin, leading them through a dark cage where I could feel bodies. They hummed with power and interest and threats that went unspoken. I didn’t want to focus on them. In the corner, I saw a boy. A boy with gray hair and his head down.
And I thought my heart would stop.
Nothing and everything. It radiated off of him like wind and fire. Just a blank boy sitting curled up on himself, alone in hell. His soul was a hurricane and his heart was a pit. My stomach turned as everything in my world shifted, focused on saving him. I wasn’t good for much, but I would make myself be good for him.
My chest sank, emotions that didn’t belong to me beginning to take over. I couldn’t count how many people were inside the cage, but I knew they were so much more than I could ever be. These beasts had been trapped so they wouldn’t tear the world apart. And we had been sent here. Me and my family sent here as our reward. A person. The gods thought that we were qualified to walk among titans, or they didn’t think it would have mattered if they killed us. We were the latest in a line of heroes that would probably end up dead before we hit thirty. I knew before that we meant nothing to the gods, but it had never felt so real as it did when I stood in hell.
The boy sat at my feet, not even looking up when we arrived. I couldn’t tell how aware of his surroundings he was, but I just wanted to tell him it would be okay. Even though it wouldn’t be okay, because the gods had plans for him. Plans I couldn’t protect him from. I could only get him out of hell and make damn sure he didn’t end up there again. I wouldn’t allow it. The boy had felt enough cruelty in his life already.
I put a hand on his shoulder, fear, and anger shooting through him and into me. When I tried containing it, my raised magic made the other people in the cage start to look over. I didn’t have time to be kind. Jasper, Verin, and I pulled the boy from his cage, and Hermes brought us topside.
When we landed on the stage, my chest heaved as light exploded back into my world. It made my eyes burn, but I didn’t let go of the boy. Jasper had his other shoulder, keeping him in place as he knelt on the stage in front of so many strangers that didn’t care about any of us. It seemed like an extra cruelty. Why did the gods do that to us? I didn’t understand how we could obey them and still get treated this way.
Even with the crowd and the two gods around us, I could only stare at the boy below me. His hair was still gray in the light, messy and wrong. His body was thin, but he looked like he would be tall. His eyes stayed on the ground, so I couldn’t tell what color they were. I could see his face though, and it killed me. When I looked at him, I could only see a young boy. Someone too young to know the life behind him, and too young to face the life ahead of him.
My fury burned again, pushing at my skin as it tried to break free. Maybe I would let it.
Jasmine
I didn’t think people calling us heroes had gotten to our heads. I certainly didn’t feel like a hero and nor did Zander. I couldn’t imagine that the others felt that way either. And yet, I had to wonder if we started to believe we were infallible when Zander, Verin, and Jasper all appeared in front of us, with a kid on the ground at their feet.
He looked normal, which struck me first. I didn’t know what I had been expecting from a child of a titan and a demigod, but a normal kid hadn’t been it.
Then the small details started to fill in. He had gray hair that hung lankly around his face, ice blue eyes, and skin so pale that it looked like it had never seen sunlight. Because it hadn’t. On a human, this would have been unhealthily pale, but he couldn’t die from small things, like being deprived of the sun. He also looked skinny, like he had never had a proper meal in his life. Thin patches of dirt touched his body here and there, his clothing—which looked a lot like what one would wear outside of Tartarus. I decided not to wonder how he had come across the too small pants and t-shirt.
The last thing I noticed, though, was the look in his eyes.
We had been so mad with the gods for tricking us in this way, we had been so focused on getting the kid out of Tartarus, we hadn’t really given ourselves a chance to think. He had been just a kid to us, one that needed someone to save him. A kid who had been living in hell for so long… as in his entire life. A kid who might not have been able to speak words in any language, a kid who probably couldn’t read. A kid that might not have even known that a world existed outside of Tartarus.
And we had yanked him out of the only life he knew, the only life he had ever known, and dropped him in the middle of a stage full of people. Because we hadn’t taken a second to think that this boy didn’t know what a camera was, what lights were, what a stage looked like. He didn’t know any of it.
We had wanted to make sure he couldn’t hurt anyone human
s, but we hadn’t taken a second to wonder how much damage he could do to demigods.
His eyes filled with a manic kind of fear, the kind that wiped away all thought.
“Zander!” I shouted, trying to make him focus on the boy.
My fella started to turn toward the boy, but at the sound of my voice, the kid had whipped around to stare at me.
I put my hands up, but then I wondered if he had ever seen someone do even that, the smallest gesture that meant, hey, I won’t hurt you. “It’s okay,” I said.
The kid stumbled to his feet, his eyes still darting around. He backed away from the boys. Zander started to step forward, but he thought better of it. He and Jasper were big guys. If they marched toward the kid, how would he know that they didn’t mean him any harm?
Kizzy moved toward him. “We’re not going to hurt you, okay? Everything is going to be fine.” She swallowed thickly at the lie. “Let’s get you somewhere calmer, somewhere with fewer people.”
The kid focused on her face. His chest pumped up and down, while the fear hadn’t left his eyes.
Kizzy took another step toward him.
And someone in the crowd let out a whoop of excitement. As the rest of the crowd joined in, I understood beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we had lost the boy.
His eyes filled with panic and terror, he lashed out. I felt the power, even if I couldn’t see it. A tidal wave of energy crashed into the entire stage. All the remaining lights shattered as one, raining glass down on all our heads. The wood beneath our feet exploded. Shards of it sliced through my arms and shoulders and face, making me scream in surprise. I stumbled back, but I found that the stage had disappeared beneath my feet. I would have fallen fifteen feet to the ground below if Kizzy hadn’t whipped up some plants to catch me.
I clawed my way back onto the stage just as the boys tried to subdue our baby titan.
Zander spoke in soothing tones, using a voice powered by godly magic. “It’s okay, calm down. Just sit down.”