by Melody Rose
“Hello, brethren,” Hades spoke to the flames. “I’m sorry for the unexpected intrusion, but it would seem a mutual friend of ours has paid me an unplanned visit. I would request your presence immediately to help sort out a rather important matter.”
“Hades,” one of the Moriai whined through the green flame. It flicked in time with her cadence. “What if I don’t want to?”
“Well, luckily, Lachesis, this really only concerns Atropos, so you may skip the visit if you like,” Hades replied with a surprising amount of tolerance.
“Me?” the flame said, but this time with a completely different voice. “Why ever would you need just me?”
“Because that is what our friend requested,” Hades replied with a simple eye roll.
“Who is this friend?” Eros asked from his pink flame. “We don’t tend to run in the same circles, Uncle.”
“It would seem this demigod has made a couple of things for us in the past couple of years,” Hades said, finally revealing his hand. “I think we owe it to her to at least hear her out.”
“Cheyenne, daughter of Hephaestus, is there? In the Underworld? With you?” Atropos gawked. “But I haven’t had the pleasure of cutting her string yet!”
That statement made my mouth run dry. I tried not to think about the implication of the goddess’s words as the conversation continued.
“It would seem she’s found a clever loophole in order to visit me,” Hades said, the first sign of annoyance coming through in his voice. “That should tell you how urgent this is, along with the fact that this request comes with my endorsement.”
The green flame spluttered quickly as if Atropos was blowing a raspberry. “This is ridiculous, but I will come only because it gets me away from these two for a bit.”
“Take all the time you need, sister,” Lachesis sneered, coming back on the line again. “I’m sick of looking at your ugly face.”
“I think I’m going to have to decline, Hades,” Eros answered.
My heart sank abruptly. I knew that it would be tricky getting all three of these weapons again, but I really thought I would have the most trouble with Hades, not Eros.
“Oh, dear, don’t be like that,” a new melodic voice came from the pink flame. I recognized it instantly as Harmonia’s voice. “Just see what the daughter of Hephaestus wants. She did free me, after all. We have her to thank for these last months together.”
I did my best not to gag, but Benji was less successful as he snorted into his hand. Violet and Darren both elbowed him in the sides from either direction, but I was right there with Benji. I didn’t want to think about what the goddess of harmony and the god of lust had been doing for months with each other.
The pink flame flickered as Eros sighed. “You know I can’t say no to you, my dear.”
“Then, that is a yes?” Hades asked both flames.
Before either of the immortals had a chance to respond, their respective flames went still. A single flame, in the shape of a raindrop, plucked away from the larger flame. It looked like a falling petal from a flower as the green and pink ones floated down to the ground. The minute they touched the rocks, they began to expand. Each of them formed into a humanoid shape until the flame extinguished completely. When the flame disappeared, they left a man and a woman in their wake.
Atropos still wore her skinny black dress and short-cropped black hair, which she put behind one ear. She fluttered her eyes at Hades, though the sight was much creepier than lustful because of her ebony eyes.
Eros appeared in his classic look with no shirt and denim pants, barefoot. Even in the dim lighting from the Underworld, his skin glittered with a perfect, even tan, while the blond hair curled in perfect spirals atop his head.
When the three of them appeared before me, I nearly fell off the boat and into the water. I had experienced each of their auras of power on an individual level, but now having three gods in front of me, I felt as though I’d stepped onto Jupiter. My muscles strained from the weight of their very being, and I struggled to keep my eyes open.
“That’s quite a loophole, Hades,” Eros said suddenly as he looked up and down at the Argo docked in the river.
“You’re telling me,” Hades said with a sigh. “After all this is over, I’m going to have to reexamine my security measures.”
“Speaking of which,” Atropos said as she popped her lips dramatically. “What is ‘all this’ exactly?”
Hades held out his hand towards me. “I think it best if Cheyenne explained herself.”
I forced my eyes to stay open and my focus to remain on the three powerful immortals in front of me. As much as my gut was screaming to run away from them, I stayed firm and asked them exactly what I needed to.
“I want to borrow the weapons I made for you each. The Helm, the Scissors, and the Bow so that I can make the Ultimate Weapon,” I said, regaining strength as I spoke. “I swear to make you new ones the minute that we defeat Eris. It will be the first project I work on. But I need those blessed items, or we won’t have a chance to defeat the goddess.”
“This is rather unorthodox for gods to hand over their weapons to a demigod,” Eros commented.
“That’s not true,” I spat, my Oracle powers kicking in. “Athena gave Perseus a shield to help him defeat Medusa. Zeus gave Heracles the bow to defeat the Hydra. How is this any different from those instances?”
“How do we know that you’re going to use the weapons for what you say you are?” Eros challenged. He curled his hands into fists and put them on his hips. “How do we know you aren’t going to don these enchanted items and never remake them for us?”
I pursed my lips, a stubbornness surging through my body. “I have done everything all three of you have asked of me. I have given you no reason to doubt my word, even in the most tempting of situations. My destiny is to make the Ultimate Weapon, and if the only reason you’re refusing to help me is that you question my honor, then you are fools.”
Hades’s lips curled into a smirk at that while Eros scowled, and Atropos sneered.
I knew that calling the gods fools wasn’t necessarily the best choice. However, I hated that they questioned me just because I was a demigod. I had always done everything right by them. Hadn’t I proven that I wasn’t like the Greek heroes before me who used trickery and deception to get what they wanted? I used my hard work, my will, and my honesty to achieve the tasks laid at my feet. If they were ever going to trust a demigod, I was the one.
Hades looked to his immortal companions, and the three of them shared silent glances. I didn’t know if they were literally speaking to one another in their minds or if they were just reading one another’s expressions. However, in the next moment, it didn’t matter because I was soon let into their decision.
Hades, Eros, and Atropos stepped forward with their hands outstretched. Magically, the three items, the Helm, the Bow, and the Scissors, appeared in the appropriate immortal’s hands. The items floated up so that they now rested at eye level with me. I reached out and grabbed each of the weapons, cradling them in my arms.
“Since your major battle is supposed to take place tomorrow morning,” Eros said with an unmistakable lilt of sass, “I expect my new bow within twenty-four hours.”
“Same with my scissors,” Atropos said with a glare. “That is if you don’t die before then.”
My blood went cold in response to her words. The goddess had a point. The immortal beings made this deal with me, assuming that I would live to complete my destiny, not something that guaranteed to every hero. Regardless of her haunting warning, I puffed out my chest and responded to the gods.
“Not to worry. I don’t plan to have you cut my string for a long time.”
32
Violet navigated us out of the Underworld with ease. The surrounding water transformed from the empty blackness back into the clear blue. Over the course of the journey, the four of us plotted how to get back to campus undetected. It was a lengthy conversation, full of arg
uments and various courses of action. Right as we approached the bottom of the lake at the Academy, we finally had our roles straight.
“Everyone clear on what they’re doing?” I clarified as I looked around to my three friends.
Violet stood strong on the upper deck of the ship, guiding us to the surface. She had two swords strapped to either side of her hips. Darren leaned against the mast with his arms crossed over his chest. He pushed his glasses up his nose with one hand while he twirled a knife in the other. Benji gripped the side of the boat, his leg jiggling in anticipation. Between one of his fingers, he rubbed a single green leaf, more useful to him than any of the metal attached to the rest of us.
I stood across from them all with Eros’s bow stretched over my shoulder, Atropos’s scissors in my pocket, and Hades’s Helm of Invisible tucked under my arm.
Once I got confirmation from all three of them, I took a deep breath. Before I could even get my words out, Benji cut me off.
“I swear to the gods, Shy, if you start with some ‘I may never you all again’ bullshit, I will tear your vocal cords out. I don’t want to hear it. We’re going to fight, and we’re going to win. There’s no need for goodbyes, got it?”
His voice and his glare were so firm, his pursed lips making his cheekbones all that more prominent, I didn’t have to nerve to dispute him. Plus, I didn’t really want to say goodbye. It seemed like bad luck before going into a battle.
“Fine then,” I said with a shrug, trying to act more confident than I felt. “Maybe Tyche bless us all.”
“We could use it,” Violet muttered. Then she turned her gaze above. “Alright, everyone, get ready. We’re breaking the surface in three… two… one…”
Right on cue, the Argo’s mast poked through the bubble as we rose to the surface once again. All of us watched the water trickle down the sides of the air bubble until it disappeared, and we were floating rightly on the campus lake.
We didn’t have much time before dawn. The sky was still dark but had streaks of violet and pink running through it, signaling the oncoming sun.
With one last glance at my friends, I placed the Helm of Invisibility over my head. There was a cold wave that splashed down my hold body as I blended in with my background. While I had promised the gods that I wouldn’t run away with their weapons, I hadn’t promised that I wouldn’t use them. It just seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when we were trying to sneak on campus.
My friends had the harder job since they didn’t get the benefit of a magical helmet, but there were more of them working together. They were supposed to go and rescue Ansel and the other soldiers from the jail while I made my way to the forge. It wasn’t our first jailbreak, so I was confident that they would pull it off.
As much as we plotted and planned, we had no idea what exactly would happen at dawn. We knew the graduation ceremony and how that was supposed to go. But with Eris and her children in charge of everything, there was no telling what would happen. That was the basis of chaos.
Darren even broke down the word for us, the only one of the group to pay attention to Greek language class. It originated from the Greek word, khaos, which literally meant a “vast chasm or giant void.” Its modern definition translated to “complete disorder and confusion.” So anyone’s guess was as good as ours for what would happen.
Therefore, our plan was to stop the chaos before it had a chance to begin.
We needed help in order to do that. If there was a battle on the horizon, then we would need more than four of us to fight in it. That’s where Ansel and the other soldiers came in.
While that jailbreak happened, I would be in the forge making the Ultimate Weapon. Once that was complete, I would hand it off to one of the freed demigods and let the good times roll.
One of our more pressing concerns was who the “child of the betrayed” was in the prophecy. They were the one to wield the blade, and while it was clear that I was to be the one to make it, we didn’t know who would wield the Ultimate Weapon.
We tossed around names like a tennis ball, back and forth. However, as prophecies were known to be, the answer wasn’t clear. It could have been anyone from Esme, to Ansel, to Violet. Then there were demigods we didn’t know that were clear candidates. Or what about siblings? Ansel and Annika were both children of Apollo, so could either of them wield it?
“Maybe that’s the point?” Violet suggested. “Maybe all the gods have been betrayed at some point or another, so any of us demigods can wield it.”
“As much as I like that theory, it doesn’t feel right,” I answered honestly. “I think I’m going to let the Ultimate Weapon guide me once it's made. I can communicate with the metal and see where it wants to go.”
It wasn’t the soundest part of our plan, but it was what we decided to go with, if for nothing else but that the other options weren’t as promising.
I ventured away from the boat without looking back. I trusted Darren, Violet, and Benji with my life. The three of us had been through enough adventures together that I didn’t have to hover over them to make sure they would do their jobs. I just knew it. There was nothing more they needed, so I focused on my own mission ahead.
My first step after getting off the Argo was to call Khryseos and Argyreos. The minute I summoned them, the dogs appeared. For a second, I thought the Helm of Invisibility wasn’t working because the two of them bounded up to me, clearly seeing me. But then I remembered that these dogs were about as magical, if not more so, than the helmet I was wearing. They could probably see through its guise.
“Come on, boys,” I whispered to the pair of them. “I need you to be my backup. But we can’t be obvious. We need to sneak onto campus.”
The dogs looked at one another and appeared to nod in tandem. Suddenly, Khryseos and Argyreos blinked, and a shimmering blue aura appeared around each of them. When they walked alongside me, they left no paw prints.
I paused for a second to marvel at the guard dogs. “Are you telling me that you’ve been able to turn invisible this whole time?” I sputtered at them, doing everything in my power to keep my voice down.
Khryseos and Argyreos looked at me with innocent faces as if to say, “You never asked.”
I rolled my eyes. “When this is all over, we’re going to take some serious time to see what other tricks you two have been keeping from me.”
The three of us walked down the grassy hills towards the quad at the center of campus. While it would have been direct for us to walk across the farming fields to the forge, we had to make a detour to get the necessary supplies.
When we reached the quad, I ducked behind one of the bathing houses, which was higher up than the paths, the trees, and the lampposts that normally decorated the open campus space. However, an unfamiliar sight greeted me.
The lampposts were extinguished.
“What the…?” I muttered before I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to be drawing attention to myself.
The lampposts on campus were lit with pieces of the Eternal Flame. Extinguishing them should be impossible to extinguish them. There were ways to combine them and redistribute them, but the Flame couldn’t go out. So where were the Flames?
A sharp pang of panic jolted through me. Khryseos and Argyreos must have sensed it because the two of them huddled close to me on either side. The weight of them near me comforted me, but my mind still raced as I rerouted my entire plan.
I needed a piece of the Eternal Flame to make the Ultimate Weapon. It was a critical part of the recipe as dictated by the prophecy. Originally, I thought I could scoop one up on my way to the Forge, grab Harmonia’s necklace from the safe, and get started on crafting the Ultimate Weapon. But it wasn’t going to work with regular flame.
I sat down against the side of the bathhouse, the marble wall cooling the back of my head. I took a couple of deep breaths as I watched the sky lighten. There wasn’t much time before the graduation ceremony was set to begin.
I scra
mbled to come up with an alternative solution. Where else was I supposed to get a piece of the Eternal Flame? Where was another one on campus?
Absentmindedly, I reached up to my throat, where the necklace I made out of Khryseos and Argyreos’s collars hung. It once contained my brother, Erich, in his Eternal Flame ghost form. I cursed myself for not putting another piece of Flame in there, just for emergencies like this one.
But as I thought about containers for the Eternal Flame, my mind passed over the lamp hanging outside of my house. I clutched the locket in my hand, giving it a grateful squeeze. I just had to pivot my whole plan, but with Khryseos and Argyreos, I might be able to do it.
“Okay, boys,” I whispered to both of them. “I need you to pop over to the Forge and get the pieces of Harmonia’s necklace. I don’t care how you do it, I just need those pieces, got it?”
The dogs didn’t even respond. They simply disappeared, teleporting out of sight.
“I’m going to take that as a yes,” I said aloud to myself before I jumped to my feet and rocketed toward the alley of houses on the north side of campus. It would be cutting it close, to get the Flame, and Harmonia’s necklace, and manage to make the Ultimate Weapon all before the sun rose in the sky.
My legs pumped, my arms swung at my sides. This wasn’t the first time I was grateful for the five-plus miles runs I did every morning. My body was strong enough to get me to the other side of campus in record time. I didn’t know if it was the adrenaline from the panic or the fact that I felt like I was chasing the light in the sky, but I barrelled forward.
My house appeared in my line of view, which only pushed me further. Khryseos and Argyreos kept up as if this was an easy jog for the pair of them. I was glad we were invisible because we would have looked like a strange sight, dashing through the center lane, Official houses on either side of us.
I reached my modern house and breathed a sigh of relief as I saw the blue flame flickering just where it was supposed to be in the lantern next to my door. I bounded up the porch steps, two at a time.