Wrath "Rise of the Fallen"

“Something bad is coming. Something truly bad.”

Zeus stood on the patio just off of the throne room, his back to the early-morning bustle of servants, administrators, and other Olympian cogs. “Again?” he said, sliding his arctic blue eyes to the right where the voice of his brother had come like a whisper from unlit catacombs. Zeus usually loved the beginnings and the ends of the day. Apollo had graced the land below Mount Olympus with a glorious sunrise and just a touch of crispness to the air. The regret from earlier was churning itself into something equally as disturbing: a rootless anxiety.

“No,” Hades said, “this is different. This… this is old.”

Zeus pushed away from the balcony railing and turned. His brother was a fever dream vision. Black tunic, black cloak, jet hair falling from beneath his horned helm to his shoulders and crowned with that queer phantom-green fire, which now flickered like a mellow candle, and tangled with the barest breath of smoke and ash. His dark eyes twinkled with quiet crimson embers in an angular face pale like cloudy quartz though still showing a family resemblance under the black, neatly groomed beard. Hades was lean and long, perhaps not as broad as Zeus, but roped with powerful muscle like some twisted root of an age-old tree. And there, always, the faintest whiff of decay almost immediately masked beneath the faintest scent of freshly turned earth. “What do you mean?” Zeus asked.

“Father once told me about a place. A temple older than the Titans hidden in a valley that is itself lost in a wasteland. He spoke of a wickedness locked away within that dreadful place, and he seemed deeply fearful.”

Zeus idly pulled his beard between his fingers. “I’ve seen him that way,” he muttered, pinching a tuft of iron grey and tugging gently.

“Father said that the evil within must never be set loose upon the world.”

“What kind of evil?” Zeus asked, trying to imagine something that would so trouble a Titan such as Kronos. “I mean, really, how bad can it be?”

Hades gave a small shrug. “He didn’t say. He wouldn’t say. But that was around the time he gave us the stones.” He pulled his necklace from under his tunic. The stone should’ve been plain looking and pearly white. Just the like one he had. Like the one Poseidon had. But what dangled from the rose gold chain Hades held was no white stone. It was black and glittered as if a rainbow had exploded within it. “You don’t look surprised,” Hades said. The green fire above his helm flared and he shook the necklace. The rock’s inner lights danced.

Zeus held up his ring. Plain and white. “My ring looked like that this morning.”

“This morning?”

“I had a dre— a vision, I guess.” Zeus struggled to recall the images. A winged warrior and a man that was no man. He shrugged.

“Kronos said that the stone would let me know if something was going wrong.”

“So how long has your stone looked like that?” Zeus asked.

Hades lifted the necklace to his eyes, studied it a moment, and then dropped back inside his tunic. Zeus saw turmoil in his brother’s dark eyes. He shook his head. “A fortnight ago or so. A weird energy seemed to create heat, I started having disturbing dreams, and a terrible sense of… doom began to haunt me. I thought no, no, no, that cannot be.” His black eyes sparking with crimson. “And I ignored it. And ignored it. Even as the awful sense continued to grow and the stone began to change.”

“Ignored it until now,” Zeus said.

“Until now.” Hades shrugged again. “I dispatched Hermes to the Isle of the Three. I know, I know. But maybe the witches might be able to divine some insights.”

“Waiting as you did,” Zeus said quietly, not wishing to drift into a discussion of the witches’ questionable ways and means. “Waiting this long. You know what it means.”

Hades turned his gaze to the sky beyond the balcony for a long moment as if tracking something unseen. “Of course.” His eyes narrowed. “Whatever is happening, it is probably already too late.” He tilted his head to stare at Zeus. “We must go there.”

“Where exactly?”

“I have no idea,” Hades said. “The stone will guide us.”

The snap in the morning air now crept over Zeus like a chill claw. He smelled the grave on his brother. He loved the beginnings and the ends of the day, but knew this day would not end well. “We will go at sunset.”