Wrath "Rise of the Fallen"

With all three noses snuffling the ground, Cerberus led the Greeks through a forest of crooked stone spires rising into the scarlet sky. “They can be holding Demeter in only one place,” was all Hades had said as they set off behind the three-headed hound. They had to skip and hop over veins of lava fracturing the land. Those veins grew into creeks feathered with fire flowing in the direction the Greeks were moving. As the creeks converged into an angry boil and dumped over a jagged cliff, the glow from below reminded Zeus of the dawn sacking of a city.

At the cliff edge, Hades pointed toward the far side of a swirling lake of orange and black liquid fire where a low, bone-white temple sprawled. “She is there.”

“She’s not the only one there,” Zeus said. Scores of people milled around the temple and spilled out over the rocky valley beyond. They formed a blockade of sorts. “Are those souls?”

“Hmm….” Hades murmured, his spiritual fire billowing above his helm. “They are not mere souls.”

“Oh?” Zeus peered more closely at the throng with his eagle vision. They looked like souls to him with their waxen blue skin, but maybe there was something in their eyes. Not quite the infinite gaze of dead souls. Something icy animated those eyes. Something just a shade manic. They were all fitted for battle with random bits of armor, shields, and sinister-looking weapons.

A troubled grin spread across Hades’ pale face. “Vengeful spirits. Lot of people die feeling wronged or otherwise unsatisfied. Go figure…. I keep them here in Tartarus because they are too volatile to be upstairs with the rest of the souls, always seeking escape to exact retribution on your side of the dirt. I’ve always thought they might make excellent warriors. Existential rage such as consumes them, when put to proper use, could be excruciatingly effective…. Looks like the demons know that and released them all from their prisons.”

“That can’t be good.”

“It is not good,” Hades agreed.

As they descended to the valley floor, it seemed as if someone had slit the throat of the sun and bled it out into the lake. Cerberus took them around the lake, growing increasingly anxious as they approached the leading edge of the horde of vengeful spirits. They climbed atop a tall, boulder that seemed wedged into the ground and looked out over the mob. Some of the spirits saw him and began to flow toward the rock with weapons menacing.

“Listen to me!” Hades said. “Your queen is being held in there! We must free her!”

“She’s not our queen!”

“You are no king!”

“You’re both tyrants!”

The hostility in the voices was startling to Zeus. He glanced at Hades whose uneasy expression was reflected in the rapid pulse of his spiritual fire. Cerberus’s growls sounded like some strange combination of rocks and hornet swarms grinding together. Zeus quietly began to reach for his Grace.

“Listen!” Hades said, holding his staff over his head. “Listen to me! If you walk away now I promise you an eternity on the Elysian Fields. No more time in Tartarus!”

“We’ve been promised better than that! The Son of the Morning guarantees us not just your Underworld, but also a chance for revenge on Earth!”

“Really?” Hades said. “And what must you promise in return?”

“Your head on a pike!” Cheers rose from the mob and weapons rattled shields.

Zeus’s eyebrows rose. Cerberus’s hackles rose too, and the beast leapt into the middle of the horde. Three heads thrashed about, grabbing souls, shredding them, and flinging pieces and weapons and armor in all directions. Zeus fired his staff and was strangely comforted by the black lightning throbbing off the blades. Without hesitation, he followed the three-headed hound down into the fray and he began tearing into the mob. He heard Hades drop to the ground behind him with a wild cry. Together, they carved a path through the vengeful spirits and reached the temple entrance, a broad walk of polished white marble threaded with silver and copper veins leading to tall and wide double doors painted gold and black. The temple façade towered over them, the building much larger than it had appeared to be from the cliff.

Cerberus crashed through the doors and tore into the wedge of demons guarding the entrance. The beast sounded genuinely joyful during the slaughter. Zeus and Hades slid in behind the hound and found the entry hall empty of sentient things and quiet. Torches flooded the room with strangely happy light, revealing black-enameled doors lining the stone walls. And a single archway. An ornate arc, carved with faces, leading to a hallway beyond. Hades headed toward it. “She is this way,” Hades said. “Cerberus, stay here. Guard the entrance. Kill anything that comes through those doors.” Three sets of jaws dropped, sending ropes of drool stretching to the floor, and its scorpion tail thumped the ground with glee.

The Greeks passed under the archway and Zeus saw that the carven faces twisted in abject suffering. “What kind of temple is this?” he asked.

“Keep your staff ready.”

The bright light gave way to smaller torches that seemed to struggle feebly to stay lit. The walls went from polished white marble to rough black rock. Zeus’ ring still threw light and it glittered on raw gemstones jutting from the wall, more like jagged teeth than anything precious. They may have been descending but it was hard to tell. Like the throat of a writhing serpent the hallway began to twist and turn, and then it gaped wide, spilling the brothers into a vast cavern with walls that disappeared upward into blackness.

How deep have we gone? Zeus wondered as he picked up his pace to follow a trotting Hades. Too deep, came his own response. He pushed back against the fatigue sliding through him.

There were no torches, but there was light. A reddish glow emanating from the walls, as if a huge fire burned deep within the dark rocks, pulsing like a slow heartbeat. Hulking, armored figures lined those walls. Lots of them. Bristling with long spears, giant shields, and broadswords, they moved as one with a low rumble when they saw the two Greeks racing toward the middle of the cavern.

Surrounded by four abnormally tall guards with long, viciously curving swords, stood an obscenely fat demon in a billowing white robe blotched with brownish stains. The guards had female features beneath their helmets; the leader seemed male. Behind him two rough beams were stuck in the ground at angles so that they crossed each other. Lashed spread-eagled on the simple structure was a slack figure.

“Demeter!” Hades cried and sprinted toward the terrible scene.

The guards immediately jumped between the Greeks and their leader, raising their curved swords in unified threat. The other soldiers formed a circle around everyone, spears ready. But the demon flicked a bloated hand and barked something unintelligible. The guards warily stood down, but remained in front of their leader. The circle of soldiers kept their spears up.

“Hades,” the demon leader said, small, hoggish eyes glittering within moist folds of craggy grey flesh. “So good of you to come.” Little flaps fluttered over his nostrils and he grinned wide with thin blue lips, showing broken teeth streaked with grime. “But of course, you had to, didn’t you?” He tipped his grotesque head toward Demeter, chin after chin jiggling like the swollen bellies of dead fish. The Lady of the Underworld was naked. Her copper hair clung in sweaty strands to her shoulders. She sagged beneath her own weight and sheer agony glazed her emerald eyes. Zeus saw instantly why she suffered so—her hands and feet had been spiked to the beams with jeweled daggers. Beneath her feet, a large shallow bowl sat over a pit of angry-red embers.

“Release her now and I will kill you quickly!” Hades’ voice pitched up to near hysteria.

“Hmm… I think not,” the obese demon said with a greasy smile. He held a short scepter with a small ball of faceted crystal on the end. “Tempting as your offer is, abomination, I have need of your lovely queen.”

“Who are you?” Hades asked, low and slow. Zeus cast his eyes around furtively. The circle of soldiers had tightened. This was going to get bad fast. His hands clenched and unclenched on his staff; the black lightning pulsed and flickered.

“Hmph…” The demon’s fat face scrunched into a frown. He seemed genuinely miffed that Hades didn’t know him. “I’m Maw, Lord Commander of the Ice and Blood Legion. I’ve been tasked with taking the Underworld. ”

Hades laughed. It sounded forced and did nothing to quell the panic Zeus saw in his brother’s eyes. “With what?” Hades waved a hand dismissively over his head. “This handful? That rabble outside? We cut through them like a blade through water.”

Maw chuckled and nodded his head as if considering Hades’ words. He tipped his head, chins falling the side and waggling, and eyed the Greeks with a dreadful smirk. The crystal on his scepter began to glow like Selene’s moon. Still smirking, Maw turned toward Demeter and lifted the scepter to his lips. Then he blew.

From the crystal, a white cloud billowed toward Demeter. Zeus could feel the chill from where he stood. Before he or Hades could react, it struck Demeter with a gentle puff. She threw her head back to scream, but it never came. Frost formed on her face and sheened down her body to glitter like a snowfield. She stopped moving, frozen solid. A sculpture of torment in foul ice.

“NO!” Hades yelled.

“Yes, actually,” Maw said and swung the scepter at Demeter. She shattered. Pieces large and small fell into the bowl on the coals and began to sizzle and steam. Maw immediately started chanting in some indecipherable tongue. Hades stood fixed in place, a look of horror stretched across his face.

Zeus struck. The black lightning disintegrated one guard and tore another to shreds, but the other two guards closed ranks in front of the chanting Maw and deflected Zeus’ attack with their shields. Something hot bit Zeus’ shoulder and he almost lost his staff. Spinning, he barely had time to parry another spear strike from one of the demonic soldiers. The circle was collapsing on them. “HADES!”

A spear ran through the Lord of the Underworld’s back. As Zeus moved to cover him, Hades stumbled to a knee. Zeus pulled the spear from Hades’ body and yanked him upright. Pain twisted Hades’ face, but he lashed out with his staff at the charging soldiers, igniting them with waves of his Grace-augmented spiritual fire. “Stop the demon!” Hades said through clenched teeth. He continued showering his blackened fire on the enemy, who died easily.

Zeus spun around and fired his staff. He was met by one of the two remaining tall guards. Blue eyes in a strikingly beautiful blue-white face regarded Zeus with seeming amusement as she easily deflected the black lightning with her huge sword. Behind her, the bowl was boiling chaotically like the mouth of an angry volcano. Maw worked his hands, teasing the hot contents upward, making it hop and jump until finally it erupted in a crimson gush that rose high above them before bursting outward in all directions like an exploding cloud toward the far reaches of the cavern with more power and volume than could possibly have been in the bowl.

The red cross jetted into the cavern walls with astounding force. The ground shook, sending Zeus reeling as he sidestepped a sword strike. He spied Hades beset by demon soldiers but holding his own with a manic fury. Zeus realized that whatever it was that Maw had conjured had once been Demeter, and a wave of horror and sickness rippled through him. He raged and blasted the guard before him with black lightning. His ferocity surprised her and she barely managed to move enough to avoid losing her head, although most of her upper torso vanished in a mist. She crumpled, leaving the final guard who stood close to Maw, sword up and wide eyes watching in all directions.

She was the last obstacle between Zeus and the thing that had killed his brother’s wife. He lashed out at her, but his staff sputtered, the black lightning spilling out in a paltry trickle that batted against the still-shaking ground. The lightning blades sparked and crackled, and the blackness dwindled back to the familiar—and weaker—blue-white light. His ring had gone dark.

Maw saw this and chortled. He flourished his hands outward as if to say, “Do you see?”

Zeus did see. Hades, bleeding from the terrible spear wound, had destroyed the arc of soldiers closest to them, but the rest of the circle was closing in. The ground quaked. Now the cavern walls shuddered and rippled like linen in the wind. Rock faded to reveal a sky like a wild inferno swirling over a barren landscape of sand and jagged spires.

Covering that landscape, as far as Zeus could see, was an army. Larger by a hundred times—more!—than any host he had ever commanded. Than any he had ever seen.

Demons and other things—huge things, misshapen things—marched into the cavern space like a lava flow. No, they were running, sprinting. That was why the ground was shaking. “Hades!” Zeus cried. “We must leave now!”

Still clutching a dead soldier by the neck, Hades turned toward and whirled the corpse at Maw who watched smugly as it thudded to the ground several feet from where he stood. Hades roared and charged, stumbled, clutched the wound, but Zeus grabbed him by the waist and slung him around. “We have to get out of here!”

“I WILL KILL YOU!”

Maw grinned hugely. “I think not, abomination. Now, like your wise brother suggested, scurry along.”

Hades screamed again and nearly broke free of Zeus’ grasp. He tried to use his staff, but like Zeus’, it sputtered and produced a bare trickle of his typically green spiritual fire. He wobbled and nearly collapsed. “Dead! You’re dead! YOU’RE DEAD!”

Maw clapped his hands like a giddy child and then flung them out in another look around you gesture.

“Come on!” Zeus dragged Hades back to the winding hallway and managed to haul his now-sobbing brother back to the temple’s main floor. Cerberus was howling and mauling spirits and demons. The hound wore arrows and spears and bled from countless wounds. The temple was overrun, and Cerberus moved through the throng in a pain-enhanced frenzy. Zeus turned to Hades, who stared dumbly into some nightmare distance, blood running down his tunic. Zeus slapped him hard. Once, then again, shook his shoulders violently and said, “We cannot stay here.” Zeus pushed him toward the three-headed dog. “Cerberus! Get us out of here!”

The hound bayed in three rasping voices and crashed headlong into the creatures pouring through the door, creating an exit. Zeus followed, pulling Hades along by his hand, and tried not to worry about his brother’s physical—and psychic—wound. Cerberus cut a swathe through a legion of vengeful spirits, but the spirits seemed uninterested in the three and, in fact, were giving way like an ebbing tide.

They were not pestered and soon were back up top at the entrance to Tartarus. All was quiet, but the air was charged. Cerberus halted and growled, the hackles on all three necks rising. Zeus spied a contingent of armed spirits and demon soldiers at the edge of the Vale of Mourning. More than what had been camped at the Underworld’s entrance. He turned to Hades. “We must regroup at Olympus. The Underworld is lost.”

Bleeding from his lip, his cheek wearing a blooming red stain from the slaps, and swaying sickly Hades finally focused in on Zeus. Even for him, his color looked bad. “All is lost. All.”

Zeus eyed him a moment, fought down his anger and anxiety, and said quietly. “Cerberus, to the Gate of Dusk.”