Disclaimers, etc.: see chapter one.

Lethe's Saga II:

Phoenix Rising

By Eugena

Chapter Seven: The Lethic Heart

Lethe raised one arm and with the other she took a sharp knife to a vein. "Your sacrifice."

"Ichor?" Ares asked.

"That's not very hygienic," Aphrodite chimed in.

"Through my veins, every last word courses. These ones will never make any last

words."

"The will live forever?" Ares asked.

"They won't die, but that does not mean that they will live."

"How will you torture them?"

"With last words. All the curses against them. They will hear them forever. The voices for Gabrielle and Eve will be specific, but Xena will hear collages of voices, echoing out forever."

Cupid's wings stirred the still air. Fear and Terror ran down through the halls of war. Though Harmony tried to prevail, malice still won out in this place.

Love and War, polar opposites paired by fate, stood together for the exacting of a judgment. Cupid formed an arrow to aim at the intruding shade.

"Would you like to open my veins, Love's child?"

"Don't!" cried a voice in the distance.

"Lethe, stop!" a familiar voice ordered.

All parties facing the altar turned. All but one sought out the voice of the second, leaving Cupid searching of the first. A haunting flicker of past memories began forming in the shadows of the walls: brown eyes and black wings poised in the air, a distorted mirror image.

"Anteros!" Cupid shouted.

"Anteros!" Aphrodite cried out in distress.

Ares looked between his lamenting sister and his winged son, searching for answers.

"I thought you were a dream," Cupid said to the shadow being.

The other stepped into the light, slowly illumined like Cupid. He was as the other, but with ashen black wings and brown hair.

"I knew that father had a hard time accepting you, brother," he said, "so I doubted that he would accept me."

"Brother?" Ares mouthed in shock.

"Anteros!" Aphrodite ran before him, crying, "I didn't know. I didn't know!" she wailed hysterically.

"You had another child," Ares surmised, "why didn't you tell me?" he demanded.

With tears in her eyes, she answered, "He was there, then he was gone. I couldn't accept it. I couldn't believe it."

"How could you not tell me?" he demanded again.

"You spoke to Themis," Anteros explained for him, "'Bear another child and Eros will become a man,'" he looked to Ares, "I am that child."

"Who is Eros?" Ares inquired.

"I am Eros," the once Cupid responded, "I have not been called that since Anteros lived with us."

"I did not even know that Eros was your name."

"Mother and I both blocked the existence of Anteros from our minds from our grief of his disappearance."

"What has brought you here after all this time?" Ares asked of his newfound son.

"I am the one who punishes those who spun love. I have come to avenge your love, father."

"I love Xena whether or not she loves me."

"She has harmed many; for that she must be punished."

"What do you care of her transgressions?" Cupid asked him.

"He has lived with me," the second mysterious voice piped up again.

From the walls where Anteros once stood, a familiar, once forgotten black clad man loomed ominously. One of his arms wrapped about a golden helmet.

"Hades," Ares gasped.

"My lord," Lethe answered from in front of the altar.

"You cannot punish them this way, Lethe," he told her.

"How is it that you are alive, Uncle?" Ares asked.

"You are disappointed to see me or is it that you can not distinguish me? Didn't you realize that the one whom Xena killed was not me? My underling, Pluto, long conspired against me to gain my realm and my wife. Now he has reaped his harvest, yet still undeservingly."

"The Underworld is in ruin," Ares insisted, "Persephone is dead."

Hades sighed in memory: "I left the Underworld to secure it from Pluto's grasp. I was returning to it when Xena destroyed it. Persephone came to visit me," he paused from the sorrow in his throat, "she thought I was dead. She wanted to forget. In Lethe, she could avenge us all."

"Why can't you restore the Underworld? You are its ruler," Cupid persisted.

"Lethe alone can restore it. When she left, the gates closed." He turned to Lethe: "They do not deserve immortality. Nor should they be haunting you forever."

"What should I do?" Lethe asked.

"Tantalus could enjoy company."

"I will not allow it!" Ares objected.

"She now reaps the wrath she has sewn. My word is final."

With everyone's focus upon Hades, Cupid took the only opportunity to even the score. Reaming his arrow, he allowed it to finally find its mark.

"No!" Anteros cried as he and Hades ran to her.

River-ichor flowed from out of her veins and onto the altar. "Congratulations, Love's child, you have sealed her fate. You will all reap the harvest of a world without the entrance to the beyond." She crumbled to the floor: "Thank you, Persephone. At last," she sighed heavily, "I have avenged –"

With no words left for her, she remained only straightened when Deimos brought her into his arms. "I will not let you die. Take my life instead."

"No, brother," Anteros held him off long enough for Hades to don his helmet and Lethe in his arms, both disappearing from sight. Anteros joined him, and there was no one left present to avenge love. Deimos released a gut wrenching sob as he fell to the floor in agony. Seeing a small depiction of his father on the altar's base, he bellowed, "Every day when I look at my reflection, I have to look at you!"

"Deimos," Ares began.

"Stop. I don't want to hear one word out of you!"

"Oh, Deimos," Aphrodite moved to her son.

"I always missed not seeing you, mother. But father, who could only pride in Phobos and I because we are of war, would never see us. Always too busy with his new conquests

and the new country."

Phobos drew nearer to his brother, but Cupid had not as he did not understand him.

Deimos looked up at his mother, then over to his father. "You take from me all that I have beyond this family. It was Lethe's right – it was everyone's right – to punish these three."

Deimos did not move again, and for once, it was Ares who stayed with Cupid and returned to Aphrodite's palace where Psyche and Bliss were. The others remained with grieving Deimos. Helena, who could have only watched the previous events, tried in vain to awaken Amphied and the priestesses.