Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.
Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".
CHAPTER NINE
A MOTHER'S LAMENT
In the heart of one of the many temples at Mt. Olympus a goddess with milky-white eyes stood over a pit of swirling flames.
Though she appeared young and beautiful - and blind - Themis was old, one of the original gods who fought the Titans and in her temple she could see even with blind eyes things others could not. She had also once done more than simply fight the Titans, caught in a star-crossed affair with one on the side of the enemy that had produced a son. Themis was blinded by Zeus for her betrayal and that act led her son his own rash choice and punishment, a price she could not spare him.
A cluster of worlds seeded with magic by her son's actions had also paid a price a for that and might pay an even greater one if a mad sorcerer succeeded in pulling all those golden threads apart, crashing everything together in a chaotic mess to rival the beginning of all things.
Themis 'watched' in the fire as Emma Swan and her dark-haired companion and son received Thanatos' blade and with a swish of her hand altered the flames and viewed the blonde's true love and his companion in that eternal and putrid swamp.
It was a dangerous thing to make a play against Zeus. But Themis was not Hades, brash and arrogant.
And she was not alone.
There had long been an ideological divide between the gods, between those interested in power, war, and violence and those who favored wisdom, morality, and love. Might had made right on Mt. Olympus since the Titan War, but all ages come to an end.
Light footsteps gliding on the marble drew Themis' attention from the flames, though her blank eyes remained focused on it rather than Styx's fiercely beautiful daughter whose feathered wings brushed dust motes from the floor.
"The sword?"
"As it should be," replied Nike. "Aphrodite and Dyonisis provided the needed distraction for Athena to bypass the protections."
Themis smiled at that. One should never underestimate a slut and a drunk when they were gods. Dyonisis liked his entertainment, but to be gifted in its ways meant growing tired of the stale, recycled version that Zeus enjoyed and playing himself the inebriated fool at those endless parties. Aphrodite had once been impetuous, prone to handing out sleeping curses and implementing wars in her youth, but Athena had rubbed off on her. It also helped, of course, to have in the goddess of wisdom one fashioned by Zeus' own magic, which ran thicker than blood in his mind. His chide would not defy him. And that would, if they succeeded, be his undoing.
Others began flowing into the temple then, younger women who shared Themis' features and that of their father, the one they plotted to betray. Zeus had had many wives over the centuries, some who loved him and whom Hera tolerated, some who were taken as punishment for crimes and whom his sister pitied and helped severe that tie.
Themis had bore Zeus six daughters before that time came. Eunomia who wanted order, Dike who sought justice, Eirene who desired peace, and the triplets Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos whom their father called "The Fates" but who long ago had lost any true control over the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal from birth to death. Zeus had cursed them all, imbued her children with magic that would be forever smothered by his own agenda: control, injustice, violence, and the books with the golden bindings he had his three daughters spin when they were too young to understand that he intended to use their gift to enslave worlds, to use mortal souls for his own entertainment and those arrogant, selfish, cruel gods who attended his parties and kissed his golden sandals. Hades might have deserved to be cursed for his various crimes, including the kidnap and rape of Zeus' daughter by some mistress - though Zeus cared little about his daughter in that more than as his property - but Themis' children had done nothing but serve him with the powers he imbued into them at conception.
Themis was not one of the lusty cunts who sought Zeus bed and Hera had taken pity on her as it was Hera who took pity on that former mistress and the girl Hades stole. As Zeus had forgotten about his thrown-away lover and the child he left her with, so he had also forgotten about Themis and her children in time.
It had been ages since Zeus had even pretended to care that Themis still existed. It helped, of course, that she had long ago "given" her gift of foresight to Apollo, if Zeus' demanding she do so could really be considered a gift. In his arrogance, however, he had not considered that Hera would help Themis duplicate it in that oracle and retain her own. It did help that she relinquished her position as Judge of Mortal Souls at that time, reforming things to use former mortals, revered kings whom she had placed in Elysium. Removing herself from dealings with mortals and allowed Themis to fade into obscurity, forgotten as anything more than a model for a statue in the rotunda of the Halls of Justice. She was just an old blind woman now, a god that even the mortals under Zeus' thumb had little use for as they corrupted their own systems of justice, heroes engaging in the same amoral debauchery as their villains - just the way Zeus and his devoted gods wanted it to be.
Now they were the blind ones, blinded by arrogance and cruelty, unable to see that they had become as terrible in their desperate control over all things under them as the Titans ever were in their thirst for blood and chaos.
And now, as the worlds threatened to come undone, Zeus allowing everything to come undone rather than give up power he had never earned, Themis had begun to act, to finally get revenge for her beloved Prometheus.
"It's time to alert Hera," Themis told the assembled goddesses, "and restore Mt. Olympus to its glory."
The beast had been chasing them for some time, and without magic here there was little Merlin could do. He had no magic here. Perhaps if he was Lord of Death he'd have some new powers to fend off the monsters of Tartarus, but at present he was just a dead man in the company of a Lord of The Underworld who had clearly been hired as a paper-pusher not a replacement god as he too had no magic or authority to call off the three-headed dog.
The longer they were pursued, the more Merlin was convinced that the lizard-skinned ferryman was right and Zeus had played them, sent them off to get them out of the way as he let the worlds destroy themselves, burn to ashes his failed experiment so he could start anew without any leftover reminders, no vengeful mortals that might wage war on Mt. Olympus after discovering what the gods had done to them.
"We're running out of solid ground," Neal pointed out, breathless and fighting to pull his boots up out of the mud. "Solid being relative."
Another growl and Cerberus' larger, hungrier, rabid-looking sibling appeared. How exactly a beast with three heads coordinated its intentions and limbs had to be the magic of the gods as the unnatural thing prepared to lung.
It only got a loping start, however, as something dark and glittering came spinning toward them landing at their feet and Merlin snatched up the broken sword, instantly knowing its weight and grip - and the beast halted, snarling.
"I order you to leave," Merlin told the creature and though it looked very unhappy to do so, it slunk back into the bushes and out of sight.
"What the hell just happened?" asked Neal.
"Excalibur," the wizard reported. "Transformed and destroyed in earthly form by the darkness pulled back into its blade. I did wonder if it could be truly destroyed or if it came here with the souls bound to the dagger."
"Okay, but how did it-"
"It came with me, of course," the answer came from Nimue, stepping out from behind a tree and pulling back her hood.
"Of course," Merlin exhaled. "Two Dark Ones came this way."
"I'm the only Dark One," Nimue corrected and her lips twisted into a self-depricating smile, "or formerly so, though I remain monstrous here. The gods do seem to love their monsters."
Merlin swallowed thickly, finding himself unprepared for this reunion even though it's what he had been seeking. "Nimue. I never meant for you to be cast down to this place."
"I know," she sadly replied. "You were tricked by a witch herself tricked by Hades and killed by a cruel and lustful man and his blood-cursed whore. I fought a losing battle against the savior's light to make a true Dark One out of that... chimera of a woman and you fought against her twin's darkness to destroy mine. We both failed quite spectacularly."
"The twisted irony of the gods," muttered Neal.
"Quite," scoffed Nimue who cocked her head and amended. "I heard Rumplestiltskin's son had replaced Hades after his coupe that sent us here also failed. That you are being chased by monsters as the worlds tremble with a dangerous magic does not seem to bode well, Baelfire."
"Not particularly, no," Merlin conceded.
It was then Neal noticed the second figure standing in the shadows, brown curls laying limp in the rain, pale face pulled into an expression of shock. His own probably took on a similar one, Neal thought as he managed to croak out one word.
"Mama?"
AN: Themis really was the goddess of justice who judged souls before that task was later given to three highly respected dead kings. You'll see her likeness at every courthouse, a blindfolded woman holding scales (and recently on Twitter circulated in that wonderful cartoon of Justice keeping Trump away from Lady Liberty.) She is also Prometheus' mother in at least one of his origin myths.
