Chapter 36
It took Bo, and the others, quite some time to understand what Hades had just said.
Kenzi has the lightning? Zeus' lightning? And she's a what now? A vessel? Those questions popped into Bo's head. She stared at Kenzi blankly for a second or two, and then she laid her eyes on Kenzi's hand where the remaining electrical energy was still buzzing softly.
She turned back to Hades eventually. Licking her lips anxiously, she tightly wrapped her fingers around the hilt of her dagger.
Subconsciously, she refused to believe the things Hades had just revealed, that Kenzi somehow became a container for Zeus' lightning, were true. It was just impossible to her knowledge, and she couldn't help but wonder if this was yet another trick from Hades. However, she was unable to come up with an explanation for what exactly had happened either. If it wasn't Zeus' lightning, what else could it possibly be? What else could allow Kenzi, a human, to knock Zagreus out like that?
But, how? She wondered as she frowned at Hades' annoying smirk. How could Kenzi possibly have gotten hold of the lightning? We didn't even know where it was, or what it looked like and we searched for it for a long time but couldn't find anything. Did Zeus somehow planted it inside Kenzi before she went back to Myth without anyone knowing? Did Kenzi somehow figured out where and how to get it on her own? Was Kenzi that good at keeping such a big secret?
"Hey, don't look at me like that," Hades said to her. "This has nothing to do with me, I swear."
Bo was about to ask him how it happened exactly, since he was the only person here who might have an idea. Before she raised her question, though, Dagny blurted, "this is not possible."
The young girl stared at Kenzi for a while, before she turned to her mother as if she was seeking some sort of validation of her statement from the Valkyrie.
Tamsin, however, seemed to have a slightly different opinion. "Well..." Tamsin said hesitantly. "Yeah...I mean, there's no way a human can do that but...this is hardly the most impossible thing that had happened, is it? For me, I'd still vote me coming back from the death of my last life over her having the lightning, or even me giving birth to a P-"
She stopped herself abruptly since she didn't want to let Hades know that Dagny wasn't a Fae or a hybrid of Fae and Ancient. She wasn't even an Ancient. She was a Primordian, the first kind, the kind that was said to be long gone, the kind that was more powerful than the Ancients. She remembered that when Dagny had first revealed her power when confronting Hades, Hades seemed to have no idea what Dagny was. She remembered that when Dagny hurt him that day, he had shown a hint of fear. Tamsin didn't want him to know what Dagny was, ever.
Hades, on the other hand, wasn't paying much attention to her. He was still eyeing Kenzi, and his stare had made the petite human so uncomfortable that she tucked herself behind Bo.
Bo covered Kenzi and patted the side of her arm gently. Hades chuckled at her move as if he was asking her why she'd bother to protect someone from him.
"So...I guess none of you think this is possible?" Hades asked, his eyes still on Kenzi.
"Mortals can't wield Zeus' lightning," Dagny said matter-of-factly, like she was answering a question in her exam.
"Oh dear," Hades shook his head at her. "This is not wielding. This is barely holding the lightning inside her. She's a vessel just like-"
He turned to Bo and continued, "-your ex wife and all those humans Zeus used. It would be stupid to think that being a vessel of an Ancient means you are strong enough to defeat the Ancient or having the Ancient work for you, wouldn't it? Just as stupid as thinking that having the lightning inside her means that she could use it properly."
He paused briefly, before he said, "as for how she got it, I have no idea. Well I mean, I might have an idea or two, but they don't really matter that much now. She somehow got into contact with it for sure. Maybe Zeus has it hidden in her apartment and it responded to the strong energy of the fight we had there earlier. It could also been inside her a long time ago, when Zeus was still here. Who knows. That sneaky little bitch, always hiding things from me just like my mother…."
Bo felt a little relieved that Hades seemed to have nothing to do with Kenzi holding Zeus' lightning, but she was still worried because she had seen how those human vessels of Zeus turned out, and she didn't want Kenzi to get hurt.
"I guess the oracle was right. Fate has everything planned out for me," Hades mumbled to himself with a thrilled look. "It even delivered me the lightning! How convenient."
Bo watched him closely as she suddenly had the feeling that something big was about to happen. "Your fate again, huh? I guess it also told you to draw the shortest straw so you could come down to Tartarus? Did it also tell you to kill my mother, Trick and Tamsin?"
Hades pulled one corner of his mouth into a evil smile. He raised his index finger and pointed it casually at Tamsin who was standing right next to Bo. "Well, I did kill your mother and your grandfather, but when did I kill Tamsin? She died the Valkyrie way. She died of childbirth. She didn't even really die. She's standing right there, right beside ya."
"Because she shouldn't have died in the first place! She wasn't supposed to!" Bo yelled at him furiously as she remembered how Hades had tricked the Moirai into cutting Tamsin's thread, "but you wanted her to die, and you made it happen ten years ago."
"Alright, fine, okay," Hades drawled as he rolled his eyes. "Maybe it was me, so what? She made her way out of the underworld and came back anyway. No harm no foul, right?"
Bo stared back at him. She hoped that the anger in her eyes could kill, because then she'd have killed Hades for a hundred times already, if not thousands. "You are an asshole, a narcissist. You are a psychopath. You are the sickest, more disgusting person I've ever known," she said to him slowly as she pushed each and every word through her clenched teeth, "but I know you kill for a reason. You kill because you need those deaths to happen."
"Ahhh…I see, so this is your way of interrogating me about my plan again, huh?" Hades said as he playfully swung his bident in the air. He watched the blue energy residue slowly disappear in the darkness while adding, "for what? So you can intervene?"
"If you are so confident about it, why can't you tell us? What you are afraid that we're gonna stop it if you tell us?" Bo taunted.
Hades chuckled again, shaking his head as if Bo's words amused him greatly. "I don't mind sharing a few details with you, Bo," he said. "We are at the very end of it anyway. Maybe when you hear about it you'll finally stop struggling because you'll know that there's no way you could stop me."
"I beg the differ," Bo snorted, though she wondered if there really was a way to stop her father. She had noticed that even though Hades had found out that Kenzi had Zeus' lightning, he didn't seem concerned, afraid or anxious. It seemed that it didn't matter to him at all. She couldn't help but wonder why. Was the lightning not enough to kill him? Or was there something about it that he knew but they didn't?
"You got one part right, Bo, you smart, smart girl," Hades said as he paced along the stone circle. "Every death does fit into my plan. I mean, those collateral damages are not included of course. I'm just talking about the deaths you've mentioned. They do fit into my plan. They were all something my fate has planned for me."
"There comes your fate again. Did anyone tell you that sometimes all your fate does is to screw you over and over?" Tamsin commented.
Hades laughed. "Maybe yours, but certainly not mine," he told her. "And yours screwed you over and over because you had no idea what was gonna happen to you next. You have no idea what choice you should be making, or whom you should be falling in love with. You banged your head into the dead end over and over, because you had no idea where you should be going."
Tamsin didn't respond to his comment. Instead she reached for Bo's hand secretly and gently squeezed it. The brunette immediately squeezed back.
"I, on the other hand, do know exactly what's gonna happen to me next," Hades said arrogantly as if it was some precious privilege that no one but him would deserve having. "When I went to the oracle the second time, she told me that everything would make sense when it should make sense. I asked her if she could elaborate, and she reluctantly gave me a few details."
"Such as?"
"For example, that I'd open the hellgate long after the Ancients were gone from Earth, that I'd have four Pyrippi who are related to me by blood. Not until they are motherless would they become the key to the hellgate. I believe that was what she said to me back then. She also mentioned to me what kind of mothers my children would have. Now, you know how those deaths fit into my plan."
"Dude, you did all that because of some gibberish some whack job lady once told you? That's the new level of pathetic," Kenzi said to him as she put her arm around Tamsin's waist to pull her close as if she was trying to protect her.
"Typical, ignorant, dumb human," Hades said to her with pity. "You don't even possess any power, yet you think you could stand here and undermine an oracle?"
"That's all she told you?" Bo asked.
"Oh no, I haven't gotten to the best part yet. The best part of the conversation between her and me, was that she explained to me how fate would work, how it would put me into a desperate position before anything could move forward. She told me that she saw me surrounded by darkness and death for ages, that there would be nothing with me but the anguish of the tortured dead and the whine of the wronged soul. She assured me that it was only a part of my fate. It had to happen before anything else could happen."
"So that was why you deliberately drew the shortest straw. You knew you were gonna get sent down to Tartarus," Bo said.
"Sort of, yeah, back then a part of me still wanted to verify if her words were correct, you know," Hades said. "And indeed they were correct, every single word of hers was"
He paused for a long time as he examined his bident like he was trying to figure out if there was any damage to it. "The more time I spent and lived, the more I become amazed by that oracle. She foresaw everything. Everything. She even told me precisely that I would be banished by those who are related to me by blood, for three times. Then, I would be rescued by those who are related to me by blood, for three times. After that, a lot of things would start to make sense to me."
"Being Banished? But, you didn't get banished to Myth. You escaped because you were sent down to Tartarus before that," Bo said.
"Oh, Bo, Myth isn't the only place to where you can banish people. There are a lot of places the banished could go, for example, Tartarus," Hades explained.
Bo frowned at him. She somehow had a very vague idea of what all these banishment related things were about, but she couldn't quite grasp it yet.
"You already knew about the first banishment. I drew the shortest straw. I got thrown into Tartarus by my siblings and my mother. That was how Zeus got to be in the throne back then instead of me."
With that he raised his index finger and turned his palm towards Bo, as if he was counting for her. "I was supposed to be bound to Tartarus forever when that happened, but hey, my fate has a different plan for me, remember? I grabbed that ignorant little slut and made her fall for me. She begged her mother, Zeus, to grant me some freedom at least. Zeus could have said no, but the dumb snacker munched down all those pomegranate seeds like a hungry chipmunk. Zeus had to give me some freedom in exchange of some of her freedom. See, it worked out just like the oracle had told me. I was banished for the first time and then rescued for the first time."
Bo knew that he was talking about Persephone. The way he talked about her, and the fact that he had kidnapped her, imprisoned her, raped her and brutally murdered sickened her.
Hades, on the other hand, chuckled, as if he had just mentioned something he was proud of. "The story after that, I think you might have heard some of it. Zeus hated me for everything, for taking her daughter. I made a lot of fuss, and created a lot of trouble. She eventually got pissed and decided to send me further down. She used that box on me, and caged me in a space deep down in Tartarus, where I couldn't get out on my own. That was the second time I was banished."
He raised his middle finger, before she continued, "then, you released me and granted me freedom. That was the second rescue. Then, you sent me right back to Tartarus as the third and the final banishment. Then, my sweet little daughter Dagny helped me get out. That was the last rescue."
He then stretched his thumb out. With his index and his middle finger he formed a "three" at Bo. "Three banishment, three rescues. Three is all I need."
When Bo had heard that, something rolled inside her stomach, making her nauseated. The coldness on her back now was slowly creeping up along her spine. She could practically smell her own fear now.
She had always suspected that there was a reason behind everything that Hades had done, because some of them didn't make much sense to her. Now, he had confirmed to her that there was indeed a reason behind all those things. They would all fit into Hades' plan, and his plan was in a much, much bigger scale that she had ever expected.
She knew that her releasing Hades from the box was in his plan. She had no idea, though, that sending him back to Tartarus was also his plan. He had practically planned everything, and now she started to wonder what other things she had done that she thought was the right things to do but in fact had been in his plan too. Had she been helping him all alone without even realizing it?
"Okay, I get it," she said as she tried to keep her voice calm and indifferent. "You need to be banish three time and then rescued three times by those who share your blood, because your fate said so. I kicked your ass back to this shithole ten years ago. Did your fate tell you to wait for ten years before moving your plan forward?"
"Well, the oracle did say that after the third banishment, I'd spend a lot of time down in the darkness waiting for my rescue because simply the one who was supposed to rescue me wasn't ready. I also took the time searching for my long lost son and that bitch who betrayed me. I had to make the last Pyrippus motherless too, right? It just happened to have taken me that long to do all those things."
"Did your fate tell you to find him or to screw with Lauren, trick her into making that damn serum and then steal it to empower him?"
"Hey, that wasn't stealing! I was simply taking something that was mine. I mean, afterall it was I who gave her enough hints so she could finally make that serum. It would be ridiculous for her to think that it should be hers, right?" Hades gave Bo a big, lazy shrug. "Besides, you knew how unsafe it is for her too keep that serum. She couldn't keep her hands off it! Even if she could, there would always be someone who's after that serum. I was simply doing her, and all of you, a favor by taking it away from her. And yes, my fate did tell me that I need four powerful Pyrippi, not three powerful Pyrippi and one weak and crippled."
"What a load of bullshit," Bo commented. "And you know what I think about your fate? I think it's flawed as hell."
"Why would you say that?" Hades asked her. Even though he was too arrogant to take Bo seriously, a small part of him still got curious enough to ask.
"You are following the steps your fate has set up for you, blah blah blah," Bo drawled. "You get everything settled. What's gonna happen next? Oh that's right, you are gonna open the hellgate to let all those angry Primordian prisoners out. If you think that you aren't gonna be their first target, think again."
Hades laughed at Bo's words, as if that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. "Maybe they'd do that to me a few thousand years ago," he said, "but not anymore."
He saw Bo's furrowed eyebrows and he laughed again. "Oh, Bo, my poor child. You have no idea what this place can do to you, do you?"
"Other than making you intolerable, no, not really," Bo replied.
Hades seemed to have wanted to make a comment on her attitude again, but instead he continued explaining, "this place, Tartarus, is the low of the lows. It's the bottom of the world. It spawns nothing but darkness and despair. Everything down here, are either tortured, have begged for death, or have nothing but anguish."
"Oh, believe me, I know," Bo said.
"If you are trapped here for a few days, you'd feel scared, hungry, and maybe a little down, but that's about it. You'd still have hope and you are still living. When you are imprisoned down here for, say, a few years or maybe a decade or two, you'd become frustrated, angry or in your mother's case, go insane, but you'd no longer feel scared, because if you could manage to stay here that long, nothing could scare you anymore. The only thing you'd be thinking every second of every day would be how to get out."
"What's your point?" Bo asked impatiently, unable to figure out how this could be related to the comment she had made about Hades' plan.
Hades huffed out a scoff. "As the times goes by, you'd eventually accept that there is no way out for you. No one's gonna come for you. Nothing's gonna take you away from this place. When the last tiny bit of your hope gets crushed, when you accept the fact that you could never leave this damn place, this place would start to eat you, little by little, bit by bit….Your physical body starts to rot. Your memories and your feelings starts to fade away. Soon, there will be nothing left in you other than one thing, and one thing only, rage. You'd hate everyone and everything. You'd want revenge. You'd want to smash things, to hurt things, to destroy things, not necessarily the ones that locked you up in the first place, but everything that's the opposite of you. That rage will not die. It'll only get stronger and stronger until it consumes you completely, until it becomes the only thing that's left of you. For the Primordians, they've stayed behind the gate for so damn long. They are not themselves anymore. They are long gone."
He stopped for a second or two and took a glance at the thick darkness beyond the border of the platform they were standing on. He noticed that Bo was looking at it too like she was wondering if all the Primordians were really down there.
"Don't get me wrong, Bo. I'm not saying that they have disappeared or vanished or something. They are still down there, because they had nowhere to go. They are confined in a dark place abandoned by time and by everything else. They have died a long time ago, Bo. The locked up Primordians don't exist anymore. What's left behind that gate, are only shadows. My father and the others, their very existence has been reduced into shadows of wrath. They are nothing but a puff of putrefied smoke, or maybe a breath of rotten air. They can't think. They can't speak. They can't reason. And I doubt they could recognize anyone or anything. Let me tell you what's gonna happen after I open the gate, Bo. Those shadows are gonna rush out, roaring in pain. They'd want to kill someone, but I doubt it would be me. They won't remember me. They won't even remember that I was one of those who locked them up. What they want to destroy the most, are the things that they once had but were taken away from them. Those who are alive and breathing. Those who can still laugh and feel. That warm, bright sun and everything under it. They are gonna want to destroy all of them."
"Now you admit that you want my world destroyed?" Bo asked him while wondering why suddenly he had said that.
"No, Bo, I couldn't care less about your world being destroyed or not. I just need that army of chaos to get it banged up enough before I can get what I truly want."
"What do you truly want then?" Bo asked.
"I have already told you, Bo! I want the throne! Have you not been listening to me?!" Hades yelled. There was sudden burst of anger in his voice, like he was very upset that Bo would ask him that question after their conversation earlier. "I want that throne!"
"Ummm, is it just me or are you not making any sense? How can that get you your throne?" Kenzi asked, confused.
Hades scoffed at her. "Humans are such weird low lives...well, to be fair, Faes aren't exactly any better," he said. "You are so weak, so desperate and so stupid. You believe things just because you want to. You follow someone because you think that person could lead you, no matter how fucked up that person is. You worship whoever, or whatever you think that has saved you. What do you think is gonna happen after years and years of pain brought by the Tartarus shadows, I finally become the one who defeat them and lock them up again? Whom do you think all those ignorant, stupid morons like you are going to worship after that?"
He stopped briefly and looked at all four women condescendingly, like his plan was too brilliant and they didn't even deserve to know about it. "I will get what belongs to me," he announced as a sheen of blue energy rose and surrounded his body. "I will make every single one of them worship me. I will make them bow. I will be more popular than Zeus, than anyone else that has ever existed! There will be no Gods but me!"
Bo nervously glanced at Tamsin, and her heart sank a little when she realized that Tamsin was equally concerned and scared.
Bo had always assumed that Hades wanted to destroy her world. She never thought his plan was to paint himself as the savior and make himself a God. How could she possibly stop him, and also stop all those angry shadows from hurting anyone in her world? How?
"I gotta say that it's a great plan," Tamsin commented. There was a hint of tremor in her voice, but she swallowed it back immediately. "I just don't think that those pissed shadows or whatever are that easy to lock up. You gotta be careful cuz if they kill all your ignorant, dumb morons, you'd end up having no followers."
"Don't worry. I got that part covered. I know how to open it, and I know how to lock it. I've done it once, remember?" Hades told her with great confidence. A smile of arrogance beamed from his face. That was a look that both Bo and Tamsin were too familiar with. That smile, it meant that everything was going the way Hades had expected.
"In fact," he gloated. "Soon I'll be the only person who can actually lock up the gate."
Tamsin anxiously turned to Bo when she head that. Somehow the way Hades said it made her very scared. It sounded to her like right now there were other people who could lock the gate but soon these people would no longer exist. For some reason, she felt that it had something to do with Bo.
Bo took Tamsin's cold sweat covered hand into her fingers and squeezed them gently. It was meant to comfort Tamsin, but only Bo herself knew that she was shivering just as hard.
"Well, since we are all here, I guess I could let all of you know how to open the hellgate," Hades said absentmindedly as he knocked on one of the patterned rocks with the tip of his bident. "Not everyone can open or close it. It has to be someone who bears that curse."
"The curse that turned you into an a-hole?" Kenzi blurted.
Hades let out a deep breath and stared at the rock beneath his foot. "The curse, it just has something to do with parents and their children. It's something common in my era, for some reason. Parents wanting to eliminate their children. The children wanting to overthrow their parents. It was always like that. My father's father shoved his children back into their mother's womb. My father castrated him, and then he got ousted by us for wanting to kill us in the first place, ironic, huh?"
He paused for a long time, like all his old memories of his family, his father and everything else fleeted across his mind. Then, he continued, "when we decided to overthrow him, we figured we'd put him in a prison and let him rot, because death was just a way out too easy. Then, we discovered this space in the bottom of Tartarus. What was even more fascinating, was that the gate somehow responds to that strong urge of wanting to kill someone who shares your blood…."
He trailed off as he approached Melinoe, who had been sobbing in fear on the ground for the entire time.
He got down to look at her in the eyes, and the woman immediately stopped sobbing. She was too scared to make a sound.
"Mel," he called her name as he caressed her cheek gently with the back of his index finger. His voice was unbelievably soft, so soft that it made the hair on the back of Bo's neck stand.
"Daddy," Melinoe murmured and looked back at him. "Please forgive me, please. I promise I won't fail you next time, or ever again."
"Oh...my sweet little girl," Hades cooed her as he raised her face by lifting her chin a little. "Of course I'll forgive you. I'm sorry I was a bit harsh on you earlier. I just...I really need things to go my way, okay? I can't let you, or anyone, screw this up."
"I-I'm sorry, daddy," Melinoe apologized again. Tears fell down along her cheeks, and neither Bo nor Tamsin could figure out whether they were tears of happiness or fear.
"It's okay. Everything is gonna end soon," Hades told her. "I won't be mad at you again, Mel, I promise."
"Really?" Melinoe beamed. She looked at him eagerly like a small, innocent child.
Hades nodded firmly. "You do remember that I have a plan, right? The plan I told you about when you were a little girl?"
"Yes of course I remember. You said that I was very important to your plan. You said that you couldn't do it without me."
"That's right," Hades assured her. "Back then, you promised me that you'd help me. You remember that too, don't you?"
Melinoe nodded. "I'd do anything for you, daddy," she announced as she wiped her tears off.
"Okay, now is the time," Hades told her simply. He put his left arm around Melinoe's shoulder and pulled her close like he was the father who was comforting a frightened child. "You know, you grew up exactly the way I wanted you to be."
"Really? I did?" Melinoe asked as she hugged him back. Her voice was filled with joy.
"Yeah, I couldn't have asked for anything better," Hades told her.
Melinoe chuckled, choking in her tears. She let out a big, proud grin as she hugged him tight. Though, that grin suddenly froze and turned into the look of confusion, horror and pain when Hades thrust his bident deep into her chest and twisted the blade inside her.
Melinoe was too shocked to even put up a struggle. She looked at Hades, her eyes shot wide open. When he pulled the bident out and pushed her away, she numbly looked down at herself, at where her blood was gushing out.
Then, she raised her head slowly and stared at Hades. "Daddy…?" She called him hesitantly, with a lot of fear and sadness in her voice.
"You said you'd do anything for me, Mel," Hades told her softly as he watched her collapse into the ground bleeding to death. "This is how you could help with my plan. You have to die."
A few muffled noise got pushed out from Melinoe's throat like sobbing plea. Then, bloody foams came out from her mouth. She looked at him in disbelief, with the pain and anger brought by the betrayal. Then, the fear of death fleeted across her eyes, but only briefly. As she started to lose her consciousness, she gave Hades a hesitant smile. "Daddy...did I really help?"
Hades nodded at her while telling her "oh yes".
Melinoe smiled again. She choked out more blood, before she murmured to him, "can I be your...favorite child now?"
Hades tilted his head a little and gave her a wicked smile. He never answered her question. He didn't have to anyway. Soon she stopped breathing.
Way too shocked and scared by what had just happened in front of their eyes, Bo couldn't react properly at all, neither could Tamsin, Dagny or Kenzi. All four of them just stood there in dead silence with their heart trembling and their hands fisted.
Melinoe's blood made a mess on the ground. The patterned rock under her was soaked in blood too. At first the thick, crimson liquid just ran down towards the lower part of the platform, but after a second or two, it started to move backwards like an invisible force was pulling it back.
It all went back to the rock, and slowly sank in, as if the rock was absorbing every drop of Melinoe's blood intentionally.
Soon, the ground was as clean and dry as it ever had been. There was not a single drop left. The rock, on the other hand, turned from pale white into a bloody red color. Something began to glimmer underneath the red, like something underneath had been awakened by Melinoe's blood.
Hades smirked at the stunned women as he pressed the tip of his bident against the rock to let it take the last bit of blood stuck on his blade. "I forgot if I have mentioned to you or not, but to open the gate, just standing here is not enough. The gate needs a bit of a sacrifice. It needs to taste the blood from your blood relatives to make sure that you really want to kill them."
He raised his bident, which was clean now, and he looked at it. "You are right about how to open the gate, Bo. In order to open it, I need to gather all four Pyrippi. What you don't know is that, I have to drench each of the four stones with each of your blood to open the gate."
With that, he slashed his bident at Bo abruptly. It came at her too fast, that she barely dodged it.
She lost her balance and fell to the ground. Then, she saw the bident slashing down at her. She jerked to the side, but not fast enough. One of the prongs pierced her left thigh and pinned her to the ground.
Tamsin rushed to her. Before she could even touch Bo, though, Hades dealt a heavy blow to her chest with his elbow.
When Dagny attacked him, he had to pull his bident out from Bo, which resulting in Bo groan in pain,.
He took her weapon with his and clenched his teeth. With a hard push, he forced her back, tossing her to the corner.
"Be patient and get in line," he told Dagny while watching the young girl struggle to get up. "You are next, sweetheart."
Tamsin took the chance to drag Bo back. She didn't make far, when Hades caught up with them. She tried to pull her Valkyrie power on him, but she couldn't even get it to work properly. The first few seconds gave her a heavy headache, and then her back pulsed in pain.
She stumbled back, and he sneered at her while shoving her away brutally. He grabbed Bo and dragged her back to one of the patterned rocks.
"Don't worry," he said to Tamsin. "You are gonna go with her eventually, after I drain every drop of her blood of course."
Both Tamsin and Dagny yelled at him furiously. They repeatedly tried to get over to Bo's side and to help her, but each time Hades stopped them by forcing them back.
He raised his bident while Bo struggled in futile. Tamsin growled and scrambled over to Bo. Before she got to her, though, Kenzi jumped out and struck Hades with lightning.
The bright light blinded everyone for a second or two. The roaring sound ringed in their ears. After the light dimmed down, they were shocked to see that Hades wasn't hurt by the lightning at all. It did burn his suit a little, but apparently made no injuries on his skin.
Glancing at their stunned face, Hades laughed out loud. "Oh, please," he said lazily. "She's just a sheath. She can use it because the lightning protects the sheath, but to defeat me? That's a completely different story. Even Zeus can't kill me with one strike. What makes you all think a human can?"
He grabbed Kenzi by her neck. Kenzi yelled, struggled, kicked and bit, waving her arms in the air. A bright light came out of her hand and hit Hades, and Hades laughed while reaching out for that light directly.
He slowly closed his fingers, letting the lightning gather in his hand. The lightning eventually formed a cylindrical shape.
He pulled his arm back, as if he was drawing the lightning out from Kenzi's body. And eventually, the bright light left Kenzi. Glowing softly, it became a short spear in Hades' hand.
Hades tucked it into his belt and shook his head. "I don't suppose I'd use this anytime soon but it's always nice to have it," he said to them. "Low lives like you think you could use it to defeat me? That's just hilarious."
He came at Bo again. When he saw the other three women dashing towards him he struck all of them down with a single blow from his weapon. Then, he looked down at Bo, who had nothing but anger burning in her eyes, and said, "now, let's get the second stone ready."
Bo growled at him, trying to put up a fight, but the wound caused by the bident earlier somehow made her very weak. It was as if the injury had consumed her completely. She could barely hold her dagger, let alone fight.
She weakly push his hand away, but the next thing she knew was the bident plunging into her body.
It felt really cold at first, like the bident was about to freeze her flesh from inside out. Then, it exploded into an excruciating pain which made her cry out loud.
He held her by grabbing her hair, and used his blade to slit her throat.
Bo choked. The pain and the fear of death triggered her Succubus instinct before she blacked out. She suddenly sat up and grabbed Hades's weapon and jerked him away.
She opened her mouth, starting to take Chi from everyone on the platform. She could feel the wound on her neck slowly healing.
It didn't take her long to realize that she was taking Chi from everyone but Hades. She also realized that she was hurting the others, especially Kenzi since she was the only human there.
Beyond scared that she might kill Kenzi, or maybe all of them, Bo gasped and forced herself to stop feeding. She saw Kenzi collapse and she wanted to run over to help, but Hades pulled her back to the patterned rock ruthlessly and thrust his bident into her lower back.
Bo struggled hard, using every bit of her strength to push him away. She eventually succeeded, because Zagreus suddenly awakened. His loud fuss temporarily distracted Hades.
Bo staggered, trembling in pain. Hades came at her again, and she had nowhere to run but to step back. With so much pain, she had forgotten that she was not very far from the edge of the platform. She dodged his attack, before she tripped and fell over the edge.
She could hear the women yelling in fear and anger. She could hear Hades' loud voice as well as Zagreus' wild howls. But, soon the wind had taken all those sounds away from her.
She was falling into the bottomless darkness. She was helpless and she was in great pain. She could see that the darkness enveloped her body as if the hell itself was hungrily devouring her into its belly of eternal gloominess.
Fear hit her, hammering her chest. She clutched her chest, feeling her own fingers trembling like crazy. She started to wonder if this was how she was going to die. The feeling of death was real, so very real.
She desperately tried to grab something, anything, to stop herself from falling down further, but there was nothing for her to grab. There was nothing out there but darkness.
She let out a painful sigh, thinking that maybe she should close her eyes and give up now. Befores she did, though, she saw Tamsin dive down.
The Valkyrie launched herself at her fearlessly, and that scene made Bo feel warm, but it also gave her a strong pain in her chest.
No...don't come down for me, Tamsin...I don't want you to die. I want you to live. She yelled internally, because she was no longer able to talk. Her throat was clenching hard, and she wasn't even sure if it was because Tamsin had come to rescue her from an impossible situation, or because she herself was dying.
As Tamsin got closer and closer, Bo clenched her teeth to stop herself from crying. For a moment there, all she could think about was that Tamsin was gonna die with her. She wanted to stop the Valkyrie from dying for her, but there was nothing she could do. They were both in the middle of the air, and they were falling down.
Bo reached her hand out, and Tamsin immediately grabbed it. She put her arms around Bo's body and held her tight to her chest.
For a second or two, the only thing they could hear was their hearts pounding desperately inside their chests. Then, a loud flutter occurred, before a sheen of light appeared in the thick darkness.
Both of them got suddenly pulled up. Then, they started to fall again, but not for long. They got pulled up again, and they rose a bit further, before they stopped.
Bo gaped at the pair of wings that had burst out from Tamsin's back. It took her quite a while to realize that somehow Tamsin got her wings out and saved both of them.
Letting out a teary smile at Tamsin, Bo choked in her our tears. She could feel nothing but joy dancing inside her. She felt so happy that Tamsin had finally gotten her wings back.
Tamsin managed to hold their position in the middle of the air, before she commanded Bo, "Feed." Her voice was shaking a little.
Bo immediately obliged. As she touched those soft, warm lips, her heart had stopped for a split second, before it started again and slammed against her chest like crazy. Tamsin's Chi calmed her down, and it took away all her fear too.
Their lips parted shortly after Bo had healed. Neither wanted to pull away but both knew that this was definitely not the moment for anything else. For a second or two, they just looked at each other in the eyes. They trembled. They smiled. They chuckled like two idiots with tears all over their faces.
"Your wings," Bo murmured as she gently caressed a row of feathers with the back of her fingers. "You didn't tell me that they are back, Tamsin. Why didn't you tell me?"
Tamsin gave her an awkward smile before she turned to take a look at her own wings. "I..." she stuttered. "I didn't know that they were back either until they…."
She was telling the truth. She had no idea they were back. She had thought that she had lost them forever, because ever since she had come back she had never seen them out once. She couldn't even use her power properly, and she thought that maybe she no longer had it.
She never thought she'd have her wings back like this. She never expected to make it back up there alive with Bo. When she saw Bo falling into the abyss and was drenched in blood, she did not think twice before she dashed over and jumped.
A/N: someone asked about why Tamsin didn't use her power. I guess I should have elaborated more on that during earlier chapter where they were fighting the monsters. Basically she couldn't use her power properly, and it was like that ever since she came back from her death. It's a mix of her coming back from an impossible situation and also having a little PTSD. She was not confident enough about herself and she was feeling very vulnerable so she couldn't get control over her powers, but now I guess she has finally gotten her Valkyrie self back so her wings are back.
This chapter is a hard-to-write. Too much conversation for my liking...but it's for the story, because Hades has to reveal his plan before they could figure out a way to stop him.
There are probably two more chapters, at most three, for this fic. I might do a bonus chapter with some Valkubus fluff for all Valkubus shippers but that's about it. This is going to be the last Canonverse Lost Girl fic I'll ever write (probably). I'll continue my AU stories after this. I do have a few other AU ideas for Valkubus but I probably won't start writing until I finish at least one of the ongoing AUs.