Chapter Thirty Four: The Path to Tartarus
The atmosphere in the stadium was fraught with anxiety and frustration: despite the Olympian god's finest efforts Kronus had evaded capture yet again.
Oceanus' imperial frame shook while Poseidon gently but cautiously removed the dagger from his hand.
'Teacher, it's not your fault…'
'But it is, Poseidon! I should have anticipated this behaviour. Your father never was graceful in defeat. Back him into a corner and he behaves like a scared, trapped rat.'
'We have to find him!' Hestia cried, and Poseidon snorted.
'Thank you Hess, Goddess of Stating the Bleeding Obvious.'
She pouted prettily and turned to Axel for comfort.
'Where will he go now?' asked Zeus, hands casually behind his head. He was trying to make light of the injuries he'd sustained, but the chalky greyness of his face and his drooping posture gave him away. Hera, still clasping Cassie to her chest, propped him up on one side. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and there they stood, a makeshift, pale-haired family.
'Tartarus, of course,' said Athena. 'He still wants to free the other titans and get his body back.'
'So we need to get to Tartarus, preferably before he does,' Amphitrite affirmed, squeezing her husband's hand.
'But the Underworld is like a labyrinth,' said Athena, referring to how troublesome it had been even finding Hades' quarters. 'Uncle doesn't appear to be in any hurry to wake up. Do any of us know how to get there?'
'I visited Tartarus only once, and it was so many years ago.' Zeus shrugged in helplessness. 'I couldn't remember my way there in a thousand more years.'
Everyone turned to the couple who until then had been silent, one unconscious and the other deep in contemplation. Aware of the sudden lull of worried voices Harusame looked up from cradling Hades and blinked.
'Ah, I'm sorry, were you talking to me?'
Athena knelt in front of her, taking charge. She tucked a strand of chrome coloured hair behind her ears and took Harusame by the shoulders, imploring.
'We need you, Lady of the Underworld. Can you navigate us to the cave of Tartarus?'
Harusame gnawed her lip; still holding Hades she was unable to twirl her ring about her finger, so this was her only form of respite. She gazed into all the faces in the room that were filled with hope. How she hated to let them down.
'I'm sorry,' she whispered. 'Hades never showed me the way. He said Tartarus was a forbidden chamber…so…there was no reason for us to go there…'
'Just take your time,' Poseidon interrupted, his tone strained and unusually high pitched. 'Just think really hard, Harusame.'
'I'm so sorry,' said Harusame, avoiding their interrogative eyes, and bit her battered lip so hard that a droplet of blood fell onto Hades' face.
Athena shook her head, getting up. 'It's no use Uncle. We can't force information out of her that she never had. The poor girl is new to this world, and besides, we don't have time to dally.'
'But what can we do now?' asked Hera. 'There must be someone who knows the way!'
Hestia gave Axel a questioning look, but he shook his head sadly. 'I worked in the office, my Lady. I never went out on a boat. Good thing too, as I am liable to seasickness.'
'For crying out loud runt,' Poseidon exploded suddenly, striding forward and shaking his brother. 'Wake the hell up! You're the only one who can get us there!'
Hestia snatched Hades back in outrage, telling Poseidon not to be so violent, and a startled Harusame was pushed aside as they quarrelled. She backed up, wringing her hands against her bosom, and cast her insentient beloved a long, tender, measuring look while his brother and sister fought over him. She then cast that same measured glance to the doorway, and backed up a little further. Nobody noticed.
'Stop it Poseidon,' said Hestia, blazing, her chin in Hades' hair and her arm shielding him from further assault, 'you stop it right now! I mean it!'
Poseidon, the fear draining from his body, went limp and lethargic as shame stole over. 'Sorry,' he muttered.
His shamed quiet spread and blanketed the group, each feeling responsible for Kronus' escape in their own way.
'It would simply take too long,' said Athena, 'to search all the chambers, all the rivers one by one. It's a needle in a haystack. The bottom line is that Uncle Poseidon is right. We need Uncle Hades.'
'I could shock him,' suggested Zeus brightly, though Hera squashed this idea with a scowl.
'Please, Uncle.' Athena patted the sleeping Hades' cheeks but to no avail. 'If we don't get to Tartarus before Kronus does…' she trailed off, not wanting to finish because the end of the sentence was too horrible to contemplate.
'Teleport!' Hestia clapped her hands together, so taken with the brilliance of her bright idea that she let Hades slide from her lap to the floor for a second before grabbing him again. 'We can teleport there!'
'Impossible,' said Oceanus. 'Tartarus gives off a blocking signal meaning nobody can teleport to or from it.'
The group fell silent again, though the funereal tension was almost palpable. Hestia looked around. Someone was missing.
'Harusame!' she called. 'Harusame! Where is she?'
'Oh crap,' said Poseidon with feeling, and ran to check the other rooms. He came back a moment later, doom written on his face. Amphitrite took his hand.
'Did you find...?'
'She's gone,' he replied between clenched teeth. 'And she took the last ferry with her.'
Zeus stood forward, paler than ever, and the abject concern plastered on his face made Hera's chest tight with jealousy. 'You don't think she …? Oh Persephone, you little fool!'
'Uncle!' Athena dropped to the floor and pulled at Hades' cheeks in desperation, stretching them out like silly putty. 'We need you. Please, Uncle!' She lowered her head despondently, sighing with frustrated discouragement.
'Don't call me Uncle,' said a throaty voice as it emerged from slumber.
-
Iwanami heaved the oar into the muddy water with a splashing stroke and pulled it forward again as they drifted down the current. She could hear muted muttering behind her. It sounded vaguely like a mantra of;
'My way is the right way. My way is the right way. I am the only bringer of righteous justice. I am justice!'
She didn't dare ask what this meant. Since Kronus had thrown her into the ferry and ordered her to row she didn't dare to do much else. With no energy left for his usual irreverently exaggerated airs he sat very still, a shell of his former self. Mortal and dying he may be but he still had fearsomely powerful magic, and she was in no hurry to relinquish her existence just yet. Still, he was too weak to row by himself so she couldn't resist prodding him a little.
'This is pointless,' she remarked, shooting him a careful glance over her shoulder. 'They'll catch up to you soon enough, Mr Titan. They may have gone easier on you if you'd given yourself in.'
Kronus, balled up in the seat of the ferry, lifted his head from his hands. 'You will address me as Lord Kronus,' he said in a dangerously silky tone.
The bleeding from his ears and eyes had stopped, but ghoulish smears of crimson stained the corners of his mouth, settling in the minute cracks of his dry, parted lips. Iwanami wondered silently if her own vampiric tendencies had ever made her look so effectively chilling.
'And you are here to row, not to talk,' he added, his voice hoarse. 'Go left at this intersection. We are nearly there.'
'Sure sure, Mr Titan,' she chirped.
-
Harusame was close. She knew it, but she didn't know how she knew it. It was some kind of burning instinct within her, drawing her to where her mother had once made a great sacrifice in another lifetime. She hadn't lied to the others - Hades had never shown her the way to Tartarus. Yet here she was, leaning against the oar, every bone in her body creaking with the effort as she rowed into unknown and yet so strangely familiar territory. Heavy miasmic fog swirled around her, its wraithlike tendrils beckoning.
She grasped the handle of the oar so hard that her hands were red and stiff; she didn't have the superhuman strength to glide through the waves with ease as Iwanami did, but on she rowed anyway, panting with the effort. Hours of constant worry, battle and lack of sleep were catching up. Adrenaline reserves had set in but she was barely thinking straight.
'History repeating itself, isn't that what Hades' father said? I have to stop Aya-san before it's too late. Even if…even if I…'
-
'Harusame did what?'
A groggy and distressed Hades was met with a room of uncomfortable faces, none of whom would meet his eyes.
'She was gone before we knew it, little one,' said Hera. She passed Cassie back to Axel, and put her arms around Hades. 'I'm sorry. You must understand that this is your realm, and not one of us is familiar with it. If it is any consolation,' she added, shooting her worried husband a furtive and displeased glance, 'I am sure such a weak little human girl will not be able to row that ferry and catch up with Kronus on her own. Ironically, her lack of strength will mean that no harm comes to her.'
'You don't know that for sure, Hera,' said Zeus.
Hades ran a hand through his hair, his arm muscles weak and trembling. The thought that Harusame had followed Kronus to Tartarus – alone - was threatening to break loose and wreak havoc through his entire nervous system if he didn't get a grip on it. Hera's voluble, sensible arguments did nothing to ease his panic. 'What about Charon?' he asked quietly. 'He could've taken you there.'
'We found him on the way in,' said Athena, 'but he and most of your under demons are suffering from powerful hypnotic magic. They'll be out for a while.'
Hades met Oceanus' gaze and understood. When he'd walked through the Underworld with the Spirit of Destruction he'd taken down his titan teacher, but he'd done much more damage to his staff.
'I'm going alone,' he said, standing, wobbling, and falling down again as his weakened limbs failed him. Hera and Hestia automatically reached for him but he slapped both of their hands away. 'Don't touch me,' he snapped tetchily, rattled at how feeble he'd become. 'I said I'm going alone.'
'Little one,' said Hera in great tolerance as he tried to stand, 'please see reason. You are not fit to-'
'I'm going if I have to drag myself there!' Hades barked, on the verge of tears. Did none of them understand? That was his girlfriend out there, his one true love, and she was all by herself heading in the same direction as a genocidal maniac hell-bent on seeking revenge! Did none of them see that he had to save her? His eyes flashed, showing how serious he was, and Poseidon moved forward.
He got down before his little brother on the floor, offering him his back. 'Climb on.'
Hades stared. He hadn't had a piggy back ride since the Golden Age. Was Poseidon serious?
'Get on already runt. This offer expires in three…two…'
'Okay, okay,' Hades sighed, submitting.
He had few other options, but he really wished that a room full of his close relatives weren't watching as he sat astride his brother, leaning onto his broad frame with a hand on each shoulder. Hestia squealed and went all googly eyed and flushed at the sight of this cute picture, making Hades even more uncomfortable.
'Now,' said Poseidon, standing effortlessly, 'we two will handle things from here. You stay and wait for reinforcements. Got it?'
He was addressing Zeus, and looked so overtly authoritative that the blond god straightened like a cadet saluting his commanding officer, as though he were used to taking orders rather than dishing them out.
'Yes, Brother.'
'Will you be alright?' asked Axel in a voice sweet with concern, and Poseidon nodded in grim affirmation.
'Hell, I should hope so. We're his oldest sons. If we can't stop this madman, no-one can. We'll rescue the damsel and be back in time for a smoke, a home cooked meal and a real glass of champagne. The last twenty four hours have made hedonism very appealing.'
He carried Hades to the door then stopped at the sound of his wife's voice.
'Poseidon…'
Amphitrite stepped forward, blushing. 'When you come back…no more separate bedrooms, okay?'
Hades decided it would be unkind to laugh at this declaration considering his own track record, or lack thereof. The rest of the group wasn't so thoughtful, Zeus chortling especially loudly until Hera elbowed him in the ribs, but Poseidon didn't seem to care.
'I've really got something to come back for now. Count on it,' he told her softly, and he and Hades slipped away.
'How are you planning to get us there if the last ferry is gone?' asked Hades, tightening his pincer grip around his brother's strong neck as they sped up.
'I can command the water in this place. I'll part the rivers as we go; the last of my powers ought to do it. You know,' he added, 'you'd be a lot easier to carry if you just wrap your legs around my waist a bit more.'
'Shut up,' was the embarrassed reply. Sick with fear over Harusame's plight, Hades forced himself not to dwell on it. He needed a distraction. 'So,' he said, 'you've not been getting any the last few hundred years. How's that working out for you?'
'Don't make me drop you, runt,' said Poseidon gruffly.
-
The cavern of Tartarus was a grand stadium of cacophonous, claustrophobic horror, with its wailing, shrieking, gruesome spectres haunting the sheer drop that led to its plummeting murky depths.
Pulling the ferry up against a huge serrated rock as they reached the edge of a waterfall, Iwanami noticed that theirs was not the only route to Tartarus but was by far the lowest. Across the pit with its neon bars and up the vast, slimy walls was another waterfall jutting out over the cavern; that one several hundred metres above the surface of the rumbling rush of water and the cage that glowed with maleficent vivacity. The course that Kronus had taken brought them almost level with the circular confine, so that as Iwanami brought them to the edge he simply hopped out and landed on the bars, albeit slightly clumsily.
The brassy bars were so thick and buzzing with a magical containment field that Iwanami could not see what was below, although she could feel it. Years worth of restrained resentment radiated throughout the entire pit as she followed Kronus onto the bars, and despite her resolve she felt the sudden, irrational urge to run screaming from the place.
The titan seemed to feel the same. His eyes fixed to the floor he actually looked as though he might retch at the sight of it and Iwanami understood, in a way, what he had suffered. An incessant eternity of isolation, boredom and sorrow, your feet chained to the cold ground in shackles of your own making in a stifling dungeon…that was enough to warp any mind; to fine tune the slightest hint of instability into raving psychosis.
The King and the Ker had both sought revenge on a world that had cruelly stripped them of all they had and abandoned them, tossed them aside to the shadows; however there was one key difference. Iwanami knew she had taken control of her own fate and planned to meet it with dignity, whereas Kronus still flailed desperately like a fish on a hook, unwilling to admit his defeat in a graceful manner.
She smiled in silent smugness as he climbed to his feet, steadying himself against her. The knife wound had debilitated his capability to stand up straight, and he was now doing a poor, limping impersonation of the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
'Tartarus requires a price,' Kronus said, his breath coming in harsh pants. Lank hair fell into his shadowed eyes as he regarded her. 'For each use one soul must be sacrificed. You will have the honour of opening the gates to the new Golden Age. Are you grateful for this privilege, my little pawn?'
Iwanami kept up her smile, wishing he'd get on with the incantation already, and as her eyes wandered over his shoulder she caught sight of something that made her heart stop. Across the chasms another ferry protruded over the edge of the higher waterfall opposite, its oar stuck into the water to prevent it falling to its doom, and climbing out of it and carefully scaling her way down along the walls was a very familiar figure with long black hair.
'Oh, come ON,' Iwanami fumed, 'could this girl be any more of a pain in my ass? How did she get here so fast, and why is she by herself? Where the hell is her stupid purple-haired wannabe Prince Charming when you actually need him?'
Thinking quickly she stepped forward, pressing her body against Kronus'. He did not object. She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him, and as she'd hoped he was so busy responding that he didn't notice Harusame's haphazard rock climbing exhibition. His breathing was hard and high in his chest, and hers was too, but her larruping pulse was from panic not passion. With one eye, Iwanami followed the girl's progress as she reached a wide ledge, and the Ker breathed a sigh of relief.
'Just stay there,' she thought madly, trying to project this urgent order through telepathy, 'and keep quiet, dammit! Even with my irresistible womanly charms I can't keep this dirty old man distracted forever!'
To her profound disappointment however, when Kronus ended their steamy clinch he had that unpleasant smile back on his face. He sighed softly.
'A first-rate endeavour, my dear,' he told her, and then without even turning around he raised his voice so that a barking echo boomed through the pits. 'Do you think I cannot sense your presence, PERSEPHONE?!'
Harusame was so startled by this loud announcement that she lost her footing on the ledge, and before Iwanami's horrified eyes the girl overbalanced and fell.
