PART III

Prologue


The soft tap of a cold droplet landed on her cheek. Her irises, carefully hidden behind shut eyes, began a slow shift in place. An abrupt exhale parted her lips. When another tap dribbled down her skin, her lids revealed the cloudy jades and Persephone was awake.

She blinked a few more times to reel back her senses, taking in the view of bleary shapes of grays and blacks and a few streaks of translucent yellow. The smell of ash quickly struck her, so strong it turned to that rotten taste now creeping down her tongue. She mindlessly licked her lips in the attempt to lose the wretched tang, but the dryness was a worse sensation.

When the haze has lifted and the blurry gobs have cleared, Persephone found herself rising around a desolation. She stood from a balcony, shaking at the landscape of ruins that loomed before her— buildings which sported massive columns, domes and monuments which had palpably made a glorious city splendor if not for the fact everything here was abandoned and depleted. The yellow streaks she had seen in the first few seconds of awakening were bright flashes of thunder, claws effortlessly tearing the horizon from end to end, sending distant explosions that undulated across the dust-hardened floors.

"I thought you might like it."

Persephone turned to the voice behind her, at Apollo leaning his side to a wall and his dead blue eyes fixed upon her. The dark rings below them had not waned, amplified by his paler skin, the dull, unkempt hair and the obvious loss of pounds. His smile was evidently forced, and the snicker that followed was unnerving— "As if you do not wake up to the same sight for almost half a year."

"What is this place?" Persephone looked back at the landscape, reconciling into memory any sigil, any marker which could have symbolized a kingdom.

"Just someplace. Somewhere. Well… safe."

"Safe?" Persephone huffed, pointing around, "How is this safe? You think I forgot what you've done? You—" Recoiling in both fear and anger, she felt tears sting and the edge of her voice break, "You killed Orthrus! He was harmless and you…"

The smell of Orthrus' burnt flesh and fur, the hissing sound of his blood as it dripped down the stones… they washed over Persephone and the nausea formed a lump on her throat, "You murderer! Everything I thought were rumors about you I once refused to believe, not until this day!"

"This day?" Apollo's head inched forward, suddenly interested, "Tell me, love, what do you think is 'this day'?"

Persephone's mouth hung open. She was sure to have intended to leave the Underworld earlier, expecting to arrive at the waning of the earth's infertility, all for the summons Apollo used to trick her. She could have easily answered him, but the manner he narrowed his eyes and the disquieting smirk told her it was wrong. There could only be one explanation to this… "How… how long have I been out…?"

His deepened snigger approved her suspicion.

"Four days," Apollo shrugged.

A relieved sigh came from Persephone. So she had yet not missed the harvests, after all. Her mother would not have—

"Four days here. That would mean…" Apollo feigned the guise of a thinker, counting with his bandaged fingers and secretly enjoying the horror growing over her pretty face, "About ninety… no. A hundred? And twenty… earth days. On average."

Persephone's trembling hands were covering her mouth the moment Apollo finished, breath held and color draining down her neck. "What…" her whisper was exasperated, shaking and mortified, "What have you… done?"

She could not even begin to scale the degree of chaos possibly happening right now, fervently wishing Apollo would laugh at her face for believing, and she would have even immediately forgiven him the moment he tells her it was but some moronic prank. Apollo bit down his lip to prevent the chuckle, "Well you could have known earlier, Sephy! Had I known you were a deep sleeper, then—"

The slap from grip to wrist came forth. Persephone's cheeks were nearly the color of her hair, her jaws stiff and ruddy from pent up anger she had never felt before.

"Don't you dare call me that…" it was a wonder for Persephone to even have been able to speak amid the chattering, her palm still spread despite the failed attempt to strike his face, her wrist already bruising from his tight clasp, "Apollo calls me that… and you are not Apollo, just a savage parasite leeching off of him— urgh—!"

Her purpling fingers began to curl as pain intensified from his grip, now threatening to break the delicate bone.

"Savage parasite? Me?" Apollo wrenched Persephone close enough to make sure she was in tears, "Shouldn't you stick that word to someone else we both know who really embodies it?"

It was Persephone's time to laugh, though briefly, still daintily, satisfying Apollo with a single tear that raced past her chin.

"Oh, and this new You is better then?" she sniffed, "So how does Artemis like her new brother?"

Persephone's wrist had suddenly throbbed less, feeling her blood beginning to squeeze past slightly loosening veins. "You're right, though. I believe you are still the Apollo I know there," she could not help looking at him with medleyed conviction and sympathy, "Your heart still flares for her. A simple word that reminds you of her husband sends you into fury."

Persephone watched the edge of Apollo's lips quiver.

"If there is any parasite here, it is that dark power leeching off on the love and pain you bear for her. But it's not too late, Apollo. Let me go. Let me do mine duties; let me help her sort out the sure disorder my absence has caused," she pleaded, "And let her find you. Though you are banished, I know in her tender heart she still yearns for you. Athena—"

"Run…"

Apollo choked on the word as if a malignant force deprived him the right to speak. Persephone felt moist gathering in his wavering grip, and as their gazes met she saw a glimpse of the Apollo who once was— a pair of kind eyes, brimming with tears and silently screaming to be forgiven. His breaths began to hasten, sweat was forming relentlessly over his body and veins began surfacing below his jaw.

"Hide… stay hidden… un- until…" Apollo hissed and grunted uncannily, "By chance he… he…"

Persephone went cold at the sight of golden blood that began streaming from Apollo's nose. Waking up in this wasteland had not incited fear in her, but seeing Apollo now— ichor in his system, convulsing and making beastly growls— only then had she felt terrified.

"Apollo… please," she heard herself whimper, feeling heat fester from his grip, "It burns—"

"LISTEN TO ME!"

Persephone's wail was stifled instead to a fearful sob, her head turned away as soon as he screamed to her face and vapor steamed from his skin. It was causing a nearly excruciating heat which could boil her eyes in their sockets anytime, where images of Orthrus' woeful end continued to form.

"He… he is nesting above the portal," Apollo whispered between difficult breaths and gurgling, "Stay close… but hidden… and anytime- anytime he leaves…"

Persephone's teeth chattered, "Who? Who is he?"

"Go… aaargh!"

Her body thud unto the dust without caution, without giving her time to cry out the painful spasms at that single fierce push. Standing on her feet and wobbling in the balance, she willed to run but the sight of Apollo's harsh demeanors towards his own flesh kept her glued in place. She watched him claw on his own face, shiver amid the steam and curse at the unseen.

And then there was this stillness that halted her breath.

Persephone gently called out his name the moment he stopped moving. A small step forward. Another call—

Until Apollo's head snapped to her direction, the sclera of his right eye burnt black and widely opened.

Struck with fright, she scrambled towards the first path that greeted her, abandoning the capacity for directions and reasoning. All Persephone thought was to run.

Run and run; she was not even feeling her legs, nor the hem of her billowing dress torn by a shard at the bend. The streets were unending before her and she kept going, kept pressing through narrow alleyways and dark, uncertain trails.

When at last fatigued, she strode into a building and hovered over the first flight of stairs that met her. Persephone swore she could feel herself melt into the floor with the numbness gnawing in her limbs. Hair stuck around her face, streaming with sweat and grime. Her throat ached for a single drop of water.

Leaning her back against the nearest wall, she pulled her knees towards herself while waiting for her lungs to suck as much needed air, made nearly impossible by humidity and the heavy stench of acids. She raised her palms before her to affirm some steadiness, sniveling at the view of her hands doubling, and at the black flecks beginning to float around her periphery. She could lose consciousness anytime… and as frightening as it sounded, she had to at least secure this hiding place until fate could bring her back again…

If, by some sort of miracle, she were to be back again.

She looked up at the cracked ceiling. Somehow hearing the coarse and pained swelling of her lungs as they make final attempts to keep her alive had a strange calming effect on her. In the fumes she could smell death skulking by, flashing in that ceiling reels of her good, long life— her beautiful, annoying mother, the warmth of her barley cakes, the tears she always hides at every departure. Her husband, a truly confusing piece of work. It wasn't love at first sight between them too; oh but which couple in Olympus did have that? Looking back, however, she felt that the time she loathed him for tricking her into his lair had never existed…

How wonderful would it be to reminisce with him once more, to effortlessly alter his frown, and make fun of the deep dimple in his cheek which only her ridiculous laughter could draw out.

As Persephone slowly caved into the cold, quiet embrace of oblivion, something caught her attention. The death she smelt skulking by was somehow keeping her awake and sane, to her wonder. Flickers of red appeared on the shadowed walls: reflections coming from the wide window above her head. She had been so used to the grayness of this place that seeing any other color was astonishing.

Gathering remnants of her strength, she bent her soiled fingers over the window frame and pulled herself up enough to take a look at the source of red light.

Only that she wished she had not done so. The fear she felt over Apollo's stunt was not only renewed but also twice escalated.

It had then occurred to her that she was standing at the edge of a massive nest, an expanded bowl of ruins, home to a morbidly enormous hulk tucked in the middle like a swaddled babe. The fiery color Persephone had been seeing came from molten rock which flowed over and beneath this hideous mass, keeping it warm. There were slow movements in its surface which she realized sooner were a clump of huge serpents, coated in slime and slithering over each other. She could make out an arm coming out from within the pile of snakes, covered in both scales and fur, claws spreading as if to stretch and reposition. It shifted slow in that monstrous size, venting steam, mucky sounds and rippling hisses.

Persephone did not need to see the whole of it. She had been born shortly after Zeus claimed victory over his own father who spawned a horrifying creature supposedly to vanquish him. Could it be—?

"I wouldn't be too visible if I were you."

Persephone fell back beneath the window to find Apollo sitting beside her, hands clasped above legs stretched with one crossed over the other.

Terror shooting back to her head, she scrambled away but had not crawled too far. "Y-you…" she gasped, searching in him the dark mutations she'd witnessed earlier, "are you… alright?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Apollo shrugged.

"Are you insane! You— you… changed!" Persephone gawked. Hearing her high tone, she hushed the rest of her words through gritted teeth, "Apollo, how— there's ichor in you…! Primordial blood! Do you know that?"

"Oh," Apollo acted surprised, "Please, do tell more."

Persephone felt her wit fleeing her, baffled to the crux.

"How are you alright with this…?" she finally asked, "A blood pact with Cronos… really?"

"Cronos did me more saving than any of your lot ever attempted to; stop being dramatic over it," Apollo leaned his head on the wall behind him.

"Dramatic? You are allowing him to channel through you, you've practically sold your soul to him, to do as he commands. He has access to your power, your knowledge and memories… he is living in you—!"

"Well I didn't really have a choice, did I?"

"Of course you do! You're choosing this—!"

Persephone heaved painfully as Apollo's fingers locked around her neck in a snap—

"I chose to go to that cave! I chose to follow that bastard in! I chose to die!" his was an anger never before beheld, "But the rest of it?" he gave a firm shake before releasing her, "Hades chose for me."

Persephone coughed as she held her throat, locks of her auburn tresses falling over her face, "So this is a revenge plot over my husband?"

"I cannot say it wasn't, at first," Apollo smirked, "I personally wanted to make him pay for what he did to me, for channeling me to Cronos. But later on I've had a change of perspective. You should have known what potentials Cronos uncovered in my power."

Persephone shrank at the way Apollo trembled looking at his palms in both confusion and pride.

"I could have been so much more, Sephy," he laughed bitterly, tears welling, "You should have seen how a single flick of my fingers blasted the earth, should have seen how many more stars I could harness my energy from, not just that single ball of light from our very limited region. All of us, we could have been more than Zeus' playthings, not just pawns in his dirty games. He was the true enemy; he suppressed our powers and dictated where it should be utilized because he knew our true capacity."

"Apollo stop," Persephone's voice faded to a whisper, "You're sounding ridiculous. Just… stop."

"Do you really want to know where we are?"

She shook her head fearfully, face crumpled. Apollo went on anyway, "You see, Cronos' avenue to time allows him to settle back and forth ages which have happened, are happening…and are yet to happen. This, love, is the future of one of Rome's great port cities, extinguished by the near mountain's fire and ash."

Persephone looked around, in her mind reconciling the grim landscapes she'd earlier passed by, "Rome's— we are in Rome…? Somewhere in the future?"

"Fantastic, isn't it?" Apollo grinned.

"How would you be anywhere in Rome? How would its pantheon ever allow you to bring in Typhon here— unless… unless…" her eyes widened.

"Yes, dear, unless they allowed," Apollo reached out and spread his hand over her eyes, drawing her consciousness back into that deep nothingness.