Disclaimer: I don't own Trials of Apollo

Another small ichor warning for this chapter!

HADES XVIII
Too Many Curses and Too Much Pain

They were not fortunate.

Apollo's warning was sharp, and the snap of his bowstring followed immediately as he loosed an arrow at the shape that came hurtling out of the trees. Hades' hand gripped the hilt of his sword tightly, and grimaced as a shriek announced that the arrow had struck its target.

"I said not to kill," he scolded, but Apollo seemed unaffected as he nocked another arrow.

"I didn't kill," the younger god replied. "It wasn't a fatal shot." As if to prove his point, he fired another one as the shape lunged again. "This is the home of the Curses?"

Hades wasn't sure why Apollo felt the need to ask, but humoured him regardless. It had been a long time since the Arai had last left Tartarus to inflict curses upon the living. "It is. Do not kill them."

"Or they impart the curses your foes have unleashed upon you," Apollo finished, his eyes smouldering. "I remember."

Remember what, Hades wondered, but brushed the errant thought to one side. The Arai were not known for assailing gods – indeed, the gods had often used them, or at least let them pass unchallenged, when they wished to punish a particularly obnoxious mortal. However, he and his brothers had learned the hard way that they could, in fact, target gods.

Zeus had never been claustrophobic, to Hades' recollection, but when one curse had struck him down and compressed him as though he was trapped inside-

The worst thing about that particular curse was that Hades still had no idea who had cursed Zeus to be consumed like the rest of them. It could have been their father, but it could equally have been any of their siblings, in a moment of jealous rage. Hades himself had more than once muttered something to the effect of his youngest brother not knowing what it was like. With the knowledge of how Zeus had changed over the years, paranoia creeping in and turning him cruel in his fear, Hades felt less sorry about it now, but at the time there had been an unease that he might have inadvertently inflicted his own pain on the only brother that had escaped it.

He did not impart this story upon his nephew; despite the cavernous abyss that had yawned into existence between himself and his youngest brother since then, there were still some things Hades would not betray.

Besides there was a more pressing matter at hand; how to escape the Arai now their attention had been caught. Truthfully, Hades did not remember how, exactly, they had fled the first time. He suspected they had killed them all and suffered the curses until they wore off, but that was hardly an ideal solution.

A flap of wings exploded into existence directly in front of him, and Hades jumped back, out of range of the lashing claws and talons belonging to the Arai assailing him. She was unmistakably a sister of the Erinyes, with similar lines to her face and the same wicked grin Alecto bore when she unleashed her wrath upon Sisyphus and her other favourite victims within the Fields of Punishment.

None of the Furies had laid eyes upon Hades with such vindictive glee in their expressions, however, and Hades was forced to duck and weave as she lashed at him again, and again. More wings rustled, and he moved faster, dodging the second, and then the third, and the fourth Arai as they descended upon him.

Off to one side, he could hear Apollo's bowstring singing as he let arrows loose, and the shrieks of hit Arai as they were struck – if it were any archer than one of the Twins, Hades would fear a misfire killing one and inflicting their borne curse upon the younger god, but if nothing else, he could hold belief in Apollo's aim.

He also had to mind his own aggressors, rather than letting his attention be caught by how Apollo was faring. His Helm was designed to conceal his presence utterly, but daughters of the Night hellbent on passing on the curses of the no doubt thousands of souls who had taken umbrage with him at one point or other appeared to track using something other than sight as their claws dug into his armour.

Loud shrieks merged with the distant screams from the Acheron, causing a ringing sound of dissonance that Hades disliked intensely. He also disliked the words the Arai spat in his direction – promises of torment, of agony and finding out what it was like to be the one stuck in eternal torture.

It did not surprise Hades in the slightest that many of the curses levelled at him came from the punished souls from his realm, who sought to break free and take their vengeance on him and any other soul involved in their eternal punishment.

He could not cut the Arai down, for fear of unleashing the curses upon himself, so he used the flat of his blade to swat them away, breaking wings and arms and claws with each hit but forced to hold back from a fatal hit.

Non-lethal defences could only hold the myriad of curses at bay for so long.

Apollo cried out.

Hades slapped away the nearest Arai and ploughed his way directly to his nephew's side; ichor was dripping down one side of his face, deep gouges from claws narrowly missing his eye. By itself, it was hardly an injury to faze a god – Hades had seen Apollo weather far worse in his existence, and that was before he included anything from Tartarus – but the physical injury was not the concern.

The death of the Arai was not the only way they could impart their curses.

What curse had taken hold of Apollo, Hades could not tell. From the way he snapped another arrow into existence on his string and levelled another shot at an Arai's wing, downing her immediately, it did not seem to be a serious one – some curses could be nothing put pettiness – but the flock of Arai sensed weakness, and struck.

Distracted by Apollo's state, Hades almost failed to notice the Arai lashing at the back of his neck; when he did register it, the claws skimming at his form, he twisted around and slashed with his blade before common sense could override instinct.

The Arai burst into dust and the curse slammed into Hades like the rampaging Sow, stunning him for an instant as he waited for it to bloom into existence.

The last time, the curses that had been inflicted upon him had been unbearable torment, to the point he had forcibly banished them from his recall. Doubtless, they had been from the Titans, uttered on their dying breaths as Hades and his siblings had defeated them, with an agonising cruelty to match.

This time, Hades braced for more of the same.

Nothing happened.

He could feel the curse, thrumming away on the edge of his essence, but it seemed unable to activate. A cautious flare of his essence had it dissolving away into nothing, much to his confusion.

There was no time to dwell on the strange phenomenon, however. The Arai had not ceased their relentless attack after a single death, and Hades was forced to resume defending himself, the unease set aside but not forgotten as he continued to bat the daughters of Nyx away with the flat of his blade.

Another sound, this time a grunt, came from Apollo, and he caught sight of a flash of gold as the archery god's bow fell to the ground. Deep gouges this time tore through the younger god's bicep, ichor flowing freely down his arm. It did not appear to faze Apollo, who punched an Arai away from himself with his bare hands before scooping his bow up once more, but the cackling of the Arai unnerved Hades.

"No archery!" one declared. Her laugh was hoarse, as though it came from the wizened old throat of a mortal who should have let Thanatos take them decades earlier. "No archery, son of Zeus."

Sparing only the bare minimum of his awareness to the Arai targeting him, Hades found most of his attention focused on Apollo as he nocked another arrow and draw the bow back, only to falter almost immediately.

"What?" his nephew asked, his voice a little gasp of surprise which quickly turned to horror.

"What happened?" Hades barked out, slamming a trio of Arai away with his blade and moving so that he was back to back with his nephew, blasting away another Arai headed for Apollo's rear.

"I- I can't draw it back!" Apollo exclaimed, his voice descending into a wail that Hades was fairly certain had been unintentional. "The string won't move!"

Whoever had cursed Apollo to lose his archery was a mystery to be solved at a later date. "Then fight without it!" Hades snapped at him. "Did you or did you not once defeat Ares in a wrestling match?"

"But-"

"Phoebus Apollo!" he thundered, interrupting his nephew's panicked protest. "Now is not the time to freak out. Fight. The curse-"

Talons caught the side of his neck, his attention having wandered too far for too long, and the cackling of the Arai filled his ears as ice flooded his essence.

"Hades?" Apollo asked; there was a desperation in his voice all of a sudden.

"Fight," he growled out, slashing out at the Arai responsible for the ichor dripping down onto his shoulder. It was only when she burst into dust that he realised he hadn't used the flat of his blade. "By the Fates," he cursed, then choked on nothing as the ice continued to coil within him, freezing him from the inside out.

He knew exactly who had placed this curse, but the knowledge did not help prevent it.

"Daughter-thief!" the Arai cried, and Hades felt his legs shudder, felt himself stumble.

"Uncle?" Apollo's voice had leapt up several tones – what did his nephew call it, again? An octave? A warm back pressed against his own, burning against the ice within, and a noise tore itself from Hades' throat.

It was not a scream. Hades did not scream, even when the full brunt of his eldest sister's fury upon the world was focused solely into his essence. It was, however, an admission of great discomfort, and he felt Apollo still for a brief moment before his nephew tore away.

A roar of rage came from behind him, and the shrieks of the Arai shifted away from delight into something more raw, more primal, to match the wrath of Apollo.

Hades wasn't entirely certain what had provoked it; perhaps he had been hit by another curse. He had no time to ponder, however. The coldest depths of winter the Overworld had ever experienced wrapped him in a crushing embrace and he could barely keep his grip on his blade as he swung it at the ever-approaching Arai.

Dust showered him, the edge of the blade catching more than the flat, and curse after curse crashed into him. Some – several – dissipated much in the same way as the first, gnawing fruitlessly on the edges of his essence, but not all, and Hades found unbearable pain biting wherever the winter didn't reach.

Apollo's fury was a background roar, not comforting because nothing could be a comfort when the curses of all those that had ever, for however fleeting a moment, wished ill upon Hades surrounded him, but a reminder that he was not alone. He had not been alone last time, and he was not alone this time, even if water gargled out of his mouth and his limbs trembled as lightning coursed through them.

He could hardly blame his brothers when he, too, had muttered many curses towards them in his darkest days, but after his last time handling the Curses, when it was those same brothers who had covered his back, the sting of betrayal was raw.

Now, his back was being covered by his nephew. There was no familiar song of a bowstring, a curse stripping Apollo of one of his core skills, one of his first, if Hades recalled correctly, but there were shouts and grunts and the sound of impact as one thing struck another.

Until the shouts silenced.

Hades slashed another Arai in half, feeling a wave of scorching heat roll over him – Hyperion, perhaps, or maybe Hephaestus had a bad day in the forge several centuries ago? – and whirled around to see his nephew clutching at his throat with one ichor-coated hand, eyes wide.

Slowly – glacially – Hades crossed the brief distance between them and slashed away an Arai that lunged forwards. The Curses numbers had not dwindled in the slightest, despite how many he had cut down.

"Fight," he repeated to his nephew. The sound he got in response was grating – a descriptor that barely scratched the surface of how terrible it was to hear.

It was a cacophony of every broken instrument Hades had ever had the misfortune to hear, and then multiple more besides, discordant and clashing in a way that physically hurt to hear. An orchestra of the damned, torn from the hoarsest throat to ever exist.

Apollo flinched as if the sound pained him – if it pained Hades, there was no doubt it pained the god of music.

"Fight," was all Hades could say, because until the curses stopped coming, they could not even begin to attempt to lift them.

He didn't remember how long it had taken the effects to wear off last time, but they must have done.

Lightning sparked in his legs and he stumbled again, crashing down to one knee. Apollo let out another of the hideous gargle-shrieks and stumbled forwards, one fist colliding with an Arai aiming to gouge Hades' eyes out.

With a grunt, Hades hauled himself to his feet again, mumbling complaints against his siblings – only Hestia, it seemed, had not inflicted some form of curse upon him, based on the phantom bites of beaked creatures with resplendent tail feathers representing Hera's own frustrations – and awkwardly staggered until he was once again back to back with his nephew.

Short of killing all of the Arai and suffering the full force of all the curses, he had no idea how they were going to escape. His vision was swarmed with flapping wings no matter where he looked, and against his back Apollo was shaking.

Hades was shaking, too, as the chill of winter and jolts of lightning continued to ravage him and he drowned again and again on dry land. It hurt, to know that his siblings had cursed him, for all that he knew he'd cursed them, too. Demeter, he understood – she had always been forthright in her fury over his relationship with her beloved daughter, and the curse clearly dated back to their original fight, before the truce. His brothers, and Hera, he couldn't place the timing. It could have been millennia ago, or it could have been last week, for all he knew.

The Arai lunged at them again, and his sword joined Apollo's fist in bashing them back, away even as Apollo's chest heaved like a mortal starving of air and Hades' grip on the hilt of his blade faltered.

The screams didn't register above Apollo's hoarse tormented cries and the shrieks of the Arai until Hades felt the ground beneath his feet falter and his balance wavered. Next to him – they were no longer back to back, had shifted to side to side at some point between one curse and another – Apollo stumbled and realisation crashed over Hades.

He caught Apollo's armour as his nephew overbalanced backwards, and normally that would be enough, but his physical form hadn't been so wrecked since the last time he was in Tartarus and while his grip didn't fail, his own balance did. They toppled backwards together, Hades realising far too late that during their battle they had been herded backwards, away from the trees and towards something altogether more painful, and the screams began.

Hades couldn't move.

Poseidon's descriptions of the full viciousness of the Acheron in Tartarus had been woefully inadequate. Every molecule of Hades' being was set alight, freezing and sparking and drowning from the curses while burrowing invasively deep into his essence, dragging it out for the Pit to see. His form flickered, losing the fight to stay intact as everything beneath it tore to shreds.

When his younger brother had touched the water, Hades and Zeus had pulled him back, but Apollo had fallen with him and there was no-one left to haul them out. They would have to get themselves out of the Acheron, but the Acheron clearly had no intention of letting them go, no matter how much they struggled.

At least, Hades thought he was struggling. It was difficult to tell when everything that made him him was being flayed alive from the inside out. It was difficult to tell anything at all.

He didn't expect the hands that pulled him up.

He didn't notice them, to start with. His awareness was restricted down to agony and the way his essence was raked over boiling sands and frigid ice all at the same time, lanced through with electricity and drowned for good measure. Hands tugging at his unravelling form as the Acheron whisked him directly towards the delta failed to register at all.

Then he was going up, leaving the water behind as the bank dug into his raw essence. Faintly, he could hear an agonising cacophony of sound that wasn't quite screams, and grunts of effort, and then he was on the bank, burning and freezing and twitching but intact, and Hades was forced to do nothing but lay in his crumpled heap, too shattered to even register how undignified he must have looked.

Another form slumped down next to him, and his eyes met the blazing currently-blue flames of Apollo's.

His nephew was barely recognisable. His form had almost entirely sloughed away, leaving him a flickering bundle of light covered with occasional scraps of flesh. Golden liquid coated the ground around them, running down in miniature rivers to the Acheron.

As Hades watched, a golden shimmer slowly passed over Apollo, restoring his appearance. For the god of healing, it was slow regeneration, especially for what was clearly only surface level restoration rather than a full heal, but Hades could feel his regeneration was even slower as his own form also re-congealed around his essence, an outer shell to simply contain himself.

As Apollo's face reformed, tears of agony spilled down his cheeks. Hades couldn't comment on that, considering he was well aware of the saline tracks forming down his own reforming face.

River of Pain was far too tame a moniker for the Acheron.

For an eternity of an instant, they lay by the bank of the river, unable to move and fully vulnerable to anything that approached. It was a state Hades despised, and as soon as the exterior of his form solidified again he hauled himself into a sitting position, surveying their surroundings in an attempt to regain his bearings and forcibly ignoring the essence-deep pain that had not been erased by his reformation.

There were no trees on their side of the bank; across the river, Hades could see the thin spindles protruding from the surface of Tartarus, and he wondered if they'd crossed the river again – but no, they'd travelled downstream and the water was still flowing as though they were on the same bank. That did not make sense; there were no trees upwards of the Acheron, only below.

Then he noticed that the river whose bank they were upon was not the Acheron at all.

The Acheron wound almost directly towards them, intersecting with the river whose bank they sat upon before the water flowed down, towards the abyss and Chaos. This river must have been the sixth, although Hades could not identify when they had crossed it.

At least, it put the Arai behind them, and while Hades couldn't place exactly where they needed to head, they were also further along the route they'd needed to take, rather than having been sent completely off course.

Beside him, Apollo had also pulled himself upright. One ichor-covered hand was massaging his throat, and his eyes flickered with distress, reminding Hades that Apollo, too, was currently under the thrall of multiple curses.

Hades could not recall if he had ever mindlessly cursed his nephew. He sincerely hoped he hadn't.

"We should move further from the river," he said after a moment. His voice sounded raw.

Apollo nodded, but when he opened his mouth to speak, the same grating, discordant screech jolted straight through Hades' essence. His nephew looked devastated, and Hades wondered who had cursed him to that extent.

His own curses still plagued at him, his brother's lightning coursing through him while he drowned and froze and trembled from the combined effects of everything, but Hades pulled himself to his feet. Apollo staggered upright, still massaging his throat as though he hoped that would restore his voice and in silence, Hades led them further from the banks of the river.

They did not travel far; unlike the upper reaches of the Pit, there were no convenient caves full of weak monsters to repurpose for their own ends. Here, everything was exposed, and the best shelter Hades could find was none at all, simply placing them in the centre of a large, flat expanse where nothing could sneak up unseen.

The curses would not last forever; Hades suspected that they were supposed to, for mortals, but the regenerative powers of gods would, in time, overpower the Arai's intent. He and his brothers had huddled together and waited it out – that much, he now recalled, although he did not recall how long it had taken. No doubt, he and Apollo would need to do the same, and he brought them to a stumbling halt.

"We must rest," he said bluntly. Apollo nodded, no longer attempting to speak to the thanks of Hades' battered essence. He had no desire to be assailed by the sounds that tore themselves from Apollo's throat if it was not necessary.

Somehow, he hadn't lost his hold on his sword, and he laid it on the ground as he slumped down, his nephew beside him. Apollo's bow was nowhere to be seen, and his quiver was empty.

There was nothing left for them to do, but rest.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari