The Haunting of Guaritori Diolco, Part 11

Underworld Battle

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Hades (Delcarmat/Shutterstock)

I raised the lumen naturae effect to blinding intensity, but this time, the brothers were ready for it. Instead of trying to fight it with shadow, they fought it with rainbows. They couldn’t block the power of the Philosopher’s Stone that way, but nor could its power immediately banish the rainbows as it would the darkness.

Unfortunately for them, Charon didn’t appreciate the disruption of magic caused by the rainbows. “Stop that!” His voice roared like an earthquake, though he didn’t immediately attack the brothers. Perhaps their magic was as alien to him as it was to me.

The brothers paused for a moment, but they made no other response to Charon. Instead, they doubled down on their magic, creating a dome around themselves. Perhaps they were trying to shield themselves from whatever magic Charon could produce. I’d never seen them thicken the rainbow effect this way before.

I couldn’t afford to wait until I’d figured out their strategy. The key to the rainbow’s disruptive effect was the anti-nyv strand within it. As quickly as I could, I transformed the anti-nyv into nyv, throwing off their calculations and maybe exposing them more to Charon.

“Close the doorway!” said Charon in a commanding tone. I should have thought of that, of course, but when I reached out to do so, I saw that the tunnel beyond was filled with brothers, all of whom would die if I abruptly broke the connection. The best I could do without bloodshed was seal this end, but the brothers were holding it open, somehow. I pushed myself back into a migraine without getting any results.

A wave of magic passed over me and struck the brothers. From its coldness and their reaction, it was Charon’s attempt to invoke terror and force them to retreat. But though they shook, they held their ground. Even though I moved as fast as I could, they kept reintroducing anti-nyv into their rainbows, giving them some protection against magic—even that of an elder power like Charon.

I’d been working on the assumption that the rainbows were protective only because they kept an opponent from analyzing the underlying magic. I’d been wrong. Somehow, they could modulate the effect to block hostile magic without completely suppressing their own.

I tried to dissipate the rainbows, but even the Philosopher’s Stone could only do so much. Apparently, it could affect only one component of the rainbow at a time, no matter how hard I concentrated.

Across the river, I heard loud and savage howling—Cerberus, no doubt. From the memories of Hermes, I knew that the three-headed dog was sounding the alarm, something he had practiced but had never had to do. After all, who would be foolish enough to bring an army into the Underworld?

The howling didn’t slow down the brothers much, either. More and more of them crowded onto the beach, making their shielding stronger and their anti-nyv more insistent as they did so.

Charon amplified his fear magic enough to shatter the minds of most mortals, but the brothers persisted. In fact, they seemed to be growing stronger by the minute. How could there possibly be so many of them?

“Close the doorway!” he demanded again. This time, I was sure I heard concern in his voice.

“If I do that, many will die,” I said, hoping as I did so that Charon wouldn’t turn his power against me.

“Whatever they’re doing is destabilizing this area,” replied the ferryman. “If you don’t stop them, the instability might spread further. Compromising the Underworld too badly, might make the whole plane become unstable, with catastrophic consequences.”

I wasn’t familiar with the natural state of the Underworld, but I realized that it was becoming lighter, and the soil beneath my feet had started to shine.

“Keep in mind that this plane is connected to your own,” said Charon. “If this plane is too badly disrupted, the results will ripple into yours—and it’s already in perilous shape, from what I hear.”

I didn’t want to be the one who had to weigh the lives of the brothers against the lives of untold numbers of beings they might be jeopardizing. But I was the one. If Charon could have closed a doorway opened by the power of Hermes, he would already have done so.

I forced myself to try to close it, but I wasn’t quite as powerful as the real Hermes had been, and the tunnel was filled with rainbows down its entire length. In this case, they were focused on keeping the tunnel open. I could make it shudder as if it had been struck by an earthquake. I could make it expand and contract like a giant worm trying to digest the Brotherhood. But I couldn’t close the connection the tunnel was keeping open.

“I. . .can’t,” I said, trying to keep from screaming as my pain continued to rise like an acid tidal wave.

“Come no further!” Charon’s voice shook the ground, and by sheer strength of will, he brought into being an invisible wall that would under ordinary circumstances have stopped anyone, even a former god. But the anti-nyv in the rainbows began to eat away at it almost immediately.

“How can they use magic and yet prevent magic from being used against them?” Charon muttered to himself. “It is. . .unnatural.”

I wished I could answer his question, but the best I could do was focus all my attention on converting the anti-nyv in the rainbow. I could at least slow the Brotherhood’s advance until whoever Cerberus was trying to summon got here.

One of the brothers threw a stone at Charon’s wall—and the rock passed right through it, landing practically at our feet.

Too late, I realized that it was only a rock in appearance. In reality, it was a banestone—the purest form of anti-nyv in existence, unchecked by the other energies in the Brotherhood’s rainbows. No wonder it had pierced a magic barrier.

Like other elder powers, Charon might not have been able to feel a full range of human emotions, and he didn’t look frightened. But he did seem unsettled. Glancing at him, I saw that even his magic faded to almost nothing in the presence of the banestone.

The Philosopher’s Stone could easily transform it into nyv, and when it did, Charon’s power began to return immediately. But now other banestones were flying our way, and I had to try to transform as many of them as I could in midair. I could only do one at a time, though, so most of them were getting through. In the face of such an attack, Charon’s wall shattered like glass. Worse, the parts of the ground struck by the banestones disintegrated. In a place like this, the landscape must have been mostly magic.

Charon, whose physical strength was unaffected by the barrage, grabbed me by the arm so hard he nearly tore it off and pulled me toward his ferry.

“We must retreat!” he said. Once I started moving on my own, he let go and raced on ahead of me.

The brothers advanced, but they had to transform the banestones as they went to avoid stifling their own magic, so their pace was slower than ours. That was probably all that saved me from recapture.

After Charon boarded the ferry, he turned and gestured impatiently for me.

“I’m surprised you waited,” I said. He grabbed me off the dock and threw me into the boat before grabbing his oars and rowing like crazy.

“I don’t trust you,” he said in a tone as cold as the Artic. “But I trust them less. They want you, so it stands to reason that I must keep them from getting you.”

Under the circumstances, I wasn’t about to refuse any help, however qualified and grudging.

Charon had us across the river before the brothers reached the dock.

“We will have to make our stand here,” said the ferryman. “I dare not allow them any further into the Underworld. If they release more of those vile stones, they will certainly compromise its basic structure.”

Looking across the river, I could see bright light where only subdued grayness normally existed. The brothers appeared to be moving a little below ground level as the damaged soil continued to sink beneath their feet.

“Can they get across?” I asked.

“Normally, no,” replied Charon. “But with the abominable forces at their command, I have little doubt they can neutralize the power of Acheron, which normally inflicts uncontrollable sorrow upon all who try to cross unauthorized. The river’s natural current would also work against them, but I fear the water level will start falling as the underlying magic fails.”

From what Hermes could recall, that was the longest statement Charon had ever made to anyone in centuries. I couldn’t help but feel fear clawing at my heart.

“How long can we two hold out against them?” I asked. My headache was a little better, but my heart was beating like a drum.

Charon slowly shook his head. “I cannot even guess. Cerberus will join us. And there should be others. But I have no idea what our adversaries can do with their strange magic. Nor do I know how long the Underworld can endure against the stress of that magic.”

Nor did I. If only I had thought to close the doorway into the Underworld before it was too late!

New brothers continued to arrive as the ones already here approached Charon’s dock on the far side of the river. They were still moving slowly, but the natural gloom of the Underworld continued to recede as they advanced. I hindered them as much as I could from a distance, but they were able to regenerate their anti-nyv faster and faster. Was there no end to how many of them there were?

I hadn’t noticed when Cerberus stopped his howling, but I did notice when the massive dog, more the size of a horse, trotted over to join us. His fur was midnight black, and poison dripped through the fangs in the mouth of each of his heads. His eyes glared at me, blazing with dark fire, but because I was with Charon, or because he sensed Hermes’s magic within me, he didn’t immediately attack. However, his tail, which looked like a serpent, prepared to strike, just in case.

“Help comes,” said Charon, his tone more grim than cheerful. But perhaps cheerfulness wasn’t within his emotional range.

I heard horses’ hooves rushing toward us, and suddenly, a silver chariot pulled by a team of four black horses appeared out of the shadows. The figure holding the reins could only have been Hades, king of the Underworld.

His crown was silver but didn’t shine. Indeed, his general presence was so gray, so similar to the ambient lighting, that if he weren’t moving, I might have mistaken him for stone. But there was no mistaking his power. Though he was younger than Charon, the king’s magic was far more overwhelming. It would be easy to become lost in it, swept away in its tide until one not only died but ceased to exist. Though he was not literally death incarnate—that was Thanatos—the power of death and the ability to rule over the dead flowed through him. His trident also throbbed with power, pulsing like the beat of a giant’s heart.

Persephone rode next to him on the chariot. Though I knew they were married, she could not have been a greater contrast to him. Where his every movement whispered of death, hers sang of life. Instead of being crowned with metal, she was crowned with flowers. Rather than being robed in gray, she wore a gown of the most vibrant green imaginable. While his appearance would provoke fear, hers provoked awe—perhaps even love, if one’s heart was free.

Behind them stood Hecate, whom I had already met more than once, though each time, she looked different. This time, her expression was grim, though her facial features still reminded me of Aphrodite’s. She was crowned with moonlight, and in the glow, her silver gown sparkled. Someone like me who could see magic couldn’t help but notice the triple power of air, water, and earth that throbbed within her.

Under any normal circumstances, this trio could have defeated any army hands down, but with the Brotherhood able to deflect magic and even shut it down completely, I had no idea what would happen.

The brothers paid no attention to the arrival of reinforcements. Not having expected to end up in the Greek Underworld, they were experimenting with ways to cross Acheron. With their rainbows flaring all around them, it was hard for me to tell much more than that.

“Who are they?” Hades asked Charon. The ferryman nodded to me, and somewhat shakily, I told him what little I could.

Hades’s eyes narrowed. “You are the mortal who killed Hermes?”

“We do not yet know—” began Persephone. Hades glared in a way that silenced even her.

“The question of his guilt can be settled later,” said Hecate with surprising firmness. “He has power we need—and perhaps insight as well.”

“Nonsense!” said Hades. He raised his trident, and death magic poured from it in waves. For a moment, the rainbows paled, and I caught a glimpse of many of the brothers staggering. But then the rainbows stabilized. Hades frowned in a way that would have killed the flowers in Persephone’s crown if they hadn’t been on her head. “What magic is this that can resist my power in my own realm? I have never seen such a thing.”

Hades sneered the moment I started talking, but I forced myself to finish the explanation of rainbows, banestones, and anti-nyv.

“An attack at closer range might work,” said Hades.

“Or they will lay out more banestones and perhaps trap you,” said Charon. “Faced with them, you may not lose all your magic, but your power could be reduced enough for them to resist it. They broke my forbidding more rapidly than I could ever have imagined.”

“Then we must fight them physically,” said Hades. “Do they have any defense against that?”

“Numbers, perhaps,” said Hecate. “It is hard to count them, but they seem more numerous than I would like.”

“The Elysian Guard is on the way,” said Persephone. Turning to me, she added, “It is a force composed of the heroes who live in the Elysian Fields. They are well trained for battle, though we have never had to use them in actual combat before.”

“We cannot wait for their arrival,” said Hades, pointing with his trident at the opposite shore, parts of which were breaking off and falling into the Acheron. “Whatever the intruders are doing is compromising the very fabric of this place. We cannot risk them doing enough damage that they start to unravel the magic that holds the Underworld together.”

“This mortal has a power that can reverse the twisted magic of the intruders,” said Charon, pointing to me. At least, he had been paying attention.

“Not fast enough to stop them,” I admitted. “But if they were distracted or their numbers thinned—”

“We can do that,” said Hades. I tried hard not to think about what thinning their numbers would mean in practice. The king of the Underworld would have no problem painting the opposite shore in their blood. There wasn’t much I could do now but hope he would kill only when absolutely necessary.

That was a frail hope at best.

Charon led us to the ferry, which miraculously stretched to make room for all of us—chariot and horses included. Once everyone had embarked, he took us to a point far downriver from the brothers, allowing us time to disembark before the other side could join battle with us.

The brothers had tried creating their own raft, cloaked with darkness and rainbows. Acheron had swept it away, but the dark waters had turned paler, and the current flowed less strongly. If this became a war of attrition, I had no doubt who would win.

Hades had all of us get into the chariot, which, like the ferry, expanded to accommodate us. The horses charged forward, fast as lightning, and Hades roared a war cry and sent another wave of death magic at the brothers. It was just as powerful as the last one, but the rainbows showed much less sign of wavering this time.

The brothers couldn’t avoid noticing Hades’s chariot bearing down on them. They pulled back somewhat from the dock and then threw a row of banestones down in an attempt to block our way.

Faced with the power of concentrated anti-nyv, the horses came to a stumbling halt and would go no further. Cerberus whined and refused to leave the chariot. Undeterred, Hades jumped from the chariot with the rest of us close behind. I could see him diminish as he came within range of the stones, but he was still a formidable warrior, and his charge didn’t slow.

As soon as I got in range, I started changing the banestones from anti-nyv to nyv. Hecate, an expert in magic, took the opportunity to pick them up and lob them at the brothers, who hadn’t anticipated such an attack. The flying nyv tore holes in the nearest rainbows.

I tried not to listen to the screams or hear the sound of Hades’s trident ripping through flesh. I thought about Occultus’s claim that the Brotherhood wanted to reverse the effects of the Catastrophe. Was I fighting on the wrong side? Despite everything, I found myself trusting Hades more than Occultus. That didn’t mean I wanted to see the brothers slaughtered, but I doubted I could stop Hades now. He moved with machinelike precision through the ranks of the brothers, giving no quarter and taking no prisoners.

It didn’t take long for Persephone, Hecate, and Charon to join the fray. Even without magic, all of them had considerably more than mortal strength and durability. The brothers, confused by the attack, dropped banestones so near their own lines that those who faced the Olympians had no magic to protect themselves. The result was the slaughter of virtually every brother on the frontlines. The metallic smell of blood was making me sick.

But the brothers, though unprepared for a battle with the Underworld gods, weren’t stupid. After the initial carnage, they stopped using banestones and concentrated all of their magic on shielding themselves as they had when they first faced Charon. They managed a barrier strong enough that Hades and Charon couldn’t immediately breach it, though they threw themselves in a frenzy trying.

Each blow Hades struck with his trident made the rainbows flicker and sent the black energy of death outward from the point of impact. The nearest brothers only got a partial dose, but it was enough to render them weak and sometimes plunge them into unconsciousness. They had to be pulled back by those not yet affected.

Charon’s staff caused almost as much flickering and sent waves of fear against the nearest brothers. After studying the situation for a moment, Hecate joined in by blasting with simultaneous bursts of air, earth, and water magic, which distorted the rainbows by shifting the delicate balance of power within them.

I kept turning anti-nyv into nyv. The increasingly unstable rainbows slowed the efforts of the brothers to replace the anti-nyv. For the first time, I let myself hope. Our adversaries seemed to be losing ground. Even without Persephone, who was still studying the rainbows, and Cerberus, Still cowering in the chariot, we were pushing the brothers further and further back, away from the shore of Acheron and towards the doorway I had created.

Adamant!

I’d been so preoccupied by the battle that I’d forgotten Hermes was still tethered to me. He’d gotten weaker and was now completely invisible. But I was sure that was his whisper. It had to be a warning—

Before I could reach the obvious conclusion, I felt the energies around me shift abruptly, and Hades backed away from the rainbows with an arrow sticking out of his right arm—an arrow with an adamantine head.

The golem hosting Thoth had also been attacked by an adamantine weapon. Puzzle pieces started to snap together in my mind, but thinking through all the implications would have to wait until later.

Persephone was already at Hades’s side, deftly removing the arrow and caressing the wound with her life-giving energy. But before the wound had even started to heal, Charon was also struck, this time a shoulder wound that caused him to drop his staff.

I did my best to raise a shield of air magic around us, but I knew I was too late to deflect the next round of arrows already plowing toward us.

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