Hellscape

Chapter 12: The Veil

    "Okay!" She fires back, lowering her gaze to his hand and speaking in a low apologetic tone, "I'm sorry, that was a stupid question."

    "You think?"

    As the two argue, Lazarus approaches the hellfire again, looking for the wrinkle. Watching it move down the wall, he juts his hand into it — stopping the veil from lowering any further. With a tremendous amount of force and effort, he lifts it slowly. Veins bulge in his neck and his arms as he creates an open field in the hellfire.

    Mel and Charon stand silent, completely stunned in place as they watch him hold the vibrating wall of hellfire in the palm of his hands when it nearly just charred the demon. She blinks at him, her lips parting as Charon mouths, "what the fuck", his burnt hand still resting in Melinoe's grasp.

    "I know that I'm making this look easy," Lazarus says, his voice strained as he grunts under the pressure of the veil. A vein near the slit in his eyebrow swells from under his skin, pulsing as he takes a deep breath he had been holding under the weight of the mystical protective wall. "But I don't think I can hold this for much longer."

    The two underlings shuffle in, ducking under the veil quickly so he can drop it and take a reprieve. Lazarus bends over, his elbows resting on his knees as he catches his breath.

    "How did you do that?" Mel asks, still baffled and impressed by his feat.

    "There's a ripple," he explains, still out of breath but gesturing behind him. "I just, you know, did it."

    "Seriously-" Charon scoffs, "who is this kid?"

    "That looks bad," Lazarus says, nodding towards Charon's damaged hand. "Does it hurt? Can I touch it?"

    "No, you can't touch it." Charon scowls, taken aback by his line of questioning, "what the fuck?"

    Mel turns away from them, rolling her eyes and looking down to the floor. She carefully lifts her feet one at a time to see the whole picture. Not only is Hades at the center, but he's laying in a pit of darkness while faces watch from the clouds. He doesn't look scared or relaxed, but defeated and betrayed. She spins in a circle, looking down at the entire image, "what is this?"

    Charon backs away from Lazarus, studying the mosaic with a simple shrug, "it's your dad."

    "I can see that," she says. She waltzes across the floor, approaching the lighter area of clouds and squatting down to delicately outline the hidden face. "But this isn't."

    Charon and Lazarus stand behind her, looking down at the wide flat features of a man with a large beard. Wrinkles are painted around and under his eyes, and beneath the large beard rest full lips. Nothing about this man resembles her father at first glance, but she can see him in the eyes and in his smile, and she wonders who he is and why this man would be so prominently displayed. To the right she sees another face and then another, all of varying expressions, features, races, and genders — faces she's never seen but feels familiar with. Lazarus studies each face too, his brows stitching together as he takes small steps backwards. He rubs his chin and his mouth, as the same familiar feeling overcomes him.

    "I know them," he whispers.

    "Well," Charon sing-songs gleefully. "Look who's been proven wrong. "There's only one God", HA! I knew it. He doesn't have a clue about anything."

    Mel and Lazarus cock their heads to the side, eyeing Charon with anticipation as they wait for him to explain his boastful outburst. He rolls his eyes, pointing around the platform at each of the Gods with a shaky wounded hand. "These are Gods. There's Zeus, Poseidon, Hestia, Hera, Aphrodite, Hermes, Athena and Ares, Apollo, Hephaestus, Demeter and Artemis. All twelve olympians are here, glaring and judging the greatest of them all — Hades."