The Titan's Daughter | complete

20. I Release A Few Eternally Damned Souls

Ahomana's POV

MY MEMORY CAME back at the most inconvenient moment. The tale of the Danaides, the daughters of Danaus, was a gruesome one.

Basically, these two twin brothers, Danaus and Aegyptus, had two different kingdoms and usually fought over land. Danaus bore fifty daughters to four different women, and Aegyptus had fifty sons. Aegyptus asked Danaus if he could marry his sons to Danaus's daughters. This would bring him a lot of leverage over his brother.

Skip a few disagreements, and the marriages were set. But Danaus didn't want to marry off his daughters, so he gave each of them a dagger and told them to kill their husbands on their wedding night.

All but one carried out the deed.

So the fact that apparently their father had told them to kill me, it made me want to run away and cry. I suspected that the Fury had appeared to them looking like their dad and told them to stab me to death.

I guess dying at the hands of forty-nine beautiful women wouldn't be the worst end.

"Whoa, hold up where." I raised my unarmed hand, "I just want the bident and then I can go. You can get back to your water and everything will be normal again. No need to kill me."

"Don't kill him." Adrasteia frowned, "That would be bad."

"Yeah." I agreed, "Bad."

The Danaides advanced. I backed up and pulled Adrasteia behind me. The little girl was starting to grow on me.

And then a crazy idea popped into my head. I mean, I couldn't fight all of them and live.

"Come on." The first Danaide cooed, her celestial bronze dagger glinting in the reddish light. "It'll be fun."

Fun was not the word I'd use.

The dark haired girl suddenly leapt forward, slashing her knife. I ducked and slammed my fist into her stomach, reluctant to impale her with my spear. She flew backwards and two of her sisters caught her.

"You wouldn't want to kill me." I announced, "I'm your only chance at getting free of your punishment."

The Danaides hesitated. Then the darker haired one of hit shouted, "He lies! He only wants to escape us!"

The other Danaides started yelling in agreement and started towards me again.

"Wait!" I yelped, "I can patch up your vase!"

Even the dark haired one froze. A new one, one of the few with light hair, piped up and said, "We can fill it up?"

"Sure, you can fill it up. And then you'll be free to wander around the Underworld as you please. You could sneak into Elysium."

At the mention of Elysium, all fort-nine girls broke out in excited chatter.

I started to hurriedly search through my pockets. I'd left my duffel bag with Dallas and Thysía, but I usually carried some sort of tape.

My hand hit my back pocket and I let out a sigh of relief. A roll of duct tape.

"How're you going to patch our basin, demigod?" The dark haired one sneered.

"You'll see." I told her, "But all I want is the bident."

"That rusty old fork? Pah, you can have it."

Taping up the vase proved harder than I thought. There were a lot of leakages. But I eventually got enough covered for the Danaides to excitedly rush from the river Styx to the basin and fill it up.

The bident had actually been sitting in the water inside the vase the whole time.

I looked at it warily as the dark haired Danaide presented it to me.

It was made of Stygian Iron, and was radiating a kind of black mist that didn't look very fun to touch.

I swallowed and took it from her. I felt it's power coursing through me instantly.

I'm holding a god's weapon. The realisation sent a shiver down my spine.

The dark haired Danaide rushed away from me and sprinted down the bloody pathway to catch up to her sisters. They were all laughing and skipping merrily through the Fields of Punishment.

I looked at Adrasteia. She hadn't said much as I worked on the basin.

"Are you okay?" I asked her.

"You'll be leaving now, won't you?" She sighed, "I don't make friends much down here."

My bear broke for her. I squatted in front of her and put my hands in her shoulders, forcing her to look at me.

"I'll come and visit you, don't you worry about that, Addy." I smiled, nicknaming her.

She grinned back at me. "I'd like that."

"But before I go, tell me about yourself." I suggested.

"Do you want to know about why I'm here?" She asked, "They usually do."

"Only if you want to."

"Ok." She grinned at me, before the smile faded and she began her story, plopping down on the black sand of the River Styx. "My real Daddy left one day, and Mommy told me he went to get milk. But I'm not stupid. I know he died."

I didn't know what to say. Luckily, she continued.

"Mommy married a bad man. He told me he was my Daddy now. But he hurt my sister Layla. He hit her all the time, if she didn't do something he wanted her too. He hit me sometimes as well."

I gaped. What man would hit a little girl?

"One day he was about to punch Layla and I pushed him away from her. But he fell backwards and went down the stairs." She said quietly, "Mommy thought I was a murderer. She wouldn't listen to Layla. Mommy went crazy. One day I walked into her room and she took out a knife and stabbed me."

"Oh my god." I mumbled, "That horrible." I couldn't help but wonder how a family had ended up so dysfunctional.

"They said I had to push my real Daddy down the stairs every day and watch him die over and over again." She whimpered.

"It's okay, Addy, it couldn't be your father's real spirit." I tried to comfort her, "It's just a vision."

She looked up at me. "Don't end up like me. Save your friends. Go. They'll need you soon."

"Thank you."

And then I put the pearl on the ground, stood up and crushed it underfoot.

"See you soon, Addy."

Her voice was faint as I rushed upwards and sped towards the ceiling. But I just heard it, "See you soon, Mana!"

And then I hit the Underworld roof. I slid through the soil and I slowly felt it getting colder, and wetter.

I barely had time to hope that I didn't come up underwater, when I burst out into freezing liquid and broke the surface.

I was standing in a freezing cold mountain creek.

I heard a car driving past nearby, and bush-bashed until I came to a road. I glanced around.

There was a sign on the other side that read welcome to mount tamalpais.

I started walking uphill, my hands full with my spear and Hades' bident.