With the manticore charging the veil, Lazarus stares straight ahead, watching the wave in the shield work its way down rather quickly. As they fly closer, Lazarus vaults himself off of the beast's back, diving head first through the ripple and for the third time, it's as if time stands still.
Soaring through the air, the blue haired boy squeezes his eyes shut tight, keeping himself as straight as possible as he slips through the crinkled veil. The veil hisses as he passes through, rolling into a soft landing in the middle of the platform. He scrambles back against the front of the desk, frantically covering his ears to block out the low humming buzz. His brain vibrates within his skull and he screams. The buzzing slowly fades away and Lazarus starts to catch his breath.
Out in the grotto, Melinoe jumps down into the canoe with Charon, urging him to paddle faster. They approach the island with the manticore sitting at its base. The beast growls, warning them off and away from the platform, but Melinoe hisses at the creature and it cowers, flying back into the hole it came from.
She peers up at the wall of hellfire, shaking her head with a creased brow. She doesn't see the break in the veil. She doesn't understand how he made it through unscathed.
Inside, Lazarus stands to his feet, shaking off the dizziness that threatens to overcome him. He looks down at the intricately and magnificently detailed mosaic mural. The image depicts Hades at the center, surrounded with silver and black tiles featuring little red glowing eyes. But on the outskirts of the image are clouds with faces hidden inside. Hate and pride and jealousy emanate from the mosaic, but so does love and distrust and honor.
Carefully, he walks across the floor to the edge of the platform to where Mel and Charon stand on the opposite side of the shield. The buzzing grows louder in his head and he flinches from it, but soon realizes that the sound must be coming from the shield — like a live-wired fence and not from inside his head.
"Let us in!" Melinoe shouts at him, but from behind the wall of hellfire all he can hear is a muffled warbling as her mouth moves. He shakes his head, shrugging his shoulders. She turns to Charon, desperation in her eyes and voice, "he can't hear us."
"Find a button or a key or something!" Charon shouts at the wall, thinking that she must not have been loud enough, but Lazarus just stares blankly at them. Charon raises his arms and drops them with a hiff, "he's useless."
"Here," Mel says, taking Charon's left hand in hers and tracing the inked lines.
Lazarus watches her carefully go over the markings in Charon's hand. The demon stares down at her, parting his lips as he longs for her touch. She bites her bottom lip as Charon's eyes flutter closed and his head rolls back. The moment is intimate and the longer it takes the more uncomfortable Lazarus feels watching them, but the lines start to glow and he can't pull himself to look away. Melinoe fondly raises Charon's hand, aiming it at the shield.
Lazarus takes a step back, not knowing what to expect but also not wanting to be in the line of fire if something was going to come shooting out of his palm. The five pointed symbol burns brighter against the hellfire and much like a bug zapper, the shield sparks.
"Fuck!" Charon shouts, dropping his arm and stumbling away from the shield, shaking his scorched hand. He brings it to his chest, hissing in pain. Mel grabs his arm urgently but gently, looking at the burned skin.
Her fingertips hover over the crackling flesh and she bites down on her bottom lip again. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, Mellie, I'm totally fine," he says sarcastically. "It's not like I almost just lost my fucking hand to fucking hellfire!"
"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."
A low ringing stirs in the back of Lazarus' mind. At first it's like a dull ache, but the longer he ignores it the louder and more violent it becomes. Aggressively, he shakes his fingers through his hair and effectively shakes the ringing from his skull. He stares at the bearded face, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is only one God. For a brief moment, an image of a woman flashes in his mind and he can hear her voice — peaceful and gentle, assuring him that he's right about this. The memory quickly fades and he winces in frustration.
"No. That's not right," he says confidently. Charon rolls his eyes at the boy, but Lazarus ignores him, continuing, "something isn't adding up. Does this feel right to you?"
He turns to Mel, but she shrugs, unsure of what to say. The images at her feet fill her with dread and the overwhelming confirmation that she's being left out of something, something important. She stares into her fathers face, not knowing what to think.
It would be easy to side with the demon — she cares for him deeply and doesn't ever want to be against him, but in believing him she would be ignoring the feeling in her gut. It would be easy to simply believe all of the things her father has told them, but she knows that he's sneaky and secretive and that anything he says should be taken with a grain of salt. It should be easy to trust them both.
It would be difficult to explain why she sides with the human — no one, including Melinoe, could fully grasp the intimate connection she feels with him, and yet the feeling exists. It's hard to justify believing his theory when he has no memory of his own life, but when he speaks and tells these stories, she feels the truth of them in her bones. And no matter how far out and insane his theories sound, she knows in her gut that she can trust him.
Feeling the pressure from both men, she looks to the ground, letting out a wavering, "no."
Lazarus exhales, balling his hands into his blue hair as he thinks aloud, "Hades said he came here of his own volition, right?"
"Yeah," Charon says, not sure where the human is taking this particular line of questioning.
"But that doesn't match the story."
Charon sighs, rolling his eyes again and grumbling, "there you go with your stories again."
"See," Lazarus starts, "Hades was sent to the Underworld to be kept away from Earth and away from the humans after he tried to steal the sky from Zeus. He led an uprising of dark and corrupt beings in an attempt to overthrow his more powerful brother."
"No-" Charon scoffs. "Hades chose the Underworld, he chose to live amongst demons and he chooses to torture souls. He wasn't sent here as a-a punishment."
"But he told you-" Lazarus points to Mel, "that he knew what it was like to be "cast out"."
Lazarus shakes his head and furrows his thick eyebrows.
"It's such a strange phrase, but when I heard it it sounded familiar. And at first I didn't know why, but I think I've heard it before. Hades didn't choose the Underworld. He isn't a God and neither are any of them."
"What are you saying?" Mel asks, standing to her feet and crossing her arms over the giant pit forming within her. She bites her bottom lip, knowing that she's asked a question she already knows the answer to.
"That's not Zeus," Lazarus says, pointing at the mighty bearded man hidden in the clouds. A light hearted chuckle of realization escapes him. "That's God. These aren't Olympians, they're angels."
Charon and Melinoe remain silent as the human in front of them walks around the platform looking into each of the faces depicted before he stands in the center, looking down.
"And Hades, isn't Hades at all." He shakes his head, "no. It's Lucifer. God's favorite son, the fallen angel, cast out of Heaven and sent to Hell for leading an uprising against his father."
"No." Charon says finally, shaking his head. "Nope. No. You're wrong."
"The stories are too similar not to be connected," Lazarus says plainly. Turning around, he approaches Melinoe, taking her head and gazing deeply into her eyes with a firm determination. He whispers, "you've gotta believe me."
And she does.
"Mellie," Charon says seriously, breaking the private world her and Lazarus seem to go to. "You can't seriously be listening to him. He-he doesn't know anything, okay? He can't remember how he got here, but this-this he's certain of?"
"I remembered my mom," Lazarus says quietly, dropping her hands. "She told me about all of this. About angels and demons. She told me that all stories are based on truth. What if that's what your father did? What if he came up with a story that made his fate seem better, made Him sound better?" He looks at Charon, "would you have followed him willingly, and been his loyal soldier, if you knew that he didn't choose to be your leader? That he didn't want to come here?"
"But he did," Charon defends, looking to his best friend for support, "Mellie?"
"I don't know," she whispers, lying to herself and to him. Charon scoffs as she looks at him with tightly pressed lips and shrugs her shoulders. "I don't know, okay? I don't know about any of it. Do I want to believe you and him? Of course I do, but I can't ignore what I've always felt. All I know is that we came here looking for a password, so that's what I'm going to do."
She stomps past both of them, ignoring their mixed expressions and sighs of displeasure. Stretching her hands across the rich mahogany desk, she grabs the only thing on the otherwise empty desk — a single small silver key. Snatching it, she attempts to unlock the top drawer but the key doesn't fit and she groans, shoving it into the bottom drawer. Twisting the key in the lock, she yanks it open.
"You're joking," she breathes.
Charon and Lazarus dash to the desk, peering down into the empty drawer.
"I thought we'd find something here." She slams the drawer shut with a huff of annoyance, "a clue, maybe a little piece of paper with the password written on it, something!"
"We did find something," Lazarus says. "We found the truth."
Charon snorts.
Lazarus ignores him, "I think the mosaic is the clue you're looking for."
"Of course you do." Charon scoffs, shaking his head and rolling his eyes.
"Think about it," Lazarus demands. "Why would he set up all of these acts of protection if there was nothing here?"
Melinoe walks away from the desk, tucking the key in her pocket beside her purple underlight. Walking back into the center of the space, she looks down into her fathers dark eyes, twinkling under the glow of the hellfire.
"This is his most sacred place," Mel whispers. "If he had a secret to hide this is where it would be. None of this makes any sense."
"But it does," Lazarus says softly, joining her in the middle of the platform. He leans into her, his fingertips tickling hers as he whispers, "you believe me. I know you do."
"Maybe there's nothing here, because he's not hiding anything," Charon suggests. "Have we thought of that? Mellie, I know you think he's doing something wrong, but what if he's not?"
"Torturing souls for all of eternity is pretty bad," Lazarus mutters under his breath.
"I don't know," Melinoe answers Charon, scowling down at her father's face. She furrows her brows, pointing down at him to make the boys behind her look at him. "What's he doing?"
"He's going home to the Underworld," Charon says, as if it's the only reasonable response.
"No-" She shakes her head, knowing within her heart of hearts that that isn't true. With a scoff, she says, "he's falling."
"He is the fallen one," Lazarus says quietly.
And as the phrase falls from his lips, the floor unlocks beneath them. The entire floor disappears and all three beings fall down into darkness.