Chapter Eight
"So. This is the last of the Valens line."
That is exactly what Neptune said after I'd only been standing in front of him for a few seconds. The God, who only looked to be in his mid-twenties early thirties at the most, sat in a chair that gave the impression like it belonged in the first class dining room of the Titanic instead of up on the platform where it currently was. It was simple, not something I ever thought I would see a God sitting in. A rather pretty woman sat on his right with Hades on his left. His chair was literally made of smoke. I was sure there was something invisible that was holding him up, something more solid then smoke but I couldn't be sure. Hades regarded me with nothing more than mild curiosity, no apology at all on his face. I was starting to doubt if Poseidon, or Neptune as the Assarions called him and I was supposed to be thinking of him, really wanted to discuss his brother's mishap from this morning.
"She's quite lovely," the woman said. "May I keep her, husband?"
Neptune smiled at his wife but then said, "I'm afraid not, my dear. Her...role is something bigger than that of a statue in your shipwreck garden." He turned his attention back to me and stood up. "No, I do believe she is the one I was told of quite a while ago. Someone I've been waiting patiently for."
That caused her to look at me a little differently. "She doesn't look like much."
"They never do." He stopped in front of both myself and Andrzej. Even though I could feel him look me over while he'd circled the pair of us, I could feel him appraising Andrzej as well. "But they always look the same. The true oracles. There are a slew of fakes, you know."
"They are all true oracles, brother," Hades said dryly.
"You are wrong in weighing them the same. In fact, I'm surprised you didn't notice just how powerful she was when you tried to kill her this morning. I could feel it the second her feet touched the floor of the hall."
Hades rolled his eyes. "I was focused on other things."
"Yes, like maintaining your pact with Cyrus." He glanced over his shoulder at his brother. "What you don't realize is their combined potential. You're viewing them separately and that is your mistake. You're acting like Logios and Janus, brother."
"Do not speak to me of those two. All they do is go back and forth over the Elite. It's tedious and annoying. They see what is good for them at the present which is uncharacteristic for Janus. His intentions are usually more long term."
Neptune just smirked at his brother and turned back to me. "What my brother is trying to say is..."
"I can speak for myself." Hades stood up, his chair disappearing instantly, and walked over to where the three of us were standing. "You don't really need an apology, do you?"
"I'd like one but I understand completely if you don't give it."
"Good. Then I'll be going."
"Not so fast, brother. There are...other things that need to be addressed."
"Such as?"
"Your deal. You should probably explain why you tried to gut her like a fish. Maybe even bring Cyrus himself down to help explain it. She just might understand better than you think."
"You want me to explain my actions to her? A mere...mortal? I don't think so, brother. You are..."
Neptune raised an eyebrow at him. "Summon your pawn, Plouton. Or I'll summon him for you."
"You can't threaten me, Poseidon. Cyrus would never listen to you."
"He would if he knows she's here. I think you underestimate, like Janus and Logios do, just how much they mean to each other. But that's the problem, isn't it? Everyone sees their past, the fact they grew up together and they view it as a problem. They've become attached, uncooperative if the other is absent." Neptune clicked his tongue. "You should know just how that is, brother. For it's the same for you without your Persephone."
"Don't bring her into this."
"Then summon your pawn and while we're waiting on him, we'll have a demonstration." He turned to me, those sea blue eyes twinkling with a hint of mischief. "What do you think?"
"I don't think she needs to prove herself. At least not to you," Andrzej spoke up. "The Gods like to play games and she would be wise to keep what she can do in check as to not bring it to the Gods' attentions."
"But she's already been brought to our attentions. Long before you even thought to enter the picture." Neptune went over to stand in front of him. "The last of Lycaon's line. Not something you're proud of, I believe. Fitting, though, the situation you now find yourself in."
Andrzej stared coldly at him. "We all have family lines. Some of us are more proud of them than others."
"Tell me, boy. Have you informed your εταίρος of what you are? What you turn into on the new moon each month? How you came to be the way you are?"
"Now, now, brother. Don't go spilling the boy's secrets. She'll figure it out soon enough on her own. Especially if she's paired with him and plans on staying that way." Hades looked amused. "Janus made an interesting decision pairing the two of you up. I highly doubt this partnership will last the fortnight. Janus just might have to make good on his deal."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.
Several of the see-through panels shimmered until images popped up, playing for me like a video. Each had their own set of conversations. I watched in interest as one played the conversation between myself and Andrzej's conversation from earlier, the one in which he was being rather heartless about my mother's death when we were walking down the hall with Caroline. Another played him showing me to my room the first time and the conversation we had concerning my inability to come to terms with my new home. On yet another was the agreement I'd made with Janus about seeing and speaking with Cecil again.
One by one they ended and by the time the last one played out, Neptune was smirking and Hades had a sour expression on his face. Something Hades saw, he didn't like.
"She's not supposed to be able to see the past."
"Interesting thing about that, brother, is she was answering her own question. There was nothing in the immediate future of this place that would've answered it. Therefore her power took her back to a time where it could." He smiled at me. "And you did quite well. Now," he put both hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes, "tell me something that will happen now, in a few moments time."
Everything inside of me seized up so I was standing completely still. It felt like I'd become a tree, grew roots into the ground and feeling the future of where I was. His palace was huge but to me...I was like a giant, looking down at a miniature of the place. I saw the room we were in and the halls that branched out behind a few of the panels. The servant girl from earlier stood in one, rearranging one of the flower arrangements in a vase painted with a scene from a great battle. She didn't see the man coming up from behind her, a gentle smile on his face as he tickled her sides...
"She didn't mean to." A sound of the shattering pottery accompanied my words a few seconds later. "Another servant startled her." I recounted a few other things, one that even made me blush. But there was something I was seeing outside the palace, something that came to me like the images on the panels a few moments before. I didn't know what it was or how it was coming to me but I could feel the true possibility of it happening. It was far enough into the future that it was still tangible in my hands somewhat, able to be molded and changed to how I thought it to be. But there was something else rather sturdy about it, permanent almost. I looked over at Hades, tilting my head to the side. "Your plan won't work. She won't stay with you longer than she has to, even if she wants to. No girl wants to be tied to her mother forever no matter how much they love each other. She loves you too but not as much as you would like, not in the way you'd like." I shivered as something I didn't want to see flashed before my eyes. "It won't end well, I'm afraid. Eventually she won't come back."
What I'd just seen flashed across a panel to my left. It was of the beginning at first, a flaxen haired girl standing in a field. The emotion tied to the place was incredible, both sadness and happiness but the girl herself...she was rather miserable. It flashed to the day she would do it, how the smile slowly drained from her face and became a look of a weary old woman who just wanted it to end.
"She grows tired of the back and forth. The games the Three Brothers play is beginning to wear on everyone, including her." For some reason I reached up and grabbed a hold of Neptune's arms, a hold he didn't shrug off or say anything about. "If you continue, the seas and oceans will dry up. The creatures who dwell here and on the Earth will perish...the only thing that will remain is death. For death will exist long after everything else."
"Ok. I think that's enough," Hades said. "It's getting rather gloomy in here, even for me."
"You wanted a demonstration," Andrzej broke in, trying to pull my arm off Neptune's. "You got one. But I believe he is right, Natalie. You should stop now."
For some reason the vision twisted over so it was centered on Andrzej. Maybe it was because of him touching me but I suddenly saw him returning home to find his whole family dead. His mother was laying across the stairs of the purple and blue travel wagon on her back, her eyes still wide open for the world to see. There were claw marks across her neck, blood dripping down to pool on the stair below her head. She had the same colored eyes as her son.
Andrzej looks down at his hands, a question on his mind that he's afraid to ask...
I didn't know if I said any of that out loud but he looked startled enough, his face paling worse than the sheet of paper his father's warning was scribbled on the side of the wagon...
"Your family loved you," I whisper to him. "No matter what happened to you or what's coming..."
"Brother, I think that's quite enough."
My attention of course was reverted back to Hades. "She'll die before you can figure it out. She knows that is the only way to keep herself in one place for longer than a handful of months...but yet...it's not the only way..."
"I said that's enough!" Hades cried.
In the back of my mind, I heard what else he said but the images just kept repeating over and over in my head, like they were on a loop and blurring themselves with the present. Bloody hands, dried up lakebed, and a huge explosion that no one could stop. I knew, without a doubt, that whatever that explosion was, it was what caused the end of this, all of it. The end of the Elite, the end of the Gods, the end of human kind.
The panels around me reflected all three images, over and over again. All of them shaking and vibrating like what I was seeing was sure to shatter them. It was ok, though, at least in my mind. Because if the images shattered, then maybe they wouldn't be true anymore. Maybe the future would turn into something else that wasn't death and destruction. Mankind was much more than that. We created, sometimes very beautiful things but as I was seeing it, in the future it wouldn't matter what the people of the Earth created. It would all end in a blink of an eye, a span of one heartbeat...
All of a sudden a hand was clapped over my eyes and another over my mouth, drowning out what I was seeing and replacing it with something else. Something a bit happy in its own right, but sad all the same.