CHAPTER SUMMARY
Percy's dream, part three; Persephone and Hades battle Hecate.
BEGINNING NOTES
Chapter Rating: General Audiences
Content Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence
Word Count: 3558
And all the characters are owned by J.K. Rowling, or Rick Riordan.
____________________PERCY____________________
If Hecate had looked like Morgan le Fay when she entered Hades' Palace, if she had acted like Morgan le Fay when Hades accused her of kidnapping Nico, she transformed into Morgan le Fay when she responded to Persephone's fury.
For half a second, the throne room was in silence. Hades stood in front of his throne, staring at his wife and "guest" in front of him, trying to process Hecate's words through undefinable amounts of rage. Persephone glared at her combatant, absolute hatred in her eyes, running through what would be the best course of action in her mind at lightning speed. Hecate trained her eyes on the Queen of the Underworld, then its King, smug arrogance contorting her features as she watched the two gods try to figure out what to do--what they could do.
Still watching the scene play out, but safe in dream-form, Percy didn't have to worry about action--not until he woke up, anyway. So, without having to deal with planning his next move, the son of Poseidon could let fear and worry envelop him.
"You don't have a stepson anymore?!" Does that mean Hecate killed him?! No... wouldn't Hades and Persephone know if he were dead? Unless she used her magic to kidnap his soul after she murdered him, and is keeping him captive in one of her caves in the Underworld. Or maybe she'd have put him in her lands in Great Britain. Or a different world like Ogygia--shit, even if he is alive, I'll never be able to find him! Even the whole camp looking wouldn't be able to search every possible world Hecate could've put him in! And, if he's dead--
Percy's panic attack stopped short as the scene in front of him exploded. Persephone sprung at Hecate--not catfight level, she was way more dignified than that--but, she screamed in anger and thrust both her hands towards Hecate. Vines--the same thorned kind with the black roses that she'd used to restrain Hades earlier--erupted from the floor of the palace, as thick as Percy's shoulders were broad. Hecate muttered something under her breath--no doubt a spell in Ancient Greek--and shot into the air. The vines grew to follow her, but she was too good a flyer and managed to stay out of their reach.
"Get her!" Hades shouted, referring the Furies, who'd perched themselves in their usual spot on the throne as soon as Hecate arrived.
With a squawk, the three Kindly Ones launched into battle. Dead soldiers flooded into the throne room, holding Korean War era machine guns, and started firing Celestial Bronze bullets (patented by Dr. Chase) at the hovering goddess. The three attackers cornered her in five minutes flat. With maybe three seconds left before her capture, Hecate yelled a curse of her own.
Though the incantation was in Ancient Greek, and the words didn't translate in Percy's mind like usual (that just meant they had no English equivalent), he knew it had to be bad. Why? Because, backed in a corner, about to become a P.O.W., Hecate sounded like she'd just won the lottery.
Blue orbs--Percy recognized those from the Battle of Manhattan, when he'd seen them surrounding Olympus--shot from the Greek Fire circling her wrists. At light speed--they were light, after all--they gathered in the center of the throne room. When the last small orb entered the larger circle--it took a literal second to get all the orbs together--they exploded.
H-bomb style.
The list of what didn't get blown to bits was shorter than the list of what did. The entire throne room? The palace was rubble. The three Furies? In Tartarus, along with any other non-immortal Hades employed within a mile of his palace. The dead Korean soldiers? Nothing but pure consciousness, along with any dead soul closer than Asphodel. The rosebush vines? Black pulp, along with Persephone's garden, and any other courtyard.
Hades stared at Hecate, who was lowering herself to the ground, too calm for someone who'd just blown up his home. He seemed to be searching for a curse terrible enough to punish her. He scanned the rubble, trying to think of something, until he saw--
"Persephone!" Hades yelled, but it wasn't a roar of anger, but a scream of anguish. He bolted to her side. Percy didn't want to look at the Queen of the Underworld, not if the sight of her made Hades react like that, but he forced himself to.
Had Helen of Troy fallen in the Trojan War, she would've resembled Persephone now. From the look in Hecate's eye, she'd somehow planned this, or had at least known it would happen. Somehow, she'd ensured that Persephone would cripple in the blast, but not disfigure, not incinerate--she'd look just like herself, just like the Queen of the Underworld, but with painful, horrible injuries. It was all the more cruel to Hades who loved his wife more than his own existence.
First, Percy noticed her godly injuries. Her hair always curled and moved like it was in a spring breeze, but now it laid flat on the blackened rubble that used to be the floor of the throne room. Her eyes were wide open, but the golden glow had faded to a more human-like hazel. Her lips before the blast were shiny and pink, as though she wore a tinted lip gloss. Now, they had lost their magical makeup quality, and became too pale, like a hypothermic swimmer.
Then, there were the more mortal, obvious injuries. She bled golden ichor, the blood of the gods, from a thousand spots--both arms, legs, sternum, neck, shoulders, face--anywhere where the blast had scraped off enough skin to bleed. Thorns spiked the palms of her hands and bottoms of her fingers; she must've shielded her face on instinct. One thorn, a small one she couldn't block, had lodged itself in her bottom lip, on the left side. It was a deep wound, with Ichor dripping down the side of her chin and onto the floor, adding to the puddle, which was a foot wide on every side and growing. The blast tore off her finger and toenails, some completely, others broken in excruciating ways. Her left hand rested on her stomach, but her right laid twisted at a funny angle by her head. She must've dropped right where she stood, because her legs bent into her, her feet sticking out on the left side of her body, halfway down her back.
Her dress--which, until the blast, had been the same as Percy remembered her winter dress looking like, faded colors that looked white at first, arranged to give the appearance that smoke covered her body--was nothing less than mutilated. Most of it was a mixture of black--scarred from the ash--and gold from her blood. The blast ripped the hems into jagged lines, so tattered remains littered her legs. The front of the dress, from the collar to the waistline, was nothing more than a few hanging threads across her otherwise naked chest (which Percy's eyes avoided at all costs; if he ever saw Hades, and the god knew he had that image in his head, he'd turn Percy into a cockroach and squash him).
Her crown--a tiara made of a mixture of pure gold and silver, with precious gems outlining the bottom, and a large, black opal on top--didn't survive the blast. Shards of silver, gold, opal, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, topaz, sapphire, and so on glittered the floor. One gemstone--it looked like jade--had flown about thirty feet away from Persephone's body. Her other jewelry--necklaces and bracelets made of gemstones shaped into flowers--seemed to have gone the same way. Only her wedding ring remained on her finger, a band of black gold with a pinkish gem--a Pink Star Diamond, according to Hazel and Piper, the one time Persephone's ring had come up in conversation--was in perfect condition, on her left ring finger, resting on her stomach.
Wow. The wedding ring, Hecate? That's harsh.
In summary, the powerful Queen of the Underworld looked like a godly corpse. Her skin was vampirish, like her lips. She wasn't moving, she wasn't breathing, and her eyes weren't blinking. But, that wasn't what worried Percy, nor caused that aura of grief in the Lord of the Dead as he knelt beside his wife, knees stained and surrounded by her blood.
Persephone had always been beautiful, but now she looked radiant. A warm glow surrounded her body, like the first lights of a new dawn. But, that wasn't a good thing. Percy had never seen that light before but he learned what it meant. It was a form of healing magic, the kind the Apollo kids used to heal. There was too little of it in demigod blood for it to work; it only activated when a half-blood ate ambrosia or nectar, or another demigod temporarily transferred theirs to their patient in a healing spell.
But, gods were different.
The healing magic made up their blood the way red blood cells made up a mortal's. It was the reason their blood was a golden ichor, it was so potent in each drop. It kept them alive and immortal, allowed them to heal, quick and easy, from just about anything; the hue was the magic trying to do its job. Under normal circumstances, it shone for a microsecond. Even then, it only happened when the damage was so extensive and plentiful that all the magic in the immortal's body required activation to heal the wounds.
The thing was, the magic didn't work the way one would expect; it was an all-or-nothing kind of situation. The magic did nothing until there was enough of it to do everything; it couldn't work piece by piece like the human body, you weren't healed at all until there was enough magic present. Then, you recovered in an instant. And, the hue only came when every ounce of healing magic was pressed to the wounds, to save the god. Their bodies couldn't make more than what was already there; they'd maxed out the limit in their blood when they'd evolved from the Titans.
In conclusion: if Persephone had that glow long enough for anyone to see it... she wasn't healing.
Ever.
For a full minute, as Hades stared at the broken body of his bride, he seemed to forget everything but the image of her wounds. Hecate might as well have disapparated like one of her followers for the amount of thought Hades paid her. If she wanted to, she could've walked out of there without him even noticing. But, she stayed, watching with a cruel smile as he mumbled some healing spells, trying to help Persephone's magic heal her.
He only managed to make the hue a teeny bit brighter.
Percy couldn't see Hades' face; his back was to the son of Poseidon, and his face straight down at his Queen. He only saw a husband reach for the thorn in his wife's lip, and pull it out with a hand so gentle he might've convinced himself she could still feel pain. He didn't kiss her; he took her left hand in his, where his own wedding ring sat, and grazed the bottom of her pink diamond with his thumb. Without looking up, he spoke, in a voice Percy had only heard once before: when he'd stood beside the broken body of Maria di Angelo. But, he'd only known Bianca and Nico's mom for a decade; that was maybe five minutes compared to the time he'd spent with Persephone. If he'd felt grief at that loss, it was nothing now.
"Why her?"
"She challenged me."
"Why not me?"
"I was hoping for you. In fact, I expected it--you're much more prone to anger than Queen Persephone."
Her words were cool, calm, collected, cruel, and calculating. Despite what she'd said, there was no doubt in Percy's mind that this was exactly what she'd both wanted and expected. Hades not only noticed what Percy had, but seemed to know exactly what she meant. He looked like Olympus itself had fallen on his head.
" I flegómeni filí tou thanátou," Hades whispered.
The words translated in Percy's mind, and the realization hit him like a ton of drachmas in the gut. In an instant, it all made sense--everything, right down to the contradictions Percy first saw over a year ago.
She'd chosen the Titans in the Second Titan War. She resented the gods, for not making her a major goddess, an Olympian. She'd been using Persephone's abduction to gain power, but it hadn't worked, so she saw her chance and took it. The Titans lost, and she failed... but, she pretended to see the error in her thinking and begged forgiveness. She granted Hazel ghost status to keep her in the mortal world, trained her and earned Hades' begrudging debt. She bided her time.
Now, Hecate had Hazel as a ghost, and Nico as a captive. His children. His only children. She played dumb to let the truth warp Hades' mind with fear--Hecate, a lowly Titan goddess, had manipulated him into giving up his children without him realizing it. For a year. That was what Percy had missed; that was the conversation just before his dream started. Hades had told Persephone everything, Persephone had begged him to challenge her at the council, but Hades knew she could manipulate them all.
She'd already gotten Olympus in her pocket. That's how she got followers in the first place.
That's where the control of his temper came from; a terrified Hades feared Hecate would outsmart him again, and something worse would happen. He was forcing himself to control his anger for Persephone's sake--she'd be going in this time, to try and counter Hecate's attacks. Running on an emotional, furious mind would cloud him of any dangers she might be in.
But, that had been Hecate's plan all along. That's why she didn't kill Nico outright, she captured him, hid him, scared the godly Erebos-lights out of Hades, so Persephone would take the lead. Hecate acted her part well, first the innocent to annoy the Queen of the Underworld, then in a 'rage' she dropped the perfect insults to launch Persephone into a rant. Persephone dropped the final insult, the last words she was famous for... and stepped into Hecate's range.
Percy recalled a story he'd heard in a History of Magic. Legends said that Ignatia Wildsmith, a child of Hecate in the middle ages who passed as a powerful wizard in her realm, received a gift from her mother on her 93rd birthday. The plant bore a blessing of Hecate's, powdering its leaves and throwing that powder into torch fire--Hecate's symbol--would allow the caster to control the flames and use it to embellish their magic, turning pure thought and wishes into unique spells. Ignatia, more greedy than she was smart, thought it would be a brilliant idea to amend the gift a bit, making it so the magical flames could only transport the caster based on their thoughts, rather than do anything. Then, she sold it in Diagon Alley, made it so the powder would replace itself when used or sold, and made a fortune.
Then, two weeks later, Hecate found out, and Ignatia made it onto a Chocolate Frog card!
Though Floo Powder caught on, Hecate still used the flames for their original purpose--combat. It looked exactly like the Greek Fire she always wore when not in disguise, so it was super easy to sneak it into battle. And, she used the flames so rarely that no one ever suspected her to use them.
Why not use them all the time? You needed to surround yourself in the fire; her followers stood in their fireplaces to use them as transport. The flames were hard to use, since most people don't stand five feet in front of whoever they're battling, if they can help it. And they usually can.
But, Persephone had to get in her last comment. Hecate pretended to freak out, but instead of pelting her with Greek Fire, she enveloped her in 'harmless,' magical flames. She used their power to strip Persephone of whatever magic she used to protect herself in battle, then, when the attack came, Hecate let loose her nuclear powers with the Queen of the Underworld unable to defend herself.
Because that wasn't harmless Floo Powder. It was I flegómeni filí tou thanátou ... the flaming kiss of death.
After years watching Annabeth plan for wars, Percy knew Hecate's plan. Hades didn't have too many family members who were even indifferent to him, much less loved--or even just liked--him. Because of the old Big Three Pact, Hades had only two children--Hazel and Nico. Them, plus Persephone, made up his family. Hecate just took them all away from him, right under his nose, in one, foul swoop. She wanted what she'd always wanted--his status as a major god, and his spot as the thirteenth Olympian. To Hades, she wanted to break him into giving up.
But Hecate was smarter than that. She knew Hades couldn't control his temper, and was fiercely loyal to those who showed him the slightest hint of love. If Hades would "open the gates of the Underworld and let the dead flood into the world" rather than let Demeter take Persephone, what would he do with a foe that always outsmarted every other god who might help him? He'd take matters into his own hands, declare war, and keep on fighting until Hecate was too scared to keep his family from him, until Zeus ordered her to bring them home.
Hades would cement his status as an angry, vengeful, irrational, uncontrollable god. Hecate did everything with a scapegoat--from any other god's perspective, Hades was throwing a tantrum because he couldn't have it all. As soon as Hades got what he wanted, it would all be over. A scared Olympic Council would strip Hades of his power. The gods would kill his children. They would force Persephone into divorce, and keep her from ever returning to her [ex-]husband's side. Hades would have his realm taken away from him, chained like so many other enemies of Zeus, and banished to Tartarus.
As for Hecate? She'd proven she could take care of lands and followers for centuries through the Wizarding World. She'd gain Erebos, status as a major god, and likely the full Olympianship Hades never got from his reputation as a scary guy. If she wanted, she could do the same thing to Zeus, and become Queen of Olympus.
Oh yeah. And the world would burn. All Percy could do was watch it happen.
His fingers still laced with hers, Hades drew Persephone's left hand towards his chest. The pink diamond dug into his skin. He lowered his head; Percy could picture his face--eyes closed, taking solace in the slight physical pain to distract from the deep, emotional torment. He seemed worn down; his honor was nothing to him at that moment.
"Heal her," he whispered. He didn't even try to make it sound like a demand or even a request.
Hecate smiled at the small victory; she'd gotten a brother of Zeus to beg. "Why would I revive a woman who tried to capture me, Lord Hades?"
"You will give her back to me," Hades answered Hecate, his voice stronger now, more demanding, more hateful, more threatening. "And my son. And my daughter."
Hecate smiled and gave a small laugh. Again, Percy couldn't help but notice the similarity to--
Wait a second... if Morgan le Fay and Merlin were both real wizards... and people always said she was his mistress when she studied with him... didn't Bagshot say she disappeared, never to show her face again, and less than a year later, Merlin had a newborn baby... he always said Morganwasn't the child's mother... what if she wasn't lying?
"No. No, I won't."
"Yes, Hecate, you will."
"You still never answered my question. Why?"
What if he wasn't sleeping with his student because she was training him? What if Morgan le Fay wasn't the child's mother because Morgan le Fay never existed? What if that was Hecate's child?
"You think me weak, Hecate. You think you can break me into submission?"
"Yes, Lord Hades. I do."
"You underestimate me, Titan. Now, give me my family back, or you will regret it."
"Why?"
The son of Merlin and Hecate... who helped to teach his mother's followers magic like she had her lover? Who co-founded the most prestigious school in his mother's realm? Who made something so great, his own father, Merlin, sorted himself into his son's house, so he could qualify to teach and be a part of it?
What if Salazar Slytherin was Hecate's child?
"Because, if you don't comply by the year's end, I will open the doors of Erebos and release the dead into the world. My warriors will find your pockets of followers and kill each and every one of them, along with anyone who gets in their way. If I don't have my wife, daughter, and son free of harm and your influence by December 31st... the Underworld goes to war."
What if Tom Riddle was Hecate's descendant?
"Then we go to war," Hecate agreed, with a cunning smile, and disapparated in a swoop of fire.
END NOTES
I'd add in a sound effect, but I too much enjoy the silence of you staring in shock at the screen.
Oh, and Morgan le Fay and Merlin WERE lovers in the original legend. Sometimes. It depends on what version you read--it was written a long time ago. But, no, that's not my BBC Merlin shipper brain, it's actually true. Look it up if you don't believe me :P
This week's beta commentary:
STORY: Hecate sounded like she'd just won the lottery.
SARA: Anyone else remember that really fucked up story called the Lottery?? Like, the villagers all drew stones and who ever got the black one they beat to death no matter prior relationships? I do. I will never forget it.
GIULIA: YES I LOVE THE LOTTERY SO MUCH
GIULIA: IT'S THE OG HUNGER GAMES
LISSY: YES I REMEMBER