“I am in need of your skills.” Morrigan gestured towards Lucius. “My friend is a Greek god, trapped inside the body of the human who summoned him. Can you help him be free of it?”
The woodland god crossed his arms as he looked him over. “Yes, I can help you, Hades of the Underworld,” he addressed him. “I am Cernunnos.”
“Cernunnos does not hail from these lands,” Morrigan explained, “but he travels through all the woods in the North, keeping watch on all that transpires in the wooded realm.”
Lucius kept quiet. He was certain the creature knew who he really was, but for whatever reason, he was not betraying his identity. He knew that meant one of two things—that he was afraid of upsetting Morrigan, or he wanted a favor in return for his silence.
Suddenly her gaze was pulled up to the sky, for her crows had accumulated vociferously above her. “The battle has begun and I am late,” she realized.
“I can take things from here,” Cernunnos assured her as he took a seat on a nearby boulder, his massive weight sending up a cloud of dust and dried leaves.
Morrigan drew in towards Lucius, so they were standing mere inches apart. “You can find me before you go back, if you’d like,” she said with a salacious glint in her eye.
Before he could reply, she abruptly transformed into a crow, departing in a flurry of black feathers. He stared wistfully after her as she disappeared, almost forgetting there was an oversized satyr seated nearby.
“Does she know who you really are?” Cernunnos asked, interrupting his thoughts.
Lucius frowned. “If you know who I really am, why did you tell her I was someone different?”
Cernunnos shrugged. “I want no godly discord in my woods. There is enough of that between the humans. I know all about you. I know that you are a dark god banished to Tartarus by his own wife and brother. I wondered when you would discover there was a tear in the realms and come back. They created it when the Druids brought them here.”
“How do you know?”
“I am Lord of the Forest. I see all that transpires on earth.”
Lucius crossed his arms. “Well, you may have figured out my identity, but I am only here because I found a way to possess a human.”
“Ah.” Cernunnos smiled under his bristly beard. “But now you know how to rise up properly.”
Lucius was mystified. “Why do you help me?”
Cernunnos shrugged again. “I do not like her husband.”
Lucius grinned. “Then I appreciate your aid.”
The woodland god rose from where he sat, the effort filling the forest with the sound of creaking trees. “I assume you know how to get back to your realm,” he stated as he turned to head back into the darkness. Lucius watched him go, his antlers disturbing the skeletal treetops as he lumbered beneath their branches.
He sighed, resting his hands on his hips. He longed to go after her, but he knew that although he’d find temporary solace and release in her arms, he would be deceiving her by using another man’s body, something she would never forgive him for. He wanted to make love to her because she wanted him, not because she was tricked into it, and definitely not with the cumbersome body of some red-haired oaf that stunk of aging dirt with too large of feet. Besides, now there was another way. “I will come back to find you,” he whispered up into the night sky. Then, before he could talk himself out of it, he released the human from his clutches, his soul diving back down to the Underworld.
He was surprised to see Isis, dressed as Persephone, waiting for him when he arrived. The Lily of the Nile shade of her dress brought out her eyes as she glared at him. “Where were you?” she asked.
He was so elated that he picked her up, spinning her around the room.
“What has gotten into you?” she laughed.
“I found out a way for us to go back to Earth,” he told her excitedly as he set her back down.
Her face fell. “No.”
“Isis—she has left him all on her own. She does not remember our past. I have a fresh slate. I can rise up to Earth and serenade her, and if she does remember me, I can show her how much I have changed. There is no doubt she will take me back—she loved me far before he seduced her.”
Isis took his hands. “Set, you still do not know for certain that she ever did. Remember the pain you felt—the hatred you had over their betrayal. She is not your answer.”
Lucius scowled. “You are wrong.”
“I am not wrong,” she insisted, even as he pulled away from her. “You told me you wanted to move on and you have. You have built an entire life without her. There is no reason to go backwards.”
Lucius stared back at her, observing eyes that seemed that much greener when impassioned. She was not wrong; he’d grown comfortable with his new identity, becoming the much feared but venerated King of the Dead easily. He did enjoy the work, as he enjoyed Isis’s platonic companionship, but he would be lying to pretend there wasn’t something missing. Seeing her again, even if it was in an entirely different body, as a different person, had made it quite clear what that something was.
“Even if you go back to earth, your memories will be erased,” Isis pointed out, arguing with his silence. “That is how the two of them are able to live in bliss, roaming the Earth without a care in the world, oblivious to their true history.”
The modern Lucius paused. “You should know the story from there,” he said softly. THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, 1858
libraean
The clock on the mock fireplace clicked steadily during the brief silence.
“This is where I need clarification,” Libraean told the tall, black haired vampyre seated across from him. “I have written down several versions of what started the Pădurii bloodline. We know Hekate’s version was incorrect, but Anubis told David that you convinced Isis to have your children to protect her heka. It makes no sense that you would impregnate Morrigan’s sister when your entire reason behind returning to earth was to repair your relationship with her.”
Lucius sighed. “I never negated Isis’s story because I did care for her as a dear friend. Now that I am aware she was Discordia in disguise, I should set the record straight. Typhon did let me use his body to slip past Anubis and find the tree under the nose of the Council. The acacia drove any man who came too close to it mad, and the man I found worshiping the tree was well beyond the brink of insanity. That particular man, who called himself Erebos, was a raving lunatic in his own right, though we had no idea at the time. His mind was different than Cuhullin’s; while I was able to control his mind completely, Erebos’s overpowered me. I believe it was because it was so fractured—I kept getting lost.”
He frowned, leaning back in his chair. “I did manage to use him to pull Isis—well, Discordia—out of the tree, and we did go back to Erebos’s house to rest and make plans for her to restore me fully to life. But we decided to celebrate, drinking heavily with our meal, and I didn’t realize how his body would react to alcohol. Besides, she and I made love before and she was Morrigan’s twin so… you can use your imagination to arrive at why what occurred did. Isis was mortified the next morning, so we both decided it was something we would never speak of again. Now I know this was all a part of Discordia’s plan—she even charmed the memory so that Anubis, then David, would believe the alternate version was real.”
“My word.” Libraean shook his head in disbelief. “Then she brought you back, disappeared with the child, and you found me. Did you have any recollection of your former life at that point?”
Lucius shook his head. “None whatsoever. Eventually, I did begin to remember bits and pieces of the past, and I found out where she was and that she had my children. Naturally, they were hostile towards me. I discovered that Discordia tried to murder and consume the oldest and her child, but the girl reached out to the Council in time. They are the ones who put her back into the acacia, but told no one. Anubis had created the Council to protect the heka, yet they’d let someone slip past to kill Isis. They feared his wrath. Then you know the rest—I was unaware of the Council’s transgressions, so I tried to free who I thought was Isis, giving life to David’s ancient girlfriend and killing Discordia so that she would one day come back as Hekate.”
“Lucius, do you have a text on Greek mythology handy?” Libraean suddenly asked.
