Morrigan swallowed. “We do tend to find each other,” she agreed. Though her insides screamed, she forced one last playful smile, and darted after her son. She pictured Lucius’s face, forcing herself to remember why she made her decision.
Anubis slipped his hand around hers as they headed back towards the temple, Thomas trailing behind. He lifted the draped leaves so they could enter, revealing Helena waiting for them inside.
Though he spoke quietly, Anubis’s deep voice resounded throughout the chamber. “The only way to send a creature to Tartarus is to kill them, but even then, they must be an abominable being. I can open the portal, but after that, I am at a loss.”
“I am an abominable creature,” Morrigan told him quietly. “I killed David’s lover in Ireland, long ago.”
“You were a goddess enacting vengeance on one who disrespected you,” Helena spoke up. “That is not an atrocious act. Besides, you spared her son.”
Morrigan looked up at her, realizing that as a spirit, Helena had access to all knowledge. Pangs of regret descended upon her as she pictured Boann’s face, horrified to learn she’d spend her eternity as a river. “I have killed more humans than can be counted,” Morrigan insisted.
“You only killed one in this lifetime, and he threatened you,” Helena argued.
Morrigan blinked, taken aback. She was right. “Then what should we do?”
“If I may,” Thomas gently interrupted. “There might be another way.”
“Do tell.” Morrigan turned towards him.
“I have often wondered, when considering your history in Egypt—how was Set banished to Tartarus?”
Morrigan looked to Anubis, but he shook his head. “Tartarus already existed before I took him there. I did not create it.”
Morrigan grew quiet, sweeping away the cobwebs that cluttered her mind to her days as Nephthys. Then it hit her. “Because I created it to send him there.”
Thomas nodded, warmth in his brown eyes. “You are the creator of realms. If you want to go to Tartarus, send yourself there.”
She clasped his hands. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then she turned toward her son, and took his arm. “I am ready.”
The air around them grew thick and hot as they sat in the temple, like the sweltering jungle right before a monsoon. Although hundreds of candles smoldered all around them, she could not see, her son’s glowing blue eyes the only thing visible in the darkness as he chanted. She heard the distant beat of drums keeping time with her own heart as she relaxed into an ancient world she had long forgotten, the place where her soul had been born. Her son was now the jackal, the god Thoth standing beside him, working together to pull Nephthys out of hiding. The drumbeats soon shifted into the chanting of Egyptian priests, the incense smoke biting the air as Anubis traced symbols on her forehead and eyes with oil. He stood back as violent purple flickered around his skin like heat lightning, raising his power until it trickled out of his fingertips. It fell to the ground in a circle, where the souls of the chanting priests sprang up, strips of linen hanging from their necrotic, mummified flesh. They bowed to Morrigan, singing her praises with rotting mouths as the ground opened at her feet. The heat of the room intensified, but she was kept cool, her own manifestation of power—black shadows—swirling around her for protection. The priests were soon joined by other nameless souls, drawn to the one who once cared for them, preparing to carry her home.
She closed her eyes, thinking of David, Cahira, and the precious Earth she was leaving behind. Then she saw his face, his adoring golden eyes, and she let herself go, suddenly weightless.
The souls guided her as she floated down through the barriers between realms, their frayed spaces bending easily to her presence. But what met her as she landed was not the shadowy realm she remembered, but a blast of raging fire and scalding heat. Intensely bright and suffocating, she shut her eyes against it as the souls pulled her through the worst until they reached a calm space to lay her down. Then they lingered, as if hoping she’d give them a resting place better than where they currently stood. She quickly envisioned the Underworld that she remembered—the one that she and Lucius had created, with its towering Records Hall, the obsidian mountains, and indigo pools. She waited until it was perfectly clear in her mind before she whispered, Go. And it was suddenly so. When she opened her eyes, they had all disappeared.
What met her instead were the empty eyes of an overgrown crow skull, which cocked its head to the side as it examined her with intrigue. She sat up to observe her surroundings, the world around her painted in shades of rust and burnt orange. A reddish haze snaked through a cemetery formed out of mushrooming human bones. The crow skeleton cocked its head to the other side and decided to move on, tugging bits of rotten flesh from some of the remains. One batted the crow away with its bony arm, its putrefying eyes still rolling around in its sockets.
Morrigan noticed some wore clothing from a century prior, their leftover skin pockmarked from disease. They didn’t match others splayed out in shambles, so old they grew fungi out of their crevices. “You do not belong down here,” she realized as she rose to her feet, startling the dead crow who flapped at the stale air.
The living skeletons began to lift themselves out of their plots, groaning as she heard their voices loud in her mind: We don’t belong here, please…we just want to rest.
Go, she commanded as she thought of her Underworld once more. Their gruesome physical husks fell immediately into dust, leaving behind ethereal human apparitions who floated peacefully and disappeared into the caliginous space above them. She smiled, satisfied, although the crow was not, and she gathered up her black skirts to leave the field of bones. She caught the attention of a few leathery demons that had been scuttling around in search of food, who now stared at her with open curiosity. They bowed as she walked past, their bones cracking and popping with movement as they squeaked like overgrown rats with wings. She marched past them through the Hall of Titans, who groaned and grumbled, the sound reverberating through the passageway. Every demon she passed immediately gave her a deep bow, even the horrible wolf that flew up to her before realizing who she was. She gave him a hateful sneer, remembering when he tore her apart on Earth a century ago. He retreated as quickly as he’d approached.
She eventually reached Phlegethon, once a winding river and now a lake of fire that covered the Elysian Plains, the place in Hades where souls could rest in peace. She pooled a white mist together to surround her in a watery veil, protecting her from the heat as she stood at its banks, gathering it up in a great, swirling ball. Then she pushed the fallen rocks back where they belonged, and trapped the flow of lava in its original place so the plains were free.
Satisfied, she turned to see dozens of demons gathered around her in awe. She ignored them, intent on finishing her work, correcting the places that once belonged to other realms with careful sweeps of her arms. She passed by the old Asphodel Meadows, a dank, sunless space where the disembodied spirits once wept and wailed, now overcrowded with the souls she’d sent there. She showed them the cleared Plains in her mind, and dozens headed back that way, revealing a towering mountain range made of rock and bone. She blinked when part of it moved, recognizing the bulky shape she’d mistakenly assumed was stationary.
“Cerberus,” she said in disbelief. He immediately shrunk down to her size, wagging his tail as he ran to her, all three heads panting happily, pink tongues hanging out of their mouths. “You’re still alive,” she said in wonder as she ran her fingers through his fur. “Is he here?”
Cerberus abruptly grew back into his giant proportion, bowing his three heads so she could use one to climb onto his back.
“That is very kind of you, thank you,” she said as she seated herself between his massive shoulder blades. She held onto his fur as he lifted her up, taking her past the deepest places of torment and lakes of trapped bodies, straight into the mountain range itself. He dropped her off at the mouth of a cave, gesturing inside with his heads. She patted him again, advancing into the darkness until she finally reached the cold world she remembered.
She saw him from the back, standing shirtless with his hands on his hips, admiring the palace he was in the process of rebuilding. Hades’s towering obsidian palace was nearly complete as demons carried the fragmented chunks of stone forward, the sounds of clanking tools echoing throughout the empty hills. In the distance was a deep crater that once held the River Styx, its waters trapped by the mountains she’d just walked through. She could see sweat dripping down the muscular curvature of his back as she crept closer, running fingers through hair he’d apparently decided to keep short, even in the Netherworld.
But when he sensed her, immediately whipping around to see if his senses were betraying him, he looked like a mix of all of them—Set, Lucifer, Lucius, and Louis—a blend of all his faces possessing the same brilliant gold eyes.
He froze, staring in utter disbelief.
As much as she felt like throwing her arms around him, she marched up to him instead, shoving him as hard as she could and knocking him to the ground. “How could you kill yourself without telling me?” she demanded.
He scowled, jumping back to his feet. “You were the one who left me, remember?”
“What are you talking about?” She glared at him, hands on her hips.
“When you came back from contacting Jacob, Anubis and Cahira told me you’d left,” he told her. “We didn’t hear from you for days.”
“I was gone that long?” She frowned, looking away as she tried to piece things together.
“Morrigan, why are you here?” he asked softly, emotion thick in his voice.
“Because you are here!” she said in exasperation.
“Please don’t shove me again,” he said as he put his hands up in defense. “I thought you’d run off again, upset that I killed Jacob, perhaps upset from the things I showed you about myself…” He trailed off, unnerved by his own admission.
“So you let yourself die? That is absolutely ridiculous.”
