Underworld

sixteen : a mother's heart carved in frost

OLYMPUS WAS COATED in ancient power. Elements powerhoused the shaking earth with a fracture, and in what seemed like hours since the announcement for the gathering of the Olympians, the throne room made of spontaneous gold was suddenly engulfed with every breathtaking ability to be imagined. And with every breathtaking ability triggered the arrival of the newest god, either walking through the doors of their birthplace with an intrigue or a dire anger at the sudden interchange of events. Everything was weighed with fate, and with the Olympians now putting the marriage between the God of the Underworld and his goddess on a erudition, this would mark the world forever.

Ten gods of the highest order occupied the seats of the rounded glass table, some bringing their most loyal courtiers while the married sat beside their husbands and wives. The silence was absolutely grim, and the anger that radiated from the King of the Gods was unfathomable. Something in this cruel world was beyond evil, burrowing in the new frosted layer of Earth, and this meeting would bring what was his final enactment before he hit the rock bottom that was desperation. Zeus was never a patient man. He had never felt thirst for he always was drunk off the liquid of life and never pitied. But this...this drew a line he didn't know he had to erase.

The great doors opening echoed throughout the polar room, ten pairs of godly eyes turning to the source of the noise, and with the reveal of their fellow predecessors backs seemed to hunch forward in anticipation. This was the gloried star of the night, the very conflict that brought the gods rushing to the Mount. Darkening shadows entered the room with purpose, spilling from the Death Gods with stone cold boredom on their handsome faces. Thanatos was the first to guide his king and queen through the doors, doing a double over the space without so much as a flicker. He was not fazed, neither entertained, and in his supreme loyalty, holding the doors for his true rulers was an act that Thanatos took with stride. The rest of this room was scum; and they'd be treated as such.

Hypnotic could be the only word drawn from the English dictionary at the sight the Olympians beheld. Holding the arms of Death, with the fiery light that had just found homage in her eyes since the two months previous, the Queen of Darkness walked across the glittering stone tiles like it was her own hellfire. The crown she wore on her head was bejeweled with blood rubies and darkness, and showcasing the essence of her power was something the Great Persephone hadn't realized she was projecting. It was so simple for Hades to smirk at the fools amoung him, the utter audacity to doubt both him and his wife making this entire rooms another level of stupidity. Together, they were fire and ice, a dark dance of ruin, and an infinite amount of power to be unmatched.

Yet inside, Persephone's heart was racing. The sun had not yet rised, but even in the darkness of the night above ground, her entire sense of life felt thrown off. She had absolutely no idea how accustomed she became to the organic dark that was the Underworld and all of its seductive secrets. The tremor that internally stole her was horrific, with the filling of one thousand voices that weren't hers in every corner of her mind, she was trudging on the edge of insanity, each step closer to the table of Olympians her own Plain of Judgement. She did her best to control the movement of her eyes, finding that doing a sweep of the occupants holding the room was clutching at her anxiety. All she could conjure was the twinned fiery hair of her own, with cold blue eyes that would soon suck her into nothingness once again. But she wouldn't. She would not let her take her away, and the arm she held - with such free will - was evident of that circumstance. It was only second nature to dig her fingernails into the material of Hades's thick jacket, trying to bridge the never-ending anxiety that broke through her gut. She wasn't here. Not yet. But when she arrived, all hell would break lose.

But she was so plagued with thoughts of her mother that the existence of the very evil that reflected this snowy terrain sat right to the left of the table, throwing her into this harsh reality with a crush of memories that flooded her heart and soul. Those rustic brown and crystallized blue irises were hungry to avenge the deserved, that hardened jaw set with a rippling muscle that made her want to vomit. Sands of time relapsed back to the top of the hourglass as shards of the past fractured her mind, from the sickening dirt that clung to her skin and the flurry of cold touches that left invisible scars upon her ichored flesh. And in the crossfire, what reminded her most of the struggle, was the golden high gilded top that arose to Apollo's neck. Black. She had scarred her mark of power into his flesh. It was too much...it was hitting her square in the chest... a downpour of rain unleashed with furied thunder that rippled. She would explode. She would explode and destroy the eternal with this newfound darkness, because this was all she knew how to do...all that she knew how to unleash. She was going to-