HADES

Chapter 24

She closes her eyes and I suddenly feel like some force is pulling at my neck.

I guess Hades must have felt it too because he sends a dagger straight for her heart but what happens next makes me scared for my life. The dagger goes through her and she turns into black ash which then crumples to the floor. It was an illusion! I turn around swiftly to look for her but I can't see her. Hades holds my hand as a form of security, I guess. Suddenly, I am pushed away from Hades and feel my back collide with a wall. I feel myself levitating. I feel my body being moved involuntarily. My legs and arms are being widened and pulled harshly. I also feel my head being pulled. Samantha suddenly appears out of nowhere and as though the curtains were pulled from my eyes, I see that my hands, feet and neck are actually chained. The ends of the chain are in another dimension; I know this because I see three portals. The chains were retreating back into the dimensions but because I was chained, my legs and arms are being pulled. She wants to rip me apart. I scream in agony. Suddenly, I feel my internal self being squished to a corner, I feel a presence inside me taking my wheels from my hands. Could it be? Shota. I feel my neck and there it is, Shota's necklace hanging from my neck. "Hades!" I scream, and the last thing I see before my eyes shut is Hades' confused and shocked face.

"Lucy," I hear a low distorted voice. The more conscious I become the louder the voice becomes until the voice was practically screaming at me. "Lucy!" Hades. Like a released, compressed spring, my eyes sprung open. "Hades. Shota, Shota, I saw..." Hades put his finger to my mouth before I could finish. "Yes, I saw her too." He says. "So, what happened?" He pulls me by my hand to help me stand up. "Shota only came temporary and it was to protect you. Well, not you specifically. I've never seen anything like the way she destroyed Samantha. She just deconstructed her, her bones, flesh, everything was just splattered all over that house. It was as though a bomb went off inside her. It was very quick. We managed to save her brain for Skotadi." "What about my powers?" "Something happened after Samantha was killed. A sort of dark matter came out of her brain and went into your chest. Do you feel weak in any way, mentally, physically?" I flex my shoulders. "No." "Then your powers are back." I rub my wrist, feeling a slight sting because of the chains. We are currently in Hades' castle. I know because everywhere just smells like Hades. Delicious. "Where's Skotadi, Zeus, and Poseidon?" "Skotadi is extracting the spell, Zeus and Poseidon are preparing their armies in case the spell does not work or it does work but Shota decides to attack Olympus." It really could get ugly either way. Hades departs to talk to his army, of which I have never had the chance of meeting. Feeling the need to do something, I decide to join Skotadi.

Reaching the door, I hesitate but before I could walk away, Skotadi tells me to enter. I sigh and enter. "Hello young goddess, how are you feeling?" I resist the urge to roll my eyes at her attempt at being nice. "Ok, but there are still some clouds in my head though." Skotadi is sitting in the way a monk would when about to meditate, Samantha's brain is floating in the air but I can see some slight pulses of electricity run through it. "What are you doing?"I ask her. "I'm giving the brain temporary power so I can go through it, it's going to take a while." Skotadi is in her true form (WHAT'S HER TRUE FORM AGAIN?).

"Tell me how did you meet Hades?" Skotadi asks out of nowhere. "Um, I was actually forced into the marriage," I see Skotadi raise an eyebrow, "at first I hated Hades so badly. But I got to know him, got to see beyond the illusion of death that most people see and now, I don't think I would be able to live without him." Skotadi simply nodes her head as though she's heard my story a dozen times.

She probably has, I mean, Hades was once hers. "And you. How did you meet Hades?" Skotadi laughs and her eyes slightly twitch. "We met when we were in our teens. I was sixteen, he was eighteen. His mother and mine were the best of friends. He suddenly developed a crush for me and because my powers as a witch had not yet been fully developed, I didn't know. He showed his crush for me by acting like a four-year-old, pulling my hair and calling me names just so I could give him attention. I kind of hated him a little. But when I turned eighteen and my powers were developed and so were his, I realized he actually liked me and by then it has actually advanced to love," I feel a pang of jealousy, "We started 'dating' as you humans would call it and we were known as the future it couples of Olympus." There was a knock and a servant came in with a bowl full of all kind of herbs. She asks the servant to throw the herbs into a fire that appeared out of nowhere and only then did I realize that the room had a wonderful fragrance to it, I could smell lavender. "So, what happened?" I ask Skotadi. "My father. The stronger my powers got, the weaker my mother's powers became since it went from generation to generation. My father was very ambitious and he wanted to use my powers for his own deeds. Getting women to sleep with him, making people do favors for him. What I didn't know was that he wanted Hades' mother. He would casually mention her name, not knowing that I already knew what he wanted. One day he finally got the courage to tell me to make Hades' mother fall in love with him. I told him no and he got mad, so mad that he threatened to kill my mother if I didn't do it. Now, it would have been easy for me to protect my mother from him but my mother needed him. No matter how many times he cheated on her, she still stayed in the marriage. I had no other choice but to do it, but I had to make sure that Hades or anyone for that matter would not know about what happened between my father and his mother. But things turned bad. What I didn't know was that the fool would do it in our own home, on my mother's bed. My mom walked in on them. She got so angry that the whole of Olympus had a slight shake to it. She was about to attack my father when Hades' mother took a knife she always kept attached to her thighs and killed my mother. When my mother died I knew immediately and I wept. When Hades' mother got to her senses and realized what my father had done to her, she told her husband and my father was killed too. I lost everything thanks to Hades' parents and the funny thing was that Hades hated me too. He accused me of seducing him with witchcraft as I had done to his mother to make her love my father. I won't deny that I sometimes used it on him if I thought he was cheating but other than that, never. He called me all sorts of things. Apparently, my mom deserved to die, that's what he thought. So, even now we still blame each other for what happened."

Well, that's something to talk to Hades about. To think that if it was not for Skotadi's father, I would not be here right now makes me shiver a bit. "Step back," Skotadi suddenly says. I step back to the door. Samantha's brain begins to shake and with a cloud of dust, it turned into a scroll. Finally.

Hey, you. Yes, you, if you're reading this then you have finished Chapter 24 of HADES and I just want to say THANK YOU for making it this far.