I hoped to find from her memories. Because I knew it would do little good trying to get information out of her freely, for threatening death would have only been a welcome by one cursed as she. The demonic element of her new being was now in pieces and would no doubt, if they could, be scrabbling to try and contain their undying prisoner so she couldn’t escape them. This meant that offering an eternal death would be one she would no doubt have begged me for.
Any other time I might have felt pity for such a being, but not today…not when I knew that my girl had been here, that her blood had been shed. For despite how brave she was, when seeing Arachne for the first time, she would have been forced to face her fears.
She hated spiders.
But then this was Amelia we were talking about, which meant that even if she was afraid, she would no doubt fight with her last breath because that was my girl. I fisted my hand the moment I remembered her blood there and let my snarl of anger ripple through me. Then I set my sights on the one being that right now I could take some of my rage out on.
However, the moment I stepped forward I felt the usual crackle of the air next to me, and having experienced it many times before, I called out,
“It is clear, Brother.”
After this Dariush stepped through what seemingly would have looked to others as thin air.
“I thought their plan was to try and stop the war, not burn the whole fucking lot to the ground,” he said now being free to speak as he usually did when no one else was around.
“I have a feeling that they had no choice,” I replied seeing for myself what they must have been up against. Besides, I cared little for the carnage, just so long as they were able to keep my Chosen One safe.
“Do you know if they found this slave of yours?” he asked making me sigh,
“They found her.”
“You look relieved, which tells me there is more going on here than you’re willing to say,” Dariush commented and it came as no surprise, so I decided to give him what I could.
“The Tree of Souls is infected,” I said making him hiss through his teeth,
“Fuck”
“Yes, fuck indeed,” I agreed with another sigh resisting the urge to scrub a hand down my face seeing as that would fucking hurt giving the amount of edged metal that currently covered my skin.
“How did this happen?” I ground my teeth, lifted my left hand and said,
“This is how it fucking happened.” The gravity of my words hit him hard enough to snarl one name,
“Fucking Cronus.”
Cronus had been a God who was thought to be dead and who, before Amelia was even born, tried to bring about his rebirth. This time doing so as a God on Earth and to aid him in what would have been an apocalyptic endeavour, tried to release the Titans. It had been the start of what would become known as the Blood Wars.
We had won the battle that day, but it wasn’t without losses on both sides. My own sacrifice made, however, had been the first time we had managed to stop the Titans from breaking free of their once eternal prison in Tartarus. But unbeknown at the time, losing my hand in the lowest depths of Hell had kick started its own chain of events. And naturally the biggest problem we faced now, was how to stop it. Because there was something Amelia hadn’t known when stepping into Hell believing she had the power to stop the curse. There was only one way to do that and that was down in Tartarus where this all started. The problem with that was…
Tartarus didn’t fucking exist anymore!
It had been destroyed in the second battle against them and the Titans were buried along with their God, Cronus…or so we were led to believe. But of course, the Keepers of Three had conveniently chosen to keep this information from Amelia. The biggest question of all was why. The Fates could not lie, this was true, but what they were pretty fucking good at was keeping shit to themselves and the manipulation of others through choice words spoken. Basically, in short, they were crafty fuckers who couldn’t be trusted!
“And what of this witch, do we know of her involvement, as I gather there was more to