Page 9 of Scion of Chaos

This is all good info that I wish I’d known, aside from the fate part, which was a rumor Rachel just confirmed. But I don’t see how it changes anything. I still don’t remember any of what happened.

Rachel sees my dissatisfaction and reaches out to grab my hand. “Sweetie, it’s messed up if you summoned a god and he smashed and dashed, even if you were willing. Especially if he gave you amnesia before he disappeared. You don’t seem to think you were raped, and your aura doesn’t look like you were traumatized... quite the opposite, in fact. If it was good, I’d think you would want to remember it.”

“I wish I fucking did, because whatever happened to me, it changed me. The world feels different. Food tastes different. I have all these ideas.” I hold up the sketchpad I’ve been steadily doodling on and flip back through the several pages I’ve filled. Her eyebrows shoot up.

“Nice! I’m seeing a theme, though: gods and monsters. Do you think it means something?”

I frown at the sketchpad, because I haven’t even really thought about what I was sketching. But there is a distinct theme. Besides the satyr I modeled my dildo after—the sketch still gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling when I look at it—I’ve sketched another hoofed creature: a minotaur. Along with him is a dragon, another dragon—except this one has dozens of heads—a three-headed wolf-dog, a swirling mass of misty darkness with the vague shape of a man, a flying warthog creature, a muscle-bound hunk with a lion pelt over his shoulders, and the last and most riveting, a man with eyes like deep voids and angular features more beautiful and severe than anything I’ve ever laid eyes on. The final figure is depicted standing in an architectural archway with an expanse of stark, black and gray landscape behind him that looks familiar, but I can’t remember why.

“It’s got to be a clue,” she says. She hops up and heads to one of the bookshelves, dragging her finger along the spines until she finds the right section, pulls several books out, and heads back, already flipping through the pages of one.

“Good old Edith Hamilton,” she says, spreading the first book open between us. “We’ve got a practical pantheon of ne’er do wells here. This guy....” She points at the multi-headed dragon. “…he must be Typhon, the son of Chaos and Gaia. And this guy is Chrysaor.” She flips to the winged warthog. “He’s the brother of Pegasus. And this one is Cerberus, obviously.”

She flips through the book some more, staring at each of my sketches, then steals my pencil and starts writing names under each of the pictures.

We skip back and forth, comparing my drawings to different illustrations from the books, and have all but the last one named before too long. Then we stop and stare at the final sketch, and an anxious flutter fills my belly.

“He’s kind of beautiful in a terrifying way,” she says.

But I can’t stop fixating on his mouth, which is a perfect shape. Everything about him is perfect. God-like. Except for his eyes, which look.... fractured.

“But who is he? Does anything in there help figure that out?”

“Well, some were obvious. Herakles with the Nemean lion he killed. That feels like a clear sign this is about you, by the way. But this guy... Maybe heisTartarus?”

“I thought Tartarus was a mythological prison.”

“It is. And it’s also a god. At least at one time it was a god, see?” She flips through one of the books we’ve been scouring and turns it around, showing me a section that describes Tartarus as a primordial god, whereas all the others seemed to claim it’s a part of the underworld where the criminal element of the divine were sent as punishment for their wrongdoings. Or basically anyone who ever wronged a god.

“This guy is his brother, Erebus, who’salsoconflated with a different section of the underworld.” She points at the darker image I sketched just before the last guy, a figure that looks like no more than a shadow. “He’s the god of darkness.”

I page slowly through each of the sketches again, staring at the names Rachel jotted beneath each one. My insides are tangled, because I feel like I need to know more.

“Anything coming back to you?”

“No. But thanks for trying to help.”

She stands and grabs our dishes, laying a hand on my shoulder as she passes by to the kitchen. “Maybe you just need to sleep on it. If you want to talk again tomorrow, let me know.”

5

Vesh

Pandemonium greets me when I materialize in Tartarus’ entry hall, and not the fun kind. My guards are embroiled in combat as void demons of all sizes pour through the broken doors. The smallest scrabble in rat-like swarms, burned to ash the second they reach Campe’s fiery breath, while Alcides confronts a solo gargantuan beast whose skin is a writhing mass of twisting sinews as black as an oil slick. He swings his club, smashing into an arm that shatters into an explosion of hundreds of the smaller beasts. When he jumps back, Erebus throws a ball of pure darkness at the creatures, sucking them into a spinning sphere that he hurls back through the broken opening.

“What the fuck took you so long?!” Alcides bellows, swinging his club into the gut of another void demon. “We’ve been fighting for almost a full day!”

In the center of the fray is Pan, locked within the void glass cage I shoved him into when I sent him backinside.

“Let me the fuck out so I can fight!” He shoots a frantic look through the bars while stomping his hooves on the small monsters snapping at his ankles.

I grit my teeth and shoot a chaos vortex from one hand, vaporizing a fresh wave that pours through the doors, so my guards can finish handling the ones that have already breached the barrier. But where the ashes fall, more creatures flow in to take their place.

Chrysaor swoops in, folding his wings against his bristly back and ramming his tusks into another big void demon, forcing it backward. It loses balance and Cerberus leaps, all three heads snapping at the creature’s throat as it collapses.

Asterius charges at yet more of the larger monstrosities, his enormous bull head lowered, plowing into the chest of one creature before tossing it aside to charge at a second. I ready another spinning wheel of chaos magic to toss at the stunned group whenever he gives me an opening.

In my head, Typhon proclaims his intention to join the fight. I guess our little diversion energized him, so I mentally welcome him into the madness.

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