Hello kids!

I'm back again, and I promise the wait was worth it! This chapter is TWO PARTS! This is part one, and I'll be uploading part two tomorrow...I swear! And, as you can probably already see, these parts are long AF. They definitely are the same chapter...but it's one long-ass chapter, so I split it up to make it easier on y'all.

That being said, this chapter is VERY IMPORTANT. The plot is finally kicking off, and we're here reaching the breaking point. Marcus is getting his Kaiah back, and then there'll be Hell (lol) to pay!

Anyways, enough blabbing!

Enjoy,

E <3

~ 

MARCUS

"I still do not understand why my basileus allowed you to take me," Lacedaemon growled, stalking both gracefully and moodily behind me in a way only a Spartan could. "Why are we suddenly in my homeland?" He looked around scathingly at the colorful street vendors and loud tourists lining the cracked streets. "What's left of it, that is."

"Because," I snapped, scanning the crowds for my destination. It had been a long time, and I was likely to miss it if I wasn't careful. "Kaiah was taken, and we're likely to tangle with the gods. You are the only one other than Lucifer and I who will have any idea of what to expect from them."

I could feel the heavy weight of the strategos' eyes from behind me. "When have you met the gods of Greece, daemon?"

I smirked despite myself, a vindictive pleasure rising in my chest. "Are you afraid of your gods, Spartan?"

He snorted, casting his eyes around the irreverent throng of foreigners—barbarians. "Only fools do not fear the gods."

"Well then, I very much apologize for the fright I'm about to deliver," I replied sardonically. "I am not one of the twelve major gods, but back in my heyday I was known to strike fear into some innocent Greek hearts."

I was forced to stop when Lacedaemon froze, hand going to the butt of his gun, hidden beneath a duster-length coat. He had refused to leave without a weapon, but his normal sword, his kopis, had been left behind out of necessity.

I chuckled without humor. "We don't have time for you to try to shoot me," I turned slightly to eye him. "Kaiah is all that matters. Do not force me to leave you behind."

"Who are you?"

"Oh, come now, can you really not guess?" I turned fully now, brushing my hair from my face with a casual air. "Shall I give you a hint? You never worshipped me, but you knew of me. I watched with Ares from many a battlefield. I saw your last battle, though my sisters did the harvesting of your soul, not I."

The man's olive complexion paled, and I knew he now understood.

"Thanatos."

"Pleasure," I mock-bowed. "Now, can we move on? We won't get anywhere near the Underworld without the help of the messenger."

"You mean to summon Hermes?" The shock on the poor man's face really was comical.

"He is the guide of the souls, and he's likely to be the only god in Olympus who knows where the gates of Hades are. So, I will summon that little rat, even if I have to drag him here by his winged helm," I vowed, starting forward again. "Actually, come to think of it, I might just prefer that. Luckily, though the pipsqueak never really got his own temple, his daddy often sent him down in his stead. So, make a sacrifice to Zeus—" a horrific prospect, truly, "—in one of his temples, and Hermes should respond."

"There is no guarantee of this!" Lacedaemon scoffed. "My people made many offerings to the gods—"

"Yes, but they couldn't have given less of a shit about you," I replied mildly. "Or, at least, the ones you bothered to honor didn't." I cast a baleful eye in his direction. "Where were my offerings, Spartan?"

"Well, you—"

"I understand," I interrupted. "No Spartan warrior wants to be visited by me. After all, I am not the god of violent death, and was always your wish to die by the sword you so readily wielded, was it not? No, my dear sisters—the keres—they were who you wished to see in your moments of death, despite the fact that they were under my command." I smiled dryly. "I really don't understand the fuss. They aren't much to look at, I wouldn't want to spend my final moments with them."

"So, you think you'll be able to summon Hermes?" He asked, swiftly changing the subject. I allowed it.

"Oh, I know I will. They will already know I'm here, unless they've gone soft in my absence. Which, unfortunately, is not a possibility I would discount." I sighed. "My aura will be dimmed in this state, but it is the same fingerprint, regardless. Zeus used to always know of my presence before I got anywhere near Olympus, on the rare occasions I deigned to visit."

"But how—"

"Unfortunately, Lax, we don't have the time for me to spill my life story. My mate is my only priority." I cut him off sharply, growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of familiarity in our surroundings. "If I could only find that chaos-be-damned temple!"

"I did not agree to the indignity of a nickname."

"Shut up and help me look, Lax."

"You do not know where it is?" He asked innocently, and I tossed him a baleful look from over my shoulder.

"I have not been here since AD 363," I replied scathingly.

"And I have not returned since 480 BC," was the irritatingly logical retort. "And I've been sort of dead. You haven't."

I snarled at him, and though he didn't flinch, his face paled ever-so-slightly, his jaw clenching. I would have to capitalize on this time, when he knew of my former identity but wasn't aware of my powerless state. It put him in his place, which few things could boast. I opened my mouth to tell him off further, when I felt a pull on my arm.

A swarthy woman with kind eyes and dark hair dusted with gray smiled at me. She opened her mouth and, looking towards Lacedaemon, spewed a bunch of half-words and garbled sentences that I couldn't quite decipher. I wondered what sort of language she spoke, before finally realizing, with a lead ball forming in my abdomen, she spoke Greek. My language, modernized, changed with the years and numerous hardships and victories that I had not been a part of.

That I had not been allowed to be a part of.

The strategos looked similarly grim as he, too, was unable to follow the words the woman spoke.

"Ouk gynaíka—" I began, but the woman cut me off, beaming, although slightly confused.

"Oh, you speak English," she grinned. "There is no ouk in our language, but I am a gynaíka," she told me patiently. I had to swallow my pride so as not to inform her that I did, in fact, speak Greek. True Greek. She cocked her head to the side. "I cannot place your accent, however. Where is it you are from?"

"We are—"

"Are you not Greek, sir?" She interrupted Lacedaemon with a quirk of a dark brow. "You have the accent."

The Spartan opened and closed his mouth helplessly. I interjected to save him.

"I'm sorry, he doesn't speak much Greek, I'm afraid. Mother from the West and all that. Could you help us? We're lost."

She grinned, "Tourists. There are not enough signs for you?"

I smiled back at her, though it was somewhat pained. Being referred to like the average Barbarian was not easy to hear. "Apparently not, ma'am. Could you point us towards the temple of Zeus?"

"You're right near it," she replied crisply. "Just down there to the right. It won't take more than ten minutes."

"Thank you," I nodded to her, and she waved us off good-naturedly, leaving the two of us, surrounded by the descendants of our kinsmen of old, yet somehow achingly, utterly alone.

"It really is gone, isn't it?" Lacedaemon whispered, heartbreak dripping from every syllable. "The glory of Greece."

"The glory is not gone, Spartan," I replied, my own voice choked with sorrow and grief. "But ours is."

We hung there for a beat, seemingly existing between two separate, impossibly different times, each one like an ill-fitting, uncomfortable shoe. We were relics of the past in a place that no longer loved us. We were specks of dust on the long, harsh winds of time.

Then, in silence, we walked, each step hollow on the aged cobblestones that were yet younger than the two of us that dared tread upon them. When we arrived at the set of columns and the broken remains of the marble floor that were all that had survived from the height of my nation's history, the pit in my stomach grew and lengthened into fury. I wanted nothing more than to scream my hatred to Olympus, to raze the country I'd once so loved to the ground. To hunt God down and make him pay for every ounce and drop of suffering I'd experienced in the thousands of years I'd lost.

But I could do none of that. My Kaiah needed me, and her needs would always, always come first. So, I tamped down my fury with the ruthlessness I'd once been so well-known for among my countrymen.

"Will the offering still succeed here?" My companion's disgust was palpable. He was likely enjoying this little homecoming about as much as I was, and this sight didn't help matters. "This is nothing more than a pile of rubble now."

"In comparison with how it once was, maybe," I agreed heartily. "But this place still remains holy."

"Even with all these Barbarous here?" He asked doubtfully.

I grunted. "How little faith you have in your gods. I can't say I blame you, but the aura of Greece is not so easily tainted. If we call, they will hear us."

"Will they come?"

I snorted. "If they don't, they risk pissing me off. I'm not as powerful as I once was, but they don't know that, and our memory is long. I doubt they'll risk it."

He nodded, calculation freezing the anger in his eyes. "A bull then, for the sacrifice?"

I shook my head. "Not necessary. I am—was—a god. My blood will have far more sacrificial energy."

"Your blood has not changed with your daemon form?"

"Probably the only thing that hasn't," I grumbled.

"And how much will you have to bleed?"

I felt the grimace overtake my expression. Leave it to a war general of antiquity to find the one flaw in my plan. "A lot," I admitted reluctantly. "Too much, likely, but I will regenerate fast. Still," I heaved a breath, forcing the words on unwilling breath. "I'll likely...need your assistance, once Hermes is here. I know God has given you some...upgrades of your own."

"More than just God's changes linger in my body," he admitted. "Hermes will not evade me whilst you are weakened."

"Perfect," I whispered ferally. "You hold him still, and I'll...talk to him."

"Of course," Lacedaemon agreed magnanimously. "Just talking."

That settled, I'd decided I had officially had enough of the delays. Though I doubted Hades would hurt Kaiah, I couldn't be sure, and the very thought that she might be in peril made my skin itch. So, without further thought, I took a small knife from my jacket pocket and drew it across my wrist in a brutal vertical slash. Swearing violently in our Greek, the Spartan moved hastily to cover me as my blood streamed into the cracks in the cobblestones of the street. Though I no longer gave a fuck, it may have caused panic among what few tourists would care enough to see the color of my blood. They didn't bleed gold, after all.

Because they were all too damn absorbed in their own affairs and the glorious relics of the past to give a shit about strangers, no one noticed as I bled myself nigh on dry.

It wasn't until I stumbled, my legs threatening to give out beneath my weight, that I deemed I'd bled enough. Tearing a scrap of my shirt and binding my deep wound firmly, I sagged against the stone wall near me for support.

"'Ermais," I growled woozily, invoking the ancient name of the god with no small amount of spite. "Deūro!" I commanded, and then slumped even more heavily against the stone.

For a moment, nothing happened. Not that I expected it to. The dramatics that were so often associated with godly beings usually only happened when the gods were feeling the need to remind the mortals who awaited them that they were superior. But, in actuality, it was all unnecessary posturing, nothing more.

Lacedaemon likely did not know this, but still, his discipline did not allow him to question me, nor did it allow him to falter.

"Show yourself, you fucking bdelyròs, fun time's over. Come out, Hermes." I barked, my words seemingly lost in the crowd around us. But I knew they wouldn't be. Not to the god of travelers.

"You look...unfortunate."

Ah, that voice. Raspy, suave, and, to me, absolutely unbearable.

"At least I'm not stuck sulking on Olympus whilst our country suffers," I snapped, not looking behind me, trying to delay the inevitable moment I'd have to look at his stupid fucking face again. "Not much has changed since through the ages, has it?"

"Why would we help a people who no longer believe in us? I see no worshippers." Hermes scoffed, no trace of sarcasm in his tone. By chaos, he was serious. "There used to be a certain push-and-pull. A give-and-take. Seems to me they abandoned us long before we abandoned them."

"At least you admit you did abandon them," I replied wryly. "But that is not why we're here."

"Oh? So, this isn't just a happy reunion? How surprising that the Lost God comes crawling back for aid."

Snarling, I finally whirled, valiantly ignoring the weakness in my limbs as I turned to face the slim-built, dirty blond-haired, golden-skinned little shit that dared insult me even now, after all that had happened. It didn't matter that in this form he towered over me, we both knew he was the smaller man of the two of us.

"This is not a request for help, amathés. This is an order." I left no room for argument in my tone. "You will help us find the gates to Hades, or your ichor will stain this temple as gold as it once was."

The cocky asshole snorted. "Don't think I haven't noticed your aura, Thanatos. You're weaker than an Athenian woman after the Thesmophoria."

"It does not surprise me that one such as you would manage to dishonor women in an unrelated discussion," Lacedaemon scoffed. Hermes homed in on him, his thieving, shrewd eyes missing nothing as they evaluated.

"Is that a Doric accent I hear? A Spartan, I see. Hades would be glad to see you, were I to lead you to his gates. But I will not, and I can truthfully say nothing pleases me more."

Before the spoiled brat could even think about escaping, Lacedaemon latched onto his shoulder with a firm grip, forcing a surprised wince from my fellow god's face.

"What are you?" he demanded imperiously after he'd tried and failed to break free of the strategos' hold. A trace of fear colored his tone, and I assumed Lacedaemon had somehow managed to prevent him from transporting himself through the ether. Lax just regarded him coldly.

"I am a Spartan."

"Now," I began, already feeling better—though it perhaps could have been a placebo from seeing Hermes close to getting his ass kicked, "I might be weakened, but you're still a punk-ass messenger god, and I am still fucking Death. So, want to take your chances with me and Lax here, or would you be so kind as to show me the gates?"

Hermes narrowed his eyes, his body tightening in fury. "Fine." He spat the words like venom, but I only took pleasure in it.

Ah, how good it was to put snobs like him in their place.

Holding out my hand, tremors still lancing up my arm, despite my best efforts to suppress them, I brushed my fingers against his forehead, loathing it all the while. Pictures flashed behind my eyes, and I nodded, breaking our physical connection when I was satisfied.

"Why has Hades not altered the location since I left?" I asked, though I'd rather throw myself into Tartarus headfirst before I continued to converse with Hermes.

The weasel rolled his eyes—he dared to roll his fucking eyes, and replied, "Because there were no more souls to guide there. Since no one believes in the Underworld, no more demigods and wishful heroes want to look for it. So, moving it was pointless." He regarded me, the first actual shred of decency showing itself. "You have been gone a long time, Thanatos. But I think you'll find, despite what you've seen here," he gestured towards what remained of the Athens I had known, "not much has changed. And that is not necessarily a good thing." Then, glaring back at the Spartan, he spat. "I'd like to leave now."

"We'd also like you to do so," Lacedaemon replied easily, releasing his hold on the god.

He disappeared within seconds, likely so as not to give us time for second thoughts.

"Grab on," I told my companion. "We're going to kick some Underworld ass."

He hesitated. "You are still so weak. Would it not be wise to wait?"

"Wisdom is Athena's realm," I held my hand out. "I would hate to tread on her turf."

"You're going to get yourself killed."

"I'd never get so lucky," I replied dryly as he clasped my shoulder.

~

Just as Lacedaemon had predicted, the jump from Athens to the gates was immensely draining, my physical form already strained by the massive blood loss. I swayed on my feet, leaning humiliatingly upon my companion as I struggled not to empty my stomach on the ground before us. Though his brow was wrinkled in concern, and his eyes carried a definite weight of an "I told you so", Lace didn't comment, for which I was grateful.

The gates themselves were just as I remembered, in the same place I remembered, and were accessed just as before. It took a disturbingly short length of time to infiltrate the Underworld. Though I knew it was because Hades allowed it that I succeeded at all, the fact remained: the gates were relics, frozen in time. I'd thought the rubble and disrepair of Athens had disturbed me, and it had, but this was by far worse. A sense of foreboding bubbled and roiled in my gut.

"I do not like this."

I looked at the man next to me, barely making out his form in the ever-present dark of Hades. "You don't either, huh? I'd hoped it was my paranoia."

He shook his head, moving carefully around an obstacle, wisely avoiding making physical contact. "I've changed. You've changed. We've been forced to adapt, even if our changes didn't take place in our homeland. This," he gestured vaguely. "Is unnatural. It's not right."

"I agree, and this adds a whole new level of urgency to our rescue mission," I forged onwards down the marked path, the eerie silence too looming for even the Underworld, as I remembered it, at least. "If Kaiah is here—and I have no doubt—then any assumptions I might've made about Hades' character may be unreliable."

"So, we're facing an enemy whose motivations we no longer can even fathom a guess of?" Lacedaemon grumbled. "Perfect. You couldn't have even found me some Hoplites to massacre. This is by far becoming my least favorite mission."

"Well, maybe I can brighten your day," I muttered, before stepping out from the enclosed corridor we'd been traveling through. "Because now I can transport us—at least to the gates of the castle. And guess who guards those?"

A spark lit his eyes. "Kerberos."

"Ready to meet the Hound of Hades?" I asked, cocking a brow. "He's never really taken a liking to me, so for once I'm not an advantage."

"That implies that you usually are."

"Hilarious. Ready to kick some fuzzy ass?"

He rolled his thick neck, his spine popping as his eyes burned with anticipation. "A Spartan is always ready for a fight." His brow furrowed, "However, you were already significantly impacted by the transport from Athens. To do so again so soon—"

"Is a problem which remains unavoidable," I interrupted. "Let me worry about my limits, Lax."

He scowled darkly. "It's I who would be stranded in Hades if you wind up killing yourself."

I just shrugged. I knew danger didn't faze him, and death certainly didn't scare him. As I predicted, with a long-suffering sigh, he grabbed on, and I once again jumped through space, closing the distance between us and Hades' castle instantaneously.

This time, however, was so much worse. I barely had time to note that Cerberus was nowhere to be seen before I fell to my hands and knees, vomiting violently onto the death-darkened dirt below. The matter I expelled was tinged a familiar shade of gold, and I groaned, knowing it was my blood which stained it. I was likely bleeding somewhere internally. Which, considering how much blood I'd only recently lost, was very bad news. The thing was, I didn't give a fuck. I was here, and, shoving up to my feet, I found I could stand. Therefore, I could fight.

Kaiah was all that mattered. I needed to save my mate, and I didn't care how much I was hurt doing it. I didn't care if I died doing it, as long as she ended up safe and sound.

"You cannot continue like this!"

"Save your mother-henning for someone who'll fucking listen, Benjamin!" I growled, my chest heaving as I spat out the name he so hated.

"The problem being, none of you headstrong idiots will!" He growled back just as fiercely.

Knowing our group, I couldn't argue with his logic. I also couldn't muster up any guilt, not when my mate was so close. I could feel her, sense her at the edges of my aura, causing my skin to prickle with her nearness.

"She's here, Lax."

He sighed. "Now you'll be even more idiotic, won't you?" But, despite his words, his eyes were steely with raw determination. He might play it cool, but he was also fiercely protective. I doubted Kaiah's kidnapping sat well with him.

It sure as fuck didn't sit well with me.

"The gates are open," he noted.

"He's expecting us," I finished.

Lovely.

With no other choice, we drew our weapons and strode through the gates, single-minded in our intent. I was here to take back what was mine.

If my former friend stood in my way, I would kill him.

~

Ho boy. Wild, and we're only about halfway through the chapter! EEE!

Anyone noticing a bit of a change in Marcus? ;)

I think someone has finally reached the end of their rope. Which, honestly, is fair. Marcus has gotten the shaft one too many times, methinks!

Any questions/concerns/exciting things you want to share?

Until tomorrow,

Epsilon