Eíste se synergasía me ton Króno? : Are you in collaborations with Kronos? 

Sorry again y'all for the late update. I was having issues with my living arrangements and just earlier this week was able to return to the city where my school is located. I've gotten more settled in and finally had time to finish this chapter. I hope you all can excuse me for that!

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Samantha

Tonight marks my seventh night here.

And I've had nightmares each evening ever since. 

Nightmares of memories I don't have. Of war. Of pain. Of a feeling that I can't describe that burns past my chest every time I close my eyes, enveloping me in a blanket of heat that dulls my heartbeat, threatening to suffocate me. I have no one to tell, no one to understand what's happening, so I've kept it to myself, and I've come to dread the fall of complete darkness in the Underworld. 

I always wake up drenched in my sweat, my skin hot to the touch. But tonight, something feels different as I close my eyes. Something draws me to the darkness peripheral to my dreams, that strange place between sleep and wakefulness where your body hasn't yet fully immersed itself into unconsciousness. 

The nightmare comes to me tonight, in that place. I haven't fully fallen asleep yet when I'm being pulled by something far beyond my reach. It's weighty, it's strong, and it's encompassing of everything around me, slowly but surely coercing an urge from within me to wake. It sends liquid fire to pool at my wrists, making the skin there become raised and irritated. My fingertips begin to tingle. 

It's like my cells are being beckoned toward something only they can recognize. My face is flushed, my neck hot and sticky, and my toes frozen in place as the nothingness around me begins to bleed into a darkness I'm not familiar with. 

I know I'm in Tartarus before the heat around me gives it away, but the darkness here isn't like the darkness I knew when I was in a stasis. It's... denser, and it's deeper. 

My legs lead me to where the vague outline of something large rises and falls and rises again in light uptakes, breathing.

As I near it, the puffs of air being blown cause dust to disperse from something above it, revealing iron. As if entranced, I reach out with my fingertips, seeking to find the surface where the dust bounced off. Cold hardness meets my skin as my fingertips tentatively glide across a cylindrical surface. It's thin, and long, separated by intervals of space every other bar. Its height travels further up and stops only when it meets a level platform with sharp corners. 

A cage. 

I strain my eyes to see it in the darkness, but to no avail. The darkness moves like smoke after a fire, thick and unyielding, unwilling to disclose anything else except the hunched over form of  the person imprisoned, and bits of its cell as well.

I should be scared, I know. Anxiety begs my mind to retreat and fight the summon of my body, but the attraction I feel to this place keeps me grounded. It's intense, and although it's unknown to me, my cells seem to be well acquainted with it. Without thinking, I extend a hand to the flat surface running along the top of the bars, the part that connects them to the level face of the cage's top. When my fingertips flit atop it, I can feel ridges carved into the metal, ridges that come alive under my touch. 

"Ahhh, the emergent one."

My hand stills. 

Silence greets the voice as my heart suddenly thunders underneath my ribcage, my blood beginning to pump so violently I can hear its muffled thrum. I'm afraid it'll burst past my veins and make my wrists catch on fire.

My voice gets caught in my throat and I can't answer, like a gulp I couldn't quite swallow. A sting of awareness trickles down the back of my neck towards my spine when the voice speaks up again. 

"I have searched Gaea for you, but my efforts have been futile."

The voice is deep, gravelly, and it makes anxiety coil into a tight knot in my stomach. I want to throw up, scream, and run as far away as possible from whatever this awful place is. It feels like the darkness caressing me is an extension of the voice, and though I suspect it belongs to the hunched over form inside the cage, the bars can not conceal everything. 

Somehow, as silence thickens between us, I'm able to find my voice again, desperate to give the voice what it wants so I'll be left alone. 

"Who are you? What do you want?"

My voice sounds thin, wavering on the last syllables, but I don't care. The nightmares the past week have been too vivid and harrowing for me to forgo my chance at ridding myself of them. On my third night here I dreamt of being impaled again, but this time, my stomach had not been on the receiving end of the three-pronged weapon. My heart was.

And even after it had been gruesomely wrenched from my ribcage, it had been cut and divided into lots. That night, I awoke with an aching feeling in my chest.

"Are you the one who brought me here? Are you the reason I've been having nightmares?" I accuse, feeling my eyes narrow despite the fact my knees are knocking one against the other.

It's my turn for silence to answer me, so I prod again.

"What do you want with me?"

My voice is desperate and I hate it, but I have to pick my battles. I don't know who it belongs to, and I don't know what they're capable of. If their ability to summon an encounter during my unconsciousness is any indication, it's obvious the owner of this voice has more than enough power to hurt me in ways that will stick for a long time.

"You know."

I shake my head lightly, feeling that if I move too much or too vigorously, I'll stick out even more.  

"No, I don't."

"We both partake of the same source."

Again, I shake my head. What the hell is he talking about? I don't have power. Not even a couple of measly sparks could run past my palms to save me from human kidnappers. What makes him think I could ever partake of the same source?

"No, I- I don't understand. I don't have powers, you must have the wrong person! I can't even understand my boyfriend, I'm--"

The voice laughs, mocking me. 

"Time makes no such error." 

Tears threaten to spill. I know Daniel didn't plan for all this come of his enthusiasm, he's just a kid, but fuck if a part of me doesn't resent him a little bit for it. I should've stayed with Hades, I should have followed him around as he carried out his responsibilities, then I wouldn't be in this mess. Then I wouldn't have to watch him interact with beautiful, russet-haired goddesses. 

Yeah, in this timeline, autumn is in full swing, and for the past week I've had to endure witnessing Hades' sweet moments with Persephone. Watching him treat her with silent gentleness while I got to be on the opposite end of his still focus and blunt arrows, it caused something inside me to whither. Why did she get the flowers in her hair while I got a weapon lodged in my throat? 

"I have nothing to give, I don't know what you want from me..."

My voice comes out defeated, exhausted from hoping the Fates will take pity on me and send me back home. Instead, I'm rewarded by watching the man I left everything behind for fall in love with someone else.

"I will search through endless divergences in time to find you, Emergent One, and I will. I am nothing if not patient."

My throat is clogged, preventing me from breathing as I suddenly fling my hands to my neck, clawing at the hot skin there, clutching to the only oxygen I'm able to get. With a sharp jolt, I gasp and chortle awake-- only to find the tip of a sword poised underneath my chin. 

When I follow the path to its grip, I find strong, pale fingers positioned to kill me. Their owner is silent, solemn as the blank night sky in the Underworld. His lip curls in disgust when he realizes I've come to, eyebrows furrowed defensively against his hard eyes. 

"Eíste se synergasía me ton Króno?" 

His voice is intoned as a question, but I understand nothing except Kronos. Does this have anything to do with my nightmares this past week? Can Hades see them? Is it possible for us to still share a connection? 

He waits for me a moment, his jaw becoming set, the look in his eyes becoming incensed when after several seconds I don't respond. 

He glares at me, repeating the same question. Or at least, that's what I'm assuming he says next. This time, however, he raises his voice, waiting expectantly for another brief stretch of time, only to be infuriated by the fact that silence once again, ensues. How the fuck am I supposed to have an answer if I don't speak his language? He hasn't attempted communicating with me since I arrived, not even to ask me for my name.

If this is what our interactions are going to be like, why doesn't he just take me to the surface? In fact, why the hell did he even bring me here if his intent was to kill me? Or let me stay in the palace for that matter? 

Suddenly, I'm angry. Suddenly, it's me raising my voice. Feeling heat creep up my neck again, staining my cheeks, I swat his sword away, ignoring the burning sensation in my fingertips as I do so. 

"Don't you dare yell at me! Not when I've been nothing but kind to you!"

My voice breaks, and the burn in my cheeks travels further up to my eyes and nose as the sting of tears soon overtakes my face.

"I tried to pretend like you didn't try to kill me up on the surface, I kept excusing your lack of attempts at connecting with me or even communicating with me because I thought, god, he's a busy man with shit brothers who was forced into accepting an even shittier deal!"

The first tears fall onto my cheeks, blurring the vision of Hades returning his blade to my throat, saying something else that matches my tone. But I don't let that stop me, I'm sick and tired of allowing strangers who look like Hades to hurt me, injure me, and kill me. I'm sick and tired of pretending like I wasn't just in high school, a child playing the role of an adult in face of a negligent father, an absent mother, and a philandering boyfriend. 

My world is not one with perilous journeys to different realms, there's no room for envious, mentally unstable kings who kidnap their brothers, or even one where children with unfathomable amounts of power have the ability to transport people to different timelines and dimensions. It's time I accept that, because look where denial has brought me. 

I'm alone in an unrecognizable world where the land of sleep haunts me, on the opposite side of the blade of the man who once told me I was his only anchor to reality. More tears fall as another stab of pain pierces my heart. 

I watched Hades kiss an indifferent Persephone today. He gathered the pedals of flowers, ones obviously imported from the surface because they can not grow here, and his careful fingertips decorated the length of her braid with them. His lips grazed her temple once he was finished, brushing aside the shorter strands of hair framing her face, gentle and ever-doting as always. 

I purse my lips with distaste, slowly shaking my head. Hades swings back his sword, determined to slice through me once the blade returns to my skin, but before he can, my palms erupt into scarlet red flames.