“Why did you come here? To Tartarus? You couldn’t have known about the attack. Not even Sky and her people knew.”
“We found someone who had Abaddon’s handiwork on them and thought it would be best to talk to the people who last dealt with her. I can’t say it turned out well, but had we not come here, it might have been worse.”
“Abaddon was someone who worked with the Titans. I knew her very well, possibly better than Lucifer himself, considering how long they were apart. She was part of our ranks for a thousand years at least, which made her betrayal to start a rebellion with Asmodeus all the more galling. Even worse was how soon after we defeated them, Zeus was born. And then when he was powerful enough to overthrow his father, he did. We made a lot of mistakes back then, mistakes that cost lives, which separated families. But the biggest was leaving Abaddon alive. We should never have taken in any of the devils. We should have just executed them all and been done with it. But we were younger, stupider, and the possibility of controlling that much power was hard for many to resist.”
“Can she be killed?”
“Anything and anyone can be killed, but in Abaddon’s case, I couldn’t imagine how much power someone would have to wield to be able to do it. I’m not sure if Cronus and Rhea would have been able to defeat her with anything less than their full strength. And Asmodeus is considerably worse.”
“That’s what Lucifer said.”
“Asmodeus is the closest thing I’ve ever met to an actual godlike being. He was placed with the Norse pantheon, and they used to burn through specially created sorcerer’s bands. His power was just too difficult to contain. He needs blood to continue using it, though—that’s his only downfall. Like all vampires, he has to feed to maintain power. And he feeds a lot.”
“I’m going to do everything in my power to stop these people.”
“And it won’t be enough.” Hyperion sighed. “I’ll help deal with what happened here, and then I’ll come help. Hades told me I can leave whenever I like, but my power will take too long to charge for it to be anywhere near a level that would be considered useful. Selene tells me that they’re attacking humans in the Earth realm? That this cabal has finally shown itself, and they used your name to do it.”
“That about sums it up, yes.”
“Don’t be drawn into a battle you can’t win. Whoever is behind all of this is powerful enough to appeal to Abaddon for help. And it’s not Asmodeus—he’s not the shy type. It’s someone who doesn’t want to be known until they’re ready. Until it has the most impact on whatever long-term game they’re playing.”
“This game has gone on long enough already. At least since they corrupted Mordred, and I presume even longer than that. I don’t know why they finally decided to strike now, though.”
“Abaddon has been trapped in another realm for thousands of years. My guess is her emergence from that realm has allowed these people to finally put their plan into action.”
It made sense: you wait until most of your heavy hitters are in the same place before you destroy your enemies. “Baldr,” I said aloud as my mind began to race.
“Baldr is not the leading type.”
“No, Baldr and the blood elves were trapped in the dwarven realm. And Abaddon was trapped in some other realm. Now Abaddon is here, and she’s brought blood elves. She can seemingly jump between realms with some sort of portable version of the old realm gate tablet we found.” I walked toward the room where Rhea had been murdered, and Hyperion stepped in my way.
“No,” he said.
“I need to look in the room.”
“I won’t have her property be thrown around while you search for something that may or may not be helpful.” Hyperion didn’t make it sound like he was going to leave me a lot of choice.
I really didn’t want to get into a fight. “Look, when Abaddon left the room, she threw a bangle or something like it back inside. She put one on her wrist when she left the realm with Atlas, too. I need to find that bracelet. It’s important.”
“Rhea died in there, and you want to start rummaging around, desecrating her home even more than has already been done. What if it’s nothing? What if it was just a piece of junk?”
“Then it’ll have been eliminated as important.”
“I couldn’t save them,” he almost shouted. “They were my friends, and they died because I wasn’t here.”
“And if you don’t let me in there, a lot more could die.”
Hyperion reacted as if he’d been slapped. He shoved me. “You dare lecture me about the consequences of my actions. I was ruling the piece-of-shit realm you call home before your parents gave even a second of thought to you.”
“Move, or be moved. No more playing, Hyperion.”
He took a step forward, and shadows tore out of the ground, wrapping themselves around him and dragging him to the floor. “I don’t want to put you in my shadow realm,” I said softly. “But if you push this, I will hurt you.”
“You’ll try,” he said, changing into his golden dragon-kin form, and opening his mouth, burning away my shadows with molten flame, causing feedback that made me yell out in pain.
“Didn’t know the shadows could hurt you, did you?”
Before Helios had managed to do the same thing earlier, I hadn’t thought they could, no.
He stood to his full height and unfurled his massive wings, knocking over a vase beside him that crashed to the floor, scattering remains all around. He turned and looked at the vase, the anger on his face softening, and the dragon-kin form melted away, leaving only the man.
“I’m sorry,” I said as Hyperion dropped to his knees and wept for his fallen friends.
“Do what you need to,” he said to me without looking up.
I left him to his sorrow and walked into the bedroom where Rhea had been murdered. Her body had been removed already, but the blood remained, and nothing else appeared to have been touched. I moved several piles of belongings that had been discarded during the fight but found nothing. I used my air magic to push the bed several inches and spotted what I was looking for on the floor beside a bloodstained dagger.
I picked up the dagger and placed it on the bed. I didn’t know whose blood it was, but Abaddon had been given a deep wound from what I’d seen, so it might have been hers. I picked up the copper bracelet and found it to be devoid of anything even close to a mark. There were several indentations on the top of the bracelet, but other than that it was completely smooth.
I left the room and found Hyperion sitting on one of the sofas, waiting for me. “I need to apologize. I’m sorry. I allowed my grief to override common sense.”
“We’ve all done it,” I told him. “And I found this.” I passed the bracelet to him.