CoXFic: A Rogue's Monomyth (Part Five)
Friday - Unknown
Unlike the borders of the Underworld, which still hung on to topographical vestiges of the outside world, the true gates of Hades' realm was somewhat closer to the conventional model. Darkening caves and rock walls, dripping stalactites and desolate grottoes. As Kam withdrew back to whatever realm he had arrived from, Synge scanned over the "building" before him. The building itself appeared only to be a facade placed over an existing cavern: short, squat Doric columns holding up an otherwise unremarkable architrave. It did not appear overly ornamented, which was a disappointment to the mage, but one he did not dwell on long before walking into the shadow of the entablature.
The outside of the building was fitted with iron doors, carved with mid-relief images of three standing figures engaged in what appeared to be debate. The manner in which they were displayed suggested that the viewer themselves were engaged in the discussion, as at least two of the figures could be discerned as gazing outward. In the background of the left door, one could discern the yawning maw of a great cavern. There were faded, eroded etchings within the cavern which may have been intended to represent flames, or perhaps twisting shadows. On the other door, the background faded into a wooded glen and grassy hills. Brass, copper, and gold had been overlaid on to the iron to highlight the figures and backgrounds. Jaime briefly wondered whether or not the shades of the dead were expected to open them or merely pass through them insubstantially. The doors to the Judges' chambers were not locked and the hinges were well balanced and oiled, swinging open wide with little effort. He tugged his still-damp coat around his chest, feeling a sudden chill as he moved into the Judges' chamber.
As he could have predicted, the doors swung closed behind him with an ominous echo of weights being thrown to prevent his escape. The interior of the door held its own warning to the newly-arrived dead seeking to avoid their assigned fates: the image of Cerberus busily rending and devouring the thinly engraved outlines of fugitive souls. Synge circled through the shadowed chamber; a former cavern broadened and irregularly shaped into a hemisphere. Precious little decorated the room, aside from a few alcoves featuring sculptures signifying some of the most infamous denizens of Tartarus: a wheel, a stone upon an incline, a dragon with a woman's head, a dangling tree with a cup beneath. Opposite these stood three great stone sculptures, hardly more than engraved pillars or megaliths. Each one was carved in the vague approximation of a seated, robed man with a stern looking and impersonal expression. Each figured was crowned with a small diadem. The one on the right was bald with a great braided beard. The one on the left was clean shaven, but with great flowing hair carved behind him. The center figure featured a great curly, tangled beard and pleated hair.
"Hello?" Synge called out to the empty room. His voice echoed through the chamber, following him as he stepped from stone to stone, peering into the passageways which forked away from this room. No sound returned his calling, save for that voice of a cursed nymph long scattered across the worlds. After some time, he settled down in the middle of the room, unwilling to search blindly across the entire netherworld for the men he wished to find. "I wish I still had some freaking smokes,” he sighed.
When the voice spoke, it rumbled like rocks tumbling down a hillside. "Do you come from the East? Or the West?" it asked.
Synge looked around himself in urgent concern. No one had appeared. The voice, though immense, sounded as if he came from the very room he was sitting in. "What? Where are you? Show yourself..."
"The East. Or the West, boy? Which one is it?"
Synge slowly turned away from the passages and the hidden recesses where the warning sculptures stood, putting his face toward the great stone men. He they had not moved. Their eyes and mouths were still. Nothing at all had changed. Yet he knew he was no longer alone, if he had ever been.
"Do not test our patience, breathing man. We are not to be trifled with," the Judges grumbled.
"I am..." Synge stuttered. "I am from where the East ends, but before the West begins. I am neither and both." He was answered by silence, long and empty enough for Synge to believe he was alone again.
"Typical sorcerer rhetoric," The statue on the left said without moving its carved lips.
"Riddles and contradictions," The statue on the right muttered, its unmoving, unblinking gaze shifting attention toward the center figure.
"If he seeks refuge in avoiding our inquiries, he will be sore with disappointment," Minos decided, resting himself against the wall without shifting a pound of his stony weight. "You have only bought our full attention to this case, James Masterson Synge." Synge's head jerked backward, surprised that the Judge had used the familial pronunciation of his name. "What boast of pride brings you before us?"
"You think I went through all this work to get here because it was fun?" Synge remarked snidely. The Judges said nothing in return, but he could feel a few tons of weight on his shoulders from their gaze. Synge cleared his throat and started again. "Nothing so vain as pride, but desperation. The mortal lands have been aflame in war and death, strife and destruction. Ares and Deimos run rampant through the cities and nations..."
"An affliction you have rarely deigned to balm, wizard," Rhadamanthys observed. "Your greed has fanned the flames of that conflict. Or rather, like the bane of Phineas, has caused you only to dine on the wealth and toil of others."
Synge sighed, giving the statue a begrudging glance. "Simply put, things are total chaos up above. I know you all could give a damn. You stay out of mortal affairs until they end up here. Fine, I don't really care about that. I'm not asking any of you to get off your graved asses -" A small tremor of discontent rolled through the chamber. "- but what tidings I bring are dire enough to even warrant your attention. It so happens that a band of mortal druids and..."
"...our time is infinite, Master Synge. Not our patience, come to your point."
Synge paused and gave the three megaliths an outright glare. "Do you assholes always interrupt people in the middle of their goddamned testimony? I didn't know I was on mother-fucking Hellenic Idol down here; can I finish without the commentary? I am trying to be fucking respectful and you are pissing all over me!" Synge crossed his hands over his chest with a huff. "Fine. True Facts: Plouton is selling all of your asses out to the Morningstar and the Fallen," Synge declared broadly before slipping on his sunglasses, hoping that the Judges wouldn't read the bluff in his eyes. To this he added, "Deal with it."
Synge wasn't sure exactly what happened following that, only that he was suddenly on his back with an incredible ringing in his ears, as dust sifted from the ceiling to settle among the loose fragments of stone that had clattered to the ground. The megaliths, the judges, were no longer seated, but now portrayed them standing - almost looming toward him.
"Libel!" Aeacus roared.
"Truth-poisoner, reckless gossip," spat Rhadamanthys.
Only Minos kept his composure, severe though it was on his unchanged face. "Dangerous accusations, boy. What evidence do you have?"
Synge picked himself off of the ground, reached into his pocket and removed the golden bough. Within the taper-lit gloom of the chamber, it shone brighter than anything else. "I have brought tribute to Despoina, an offering that she might, through womanly guile and arts, prove these accusations false."
"You are late for that, heirodule," Minos replied. "The seasons of the earth have warmed and the Mistress has turned to the Kore. You will not find her here, leaving you without a witness to support your accusations."
Synge tucked the little clipping back into his pocket with a smile. "Then, perhaps, you might guide me to the woman who slides, as a sinuous viper might, between the sheets of the marriage chamber of your Master? Perhaps she has his ear with the Mistress is away..." The shuddering of the chamber caused him to take a leap backward away from the fury of two of the judges, but not all of them. "The Legacy Chain has found the Kore, they entreat her on this very day to incarnate as mortal that they might use her in a rebellion against Hades himself! But why?! Why invite Eris into the carefully ordered realm of justice and repose? What threat could be so massive? I asked these questions, honorable Kings of my fathers, I asked and I tore answers from the throats of secret conspirators." He watched as Minos pushed his fellow judges back into their seats. "The answers they gave me were impossible things, unthinkable, under the rule of Zeus Almighty."
"Zeus has been long absent from the throne of Olympus," Aeacus whispered, his face embracing the shadows from a snuffed taper.
"And the Box falls into the hands of wicked mortals, once again," Rhadamanthys sighs, eyes thinning down to slits.
"Only the Moirai know what path our kings and Gods trod, boy. It is not our place to question them. That is the burden of heroes," Minos observed. "A title you are far from holding. The transactions of Hades are beyond our authority to intervene. Although I have expressed my... disappointment in his diplomatic entertainments."
"So it is true," Synge sighed, running a hand through his hair. "The Unseen god will abandon his bride and ally with the Pit. This is beyond retarded. They are going backstab you, and rob you of everything they have promised. What could they possibly fucking well offer you? Not riches, he owns all the damn wealth of the Earth. Power? He rules unquestioned here. Did...Did they offer them the throne of Olympus itself? Are you all taking hints from Lucifer and staging your own fucking mutiny of heaven?"
Minos settles back into his seat, turning his face cold and flat to the mortal. "We have nothing further to give you, boy. Our duties remain unchanged. Entertaining your piebald gossip and rumors, however frightening they may be, provides no interest to us. It is plain that you wish to be judged only by your words." His carved finger gathered dust, but the intended dismissive gesture was plain to see. "You may take him, Far-Reaching-One."
"What? What do you mean take…" Synge whirled around from the once-again inert Judges, hearing the clicking of rotten armor and grind of tarnished iron unsheathing. From the darkened passageways, the unhallowed dead streamed forth with sword, spear, and cudgel. This, at least, was familiar to the well-heeled combat mage. With a snarl, Synge tore at the air, stripping the primeval universe of light and flame. An escort of fiery knives surrounded him as he found himself pushed back against the far wall. Ixion's flaming wheel, captured in stone as it was, crumbled beneath Synge's greedy fingers, fueling the spells he beckoned at his lips and with the scribe of his mind.
"Hands up, fuckers, who wants to die? Again?!"
Synge ripped his spells at the monsters, flame and aelectricity ripping through the unburied soldiers of countless slaughters and battles. His fingers blurred and twitched, sewing together streams of intent and odyllic force into Helios' Tear, the Spear of Apollo, Tesla's Finger. The dead ignited, burned, or shattered before his mystical force, but each one was quickly replaced. Jaime staggered backward as a hulking abomination smashed through the chamber's threshold, a long-decaying Minotaur slain at the battle of Cimerora now returned to seek its revenge. Synge took a breath and concentrated it in his chest, his throat growing bright red, then orange, and then white before he blasted the creature with the Tongue of the Dragon. The infernal gout splashed across its face and the wall next to it. The superheated stone beside the Minotaur exploded into red-hot fragments and cinders, coating the beast’s exposed skull in molten rock. It roared dully, blindly swinging its ungainly axe across the room. Synge dived toward and under the beast allowing it to charge into the defenders still hobbling and clattering into the room.
This was not a simple battle. Jaime had long been accustomed to handling such unequal battles with his allies, or at least a well-established contingency plan. There no such safety here. The blades and staves of the undead were unending, and Synge quickly knew this was not a battle he could win without some intervention. His power, his spells, those were assured. His flesh and blood, the former quickly splitting in two to shed the latter in greater and greater amounts, would not last as long as those. When his body was finally spent, it was certain he would be revisiting the Judges in a much less equitable venue. Synge snatched a spear from one of the rotting revenants, and spun in a gyre to clear himself more space in the chamber. He fell back against the body of the (dead-again) Minotaur, which was now slowly cooking against the statues of the judges.
"Is this how you welcome a guest to the house of Hades?" Jaime cried out, his chest heaving even as his spells spat and snipped at the encroaching hordes. "Is this the hospitality of the great and many-treasured Plouton? Have I spoken wrongly? Have I defamed his name? Or do you seek to silence the voice of the just, do you seek to blind the sight of those who would stop this house from desecration? Give me audience, Old Man! I want to hear it from your mouth! I demand hospitality!"
A great tremor shuddered across the ranks of undead before him, halting them. With twitches and sighs the soldiers sunk back to a lazy attention stance. The corpse-army then collapsed in a heap of long-decayed bone and tatters, inanimate once more. Synge took a great heaping gulp of air and stuttered it out again with a shiver.
A voice oozed out from the darkness of the passageway, softly breaking the silence, chilling Synge's bones as it snaked into his hearing. "The great and many-treasured Plouton has forgotten hospitality, boy-witch," it spoke. "He has forgotten the great fury of his Mistress' mother, the great lamentations of the living he caused by means of his lust for a maiden. He has become complacent and ingratitude fills his heart." Synge watched as a vague, female figure approached the threshold of the room. It did not emerge from the shadows, but only to reach out a naked arm to beckon him forward with claws the color of the deepest hours of night. "Come to me, boy-witch. Your arts are sweet to me."
Synge stepped forward hesitantly, keeping his eyes on the inert skeletons and ghouls he was firmly expecting to rise once his guard was down. He stepped only to the edge of the passageway but went no further. The woman's hand glided across his bloody chest and his raw cheeks, dabbed at the stream of blood from his eyebrow. The finger quickly withdrew as the woman licked at the stained finger. She issued a heartily, closed-mouth laugh. "Very sweet, pretty one. I accept your sacrifice and grant you my favor."
"Then I have some questions, Cross-roads goddess," Jaime began.
Hecate draped her hands on each side of Synge's face, letting her hands fall across his disordered hair. "No, no, pretty boy. My favor is mercy and breath in your lungs. Your questions are meaningless. You have not the strength to overthrow Hades, nor even enough to contend with him. Take my bounty and withdraw back to the realm of the living. I will account for Hades' betrayal of his wife and the Mistress of this realm. A Son of Cronos is nothing as to my power, older and more primal as it is. You, however, are simply flesh. Pleasing flesh, I think. Would you like to cultivate my favor, further, boy?"
Jaime jerked his head away from the goddess' touch. "I didn't come down here to get told off. I need to know what is happening, for Chris--"
Hecate's suddenly scaled and chilly hand snatched at Synge's face, covering his mouth and choking him on midnight water and grave soil. He felt a hemp noose around his throat and his feet dangled in the air, jigging like a murderer's last dance. "Speak not that name to me, boy. I abhor that name, that power. It is cursed to me. My children, my daughters have suffered oft and in great numbers to those in service to that name." Hecate slowly emerged from the shadows, her pallid face shifting from shallow-cheeked girl, to full-fleshed woman, and back to the emaciated contours of the crone. Throughout all, her eyes were dark and lightless as a pool of moonless water. "We have suffered enough because of their myths and prayers. I will never let that name, or those servant to that power, approach this realm. Not even his greatest adversary, nor the marches of the Fallen, will not foul my abode. Never." She glanced over to the unmoving Judges and barked, "Never!" She snapped her eyes of unbroken night back to Synge before dropping him back to the ground. "And I cannot trust a servant of the Well of Furies to do what needs be done. These are matters for Gods and Goddesses, not god-slaves." Hecate turned her full figure away and padded barefoot into the darkness.
Synge gasped and tore away the sensation of the spectral noose from his neck, "I am not a servant of the Well, bitch." He coughed a few more times to clear the grave dust from his throat. "I am of the Host of the Radiant, initiate of the White Hall. The Well is our enemy, our destruction. I will fight it, not serve it. I am Jaime Synge, bane of Infernal, Spell-Knight to the Mu, friend and fiend of Midnight. I have plundered the Tree of Thorns, I have struck at the life-blood of Romulous the Usurper. Synge of the Vanguard, Arcanus Synge of the Carmine Tower. The Shadowguard are mine to command, the ley runs through my blood and soul. I am Jaime Cabiri, Fury of the Forge and scion of Hephaestus and I will know of this plot. Or else."
Hecate paused in her silent retreat. "Or else what, mortal? You would strike against the goddess of all witches, of night and crossroads, necromancy and the moon? I think a little foundling of the Forgemaster could not do this, much less you. But since you feel so strongly about these little names and honors you place upon yourself, let us seek the truth of them, hmm?" She turned to the side, placing her hand on the corner of some unseen hallway. "Speak to your father then. If father he be to you." Although he could not see her face, Synge knew she was smiling at him with all contempt.
Synge struggled up to his feet with a curse and began to charge after the Night-Goddess when a voice speaking his name halted him in midstride. He felt his bowel turn liquidy and tumultuous, his fingers and face grew cold as he slowly turned around. Behind him, standing squatly and solidly within the arch of the opposite passageway, was a man he had never seen before but knew full well the moment his eyes lit upon his smudged, spark-scorched face. His dark hide apron was old and well-used, his arms and hands thick and rough from labor. His hair had once been shaved down to the skull but dark and thick bristles were just emerging from the scalp. His chin was covered in a short, irony beard, roughly and unfashionably trimmed and without any decoration. He shifted his weight from one twisted foot to another and silently took the measure of Synge's character. Staring down this shabby, dirty workingman's divinity, fouled by labor and shamed by lameness, Synge did the only thing his aggravated ego and bristling nerves could possibly manage.
He collapsed in prostration, slamming his forehead to the floor with such energetic piety that his skull rang.
Unlike the borders of the Underworld, which still hung on to topographical vestiges of the outside world, the true gates of Hades' realm was somewhat closer to the conventional model. Darkening caves and rock walls, dripping stalactites and desolate grottoes. As Kam withdrew back to whatever realm he had arrived from, Synge scanned over the "building" before him. The building itself appeared only to be a facade placed over an existing cavern: short, squat Doric columns holding up an otherwise unremarkable architrave. It did not appear overly ornamented, which was a disappointment to the mage, but one he did not dwell on long before walking into the shadow of the entablature.
The outside of the building was fitted with iron doors, carved with mid-relief images of three standing figures engaged in what appeared to be debate. The manner in which they were displayed suggested that the viewer themselves were engaged in the discussion, as at least two of the figures could be discerned as gazing outward. In the background of the left door, one could discern the yawning maw of a great cavern. There were faded, eroded etchings within the cavern which may have been intended to represent flames, or perhaps twisting shadows. On the other door, the background faded into a wooded glen and grassy hills. Brass, copper, and gold had been overlaid on to the iron to highlight the figures and backgrounds. Jaime briefly wondered whether or not the shades of the dead were expected to open them or merely pass through them insubstantially. The doors to the Judges' chambers were not locked and the hinges were well balanced and oiled, swinging open wide with little effort. He tugged his still-damp coat around his chest, feeling a sudden chill as he moved into the Judges' chamber.
As he could have predicted, the doors swung closed behind him with an ominous echo of weights being thrown to prevent his escape. The interior of the door held its own warning to the newly-arrived dead seeking to avoid their assigned fates: the image of Cerberus busily rending and devouring the thinly engraved outlines of fugitive souls. Synge circled through the shadowed chamber; a former cavern broadened and irregularly shaped into a hemisphere. Precious little decorated the room, aside from a few alcoves featuring sculptures signifying some of the most infamous denizens of Tartarus: a wheel, a stone upon an incline, a dragon with a woman's head, a dangling tree with a cup beneath. Opposite these stood three great stone sculptures, hardly more than engraved pillars or megaliths. Each one was carved in the vague approximation of a seated, robed man with a stern looking and impersonal expression. Each figured was crowned with a small diadem. The one on the right was bald with a great braided beard. The one on the left was clean shaven, but with great flowing hair carved behind him. The center figure featured a great curly, tangled beard and pleated hair.
"Hello?" Synge called out to the empty room. His voice echoed through the chamber, following him as he stepped from stone to stone, peering into the passageways which forked away from this room. No sound returned his calling, save for that voice of a cursed nymph long scattered across the worlds. After some time, he settled down in the middle of the room, unwilling to search blindly across the entire netherworld for the men he wished to find. "I wish I still had some freaking smokes,” he sighed.
When the voice spoke, it rumbled like rocks tumbling down a hillside. "Do you come from the East? Or the West?" it asked.
Synge looked around himself in urgent concern. No one had appeared. The voice, though immense, sounded as if he came from the very room he was sitting in. "What? Where are you? Show yourself..."
"The East. Or the West, boy? Which one is it?"
Synge slowly turned away from the passages and the hidden recesses where the warning sculptures stood, putting his face toward the great stone men. He they had not moved. Their eyes and mouths were still. Nothing at all had changed. Yet he knew he was no longer alone, if he had ever been.
"Do not test our patience, breathing man. We are not to be trifled with," the Judges grumbled.
"I am..." Synge stuttered. "I am from where the East ends, but before the West begins. I am neither and both." He was answered by silence, long and empty enough for Synge to believe he was alone again.
"Typical sorcerer rhetoric," The statue on the left said without moving its carved lips.
"Riddles and contradictions," The statue on the right muttered, its unmoving, unblinking gaze shifting attention toward the center figure.
"If he seeks refuge in avoiding our inquiries, he will be sore with disappointment," Minos decided, resting himself against the wall without shifting a pound of his stony weight. "You have only bought our full attention to this case, James Masterson Synge." Synge's head jerked backward, surprised that the Judge had used the familial pronunciation of his name. "What boast of pride brings you before us?"
"You think I went through all this work to get here because it was fun?" Synge remarked snidely. The Judges said nothing in return, but he could feel a few tons of weight on his shoulders from their gaze. Synge cleared his throat and started again. "Nothing so vain as pride, but desperation. The mortal lands have been aflame in war and death, strife and destruction. Ares and Deimos run rampant through the cities and nations..."
"An affliction you have rarely deigned to balm, wizard," Rhadamanthys observed. "Your greed has fanned the flames of that conflict. Or rather, like the bane of Phineas, has caused you only to dine on the wealth and toil of others."
Synge sighed, giving the statue a begrudging glance. "Simply put, things are total chaos up above. I know you all could give a damn. You stay out of mortal affairs until they end up here. Fine, I don't really care about that. I'm not asking any of you to get off your graved asses -" A small tremor of discontent rolled through the chamber. "- but what tidings I bring are dire enough to even warrant your attention. It so happens that a band of mortal druids and..."
"...our time is infinite, Master Synge. Not our patience, come to your point."
Synge paused and gave the three megaliths an outright glare. "Do you assholes always interrupt people in the middle of their goddamned testimony? I didn't know I was on mother-fucking Hellenic Idol down here; can I finish without the commentary? I am trying to be fucking respectful and you are pissing all over me!" Synge crossed his hands over his chest with a huff. "Fine. True Facts: Plouton is selling all of your asses out to the Morningstar and the Fallen," Synge declared broadly before slipping on his sunglasses, hoping that the Judges wouldn't read the bluff in his eyes. To this he added, "Deal with it."
Synge wasn't sure exactly what happened following that, only that he was suddenly on his back with an incredible ringing in his ears, as dust sifted from the ceiling to settle among the loose fragments of stone that had clattered to the ground. The megaliths, the judges, were no longer seated, but now portrayed them standing - almost looming toward him.
"Libel!" Aeacus roared.
"Truth-poisoner, reckless gossip," spat Rhadamanthys.
Only Minos kept his composure, severe though it was on his unchanged face. "Dangerous accusations, boy. What evidence do you have?"
Synge picked himself off of the ground, reached into his pocket and removed the golden bough. Within the taper-lit gloom of the chamber, it shone brighter than anything else. "I have brought tribute to Despoina, an offering that she might, through womanly guile and arts, prove these accusations false."
"You are late for that, heirodule," Minos replied. "The seasons of the earth have warmed and the Mistress has turned to the Kore. You will not find her here, leaving you without a witness to support your accusations."
Synge tucked the little clipping back into his pocket with a smile. "Then, perhaps, you might guide me to the woman who slides, as a sinuous viper might, between the sheets of the marriage chamber of your Master? Perhaps she has his ear with the Mistress is away..." The shuddering of the chamber caused him to take a leap backward away from the fury of two of the judges, but not all of them. "The Legacy Chain has found the Kore, they entreat her on this very day to incarnate as mortal that they might use her in a rebellion against Hades himself! But why?! Why invite Eris into the carefully ordered realm of justice and repose? What threat could be so massive? I asked these questions, honorable Kings of my fathers, I asked and I tore answers from the throats of secret conspirators." He watched as Minos pushed his fellow judges back into their seats. "The answers they gave me were impossible things, unthinkable, under the rule of Zeus Almighty."
"Zeus has been long absent from the throne of Olympus," Aeacus whispered, his face embracing the shadows from a snuffed taper.
"And the Box falls into the hands of wicked mortals, once again," Rhadamanthys sighs, eyes thinning down to slits.
"Only the Moirai know what path our kings and Gods trod, boy. It is not our place to question them. That is the burden of heroes," Minos observed. "A title you are far from holding. The transactions of Hades are beyond our authority to intervene. Although I have expressed my... disappointment in his diplomatic entertainments."
"So it is true," Synge sighed, running a hand through his hair. "The Unseen god will abandon his bride and ally with the Pit. This is beyond retarded. They are going backstab you, and rob you of everything they have promised. What could they possibly fucking well offer you? Not riches, he owns all the damn wealth of the Earth. Power? He rules unquestioned here. Did...Did they offer them the throne of Olympus itself? Are you all taking hints from Lucifer and staging your own fucking mutiny of heaven?"
Minos settles back into his seat, turning his face cold and flat to the mortal. "We have nothing further to give you, boy. Our duties remain unchanged. Entertaining your piebald gossip and rumors, however frightening they may be, provides no interest to us. It is plain that you wish to be judged only by your words." His carved finger gathered dust, but the intended dismissive gesture was plain to see. "You may take him, Far-Reaching-One."
"What? What do you mean take…" Synge whirled around from the once-again inert Judges, hearing the clicking of rotten armor and grind of tarnished iron unsheathing. From the darkened passageways, the unhallowed dead streamed forth with sword, spear, and cudgel. This, at least, was familiar to the well-heeled combat mage. With a snarl, Synge tore at the air, stripping the primeval universe of light and flame. An escort of fiery knives surrounded him as he found himself pushed back against the far wall. Ixion's flaming wheel, captured in stone as it was, crumbled beneath Synge's greedy fingers, fueling the spells he beckoned at his lips and with the scribe of his mind.
"Hands up, fuckers, who wants to die? Again?!"
Synge ripped his spells at the monsters, flame and aelectricity ripping through the unburied soldiers of countless slaughters and battles. His fingers blurred and twitched, sewing together streams of intent and odyllic force into Helios' Tear, the Spear of Apollo, Tesla's Finger. The dead ignited, burned, or shattered before his mystical force, but each one was quickly replaced. Jaime staggered backward as a hulking abomination smashed through the chamber's threshold, a long-decaying Minotaur slain at the battle of Cimerora now returned to seek its revenge. Synge took a breath and concentrated it in his chest, his throat growing bright red, then orange, and then white before he blasted the creature with the Tongue of the Dragon. The infernal gout splashed across its face and the wall next to it. The superheated stone beside the Minotaur exploded into red-hot fragments and cinders, coating the beast’s exposed skull in molten rock. It roared dully, blindly swinging its ungainly axe across the room. Synge dived toward and under the beast allowing it to charge into the defenders still hobbling and clattering into the room.
This was not a simple battle. Jaime had long been accustomed to handling such unequal battles with his allies, or at least a well-established contingency plan. There no such safety here. The blades and staves of the undead were unending, and Synge quickly knew this was not a battle he could win without some intervention. His power, his spells, those were assured. His flesh and blood, the former quickly splitting in two to shed the latter in greater and greater amounts, would not last as long as those. When his body was finally spent, it was certain he would be revisiting the Judges in a much less equitable venue. Synge snatched a spear from one of the rotting revenants, and spun in a gyre to clear himself more space in the chamber. He fell back against the body of the (dead-again) Minotaur, which was now slowly cooking against the statues of the judges.
"Is this how you welcome a guest to the house of Hades?" Jaime cried out, his chest heaving even as his spells spat and snipped at the encroaching hordes. "Is this the hospitality of the great and many-treasured Plouton? Have I spoken wrongly? Have I defamed his name? Or do you seek to silence the voice of the just, do you seek to blind the sight of those who would stop this house from desecration? Give me audience, Old Man! I want to hear it from your mouth! I demand hospitality!"
A great tremor shuddered across the ranks of undead before him, halting them. With twitches and sighs the soldiers sunk back to a lazy attention stance. The corpse-army then collapsed in a heap of long-decayed bone and tatters, inanimate once more. Synge took a great heaping gulp of air and stuttered it out again with a shiver.
A voice oozed out from the darkness of the passageway, softly breaking the silence, chilling Synge's bones as it snaked into his hearing. "The great and many-treasured Plouton has forgotten hospitality, boy-witch," it spoke. "He has forgotten the great fury of his Mistress' mother, the great lamentations of the living he caused by means of his lust for a maiden. He has become complacent and ingratitude fills his heart." Synge watched as a vague, female figure approached the threshold of the room. It did not emerge from the shadows, but only to reach out a naked arm to beckon him forward with claws the color of the deepest hours of night. "Come to me, boy-witch. Your arts are sweet to me."
Synge stepped forward hesitantly, keeping his eyes on the inert skeletons and ghouls he was firmly expecting to rise once his guard was down. He stepped only to the edge of the passageway but went no further. The woman's hand glided across his bloody chest and his raw cheeks, dabbed at the stream of blood from his eyebrow. The finger quickly withdrew as the woman licked at the stained finger. She issued a heartily, closed-mouth laugh. "Very sweet, pretty one. I accept your sacrifice and grant you my favor."
"Then I have some questions, Cross-roads goddess," Jaime began.
Hecate draped her hands on each side of Synge's face, letting her hands fall across his disordered hair. "No, no, pretty boy. My favor is mercy and breath in your lungs. Your questions are meaningless. You have not the strength to overthrow Hades, nor even enough to contend with him. Take my bounty and withdraw back to the realm of the living. I will account for Hades' betrayal of his wife and the Mistress of this realm. A Son of Cronos is nothing as to my power, older and more primal as it is. You, however, are simply flesh. Pleasing flesh, I think. Would you like to cultivate my favor, further, boy?"
Jaime jerked his head away from the goddess' touch. "I didn't come down here to get told off. I need to know what is happening, for Chris--"
Hecate's suddenly scaled and chilly hand snatched at Synge's face, covering his mouth and choking him on midnight water and grave soil. He felt a hemp noose around his throat and his feet dangled in the air, jigging like a murderer's last dance. "Speak not that name to me, boy. I abhor that name, that power. It is cursed to me. My children, my daughters have suffered oft and in great numbers to those in service to that name." Hecate slowly emerged from the shadows, her pallid face shifting from shallow-cheeked girl, to full-fleshed woman, and back to the emaciated contours of the crone. Throughout all, her eyes were dark and lightless as a pool of moonless water. "We have suffered enough because of their myths and prayers. I will never let that name, or those servant to that power, approach this realm. Not even his greatest adversary, nor the marches of the Fallen, will not foul my abode. Never." She glanced over to the unmoving Judges and barked, "Never!" She snapped her eyes of unbroken night back to Synge before dropping him back to the ground. "And I cannot trust a servant of the Well of Furies to do what needs be done. These are matters for Gods and Goddesses, not god-slaves." Hecate turned her full figure away and padded barefoot into the darkness.
Synge gasped and tore away the sensation of the spectral noose from his neck, "I am not a servant of the Well, bitch." He coughed a few more times to clear the grave dust from his throat. "I am of the Host of the Radiant, initiate of the White Hall. The Well is our enemy, our destruction. I will fight it, not serve it. I am Jaime Synge, bane of Infernal, Spell-Knight to the Mu, friend and fiend of Midnight. I have plundered the Tree of Thorns, I have struck at the life-blood of Romulous the Usurper. Synge of the Vanguard, Arcanus Synge of the Carmine Tower. The Shadowguard are mine to command, the ley runs through my blood and soul. I am Jaime Cabiri, Fury of the Forge and scion of Hephaestus and I will know of this plot. Or else."
Hecate paused in her silent retreat. "Or else what, mortal? You would strike against the goddess of all witches, of night and crossroads, necromancy and the moon? I think a little foundling of the Forgemaster could not do this, much less you. But since you feel so strongly about these little names and honors you place upon yourself, let us seek the truth of them, hmm?" She turned to the side, placing her hand on the corner of some unseen hallway. "Speak to your father then. If father he be to you." Although he could not see her face, Synge knew she was smiling at him with all contempt.
Synge struggled up to his feet with a curse and began to charge after the Night-Goddess when a voice speaking his name halted him in midstride. He felt his bowel turn liquidy and tumultuous, his fingers and face grew cold as he slowly turned around. Behind him, standing squatly and solidly within the arch of the opposite passageway, was a man he had never seen before but knew full well the moment his eyes lit upon his smudged, spark-scorched face. His dark hide apron was old and well-used, his arms and hands thick and rough from labor. His hair had once been shaved down to the skull but dark and thick bristles were just emerging from the scalp. His chin was covered in a short, irony beard, roughly and unfashionably trimmed and without any decoration. He shifted his weight from one twisted foot to another and silently took the measure of Synge's character. Staring down this shabby, dirty workingman's divinity, fouled by labor and shamed by lameness, Synge did the only thing his aggravated ego and bristling nerves could possibly manage.
He collapsed in prostration, slamming his forehead to the floor with such energetic piety that his skull rang.