Nyx tossed her hair over her shoulder, her black eyes staring down Hades as he stood at the door. Even though she had thrown him to the ground outside, he hardly looked put out. Hades stared back at Nyx, unafraid but also unchallenging, running a hand through his dark hair before scratching his beard absentmindedly as if he had all the time in the world to make it through this conversation. His own power, actualized as gray smoke, curled around his broad shoulders like a mantle. Nyx let out a sharp breath through her nose as her brow furrowed.
“Is there something else that you wish to say to me, Hades?” At the sound of his name, shooting stars shot out from under the hem of her tunic like sparks. Every wall in Hecate’s home creaked again as it bowed under the weight of a primordial and a god barely able to contain their powers.
“Nyx…” Hades’s voice had changed, dropping lower and carrying a severity with it that even Nyx had to recognize. “Erebus loves you. You need to try and understand what we’re trying to do—”
“If one more person tries to tell me what Ineedto do, I will wipe them from existence.” Nyx stood, not abandoning her body but letting it grow taller until she grazed the ceiling. Her hair whipped around her shoulders as the kitchen began to shake. Any jars or pottery that had not already been knocked off their shelves went tumbling to the floor. Even the fire started to leap higher as it consumed the kettle sitting above it entirely.
“Don’t do it…” Hecate warned, feeling her power rise in response to the threat to her hearth.
“I am trying tohelpyou!” Hades’s control finally snapped, and he stormed into the kitchen. He let his god-form overtake him until he was eye-to-eye with Nyx, his eyes glowing gray and his body tense. Gray shadows wrapped themselves around his chest and arms, visibly trembling with restraint. Nyx only growled in return as a black hole appeared behind her, slowly beginning to expand. Hades remained unmoved as his hands tightened into fists at his side.
“Try me,” Nyx hissed, her voice beginning to echo and sounding utterly inhuman as the humanity bled from her eyes. “Do you want to see where the God of the Underworld goes when he dies?”
Hades roared in response, and there was a sonic boom as the two immortals collided into one another. The house began to shake as tiles fell from the roof and cracks appeared in the walls.
“Nyx,” Hecate shrieked, crouching down behind her counter and holding on for dear life as jars and herbs went flying into the portal. “Stop this!”
Her pleas landed on deaf ears as Nyx and Hades unleashed the full torrents of their powers on one another. There was no scenario in which Hades could overpower her, but Nyx remained cautious that if she simply ripped open the universe to consume him, there would be collateral damage.
Hecate gripped her counter and hauled herself up, her hair whipping wildly around her as the power in her kitchen threatened to destroy it. She peered over the edge as she watched both Hades and Nyx try to rip the other apart. They had dissipated entirely into their god forms, clouds of gray and black smoke, and only when they moved forward to strike would their faces appear amongst the chaos. Hecate stared, partially in awe and partially in disbelief, at Nyx as stars began to orbit around her.
She was a terrible sight, and it was in that moment that Hecate understood the full extent of why Zeus was afraid of the Goddess of night. There was a black hole behind Nyx, framing her body as her long hair stuck out at all angles in a perverse halo. Beacons of purple, black, and blue magic would combust from her in waves as stars and comets shot out from the folds of her garments. Wind whipped around her, containing all the sounds of the night, wolves howling and owls shrieking. Nyx’s eyes were completely white, and her lip was curled back in a snarl, as she stuck a hand out towards Hades. Dark tendrils, like tar, shot out from the ends of her fingers and pierced through the clouds until they disappeared.
Hecate didn’t need to wait to know if they hit their target. Hades emerged from the other side of the kitchen with a shout. He ripped the shadows off him, and Hecate could see red marks, like claw marks, across his half-naked chest where he had been struck. He might have been outgunned, but Hades would not go down in his own realm without a fight to the very end. His eyes were now pitch-black and wild, something utterly calm in the very center of his gaze, something…dead. Any warmth that Hecate had sensed in Hades was now gone. His hair was matted to his forehead with sweat and gray shadows still wrapped around his biceps like an extension of his body.
Hades launched himself towards Nyx, snarling like one of his own beasts of hell, cocking a fist back as he did so. A wave of gray smoke filled the entire kitchen, momentarily snuffing out Nyx’s cosmic light show. It was so thick, it took a moment for Hecate to catch her breath. Hades came crashing down right in front of Nyx, slamming his fist into the ground, causing the one of the exterior walls of the house to come crashing down. The impact sent out a shockwave of cold power that instantly froze everything around it. It was so cold that it burned hot. It took Hecate a moment to realize that the absence of warmth caused by Hades’s power was the absence oflife.
“You want to know where the God the Underworld goes when he dies?” Hades snarled, and his voice echoed throughout each corner of hell. He picked his head up as Nyx shook frost off her shoulders, the black hole growing behind her as it now threatened to take the kitchen table with it. “You can’t kill what’s already dead, Nyx.”
Nyx let out a guttural scream, her hand shooting forward and wrapping around Hades’s neck once more. She leaned down and stared at him, their powers cascading against one another, merging and opposing like oil and water.
“There are things far worse than death,Hades.”
Hades stood to his full height, shaking his shoulders as he stared at Nyx. Neither of them moved, and Hecate held her breath, still anchoring herself to the kitchen counter. The portal behind Nyx had stopped growing, but it was still threatening to pull the whole house in on itself. Some of the light faded from Hades’s eyes as he cocked his head to the side, slowly coming back to a mortal form as he waited. As quickly as he had lost control, Hades seemed to regain it as if he had remembered why he was there in the first place. The warmth that Hecate had sensed in him returned.
“You’re experiencing it now.” Hades acknowledged, his voice quiet as Nyx tightened her grip on his throat. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
As soon as he said those words, a switch flipped in Nyx. Her eyes went wide, and the white power seeped from them, her dark irises slowly coming back into focus. She shrunk down to her mortal height and released her grip on the god. The black hole behind her began swirling in a clockwise direction until it caved in on itself. Without removing her gaze from Hades, Nyx waved two fingers in the air and everything that the portal had consumed came crashing down from the ceiling onto the floor, which effectively broke all the jars, pottery, and furniture that had disappeared.
Hecate stood to her full height with a relieved sigh and a roll of her eyes. “Thank you. I’m so glad you thought to return my things after you nearly ripped a hole in the universe in my kitchen.” She leaned against the counter and tried to catch her breath, both Hades and Nyx still staring at one another.
They had regained their human bodies—Hades looking like he had emerged from a fight with the Nemean lion, and Nyx giving off the appearance of someone who had walked out of the center of a hurricane. A broken expression crossed Nyx’s face, only for a second, but it was enough that both Hecate and Hades saw it.
Hades sighed, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand as he looked up at the ceiling. “No one wanted it to be this way. If you believe anything that I say, please believe that.” Nyx nodded but said nothing, wrapping her arms around herself as if she’d never be warm again. When she turned and looked at Hades, a little flicker of power danced in her eyes again.
“Resolve this. End it. Quickly.” There was a reverberation in her voice that sent chills down Hades’s spine, and he knew that the next time Nyx lost control, she’d take the everyone with her. “Or I swear, Hades, I will swallow the entire world in night.”
Hecate couldn’t help but utter a sharp gasp, her hand flying up to cover her mouth. She knew that Nyx was hurting, but she never thought that her friend would threaten the balance of the universe. It was the one thing that she always strived to protect. Hades studied Nyx once more before he gave her a curt nod of recognition. There was another moment of silence in the kitchen before Hades turned on his heel, walking towards the door with his hands up. When he got to the doorframe, he stopped and called out over his shoulder.
“Nyx, tell me this… what is night without its darkness?”
The primordial had been staring down at the ground and whipped her head up as she snapped in response.
“Perpetual.”
Hades shook his head. “Unbalanced.” He was gone before Nyx could offer any rebuttal. She sank down in front of the fire, which miraculously was still going strong. Hecate said nothing, knowing Nyx would start speaking when she wanted to. For the rest of the afternoon, Nyx didn’t move. She sat in front of Hecate’s hearth and mourned, dying a thousand deaths over. By the time the sun had set in the mortal world, she had not let her night release its grip on the Underworld.
Hecate moved around quietly for the rest of the day, slowly reassembling her kitchen and her apothecary stores. If there was anything that she held sacred, she knew not to disturb a heartbroken woman who had fallen at her hearth. Was Nyx not sitting in the very place that woman prayed to Hecate from all over the world? Hecate didn’t know if Nyx had chosen that spot instinctually or randomly, but it was sacred; Hecate would not disturb her if she was in front of the fire.
