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Prologue
840 A.D., Somewhere in Scandinavia
Persephone watched from atop the hill that overlooked the battleground. The mortal warrior, his leather armor creaking as he walked, had yet to notice her. Blood, not all of it his own, mixed with sweat, tears, and war paint across his face and down the long braids that tangled at his temples. He checked for survivors among the dead, hoping to see that some of his men had lived. If he could not bring them home alive, he would fulfill his promise to honor their bodies with a proper burial.
Persephone knew this soul. This soul, throughout his lives, had always chosen war. Something that conflicted with his true nature, the one Persephone saw when she guided his soul to the afterlife.
She rarely guided the dead to her realm, preferring to take care of them once they arrived, but this soul only ever called to her and not Thanatos, her Reaper.
And she answered, escorting him herself to Elysium.
There was very little Persephone did not understand about death, but the warrior soul’s ability to summon her to the deaths of his men and his own was one of them.
When the life the soul had lived was assessed, it proved to be deeply caring and affectionate, regardless of its mortal coil. It never mattered what body he was born into; his spirit was always that of a warrior. He was always standing between the innocent and certain doom. He did not bring his army to war for power or land, but for justice and freedom.
His face was solemn as he prayed to the old Gods, ones she knew were not real, for his fallen brethren. In that moment, he allowed his emotions free. Losing his comrades was a hell he would live in for the rest of his mortal days.
The Viking finally looked up at Persephone, somehow sensing her presence as he always did when she came to take his soldiers to their final resting place, and Persephone delighted in the eye contact that no mortal should be able to make.
He placed his fist over his heart and lowered his head. She wondered as she watched him if he held a latent power, but she saw no unbound abilities when his soul crossed her gates. Just the lovely soul she felt more and more affection for over the millennia.
Though the man bowing his head before her did not know her, his mortal mind thinking her a Valkyrie, his soul always remembered her. As if she were home to him as he was home to her.
After returning his gesture, Persephone called his slain brothers to her. The perished warriors heeded her call to avoid trapping themselves in the mortal plane as a soul without a vessel. They used her as a gateway to the Underworld, a world attached to this one that only the dead could find—a veil between this world and hers where she cherished and guarded her souls.
Before they passed through her ethereal form, each soul stopped and placed a fist over their heart as they nodded to their general in respect. And although her warrior watched on, he only ever saw her, not his men, and she always wondered why.
She felt the souls as they passed through her and was overwhelmed by the love they felt for him. When so many other leaders received anger and betrayal from the souls of the soldiers lost to their mortal world, their deaths a fault on the part of their leader, this one did not. This warrior’s men died knowing that their leader fought beside them and for them, and they loved him as they did their own kin.
Persephone was fascinated, awed by such respect.
After the last soul passed through her, Persephone looked at the warrior again, knowing she would not look upon his face until it was his time. Until the countless wars finally punished his psyche too much for him to continue the fight.
The mortal man that the soul currently inhabited smiled at her, always a handsome smile, then turned from her and began the funeral rites to ensure the mortal bodies were given their proper respect.
“Until I see you again…” Persephone whispered to him, the wind carrying her voice. “My warrior.”
Chapter 1
2164 A.D., City of Halcyon
Persephone sat anxiously in the back of the car as she stared out the window at what remained of the human world. The Moirai, the three deities older than time itself, had summoned her to their headquarters at the Fates Consulting Group.
She was hesitant to heed the summons, knowing that what was waiting for her was nothing she would care to hear. She was already well behind schedule for the day, and her Chief Financial Officer at Cerberus Financial was breathing down her neck. But she knew that to ignore the call of the Moirai would just invite even more inconvenience in the future.
Lost in her thoughts, she watched the city of Halcyon move past her through the car window. Halcyon was one of the few urban centers to survive humanity’s Great War, the cataclysmic conflict that had brought an end to the human era nearly a hundred years ago.
Beyond its advantageous position between a mountain and the Thalassian sea, Halcyon had benefited from inhabiting the old lands of Mount Olympus. The city was now considered the world’s capital, though the world was a much smaller place. Zephyr, the remaining land of what was once been called Europe, was the only continent with life thriving upon it.
The large, curving building that was Fate’s Consulting Group came into view through the car window. The spiral metal building reaching up so high in the sky, it looked as if it could touch the heavens above. In it was the Moirai, who never left their private little retreat, high above the middle of the bustling city of Halcyon.
Although Persephone didn’t like to leave her realm much, much less if it was to visit the Moirai, she did enjoy Halcyon and its magnificent beauty. Perhaps its proximity to Olympus gave her a sense of nostalgia, even though it had been many centuries since she and her sisters ruled from Greece. The names changed, titles were forgotten, lives were lost, but the land held the memories of millennia.
And it was all as well, since humanity never seemed to capture the truth of the Gods in their beliefs. The Gods who were not quite what the humans thought they were.
Persephone and her sisters had lived among the humans at various points throughout history, fighting alongside major armies or dancing with lords at fancy balls. Overall, they allowed the humans to govern themselves and, for a time, had chosen to let the humans live as they willed.
It did not take long for them to see what came of the humans without the interference of the Goddesses; the greed and blood lust. Humanity found themselves lost to their baser urges of conquering and killing. They brought the world to a standstill with their Great War, using horrible weapons until there was barely any humanity left. Only barren wasteland now surrounded Zephyr, some of the landmasses lost to the seas.
