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Thanatos shifted subtly in his seat. The hound moved itself to its full height as well beside his mistress, back to being wary of Devon. He was sentry again, with intelligent eyes, ready to take on any threat to the Goddess. To tear said threat apart. Piece by bloody piece.
Slowly, she finally stood and stepped towards him until they were only a foot apart. This close, he realized he was only an inch or two taller than her.
Her blue eyes pierced his gaze. The way she stared made him feel like she was peeling back layers of his soul. Just as she had done when he was only a soul without a shell.
He felt suddenly caught off guard by that thought and wondered where it had come from. The tiny hairs on his skin stood on end again, his fight-or-flight instinct so ramped up that he was tempted to bolt for the door.
“You’ve been tormented by demons for so very long,” she whispered. “I guess it doesn’t really matter, though, does it? Still ended up in the same place.”
His eyebrows arched in confusion, but he stayed quiet through her assessment.
“You realize you are not dead. You are very much alive,” she said, finally addressing him
instead of her whispered statements.
This information sent a wave of shock through him and memories flooded his mind. Nothing about how he died, but ones of him looking down at his own body, lying on the floor of some horrible motel room as the Goddess and a winged skeletal man stood over him.
“How? I saw my body. I saw what had happened. The blood was everywhere,” Devon
muttered, feeling a cold, creeping numbness at even saying it out loud.
As much as he tried not to let the memory take hold of his mind, it horrified him to see himself with glassy dead eyes and his chest not rising and falling with breath as his skin turned blue.
Devon remembered he had been in such a dark place recently, feeling as if no one cared if he lived or died, and wondered if he had done this to himself. The thought he could end his own life nauseated him.
He spent his entire life fighting for other people but forgot to fight for himself, forgetting he also deserved a chance. He knew that if he had survived, he might have still ended everything, and that made him sick.
Devon was unsure if he necessarily wanted to remember how he died, but he knew deep down he needed to.
Reality brings little comfort.
“Something larger than you, or me, stepped in and kept you from true death. I may be a Goddess, but even I cannot see the future or decipher the reasoning behind the Moirai’s deeds.”
“A Goddess? Moirai?” he echoed, his voice low and unsure, still stuck on the words he had learned in history lessons so long ago. Ones that were obviously much more real than he had ever thought.
Devon knew she was not of this world but hearing her say the words outright made it even more surreal. She was an actual Goddess, a higher power that came to his death to guide his soul from the mortal realm.
“I never… the history books…” he was fumbling his words, but she nodded patiently in understanding.
“Yes, history has had plenty of ideas on who and what their gods were. We even acquiesced to this, to a certain extent. You see, history has not been kind to female rulers. The gods you read about - Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, the brothers who ruled sky, sea, and the Underworld, were just our alter egos. Created to appease and help us work alongside humans.”
“They do not exist,” he whispered.
Her only response was a simple shake of her head.
“The only powerful beings watching over you were Goddesses, which were my sisters and I. Kind of changes your perspective on the fairer sex, does it not?” she asked with only a tilt of her head to show it was an actual question and not rhetorical.
“The other Olympians…”
“The senate in Halcyon is made up of demigods, children born of Titans and humans. They have powers in relation to the ones you know of as the Olympians. But, no, there are none that are Olympians in the way you think of.”
“So… am I a demigod?” he asked, unsure of everything at that moment.
“No, that would imply that you have power and cannot be killed in the traditional sense.”
His eyes widened a fraction at this. Killed in the traditional sense? As if he had spoken aloud, she answered his question.
“Mortals are easily killed. A demigod would not have fallen from a gunshot wound, which, taking in your body after death, was how you died. To kill a demigod, you must use hydra’s blood or sever their head from their body and burn them in a sacrificial fire.”
