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A lightning bolt comes alive in his palm, flying with precision as he launches it in Kronos' direction. The white-hot plasma lands true, hitting Kronos in the hard lump of his throat.
“Oh,” Kronos simpers at the gathered gods, the ones who surround him with battered but determined forms. “What’s this? Children pretending they can win against their betters?”
Zeus' wings struggle to open, but he wills them to expand. Golden and ruffled. Broken but beating. He rises into the air, and at each of his sides, his children of war rise as well. Ares and Athena share quick glances—unspoken tactics flowing between them—before they both move with intention.
Hades' mist envelops both, hiding them from Kronos' narrowed gaze.
“It seems worms can grow spines.” Kronos' lip curls with his obvious disgust.
“Persephone,” Demeter’s shriek pierces through the fog. “Return my torches!”
Zeus ignores that damnable woman; his focus remains on Kronos and bringing his father to heel.
Kore, if you’re meant to rise out of Demeter’s shadow, this is your hour.
41
Kore
Demeter glares at Kore, casting off the remnants of the bonds he held her with. They break like brittle, decayed leaves and fall away from wrists bruised with reminders of their existence. Kore’s chest tightens with a momentary twinge of guilt, but the moment passes when he catches sight of the hatred shining from Demeter’s gaze.
“Yield, Persephone,” she commands.
That name grates across his senses, reminding Kore that Demeter has never seen him as anything more than a necessary extension of herself—a tool to be used and discarded at her will. No matter how often he tells her, Demeter will not see him as he stands. She refuses to, and so she keeps him in her mind as her preciousPersephone.
The torches in his hand burn hot with his temper.
“My name is Kore,” he reminds Demeter as the poisonous claws of her vines shoot out from the earth.
Demeter forgets he holds the totems of her power, and Kore burns her vines with little effort. Fiery ash rains down around them, like a snow of destruction, as Kronos fights with the other Olympians. This war, the one between him and Demeter, is Kore’s alone.
“You sniveling shit,” Demeter hisses, her arms making more summoning motions. “How dare you defy me? I am the mother who bears the fruits of the earth! I am the one who blesses mortals with bounty, and you are nothing!”
Kore allows the words to roll off his back, water over the feathers of a swan. He’s used to the venom of Demeter’s tongue. The torches burn red-hot at his command, and a smile blooms across Kore’s mouth as Demeter watches in dawning horror.
“Who is nothing, Demeter?” Kore taunts.
The torches she commanded yield to the offspring she loathes, her worth made meaningless in Kore’s palms.
She twitches, a ripple of displeasure that smoothes away beneath a placid mask. Demeter is a bitter woman—if Kore admires anything of Demeter it’s her tenacity. She’s the most unflappable goddess Kore’s ever met. He often wondered if, in different circumstances, they could’ve been close.
If he’d been born female, would Demeter love him the way she loves her creations?
We’ll never know.
Kore puts all thoughts of what could’ve been out of his mind, dodging poisonous vines and burning Demeter’s monstrous bramble. Around them is a war separate from theirs, one that wages with the fate of Olympus on its shoulders. The battle between Demeter and Kore is different; it’s a war of independence. Kore is fighting for his right to exist outside of Demeter’s shadow. Demeter’s pride and refusal to bow to Kore’s desires fuels this battle—a fight that needn’t occur.. A war that’s been brewing between them since Kore’s cursed birth.
Time is strange in Kore’s world, moving slowly for him but rapidly for mortals. In a blink lives move through whole journeys, from conception to death. Hours follow whole civilizations as they rise and fall, and Kore wonders how many of those souls he will meet in the Underworld when he’s done here. How many lives lost during this fight will he watch Hades judge? How many will he feel compelled to show leniency, due to the memory of Demeter?
Kore feels that his lingering attachment to what could’ve been is a weakness, a weakness which has him pulling punches when he should knock Demeter flat. After their centuries together, he knows Demeter won’t see him as he is; she sees Kore as a failure and rues his creation.
“Just let me leave,” he pleads, his torch catching one of her heavy vines.
“Why should you know a happiness I never knew?” Demeter demands, her gold eyes wild with envy. What could Kore possibly have that she didn’t?
He thinks of Hades, of the nights in her bed when his body found a home between her thighs. The answer strikes him as a blow lands against Kore’s bruised side.
A daughter.
