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Persephone made a sound of impatience and sucked her teeth. Hades had sent her to Tartaros, but she could not enter Tartaros, not really. If she could not get inside, a fact he was obviously aware of, she could not be tortured for the rest of her existence, so why was she here?
“Is it open all around?” She asked, craning her neck to see the fence surrounding the perimeter., but the gate was too wide to see past. “You can rise,” she mumbled when she realized they would remain bowed until she dismissed them, silently berating herself for mumbling. Hades would not mumble, and neither would she.
“No, Queen Persephone. If they were open we would not be needed.”
“No, I mean is it open in gaps like this gate,” she said, impatiently gesturing to the thin gaps between the bronze columns of the gate, “or is it completely closed off in stone and earth? Is a fence strong enough to hold the Titans or must they be enclosed in something harder to break through?” She focused on keeping her voice regal and strong, thinking of the way Hades never let his voice waver, and forcing hers to stay just as steady.
“Oh, yes, Queen Persephone,” the third spoke, silent until now, bowing his head deeply in her direction. “The bronze gaps all along the prison. They cannot escape as they have no power while imprisoned, the Three ensured it – the Three Brothers, I mean.”
Persephone nodded, and said, “I am going to walk around the prison.” Walking off in a random direction, she kept her head high and her back straight enough that it ached, until she could no longer see the Hekatonkeires. At which point, she let her posture fall, her shoulders rounding slightly as she stretched her back into a small hump, reaching her arms forward.
Walking around the bronze enclosure was tiring and uneventful. She looked through the bars every few hundred steps, not daring to get near enough to touch them, but saw no Titans or beasts lurking about.
The cuts littering her skin had still not fully healed, though they had stopped bleeding, veins of dried gold colouring her shins. It flaked away like tiny gold flower petals flying behind her, but she was too exhausted to appreciate the beauty – too focused on her escape.
She had lost her sandals in the fall, thankfully the pads of her feet were unbothered by the smooth, surprisingly clean stone she walked on. Without footwear, however, her toes dragged along the ground when she was too weak to lift her feet any higher off the ground, scraping the toughened skin away, a trail of blood following her.
When she was unable to walk any longer, Persephone sat against one of the many large rocks scattered along the prison, facing it. Watching for one of the Titans to come strolling her way, hoping for them really – she was in desperate need of company.
It felt like weeks since she had last spoken to Hades, weeks since she had fallen down here.
“Hades,” she groaned, looking up at the empty darkness above her. She sat there, waiting for him to appear until she fell asleep, her head resting on the rock behind her.
§
“So,” a voice sang, waking Persephone from a restless sleep. “Hades has found himself a queen.”
The rock stabbed into her skin along her back and cheek, her neck crooked at an uncomfortable angle. She raised her head, her neck stiff and aching, and squinted at the source of the voice.
Glowing red-orange eyes of fire met hers, flashing with each blink as small embers fell to the ground. They were on a fine enough face, with full lips and a strong nose. He might be handsome if not for the eyes, filthy matted orange beard, and pointed ears.
He was naked from the waist up, his skin streaked with dirt and pale from the lack of sunlight this deep under the earth. Wings jutted out from his back, spread wide and blocking her view of anything but him, the tip of each feather talon-sharp. As her gaze fell below his waist she snapped her eyes back to his. In place of legs he had two thick coiled serpents, their eyes identical to his own, and staring at her intently.
“Typhoeus,” she said, her voice surprisingly strong, though thick with sleep.
With a greasy smirk and flash of his eyes, he slithered closer to the wall retaining him. “How can you recognize me, when I am barely a tenth of my size?”
“How many fire-eyed, serpent-legged men do you know?”
He halted, not quite close enough to touch the bronze bars separating them, and beckoned her closer.
She stayed seated.
He raised his eyes at her – no eyebrows, she noticed – and hissed, “Free me, Queen.” Spitting the title like it was ash on his tongue.
Persephone rolled her eyes, but stood, crossing her arms and staring him down with an equally irate gaze. “The only way I would free you is if you could kill Hades,” she shot a look above her head as she said his name, “but,” she looked back at Typhoeus, jutting her bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout, “you cannot.”
“I absolutely could,” he said, nodding too enthusiastically.
“How?”
“I—” the fire of his eyes dimmed as he narrowed them at her. “Why should you wish your husband dead?”
“Queen,” she corrected.
“Why should you wish your husband dead, Queen,” Typhoeus spat at her feet, the saliva hitting the invisible wall in the spaces between the bars, and sliding to ground.
“He has killed someone,” she said. “Someone important to me, and I wish to return the favour. But I will have to kill him since there is nobody more dear to him than himself.”
