"Not good!" Hades, locked in a fierce struggle with Hyperion of the Twelve Titans, finally sensed it the instant the Wall of Sighs was destroyed.
He would have been better off not splitting his focus; the moment he pulled his mind back to the underworld and took a look, he was shaken to the core.
The Wall of Sighs he prided himself on—impregnable, unbreakable—had become a wall of wailing. Countless Helheim warders were pouring through the great molten breach into the Elysian Fields, brazenly hunting down the screaming, fleeing souls.
Bear in mind, anyone admitted to Elysium had been the most devout among mortals in life, the majority of them women. Their souls might not have had the strength to serve as divine attendants to the Olympians, but in purity they were absolutely top tier.
Keeping them in this eternal paradise of the underworld served two purposes: first, it was reward-and-punishment made clear—hell and paradise both—which made ruling mortals easier; second, it was precisely because people yearned for paradise that more mortals worshiped Hades, praying to evade punishment after death and enter bliss.
From a certain angle, even the ferryman Charon's one-coin fare was meant as the same sort of warning.
Now that Elysium was being invaded, Hades truly couldn't sit still.
If the Hades Hall on Olympus was smashed, at worst he lost face. But if his own Elysium was ruined, that was losing the substance.
"Out of my way, Hyperion!" Hades roared, flinging a deep-dark underworld canopy over Hyperion, trying to force the troublesome Titan back with a big move.
Not so simple. Before he'd been imprisoned in hell, Hyperion had been the sun god who soared the high skies—call him an unofficial sun god. He was also the father of the true first-generation sun god Helios, the moon goddess Selene, and the dawn goddess Eos.
Even though he'd been stripped of his office when chained, with his release he had already begun using his will to erode his eldest son's office and seize back part of the sun's authority.
Sensing Hades's power inexplicably dipping by a medium chunk, Hyperion immediately remembered the promise Odin had made back then: "As soon as the Æsir invade the Greek world next time, you Titans can unite and resist Zeus's tyranny. In return, the Æsir will destroy the Olympians' foundations so you can take back what was yours."
It had to be said, Odin was a blowhard fond of handing out rubber checks.
But the Æsir were actually delivering; with the Titans tying up Zeus and company, they really had gone to dig out the Olympians' roots.
Whether the Titans could reclaim their offices wasn't the Æsir's concern.
Titans drunk on hatred and revenge weren't about to let their old enemies go.
Hyperion laughed wildly, a thunderous sound shaking the mountain's crown. "Want to run back to the underworld? Dream on—"
With that, the giant—easily a hundred-plus stories tall—swung a fist, a mountain-sized hammer of a hand sheathed in lava thousands of degrees hot, all the power he'd taken back crammed into that punch.
"You—" Hades was about to go mad.
Elsewhere, Hela had prepared for a slog, but once her army stormed into Elysium they didn't even meet decent resistance.
Watching those beautiful, delicate, gentle souls scatter like frightened chicks, only to be run down in a few steps by faster underworld warders and collared with soul-chains, Hela curled her lip and murmured, "Hades really isn't coming back?"
"Sister Hela, don't get careless," the more steady Ereshkigal cautioned.
"Of course. I'll quit while I'm ahead. Still, if we've come all the way to Hades's home turf, not bagging a goddess or something is hard to justify, no?" Before Hela finished, Scathach pointed off into the distance.
Well now—how convenient.
Not far away, a goddess of no small power was stirring the underworld's strength, turning it into beams of death that directly vaporized the Helheim warders leading the charge.
That was "vaporized" in the sense that their souls—and even their soul-armor—were utterly annihilated.
Ordinary underworld beings couldn't do that.
"Heh." Scathach, fingers itching, was about to step forward.
Ereshkigal, rarely, took a step up. "Little sister Scathach, let me handle this one."
Scathach's cool face didn't change. "As you like."
She was only interested in powerful close-combat types; facing what looked like a more domestically inclined goddess, she had little interest.
About five kilometers ahead, in front of a splendid Greek-style temple, over a thousand Helheim underworld warders were cowed by a figure who was girlishly pretty yet full of authority; they didn't dare advance another inch, standing "properly" about a hundred meters from the temple's main gate.
It wasn't that they didn't want to rush in. They brandished claws and teeth and tried to scramble in on all fours, but a formless divine radiance was spreading at the level of law, its overwhelming might rejecting their advance.
"Vile demons from beyond! This is a sacred place of rest, not somewhere for you to run wild! I am Macaria, goddess of rest. I command you to leave the Elysian Fields at once—" A strikingly beautiful black-haired goddess stood in the temple's doorway. She was plainly afraid—there was timidity and retreat in her eyes—but still she stepped out. A host of Lampades, the torch-bearing underworld nymphs with decent fighting power, stood behind her.
Her bluster was doomed to fail.
When she saw Ereshkigal also step out with a band of fierce-looking death-aspect lesser gods, emerging from the passage that Helheim's boundless warders had opened, she knew she was finished.
"This is the High God Ereshkigal, the sleep god of Helheim of the Æsir underworld." With that divine introduction, Macaria's heart plunged into the abyss.
Had it been another enemy, her own name might have scared them.
After all, she was the daughter of Hades and Queen Persephone—one of the most exalted beings in the Greek underworld.
Sadly, her title had no deterrent effect before such mortal enemies; if anything, it was likely to arouse their frenzy and greed.
Macaria fell silent.
"I know you, daughter of Hades. I'll give you two choices—either resist fiercely, be struck down by me, and taken to Helheim; or surrender nicely and come with me to Helheim."
Macaria pressed her lips hard together. After a few seconds, she gave a bitter smile. "What difference does it make?"
"Of course there's a difference." Ereshkigal flicked the tip of her golden hair. "I don't like rough fighting. If we can avoid a battle, I can at least ensure that until Hades surrenders or falls, you won't be treated arbitrarily as a slave god."
"A slave god? Like Artemis?" Macaria's mouth grew more bitter.
"She's fortunate. At least, after she conceived the God-Emperor's child and swore fealty to the Æsir, she was granted a vast continent as huntress goddess." Ereshkigal said, light as you please, something that sounded quite terrifying to Macaria.
Several seconds later, Macaria lowered her head. "I surrender."
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