Who: Hades (solo) What: Time to find demons Where: His sons' bedroom, Hestia & Hera's house When: May 20 going into May 21, 2011. Late evening Warning: none
The question had haunted Hades the very moment Hestia left his office Thursday afternoon. He had rationally dismissed the possibility with a moment of deliberation. There were dozens of reasons why his sons’ joint nightmare was not the work of a demonic enemy in his mind.
The first among those reasons was the demons – twisted creations of the Devil in what Hades had long since judged to have been some project of the fallen angel to mirror how humanity truly is – their malicious, selfish nature – with what they should be in the Devil’s eyes – obedient pawns – were not his enemies per se. And even if they were, they certainly wouldn’t come up with the idea of invading his sons’ dreams on their own.
It had been easy to dismiss the possibility to Hestia, especially with the lack of possession or physical sighting of a demon near them but…
Then Hestia left his office. Her departure had been the downfall of his certainty as his mind, after centuries of administering justice, began to counter and give voice to possible counterfactuals. When he had finally left Hestia’s house and drove back to his own home, he never turned on the radio. His thoughts were much too loud and demanding for him to even notice the music anyway.
When he had parked, his mind had come up with some damning evidence contrary to his previous uncharacteristic optimism: Hadn’t Subrosa broken into a House of Hestia?
That was different, he tried to argue as he put away his keys and locked his vehicle. She was weaker when they invaded her home, literally on the brink of delivering her first children and still moving through a painful transition in her life. She was stronger now. No one could get into her house without her notice, he told himself.
But as he had on his throne in the Underworld, the other side of the argument either had to be fully countered or accepted and he couldn’t manage to refute the questions: Are you sure? Absolutely positive?
The answer was no.
And that “no” kept Hades up the entire night in a way nothing else ever had. Not distractions, not pacing, not red bull or coffee, not even ProVigil had managed to keep him so awake and sleep so far from him as that “no” had. Images of some demon hiding in his young sons’ souls kept him awake with a fiery rage and fears that some demon was twisting their dreams nearly persuaded him to leave his sleeping wife’s side and rush across the city to theirs.
But he held still and calm, easing his own concerns in the dark of the night by softly running his fingers through Persephone’s hair and remaining close to her and that perpetual spring calmness that surrounded her. Rushing across town and into that house in some sort of mad fit would do no one any good regardless of outcome.
Centuries of anticipation and planning had prepared him for the seemingly eternal wait for when he could hold his sons again and assure their safety. But even his daytime visit with them was not what he had wanted.
Not this Friday. This Friday he longed for the evening when everyone in Hestia and Hera’s home were asleep except for him and maybe that little dog of hers. Now was the moment he had hoped and waited for in those terrible hours as he slinked up from the arrangements his sisters had prepared for him in the dark basements of the home when he stayed over to his sons’ still shared bedroom.
Are you sure? Absolutely positive nothing has entered into this house and attacked your sons? The words echoed again in the depths of his mind but they wouldn’t for much longer.
He was going to counter the possibility or accept it. He was a god of judgment, not a god of limbo.
He was uncertain, as he settled down on the floor of his sons’ bedroom, if Hestia would be pleased that he would be able to give her a definite answer or annoyed about how he was about to achieve it, but he decided he would handle such matters when they came to pass.
They weren’t important right now.
Nothing was besides placing the skull of a lamb, slain in his name almost three years ago, upside down on the floor to act as a morbid bowl. Nothing else was important now besides rolling up the sleeves of the long white silk shirt he had changed into and pulling up the hood of the black cloak he had draped across his shoulders. Popular belief seemed to demand that practitioners of necromancy and other hidden “black” arts wear black, hooded cloaks and while Hades didn’t quite understand why such a literal demand existed, he saw no reason not to comply with it. He understood how the modern world worked and how powerful belief was… He saw no reason not to milk the possibility of greater ease of success by simply wearing a cloak.
Not that anyone would ever know about it as he immediately faded out of visual existence as he donned his helm of invisibility beneath the black hood. Softly then, as softly as he could, he began to recite words he himself had developed so many years ago as he carefully laid out fine wood chips of cypress into the two larger indents of the dead lamb’s skull. Each chip brought back the memory of teaching Persephone how to lay out the great cypress blanks along the floor of sacrificial bones when he had first taught her. He had finally accepted that all his memories would forever feel like they all happened last August. Eventually it wouldn’t feel so surreal.
In those ancient days he would have lit the fire with the living a flames of the Phlegethon but today, in his sons’ bedroom, he simply used his lighter. Where the flame came from had never been important. The wood being consumed was and as soon as he saw enough flames spring up from the wood and be strong enough, he sprinkled down upon the small fire incense composed of the dried pedals of gray asphodel and white poplar flowers and springs of mint. It was a sudden, intensely floral, clean-scented smoke that rose from the lamb’s skull and began to perfume the room.
With his thumbs beneath the skull, he covered both larger indents with his fingers and then inhaled the incensed smoke deeply into his lungs from the hole where the neck/spine once attached. Hades could easily remember a time when he wouldn’t need to bolster himself with mysticism that he himself had developed to do things like this. Once upon a time his fiat alone would have been enough but…
He was glad to trade the convenience of such power for the paternal obligations he now had that required the bolstering.
His soft words instantly ceased as his vision expanded beyond the material world of wood and stone and child-sized furniture. He saw them but beyond them. His vision expanded even beyond the world of the living itself, which was the point. He knew where demons originated – from the realms of the dead and standing up he looked all around the room to see if any part of it had been breached mystically by someone or something from below.
Someone or something that would not have dared to attempt it when the little boys’ mother would have been awake and watching. Some cowardly beast of a creature that would invade a child’s room and then a child’s mind…
But he saw nothing.
Not that it cooled the fiery anger that even the thought fanned in his chest.
No.
Not yet anyway.
He turned and let his gaze fall upon his sons. He knew there were other times and places a demon could have snuck into his sons and his anger and fear reached a fevered pitch inside of him as he took another long drag from the skull.
First he looked down to his eldest, Edward, and then to his youngest son, Eric, but as he stared down into the golden light that their innocent souls manifested as to him, he stood confused. Carefully, he lifted Edward from his bed, knowing his eldest slept deeper than his brother and laid them side by side. Holding the skull in his one hand, he brushed his fingers along their soft blond hair and along their brows.
Your souls are strange, little precious ones. Your genetics may be identical but your souls certainly aren't... Each of you... Hades shook his head and tucked them both into the one bed as he rose again. I wonder if all my children have such marks on their souls but... Neither of you have been the home of a demon and that's what I was worried about.
He moved away from the bed and covered all the holes of the lamb skull with his hands to snuff the flames and eventually the smoke they caused. Relieved and yet with much to think about, he opened the window to their bedroom and sat himself on the sill with the skull on his lap. What he didn't bother to ponder was was it actually necessary to air out the room to deliver it from the pleasant scent of the incense.
The window was open.
He wasn't shutting it now.
Besides the evening breeze felt nice against his back as he finally found a moment of calm and thought about his sons, pondering not only their souls but why he had never gotten them race car beds.
Summary: Hestia had put a thought in Hades' mind about demons invading his sons' dreams. When everyone was asleep on the Friday evening he slept over, Hades decided using black magic to help him find out if that was actually true or not was what he was going to do.