A small portion of our haul belonged to those of us from Asphodel that had achieved Brighthood on our own, part pay to reward those who had followed Achilles and part bribery to sooth hunger and greed. The rest was being fed to as many Blurs as we could reanimate and conscript after we had arrived back in the Fields of Asphodel. And by the gods above and below, it was going to be a lot of recruits.

My Laruas had taken hundreds of flasks of Nectar and numerous chests filled with Ambrosia from Elysium’s false paradise. Even a drop of Nectar could revive the weakest of Blurs and with over four thousand drops in each seven-ounce flask…

“The divine fluid alone would make us well over a million Brights from these faded souls.” 13 said, a strand of connection and our close proximity bringing my thoughts to his. The further we were apart the harder it was for us to communicate unless some other catalyst like the King of the Titans’ desire and willpower made it easier.

“And the solid Ambrosia will fortify them.” I said. Each Blur we awakened could be ordered with Achilles’s voice and supernatural presence to start converting others, every action we did became multiplied upon itself exponentially. Two awakened became four and then eight and then sixteen and then thirty-two and so on until we had legions upon legions who knew only that glorious Achilles had brought them the food and the drink of gods so that they could conquer death itself.

To say it was inspiring would be like saying the heart of a star was somewhat warm. It was one thing to plan rebellion against a god and another to see the army that would do so coming together before my eyes. That it all had been done so well was a miracle, a precarious feat just barely held together by sinews of our adamant will and chains of our righteous fury. The slightest mistake could have ruined everything, and I would never know true life again.

We had run like Hades himself was chasing us, which was good because about three quarters of the way back his forces really had started doing so. Achilles and I had gambled beyond belief with this uprising, while I had infiltrated and undermined Elysium, the King of Heroes had been carefully engineering a way for our initial army of thousands to make their way from Asphodel to Elysium and back when the timeframe was measured in weeks and months at a time. Albas Heraklion had told me the foolhardy daring of those plans, of how scouts had swept every outpost, every hatchery of monsters, every lair scattered throughout our path of return.

“It wasn’t enough.” 13 commented, sifting through the surface of my mind.

“No. We couldn’t stop every random aerial patrol, but we’re here now.” I said.

“Do you think it can be done? Can we truly defeat Hades?” He said. “His Infernal Beasts and monsters are stronger than you humans.”

“Not stronger than your people.” I replied.

“Perhaps not. However, you didn’t start this rebellion knowing you would gain our aid though. How did you delude yourself to think you could win?”

“We were always going to have greater numbers.” I argued. “The many can conquer the few with sufficient amounts.”

He laughed.

“In your mortal life as an Imperator, how many ‘greater numbers’ of infants would it take to win against you?”

Rather than argue how out of proportion in scale that analogy was in how it compared Brights and Infernal Beasts to Unawakened infants and grown Imperators, I decided to stick to being a smartass.

“Depends on how fast said infants are moving when they hit me.” I said. “With a powerful enough grav-accelerator cannon, say, on the order of a continent wiper, you would only need one.”

“Who said you could bring a grav-accelerator into this hypothetical situation?” 13 said.

“Who said I couldn’t?” I replied.

“It defeats the point of the comparison.”

“No, it doesn’t. The infants are our forces and the Imperator is Hades’s Beasts, but the grav-accelerator is just a representation of why we’ll win: the King of Heroes and I have no intention of playing fair, let alone sane.” I said.

“Oh?”

“You’ll see.” I said, looking away from him. Not even drinking Nectar had repaired his damaged lips. Nor, for that matter, had I been able to remove the stitches from any of the other Laruas. I had been informed by 13 that only the voice of a god directly from that divinity rather than an emissary could break the golden wires cruelly threaded through their lips to keep their mouths silent.

“Not very forthcoming with your faithful friend and servant, Adrias.” 13 said. “You’re hiding away the secret in the depths of your mind as well.”

“I’ll be forthcoming when you are.”

“What do you mean?” He said, a false look of confusion coming over his face that was as much a mask as the white ones the other Laruas wore to hide their stitches.

“I mean the vials you’re keeping in your robe’s pocket. The same vials that Kronos had you trade to my grandfather under the cover of Callidas’s bartering.”

The head Larua said nothing.

“Thought so.” I said.

“It is Kronos’s will that it is as it is.” 13 said finally. “I cannot say anything.”

“His will that I don’t know what it is or what it is for?”

“Yes. For now. He sees the future in patches and all I know is that I am to carry them on my person and wait for further instruction.” He said.

I sighed. Not much point in interrogating someone who was both unwilling and unable to tell me much of anything at all about the Titan’s plans.

Our alarms sounded, screeching and howling like the Beasts that had once manned the surveillance towers we had taken.

“They’re finally all here.” I said. “The whole of them.”

Hellish monsters comprising the entirety of the Underworld’s might lay beyond the walls though I couldn’t yet see them.

Distantly, even surrounded by followers, Achilles’s gravitas lanced out with brazen majesty in response. I wasn’t close enough to hear his words, but I already knew roughly what they were going to be, and the echo reached 13 and I soon enough.

“Repeat after me: Achilles calls all of Asphodel to overthrow death itself. Rise up and destroy.” I said, my lungs and vocal cords hijacked once more like he had done previously to summon Brights the first time.

I coughed, rubbing my throat. The former servant seemed unphased, too unmoved.

“Wait, you didn’t repeat it.” I said, squinting at 13. I had almost overlooked it because of him being a Larua until I realized that didn’t matter— he was stitchless.

“I don’t belong to these Fields like you and the rest of them do.” He said.

“I thought it was just the King of Heroes’ presence that mattered.”

“It is, to an extent. It is the same as Kronos’s power over my kind. Achilles is the most powerful entity in Asphodel and he is linked to it intimately as are you. By extension, you are bound to him in equal measure.” 13 said. “You call him the King of Heroes, but he is as much the King of Phantoms as well.”

All the ghosts of this grey domain, Bright or Blur, were pressing in towards Achilles, towards us. The further away they were, the more frantic urgency they had.

13 frowned as he looked the walls. “I don’t understand, we don’t have enough ropes to scale the walls with our soldiers quickly enough. We’ll be sniped off the top as we make our way over.”

“I wouldn’t say we’re climbing them exactly.”

“What- why aren’t the Blurs stopping??” 13 said in alarm.

The lifeless ghosts, the majority of Asphodel that we couldn’t even make a dent in their numbers with our Nectar and Ambrosia, were surging forward and were swallowing up our Brights in their masses.

“Alone, the Blurs are mostly intangible,” I said with amusement as he stared at the oncoming wave of sentient mist and dust. “But packed in dense enough like my Ghostforged blade and moving quickly they’re like a tsunami.”

I laughed as the spectral swarm devoured us and crashed against the obsidian walls that encircled the Fields, sweeping upwards in a frightful climb and then spilling over the barrier to fall down towards Hades’s army.

The mad strategy Achilles and I had devised worked deviously, the Blurs cushioning our landing and hiding our Brightness from the enemy as we poured into their ranks from above. Though the dulled could not kill for us, we could use them as a disguise and a method of transportation. Each time I found an enemy tossed about in the rushing mist, I stabbed them with my blade and when they hunted me, I dimmed my light and sank back into the comforting blanket of chaos. A million shining legionaries hid in the midst of uncountable shades, all driven by one purpose.

Liberation.

Freedom from death, freedom from an eternity of greyness, freedom from lack of meaning.

Together, what could possibly stop us as our shining swords struck like thunderbolts?

After all, I may have been the Flame, but we were the Storm.