Outnumbered, faced by foes who followed no ordinary convention or strategy, the first ranks of Hades’s ran like dogs from us. The mongrel mutts slammed into their comrades right behind them as those there blocked the route of escape from our insanity. I did not shy away from the word. What we had done was indeed insane for now, but what was the difference between madness and genius if not success?

I smiled as we lashed out at individual threats in teams of tens or more, each of us fading into mist and shadow when attacked only for our other Brights and Laruas to strike from every unguarded direction. The condensed essence of the Blurs that formed the ghostly winds and unnatural storm clouds that pushed against the Infernal Beasts; slowing the movements of their bronze swords, unexpectedly shifting the Beasts’ balance, slightly misdirecting their spears just the fractional amount needed to make the thrusts miss when one of our team got too bold.

In equal measure, subtle pressures of the mist and dust in the air guided my Ghostforged blade to victory and pushed me out of reach of injury when I was too slow in this humanlike body that lacked the graceful finesse and savage strength of the Imperator’s Path.

“My Imperial flesh and demigod blood may be gone…” I said to an audience of my fellow warriors and Hades’s monsters that would never be able to hear my words over the noise of battle and the wailing winds.

“But my mind and heart can never be taken!” I yelled as I stabbed an abomination through his gaping mouth and forced the tip out the back of his head.

When I was a Servus, I was me. When I was an Imperator, I was me. And even when I was a half-step from being a god, I was still Adrias Lucion.

I transformed my blade into an axe, gritting my teeth as my weapon howled, and then buried in the shoulder of another Infernal Beast, five other Brights and two Laruas taking the chance to ram spears of righteous vengeance into its chest and torso. What we left behind us, broken wrecks of animal-men and monsters, would be ganged up on by those who came next as they followed us. The creatures would try to heal only to be torn to shreds by the cleanup crew until nothing but ten thousand chunks of meat and ten thousand splinters of bone remained.

There was no afterlife for these creatures and no one would ever remember their names. A true death and one they deserved for delaying our exodus back to the realm of the living for even a moment. We were the unfairly dispossessed, the wrongfully enslaved, and the unjustly accused. Had Hades and his Judges of the Underworld and his many servants really thought that this would stand forever? For all time? That no one in an eternity would ever dare ask the only question down here that matter?”

“If not even Elysium satisfies the lucky few, why should any of us remain dead?” I said, once more speaking into the all-consuming noise.

The answer of the weak was that no one could escape. The answer of the cowards was that punishment would be worse than what burdens they bore now. The answer of the pious was that no one should escape and that it was the will of the heavens.

I defied the heavens. I was born to be a slave and became almost a god. Some would credit it all to my borrowed bloodline despite none of my grandfather’s descendants activating those powers and so they missed the simple truth. I was unique and my answer to realm of the dead’s question was…

“You are only nothing when you accept that you are nothing. I will live again because I. Do. Not. Accept. Death!” I roared as I used the spear form of my Ghostforged tool to puncture through the side of an Infernal Beast’s head.

If we had been losing and I was facing eternal imprisonment in the Pit of Tartaros, chained with Adamantine links, I would chew on them with my teeth, shattering my molars over and over again as they regrew for as long as it would take to break the unbreakable. While I existed, while I thought and felt, my desire for freedom and glory would outlast the stars themselves.

My hunger and hatred burned within me hotter than the fire of Heracles, more invigorating than Nectar, more unsettling than my audience with the King of the Titans, more painful to restrain and hold in than dipping my undead hand in the Styx.

I moved faster and faster, my breath ragged, as I strained to feed the animal in my soul its due in blood and violence.

The ghosts in my weapon ached as I switched from sword to dagger to spear and then shield and axe and warhammer.

This is your victory too. I’m not just winning it for you, you’re winning it for me. We hurt together so that we can stand in the light of a sun together. I thought to them.

This time when I blocked with a shield and then made it a gladius, they did not weep or scream in my mind. There was only a singular intent to kill Hades’s soldiers, fourteen souls unified in hope for something better, thirteen wielded with deadly precision by the fourteenth soul; me.

The storm of spirits was building and building as more poured over the walls of Asphodel and through my connection to the Larua network, I could sense that we were dominating the field with the ability to combine terrain, climate and armies into a cohesive whole of destructive liberation.

My grin must have looked like I was on the drug Shine, the exhilaration seizing me. Nothing could stop us, nothing could keep us from escaping, nothing could-

“I think not.” A voice boomed like a thunderclap. My smile evaporated, a drop of water falling onto a hot pan. The force and divine authority of those three words jarred me, but it was the tone and emotion that frightened me. There was no anger in the man’s voice, no panicked fury. Just the dispassionate displeasure of someone overworked who had found out he had been given more paperwork to do.

Paperwork.

I sneered; I wouldn’t have our rebellion reduced to so low a comparison. This crusade was far more than an idle annoyance and I would ensure that fact was known to history.

“Return to the Fields of Asphodel.” The voice came again.

I resisted the urge to flee, drawing on my strength and reinforcing the Laruas’ wills with the assistance of Kronos. We were not everyone though and the storm clouds of Blurs and vast numbers of our newly made Brights fled like cowed hounds with their tails between their legs.

“Get back here!” I yelled at those running away. “Traitors!”

With the cover of the mist and dust gone, everything became clear. Most of the Infernal Beasts were destroyed or maimed, but over half of our Brights had abandoned us. What wasn’t clear was where the voice had come from, I could only see our side and the enemy’s but not the speaker.

Confused and on edge, we bunched together into more of a formation than the loose swarm we had been in moments before. The high of conquest and the inevitable arrogance that followed had been wiped off every one of the faces that I looked at, but I was proud to find that despite that they stood firm and that their backs were straight. Words alone, no matter who spoke them, weren’t enough to erase their courage. I found my way to Achilles who stood at the front and center of our lines, 13 and Fish and Pollixa making their paths over as well.

“Well, we just lost most of our army.” I said bitterly to the King of Heroes.

“Let them run, they were cowards. A spear that breaks with a single strike is worth little and a man that shatters is worth even less.” He said.

War cries and chanting started up in the Brights, people within our formations stirring up morale.

A dread aura gripped our hearts, the sensation like feeling the chill of the executioner’s steel axe head resting on your neck as it was lined up where it would cut off your head. No one chanted anything now.

“Those of you who were awakened in Asphodel with Nectar may leave now without consequence. Any who stay with those who raided Elysium and the Laruas will be cast into Tartaros with them.”

Still, I could see no one speak and even pinpointing where the sound was coming from was difficult.

“Show yourself.” Achilles said, the sound carrying through the air unnaturally. “Take off your Helm of Darkness.”

The air flickered in a spot and revealed a man with dark hair and even darker eyes as he took off his helmet. Though he stood at only the height of an ordinary person, he still seemed to tower over even the tallest of his Infernal Beasts.

Hades the Corpsefather, Master of the Underworld, had come personally to deal with what his servants could not.

And he did not look pleased about it.