Chapter Thirteen

Hades stood in front of the vacant room before him. It’s entrance widening like a baby bird’s mouth awaiting to be fed from it’s mother. In the center of this room was a giant table whose surface reflected back like a mirror. Hovering the table descended a giant crimson goblet, it’s rim tipped over. Anyone who had ever entered the room would simply see their own reflection and the goblet in the surface of the mirror.

For so long, he would wanter this palace. He knew this place better than even Osiris. But this room. Most of the empty rooms where used to confuse intruders. Filled to the brim with traps and dead ends. Souls who lost their lives here would forever live in purgatory. Their existence cleansed from all those who may have known them in the living world. Wandering aimlessly, forgotten, until the end of time. A fate worse than any Overseer would cast.

But when Hel arrived, the room became alive. Flowy from the goblet a silver silk began to pour onto the surface of the mirror. Sparkling and shimmer. It’s metallic contradictions meaning nothing to a stranger’s eyes. But as Hades moved aside, Hel stepped into the room and both her eyes seemed to glow at the sight of the thread.

Hel gasped. Never in her life had something been her’s that was not once someone else’s. Not the clothes that used to cover her body, nor where she would lay her head to rest. Nothing. But there was a pulse from the silver threat. She felt her body being pulled towards the beautiful sight. It took everything within her being to keep her hands at her side. Slowly. she pushed the sewing needle forward to gab at the sore spot on her left proximal on her phalanges of her pointer.

“That silvery thread is called by many names. Izanagi refers to it as reikon and it forms a pool awaiting their proper funeral arrangements to be conducted before Izanagi makes his judgment. Osiris’s comes individually and in the shape of the human heart; riding on the backs of scarab beetles, where on by one, they are placed onto a grand golden scale against Ma’at’s feather of Truth. Mine simply get pulled from the ground where the body has fallen in an orb before me where I can, well most of the time it’s my hierophant’s, simply swipe to and fro dictating where they will be cast within the Underworld.” Hades did not remove his eyes front he sight before him.

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Hades turned his attention to Hel. She did not take her eyes off the goblet. She did not look away even though she could feel his gaze upon her. It had been so long since Hades first arrived here. He could not remember life beyond being an Overseer of the Underworld. He wasn’t even sure if there was ever a life beyond being an Overseer. It was the same for Osiris. Izanagi was a different story.

“Am I close?” Hel’s voice was hard to hear despite there being no other noise around.

“Huh? To what?” Hade’s stared at her. She was so small. And with only seeing her right side, she appeared almost sweet. Her child like face still puffy with youth. Her blond hair wispy like a cloud. Her tiny frame reminded him of all the children who give the living world life and joy.

“To you and everyone else?” Hel looked at him. Her left side shattered the impression of her youth and childlike wonder. A skull piking through. Her skin down the middle looked either stretched or scarred off. The exposed skull yellowing with time. The eye socket appearing as a black void into nothing. Thinking of anatomy, it made no sense.

Hel shuffled into the room. She felt something warm rise up. Her speed picked up as she approached the throne before her. Leaning over the rim of the table, Hel watched as the silver thread slowly dripped onto the mirror. A ripple with each drip perfectly flowed in a soft wave towards the end of the table. Curious, Hel took her left pinky and touched the surface. Immediately, she was sunk tino a vision. Letting out her breath, Hel pulled out of the vision and remained back in her throne. Hades watching with a smile.