《Halcyon》and she swallows the stars -- chapter two up

Prologue --

Mortals fear two things: that which they do not understand, and the darkness of their own souls.

The underworld is a very dark place, child. The world of the living hides its evils beneath roses and promises sweet, and it tells you softly that things will get better. That things could be worse. That if you would only turn a blind eye, you will find happiness.

The underworld refuses to hide what it is, and that is why mortals fear it. Here, there is nowhere to run or lie or victimize. Here in the cradle of death, cats discover who they really are. Corrupt, filthy deceivers, veins clogged with lies and hatred and fear. All mortals are horrible creatures. Tainted from birth. These same mortals fear me because I look just as terrible as I am--as they themselves are.

Do you understand yet? Mortals are corrupt, the underworld shows them their corruption, and I...I am its Queen. I am death and darkness and truth. My veins run with shadows; my lungs fill with smoke. I exhale pestilence, and my world is the clattering of bones and the flash of fire and the rattle of a thousand insects fleeing at once. I exist to guard dead souls and to show all mortals the terror of their own selves. I am the Lady of the Dead.

There is nothing more abhorrent to me than the lies you tell yourselves.

But even the underworld is not without hope, for one day you shall all see yourselves as I see you. One day you will see the living world and the underworld and there will be no difference between them. It will all be my dominion. My weapon is Truth, from which there is no hiding. There will be no escape in Death or in Life.

The old gods may be dead, but death means nothing to me.

Do you understand yet? Don't worry, child. You will.

---

Chapter One --
the dawn of the gods 
2500 years ago  


The war had been raging for moons now. The earth had never seen anything like it--and it was not prepared, judging by the way it shook and how its sky mottled like an infected wound. The darkness was split only by the glowing scream of Zeus’s lightning, tearing the sky in two again and again.

The gods were not afraid of war. Our gods fed on blood and terror, and death and destruction was beloved to them. For seasons upon seasons, ever since Prometheus formed the first mortals from the shattered bones of the creator god, mortals had satiated the gods with constant sacrifice. The earth was bloated with blood. I knew them all--Tlalte, Quetzal, Tezcatli, Tlaloc, and so many others--all brutal, all hungering for our submission. Even the Titans, revered as they were, dared not stray onto their warpath. These new immortals, led by Zeus and his brothers, were different. They had chosen to fight.

Zane and Ghant had grown larger and stronger the longer the war raged on, until they were practically glowing, their eyes flashing with power. All the immortals had hooked their claws in Wrath and Greed. As had the mortals, who used the chaos to fight their own battles and conquer as they had been taught to.

My companions and I heard the earth tremble with the screeches of the dead and dying from deep within underground tunnels. The network of them ran beneath all the mortal territories, and from them we watched. We slipped out when we could to inflame their minds with our individual sins. Zane and Ghant were naturally gone the most, whipping cats into frenzies, drenching the ground with more and more blood.

Sometimes I wondered if this was the end of the world.

I smelled Nisa’s approach before I heard her--the faint scent of pine and berries, accompanied by the quick patter of her paws against the packed earth. I crouched in total darkness, but the breeze from a nearby exit tunnel whispered down each bone of my spine.

Nisa had left at dawn, her scent spiking with excitement. “The greatest warriors are so proud.” Hunger in her voice. “So so proud. I want their pride to fill them.”

The day before, she had told me, “Most of them want land and glory too. Can't you make them covet what isn't theirs?”

“Soon,” I'd told her. “Soon.”

She slipped up beside me, greeting me with a flick of her tail against my shoulder. I curled my paws into the cool earth.

“Well?”

“One of the mortal champions is dead,” Nisa said. Her voice reminded me of a bird, bright and chirping. Altogether too innocent-sounding to deliver such dark news. “Achilles. Do you know why he died, Ettinger?”

I harrumphed. “Someone killed him?”

“Oh, funny as ever, aren't you?” She laughed, an almost haughty laugh that grated somehow. “He was too proud. It led to his undoing. He'll go east of Mictlan now--isn't it wonderful? I led one of the mortals’ greatest warriors to his death.”

I shifted, pressing down the dirt in anxious, quick movements. “Will that even matter once this is finished? Will even Mictlan be left standing?”

“How could the underworld be destroyed?” Nisa asked. “It makes no sense.”

Her presence heated my right side, the exit wind cooling my left. “Nisa… Who do you believe will be the victor of this war?”

“Everyone says it's impossible that the gods will be defeated.” She nudged my shoulder just as a roar of thunder shattered through the dark. “They're too powerful, too full of seasons' worth of sacrificial blood. But these other immortals… They're different. They were born among the mortals, but greater, and I think that helps them understand what the gods can't.”

I turned my head towards her. “Like the Lady.”

“The Lady is different. She was a sacrifice.”

And now she ruled with the very gods she was killed for.

She sighed, a noise between pleasure and sorrow. “Not many believe the gods will ever fall. But I think they're wrong. I think every empire falls, and it's time for the gods to bleed as everyone else has.”

“Are they prideful?” I asked.

“Oh, very much so,” she said. “And the more prideful you are, the worse it is when you fall.”

Thunder again. She pressed against me.

I said, “Zeus is fighting hard.”

“He walks like a king.”

“Do you think so?”

“He'll win or die--him and his brothers. For cats like them, there is no other option.”

---

The gods fell not with fire or lightning or a crack like the end of the world. They fell with a murmur, and the sun went out. We lived forty days in darkness that even the few remaining stars could not fight, in a horrible tenebral limbo, an agonizing waiting. Even the mortal wars went silent. Surely I thought, surely the world itself would drop into nothingness and simply disappear. Surely we would all be snuffed as quickly and quietly as the sun.

“Tlalte swallowed the sun before she died,” Ghant had told us on the first day of darkness. None of us seven had spoken since.

Then one day…

Light.

A cat, running across the curve of the sky, his footprints trailing behind him in golden streaks.

Then, behind him--

The sun.

A new sun, rising in fiery, searing glory, following the cat in complete obedience.

We, so used to darkness, cowered in pain before it. Mortals screamed, their cries louder than Zeus’s thunder.

Later we learned his name. Apollo. He had fought to create a new sun, and as its lord took it upon himself to pull it over the world each morning. An honorable job, but one that even I--Envy himself--did not envy.

This was the dawn of the new gods.

The gods allowed the mortal world six days to recover and rebuild. They ordered the end of the war, and that all remaining disputes were to be concluded with diplomacy. Any remaining still would be brought before Zeus, who had apparently been appointed King over the new gods. The mortals’ efforts were fraught with tension. We all remembered the cruelty of the old masters, and the blood that had been spilled at their claws.

Outwardly, the new gods were not so brutal. They preached of a “golden age” of peace and prosperity that they would usher in. I knew this would not be so when, on the seventh day, the gods hunted us down and dropped us at Zeus’s feet.

Three gods faced us on the middle of a jagged mountain, all hard stone and snow and freezing wind that slashed at our flanks. Zeus was as forbidding as the mountain itself--just as large and unmoving and harsh, with a fluffed pelt of gray and white and a gaze that pounded into me. Beside him, regal Poseidon, a sleek dark gray with eyes that glimmered with all the colors of the sea. Beneath a nearby outcropping, small and unassuming Hades, with black kitten-soft fur and a look of cruel silver.

“You started this war,” was Zeus’s greeting. “You cost this world more pain and terror than is imaginable.”

Zane’s hackles rose, his huge shoulders bunching. “You started the war! So you could overthrow the gods and rule yourself.”

Zeus caught the rage simmering off of Zane, and I watched his lips curl as it filled him. Even gods were not without sin. “You forced yourselves upon every cat. You filled them with wrath and pride and lust and envy and greed and gluttony--you were the cause of more battles and bloodshed than were ever, ever necessary.”

“Would they have fought so well without us?” Zane challenged. I heard the slow scrape of claws against stone. “Would even you have conquered without us?”

“You are tearing this world apart!” Zeus’s snarl rang in echoes from the mountain towering around us.

Poseidon inclined his head. “I have seen it. You are filling this world with pain.”

“And death,” Hades added in a soft voice.

Zeus hissed. “You see? You and I both know you are sins, rotten to the core. We owe you nothing, not even a fair trial. Now that this bloody era has ended, I will not allow you to spread your pestilence any longer.”

So the suffering we caused had come back to haunt us.

“What will you do with us?” Nisa’s fur fluffed, which did little to improve her small size.

His voice was cold. “Lock you away. For eternity.”

“Eternity,” Poseidon repeated.

“Eternity,” Hades hissed.

“Eternity,” I whispered. I had always known that sins never existed without punishment.

---

The darkness the old gods had caused when they fell was beautiful in my memories. That darkness had kept the stars, the wind, the feel of grass beneath my paws. This darkness was absolute. It felt like nothing. I felt like nothing, as if the shadows had swallowed me and taken me somewhere even nightmares were afraid to go.

I could feel no ground. Only a strange sense that I had been elongated, stretched across thin air. A disembodiment. I was not here. This was not me. And yet I was, I was.

This was Zeus’s punishment. He had led us to a crack between two great rocks that leaned on each other, sent us inside, and trapped us between dimensions. In a sense, we were not in the mortal world anymore. We were nowhere.

Just before we were sealed, Hestia came to us. Small and brown and unremarkable, but for eyes that flickered like fire. Warmth bloomed wherever her gaze landed. I was foolish to hope she could save us, and I knew the foolishness of it. Perhaps her face softened in pity. Perhaps it was a trick of the newborn sun.

“You will not be alone,” Hestia said. “You will have Hope.”

Then Zeus had come, and I had lost sight of her.

I would go mad here.

But every time panic ripped up my throat and spasms rocked me and I had just decided to claw my own eyes out as a distraction from this nothingness-- one of my companions was there, against me, filling my nose with their scent, and slowly I remembered that I was not alone. Sins could be punished but not separated.

In the mortal world, centuries passed.

---


Chapter Two
400 years ago

---

Nothing.

N o t h i n g.

Void. Nonexistence. A cold, harsh n u l l i t y.

We were ciphers, and we were nothing.

---

I had forgotten how to tell if I was awake or asleep. In dreams, in wakefulness, in the same deep desperate wretched blackness- I saw Tlalte swallowing the first sun. It was a ghost of a memory. Nothing more than the faintest remembrance of light, and the way it was snuffed. Suddenly, the way a neck snaps.

Had she fallen in glory or disgrace?

Did it matter? It was still falling.

---

Time was a fickle thing. In the way it moved and scraped, the way it started and stopped. The way it tore me cruelly though the blackness, the hurtling movement made so much more terrifying without sight, spinning me through days and dimensions like the vicious tug of a current. Soon, surely, there would be a

drop

and I would fall off the edge of the world.

When time moved fast, it clawed all sense from me. It narrowed the universe to the tinny rocking beat of my heart, the aching tense of my muscles, the cackle of the breath within my lungs. The microcosm of my own self felt at once vast and small. As if I would either explode or whirl far off into nothing. And no one would miss me, sense the snuffing of my life any more than they would feel the death of a star--

Perhaps gods do not fear death so much as they fear being forgotten.

Then time would leave me flailing in the still eddies of space, gasping harder and harder when I could not hear my own breath echo. Time, with a tender caress, would leave me frozen. Before my terror was loud and wild and all-encompassing. When time slowed, it shrank--became crushing and intimate and silent.

The slow fears were the worst. The silence crept into my mind like a living thing, constricting me beneath the weight of a thousand desperate thoughts. A feeding frenzy of what if’s and not enough’s. I yearned for some sound other than the traitorous beating of my heart, fluttering painfully in my stomach. The sense that I was surrounded by friends but separate from all of them.

If I did not go numb, I would go mad. There was no other option.

---

But always, there was a glow. Just before I snapped and chose death over time’s wicked games.

A glow is not always light, I learned. I never saw it. But there was something inside me, rich and sweet, constant. I could not always feel it. But if I reached deep enough, begged with a voice that crackled into silence--

It was there.

It was the scent of pine, or the first gulp of water after a long thirst, or the rusty purr of a friend sad too long. It was the first touch of sun after a hard winter, the rasp of a comforting tongue over drooping ears.

You will not be alone. You will have Hope.

I heard a noise.

I was not used to any sound but the thunder of my own body moving, and this noise was a crack. Like every star dying at once. Like the universe cleaving in two. Like outer space collapsing around me.

A weight flaked off from between my shoulders and floated away. The noise itself burned me, burrowed its way beneath my muscles, sent thorns into my chest--the noise itself was awful, but it was worth the pain.

For the first time in millenia, I saw light.

It was

a g o n y.

Like I was dying.

Like the world was dying.

Like the sun had fallen, and everything was burning. Liquid fire desiccating everything I knew. Melting the marrow within my bones.

Being released from my prison was the worst pain I had ever known.

Unending.

Fire dancing behind my eyes.

But in the first flickering shadow--I saw another cat. Not one I knew. In that instant, their face was emblazoned in my mind as surely as the sunlight.

Green eyes. Young eyes. Unspoiled eyes.

In their eyes, I saw Hope.

---

Sneak Peak of Chapter Three --

---


Then the mortal cat interrupted our stillness.

She was strong, though not powerful. Pretty, but not beautiful. Her pelt, a rich brown painted with black tabby stripes, spoke to me of places unknown--the deep, cool soil of secret coastal caves, ground that had never felt the caress of the sun. She walked with a confident prowl, the gravel crunching beneath her paws.

“You owe me a life-debt,” she said. Her voice reminded me of crashing waves.

We didn't speak, but surrounded her. All seven of us in a ring around this stranger--working in a fluid motion as we had done in the past. I knew then that we had not been broken.

Save 1

Save 3

Fans --
(note: being on the fan list also automatically includes you in the pinglist. if you would not like to be pinged whenever I post a new chapter, please let me know.)

1. Swanwhisper
2. Brownie 
3. ☣Sнα∂σωƒα¢є☣
4. ☾ Cʀᴇsᴄᴇɴᴛ ☽
5. ᴛᴜᴇsᴅᴀʏ
6. Lorekeeper Crow
7. mintedstar/fur

Playlist --
(a.k.a. whatever random nonsense inspires me)

1. Forgotten - Linkin Park 
2. Hysteria - Muse
3. Sally's Song - Amy Lee
4. Heathens - Twenty One Pilots 
5. Wrong Side Of Heaven - Five Finger Death Punch 

(Am I even allowed to post yet omd? 'll delete if I can't) But holy crap, my friend, how is this so brilliant already?


I really love the voice of the prologue, and how it's also sort of speaking directly to the reader
and ashdkdkdkdkd this is amazing. I cannot wait to see more. (where is the thumbs up emoticon,,, I need two to express my love for this fic already).
Edit: If you're doing the fan thing this time, would you mind adding me? 

Oooo I love the mythology aspect of anything, and this looks to be amazing.
The style is just stunning.
Do you take fans? Because you really need to add me there.

Eeek, fan me too! :'D
I'm curious to see how our stories differentiate on that as well. I think it will be cool to discuss the Pandora story through our own writing.
I hope it doesn't disappoint! It's going to be much different than the rest of the novels in the CotV series.
YES! I want to see more of the Lady. :'O

Hey Tandy, not sure if I've chatted with you since my SN change. I was Larkflower, but changed to Crescent on the old forums and kept that name in the move to this place.

I totally love this idea so far. The prologue is wonderful, with just the right touch of mystery! I love mythology so much... Fan me?

Crescent- Oh, hey, great to see you again!
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Mythology is amazing. ^^ I'll add you now.

Swan- Why thank you.
You have to feel the mood, taste the mood, BE the mood...

As do I. You'll be seeing plenty more of her.

Aw, Swanny, nothing is perfect. XD But thank you! Now, now, they do deserve to suffer at this point in the story, I'm sure. Maybe not Ettinger as much, because he seems to be a floppy chicken who likes to mope around underground, but still.

Let's clear this up now--do not expect me to clearly follow Greek mythology at all whatsoever. XD That is basically what happened to the Titans I think, but I actually made the old gods basically Aztec gods. The Lady of the Dead, Mictlan, Quetzal, the reference to sacrifices are all taken from that.

That's deep as all get out.

But that just gives them the chance for redemption. Even sweet Nisa who can also coincidentally kill a guy. No, I'm a great mother. Hmm, Ettinger is more like a different kind of bird. A macaw perhaps.

Yeah, maybe I should say something about that on the first post. But thank you. It'll be interesting to contrast the more brutal Aztec gods with the self-proclaimed civilized Greek gods.

Precisely. I love them. *points at 500 redeemed OCs, including a certain Faerie boi* She's a tough cutie, that daughter of mine. I am. He's a macaw then, official.

They'll come back. The Lady of Death (Queen of Mictlan, Mistress of Bones, etc etc) is one of them, and she plays a huge part for one.

I appreciate it. Because all my smol girls are like that? Legit.

I look forward to it too. Lots of good conflict. Everyone loves the Lady of Death--a bit ironic when you think about it. XD

Well, I certainly need to keep my eye on this. I've only read a little bit so far, but I'm still quite enjoying it. Looking forward to reading more!

Swan- I could not agree more.
"Difficult" Only difficult? You offend me. But then again, I like Thanatos too, so ay.

Lore- Thank you very much! I hope you enjoy the rest. c:

Crescent- Thank you! I love personification, haha. I'm so glad you're enjoying the story so far.