Thalia...
The last thing she remembered before falling asleep was being gently carried on her brother's back. Even though he was panicking and terrified and angry at the fact that Julian was on this world as well and had found them, he never directed that anger at her and was acting to protect her. For a short moment, she was worried that she might not be able to see her brother feel at ease again but when Selene showed up, she was able to calm him down enough and make him agree to talk to her. She didn't know what to think about Selene so far but for the moment, it was like having an older sister around to help calm her brother down when he was in a bad place.
Having Selene walking with them, on their way to the home that her brother was still working on for them, helped her feel more at ease and calmed her down.
In fact...maybe she had calmed down a little too much as the long walk back to the house left her so tired that her eyelids became too heavy to keep open and she found herself slumped against her brother's back, half asleep.
She was thirteen years old now, wasn't she too old to be carried like this?
Well..., it was nice to be carried like this. Her brother's firm strong back made her feel just at ease at it always had in the past whenever he would carry her home.
Every so often, as she was being carried, she would blink her eyes shut for longer than she wanted and slip in and out of being asleep as she lost some time.
The last time she blinked, she was being laid down in her brother's bed as he pulled the sheets over her before closing the door behind him.
In no time at all, she fell into a deep sleep.
Her dream was unusual.
She had never found herself in a dream that was so empty and formless, yet so vivid. She could even touch and feel her own skin in her dream.
When she looked down at herself, she realized that the clothes she had on when she was asleep were gone and replaced by what looked like a white Greek tunic.
Why was she wearing this...?
More importantly, what was this dream supposed to be about? Its just an endless void of darkness in all directions. None of her dreams have ever been like this before.
Just as she was thinking her dream was going to nothing but waiting to wake up again, she heard a spark. A brief flash of light shone from the right of her and Thalia turned her head to look at it.
She wasn't able to see the flash of light itself as it faded too fast for her to react to, but she was able to make out the afterglow as the light seemed to bounce off the nothingness around her.
From the afterglow of the flash of light, she was able to make out the shape of a person.
Then, another flash of light sparked on the opposite side of her, to which she spun her head around quickly to catch a glimpse of.
It was only for a split second, but it was long enough for Thalia to come face to face with a skeleton, with flames clinging onto its bones.
Before the light had faded away, she was able to notice that the skeleton was writhing in pain.
Then, one after the other, sparks of fire began to ignite all around her until everything in site was filled with the scene of burning writhing skeletons.
As Thalia looked below her, her feet were ankle deep in strange black sand that stretched on for beyond what her eyes could see. Hordes of skeletons all around her continues to shake in agony. Some of them had crumpled onto the floor, hugging themselves to deal with the pain while others were running around in circles as if trying to escape the flames that were continuously burning them. Some of the burning skeletons however, had started ripping apart other skeletons and begun making building material out of them.
As she looked at these skeletons that were attacking each other, she realized that their bones were more blackened than the others. They had gotten used to the pain of the flames and adapted to it. They even started making weapons and armor out of each other. As Thalia looked around, she noticed small buildings that had been crafted out of the bodies of other skeletons.
Why were they doing this to each other...?
As if in response to her thoughts, a large humanoid form fell out of the sky and crashed onto the expanse of black sand. It seemed to be the only creature other than her that still had flesh on its bones. This creature was completely naked and had black skin, two forward protruding horns on its head with red flames burning on their ends, and white claws. Where its eyes were supposed to be, empty cavities filled with two floating orbs of fire burned as they shifted from side to side and looked at the skeletons around it. Its face was half wolfish, half human in appearance.
Upon seeing the appearance of this creature, many of the skeletons ran away in fear of it only to be trampled underneath its clawed feet before having their bodies crushed into dust.
The blackened skeletons however, held their ground and swarmed the creature in an attempt to kill it.
They were only somewhat successful in being able to cut open its skin but the creature was able to effortlessly tear through them as if the skeletons were made of cardboard.
Upon finishing off the last of the skeletons, reducing them all to dust that settled on the ground, only then did she understand.
The black sand that she was standing on was not sand at all. It was thick ash from all the skeletons who had been crushed to death repeatedly.
The moment this thought came into her mind, the black wolfish demon turned its head to look directly at her.
Without a moments hesitation, she took off like a bullet and started running away from it as fast as she could. As she ran, lava erupted from spouts in the black sand all around her. As it did, clawing skeletal hands reached out from within the lava as if they were being reborn after being crushed to death.
She ran past them and tried to get as far away from that horrifying creature as possible.
She continued running and running and running until her mind couldn't fathom for how long she had been running for. Her body didn't feel tired from all the running for some reason and yet, she felt mentally exhausted.
It felt like she had been running for weeks...or hours?
She couldn't get a grip on how time worked here.
"What is this place?" she asked herself, not expecting an answer.
She looked around, hoping to spot something that might lead her out of this place but all she could seem to find was more endless piles of ash, more burning skeletons, and many more of those wolfish creatures that continued to slaughter them. When they looked at her, they didn't seem too interested in her though for some reason.
She didn't want to wait around to find out when they might change their minds and come after her next. She just wanted to get out of that place.
She wanted out.
As she was trying to slow herself down to give herself time to think, she ended up tripping on a skeleton's arm bone and fell down. Her face crashed into the mounds of ash, obscuring her vision.
When she managed to get back up and wipe the ash from her eyes, she had then found herself in a completely different area.
She had appeared in a large, long, dark hallway that looked to be made almost entirely of Black Iron.
Marcus had told her that Black Iron was usually used to craft weapons and armor, so seeing so much Black Iron being used to make up an entire building was a little surprising to her.
She stood up and decided to have a look around as she tried to walk as quietly as possible. With the sound of her footsteps echoing off the walls of the long hall way, it made it seem impossible for her to move around stealthily. Even so, she ran through the halls as she looked for answers as to why she was even there.
For some reason, she felt like this was less of a dream and more like a vision. It was as if her mind, her very presence had been transported to...where ever this place was.
When she finally reached an area that had windows, she moved the curtains aside and gazed out into the expanse beyond it...only to find the endless fields of black ash and flaming skeletons in the distance.
So...wherever Thalia was in this dream, she hadn’t truly left where she had arrived from; she only ended up in a different area.
But where was here exactly?
Just then, she heard the sound of heavy, armored footsteps echoing in the hall.
She spun her head back and forth frantically as she was trying to look for somewhere to hide but there were no doors anywhere she looked.
She did the only thing that came to mind and hid behind the heavy curtains. They were thick enough to block out most of the light coming in from the outside and low enough to the ground that her feet would be hidden.
She pulled the curtain over her body and moved as far away from the window as she could so that it didn’t look like she was blocking the light passing through the cloth.
As she continued to hide, the steps grew louder as she could hear the approach of many soldiers as they marched towards her. She could even see a faint glow of light shining from their heads.
This is stupid! Why am I hiding behind the curtains like in the cartoons?! she thought to herself.
She was definitely going to be caught.
As the soldiers continued to get closer, she watched as many of them passed by her without turning in her direction. For a moment, she wondered if hiding in the curtains was actually going to work out, as ridiculous as it sounded.
However, when it looked like the most of the soldiers had surrounded her, they all turned in unison to face directly at her.
They stood there silently, in waiting. Waiting for her to show herself.
She didn’t want to show herself. She wanted to hide, and cry, and wimper at being brought to this strange place.
She waited for the soldiers to attack her or grab her or do something but they just stood there, facing her, waiting for her to act while remaining in complete silence.
Not being able to stomach the silence anymore, she decided to peek at them from the curtains.
Surrounding her was a group of over a dozen fully armored soldiers wearing black iron armor over skin that looked like glowing embers on blackened firewood. Behind the visor of their helmets, flaming eyes similar to the horned wolf demon thing in the ash fields glowed with a reddish hue.
As soon as her face was visible to them, the soldier closest to her and at the front of the others pull the sword from its waist suddenly.
She yelped and almost hid behind the curtain again only for it to rest the tip of the blade against the ground and kneel in front of her.
“Huh…? What’re you…?” she muttered in confusion while she watched the other soldiers follow the first’s example by kneeling before her.
The soldier closest to her raised its head as if asking a question. As if asking her to give an order.
“Uh...um...can you show me how to get out of here…, please?” she asked meekly.
Slowly, the soldier in front of her reached out his hand and turned it over, holding his hand out to her invitingly.
Reluctantly, she took the soldier’s hand and was led down the halls with the other soldier’s following behind her.
They continued walking along the halls for what felt like several hours until they came across a wide stretch of stairs that seemed to lead to a throne room.
Is this some kind of...castle? What is this place? she thought.
The soldier holding her hand led her up the steps and pushed open the door to the room ahead. Sure enough, what was opened up before her was a wide throne room with a smooth and polished black marble floor that reflected the light of the many flaming torches that were scattered amongst the walls.
As far as throne rooms went, it seemed rather simplistic to her.
At the back of the room were not one, not two, but five thrones. There was one larger throne made of smoldering wood and four smaller ones of volcanic rock, two on either side.
All the thrones were currently empty.
Why did they bring me here…?
Then, the soldiers who had followed her into the throne room, all kneeled in unison as if in response to someone else’s arrival.
She returned her attention to the thrones and in the seat of the largest throne, flames burst to life and swirled in place. The flames spun in place so quickly that the light shining from the flames gave the illusion of it taking a humanoid form. Eventually the flames swirled so fast and in such a particular shape that it couldn’t be described as anything else than that of a woman.
In a short moment, the flames died down and stopped spinning as a woman with long black hair that burned with flames at its ends, blue flames in the empty cavities of her eye sockets, and white skin appeared in front of the throne wearing a similar Greek tunic to her own.
Thalia couldn’t seem to breathe or summon any words to say to this woman that had appeared from a flaming cyclone. Looking at her, this woman was astonishingly gorgeous. Even with her eyes being empty and replaced by the two orbs of blue fire, she still looked kindly and beautiful, a sharp contrast to the soldiers and demons with their red flames that burned with fearsome intensity.
“Uh...um, can I...ask you a question?” she stammered and her voice echoed in the room, surprising the woman who had appeared.
The flaming woman blinked in surprise, her eyelids covering the flames as they opened and closed, which was strange and a little distracting.
The woman’s eyes widened as she noticed Thalia in the room and her hands reached up to her face in shock.
“T-Thalia…?” she said softly.
“Y-yes. That’s me...w-who are you?” she asked.
The woman laughed and smiled as she asked, “You don’t recognize me? Would you like to take a guess at who I am?”
“I…,” Thalia couldn’t seem to finish the thought because at first, she did not really recognize this woman aside from how similar to Moyako she looked, due to the flaming ends of her hair, but then...she realized it and it almost crushed her.
“Are you…my mom?” Thalia asked her and her heart seemed to skip a beat as the woman nodded to her.
“I am your mother Thalia. I am Hestia,” she said with a look that said she would be crying if she could.
This woman, Hestia, her mother...she had never seen any pictures of her as Marcus said that he never had the chance to take any with her, so she never got to see what she looked like before she had died and yet...here she was.
Her mother was right in front of her, even more beautiful than her brother could have ever described her to be.
Thalia’s body seemed to move on its own as she walked towards her and tears began to stream down her face as she had finally come face to face with her own mother for the first time in her life.
In the last few feet that separated her from Hestia, she leapt towards her mother and fell into her arms.
Hestia immediately wrapped her arms around her and hugged her tightly, even stroking her hair as she held her.
For the next several minutes Thalia simply cried into her mother’s arms while being held and having her hair stroked gently. It was a feeling that she had been longing for her entire life, only now to experience it long after her mother had died.
Even being raised by her older brother, she had never felt the same kind of parental affection that she was getting from her mother now as she might have from him.
Marcus made sure to make the distinction that although he had raised her alone, he did not want to be her ‘father’, which she respected. However...that did not stop her from wanting a mother or a father in her life at some point.
Having her mother before her, it filled an unconscious void that she only now became aware of.
Once Thalia had finished venting out her emotions, she tried to collect herself.
“Hestia...mom...where are we?” she asked.
Hestia looked at her with a straight face and said, “Hell. This is Hell.”
“...huh…?” Thalia muttered, dumbfounded.
She couldn’t seem to process what she had heard.
“Wait! Hell is real?! Why are we in Hell?! Actually, why are you in Hell?!” Thalia asked frantically, much to Hestia’s amusement.
“Oh? Does it really surprise you so much to find your own mother in Hell?” she asked sarcastically.
Thalia looked at her like she was crazy and replied, “Yes! Why the Hell-” Hestia frowned and took offense to that, “-are you in Hell?!”
Hestia looked at her with what almost seemed like a pouting expression as she said, “I think you have a large misunderstanding about what you just said.”
Thalia didn’t understand what she meant.
“Marcus...even though he rarely talked about you, whenever he did he never said that you were bad or deserved to end up in a place like Hell!” she said and Hestia’s expression changed to one of understanding.
“Ah...I think I get why you’re so confused now…,” Hestia said as she nodded as if confirming the situation.
She then sat down on the floor of the throne room, patting the black marble and inviting Thalia to sit with her, which she did.
“Thalia, my dear. Whatever you might have learned, whatever ideas about Hell you might have grown up with living on Terra...I assure you that they are wrong. Do not be so quick to panic just because you found me in this place,” she said in an attempt to calm Thalia down.
“But you...seeing you in a place like this...it doesn’t make sense to me,” Thalia said.
“I’m sure it doesn’t. After all, Hell is the place where sinners and demons reside after all. But there is one big misjudgment about Hell that you’ve made so far,” she said.
“And...what is that?” Thalia asked.
Hestia smiled and said, “When I died, I did not get sent to Hell, nor am I in Hell. I am Hell itself. I am the Goddess of Hell.”