Deathnibbles

  The triangle clicks into place Deathnibbles. The timer starts screaming red at the sky. Ten minutes. Nine-fifty-nine. Nine-fifty-eight.

  A soul fogs into shape head down, shoulders curled like a leaf burned at the edges. I’m supposed to shut it up. That’s the game.

  Deathnibbles hops forward, tail high like a banner because dignity is for creatures with longer legs.

  “Squeak” Deathnibbles sats but what he really meant was, “Okay. Not here to bite.”

  Deathnibbles pauses then thinks up a idea. He carves into the ground with his scythe. Big black letters, friendly font. UNDERWORLD WORKERS UNITED. YOU DESERVE SAFETY. YOU DESERVE WITNESSES.

  The soul blinks. “Are you… a squirrel?”

  “Squeak,” Deathnibbles nodded.

  Somewhere above, the crowd laughs. Somewhere else, gods trade bets on whether he’ll make it to the two-minute mark before crying.

  The soul takes reads the message. Hands trembling. Deathnibbles continues to scratch a message.

  “Rule one: Don’t talk to press alone. Rule two: never meet your abuser without a witness. Rule three: if anyone offers you food for silence, call me right away.”

  The timer eats itself. Eight minutes. Seven-forty-seven.

  Sounds can hear the other wedges. A gasped sob cut off by sand. A pen scratching hard on parchment. A choir of coins.

  The buzzer detonates. Walls collapse. The heptagon unfurls. The souls fades. “Union of souls huh. Not a bad idea.”

  Deathnibbles stands proudly of his efforts adn then glances over and sees Glenn.

  He’s standing there, scythe black with something that isn’t mortal blood, shoulders heaving. At his feet: Mammon, not healing.

  The arena gasps like one giant lung.

  Deathnibbles doesn’t make a peep. He stares at Glenn. Glenn looked so…sad.

  Later, the city is a river of noise and light. Deathnibbles is escorted by the sphynx from Egypt’s building. They stand between two Greek fa?ades: on the left, Tartarus themed in tasteful nightmaric iron ribs, chains like rain. On the right, a Parthenon that looks like taken straight from Athens.

  The Sphinx is in a tan blazer, glasses. She smells like papyrus and new toner. Andromache meets them at the door. She’s taller up close, but everyone is taller than these two.

  “Persephone has agreed to meet you,” she says, voice as sharp as a sword. She eyes sphynx. “Who is this.”

  “My name is Giza,” the Sphinx says. “I’m his translator.”

  “I understand his squeaks just fine,” Andromache says. “But if you must. Come.”

  Inside, the Parthenon is a liar. The marble peels back into cavern; the air cools and smells of iron. Below, tiers of shadowed halls stretch away, lit by pale-green lamps. Titans in chains haul ledgers the size of ships. A river runs through it, slow and black, and some plantlife grows : ivy up columns, flowers in cracks, moss softening the edges of punishment. Persephone’s touch. Life where death insists.

  They climb the stairs. They go on too long for the building that contains them. That’s the trick with gods: the inside is bigger than the story you told yourself.

  At the top: a garden. Not a mortal garden. Every plant has a reason to be here. Persephone kneels among them, tending a cluster of pale, waxen blossoms Deathnibbles has never seen.

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  “My queen,” Andromache says, bowing. “The ambassador for Anubis has arrived.”

  Persephone rises. Taller than Andromache. No longer the god of spring but of seasons mixed. The kind of beautiful statues try to be when they think no one’s watching.

  “Come,” she says. “Say what you came to say and be gone. I do not have time to meddle in whatever Anubis is planning.”

  Deathnibbles pulls a scroll from his cloak. His paws shake as he presents it with both hands.

  “Deathnibbles brings a message from Anubis,” Giza says. “He wishes to propose an alliance.”

  Persephone takes the scroll, scans, and then throws it. It whistles past their ears. The paper lands like a dead bird at their feet.

  “What is this,” she says. It isn’t a question. It’s outrage. “He wants me to protect that Reaper? Lucifer’s pet?”

  Deathnibbles squeaks in a plea. Giza translates without flinching. “He says he knows it is hard to believe, but Glenn’s winning serves all of us. Balance. A chance at peace.”

  The temperature drops. Some flowers brown at the edges. Persephone’s eyes flash.

  “Peace?” she says. “I do not want peace. I want vengeance. My husband is gone. He gave himself to keep a pact standing that would have crushed worse. It got him a tomb. Peace is for kings. For liars.”

  She looks at Andromache, then at Deathnibbles, and when she speaks again the words come like stones:

  “Do you know why I chose her? Do you know what happens to the women after the kings are done playing games?”

  The garden goes quiet.

  “How,” Persephone asks, “do you tell your sister that tonight you will both be raped and sold? How do you tell your mother that her youngest daughter was taken to the altar as a consolation prize for the men who burned your city? How do you tell yourself to be strong while they pry your child from your arms and throw him from the walls? And when they bring his body back on your husband’s shield, how do you swallow breath when they tell you that you will be a bed-slave to the son of the man who killed the man you loved.”

  Her voice does not break. The plants do. Leaves curl. Petals crisp.

  “I do not tell her to be strong,” she says. “I tell her to be angry. To fight. The kings have always played their games; the rest of us have always paid. Upper Management is the same. It is a joke to them. It has to be.”

  Andromache places a hand on her queen’s back. She doesn’t speak. Her eyes are fixed somewhere thirty centuries away when she was still with Hades.

  Deathnibbles thinks about Glenn standing over a body that shouldn’t be able to die. He thinks about the soul he made start a union and how its not that different from his family’s souls. He thinks about Lytha, the first to treat him then some insignificant animal. Someone who loved all souls, not just man.”

  Deathnibbles hops forward. He reaches behind him and takes the small scythe from his back and hold it up with both paws.

  Persephone blinks. Then wipes a finger under each eye and takes the weapon.

  It grows in her hands, unfurls like a memory remembering itself. The blade curves wider, the haft lengthens; ivy creeps and blossoms along the wood. She weighs it. Nods.

  “I know this scythe,” she says. “My husband’s.”

  Giza inclines her head. “He wants you to have it.”

  Persephone studies it. She is very gentle with the edge. Giza keeps speaking in the calm register she uses for clients that visit her reception.

  “He knows how you feel,” she says. “Glenn killed his whole family. While he will never forgive, he understands we are all pawns in this… corporate machine. Glenn might break it. If he can’t, there are those like you and Andromache who will keep fighting.”

  Persephone looks at the mythical creatures that somehow found themselves into her realm for a long time. Then she turns the scythe so the blade catches the garden’s cold light.

  Finally, she hands it back to Deathnibbles. His paws dip with the weight and then it remembers it’s small again.

  “Keep it,” she says. “If you use it against gods, he would want you armed.”

  She turns away, but her words come back over her shoulder like a conditional tense:

  “As for alliance, will not bless it. But for now our goals are aligned. We will not interfere. Know this, little envoy: if it comes to Andromache against Glenn, she will end him without blinking.”

  Giza and Deathnibbles bow. You don’t argue with a force of nature when it’s being calm before its storm.

  They get halfway down the impossible stairs when Andromache catches up in the colonnade. She isn’t softened by the garden. She is still bronze and tendon and long memory.

  “How,” she asks, “do you protect someone who killed your family?”

  Deathnibbles squeaks softly.

  Giza’s voice carries it in words: “He says he wanted nothing more than to kill Glenn. But when he saw him, he didn’t see a monster. He saw a frightened, lonely boy. There is sadness behind his eyes. He is unsure what to think now. But if there is any chance to stop this from happening again, why not try?”

  Andromache’s mouth tightens. She nods once, a soldier’s nod. Then she turns back toward the garden, toward her queen, toward the thousand other fights.

  Outside, the city is still roaring about the kill. Deathnibbles tucks the scythe against his back and feel its small weight settle between his shoulders like a hand. Giza adjusts their glasses.

  They walk into the noise. That was not a victory but it was worth merit. That will have to be enough.