Page 105 of Where Darkness Bloomed
From the throne, Persephone leaned forward slightly, watching.
For a moment, only his ragged breath filled the hall.
Then—a shift.
His trembling ceased. The wide-eyed terror drained from Tantalus’s features like wine from a broken cask. The breathy sobs quieted, swallowed by silence as a slow, insidious change overtook him.
His shoulders straightened, his eyes darkening wickedly, flattening into cold, black voids. A slow, cruel smile unfurled across his thin lips.
Hades regarded the mortal without surprise. “Speak,” he commanded.
Tantalus’s gaze snapped to him, a sneer rising like bile. Hatred now smoldered in his black stare. “I was once favored by the gods,” he spat. “I dinedwith them on Olympus at the invitation of Zeus himself. You know this, Unseen One.”
He stepped forward, his face breaking into an ugly leer.
“They feasted on ambrosia and nectar, hoarding eternal youth and power. One day, I took only a morsel, a mere crumb for mankind. For that, Zeus cast me out.” Tantalus gritted his teeth, venom coating the words. “My son condemned me for my pride in thinking myself equal to the gods. His betrayal shamed me more than the gods ever could. A king, scorned by his own blood.”
A pause.
“Oh, but I had my revenge.”
Madness danced in the king’s eyes, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I hosted a banquet, grander than any in my kingdom’s history. During the fourth course, Dionysus noticed my son’s absence.”
Persephone gasped, her eyes widening with dawning horror.
Tantalus’s gaze slid toward her. Then his smile stretched wide, showing unnaturally pointed canines. “They say your mother tasted a piece of his shoulder, young one.”
The words slithered through the air like a serpent, and Persephone recoiled as if bitten. Laughter rang out, shrill and maniacal, bounding off stone.
The mirth of a madman.
But it faltered abruptly, choking off mid-breath as Hades stepped forward. He came to the edge of the dais, standing between the mortal king and his queen—an unmoving wall of dark power.
“Tantalus of Phrygia.”
The torches guttered beneath his restrained wrath. The air thickened, turning cold, pressing inward like an iron grip.
“Had your words held truth, I might have held your soul in solemn guard, as I do all the dead. But for your deceit, your hubris, and the horrors you wrought upon your kin—”
His eyes flicked up, meeting the mortal’s, fathomless pits of endless dark.
“—you will know me as your tormentor.”
Tantalus’s lips parted, a scream clawing its way up his throat—
“Silence.”
The command cracked through the hall.
The scream died before it could be born. Tantalus’s mouth gaped open,frozen in a voiceless shriek. His neck strained, veins bulging. He writhed, screaming silently for help.
None would come.
“Forsake hope, mortal king.” His voice held the finality of a tomb sealing shut. His power surged, a vast darkness, preparing to devour this wretched soul. “I, Hades, Lord of the Underworld, condemn you to Tartarus, where you will hunger and thirst for eternity under the lash of Tisiphone.”
Hades turned away then, his gaze finding her—
Persephone.
