"The Wall of Sighs?" Hela was in battle form—half her face a goddess's, half a wraith's. The ghostly side of her mouth ticked upward, and a captured Greek underworld jailer was nearly scared out of his soul.
"Great goddess, the Wall of Sighs is the boundary separating Elysium from the underworld. Only gods—uh, only Olympian deities—can pass through. No matter how powerful the impact, it remains unscathed, a wall of despair for all beings other than gods—truly a wall that makes one sigh. Unless…" He struck a pose of frank disclosure.
"Speak. Whether your information has value will determine your reward." Hela arched a disdainful brow.
"Unless one can flood the depths of darkness with the light of hope—that is, the sun's energy, source of all things—only that can shatter the Wall of Sighs. But where would sunlight come from in the underworld?" He chuckled dryly, wearing a fawning look.
He was stating an open secret.
Precisely because no one below godhood could do it, Hades hadn't minded making it public.
"Oh? That's what Hades is banking on?" Hela curled her lip.
"Seems so." Ereshkigal flicked a hand, and, to mortal souls who could never ford it, the underworld river iced over in thick sheets so Helheim's warders could march across in ranks.
Hela turned and smiled lightly at Scathach. "I may need to trouble you this time."
"No problem," Scathach said softly.
The three underworld goddesses raised their eyes, taking in a sight to stir the heart of any bard.
It was a long battle line stretching across the first underworld river's bank and out to both horizons.
The Helheim warder host looked endless. They wore what seemed heavy black-green plate; ghost-blue underworld fire danced in their skull sockets. Anyone in the underworld with half a clue could tell how obscene the undead power bound in each warder was.
Drop any one of these into the outer world and razing a town wouldn't be an issue.
At a glance the rear ranks had already blurred into a swelling mirage, like the seam of sea and sky.
Only Hela and her companions knew that line traced the front where the Æsir and Olympian underworld forces met.
On their near side, tens of thousands of Greek shades were shackled by Helheim's fierce warders and hauled off; on the far side, uncounted wandering souls scattered like spooked chicks, chirping in panic.
It barely counted as a fight to the death—more like one-sided snatching.
Helheim's side was a locust swarm sweeping a field, devouring everything in sight.
But this was just an appetizer. With the Greek underworld's Three Judges down, no mighty foe would be blocking this stretch.
The real test would be at the Wall of Sighs.
Shades on the periphery—snatch them and be done. For Hades it even lightened the underworld's load.
After all, the recent mass deaths among Greeks had already overburdened his realm. Losing these shades wasn't even a scratch.
Before long, the three Helheim goddesses, with tens of thousands at their backs, crossed the broad gray plain called the Field of Truth. Two roads met here: one to the place of bliss, the Elysian Fields (Elysium), and the other to Tartarus.
Tartarus had already been wrecked by Cronus and the other Titans; the fiends kept there, and the unfortunates thrown in recently, had long since fled up through the great rift to Mount Olympus. Going that way was pointless.
Hela's only goal, naturally, was the world behind the Wall of Sighs—that emblem of eternal happiness for the dead, the Elysian Fields. That was the true essence of the Greek underworld.
The Helheim host closed on the Wall of Sighs.
It looked no more than ten stories high.
No—hardly even a wall. The white-jade-like—though who knew what it was—surface was carved with murals praising Hades and depicting the bliss beyond.
Hela gave a short laugh. "All right, time to knock. Tell the fools in back the true master has arrived."
Ereshkigal rolled her eyes. Knock? More like kick the door in.
Scathach didn't care either way. She turned, her grip on the spear so loose it was like she held a sheet of paper.
The runes on Gungnir lit one by one; every glyph's glow felt like golden sap seeping from Yggdrasil's roots. As she stepped and twisted her waist, the underworld ground trembled; the spearpoint ripped the air with the tear of silk—and it was as if a million souls shrieked in terror together.
She cast a seemingly casual throw toward the underworld vault behind their own lines.
When that spiral stream of light—visible only at its two ends, with no trace in the middle—punched through the firmament, a strange surge of power rolled across the dome above. Then, as if from a fresh wound, different lights spilled down.
In the next instant, as fragments of the broken vault fell mixed with splendorous sunlight, the whole underworld quaked.
Harmless-looking sunlight poured in on a forty-five-degree slant. In a single exchange the entire Wall of Sighs behaved as if struck by a giant shell, bursting out a ring-shaped, nebula-like shock wave.
On the pale, supposedly indestructible wall, the sunlight burned a trench like molten lava. In seconds, the sunlit sections of the Wall of Sighs melted like candle wax in a flame, slumping into a puddle of white tallow.
"Ahhh!"
Sensing the horror of it, underworld shades screamed in terror by the thousand.
At the same time, Hela's wanton chuckle rippled through all Elysium.
"Ke-ke-ke—Hela, mistress of Helheim of the Æsir underworld, is conducting business. Only Hades and his underlings are targets. Anyone else who can't see straight is welcome to come out and 'discuss' it with me."
Truth be told, the instant the Wall of Sighs dissolved, Hela felt several powerful presences in the underworld startle awake. Their divine gazes came probing, watching the Helheim host with deep hostility. Had Hela pressed forward indiscriminately, they might well have leapt out.
At her words, their sights withdrew.
Hela didn't know it, but the peepers were Nyx, goddess of night, and Erebus, god of darkness. As the most ancient primordials, they did not take orders from Hades—but their strength was nothing to scoff at.
Hela knew only to keep the main thing the main thing—focus on Zeus's core deities.
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