Hadie's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Hadie stepped through the portal into the Underworld with Harold's grey face burned into his mind. The air here pressed hot against his skin, thick with sulfur and ash. Somewhere in these caverns lived creatures that predated even the Olympians—things that remembered curses from the first age of gods. The molten river carved through black stone ahead, its surface rippling with waves of liquid fire. Heat slammed into Hadie like a physical wall. He'd come here searching for a creature his father had mentioned once—a hydra that nested in the volcanic depths, whose blood carried properties that could dissolve ancient magic. But standing at the river's edge, watching lava bubble and spit, Hadie realized the problem: he had no idea how to cross, let alone survive long enough to extract what Harold needed. Then the river moved wrong. A serpentine head rose from the molten flow, dripping fire. Then another. Then three more. The hydra's multiple heads swayed above the lava, each one tracking Hadie with eyes like burning coals. He'd found the creature. Now it was going to kill him. Hadie morphed and launched himself sideways as a jet of lava sprayed across the stone where he'd stood. The hydra surged forward, its massive body creating waves that splashed molten rock onto the banks. Hadie ran, his mind racing through scenarios—fight it, distract it, try to communicate—but every option ended with him melted or crushed. Another head struck, jaws snapping shut inches from his shoulder. He rolled, came up running, and spotted the fortress built into the volcano's slope ahead. The hydra's lair. If the creature nested there, maybe it kept something inside—shed scales, pooled venom, anything he could use. He sprinted for the entrance as three heads converged on him at once. The impact of their collision behind him sent him sprawling through the doorway into darkness. Inside the lair, Hadie's eyes adjusted to the glow of cracks in the stone walls, veins of lava running through them like arteries. The hydra didn't follow him in—it circled outside, heads weaving, blocking his exit. Trapped. Then Hadie saw it: a crystallized formation in the center of the chamber, where the hydra's body heat had condensed something from the air over centuries. The crystal pulsed with the same grey color as the curse spreading through Harold. The hydra wasn't just a monster. It was immune to the petrification curse, and its body had been filtering the curse's magic out of the Underworld's air, concentrating it here. Hadie pulled an empty vial from his belt and carefully broke off a piece of the crystal's opposite side—the clear, purified part. The section that showed what remained after the curse was removed. He'd come looking for blood or venom, but he'd found something better: proof that the curse could be extracted. As he turned to face the hydra still waiting outside, Hadie understood that mortals and gods weren't the only ones fighting to survive the Titans' return. Even monsters were trying to endure.