Here's a bit from the sequel of Task Force:
Gaea—Finding Balance. It's a work in progress, but it'll give you a taste of
what's coming:
A swirling blackness, Nyx
moved and shaped herself in ways that would stagger the mortal mind,
collapsing into eddies of dark, living clouds, ready to bear her offspring
implanted in her by Olympos’ adulterous
king. With the catacombs of the dead for her nursery, Nyx wanted
to bring forth her daughter in the company of the agonized, pitiable souls
of those who had never made it beyond the gates of the underworld; they
had much to offer her child. Suddenly, almost as if she had forgotten her
role in the cosmos, her surging form shot forth toward the exit of Tartaros,
a cave entrance kissed by the air that mortals breathe. As she neared the
opening, bright Hemera,
the day itself, descended into the deepest Hadean depths, and both Protogenoi, the
primordials,
touched ever so briefly before Nyx
bubbled forth into the air, becoming the blanket of obscurity over part of
Gaea—Night and Day in a forever dance.
Taking her place in the sky, Nyx
felt it was time: her daughter would enter the world in a way no other elder
god had.
• • •
Megara, Greece. 1000 B.C.
Screams of torment and railing pain cut
at the air like talons, ripping apart the peace of the healer’s tent in
the cultist’s sanctuary, a humble place here in the mortal world where
those afflicted by madness came to embrace the darkness of Nyx.
A woman, crazed with murderous thoughts and tortured dreams, reclined on a
woven grass mat, her wrists and ankles bound with worn leather straps anchored to
the ground to prevent her from hurting herself—or others. Her eyes as black as Erebos,
the darkness itself, she became the ideal choice for this birth, a living receptacle
for Nyx.
Her madness would mix well with the darkness. Ancient primordial entered her
human host and the body took on the pregnant form, bloating the abdomen with
life.
Soon, echoing cries interlaced with
unintelligible mutterings escaped the woman's lips while the healer, his white chiton
stained from years of patient’s blood, knelt ready to extract the newborn,
eager to come forth; he was certainly ignorant of what would come. He preferred
the crimson patches on his garment, to help him remember each forced
amputation or sutured wound, usually brought about by a stony fragment or stick
used during an arcane ritual to Nyx.
This cult was bound by anarchy, it would seem, and spontaneous fights were
common. Night incarnate had selected well, largely to reflect the chaos
within, but also to see what it would feel like to push her progeny forth
as a mortal would. That connection to humanity would prove so very useful.
Following a pain-induced shriek, a
volcanic spray of blood and placenta erupted forth as the part human, part
primordial being pushed her way into the world of Humankind without the
benefit of the healer’s aid. Wiping the sanguine discharge from his face,
the healer caught a glimpse of this child, and as he felt his psyche melt,
he gouged out his own eyes with his fingers, mumbling as his intellect
fragmented, foaming at the mouth like a rabid beast. A mortal mind could
not comprehend such a primordial in her true form. Soon, he lay still, and the
entity hovered over to the lifeless body, draining it of whatever soul
still remained as a child takes sustenance from its mother. Not even Hades
would want the remnants of the empty corpse, as it had no spirit to wander
the underworld.
Nyx
exited the woman’s spent body—now a lifeless, vacant shell—and coalesced
around her daughter, ready to take her back to Tartaros
where the newborn would mature among the imprisoned Titans, Gaea’s children buried beneath
stone and Zeus’ curse, and there she would feed off ancient energy originating
from Khaos,
the mother of the cosmos herself. In such a place of despair, this child
would find solace near yet another tomb, a place no mortal could ever see,
and no god would ever go. She would grow accustomed to the dead chill of
whose presence no one spoke, for fear even mentioning the name of he who
was buried there would rouse him—Kronos, the Titan king.
As the Moirae
wove the fate of Humanity and the gods, so too did they forge the path of
those who outranked them. Part of Fates’ tapestry would form a path for
the daughter of Nyx,
whom she called Lismonia.
Bony fingers on the loom, bound by duty
and a yearning, trembled with each pass, and the fabric it brought forth
for Zeus' daughter bore the color of blood.
• • •
In Tartaros
once more, Nyx
awaited the return of Hemera,
bright Day, so she might become the night sky, an eternal balance she had struck
when Gaea was young. While Lismonia
drifted around the Titans’ rocky tombs, she absorbed even the faintest
traces of energy from within the encasements, energy tainted by hatred of
the other Olympeian
gods—especially Zeus, her father. She felt their rage, their unremitting, seething
rage against the youngest son of Kronos. Like mother’s milk, this life
force leached through the stone into Lismonia,
and her cloud-like, tentacled
form roiled like a storm-battered sea with every acerbic drop. Each of the
Titans, left alive but entombed within Gaea’s shell, remembered the day
Zeus’ scythe took their lord’s life, returning his energy to Khaos.
Each remembered the sacred pact of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, the one that
turned their own mother, Gaea, against them. Mother Earth was nothing if
she was not loyal to prophecy, the very one that foretold of Kronos’
demise by his son’s hand.
Lismonia
glided further away from her mother, tumbling over the rock-strewn floor
until even she felt the gelid tomb, the one place in all of creation not
even the gods visit. Surrounding the earth sarcophagus, she waited to feel
that familiar electric sensation of life, but... nothing. Her frustration
subsided as she comprehended what she had learned from the Titans: Kronos,
the son of Gaea and Ouranos, the king of the Titans, truly was no more.
• • •
After her feeding, she wanted to explore
her new home, like any curious child, and found the path to the place
where she knew she could find the one she needed to meet, the one she
needed to see, the one she needed to kill—Zeus—for he not only had abandoned her mother, as he had so many others, he was despised by the Titans,
and it was their hatred that fueled her. The journey to Olympos
from Tartaros,
even for Nyx’s daughter, would take time. Immune to mortal constructs, she
could not be bound by chain or rope, by solid or ether, but time had neither shape
nor form, matter nor mind—and it could affect her. No matter, however. She
would eventually reach the sacred mountaintop, and she would ensure that
Zeus understood what it meant to abandon her. Making her way through
Hades, though, would teach her much, if nothing else, how nourishing souls
could be.
Through the fields of gray
asphodel, Lismonia
wended her way, rolling like a black tide. Spirits of the dead—pale mist
swirling with no human resemblance—paid her no mind, neither knowing nor
caring who she was, and they continued to wander through the fields as the
billowing daughter of Nyx
wafted around them. Near Hades’ palace of inky marble columns, striated
with wispy bits of white, she stopped, looking like a storm cloud that had
lost its buoyancy. This was Hades, she thought, the underworld where the dead
found their solace or their suffering. She had already felt the deep,
aching torment from the Titans, raw emotions able to carve into the
densest stone, and now she felt at home. Onward she moved, undulating,
rolling across the realm, finding her bearings, until she saw her kin.
Hovering on scaly black wings behind the Hall of Judgment, their arms and
legs entwined with serpents, three sisters tormented a human soul not yet
ethereal, but not corporeal. Having drowned his newborn child, this once
mortal would go to Tartaros,
forever enduring punishments not fit for humans to comprehend. Such was the will
of Rhadamanthys,
Aeacos,
and Minos, the three judges of the underworld.
Each had been a son of Zeus and mortal, rewarded for his good deeds with
this post, and so they spoke in one voice, “Tartaros
shall lay claim to you, and none shall discern your screams amid those whose
voices you join.”
Despite lacking a corporeal body, this
former human felt every talon strike ripping through what remained, every
snakebite and the venom each released, every contemptuous gesture, and he
would never again know peace. One of the three winged goddesses, Tisiphone,
took perverse pleasure in bringing anguish to him, the murderer of the
innocent; the other Erinyes,
Alekto
and Megaera, assisted
in his torment. Daughters of Nyx,
by Ouranos,
and sisters to Lismonia,
they only relented when their cloud-like sibling moved closer. With only
thought, she conveyed her contempt for Zeus and all of Olympos,
relaying how the god of the sky had abandoned their mother. She was going to Olympos
for a reckoning, to tear down the oligarchy of the gods one by one,
starting with her father who had wronged the Protogenoi. Lismonia
had few emotions known to her for one so young, but the Erinyes
saw her pain, felt her yearning. To demonstrate her desire, she swirled
around the tortured soul before them, exacting her own revenge on him for his
heinous crime. None who knew him would ever remember he existed—such was
her power—but his spirit would remember the egregious harm he had done to
his infant girl. How fortuitous, Lismonia
thought, that he had tripped on a stone after committing the deed,
cracking open his skull. As his blood leached into the earth, Hermes
dragged his soul to the underworld to face judgment. And now what was left
of him went to Tartaros, to endure whatever agony he deserved, knowing no
one would ever mourn him or feel the finest shred of pity.
Lismonia took her leave of her sisters, heading
directly for the caverns that stretched out beneath Mount Olympos. Magaera and her sisters followed.
Surely the daughter of Night would lead them to glorious and plentiful torment.
