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“Do you wish it often?”

“No.”She continues to move down the tunnel.

“How far underground are we?”

“Very.”

“And I lived down here with you? In these tunnels?”

“Yes.”

“We just roamed down here for thousands of years?”

“You liked to draw. I would bring you stones that you would scratch into the walls. There are thousands of pictures, and over the years, I’ve come to realize they tell a story. A story of what must come.”There is a glow up ahead. It is a volatile shifting of magenta and violet that catches and holds my gaze. Hydra tells me,“It is where I take you now.”

I can’t make myself speak as she lumbers closer to the glowing void. When she finally steps from the tunnel into the largest cave yet, I am speechless. It’s a thing of dreams, a wonder of this realm, surely. The cave is wide and high. Impossibly high. The firestorm within the stone stretches from the ceiling into the cave walls, rumbling like a low boil under sketches that look like runes. They flash, illuminating brightly as the firestorm rolls under the stone in a sequence of prophecy that chills the very marrow in my bones.

“I did this?” I gasp after long minutes. I slide down her back and tail, stepping onto the cool cave floor.

The floor of the stone is a thick coal black, blending almost seamlessly into the pool of obsidian in the center. That black stretches up over the walls of the cave, as it had over the walls of the previous caves. I assume that the ceiling of the caves is crafted of a clear crystalline stone that allows the fire inside to be seen.

It appears I’ve chiselled away enough of the black stone on the walls to craft a story of what is to come that is illuminated by the rolling flame within it all.

And as each image appears bright before fading to bright again, I can feel the memories of a life in between coming to me. They click into place as though they are a story told to me on an ancient tongue, older than time.

I see the rise of Primordial Gods and Titans, and the fall of both.

I see the war of the Gods, and the rule that has lasted an eternity, twisted by an immorality bred of the Gods that has spread unchecked like a toxin to humanity.

I witness the birth of a child prophesied by the Moirai—three from a place beyond this universe. They have settled here to scribe the events of the realms of this world. To guide the spiritual evolution of this realm, so ancient to those who are born to it, and yet still in its infancy to the three who stand sentry.

I see the final war. The Gods who will fall.

I see three Gods who will stand above all, ruling together as one. They are violence and justice and strength. They are love and honor and loyalty. They will be bound by the birth of two. Twins, one born of darkness, and one born of light. One to temper violence and the other to temper impossible strength.

I see the coming together of monster and woman. A mating beneath twin moons. Fertility.

The sketches come alive, as though animated in the stone by a magic so ancient and timeless it cannot be of this world.

I see a Goddess swell in the arms of her God, and as the firestorm rolls behind the sketch, it brings life to the image, for I see tears roll down her face.

A whisper spills in my mind. It is not my Hydra.

“Love. Grief.Sacrifice.”

I see Olympus, and the crumble of an ancient realm that bleeds malice. I walk the halls of it, Hydra at my back. A figure I do not know bends the knee before me, a face man then woman. Lies play in the eyes. They are beautiful and golden, but their heart is cloaked in gloom and doom.

The image shifts again. My Hydra is close, but wary. She is healed and strong and I am proud and brave. But a blade blessed by lightning swings to cut me in two—I don’t see it. The lives I nurture inside me are vulnerable. His aim is to destroy all that they are, for they are the end of all that has ever been, and the beginning of everything that has yet to be.

Before the blade of lightning can strike me, I am saved by a thing of darkness. A blade that crawls with shadows and bleeds flame.

The image transforms again as a sob catches in my throat.

I trace my finger over the flashing sketches of the twins—over the moons I carved long ago into the chests of daughters not yet born. From the moons in their chests burst the strings of an unbreakable rope that binds them all. And I know.

I know.

The infants that are of me and Hades—sanctioned by the Moirai and the universes beyond—come alive. They peel from the wall; ghosts I watch pulled on strings from the arms of parents who love them desperately. Those strings never breakeven as they are placed beneath the tree of life, their skin cold with a blue that will scar the whole of my heart for the rest of eternity.