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Ares looses a roar as doors open and gladiators storm into the arena. Each one is armed with weapons that could crush the bones of a man with a single swing. There is easily a hundred men now locked in the arena with Ares. The only three without aweapon are the human man, the gladiator meant to kill him with his bare hands, and Ares.

Zeus laughs a maniacal sound that draws my sharp gaze. I find his is already on me. “Hera thought to spare you this scene.” He shrugs, like it simply couldn’t be helped. “But I did promise you a show, did I not?” Another maniacal laugh that slithers like snakes over my bones. “This, dear daughter, will be a show the like you’ve never seen.”

At the sound of a battle cry of men, I am unable to do anything but look back at the scene in the arena. The armed gladiators charge Ares from all sides, and I wait for him to do something to deflect the attack. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t lift a single claw as he bows his head between his shoulders and braces for the deadly onslaught.

The first gladiator to connect with his flesh is one who carries a weapon that looks like a big hook. He grips him around the neck and pulls violently down on the handle as the others connect with his back. Long metal weapons with unbreakable clubs bursting with smaller blade-like points connect again and again with Ares’ back, splitting the human flesh he wears to ribbons to showcase the flesh of the God beneath. Blood sprays as whips lash, and Ares hits his knees in the sand.

The first sound that tears from his lips is one of agony so extreme, so brokenly pained, my womb contracts under the stress of it. This exposure is too much for the soul inside me that already loves him, and I grip my belly with shaking arms as though to hold the piece of me that aches to break free, to save him, safe inside me where I can keep her for just a little longer.

Still, I can’t tear my eyes from the horror of the scene below. I don’t miss the way the gladiators shred the last of the flesh Ares wears, exposing the granite flesh of the beast beneath.

Gray stone flesh seeping with hot-red blood falls to the sun-baked sand with a sizzle as vicious clouds roll overhead.Gladiators roar and rage, lashing at the broken mountain that is the God of War andCourage, now crumpled in the center of the amphitheatre.

Gods stand in their seats, human servants hovering close. I’ve been here long enough now to see the difference. Even the lesser Gods possess a glow about them that the broken souls of the humans in Olympus do not carry.

At the table I share with the worst of the Gods and Goddesses, bile rises at the unrestrained excitement that burns bright in each of their expressions.

Even Hera wears a look of delight as she holds her wine, watching her son on his knees being beat by the human souls turned trained gladiators. Beside Hera, Hercules’ blue eyes are bright with delight. The kind of delight that only one whose soul has been woven with threads of malice can wear while watching such a scene. It is as though they hunger for the torment of the God they should love.

Hunger for the destruction of all that he is.

A grunt of raw agony echoes up from the arena. I look back to find Ares has spilled forward to hold himself up with his hands planted in the sand. Blood rains from the weapons that land again and again over the dark stone of his back. The drops sizzling as they fall to the earth, as though acid leaks from the very blood he bleeds.

It goes on for so long that even the stone of his Gods’ flesh begins to tear open over his back. Blood-soaked obsidian bone protrudes from split flesh and muscle, and still, Ares does not stand. He does not fight.

His clawed hands are fisted in the sand and his thick thighs, now gaping with wounds, quiver as though he is moments away from complete collapse.

A skip in my heart is the match that ignites a true fear inside my heart that he may very well be killed today.But can a God be killed?

I thought it impossible, thought the consequences too great. Now…

“I don’t think he is going to succumb to the bloodlust today, Father.” My head snaps around to see a woman I’ve not yet seen. She’s beautiful, as all Gods are, but there is something about her that feels off. Somethingotherlurking behind her dark brown eyes.

“Something is missing. The place where the soul should lay is empty, barren.”

I flinch at the voice of three that are not of me, and the new arrival smirks as though delighted by my discomfort, those oddly dim brown eyes sparking with interest that quickly dulls again.

“Athena.” Zeus pushes back from the table and pats his knee with one big hand, adorned in rings of gold that glitter with diamonds.

A slither of sick slides through me when Athena pushes a mass of dark curls over her shoulder to plop down on Zeus’ knee. My eyes shoot to Hera. Her gaze forced toward the arena as though ambivalent to the display of—well, I’m not sure what is being displayed.

I’ve come to realize that most of what I know about the Gods is a lie that is twisted around the truth. Sure, I know Athena is the Goddess of Wisdom and Warfare. She is beloved among mythology, but I’ve learned enough to know that the most loved are the truly evil. The truth humanity knows today of the Gods is steeped in lies disguised to demand the affections of the foolish.

Athena shimmies on Zeus’ knee, her smile dark and twisted with depravity. There’s no other word for it. Everything in her, of her, is ugly.

Zeus’s big hand falls on her bare thigh with a slap that makes both me and Leuce flinch. Unlike everyone else at the table, heck, unlike everyone else in the amphitheatre, Athena is dressed in a short dress of armour. Splits in the armor of the skirt display a pair of white panties that has a sickening discomfort warring inside me to mingle with the fear for Ares.

In front of everyone, Zeus lets his big hand slide too far up her thigh to be appropriate.

Leuce leans close to whisper, “Fucking disgusting.”

“I agree,”Hydra says in my mind. She is always close, always listening and watching.

Hera’s jaw tightens and Hercules’ blue eyes watch the path his father’s hand takes on Athena’s thigh with a hunger that can’t be mistaken as anything but vile.

Athena leans her back into Zeus’ chest, pushing her own breast, plated in armor, out toward the table. Her eyes dance for a moment on Hera, as though trying to taunt her wrath, before she sighs. “You don’t need him. I can start the wars for you, father.”

“When did you return?” Zeus ignores her words to ask his own question.