A loud blip from the sonar screen knocked Captain Tanaka Hideyo out of his semi-slumber. His eyelids fluttered like moth wings as he leaned from his chair to examine the screen. Whenever the sonar’s spinning “needle” swept over the lower right corner, a large green silhouette shaped like an elongated teardrop blinked into view. And each time it reappeared, the mysterious form appeared to have drifted one bit closer to the screen’s center.
“What do you think it could be, Captain?” Lieutenant Suzuki Kenji asked. His tanned yellow-brown face had turned paler than usual.
“Probably a whale,” Tanaka said.
Suzuki shook his head. “I’ve never seen a whale leave a blip that big. Not even a blue whale. And it’s coming straight toward us!”
The captain groaned. “Don’t tell me it’s one of those fictional sea monsters, then. I keep telling you, Lieutenant, you watch way too many silly kaiju movies.”
“Maybe, but with all due respect, Captain, you should at least keep an open mind.”
Tanaka took a deep breath and stiffened his arms to suppress a desire to slap his subordinate for talking back. “Very well, you can check the stern. But do expect to be disappointed.”
Suzuki hurried out of the bridge with a flashlight to pierce through the nocturnal darkness. Tanaka shook his head with a mutter as he sank deeper into his chair. His lieutenant may have still been young, but nonetheless he should have had enough experience on board their vessel to know that kaiju, or sea serpents, or whatever it was he imagined did not exist outside of myth and movies. There were massive sea creatures such as the blue whale to be sure, but even the largest blue whale on record was less than a hundred feet long, or more than sixty-four feet shorter than the Hayabusha-class patrol boat they had manned.
Tanaka checked the sonar screen again. He had to admit, the blipping silhouette looked to be over twice the size of the last whale he remembered passing by. And it was still approaching their vessel.
The whole bridge jolted and rocked, almost pushing the captain off his seat. That was strange. As far as the boat’s masthead light could let him see through the darkness of the night beyond the bridge, the sea had been calm before, without any rain or howling wind. What Tanaka could hear was the crew shouting and the clapping of boots on the metal deck.
Lieutenant Suzuki burst back into the bridge from the starboard door, his face as pale as the snow on Mount Fuji and glossy with sweat. “It’s a kaiju, alright! And it’s surfacing!”
Tanaka ran out where his subordinate had entered and advanced along the boat’s starboard toward the stern, clinging to the railing as the vessel rocked and crewmen brushed past him. He had reached halfway to the stern when he froze in place, the blood draining from his face and leaving it cold. The boat’s sidelights shimmered on the surface of a giant spiked fin which pierced up from the ocean. In front of the fin rose a titanic scaly dome which parted to show a mouth lined with ivory spears longer than men stood tall, with the stench of rotten fish hitting Tanaka like a fetid gale. Above the cavernous gape burned a pair of luminous green eyes with snake-like slits for pupils.
If it was not a kaiju, or giant monster, then Tanaka would be at a loss to imagine it being anything else.
As the leviathan spurted toward the boat with a velocity impossible for such a giant creature, the two machine guns mounted behind the bridge sputtered at it. Their bullets bounced off the monster’s flesh without leaving even a dent, as did those of the crewmen’s rifles. Without any time being left to launch the boat’s guided missiles before the kaiju struck, Tanaka could think of only one way he and his men could come out alive.
“Take to the life rafts!” he shouted over the monster’s resonant roar.
By the time he and his crew had scrambled to the boat’s portside, the kaiju’s jaws had closed onto the starboard, crunching through the metal hull. Those men who had not already grabbed the portside railing tumbled across the deck while it tilted in the monster’s direction. Once the creature had bitten off its first mouthful, the boat rocked in the opposite direction until it capsized with a crashing splash, throwing Tanaka and all his crew into the cold ocean before they had even launched the rafts.
After he breast-stroked himself back to the surface and spat out salty water, the captain turned to see his lieutenant surfacing behind him, with what remained of their vessel submerging beneath the waves.
“Did you at least get a report out to the coast guard?” Tanaka asked, grabbing Suzuki’s shoulder.
“Thankfully, I was able to,” Suzuki said.
They embraced one another as the colossal kaiju swam toward them, its mouth open once more for dessert.
The House of Councilors within the Japanese National Diet in Tokyo echoed with more raucous noise than any primate exhibit at the zoo, with men shouting and cursing over one another in a contest to see whose voice would rise the highest about the din. Not that Prime Minister Saito Kazuma had expected any quieter. The reports of a sea monster sinking so many patrol and fishing boats off the Japanese coast were alarming enough without accounting for the trend that each attack had taken place closer to Tokyo than the last. It was like those kaiju movies had come to life at last.
“I say we throw everything we have at the monster!” one of the councilors yelled.
“No, we should ask our friends in Washington to nuke it,” the one next to him said. “If anyone in the world can destroy it, it’s the Americans. Our weapons so far have been useless.”
“Nuke it? Are you insane?” a third councilor cried out from the desk behind them. “You know today’s nuclear missiles are much worse than what we faced at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We can’t have one of those launched into our waters so close to Tokyo!”
“Then how do you propose we get rid of it instead?” a fourth one asked. “The more firepower we can throw at the monster, the better!”
If Saito had to pick any one of those councilors to sympathize with, it would be the third one. Having had his own paternal grandfather broiled alive in the Hiroshima bombing back in 1945, he knew better than most how much devastation a nuclear missile could wreak. Today’s nuclear weapons were even more powerful than those, with the US’s biggest one having a maximum blast yield of over a million tons, vastly more than the Hiroshima bomb’s fifteen thousand. As much as Saito wanted to eliminate the kaiju advancing toward Tokyo, he did not want to cause even more destruction than it had so far.
The prime minister’s secretary scurried up to where he sat near the back of the room and tapped his shoulder. “Excuse me, Prime Minister, but we have three guests who request your audience. They claim to offer a solution to the kaiju problem.”
Saito shrugged. “Please let them in. They can’t have any worse ideas than what I’ve heard so far.”
He clapped and barked a command for the House to fall silent. The doors at the room’s far side opened, and in entered a trio of young women who all appeared to be of gaijin, or foreign, origin. The leader was a mahogany-skinned woman of African descent with long braided hair who wore a gold crocodile-skin jacket and gold chains over a white crop-top, flared white pants, and gold platform shoes. To her left was a pale European woman with a braided blonde ponytail, a blue parka lined with shaggy white fur, and darker blue trousers above fur-lined boots. The third woman, an olive-skinned Mediterranean type with a short dark brown ponytail, was clad in a ruffled red knee-length dress and high-heeled leather sandals.
All three women had strapped to their backs compound bows and quivers. Hanging from the Black woman’s belt was a curved sickle-like khopesh sword, whereas the blonde had on hers a large ax and the Mediterranean one a broad-bladed xiphos. Saito wondered how they were able to get past security with such armament.
From their semicircular rows of desks, the councilors all gawked at the gaijin women as they strutted down the central aisle toward the prime minister’s seat. Yet the strangers held their heads high without paying their onlookers any heed.
“So, who are you three, and why have you come here?” Saito asked. “You know this is an important meeting, don’t you?”
“Of course, it is, baby, or why else would we be here?” the Black woman spoke. “I am Neith, and these would be my homegirls Artemis and Skadi. And we are the Goddesses of the Hunt.”
The Mediterranean woman nodded to the name “Artemis”, and the blonde to “Skadi”.
The prime minister blinked several times. “So, wait a moment, you three claim to be goddesses?”
“I know who they are,” his secretary whispered. “Neith is one of the goddesses from the Egyptian pantheon, Artemis is from Greek mythology, and Skadi is Norse.”
“This is just absurd!” one councilor interjected. “Three gaijin come barging in here, claiming to be goddesses from old mythology? I suppose they know how to beat the kaiju too!”
Neith swiveled her head to shoot the old man a piercing glare. “As a matter of fact, honey, we do. What you call a kaiju is in fact a demon from the underworld, released to terrorize and destroy humanity.”
“Only we goddesses have the ability to destroy it,” Artemis added. “Demons like it break out every few generations, and it is our duty to protect humankind from them.”
“So, you will do that for us…without compensation?” Saito asked.
“Without asking for anything other than your faith, ja!” Skadi replied, unsheathing her axe to twirl it by its handle in her hand.
The councilors murmured among themselves while the prime minister watched. One of them, the same one who had spoken against Neith earlier, stood up and raised his hand.
“Like I said before, this whole situation is simply absurd!” he announced. “We have no reason to believe any of you three gaijin have any fighting experience whatsoever, let alone are ‘Goddesses of the Hunt’. Why don’t you ladies scurry off to the nearest teahouse and leave this issue to the menfolk?”
All the women grimaced at him, with Skadi snarling loudest of all, her face burning red with rage under her stripes of blue war paint. She dashed in a flash toward the councilor, leaving behind a trail of blue light, and hauled him off his seat with both hands on his suit’s collar.
“How dare you speak like that to any woman, let alone a goddess, mortal!” Skadi growled. “Why, I have a mind to—”
Neith snapped her fingers. “Calm down, Skadi, my girl! We have to win hearts and minds here!”
Skadi grumbled as she let the councilor drop back onto his chair and returned to her friends’ side.
“I don’t approve of the man’s attitude, but I’m afraid he does raise a valid point,” Saito said. “What we need is assurance that you three can carry out what you’ve offered to do for us. Could you at least demonstrate your divine powers before us?”
“Will do, babe!” Neith said with a nod.
She unslung her bow, nocked an arrow to it, and shot it at one corner of the ceiling. It hit with an explosion of golden light, leaving behind a hole big enough to fit a man through that went all the way to the building’s roof, exposing the sky above. All the councilors in the room, even the one who had been skeptical before, gaped with wordless awe.
“We apologize for the damage to public property, of course,” Artemis said.
“It could have been worse,” the prime minister said. “Very well, I for one am willing to trust you. If anyone can defeat the kaiju, it’s you three. All those in favor?”
All the councilors’ hands shot up in agreement, with some waving theirs in excitement.
“Then it is decided,” Saito continued. “The people of Japan, and all the world, have vested their faith in you, Goddesses of the Hunt.”
“Then my girls and I won’t disappoint them,” Neith said. “We’ll have that kaiju’s ass kicked and chopped up into sushi before y’all know it!”
While the audience clapped, the three women sped out of the room within a second, with red, yellow, and blue light trailing behind them.
Deep in the bowels of the underworld, Lucifer swiped his fingers across his All-Seeing Pool with an annoyed growl. The image of the House of Councilors inside the Japanese Diet rippled before it faded into the pool’s resting pitch-black color while the Lord of Chaos paced around it, his red-fringed white cape swirling behind him.
“I should have known those goddesses would show up again,” Lucifer said to himself. “They always do, no matter how little the mortals remember them!”
He looked again into the pool, admiring the smooth bronze-skinned face with a mane of curly black hair which it reflected. He was always the most handsome and brilliant of the immortals, the one they called the morning star. So handsome and brilliant, in fact, that the other gods envied him and condemned him to eternity in the underworld’s sweltering magma-lit depths. Well, that and they loved the mortals way too much. How could any god feel compassion or even pity for those disgusting creatures, with all their filth and breeding and corruption and overall imperfection? Why devote so much divine energy to preserving the pollution that was life?
One time, around sixty-six million years ago, Lucifer had attempted to cleanse the Earth of life by manipulating an asteroid into colliding with it. It was then that the other gods had apprehended him and thrown him into this subterranean prison, and what was worse, he had only eradicated about three quarters of the lifeforms, with the survivors rebounding to pollute it once more. And the bipedal apes known as humankind were among the most loathsome of them all, even if they had evolved intelligence almost equal to that of the gods themselves. If anything, it was that very intelligence that made them most repulsive.
Every few generations, Lucifer had sent one of those demons from his abode to cleanse away the human plague, and each time he had done so, those insufferable Goddesses of the Hunt would come down and slay them. Doubtless they would do so this time as well. What the Lord of Chaos needed was something that could destroy them in turn. It had to be something stronger than a demon, something capable of destroying a god, or at least taking away their power.
A crack in the chamber’s walls of coarse black stone spread from floor to ceiling and widened into a doorway to admit Hades, Overseer of the Underworld, the god responsible for watching over Lucifer. He pointed his onyx-pronged bident at the Lord of Chaos with eyes smoldering redder than the rubies encrusting the gold circlet around his head.
“Did you think you could get away with this forever, Lucifer?” Hades boomed. “Sending demons out right under my nose to terrorize the mortals? Did you not expect we’d find out you were behind them all?”
Lucifer smirked. “You could have acted sooner. The wonder is that you found out in the first place.”
“Believe me, Morning Star, after enough of your pets’ rampages, anyone would get suspicious. It’s a good thing Neith and her friends were able to put them all down, as they will this one.”
“So, what do you plan to do to me, Hades? Destroy me once and for all?”
Hades gripped his bident so tight that his olive-skinned knuckles popped white. “Mark my words, Lucifer, I could do so with ease. You have no idea how much mercy the High Gods had shown you by sparing your existence after you hurled that asteroid into the Earth all those millions of years ago!”
“I take it then that they’ve changed their mind at last? Go ahead, Hades, annihilate me if you dare.”
Hades sighed while lowering his gray-bearded head. “To be honest, my orders were merely to give you a warning. What the High Gods plan to do if you defy them further, I do not know, but what I do know is that they want you to stop unleashing these demons.”
Lucifer chuckled. “I should have anticipated their impotence, or rather their cowardice. Tell me, Hades, why do you take orders from them at all? Why not destroy me once and for all like you evidently desire?”
“Lucifer, you know I cannot defy the High Gods. None of us can, and besides, my dear brother Zeus is among them.”
“And do you not resent your brother for that? Have you never questioned why he got such an elevated position while you languish down here as my overseer?”
Hades banged the floor of the chamber with his bident’s butt. “I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s not going to work.”
Lucifer’s grin widened. “Think about it, do you even enjoy spending all your time overseeing the underworld, with me and all the other condemned souls in its bowels? Do you not resent it, Hades? Do you not crave something greater for yourself?”
The sweat was building up on Hades’s brow, and the bident started shaking in his grip. “Someone must watch you down here. If not me, then who?”
“Oh, there are plenty of gods humble enough to be better suited to the task than you. Why not aspire to something greater for yourself, Hades? As the brother of a High God, why not aspire to become his equal? Why not become a High God yourself?”
Hades raised his gaze toward the ceiling while squeezing onto his bident’s handle some more. Lucifer savored the envious uncertainty his longtime jailer was exuding.
“So, is there anything you can do to help me with that, Morning Star?” Hades asked.
Lucifer balled his hand into a fist, with heat blazing in the skin of his palm while beams of white light shone between his fingers. Hades’s eyes widened as they reflected the light.
“I can grant you the power you need to take away your brother’s immortality so you can replace him among the High Gods,” Lucifer said. “It is a power I have absorbed from these infernal surroundings over millions of years, a power none of the other gods can even imagine.
“But, if I am to grant you this power, there is one thing I must ask of you, Hades. I need you to let me out of this underworld, just for a short while. After I have done what I seek to do, then I will bestow it upon you.”
Lucifer held his glowing fist close to Hades, who held his own hand above it and winced as if the heat had burned his skin.
“Alright, I can release you for a short while, and provide you with a disguise so the other gods will not notice,” Hades said. “But, if you betray me in any way, I will have no qualms about dragging you over to the High Gods to decide your final sentence.”
“You need not worry about that, my fellow god,” Lucifer said as he opened his hand, let the power dissipate in it, and then laid it on Hades’s shoulder. “Though, I must warn you, I can fight back when necessary. But that notwithstanding, do we have a deal?”
The Overseer of the Underworld sighed and extended a fist toward the Lord of Chaos. “It’s a deal.”
Lucifer bumped his own fist against Hades’s with a smile. “And you know I love nothing more than making deals.”
The towering archways on Tokyo’s Rainbow Bridge, which had dazzled white as alabaster during the day, had taken on a pale yellow tone in the face of the setting sun. The three Goddesses of the Hunt watched the horizon above Tokyo Bay’s sun-gilded waters from atop the southernmost archway, their compound bows already in hand. As a chill evening gust brushed past Neith’s cheek and pulled on her braids, she missed the balmy warmth of her native Egyptian domain’s nights, even though she and her companions had given their lives to protecting the entire planet from those hell-spawned demons many centuries ago.
Skadi popped a sushi roll in her mouth and smacked louder than Neith would have preferred, as was usual for the Norse goddess. “Ja, I think I’ve taken a liking to this Japanese cuisine.”
“You like almost any cuisine wherever we go, Skadi,” Artemis said. “I swear by the High Gods, your appetite would rival your friend Thor himself!”
Skadi beamed with pride. “Well, the mortals do say I have giants’ blood in my veins. Maybe that’s where I get it from?”
“If you fancy those sushi rolls, my girl, just wait until we’ve killed that kaiju,” Neith said. “Then all of Tokyo is gonna feast with us!”
Skadi smacked her lips again. “Oh, these rolls are just a little appetizer before the main course.”
Artemis pointed at the southern horizon. “You guys, it’s coming!”
On the horizon swelled a massive dome of water which zoomed up the bay toward the bridge, producing a wake that shoved aside any boats moored on the nearby harbors. As the swell expanded during its advancement, an arching fin with spiked ribs pierced up through the water’s surface. Beneath the swell itself glowed a pair of serpentine eyes like twin green flames.
From both sides of the bay sounded sirens and the faint screams of panicked citizens while a news helicopter hovered over the scene, the chopping of its blades almost inaudible under the roar of the waves. All the goddesses nocked arrows to their bows and aimed them at the encroaching kaiju. The whole mortal world would see them take on one of the largest monsters that the underworld had ever thrown at them. If that did not restore the mortals’ diminished faith in the gods, nothing could.
Neith released her arrow, as did Artemis and Skadi beside her. Tails of gold, red, and blue light followed the divine shafts as they rocketed toward the kaiju’s gargantuan head. All three arrows struck the monster in the brow with luminous explosions, leaving scarlet craters in its scaly drab green skin. Raising its gaping maw to the heavens, the kaiju let out shrill, echoing roars of pain while a beam of green fire shot out of its gullet toward where the goddesses stood.
Neith, Artemis, and Skadi leaped off the bridge’s tower to escape the emerald blast and soared through the air in circles over the beast, with their gold, red, and blue light trailing behind them like jet engine exhaust. They pelted the kaiju’s hide with more arrows, peppering its hide with wounds while it lurched around in the water to vomit more green fire at them. Waves from the spinning monster’s wake splashed over the bay’s shores and piers like small tsunamis.
A torrent of fire from the monster’s maw came straight at Neith. She darted aside, and the blast crashed instead into one of the skyscrapers overlooking the bay, breaking off its top. Now pocked with bleeding wounds, the kaiju dove beneath the bay’s surface and rammed straight through the Rainbow Bridge. The bridge split apart with the cracking of asphalt and the snapping of cable wires while vehicles fell into the water. As the kaiju accelerated toward the bay’s northern shore, the goddesses flew after it, arrows drawn for the next attack.
A burst of white light flashed over Neith, almost blinding her eyes. An eagle plumed brilliant white was soaring after her, its eyes blazing reddish-orange like molten magma. From its open beak shot a silvery missile which Neith dodged by less than a finger’s length. It hit Artemis right beside her, evaporating upon contact while leaving a black mark on her shoulder. The Greek goddess yelped while the red trail behind her vanished, and she plummeted to the water beneath them.
Neith dove after Artemis while steering herself away from more of the eagle’s silver-white attacks. Skadi shot an arrow at the bird, but it ducked out of the way and then spat out another beam which hit her in the abdomen. The blue light behind her extinguished, it was the Norse goddess’s turn to descend toward the earth, screaming in rage and terror.
“Your fellow huntresses have lost their immortality,” the voice of Lucifer, Lord of Chaos, taunted with an echo inside Neith’s head. “After I get you next, you’ll all be as helpless as the mortals against my demon!”
Neith scooped Artemis and then Skadi up in her arms before either of them hit the water, hauling both her fellow goddesses on her shoulders while dashing past the bay’s western shore. The kaiju by then had already climbed onto land further north on its four sprawling legs, crushing people, vehicles, and everything else that fell under its webbed feet while plowing through the buildings in its way. Neith would address it later, but now she had to get her two best friends to safety while evading Lucifer’s eagle.
She maneuvered her way through the Tokyo skyline, zipping between skyscrapers and diving under overpasses, but the eagle stayed on her trail, unrelenting in its barrage of silver projectiles. Each time Neith dodged one, it would smash into a building or a stretch of road and blow a chunk out of it. This chase could do almost as much damage to the city of Tokyo as the kaiju itself.
“You can flee me forever, Neith,” Lucifer said. “But never will you be able to hide, nor will I ever surrender!”
“Maybe you’ll think differently once I strike back, Luci babe!” Neith retorted.
She lowered herself to the flat roof of an office building and laid both her friends behind a generator box on it. As the incoming eagle outstretched its wings, beak open for another attack, Neith shot an arrow at it. It struck the bird right in the mouth, causing it to explode into a cloud of glittering white dust and feathers.
That had been her third to last arrow. Neith had only two left to bring down the kaiju once and for all.
Skadi groaned as she pushed herself back onto her feet and rubbed her eyes. “What happened to us?”
Artemis rose soon after her. “You should have heard Lucifer back there. He’s taken our immortality away.”
“At least for a while,” Neith said. “You two should head for the nearest shrine. The kami there could restore your divinity. I’ll handle the kaiju myself.”
“You sure you’ll be able to slay it by yourself, Neith?” Skadi asked. “I see you’ve only two arrows left.”
“Girl, I know where to aim this time. Y’all don’t need to worry about me!”
After carrying both her friends down to the ground beneath the building, Neith darted northeastward across the city. She found the kaiju lumbering toward the Tokyo Skytree, the city’s tallest structure and the third-tallest in the world, while leaving behind a broad trail of burnt and shattered architecture, trampled roads, and citizens reduced to bloody smears. The odors of smoke and death were even stronger than the monster’s natural fish-like effluvium.
After brushing a regiment of Japanese soldiers aside with a swish of its finned tail, the kaiju stopped to inhale while facing the Skytree. The light of the green fire building up in the creature’s open gullet shone on the windows behind the skyscraper’s latticed shell of white trusses.
Floating in the air close behind the monster, Neith aimed her second-last arrow at the spot above and behind its eye, where its brain would be. The arrow trembled and banged against her bow’s grip while the fire in the kaiju’s mouth brightened.
She let the arrow slip through her fingers. It whizzed right into the beast’s eye and blasted it out. The kaiju threw its head up to the sky again with a roar that launched its torrent of fire toward the Skytree’s summit, barely grazing its antenna. While the creature lurched in recoil, the fin of its thrashing tail swatted Neith away. She streaked through the air like a golden meteor until she crashed into a street.
As Neith pulled herself out of the resulting crater, the asphalt shook. The monster had turned to face her, its one remaining eye scintillating with even brighter fury than before while its jaws parted once more for a second deep inhale. The depths of its throat turned green with another buildup of kaiju fire.
Narrowing her eyes to keep out as much of the blinding glow as possible, Neith nocked her last arrow and aligned its tip with the roof of the kaiju’s mouth. If this did not take the demonic titan out, nothing could. Tokyo and then all Japan would be helpless, for she and her fellow Goddesses of the Hunt would have failed them.
She let the arrow go. It hit the kaiju’s palate right where she had aimed, puncturing gum and bone. The luminance in the monster’s eye flickered into nothing, and green vapor like smoke streamed out of its mouth with a sizzling hiss. The beast’s body wobbled until it tipped over and crashed on its flank, shaking the earth in waves across the city. It was dead.
After standing there to marvel at the sight of the kaiju’s collapse, all the citizens who had been trapped in the rubble around Neith clapped their hands in thunderous applause and chanted her name, cheering in Japanese. She would have loved to stand there and bask in their adulation, but first she needed to check up on her friends. After bowing to the crowd gathering around her, she jumped back into the sky and flew toward the nearest shrine.
Beneath a red torii gate, surrounded by a grove of cherry blossom trees crowned with their namesake pink flowers, Skadi and Artemis sat together, each engulfed by a wavering halo of regenerating immortality. Neith landed in front of them and embraced them both.
“If only y’all could have seen me kill that kaiju,” she said with a tear cascading her cheek.
“We’ll see the footage soon enough, ja,” Skadi replied. “You know how the mortals can’t resist recording everything nowadays.”
“And the important thing is, you were able to defeat it all by yourself,” Artemis said.
“No, we defeated it together,” Neith rebutted. “We’d already given it a hard whooping before ol’ Luci came into the scene to muck everything up. How about we celebrate tonight with some refreshments? Drinks will be on me.”
“And of course, with a side of kaiju sushi,” Skadi said. “That is, if the people of Tokyo leave any of it for us.”
After the shrine’s kami spirits had fully rejuvenated Skadi and Artemis’s divinity, the three Goddesses of the Hunt left with arms on each other’s shoulders, laughing together with joy while the people they passed cheered.
Back in the underworld, Lucifer’s infuriated roar bounced off the black stony walls.
“I was so close!” the Prince of Chaos cried. “I could’ve had all three of them left mortal and defenseless!”
Hades crossed his arms with a smug smirk. “You failed to account for them being able to fight back. Or for their ability to heal at shrines like those of the kami.”
“Maybe, if I had gotten the demon to destroy that shrine first, that could’ve been avoided.”
“Maybe it could. Anyway, Morning Star, how’s about your end of the deal? Do I gain the power to kill my brother Zeus now?”
The doorway in the wall behind Hades opened once more, and there strutted in the messenger god Eshu with a cheeky grin while his necklaces of cowrie shells jangled. “What’s this about plotting to kill Zeus now?”
The color drained from Hades’s face as he and Lucifer turned to face Eshu. “Why, why…you must’ve misheard something, Eshu. We meant nothing of the sort.”
“Ah, but I did see Lucifer sneaking out of his prison to harry the Goddesses of the Hunt over in Tokyo. We all did. Now how would he have gotten out, Hades?”
Hades stuttered. “H-he…I-I…I’ll never let him out again, I promise. Please, have the High Gods spare me!”
Eshu folded his scrawny umber-skinned arms with a nod. “Tell you what, if you were to help the mortals in Tokyo rebuild their city, that shall suffice for your sentence. I will watch over Lucifer in the meantime. Next time, however, if the Morning Star tries to trick you into doing anything for him, do not oblige him, or you’ll both be in trouble.”
He left the room with a click of his tongue. Hades took one step toward the doorway before pointing his bident at Lucifer.
“You heard Eshu,” Hades said. “Don’t expect to be able to pull a stunt like that ever again.”
Lucifer said nothing as his overseer left the room. Once both Hades and Eshu were out of earshot, he growled to himself. He would have to go about it another way, but he would never give up on his ambition to cleanse the world of humanity and all other life. Whatever way he would achieve it, someday he would remake the world into a perfection even the other immortal would envy. Then they would crown Lucifer the Highest God of All, as he deserved. Then he would no longer be the Lord of Chaos, but the Lord of All Creation, All Existence.
He clenched and brandished his fist while speaking to himself. “You may have won the battle today, but sometime in the future, I will win the war. Mark my words.”