From the tips of her perfect, pedestal-worthy toes, up those endless, sculpted legs, over the swell of her hips that could end empires, the dip of her waist that made his own non-existent guts clench, the full, pale mounds of her breasts, the elegant column of her throat, to her sleeping, deceptively peaceful face framed by all that night-dark hair.
"I WOULD GIVE ANYTHING—ANYTHING—TO TOUCH HER. TO JUST ONCE—"
Who wouldn't?
That's when her eyes opened.
Green eyes.
Not the bilious, corrupted green of this wretched realm, but the vital, untamed green of the first spring shoots pushing through thawing earth. The green of new life, of wild forests, of the world she had been dragged from millennia ago.
And those eyes, ancient and unfathomably alive, locked onto Pete's soul.
And Pete felt death.
Not the messy, biological death he'd already experienced. Not the metaphorical death of a dream. This was Real.
Absolute.
Final.
The death of the soul. The complete and utter cessation of his being.
"OH NO. OH NO NO NO NO—"
The entire Underworld shuddered. It wasn't a tremor; it was a flinch.
Persephone's rage erupted. It was not an emotion; it was a physical cataclysm. Her divine power, a force as fundamental as gravity, flooded the chamber, turning the air to soup, thick and heavy with malice.
The temperature plunged to the freezing point of a soul, then spiked to the heat of a dying star, then dropped again, a chaotic fever of her wrath.
Pete's soul-form began to crack. Literally. Fine, web-like fractures of light appeared across his glowing surface, like glass under impossible pressure.
"I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY! I DIDN'T MEAN TO—I WAS JUST—"
"MORTAL!"
Her voice was not a sound; it was an impact. It was the sweetness of honey laced with cyanide, the beauty of a rose garden filled with vipers.
It was the first bloom of life and the last, lonely gasp of winter, spoken as one.
It struck him, and his soul-form detonated. It shattered into a million glittering shards of agony, then was violently slammed back together, only to shatter again, each cycle more excruciating than the last.
"PLEASE! I COULDN'T CONTROL IT! I WAS PULLED HERE! IT'S LIKE MY SOUL'S A GPS SET TO 'CERTAIN DOOM'!"
The voice was filling the cracks in his being, reforging him in a kiln of pure pain.
"IT HURTS! OH GOD, IT HURTS! MAKE IT STOP! PLEASE, MAKE IT STOP!"
She sat up in one fluid, terrifyingly graceful motion. The mere shift of her body sent shockwaves through the room. Pete's flickering form spasmed as his consciousness tried to process the sight through a filter of pure agony. She made no move to cover herself.
Why would she? This was her domain. Her sanctuary. Her bed.
And he had dared to violate it.
He had dared to look.
"A MORTAL SOUL HAS DARED TO GAZE UPON MY FORM!"
"I'M SORRY! I'M SO, SO SORRY! PLEASE DON'T KILL ME! AGAIN!"
Her wrath was a physical weight, a mountain of absolute fury pressing down on him. Pete's soul-form collapsed inward, crushed by the pressure of her displeasure. He could feel himself dissolving, his consciousness fragmenting, the memory of Pete the man grinding into fine, meaningless dust.
He was ceasing to exist.
"PLEASE! I DON'T WANT TO DIE! NOT LIKE THIS! NOT FOREVER!"
His bargain, a pathetic offering of nothing, was swallowed by a new sound.
Throughout the cavernous Underworld, horns blew.
Not the simple alarm calls of the guards, these were different.
Deeper.
Angrier.
These were the horns of judgment, the war-time klaxons that announced an offense so profound, so blasphemous, that the very fabric of the underworld demanded immediate, absolute, and painful divine retribution. It was the sound of an order being given to unmake a soul.
"MERCY! PLEASE! I'LL DO ANYTHING! JUST PLEASE—"
And through the symphony of his own screaming and the wrath of the goddess, he heard it, a new rhythm punctuating the chaos. Getting rapidly closer.
BOOM.
A shockwave of pressure, a concussive force that made his million soul-shards vibrate in unison.
BOOM.
The floor of the chamber—the bedrock of Hell itself—trembled. The obsidian rivers of starlight rippled.
BOOM.
Those were... Footsteps.
Gigantic footsteps.
Every impact was a seismic event, a declaration of power that dwarfed even the rage currently tearing him apart.
"Oh no. Oh god no. Not him. Please, not him."
Hades.
The Lord of the Dead himself. The King of this whole fucked-up nightmare. The husband of the goddess he had just been mentally fucked and touched, was coming.
And he was running.
"I'M DEAD! I'M SO FUCKING DEAD!"
Pete's flickering soul-form sputtered with a terror so profound it momentarily overrode even the white-hot agony of Persephone's power. He was a dead man, and he was about to die. The irony was so sharp it could have cut his soul-form to ribbons if it weren't already in ribbons. This was it. The final curtain call.
"PLEASE! SOMEBODY HELP ME! ANYBODY!"
But who would dare? Who could interfere? This time, there would be no escape. No glowing book to whisk him away to another level of torment. No car crash to grant him a change of scenery.
"I DON'T WANT TO DIE FOREVER! PLEASE!"
This time, he would face the combined, concentrated, and fully justified wrath of two of the most powerful beings in creation.
Both of them.
And he had seen the Queen of the Underworld naked.
He had stared.
He had desired her.
"I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY!"
The footsteps grew louder, each one a hammer blow to the doors of his sanity.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Pete screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
Pete was absolutely, utterly, completely fucked.