Achilles manages a weak squeak.

Hephaestus laughs, the ugly noise amplified by the speakers in his pressure suit. “Don’t like the air and gravity here, eh? All right. Get into this. It’s called a thermskin and it’ll help you breathe.” The god of fire and artifice throws down some impossibly thin garment onto the boulder next to Achilles.

The hero tries to stir, but the air weakens and burns him. All he can do is wiggle and cough and retch.

“Oh, fuck me,” says the crippled god. “I guess I’ll have to dress you like an infant. I was afraid of this. Lie still, quit squirming. Don’t shit on me or puke on me while I’m undressing you and tucking you into this thing.”

Ten minutes later—with a tapestry of Hephaestus’ curses now hanging in the air like glowing smoke from the volcanoes—Achilles is upright on solid rock next to Hephaestus, dressed in a gold thermskin under his armor, breathing easily through the thermskin cowl’s clear membrane—the dwarf-god had called it an osmosis mask—brandishing his acid-etched shield and still-bright sword, staring up at the looming but still indistinct mass called the Demogorgon, and feeling invulnerable again and not a little pissed off. Achilles only hopes that the Oceanid named Asia will start asking one of her endless questions again so he will have an excuse to gut her like a fish.

“Demogorgon,” calls Hephaestus, using the amplifier built into his fishbowl helmet, “we have met once before, more than nineteen hundred years ago during the Olympians’ War with the Giants. I am called Hephaestus…”

“THOU ART THE CRIPPLED ONE,” booms Demogorgon.

“Yes. How nice of you to remember. Achilles and I have come to Tartarus to seek out you and the Titans—Kronos, Rhea, all of the Old Ones—and to ask for your help.”

“DEMOGORGON DOES NOT HELP MERE GODS AND MORTALS.”

“No, of course not,” says Hephaestus, his rasping voice amplified a hundred times by the speakers in his suit. “Shit. Achilles, do you want to take over? Talking to this thing is like talking to your own ass.”

“Can that big mass of nothing hear me?” Achilles asks the little god.

“I HEAR YOU.”

Achilles stares skyward, focusing on the roiling red clouds a little to the side of the featureless, veiled nonface of the nonthing looming above him. “When you say ‘God,’ Demogorgon, do you mean Zeus?”

“WHEN I SAY GOD, I MEAN GOD.”

“You must mean Zeus then, for right now the son of Kronos and Rhea is calling all the surviving gods together on Olympos and is announcing that he—Zeus—is the God of Gods, the Lord of All Creation, the God of This and All Universes.”

“THEN EITHER HE LIETH OR YOU DO, SON OF MAN. GOD REIGNS. BUT NOT ON OLYMPOS.”

“Then Zeus has enslaved all other gods and mortals,” says Achilles, his thermskin-speaker voice and radio broadcast echoing from the vol-cano’s slopes and cinder ridges.

“ALL SPIRITS ARE ENSLAVED WHICH SERVE THINGS EVIL: THOU KNOWEST IF ZEUS BE SUCH OR NOT.”

“I do know,” says Achilles. “Zeus is a greedy immortal son of a bitch—no offense to Rhea if she’s out there in the shadows somewhere listening. I think he’s a coward and a bully. But if you consider him God, then he will reign on Olympos and in the universe forever and forever.”

“I SPOKE BUT AS YE SPEAK, FOR ZEUS IS THE SUPREME OF ALL LIVING THINGS.”

“Who is the master of the slave?” asks Achilles.

“Oh, that’s good,” whisper-hisses Hephaestus. “That’s very good…”

“Shut up,” says Achilles.

The Demogorgon rumbles. It is so loud that at first Achilles thinks the nearest volcano is in full eruption. Then the rumble modulates itself into words.

“IF THE ABYSM COULD VOMIT FORTH ITS SECRETS—BUT A VOICE IS WANTING, THE DEEP TRUTH IS IMAGELESS; FOR WHAT WOULD IT AVAIL TO BID THEE GAZE ON THE REVOLVING WORLD? WHAT TO BID SPEAK ON FATE, TIME, OCCASION, CHANCE, AND CHANGE? TO THESE ALL THINGS ARE SUBJECT BUT ETERNAL LOVE AND THE PERFECTION OF THE QUIET.”

“Whatever you say,” says Achilles. “But as we speak, Zeus is proclaiming himself Lord of All Creation and soon he will demand that all of that creation—not just his little world at the base of Mount Olympos—pay homage to him and him alone. Goodbye, Demogorgon.”

Achilles turns to leave, grabbing the sputtering god of artifice by his metal-bubble arm and pulling him around, away from the unformed mass looming above them.

“HALT!… ACHILLES, FALSE SON OF PELEUS, TRUE SON OF ZEUS, WOULD-BE AUTHOR OF DEICIDE AND PATRICIDE. WAIT.”

Achilles stops, turns back, and waits with Hephaestus. The Oceanids are cowering, covering their heads as if from hot ashfall.

“I SHALL SUMMON THE TITANS FROM THEIR CREVICES AND CAVES, BRING THEM FORTH FROM THEIR COWERING CORNERS. I SHALL COMMAND THE IMMORTAL HOURS TO BRING THEM FORTH.”

With a sound that makes all the other unbearable sounds seem small, the rocks around Demogorgon’s throne cleave in the purple night, the lava glow grows deeper and broader, a rainbow of impossible colors arches through Tartarus’ gloom, and chariots the size of mountains appear from nowhere, drawn by gigantic steeds that are not horses—nothing like horses, not even remotely like horses—some being whipped on by wild-eyed charioteers that are not men or gods, other steeds staring behind them with burning eyes filled with fear. The charioteers themselves are almost impossible for mortal eyes to look upon, so Achilles averts his gaze. He thinks that it would be unwise to vomit again while sealed behind this thermskin facemask.

“THESE ARE THE IMMORTAL HOURS WHICH THOU DIDST DEMAND HEAR THY CASE,” booms the Demogorgon. “THEY SHALL BRING KRONOS AND HIS ILK HERE TO THIS PLACE.”

The air implodes with a series of sonic booms, the Oceanids scream in fright, and the huge chariots disappear in circles of flame.

“Well …” says Hephaestus over the suit radio and does not go on.

“Now we wait,” says Achilles, setting his sword in his belt and slinging his shield.

“Not for long,” says Hephaestus.

The air is filling with circles of fire again. The giant chariots are returning by the hundreds—no, by the thousands—each one filled with a giant form, some human-looking, many not.

“BEHOLD!” says the Demogorgon.

“It’s hard not to,” says Achilles. He braces himself and slides his great and beautiful shield across his forearm.

The Titans’ chariots come on.

Moira was gone when Harman awoke. The day was gray and cold and it was raining hard. The sea far above was churning and whitecapped, but not the violent surge of liquid mountain ranges he’d watched by lightning flash the night before. Harman hadn’t slept well—his dreams had been urgent and ominous.

He rolled up the silk-thin sleeping bag—it would dry by itself, he knew—and set it into his rucksack, leaving his clothes in the waterproof bag, taking out only his socks and boots to wear over his thermskin.

They’d had a campfire the last night before the storm began—no weenies and marshmallows, of course, Harman only knew what those were through the books he’d absorbed at the Taj—but he’d eaten the second half of his tasteless food bar and sipped water while they sat by the flickering flames.

Now the ashes were drenched and gray, the Breach floor between the rocks and coral had turned to mud, and Harman realized that he was walking in circles around their campsite, looking for some last sign of Moira… a note perhaps.

There was nothing.

He hitched the rucksack higher, pulled the thermskin cowl lower so that the goggles were properly lined up, wiped the rain from them, and began hiking west.

Instead of growing lighter as the day progressed, the skies grew darker, the rain came down more heavily, and the walls of water on either side grew taller and more oppressive. He’d gotten used to the trick of perspective where it was never the ocean bottom going down, but always the vertical walls of water on either side growing taller. Harman trudged on. The Breach descended through path-blasted ridges of black rock, passed over deep crevasses on narrow, slippery black iron bridges with no railings, and climbed steeply up more rock ridges. Even though high ridges made the walls of water on each side lower—the ocean was no more than two hundred feet deep here, Harman guessed—the climbing was exhausting and even more claustrophobic than before, with the rock walls on either side of the narrow path making him feel as if there were walls within walls closing in on him.