Book of Hades
Everyone in the Underworld knows of my Bident. The instrument that channels all of my powers and has the ability to destroy anything and almost anyone. Some kings wear a crown and cloak to show their station and status, but I am more than a king. My brother, Zeus, has his lightning bolt, and Poseidon has his Trident. We would be significantly weaker without them and much more vulnerable. They are weapons of kings among gods. Who needs a crown?
***
I was back up top and enjoying a drive on one of the worst days of my life. It was pretty bloody serious for me to say that because I’d had some seriously messed up days in my long life. This was something that I could not have planned for or seen coming. I was driving along very nicely with some rock music playing. The sun was shining, and all was good in the world. You would think I would have learnt that the worst days always seem to start off perfectly.
I dropped by my little coffee shop business and said hello to my business partner. She had finally ordered my expensive coffee, and I relaxed with a cup, letting my thoughts drift away like the steam from my mug. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, just taking in the stillness and tranquility of the moment. I startled when something smashed outside.
My eyes sprung open, and I looked out of the window with irritation. My bloody car window was shattered. The two men across the street were holding guns and shooting at beer cans they’d lined up on a fence. They were obviously drunk and laughing at having missed their targets by a mile, hitting my bloody car instead. Or maybe they got bored and did it on purpose. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. They were stupid, moronic cockroaches who had damaged my car. That was all I knew.
“What in the name of bloody Tartarus?” I said in shock. “I’ll bloody rip their souls out and stamp them into oblivion,” I growled in a low tone to myself. I walked out of the doors quietly and calmly, not wanting any issues around Coffee Kingdom. It was a place of business, and this was a different sort of business. I intended to do the dark, gruesome, deathly type of business.
The broken glass crunched under my feet as I walked past my car, moving towards the soon-to-be screaming dead men. I put my hand into the inside pocket of my black suit jacket and took out my Bident. Normally, I would just knock them both out and drag them to their final resting place in Tartarus, but I wanted to kill them right there. They would end up in Tartarus anyway. I made my Bident grow in size and pointed it at the two overweight, slobbering drunk idiots ready to blast them into the Underworld.
I was still quite a distance from them, but I couldn’t wait, needing to kill them immediately. I harnessed my power, strength, and hate into the Bident before releasing it in one huge burst. It should have blasted them into dust, but something went wrong. Maybe I overloaded it with too much power, or it simply malfunctioned, which was pretty much impossible.
The Bident should be used physically rather than from a distance, and it was not really the same weapon on Earth. It worked slightly differently, and it was far less powerful. Maybe the distance was why it malfunctioned, maybe not. Whatever the reason, the strike went forward and backwards at the same time. I blasted them into nothingness and myself into a fraction of my original size.
I had no idea how small I made myself, but I was in the middle of the road when I released the blast of destructive power. I was standing beside a stone that looked like a mountain and a huge crevice that looked like the Grand Canyon.
“How the fuck did that happen?” I said, looking around at the unbelievably big world surrounding me. It was such a weird perspective. A car rushed towards me like a tsunami, growing bigger and higher with every second that it approached. I decided to make myself big again before I was squashed like an ant and willed myself larger, but nothing happened.
“Come on, for Tartarus’ sake, work!” I shouted. I tried again and again, but nothing. I watched as the car continued to come and realised I was in no danger. The wheels were huge, and the car was pretty high above me on the ground, thanks to my minute size. I watched it sail over me, the distance between the front tires looking a mile apart. I put my Bident back in my pocket and ran as fast as I could back towards the sidewalk and, more importantly, my car. Thankfully, the Grand Canyon was on the other side of me, or I would have been walking for hours to get around it. I needed to figure out what was wrong with my Bident.
It took me close to ten minutes to get off the road, and I had a close call when I saw another car coming. I was right in the path of the mile-long front right tire and had to force more speed into my legs before I was nothing but a tiny dot of red that would never be seen on the road. I reached safety with a few seconds to spare. The car zoomed past me, knocking me to the ground with the unreal force of wind.
I landed close to a small strip of grass that separated the sidewalk from the parking space outside of my coffee shop. It would take hours if I tried to go around it, so I decided to cross it. The dirt seemed firm enough as I stepped onto it, and I was relieved not to be sucked into soft soil like quicksand.
I was standing in what appeared to be a jungle, the blades of grass huge and wide. A bead of water dropped from one and crashed down in front of me. The ground shook slightly, and a small bog formed. This was a seriously dangerous situation I found myself in. A simple small patch of grass had me nervous. I’m sure many members of my family would find this very amusing if they saw me.
I began to walk through the forest of green, dodging muddy lakes and looking up incessantly to avoid any more falling drops. It was hard going and taking a long time due to terrain and dodging and weaving blades of grass and falling giant water bombs. My black shoes that had shone like mirrors when I left the Underworld were now caked in mud and pretty much ruined. My car and my shoes had been casualties of my day on Earth so far, and it made my anger worse.
It was amazing to me that Earth was just as horrible a place as the Underworld and even more dangerous. I was having that very thought when I came face to face with a giant worm. At such a small size as I was, it looked more sinister than most things in the Underworld. I have no idea if worms would find me tasty, and I didn’t want to find out, so I steered clear of it. Lucky for me I did, because a bird came pouncing from above to snatch it up. It looked like an enormous dragon-like beast, and I hid behind a blade of grass until it took flight once again.
It was like some kind of nightmare. Everything was of monumental size, and I was currently powerless. I knew I had to be close to being on relatively solid ground again and near my car, so I pushed on. I heard a sudden noise nearing me and looked around for the source, not wanting to be caught off guard. A centipede burst out from behind a blade of grass, its antennae waving around like gruesome fishing rods, looking to catch some lunch.
The sheer size of the beast was a sight to see. Its scarily big legs pounded the ground as it scuttled towards me. I had seen enough and turned to run, but in my panic, I ran straight into a spider web that had been woven between two blades of grass. I struggled but was stuck. Then I saw a creature more ghastly and terrifying than any I had ever come across. At that moment, I really felt like it was the scariest thing I had ever faced. It wasn’t, but the situation made it the scariest because I was defenseless. I was trapped in a web with no means of defending myself against this monster.
The beast that approached me was a money spider. They are very small when you are a full-sized human, but when you are about a centimeter in height, they are gigantic. I was stuck chest first and used all of my strength to get one hand free from the super sticky rope I found myself attached to. I managed to squeeze my hand into my pocket and pull out my Bident, desperately hoping it would work this time. The money spider darted towards me, expecting a nice meal. I closed my eyes and forced my will into the Bident and felt myself grow.
I took a huge breath and leaned forward with my hands on my knees, trying to get my composure back. My Bident seemed to correct itself just in time. I stood up straight and looked down at my chest. I noticed the money spider was on me. I picked it off and placed it back in the grass, suddenly having a profound respect for the little creatures on Earth. It really was a different world when you were that small.
On the bright side, I had just found a new torture technique. Instead of blasting people into a pile of dust, I could shrink them down and throw them onto a patch of grass to live among those giant monsters. When they were captured and eaten, they would go to the Underworld and meet me again. Now that was what you called punishment. I just hoped that never happened to me again.
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