Chapter 48: His Entry
Flashback.
In the year when the Tiber flowed clear and the Gods answered the vows of men, a girl of nine years of age sat on the ground in front of her burning villa in Campania.
Liliana had no family. When she was nine, her mother, a Greek slave, had taught her to worship Hecate.
Her father, a Roman merchant, had always been content to leave the Gods alone, as long as they left him alone.
He was a salesman. He traveled all over the world, and Liliana’s parents had been two of many slaves he had brought with him.
When she was nine years old, a band of renegade demigods came to her village and started taking tribute. They had taken both of her parents, and she was left to the dogs, it seemed.
Amon found her three days later on the streets, on the verge of death.
He was not yet the Golden Immortal, and he wore his blond hair in braids down his back, tied with leather cords.
His eyes were a stormy gray, like the dusk sky. He wore a rather travel-worn cloak, but it never seemed to get any worse for wear.
He had just finished a hunt, a rather successful one at that, in which he had tracked down and killed a group of demigods who had been feasting on the children of the local village.
He had gone to the city area and saw her getting bullied by Roman soldiers.
"Do you want to live?" He had asked and taken her in.
For a long time Amon studied her, then sat down on the earth and took out a piece of dried meat from his belt, handing it to her.
"However, you’re going to learn how to make sure this doesn’t happen to you."
"How will I learn to face...those monsters?" She asked.
Amon touched her forehead, seeing something in her eyes, something dark, but ignored it for the time being.
"I will teach you the ways."
That was how it began.
By the time she was thirteen years old, the little girl had changed into a young girl with long hair that fell down her back like a waterfall of night, and Amon had grown to call the strange threads of darkness that she produced, "the bits the Creator missed cleaning up."
By the time she was sixteen, Liliana had grown strong enough to kill. Her hands were more agile than he had thought.
"It’s time, Liliana dear." He said.
"Will I be able to do it, sir Amon? Will you be proud?" she asked.
"Oh, Liliana, I’m already proud of you. Look at how much you’ve grown for me." He said, taking out a knife, a dark-skinned knife.
She smiled, taking the knife. Her first target had been a half-crazed son of a war god who had been sucking the life from a line of priestesses, and they had called forth the help of the immortal.
And Amon had sent Liliana. As clever as she always was, she had waited until he was blind drunk before unleashing a thin thread of violet light around his neck.
"Aaaaa!" He screamed, starting to struggle. Amon tried to help, but she had already laid the spells he had taught her, rendering the demigod motionless.
As the demigod attempted to regenerate from the wound she’d caused, she just drove the knife Amon gave her into his thigh. The darkness had cancelled out his body’s natural healing abilities, and in the end he had been suffocated by his own powers.
Amon had watched from the roof of an abandoned temple as she worked, her hands trembling with the effort of waiting until the last possible moment to deliver the killing blow.
"You hesitated," he said when she was done.
"Sorry, because I was counting," Liliana replied matter-of-factly. "I wanted to know how long it would take him to realize he was...already dead."
Amon’s lips twitched at this. Almost a smile. "Good. Next time, don’t count out loud. This is a stealthy mission, not a grandiose one."
As time passed on, when Liliana was nearly twenty years old, she stopped looking like a street urchin. She grew up. She got tall and strong-jawed, and her hair turned a deep, rich purple color, like crushed amethysts, absorbing the residual darkness around her.
Her skin remained a cold, marble-like color, and she always wore dark clothes on her hands, a habit she had gotten into a long time ago.
She also wore a ring of iron on her left hand, a gift from Amon after her first solo hunt. It made her feel powerful.
For many years, they hunted across Greece and Anatolia and even Hispania, following rumors of any number of rogue demigods.
Always, Amon would find the most difficult of these to rid the world of and leave the rest to Liliana. Sometimes, though, she would secretly sign up for one of his stronger cases, just to prove to herself that she was as good as he was.
By the time Liliana was twenty-three, she had grown to see Amon in a new light. Not all at once, like a knife to the heart. Instead, she slowly realized how she felt towards the Golden Immortal.
She found herself constantly noticing the smallest details about him, like the way he was never harsh when she failed at something, and the way he always managed to put himself between her and danger.
Occasionally, she would even catch him drinking when he thought she wasn’t looking. And every now and again, she would find herself following him to see what he did when he thought no one was looking.
Once, she had even followed him to the rooftop of a temple. He was sitting on the edge, staring up at the stars. His hands were busy cleaning a blade, his movements careful.
Liliana felt a pang in her chest as she realized that she felt something for him. But she pushed the feeling down, not wanting to let herself feel it. Not wanting to give herself the chance to get hurt.
Come on, Liliana. He is like a father...not...not like that.
And long after that, she would be twenty-seven when almost her entire life would have been forfeited for his sake.
One day, it was a pack of demigods who had been worshipping an almost completely forgotten son of Ares, left to rot in the shadows long ago.
They had found Amon in the long-abandoned temple of an old oracle, him having wandered there seeking answers to questions that few others dared to ask.
The rogue demigods had bound him in iron, in salt, and in the stolen prayers of the forgotten.
Liliana had arrived on the scene long before he had called for her, having tracked the sound of his struggle.
If I can just make him see me...at his level.
Pouring every last filament of her dark power into a single, slender spear of violet light, she had driven it deep into the heart of the binding circle.
The resulting backlash of power had nearly been her undoing, but she had lived. And three days later, she awoke to find herself curled up on the cold stone of the temple floor, Amon by her side.
"Thank the lord, you are alive..." Amon muttered.
"Yeah...me too, master." she replied.
Amon turned to her completely, looking at her eyes with utter seriousness.
"Why did you go on your own, Liliana? You are strong, yes, but not that strong."
"....."
There was silence.
"Yes, master, but I thought with all the training I could do it, be like you."
"I trained you so you would not be like me, Liliana." Amon grunted. "So stop it and follow orders."
That disappointing gaze. Liliana couldn’t help but be suddenly crumbled by it.
"I just...wanted to make you proud, that’s it..."
Something seemed to have transferred between them in that moment.
By the time Liliana had reached thirty years of age, the gods and mortals alike had started to refer to her as the Purple Witch. Along with Amon, the Golden Immortal, she roamed the earth looking for any injustice, completing mission after mission, dealing with the legion of demons, sometimes controlling the rogue angels.
Her increasing power made her a figure to be reckoned with, and Liliana had started to grow, year by year, into a greater and greater disappointment for her heart.
For a long time she believed that he once had felt the same for her. But slowly, maybe she had become utterly obedient. The Golden Immortal started to use her however he saw fit. Just as long ago he had been used by the Creator.
She was content to let it be. Actually.
Until the night it all ended.
Amon had given her orders a week before to investigate the strange disturbance that had been happening between the First World and the Second World, deep in the heart of Tartarus.
Every so often, a powerful soul would be pulled down to the earth, there to be marked for death. Demigods, priests, even a river goddess of low stature, all of them had fallen victim to this strange occurrence.
As the sun set below the horizon, casting a dark orange-red glow across the surrounding landscape, Amon ran his hand across the scorched ground.
"It’s not natural," Liliana said. "Whatever is pulling them down isn’t just a normal demigod."
"Looks natural, too natural," Amon muttered, running a hand over the scorched ground of the old temple. "Something must be pulling them down."
The earth suddenly ripped apart, as if pulled by an unseen force, and a massive, dark figure arose from the depths of the Underworld. It was he...
The Lord of the Dead, his pale face unmatched by even the Gods of Olympus, was immediately recognizable to Amon and Liliana.
His inky black form was framed by a semi-circular canvas of shades, usually entities of dark, wraith-like material that did his bidding, and his three-headed hound roamed frantically around the periphery of the group.
"Golden One," Hades said softly. "I have waited a long time to see what the Creator’s little weapon looks like when it is finally outnumbered."