I was sick when I wrote this so I know it's not my best. Maybe one day I'll come back and make some changes and add more details but yeah...it's meh hahaha

I grunted as a guard shoved me forward, my tightly bound ankles chafining as I fell to the cold, wet ground staining my dress in what I wanted to assume was mud. I shook my head as the musty bag over my head was yanked off, my mousy brown hair falling on my face. I blinked rapidly as my eyes tried to adjust to the poorly lit room as well as the sudden rancid smell that hit my nose. Rotting skin, mold, and human waste filled my mouth with bile.

I didn't have to see much of anything to know that calling this place a room was a generous description. The ceiling dripped with some unknown liquid making a tinking noise in brass buckets that littered the floor. People's voices moaning and crying ricocheted off the walls of the cell house I was so unceremoniously thrust into. My writs burned from the rope that was tied around them as a guard yanked me to attach it to a stake in the ground. But I quickly ignored them as I took in my surroundings, my eyes finally getting used to the light of the only two torches nocked in a pillar in the middle of the low ceilinged holding cell.

Two cells lined each of the four walls. All of them were nearly filled with prisoners whether they deserved to be there or not. I was placed in the last one along with the three other girls I came here with. All four of us were taken from our village all because we found an easier way to wash our clothes. But as it turned out, someone thought we were acting under the influence of the devil. That we were witches sent to curse them through their newly cleaned clothes.

Complete and utter sorcery.

I tried to plead with the bailiff's guards that the other girls were innocent, that it was all my idea. But they wouldn't have it, not wanting to risk letting loose even one possible witch. I looked behind me at the girls now huddled against one another, their own hands bound to a stake in the ground making it difficult to go to the bars and use our magic on the guards to escape.

I tried to give them a small smile but I knew it came off more like a wince. Looking down, I turned away from them, not wanting to make things worse. But something caught my eye. In the group of woman that came with us, there was a little girl no more than four, at least. She had a doll with her, it was small and thread bare, it's head of red yarm holding on for dear life, it's dress torn and soaked in mud. I closed my eyes and silently wished she was alright and that those devil infused men would see reason and let her go. No one had magic. No one could speak to spirits. No one could lift objects. And if they did they would use them to cheat fate and save themselves from being burned at the stake.

Unless they decided to save the others first. If they had magic.

I tugged at my bonds, taking note I was the only one not huddling around the other women as they quaked in fear. Dirty faces, torn clothes, missing shoes. My heart ached for the innocent women and children, and even a few men, that would soon have to somehow prove they are not guilty of the accusations that a few misguided young women brought upon them.

My head snapped up at the sound of the door opening. Everyone in the jailhouse shied away from the sudden beam of light, but collectively breathed in the fresh air, not sure if they will ever get a chance again.

A guard stood with a homely man as he spread out a long piece of parchment, clearing his throat before he read.

"Witches Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott, Mary Warren, and Slave Tituba have listed names of the women whom they know to be in alliance with their practice of witchcraft and devilry:

"Sarah Coswell,"

A wailing cry erupted in one of the far cells. But I kept my eyes glued to the man as he continued, an angry fire burning in my chest. With each name, he called more cries filled the small room.

"Elizabeth North, Catherine Little, Poppy Well," he took a breath and squinted into the paper.

"And Ember Rose."

My breath caught as my body froze. Hearing my name should not have come to so much of a shock to me but I didn't know those girls. I lived on the other side of the village. My only solace was that the three girls who came with me were not called. But who knew how long they had before they would be.

The light in the doorway was closed off again as the guard and man left, leaving the jail room echoing in despair and pain. Sweat beaded down my back as my mind raced with what to do. I looked around and saw as those four other women who were called were thrust out of the huddling group, left to clutch their own shaking bodies in an attempt to console themselves against the fate they now knew was near impossible to avoid. I could already smell the fire and feel the heat.

I closed my eyes and shook my head.

No. This cannot happen. Not again.

After hearing about Bridget Bishop's hanging I was sick and utterly devastated knowing that that woman would not have hurt even the smallest creature. I had wrongly assumed that her death would satisfy the witch hunt. But it had only ignited it, spreading the fear and ideals to nearly everyone in Salem. It was a miracle that not all of Massachusetts became caught up in such a contagious lie.

Tituba as smart to confess to it, ultimately saving herself. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn had resisted too much. I could see their hanging bodies from my home, their bodies perhaps still warm as I was carted off this morning. Tears fell down my cheeks but they were not for me. I took a deep breath and looked down at my hands willing the rope around them to fray.

I could feel the air around me shift and a smirk played on my lips as irony would soon change the fate of those women.

Suddenly a hand reached out making me jump as it covered my bound hands.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," a man's voice whispered.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I looked up, only to be met with a cloaked figure, his face hidden in the shadows of his hood made easy by blocking out the only light behind him. He crouched in front of me, the rim of his hood nearly touching my forehead.

"Why?" I hissed, looking around at the people scared and crying around me.

But I paused, my eyes narrowing as I took in everything slowly.

It had fallen quiet.

No one was moving. Even the flames on the torches stood still though the light didn't stop shining. The accused women sat frozen in mid sobs. The guards on duty looked as though they were asleep. My mouth felt dry as I turned to the shadowed man, my eyes wide.

"Who are you to tell me what to do."

His hand didn't move where it sat atop mine. "I can't, in good conscience, let the only women let alone human with magic reveal herself to the very people who would hang someone for less."

"Clearly I am not the only one who has magic. You have stilled the room. I cannot do that."

"Clearly you do not believe that the devil they so frequently speak of cannot in any way be truly real." He shifted and what little light there was glinted off his gold-rimmed red eyes. I wonder if the spell used on the people around me was for his protection or theirs.

I shivered. "Why are you here?"

He removed his hand and leaned back a bit, though remained crouched. "I'm here to make a deal." His voice reminded me of deep, dark blood, thick and dripping with ominous beauty.

I nearly laughed, only a snort escaping through my nose. "I irony in this situation is more than my idea to take out the cursed women who started all of this with the very magic they attested to having."

The hooded "devil" chuckled. "Perhaps they still will be."

I opened my mouth but closed it, narrowing my eyes in turn. "No. You wouldn't help me." My voice came out in a whisper of disbelief.

"Yes, in fact, I would."

"But not without a price, I imagine."

He chuckled again, his body shifting slightly to where I could see one side of his face perfectly. His eyes were nearly red with gold lining the outside of his iris and pupil. His skin was dark, like cooled caramel, his dark facial hair that covered his lip to his chin then up the side of his jaw made him look fairly young, only a few years older than myself. Despite the urge to look away, I held my ground, looking him right in the eyes and lifting my chin. The corner of his mouth I could see lifted in a slight smirk as he spoke.

"For you, it will be merely an inconvenience. But I will allow you to pick three people to save. Only three."

My heart had been surprising still from the moment he appeared but now at the mention of saving someone from a burning grave, my chest shook with the power of its rapid beating. I found it difficult to breathe properly. I swallowed before I answered.

"And your price?"

The "devil" reached up and moved a lock of my sweaty hair from my cheek, making my skin burn where he touched me. I praised myself for not flinching but my eyes flicked behind him as if looking for a place to escape.

"Your life."

My eyes darted back to him, wider than before. "My life?" I all but squeaked out of my painfully airless lungs.

"Yes. Three lives for the price of yours. I think it to be fair."

"But I thought you just said..." I let my words die off as I turned away from him, my eyes landing on the small doll gain. An idea formed. I turned back to him the fire in my eyes raging enough to make him jump. I smiled.

"Four. The three girls I was accused with and the little four-year-old girl. But instead of my life, you take my soul."

His dark brows rose, his mouth slightly agape. "You know you will never be free of me if you do this? I would have control over you and when you die. You may live for thousands of years or I could snuff you out tomorrow."

I shook my head. "I don't' care. If you were going to take my life anyways, might as well prolong the pain to save even one more life."

His shock fell away into awe but was quickly replaced with indifference. "So be it."

He snapped his fingers and a wave hit me, my breath leaving my body with a "whoosh" of air. I felt slightly weaker but made sure not to show it as I met his gaze.

"It is done then. Set them free and I will stand my hearing."

The Devil cocked a brow. "Your courage will be your downfall."

"So it seems, seeing as how I am talking with the very devil who now has complete and utter control of my life."

He stood making me crane my neck to look up at him. "Your four friends will be set free. However, you will have to watch the rest of these women die at the hands of those accusers." His hand appeared out of the folds of his cloak, pointing at me with finely manicured nails. "Use your magic once to change the course of this Witching and you will never know the meaning of happiness."

Then he was gone, the sounds of the trapped and condemned returning in a wave of reality. But I wasn't scared.

"An empty threat, to be sure, for I already know a life without happiness," I whispered under my breath just as the door to the jail banged open and guards flooded in to take away those who were accused and those whom I sold my soul to set free.

I suppressed my feelings. I looked at nothing as I stood before the men who called themselves judges. Glazed eyes and numb hands I moved only when shoved, spoke only when yelled at. I was a walking corpse, ready for my fate to be decided by the hooded man I came to believe was truly the Devil himself.

I was not hung that day nor any other day after. But I watched as eighteen women were condemned, several others dying before they were even tried. I was sent back to my home with nothing so little as an apology for questioning my character.

But a part of me almost wished they had chosen me.

Even now, three hundred and thirty years later I wished I was numbered among the woman proven of witchcraft. It should have been me. I was the only one with magic.

The Devil has yet to use me. I did as he asked and did not intervene. I kept to myself and used my magic sparingly. But after I watched my village grow and change while myself remained unchanging, I knew I had welcomed a fate far worse than death.

So I remained as I was, changing my name and my story when people became suspicious. I watched history happen then repeat itself. I took chances and used my magic to help those around me. But I quickly learned that with one good deed I did a far worse fate befell someone close to me or to important people.

Therefore I closed myself off. Stopped my heart from falling in love. I busied myself with learning as much as I could, building up my talents as well as my knowledge of the world. I traveled. I grew rich but stayed humble. Happy would be too generous a description of my life, but content would.

However, I never touched my magic. Unless told otherwise. Yes, he came to visit me. Not a lot at first but by the time the twenty-first century rolled around I would find him sitting in my living room or feeding my plants on my balcony.

I tried to ignore him, I tried to shoo him away. But he would only laugh, talk to me like I was his friend then leave, taking with him the life of one of my plants or pets, or an old woman next door, the smell of sulfur in his wake.

Sometimes I would beg and plead with him to just take me, to end my everlasting suffering. But he would just look at me, his dark eyes clouded by something I could not place. I was never granted a reprieve, my life continuing on.

That is until one day I came home to him sitting on my couch, his head in his hands, his shoulders slumped and his long hair cascading around his face like a shield. I approached him, hesitant to speak.

"The devil cries. How poetic."

His face shot up and my breath hitched. His eyes they were...normal. A deep dark brown met my own dirt colored eyes. Tears sparkled as they brimmed his eyes. I felt a sudden urge to go to him but suppressed it as I placed my purse and keys on my kitchen table. I heard him get up and felt him approach me though he had the good sense to stay back having already learned of my distaste of his tendency to stand too close, my years of martial arts training with the real teachers not going to waste.

I didn't turn as he spoke.

"I need you to help me."

"I already did that. You have my soul. What more do you want?"

I felt a gentle brush on my arm and I shivered but not with pleasure. Still, I did not turn to face him.

"A third World War is about to start and you have done nothing to stop it."

At that I spun on him, pushing him back making him stubble back onto the couch. "You know very well why I have not. One flick of my wrist and the good I would have done would have been negated by the equal, if not worse, power of negative consequences."

He raised his hands, his brows raised as his eyes all but pleaded with me. "That was not me. You have been free to use your magic as you wished."

I shook my head, narrowing my eyes. "Lies. You have been punishing me for trying to help the world be the least bit happy."

He shook his head, dropping his hands to his lap. "That is just the world. You humans have a tendency to make even the smallest of good actions look powerless to the monster of negativity."

I snorted. "Says the powerful being who lives off of death and destruction."

His eyes fell and his shoulders slumped. "The result of being at the receiving end of the circle of life. Though I do not revel in it as I once did."

I rolled my eyes finding it hard to believe him. "Next God will come down and tell me he finds pleasure in killing small animals."

I scoffed and turned to go but paused as a hand slipped into my own, tugging me back. I looked over my shoulder, my brows pinched as I looked between our clasped hands and the head of the man who refused to look up at me. I was so focused on trying to understand his shift in personality that I nearly missed his words.

"Do you know the tale of Persephone and Hades?"

He did not wait for my answer as he looked up. I chided my heart for leaping with sorrow at the pain in his eyes.

"How is it the one woman I have not stopped thinking about for nearly four hundred years now possess the exact name of the woman that stilled the anger in the God of Death? The very woman who has the power to stop the destruction of the world as we know it, who regards me with so much disdain I can bearly bear it."

I turned my body to look at him fully, my hand never leaving his. "You are the devil. The epitome of evil. How can I look at you otherwise?"

Hurt flashed over his face and I nearly took my words back but I stood my ground. My eyes followed him as he stood, my feet glued to the ground as he stepped close. His voice was low as he spoke, his free hand reaching up to move my hair from my cheek like he did all those years ago.

"I am not who I once was. But it is no use to me to convince you otherwise if you are so adamant to place all that has gone wrong in this world on me."

I opened my mouth to answer but closed it as his eyes locked on with mine. I remained quiet as he finished.

"I will return you your soul and ask that you do all in your power to stop the world from destroying itself. There needs to be a balance in all things. And in some cases that requires me to preserve life rather than take it. Promise me you will do that for me. Save humanity and I will grant you anything you wish."

My eyes suddenly pricked with a feeling I had long ago stopped myself from feeling. Tears unwillingly pooled up in my own eyes, blurring his face.

"Anything?" I whispered.

The dark haired man, the man who I suddenly did not feel deserved the name of the devil, nodded, a small smile pulling at his lips.

"Yes," he whispered back, "anything."

I nodded, sniffing back tears as I blinked. "Yes. I will help you."

He stepped back slightly, taking both my hand in his. "Persephone Grace, I grant thee thine fate." Then, ever so gently, I felt him press a kiss to my forehead.

I closed my eyes to his touch, breathing in a sense of purpose. But when I opened them again he has gone, my hands cold, my forehead tingling.

*A really cool a$$ battle where she saves the world almost like Wonder Woman. Curse being sick or else I would have written this. But yeah, cool stuff.*

I sat among the wreckage of the last battle, my body bleeding but I felt no pain. My hair tossed in the wind, brushing against my numb face. I stared at nothing as dust filled the air and the cries of the living echoed in hollowed victory.

I felt a presence appear next to me but I did not need to look to know who it was. I took a deep, shuddering breath as I waved a hand halfheartedly to the area around me.

"It is done."

He came to sit next to me, his hand coming to fall on my bloody one that still clutched the staff I used to end the war of all wars.

"You did well. The balance has been restored."

"But at what cost?" I whispered back, my voice thick with emotion.

I didn't mean to but I was tired. I leaned against him, sagging under the weight of my actions. I had lived far too long for one person. I had killed more people in a span of a week than history had ever claimed. I closed my eyes and let myself feel for the first time in ages.

My temporary pillar of strength shifted until we were looking at each other. He reached out and cupped my cheek, his eyes kind and soft as he held me.

"What is it that you wish, larla?"

"Home. I want to go home," I whispered, tears falling down my cheeks as I closed my eyes.

"Then home you shall go."

His lips pressed against mine but so quickly, so softly I wondered if it even happened.

But the release of pain and sorrow was so great I cared not what was going to happen next.

Persephone has finally gone home with Hades.