Dante Lot (unseen_miami) wrote in olympian_rewind, @ 2011-07-25 21:09:00 |
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Entry tags: | dante lot, hades, npc |
Who: Hades (solo - mostly)
What: Aftermath and New Beginnings
Where: Hell
When: Today
Warning: none
From the golden throne outside his palace, Hades watched the on-goings of the court and the surrounding areas with an idle attention. The bronze walls with their iron bars were going up in short order. The inner walls were already up securing the perimeter but the fortifications continued to expand outward in order to stymie an enemy trying to breach them. The Elf Viking Goddess striding atop the unfinished walls at the exterior broke the landscape beyond it. Her beauty and her life were out of place when Hell itself surrounded them on all sides.
Some of the Titans helping to build those walls were surreal and yet understandable. The sooner the walls were completed, the sooner they enjoyed their full protection.
Even the Titans pacing along the interior walls struck Hades as surreal. The Titans being helpful… The Titans being beneficial to him… It would take him a long time to grow accustomed to it.
But right now he didn’t have the mental strength to bother. He simply accepted the surrealism and the truth and then turned his eyes away from them to the thousands of souls milling around in the court grounds and the secured lands around them. The majority of them he had led to the banks of the Lethe river and made them drink… but some of them, a select few of them had been given small bowls of differing amounts of the water…
Just watching the souls made him exhausted. He didn’t know what was more wearying to his mind – the depression of being away from his family or the despair he had witnessed in those souls’ eyes. He was certain it wasn’t the battle. In the scheme of things, the battle had been short but fierce. Even with a literal cadre of Viking gods, a host of Titan warriors, a thousand Hellbots and even some infernal tanks crafted by Hephaestus, it had been a fierce battle to drive back the Ogres. Its violence was only increased when the Christian demons, seeking to make all situations more difficult and more intolerable by their nature, joined the Ogres…
At least the other monsters of the Underworld had remained neutral…
In the moments of the battle when he could spare a glance away from the enemy, he noticed those monsters watching. Part of him hoped that in their monstrous hearts, they had been rooting from him. He knew the realm was on his side. The Underworld’s doting and attentive presence had kept the weariness of his mind from touching his body at all. Even now, as he sat, he physically felt strong and willing for any counter assault.
It was only mentally did he feel like he was sinking under the weight of dolorous chains, which gained links with every passing moment. The thrill of the battle had long since left him. That feeling of life and youth that battle always seemed to bring him had been driven out of his soul when after the initial victory, the responsibility of that victory had slowly set in.
With Cerebus and squad of one hundred Hellbots at his side, he had scoured the plains of Hell for those who had once been his and did not deserve an afterlife of torment. It was a campaign of penance as he found each soul – calling those whom he had known by name. Those who had known him threw themselves at their former king. He could see in their tear filled eyes the hope that their king had finally come to rescue them and their fear that this was an illusion simultaneously.
Each time a soul embraced him. Each time a soul fervently thanked him as he brought to the safety of the enclosure, it only felt like another burning coal heaped upon his head as his guilt grew.
How long had he had made them suffer… He could absolve himself of the majority of the time when the Devil ruled but deposing him had clearly not been impossible. How much sooner could he have done it if he had asked for help and not wallowed in his grief and depression? When the Devil had been deposed, why hadn’t he immediately tried to bring the souls relief?
He had called Zeus a terrible King once. He knew he could because he was one as well.
If he had had any doubts, those whom he had not known but had spoken his name and his family’s names after they fell from grace had made it quite clear to him. They had worshipped his family in life despite the world becoming more and more Abrahamic around them and kept to the faith only to find no help and only torment when they died. The look of betrayal in their eyes when he sought for them might as well have dismembered him each time. Their relief and gratitude when he brought them to the enclosure did nothing to ease that feeling.
He had found them all and brought all whom he had sought into the enclosure personally. And now he watched them. His body may have felt more powerful than it had in recent memory but his mind felt more tortured in equal proportion.
His failure toward those souls milling in the courtyards was only amplified by his longing for his family. His own soul longed for the comfort of his wife’s arms wrapped around him in the night, the warmth of Hestia’s touch when her fingers grazed his skin as they passed off the children or she handed him some sort of treat, the quiet lunches shared with Hera on Friday afternoons, even the text pings from Melpomene’s messages to him…
At least they knew why he was not around… Why he had been absent for three weeks… They were immortal adults. They could understand.
The comfort he forfeited by being away from his children only added its own barbs because he knew they didn’t. Every day that passed and he didn’t hear their little voices calling his name or have their tiny arms try to wrap around him was another day they didn’t hear his voice say their names or be lifted up in his arms. And they wouldn’t understand why.
And each day was another day he could not get back.
They were only children once…
His eyes shifted back to the bronze walls.
They were also mortals…
One day, all of this effort would protect them.
And soon he would be able to return to them.
He was almost done here for now.
Of course, as he slouched further on his throne, he questioned what he was really almost done doing.
His first reign as king of the Underworld had taught him a painful lesson – the dead hated being dead and no matter how beautiful the gardens were that he provided for them, every single one of them would trade all of it for just another day of life. In his mercy and justice, he had erased the memories of all those who had or would have been sent to the Gardens of Asphodel. They were relieved from any memory of the pains of Hell… But it also ensured they would grow to hate where they currently were…
And yet, it wasn’t their resent that made him question.
They had what they deserved.
It was the virtuous souls that pained him.
As he looked around, he couldn’t provide them with the beauty of the Elysian Fields… not anymore. This was still Hell. He couldn’t install a paradise within it… even if he had the power to do so, he was certain that would bring down the wrath of the Christian god. He was already walking a fine tightrope of legalism to accomplish this as it was…
He closed his eyes, bracing himself for the final thing he had to do… When they drank from their little bowls, he would have to explain to them why they were no longer in the Elysian fields without the benefit of them remembering his rescue of them… without the benefit of them knowing how the Underworld had become a realm of torment outside of his control…
The wait was almost unbearable but he had no choice…
They were virtuous souls… He would not force them to drink from the Lethe River. It had been his promise to them, but he did explain why he was giving them the bowls. They were virtuous souls… They also didn’t deserve to remember the pains of Hell.
Let them drink of the waters on their own accord…
He just wish they would hurry…
He was rapidly losing his nerve toward his incredible act of justice and mercy toward those he was truly responsible for…
“[Lord Hades?]”
A soft voice broke his thoughts and forced his clenched eyes open.
The soul of an elderly man stood before him, his bowl filled with water was cupped in his thin hands. Hades straightened up on his throne and focused his eyes upon him, “[Yes, Apollonius of Crete. What is it?]”
The soul bowed his hand with a small smile, the water in the undrained bowl slightly rippling in his movement, “[If it would be acceptable, we of the Elysian Fields, would like not to drink from the waters as was our privilege when we first died.]”
Not drink from the waters? Hades narrowed his eyes in confusion, “[If you don’t, you’ll remember all the centuries of pain…]”
The soul nodded. “[Yes, sire, but we would also remember that all those centuries have ended. We have discussed this at great length and we would like to be able to remember that our king came back to rescue us and to provide for us…]”
Hades stared at the soul of the elderly man and then shifted his gaze to the group of virtuous souls standing together. Their eyes were fixed on him. They were waiting for his decision…
He would be prompt. Especially since he had wanted them to be prompt.
Especially since they had managed to instantly shatter the chains of angst he had been constructing for himself. When he first set foot in the Underworld, he had wanted his subjects to enjoy their afterlives in his realm… Now it had finally happened.
“[Do as you wish. You are the Blessed of the Elysian Fields,]” Hades responded and watched as the elderly soul bowed his head again and then turned to descend the steps that led from the throne. He wandered through the courtyard to that collection of virtuous souls and then together simply dropped their bowls in unison to the ground.
He could hear them laughing joyfully.
His eyes shifted from them, following the line of mint bushes that ran parallel along nearly the entire interior bronze wall. The mint plants had sprouted like weeds when he had transplanted the original divine plant inside the walls… Despite the former nymph having not done truly anything to encourage him toward this course, his mind had used her enough times to shove him. It had only seemed right… And Minthe hadn’t deserved Hell either. Her punishment had been being transformed into a plant… and he had planted her as far away from the palace as he could manage.
Now the bronze walls were lined with the bushes…
He shouldn’t have been surprised. Mint always grew like a weed in the Underworld when it was allowed to. The original divine plant blended perfectly in with the row of offshoots, except to him. He’d always be able to pick the former nymph out, even at a distance.
He could do the same for the poplar tree that virtuous souls now lounged beside. They seemed to have adopted that particular former nymph to tend and care for.
He followed the line until his eyes rested upon a group of Titans. They were no longer a threat to his kin… He no longer had to slavishly watch them…
His eyes shifted skyward. The light of the souls burning as stars in the twilight sky twinkled overhead along with the occasional crackle of the magical force field the Elf Viking Goddess had put in place as she expanded it occasionally… But his gaze focused beyond all of that and even beyond the earthen sky… He imagined his family on the surface. His wife was waiting for him, his children loved him…
It was a sudden and unbelievable epiphany… He had finally achieved the life he had longed for when he had first stepped foot in the Underworld after the Titannomachy…
He closed his eyes once more, “[Upon the Styx and by my own name, I make this oath, I will never forget this fact. I will never take for granted what I am now afforded and have. No matter how much pain or disappointment may come. Pain and disappointment are part of every life, including this one… the life of my dreams. Too much suffering has occurred for this to happen. I will never be ungrateful for what has somehow occurred for me. I swear it.”
Opening his eyes once more, he focused them again on the Elf Viking Goddess on the bronze walls. He couldn’t wait for her to want to return to the surface so he could see his own family there again but…
It was now a much more bearable wait.
He would use the time to plan how to share his satisfaction and delight with those he loved above. They deserved to share in it.
With as many times as he had dragged those he loved into his own depths of despair, it was about time he could try to drag them up his mountain of elation.
Summary: After the fierce battle to gain a section of Hell to be his own, Hades surveys the lands he has won and overviews the ramifications of his actions. He makes an unexpected conclusion.