[ mercy sneaks a look at the library as they pass it, her chin tilting and rubbernecking, before she forces her gaze straight forward again. it was more augustine’s sort of thing, but she was a voracious reader herself. by the time she’s led into the massive walk-in closet, that frazzled stiff-jawed demeanour thaws a little into relief at the sight of the hangers. ]
Oh, thank— [ god, she almost says, but then course-corrects at the last second: ] fuck. The indignity was starting to get to me.
[ all of the saint’s attention is on the clothes, and she barely notes which direction hades stalked off to. she goes rummaging, picking her way through the chaotic racks with a finicky attention-to-detail which contrasts her weary acceptance of the earlier nudity. now that there is an opportunity to be dressed again, why not get it right?
and with enough time, she cobbles together something fitting. the palette is darker than the spring-like colours she’d once favoured (an inevitable touch of hades’ taste seeping through), but she does eventually find a white himation to wrap herself in like a shawl. (like a safety blanket, for how it reminds her of the white canaanite robes.) she tidily hangs up the leather jacket again. she laces up a pair of black combat boots, which don’t fit the saint of joy at all — they’re more like something pyrrha or gideon would’ve enjoyed — but at least they’re sensible. now dressed, mercy heads for the stairs, climbs it and peers out to each storey until she finally finds the king. her gratitude always used to be snappish and peevish and grudging, but this time it comes out like a sigh. ]
[ the room hades is in - three floors up - looks, more than anything else, like some dive cohort bar. namely because it is a bar, dominated by a long, polished slab of mahogany running nearly from one side to another. it’s old, pocketmarked with scratches and stains and deep ravines in the weathered wood. behind it is a full cabinet of liquor, bottles glistening clear, gold, red, gold, blue, brown, violet, brown, brown, red.
but that’s almost it, other than a few stools, the rest of the room is shockingly empty. on the opposite side of the bar there’s a window overlooking the town; perpendicular is the saddest-looking stage and one of her guitars on a rack. the rest is empty.
hades herself is at the bar, already working on a second glass of something slightly lighter and less viscous than blood. she stops mid-sip when she sees mercymorn enter, setting the tumbler down before she drops it. ]
You remind me of my niece in that.
[ god, she’d give anything to see athena’s smug fucking face. ]
Here. [ she nudges another glass over, pouring from the same bottle. ] Pomegranate liqueur. Old tradition for newcomers.
[ mercymorn takes in her surroundings warily, walking on the balls of her feet like a half-tiptoe. still instinctively half-waiting for the trap to reveal itself, despite the fact that the trap’s already sprung and the worst has already happened, so what’s there to lose, anyway? she stares out the window for a moment — what with living on the mithraeum, it’s been a while since she’s been anywhere with a view — but then eventually joins hades at the bar. the saint leans forward, hands pressed against the edge of the chipped wooden counter, mouth pursed.
an ancient recollection is needling at the edge of her memory. they knew a tiny bit about mythology; bits and scraps, enough for augustine to say dios apate when they meant to distract god, and now she remembers one detail. six pomegranate seeds and— ]
I suppose it’s no particular foul if I drink this and it means I have to stay.
[ a joke, kind of. where else would she go? so she takes the glass, holds it primly, sets her lips against the edge and takes a tentative sip. and god, but it’s sweet: it doesn’t taste like ash. it tastes alive, when so much of the empire is rot. they kill planets wherever they go. her tongue curls, presses against the roof of her mouth, tries to savour every last stinging tartness of that flavour. ]
[ there’s a moment as the wheels turn, as the joke lands. and then hades laughs: far from the bouncing mania from earlier on the shore, this is groaning and wheezing, like an old radiator on its last legs. ] Yeah. Fucking figures he keeps that around.
[ though it’s also a little strange, that john gaius cared to remember anything about her family, let alone talk to his saints about it. maybe she should clarify, tell mercymorn more about her wife - but no, the very thought stabs hades in what passes for her heart. it’s hardened in the last myriad of solitude, like it’s been calcified with seawater after a shipwreck. and just because she’s taking a lyctor in (ugh) doesn’t mean she’s about to open up like a fuckin’ therapist.
so instead, she cants her head to the side and thinks about athena. ]
Athena. Goddess of wisdom. You ever play cards with somebody and fall for their bluff? Or chess, and you take their queen, and they’ve got some fucking smug look that everything’s going to plan? That, but all the time.
[ she knocks back the rest of her glass, trying to cut off the morose loneliness before it settles in. ] Fucking stuck-up bitch. Miss her like hell.
[ and here, unfortunately, is the tragedy of it all: mercymorn knows the sound of that emotion in hades’ voice. the bitter wistful longing, the nostalgia humming beneath it, the long familial familiarity which doesn’t fade despite literal thousands of years without. the loss of someone who was irreplaceably like you. because mercy has, of course, lost her family, too.
this is what john has taken from both of them.
her mouth feels thick and dry as she says, ] Yes. Ours was Cassiopeia— Cassie— but she was so nice about it even as she absolutely tore you apart in chess. Didn’t even have the decency to rub it in our faces or anything. I loved her for it.
[ there’s that tight thread of pain, echoing in both of them. staring into the depths of her glass as she rolls the liquor around within it, she adds, droll and poisonous: ]
I watched her get torn apart by ghosts in the River. We were fighting a Resurrection Beast on the Emperor’s behalf.
Yeah. No shit. [ but there's less bite in it than there would have been – hell, an hour ago, when mercymorn was first dragged out of the river. the thing about immortality that nobody knows (except the immortals, and they ain't talking) is that you go bugfuck crazy after a while. normal lives pass through in the blink of an eye – speedrun the seven ages of man, glitch through the cannon's mouth right to shrunk shank – and there's only a handful of people who really get it. so on that rare, once-in-a-million chance you sit down and talk to one, you tend to latch on, like fellow countrymates in a foreign land.
which is why, when hades pours herself another glass and tops mercy off, she takes a moment to clink one rim against another. ] Cheers. To Athena and Cassie.
[ she knocks it back, and – well, alright, maybe she is morose. fucking sue her. ]
You know what they used to be called? The Resurrection Beasts. Back when they were planets, humans used to look up into the stars and name 'em after us. I got – shit, that dinky one at the end of the system. Pluto.
To Athena and Cassie, [ the former lyctor echoes, just as maudlin, because she’s reminded sharply and suddenly of the last time she’d been toasting to people long-dead. to absent friends. and to our cavaliers. to cristabel.
instead of letting herself think too much about it, mercymorn knocks back the drink. and then turns her attention to that interesting tidbit hades just dropped. chewing on that intellectual curiosity, she says: ]
The dinky one at the end of the system? What, you mean the Ninth House? It’s actually called Pluto? [ john had stolen all of the original names, papered them over with new ones of his own. even her own name had been lost to history and lost to all memory except god’s. ] What are the others?
Fuck. [ she wonders if she can even name any of them off anymore. she’s been hoarding it for so long: the names, the memories, her family. sharing them with somebody else seems almost profane, like it’s surrendering a part of her. but then again, who else is she going to tell?
hades doesn’t answer immediately, she pours herself another shot, downs it, slams the glass back on the bar hard enough to nearly crack it. ] Let’s see. [ thumb out, counting them off. ] There’s me. Jupiter and Neptune, my brothers. Venus and Mars. Uranus - [ she pauses here to spit onto the ground. her grandfather died before she was born, but fuck him and everything he stood for anyway. ]
Gr - [ but before she can bring up Grandmother Gaia, who she felt die before the world of the living was cut off from her, there’s a rumbling from below them. not quite an earthquake, not quite the grinding of massive gears, more like an enormous beast stirring in its sleep, turning on its side. ]
Fuck. Gimme a sec. [ hades stands - sways a bit, thanks to a few shots of liqueur - and staggers over towards one of the walls. she reaches up and to the left, grabs at something like she’s balling up cloth in her hand, and moves it diagonally down, like she’s tearing a curtain away.
the wall opens up, showing a window. rather than looking over the underworld, or into the next room, it’s - it’s something. fire, and smoke, and flashing lightning far, far in the distance.
there’s a moment’s pause, and then a massive fist - the size of hades’ entire upper body - pounds against the other side of the glass(?). she doesn’t so much as flinch. ]
[ mercymorn the first does not often curse. she’s too prim and rigid and uptight, with a mouth quick to wash out with soap (and somewhere buried deep under her skin, some ancient instinct and muscle-memory from catholic school rearing its ugly head, although she doesn’t know it). it’s already slipping more in the past hour, though, because she’s tired and dead and out of fucks to give, but she still doesn’t like to do it.
but this does the trick.
that massive fist hits the glass and mercy propels herself backward from the bar, still clutching that tumbler in her hands, almost sloshing some pomegranate liqueur on herself. her fingers tighten on it almost enough to shatter the glass, and her voice hits its own high, supersonic pitch. ]
[ there is Something on the other side of the glass.
which is – alright, that's stating the fucking obvious, no? of course there's something, there's always something. even a place like the depths of canaan house or the murkiness of the river have dust, or disused equipment, or the endless, writhing mass of moaning ghosts and spirits. but then there's the odd place with nothing: corners of the galaxy where a nebula blots out the distant starts, leaving everything in darkness. the great maw of the resurrection beasts, with heaps and heaps of nothing.
there is Nothing on the other side of the glass. there is Something on the other side of the glass. there are many, many, many Things on the other side of the glass.
hades still does not blink. ]
Ornery fuckin' asshole today, aren't you? [ the Something rages again – pounds once more, then draws away, then leans down. for a moment, there's what could be a face. certainly something with rotting teeth (the size of a human hand), with an unkempt beard (though it might be a stormcloud), with glistening, hate-filled eyes. hades snarls right back. ] Fuck off, old man.
[ the glass, or whatever it is, holds. that's old magic, nearly the oldest there is. cronus, usurped king of the cosmos and leader of the titans, lumbers away. on the other side, there are – more Somethings. many, many more.
hades sighs and glances over her shoulder. ]
You're safe. I promise. [ there's another, lengthy moment where she looks out the window. ] Johnnyboy wasn't the first to overthrow the Gods
[ mercymorn has seen resurrection beasts in all their ever-shifting myriad forms, has seen their heralds, has seen sacs of pulsating flesh and half-formed nightmares which didn’t seem quite certain what shape they wanted to take. their appearances differed depending on who was doing the looking. reality blurred. the mind filled in the blanks, and not well at that.
that is what that thing reminds her of. a resurrection beast. ]
It makes me think of Number Eight. It was a giant head, too.
I—
[ it occurs to her, then (and this thought only ever occurs to them rarely), that the beasts once had other names. and john has not bothered to use them. he and the lyctors don’t like to use them. gives the RBs too much power, too much identity, rather than safely thinking of them as mindless angry spirits, all instinct and hunger rather than sentience. ]
You know, I don’t actually know which one was Number Eight. Which planet it used to be. What name. And who the hell was that out there?
Dunno which one Eight was. [ eighth planet was neptune, (her brother’s laugh, his beard, how he always smelled like saltwater and brine), sure, but gaius fucked up the order of everything. rended each planet’s soul to cinders, then rearranged them as he saw fit.
as for mercymorn’s question, hades doesn’t answer for a long, long moment. ]
They’re called the Titans. Our forbearers, the Gods before us. [ until cronus’ paranoia grew too much to bear, until he ordered hestia’s execution - and that, that was a hair too fucking far for all of them. zeus may have led the charge, but it was hades’ knife that cut their father open. ] That one’s Cronus. He’s always been an asshole, but he’s had it out for me ever since I gutted him from cock to fucking chin.
[ hades flicks her wrist, closing the window entirely, and stumbles back to the bar. she fumbles with her glass for a moment, reaches for the bottle, drops her hands. ]
[ the window closes in front of them, like the bulkheads and viewports of the mithraeum slamming shut to block out that madness-inducing view of the approaching Beasts, and the whole feeling is faintly familiar. turtling down. mercymorn drifts in hades’ wake, still sipping primly at her own drink, finger worrying at the edge of the glass.
(she hasn’t felt real glass on her skin in so very long. it’s a rare commodity; not much of the empire has bothered with natural production when plastic does better.) ]
That thing is your father?
[ dripping incredulity and a little bit of disgust in her voice. the topic of parents and children has become more and more alien to her over the years; she’s infertile as all get-out, as notably established. the lyctors can’t reproduce. ]
How do you even… I mean, logistically. Was your mother the size of a skyscraper?
[ the saint of joy, ladies and gents. she’s not great with the whole consolation thing. ]
[ she shrugs. what’s she supposed to say to that? go deep into the celestial birds and the beads? it’s hard to explain. hades herself is concept as much as she is blood, and her generation are closer to human comprehension than any of their predecessors. look at nyx, look at master kaos, look at grandmother gaia. cronus is towering, massive, titan - and he was small enough to hoist hades up on his shoulders, when she was a toddler. rhea wrestled hard enough to cause earthquakes, and she wiped the tears from hades’ eyes. ]
Gods don’t play by your rules, kid. [ it’s all the answer mercy’s going to get.
but still, hades goes on. she stands - a little wobbly - and starts to browse the shelves of bottles behind the bar. ] He’s imprisoned down there. All of them are. [ an explanation as much as it is to console a woman who’s not used to this shit. ] When we took over, we wove it into the laws of the universe. Take any fucking thing you find - stars or rocks or flesh - and break it into molecules, and atoms, and fucking protons and quarks and shit, and you’ll see it written. The Titans are imprisoned in Tartarus.
[ what john gaius did with life and death: necromancy, flesh magic, bone shaping, the works - so too did the olympians, eons before. any halfway-decent dictator will tell you that, the first thing you do when seizing ultimate power is make sure nobody can take it. ]
[ mercymorn cristabel is having a religious crisis.
she doesn’t remember being m—, doesn’t know what beliefs she once held before the resurrection, but it is faintly distressing to reach the other side and then discover that her God was not the only God. that there are scores more. that john took said gods and brought them to heel; that hades’ own brothers jupiter and neptune have been made monstrous, turned into resurrection beasts. that his crimes were even more than she realised. ]
I want,
[ she says slowly, thinking of her aborted attempt at rebellion and mutiny and deicide, strangled in its womb, and what the hell happened to augustine? ]
to finish what I started. I want to find and recover Augustine Alfred Quinque, if he’s somewhere in your River as well. I want to kill John Gaius. I want to stop whatever he’s done. It sounds like we might be aligned in that.
[ aligned. hades isn’t sure what to think. the idea of having allies in this immensely desperate fight is weird. she’s been a loner for so long, she’s forgotten what it’s like to have people around her that aren’t just servants and subjects. laughter. jokes. companionship. even before the coup (what others might call the resurrection, or the apocalypse), she didn’t have much. the work. the music. persephone.
idly, she notices that the bottle in her hand is starting to crack. hades sets it on the table - nearly slams it - before it breaks. ]
Yeah, [ she sighs. ] Guess so.
[ hades turns back, leaning against the bar, looking mercymorn in the eye. in another life - in another time - they could have met like this, a bartender and a patron. gotten along fine. not had to fight a war.
then again, the last time she fought in a war, the last time she had allies? she won. ] Augustine Alfred Quinque. I'm guessing he’s another Lyc-
[ mercy’s heart leaps once in her chest at that seemingly-significant reaction, a sudden mad fluttering like a bird trapped in her ribcage. extremely annoying; she thought she was past those base biological reactions. she presses it down again, consciously closes chambers and valves until her pulse straightens out. ]
Yes. The first of us.
[ as she was the second, as he was so wickedly and annoyingly fond of reminding her: that when john gaius had reached out to resurrect them, he had grasped the reedy thread of augustine’s soul first.
then. sounding prim and arch like a schoolmarm, she says: ]
[ the apology is quick, hurried, and over with before either of them can fully process it. hades hasn’t needed to apologize for anything in eons; it’s almost novel. ]
There was one. While ago. [ hundred years, maybe? it’s to judge how much time passes with any specificity. there’s no sun to rise or set, and while there’s some shades who obsessively mark when not-day ends and not-night begins and not-day begins again, hades doesn’t fuss too much. ]
Big - [ she puts her hands out, miming shoulders at about eye level, set a bit further apart than her frame. ] Barrel-chested fucker. With a beard. Fell down through the fucking Stoma, and the first godsdammed thing out of his mouth was about my legs.
[ granted, he wasn’t too bad on the eyes. in other circumstances, she might’ve taken ulysses titania tetra up on his leering offer. ]
[ big barrel-chested fucker is already a telling descriptor, with a beard even moreso, and hits on anything with a pulse and sometimes not seals the deal. ]
Oh, [ mercymorn breathes out, a helpless little near-laugh under the words. she once thought she’d just be vaguely annoyed at any reminder of the sixth saint. they’d never been particularly close; he and augustine had gotten along much better, and had been a unified front both pointing out that joy was actually the worst sort of killjoy and she was really bringing down the entire vibes of the party and could she not indulge in one measly orgy without criticism?
but after he sacrificed himself, everyone else had laughed less; their smiles dimmed. she’d found that she did miss him, actually, in the way of a puppy who pissed on the carpet but it was still a rather lovable harmless puppy and the mithraeum was worse without him. ]
Ulysses Titania, [ she says. ] Inveterate party boy. He always liked to remind himself that he was alive and we were alive —
[ a sigh, more wistful and hopeful than she expected. ]
Is he still here? He was one of my brother-saints.
[ well, this is just - this is fucking embarrassing. it’s a little like telling somebody their goldfish died, or their favorite restaurant closed while they were out of town. ulysses tiatania is rotting in a hole somewhere, thanks to one of hades’ pissy moods and an ill-timed pickup line.
but when she scratches at the back of her neck, flying in the face of any good manners, she doesn’t dillydally in her answer: ]
Yeah.
[ blood and darkness, her hair’s all mattered and gnarly. she really needs to brush it more often. probably wash it, too. ]
Fuck if I know where. Threw him into a pit two hundred years ago and haven’t thought of him since. But, uh, if he’s still sane, we can find him and bring him up.
[ an immensely, incredibly awkward pause. ]
Didn’t think I’d ever have to tell another Lyctor that, y’know? [ maybe, if mercymorn hadn’t (somehow) endeared herself right away, hades would have thrown her into the prison with him. but no, she’s smarter than that. don’t let the enemy regroup. ]
I— oh. [ it wasn’t what she’d expected, but then again, absolutely none of this has been what she’d expected. she’d expected this day to end with her fingers plunged into john’s chest and ripping his heart through his ribcage and dying for her trouble. seeing the sun die, for her trouble. being buried alongside augustine.
being here, on the other side, without him for the first time in a myriad was absolutely not part of the plan. and mercymorn’s always been meticulous about her plans and schedules and itineraries. they’re thoroughly off-book now.
her lips purse over the thought of ulysses thrown in a pit. ]
Honestly? Can’t even say I blame you. I never tried to kill him but he certainly earned a pit-tossing here and there. [ a beat. she’s worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, digging in until she tastes blood. ] He wasn’t part of the rebellion with us, but he died early enough that it hadn’t truly gotten its legs yet. If we haul him out, I could likely convince him. Given enough time, and we do have time.
Who else do you have? In terms of your allies. Is there anyone else, or is it just—
[ her voice cuts off the words, carved off like a paring knife. is it just you. ]
Yeah, well, up to you. You want to haul him out and spread the good word, be my guest.
[ at some point, she’s going to have to reckon with the notion of being a leader again. ruling the underworld is one thing - the shades can’t do much other than shuffle around and obey and live their (not technically) lives. but having people to actually command, delegation to do, a fucking war to fight? that’s…well, she’s out of practice.
the dead, historically speaking, have been patient. hades has had nothing but patience for the last myriad. patience, anger, and grief. she can stomach a little more.
she picks at the label to the bottle, mulling over allies. in terms of people who have more than a snowball’s chance in hell? currently at the bar. in terms of others… ]
Not much. Few of the other Chthonic Gods. Nyx has a place out past the marshes, she comes by sometimes to chat and fuck. Hypnos wakes up every century or so. The Erinyes - three of them - are rarin’ for a fuckin’ fight. Charon’s gone, went fucking insane and dove into the River. Than’s dead, probably. Ever since the Coup. Everyone's listless.
[ not that any of those names mean anything to her yet, but
mercymorn and the erinyes are destined to get on like a house on fire once
they eventually meet. birds of a feather. augustine’s called her a harpy
often enough. as far as this tally of their bedraggled forces go,
though: ]
I’m not very good at motivational speeches. Are you good at motivational
speeches? Pyrrha was always ours, she knew exactly what to say to get
everyone’s chins up. Maybe it’s a military thing.
[ she drains the rest of her drink in one long, aggrieved swallow.
she doesn’t precisely know what to do next, but she knows that she
can’t just sit here in existential ennui for the rest of eternity. for one,
she needs to find augustine the first and give him a piece of her mind for
fucking up the plan and not following right after her. he was supposed to
be a fixture of whatever afterlife she wound up in. and john still needs
his comeuppance for more reasons than she ever realised — ]
I don’t know about you, Hades, but I’m rather pissed off at my best friend
and I think we ought to do something about it. Even if it takes time.
Sweetheart - [ hades chuckles, wheezing and dry, cobwebs and dust. ] Only thing I've been good at lately is getting drunk and playing guitar. [ on the days (or nights, or neither) where everything's too much to bear, she vanishes into a bottle. on the better ones – few and far between – she's able to claw away at the strings of her old G&L.
there's more bad days than good days. a lot more.
being called hades, without any honorifics – that's been a while, too. the shades treat her as king, and while she's never liked getting her ass kissed, she gripped onto something familiar, and hasn't let it go since. her accountants and ministers call her lady. these days, only nyx – when she deigns to appear, making the electricity flicker – calls her hades.
it's nice, that mercymorn does. hades doesn't correct her. ]
Alright then, Kiddie. [ unbeknownst to either of them, somewhere in the vague Up Above, pyrrha dve is meeting the six house and looking at their leader: you, kiddie?
hades snatches her bottle back up, takes a swig, clinks it against mercymorn's finished glass. ]
We want to do this, we do it right. You - [ a finger jabbed in her direction. ] Are going to tell me everything about necromancy. We find your friend, he's either on board or gets locked up. I want everything – how it works, how you do it, how to get through your fucking River. And in return -
[ the shadows around them tighten. the air hums. hades grins. ]
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Oh, thank— [ god, she almost says, but then course-corrects at the last second: ] fuck. The indignity was starting to get to me.
[ all of the saint’s attention is on the clothes, and she barely notes which direction hades stalked off to. she goes rummaging, picking her way through the chaotic racks with a finicky attention-to-detail which contrasts her weary acceptance of the earlier nudity. now that there is an opportunity to be dressed again, why not get it right?
and with enough time, she cobbles together something fitting. the palette is darker than the spring-like colours she’d once favoured (an inevitable touch of hades’ taste seeping through), but she does eventually find a white himation to wrap herself in like a shawl. (like a safety blanket, for how it reminds her of the white canaanite robes.) she tidily hangs up the leather jacket again. she laces up a pair of black combat boots, which don’t fit the saint of joy at all — they’re more like something pyrrha or gideon would’ve enjoyed — but at least they’re sensible. now dressed, mercy heads for the stairs, climbs it and peers out to each storey until she finally finds the king. her gratitude always used to be snappish and peevish and grudging, but this time it comes out like a sigh. ]
Thank you.
no subject
but that’s almost it, other than a few stools, the rest of the room is shockingly empty. on the opposite side of the bar there’s a window overlooking the town; perpendicular is the saddest-looking stage and one of her guitars on a rack. the rest is empty.
hades herself is at the bar, already working on a second glass of something slightly lighter and less viscous than blood. she stops mid-sip when she sees mercymorn enter, setting the tumbler down before she drops it. ]
You remind me of my niece in that.
[ god, she’d give anything to see athena’s smug fucking face. ]
Here. [ she nudges another glass over, pouring from the same bottle. ] Pomegranate liqueur. Old tradition for newcomers.
no subject
an ancient recollection is needling at the edge of her memory. they knew a tiny bit about mythology; bits and scraps, enough for augustine to say dios apate when they meant to distract god, and now she remembers one detail. six pomegranate seeds and— ]
I suppose it’s no particular foul if I drink this and it means I have to stay.
[ a joke, kind of. where else would she go? so she takes the glass, holds it primly, sets her lips against the edge and takes a tentative sip. and god, but it’s sweet: it doesn’t taste like ash. it tastes alive, when so much of the empire is rot. they kill planets wherever they go. her tongue curls, presses against the roof of her mouth, tries to savour every last stinging tartness of that flavour. ]
What’s your niece like?
no subject
[ though it’s also a little strange, that john gaius cared to remember anything about her family, let alone talk to his saints about it. maybe she should clarify, tell mercymorn more about her wife - but no, the very thought stabs hades in what passes for her heart. it’s hardened in the last myriad of solitude, like it’s been calcified with seawater after a shipwreck. and just because she’s taking a lyctor in (ugh) doesn’t mean she’s about to open up like a fuckin’ therapist.
so instead, she cants her head to the side and thinks about athena. ]
Athena. Goddess of wisdom. You ever play cards with somebody and fall for their bluff? Or chess, and you take their queen, and they’ve got some fucking smug look that everything’s going to plan? That, but all the time.
[ she knocks back the rest of her glass, trying to cut off the morose loneliness before it settles in. ] Fucking stuck-up bitch. Miss her like hell.
no subject
this is what john has taken from both of them.
her mouth feels thick and dry as she says, ] Yes. Ours was Cassiopeia— Cassie— but she was so nice about it even as she absolutely tore you apart in chess. Didn’t even have the decency to rub it in our faces or anything. I loved her for it.
[ there’s that tight thread of pain, echoing in both of them. staring into the depths of her glass as she rolls the liquor around within it, she adds, droll and poisonous: ]
I watched her get torn apart by ghosts in the River. We were fighting a Resurrection Beast on the Emperor’s behalf.
Fucking mistake, in hindsight.
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which is why, when hades pours herself another glass and tops mercy off, she takes a moment to clink one rim against another. ] Cheers. To Athena and Cassie.
[ she knocks it back, and – well, alright, maybe she is morose. fucking sue her. ]
You know what they used to be called? The Resurrection Beasts. Back when they were planets, humans used to look up into the stars and name 'em after us. I got – shit, that dinky one at the end of the system. Pluto.
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instead of letting herself think too much about it, mercymorn knocks back the drink. and then turns her attention to that interesting tidbit hades just dropped. chewing on that intellectual curiosity, she says: ]
The dinky one at the end of the system? What, you mean the Ninth House? It’s actually called Pluto? [ john had stolen all of the original names, papered them over with new ones of his own. even her own name had been lost to history and lost to all memory except god’s. ] What are the others?
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hades doesn’t answer immediately, she pours herself another shot, downs it, slams the glass back on the bar hard enough to nearly crack it. ] Let’s see. [ thumb out, counting them off. ] There’s me. Jupiter and Neptune, my brothers. Venus and Mars. Uranus - [ she pauses here to spit onto the ground. her grandfather died before she was born, but fuck him and everything he stood for anyway. ]
Gr - [ but before she can bring up Grandmother Gaia, who she felt die before the world of the living was cut off from her, there’s a rumbling from below them. not quite an earthquake, not quite the grinding of massive gears, more like an enormous beast stirring in its sleep, turning on its side. ]
Fuck. Gimme a sec. [ hades stands - sways a bit, thanks to a few shots of liqueur - and staggers over towards one of the walls. she reaches up and to the left, grabs at something like she’s balling up cloth in her hand, and moves it diagonally down, like she’s tearing a curtain away.
the wall opens up, showing a window. rather than looking over the underworld, or into the next room, it’s - it’s something. fire, and smoke, and flashing lightning far, far in the distance.
there’s a moment’s pause, and then a massive fist - the size of hades’ entire upper body - pounds against the other side of the glass(?). she doesn’t so much as flinch. ]
Hi, Dad.
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[ mercymorn the first does not often curse. she’s too prim and rigid and uptight, with a mouth quick to wash out with soap (and somewhere buried deep under her skin, some ancient instinct and muscle-memory from catholic school rearing its ugly head, although she doesn’t know it). it’s already slipping more in the past hour, though, because she’s tired and dead and out of fucks to give, but she still doesn’t like to do it.
but this does the trick.
that massive fist hits the glass and mercy propels herself backward from the bar, still clutching that tumbler in her hands, almost sloshing some pomegranate liqueur on herself. her fingers tighten on it almost enough to shatter the glass, and her voice hits its own high, supersonic pitch. ]
What the fuck is that??!
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which is – alright, that's stating the fucking obvious, no? of course there's something, there's always something. even a place like the depths of canaan house or the murkiness of the river have dust, or disused equipment, or the endless, writhing mass of moaning ghosts and spirits. but then there's the odd place with nothing: corners of the galaxy where a nebula blots out the distant starts, leaving everything in darkness. the great maw of the resurrection beasts, with heaps and heaps of nothing.
there is Nothing on the other side of the glass. there is Something on the other side of the glass. there are many, many, many Things on the other side of the glass.
hades still does not blink. ]
Ornery fuckin' asshole today, aren't you? [ the Something rages again – pounds once more, then draws away, then leans down. for a moment, there's what could be a face. certainly something with rotting teeth (the size of a human hand), with an unkempt beard (though it might be a stormcloud), with glistening, hate-filled eyes. hades snarls right back. ] Fuck off, old man.
[ the glass, or whatever it is, holds. that's old magic, nearly the oldest there is. cronus, usurped king of the cosmos and leader of the titans, lumbers away. on the other side, there are – more Somethings. many, many more.
hades sighs and glances over her shoulder. ]
You're safe. I promise. [ there's another, lengthy moment where she looks out the window. ] Johnnyboy wasn't the first to overthrow the Gods
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that is what that thing reminds her of. a resurrection beast. ]
It makes me think of Number Eight. It was a giant head, too.
I—
[ it occurs to her, then (and this thought only ever occurs to them rarely), that the beasts once had other names. and john has not bothered to use them. he and the lyctors don’t like to use them. gives the RBs too much power, too much identity, rather than safely thinking of them as mindless angry spirits, all instinct and hunger rather than sentience. ]
You know, I don’t actually know which one was Number Eight. Which planet it used to be. What name. And who the hell was that out there?
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as for mercymorn’s question, hades doesn’t answer for a long, long moment. ]
They’re called the Titans. Our forbearers, the Gods before us. [ until cronus’ paranoia grew too much to bear, until he ordered hestia’s execution - and that, that was a hair too fucking far for all of them. zeus may have led the charge, but it was hades’ knife that cut their father open. ] That one’s Cronus. He’s always been an asshole, but he’s had it out for me ever since I gutted him from cock to fucking chin.
[ hades flicks her wrist, closing the window entirely, and stumbles back to the bar. she fumbles with her glass for a moment, reaches for the bottle, drops her hands. ]
He’s my Dad.
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(she hasn’t felt real glass on her skin in so very long. it’s a rare commodity; not much of the empire has bothered with natural production when plastic does better.) ]
That thing is your father?
[ dripping incredulity and a little bit of disgust in her voice. the topic of parents and children has become more and more alien to her over the years; she’s infertile as all get-out, as notably established. the lyctors can’t reproduce. ]
How do you even… I mean, logistically. Was your mother the size of a skyscraper?
[ the saint of joy, ladies and gents. she’s not great with the whole consolation thing. ]
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Gods don’t play by your rules, kid. [ it’s all the answer mercy’s going to get.
but still, hades goes on. she stands - a little wobbly - and starts to browse the shelves of bottles behind the bar. ] He’s imprisoned down there. All of them are. [ an explanation as much as it is to console a woman who’s not used to this shit. ] When we took over, we wove it into the laws of the universe. Take any fucking thing you find - stars or rocks or flesh - and break it into molecules, and atoms, and fucking protons and quarks and shit, and you’ll see it written. The Titans are imprisoned in Tartarus.
[ what john gaius did with life and death: necromancy, flesh magic, bone shaping, the works - so too did the olympians, eons before. any halfway-decent dictator will tell you that, the first thing you do when seizing ultimate power is make sure nobody can take it. ]
What do you want next, Mercymorn Cristabel?
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she doesn’t remember being m—, doesn’t know what beliefs she once held before the resurrection, but it is faintly distressing to reach the other side and then discover that her God was not the only God. that there are scores more. that john took said gods and brought them to heel; that hades’ own brothers jupiter and neptune have been made monstrous, turned into resurrection beasts. that his crimes were even more than she realised. ]
I want,
[ she says slowly, thinking of her aborted attempt at rebellion and mutiny and deicide, strangled in its womb, and what the hell happened to augustine? ]
to finish what I started. I want to find and recover Augustine Alfred Quinque, if he’s somewhere in your River as well. I want to kill John Gaius. I want to stop whatever he’s done. It sounds like we might be aligned in that.
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[ aligned. hades isn’t sure what to think. the idea of having allies in this immensely desperate fight is weird. she’s been a loner for so long, she’s forgotten what it’s like to have people around her that aren’t just servants and subjects. laughter. jokes. companionship. even before the coup (what others might call the resurrection, or the apocalypse), she didn’t have much. the work. the music. persephone.
idly, she notices that the bottle in her hand is starting to crack. hades sets it on the table - nearly slams it - before it breaks. ]
Yeah, [ she sighs. ] Guess so.
[ hades turns back, leaning against the bar, looking mercymorn in the eye. in another life - in another time - they could have met like this, a bartender and a patron. gotten along fine. not had to fight a war.
then again, the last time she fought in a war, the last time she had allies? she won. ] Augustine Alfred Quinque. I'm guessing he’s another Lyc-
[ wait a fucking second. ]
Oh.
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Yes. The first of us.
[ as she was the second, as he was so wickedly and annoyingly fond of reminding her: that when john gaius had reached out to resurrect them, he had grasped the reedy thread of augustine’s soul first.
then. sounding prim and arch like a schoolmarm, she says: ]
And?
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[ the apology is quick, hurried, and over with before either of them can fully process it. hades hasn’t needed to apologize for anything in eons; it’s almost novel. ]
There was one. While ago. [ hundred years, maybe? it’s to judge how much time passes with any specificity. there’s no sun to rise or set, and while there’s some shades who obsessively mark when not-day ends and not-night begins and not-day begins again, hades doesn’t fuss too much. ]
Big - [ she puts her hands out, miming shoulders at about eye level, set a bit further apart than her frame. ] Barrel-chested fucker. With a beard. Fell down through the fucking Stoma, and the first godsdammed thing out of his mouth was about my legs.
[ granted, he wasn’t too bad on the eyes. in other circumstances, she might’ve taken ulysses titania tetra up on his leering offer. ]
Ring any bells?
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Oh, [ mercymorn breathes out, a helpless little near-laugh under the words. she once thought she’d just be vaguely annoyed at any reminder of the sixth saint. they’d never been particularly close; he and augustine had gotten along much better, and had been a unified front both pointing out that joy was actually the worst sort of killjoy and she was really bringing down the entire vibes of the party and could she not indulge in one measly orgy without criticism?
but after he sacrificed himself, everyone else had laughed less; their smiles dimmed. she’d found that she did miss him, actually, in the way of a puppy who pissed on the carpet but it was still a rather lovable harmless puppy and the mithraeum was worse without him. ]
Ulysses Titania, [ she says. ] Inveterate party boy. He always liked to remind himself that he was alive and we were alive —
[ a sigh, more wistful and hopeful than she expected. ]
Is he still here? He was one of my brother-saints.
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but when she scratches at the back of her neck, flying in the face of any good manners, she doesn’t dillydally in her answer: ]
Yeah.
[ blood and darkness, her hair’s all mattered and gnarly. she really needs to brush it more often. probably wash it, too. ]
Fuck if I know where. Threw him into a pit two hundred years ago and haven’t thought of him since. But, uh, if he’s still sane, we can find him and bring him up.
[ an immensely, incredibly awkward pause. ]
Didn’t think I’d ever have to tell another Lyctor that, y’know? [ maybe, if mercymorn hadn’t (somehow) endeared herself right away, hades would have thrown her into the prison with him. but no, she’s smarter than that. don’t let the enemy regroup. ]
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being here, on the other side, without him for the first time in a myriad was absolutely not part of the plan. and mercymorn’s always been meticulous about her plans and schedules and itineraries. they’re thoroughly off-book now.
her lips purse over the thought of ulysses thrown in a pit. ]
Honestly? Can’t even say I blame you. I never tried to kill him but he certainly earned a pit-tossing here and there. [ a beat. she’s worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, digging in until she tastes blood. ] He wasn’t part of the rebellion with us, but he died early enough that it hadn’t truly gotten its legs yet. If we haul him out, I could likely convince him. Given enough time, and we do have time.
Who else do you have? In terms of your allies. Is there anyone else, or is it just—
[ her voice cuts off the words, carved off like a paring knife. is it just you. ]
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[ at some point, she’s going to have to reckon with the notion of being a leader again. ruling the underworld is one thing - the shades can’t do much other than shuffle around and obey and live their (not technically) lives. but having people to actually command, delegation to do, a fucking war to fight? that’s…well, she’s out of practice.
the dead, historically speaking, have been patient. hades has had nothing but patience for the last myriad. patience, anger, and grief. she can stomach a little more.
she picks at the label to the bottle, mulling over allies. in terms of people who have more than a snowball’s chance in hell? currently at the bar. in terms of others… ]
Not much. Few of the other Chthonic Gods. Nyx has a place out past the marshes, she comes by sometimes to chat and fuck. Hypnos wakes up every century or so. The Erinyes - three of them - are rarin’ for a fuckin’ fight. Charon’s gone, went fucking insane and dove into the River. Than’s dead, probably. Ever since the Coup. Everyone's listless.
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[ not that any of those names mean anything to her yet, but mercymorn and the erinyes are destined to get on like a house on fire once they eventually meet. birds of a feather. augustine’s called her a harpy often enough. as far as this tally of their bedraggled forces go, though: ]
I’m not very good at motivational speeches. Are you good at motivational speeches? Pyrrha was always ours, she knew exactly what to say to get everyone’s chins up. Maybe it’s a military thing.
[ she drains the rest of her drink in one long, aggrieved swallow. she doesn’t precisely know what to do next, but she knows that she can’t just sit here in existential ennui for the rest of eternity. for one, she needs to find augustine the first and give him a piece of her mind for fucking up the plan and not following right after her. he was supposed to be a fixture of whatever afterlife she wound up in. and john still needs his comeuppance for more reasons than she ever realised — ]
I don’t know about you, Hades, but I’m rather pissed off at my best friend and I think we ought to do something about it. Even if it takes time.
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there's more bad days than good days. a lot more.
being called hades, without any honorifics – that's been a while, too. the shades treat her as king, and while she's never liked getting her ass kissed, she gripped onto something familiar, and hasn't let it go since. her accountants and ministers call her lady. these days, only nyx – when she deigns to appear, making the electricity flicker – calls her hades.
it's nice, that mercymorn does. hades doesn't correct her. ]
Alright then, Kiddie. [ unbeknownst to either of them, somewhere in the vague Up Above, pyrrha dve is meeting the six house and looking at their leader: you, kiddie?
hades snatches her bottle back up, takes a swig, clinks it against mercymorn's finished glass. ]
We want to do this, we do it right. You - [ a finger jabbed in her direction. ] Are going to tell me everything about necromancy. We find your friend, he's either on board or gets locked up. I want everything – how it works, how you do it, how to get through your fucking River. And in return -
[ the shadows around them tighten. the air hums. hades grins. ]
I teach you about Deicide.