[ the goddess of the dead is not tall, but she gives off the impression. she doesn’t accessorize with bones, she doesn’t wear grand robes - hell, she doesn’t even wear a laurel wreath, let alone a crown. hades dresses in black (surprise surprise), but for comfort and practicality: sturdy leather jacket, black tank top, black jeans, chunky boots. she doesn’t look particularly royal or divine. with bags under her eyes, with the knots in her hair, she looks like she rolled out of the wrong side of the bed. from a dumpster. in a bog.
she stalks forwards, and fast. not fast like an accomplished duelist, or fast like a lyctor. fast like somebody had recorded her moving and thrown away half the frames. there’s movements missing: she slumps her body forwards, shifts her hips, lifts a foot, and then she’s taken three steps. hades stands above mercy, sets the heel of her boot on mercy’s sternum, and pushes down. it’s not meant to hurt, not meant to knock what passes for wind out of what passes for lungs; it’s just meant to say stay the fuck down.
(could she take a lyctor in a fight? probably. right now, she’s banking on the element of surprise. ]
Something happened that nearly put an end to your whole shitty religion. You’re going to tell me what.
[ hades leans in. behind her, the river styx laps against the beach, red water against black sand. further back, before where there would be a horizon, the river curves up, and up, and up, a waterfall in reverse, and then it fills the sky above them. if you squint, you might just be able to pick out a particularly large ghost, like trying to see an individual ant in a colony. of course, it’s not quite so straightforward - there isn’t really a horizon or reverse waterfall or even a sky. there is no above the afterlife, there’s only the other side of the river. there is no other side of the river, there’s only the realm of the living. ]
Or I will hold your fucking head down and drown you in the River for the rest of eternity.
[ The boot presses against her chest, just enough pressure to pin her like a butterfly to a board. She's still naked, because her Canaanite robe is somewhere back on the Mithraeum (and unbeknownst to her, John is wrapping himself in it right about now), but Mercy doesn't seem fazed. She should feel horrifically vulnerable now, probably, but she doesn't seem to care. The body is simply a tool, an implement, and hers already snapped like a pickaxe breaking against unyielding rock. ]
Technically, I cannot be drowned.
[ It's not growing gills, but she can oxygenate her own bloodcells and bypass the whole tedious matter of lungs and throat and breathing. The main issue is controlling the panic when you're being drowned. But this woman — whoever she is — is not a Revenant Beast, and so Mercy remains in tight cool control of her sanity and faculties. She stares unflinching up at her from the ground, her own hand seized on the black boot, hanging onto it even if she has no hope of flinging the other woman off from here. She considers touching bare flesh and trying her luck a second time, but the jeans cover too much skin. Perhaps she can reach for an ankle—
Then, the question slips its way past Mercy's default stubborn recalcitrant unhelpfulness, and pings something. 'Your whole shitty religion' would have made Cristabel have a conniption, and Mercy cherishes that sense of faded echoed affront. Cristabel only lives on in Mercymorn's memories of her.
But the Saint of Joy herself is something of a heretic these days. So: ]
Wait, nearly put an end to religion? [ Gears turning. If this is BOE (but she knows it isn't), she could be honest. If this were a civilian (but that doesn't fit either), she probably shouldn't mention what she did. She can't sense thanergy or thalergy pulsing off this being, like the denim-and-leather-clad punk is a complete untappable dead zone — is this some kind of long-lost Super Lyctor or Alecto's cousin or something, fuck's sake, she wouldn't be surprised, John has already lied about so much, so maybe he shunted this stranger through the stoma long ago—
But. Fuck it. ]
Well. I mean. That was me. I tried to kill God. It didn't stick.
[ it’s a snarl at first, an explosion of anger and fury like magma bubbling to the surface. hades has never enjoyed the supposed benefits of being a goddess - the adulation, the worship, the fear - but it’s in her blood, and always has been, and always will be. the thought of a slimy little pretender like gaius being treated like her family makes her nauseous, even if he hadn’t perverted the natural order, defied her own authority and power, likely killed her family, et-fucking-cetera.
the rage on her face slides off in favor of open, fish-mouthed shock. it just about knocks the breath out of her, and hades realizes a few things in quick succession: firstly, that something nearly killed the emperor undying. second, that thing was one of his own saints. and third, that the operative word is nearly, and that the fucker’s still alive. ]
You. [ she needs to repeat it, verify it. hades lessens the pressure of her boot on the woman’s chest. ] A Lyctor. Tried to kill John Gaius.
[ there’s another moment of silence, and then she laughs.
it starts low: a tremor in her shoulders and a quiet rumble, like any joy is being slowly strained out of her. it catches in her throat, choking and squawking, and hades loses her balance, stumbles off of mercy’s chest and bends down in a valiant - and vain - effort to steady her breathing. and it just keeps going, until she’s fallen on her ass into the sands of the riverbank, face red and hot, shrieking in hysterics with laughter that twists into sobbing and back into laughter again. ]
[ freed from the pressure of that boot, mercy sniffs and draws herself up to a seated position, legs curled primly beneath her in an attempt at dignity. the laughter punctures some of that anger and tension stewing between them, like a popped balloon now shrieking as it deflates. it gives her space to consider the matter of clothing — she could construct something out of viscera, she's an excellent flesh magician — but that would be far too hideous and messy. (meat dresses! ugh!) best just to leave it as is, for now.
so she just sits there, naked and huffy and waiting out hades' laughter, like someone who isn't in on the joke. her mouth still tastes bitter with defeat, with the knowledge that even centuries of planning and preparation had not been enough to do in john gaius. she wonders, vaguely, if augustine is going to come tumbling down that inverted waterfall next. if so, she hopes he hits some rocks on the way down. ]
Yes, all of that is correct, [ she says tightly, during a brief break in the other woman's hysterical wheezing laughter. her mouth is pursed and pressed thin, all her pointed expression as stern and severe as a teacher frowning at a student gone too-loud and disruptive. (she doesn't realise yet, of course, that this is a goddess and the goddess is so many more myriads older than her.) she repeats her question once the gasping dies down, stubborn as only the saint of joy can be: ]
Honestly. Who are you? I don't recognise you, and you don't feel human, but you don't feel like a Lyctor either.
Blood and Darkness. [ it’s an ancient curse, murmured so quietly that mercy might not be able to hear. and then, a bit louder: ] You’re all right, kid. [ which is not something that hades would thought she’d ever say about one of gaius’ lackeys. she settles back, resting her weight on her shoulders, like somebody at third house enjoying an afternoon at the beach. for a long moment, she’s quiet. what to tell the lyctor? on the one hand, hades doesn’t feel any godsdammed reason to be honest with somebody who’s spent the last myriad fucking the universe over. (a vague memory stirs, of that lyctor who came down a while ago and immediately started hitting on her. ultimatus? lysistrata? finneas? something like that. whatever, he’s still in the pit hades tossed him into.)
on the other, if she had killed gaius - or tried to, at least - then maybe she’s proven herself to take a couple answers. ]
Yeah. [ she snorts. ] You wouldn’t. [ it’s said without any real venom, but undeniable bitterness. hades stands up, pushing herself to her feet in a smooth motion - and a slight wince when she feels her joints crack. she reaches down to grab the lyctor, to pull her to her feet, and then stops. manners.
instead, she extends a hand. when mercy’s risen, hades looks at her in (and maybe through) the eye. ]
Hades, Goddess of the Dead. The real one. Welcome to the Underworld.
[ Those fucked-up eyes of Mercy's are just as fucked-up as ever: stormy grey mingled with red, ghastly and cloudy and simmering with perpetual resentment as she grudgingly accepts the hand and climbs back to her feet. Apparently, even beyond the River, even after death, she's still hooked up to the battery of her cavalier.
(John really did do a number on the afterlife, didn't he? Wherever she is, Cristabel never really died. Part of her was still here, a sliver in Mercymorn's soul, a knife beneath her fingernails.) ]
The real—
[ She splutters, improbably still offended on John's behalf, even though she shouldn't really give a damn what the man thinks anymore. And she tries to grasp onto that name — Hades — thinking it ought to ping some distant recollection, some mythological awareness on her part. But everything that happened before the Resurrection remains frustratingly blank and empty. John had always been the only one who remembered that time; any information they had about the bygone era came metered through him. ]
So this isn't the River? I mean, it looked similar enough, but...
[ The gears are starting to turn. It's a puzzle and she does, actually, love puzzles. ]
[ and just like that, her good mood gets snuffed out. ] Of course it’s the fucking River, what else would it be? The River Styx, if you want to use it’s proper fucking name, not that anybody remembers anymore. [ it’s strange. hades isn’t too put out that her own name’s been forgotten, pushed aside in favor of the usurper. it’s what emperors do, remake their conquests in their own image. but for something so seemingly innocuous as ‘styx’ to be purposefully removed from a society - fuck her, that’s petty. not even her brother pulled that sort of shit.
(a pang, a throb in her heart. she wonders if zeus is alive. even hopes.)
she breathes short, huffed breaths, forcibly willing herself to calm the fuck down. after a moment, hades pulls her jacket off and unceremoniously shoves it into mercy’s hands. ] Put it on. You’ve got nice tits and all, but you look fucking pathetic. [ it exposes her own tattoos as well, up her arm: bricks starting at her wrist, cerberus’ three heads on her bicep, gears on her shoulder. she turns away from the shore - top of a tree on her back, covered by her tank top - and looks inward. the beach lasts too long: two hundred, five hundred, a thousand feet of sand and rock. it slopes up towards the cliffs a ways away, where the shoreline should be. ]
Styx used to pass by where we’re standing, up there. Part of it even went further, through town and right up to the palace. Until your fucking cocksucker boyfriend blocked it up so he could live out his edgelord necromancy self-insert dreams and play God.
[ the leather jacket isn't quite ample enough, but mercy is very short, and so it balances out to cover most of her: she shrugs into the coat and it hangs just to the top of her thighs, offering the lyctor a modicum of decency. with an airy sniff, she zips it shut — and finds, much to her dismay, that the sleeves hang over her hands, making her look like a child playing dress-up with a parent's clothing. they're going to have to do something about this. ]
He is not my boyfriend.
[ itscomplicated.jpg. ]
I didn't actually know there were any gods apart from Him — him — in the universe. Sorry. Call it an act of insult due to ignorance, not willful insult. [ apologies are rare enough from mercymorn, but perhaps death and washing up in someone else's dominion does have a certain humbling effect. and she likes to be precise. when she actually intends offense, she wants you to know it was intended, and therefore vice versa. ]
[ it’s another brief moment of anger: her nostrils flare, her mouth opens, and hades is ready to tear the lyctor a new asshole, before she corrects herself and fucking apologizes. it’s enough to give hades pause. she doesn’t acknowledge it verbally, doesn’t pat her on the fucking head or anything, but she gives a single nod. apology accepted, at least for the time being.
she looks a little more approachable without the jacket. less feral, at least. when hades crosses her arms, it’s almost a little sheepish. ]
There used to be more of us. [ her voice is tight - control, emotion, controlled emotion. ] My brothers. My family. My fucking wife. I haven’t seen them in ten thousand years, ever since John shitting Gaius fucked everything up. [ she doesn’t say that she misses them, that she doesn’t know if they’re alive. the lyctor might not be an enemy, but she sure as seven hells isn’t hades’ therapist. ]
Come on. [ she jerks her head away from the beach towards a long, winding path up the rocks and cliffside. ] Let’s get some grub and figure out what to do with you. Got a name, kid?
[ and there is that affronted screech; mercymorn practically ought to trademark it at this point. ]
I am ten thousand years old, [ she hisses, even if she's objectively aware that, to a real live god, that's likely just as much a blink of an eye as the mortal infants were to her. old habits are still hard to break.
but she falls into line with another muttering grumble, picking her way along the rocks and the uneven path behind hades as they start making their way upward. sometimes the jagged rocks cut her bare feet and she leaves bloodied red footprints in her wake; the wounds automatically seal themselves up a moment later, and she doesn't seem to mind. with only a flicker of effort, she hardens her calluses and keeps going.
she's quiet, stewing over the theological implications of what she's just learned, before she inevitably pipes up again with a naggingly curious question. cristabel really ought to have been here. ]
So what happened? Did they just... disappear, after the Resurrection?
[ there’s a thing that people like them - beings like them - can do. gods, saints, lyctors, they can wear their immortality like a cloak. to the little ones that are born and live and die, it’s like seeing a thousand-year-old cathedral: the knowledge of time, and one’s place in it, and how incongruous the two are when compared.
hades doesn’t stop walking, she barely turns her head to shoot mercymorn a withering look over an ink-stained shoulder. mercymorn is old like cathedrals and the ruins of canaan house; john gaius is old like the empire and the foundations of necromantic theory. hades is old like the stars, and the orbits of the planets, and the darkness in between them. she has height, weight, girth - and for a long, terrible moment, she has something else.
the goddess of the dead repeats herself: ] Kid. [ and continues walking, (close to) normal once more.
she doesn’t mind the blood, the shores of the river have seen worse. it’s even nice to smell and see fresh blood again, to feed the dirt beneath their feet. her own boots are sturdy and steady, though they barely make an indent as the rocks turn into something approaching an actual path, and then stairs. in the distance, the first few homes in the capital (and only) city of the underworld: accountants, servants, shit like that. ]
Fuck if I know. When piss-eyes clogged up Styx, it kept me from crossing over. Can barely get waist-deep before a billion souls are trying to cop a feel and drag me down on his orders, and I ain’t here for shitty dubcon. Hauling you out was the furthest I’ve made it in ages, and only because he was fuckin’ occupied. [ she shrugs, almost contemplative. ] Codifying necromancy’s always going to be your boyfriend’s biggest crime, but honestly, house arrest just stings.
[ in that one fleeting strange moment where hades had seemed something else, mercymorn was suddenly reminded of nothing else so much as the revenant beasts: something old and ancient and hungry and furious and alien. it made that yammering animal panic rise up in the back of her throat like bile, and so she bit down hard enough to draw blood, to anchor herself back in her body, to prevent that hindbrain reaction—
but thankfully the moment passes, and they keep walking up the stairs (stairs!) and towards this odd city across the river. despite everything, she finds herself morbidly, absolutely intrigued. she wishes she had a clipboard to start scribbling notes.
and 'piss-eyes' is an indignity for which she cannot stand, but thankfully mercymorn slips on a patch of slick wet stone, catches herself by clutching at the fabric of the god's tank top, then coughs and regains her balance. all raised hackles and metaphorical frazzled feathers and still trying to muster her dignity together. ]
I'm more of a cat person, personally. Why?
[ the only creature of unconditional love she was accustomed to was her cavalier. ]
[ it’s what passes for dusk in the underworld, when gloom only grows and what unnatural light comes from above vanishes. their way is lit by lamps: glass bulbs with hundreds of fireflies, with flame, with glowworms. the palace itself has something like electricity, though it won’t turn on until hades is back. in the old days, this is when the gates would shut, and when cerberus could stretch his feet before finding a place to sleep. now, there’s little point - but old habits die hard, and cerberus is bound to be somewhere nearby.
and really, what’s the point of talking to a lyctor if hades can’t mess with her?
hades doesn’t offer an explanation. just grins - wide, bright, and a little fucking feral - and whistles sharply, two fingers in her mouth. they can hear cerberus coming: first the thundering clamor of his massive paws, then the barking and panting of three heads. it doesn’t take long before he bounds into view at top speed, rounding the corner of a building and barreling straight towards them.
he’s massive, heads about even with hades’ shoulders. the leftmost one - always the inquisitive one - notices mercymorn first, and gives her the full attention of three heads and a few hundred pounds of beastly canine muscle. ]
Hi, goober. [ hades grins, showing more warmth in a single motion than she’s shown to mercy so far, and reaches to scratch under one head. ] This is Cerberus, my guard-dog. Keeps souls from getting out. [ there’s a meaningful pause. ] You know, you never told me your name.
[ that dog — that giant, impossible dog — comes barrelling in and mercymorn takes an instinctive step backwards, horrified, even as the left head leans forward and shoves a wet nose into her shoulder. the fact that she's wearing hades' jacket makes it even worse; makes her smell like their master, and makes the dog even more content to slobber all over her in a cheerful manner. she raises her hands as if to try shoving the face away, then looks at the jaws and and sharp teeth and reconsiders. cerberus licks that raised hand, and mercy's mortified expression makes it look like she could shrivel into dust right here as we speak.
she takes another skittish step back, and tries to primly wipe her hands off on the jacket. she needs a wash. she needs a shower. she needs clothes. she can still feel the drying saliva on her. ]
Oh.
[ then: ]
I didn't? [ there's a blank look in her hurricane eyes. normally, she doesn't ever have to introduce herself. people know her. the cohort snaps to attention, they even crack their heels together whenever she passes by, it's very cute. but then she gathers the shreds of her dignity (paltry), and knows the goddess will likely laugh at her, but: ]
Mercymorn Cristabel the First, Saint of Joy, Second Saint to Serve the King Undying, although I suppose I'm not serving any longer.
[ at the very least, hades has the wisdom (and, temporarily, the self-control) to not laugh at the lyctor’s confusion and panic. though she does take a moment to absolutely dote on cerberus: ] Who’s a good boy, you are, yes you are you dumbass, I love you so much.
[ speaking around half an octave higher than normal, faux baby-talk and everything. because if she’s going to make an ass out of herself to mortify her guest, hades is going to go all out.
(also, that jacket definitely has worse on it than canine slobber.)
she keeps one hand underneath cerberus’ middle chin, thumb looped around his collar. there’s another moment as he continues to sniff and investigate the lyctor, before hades takes mercy and yanks him back. ] Down, boy.
[ hades looks at the lyctor - at mercymorn - top to bottom, mostly-nude and in her own jacket and all. ] No, [ she says, and it’s almost kind. ] You’re not. No saints here, Mercymorn Cristabel.
No saints. So how does this work? Are you really here alone, except for the dog?
[ Mercy cranes her head, peering around the eponymous Hades, and there's the sense that she's gathering data, jotting meticulous mental notes on what the real-world underworld (afterlife?) is like.
Because her familiarity with myth is, frankly, abysmal. So much had been lost to time: the Blood of Eden carried off some of the only data archives from before the Resurrection, and the rest was destroyed or doled out to them by God Himself from memory alone. Incomprehensible jokes and references. His favourite poetry. Everything had come metered from their deity's lips and, for a woman who was admittedly a neurotic control freak, it had gotten a little tiresome. There was so much she wanted to know. ]
I don't think he even knew there was something else on the other end of the River. Not like this, I mean. Also, where can we get some clothes, because this is starting to be ridiculous.
[ There is just something about wearing a jacket and nothing else which seems to emphasise your nakedness, more than fix it. ]
I told you. [ it’s said slowly, as if speaking to a child. ] There’s the souls.
[ they’ve been quietly surrounding the pair without fuss or noise, flicking in and out of corporeality like fireflies, or embers, or the after-image when a screen flicks off. it’s not like in the River, where souls moan and writhe and grope. they’re just - there, milling about, passing by. on instinct, they give hades and cerberus a wide berth, crossing to the other side of what passes for a street. no blood, no bones, just shades and hoods and robes. ]
Yeah, alright. [ she lets go of cerberus at long last. the dog gives mercymorn one last sniff and look before hades whistles and jerks her head. he drops back down, ears tucked to the sides of his head in embarrassment, and obediently trots away. ] There’s some stuff in the palace. Come on.
[ as they approach, the city starts to feel more - well, more. what had been shadows form into actual buildings: brick and stone and girded metal. stalls, shopfronts, alleyways, and people to run them. the shades here are a bit more animated, chatting quietly amongst themselves. sometimes, one even had their hood down: a blonde blacksmith hammering on an anvil; a girl sitting on a low roof; a couple laughing over a book. all of them are translucent, all of them flicker. only hades and mercymorn seem to be whole. ]
Used to just be meadows down here. Most people live dull fucking lives, just got to stand around forever. But turns out that eventually, you’ll go fucking mad without something to do, and - [ she shrugs. ] They started to build.
Interesting, [ she says slowly, thoughtfully, head pivoting on a swivel as they move through the city and the visuals start to solidify. Trying to take it all in, and skittering a couple steps away from the shades if one of them drifts a little too close to her — she doesn't seem to have the same invisible forcefield around her that Hades and the dog do. Even if they're not hungry and grasping, Mercy still has a healthy fear of ghosts. (Cassiopeia, she always remembers Cassiopeia; that vision is carved permanently into her memory.) ]
So it's a bottleneck. They're all building up and stuck down here where they're not supposed to be. Like he's constructed a dam in the River.
[ She sounds like a doctor, compiling symptoms and trying to diagnose an illness. ]
[ it takes a moment for hades to register what mercymorn is theorizing. and it's not fully incorrect: gaius has fucked the afterlife a whole new asshole, but even a usurping god can't reach past the river. ]
Everyone in the River is supposed to be here. That's why it's a fuckin' river, it flows. [ separates the living from the dead on a metaphysical level. there's always been ways into the underworld: passageways around the back for the likes of orpheus and heracles and diana. but now, there's only the river, and the stoma blocking the path at the bottom. ] I say used to, I mean fucking used to. Back when I started.
[ when the blood of her father was still drying on her hands. ]
Nyx ruled the afterlife back then, it was just - black, far as the eye can't see. This was - fuck, I don't know. [ it's been too long, and time doesn't work right down here. ] Thirty, maybe forty thousand years back. I waded across Styx and brought light with me.
I hate sounding a fool, but this admittedly isn't my specialty, [ the lyctor confesses, world-weary, as they skirt their way down the streets and towards the palace and towards some semblance of dignity for her. ] Spirit magic is Augustine the First's realm, and out of all of us, he knows the most about the River. If only he were here—
[ and for that lingering second, there's a different cast to the persnickety woman's voice: a kind of bittersweet longing. a kind of homesickness.
and then she rips that sentimentality out of her own voice, and reorients. she hardens again, like a wound scabbed over, and starts digging for information: ] So. Let me get this straight. First there was nothing, and then you brought light, and the souls started building this... this afterlife, this city. And it functioned, and souls crossed over from my world to yours, but now the cycle's not working. You're alone with the souls. Do new ones not come unless the stoma takes them?
[ mercymorn was not a spirit magician, but she was tinkering and chipping away at this hypothesis and her understanding of The Situation™ regardless. john gaius used the dead like ammunition, like so much kindling for the flame of his boundless power. so maybe he was chewing them up on the other side, before they could even get into the river and safely to wherever they needed to go, to hades' domain where they belonged after death.
which would make sense; necromancy had always been built on consumption, in her experience. ]
Yeah. [ she keeps her voice steady, but she still sounds tired. ancient and weary, like fabric that’s been run worn and ragged; a spaceship with a dying engine. hades has been at this for so long: first ruling, and now desperately trying to console her shades, that it’s all she knows.
she has long, long, long forgotten the sun on her skin. ] They trickle through sometimes. Not many. We had almost twenty last year.
[ twenty new souls in a year. felt like a gift.
the palace looms in front of them, a massive construct of obsidian and black marble. it doesn’t look built so much as it was carved, or even grown. no seams and no bricks, just cold, dark stone, rising out of the not-earth. it came nearly out of nowhere: if a building could sneak up on somebody, it sure as hell did. in the mist and gloom, it looks like a void, a black hole, a ghost.
hades trudges forwards as she has every day for myriads, flicking her wrist with well-practiced apathy. the gates, rusted iron and remnants of gold, creak open. it’s brighter inside, gemstone lighting flicking on as they pass by some unseen sensor. there’s morgues louder than this.
after another minute or so of walking through semi-lit hallways, they come to a patch of knotwork and ruins, a circle ten feet in diameter. hades steps onto it, motions for mercymorn to follow, motions for mercymorn to stop.
she jerks her head up, and the circle seamlessly separate from the floor and starts to rise. ]
[ she joins hades on that platform, and catches her balance on a graceful foot as the gravity shifts and tugs at them. she’s very short next to the other woman (or woman-shaped thing), and it’s all the more apparent now that they’re standing shoulder-to-shoulder. she finds her hands drifting to each other, fingers catching and fidgeting restlessly as they wait. it all feels so queerly unfamiliar— like she’s an employee visiting from a rival firm, or something. ]
I’m not even going to ask you how it operates. And frankly, part of me was expecting more… skulls? More underworld decor, at the least.
[ john had such a Thing about the skulls; he’d have liked the goth bullshit of this obsidian and marble. mercy had always thrown up her hands about the aesthetics of it all; she would’ve worked in a blank clean metal lab and not cared about how it looked. ]
Because I’m the King. [ simple, straightforward, easy. ] And I said so. [ king of shadows, king of shades, hades is king of the underworld. but more than that, hades is the underworld. just as she is the river styx: cut her veins and the river flows, strike her down and the ground crumbles. l'état, c'est fucking moi. ]
What the fuck would I want with more skulls?
[ the elevator goes up three floors. the ceiling gives way, opening up like a camera’s aperture, big enough for the platform. and then, as they continue to rise, it closes below. first is up to another hallway, stretching out in all directions. then a library - dusty and disused, but undeniably massive, endless rows of books and parchment and scrolls. it finally stops (definitely not on the top floor) somewhere a little smaller than the grand halls below. there’s more lights, and it’s a touch warmer. if anything, it’s approaching comfortable.
hades steps off impatiently before the elevator’s fully stopped. she walks thirty feet, past a couple of worn couches and side tables, and then to a door. it’s nowhere near the cavernous entrance, just - a door.
inside: rows of hangers, racks of clothes. it’s not organized well, worn stola and ragged himations next to jeans, next to overcoats - but it is massive. In the center, a spiral staircase going up. and, somehow, down. ]
Help yourself. [ she heads straight to the stairs, pausing only to grab another jacket along the way. ] I need a fucking drink.
[ 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.
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[ the goddess of the dead is not tall, but she gives off the impression. she doesn’t accessorize with bones, she doesn’t wear grand robes - hell, she doesn’t even wear a laurel wreath, let alone a crown. hades dresses in black (surprise surprise), but for comfort and practicality: sturdy leather jacket, black tank top, black jeans, chunky boots. she doesn’t look particularly royal or divine. with bags under her eyes, with the knots in her hair, she looks like she rolled out of the wrong side of the bed. from a dumpster. in a bog.
she stalks forwards, and fast. not fast like an accomplished duelist, or fast like a lyctor. fast like somebody had recorded her moving and thrown away half the frames. there’s movements missing: she slumps her body forwards, shifts her hips, lifts a foot, and then she’s taken three steps. hades stands above mercy, sets the heel of her boot on mercy’s sternum, and pushes down. it’s not meant to hurt, not meant to knock what passes for wind out of what passes for lungs; it’s just meant to say stay the fuck down.
(could she take a lyctor in a fight? probably. right now, she’s banking on the element of surprise. ]
Something happened that nearly put an end to your whole shitty religion. You’re going to tell me what.
[ hades leans in. behind her, the river styx laps against the beach, red water against black sand. further back, before where there would be a horizon, the river curves up, and up, and up, a waterfall in reverse, and then it fills the sky above them. if you squint, you might just be able to pick out a particularly large ghost, like trying to see an individual ant in a colony. of course, it’s not quite so straightforward - there isn’t really a horizon or reverse waterfall or even a sky. there is no above the afterlife, there’s only the other side of the river. there is no other side of the river, there’s only the realm of the living. ]
Or I will hold your fucking head down and drown you in the River for the rest of eternity.
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Technically, I cannot be drowned.
[ It's not growing gills, but she can oxygenate her own bloodcells and bypass the whole tedious matter of lungs and throat and breathing. The main issue is controlling the panic when you're being drowned. But this woman — whoever she is — is not a Revenant Beast, and so Mercy remains in tight cool control of her sanity and faculties. She stares unflinching up at her from the ground, her own hand seized on the black boot, hanging onto it even if she has no hope of flinging the other woman off from here. She considers touching bare flesh and trying her luck a second time, but the jeans cover too much skin. Perhaps she can reach for an ankle—
Then, the question slips its way past Mercy's default stubborn recalcitrant unhelpfulness, and pings something. 'Your whole shitty religion' would have made Cristabel have a conniption, and Mercy cherishes that sense of faded echoed affront. Cristabel only lives on in Mercymorn's memories of her.
But the Saint of Joy herself is something of a heretic these days. So: ]
Wait, nearly put an end to religion? [ Gears turning. If this is BOE (but she knows it isn't), she could be honest. If this were a civilian (but that doesn't fit either), she probably shouldn't mention what she did. She can't sense thanergy or thalergy pulsing off this being, like the denim-and-leather-clad punk is a complete untappable dead zone — is this some kind of long-lost Super Lyctor or Alecto's cousin or something, fuck's sake, she wouldn't be surprised, John has already lied about so much, so maybe he shunted this stranger through the stoma long ago—
But. Fuck it. ]
Well. I mean. That was me. I tried to kill God. It didn't stick.
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[ it’s a snarl at first, an explosion of anger and fury like magma bubbling to the surface. hades has never enjoyed the supposed benefits of being a goddess - the adulation, the worship, the fear - but it’s in her blood, and always has been, and always will be. the thought of a slimy little pretender like gaius being treated like her family makes her nauseous, even if he hadn’t perverted the natural order, defied her own authority and power, likely killed her family, et-fucking-cetera.
the rage on her face slides off in favor of open, fish-mouthed shock. it just about knocks the breath out of her, and hades realizes a few things in quick succession: firstly, that something nearly killed the emperor undying. second, that thing was one of his own saints. and third, that the operative word is nearly, and that the fucker’s still alive. ]
You. [ she needs to repeat it, verify it. hades lessens the pressure of her boot on the woman’s chest. ] A Lyctor. Tried to kill John Gaius.
[ there’s another moment of silence, and then she laughs.
it starts low: a tremor in her shoulders and a quiet rumble, like any joy is being slowly strained out of her. it catches in her throat, choking and squawking, and hades loses her balance, stumbles off of mercy’s chest and bends down in a valiant - and vain - effort to steady her breathing. and it just keeps going, until she’s fallen on her ass into the sands of the riverbank, face red and hot, shrieking in hysterics with laughter that twists into sobbing and back into laughter again. ]
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so she just sits there, naked and huffy and waiting out hades' laughter, like someone who isn't in on the joke. her mouth still tastes bitter with defeat, with the knowledge that even centuries of planning and preparation had not been enough to do in john gaius. she wonders, vaguely, if augustine is going to come tumbling down that inverted waterfall next. if so, she hopes he hits some rocks on the way down. ]
Yes, all of that is correct, [ she says tightly, during a brief break in the other woman's hysterical wheezing laughter. her mouth is pursed and pressed thin, all her pointed expression as stern and severe as a teacher frowning at a student gone too-loud and disruptive. (she doesn't realise yet, of course, that this is a goddess and the goddess is so many more myriads older than her.) she repeats her question once the gasping dies down, stubborn as only the saint of joy can be: ]
Honestly. Who are you? I don't recognise you, and you don't feel human, but you don't feel like a Lyctor either.
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on the other, if she had killed gaius - or tried to, at least - then maybe she’s proven herself to take a couple answers. ]
Yeah. [ she snorts. ] You wouldn’t. [ it’s said without any real venom, but undeniable bitterness. hades stands up, pushing herself to her feet in a smooth motion - and a slight wince when she feels her joints crack. she reaches down to grab the lyctor, to pull her to her feet, and then stops. manners.
instead, she extends a hand. when mercy’s risen, hades looks at her in (and maybe through) the eye. ]
Hades, Goddess of the Dead. The real one. Welcome to the Underworld.
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(John really did do a number on the afterlife, didn't he? Wherever she is, Cristabel never really died. Part of her was still here, a sliver in Mercymorn's soul, a knife beneath her fingernails.) ]
The real—
[ She splutters, improbably still offended on John's behalf, even though she shouldn't really give a damn what the man thinks anymore. And she tries to grasp onto that name — Hades — thinking it ought to ping some distant recollection, some mythological awareness on her part. But everything that happened before the Resurrection remains frustratingly blank and empty. John had always been the only one who remembered that time; any information they had about the bygone era came metered through him. ]
So this isn't the River? I mean, it looked similar enough, but...
[ The gears are starting to turn. It's a puzzle and she does, actually, love puzzles. ]
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[ and just like that, her good mood gets snuffed out. ] Of course it’s the fucking River, what else would it be? The River Styx, if you want to use it’s proper fucking name, not that anybody remembers anymore. [ it’s strange. hades isn’t too put out that her own name’s been forgotten, pushed aside in favor of the usurper. it’s what emperors do, remake their conquests in their own image. but for something so seemingly innocuous as ‘styx’ to be purposefully removed from a society - fuck her, that’s petty. not even her brother pulled that sort of shit.
(a pang, a throb in her heart. she wonders if zeus is alive. even hopes.)
she breathes short, huffed breaths, forcibly willing herself to calm the fuck down. after a moment, hades pulls her jacket off and unceremoniously shoves it into mercy’s hands. ] Put it on. You’ve got nice tits and all, but you look fucking pathetic. [ it exposes her own tattoos as well, up her arm: bricks starting at her wrist, cerberus’ three heads on her bicep, gears on her shoulder. she turns away from the shore - top of a tree on her back, covered by her tank top - and looks inward. the beach lasts too long: two hundred, five hundred, a thousand feet of sand and rock. it slopes up towards the cliffs a ways away, where the shoreline should be. ]
Styx used to pass by where we’re standing, up there. Part of it even went further, through town and right up to the palace. Until your fucking cocksucker boyfriend blocked it up so he could live out his edgelord necromancy self-insert dreams and play God.
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He is not my boyfriend.
[ itscomplicated.jpg. ]
I didn't actually know there were any gods apart from Him — him — in the universe. Sorry. Call it an act of insult due to ignorance, not willful insult. [ apologies are rare enough from mercymorn, but perhaps death and washing up in someone else's dominion does have a certain humbling effect. and she likes to be precise. when she actually intends offense, she wants you to know it was intended, and therefore vice versa. ]
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she looks a little more approachable without the jacket. less feral, at least. when hades crosses her arms, it’s almost a little sheepish. ]
There used to be more of us. [ her voice is tight - control, emotion, controlled emotion. ] My brothers. My family. My fucking wife. I haven’t seen them in ten thousand years, ever since John shitting Gaius fucked everything up. [ she doesn’t say that she misses them, that she doesn’t know if they’re alive. the lyctor might not be an enemy, but she sure as seven hells isn’t hades’ therapist. ]
Come on. [ she jerks her head away from the beach towards a long, winding path up the rocks and cliffside. ] Let’s get some grub and figure out what to do with you. Got a name, kid?
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[ and there is that affronted screech; mercymorn practically ought to trademark it at this point. ]
I am ten thousand years old, [ she hisses, even if she's objectively aware that, to a real live god, that's likely just as much a blink of an eye as the mortal infants were to her. old habits are still hard to break.
but she falls into line with another muttering grumble, picking her way along the rocks and the uneven path behind hades as they start making their way upward. sometimes the jagged rocks cut her bare feet and she leaves bloodied red footprints in her wake; the wounds automatically seal themselves up a moment later, and she doesn't seem to mind. with only a flicker of effort, she hardens her calluses and keeps going.
she's quiet, stewing over the theological implications of what she's just learned, before she inevitably pipes up again with a naggingly curious question. cristabel really ought to have been here. ]
So what happened? Did they just... disappear, after the Resurrection?
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hades doesn’t stop walking, she barely turns her head to shoot mercymorn a withering look over an ink-stained shoulder. mercymorn is old like cathedrals and the ruins of canaan house; john gaius is old like the empire and the foundations of necromantic theory. hades is old like the stars, and the orbits of the planets, and the darkness in between them. she has height, weight, girth - and for a long, terrible moment, she has something else.
the goddess of the dead repeats herself: ] Kid. [ and continues walking, (close to) normal once more.
she doesn’t mind the blood, the shores of the river have seen worse. it’s even nice to smell and see fresh blood again, to feed the dirt beneath their feet. her own boots are sturdy and steady, though they barely make an indent as the rocks turn into something approaching an actual path, and then stairs. in the distance, the first few homes in the capital (and only) city of the underworld: accountants, servants, shit like that. ]
Fuck if I know. When piss-eyes clogged up Styx, it kept me from crossing over. Can barely get waist-deep before a billion souls are trying to cop a feel and drag me down on his orders, and I ain’t here for shitty dubcon. Hauling you out was the furthest I’ve made it in ages, and only because he was fuckin’ occupied. [ she shrugs, almost contemplative. ] Codifying necromancy’s always going to be your boyfriend’s biggest crime, but honestly, house arrest just stings.
Hey. Do you like dogs?
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but thankfully the moment passes, and they keep walking up the stairs (stairs!) and towards this odd city across the river. despite everything, she finds herself morbidly, absolutely intrigued. she wishes she had a clipboard to start scribbling notes.
and 'piss-eyes' is an indignity for which she cannot stand, but thankfully mercymorn slips on a patch of slick wet stone, catches herself by clutching at the fabric of the god's tank top, then coughs and regains her balance. all raised hackles and metaphorical frazzled feathers and still trying to muster her dignity together. ]
I'm more of a cat person, personally. Why?
[ the only creature of unconditional love she was accustomed to was her cavalier. ]
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and really, what’s the point of talking to a lyctor if hades can’t mess with her?
hades doesn’t offer an explanation. just grins - wide, bright, and a little fucking feral - and whistles sharply, two fingers in her mouth. they can hear cerberus coming: first the thundering clamor of his massive paws, then the barking and panting of three heads. it doesn’t take long before he bounds into view at top speed, rounding the corner of a building and barreling straight towards them.
he’s massive, heads about even with hades’ shoulders. the leftmost one - always the inquisitive one - notices mercymorn first, and gives her the full attention of three heads and a few hundred pounds of beastly canine muscle. ]
Hi, goober. [ hades grins, showing more warmth in a single motion than she’s shown to mercy so far, and reaches to scratch under one head. ] This is Cerberus, my guard-dog. Keeps souls from getting out. [ there’s a meaningful pause. ] You know, you never told me your name.
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she takes another skittish step back, and tries to primly wipe her hands off on the jacket. she needs a wash. she needs a shower. she needs clothes. she can still feel the drying saliva on her. ]
Oh.
[ then: ]
I didn't? [ there's a blank look in her hurricane eyes. normally, she doesn't ever have to introduce herself. people know her. the cohort snaps to attention, they even crack their heels together whenever she passes by, it's very cute. but then she gathers the shreds of her dignity (paltry), and knows the goddess will likely laugh at her, but: ]
Mercymorn Cristabel the First, Saint of Joy, Second Saint to Serve the King Undying, although I suppose I'm not serving any longer.
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[ speaking around half an octave higher than normal, faux baby-talk and everything. because if she’s going to make an ass out of herself to mortify her guest, hades is going to go all out.
(also, that jacket definitely has worse on it than canine slobber.)
she keeps one hand underneath cerberus’ middle chin, thumb looped around his collar. there’s another moment as he continues to sniff and investigate the lyctor, before hades takes mercy and yanks him back. ] Down, boy.
[ hades looks at the lyctor - at mercymorn - top to bottom, mostly-nude and in her own jacket and all. ] No, [ she says, and it’s almost kind. ] You’re not. No saints here, Mercymorn Cristabel.
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[ Mercy cranes her head, peering around the eponymous Hades, and there's the sense that she's gathering data, jotting meticulous mental notes on what the real-world underworld (afterlife?) is like.
Because her familiarity with myth is, frankly, abysmal. So much had been lost to time: the Blood of Eden carried off some of the only data archives from before the Resurrection, and the rest was destroyed or doled out to them by God Himself from memory alone. Incomprehensible jokes and references. His favourite poetry. Everything had come metered from their deity's lips and, for a woman who was admittedly a neurotic control freak, it had gotten a little tiresome. There was so much she wanted to know. ]
I don't think he even knew there was something else on the other end of the River. Not like this, I mean. Also, where can we get some clothes, because this is starting to be ridiculous.
[ There is just something about wearing a jacket and nothing else which seems to emphasise your nakedness, more than fix it. ]
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[ they’ve been quietly surrounding the pair without fuss or noise, flicking in and out of corporeality like fireflies, or embers, or the after-image when a screen flicks off. it’s not like in the River, where souls moan and writhe and grope. they’re just - there, milling about, passing by. on instinct, they give hades and cerberus a wide berth, crossing to the other side of what passes for a street. no blood, no bones, just shades and hoods and robes. ]
Yeah, alright. [ she lets go of cerberus at long last. the dog gives mercymorn one last sniff and look before hades whistles and jerks her head. he drops back down, ears tucked to the sides of his head in embarrassment, and obediently trots away. ] There’s some stuff in the palace. Come on.
[ as they approach, the city starts to feel more - well, more. what had been shadows form into actual buildings: brick and stone and girded metal. stalls, shopfronts, alleyways, and people to run them. the shades here are a bit more animated, chatting quietly amongst themselves. sometimes, one even had their hood down: a blonde blacksmith hammering on an anvil; a girl sitting on a low roof; a couple laughing over a book. all of them are translucent, all of them flicker. only hades and mercymorn seem to be whole. ]
Used to just be meadows down here. Most people live dull fucking lives, just got to stand around forever. But turns out that eventually, you’ll go fucking mad without something to do, and - [ she shrugs. ] They started to build.
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So it's a bottleneck. They're all building up and stuck down here where they're not supposed to be. Like he's constructed a dam in the River.
[ She sounds like a doctor, compiling symptoms and trying to diagnose an illness. ]
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Everyone in the River is supposed to be here. That's why it's a fuckin' river, it flows. [ separates the living from the dead on a metaphysical level. there's always been ways into the underworld: passageways around the back for the likes of orpheus and heracles and diana. but now, there's only the river, and the stoma blocking the path at the bottom. ] I say used to, I mean fucking used to. Back when I started.
[ when the blood of her father was still drying on her hands. ]
Nyx ruled the afterlife back then, it was just - black, far as the eye can't see. This was - fuck, I don't know. [ it's been too long, and time doesn't work right down here. ] Thirty, maybe forty thousand years back. I waded across Styx and brought light with me.
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[ and for that lingering second, there's a different cast to the persnickety woman's voice: a kind of bittersweet longing. a kind of homesickness.
and then she rips that sentimentality out of her own voice, and reorients. she hardens again, like a wound scabbed over, and starts digging for information: ] So. Let me get this straight. First there was nothing, and then you brought light, and the souls started building this... this afterlife, this city. And it functioned, and souls crossed over from my world to yours, but now the cycle's not working. You're alone with the souls. Do new ones not come unless the stoma takes them?
[ mercymorn was not a spirit magician, but she was tinkering and chipping away at this hypothesis and her understanding of The Situation™ regardless. john gaius used the dead like ammunition, like so much kindling for the flame of his boundless power. so maybe he was chewing them up on the other side, before they could even get into the river and safely to wherever they needed to go, to hades' domain where they belonged after death.
which would make sense; necromancy had always been built on consumption, in her experience. ]
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she has long, long, long forgotten the sun on her skin. ] They trickle through sometimes. Not many. We had almost twenty last year.
[ twenty new souls in a year. felt like a gift.
the palace looms in front of them, a massive construct of obsidian and black marble. it doesn’t look built so much as it was carved, or even grown. no seams and no bricks, just cold, dark stone, rising out of the not-earth. it came nearly out of nowhere: if a building could sneak up on somebody, it sure as hell did. in the mist and gloom, it looks like a void, a black hole, a ghost.
hades trudges forwards as she has every day for myriads, flicking her wrist with well-practiced apathy. the gates, rusted iron and remnants of gold, creak open. it’s brighter inside, gemstone lighting flicking on as they pass by some unseen sensor. there’s morgues louder than this.
after another minute or so of walking through semi-lit hallways, they come to a patch of knotwork and ruins, a circle ten feet in diameter. hades steps onto it, motions for mercymorn to follow, motions for mercymorn to stop.
she jerks her head up, and the circle seamlessly separate from the floor and starts to rise. ]
Elevator.
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I’m not even going to ask you how it operates. And frankly, part of me was expecting more… skulls? More underworld decor, at the least.
[ john had such a Thing about the skulls; he’d have liked the goth bullshit of this obsidian and marble. mercy had always thrown up her hands about the aesthetics of it all; she would’ve worked in a blank clean metal lab and not cared about how it looked. ]
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What the fuck would I want with more skulls?
[ the elevator goes up three floors. the ceiling gives way, opening up like a camera’s aperture, big enough for the platform. and then, as they continue to rise, it closes below. first is up to another hallway, stretching out in all directions. then a library - dusty and disused, but undeniably massive, endless rows of books and parchment and scrolls. it finally stops (definitely not on the top floor) somewhere a little smaller than the grand halls below. there’s more lights, and it’s a touch warmer. if anything, it’s approaching comfortable.
hades steps off impatiently before the elevator’s fully stopped. she walks thirty feet, past a couple of worn couches and side tables, and then to a door. it’s nowhere near the cavernous entrance, just - a door.
inside: rows of hangers, racks of clothes. it’s not organized well, worn stola and ragged himations next to jeans, next to overcoats - but it is massive. In the center, a spiral staircase going up. and, somehow, down. ]
Help yourself. [ she heads straight to the stairs, pausing only to grab another jacket along the way. ] I need a fucking drink.
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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.
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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.
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