Chapter Text
They say that when I was born, the crops yielded to death to honour my forthcoming. The heads of wheat fields bowed low to the ground and the leaves of plants dried and crackled to applaud me as my mother cradled me in her arms. The animals lost their fat, ribs sticking out of them like curved branches, while many others lay down in their forest and meadow homes, never to open their eyes again.
The mortals were scared, I was told, because they didn’t understand why the winter had taken such a strong hold on the earth that year. They thought perhaps Boreas, the God of Winter and the chilling North Wind, was angry, or that something had been done to tarnish his name. Piles upon piles of calves still untouched by death and what little fresh food and fruits could be scrounged were tossed into large pyres as they wailed and prayed and sang to him, hoping for mercy. They did not think that a god was being born to the God of the Underworld himself, known to be chaste and frigid to anything but my mother, his exalted Queen and plunder from the surface.
I was wrapped in black wool, shorn from sacrificed lambs given to my parents by mortals, and although they say the Underworld was the evilest of colds, I felt nothing but warmth within the blankets. Nekrikos, my father announced to the room, and my name meant Deathly. I can remember the torches lighting the dim room, the eternal flames illuminating my mother and father’s faces. Hades, as I know him, looked stern and intimidating, but his fingers against my face were gentle. My mother looked sweeter than anything that deserved to be in the Underworld. I learned as I quickly grew that she was in fact a daughter of a goddess from the heavens instead, and a portion of the year she was gone from the palace, leaving me to handle my father’s agitation at her absence on my own.
During the first few decades, my mother brought me to the surface with her as she left the Underworld to reunite with her mother. I watched skeptically as the flowers bloomed and the trees became swollen with fruit and watched, quietly, as my mother was embraced by many who had missed her.
They welcomed me cautiously, the gods and goddesses of Olympus, for I was the offspring of a God they all found displeasing. Demeter held me in her arms as her own, but over her shoulder I could see Ares watching me with curiosity, Artemis with distaste, and Hera with an expression of ambivalent tolerance. My nephew from the dark, she greeted as she chastely kissed my cheek. Welcome to the heavens.
Zeus I found to be less intimidating than Persephone had described him to be. Strong and mighty described him well, but as I was a child born in the darkness, his brilliance only made me want to turn away from him. I made sure not to do that, however, so as not to spite the current God of the Universe. He greeted me kindly enough, with a firm hand on my shoulder and a strong clap on the back. I suppressed the urge to shiver at the warmth I was unused to and smiled when it was expected from me. I was still quite young, but I had already learned to prefer the cold Underworld than the airy mountaintops the rest of my family lived on.
On days my mother was busy working with Demeter, I found myself drawn to the riverside of Acheron, where the waters bordered the land of the living and the Underworld. Every now and then I’d see Thanatos, the actual god of Death, escorting a soul to the mist far in the distance. I’d see Charon, the ferryman I knew well, take them onto his boat.
“We might as well call you Acheron,” Thanatos said one day as he alighted by my side where I had sat, watching him perform his duties, “As you spend all your days here. Do you not want to aid your mother?”
Thanatos had always been a god I respected, strong and merciful, who held the scythe with justice and wisdom. I knew that one day, my position in my father’s household would give me power over him as well, but I was grateful of his friendliness despite the knowledge.
I shook my head to answer his question. There was a very good reason as to why I had been relieved of helping my mother in the rekindling of the earth’s living creatures. “I frightened Demeter by killing her orange tree,” I said simply, reaching out to pluck a weed that had pushed its way out of the riverbank’s pebbles. It withered immediately in my hands.
Thanatos watched the action quietly before nodding. Though he was the god of death, he only reaped what was fair and necessary. My father sometimes sent him with tasks to take someone’s life, but never did Thanatos take life for his own selfish gain. He could not do what I could, which was to sap the energy away from the living plant so swiftly, it was almost instantaneous.
“Do you wish to go back home?” He asked, settling himself down on the rocks next to me. His large form nearly dwarfed my own, but his shadow enveloped me and I felt safe. “I’m sure you could be able to convince the Queen to let you stay and aid your father down in the Underworld, now that you have grown older.”
“Perhaps,” I said, pulling out another weed and crumbling up with my fingers as it died. “Do you think I will do as you do and take mortal souls, or will my father give me another task?”
The god of Death chuckled and it sounded like dry tree branches snapping during a storm. “Young god, you will undoubtedly inherit all of the underground when and if your father ever decides to do so.”
“Will I have to return to the surface with my mother, do you think?”
“Not unless you don’t want to,” Thanatos said with a shrug.
I didn’t want to, I decided then, as I looked out towards the river where the living world met the dead. Charon’s silhouette was barely there, shrouded by the mist, and I wondered if he too favoured the river Acheron over the Styx like I did. Mortals claimed that after death they had to cross the Styx, but little did they know that the ferryman hated how clogged its riverbanks became of souls, and always chose to go through the several other rivers that crossed into the Underworld if he had a chance.
“My mother can keep tending to her spring flowers,” I said decidedly, tossing the dead plants into the river. “I’ve seen enough of the mortal world and want to return.” That afternoon I asked my mother to return to aid my father. She studied me briefly before nodding, entrusting my travel to Thanatos.
“Why did she let me go so easily?” I asked a little peeved at how easy it was to request to go home, when I thought I had been forced to accompany her every year into the mortal world. We had been walking down towards the end of the river Acheron where we’d cross the veil with ease, as gods.
“Perhaps it is because she recognizes that you’re growing,” the other god said as we followed the winding riverbank. “You are more a help to your father than you are up here,” he said, noting what I had already known long before.
“The Olympian gods look at me like I’m something ugly in their midst,” I said bluntly, kicking a rock. “Hermes has even challenged me to a race to see if he is faster than the son of death, that can take a life before an eye can blink.”
Thanatos hummed. “But he is,” he said factually, and I suppressed the urge to rebuke him for agreeing with the idiotic, boastful winged god. “Hermes is not messenger of the gods for no reason.”
As he spoke, there was a flapping of wings and I looked up to see a crow landing on Thanatos’ outstretched hand. It was the soul of Archimedes, a known scholar during his time, who had bargained with the god of Death to help teach him of the constantly changing world so long as he would be around to witness it. Thanatos had been pleased that Archimedes pleaded the bargain to him and not Hades instead, so then turned him into a bird, allowing him to travel the world and learn its news, under condition that he come back and report it.
“What news does he bring,” I asked curiously, watching the two speak in ways that no one else could understand, with unmoving lips but an active mind.
Thanatos raised his brow in slight surprise before lifting his arm, allowing Archimedes to set flight again. “Your father summons you.”
“By way of bird?”
“It is not a direct summon. He is aware of your return and simply wants to see you when you arrive.”
I mulled over this thought. Hades was a busy man, although never too busy to deny me of attention when I so needed it, or when he felt like it. “Does Archimedes not say the nature of why he wants to see me?”
The other god sent him a crooked smile, that to a mortal would only ensure their coming death. “He is your father. Perhaps he missed you.”
“You mistake my father, Thanatos,” I said skeptically. “He misses no one except for my mother and that is only because she knows how to cull his anger when he is provoked.”
All I received was a noncommittal hum in reply. Thanatos might have known Hades for far longer, but he was my father. Truly I knew him on a little more personal level than the other god.
“Come now, Nekrikos of Acheron,” Thanatos said, and I narrowed my eyes at him at the formulation of the name. I liked it, but I didn’t want to admit it. “You are his pride and joy. Let us hurry, so that we may quench your obvious curiosity at his summon.”
I frowned, unable to find it in myself to argue. Charon was at the edge of the mist, waiting, and although we didn’t need the ferryman to bring us over the river, Thanatos knew I liked riding its waters and peering over the boat’s edge.
As we boarded, Thanatos put a hand to my back and pushed me forward, causing me to stumble slightly and the boat to rock. “Presenting, Nekrikos of the river Acheron, coming to return home to the Underworld.” I shot him a glare only for him to smile thinly in return. Aside from my mother, those from the Underworld had very miniscule senses of humour, although Thanatos proved to have the most. Charon simply bowed his head low, as was protocol for any announcement of great new rider, even though he knew me.
“Acheron,” he repeated in honour, and I realized that much like my father’s ‘King’ and my mother’s ‘Queen,’ this would soon become my respectable name.
As Charon began to row us over the river towards my home, I put my hand over the edge and let my fingers dip in the water, enjoying its refreshing coolness. Nekrikos of Acheron, I mouthed to myself, flicking away the desperate hand of a poor soul that had no fare, trying to climb aboard. My father had the Underworld and my mother the Spring. All I had was a title and the power to take life away, with no reason to. Thanatos said that one day, perhaps, I’d inherit it all, but how soon does a god ever die, or give up their realm?
This river, at least, could be mine.
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Thanatos departed as soon as we arrived to the palace. Having far more responsibilities than a young prince of darkness, he claimed to have joined the ferry ride only to provide company. When I told him that I didn’t need company on a boat ride across a river full of the damned, he simply shrugged before vanishing.
To me, my father’s palace was far more interesting and impressive than Olympus’ heavenly cradle, but I was hesitant to say it out loud in case Zeus was somehow listening. Glistening with black onyx stone, it looked like it had been carved from the walls of the Underworld’s mountains and volcanos. It was nestled in an area of the Underworld separate from the places where mortals were sent to, because the last thing my father needed was to look out his window and see mortals repeating the same actions again and again for all of eternity. I doubt I could have gotten much sleep either, if the repeated screams of Prometheus on his rock or Sisyphus’ boulder crashing back to the ground plundered each and every night.
The halls were dimly lit with eternal flames that cast more shadows than light and each room had ceilings that stretched farther up than the mortal eye could imagine. It was a reminder to all that Hades was not simply enclosed in the Underworld, and had dark skies itself. Unlike most of the Underworld, the palace was the only place that was mostly quiet. Very rarely did my parents indulge in music during meals and only the crackle of flames in room hearths could be heard. Every once in a while, Cerberus, the guard dog of the palace, would find his way in and demand attention.
My father’s meeting room was the vastest amongst them all. Wide and spacious, it could have fit several of Zeus’ temples in them and still have room to spare. Solid black columns that held bowls of fire at their tops lined the sides of the room and each corner was dark, hiding an advisor to my father’s court who watched everything that happened in the room carefully. At first I wondered why he needed so much space, until one day when I was younger he called Cerberus inside and placed me on his back, allowing the beast to carry me around the room while I screamed in what was probably delight. Aside from that, it was always an intimidating area for any mortal who dared try to find audience with the god of the Underworld.
That was where I found myself now, entering the massive room and finding him closer to his throne, standing and speaking to who I recognized as the old man Aeacus, one of the judges of the souls. They turned as I entered and I bowed my head low as I was taught.
“You summoned me, father?”
“Yes, come here,” Hades said, gesturing with his hand. Although he looked to be speaking at a normal volume from more than a hundred feet away, his voice seemed to fill the entire room with sound. As I came closer, I saw Aeacus with a small smile. He bowed his head to me accordingly. “Welcome back. I understand you have taken one of my rivers as your own?” My father spoke casually, making me pause.
It’s easy to forget that many things are noticed, especially by the gods of each realm. I almost apologized, for I feared it was out of my place to simply call something in my father’s world my own, but then I remembered that Thanatos said I was his son, and that one day perhaps it would be mind. Besides, he didn’t look angry, and instead more curious as to my action.
I swallowed, then nodded. “Yes. Nekrikos of Acheron, as Thanatos helped name me.”
He hummed, and I stood as calmly as I could, because provoking the God of the Underworld’s anger and wrath was a fate far worse than being sent to the underworld itself. “Thanatos aided you? Then it shall be so.” He placed a hand on my shoulder and I nearly startled at the familiarity in it. “I gift you the River Acheron, River of Woe and Pain, and all its inhabitants. Be known as such. Treat it carefully and govern it well.”
The breath I let out was full of surprise and I quickly dropped to one knee and lowered my head in respect. It was abrupt and unprecedented, and I had no idea if this had even been planned, but I was not in any place to refuse.
“Thank you my King,” I said, before raising my head to look at him. We shared a few moments of silence and fractionally, like the face of a rock shifting by a crack, Hades smiled. I smiled back and I’m sure if my mother were there to witness it, she’d probably start crying.
“Now stand, Aeacus and I have a task for you.”
When I stood, Aeacus was beaming at me. Unlike the gods, mortals had so many things to find joy and pain in, and Aeacus had been entrusted with my father’s keys to the Underworld, so I supposed he was proud of that position.
“Congratulations, Acheron,” Aeacus said and already I could feel my true name slipping into an area of reverence, only to be said during prayers, rites, and rituals. “The King has seen value in your youth and entrusts to you responsibility.”
“You have observed the Underworld’s different realms and workings,” Hades said, “and soon, you will aid in overseeing it all at my side.” I held my breath. Inheritance did not come this easy, and I knew my father well enough that he would not give over his realm just like that. We would work together, as he said, but I knew what was coming next was a test, in guise of a responsibility.
“For now, I task you to work with the judges in judging the souls that enter our gates. Aeacus will be your guide and you will learn to discern each human sin carefully and acknowledge accomplishments accordingly. Do you accept this role?” My father asked, and I could hear it behind his words. Will you take on this challenge, and prove to me that your wisdom is worthy of judging my people?
“Yes,” I said as confidently as I could, and he nodded, turning to Aeacus.
“Take my son and teach him your ways. We will continue to reconvene and you will inform me of what you’ve been learning.” Then, my father smiled thinly once more and nodded at me. “A portion of the Underworld is now yours to command. Work wisely and decisively.”
The dismissal was clear and Aeacus and I left the room, pausing outside the closed doors. I peered at him analytically just as he smiled at me warmly, as old mortal men do to young men. I knew the judges relatively well, as I had sat and played at their feet when I was a younger child as they judged mortals. Aeacus was like a grandfather to me, more so than Cronus could obviously ever be, and I wondered how it would be to work next to three, bickering, old men.
“Acheron,” Aeacus said eagerly, “this will be quite an honour to work with you. You will be able to exercise your right as prince of the Underworld and call forth your judgement onto the mortals that enter your father’s realm.”
“Is it difficult?” I asked him, remembering the long conversations and debates they had amongst themselves while contemplating a soul’s fate.
“Only as difficult it is to teach the sun to move, or fire to control its burn.”
The sun could not move on its own, and only Helios had that power. So, it was difficult.
“Alright,” I nodded, still determined to take on the task that my father had given me. If this was the first duty I had to prove my worth as his son, I would do it gladly. I felt my body grow with eagerness at the idea of deciding a mortal’s eternal fate, which could possibly be far worse than death itself.