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Long before the Prince of the Underworld would flee his father’s realm time and again, he shadowed the Lord of the Dead day and night, as children do; his questions falling endlessly as obols into Charon’s coffers.
“How many cousins have I got, Father? When will they come to play?”
“If Hypnos puts everyone to sleep, who puts him to sleep?”
“Is it true that some dogs have only one head?”
To most of these, Lord Hades answered as curtly as he could, but it availed him little. The Prince’s curiosity was a hydra; for every question dispatched, two more arose.
On this particular evening, or the approximation of it in the realm of eternal dark, young Zagreus had discovered a new and inexhaustible vein.
“Father, what is the sun like?”
Hades sat on his great throne, reviewing procurement orders for the security chambers. He did not look up. Perhaps, should he refuse to acknowledge the boy, the boy would grow bored and find some shade to torment instead.
It had never worked before, but there was always a first time.
Today was not that time.
“Achilles told me one cannot look at the sun directly.” The boy stretched upward, placing his hands upon the desk’s edge as he balanced on the tips of his feet, all the better to be seen and heard. “But surely gods may do as they please? I want to see this radiant giant for myself.”
Hades sighed. The boy had never met a boundary he did not attempt to cross.
“The sun,” he muttered, his quill carving irritation into parchment, “is not your concern.”
“I’ll take it as a maybe.”
The Lord of the Dead lifted his gaze from the parchment, eyes narrowing beneath the shadow of his brow. “The surface is forbidden to you. Such idle musings serve no purpose. Tell me instead if you have fulfilled your obligations to your tutor.”
“Twice already. I could do the drills in my sleep.” The Prince smirked. “Father. What colour is the sky?”
The quill stopped.
There was a sky, once. Before the lots were drawn and his brothers claimed the height and the breadth, leaving him to rule what lay beneath. Here he remained, up to this day, with the weight of the world pressing down upon his realm. No sky for his house. Only darkness.
The Lord of the Dead buried such memories where they belonged.
“Why this sudden fascination with the surface?” He glowered at the boy. “You are a god of the Underworld. What lies above has no bearing on your existence.”
While curt, such an answer was, in its way, a kindness, though Hades would never admit it. Better not yearn for what one cannot have. He had learned it the hard way.
But the boy, as all the young, would not accept such counsel untested.
“No bearing? Father, it’s literally everything that isn’t here. And I’ve never seen any of it. Not the sun, nor the sky, nor the trees.” The boy’s voice grew breathless with wonder. “Is it true that on the surface there grow trees—whole forests—and that some of them bear food, right there for the picking?”
She could grow trees even here, once. In this sunless realm, she had coaxed green things from the unwilling stone.
That was, however, one door the Lord of the Dead would not open. Not today. Especially not for this boy with his mismatched eyes—one red, one green—who stood before him as a daily reminder of hopes he had been fool enough to harbour.
“These interruptions waste my time,” he said. “Go to your chambers. I will not entertain these flights of fancy.”
“But Father—”
“Enough. Leave now.”
The Prince’s features scrunched in a fashion most unbecoming of his station, but what recourse had he? No argument would sway his Lord Father, and none was invited. So young Zagreus turned and began the long walk across the great hall, small footsteps echoing against the ancient stone.
Halfway across, he turned.
“I’ll see it all someday, even if it kills me!”
This he yelled, rather as though it were prophecy and not mere childish defiance, and dashed away before his Lord and Master of the House could devise a suitable response to such insubordination.
* * *
The Prince of the Underworld, once fixed upon a notion, was not easily dissuaded. His father’s silence had done nothing to quell his curiosity; if anything, it had fed the thing, as water poured on stubborn weeds.
Thus, some days hence, young Zagreus appeared once more before the great desk, this time stepping with unusual solemnity. In his cupped hands, he carried a treasure.
“Father, I have brought you something.”
Hades squinted at the piece of parchment in his hand. The heroes of Elysium had exceeded their armament budget again. The heroes always exceeded their armament budget. He tallied the excess with grim resignation before acknowledging his offspring.
“I did not request anything, boy.”
“It’s a gift.”
“I do not require gifts. I require peace, quiet, and the completion of your exercises.” The Lord Father’s brows drew together in a fearsome line. “How many times did you run your drill today?”
A pause. Most telling.
“I haven’t seen Achilles… yet.” For a moment, the boy’s confidence faltered, and he shifted guiltily from one foot to the other, sparks flying from his fiery heels. But only for a moment. “I went to see Charon instead!”
The Lord of the Dead set down his quill. This, at least, warranted his full attention—and his full disapproval, which he directed at his son with practiced intensity.
“Impudent boy! The Stygian Boatman has his duties to perform. He is not a nursemaid nor an entertainer. You will not pester him.”
“I didn’t pester! I went to make a trade.”
The situation, already concerning, had taken a sharp turn toward the deeply alarming. The Prince of the Underworld was ten years old. Nearly eleven, as he insisted at every opportunity, as though this additional fraction of existence granted him some authority. And here he stood, speaking of trades with the ancient boatman.
The Lord of the Dead was not certain he wanted to know more.
He asked, regardless. “With what currency? What could you possibly possess that the Boatman desires?”
“I gave him my dessert privileges. For a week!”
The silence followed. Then: “Your what?”
“My dessert,” the boy repeated, patient as though speaking to someone rather slow. “Charon loves nectar tarts. Everyone knows that, Father. You would too, if you ever came to the lounge.”
The Lord of the Dead pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose, where a familiar ache had begun to gather. Not even gods were proof against headaches. Particularly not those cursed with insolent offspring.
“And what, exactly, did a week of nectar tarts purchase?”
The boy stepped forward and opened his hands as if making an offering.
Inside, there was a leaf. Brown, curled, and brittle as old parchment, it sat in the Prince’s palms as a precious relic.
“It’s from above,” the boy whispered. “From the surface. It fell into the Styx, and Charon caught it.”
Hades said nothing.
“Father, it was a part of a tree!”
Still nothing. For what was there to say?
It was a poplar leaf; he recognized it. The poplars grew thick at the entrance to the Underworld. Beneath their branches he had first met her. Beneath their branches he had stood, after she left, staring at the empty path as though she might yet come back.
The leaf sat in his son’s hands, but it was dead as everything else in this realm.
“Is it not wonderful, Father?”
“It is refuse,” Hades spat. “You abandoned your training. You ventured to see Charon without permission. You bartered away the bounty of this House. And for what?”
“For a leaf,” the boy said, as though this were answer enough.
“The only leaves you should concern yourself with are the laurels upon your head. You have a duty to this House.”
The boy’s hand rose to touch the burning crown that wreathed his brow. His fingers passed through the flickering flames and found the gold beneath. He stroked it once, thoughtful, then shook his head.
“They’re not alive.”
“Neither is this.” Hades scoffed at the withered scrap in his son’s palm. “This is a dead thing, boy. From a world that is not yours and will never be yours.”
The Prince frowned and closed his fingers around his treasure once more, sheltering it from his father’s scorn. And then, because hope in this child proved stubbornly difficult to kill, he lifted his chin.
“I like it! And I’ll soon get more. Charon promised. Well, he sort of groaned. But it was a promising groan.”
“You will not.” Three words, absolute as death itself. “This ends here. Report to your tutor and do six repetitions of your drills. Perhaps exhaustion will teach you what reason cannot. And boy?” The Lord of the Dead leaned forward. “If I hear you have troubled the Boatman again, it will be worse.”
Thus was the Prince rebuked, and thus did he run his drills, six times over, until his burning feet left scorch marks on the training grounds. But the leaf remained hidden beneath young Zagreus’s pillow. And in the dark of his chambers, between drills and studies, a new plan had taken shape.
* * *
The House of Hades was, by and large, a quiet place. The shades, though prone to moaning, did so softly. And everybody else had long since learned to afford their master the silence he required.
Everybody, that is, but his son.
The commotion reached Hades before its source did. Raised voices, distant at first, but drawing nearer with every passing moment. One was the boy’s; that one he recognized at once, for no other voice in the Underworld carried quite that pitch of righteous protest.
“I was fine! Really fine. I nearly made it.”
The other voice, deep and throaty, he could not place at first.
“You were on fire, little godling.”
“Only my feet. My feet are always on fire.”
Then, into the great hall, strode Megaera, her single wing folded tight against her back, her expression one of professional detachment. She’d done her job, as many times before; she’d do it again, a thousand times, if the realm required. And in her grip, held by the back of his chiton like an errant kitten, dangled the Prince of the Underworld.
The boy was filthy. His singed hair stood at odd angles, and fresh blood marked his knees. Yet his expression, despite the dangling and the scratches, was not one of fear nor remorse. It was determination. He was determined to go back to whatever task the Fury had interrupted.
And with a sinking feeling, Hades realized what it must have been.
“Megaera, report,” he barked.
“I found the Prince in Tartarus, my Lord,” the Fury answered, with her head inclined. “He had the wretched witches after him, but otherwise appeared barely scathed.”
“I was evading them!” the boy interrupted. “They weren’t fast enough.”
“He claimed he was heading for the surface.” Megaera continued as though he had not spoken. “He was carrying a crude map, a flask of water, and—” A fleeting smirk touched her lips. “—the remnant of a leaf.”
“It was for reference,” the Prince explained. “So I would recognize the trees when I arrived. A wretched lout stepped on it during the chase.” He shrugged. “No matter. The surface has thousands more.”
“When I instructed him to return, he declined.” The Fury raised the boy slightly. “So I assisted him.”
The Lord of the Dead did not move. Did not speak. The quill lay where he had set it. The parchment waited, forgotten. Cerberus, in his corner, lowered all three heads to his paws and whined. Even the distant moaning of the shades seemed to fade, as though the Underworld itself held its breath.
The boy had stopped squirming. Even he, who feared so little, seemed to sense that the air had grown heavy. His father was as still as a mountain, but mountains, too, hold fire in their hearts.
When Hades finally spoke, his voice was soft.
“Put him down, Megaera.”
The boy dropped. What came next was not soft at all.
The Lord of the Dead descended from the dais, each step ringing against the ancient stone like the tolling of a bell.
“Do you know the first law of this realm, boy?”
His voice carried to every corner of the great hall.
“There is no escape. This is not a suggestion. This is not a guideline to be tested at your leisure. It is the foundation upon which all order rests.” Another step. “Shades do not leave. Souls do not leave. No one leaves.”
The boy opened his mouth—
“Silence.”
—and closed it again.
“Today, my own blood, the Prince of this House, was caught fleeing like a common shade.” Hades loomed over his son now, vast and terrible, his shadow swallowing the boy whole. “What message does that send?”
The boy’s eyes darted to the side. “I was going to come back. I only wanted to see the surface!”
Only. Such a small word, to contain so vast a wanting.
“You are the Prince of the Underworld.” Hades’s voice dropped lower still. “You have a station, a duty, and a purpose. And here you abandoned all of them.”
You abandoned me, he did not say. As she had done.
But this one—this boy with his mismatched eyes, his burning feet, his questions—this one was bound to the Underworld as surely as himself. The same darkness ran in their blood. There was no escape. Not for the Lord of the Dead nor for his son.
“The sooner you accept your fate, the better,” he finished. “There is no place for you above this realm.”
For the span of a breath, the boy faltered, and something new passed over his face. It was not fear of his father. The Prince had never feared the Lord of the Dead, not truly. This was something worse. It was the creeping dread that his father might be right.
The thought was unbearable. And so the Prince of the Underworld did as every child had done since the first father spoke and the first son refused to listen. He clenched his fists and shouted into his father’s face, “I won’t do it!”
What happened next would be discussed in whispers among the House staff for days to come.
The Lord of the Dead moved with a swiftness despite his bulk. One moment, the boy stood defiant; the next, he was tucked beneath his father’s arm like a rolled-up carpet. The Prince had time for one indignant squawk before the first blow fell.
It was not, by the standards of the Underworld, a severe punishment. The Master of the House had not condemned his heir to scrub the floors with a bronze brush for a hundred years. Nor had he sent him to push a boulder up a hill for a hundred more. This was merely the ancient dance between father and son. Young Zagreus knew it well. His untamed spirit, rushing like the churning waters of the Styx itself, had often crashed against the shore of his father’s authority.
But knowing did not mean accepting. The Prince writhed and twisted like an eel caught in a fisherman’s net.
Hades remained unmoved by his heir’s protests and brought down his palm with determination. His arm was tireless. Of course it was. The hand that had once grappled with Titans and sculpted an empire from the void found no challenge in holding one stubborn little godling.
“You want to seek the sun?” he growled, after a dozen firm swats had fallen. “This is the only warmth you shall know when you defy me.”
The Prince’s response came in gasps, forced out through gritted teeth, but come it did.
“Is this—OW—supposed to discourage me? Because the sun—OW—sounds better every moment!”
Yet, even while he spoke, his feet kicked wildly, leaving fiery arcs in their wake. In all the thrashing, his chiton had ridden up, revealing pale thighs that would not remain so for long. Hades noted this new target and shifted his attention downward, to his son’s audible chagrin.
Megaera had withdrawn to a respectful distance, though Hades could feel her presence still. Good. Let her watch. Let them all see what becomes of those who defy the order of this House.
Another blow fell, then another. The boy’s protests grew more desperate, his struggles more frantic. At last, Hades paused, his palm hovering in the air. “Well? Have you learned your lesson, boy?”
This was the moment when the child would apologize. Would promise to obey. Would accept, at last, the boundaries of his existence. Indeed, when the Prince twisted to glance up at his father, his expression was grave.
“Thank you, Father.”
The Lord of the Dead permitted himself a moment of cautious hope.
“Thank you for the practice.”
The hope wavered.
“Surely, if I can survive this—” The boy gestured vaguely. “—I can survive whatever Tartarus has to offer. And I will try again. If not today, then tomorrow. If not then, the day after.”
Hades’s eyes narrowed to slits. When he spoke, his voice was stone grinding against stone. “You think this is courage, boy? This is foolishness.” His hand fell again, harder than before. “I have eternity. You shall break long before I tire. But I shall speed it up.”
He turned to the Fury with a grim resolve.
“Megaera, your whip.”
The Fury’s expression betrayed nothing, save for the smallest twitch at the corner of her mouth, in what might have been approval or amusement. With Megaera, it was difficult to tell. She uncoiled the whip from her belt and placed it in her master’s outstretched hand.
“You may go, Megaera.” Hades weighed the whip in his free hand. “This matter requires no witnesses.”
The Fury inclined her head. If she felt any disappointment at being dismissed before the spectacle’s conclusion, she barely showed it. Her footsteps retreated across the stone floor, steady and unhurried.
At last, the father and the son were alone.
The Lord of the Dead wasted no time. With the Prince still under his arm, he walked back to the dais and positioned his wayward son across the arm of his imposing throne. The boy’s chiton had bunched around his waist in the struggle, and Hades lifted it higher still, leaving his son’s posterior fully bared to the perpetual cold of the realm.
The Prince squirmed, but a single massive hand between his shoulder blades pinned him down. The punishment resumed. Where the palm struck, flesh bloomed white, then flooded scarlet.
“You could have died, boy,” Hades growled, revealing finally his deepest fear. “Do you understand that? The witches would have torn you apart for sport.”
“I’m—OW—immortal!” the Prince protested. “I would have—OW—come back!”
His father’s hand fell, hard. “And you think that is nothing?” Another swat. “Let me tell you then. I have witnessed death in every form. Ten thousand years of it, and ten thousand more. It is never nothing. It is not to be sought. It is not to be taken lightly.”
His hand rose once more, and the final blow descended on the prince’s upturned backside.
“You will not treat death as a game in my House!”
Then, he took the whip.
The Fury’s lash could easily reduce even the proudest shade to a weeping ruin. Such was not the purpose Hades had in mind. He gripped the whip close to its tip, shortening its reach. No matter what his son thought of him, he was not cruel. Only, the boy needed to understand and feel, in his very flesh, that some boundaries could not be crossed.
As leather whispered against stone, the Prince went quiet, which was perhaps more telling than any protest. The boy, who filled every silence with questions and declarations of impossible goals, had begun to listen.
Perhaps, at last, the lesson would take root.
Hades drew his arm back and brought the whip down. Where it struck, it raised a welt across the Prince’s backside, cutting the earlier handprints like a river through a valley. The boy let out a yelp, his hands flying back to shield himself, only to be caught in his father’s iron grip and twisted behind his back.
“Interfere again,” Hades warned, “and we shall be here until Helios has completed another circuit of the world above.”
The Prince went still, save for the trembling that accompanied his attempt to hold back tears. Even now, pinned and punished, the child fought back. It was ever thus between them.
Hades sighed and brought the shortened lash down again, laying a second stripe parallel to the first. The boy jerked, and a cry escaped him, echoing off the ancient halls. Something twisted in the Lord of the Dead’s chest at the sound, but he hardened himself against it. Two more swift strokes fell without a pause.
“You believed yourself prepared for death?” Hades murmured, watching the boy writhe, as the marks turned crimson. “What you feel now is but a whisper of that agony. Endure it. You have brought this upon yourself. And think twice before defying me in the future.”
The leather whistled through the air once more.
“Five,” Hades counted. “Do you know what this number means? Five lashes for the five rivers you would have had to cross. Did you think of that?”
The boy’s voice came ragged now, choked with tears. “I could have—would have—found a way...”
Defiance, even now. Even weeping. Another lash bit into the flesh.
“Six. For the covenant of the six gods,” Hades intoned, “who divided the cosmos between them, creating the boundaries you disregard.”
The boy let out a howl. But still, the whip had found him.
“Seven. For the seven times I have told you only this week that the surface is forbidden. Seven times you have not listened.”
The welts had overlapped now, the pale skin turning into a map of painful lessons. The boy’s fingers dug into the throne’s edge, seeking support where none could be found.
“Eight. For the eight hundred shades who wander lost because they thought themselves clever enough to find their way out. Do you want to be one of them?”
“No, Father, wait—”
The Prince began to speak, then hesitated. The whip, however, did not pause, biting into the flesh already striped and swollen.
“Nine. For the nine Muses who sing of heroes. They do not sing of children who throw their lives away on whims. Who would sing of such fools? Who would mourn them?” His voice faltered. “Only their parents.”
The Lord of the Dead cursed himself the moment the words escaped him. The last thing the boy needed was weakness; the last thing Hades needed was to show it.
Yet before he could deliver another stroke, Zagreus twisted beneath his grip, looking up with a face transformed. The defiance had drained from him, leaving his tear-streaked face unexpectedly thoughtful.
“I’m sorry, Father. Truly. I didn’t think you’d care.”
Hades glared back. “There is no escape from caring.”
Ten, he should say, and raise his hand again. Ten for the ten thousand ways the path to the surface would destroy you. For the ten thousand times I would have to watch you crawl back through the Pool of Styx, broken and gasping. For even if you survived, even if you clawed your way to the light, you would die within an hour beneath the sun.
Hades knew this. He had always known it. It was his blood, after all, that had cursed the boy, binding him to darkness as surely as any chain. But the words would not come.
Perhaps his son did not need to learn the full weight of his birthright today. There would be time enough in the eternity ahead.
Hades dropped the whip.
“Enough. Get up.”
The boy scrambled off the throne, unsteady. He stood before his father, small and singed and tear-streaked, both hands pressed to his hindquarters in a gesture as old as fatherhood itself. But he did not look away.
The Lord of the Dead regarded his son. This stubborn, reckless, infuriating creature who dreamed of skies he could never touch.
So much like myself, once, Hades thought, unbidden.
The thought did not inspire leniency. No one had been soft with him. No one had sheltered him from the weight of his fate. He had learned his place the hard way, as all the gods had, and he was stronger for it.
His son would learn the same. And in time, perhaps, he would understand.
“You shall be confined to your chambers for a fortnight,” Hades said, with his voice iron once more, the brief crack in his armour sealed shut. “You shall not leave except for your lessons.”
The Prince barely nodded as he dragged his bracer across his face, smearing tears and snot. Hades observed this without comment. The boy had just taken his first whipping. Some allowances could be made.
“When you do not train, you shall study the history of this House. You shall copy the laws that govern the dead until you understand why they exist.”
Another reluctant bob. Then, quietly, the Prince offered: “Father? I won’t try again. Not if you mind.”
It will not last, Hades thought. One day, he will try again. One day, the wanting will outgrow the memory of this night.
But not today. Today, his son stood before him, chastened and exhausted, offering a peace that would hold for a time. It would have to be enough.
“See that you don’t,” Hades said. “Now, go to your chambers.”
The boy hesitated, as though he wished for something more to happen. A word of comfort or a hand on his shoulder. He received neither. After a moment, he hung his head and shuffled toward his room.
Hades watched him go. When the small figure had vanished into the corridor, he turned to Cerberus, cowering in the corner, all three heads pressed to his paws.
“Go after him.”
The hound needed no second bidding.
* * *
The Prince served his confinement.
This, in itself, was remarkable. The staff of the House had wagered among themselves how long the boy would last before some new scheme emerged. Megaera had given him one day. Thanatos, more generous, had allowed three.
But the days passed, and the Prince remained in his chambers. He trained when training was required. He studied when study was demanded. He copied the laws of the dead in his sloppy, uneven hand and did not complain. Or rather, he did not complain much.
For the time being, he felt pacified by the memory of his father’s voice cracking open, just for a moment, to reveal something unexpected beneath his usual gruffness.
A week had passed. Young Zagreus sat in his room, reading his history, when the door opened. Hades did not knock. He never knocked. He simply appeared in the doorway, filling it completely, a small clay pot cradled in his massive hands.
The boy perked up. There was green inside the pot.
“Pomegranate,” said the Lord of the Dead, putting it by the desk. “It is one of the few things that grows in this realm.”
The boy stared at the smooth, slender leaves. His hand reached out, hesitant, as though the plant might vanish at his touch. “Father… Is this a gift?”
“It is a lesson.”
Hades turned and headed for the door.
“What’s the lesson?” The boy was already on his feet. “Father! What’s the lesson?”
The Lord of the Dead stilled at the threshold, his broad back to his son.
“That some things can flourish in the dark, Zagreus. If they choose to.”
The words were quiet. Almost gentle. Then, he was gone.
It would take many more years for the Prince of the Underworld to learn this lesson fully. But one day, he did. That, however, is another story.