Archive of Our Own

To draw lots is to place yourself in the hands of the Fates.

To our father’s youngest son went the wide skies.

To our father’s second son went the grey seas.

And to me, the eldest, went mists and darkness, went the void, the world of guilt.

There was no other way.

There was no realm ready-made for me to rule, no space for me to lay claim to. The earth was not mine, but held in common and by our grandmother. I had the damp, cramped confines of the caves that led downwards, I had the ends of the world where the dome of the sky met Okeanos’s world-encircling river. I did not have Tartaros, nine days fall below the surface of the world as the earth was nine days fall below the heavens, though I was to guard it.

There were no subjects for me to lay claim to.

There was no action for me to take.

So I wandered. I walked beyond the edge of the world. I wandered the caves, leaving ichor smeared on rocks where the squeeze was tight. I greeted Nyx and Hemera in turn as I paused at their home, and Helios and Selene the same as they landed after their day’s journey, before I pressed onwards.

. . .

I heard of my brothers’ actions.

Poseidon came to me sometimes, shaking the ground with his passage, and brought me news of his court.

Poseidon did not need to come himself, with Iris around to carry messages. But Iris found it difficult to find me under the ground. And I appreciated his care.

Poseidon told me that Zeus had married our councilor Metis, then swallowed her when it was prophesied that she was destined to bear a son greater than his father.

I felt the weight of the prophecy keenly, and the weight of Zeus’s actions even more so. I remembered the darkness of our fathers stomach, the pain of the never ending attempt to digest us. I had spoken with Anake once, in a time that never existed, less than a bug to her serpentine coils as she and her mate Khronos drove Nyx and Hemera through the rotation of the heavens and time ever onwards on its course, and she had told me of her daughters the Moirai, and how all prophecies were in the end her domain.

That is to say, prophecies come about inevitably. I wondered when my nephew would emerge with his rightful anger, and bring our reigns to their end.

I wondered who I would support then.

Zeus did not know the agony of growing up within his father.

. . .

There were rivers underground.

Styx found me first.

Lovely, terrifying Styx, who even Zeus the Most High bends to, the daimon of hate, the keeper of our divine oaths, the okeanid who claimed the role of a potamos, whose children had long left her side for the court of Olympos. 

“Give me a home,” she demanded, “and my glory will go to your name.”

I looked upon her.

The lots were supposed to be divided evenly, but I had none of the power my brothers had, and no court to rule, and no home to dwell in.

“You ask this of me?” I asked. “Of me, and not my brother, he of the Sea, who has taken your father and your brothers and sisters into his court?”

“I am Styx,” she said. She hissed. “I am honored, but I am hatred, and I am not wanted. I will not stay where I am not wanted. Give me a home.”

I gave her a home. I met her where her waters fell in the world above, and I carved out channels and tunnels until her waters flowed freely as they wished, all the way to Tartaros.

. . .

Lethe came to me next.

Or well, she forgot that she had not already asked, and she came to complain to me that she’d forgotten the way down into the caves below the surface of the earth. She was as forgetful as Styx was hateful, and she chattered absently to me as we walked down into the caves of my realm, her river flowing in our wake like the train of a gown.

And then their brothers: Akheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Kokytos.

The five rivers encircled my realm below as Okeanos encircled the earth above, and suddenly I had a realm, and not just an endless series of fissures and cracks and caverns which led to nothing and amounted to nothing.

One day I discovered that Nyx had, unasking, moved her and Hemera’s house to within the bounds of my domain.

Hekate, likewise, did not ask before she settled herself in my kingdom.

And suddenly, I had a court. And suddenly, with running water and the Day’s rest, there was life. Nyx’s other children wandered in, nymphs came into being,  And if all of my court were unwanted and fearsome, well, who better to match them than the king who was given not a weapon, but a means of going about unseen.

I was built a palace. I was crafted a throne. I was bestowed upon all of the symbols of a king.

And if I was feared now, when I finally stepped above the ground again for the first time in a hundred years as counted by the dancing cycle of the stars in the sky above . . . then it was only right. Who could keep such fearsome gods and daimones and beings in check but one who was more fearsome?

I climbed up Mount Olympus on foot.

The festival was lively, but those who noticed me went silent and pale as they scrambled out of my way. The whispers started up the moment I was past.

There was now a great structure at the summit, soaked in Hestia’s power.

I could not help but relax somewhat as I stepped into the building. I had seen the uncertainty of our sisters when they had emerged from the safety of their hiding places during the war, and I was glad to see Hestia laying out her power so confidently.

And yet. I was terrified to see her power laid out so clearly over this monument of our youngest brother’s power. Zeus had eaten his first wife for the inevitability of a son who would be greater than him. How long before he did the same to his next wife?

“Hades,” Poseidon greeted me warmly. “It’s been quite some time since you hid yourself away in those caves of yours. It’s good to see you!”

I bit back my first several responses, which included asking if he was hiding when he attended to his realm beneath the sea, and asking why he had not come to see me since I had carved out space for Styx.

“Come on,” Poseidon said, and he drew me into the council chamber.

I was relieved to hear that Hestia had not married Zeus, though she had taken up the care of his house as his eldest unmarried sister.

I was not relieved to hear that Demeter had married him, after a decades long tryst with Poseidon spent rejuvenating the world ruined by our war with the Titans that she came away from with an interest in and dominion over food of all kinds, and plants in particular. She was so excited to present her newest inventions to those of us who had not been there to listen to their development: nectar and ambrosia. Food fit for the gods that we were.

Demeter was already pregnant - as much as a goddess could be. She nursed the potential of a child, and she had . . . for a while now. Longer than her marriage to Zeus, perhaps. I couldn’t tell the timeline.

Hera had found an interest for herself in marriage, having presided over both of Zeus’s marriages and over Poseidon’s marriage to Amphitrite - the eldest of the Nereides - as well as many other while I had been away.

And speaking of Poseidon - he had married Amphitrite and solidly established his court beyond what he had told me of before, when he had still taken the time to find me and bring me news. Poseidon was solidly of the sea now, of the water’s ebb and flow, of the salt brine, of the wild sea storms. He had not been before, but it suited him.

 My brother and Amphitrite had already had their first child: Triton, who was grown already, and ready to take the position of his father’s herald.

As for Zeus, he had been busy. His grasp on his court had always been solid - it had been him who established a court that supported us in our rebellion against our father. He had created a new race of thinking mortal creatures called humans in the image of the humans who had lived under our father’s rule. He had with the aid of our aunt Themis and Demeter, worked to law down divine laws upon us all.

Themis was also pregnant.

I had little to show for my century away, but I spoke anyway. My siblings’ expressions were strained, but they thanked me for taking in all those I had taken in.

There was a festival afterwards. I lingered as long as I could stand, trying Demeter’s new foods, speaking with Poseidon, dancing with my sisters.

I avoided Zeus. No need to tempt fate. I felt overly aware of my realm beneath us, of the caves that riddled Mount Olympos, of the entrance to Tartarus I barely dared to think about.

Aunt Themis and Aunt Phoibe together drew me aside at one point to ask for a favor: caves, for herself and some of her sisters. Themis desired to establish a place where she might speak with the humans of Zeus’s devising, that she might communicate the divine laws that had been decided upon. I allowed it. They named their cave Delphi, the womb of the world.

Aunt Theia drew me aside and spoke to me of some aspects of my domain which had thus far escaped my notice. The precious metals that the Hekatonkheires and the Elder Kyklopes forged their creations with - the bronze, the gold, the silver - those all came from my domain. And beyond the metals, there were the beautiful gemstones that all of the gods and titans loved, which Theia had endowed with brilliance and value.

Aunt Tethys came to me to ask after those of her children who had settled their rivers in my realm. She told me she was proud of what I had achieved.

I saw my mother at a distance through the crowds.

I slipped away eventually, when I felt the familiar pull of Hypnos.

. . .

Demeter and Zeus divorced before Demeter gave birth.

I never saw Demeter’s precious daughter.

Demeter rightfully kept her protected and as far as she could manage from any who might take an interest in her.

. . .

I went to the festival again the next year, and the next and the next. I had missed so much in my absence, and neither Iris nor Triton dared venture into my realm to find me and inform me of the important events.

. . .

Poseidon and Amphitrite took a honeymoon down south, and returned reportedly giggling and with two new daughters: Kymopoleia and Benthesikyme.

With Demeter’s daughter hidden, Poseidon’s children were the only children of the Kronides visible.

Kymopoleia’s hand had been promised to Briareos of the Hekatonkheires before she was born, in return the Hekatonkheires’s aid in the war against the Titans, but Triton and Benthesikyme were still free. And all eyes were focused on them, ready to see who they chose to marry.

They were all so young. I felt exhausted, just thinking about it.

All eyes were on Themis, whose pregnancy was still lasting, with no sign that the end would be coming any time soon.

All eyes were on me.

My sisters might yet marry or not as they would, but I was the King of a Domain. Unappreciated as I was, feared as I was, I held power. No one had actually asked yet, but everyone assumed that someone had. That someone would.

. . .

My court thrived, as much as something like it could.

Zeus’s humans loved and feared caves in equal measure. My caves provided an easy source of shelter against the storms that both of my brothers bring to bear, and the confined space was warmer than the open air without wind stealing away every scrap of heat. But there were dangers too: cave ins, drowning, falling down a hole or off a ledge, the stone stealing away their bodyheat, bad air that suffocated them into sleep and then death, getting lost in the maze of tunnels.

I helped their kind tend to their bodies after they died, holding them gently. They were like dryads when their trees died, leaving behind only a physical form, and no spirit. That made sense though, since the dryads were their mothers in the absence of human women in the same way the dryads were the mothers of satyrs. They were no gods or spirits with immortal spirits that don’t strictly need a physical form.

For my caves, and for my aid with their dead, Zeus’s mortals gave me thanks and offerings and worship. I liked that. It wasn’t necessary, but it was nice. Their reverence made me feel good about myself. Oh, they were as scared of me as the nymphs and the other gods, but at least they were polite about it.

Sometimes they even invoked me, the source of their fear, to inflict terror and suffering upon those of their kind who have crossed them.

Sometimes they angered me themselves, but it took less than a thought for them to die. They weren’t worth even that much effort.

A rumor started up that I let no one leave my realm. It wasn’t true, but the journey was dangerous and my borders well guarded.

Aunt Themis and Aunt Phoibe’s oracular cave in Delphi seemed to have worked well - well enough that Aunt Dione had independently set up her own oracle at a grove she named Dodona, and others had come to ask permission to set up their own cave oracles. My brother Poseidon got involved with the Delphi oracular cave somehow. He hadn’t asked, but it was fine. Poseidon was doing . . . something with our Grandmother in the cave, but it was fine! 

Triton and Benthesekimye married, and Benthesikyme took up the epithet Tritonis in honor of her husband. I was glad that the attention and pressure were off them, but I was not pleased at how the weight of it shifted to me instead.

Demeter came to me, her eyes dark and desperate.

“Walk with me, brother,” she said, she smiled falsely. In her wake came the fruit of her efforts: her entourage of nymphs, her grain spirits, and the literal fruits that she had cultivated.

We spent years together, these fractions of ourselves.

We never lay together, though at times I thought my sister nearly desperate to throw herself at me. And at times, she flinched away from even the smallest movements I made.

Every time I tried to pull away, to gently end our conversation, she reeled me back in with desperate words and clutching hands.

Centuries passed. Poseidon and Amphitrite had another daughter, Rhode, who made herself an island and caught the attention of Helios himself.

A new goddess, Aphrodite, emerged into prominence from where she had lived for some time in isolation on her island Cyprus. She said that she was born of the meeting of Ouranos’s castrated genitals and the seafoam. Zeus, as the king of the gods, ordered Aunt Dione to take her in and accustom her to the ways of us gods.

With Aphrodite’s emergence, so too emerged the Erinyes: Tisiphone, Megaira, and Alekto, born from the meeting the blood of Ouranos’s castration and Gaia’s soil. They were goddesses of vengeance, born to punish those who went against the natural order. They were particularly concerned with cursing children who acted against their parents, and thus they hated all of us Kronides, and Zeus in particular. They were too weak to act against us though, and so when Zeus cast them to me to send to Tartaros, they offered me a deal; they would swear themselves to my service to fulfil their purpose upon the hapless mortals, and punish them for their offenses against the gods as well.

I accepted.

I needed more servants who could act on my behalf in the world. More and more monsters were emerging and breeding and spawning, and unlike humans or nymphs, many of the monsters had immortal souls and the problems they caused couldn’t be solved by their one time defeat. Zeus had declared that they were to be sent to Tartaros as the Titans who fought us had been, and as the one who guarded the entrance to Tartaros, the monsters became my problem upon their defeat.

I contracted the Hekatonkheires to act as the prison guards and gatekeepers for Tartaros, and I sent the Erinyes to fetch the monsters.

Before the Erinyes, I had needed to hunt down the defeated monsters myself, with only the help of a massive three-headed dog I’d found and named Kerberos. Thanatos answered to me as one who resided in my kingdom, but he was always busy and had no time to tell me of his every action. I didn’t have time to deal with the neverending stream of monsters, and the Erinyes made good hunters. The monsters often committed the very offenses that the Erinyes had sworn to avenge, and so they took quite the delight in dragging the monsters down.

I spent years with Demeter, learning about the agricultural bounty that was another source of wealth from beneath the earth. Eventually, Demeter seemed to realize that I wasn’t going to lay with her.

Perhaps I might have had it seemed at all like she wanted it. It would have been nice to have a wife, a wife who was my equal, a wife who spent centuries with me, coaxing out the best that the meeting of our domains could produce.

Sometimes Demeter looked more like our mother than herself, and though I had heard nothing that connected her to prophecy, her eyes were too knowing.

But something had scared Demeter, and she didn’t want me. And I wouldn’t do that to her.

I was hated enough already.

Instead, Demeter brought forth a member of her ever-changing retinue, an okeanid, Leuke.

Leuke smiled pretty at me, and there was obligation there, but nothing forced. Or if it was forced, I could not tell, which was perhaps good enough.

I took Leuke with me, and we were together until she died, until she dissolved into white poplars on the banks of her brother’s river, the Akheron.

I hadn’t known she was dying.

She would have told me if she knew, wouldn’t she?

Either way, she was gone, leaving only white polar trees on the banks of the Acheron.

We had no children.

In the time I had spent with Leuke, Aphrodite had emerged into godly society, with Zeus claiming to all that he had sired her upon Dione.

Zeus had married and divorced the okeanid Eurynome, the Titan Queen before our own mother, and she had born him three daughters: the Kharites, goddesses of all of the good things in life.

Zeus had also lain with our Aunt Mnemosyne for nine nights in a row, and they had produced together nine daughters; one for each night. The daughters were called collectively the muses, as Aunt Mnemosyne and her sisters Melete and Aiode were Muses.

Zeus had lain with . . . so many of our aunts and cousins and the nymphs who populated the world, and had many children by them.

Poseidon, too, had gone outside his marriage to lay with our aunts and cousins and the nymphs of the world.  He had divine children, but his children seemed content to stay within his domain rather than rise to the attention of the court of the King of the Gods, and so the court maintained interest mostly in his children by his wife.

My court was fine. It was thriving even as we made good trade on metal and stone and gems, and we received tribute from the mortals who were grateful for my contribution to Demeter’s bounty.

. . .

Zeus tricked Hera into marrying him.

He tricked her.

Demeter and I attended to Hera as she prepared for her marriage, all of the lesser nymphs and the numerous offspring of our brother banished from her home. I knew that Poseidon and Hestia were with Zeus.

I had not been there for Demeter’s marriage to Zeus. I hadn’t even known it had happened for decades after.

“You can divorce him, as I did,” Demeter said, desperate. And, “You do not need to marry him just because he has seduced you. We have already seen how he treats women - he will not respect your marriage long. You will not be able to bear it.”

“We need a queen,” Hera said.

“He has children enough, and we are not mortals to need marriage to legitimate them,” Demeter argued.

“My realm will always welcome you,” I promised instead of arguing. I could not stop her, and . . . it hurt sometimes, that all of my sisters had chosen to live with our youngest brother, the brother who had not grown up in our father’s stomach with us. I was sure I would regret the offer if they ever actually took me up on it, but I had to give it.

“Hades,” Hera said, reaching over to grab my hand. “Thank you.”

Demeter was staring at me. There was so much hate in her eyes.

I looked away. I wondered if she was thinking of Leuke too.

Zeus came and played at stealing her away. Hera didn’t struggle too much, but she didn’t play the willing participant either. There was a feast afterwards.

I wished them a hundred happy years, and hoped that their marriage was happy even that long. Zeus had not lasted a century with any other woman he lay with. Even Demeter.

. . .

They had a son. Ares.

He was drawn to fighting. He was drawn to war. Zeus and Poseidon held themselves above war, and few dared intrude upon my domain, so great had my reputation grown, but there were many small wars among the nymphs and humans, and so they loved Ares for his support.

So too did they love Ares, for if they could placate him, they could keep war away. He was not easily placated, but it was possible.

. . .

Three centuries.  Zeus lasted three centuries.

It was two centuries longer than I had thought he would manage.

It was only two centuries out of eternity.

. . .

I had never met Aunt Phoibe’s daughter Leto before. At this rate, I didn’t know that I would ever meet her. Hera’s wrath was . . .

Leto was not Themis, who had been pregnant now for thousands of years. Leto’s pregnancy wore at her, but Hera’s curse kept her from giving birth. The humans feared Hera’s wrath and drove her out of their lands. They were not wrong to fear Hera, but they were not thinking of Leto’s wrath when she was no longer weakened, nor that of the children she surely would bear.

I had other problems to worry about. There was a drakina going from cave to cave, killing the oracles that various gods and titans had set up. I’m sure it was also killing oracles above the ground, but that was beyond my domain. And because it was killing oracles in my domain, those I had granted the caves to were coming and complaining to me.

I was the King of the Underworld, after all.

I took up my scepter, topped by its carving of a bird, and I set off to find the creature, to see what I could make of it. I tracked the drakina across the world, even stepping out of my caves to follow the trail. Eventually, I paused, staring at the dark entrance of the cave where Phoibe and Themis delivered the will of the gods to their chosen oracles.

The drakina was there, but Phoibe and Themis were not. Instead, standing at the entrance was a youth, a young man. His face was bare, no beard of mustache, and his long hair was caught up and tied to keep it out of his eyes. He held a bow, an arrow already knocked, but not yet drawn. He looked terrified, and yet there was something about his expression that made me think of Nyx’s son Thanatos, and something that made me think of Nyx’s daughters the Keres.

I paused, then reached up a hand to touch my helmet, making sure it was firmly settled on my head before I stepped forwards unseen to follow the youth down into the cave.

The youth fought a great fight, but the drakina did as well. The youth shot a thousand arrows, more than his quiver should have held. He ran and tumbled, was thrown into the walls and crushed to the floor. He fought as we had against the Titans, all desperation and youth.

He was so young. Almost a man grown, seemingly, but I rather thought that he had only seen a few days.

He fought and he fought, and the drakina’s taunting grew desperate, and the drakina’s blood began to flow black instead of red, and her movements slowed. Ichor dripped golden from his wounds, but he fought on.

Eventually the drakina - Python she had called herself - fell still.

I stepped forwards to meet Thanatos at the drakina’s side, and I took her soul to carry with me down to Tartaros.

I turned then to regard the youth. He had slumped against the cave wall, exhausted, bleeding . . . bright.

I saw his eyes follow Thanatos as Thanatos slipped away, but he said nothing.

He had reminded me of Thanatos earlier, but now, of all of Nyx’s children, he reminded me of Hemera and her day, and Aither and his bright blue. And in this cave, he reminded me of Phoibe, who I had seen leaning against that very wall before.

“You did well,” I said quietly.

The youth startled, his eyes darting about as his bow came up, an arrow knocked and drawn, aimed blindly and unerringly for my heart.

“Who goes there?”

“The unseen one,” I said, and I removed my helm.

The youth’s eyes locked onto me. His brow furrowed, and he slowly dropped his aim, carefully relaxing the draw.

“Thank you,” he said finally.

He looked past me, his shoulder relaxing further as he unknocked the arrow to return it to the quiver on his back.

The fearsome look was back on his face again, without any of the terror there had been before the fight.

“The drakina will not rise again,” I told him.

“I should like to be sure,” the youth said. “She went after my mother and my grand mother, and my great aunt as well.”

Mortals had said the same to me. And there were monsters who took up living in corpses.

“Then give her a funeral.” The driving off of such reanimating spirits was one function that funerals had evolved to serve.

The youth hesitated. “How do I do that?” he asked after a long moment, his voice quiet.

And so I showed him.

. . .

They called him Apollon, I learned later.

Apollon, brother of Artemis, son of Zeus and Leto.

Apollon, the healer. Apollon, the bright. Apollon, plague bringer. Apollon, averter of evil.

And his sister: Artemis.

Artemis, the hunter. Artemis, the wild. Artemis, of the dawn. Artemis, protector of girls.

They caught the imagination.

Artemis faded into the background, on purpose I rather thought, trying her best to catch mostly only the reflected glory of her twin. She had sworn she would be a maiden eternally, and in doing so put herself in a precarious position. She was safest in the wilds of her domain, away from those who looked upon and coveted her. Artemis did not visit me as  Apollon did, but Hekate spoke of her often.

They should have been just another set of Zeus’s insignificant bastards. They weren’t. Apollon shone too bright for that, and Artemis, for all her avoidance of the spotlight, guarded his back well and took ruthless advantage of every opening to claw the way up for the both of them.

Apollon kept Delphi. He re-established the oracle there, and named it the Pythia, after Python. He re-established oracles elsewhere, where Python had eaten them.

Apollon was too late. Mortal lives moved so quickly.

They had grown used to living without oracles, they no longer trusted that what they spoke was the will of the gods.

Insult piled upon insult. Hubris upon hubris.

Eventually, they began to refuse to worship the gods.

I didn’t care. The humans had never cared much for me.

I didn’t understand why they cared so much. The worship was nice, but unnecessary, and it wouldn’t take much effort to renew it if one just had patience.

Zeus cared. Poseidon cared. Hera, Demeter, Ares. Even Hestia.

I had to spread myself thin guarding the entrances to my domain when Zeus and Poseidon combined in their rage to flood the earth. They could do as they liked to the earth; we had agreed that it was the common ground between us, and they had outvoted me two to one. I wasn’t about to let them wreck my realm just for their anger though.

Some of Zeus’s humans fled into my caves and entered my realm and survived the deluge in that way. Some of them died attempting the same. I accepted all who came to me alive, and I buried those who died on their way. All other humans died.

Thus ended the silver age, the second age of man.

. . .

Triton and Benthesikyme had many daughters in that flooded world. Pallas, Tritea, Kallitse, and many more.

Apollon spent time with Poseidon while the waters were high. Supposedly he was learning how to properly give prophecies to mortals after his failure.

As if Phoibe and Themis hadn’t been much more involved in the oracle. As they wouldn’t continue to be involved. As if Phoibe hadn’t given the epithet Phoibos to Apollo, and marked him as her agent.

Still an excuse was an excuse. I hoped Apollon endeared his other uncle to him as much as he had endeared himself to me.

. . .

The flood waters retreated eventually.

The nymphs and dryads who had been rescued were set down upon the earth again. I kept my rescued humans in my realm rather than risk their lives to the wrath of the gods above. Generations passed, and they became strange creatures, with only the nymphs of my strange realm to mother them. They were no longer quite mortal.

It was a while before the other gods grew bored enough that they got together and decided they wanted mortals again.

They gathered together without me, all nine of them, and considered how they were to make these new humans. I was not there when Zeus shaped the first of his new humans out of the mountain ash trees, the Meliai, the nymphs born of the same meeting of Ouranos’s blood and Gaia’s soil as my own Erinyes.

These humans fought and they fought and they fought.

I could have told the others that, but more and more it seemed that they never listened to me.

There was a council forming, with Zeus the God King at its head, and I was not invited.

. . .

Ares delighted in these new humans and their quarrelsome nature.

I was glad only that they were more than ready to fight monsters themselves.

. . .

I blinked one day, and there was a new member on Zeus’s council.

A product of one of Zeus’s innumerable flings, insignificant perhaps, except for how his cunning trickery had caught the attention and wrath and favor of Apollon.

Mere days old, Apollon took him as a close companion, and Zeus made him the herald of the gods, the agent of Zeus’s will where Zeus didn’t care to lower himself.

And when all that fuss was said and done, Apollon had spirited him away from Olympos and had carried him down though the caves of the earth the way Thanatos often took, bringing him into my realm and to my court to present him to me.

“Hermes,” Apollon said, “this is our uncle, King Hades. Give him the respect he is due as the ruler of a third of the world, and he will treat you well.”

Hermes considered me, keen-eyed, before he paid his respects, and oh, I could already tell he would be trouble.

And he was. He was such trouble.

But he was never quite enough trouble that I ever regretted it when he came to me to return my helm, with new stories to tell and merry laughter making his smiles bright.

And he was never enough trouble that I refused him when he sulked into my realm and hid without greeting me. And he did come to me to hide. Sometimes I went to find him, to bring him back to the palace that had been built around my throne. I fed him and gave him somewhere soft to curl up. Sometimes when I went to find him, I just sat with him, trying to be a silent support.

It was nice to have a member of my family who actually spent time with me. It was nice that a member of my family could spend time with me without my youngest brother’s paranoia coming down hard on the both of us. The king of the gods could not shoot the messenger for delivering messages after all, especially when Triton and Iris had not ever ventured into my realm to tell me of the news.

. . .

I heard in passing that there was a spring in the mortal realm that Hera bathed in every year. It was said that she did so to recover her virginity.

I couldn’t understand what that even meant. Virginity as a concept had long had little meaning to me, and less value. I knew that many of the mortals considered it important for the legitimacy of their children and heirs, but we were gods. We didn’t pass our power on when we died because we were undying.

Moreover, Hera had children. Ares, yes, was the most well known. But she also had Hebe and Eileithyia. She was a mother.

It had been centuries since she’d had children, but she was a mother. What did recovering her virginity even do?

Or was she just attempting to create a body her husband had never touched?

. . .

I never knew afterwards which had come first: Hephaistos or Athene.

I was told that Hephaistos was the one who struck the blow to Zeus’s head to relieve his headache, and it was by this splitting of Zeus’s head that Athene emerged into the world fully formed and clad in armour.

And I was told that it was because of Zeus’s feat of seemingly birthing Athene alone that Hera had, on her own, conceived and carried and gave birth the Hephaistos.

It wasn’t the first inconsistency I had noticed, but it was one of the most persistent, and both sides were told and retold so often.

Either way, both young gods were . . . removed from Olympos.

Hera threw Hephaistos off Olympos in her shame for the the deformities she said she saw on his form, and he disappeared into the waters of the world.

Thetis and Eurynome had caught him, and they told the world that they kept him and taught him on Okeanos’s river. But really, they brought him to me. We spent nine years together, and from my people he learned of fire and volcanos, and from my people he learned the art of smithing.

I will not say that I taught Hephaistos anything myself, but it would be a lie to say I spent no time with him. I showed him how his volcanoes shaped the earth and why they formed, and I showed him how to find the veins of ore.

It was a quiet thing we had, but I enjoyed it. And I missed him when he left to roam the earth above instead.

Zeus had sent Athene into Poseidon’s care, and Poseidon had in turn passed her into the care of his son Triton, who took her to raise as one of his daughters. Triton put her on the shores of a lake sacred to him - the Tritonis - on the shore of the sea opposite the land where most of the humans Zeus had created lived. Of Triton’s relations, it was Pallas, Triteia, and Rhode who cared for her.

They taught Athene to use the gifts that were natural to her: the armour she had been born in, the wisdom of Metis that it had become clear that she carried.

Hermes told me all of this in the aftermath of Pallas’s death, after Athene killed her on accident, during a competition before those of the gods of Olympos who were interested. Athena was banished from the sea, was forbidden to initiate contact who those who were of the sea. She cried and she screamed and she did all she could to honor the memory of Pallas, but Poseidon stood firm.

Demeter came in and swept Athene off, but Athene didn’t stay concealed with her for long. Furious and grieving, she emerged shedding blessings indiscriminately.

The endless bloodshed of humans, these quarrelsome children of the Meliai, grew fiercer. With Athene’s wisdom, they were better able to destroy each other than ever before.

The Potamoi began to complaining as the bloodshed made their waters run red and salty.

Hephaistos emerged from the oceans as a great smith, but his inventions only made the fighting worse.

They humans fought and they fought, forgetting the gods who had made them, decimating their own numbers, until Zeus decided again that it would be better to flood the world and wipe out these humans.

Prometheus warned his son Deucalion of the coming flood, and so Deucalion built and provisioned a chest in which he hid and floated as water once again swept the world and drowned the men and nymphs.

Some few of the Meliai’s sons found refuge in my realm, as those of the age before them had, and I accepted them, as I accept all who come to me.

Thus ended the bronze age, the third age of man.

. . .

Deucalion landed on Mount Panassus as the waters began to recede after nine days and nine nights. He made a sacrifice to Zeus with the last of his provisions, and for his proper respect for the gods, he was given a boon. Deucalion chose to get more men, and so under Zeus’s direction, Deucalion picked up stones and threw them over his head, and these stones became men of the same kind as those of the silver age.

But Zeus was not content with these men, these leftovers of races that did not show proper respect.

And so Zeus ordered Prometheus and Epimetheus and Athene to fashion humans, for Zeus had done so twice and not been satisfied with his own results, and wished to see the creations of others.

I heard it said that Prometheus cried for what this meant for his son, but he obeyed, mixing water and dirt and his own tears to form and shape these new humans. Athene breathed life into the humans.

Prometheus did everything he could to protect these new humans. When it came time to teach them how to sacrifice, he tricked Zeus into taking the bones and the fat rather than the good meat. In punishment for this, Zeus gathered all of the gods of his council, including Hermes and Athene to make a total of eleven, and together the crafted a human woman to match the human men, and they endowed her with beauty and charm and cunning and curiosity. Her name was Pandora, and they gave her to Epimetheus as a bride. The gods gave her a pithos as a wedding gift, which she was to never open. But she did. And so she released so many horrors and monsters that Zeus had demanded I give to him from my realm, and all that remained with her was Elpis, hope.

Prometheus went nearly feral at this.

As Pandora gave birth to a daughter, Pyrrha, Prometheus stole from the gods to provide for the humans. He stole fire from Helios’s sun chariot, he stole from Hephaistos and Athene wisdom and art. 

Pandora’s daughter married Prometheus’s son Deucalion, and they had more mortal children who married the souled humans Prometheus had created as Zeus presided over Prometheus’s trial. For Prometheus’s crimes, Zeus sentenced him to an eternity staked out on Mount Kaukasos, with an eagle to eat his ever-regrowing liver every day.

Meanwhile, barely fifty years into this new age, and it became clear just how different these new humans shaped from clay were to those who had come before them. They had immortal souls, like the monsters did. And like the monsters, after their death, their souls lingered, and could either reanimate their bodies, or cause problems while disembodied.

“Hades,” Zeus declared at the annual meeting, cutting through the arguing. “You will take them in.”

“I will?” I asked, straightening on my throne, placed across the room from Zeus’s.

“You already take the monsters, this is no different,” Zeus dismissed.

“I take the monsters because they are to be imprisoned in the pit below,” I said coldly. “I would hope that you are not suggesting we do the same with these mortals you have worked so hard to maintain.”

“I care little what you do with them, so long as they are removed,” Zeus said impatiently.

“And how am I to get them to my realm? My Erinyes are already stretched thin bringing in the monsters, I do not have time to deal with mortals as well.”

“Hermes,” Zeus said. “You will take up this duty.”

“I will,” Hermes affirmed.

“And what will I get for this?” I asked. “These souls cannot produce anything. They cannot add to my realm.”

“Have them pay for the pleasure then,” Zeus said. “Just have it done.”

The conversation moved on, by my attention was elsewhere. If I was to take in these mortal souls, I would need somewhere to put them.

There was plenty of unused space at the moment, cramped as my realm was, for though I had a court, it was small. I spoke with the nymphs and soulless mortals who populated my realm and arranged for them to delineate that space clearly, and to set a watch upon it so that the souls who would be incoming could not escape to wander.

A whisper of shadow behind Hermes’s ear asking him to drop the souls on the outer banks of the rivers that surrounded my realm, a flicker of thought arrived at Nyx’s house to speak with her for her advice, a ghost slipping past the Hekatonkheires to scream frustration into Tartaros.

That last sliver of my attention paused, vision tracing the souls I saw not coming up out of the pit, as if pulled by invisible strings. They were unmarked, their lived unlived.

They would still be children when they died, I knew.

I returned my attention to the nymphs, and I asked them to plant flowers for the souls that would be arriving. It wouldn’t make my realm much less gloomy, but it was something. Asphodel, perhaps.

. . .

I was lonely.

The sudden influx of inhabitants for my realm had kept me busier, but only briefly. There were not many humans yet, and it had not taken long to reveal to them how to change their funeral ceremonies such that the souls of their dead no longer haunted them. But with the added duty, Hermes grew ever more busy, and he had less time to spend with me. In addition to the souls of the human dead, he had taken up the duty of escorting monsters to Tartaros, freeing the Erinyes back to their original purpose. I set Kerberos to guard the river, where Nyx’s son Charon ferried across those souls who could pay.

I had none who were anywhere near equal to me in my realm. I was not Zeus, with his council of eleven, including Poseidon. I was not Poseidon, with a wife who was an embodiment of the sea, and numerous titans and primordials to chorale.

I had Nyx, and I had her husband Erebos, and I had her children, and I had my rivers, and I had Tartaros, and none of them spent time in familiar conversation with me. Three of my five siblings were married.

I found myself missing Leuke. I went and sat beneath her poplars often. I couldn’t say that I loved her, but she had been a calming, stabilizing presence. I missed her company.

The Fates came to me one day as I was watching my nymphs and mortals in mock combat, ever preparing to fight at the gates of Tartaros should our enemies attempt to escape. The Fates came to me, and spoke to me.

“Brother,” I said at the next annual meeting. “Could you find for me a wife?”

The murmured conversations and flicker-thoughts that always whispered around the edges of the meeting pause, then took up again more frantically.

Zeus considered me, then assented.

I settled, content to wait. I had no illusions that this would happen quickly, but if it happened at all . . .

I was surprised to be called upon before the year was up. First, my attention was caught by the speaking of my name in the hall of Olympos. I turned my attention upwards, and thus found Persephone, the maiden, the least seen by the court of Olympos and yet the eldest of his children, asking her father to wed her to me, defending me as unquestionably worthy of her, as his own brother, as the lord of the third share of the world.

My chariot was prepared when Hermes came to me.

“Your sisters are not happy,” he warned me. “The king is up to his usual tricks.”

We were married anyway, and oh I loved Persephone.

I loved her, I loved her -

Demeter hated me for it. She cast the world into cold, and let the plants wither and die, so Hermes told me. Zeus had bid him to convince me to release Persephone back to her mother.

I let Persephone go, of course. She went willingly, because she loved and missed her mother. It was her choice always to stay or to go. I would be no unfitting husband.

And I gave her a pomegranate as choice, that she might come back as she desired.

She lied to her mother, but I could not begrudge it. Demeter had long hated me already. I wondered if this was why, if she had known I would one day take her daughter.

Themis gave birth, finally, somewhere in the midst of this all to the three Horai: the goddesses of the three seasons, of the cycle of constellations by which the year was measured. Eunomia was a goddess of good order and lawful conduct; Dike was a goddess of justice, fair judgements, and rights established by law; Eirene a goddess of pease and of spring. Together, they were set to guard the gates of Olympos.

When Persephone returned to me, by her own will, she was pregnant, though we had not lain together. I remembered what Hermes had said about Zeus’s tricks. But how could I begrudge Persephone for doing what she had to to escape?

She was my wife, and therefore, this was my child.

Zagreus, we named him. Persephone took him with her when she left to visit her mother, and I never saw Zagreus as himself again.

. . .

I could not look at Hera.

My eyes were fixed on Zeus, on the jagged cut on his thigh, held closed by golden clamps, his tunic rucked up to ensure it was clearly visible to his wife where she sat beside him.

I could not look at Hera. She had tried to kill my child not once, but twice. She had seen him dismembered for the crime of being born of her husband’s wandering gaze, and she had seen his second mother evaporated in an attempt to have him killed again.

My child. My child.

. . .

My child was named Dionysos. He was raised as a girl to hide him from Hera’s rage, weakened and bleeding mortal red as he was. It did not fully work, but he was safer.

As Demeter had before him, Dionysos discovered a new great use for the fruits of the earth, and he produced from them a beverage called wine, which could intoxicated and placate even us gods.

Persephone was so proud of him when she came to me after watching him do it the first time.

He wandered the world, gathering a following and fighting in wars until finally he came to me in my realm beneath the earth. Persephone and I awaited him, and when he asked to retrieve his mortal mother, the woman Seleme, we allowed it. He did not remember either of us, and that hurt.

And with this great feat of his - the first of its kind, the first time I had allowed a mortal soul to return to the earth - he was strong enough and recognized enough that he was restored to his full godly stature.

Hephaistos had bound Hera to a chair of of gold by way of invisible fetters at some point during the intervening years, as revenge for her hurtling him off the mountain. When summoned to Olympos to free his mother, Hephaistos denied that he had a mother. Hera and Zeus promised the hand in marriage of Aphrodite to any who could free her, and Aphrodite agreed, obviously believing that her long-time love Ares could free her.

He couldn’t. Ares stormed Hephaistos’s forge, but was driven back.

I watched as Dionysos, a god yes, but a minor one and not a member of Zeus’s council, went to Hephaistos. I stood invisible at his shoulder as he gave Hephaistos cup after cup of his wine, as the two of them spoke long into the night.

Hephaistos went with Dionysos in the morning, still drunk, and the two of them ascended Mount Olympos. Hephaistos released Hera, and thus claimed Aphrodite’s hand in marriage.

Zeus decided that he wanted both Hephaistos and Dionysos to join his council. For some reason however, he seemed unsatisfied with a council of thirteen. He wavered back and forth on whether Dionysos would join the council and replace Hestia, or if Hestia would keep he seat. He flipped back and forth between the two, sometimes evicting one or the other from their throne mid-council session.

. . .

Apollon brought Dionysos to me in the cave at Delphi. Apollon gave Delphi, his greatest oracle, to Dionysos for the winter half of the year.

Dionysos did not remember Persephone and me as his parents, but he thought of us fondly for allowing him to bring his mortal mother out of my realm.

. . .

And then there was a rebellion against Zeus. Hera, Poseidon, Apollon and Athene bound him and sought to bring him to Tartaros.

I wish I had known, I would have helped them. They did not succeed, and I did not know that my help would have gained their success either, but oh, if only I could have thrown my disgust in his face.

Thetis, who had raised Hephaistos and sheltered Dionysos, let him free.

For her crimes, Hera was hung for a while over Tartaros and Chaos. Hephaistos attempted to rescue her, and for that, Zeus threw him off Olympos again. I knew better than to try anything to blatant while Zeus still watched, but this torture that he had devised for her took place necessarily within my realm, and there were many little ways I was able to help my sister to keep the full brunt of the punishment from breaking her. When Zeus released her, she spent some time in my realm with me, hidden from her husband’s gaze.

Poseidon and Apollon were sent as mortals to serve the King Laomedon of the city called both Troy and Ilusa for a year, to test his hubris. They built great wall for his city, and Apollon tended his herd as well. The king did not pay them their wages at the end of their year of service. This angered Poseidon, but it seemed only to amused Apollon, for he continued to favor the city afterwards.

As for Athene, well. I never learned what her punishment was.

. . .

It was the age of heroes.

It was the age of mortals who could almost match the gods.

It was the age of heroes, and some of the gods were discontent to learn that all mortals, from the most blasphemous to their favored heroes, shared the same dreary fate in my fields of asphodel. They had begun to agitate for at least something better for their favored heroes.

I obliged, because even to me, the endless fields of asphodel were depressing.

. . . my realm was growing crowded. I had not quite anticipated just how many mortals there would be, and they all came to me in the end.

. . .

It was the age of heroes.

It was the age of mortals who could almost match the gods.

It was the age of heroes, and there were some mortals who were decidedly not.

Before, Zeus had always been content to simply kill any mortal who displeased him. Before, those mortals hadn’t had eternal souls which lasted past that displeasure.

He dictated to me the punishments of Tantalus, and of Sisyphus.

I accepted because I agreed with Tantalus and Sisyphus’s punishments.

And thus, the precedent was set.

. . .

This age had barely begun, and yet, it was already being called the Age of Heroes.

The children gods shared with mortals, the demigods, were greater than they had been before, their mortal souls somehow reflecting and generating some minor portion of the divinity of their undying parents without the loss of divinity that creating a new god should have meant.

Dionysos was the first to become an undying divinity with the boost of his previous live, but he was not the last. More followed in his footsteps, though none managed to reach the same hights, and many more died just trying.

“A gift from the primordial Eros, perhaps,” Persephone said one day, playing with my hair as the two of us lay together in bed. “Generative creation.”

“Not one he has seen fit to give me,” I murmured back, running my hand slowly up and down her bare back.

Left unsaid, she had already proven that she could have children. I had not.

Persephone’s fingers tightened momentarily in my hair.

The next day, she came to me with a nymph who lives on the banks of the Kokytos.

“Minthe,” she told me, her hands on the nymph’s shoulders as she gently pushed her into our bedroom. “I trust that you will be good for my husband.”

Minthe looked at me, smiling pretty, and I remembered how Demeter had presented me with Leuke.

There was no obligation this time - Minthe was leaning forwards, towards me, into Persephone’s grip.

I met Persephone’s eyes past Minthe’s face, and she nodded once.

“By your will,” I said then.

Persephone followed us to bed. She did not remove her clothes as she directed us. She held Minthe’s hand as she moaned, and she leaned in to kiss me.

Nothing came of it. And again, and nothing came of it. And again, and again, and -

“I wither, my lady,” Minthe admitted to Persephone from her sickbed. “Had I noticed sooner, I might have been saved, but I can tell it is too late for me.”

“Shhh,” Persephone soothed her. “You will be honored. You will not be forgotten.”

“My lady,” Minthe said.

When Persephone returned to her mother, she brought with her a new plant, delicate mint, which she planted and blessed to grow as strong and as widely as a weed.

Persephone brought me human women, who died even quicker.

Persephone brought me new, untouched souls caught between Tartaros and the upper world, that we might shape them ourselves, but each one dissolved under our efforts like a reflection on the surface of a still pond when a stone was thrown in.

Persephone brought me dead mortal souls, and we tried the same with their permission, but they dissolved as well.

In our desperation, we asked a demigod’s spirit. She fell apart screaming.

And we did not try again.

“I am the god of the dead,” I whispered to Persehone, curled up together in our bed, which now felt too big and too cold. “The dead do not produce new life. The dead do not create.”

Persephone held me close and said nothing.

And I never asked her why she did not go out and find another man to do for her as she had done for me.

. . .

It was the age of heroes.

It was the age of mortals who could almost match the gods.

It was the age of heroes, and Apollon’s son Asklepios was a great healer as his father before him had been. He was so great a healer that it was said that he revived the dead, though no one quite knew who. Zeus killed him for that rumor.

The first I heard of such was when Hemes came to me, panicked.

“Uncle, please!” Hermes cried, barrelling into me. “The Most High has killed Apollon’s child, and Apollon intends to retaliate! Uncle, please, please stop him!”

I had never seen Hermes so panicked before, and by the time I managed to get him to tell me why he thought I might be able to help, it was too late.

Apollon in his fury, unable or unwilling to strike at his father again after his last rebellion, had killed the Elder Kyklopes who forged the lightning bolt Zeus had struck Asklepios with. For this crime, Zeus sentenced him once again to a year of mortal servitude once more. This time, it was Admetus, king of Pherae, who held his bond.

Apollon once again cared for his captor, and he aided him far beyond what was required of him.

When his year of service was up, a shade of Apollon came to me, his eyes red with tears. He had never before asked to meet with his children after their deaths or for me to allow them to be revived, and he did not ask this of me now. He only let me enfold him into an embrace, his fingers clutching at my clothes. He confessed to me quietly that he had not remembered his son. That he had not been able to remember Asklepios.

Those shades of us did not move for a year.

And when the year was up, when Apollon finally pulled back to wipe at his eyes, I spoke quietly to him of how Asklepios had been set among the stars as the constellation of the Serpent Holder. I led Apollon through my realm and up into the upper caves that led to the earth above, and I told him that Asklepios had indeed discovered how to restore the dead to life. And I told him that the first and only one to receive this blessing was Askleios himself, and I turned Apollon to see his son.

I later learned that Zeus claimed that I had been the one to bring up the accusation that Asclepios, that Zeus claimed I was angry at him for depleting my realm of my subjects. So Zeus said, as if Dionysos had not been ascended to godhood for returning his second mother to life.

I had to laugh. It wasn’t a nice laugh. Zeus had truly no idea just how many mortals there were, just how many of them were constantly dying. Asklepios could be constantly returning the dead to life, and he would never be able to empty my realm of the shades that Zeus had forced upon me.

I had gone with Asklepios to Olympos myself his first time, and I stood by his side in the face of Zeus’s clenched jaw.

. . .

It was the age of heroes.

It was the age of mortals who could almost match the gods.

It was the age of heroes, and I grew increasingly aware of the demigods whose souls were making themselves at home within my realm. Their divinity was not that of their parents, but they were divine, and except for the children of those who made my realm home, their divinity was not comfortable in my realm, for both me and them.

I had created the Isles of the Blessed for them, but lifting the fog of my fields of asphodel had been more curse than blessing. With their minds clearer, they were more aware of the discomfort of their fledgeling divinity in my realm, and with the fog lifted from their minds, they soon realized that there was no longer anything to achieve in the Isles of the Blessed. They could not create anything meaningful. And perhaps some would be content with the simple life where there was no longer any pressure on them, but these were heroes, and they did not know how to live without that burden.

I gave them positions in my court, I gave them positions as my guard, I gave them positions in my household. It was not an easy thing when so many of these heroes were kings as well, but they grew desperate for something to do. It wasn’t sustainable. The fields of asphodel I could expand and expand with only minor issues, but there was only so much work I could offer to those who lived on the Isles of the Blessed. So too, they were taking positions in my household that had long been filled by the soulless mortals whose distant ancestors had taken refuge with me.

. . .

It was the age of heroes.

It was the age of mortals who could almost match the gods.

It was the age of heroes, and Zeus’s son Herakles was the greatest and most terrible. He came down into my realm and demanded my dog Kerberos, and the wretched hero Theseus, who had attempted to aid Peirithoos in the abduction of Persephone to be his bride. He had slaughtered one of my cattle already, and broken the ribs of my cattle-keeper.

I could have struck him down, but I saw the divinity burning beneath his skin and it reminded me of my son Dionysos on his own journey into my realm while his blood still ran red.

I regretted it later when Herakles wounded me at Pylos, and I needed to climb Olympos bleeding to ask for Apollon’s aid.

. . .

It was the age of heroes.

It was the age of mortals who could almost match the gods.

It was the age of heroes, and that was good because Grandmother Gaia decided that she was not content to let the Kronides’ defeat of her beloved son go unpunished and Apollon had declared to the council and the assembled gods that it was prophesied that the Giants she gave birth to could only be defeated by the combined efforts of the gods and their mortal allies.

I couldn’t fight in the war, except to briefly bless the occasionally mortal brave and foolish enough to call upon me rather than literally any other god. My attention was necessarily on restoring order to my kingdom where the Giants and wrecked it forcing their way up, and on trying to clear a path from the outer banks of the rivers that bounded my realm straight to the gates of Tartaros for Hermes to sprint every time a giant was killed. Sometimes he could not sprint it fast enough, and I did fight the giants with my armies to kill them again.

I gave Hermes my helm that he might run better, that he might run unseen, that he might be better protected in this war.

There was a genuine chance that we might lose.

The war ended eventually. We won. Somehow, we won.

. . .

Herakles died, and upon his death pyre ascended.

I did not like him. I did not think he deserved his ascension, but I was glad that I would not need to find a place for him within my realm, as surely Zeus would have demanded.

. . .

Hephaistos and Aphrodite divorced. They were smarter than Hera was.

. . .

I had not yet finished setting my realm to rights when Eris incited a game.

A golden apple to the fairest, and of Athene, Aphrodite, and Hera, the mortal prince chose Aphrodite.

That was the start of the end of the era, I think. It was just a game really, but the mortals took it so seriously.

It was just a game. It was the end of the age of heroes.

. . .

And in the aftermath, mortal civilizations collapsed.

Persephone and Demeter were fighting as I had never seen them do before.

Persephone had a fling with Aphrodite’s mortal Adonis, and Demeter wrongly took that to mean that she could convince her daughter to divorce me. Persephone lived up to the fear mortals had of her that they called her Dread Persephone, or Despoina and not her name at all.

Even in summer, it was never so warm as it had once been, but how cold it was changed every year. It was always too dry. The mortals had trouble growing food, and it cascaded from there.

The drought and famine made fertile grounds for . . . I wouldn’t even call them wars, for all that Ares delighted in inspiring the mortals to use the new tactics he had thought up for the Trojan War. Hephaistos had discovered that he could work a new type of metal he called iron, which was much more abundant than the bronze he had used before, and he discovered techniques that allowed for even the old bronze weapons to be more easily mass produced. And with Hephaistos’s new weapons of war, Ares showed large groups of running skirmishers how they could overwhelm the chariots used by the upper class.

With the food shortages, and the ruling class falling apart, systems of government started collapsing. Palaces and forts came under siege, collapsed, and were destroyed. People fled from their collapsing kingdoms and wreaked havoc on those which had not yet collapsed.

Poseidon’s ill temper led to not a decrease of ships, but somehow more pirates than ever, fleeing just as the people on land were, sacking and pillaging where they could. Earthquakes became more common than ever before, and Haphaistos’s volcano forges burned brighter for it as he leaned into mass production.

Apollo could have helped, could have mitigated it. He was known to be a god who delighted in law and civil order.

Apollo was angry. Troy had been his, and his son had died to the hero who had claimed such glory in the war. The plagues he had released into the armies who fought the Trojans had festered until they returned home and spread them. He lovingly sewed the seeds of outbreaks again and again.

None of this helped me. My realm was growing more and more crowded, and I was getting annoyed with it.

. . .

Somewhere in the middle of this all, a man named Orpheus sang the earth open and descended into the underworld. He begged Persephone and me to restore his wife to him. His music was lovely and sad enough to make even Persephone and me weep. Persephone asked me to allow his wish, and I wanted to, but . . .

I looked at him, and I did not see divinity burning beneath his skin, as it had burned in Dionysos and Herakles and Asklepios.

I let him go, and I told him that Eurydice would follow him, and that so long as he did not look back until they had both reached the upper world, she would be free to live again.

I knew that he would look back.

And he did. He drove himself to madness alone, but he remembered Persephone supporting his wish. Orpheus was a good poet. He glorified her for it.

I listened to his writings when I could. Orpheus was a good poet.

I stole his ideas.

I established the Elysion fields around the Isles of the Blessed for those who who were not heroes, but who had done good in their lives. I expanded the area where I punished mortals like Sisyphus and Tantalus to begin punishing others who had been wicked in life. I picked out spirits of the dead to judge the dead and decide where they should go.

And most important of all, I stole the idea of reincarnation. I spoke with the Fates and they agreed, cackling. I spoke with Dionysos, and he agreed to carry the souls who chose reincarnation up to be released to the winds of the upper world for the Fates to place them as they would.

There was something in his eyes, and I wondered if he remembered Persephone and me now. I didn’t ask.

I offered reincarnation to almost every disembodied mortal soul in my realm.

The demigods abandoned me in droves. My soulless mortals struggled to compensate for the loss, but the abrupt relief was so great that I could not complain.

For the souls who resided in the fields of asphodel, I set up a system to periodically bring them up out of the fog the clouded their minds to ask if they desired reincarnation. Soon, I had a steady trickle leaving my realm in that way.

Even the souls in the Fields of Punishment who had not been placed there by Zeus’s orders were given the option of returning to life.

All of the ancient demigods were gone by the first century after I implemented reincarnation. None who died since I implemented it had lasted even that long before they asked to reincarnate.

. . .

And then my world ended.

Or perhaps it was just a collapse of possibilities, or something else, but whatever it was that happened, my world ended.

The world was bigger than I had known it could be, and I was smaller than I had even been.

The line of narrative, the continuous consciousness that I knew as myself, was not even a flicker of thought to the great compiled being called Hades. I was only one more depositional layer, only a single mortal’s imagining of who Hades might be.

Hades was kind, Hades was terrible. Hades had kidnapped and raped Persephone, Hades had tricked her into giving him half of every year. Hermes who was eternally faithful, Hades who was unfaithful to Persephone. Hades was everything that was said and thought about him.

There were other gods in the world, other pantheons, who ruled other lands I’d heard the names of as if in a dream, but never truly considered.

And my world was gone. What I had experienced was no longer the true story of the world.

And I was insignificant, soon to be washed away by the deluge of thoughts and opinions and worship.