Disclaimer: I own none of the plot and characters of the MCU. This story is in no way for sale or profit. The following is an excerpt from an ancient Greek myth.

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Legend I

The Taking of Persephone

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The maiden Persephone, seed of the springtime, was the sweetest and fairest of all the gods. Many a god sought to woo her, but her watchful mother Demeter rejected her suitors one and all, and hid her away, in her innocence, in the wild places of the world.

But no quarter is hidden from the sight of dread Hades, King of the Underworld. Seated upon his dark throne, he spied the gentle maiden at play, and against his will, his heart was lost to her beauty and grace.

Impassioned, Hades proclaimed his desire to Zeus, King of the Gods. Zeus, though loathe to condemn his beloved daughter to the darkness of the underworld, dared not deny his fearsome brother, who commanded all the legions of the dead. In secret he gave his blessing, but he warned Hades that Demeter guarded her precious child jealously, and would not surrender her willingly.

So it was that the King of the Gods commanded Gaia to send forth a shoot of narcissus, the most beautiful of all flowers, in a certain meadow, upon a certain day, when Persephone's delicate feet danced through the woodlands and the fields, gathering flowers to weave into wreathes. Demeter, called away to her duties by Zeus, left Persephone in the charge of her dear friends, the naiads, the spirits of the streams and rivers.

Whispers and laughter and song rang in the fragrant air as Persephone conversed and played with her water nymph friends. All seemed right with world as she skipped along the banks of the sunbright crystal streams winding through the verdant wild. Until Persephone spied the fateful narcissus.

So drawn was she to its enchanting beauty that she decided she must have it for her floral crown. She left the circle of her protectors, who were bound to remain at the water's edge, and ventured forth into the meadow to collect the prize. Yet no sooner had she plucked the alluring bloom, than the earth began tremble as though in terror. The ground heaved and cracked, great gouts of flame and earth roaring up from the darkness, as a yawning chasm opened at the maiden's feet where the flower had sprouted.

From the depths of the shattered earth, in a chariot of gold pulled by black steeds with eyes of flame whose pounding hooves mimicked her father's thunder, there erupted the grim visage of Hades, towering above her small form, awe-inspiring in his forbidding majesty. So stunned was the maiden by the sudden upheaval that she fell senseless in a swoon, and was whisked helplessly into the clutches of dark god, the coveted flower falling from her lifeless fingers as he pulled her into his arms.

With a crack of his whip, the king of the dead turned his chariot. The sound brought Persephone to her senses just as Hades plunged his chariot down into the darkness. A single scream from his stolen bride echoed up from the pit before the chasm folded closed and the earth swallowed them whole.

When Hecate, the Watcher of the Walls, told Persephone's mother that she had seen Persephone pass through the dark gates of death, Demeter wept for her lost child until the world began to die.

For Fate has decreed that any who fall into the Underworld may never return to the sunlit realms of the living.