Opposing Forces

by SoundofInsurrection

Free of Hellsing control, Alucard leaves Seras & Walter in England to see to a potential threat in USA. What seems an easy mission quickly gets complicated by unknown motives of Iscariot and local vampire hierarchy. The Vampire King must reevaluate his plans as the fates of two innocent humans caught in the crossfire fall to him to save or let perish. Read 1st chap A/N for details

71. Chapter 70 The OG Cerberus Part 3

Chapter 70

The OG Cerberus- Part Three

Cerberus's glowing crimson gaze went pointedly to the gauntleted hand around his unaffected throat, then met the Dragon King's flaming gaze; sensing the dragon's desire to rampage was getting better under restraint, and once more the empath's wolfish smirk returned. "So, respectfully, Schwarze Sonne, if you're in the mood for things to get rough tonight, you're going to have to wait until after this parlay is done and I've had the chance to check on our wife, you're going to need to give me a very big dinner because I'm extremely hungry after spending the last two weeks on a bender of activity to get everything ready for this meeting and packing everything that might be useful for when it's done, and then after my stomach is full we can take things to the privacy of a bedroom and I'll be more than willing to indulge your domination instincts. Until then, Your Majesty, get your fucking hand off my throat, step the fuck back to ten paces apart, and let's set a good example for our subjects by sorting things out like civilized Underworld monarchs."

The empath could feel a flash of disgust come from the King of Death at the suggestive offer, and then it was obscured by the restrained tempest of fury. Apparently the King's inclinations were more deeply repressed than realized. Being immersed in medieval human environments at the start of this incarnation had really done him no favors. That observation was duly and stoically noted alongside the catalogue of other observations being made tonight.

And the Dragon's grip did not release as demanded. There was a split second of glints of wire falling as Vlad said, "That's a thought. Or I can have Walter destroy your dead man's switch. If the hound tries to shadow out of the wires or disappear back to the void, I'm absorbing him into my personal void. Then I proceed with destroying you for the threats made and larger ones a scheming mutt like you poses. Then I continue my plans for extending the full might of my resources and power to keep my family safe, no matter what the Olympians try to throw at us, even if that means the true and reigning King of Death needs release a truly biblical apocalyptic scale undead army that unleashes a literal ocean of blood over this world, adds exponentially more souls to its ranks, and will be enough to crush even Zeus and Apollo under the sheer numbers crashing down on them. Then I'll finally have some real fucking order established and peace found for my Queen and Heir, without worry of an impertinent, power-grabbing mutt constantly dogging my every step throughout the next however many millennia my family will have together."

The War-Prince's entertained expression was unflinching and his voice countered from the wire-wrapped Hound-Cerberus without missing a beat. "That would be an impressive but messy option that's not a hundred percent guaranteed to work and creates a metric shit ton of potential complications in the process, so let's try to avoid the last resort, Schwarze Sonne. And while you and Hermes have made another good guess, Hound-Cerberus isn't the dead man's switch. I told you- he's strictly disability support for this parlay. He's being a very good boy and allowing me to talk, and serving an even more important secondary function. I'm at a known disadvantageous power disability for communication range and he's been my one hound TV crew projecting this meeting to the minds of the hounds our wife calls Hades and Artemis, as well as forty of their siblings and offspring that She-Wolf hasn't sensed out and called up for training yet, sixty of the hounds descended from those I first gifted you, and sixty of my own. All of whom have the capability to sense where the She-Wolf and her offspring are if they're within a hundred mile radius of where the hounds are summoned up here to, unless extensive wards are put up to stop their senses. Which She-Wolf doesn't have the knowledge to cast yet, and she didn't bother with lesser wards tonight. Once we got off the A-2 and had some privacy from human eyes, Pan set up his guitar rig. While he was, I got to summoning that army of hounds and sent their shadow selves off into the night, knowing you would already be here and concentrated on turning this location over and keeping a lookout for us approaching.

"Your vampiric daughter has a maximum five mile range for her psychic senses at this time, so the pack is split into two groups of eighty-one and have long since found comfy spots to park themselves in woods that are about six miles from the Neo-Mudéjar villa our wife and your Heir are being kept comfortable at. Nice tastes, by the way. I sincerely mean that. The restoration work on the east windows is as near to perfect as possible with stained glass manufacturing changing so much and that shade of mahogany being so hard to match and keep clear. And maybe it's the recent time I've spent in Germany showing, but I especially love the Special Edition '05 Cabriolet you've got in the garage next to the three more undercover vehicles. You had to have pulled some serious strings to get your hands on one of the 80 made, and that custom paint job is flawless. You never fail on keeping the shows of wealth relatively subdued and classy, Your Majesty..."

The Original Gangster saw The Dragon's fiery eyes flare brighter as an outraged snarl rumbled in his throat, and he easily sensed that fury, as he made it inescapably clear that he did in fact know where their wife was and he wasn't bluffing on where the hounds were. And that immediate threat being confirmed did its job of keeping the King of Death from acting on his rampage instincts as he, and undoubtedly Hermes, tried to rapidly reassess the situation at hand. The War-Prince's expression purposefully arranged to one that was once more deadly serious.

"...Be that as it may, back to my point. Even if you send a telepathic order to Seras for her and Captain Bernadotte to try intercepting them, they're not going to be able to stop all the hounds from reaching She-Wolf, and the hounds will make sure Hound-Hades and Hound-Artemis are among the ones who get through. They won't so much as growl or snap at anyone at the house; it will be a strictly defensive suicide charge through enemy lines. We both know that as soon as She-Wolf sees a one sided hound slaughter happening, her fangs will come out to protect them and find out just what the fuck is going on. And even if you unleash that great big army you have built up this instant, it can't travel there nearly fast enough to provide reinforcements.

"If my calculations are wrong about the two with She-Wolf, and they're not, but if they are and somehow Seras and Pip manage to take out most of the hounds and it seems Hound-Hades and Hound-Artemis can't reach She-Wolf in time, those remaining above are slipping straight back to the void where they're safe. There's another two hundred and seventeen members of the remaining packs waiting, who will get tonight's events uploaded to their minds from the survivors and added to what I've already shared from my memories. The hounds you command will no longer answer your summons, and they sure as fuck won't obey a command to hunt down the others in the void for you. You can say whatever you like to the She-Wolf if you're the one who wins this fight, but she's not going to buy it for long after witnessing the hound slaughter and her seer senses chip away at your story, and most especially not if you go the supernatural nuclear option.

"Queen Persephone will start trying to summon the hounds she knows and have served loyally to try sensing out from them why they were under attack. When she does, she'll sense all the others quietly waiting with those two and ready to be summoned if she but gives the pull. Which is another oddity that she absolutely will take note of. Are you going to systematically execute the hounds in front of her each time she tries to summon them? Are you and your servants going to be with her every single moment of every single day to try stopping a hound from getting through? You'll be sitting on a ticking time bomb of She-Wolf finding out my side of the story, and then you're even more deeply fucked for the needlessly cruel hound slaughter and for blatantly and selfishly trying to stop her from getting the full picture.

"I don't want things to get nasty, Your Majesty. I will absolutely follow through on my threat if I have to; so I would advise that you and Hermes not make the mistake of thinking The Dread Fenrir ever makes a threat I am not committed to following through on. I am my father's son in that I try my best to do things the honorable way; but, unlike King Poseidon, I have zero reservations in employing the dirtiest of tactics if it's necessary to win an otherwise honorably fueled war. Which is why I was able to successfully lead armies in a great many campaigns against all three Dragon Kings when different conflicts broke out, yet remained such a highly respected general. Unless you, Hermes, Zeus, Apollo, Ares, or my father were directly commanding an opposing army on the field, my forces overwhelmingly won every single time; and I had an extremely impressive winning average even against you six and kept my casualties to an absolute minimum when I lost.

"However, I'd really prefer it not to come to a war between you and I. I am being entirely honest when I say I came here to restore the balances and do my part to keep everyone alive. I know better than any walking this Earth, as I have for well over eight and a half millennia, that as much as I love Persephone and as fucking good as I am, the Dragon of Void and Earth is the only daimon with enough power to truly keep her safe from the range of threats out there and her safety means more to me than anything else in existence. If I wanted you out of the picture, I would have killed this incarnation of yours six hundred years ago when you first started sniffing around Daciana and you were only a faint shade of your former self. I didn't so much as growl in your direction, even when you two were getting tween frisky under those blankets some nights in the fishing cabin. If you remember correctly, I was a very understanding wolfy and either discreetly got up and went to lay down further away, or went out for a hunt so you two had complete privacy to makeout. If my goal was to have She-Wolf all to myself, I again had ample opportunity in this life of hers to sweep in, entirely seduce my wife anew, and take off with her somewhere far, far away and hope that the bullshit wouldn't catch up to us, at least not in some way I can't rip through on my own, for however long this incarnation of hers manages to live for.

"If I wanted you to stay out of the picture, I wouldn't have arranged for you to find out about the rogue vampire attack that was going to happen at the convention hall in New York four years ago that was aiming to make an easy ghoul army out of everyone attending for the two events happening simultaneously in different areas that weekend. Eros was my middleman for that tip off to you, by the way, so credit where it's due. She-Wolf was meant to be there for the BDSM event to keep an eye on Eris and maybe partake in some much needed stress relief kink of her own, so the twins and I were monitoring everything connected to the event and Jan came across the vamps coordinating their plans on a deep web forum he knew of. Instead of personally handling it, I made my first attempt to get you to cross paths with She-Wolf while also doing my job of protecting her; but your son ended up getting sick so she stayed home, and you sent Hermes to discreetly deal with it instead. That first opportunity that presented itself and the resulting plan failed spectacularly.

"So I directly tipped you off to what Zeus was planning for Philly, in a way I knew would guarantee that you would deem it personally worth your time to investigate, instead of simply letting Zeus take his best shot at annihilating Apollo. And then I arranged a hound intervention when your Alpha-Ego got bruised and your dragon temper got you thrown out of She-Wolf's apartment. And then I directed Hound-Artemis to help make sure you could get everyone safely and discreetly out of Philly. Apologies for her confused misbehavior when Aphrodite and Hygieia showed up, by the way. My attention was diverted to helping the twins take out the forces Zeus sent after them and staging their death scenes. Smart as the hounds are, they are still only hounds. Hound-Artemis especially hates seeing your son upset and she knows those two don't harbor him any ill will, so she made a bad judgment call in the heat of the moment.

"It should be clear to you by now, even with how pissed off you are in this moment, that for better or worse one of my jobs is to serve as the neutral buffer and mediator between the King and Queen to keep things running smoothly. That responsibility is an extension of the triad of marital vows we all swore over eight and a half millennia ago. A triad that was a condition Persephone ended up demanding after certain events happened as they did, and that you willingly agreed to because of the many benefits. A demand she initially made so that I could truly fulfill my initial oath to protect her above all others, which I willingly swore to make the sole purpose for my existence nine millennia ago on the day she was born. Whether you like it or not, and no matter what issues you and I have had at times, I am not going to abandon a single oath I've sworn to Persephone as our relationship evolved, no matter what I have to do to uphold them. I've long since earned the title I aimed for of being The Most Dedicated Guard Hound In The Known History of Existence. And Persephone will be coming to that understanding in this life of hers, one way or other, sooner or later.

"The only question is, will she retain a positive opinion of you in the process and we continue the powerhouse ménages à trois that inspired so many lesser daimons and entire nations of humans and frequently pissed off the other hierarchies because we were a nearly unstoppable force to be reckoned with, or are you going to irrevocably shatter She-Wolf's opinion of you? I think it's obvious which option I prefer. So if you have any sense whatsoever, Schwarze Sonne, you will order Hermes to remove those wires from Hound-Cerberus, you will get your hand off my throat and step the fuck back to ten paces apart, and we will proceed to sorting this out like the civilized Underworld monarchs we truly are."

There was twenty-five seconds of charged silence as the two daimons stared one another down. Then a gauntleted hand, very grudgingly and slowly, released the wolf's neck.

The King of Death turned to shadows, moved back to his original position, and reformed into his Alucard guise. In the time that took, the Angel of Death had carefully lifted and removed his wires from Hound-Cerberus.

Luke gave a relieved sigh as he glanced over the three Underworld elders.

Jan shifted uncomfortably and the miserable mumble slipped out, "Fuuuuck. Bad time for a boner. Sorry for making shit awkward, but the mental image of you two going full hate sex and realizing Cerb isn't just a switch, but a beast of a power bottom, is fucking hot. Damnit! Down boy!"

Luke's eyes closed with an aggravated groan. Jan saw extremely disapproving glares leveled on him by Alucard and Walter and sheepishly cringed as he took a side step to put Cerberus directly between him and them.

Said War-Prince let himself give a wheeze of a laugh and he said though his namesake, "Calm down, Schwarze Sonne. Pan isn't meaning any harm; and he's not by any stretch of the imagination the first to imagine what things might have been like behind closed doors."

"There is nothing that will be happening behind closed doors," Vlad said assuredly. "That is not now, nor ever will be, something that even gets considered up for discussion or negotiation. Wonderings on that subject can die and be permanently buried this instant."

That order wasn't just for The Wolf and Pan. Telepathically connected as they were, the King of Death had caught Walter's thoughts flash to the recent incident while in disguise to stalk down his wife's ex-husband. His confidant was swiftly and pointedly reminded that was strictly a strategic decision to infiltrate the party and blend in with the crowd so he could discreetly read the miscreant's thoughts and lead him somewhere away from the crowd for interrogation.

The Angel of Death immediately conceded those were the facts of the situation and apologized for making an obviously incorrect momentary association that hadn't been a voluntary thought, just his mind being ever analyzing.

At the same time, the Underworld half of the twins was saying, "Yup, Big King D! Killing the thought! Just don't kill me if it takes more than an instant 'cause that's like saying don't think of a polka dotted elephant in a conga line. It spawns a whole acid-trip herd of elephants that have to get put down."

Luke shook his head as he saw void shadows starting to ripple out from the Dragon King, and quietly warned, "Shut up, you idiot! Right now!"

Jan's fist rose up and he bit down on it to help keep from nervous chatter.

Cerberus refrained from comment, waiting for The Dragon to master his reaction and make the opening move to restart their primary discussion.

It took Vlad over two minutes to bring himself back to a completely stoic state of mind after his temper had been strained so far. As much as he really wanted to rip The Wolf's soul out and tear it into shreds, especially now, The Dragon rationally knew he needed the conniving mutt's aid on a few fronts and he needed to tread carefully, and Walter had been reminding him of that as The Wolf had been speaking. Given how The Wolf had orchestrated things, rational calculations for the current state of this parlay were coming to the answer that his options were indeed extremely narrow if he wished to keep peace with his wife and not have her wrath directed on him in ways he might not be able to placate, depending on what The Wolf had those fucking hounds show her and not knowing the full extent of what those things could be.

The Wolf had him backed into a corner with as few defenses as The Dragon had put The Hawk into just weeks ago. That inarguable fact of this parlay being so definitively flipped on him from the last's results was making it difficult to get his instincts fully in check, but he eventually managed to do so.

And even as the King of Death thought to himself that his wife owed him dearly for the things he was forcing himself to tolerate even this much for her sake, he rationally knew that he owed her even more for failing to protect her and their children as he had and he needed to make the situation right. His wife and their children were not dying on his watch again. Even if Seras had gotten as powerful as she had and had souls stored for emergencies or some convenient manifestations when desired, she was still young and could potentially be overwhelmed, forced to burn through those souls quickly enough if they were under a sustained series of vicious and magically powered attacks. He wasn't putting his daughter in unnecessary danger if it could be helped. He was not going to allow his wife and children to be robbed of another lifetime together. No matter how infuriating the options to guarantee their safety and ability to reforge their ties to one another.

The decision on how to proceed formed much quicker once his emotions were back under tight control, especially with some telepathic input from Walter once he signaled his confidant could again give his advice on this parlay. It wasn't advice he enjoyed hearing; but, at the moment, it was only reinforcing his own conclusions because he couldn't construct a rational argument against a large portion of what was admittedly known to be true of the timeline of different events. Which all pointed to The Wolf being an ally, even if that alliance came with secondary motivations on the mutt's end.

That timeline was also throwing into further question just what Poseidon's motivations had been to only partially reveal certain matters, even though they both agreed the Water Dragon did still seem to be an ally with familial motivations to aid them. Their best collective guess was something set the King of Creation's dragon temper off and he and his second son had a significant falling out, causing The Wolf to seek out serving another kingdom. Whatever the inciting incident, it was likely due to the Water Dragon feeling it threw off some sort of balances, as they well knew Poseidon was more than a little fixated on maintaining identified balances in whatever means he unapologetically deemed most suitable. It was still entirely likely that a plan had been hatched between the two Dragon Kings as had been largely laid out; The King of Death's own instincts on how to handle certain matters with Zeus were pulling in distinct directions and lent weight to that. Poseidon was still a Dragon King, however, and an exceedingly crafty one. He could easily have been trying to maneuver variances to arrangements to keep his son from serving another King and Queen, however that service was actually being given, and shift certain advantages back to himself and his own wife to try preserving what power they were accustomed to having when they eventually reincarnated.

Gaining more information to prove or disprove The Wolf's motivations, knowing what might be said or shown to his wife, getting a better profile on The Wolf to later mitigate threats he posed once an alliance wasn't so severely needed, and uncovering potential causes for Poseidon's omissions and motivations- that was about the best play to be made. Not that the mutt's version would be trusted at face value; it was obviously going to be carefully crafted to tell the story he wanted to tell. However, more information was inarguably needed to untangle this mess of conflicting interests and alliances. Intel gathering, concentrating on dealing with the enemies who were actively warring against them and a far more immediate threat, and continuing to reforge and evolve his marriage with his wife in ways that didn't leave room for her to feel any need to seek out the mutt for anything beyond traditional friendship or secondary guarding- that was the productive path for handling things in the present moment and immediate future, and he'd more definitively deal with any scheming from Poseidon or The Wolf after.

By the time the King of Death came to his decisions, Jan had decided to have a seat on the ground with one knee bent up in front of him. Luke and The Wolf were maintaining a more professional stance as they waited.

Alucard's attention turned to the mutt and he inquired with a carefully stoic tone, "How were you aware of what Iscariot was planning for Philadelphia and why did your two defectors feel safe running to Zeus for aid?"

Cerberus answered immediately, expression passive. "That's easily answered, Schwarze Sonne. I knew because shortly after I last saw you and Hermes and the war had ended, Zeus came knocking on my door with a job offer to work for Iscariot that wasn't phrased as a request. The Vatican had been working with the Nazis and Iscariot knew about Project Millennium. As the sole surviving member and test subject, I was a major person of interest. His memories of the oldest days are almost as shot as yours are. He remembered me as a background guard prop to a few broken memory scenes of him interacting with our wife when she was still the Spring Princess in his Court. I looked quite a bit different when I killed him than I do now or when I was a guard, and the differences turned out to be enough to keep his memories of me as an Underworld monarch and that fight from resurfacing. So he was of the thought I'm a lesser but trustworthy ally who had reincarnated and was stuck mostly human. As far as Iscariot knows, Project Millennium only managed to grant me agelessness and a bit of speed and strength. They had no idea what else I'm capable of. I didn't enlighten Zeus to that reality and instead accepted the offer. I've been largely following very specific directions from my father since this reincarnation of mine started, to the ends of supporting the plan for Kingdom restoration that was constructed and I'm sure he's informed you of if you two have spoken recently."

"That plan was brought up," Alucard conceded. "He failed to mention anything about you being involved with it."

"I'm not the least bit surprised. Not with what his orders to me were and what I'm sure some of his motivations are. What he continually fails to acknowledge, though, is that I am not under any obligation to follow orders from him. I will accommodate cooperative plans or heed prudent advice from an important ally if such a course of action is in the Underworld Kingdom's best interests, but he has no authority to issue commands to me. As it happens, however, most of his directions have been prudent to follow, even if I didn't like them. Despite being his Second Prince, I don't regenerate my powers as fast as he does when I'm freshly reincarnated, and the powers I had as the Hound of Hades had completely dissipated by the time we reincarnated in Wallachia. Which I unfortunately discovered to be such a detrimental reality when I died so easily while protecting our wife when she was Daciana. Eighteen and a half years hadn't been near enough to pull through the sort of power I needed.

"I reincarnated for this life when our wife did as Anasztázia, and my father came topside as well. He had decided to give himself a couple decade head start on us and intercepted me where I had resurfaced in southeastern Siberia before I could try tracking down where Persephone had been born. He was quite adamant that I needed to allow you and Eubuleus to be the ones to find her first because her soul's memories don't stay as close to the surface as ours and the King and Queen needed to reestablish their more pressing ties. Unlike last time when we all had fresh slates and were maturing in our current forms in the same proximity to one another, my father felt me being at our wife's side right from the start would create too much of a connection between her and I. Especially with the human social customs being what they were and she was being raised with, it would make it too hard for you to strike back up a romance as well.

"She had also been reborn directly through Zeus this time, which my father said he and my mother had finagled the timing on by monitoring when Zeus's soul went topside to make it less straining on Persephone and allow her powers to resurface with better ease. That meant, however, that my distinctive self making an appearance could strike the wrong sort of memories for Zeus. If those memories came back, with him already pushing four decades and having what powers and martial experience he had, and commanding the sorts of forces he did, I'd not be able to take him in a fight as I did last time and I'd end up a dead wolf like I did last go around. It could also set off chains of memories that would put him on defensive lookout for you and interfere with you reclaiming the Queen. I needed to trust the Crown Prince's connection to his mother and powers would hone in on her rebirth quick enough, and that you could keep Zeus from recognizing you and protect her with the powers you had managed to pull through. The best thing I could do was to keep my distance and concentrate on getting my own power back up to snuff.

"I had no substantial argument to make against that, so I did as suggested. We both know how things went for that lifetime for our wife. And I have to say, Schwarze Sonne, I was extremely pissed off with you for letting our Queen die on your watch a second time. You really should have extricated her as soon as possible, but I understand that you didn't realize just what factors were in play. And I knew Zeus was directly involved, your current powers and vulnerabilities were what they were, and you were admittedly outmatched for that conflict in critical ways. Upset as I most certainly was, I tried to let that one go because I knew our wife hadn't suffered perma-death. I knew she'd be back after my mother tracked her soul down, made sure her soul was ready to make the next attempt, and then my mother found an appropriate opening to release her back up into a hospitable body. I dove even deeper into doing what I needed to do, with my father checking in periodically to make sure I wasn't getting any ideas that might cause trouble for the Kingly plans. Then the Lucy incarnation came around..."

Cerberus allowed his eyes to narrow in accusation on the King of Death because he couldn't get emotional inflections to properly manifest in the projected voice through Hound-Cerberus, particularly with how hard it was to make such projections of his natural multi-tonal draconic speech capabilities that his mental processes still predominantly worked in. It was mentally exhausting just getting different human languages fluently and clearly enough formed in such projections; fully aligning those reverberations as one and adding nuances just weren't worth the effort when a shift in facial expression would do the trick.

The King returned the glare even more fiercely for the reminders of those deaths, and his attempts to maintain a stoic aura were cracking enough that the empath could sense flickers of dragon rage returning. The War-Prince wasn't concerned with that rage for a number of reasons, but most especially right now because, as far as he was concerned, the prideful King needed a few scratches at his ego to remind him that he wasn't invulnerable and he needed the help protecting their wife.

"...Again, my father told me to keep my distance. Zeus might not be involved with our wife's birth, but he was certainly running around as The Paladin and Iscariot was such a persistent overhanging threat to anyone discovered to be abnormal. My powers were getting substantial, but he insisted again that there were all those many reasons to trust the King and let you find her first. You were much more powerful as well and you could handle things. I needed to be a good Consort and keep doing my job to be of sufficient use once things settled for you and our wife. Everyone in this conversation knows how that incarnation went, Schwarze Sonne. In fact, most of the world knows the abridged and extremely distorted version of that through books and movies because it went so spectacularly awful. So not only had I been denied any chance of being with my own wife in two of her lives, but my fellow husband in our royal ménages à trois had gotten himself quite securely imprisoned, the Crown Prince had died and can't help you with locating our wife, and the Crown Princess and her very useful gypsy family of that life who might have been able to aid your release had likewise all been murdered. I was in a barely containable rampage after that news reached me, and that was my breaking point. The point at which I decided my Kingly father could take his directions and plans and opinions and shove them right up his tightly puckered ass, even if it was prudent for me to continue playing along for the moment. I don't know if you've been made aware of this yet, but Queen Hera is topside right now."

"I was recently made aware of that in a roundabout way, yes," Alucard conceded stoically. "My wife and I will be seeing her soon enough, as I know she's our ally and she requested we meet, and I suspect we'll be having a far more open discussion with one another then."

Cerberus gave a small nod to that, but his words were not nearly as passive as his stoic expression. "I am so fucking glad to hear that, Schwarze Sonne. That should mean a few less explanations for me to give on her obvious involvement in sending Hermes directly to the Hellsing organization and trying to help your mental state by getting you freed for releases from your solitary confinement in the deep dungeons. Am I correct?"

"Yes."

"Wunderbar. With that understanding that Queen Hera is decidedly your ally who deeply loves her youngest daughter, I trust that even if you don't want to take my word for things said tonight, you'll believe her when we get back to England and she happily confirms everything I'll have said tonight where those things are matters that she has the personal knowledge of. She and I have had some very long chats over the last eighty years. As much as she absolutely loves you as a fellow monarch and co-husband of her daughter, she's not the least happy that her beloved baby daughter has died so many times, Zeus is still in an unchecked rampage that she's not powerful enough to deal with on her own because of how straining this reincarnation was for her and not having the freedom to make the efforts to expand her power or personally go after him because of the extremely public position she's in, and that my father has pulled some of the Kingly-ego bullshit that he has. She wholeheartedly agreed it was in everyone's best interests that I didn't sit the next round out so the Underworld's royal ménages à trois could be properly reformed.

"Hera and I worked out some quiet alternatives for the next time her beloved daughter was to reincarnate, and then we used my ever so helpful hounds for her to have a chat with Queen Amphitrite in the void. Once Hera explained what was going on topside, my mother was more than willing to cooperate with changing what conditions to next release Persephone in and to wait for my signal to do so. I'm also quite certain that since my father ended up back in the afterlife, he's been getting ripped up one side and down the other by his Queen, and he's currently being subjected to the void equivalent of being forced to sleep on the couch. Though, given how slanted it's being implied that your talk with him went, he's still being a bullheaded King who refuses to admit he doesn't always know best and he can't always get his way in certain matters. I'll make sure at some convenient time in the near future to let my mother know whatever appropriate updates there are so she can have some more words with him.

"Be that as it may... When Zeus came knocking, as I knew he eventually would because I got myself intentionally and deeply involved with a third party the Vatican had such strong ties to, I accepted his offer to join Iscariot to keep an eye on him, maybe get access to their project, and make use of Iscariot resources for my own purposes. I was unfortunately primarily assigned to their tech division because of what they knew of my skills while working with the Nazis, and sometimes they send me out as the head of a team to deal with lesser vampire threats they don't feel are worth Big Sky Daddy's time. Which was frustrating. So I rang up my mother via the hounds and had her send up Kara and Bastion from those of Hera's Court who are under her care. They're the daimons known as Iris and Zephyr. Iris is one of Hera and Zeus's middle daughters and, even after the big divorce and she took mommy's side, Zeus still adored her. She was a healer and noncombatant in that war, so he took her choice far less personal than most of the others and doesn't have many negative memories to risk triggering if she got involved. Wherever she goes, Zephyr goes because he's her Head of Guard. Also not considered a threat by Zeus to involve.

"Once they were sent topside, I kept an eye out for them and found them in their late teens, a few years apart. I informed them of just what was happening and recruited them to help with Iscariot infiltration efforts, letting Zeus bring them in by making him aware of their reincarnating. That earned me some major points with Zeus, who still had no idea who I truly was. Kara and Bastion got set up with their day job covers. Kara's real job has been a trainee for Iscariot's science division. Unfortunately, she's still in the advanced schooling phase and hadn't been cleared to work near the big project when things went down.

"Bastion was put under my wing for Zeus's new little pet project he felt the loyal guard hound should be responsible for, and that Iscariot was willing to fund a two man project for. Monitoring our wife's latest reincarnation that just so happened to be born into a family of Knights, who are allies of Iscariot. I had sent my mother the signal after my father gave me an update that it looked like Hermes was finally nearly capable of breaking your wards and you should be free any time now. I'm not happy with how poorly the Knights treated our wife, nor that it was an American family which put her in the middle of Apollo's territory. I didn't make the decision of precisely which family to release her into, but I'm giving my mother the benefit of the doubt that she made the best choice out of those available from what her senses could manage to discern from the void. It's not like she can get a proper sense of geography in the material realm from the void, especially not without my father's aid, nor know what the humans were personally like. She was making the judgments based on what she could pick up of their souls and finding a host mother distantly descended of Zeus.

"Even still, it gave me the ability to locate and keep watch on our wife, even if it meant Zeus had to be kept in the loop. He's been only receiving information the Knights relayed through me or I wanted him to know from my own full time monitoring efforts with Bastion's part time aid. He's been very reticent to make personal contact with her because he was afraid it might spark the less than pleasant memories of him killing her as Anasztázia. I suggested we start undertaking some PsyOps to help with that, but my purposes in doing so were obviously for my own reasons, not his. Do you happen to know what childhood movie our She-Wolf loves to this day?"

"Yes," Alucard confirmed stoically.

Cerberus gave a knowing smirk. "That script was a delicate line to walk. I had to put in enough happy birth family reunion plot, and some dark magic undead villain connotations, to keep Zeus happy and funding things. The lead man being a con artist and still a good guy hit a little close to home for him on you in Hungary, especially with his best friend being named Vlad. But I reminded him this was a Russian history based story and I needed to use common Russian names that American children wouldn't stumble over, and there had to be some relatively realistic contrivance to bring the family together again. The con artist, who by the end of the movie is willing to make so many sacrifices and take potentially life-threatening risks to save the princess, is a metaphor for our efforts with his little princess of the same name; a metaphor she'd be sure to appreciate if and when he felt it was safe to approach her. Zeus was sold on the plot after that. The lyrics for that movie aren't my best work by far and I couldn't get too specific, and some details for the script and a great deal of the score were changed after we passed it to an agent of ours and they worked with the other parties to get it made. Even still, the songs do have a certain distinct ring to them, don't you think?"

"Yes, they do," Alucard admitted grudgingly.

"You're welcome, Schwarze Sonne. When things first started to get rough with her surrogate family, you had only been released a few years and were clearly in quite the bad headspace, so I trusted Hermes to do his job and stayed focused on mine. Zeus was not the least pleased by certain things that happened, especially with how I made certain to relay the reports. He had some very strong words with Francis, on a couple of occasions, about trying to suppress her perfectly innocent and potentially useful to the cause powers, that their efforts had damaged his daughter remembering her original family and they had better remember what her real father could do if his ability to forgive was stretched much further, and in regards to making better efforts at keeping his little blessing to them safe.

"Then I made a persuasive suggestion to him as She-Wolf was getting into her teens and creeping into a maturing mindset, a developmental time where it would be wise to create safeguards that would help her someday be able to handle being told certain truths. Especially after the Knights had bungled certain critical things in her earlier years and we didn't want that to potentially poison her opinion of those working with the Knights or those who held similar views. Zeus agreed with my suggestions and eventually altered my monitoring orders to find a subtle way to make contact with She-Wolf so he had a more direct insight into what was going on in her life and I could start building a rapport to have such an influence. While it may not be for the reasons Zeus wants and he's been oblivious to the fact my secondary target was him to rebuild a rapport with, I'm reaffirming now that I'm willing to eventually play my part in that reunion because of what the real Kingdom restoration plans are; if we can take the magical stabby toys from him and put his overgrown ass in timeout for his continued tantrum so we can try reasoning with him."

"That was when the gaming guild ended up with certain members staggering in to join once I saw Persephone was playing what's become our main game regularly and had joined the original guild. I had found Eros and Pan by then and they were entirely on board for the secret mission once I could figure out an opening for them to help, and I conveniently left out of my reports any signs of them being vampires. As far as I had known from so limited and indirect a medium, especially as they were like many hardcore gamers and took precautions to maintain anonymity, they were human. Zeus agreed that it didn't seem worthwhile to dig deeper into every guild member's background with our small project's limited resources being what they were, just keep monitoring everything and be a friendly mute ear to his daughter. He was not a fan of the new name the guild eventually took, Hell's Harem, and I had no qualms placing blame for that one squarely on Eris where it belonged, and making up a slightly better excuse for the reasoning behind it. He didn't know who Val actually was, but he wasn't going to stick a bayonet in his daughter's best friend for having a bad sense of humor in relation to a game that revolves around fighting monsters.

"I had also found a chance to inform my father of where she was by then and sent him off to her to make contact and start being the real influence she needed without the various constraints I had to deal with. He had adopted Fumiko some decades earlier, and little Fumiko ending up making an excellent middleman to broach an introduction to vamps being real and then my father. They got to work helping undo the mountain of fanatic bullshit she had been raised with and was struggling to find alternatives to, as well as see what he could do to help train her powers and get her ready for whenever all hell would break loose with her father after you found her.

"The outfit I'm wearing tonight is from a convention the guild met up at. Zeus kindly gave me and my two Olympian recruits leave to go so we could continue building a rapport with his daughter. With how well we were already doing in the first year, he was seriously hoping I'd be an effective middleman to convincing her that he's not the enemy, even if she ended up with the memories resurfacing that might say otherwise, and Kara and Bastion could provide secondary convincing testimony..."

"I'm still pissed we had to miss that meet," Jan groused quietly from his seat on the ground. "I would've made such a badass Raijin if I pulled some of the piercings."

"Indeed," Luke agreed with a nod. "And I would've made a far more convincing Laguna than Seth did."

"Abso-fucking-lutely," Jan said immediately.

"Agreed on both accounts." Cerberus said. "Maybe we can discuss a revamped reunion cosplay with She-Wolf for after the shitstorm has passed, but we're talking actual business right now."

Luke said, "Right, sorry," as Jan simultaneously said, "Shit, sorry, Wolfman."

Cerberus continued addressing The Dragon, whose expression was faintly irked by both the interruption and the subject itself. "Anyway. While it was easy to get the guild to agree on my suggestion because everyone liked the game to some degree, Zeus was not such a fan of the guild consensus when I first briefed him on plans. Particularly that the game's background for our She-Wolf's character was a resistance leader against her own father. I assured him that his baby girl liked the character so much not because of that, but because of the compassionate and perky personality the character had, the devotion to friends, and a mutual love of good boy doggies. That placated the Big Sky Daddy's concerns on that front. I also evaded paternal suspicions for my character being the love interest by informing the Original Out Of Touch Boomer Dad that for most of the plot, they were simply coworkers in a common cause, Squall was Rinoa's primary guard, later referenced as her Knight. The only passing romantic thing that fans latched onto was a kiss in the end scene. As her former guard, and hopefully someday liaison to them reuniting, it seemed an appropriate subtle nudge to be giving. Zeus gave me the go ahead to proceed from my better understanding of such subcultures. I made sure to only pass along the non-risque photos with my written report so he could get some updated looks at the young lady his baby girl was growing into and how much fun she had clearly had with her friends and his three trusted agents."

The King of Death had heard enough to put together a solid understanding of how everything else likely unfolded. He did not want to hear what The Wolf might have to say about how he justified to Zeus meeting up with his daughter at a rave and undoubtedly leaving out what they actually had done after they had left. "That's enough explanations for my original questions. You've made it clear- you were the double agent and big bad wolf right under Zeus's nose this whole time. With your two defectors acting as they did, he's been made very much aware of that fact by now and 'The Original Gangster' is back on his kill list as well."

Cerberus gave a nod, still smirking. "Exactly, Schwarze Sonne. Are we starting to come to an understanding that I'm not your enemy and our interests are aligned?"

"You may admittedly not be a direct threat to my wife and son's lives and are offering yourself now as an ally," Alucard clarified with an edge returning to his voice, "but our interests are certainly not aligned in critical respects because of your inter-incarnation obsession with my wife and trying to repeatedly force your way back into our lives, instead of accepting what your place is as a guard."

Cerberus archly raised an eyebrow. "Is that truly what you still think?"

"That's what I know," Vlad said decisively. He also couldn't help but notice again that, despite the obviously drastic physical differences, The Wolf shared certain characteristics with Poseidon. That eyebrow raise was one of them. That eyebrow raise meant some attempt at a lecture or lengthy lesson was going to be launched in the very near future. Contrary to his views, The Wolf had no rights to be further attempting either with him, especially not on that subject. He was not going to tolerate such an attempt even grudgingly like he had with Poseidon.

"I can definitively prove you wrong on that perception as well, Schwarze Sonne."

"You may have some seemingly convincing story prepared to feed me and my wife, as you fed Zeus stories to maintain your cover, but I'm already well aware of who and what you are. You can try to waste both of our time, but you're not going to change reality from what what it is."

"Except that you're the one with the fractured understanding of reality and I'm the one with clear memories to prove what I say. Also, I have a Hera."

That Avengers inspired quip received snorts of badly suppressed laughter from both gamer brothers, and a quiet groan from Walter.

There was a displeased glare from The Dragon, who caught the reference thanks to his son's love of superheroes and that being among the movies they had watched together while still at the mountainside cabin in The States. Which The Wolf apparently knew about because Hound-Artemis had been resting on the couch with his son during that movie. So Vlad well realized the mutt was making both a point to illustrate he had covertly gained knowledge and that, if what he said was true about being in contact with Hera, he felt she was his trump card in all of this. "Even if you've been in some contact with Hera and also fed her..."

The Original Gangster's smirk crept back to wolfish and he interrupted the Void Dragon's rebuttal. "Queen Hera, The Matron Dragon and Völva of the Primordial Elemental Arts, may be in a delicate position to balance current highly visible human political obligations with her secret personal interests, but retrieving her own memories of her first life by her own skills has been a significant pursuit of interest during her quiet time over the near century she's been alive..."

That statement caused the Void Dragon to remain silent, for the moment.

"...She's had vastly more success with that endeavor than Zeus, and I personally would not want to be one who invokes her wrath by suggesting she is incapable of coming to her own conclusions based on her own memories of events. And, as I said, Her Majesty is more than willing to verify what I have to say tonight about such matters. As a side note, she's also been very grateful for the unredacted reports I send her on how her daughter is. Hera wasn't familiar with the game we cosplayed, but she was most entertained by the full plot explanation, thought it was almost hysterically funny that I snuck that under Zeus's nose so easily, and she does so enjoy a dress up that sends a message. She thought we made, and I'm quoting her description here, 'a perfectly adorable Squall and Rinoa'. She also hoped she wasn't just imagining that it looked like there might be some of the old chemistry already sparking..."

The highly empathic War-Prince could tell that jab got under The Dragon's skin from the brief flare up of territorial anger that held just a hint of doubtful confusion. The King kept his expression stoic, however, and seemed quicker to try keeping himself reined in.

The Original Gangster knew why that was because he had intentionally set up his plans with every trick needed to give himself the best advantages he could have for dealing with his tempestuous Kingly counterpart. One Queen's outrage possibly being directed at Hades was bad enough. Their wife's and mother-in-law's combined Queenly rages would be downright hell to deal with; especially because this particular King wouldn't be willing to use violent options to stop those righteous rampages of the feminine familial persuasion. Slaughter whatever British secret service agents, Hellsing operatives, or military members of the UK and potentially allies (depending on just how aggressive she decided to get) that might be sent after him- most certainly and without hesitation. But the Dragon of Void and Earth would never strike against those two Queens themselves; so he would ultimately be stuck holed up in one of his many unknown safehouse lairs and then moving to the next when eventually tracked down, trying to wait out however long it took for Queen Hera to run out of people to send after him and hoping for her and her daughter's rages to blow over at some point before their current lives ended.

Cerberus well knew he was playing dirty and, even though he also knew the Void Dragon would eventually opt for a less than lethal way to pay him back for springing this carefully planned cage on him, he had zero qualms in doing what was necessary to win the coming war to protect their family. Someday, likely several decades from now, the King would thank him for being such a very sneaky and underhanded wolf.

"...I'm also sure the various pictures I've sent her over the years made it much easier for her agents to get those IDs for our wife, your son, and Eris made up, but I'm not expecting that I'll be getting a thank you any time soon from you for that extra bit of incidental aid. And before it gets asked, yes, I knew Eris was a potential threat. Hera is very protective of her daughters and asked me to wait and see what sort of good influence Persephone and the rest of our conspiracy squad might be on her in this life; to not hold past lives vehemently against her because she could possibly evolve to be better than her past self sometimes was. I honored her request. Clearly, as Val's right back on Apollo's side, it wasn't enough. I honestly didn't believe for one second it would be; but at least it can be said that we tried our genuine best, and she has been useful over the years as such an easily manipulated and unwitting source for bits of information when She-Wolf has been more close-lipped for any number of reasons."

"And I got a halfway decent week long fuck session out of it," Jan said with a cheeky grin.

Luke gave a groan of disgust. "I still can't believe you two went at it. Even for you, that's a bit much."

Jan shrugged and said with a hint of indignation, "What the fuck ever. You're the one who said to keep Val busy so you could work on helping Mercy-cakes wake up on Big King D without interruption, and ya told me to do it at the fucking club of all places. What the fuck did you expect us to do?! Sit on our asses and knit blankets for the little dude? Zero chance of pregnancy or disease cuz vamp, and she had the extra cushion for the pushing or absorbing some switch hits and was totally game to get freaky. And like I said, it was actually halfway decent. Not great, won't write a five star review on Yelp, but I'd have volunteered to be the distraction fuck again if needed."

"Pan. Eros."

Luke closed his mouth as both brothers glanced to their defacto leader for the night, and Jan said quickly, "Shit. Did it again. Sorry, Cerb."

Cerberus sighed, giving a small shake of his head. Attention went back to the once again irked dragon and glaring Angel of Death. "Apologies for the interruption, again. You eventually build a tolerance for it; especially if you remind yourself it's just part of Pan's nature to have difficulties staying silent and he needs brief moments to vent some of the built up thoughts. Anyway... I think at this point, it might be a good idea to resume my interrupted history lesson because it's very relevant to addressing your beliefs about where my 'place' is. I think I'll skip the story behind the spring for now, though. Interesting as it is, it's a moot side detail now that certain things have already been said in regards to the history between our wife and I. That was going to be the diplomatic lead in, but things went off track."

"Yeah..." Jan ventured with a badly suppressed grimace. "Sorry about how badly the train went derailing, Wolfman."

"It happens." Cerberus gave a faint shrug, still not bothering to look back at him. "I know how you are, and how our King is, and was ready for both of your temperaments to pop up at some point. The train is back on track and still rolling along with different phases of the conversation simply being shuffled around to different stops along the way to the end destination."

Jan gave a small salute and said, "Fair enough. Shutting up again now."

"Thank you for not making Eros or I have to say it." That comment made Luke snort on a laugh. Cerberus gave a sigh, then turned his attention back to the main discussion. "Anyway, now that the peanut gallery has had their say..."

Jan held up his middle finger towards the wolf's back, but stayed silent.

"I caught that, Pan."

"You're cheating with the hound."

"You know he's there. Now actually behave yourself."

Jan heaved a sigh and crossed his arms to rest on his knee, letting his head drop down to them.

Cerberus shook his head and glanced to Hermes. "If things continue to proceed productively, even if some behavior is to be expected, I'm thinking Pan could once more benefit from some paternal instruction on self-disciplining certain impulses"

"Fuuuuuck," Jan groaned out in dread, the word muffled by his arm.

"That's unarguably going to be one of the conditions for a potential parole from exile and rejoining a family with a young child and ladies present," Walter agreed without hesitation, as such matters had already been debated with the King. As he spoke, he pulled out his pack to have another cigar.

Jan whimpered at the thought of whatever bootcamp training his scary as fuck old man might put him through. Even still, he leaned to one side so he could stare up and over at the Angel of Death. "I repeat my 'fuuuuuck'; but I will still gladly take Big King D doing the mindraping check to be sure I'm safe to parole, whatever other terms there are, and whatever asskickings you give, if it means my head stays on my shoulders and my soul in my body. So bring it, Pops. I can take whatever the fuck you dish out, and I just might surprise you on how well I can."

The Angel of Death gave a sharp smirk as he slowly blew a puff of smoke, then said with sarcastic humor, "Be careful what you wish for, sonny. I may not be quite the asshole you remember, but I've only gotten better since Cerberus last saw me and whatever he may have related to you. I will be the assigned parole officer putting you through your paces for a full reform if His Majesty makes the decision to allow you probation because of time already served. I'm giving it even odds that you end up begging for the easy out from your community service program within the first month, and 70/30 by the end of the year."

Jan's eyes narrowed at that assessment and he snapped out in challenge, "Like I said, old man warden. Bring. It."

"Would you two like to take a father-son walk to start working out some issues, or may we continue the parlay?" The Dragon asked rhetorically, glare going between the both of them.

Jan shot the King of Death an apologetic look as he quickly moved back to his original sitting position, and Walter said, "Apologies, Sire."

Alucard blew his bangs off from his glasses in frustration, and then said pointedly, "The peanut gallery will now be holding their tongues, literally and with aid of a barbed dagger pinning said tongues to the nearest tree if necessary to remind them, unless directly addressed."

Jan's head sunk down against his arms, and this time he bit the top one to remind himself to not talk.

A huff of a laugh escaped Cerberus. "This is still nothing compared to when the guild gets amped up before raids, or when there was a full Kingdom like this, but thank you, Your Majesty. Now I can get back to the history lesson. There's some explanations on context to give, and then I'm going to save us both time, potential interruptions, and better maintain the privacy of our Queen on certain matters, by directly showing you certain memories of events. If you still have questions to my motivations or allegiances, or want further details on some other aspect, we can take things from there."

"That's acceptable," Alucard agreed stoically.

"As had been brought up at the beginning of our parlay, the Court of Light ended up with some internal conflicts because of Aphrodite's unwillingness to bend to certain demands from Zeus. What myth does not relate properly is what the initial demand had been, and why it had come about. Daimon children aren't conceived in the same way humans are..."

The Dragon interrupted to speed certain topics up. "Your father gave me a brief explanation of how such propagation happens and the recovery needed from it. That the Olympian generation came from titans who had a sacrificed themselves to make more stable demons. That Apollo was Zeus and Hera's firstborn and was exceedingly powerful because they put too much energy into him. He gave a general synopsis of how each of the monarchies then decided to handle propagation once risks were known. I'm also aware of certain irregular details of my two children's births, specifically their exact unorthodox parentage because the titans muddled their attempts in critical ways, and the basics of the complications that ensued during each round of conceptions because of that."

Cerberus blinked once in surprise. "Scheisse. That makes several things much easier to explain. Part of the first memory that needs be shown will seem somewhat redundant, but I doubt you'll trust it if we jump in mid conversation. Well, from the not so top then. Zeus and Hera first tried to make a suitable wife for their Heir by creating Artemis, nowadays related as his twin. Their attempt, and the reason for people thinking of them as twins, failed because they made Artemis far too much like Apollo, with just enough influences being different to try to balance things they noticed about the Crown Prince. Apollo and Artemis were fast comrades for fighting, hunting, and a number of forms of entertainment, but neither had the slightest desire, sexually or romantically, for the other. In Artemis's case, she's largely asexual. She's not a virgin as myths say, she will occasionally take a companion if they're intellectually intriguing to her and not hounding her for sex, but it's few and far between and she picks humans because it's naturally a short term commitment that won't wear out its welcome. In Apollo's case, even with as narcissistic as he is, he didn't want to be having sex with someone who was basically himself.

"After having some lesser children of varying degrees in power as ideas or urges hit them, Zeus and Hera eventually paused their reproductions to save up the energy and try a second time to make a wife for their Heir because there wasn't one that they or Apollo deemed suitable to be found elsewhere. That's when Aphrodite was created, with the hope that a daimon created like she was would strike up Apollo's interests and it would be reciprocated. Zeus and Hera struck out a second time. Aphrodite and Apollo both liked to fuck, but while Apollo likes to have many lovers or have orgies with his main partner and people he chooses for the parties, he does not like his partners having their own lovers. And Aphrodite wasn't willing to marry him if he was going to restrict her lifestyle in ways he wouldn't agree to restrict his own.

"So, Zeus eventually arranged the marriage to Hephaestus. A decent daimon who was a lesser son of Hera and someone influential from my father's Kingdom. Hephaestus didn't mind, at first, how Aphrodite was predisposed because he thought he would be content as long as she was coming home to him at night and tried to be courteous with having other lovers. Aphrodite hadn't been so content with the arrangement, but had been heavily pressured by Zeus to sign on to it because securing any sort of significant ties to my father's Kingdom was exceedingly difficult to manage. Primarily because he had created my siblings and I in pairs and we were immediately married to one another once old enough as part of my father's designs to keep the royal power consolidated.

"Aphrodite and Hephaestus eventually began having fights about how infrequently she was home. They had attempted to spawn a child together for a short while, but it wasn't taking. Hephaestus began to think either Zeus gave him a sterile wife, or Aphrodite wasn't trying as hard as she claimed she was. Our boy, Hermes, ended up being at the Court of Light for one of his many diplomacy missions. Aphrodite was very angry after her latest fight with Hephaestus, and as perpetually aroused as always. Hermes was more than obliging in helping her prove that she was decidedly not sterile and could create offspring when trying as she had been, the problem must be with Hephaestus, because they created not one, but two children during their week long coupling and energy fusing."

Walter gave an uncomfortable cough to that blunt retelling of his actions, but kept from saying anything to avoid his King's temper with interruptions by continuing to smoke his cigar.

A King who couldn't help but glance over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow at his confidant.

Walter gave a small shrug. "I am generally far more responsible with any liaisons, but we all have our rebellious moments and a lady was obviously in need of assistance."

There was a muffled mumble from Jan that sounded suspiciously like, "that's definitely who I get it from", but he was still biting his arm and otherwise kept silent. Luke gave a quiet sigh to their less than glorious conceptions, but held his silence because he really didn't wish to risk getting his tongue involuntarily pierced.

Cerberus continued summing up events before Pan could get himself that promised tongue pinning, expression stoic. "As one can imagine, Hephaestus was not happy when Aphrodite became pregnant with another man's offspring. She started spending a lot more time in Ares's quarters because things got frequently volatile with Hephaestus with both of their tempers flaring. Ares was not only her most frequent lover, but also her personal Head of Guard and powerful enough to send Hephaestus away when he wanted to try dragging Aphrodite back with him.

"Lesser daimons could come together or separate as they wanted for the most part; if they wished to be uncommitted like common animals, that was their personal choices for spawning and child rearing, and they knew the risks to their power if they did it too often. Among the royal dragons and greater daimons, however, just as with humans throughout history, marriages were supposed to be permanent to avoid complications ensuing. Things got worse between Aphrodite and Hephaestus, however; especially after she and Ares made the decision to all but permanently move back into the palace to avoid such easy confrontations with Hephaestus and they soon after spawned Harmonia. They claimed it was a happy accident borne of their joy to have some sustained peace, but everyone knew it was them trying to put the final nails in her marriage to Hephaestus. Hera finally convinced Zeus to allow Hephaestus's petitions for a brokered nullification to the marriage because things were clearly too broken to be fixed and neither party wanted to remain married, and his father was becoming increasingly more belligerent about his son being trapped in such an arrangement and unable to return to their Kingdom.

"That divorce being allowed, while undeniably beneficial for the two parties involved, set off a chain reaction. Once the precedent was set, there was a wave of high ranking daimons petitioning to divorce arranged spouses and remarry as they wished. That reaction wasn't limited to Zeus's Kingdom, and is why I remember the events so clearly. The sister my father had pressed me into marrying was an exceptionally kind woman; but neither of us loved the other, we had very little in common, and we hadn't shared a bed since our wedding night. We were married in name only and lived as separate of lives as we could without invoking our father's ire for it. So we requested the right to divorce. My father refused because it went against his laws, saying that just because it happened in Zeus's Kingdom or with the son of a daimon from his Kingdom that wasn't a dragon, didn't mean it would happen in his line.

"After a series of arguments on the matter and him refusing to relent, I went behind his back to discuss the matter with Zeus. He had some chats with you, Schwarze Sonne, because you had been more supportive of allowing such arrangements to be nullified if all parties were willing and appropriate alternative compensations were made to not destabilize alliances. It was decided that Zeus would accept my wife and I into his Court, and you would accept three other pairs of notably placed daimons, if I could discreetly ferry everyone over your border while Zeus and Hera were visiting you for discussions on another matter. You two Kings would diplomatically handle my father's initial outburst when he realized we were gone, while Hera would have a Queen to Queen chat with my mother.

"My parents were extremely displeased with the situation and refused to admit they might be in the wrong, but they realized that we had enough support that they couldn't force us back. You and Zeus offered them certain financial incentives to help soothe their bruised egos. While my mother was eventually willing to reconcile, my father has never truly forgiven Doris and I for supposedly ruining his perfectly designed dynasty and taking half a dozen others along with us. In part because, in return for the aid, us divorce-seeking refugees renounced all ties to our former Kingdom and swore oaths of loyalty to our new homes, ensuring he'd never get his second pair of children back into the dynasty he wanted and the others were irrevocably outside his rights to command. Each of us was indentured to our respective Kings to work off the debt we owed for the compensation paid to my parents. Doris and my debts were especially high because of our forsaken positions in my father's dynasty and the damages he demanded be paid. Fortunately, my skills as a battle commander were valued just as highly, and my sister was a talented seamstress and moderately skilled enchantress. Zeus and Hera were fair in demanded years of service, Zeus granted my request to allow some of my work to pay off my sister's debt quicker than hers would have on its own, and they treated us well.

"My sister remarried to a greater daimon who didn't have much political power and whose powers weren't particularly inclined to martial excellence, but he was well respected in Zeus's court for his peace-keeping demeanor and being a reliable land steward. Nereus had thus far evaded Zeus's ill conceived matchmaking attempts to some of his or other lords' lesser daughters, but he and Doris were almost immediately smitten with one another the first time he made a trip up to Zeus's Court after our arrival. They took their time with their courtship to be certain of making a commitment because there was still no divorcing if the marriages hadn't been arranged by their elders; and because Doris wanted to wait until her debt was paid by our own doing so Nereus wouldn't damage his more modest means of living to free her from those obligations.

"I can remember we had been there nearly a century, and I had been posted as one of Zeus's generals overseeing a city-state a distance from Olympus, when I was given leave so that I could attend the wedding. The memories remain clear, even through a few deaths and reincarnations, because of what a joyous event it was. Doris was so deeply in love with Old Man Nereus that I could easily feel it from across the crowded room, and the same emotions were radiating off him for her. Seeing her that happy and knowing she'd be well taken care of made it feel worth my father's lingering seething wrath and loss of certain positions; and I was content with being allowed to continue the career I was so very good at and enjoyed, even if it was a different King to be fighting for. My father refused to come to the wedding, but my mother was present and likewise saw just how happy her daughter was. We had a talk during a dance together that also helped bridge the situation, and I was immensely relieved to make even that much progress with her.

"And as myths accurately relate, Doris and Nereus went on to have quite a few children over the course of their marriage; and I can still remember bits and pieces of my many nieces and two nephews..." Cerberus's expression shifted to raise an eyebrow a fraction as he commented through his namesake. "You seem to be losing some patience with this history lesson, Your Majesty."

Alucard's fiery eyes narrowed behind his glasses, but he kept a stoic tone as he said, "That would be because I well understand this is 'The Original Gangster' attempting to make a 'diplomatic' explanation for how you ended up becoming the head guard for my wife, and eventually weaseled your way into her affections enough to be the persistent nuisance you remain to this evening."

Cerberus's eyebrow raised a little further and wolfish smirk returned. "I'm going to diplomatically choose to not take that interpretation personally, Schwarze Sonne. I well know who and what I am, and that I've never weaseled my way into anything I've ever claimed as my own. I've sacrificed for and earned every bit of it. And I will remind you that while I am more than willing to fight you fang and claw until the end of existence if need be to retain my relationship to our wife, it's not my desire to destroy yours in the process. I may have been greatly angered as certain events unfolded, but I have always put our wife's interests first. I have also long since made peace with the fact that Persephone's capable of fully loving more than one man at the same time and you two share different things than what we do. There is zero need for us to be fighting one another. Even if you believe otherwise right now because others have known hostile inclinations and your memories are failing to manifest enough for you to realize that on your own."

"How generous of the gangster to be so understanding when you're in the midst of holding my wife and children hostage to your inter-incarnation manipulations," The Dragon said sharply. "Get on with things, and leave out the patronizing farce of being civil."

Cerberus's expression returned to stoicism. "It's not a farce, Schwarze Sonne, but I will continue my explanations and can't deny it's going to provide what's likely an unhealthy amount of schadenfreude to prove you so very wrong in your ironic perceptions."

"You may have the upper hand at the moment," Vlad warned with icy promise, "but you would be wise not to continue pressing your current advantage. We both know Dragon Kings have very long memories and my wrath is truly legendary when finally unleashed."

"Indeed. It's one of the reasons you're such a beneficial ally to have."

"Get on with this, Wolf."

"As you say, Schwarze Sonne... After my sister's wedding, I continued to loyally serve Zeus as one his generals for half a millennia more. It could be said I was too good at my job, especially as you Kings found better ways to keep your territorial tempers in check and make political alliances, because eventually we had long stretches of peace and keeping that peace enforced. I started taking on less martial duties and more stewardship work that was incredibly frustrating for how boring it was. Zeus and Hera had tried to play matchmaker with some daimons Zeus considered suitable for my station and would approve potential marriages for, but I hadn't been interested and politely declined to focus on my work.

"Then Zeus and Hera decided to try a third time at making a wife for their still unmarried Heir. This time it was partially with the hope of making a more honest man out of the Crown Prince because he had created several half-breed bastards by now and it was becoming unseemly, especially for when he eventually took a wife and had his own Heir. So they tried again to make a Princess who would be powerful as fitting for Apollo's prospective bride, and who they felt would be the right combination of influences to spark the right connections. A potential Crown Princess who would again need an exceptionally powerful Head of Guards to keep her safe, and would not get into the same messy entanglements Aphrodite and Ares had engaged in once she came of age. With my lack of political power or obligations elsewhere, with my natural gift of empathy and it being known how well I handled my sister's children during visits or random children around my postings, and with things being so quiet and my martial talents going to waste, I was offered the new posting to keep honorably occupied and be granted quite a few extra comforts because I'd being living at Court again.

"As we all know, I accepted. I was sworn to service in a very similar blood-magic oath to the one our She-Wolf hit you with as a defensive measure. Which makes it really easy for me to pinpoint where she got the seer-inspiration for it in this life and how Apollo knew enough to help her get it working. The differences between our oaths was mine was voluntarily and knowingly made, mine came with even more powerful compulsions to protect my charge from different threats because it was a well honed and routine ritual at the time, but it did not come with a distance restriction because that's such a huge liability, especially in an age where daimons who could teleport or move as fast as Hermes were a common enough concern. For the first hundred or so years, I did my job exactly as I was meant to. I protected Princess Kore from any and all threats to her interests as her faithful guard hound- shadowing her steps wherever she went, keeping her out of too much mischief, and helping tutor her in the many less martial subjects I knew and were appropriate for a Princess of the Light to learn.

"When Kore first started talking, it became quickly apparent she had in fact taken Hera's Oracle powers with her at birth. While Hera was relieved to be free of them, and on careful testing we thankfully found out that oaths Hera had been previously bound by hadn't carried to Kore because it wasn't her soul that made them, we also well knew what those dangers could be. I personally monitored every single passing exchange or conversation she ever had with every single person allowed in her presence and swiftly intervened as necessary to make sure not a single oath of any kind, no matter if it was even an innocently meant dare or silly friendly promise with another child, could ever be made and potentially cause a disastrous chain of effects. Even once Princess Kore had grown out of childhood and could properly understand and appreciated those risks, I continued being her round the clock conversation filter as needed because she didn't have enough experience to notice various things on her own or needed aid to phrase a response appropriately.

"Then that little Princess grew into a young woman. A young woman who was adroit at hiding how mature she was mentally because she knew the moment her elders declared her fit for marriage, there'd be immense pressure to accept Apollo's waiting proposal. With her powers making her easily tongue tied, as well as playing up a shy and childlike personality, and insisting she was only comfortable continuing to wear certain styles of modest clothing even as she fully physically matured- Kore was calculating to an almost ruthless degree in making sure she was viewed as daddy's precious little girl, the truly eternal Spring Princess, to keep at bay the proposal she was so desperate to avoid... But daddy's little Princess was secretly just as frisky as Aphrodite was. She similarly decided who better to try getting frisky with than the Head of Guard at her side at nearly every waking moment, was standing guard just outside the door when personal care was being tended to, and had a separate bed in her bed chamber to be immediately on hand in case some family member came for a late night personal conversation that would need be monitored."

The War-Prince could sense the Void Dragon's rage flickering steadily with that blunt recap of events. "For the record, I was initially very much against it. I had seen her grow up from infancy and viewed her as I would one of my sister's children. I saw her strictly as my charge to protect, even if that meant protecting her from her own passing hormones..."

Cerberus let the wolfish smirk slip back out as he continued his explanation because there was indeed some schadenfreude forming from making his counterpart have a taste of his own bitter medicine. He hadn't quite gotten out of his system the grudge for the Dragon of Void and Earth failing three lifetimes in a row to protect their wife. Nor for being forced during the ones since Daciana to keep his distance so the King and Queen's ties could be first established without setting off the King's dragony temper and being made the target of his growing powers. He might as well finish getting that resentment out of his system before returning to their wife.

"...And I have to say, Schwarze Sonne, She-Wolf was extremely salty with me for quite some time for turning down her attempts at flirtations when in the privacy of her quarters. One of her slighted punishments was demanding I make up a pallet of my bedding to sleep on the marble floor of the solar outside her bedroom each night, and I had to wake up earlier every morning to put it away so questions weren't asked. I ignored her pouting and quietly complied with the demands because I thought it was a phase she'd grow out of and someday she'd thank me for not taking advantage and for protecting her future interests. Then she got over her sulking by deciding to let me sleep on my bed again and soon after turning up her attempts to seduce me by increasing levels. It would be highly inappropriate for me to relate those incidents of our Queen's behavior in specific and graphic details with other ears listening, but I will say she got very creative and sassy in illustrating she was no longer a child, putting my perceptions of her and my self-discipline under a nonstop siege. A siege she well knew I couldn't bring to the awareness of others for intervention when my attempts to dissuade her failed because that would reveal she had hit maturity and she'd then be pressured to marry Apollo; something I was blood bound to help her avoid because I knew how detrimental that match would be for her.

"I'm unarguably The Most Dedicated Guard Hound In The Known History Of Existence. If the person I'm sworn to puts the biggest mammoth steak in front of me and says to sit, guard, and don't eat, I will let myself starve before I even take a lick. If an entire horde of daimons comes bearing down for that steak, I will trust that there's something special about that steak and it has a very important purpose to fulfill by feeding someone else, so I will fight to the best of my capabilities and to the death against those overwhelming odds to protect that lifeless hunk of meat. But when I haven't had any semblance of that sort of meal in more than a millennia and a half, and the steak is capable of flaunting how juicy it is, and is making nonstop persuasive arguments for years on end about how gobbling it up is absolutely within my job details because the steak would benefit from it, and there is precedent Aphrodite set with her Head of Guard she's now married to and just maybe eventually we could maneuver things so King Daddy relents on this third bad attempt on Apollo's behalf, and that steak is cosmically bound to speak the truth and so I know it means it when it is making its musings out loud on just how it wants to be eaten if I would just relent already, and my empathy can pick up all too well just how much the steak really wants to be eaten and that those emotions are never the slightest bit present for anyone except myself when we're alone?"

Jan was quietly making conflicted whimpering noises from behind The Wolf in response to what he was hearing, specifically the mental images of someone he could get his head ripped off for thinking about like that and the frustrated horniness with no outlet that those images were causing, and little trails of blood were going down his forearm from biting down harder to keep from commenting.

Luke was doing his best to politely tune out the conversation and ignore his brother's reactions, otherwise he'd be rolling his eyes or sighing in annoyance. Hopefully the Underworld monarchs could get their matters sorted out sometime this evening because there were more important concerns to be facing. The sooner they got down to the real business, the better everyone's chances for survival.

Walter was, as usual, being the silent and discreet confidant to the King's business and monitoring the three across from them and analyzing what was being said to try catching anything his King might not notice to stay on top of the situation. As much as his King wished for some blatant contradiction to something they knew as fact to surface, or for Cerberus to slip on lies and contradict himself at some point, or for Jan or Luke to give away something that would reveal this was a farce- the Angel of Death wasn't spotting anything damning that would justify calling The Wolf's threats and risking their Queen breaking away in a fury because her former lover had been killed, nor her Queenly mother breaking their current mutually beneficial arrangements with the British government and potentially causing a great deal of trouble for them. In fact, a great deal of what the wolf was saying, excluding the more racy bits that were clearly meant to tweak at the King, could be potentially answering certain questions they had and filling in blanks, if he were to be believed. And a great deal of his story rang with truth, including some of the racy bits, because of things they knew about the personalities of those involved, or some version of some events known through myth or Poseidon being similarly told.

The Original Gangster was either a world class liar beyond peer who was striking it very lucky to not somehow make some critically contradictory and exposing mistake, which was possible, or he might actually be telling the truth in what bits he was willing to reveal, though they had no idea what he may be omitting to distort that truth. Which was not an assessment his King enjoyed hearing from the impartial confidant he had brought along. The Angel of Death had never lied in his evaluations, however, even if sometimes he was cautious in presenting them or withheld from opinions when they weren't asked for; and he knew it wouldn't benefit the situation if he found some excuse to tell the King what he wanted to hear. If what Cerberus was saying was indeed truth, this was something that needed to be faced properly to find some sort of satisfactory resolution that wouldn't damage their chances to deal with the real enemies to the family.

For his part, Cerberus was having a very difficult time keeping his smirk from turning into a complete grin as he felt the King of Death's currently impotent rage seething beneath the surface. Ripples of void shadows were slipping out from around his modern alias, and crimson energy from the dragon's own power was suffused throughout them, but those shadows were again empty of their trademark eyes and fangs because the hounds were currently not obeying his orders. The War-Prince knew, eventually, The Dragon was going to get revenge for this gloating, but he knew his body and soul would remain intact because the King wouldn't dare risk an unforgiving wrath from the Queens, and it was going to be worth the lesser pains he was currently wracking up. He kept the grin from forming because there was more to this line of conversation than getting in a few petty jabs, but those jabs were an undeniable perk.

"I feel no shame in admitting it. Out of the many battles over more than three thousand years that I had fought, the Spring Princess ended up being the most brutally calculating opponent who fought with some of the dirtiest tactics I have ever had to deal with. It took our She-Wolf several years to do it, but she eventually shattered my willpower to keep things strictly professional. And when the legendary War-Prince finally conceded defeat, Her Highness was very gracious in bestowing boons for my concessions to her being the most magnificent victor whose mercies I had ever had to submit to. No one ever thought Aphrodite was innocent after she hit physical maturity because she was shameless in flaunting what her mama intentionally gave her, and she and Ares made no bones about what they were doing from the very start. Zeus and Hera tolerated as much as they did with Aphrodite because they knew they only had themselves to blame for her nature and letting her fuck her Head of Guard who had a long history of keeping himself under a tight reproductive self-control kept her from potentially depleting every bit of her energy into dozens of spawn.

"But Persephone and I? We became the glorious genesis of the cliché for daddy's precious little princess being a very naughty girl by sneaking behind his back to have sex with her guard he was paying for. And it wasn't just sex. We were heads over tails and near drowning in first time puppy love. Every fucking moment we could steal to drop courtly charades and openly enjoy ourselves in some way was perfect bliss. Naïve bliss to think it would last, but it was still bliss like I had never come anywhere close to knowing in my previous three thousand years of existence.

"I'm not going to relate the full story of that spring over there, but I think I do want to share, after all, a couple of the highlights. Even when not moving at my full speed and needing to employ an enchantment to ease wind resistance to keep things comfortable for Kore, I could easily get us from Olympus to here in under two hours. With it being in the opposite direction from your bordering Kingdom, and my martial and magical skills being what they are to almost instantaneously handle any petty human threats or lesser daimons who might get a stupid rebellious thought, Zeus had authorized locations like this for day trips to practice magic out in the wild, or give naturalist lessons, or just give Kore some space from crowds when feeling empathic drain and depression. Sometimes we even had permission for overnight trips for giving uninterrupted astronomy lessons.

"One of Kore's favorite things was watching the fire salamanders go through their life cycles and seeing them last for decades on end, unlike so many fleeting species here. They were also great practice for using her empathy to calm creatures because the little guys' toxic secretions would stop reactively coming out when she hit the right amount and it was an easy visual gauge to relate to what her senses were reading of their auras. After she got them so thoroughly sedated, she could safely handle them and they'd quietly rest in her lap as we moved on to other lessons. Once things changed between us, however, this became one of our favorite spots to have our fun without worry of being caught. She named that spring after what we shared because female nightingales are mute and it's the males who sing, and I was so frequently her voice when tongue tied or helping her find other ways to express herself. Unlike the modern poetic connotations, when we got to making music out here, literally or figuratively, there was nothing mournful about it, save for the knowledge that we had to keep our songs to ourselves."

Were it not for the severe and enforceable threats overhanging the conversation, The Original Gangster knew he'd long since be engaged in a vicious battle to the death with the Void Dragon. Everything in said King's glare and aura and deepening shadows were silent primal bellows of his territorial outrage while stuck in his blackmail constructed cage. It was such sweet, sweet schadenfreude to be indulging in, to be able to press the point that he was decidedly not the interloper; and it was entirely, unarguably, worth whatever the King of Death eventually came up with someday to repay him. His smirk disappeared now, however, because they were soon coming up to the unpleasant parts of the history lesson.

"And we did keep those symphonies to ourselves. They were completely hidden and unappreciated by outside parties for nearly two hundred years. Except for Queen Hera. With her powers of observation and deduction being what they are, she had eventually figured out her baby girl wasn't as slow in maturing as she gave the appearance of, and why the Spring Princess was putting on the charade. And Hera's maternal instincts had picked up the few tiny clues that slipped out to follow everything between Kore and I as it was unfolding, but she didn't say anything to me until about three years into Persephone's and my love affair. That's when I found out just how busted we were.

"Then Her Majesty told me the fun little unexpected fact that she had a bet going with herself on how long it would take for Princess Kore to break me. She lost that bet and a readjusted one because my willpower had been that strong. After I broke, she wanted to see if things would last or if it would fizzle after a few romps, and it clearly hadn't fizzled. She told me that as deeply frustrating as it was to be 0 to 3 on intentionally making a wife for Apollo, at least they had unintentionally managed a 2 to 3 record on matching fitting husbands for those daughters through their Heads of Guards. Even if I had renounced my ties to my father's Kingdom, I was still born his Second Prince. That came with far more personal power than most every potential alternative to Apollo and under normal circumstances it would've been considered me potentially marrying downward by desiring a princess who had so many older siblings, no matter what personal power she possessed. With as loyally as I had served their Kingdom for so long, Hera was of the thought that they could afford to make another generous bridal gift, as had been done with Ares, so I could continue my peace time retirement and still be certain of taking care of her youngest daughter's material needs.

"In the inevitability that we went to war at some point in the future and my services were needed, it was already understood Kore would be kept safe at Court like Aphrodite was. I could still take to the battlefield like Ares did because it was in the interests of protecting our charges' long-term security and we didn't have a distance choke chain on us. If things got too hairy, I'd be obligated to retreat from battle to preserve my life so I could continue my immediate duties to the princess I was sworn to. Or if Olympus came under a direct attack while I was elsewhere engaged, I'd have to speed my way back to help break up the threat before it could reach Kore. Ares sometimes had to do that and myths relate the wrong motivations to him suddenly disengaging from battles, but back then daimons knew why and it wasn't considered a mark of dishonor against him. And just like him, now I'd have an extra reason to make sure I fought and commanded to the best of my abilities for the Kingdom of Olympus and need be cautious to not have that known vulnerability exploited by enemies to run me off from battles. Nervous as I had been when Hera had first started talking because the way she led off made it seem Kore and I were about to be split apart for our indiscretions, and finally fully appreciating the parent Kore had picked up her devastatingly deceptive womanly wiles from, I left that private conversation feeling a very hopeful wolfy who was grateful for the Queen I was now under the rule of being such a far-thinking woman who was relatively more flexible on allowing her children and subjects to have free will so long as her Kingdom still benefited from events.

"When Hera made the first attempt to carefully suss out Zeus's willingness to consider alternatives to Apollo, he adamantly shot it down because it took too much out of the both of them to keep making such daughters. He didn't want to have go through it again, and there couldn't possibly be a more suitable husband for his precious baby girl than the Crown Prince, so they'd just need wait as long as it took for Kore and Apollo to come together when they were both ready. Hera gave us permission to carry on as we were until she could wear him down on the idea of Apollo being the right match for Kore and be open to considering alternatives. Her only condition was no creating children until we received Zeus's permission to officially marry. The Kingdom didn't need another Aphrodite scandal and we should be conscientious of the Crown Prince's pride and image. Kore and I were more than willing to live with that condition if it meant we were together. Dragons in their whole state don't suffer the effects of aging, so waiting however long it might take to be able to have children wasn't a concern. We had such hope and faith in the Queen's skills that we fully believed that someday, eventually, Hera would pull through for us so we wouldn't have to keep hiding our relationship and we'd be able to get started on creating the family we ended up having plenty of time to get all planned out..."

The Dragon was still in a barely restrained rampage of a mood, but he was managing to rein back in the shadows as the story continued. Cerberus had no doubts the King realized, from the glaring spoiler alert that was their present day situation, that those lovestruck plans had been shattered by certain events. The Void Dragon, with Hermes dutifully and telepathically whispering away, was more than likely having some measure of his territorial instincts placated with the reminder of who had ultimately been able to claim a family with their wife.

The Original Gangster's sweet schadenfreude had already taken on a bitter note because he knew exactly how irrevocably those plans had been stolen from him. The culprit for that theft, and that thief's Kingly enabler, remained to this day the primordially created banes of his existence. And it was time to get his counterpart's rage focused back on the real enemy, as painful as reliving certain things in such vivid detail was going to be. Hopefully, this time, with their combined fury and skills and experiences, they'd finally be able to stop that plague in its tracks.

"...Then Zeus decided, as the Spring Princess was creeping closer to three hundred years old, that perhaps he had babied Kore too much and was stunting her emotional maturity. That what she really needed was the push to grow up. So he gave Apollo the signal that it was fine to start making attempts to pursue Kore, and started trying to wrangle her into more formal responsibilities to prepare her for being wife to the Crown Prince. And that's when shit went downhill really quickly. Zeus became increasingly aggressive with shooting down Hera's attempts to dissuade him or deflect pressure from Kore. Apollo was bound and determined to claim himself a wife after such a long wait and having been kept at bay from Kore for three hundred years.

"We were quickly running out of options, so we enlisted Persephone's second eldest brother, Thanatos, for help. The King of Light's personal assassin who was as different from Apollo as night is to day, and who was deeply protective of his baby sister. We were hoping to make arrangements to elope, wait for Zeus's dragon temper to cool and Apollo's bruised princely pride to heal, and then come back home to the Kingdom when it had, but... Well, I think that's where the direct memories would be better than me just summarizing what happened. Whatever you and Hermes may have figured out, whatever my father may have told you, I know it can't possibly be the full story unless you've got memories coming back to help fill in a few of the blanks. Myths sure as fuck don't tell the truth; and there's details that weren't my father's business to be later told, even if he hates being told that by his own offspring, and he's never been a fan of how things ultimately got resolved. You're going to recognize Thanatos right off the bat, Schwarze Sonne. And as a point of preemptive clarification, in case whatever recon you've undoubtedly done hasn't managed to pull up pictures of her to make the connection when you see her in one memory, I will mention again that Iris is Kara's old self."

The King of Death was silent for half a minute as his mind continued turning over what he had thus far been told and weighed it with the many other things he knew, and tried to get his temper further reined in before it was put under any strains from whatever The Wolf might show him. His glasses disappeared in a wisp of shadows as he said, "If there's a single hint of these 'memories' of yours being fabrications, no matter how well crafted they may be, I will recognize it. At the first sign of such a deception, I will use the already established connection to pull your soul from your body in the space between seconds. Threat of hounds feeding her misinformation or no, my wife will believe me if I need tell her my talents for telepathy, mind control and dark magics recognized them as forgeries to try propping up an emotionally tugging fantasy you've constructed to further worm your way into our lives. And I know Queen Hera will not only likewise forgive me, but generously thank me, if I uncover you've pulled a carefully constructed and extended PsyOps on her and periodically slipped in similar false memories between the real ones while she's been trying to recover them."

Cerberus gave an unconcerned shrug. "I know that even if you're willing to play as dirty as I do when it's necessary, Schwarze Sonne, you wouldn't be stupid enough to blatantly lie to an Oracle such as our wife, or a Völva of Queen Hera's peerless skills, especially not for something so serious. I've got nothing to hide. Every memory is one hundred percent legit; either resurfacing on its own or when I've been doing some intense 'soul searching' exercises as part of my efforts to return back to my old self. So you have yourself a deal."

The Dragon spent another minute in silence, making sure his own mind was under a tight enough control to not reveal any of his thoughts that could then be used against him in some way. When he finally extended his awareness, he found The Wolf's mind wasn't currently under any sort of protections and access was easy to obtain.

The empath's emotional state was being kept carefully stoic, his mind devoid of unwanted thoughts, and his innate power subdued. The rhapsodic multi-tonal voice that had been coming from the hound said within the shared awareness, "Ready to begin?"

"Get on with it."

The first of the memories took shape in Cerberus's mind within seconds.

He was standing at attention on one side of a room made of pristine white marble. Magical glyphs were imbedded and glowing in walls, floor, and ceiling. The sizeable windows along the left hand wall of the room were covered in sage colored, heavy wool drapes, woven to include little white and pink roses along the edges, and currently drawn closed. The room was decorated in a profusion of potted plant life, held in a variety of ceramics pots; the larger sitting directly on the floor, the smaller perched on display pillars or hanging from netted slings suspended from the ceiling. In the center was a small indoor water fountain, made of matching marble and bearing intricate mosaics made from tiles of precious gemstones and gold settings that depicted woodland creatures in their forest home.

Across from him, a foot away from the warded door, stood the daimon once known as Thanatos, presently known as Captain Pip Bernadotte. Tall, lean, with a lighter olivine skin tone. His long crimson hair hung nearly to his ankles, even tied back as it was into a severely tight tail and at six inch intervals further down with knots of black leather. He wore a black chiton, hemmed in deep royal purple but otherwise plainly decorated, that was draped in pleats to his ankles, and the sandals he wore were black leather to match. A large bow, stained black and glimmering faintly with prismatic sigils, was over his shoulder. A similarly colored and imbued spear with an obsidian head was slung over the other shoulder by a leather harness. A quiver was at his right side, filled with arrows bearing one of four different colored feathers on the ends of their shafts. At his left hip was strapped a silver sword in an ebony wood sheath, both of which bore their own magical sigils. His stance was rigidly straight, bare arms crossed in front of himself and corded muscles accentuated by the tension. The fingers of his top hand were drumming his long, lethally sharp, dragon claws against his bicep as his expression showed some mental debate being had.

Thanatos's eye-sockets were filled with void like spheres that were suffused with a webbing of golden energy that caused the orbs to shimmer like black goldstone. His expression hardened with resolution. A resolution that could be felt as the small aura of conflicted emotions he had been leaking out just as suddenly evaporated; the assassin slipping into a mental state that made him as undetectable to the higher senses as a lifeless stone would be. Something that did not concern Cerberus because he innately knew it wasn't a warning sign of imminent attack; the Shadow Prince was simply doing similar to what he was, of containing personal emotions so as not to exacerbate matters for the highly intuitive and empathic Princess in their presence.

Thanatos's head tilted a fraction; a courtesy to the normally-sighted to show his attention was being focused on whatever person he was about to be addressing.

Cerberus's gaze likewise swept down for a moment, to that Princess sitting three paces away to his right, on a marble bench bearing a plush cushion covered in sage fabric that matched the drapes.

The daimon then known as the Spring Princess, Kore, was sitting with a carefully straight and proper posture. He could feel she was trying to keep her thoughts and emotions contained, but his acute senses could feel ripples of her anxiety and fear as it strained against her mental control. Chestnut hair that was clearly longer than even her elder brother's was twisted into near a hundred braids that had then been woven into a pattern of intricate coils at the back of her head and loops that flowed down to her mid back. Woven throughout her hair were delicate beads fashioned to look like flowers, with tiny leaves of jade and fragile petals made of rhodochrosite, whose golden settings caught the light from the torches flickering on the walls and glittered that light back warmly. Her peplos dress was as pristinely white as the room they were in, cut and wrapped in an exceedingly modest fashion to be fully covering of her lithe frame's hourglass curves, and with the folds held in place by pins that were fashioned as larger versions of the flowers adorning her hair. Her supple fingers, tipped with more delicate but nearly as sharp dragon claws, were interlaced and resting in her lap. Full lips were tense as they tried to keep a neutral position. The tips of her canines could be seen peeking out and reaching nearly to the bottom edge of the lower lip, and incisors indented next to them. Her golden gaze was focused on her brother and, after his fleeting glance, Cerberus's gaze likewise returned forward.

When Thanatos opened his own fanged mouth and spoke, the words that came out were barely above a whisper, yet echoed across the room with his deep multi-tonal growl of a voice.

Cerberus could sense immediate confusion from the King of Death and brought the memory to a pause, the stilled image becoming fuzzy and translucent as his concentration shifted off of it. He asked rhetorically, "I take it that hearing our original language isn't triggering enough of a memory of it to understand what's being said?"

"No," Vlad conceded in a stoic tone. "Outside of catching what I believe was a pronunciation of my oldest name, I didn't understand any of that."

Cerberus gave a mental sigh. "Well, Schwarze Sonne, you're going to hate hearing what's about to be said in this memory, and some specific things in the others, even more than you already would if it comes directly from my ethereal mouth, but I can translate it as straightforward as I know if you want me to. Otherwise, you can make wild guesses based on names said that you should recognize, and the accompanying body language, tones, and the vibes I can remember sensing."

"I'm already allowing you to show what you claim are memories as supposed proof of events and your resulting motivations; you might as well include verbal interpretations. We both know what will happen if I pick up the slightest hint of any of this being fabrications; and I reiterate that I will know, no matter how well crafted the falsehood might be."

"As you say, Schwarze Sonne. Just don't try to kill the messenger when we get to the less than polite outbursts or the particularly rough things when Apollo crossed the event horizon."

Vlad gave a snort of humorless laughter and said sardonically, "I have a lot of reasons to want to kill you right now, but we both know what conniving threats you have overhanging this parlay, so stop pretending matters are remotely civil, especially not in your mind where the others can't hear."

Cerberus was quick to give his glib response. "I'd normally agree with your anger for an entity committing this level of insubordination to their sworn King. However, it's easily observable that you're still not quite your usual icy self and are more prone to rampages, and you've already had your hand around my throat with threats to try soul rending me and our Queen's best doggo familiar, Hound-Cerberus. So I'm instead continuing to use the permanent power invested in me by the authority of His and Her Majesty, The King and Queen of the Underworld, as their sworn Consort; and the temporary authority granted by Her Majesty, Queen Hera, to act as her agent for giving necessary support to her daughter and daughter's second husband during such a delicate time of transition. Therefore, by the triad of authorities invested in me for current matters, I declare a sustained Not Guilty vote for shanghaiing His Majesty into signing a supernatural MAD Doctrine because it's proving abundantly necessary to keep the Dragon King from going nuclear and to continue acting the baseline of civil."

"You are racking up the counts of treason to be dealt with once this matter is set to rights by the Queens declaring for everyone to know that you have no such rightful authorities, and never have had them," The King of Death warned with full conviction.

"I'm wagering my very soul on that day never coming, Schwarze Sonne. You might want to start seriously asking yourself why I'm so confident in placing the ultimate bet and why you're really so pissed off. Lastly, one more point of clarification. When we get to parts where I'm thinking of various things, are you opting for the VIP pass to have a translation of those as well?"

"...Yes."

"As I'm sure you're well aware, the mind of a daimon with accelerated thinking skills goes at a dizzying pace, so I'm going to need to pause the memory to give those translations."

"Get on with it."

"Affirmative. Just give me about ten seconds to not only get the memory fully latched back onto, but also shift my focus enough to keep up with it to make the overlapping translations and pauses as needed."

Vlad could sense the wolf's consciousness shifting and splitting off in focus, in ways that would indicate he was doing as he said he would be, and he wasn't sensing any subconscious thoughts of making deceptions. The vision of the memory came back into focus and resumed, but now the wolf's voice could be heard overlapping the memory, acting like a metaphysical dubbing to a movie.

Thanatos began addressing his sister. "I will be direct as possible because King Hades was willing to meet with me and advise on our problem with Apollon, but I know that no matter how I word it, you are not going to be enthusiastic for the solution that can be offered. I do believe that once you have time to consider it, you will find it acceptable."

Cerberus's gaze again flicked to Kore and saw her expression hadn't changed, but he could feel more ripples of unease coming from her. As his gaze turned forward once more, he could hear her saying in a quieter echoing voice that spoke their harsh language in such a way that it loaned a flowing melody to it, "I appreciate the warning, brother; but I would appreciate knowing what had been said even more so I can properly consider what options are left."

Thanatos gave a fraction of a nod to that assertion. "As you say, baby sister. When I spoke with the Void Dragon, he held no surprise from hearing of your dilemma. His reasoning was not simply caused by a knowledge of what sort of man Apollon is and that certain characteristics would be unwanted in a husband for someone such as you, and for how stubborn our father can be once his mind is set on an issue. His secondary reason, as told to me, was borne of a truth that he and King Poseidon reasoned out and have been keeping to themselves out of respect for the free will of others and allowing events to follow their own natural courses."

"What truth would that be?" the seer asked passively.

"Just as we greater daimons with the correct compositions can create offspring if we choose to mate, so too were the entire first generation of our kind purposefully designed by the titanes who came before us."

Cerberus could feel his momentary flair of surprise mirrored in the Spring Princess's aura. The lore of their origins flashed through his analyzing mind.

Present day Cerberus hit the mental pause and related that bit of lore: "The reason for the surprise here is that, at the time, the Kings and Queens had always been said to be the purposeful offspring of the titanes, who came to fear how much power they had allowed their offspring to have and tried to destroy them. The Kings and Queens had worked together to slay their chaotic and disorganized progenitors, and from the corpses of those rapidly decomposing ancients had sprung the rest of the first generation of greater daimons. Lesser daimons than the Kings and Queens who had formed in a manner similar to shards flying out from broken crystals, some shards of different crystals had smashed together and fused to create new kinds; and the daimons that had survived the process had managed that feat, instead of breaking apart and returning to the ether, because they had managed to retain a strong enough spark of the original lifeforce they had sprung from to form a new type of sentience influenced by their new states of being. A state of being that, while lesser, was still close enough to the Dragons that their elder siblings had been able to communicate with the fledgling daimons, protect them through their vulnerable infancy of growth, and form a cohesive enough civilization for them all to survive in.

"And while that new twist on the accepted lore was surprising, I came to the conclusion it was entirely plausible that it hadn't just been the Kings and Queens who had been intentionally formed. Despite the version we were all told, the greater daimons could have been some younger litter of planned offspring, far more numerous but individually much less powerful than the Dragons, who had been much too young to remember the death of the titanes."

With that consideration and rationalization come to, a process taking the span of four heartbeats, Cerberus was able to shift back to his disciplined neutral mental state two heartbeats later.

He could feel Kore's surprise lingering, however, laced with confusion. After a minute of contemplation, she said with tone not changing, "That would make certain parts of lore take a more sensible form and it feels right to consider. The story we know could be what the elder Dragons genuinely believed of their younger siblings for a time in the confusing aftermath of such a war. Or it could be some fable to give themselves a seeming extra measure of heroism and purpose to keep their reigns unquestioned and the Three Kingdoms in what order can be maintained. What it does not explain to me in this moment is how that history plays into my current problem. Unless you mean to say that the titanes may have not only created the first generation as they had, but may have had more extensive control over propagation than we do and imprinted designs for future generations; which would then imply a chain of thought that they had intended for Apollon and I to be born and be mates, that is the cause for his unrelenting interest and our father's immovable belief that it should be so, and so I am going to have an even more difficult task than realized in convincing father to accept my wishes because his belief is innately engrained as part of the titanes' propagation designs?"

"No, baby sister," the Shadow Prince said, expression and aura remaining as emotionless as a stone. "As best as our uncles can sense and reason with their supreme powers, Apollon's lusts are his own, and our father's currently impassioned belief on that matter is his own conclusions influenced by his fiery nature..."

The empath could sense a ripple of relief from the Spring Princess to that pronouncement; which again mirrored his own reaction, and he didn't attempt to keep that particular one suppressed. He felt Kore's emotional aura shift subtly as a silent message, letting surface a need tied to comfort currently lacking. It took only a fraction of a second to allow his emotions to shift a shade off from where they should be, offering that reassurance as much as was safe to allow without risk of putting too deep of a crack in his mental discipline in case it was put to the test during this conversation that Thanatos had promised would be upsetting for her.

"...Just as we can only directly control an immediate offspring's creation, even if that creation process will inherently influence what sort of offspring they can then choose to craft, that choice to create and how is ultimately theirs to make, which is a truth Aphrodite has long since impressed the reality of in defiance to our father's ambitious designs, the same can apparently be said of the titanes. Even if that is truth, when the first generation of daimons were created, it was not done in the manner our lore relates nor for the reasons we have since been creating offspring. The first generation was created by the overpowering wills of four of the titanes, put to the ends of harnessing their collective that was too frequently and volatilely rampaging out of control and destroying sections of the physical world at too swift a rate. Those four crafted their propagation designs for the first generation, but they did so with the intent of none of the titanes, including themselves, surviving the process..."

The Spring Princess's shock again mirrored Cerberus's, to a greater extent than before on both their parts. Kore's ability to speak escaped her because her confusion was deep enough to cloud her mind's ability to find an accurate enough framing that could pass her lips.

Cerberus had a strong idea from just how well he knew her of what she meant to ask; it was an obvious enough clarification to press for confirmation of, even if she was having trouble doing so. The voice that was rhapsodic in its deep multi-tonal reverberations questioned for her, "You are saying that the titanes intentionally destroyed their collective kind to create our kind, not that there was the great war that caused their deaths after the first generation had already been born?"

Kore gave a fleeting grateful glance in his direction as her brother gave another small nod. While he noticed the golden glance from the corner of his eye, he kept his attention dutifully forward.

"That is correct, Adonis Cerberus," the Shadow Prince said. "While their exact reasonings can only be theorized, that is the conclusion drawn from what our uncle and your father can interpret. They believe that the four titanes responsible for the event included themselves in their plans because they had enough rationale to evaluate and understand that their natures were just as extreme as the rest of the collective, and that the only way to create a sustainable balance that allowed the essence of their kind to ultimately survive was to allow for their current existence to come to controlled destruction that would be channeled into some sort of magical molds they created to create their progeny; in a process King Hades felt was comparably described to the grinding down of stone and mixing with water to make a clay base, and then pouring it into a mold for tiles. And as a reward to themselves for their concerted efforts, the four titanes responsible structured their planned heirarchy so that a significant portion of three of their essences would be filtered to create one of the three Dragon Kings, mixed with other essences to create better balances they knew they had been lacking. The essence of the fourth of the titanes was split and more heavily mixed with other essences to create the Dragon Queens who would finish the balance with their corresponding Kings and keep the three Kings cooperating with one another."

Cerberus's mind started to form rapid understandings on what the Shadow Prince was leading to.

"I'm going to skip translating this bit; otherwise I'll be repeating myself near verbatim in a minute when I speak it out loud."

Kore's aura had been exuding increasing fluctuations of confusion, but she had been keeping her attention largely on her brother as she tried to make sense of what was unfolding. Now, however, she turned her gaze fully in her Head of Guard's direction as she sensed the low current of reassuring vibrations disappear, shattered by a spike of fearful understanding. She inquired with her confusion slipping into her expression and voice, "Adonis Cerberus?"

Even if Thanatos couldn't sense emotions, his psychic gaze still saw his sister's attention shift, and the assassin could undoubtedly hear the increased rate of his heart. As Cerberus was working to shove down the instinctual reaction, jaw clenching a fraction and feeling his long fangs press painfully into his lower lip, the Shadow Prince said with his perfectly emotionless voice, "It would appear that Adonis Cerberus's legendary capacity for tactical analysis has jumped ahead of my explanation. I trust that, unexpected as certain shifting factors to this potential conflict we're trying to avert may be, he is dutifully weighing the options for how to best support the solution that is in my sister's many best interests."

Kore's golden gaze had went to her brother as he spoke. Cerberus could feel confused dread growing in her aura. When Thanatos finished speaking, her gaze returned to him and she demanded, "Cerberus?! What is Thanatos meaning?!"

Cerberus had managed to force himself into the same emotionless state he employed when heading into a battle and needed to keep a clear head.

Present day Cerberus could sense the King of Death give a mental signal for the memory to pause, and he did so as Thanatos was opening his fanged mouth to speak.

"What are you thinking here?"

"This is another internal thing I'm going to say; and you're going to be picking up a consistent buzz as I put together more conclusions. Those ones likewise enter the conversation in due course. I'm rather fond of the results of those secondary conclusions, despite this being such an unpleasant situation when in progress; so it's best not to spoil the surprise and I'll continue the out loud translations."

The King of Death could sense a thinly veiled smug pride in the empathic wolf's consciousness. He refrained from reacting to the clear bait of that last comment and what he was sensing, at least for now, and instead said stoically, "Continue then."

The memory stuttered a moment, back tracked to the princess being in the midst of her question, and then continued playing out.

Before Cerberus could answer the question asked of him, the Shadow Prince replied, "What I am..."

The Spring Princess sharply cut off her dark brother's words. "I asked Adonis Cerberus to speak, Thanatos, not you. One would hope the King's Assassin would possess the ability to know when to keep his mouth firmly shut."

That upset rebuke from his youngest sister caused a muscle in Thanatos's jaw to twitch.

Vlad heard a mental chuckle lasting a few seconds, accompanied by the quiet sardonic thought in German of "Verdammt! That never gets less amusing to watch!", slip out from Cerberus's consciousness, unable to keep it hidden with his attention split as it was.

Golden gaze was returning to her Head of Guard. As it did, Thanatos made the smallest of gestures with his index finger to signal his concession for Cerberus to speak his conclusions and be the one to break the news to the Spring Princess.

The War-Prince answered with stoicism to his quieter pitched voice and emotional state. "It would seem, Princess Kore, that the titanes ambitious survival and propagation plans went awry, as evidenced by the fact that we have three Kings but only two Queens. King Hades seems to believe, and Prince Thanatos seems to agree, that either you were somehow originally intended to be that third Queen but perhaps your essence ended up mistakenly absorbed into that of your parents, the dominant chance being your mother as she would be similarly attuned as another Queen, and so you were not among the first generation; or that you would simply make a suitable replacement for the Queen who failed to come forth..."

The color was steadily draining from Kore's face and he could sense her dread, mixed with panic, climbing as her own understanding dawned.

"...No matter the specific details of that answer, the Shadow Prince has returned with a marriage proposal from the Dragon of Void and Earth. If you accept, it would force Apollon to cease his pursuit immediately while arrangements are made; and he would need keep a distance in the future to avoid bringing the wrath of the King of Death down on himself for attempting dishonorable and unwelcome conduct with the Underworld's Queen."

Kore's form began to tremble faintly with the effort of attempting to contain signs her internal reactions.

Cerberus continued the impassive assessment, even as his thoughts spun all the faster to make further considerations of the situation, and even if such a detached state was difficult to maintain with his natural empathy being what it was. "Your father won't be able to refuse this option for an alternate husband to Apollon, as he has refused to consider others, if the King of Death makes a public declaration of intent. Not long after the fabled 'War Against The Titanes', an indisputably real and unanimous agreement was made between the three Kings and two Queens. An agreement that the Dragon Kings each have the right to a Queen and, as the Void Dragon did not have his own Titanes created Queen and there wasn't a suitable substitution available at that time, he had the right to pick a Queen from any of their forming kingdoms when he felt a suitable one had shown herself, providing that she wasn't already claimed when he put forth his declaration. The wishes of King Zeus or Prince Apollon, no matter how strongly felt and stated, don't count as a preexisting claim; not after the troubles that ensued with Aphrodite and the formalized procedure for marital arrangements that's since been set into place in all three Kingdoms to avoid such incidents again. Though your father has the marriage parchments already drafted with the expectation of being signed, you haven't issued formal consent to become the wife of Apollon and entered into negotiations on those terms; so you are free for the King of Death to claim as Queen.

"I would theorize that King Hades is delaying making the declaration of invoking his right to take a Queen because doing so will obviously cause discord with your father because of how he favors you. The Void Dragon is likely weighing your willingness to accept a place as his Queen because it being with your consent would ease the potential discord. It may also be in part a courtesy to you because marriage arrangements you've been raised with as established tradition have evolved so much from when his rights were established. It would be an unwise move to begin a marriage with one party feeling so violated of their understood rights. Especially when that marriage is not solely a private matter, but bears consequences on Kingdoms. An unwilling Queen would cause strife not only from your father's reactions that would be considered vastly more justified under those circumstances, but potentially among his subjects, especially the younger generations, who may not approve of primeval behavior and would feel sympathy for the perceived injustices done to you."

As Kore sat in bewildered silence, Thanatos's whispered voice said, "That is almost entirely accurate, Adonis Cerberus. The correction that must be made is that both King Hades and King Poseidon have come to the conclusion that Kore is truthfully the missing Queen..."

Cerberus paused the memory to say, "The particularly vehement thought we just heard shoot through my head is separate from the other things going on, and I'm glad to translate it because I stand by the sentiment to this day. It roughly amounts to- 'Of course that spawn of primordial chaos is again standing in the way of my happiness with his compulsive Kingly meddling'." Before the Void Dragon could make comment, likely in support of his fellow King because that meddling had benefitted him, the memory was un-paused.

"...Many of her talents and powers that have surfaced and strengthened as she's matured, and the way they would compliment the Dragon of Void and Earth, lend substantial weight to the theory. It gains more weight when comparing those parallels to the other two royal pairs, as well as the notably irregular incidents my mother experienced before and during my sister's conception, continuing through to birth, and persist to this day. Even with nearly three centuries having passed, Queen Hera has not even begun to regenerate certain powers back. The King of Creation believes, and the Void Dragon agrees, that those gifts will never return because she didn't simply overextend herself in the effort to create Kore, but those powers rightfully belonged to the third Queen. Now that they are separated from one another, Queen Hera's current state is the one she was meant to have and is stabilizing to its natural balances. They believe what powers she has remaining will eventually grow to new heights because they won't have conflicting essences to contend with. If they are correct, the powers Kore currently wields will continue to grow and become more powerful than they manifested as while within Hera. Even if their many observations and interpretations are somehow wrong and Kore is not the missing Queen, the marriage offer is still being extended on other independent merits weighed. King Hades has a great deal of respect for what he has witnessed or heard of Kore's character, especially in recent years that she's been accepting more responsibilities, and feels..."

"I couldn't care less in this moment what the Dragon of Void and Earth feels about my suitability!" Kore snapped out with horrified expression openly forming. "What of my feelings, Thanatos?! I begged you to help us keep father from his designs to marry me off as Apollon's breeding bitch, and your answer is to instead come back with an offer that will make me Hades's?!"

The Shadow Prince flinched at that betrayed accusation. "Baby sister, I thought you trusted my judgment more than that. That is not what this proposal is, even if it might feel that way in this moment."

"Then what is it, brother?!" Kore demanded with a tremble to her voice and tears forming. "This is nothing close to what I asked of you, so what other way should I be interpreting this offer?!"

"I am offering you the only alternative solution that can be legitimately crafted without throwing Kingdoms into war, Kore. You would not be Hades's breeding anything. You would be wife and Queen to one of the three Dragon Kings. While that would come with responsibility and expectation of eventually providing an Heir, Hades is inarguably secure on his throne and feels no need to rush creation of a successor as precaution should some misfortune befall him. He has given his word as a King that, outside the ceremonial requirements for the marriage, he will not so much as kiss your cheek in greeting until you make it known to him that you feel familiar enough with him to desire a less formal arrangement, and that an Heir will wait as long as it takes for you to have the desire to be a mother and have the willingness to make such an intimate sacrifice of yourself to create that child."

"Am I expected to consider it generous for him to promise to show the minimum amount of self-restraint by not raping me under the excuse of partaking of his marital rights? Particularly when he has the Erinyes and their vacuous head concubine, Minthe; and it will be expected that I try to meekly tolerate their presence being under the same roof and whatever he may do with them, just as our mother and Amphitrite are expected to do with their Kings' lovers, especially if I'm not immediately fulfilling my duties as a wife? Why doesn't he just make one of them his Queen and vessel for an Heir?!"

Cerberus could feel some frustrated anger leaking out from the King's attempts to contain it, clearly from witnessing the oldest incarnation of their wife arguing so vehemently against the idea of marrying him. He paused the memory to say, "I feel a compulsion to mention some important things about this bit of the memory, for the sake of you having the knowledges in case you haven't made the connections, and I don't think I can hold it at bay until the vision is done with my awareness being split as it is."

Vlad could sense that some sort of strain in the shared awareness was indeed forming. One that felt similar to those he experienced when under the effects of his wife's blood ward. He asked with an icy edge to his voice, "And what would that information be?"

"I didn't get the chance to meet your main three concubines when our She-Wolf was Lucy, but I'm fairly certain from what I've dug up on them that they were the Furies reborn. Persephone eventually became more than just friendly with them, so that didn't stay a complaint for her. Based on what I can remember, she was frequently enough the one to go fetch them to join us in our bed chambers when the royal ménages à trois agreed some outside entertainment would be appreciated for the night. But when I was running about France as 'The Beast of Gévaudan', it was in attempt to find Apollo while he was still a relative baby vamp. I reasoned his natural powers should have been suppressed from your blood overpowering his and I'd stand a decent chance of sending him back to the void. I obviously failed to track him down in time, the fucking hawk had already taken flight from there, and from Ireland by the time I picked back up his trail, but I ended up cleaning up the rest of Alannah's and his mess in France.

"I got enough of a whiff from the leftovers' blood to know they were connected not just to you as vampires, but that Minthe's stench was unmistakably mixed in there and Alannah had to have been a reincarnation of her. Persephone did a number on that bitch because she refused to accept her place, even after you and She-Wolf's marriage started to become personal, and Minthe finally pushed her too far one day. You were busy somewhere with Kingly responsibilities. I was in the midst of giving Eubuleus a fight lesson nearby and whatever Minthe said must have been telepathic because I didn't catch it, but I made it there in time to see Persephone's mythic level response. She tore the concubine up, buried the remains in her garden to fertilize the plants she was in the midst of transplanting, used what energy of Minthe's soul she had been able to trap to give the plants an extra kick, and renamed the plant after the concubine so her vengeful wrath wouldn't be forgotten. From how swiftly and methodically our Queen handled things, I'm wagering she had a vision of the exchange, decided to take Pan's advice to a whole new level for putting enemies in the ground, and had intentionally shifted the situation to happen when and where she wanted..."

The empathic War-Prince could sense more than a little sadistic amusement coming from the King of Death to that anecdote, despite the seriousness of the subject being discussed and his sustained dragon rage. His own amusement was overshadowed by the strain to keep his split attention in order and relate the information.

"...That's a grudge I know She-Wolf is still subconsciously harboring because she loves smoking those menthol cigs of hers when she's stressed out. Persephone used to do the same by mixing mint leaves or oil with different herbs used back then to get a vindictive high. I also have a few memories of when she was especially not pleased to be speaking with someone or she was overseeing certain negotiations and was angry they were necessary. She'd break out the Minthe-mint for a smoke or to be served in a meal as an intimidation tactic to remind the other party of what she was capable of if they tried her patience too far, and I could feel her amusement in watching them squirm and hurry to fall in line. That was her first time going full Dragon Queen on someone, however, and now it's clear that it wasn't as complete of a job as we all thought. I know Iscariot didn't have the capability to perma-kill Minthe at the time; Zeus hadn't joined them and become the Paladin yet.

"With as tenacious as she has proven to be, I'm not willing to assume a second return to the void is enough to break up her soul's energies on its own. My mother has her hands full enough in the void as it is, even with my father being back now and resuming the help to keep our collective subjects corralled and safely whole, and can't afford to try looking for one troublesome ex-concubine. My hounds and some of She-Wolf's that she hasn't been using have been taking turns going out in teams to try to find her, but the void is an almost impossibly massive multidimensional place. Minthe doesn't have a homing beacon like our wife does, so they haven't had any luck yet. It's probably going to be some centuries more before her lesser and damaged soul can manage to resurface from wherever it's drifted off to, but we're going to want to keep an eye out for her reincarnating. If she does, especially because I'm lacking my Hound of Hades powers right now and can't do it myself, I can't suggest strongly enough how smart of an idea it would be for the King to preemptively finish the job our Queen started before Minthe crosses paths with Persephone again or otherwise stumbles onto new ways to catalyze upsets."

"Duly noted on Minthe," The King of Death replied with full stoicism returned. "That's the second time you've mentioned something about 'Hound of Hades' powers. While I have some obvious guesses what that may be implying because I'm aware of what I'm currently capable of to draw parallels, you should explain what you actually mean."

"That gets definitively answered in the last memory to be shared tonight; you'll see for yourself what I can remember for the initial event. The experiment started then, continued once the royal ménages à trois became a sworn alliance, and really got turned up to an eleven once things got personal to try making sure our wife was kept safe. It's not a spoiler to say that while our experiment wasn't a failure, it didn't end up being enough because here we are, waist deep in the continued swamp of shit. And I'll say it anew- I'd really prefer us to get back to shore and wash off, not go diving under and drowning, so please try to refrain from latching on and taking us for the death roll into the stench."

"Just get back to the current 'memory' already."

Despite the King's snippy tone, Cerberus had a distinct feeling the stubborn territorial instincts that wanted to deny the basic premise of current matters was starting to erode, even if acknowledgement and acceptance of the personal details might take vastly more time to form. He diplomatically restarted the memory without further comment.

"Kore," the Shadow Prince said with a hint of frustrated rebuke in his voice. "I understand you've been given new cause for upset this day, after what's been a stressful few years of dodging Apollon's advances because he refuses to consider such feelings are not mutual, as well as the upsets you're trying to keep suppressed caused by our father's increasing pressure to accept the courtship, but now you're being almost," Cerberus hesitated a second to think of the closest way to translate the ancient daimonic word's nuance to English, "critical for dishonorable and trivial reasons. The Dragon of Void and Earth has been without a Queen since the dawn of our kind's existence; it is hardly fair to begrudge him companionship. And unlike some who could be named and take their pleasures wherever they can find them, as often as they can find them, without regard for the consequences; the Void Dragon has kept his personal activities to that small group of concubines and has made certain to always treat them in honorable fashions. If King Hades had felt any of them were fit to be Queen, he would have raised them up to such a position long before now. He has not because he's wise enough to know what qualifies someone as an adequate bed companion does not qualify them to be an acceptable permanent mate..."

That last statement was said with a noticeable thread of accusation to his tone, and flickers of displeasure were allowed to surface for a few seconds. Neither empath gave outward reaction to the Shadow Prince's pointed criticism and defense of the counter-offer he had brought back, but Kore's distress was still growing as her dark brother continued to press the argument forward.

"...And being an adequate bed partner certainly doesn't qualify them to take a crown and the responsibilities that come with it, both to the Kingdom and in being able to create a suitable Heir. If the concept of him keeping concubines upsets you so much, it is something that could be discussed during the marriage negotiations. Given that King Hades has waited this long to even consider someone worthy of being his Queen, I think you will find that he would be most accommodating because his Queen's comforts should come before lesser companions. That minor issue aside, you still have his word as a King on how he will conduct behavior with you, and his history of keeping his given word on any matter speaks for itself. As for other things you should be taking under consideration when weighing your marriage prospects, the Underworld Kingdom is as near to impenetrable as Olympus is and even more internally capable of withstanding sieges. You would never need fear for your safety, especially not when you will have the highest priority in protection as the Queen, and whatever offspring you have someday being granted the same security. The Void Dragon is also the wealthiest of all the Kings and he gives the assurance that, as his Queen, anything your heart can desire will be granted to ensure you're kept content and free to express yourself..."

"So you're asking me to agree to trade one gilded cage for another," Kore interrupted, tears now falling, "with an elevation in title as supposed compensation for making an agreement to give up all my own desires and taking on the obligation to eventually produce at least one offspring with a man I don't love in such ways."

"Kore, I know this is not the answer you sought, but..."

Panicking golden gaze turned to her Head of Guard and she asked, "Cerberus, please tell Thanatos this isn't an acceptable option?! There must be some other way to dissuade my father and Apollon that we haven't considered, isn't there?!"

"Kore," the Shadow Prince attempted again to reason with his distraught sister. "Outside of installing additional permanent warding to these chambers and never leaving them, which is no life to be living, eventually you're going to have to pick..."

The Spring Princess turned her face back in his direction and let out a wordless scream that was the equivalent of a draconic Soprano hitting her highest notes, the full lengths of her ivory fangs glinting in the fire light. The inhuman reverberations of her voice sent his weapons and quiver knocking against the warded wall, and his tail of hair and chiton's folds whipping against his body. Kore warned in fury, voice slipping into the multi-tonal growl of the Dragon blooded, "If you try again in the course of this conversation to speak when I have directly addressed my Head of Guard, I swear I will curse you to silence and will not lift the magic until I feel you have come to have some semblance of an understanding of what it feels like to not only lack the ability to speak as freely as those around you, but for your voice to be all but unheard as almost every person around you treats you as though you are an incapacitated child who must have their life's events dictated to them!"

Translation done, Cerberus didn't even bother to try hiding the smug thought, "And don't I love it when my nightingale morphs into a dragon to show her fangs and sing such sweet raging music in our defense, and thereby opens up chances for me to launch the war songs..."

That possessive amused sentiment was mirrored by his past self; he hadn't been any more successful in keeping it from flickering through his thoughts and aura, even if he outwardly kept at perfectly dutiful attention and almost immediately buried it.

Thanatos stood still as a statue for several seconds, then gave a brief bow of his head in acknowledgment and apology.

Kore sighed and wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of a hand as she took a score of measured breaths. She turned her gaze back to the other in the room and asked for the reinforcement to come to her aid with the quieter and melodic voice back in place, "Adonis Cerberus, what is your judgment on this option my brother has presented?"

Cerberus's gaze shifted directly to the Shadow Prince for a few seconds, then to Kore, who was still radiating abject misery, despite regaining a measure of outward composure. "It is not my place, Princess Kore, to make the decision for you on which marriage offer you should accept from those deemed suitable potential husbands." As her mouth opened to dispute that assertion, he stated with continued stoicism, "I respectfully request, Your Highness, that you grant your Head of Guard the chance to make clear the definition of my statement before you attempt to weigh its truth."

Kore made a gesture to indicate she'd allow for him to continue speaking without interruption.

Cerberus maintained the appropriate outward demeanor; but now he purposefully allowed his mental state to shift enough for reassuring emotions of a desire to provide comfort and some of the love he felt for her to surface, and he radiated them directly to her with a near peerless precision to help take the edge off her current state, along with the upset that would be resulting from his coming words. "My first, last, and only purpose as your Head of Guard, as assigned by your father, King Zeus, the Dragon of Fire and Air, is to protect your wellbeing and interests to the fullest extent of my abilities. I made that blood oath with full commitment due to the honor offered in that responsibility. My resolve to uphold my vow has only strengthened over the last three centuries because the princess I was charged with protecting has grown into a royal lady who inarguably deserves any conceivable protection I can personally extend or orchestrate on your behalf. As you well understand by now from your gift for discerning nuances of truth, that duty is not constrained by so limited of a command as to only protect you from entities who may mean you immediate physical harm. As that is truth, while I have no authority to make deciding judgments on your behalf for private matters such as marriage prospects, I can rightfully offer you council for consideration that is blood and honor bound to be guided by the responsibility to protect the full spectrum of your best interests."

Kore's aura remained in a state of deep upset, but it had decreased by a noticeable degree as he reminded her, in no uncertain terms and with proof of emotion, exactly where his devotion and motivations lay, even if that assurance needed to be framed as a matter of clarifying where the definitions of his duty were and that he had no professional intentions of breaking the formal parts of his oath. After a brief considering silence, the Spring Princess conceded quietly, "As you say, Adonis Cerberus. I will rephrase my request. What council can my Head of Guard offer to me with King Hades's marriage offer now an option for consideration to resolve this fragile situation I find myself in?"

"I can only come to one conclusion, Princess Kore, based on the extent of my ability to rationally evaluate and weigh the options currently available to you, having been entrusted with the knowledge of how greatly you desire to not be wed to the Crown Prince of Olympus, and also knowing how much maneuvering His Majesty, the King of Olympus, is putting forth to try making that the only available option to you, no matter how well meaning his paternal concerns may be. The council I can in honorable conscience offer to you is that while a marriage to King Hades may feel like a death sentence to your personal freedoms and is not what you emotionally desire, it is inarguably the safest option for you to take, for exactly the reasons the Shadow Prince outlined, if you are to avoid the identified worst of options..."

The Spring Princess's shocked expression to him agreeing with the Shadow Prince was as open, sudden, and pained in forming as if he had struck her, and he could feel that pain overtaking her aura of emotions. Thanatos was still as near to a statue as before, but it could be noted from the periphery of Cerberus's gaze that the smallest amount of tension could be seen releasing from his crossed arms and fingers as the blood-bound War-Prince conceded on this course of action's merits.

"...Given what I know of the Void Dragon's personal inclinations and values, I would continue my council by saying that I believe Adonis Thanatos is correct in his belief and assurances that the Underworld King will not be pressing for provisions in marriage negotiations that would restrict those personal freedoms you currently have afforded to you and wish to preserve. His character and the ways in which he reigns makes it extremely likely that he will be careful with such negotiations out of respect for the fact that your powers as an Oracle are known to effect you in the ways they do. It would undermine your authority as a Queen if you are viewed as being so deeply bound to His Majesty that you are rendered nothing more than an additional mouth for his will to be spoken through. If Your Highness wishes to give her Head of Guard the gracious allowance to be so specific, I would lastly advise you on a singular provision you would be wise to diplomatically insist upon if you should decide to undertake the marriage negotiations under current consideration, so as to protect as many of your interests as possible."

The tension was back in Thanatos's posture, more noticeably than before. Despite the assassin's mental discipline being what it was, he could sense the disapproving irritation unintentionally surfacing and tickling at his senses. The Shadow Prince undoubtedly realized what was about to be suggested, but he couldn't try to stop it from being posed without running afoul of the silencing curse his seer of a sister had promised him.

The present day Original Gangster could sense a similar reaction tickling at his senses, coming from the King of Death who likewise reasoned out that the aforementioned surprise was a stealth counterattack.

Kore's expression remained largely bewildered, but he could feel the panic and pain decreasing by a fraction, and a tiny flicker of trusting hope was kindling. "You have that permission, Adonis Cerberus."

The War-Prince delivered the plan to preserve what they shared with continued outward stoicism, and continuing to offer her the empathic assurances. "If you choose to become his Queen, The King of Death cannot rightfully dispute that if a royal lady is deemed matured enough to select and accept a marriage arrangement out of those offered to her, then she is equally as capable of choosing the most appropriate Head of her Queen's Guard. Even if a blood ward ensures certain adherences to responsibilities, it doesn't effect capability to uphold them. If a Queen is to have peace of mind that allows her to focus on her duties to the Kingdom, her Head of Guard must be one with such skills that she has complete faith in to protect her should the King be absent. She needs have an equal trust that they will keep the lady's privacy secured in all ways- whether that be on sensitive matters overheard that pertain to the security of the Kingdom, matters relating to the private royal chambers when one is standing guard or being of some aid, or making certain that personal struggles during particularly difficult times don't make it out to the public awareness and damage a Kingdom's collective morale.

"With that being a universally understood set of characteristics needed, there are few who could rise to such standards, and fewer still who don't already have conflicting obligations or loyalties that might compromise their dedication to their oath of service. It would be absolutely reasonable for you to wish to retain the Head of Guard you already have. One who has a long history of accomplishments in commanding troops and being undefeated in personal combat against any opponent except the Kings themselves. One who has proven over the last three centuries to be most effective and trustworthy in his current position to you as a princess. One who is singularly versed in how to provide the full range of specific and sometimes delicate aids as needed for your very specific sorts of powers. One who likewise comes with a benefit of already having a preexisting familiarity to you so that while you are adjusting to being in a much different Court than the one you've been raised in and your new obligations as both wife and Queen, you are not under the additional considerable strain of training a new Head of Guard in the many specific duties you require and, even with that training, would prove an inferior replacement to the eminently qualified one you already have.

"The King of Life may not appreciate permanently losing my services to his Court, but he is the one who cast the magic on your behalf for my blood oath to be instated, well knowing it supersedes my honor bound oath of loyalty to Olympus when I was granted refuge here. I am blood bound to fulfill my oath to protect you, alone and above all others, even if that means leaving his Court because you married in a way that went against his original plans, unless you release me from that oath.

"While the King of Creation might be my father, I renounced all obligations and loyalty to his Kingdom when my sister and I sought that refuge in Olympus, and he came to his arrangements with Kings Zeus and Hades for relinquishing his claims to subjects like us who were so discontent with his laws. In the almost certain event of him being giving the honor of being a neutral mediator to such weighty marriage negotiations, he cannot claim any rightful grounds to raise objections in where I may continue to offer my services.

"With all those considerations, Princess Kore, while The Void Dragon may not like having an outsider, especially not one directly born of another King and who served the third King for the last millennium, in his Court and placed in so sensitive of a position, there is no legitimate measure by which that preference of his outweighs the many benefits to be gained by allowing you to retain my services.

"When you are done making your considerations on this matter, should you decide that the council of Adonis Thanatos and myself is a course of action you can speak commitment to and therefore accept the Underworld King's proposal, I preemptively give my agreement, with Adonis Thanatos as witness because these discussions are not being sealed in writing, and without reservations or conditions for my consent, for you to use my services as a bargaining tool in your marriage negotiations because my commitment to honoring my blood oath in any way I can will not be relinquished unless the day comes that Your Highness comes to a decision that she no longer requires my services because a more worthy Head of Guard has presented itself and she irrevocably relieves me of my oath."

Counsel given, the Head of Guards turned his gaze dutifully forward. He could sense Kore's distress remained, but was slowly decreasing to a more manageable level. He could also sense a persistent buzz of barely restrained disapproving ire coming from the Shadow Prince.

Silence stretched as the princes waited for response from the Spring Princess.

Cerberus couldn't entirely suppress his amusement from passively leaking out as the memory remained with Thanatos centered so prominently because of where his gaze was, and because he could pick up a similar, but more possessive, ire slipping out from the King in his mind. Said King's ire grew a fraction further with that amusement being sensed.

Finally, the seer said in a voice barely above a whisper, still looking at her Head of Guards, "I cannot bring myself to make a decision at this time, but I will be considering both of your councils because I trust your intentions as deeply as I do. The only thing I can say definitively is that, no matter what I decide, I can't imagine spending the rest of my existence navigating my responsibilities without my Head of Guard remaining in his position. I swear to you, Adonis Cerberus, that relieving you of your oath is not a term I will ever consent to in any prospective marriage negotiations I may ever end up undertaking. And I further swear that so long as you choose to uphold your blood oath to the best of your capabilities, I will never release you from that oath."

Cerberus gave a nod of his head, deep relief joining the other reassuring emanations he was sending her. He met her gaze for the brief time it took to say, "As you have spoken it, Princess Kore, it will be so. We will navigate these current troubles, and any circumstances that may someday come, as we always have."