A tale of a demigod's trials against his shackles of Fate as the rightful heir of Heaven and Hell.
Buckle in for a new take on Hade's son! Here we go!
PS. This is a rewritten version of a past one-shot.
Prologue: How my father met my mothers...yes, I have two of them, thank you very much.
Hello there, good stranger. I have a question for you, and it's this: what do you know about Greek mythology?
Yes, yes, first of all, the demigods and heroes.
Heracles, Perseus, Bellerophon, Theseus, Achilles, Asclepius, Orpheus, Orion, Jason, Odysseus, Kastro, and Pollux...and that's to only name a few of the great heroes. Oh, and did I mention Dionysus as the former demigod and present Olympian? These heroes were undeniably the bedrock of human culture and civilization.
Not only was the Greek stories about gods, monsters, and demigods very well known, but it also had an immense influence on the creation of the modern world and is supported by a wide range of people from various cultures, from the past to the present.
All right, what about the mighty entities we call gods? Too hard? How about the big three then? The three most powerful gods of Greek. Yes, Bravo! Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. Oh, and guess what? Among the three main gods of Greek mythology, there was one god that was treated most differently.
If Zeus, the mighty god of thunder and lightning, was the central point of Greek mythology, and if Poseidon, the champion of the oceans and the earth-shaker of the wild tides was his equal in everything but name, then Hades, the god of death, the master of gold, silver and treasure, the master of minerals and agriculture, and the king of the underworld, was in a sense, treated rather unfairly. You know, like the uncle everyone forgets he exists?
Yes indeed, he was shunned. He had powers that rivaled those of Zeus and Poseidon, and yet he had never once acted arrogantly or committed a single atrocity. He stayed in the depths of the earth, gave up his freedom, took charge of the strict selection of souls, and continued to silently fulfill his duty in the empire of the dead.
But then again, he was no different from the raging gods of Greek mythology. There were some things that Hades had forcibly acquired.
Persephone was one of them. Yes, the lustful blood was pretty thick in their veins, if I dare say so.
Persephone was the daughter of the great god Zeus and the goddess of fertility, Demeter. Her original name was the fair maiden Korē. She was a loving goddess who was worshipped as the true queen in the Greek heretical cult of Orpheus, where she was said to have the power to help the earth bloom, giving life to flowers and all life.
The most famous myth of Persephone is her 'descent into the underworld', in which she was kidnapped by Hades. What, need me to recap that tale? Very well, I shall try to keep this brief. Ahem.
...Long, long ago, Persephone was living happily with her mother Demeter in Sicily, when she caught the eye of Lord Hades. Hades, weary of the dark and sorrowful underworld, immediately fell in love with the goddess of flowers, who was the brightest and most vibrant goddess on earth, and decided to take her to his domain as his wife.
Demeter wandered grievously in search of Persephone and eventually learns from Helios, the sun god standing in mid-heaven, about the horrific truth that Hades has taken her to his dreadful underworld, and immediately went to Zeus to protest.
Zeus, however, declared that Hades, one of the kings of the three worlds, is not lacking and that the marriage is one that he has approved.
Some say that Hades asked Zeus for permission before carrying out the abduction, and that the abduction itself was instigated by Zeus, but it mattered little to Demeter who was so enraged by this declaration that she hid in her palace.
Thus, the land, deprived of the grace of the goddess, became desolate and the people starved.
Meanwhile, Hades and Persephone did not get along well at first, and Persephone did not respond to Hades' gracious treatment.
But as the months went by, Persephone gradually warmed up to the cold king of the dead and opened up to his pure and kind attitude, and finally, just as Persephone was about to give her heart to Hades, Hermes arrived.
The winged messenger of the gods told her of the horrors that had befallen earth and thus, Hades reluctantly sends Persephone home.
It was said by some gossiping spirits that Hermes himself recommended the pomegranates to Persephone, or that Hades, who wanted to keep Persephone in the Underworld, made her eat them, but the truth is unclear.
At any rate, if one ate food from the underworld, even a single bite, you were forced to live in the underworld as its dweller. This was the law of the gods, and it is what bound Persephone to Hades' domain. What followed after was the quarrel between Hades and Demeter as they fought fiercely over what to do with Persephone.
Finally, Hestia, the most loved goddess in Greece, came up with a compromise: "Since she has eaten four of the twelve pomegranates, she must spend one-third of the year in the underworld.", the goddess said. Hades and Demeter came to an agreement.
While Persephone was away from the earth, Demeter grieved, and the earth became cold and desolate, and thus, was the beginning of winter. Every year, Persephone's return brought flourish to the earth, and she became to be known as the goddess of spring.
Not one of the best 'this is how I met your mother' stories, I suppose...but this is ancient Greece we're talking about. And you know what's the funniest part?
After this incident, Persephone became somehow even more attracted to Hades, and she loved and cherished the name Persephone, which Hades gave her, and acknowledged it as her true divine name.
The fact that Hades, unlike Zeus and Poseidon, was an incredibly faithful male god in Greek mythology standards was probably one of the reasons for their happy marriage. However, there still was one such story about Hades and his little affair with a certain nymph.
Persephone was so enraged with jealousy that she trampled down the nymph in question and turned her into an herb called mint, thus marking the first of its kind. ...I couldn't drink my favorite mint tea for a couple of months because of that story.
Anyway, as you can see from this...incident, the two gods were basically a happy couple, with Persephone being a very affectionate woman...with the characteristics of a...what was the modern phrase...ah yes, a Yandere.
You can really tell from that time when she and Aphrodite fought over a boy named Adonis out of maternal love. Persephone was so disappointed when Adonis said, "I would rather be with Aphrodite", so heartbroken, that she sent Ares to kill him without a second thought, gleeful that the boy shall now truly belong to her, and her alone. For eternity.
I heard that the boy was soon plucked out of her grasps by Hades and sent onto his afterlife. Now, back to the main topic about Greek mythology.
This myth of mine begins with Persephone's "If".
What if Caenis, one of the most beautiful women in the Greek world, was raped not by a rather generous Poseidon, but by the very prideful King of Olympus?
What if she begged Hades to give her an immortal body and the strength to defeat male heroes so that she would never ever encounter such humiliation, such disgrace that tainted her maidenhood?
What if the gorgeous maiden seduced Hades with her buxom body, and truly found love in the process?
What if Hades fell to her cunning temptations in a moment of weakness, and spent a long night of passion in her bed?
What if, as a result, she became immortal and conceived a baby, and Persephone kidnapped the baby out of sheer jealousy, on the very night of his birth?
It all starts from here.
-scary.
That was the first emotion the baby felt.
Pure fear, as if his flesh would tear and his very blood would freeze.
Stiffening himself, the baby opened his eyes thinly and saw the source of his fear.
"Oh, my God, oh, my Lord, O' child of sin! I hate you, I envy you, I pity you, I resent you!"
There, with bloodshot eyes wide open behind her long, black strands of wild hair, trembling purple lips, and grinding teeth, was the Demon herself. The woman looked as if she was trying desperately to loosen her hold on the baby...as if to prevent the infant from being crushed by the hands that held him.
The wind blew, a stagnant smell of sulfur rising from the edges of the cliffs they stood on.
"Aha, ha, hahahaha! But, alas! Even though this child was born from the womb of a filthy whore, it is a boy who carries the blood of my beloved Lord Hades. I can't just kill him, I must not...!"
The baby's mouth dropped open, and he shivered slightly. For some reason, the baby had some knowledge of Greek mythology (albeit fragments of them), a natural ability to understand Greek, and modern ethics that was common nowadays.
From this limited batch of knowledge, the baby reasoned and came to a conclusion about his current situation in a very rational and reasonable way.
'If I don't do something, I will be killed.'
The woman's arms were trembling as she held him over the ledge, and the baby could feel the heat scorching his back, could see the orange glow that cast ominous shadows on the cave ceilings he was staring at, and hear the bubbling and churning of rocks as they were devoured by the inferno below.
'Magma. A volcano. An underground volcano?'
The woman's breath was labored, her eyes jerking sporadically from one point to the other. Her nails dug into his flesh.
He instinctively knew that there wasn't much time left. That was why he decided to take a gamble of a lifetime. He had no way of knowing that this gamble would twist his destiny, bend the world tree, and eventually alter the human race.
Therefore, he never reconsidered his decision.
"Mama!"
"... What?"
The underworld. The forbidden realm where the empire of dead reigns, a place where new life shall never ever sprout.
So it was only natural that Persephone, a woman who loves her husband deeply and desires a token of his love, to crave for a legacy of his as her own.
A legacy she would have never obtained, hindered by the very nature of her husband, that was to never give birth to a new life in his realm. Thus, by fate and fidelity, she was forever damned as a mother.
Her mad love and obsession with the beautiful boy Adonis were due to this sad and inevitable reality, and thus, tragedy was inevitable.
Yet, in her haze of fury, she hears a call, a word, that was never meant to be used in her presence.
"Mama!"
The young voice resounded in her ears and reverberated through the giant cave, as clear as day.
"... Aha! Ahahahahahahahahaha!"
Persephone shuddered and wailed, breathing hotly as if she were overcome with raging emotions, torn apart by her own destructive passion.
A spark of madness lit up in the chest of the loving goddess who was never to be called by that name, who was fated to never bear children in the future, and in the twinkling of an eye, she was emerged in Hellfire.
A 'crack' appeared on the face of Persephone, the chaste goddess who was never given the luxury to call a child her own.
A ferocious yet beautiful smile split across her face. A crescent moon, cruel and enticing. A smile of madness, a smile of adoration so deep, it bore insanity within.
"How ridiculous of me to be so troubled. Wasn't there a means of achieving both revenge and longing in these arms all along?"
The love-crazed Queen of Hell laughed.
"I shall make that whore's baby into mine, inscribe my mark on it, and pour my blood into its veins! This child is not hers from this time forth! He is mine and yours, my lord, our child intertwined with the pact of divine blood! Now-"
She cuddled him in her breast as if she were nursing a fragile creature on the edge of death and whispered softly in a gentle voice.
"Come, come, little one. I swear to you. I swear it on the ancient river Styx, which flows through the land of my Dark Lord."
The Queen of the Dead kissed the newborn life and planted a holy vow on his head.
"Thou art my son. My legacy, my very own treasure of death. Thy divine name is..."
Persephone took a deep breath. With that, like a curse, like a blessing-
-The baby's fate was eroded and twisted by her own desires.
"Korēcres; Glory for Persephone."
Faraway, in the clouds, thunder rumbled in approval.
The Child of Heaven and Hell shall ring the White Titan's Awakening Bell.
-As he foresaw.
Review if you are excited for more! Ideas, theories...everything is welcome!
PS. In case you're wondering, yes, he has another name which Caenis gave him, and it starts with a 'Z'. Obvious enough, right?
X-kalibuuuur, over and out!