Disclaimer: I don't own Trials of Apollo

Warning for emeto/vomit

HADES XXV
Shadow Travel Was Not A Foolish Idea

Hades had no idea what sort of plague Apollo had conjured. Admittedly, he was no expert on plagues, although he knew more than most from constant exposure to the many victims of Apollo's plague arrows that had passed into his realm, but there was nothing familiar about the aura emitting from the bleached and sickly-looking arrow.

He pushed back against the stinger as it lashed down desperately, not even caring about him but clearly after the younger god, before whirling back around to destroy the new manifestations from Kampê's waist as they attempted to reach Apollo. The trust his nephew had shown him in this battle was astounding; it was true that this was not the first time they had fought together, nor covered each other's weaknesses, but for Apollo to leave his back fully exposed to almost everything Kampê could throw at it was either the height of foolish mindlessness from his nephew, or a declaration of trust that Hades would watch his back.

Whichever it was, Hades would not let Kampê paralyse – or do worse to – his nephew.

The arrow punctured the back of Kampê's neck, and Apollo immediately flipped backwards, throwing himself up and away from the monster, narrowly missing the thrashing stinger as he landed in a crouch a little way further back up the corridor. Seeing nothing to be gained by remaining on Kampê's back, vulnerable to both her waist's conjurations and her violent stinger of a tail, Hades followed suit, once again calling upon the Helm's invisibility and intangibility to ensure no part of Kampê achieved a lucky strike as he dismounted from her back with a single leap, landing beside his nephew.

At her front end still, Bob spun his spear until it was merely a silver disk, deflecting her scimitars away from him before he jumped back himself, clearly recognising that something was about to happen – provided Apollo had succeeded in somehow inflicting a disease upon Kampê, of all monsters.

It was not something Hades would have ever thought to do. He still wasn't sure it had been a smart decision.

No longer engaged in her battle with Bob, Kampê lashed out at the arrow impaling her neck, slicing it off halfway down the shaft as agitated serpents wound around what was left and tried to yank it out. With her so distracted it was the perfect time to flee, or at least attempt to put some distance between them and get the opportunity to choose the battlefield themselves, but Kampê's body was still between Bob and freedom. As much as Hades dearly wanted to leave the blasted titan behind after his stubbornness against shadow travel – if Bob had just acquiesced then they would not have been cornered by the monstrous guard of the prison – he and Apollo were now obligated to help the titan, or at least not abandon him, lest Bob take that as a betrayal and turn on them.

Hades was sure that between them, he and Apollo could subdue the titan, but it would leave an opportunity open for Nico to force his way down into the Pit himself to check that Bob was truly destroyed – and would no doubt not speak to Hades again for at least a lifetime. He was still making amends for the serious misdemeanours in parenting he had blundered into, actions that still hung between him and his son and left their relationship stilted and awkward; he had no wish to alienate Nico, the one remaining child he could talk with, any further.

Next to him, Apollo was rigid. Trickles of ichor ran down his form from minute scratches he must have received from the serpents that comprised Kampê's hair during his rapid retreat. No doubt their fangs were as venomous as the rest of her, but Apollo had not bent to address the wounds in any way so he was presumably unconcerned.

Either that, or he was too invested in what potential disease he had inflicted upon the monster to notice his own condition. Golden eyes watched Kampê intently, Apollo's grip on his bow tight while his other hand held an arrow loosely, no doubt ready to nock and fire in an instant if need be. Hades pulled his attention from his nephew to regard their opponent, fading back into view as an afterthought as the ancient monster scrabbled desperately at the arrow with clawed fingers, her serpentine hair apparently not enough to dislodge the projectile. It left one side open as a scimitar was discarded to the floor in the process, but Bob, too, seemed more interested in watching Kampê for a reaction than breaking past her.

From her sheer desperation, Hades concluded that the arrow was doing something; Kampê was not a beast known for her paranoia, but rather her hubris. She would not panic at something unless it had already proven itself as a danger to her existence.

A moment later, the signs became clear as she convulsed, a full-body shudder that ended with a retch that echoed loudly through the hallway. A mixture of steaming ichor and pale green fluid erupted from her mouth and splattered across the floor. Bob jumped back, a revolted look on his face as the disgusting mixture barely missed his feet.

Kampê shrieked, an ear-splitting noise that Hades flinched at. Next to him, Apollo also flinched, clearly finding nothing musical about the sound, while Bob recoiled further. The monster between them thrashed, bending down to retrieve her discarded scimitar as her tail lashed out blindly towards them. Hades yanked Apollo back, forgoing his own intangibility in favour of making sure his nephew could still move despite the snake bites and whatever venom they had imparted. The younger god jerked backwards, but raised his bow and with a flick of his fingers nocked the arrow in his grip and loosed it in one single motion.

It knocked the stinger away, deflecting it into a brass wall, where it wedged into an infinitesimal crack and caught short.

"Bob!" Apollo called. The titan needed no further coaxing to run forwards, taking a flying leap over the concoction of expelled ichor and venom and deflecting away the vicious scimitar as Kampê tried to block him, before her massive body convulsed again, the shapeshifting sludge of her waist losing all form and letting Bob sail past it unchallenged. With the tail still jammed, although from the way Kampê was convulsing, Hades did not think it would remain stuck for long, it was a simple matter for Bob to skate past it.

None of them needed any encouragement to turn away from the shuddering, furious mess of Kampê and run up the brass corridors. Apollo dropped back slightly, glancing behind them with a brace of arrows on his string, while Bob took the lead in guiding them out of the maze of the brass fortress. It was no surprise that the titan knew the layout so well, given that he had spent millennia within, and Hades was content to follow as long as he, too, recognised the route.

Bob led them unerringly out of the front gates. The drawbridge across the lava moat he and Apollo had avoided via shadow travel on the way in was raised, and the molten rock bubbled threateningly, miniature eruptions spilling over the bank. Hades did not recall it being quite so agitated the last time he visited the prison with his brothers, but with it between them and the way out, they had no choice but to cross it.

Lava, even lava from Tartarus, did not rank highly on the list of dangers the Pit presented. It appeared more of an aesthetic choice than anything else, but Hades did not intend on underestimating any part of the Pit, especially after the earlier rumblings the moment he and Apollo had released Bob.

He did not think it a coincidence that Kampê had cornered them almost immediately, despite their distance from where she had been guarding the entrance.

"Do we jump?" Apollo asked, joining him and Bob near the edge of the bank. The glowing orange of molten rock reflected in the golden flames of his eyes. Bob shook his head.

"I have never seen the lava like this," he said, planting the butt of his spear firmly in front of him. "He is agitated."

A look a lot like fear crossed Apollo's face, his eyes hazing over not unlike they had been when Kampê had first cornered them, when Apollo had only barely paid attention to the fight and taken a gash from her whip for his distraction. He had been exceedingly fortunate that it had not been something worse.

"He is rising," the younger god murmured, a distance to his voice that reminded Hades of young women and prophetic hosts. It was not a reminder he was pleased to receive. He did not know how Apollo's knowledge of the future occurred, but he was beginning to suspect that his nephew had seen something in the prison.

Before he could demand answers, or at least some degree of explanation, there was the sound of something large crashing around behind them. Either Kampê had worked herself free and was managing to pursue them despite whatever plague Apollo had inflicted upon her, or something else in the prison was now heading for them. Whichever option it was, Hades had no desire to face it.

"Are you still opposed to shadow travel?" he demanded of Bob, turning fully to face the titan.

"It is a risk," Bob protested, as though Hades was not well aware of that. "You should not do it too much, lest you catch His attention."

In apparent response, the lava hurtled upright, straight out of its moat to make a burning wall of molten rock, too high to jump even for gods and gradually curving over from the top, like one of Poseidon's tsunamis just before it broke and obliterated everything in its path.

In this case, they were what would be in the lava tsunami's path.

"I think it's a bit late to worry about catching his attention," Apollo commented, the pitch of his voice raised slightly. "And I, for one, do not want to get first hand experience of how hot lava can get." Hades felt his nephew step up next to him, close enough to grab without having to reach out at all. The younger god's essence churned, dimming as he somehow smothered his veiled with other, darker, elements drawn from his domains – not that Hades had not inadvertently done the same with the light of Elysium for centuries, if not millennia. He did it again then, allowing the darkness to spill out and merge with the shadow of the rapidly descending lava as he clasped Apollo's proffered arm with one hand. Sheathing his sword, he extended his hand out towards Bob.

"We are going," he said, leaving no room for argument. "If you do not want to shadow travel so much that you would risk the lava, then that is your prerogative."

Bob sent another look at the lava and grasped Hades' arm tightly. He still looked incredibly unhappy, but despite the downward turn to his mouth, he nodded. "This is still a risk," he said, "but-"

Hades did not wait for him to finish talking.

Usually, shadow travel was an old friend, a comfort within the blackness of night as he stepped into the shadows of the world and merged. There was a peacefulness to the shadows, a pocket dimension of his domain where none dared tread save his subjects and children. Within Tartarus, however, it was not the same. The shadows here were not Hades' to control the same way, and he could feel the primordial gnawing at his edges, a warning that he was reaching above – or below, perhaps – his station. They had not liked being used to locate Bob within the prison, and they certainly did not like being used as transportation.

Apollo's brightness did not make things easy. By default, his nephew rejected shadows purely through who he was and what he was the god of, and since his re-ascension Hades was beginning to suspect his nephew was even more powerful than before. Bob, on the other hand, despite being a bright silver, was a being of grittier mettle. Pain and the inevitability of death clung to the titan, sensations that resonated on some level with Hades and reached out through the shadow to join with him.

The other risk with shadow travelling in Tartarus – because as much as he disliked the fact that the titan insisted on saying it, he was well aware that there was, in fact, a high risk – was that Hades did not know precisely where he was going or where he would emerge. It had been different travelling into the prison, because he had been there before and knew those shadows, but in the wider wilderness of the Pit itself it was a different matter entirely. He had enough orientation to know which directions to not go – down and behind, in this case – but with no predetermined anchor point, he had to stretch out his senses and take the first shadow that met his awareness, lest they truly ended up within the shadows with no discernible exit.

It was not an unlikely scenario; Hades had lost mortal children to the shadows when they had fallen in and found themselves unable to get out.

They reappeared in a crevasse, with sharp, jagged rocks on either side of the chasm. Bob immediately cursed and began to scramble up, frantic enough that neither Hades nor Apollo asked questions as they, too, began to climb. Almost instantly, a low threatening rumble started, and the walls of the crevasse started to move, widening and deepening and then shaking, as though it wanted them to lose their grips and fall.

Hades had no doubt that that was exactly what it wanted them to do, and had no desire to find out what lay at the very bottom of the seemingly infinite chasm.

He suspected that eventually it would open up into Chaos.

When yawning open didn't stop any of them from their scramble upwards – Apollo once again taking on the cloven feet of a satyr to maximise his balance and jumping power – the walls rushed together instead, not unlike the Clashing Rocks at one entrance to the Sea of Monsters.

Hades had no intention of being crushed into oblivion by Tartarus. It had been some time since he had changed his form outside of size adjustments, but it still took him but a single thought to spread his wings and with his much-reduced size dart up, out of the crevasse moments before it slammed together, leaving not even a scar to show where it had split the landscape. A larger, black bird soared past him before morphing back into the golden visage of his nephew, and Hades followed suit, shedding the screech owl for his preferred form once again.

A highly unimpressed silver falcon shimmered into Bob, and displeased silver eyes bore into Hades. "No more shadow travel," the titan said firmly. Hades had had no more intentions of doing so regardless, but he did not appreciate being told not to use one of his domains and didn't dignify it with a response.

Apollo stepped between them, a move that looked happenstance but was clearly intentional. "Where are we?" his nephew asked, looking around.

"Between the Lethe and the Styx," Bob answered immediately, before Hades could begin to gather his bearings. The titan pointed behind them. "That's the Lethe."

Hades glanced back to see the familiar milky-white water winding peacefully down the surface of Tartarus some distance away. Behind it rose the glowing brass of the prison, and the churning molten orange of lava aggressively guarding its gates.

Unlike the clearly agitated lava, the Lethe never hurried, never rushed or roiled. It did not need to, not when it had to power to wipe even a titan of their memories. It did not make it any less treacherous to cross – while Hades was confident they would have been able to jump it with ease, a single slip or splash would render them entirely amnesiac.

The Lethe might not try to ensnare them itself, but given the lava and then the crevasse, Hades suspected that Tartarus itself would do everything it could to force them in regardless.

They could not risk the Lethe, which left them with the other rivers to cross on their way back to the exit to the Underworld, following the same escape Asclepius had made what might have been eons ago, for all Hades could reliably track time in the Pit.

"The Styx?" Apollo asked. Looking at his nephew, Hades remembered the goddess forcing them to divert, refusing Apollo crossing on account of his broken oaths unless he was willing to pay the price. It was not a price his nephew had been willing to pay the first time, and Hades doubted he wanted to pay it this time, either.

"There," Bob said, pointing in the opposite direction – the direction they were now forced to go in, as there was no way to avoid crossing the Styx on the way to any of Tartarus' viable exits without backtracking across the Lethe, which would no doubt prompt questions from Bob. The dark glittering water of the Styx was far closer than the pale waters of the Lethe, and Hades got the impression that they were being watched.

It was not a new sensation; eyes had observed them down in the Delta, and on approach to the prison. Not all of it could be attributed to Styx, but Hades was certain that she was at least one of their observers – and likely one of their most benevolent, for all that she despised Apollo. He would willingly take Styx's observation over Tartarus', which was a malevolence slowly gaining more and more clarity.

He is rising, Apollo had said, and there was only one he that seemed likely. It was also a he that Hades had very little desire to ever confront directly.

Bob knew the layout of Tartarus far better than Hades did, and seemingly had no qualms about taking the lead. The titan headed for the river without waiting for either of them to agree that they should go that way, and Apollo's face shut down in a way Hades suspected hid panic.

"It is the only way out," he told his nephew quietly, watching the titan forge a path ahead of them. Apollo frowned, and Hades found himself disliking the shuttered look on the usually expressive younger god's face.

"I came here to protect Will," Apollo murmured, so quietly it was more akin to a breath of air than intentional speech. "Not to damn him."

That confirmed Hades' suspicions of the price, and he let his shoulders drop slightly. "We will find a way," he said. His nephew's face flickered with brief emotion – mostly despair, but Hades did not think he imagined something akin to gratitude in the depths of his fiery eyes, and wondered at how much things had changed between them since they had arrived.

The Apollo that had entered Tartarus would never have let such emotions show where Hades could see them. Indeed, they had been more prone to arguments and division than unison, and Hades would never have suggested sharing the responsibility of protecting one of Apollo's myriad of children, not even William. The we that had slipped from his mouth unbidden yet naturally hadn't even registered until Apollo's reaction.

Hades liked it, he realised. He had almost always enjoyed Apollo's presence, for all that he had hidden it and often cut their interactions short, but it had been distant and stilted, a bright nephew too vibrant to truly gel with the shadows of the uncle. It had felt almost as though he had been reaching for something he was not allowed (something else he was not allowed, the same way he was not allowed to visit Olympus, not allowed to walk freely with the rest of the gods across the Overworld because his youngest brother had decreed as such).

Down in Tartarus, that barrier between them had melted away to nothing. It had been natural, even, once they breached the Asclepius problem, and while Hades was not so naïve as to think there remained no grievances between them – he had, after all, been the one to curse Apollo's Pythia for decades, and neither of them had made a move to address that – it felt as though their relationship had tightened considerably.

There were very, very few others he had ever allowed so close to his essence, and even less he had merged with, even peripherally. Rediscovering aspects of himself that meant he and Apollo were not so fundamentally different after all was in some ways a relief – Hades had always been the different Olympian god (technically not even an Olympian, thanks to his brother's decree), the disliked and even reviled one on the fringes.

Apollo had never rejected him like some of the others, but the fleeting glimpses of openness his nephew had begun to grace him with, especially since Hades had managed to tell him that he didn't hate him, were something else entirely. It was something like trust, and that was something gods did not offer openly, not after millenniums of learned jadedness.

Hades found that he did not want to break it.

"Come," he said. "Before Bob wonders why we are not following." The titan was already looking back at them, although it wasn't slowing his advance at all and he was almost at the river bank. With a sigh akin to someone resigned to their doom, Apollo slunk forwards.

Hades was glad when Styx rose out of the river as they approached. If she had not been there, Apollo's crossing would have sealed his son's fate. As it was…

"Hades," she greeted, dark eyes glittering. "Iapetus."

"Bob," the titan corrected, drawing her attention away from where it had begun to focus on Apollo, who was standing tall as though he had every right to be where he was. It was a godly posture, a front that Hades had seen many times before but not realised the depths of. Even now, he would not have known that Apollo was terrified had his nephew not as good as confessed as such.

"Bob," she repeated, "I see." Hades supposed she did; passing through Tartarus as she did, she likely knew far more about the titan than most. Then, her eyes turned back to Apollo, whose posture was as rigid as any of the statues that bore his likeness. "Apollo."

Hades' nephew blinked, a small concession of surprise, and lowered his head in a measured fraction. "Styx." Clearly sensing something that wasn't being said, Bob turned to look at the pair of them – goddess and god, facing each other like a huntress and her cornered prey. Even Hades found himself somewhat wrong-footed at her use of Apollo's name, rather than the persistent epithet she had bestowed upon him.

"You are not forgiven," she said, rising fully from her river until only her feet were part of the running water, but not taking a single step out. "However, your repentance is noticed." She stepped forwards, stopping at the very edge of the water where only the soles of her feet and her toes ran with the river. It was as fully humanoid as Hades had ever seen her without leaving her river – an act that Styx did only very rarely. "I will give you a choice."

"Like the last one?" Apollo hazarded a guess, his voice sounding bitter, but she dismissed his words with a careless swipe of one hand, water cascading from the limb and splattering the surface of Tartarus at Apollo's feet.

"In a sense." Considering the last one was the choice to go all the way around the length of the river or damn his son, Hades did not consider it to be a reassuring answer. Nor did Apollo, from his still stiff posture. "You have an unfulfilled oath. Your son. Somehow, you have managed not to break it yet, despite the opportunities."

She had to be referring to the oath his nephew had made within his palace, that William would never set foot in Tartarus.

"Cross me, complete your quest, and keep that oath for the rest of his life," she said. "Do that, and I shall consider the penitence for your broken oath met. Cross me and fail this quest, or break the oath, and he is mine for the taking."

Apollo hesitated, and Hades wondered what Styx gained from her change in tune – or if there was a hidden catch. There was a visible catch that she considered failing their current quest enough to unleash her vengeance on the demigod, even without the additional broken oath, but between two titans and a god, there should be no reason for them to fail.

Was there?

Styx had no domain of prophecy, no reason to even know the prophecy Apollo had recited in his throne room, but there were lines in there which predicted dire straits for light and gold. Per the blasted thing – because Hades would never like prophecies, even if he knew how important Apollo considered them to be – either Apollo or William could still be in peril.

"Well?" she prompted, leaning forwards but not leaving the water for even a moment. Only the droplets that had flown from her brusque action had touched Tartarus' skin, and Hades suspected it was deliberate. "What is your choice, Apollo?"

"Don't I get some time to think?" the god deflected, and she bared her teeth in a mimicry of a grin. The expression was purely predatory, and Apollo stiffened again.

"You do not have time to think," she informed them, voice lowering into a hiss. "Tartarus is displeased at Bob's attempt to escape. Before, you were insignificant gnats beneath his notice but in present company you are fixed directly in his sights. Creatures from the depths are rising, crossing me in droves. Every move you make is watched, you have been followed since choosing to take on this prophecy of sunshine and darkness. The longer you think, the further his wrath reaches. You already know you can't escape the same way as last time, Apollo. You are invaded by the fringes of his essence, and those fringes are shackles."

The hidden meaning was suddenly clear; they could not go around the Styx. Tartarus was rising, and if they, too, did not keep rising they would not escape at all. Hades had no idea what she meant by the same way as last time, but sensed that now was not the time to ask.

If they failed to escape, Nico and William would no doubt eventually venture down themselves, to face the same total destruction Hades and Apollo had taken on the quest to protect them from. The choice was no choice at all.

Realisation lined Apollo's face, and the younger god stepped back once, twice, as Styx eyed him in amusement. Then he ran.

His running jump took him sailing across the breadth of the river with ease, and he landed lightly a few paces from the edge of the bank. The goddess laughed, a low noise that could have been either with or at Apollo. Hades suspected the latter.

"Always so dramatic, Apollo," she said. "Your son's fate is in your hands, now. I suggest you're careful with it."

"Will's fate was in my hands the moment I decided to intervene," Apollo replied, still standing tall and no longer seeming at all cowed by the goddess' threats. "I have no intention of failing him now."

Styx grinned her vicious grin again. "See that you mean what you say, this time."

She disappeared, the water that made up her form splashing down into the river once again to join the flow downwards, towards the depths where Tartarus was stirring.

"I thought your son was merely involved because of Nico," Bob observed, leaping across the river himself. Hades followed suit, eyeing his nephew to try and determine how much of his confident posture was an act.

It didn't feel like one.

"There's a prophecy," Bob continued, a mild accusation. "And you interfered."

"I have as much right to the epithet sunshine as Will," Apollo replied, standing his ground. "He would never have survived this journey."

There was no doubt in Apollo's voice, and Hades shared his certainty; Nico, too, would not have survived a second trip – it was still incredible that he had survived the first, even with the assistance of a titan. Whether or not attempting to take their sons' places had been the correct decision, it had been the only decision that they could make.

Now it was up to them to make sure the prophecy would never mean their sons.

"We are running out of time," Hades said firmly. "This conversation can be held whilst walking."

"I want to hear the prophecy," Bob insisted, but Hades had not waited for agreement before beginning to move, and Apollo fell into step at his side. With a noise of clear frustration, the titan strode to catch up. "What does it entail?"

Apollo shook his head. "Not down here," he said. "Too many ears could hear." He cast a wary glance backwards, as though he could sense someone behind them. Given Styx's words that they were being followed, it would not surprise Hades if his nephew could sense their pursuit. "Once we're out."

"You realise he also knows prophecies," Bob said. "I do not know why he has chosen to follow us, but withholding a prophecy from him is an exercise in futility."

"You know who it is?" Hades demanded, casting his own senses back to try and pinpoint their tail. There was nothing identifiable – familiar, yes, but only on the very hazes of his periphery.

Before he could once again try to grasp their identity more firmly, his senses heaved, jumbled and discordant as something shoved against his essence. He stumbled, almost falling to one knee, and beside him Apollo mis-stepped.

Then the ground gave way.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari