I'M BAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

With life being quarantined at the very least I have time to do some writing on my stories that I need to start the next/final chapter of. I still have to read a book and do some calculus and I'm super bummed that everything had to happen literally the WEEK of my shows for the musical that we'd been working on for months now. We lost our most popular shows but at least we got a few free shows and some small paid shows out and recorded one for a DVD.

I recommend going back to my other stories in the Shadow series before you read this, but I'll try and put reminders as we go so you can maybe get the gist of stuff.

Anyway, I'm back, I've got a lot of plans for my stories (this one especially), so let's get right into it!

Enjoy! :)

Third Person: Tartarus

He could not tell you precisely what they were thinking. Omnipotence only went so far when you were nothing but an eternal being of torture.

Rage consumed his being, frustration, and among it all, confusion.

"Follow me, darling son!" Khaos exclaimed.

Technically, the being before him was not Order nor Chaos, but it was both of them. Because the concept of Khaos came first and Order was born of Chaos, Tartarus always defaulted to Khaos. It didn't matter anyway. He usually just referred to it as 'it.' He now had the need for proper names and pronounce. Ugh, it gave him a headache.

"Where are we going?" he grumbled, his face blank and expressionless.

"Oh, now cheer up, little Tartar." Khaos patted him on the head in a demeaning way. Tartarus wanted to rip that stupid human body limb from limb. "I thought you'd be happy to be up here in the human world! You were trying oh-so-hard to come here before, weren't you?"

Tartarus didn't respond, only glaring at his parent(s) with a black gaze that would cause even the air itself it whither if it were directed at any other being.

This was punishment, he supposed, for what he had done. He was being dragged around like a pet, taunted at every turn, and even when he was allowed the freedom to take over his body, he wasn't allowed to act freely at all. He was forced to do whatever Khaos wanted of him, and restored to its original state of all-powerfulness, Tartarus stood little chance. His parent(s) had done to him what he had attempted to do to it: extract his consciousness from the rest of his being. Though still powerful, he was significantly weaker. Even if he weren't, his full power paled in comparison to his parent(s)'.

He learned that his plan was not feasible in any respect; his parent(s) had been playing with him, toying with him because they were bored. They were nearly always bored. There was a reason that Khaos so rarely appeared as its own separate entity in tales of the gods, and even if it was, it wasn't in very many myths beyond creation myths. One creation myth simply had Khaos being all alone, then suddenly it wasn't, and then there were no more mentions of it. Another didn't even name it Khaos. It was just emptiness; there was nothing, and then there was something.

Khaos was everything. All of the gods, all of the matter and concepts - all of it was like the body parts of Khaos, and it was flexing its fingers, wiggling its toes, and letting its body, for the most part, act on its own. Like internal organs. Tartarus was a force, a concept, that mere mortals could not possibly hope to understand nor conquer.

Tartarus had once thought that he was closest to his parent(s) and therefore closer to its equal - at least far closer than mortals were. Now he knew better.

"You stole that host from me," Khaos went on, a spring in its step as it led Tartarus up a stairway of energy, "ripped it from my grasp! You had the nerve and the gall and the presumption to try and extinguish me while I was feeling down." Khaos clicked its tongue and waggled its finger at Tartarus. "And I might've let you get away with it too, if I hadn't planned it all. If perhaps, you had treated me better, darling, maybe I would've given you victory."

"So then why am I here now?"

Khaos came to a stop up the stairs. It turned dramatically, spreading its arms. "Because love! And a little bit of hope, too." Khaos tapped his nose with its finger. "Along with Gaea and you, the Primordial concept of love was one of my first creations. Love created this world, it rules it. Lack of love, too much love, twisted love, perfect love." Khaos gestured left, right, up, and down as it spoke. "I built this world to have emotions, and all emotions stem from a type of love. Some theorize that Eros is the son of Aphrodite, and others see him as one of my Primordial beings. The truth is that there are so many types of love, and the Eros I made was one of my first Primordial beings. The Eros born of humanity is the one that is a child to Aphrodite. We were just too lazy to come up with a new name for him, and honestly, humanity believes in what they want to believe. I could create a new concept and the humans might name it 'Doughnut, god of the sugar rush' and I really wouldn't correct them. I'm too lazy to come up with new names. All of you had no names at first. I had no name. It was humans who named us. Humans do everything for me. They're like my blood cells, zipping around, doing what they do. Sometimes good things, sometimes bad things, and maybe I could do something about it, but I'm too lazy."

Tartarus internally sighed as he continued to follow Khaos up the stairs. It liked to rant about itself. Tartarus came to wonder if its omnipotence made it hard to keep realities straight and so it needed to reiterate what it knew just to remind itself.

He was getting used to all this thinking and wondering stuff. His human was stronger than he'd thought. Of course it did have Tartarus's parent(s) on its side, but even so, Tartarus could poke and prod at the boy's mind easily enough. Unfortunately, the human - seemingly unintentionally - ended up doing the same to Tartarus, and since he was only his consciousness at the moment, both of them were giving each other headaches and influencing each other in ways neither of them wanted or intended. Tartarus could try influencing the boy to do something rash but instead he'd do something stupid like run face-first into one of the masts on the ship. The boy would try to get Tartarus to shut up and enjoy the sea and instead he'd start thinking about ways to dye it red with the blood of monsters, trying to guess how many it'd take to create a certain hue.

Thinking and wondering and pondering - those weren't Tartarus-y things, but his brain wouldn't stop. No matter how much he just wanted to relax, he was constantly…THINKING. Did humans always have this happening?! If he'd known it would be this relentless, he might've never considered doing this. A god, especially a Primordial one, could clear their head at all times that they weren't directly needing to think. It was what made them uncreative - they thought what they needed to and never imagined or got creative. How did humans manage it? No wonder they were idiots; their poor heads were full of so much nonsense.

It just added insult to injury from his parent(s)' punishment of trapping him within the body that he'd chosen to subdue. While normally he'd probably be able to shut the human up, now he was stuck melded with him. He wondered if Khaos had the same problem with its host. Khaos was already so unpredictable that it was hard to tell. Khaos probably had no problem since it was in charge and Tartarus was a prisoner in this body.

"But enough about that." Khaos hopped up the final step. Tartarus squinted at the annoying brightness of this world. He wanted to turn the skies black and kill anything that powered that stupid ball of light in the sky. "I can tame you, my son, but I apparently cannot domesticate you. Where's the fun in that, anyway? No. I'm going to teach you a few lessons - and then I'm going to make you learn a few on your own."

"Where are we?" Tartarus asked, squinting at Khaos suspiciously. Khaos obviously knew how Tartarus felt about being bonded to this human while not being in full control.

"Olympus, of course! Home of the current gods." Khaos spun around, dancing around the fluff that Tartarus somehow knew were clouds. "I know you've always wanted to come here, son."

"With an army to conquer the fools."

"Semantics."

Khaos took Tartarus through the glowing locale. It was eerily quiet. Tartarus expected it to be louder. Maybe that was his human, actually. Yes, Tartarus didn't expect things. He just knew things and learned things.

"Why are we here?" he asked.

"We've come to start some fun. I've been planning this for centuries dear; don't worry your pretty little head." It put its hand to its ear. "Listen. You hear that?"

Tartarus looked around the barren structures, shimmering with what he assumed was beauty by the standards of gods and mortals. He thought it was silent, but as he began to listen, he started feeling a hum in the air. As he concentrated, he realized it was a scream. A wave of screams. It reminded him of home.

"Who is suffering? It sounds like dozens."

"Olympus has been closed for a while now, you see. The Greeks and Romans are tearing their deities apart. Now is the time."

"The time for what?"

Khaos held out its hand and summoned a weapon, a long, sleek blade with a black and white gradient pattern. It turned and smiled at Tartarus. He could tell that it was not a good smile.

"Time to go crack Zeus's head open, of course."