[ Author's notes ]
This will most likely be a 2 to 3 part story, some of which is already written, so please stay tuned for more! Some pertinent themes that can be taken from the game will be explored along with Zag/Than's dynamic, especially those of Life vs Death, the nature of existence, identity, the hero's journey, and the natural cycle of being.
Rated Mature for future parts.
The idea for this, of course, is taken from the bed in Zagreus' room - when you interact with it, you always get the line "can't sleep" or Running amok in the Underworld must be impossibly exhausting, and it seemed so fitting that Zagreus would seek Thanatos to help him to rest. Naturally, I took this plot bunny and ran with it. Enjoy!
Thanatos tells himself that he gleans a great fulfillment in being Death—fulfilling the natural cycle of being, embodying arcane intrigue, duality both real and allegoric, a fixture in this realm and the one beyond—but it is not quite true. Personal gratification is second to the strings that bind him, a predestined fidelity to the role bestowed to him by those estranged sisters, the Fates. Thanatos has never questioned his station, in any plane of existence; but he has, over the vast-stretching breadths of time, lost interest in such mundanities as pride for a job well done (and so has his Master lost interest in holding Thanatos in any regard of esteem—for there need be no special bearing for a charge who so meticulously performs his duty, in absence of praise or complaint).
(In truth, he fancies himself a reaper, a chaser—and yes, the god of serene, merciful death always reaps those whom he chases. Except, except—)
The bottles collect like so many lost souls. Thanatos doesn't touch a drop, would rather face the fate of his wards than be caught imbibing off-duty, let alone something so precious. The heaven-sweet smell of nectar taints him where he goes—picking and processing and protecting lost souls, keeping an ever-discerning eye. Zagreus gives them impossibly freely, waving away each time his offers of reciprocation, asking only for one thing in return:
"Thanatos. Please… help me sleep."
(This domain is yours), thundered Lord Hades' voice, autarchic when Thanatos had woken into existence, as though the nascent deity could hear anything more than that all-touching silence, roaring in his ears; as though he was merely one more shade in this colossal underground kingdom, one more Fated voice to tell him that he was a blessed god, with a sacred charge—the one to bring death swiftly, sweetly, favored among men. The people bejeweled his likeness with butterflies and poppies, gentle and soporific; he felt their essences, cradled their psyches, in the very core of his being.
Thanatos thinks about these things every time that he is greeted by the same scarred-and-savage face emerging from the death-blood river to the House's splendid shore, one red eye probing like a soul in search, swatting Hypnos' flitting queries away—as insolent as ever. Their conversations flow just as they did on that first occasion after he left, cordial but always with that disapproving undercurrent, Thanatos biting back his bruising tongue and Zagreus biting back his sense of shame and each of them pushing the other further, until the sweet-scented bottle is inevitably brandished and with it, the request. It is Zagreus' imploring face that does him in each time.
(Thanatos fulfills his duty, and blesses Zagreus with rest.)
Zagreus is ever-persistent. That is nothing new, and has always been something of a thorn. But now, he is in kind flagrantly motivated, and the combination is destructive. Thanatos hates it when he disappears, when he knows that he'll have to follow like a haunting. Keeping a close guard as he ferries the dead, fields their ceaseless calls and clamors, because if Zagreus insists on being foolish, at least Thanatos can save his hide. (He knows to expect his call now, as well.)
Zagreus does find him, in his attempts to reach the Surface. When he is caught lurking, in whichever realm, traversing from room to precarious room, he veils his real purpose by imposing a challenge: who among them can strike the most foes?
Zagreus never retreats from this challenge, no matter how wounded or deprived of sleep. They spar to the obliteration of all that moves, in tandem, a flurry of divine light. Whichever Infernal Arm he wields, Zagreus battles in a beatific design—a whole spectrum of colors emitted by his hand, the full range of elements bestowed by the gods, Achilles' teachings guiding his strikes true. He flies about in a passion-fueled fury, unleashing radiant death blows that interlock around him in sharp splendid swirls, forming fearsome lattices that vanquish countless seas of foes.
When Thanatos is engaged in work, or by his lonesome, wandering, the resentment and the fear both flatten to a line, and existence coalesces to duty alone. The cold sensation that suspends in his chest vanishes, as if cindered to ash, leaving an empty space that cannot be filled, no matter how many souls he saves. Thanatos comforts the shades that would be doomed, in life, to interminable unrest—no respite, no peace, no sleep. The living call to him, when not feeling spited, with adoring words; they beseech him with virtuous petitions (Please, Lord Thanatos, bless my ailing father with a peaceful sleep; please, Lord Thanatos, grant an end to the suffering of our indisposed). Thanatos answers their prayers; Thanatos, ever-watchful, lurks and listens in wait. For the entreating voices of the faithful, and for the weary Prince to come home.
(What is one more soul?)
The first time, Thanatos had been consumed enough by work not to start or stiffen when Zagreus—ah, so he's returned home at last—clambered up to his post, a bottle of something pressed into his hand. His lips flapped, and then flapped more, pleasantries and platitudes and Thanatos scowling as the gift was thrust blindly upon him. And Thanatos should have been angry—should have been seething and stricken with rage, with fury at being abandoned for such a futile cause; but as he looked upon Zagreus' wrecked form, he found himself quartered by panic instead.
Zagreus had borne none of the usual cheer, but relinquished the bottle broken and burning, washed up red with Styx's tears—there, his eyes, fire-and-ice clear, alive and flickering behind dark lashes. Something in them—pain? Or ire? Thanatos would have to do something for that, doubtless, for the ruinous spirit before him. Flying from the hateful river like he'd been set aflame.
"For finding and challenging me, back there," he'd gasped, and nodded in the direction of the bottle. Nectar—a treasure of extraordinary rarity, yet there it sat in his outstretched palm, emitting a passive honey-sweetness even with the stopper lodged. Thanatos hardly could summon the space to contemplate by what means it might have been acquired, between Zagreus' state and the way it paralyzed the workings of his mind.
"You've found me, this time," Than grunted at last, and slowly pocketed the bottle. The Prince touched to his shoulder then, a shaking-sharp itch of battle-worn fingertips. Thanatos shifted where he stood. "How did you get this? What would you have me give in return?"
"Thanatos, please, I need your aid," was all the answer he received, all that Zagreus could manage, very nearly a whine. His tone, and his obsequious face, laced hollow-point stitches up Thanatos' spine.
"What do you wish of me?" Thanatos sighed, and curled his arms further into himself; the Underworld's pervasive chill, and something besides, set his sides to tremble like a plague. Anger, like a spring, propelling to his throat. You left, and you'll leave me again; there is nothing for me to give you, he fiercely wished to say; but pretend, in the end, was a folly for mortals.
"My bedchambers. Come—" and fumbled the rest, just as his clambering legs stumbled a blood-trail that led to the very place, leaving Thanatos little choice but to follow, his heart threatening to escape his mouth.
In Zagreus' bedroom, a phantom air set to greet them, crackling and final like the bones of the dead. His chambers had not been so spacious as Thanatos would have expected of a Prince of Hell, and yet they were hardly spared of fineries. Of course, Zagreus would fancy himself a purveyor of creature comforts; he would have his decorations, there a third-full decanter of pilfered wine on the side-table, there a grand bear-skin to warm his feet, and on the bed of some material more luxurious than silk, peeking from where the rich blue coverlet is drawn. Afar, the great glinting mirror, looking on them in disdain, or perhaps it was confusion—
"Than. My armor. Please—"
Even so indisposed, Thanatos' body and face remained stone-still (eyes wan and wanton from an armored countenance). Zagreus had blindly reached for his statuesque forearms, and failing, pawed at the pauldrons and chiton, sputtering, "I can't—"
"Be still," Thanatos ordered. Then, softer: "I will do it."
"I'll show you," Zagreus offered weakly, and misliked the breathy tone to his voice; and Thanatos bit back a smile in spite of it all, wryly tugging at the corners of his lips. Zagreus' hand eclipsed his—still tarnished by the red mar of water and blood—and guided it to the concealed catches of his pauldrons.
(He had recalled, a fleeting thought like a flick on the wind, a time when it shocked him as nothing so had—the rumors of a red-bleeding Prince, confirmed as true before his eyes. He'd thought then, perhaps vainly, that little more could catch him off his guard, as much as could sway him. The mirror might surely laugh at that.)
"Here," Zagreus said, softly, and Thanatos' fingers flexed to the place where the bone and metal fused, the hefty piece of armor coming loose in his hand, letting the cloth beneath flow freely, as if by his wish alone. That which remained had hardly been an issue of complexity, and Thanatos did as he was silently beseeched, baring red-wet dripping skin and a constellation of gashes, the bruised contours of bicep and abdomen; and he found himself wishing again, wishing not be awed by those hard coils of muscle, or taken by the still-bleeding scars. He was not. He was awed; he was taken; his mouth parched; his heart thrummed; his eyes darkened, blown glassy and wide.
Zagreus had collapsed wasted onto the bed, the far mirror winking in omnipotent judgement. Zagreus' body lay crumpled and spent like a fresh-smitten scoundrel, blue blankets flooding an ocean around him; Zagreus' blood cast a web-streaking stain on the unblemished silk of his sheets; Zagreus' face was beholding him, then. Zagreus looked at Thanatos as would mortal to god, as a soul would pray for gentle death. His face was a supplication.
"Zagreus," Thanatos quietly said, a low and lonesome sound. "What is it that you need from me?"
"Sleep," came the choked reply. "Please. Whatever you must do. Anything to get me to sleep."
He opened his mouth, shut and opened again. "Hypnos—"
"No. You," Zagreus coughed, like a bubbling spring; a fine stream of red mist suspended in air. "Want it to be you. You can…right?"
(Truthfully, he wasn't sure. But he recalled many prayers for the relief of the infirmed, the many instances of invalids bereft and barely-breathing, unable to eat or move or speak, bound to the Earth by will alone; he recalled granting their loved ones Death's touch of respite, and freeing those souls from their torment.)
"Close your eyes."
Zagreus obeyed; the pallid lids shuddered, long lashes dancing like fluttering wings. Thanatos stood over him, a guarding shadow. As his hollow-pointed fingers slowly brushed over Zagreus' brow, the Prince's lips had parted once more, his eyes remaining firmly shut.
"I'm sorry…that I didn't...tell you. I couldn't—risk—"
The mouth of divine slumber devoured what remained of his words. As he slept, Zagreus wore an expression of profound peace.
After, Thanatos started up to leave. There'd been scarce little time to contemplate thought or feeling, or to consider the weight of his actions, the surety of retribution if Lord Hades discovered them. He would be behind on work, no doubt, and for it many souls would suffer. Before Thanatos made his exit, the room's great mirror struck a gleam to his eye. He'd charted a silent path to it, coming as though beckoned.
Who are you? the glass seemed to ask.
(Thanatos had no answer, then. He hardly has one now.)
They meet in Tartarus' sprawling bowels, after the next few rounds of death are dealt—he's learned Megaera's patterns, now, but she still takes a chunk of him from time to time. Zagreus emerges from her battle-room sanguine, as much from spilled blood as from Ares' aura; the flame-cracking ire sparks about him like a whip. His hair, drenched, plasters to his face in sheets. Already Tartarus' damned are launching themselves upon him, Numbskulls and Wringers and Pests; they clash foot to blade, now haloed in a pink-blazing haze, Aphrodite's magic failing to weaken the horde enough for Zagreus to find space to breathe.
He is painfully low on health; Thanatos can plainly see. A hollow victory indeed. Triumphant though he may have been against Meg, he'll hardly last much longer.
Thanatos extends from the wall, a shadow. Their challenge ensues without acknowledgment in words, though Zagreus looks relieved to see him. Thanatos' scythe begets certain, sweeping death; the wretched foes fall to his mercy in droves. Zagreus, calling upon his iron-forged strength, or perhaps simply stubborn resolve, fights with an admirable vigor; the goddess of love blesses his heart-seeker, each of Coronacht's arrows finding a home.
Zagreus, as the Fates would have it, manages to win the challenge; but not without consequence. He stumbles, listless and sallow with fatigue, that inevitable curse. Blood congealing thick over a wide gash at his collar, butterfly-shaped and etched deep, deep into the living tissue of his skin.
"Than," Zagreus mutters when it is finished, and manages a small smile, cornered as he is, as vermin to a trap. "You've come."
"I haven't," Thanatos retorts. Already gliding as a shimmer on water, to where Zagreus sways on the wind, only Varatha keeping him upright.
He frowns. The webbed lines that frame his eyes crease. "My eyes would tell me otherwise."
"They lie. What you see before you is an apparition."
Zagreus coughs, but the sputter conceals something softer, a chuckle. "I never took you to be one for jokes, Than."
"I am an apparition, Zagreus. Now. Sleep."
He does. Zagreus, bested, blighted, drifts solemnly and sound into Death's embrace. Thanatos carries him silently home.
Where once their talks had been weighted by playful banter and wit, they now exchange little more than the same handful of words, over and over and over.
Thanatos begs Zagreus to resist the influence of the gods that would seek to use him, to refuse their calls and embrace his own strength. He pleads with him to quell his own craving for freedom, to temper his lust for answers and truth. But Zagreus is determined to make it to the surface, though he shoves down the inklings that Thanatos is right in his suspicions (such devastating divine influence will only twist and corrupt, like Chaos leaking from inside).
He begs Zagreus to temper the desire that springs from inside him, to stop the ever-flowing fountain, because he is Fated to fail. Thanatos knows no being can defy Hades, and so he pleads with Zagreus to defeat his own self, because he can't bear the alternative (even more than he can't bear the sting of being left behind, again and again and again).
He begs Zagreus to stay in the Underworld. He tells him it is for his own sake: the Underworld is vast, and he still has much to gain and many adversaries to defeat before he can hope to reach the Surface. (He doesn't—can't—tell him that it's as much for the Underworld's safety as his own: Lord Hades harbors the potential to rend the very fabric of death and existence to shreds, and would, in the name of righteous fury.) Thanatos pleads with him to keep in sight, to keep content and composed and rested.
(He begs him to stay to prevent a cataclysm from swallowing all things, and because his hurried footsteps remind him of another devastating departure, long ago. He pleads with him to keep in sight so that there need not be any more disasters, no more blights upon this realm or that. He does not rest for the weight of Demeter's wrath, set upon the mortal world.)
Thanatos begs Zagreus to rest, as he cannot. He begs Zagreus to sleep.
But Zagreus does not cease his assault, nor spurn the power of the gods. Zagreus defies his father's commands, and in turn, Thanatos' wishes. Their conversations devolve to "please" and "no" and the cloying of nectar, and then they start to wane completely. Zagreus carries persistently onward.
Perhaps this, too, is Fated. Thanatos's hand lays him to rest, each time that he fails.
Zagreus slowly grows stronger.
He makes an easy grave of the fire-and-ash lakes of Asphodel, disposing of great swaths of the unremarked shades that reside there, absolving their sins, vanquishing their existence by his hand. Yet the blighting is not without the odd blemish: Zagreus is even now bested on several occasions by the many-headed Beast of bone, and at times caught astray by a Gorgon or witch; most iniquitous of all is the magma, boiling, bursting with the desire to consume all that it touches. The Phlegethon buries him, one and again; its fiery maw hurtles him back to the Styx, each scorching excursion tempering his power.
(Thanatos catches himself mending and minding. He lurks and watches and listens for the whispers, the spilled words of freshly-reaped souls, clamoring like a shaking of branches, whispering Zagreus' name. More than once, Thanatos leaves trinkets behind, in spite of himself—the heart of a centaur, a scattering of coin. And at times, when they meet up and spar, Zagreus flashes him something purple and gleaming, along with his telltale grin—the butterfly keepsake he'd once given him, what now seems to be aeons ago. Thanatos minds and mends and represses the guilt that comes with the treason of it all, but still catches himself indulging in reason, when there should be none to be had—knowing where Zagreus has no cause to perish, where exhaustion and not weakness is his only adversary.)
Thanatos challenges him once more, in an iron-hot chamber that smells of sulfur and burning dust. A deep lagoon flows in the shape of Thanatos' cowl, an inlet of lava that snaps at their feet. Smoldering air and fire scintillate about them, and Thanatos' scythe swipes a steady baton, a shimmering chorus of death turned to music. Beyond, breaching the bounds of walls and borders, Eurydice's beautiful voice sings their muse. Zagreus' Twin Fists drum a steady percussion; foes deflect off his fists in an effulgent blaze, and the shattered souls cry a despondent lament before returning to whence they had come. Their eyes blink out of existence like so many stars, coal-dark and flashing with some inkling belying the flat tone of fear. The Music voices their repose, an ethereal requiem.
Zagreus wins the challenge; and this time, he basks in his victory, wears the strident wreath of sound and sparks like a halo of thorns. Artemis' magic delights about him, drenches him in detific pearlescence, burns his eyes fierce and living, his hair a sun-blessed curtain cast in forked flame. He beams with an empyrean presence. He looks like a prophecy.
(A promise of redemption. A certainty of failure.)
He turns then to Thanatos like it's nothing at all, as if he hasn't just mantled the Earth and sun, forces that Zagreus has not even seen; his dog-tooth grin stabs right to the groin, a surge of light-magic and sound, and Eurydice still singing.
"Good bout, Than. Let's go again soon."
The words pierce a hole in Thanatos' chest. Zagreus' face stirs his body; he curses the tremulous thing, made fragile by that ridiculous smile, incensing in its insolence. The heat-haze plumes scorching his face too-sudden burn like pelting ice, like the winter breath that spurred the agonized callings of so many mortal souls—destroying their crops, stealing their weak and weary, now settling into Thanatos' heart like a curse.
"Again," he spits, before he can attempt to subdue the storm that plagues the white-hot center of his chest. "Then, you still will not heed. Nor cease this undertaking."
"I told you I won't." He has the nerve to sport a look of confusion. The flippancy is astounding.
"And you expect me to come to your aid. To chase. To seek, each time. To keep you from the river's edge of death, or else to hunt you down."
His head hangs, his voice quiet. "I don't expect those things of you, Than."
"But you expect me to bring you rest." This time, a barbaric edge strains the pitch of the words, echoes them off the far walls too harshly—strident, rough, abrasive like scraping stones, churning below the rivers of Hell. "Tell me, have you ever even stopped to a moment to consider why you cannot fall to sleep?"
Zagreus throws up his hands. "I cannot know. A test from my uncles. A curse from my father. Whatever it is, I can't say."
"Your inability to care for yourself is no one's fault but your own, Zagreus."
Zagreus appears as though he's been defeated, eyes cast down to the Knuckles, following the path of a fissure with a white-braced hand, as if expecting the Arms to punch back. When no blow comes, he clucks with his tongue, and Thanatos fails to suppress a flinch. Then reaches for something at his hip, freed fingers seeking—
"Here. Will you at least take this?"
He holds out a bottle, the cloying scent of honey emanating from the stoppered bottle, as if by magic. Thanatos can smell it where he stands. The nectar claws his nose and makes his eyes to itch.
And Thanatos still cannot balk at his attempts (in his own quest, and in this, too). How many times now has he disappeared, only for Zagreus to come doggedly back? How many times, indeed, has the prince defied Death? No, Thanatos' bitterness has degraded slowly, a steady attrition, and his self-respect with it. It has, somewhere in the chaos, vanished to the mercy of specter and splendor, of fierce resolve, of begrudging admiration. Zagreus awes him with purpose; Zagreus taunts him to Hell and back again.
So though he would like nothing more than to temper this vagary, he does not—cannot. He reaches for the bottle, abjectly resigned. And sighs, knowing that with this, the cycle will continue—uninterrupted, snaking and winding like the Styx's infinity, until one of them either perishes or comes to see sense.
(And Thanatos knows the former is hardly a possibility, unless Lord Hades himself bids it.)
"And what do you want for it, this time?" he bites. "You have no need for my power now, nor so much as a centaur's heart, bloodied as you are. Clearly, you are still here—"
But before Thanatos can complete his thought, or find the space to blink, Zagreus is kissing him square on the mouth. Zagreus' red-streaking fingers leave trails of sharp points, everywhere all at once, swiping the back of his neck like a ghost, pressing desperation to his slackened jaw. He kisses him breathless, like Chaos himself, for all the worlds a calamity. The force of it nearly transforms him to a shade.
When they part at last Thanatos may as well have been struck, though Eros nowhere to be found—stunned still, he grazes the stain on his throat where Zagreus' fingers had been, his blood-and-iron lips, hot to the touch like a burn. Asphodel spins on an axis around him, Zagreus' feinting form at the center. He doesn't even register the parting of lips, the poising of tongue as to speak.
"Than. That's for—"
Thanatos vanishes in an instant, leaving not a trace.
A long, long stretch passes before they again meet.
Thanatos buries himself in work, and scarcely returns to the House of Hades. The souls of the mortal realm clamor for his sparing touch, come to relieve their woes and send them to their peace. The Surface shimmers with their temperaments, by turns fearful and joyous, now settling into the post-harvest season; Thanatos reaps their memories too, and with them the colors and sensations of Earth: the frigid whippings of a blustery day, now the gratitude-cloak of a warm one, now several spells of gale winds and blooming frost. Demeter is hungry. The bitter cold brings death and famine, and there is much, much work to do. Mortals reach for him in offering; their prayers become his guiding light.
The whispers, yet, are inescapable. The souls feed him their stories as a spring feeds a cold-touching river, supplying fresh details regarding the machinations of Hades' only son. Thanatos doesn't listen for it, but only because he has no need to. Word always reaches his stead, uttered from shades of higher and higher caliber.
It is from the new-culled mouth of a Hero of Thebes that he first hears the name "Theseus."
"Felled, by the Prince's hand…"
"Yes, the King of Athens…"
And so when Thanatos seeks him again at last, it is there in the beautiful fields of Elysium, in that hallowed haven where the Champions of Earth clash mettle to might for the endless entertainment of exalted souls; it takes the space of an instant to absorb from the teeming souls sprawled among the emerald fields that yes, it is true—Theseus and Asterius are slain at last, bested in a double-man fight to the death, to the witness of every soul in the place. And now, the Prince has returned for a second go.
Zagreus, when Thanatos arrives, is already waging war—a menacing specter in the center of that great green expanse where he has met his natural end no fewer than eight times before (no, Thanatos was not listening, nor counting), where winged insects leech life and turmoiled chariots charge forth their wrath. This time, as before, Thanatos orchestrates his entry in sweeping circles of doom that cull souls on a staggering scale; Zagreus, by all sights delighted to see him, slices through the vegetation with an animal grin; around him, about him, he draws arcs of his own with the holy shield Aegis, dancing in a flurry of bright-blinding death.
The flame-wheels all die brilliantly, a chorus of fulgent and flickering fire that careens from the walls and sparks to the ceiling like heavenly rain. Zagreus, laughing, tilts back his head, Artemis' name on his lips; he lets the gold-and-verdant light reflect off his dampened skin, glisten in the heat-whipped wisps of hair, pour into his open mouth. Sees himself reflected in Thanatos' scythe and whoops.
Thanatos knows the Surface through the memories of his wards, knows the color of life in the mortal realm. The color of summer's sky, of trees, of the high and blazing sun. Zagreus battles like life itself, like passion and rage and Chaos controlled, and forges his victories in fierce yellow jolts, arching green spires sent forth by the Shield, purple smog and gold dust and red, red blood. The room's inhabitants are all laid swiftly to waste, even the beautiful vermin insects, who squeak pitifully as they perish.
(Thanatos recalls the first time he'd relented so much as to finally give chase, to locate Zagreus here and confront him with words—he'd stood so agonizingly idle as the Prince took long lashings from Tisiphone's whip, as his body was blown back by the Hydra of bone; he's watched Zagreus die in scores, and brought his down gentle hand each one, with nothing but Zagreus' bottles to commemorate his shame; but Zagreus has grown stronger, more defiant, more divine. Zagreus hardly needs him, here and now; yet he is here.)
"Your resolve has grown fearsome, I see," Thanatos clips, a bladepoint-hint of consternation sharp on his tongue, the metal creaking of his scythe in sheath slicing the distending hush of death.
"It's hardly the only thing that's fearsome," Zagreus snarls, a guttural predator purl that ought to have put Thanatos instantly on alert, and then too abruptly he is approaching: Aegis clattering from his open hand, his fingers cupping Thanatos' jaw. Curving in an arc, flung in one jerked movement, to hinge over Thanatos bared leg to thigh, the other foot planted, unsteady—then as sudden, toppling as though felled, wearing a look of unspoiled serenity.
Thanatos' heart throbs a pulse in his throat, beat after beat, suspended in place. He can hear Zagreus' strained breathing, see the labored rise-fall of his chest where he lies slain, not by enemy hands but by sheer exhaustion.
Thanatos recalls the insects and beasts of mortal Earth. There are no cats in the Underworld, which perhaps is why the rats roam free (though the cause of their existence here remains an enigma, even now). Zagreus is ever, in this place, a rat, like the beasts great and small who lurk in the Temple where Thanatos dares not tread, endlessly searching for breadcrumbs of truth; and though Thanatos might fancy himself keen to the chase, he can hardly take up the mantle of cat, not in this circumstance. He makes for a lousy hunter.
Perhaps Zagreus is both beast and prey, each in dogged pursuit of the end of the other.
Though the Underworld's damned may cower in his wake, no animal or ghost or god is unruled by sleep. Now Zagreus' lips are parted and his eyes lidded half-open (remember, remember those lips' hard seal, the frenetic touch of fingers), his dark hair strewn artfully by invisible wind, arms outstretched as if in offering.
Thanatos, in this moment, wishes for strength to reject it. He wishes for power to end the cycle. He wishes foremost to disappear.
He does none of these things. Instead, he scoops Zagreus up like a bride, and carries him swiftly back to his bed.
Zagreus wakes before the arbitrary mornings with gentle hands in his hair, ghostlike fingers working into the matted strands, brushing reverently into his neck. He wakes to feel imprints on his skin, shades of soft breath, tracings of comfort, a sweet-drifting dirge. Zagreus wakes to Thanatos' touch, and, with vigor restored, looks about the chamber blindly, seeking him each time; and each time, Thanatos is gone like a dream, leaving only faint lingerings of his peaceful embrace.
The unrelenting cycle continues.
Thanatos bears witness to the Prince's growing strength, slow-gathering like lightning from the mighty hand of Zeus. He bears witness to Zagreus rending his way through Tartarus, through the fire-and-ash plains of Asphodel with its wretched wicked souls, then up to the fields of Elysium where the heroes and warriors and kings bid him welcome with so many swords. Each time wielding a different weapon; each time brandishing a different face.
Hades' booming voice rumbles the Underworld like shaking earth. Zagreus climbs and climbs, tasting Surface air each time, as much tease as incentive; they hardly speak, anymore, but Thanatos beholds his full glory when they spar, and when he catches him at war—making of mockery of Heracles in Asphodel, wrenching the heart of his sword into the Champion's gut as Elysium's heroes transform taunt to cheer. The former king of Athens spews like a fountain each time, sputtering vitriol from a still-leaking mouth; the minotaur yet rages blind, trapped in this labyrinth of unending time, doomed to fire and forget in rotations, until the next Zagreus returns. And return, he does—again, and again.
He's been cycling without dying, of late.
Each time, each cycle, he channels another divine quirk—the caustic green of the huntress; the drowning jaws of the mortal sea; the swirling black tides of Chaos himself. The most recent encounter had been no different—Zagreus invokes the god of folly and frivolity, poison shrouding his foes in a noxious-sweet cloud, dripping from his mouth like wine, bleeding violent and violet from every open pore.
He's made the gods his arsenal.
He's devised different means of harnessing the Olympians' boons, different schemings to suit his design. He's uncovered secrets and unearthed a system, a strategy to reap that which he seeks. Whether seeds or coin or precious life-water, nothing remains barred to him anymore. Thanatos, ever skulking, tending to his shades, knows at his heart that he is biding his time, gathering strength and resources, lining every piece perfectly into place. The only son of Hades has forged and fashioned himself a formidable creature, against all obstacles, and yet; and yet…
Zagreus cycles the Underworld endlessly; he does not rest; he does not sleep.
He's hardly lost any stamina, this run—his skin and his flourish appear healthy, the sole source of concern a red-streaking line to his striking arm, thin and bright like a dying star. Even now, it begins to clot. And again, that irksome flash of reason—it's a wonder that deities can bleed at all, no matter in which color, and can toil and pain and suffer as mortals do; it is something Thanatos would have never thought to ponder, until having seen it for true. (Perhaps there is no art to the Fates' cruel design.)
No, Zagreus is not so weary, this time; yet Thanatos remains ever watchful, because Thanatos' duty is to bring respite; he is bound by that duty, so will go where he's needed, and where he is not needed he'll keep a close watch, lest it come to pass. (The ghost of Zagreus' lips like a prayer upon his.)
The song of the Fates lilts ever closer; Thanatos' ears are filled with the humming of anticipation, the disquieting thrum of galvanized souls. Each time, each cycle, they grow ever more giddy; their exuberance electrifies the air, no matter to which realm he goes. And Thanatos cycles them himself—each realm, each room in the spaces between his Fated duties; for he knows, as Lord Hades' voice rains down despotic condemnation, that he cannot return home, either. Because so long as Zagreus is still fighting, he will need Death—he will need Thanatos, as an arrow needs a pulsing heart.
(Somewhere amid the ever-flowing stream of time and place and Fate, Cerberus unleashes a mighty yelp.)
Zagreus approaches the Temple of Styx.
Zagreus approaches the Surface.