The Underworld rocked with an impact that rolled the Styx beneath the prow of Hades' boat, yanking the pole from his hands. He grabbed for the helm, spitting curses against the gods, the Fates, even fortune itself, as the water leapt up around him in a torrent of swiping, ghostly limbs. Rock rumbled above his head and, far in the distance, came the cannonade of Cerberus' mad barking.
When the sucking backwash brought his boat back to the central channel, he saw what had caused it.
The face of the Great Skull gaped open to the water like something had smashed it open from the inside. Standing to attention in the darkness of its ruins, a glowing army waited for him.
The gods stood in regiments, their swords and shields pointed towards him, shifting as he approached like flowers turning to face the sun.
"Flattering," he muttered to himself as he squinted against the scarlet glow of their divinity. Of course, in the middle of them all, as smug and triumphant as a sports trophy, his brother waited for him with his arms outstretched.
"Brother! We've been waiting for you!" Zeus descended the steps in a few great strides and went in for the embrace. Hades braced against it, his face twisting into a snarl over his shoulder, as their bodies rose with Zeus' deep, bracing breath of satisfaction. "Now this feels right," he declared, letting him go. "You and I talking again, all this ridiculous fighting over and done with. And all those distracting loose ends all nice and tied up!" Then he paused, as if listening for something on the wind.
Hades winced, and silently begged whatever might be listening that the kid was still out of the picture. As Zeus sensed for any sign of un-life still down with them, he held his breath.
"Ha!" Zeus barked in delight. "I can't believe you actually went through with it!"
"Whaddaya mean?!" Hades snapped. "You think I'm some sorta bleeding heart?!" Zeus' beard continued to spread with a smile.
"Not at all! But you never did take kindly to following instructions." He gave him a blunt elbow straight to the ribs. "But I know how much you like your deals, eh?"
"I sure do, Zeus-y," Hades replied through gritted teeth. Then, summoning some of the emotional energy that was rapidly draining out of him, he continued, "But hey, congratulations! You took everything from me yet again. Now why don't you go back up to your clouds and go celebrate?"
"Took everything from you?" Zeus' face pulled into a mask of wounded gentility. "Olympus was always mine, the power has always been mine to wield, my family are mine, and that little floozy of a cup-bearer-" With a horrified lurch, Hades heard a second, distorted echo between Zeus' usual shout. "- was mine!"
Hades had spent thousands of years swallowing his pride and by now only had enough of it left to wound, but still bile rose up behind his clamped jaw. He could swallow his own pride out of sheer habit, but it was a whole other challenge to swallow Ganymede's.
"So what, did you come here just to gloat?"
Zeus chuckled, finding his temper again. "Of course not!" The crash of armoured footsteps surrounded him, and a dozen sword points thrust themselves suddenly into his field of view. "I've come to arrest you!"
"You no-good double-crosser," Hades drawled, incapable of feigning surprise, "Who'd have thought you'd go back on our deal?"
He was jostled up to the ruins of his throne room as Zeus rumbled with laughter, as Athena shoved his arm behind his back, and as Apollo jabbed the tip of a sword between his shoulders.
"Get your hands offa me!" he snapped, flames bursting ineffectually towards the ceiling. Mithril gauntlets shoved him forwards as chariots took flight and red-eyed, whooping deities filled the air. "Where's your evidence?! I want my lawyer!" His voice echoed to the warped architecture above their heads. "Who's gonna feed my dog?!"
"My friends!" Zeus boomed as his army flooded the Underworld, and Hades could have sworn that that second voice still spoke beneath it; "You know the rules of war! Whatever you can find is yours to keep!"
"I don't have anything, ya moron!" Zeus ignored him as he roared with delight.
A thin sound, almost imperceptible at first, rang in the air. Hades rolled his jaw and winced against it as a couple of the gods glanced around them. A great power seemed to seep into the air, making it sing like a tuning fork just above the range of hearing, like the ground right before a lightning strike.
An invisible force swept the chamber, then the Styx, then all the Underworld. The ground shook with such violence that his two aggressors fell against the table, gravel spilling down onto their heads. Zeus braced himself against the wall as Hades dashed to the open chasm of the Skull and thrust his head from the hole to try and figure out what was going on.
"Hades!" roared Zeus as the shaking continued, "What are you doing?!"
Hades eyes fixed on the roof of the cavern.
For the first time, he noticed the circular crack running through his ceiling. He didn't know what to make of it, he didn't know when it had happened (Pain and Panic may well have broken something and never owned up to it), but for some reason he saw it now. He had never cared enough about this place, or anything at all, to pick up on such a hidden detail, but now as determination filled his chest, he was no longer looking solely at himself. The deafening rumble continued, forcing Zeus to take a leap to avoid a falling slab of rock.
Hades spun back around as Zeus' goons pulled themselves back onto their feet. "It's not me!" he yelled, "I'm not doing anything!"
"Grab him!" cried Zeus. "And let's get out of here!"
Pain sniffed and sniffed with his squashed snout until Ganymede's scent drifted through his tunnel in the rock. He perked up with a yelp, ears folding forwards, and broke into a rolling, bow-legged gallop on heavy paws. The kid smelled like good hair and grave dirt, and by now he'd recognise it anywhere.
A fat pug squeezed its way out of the wall and tumbled to the ground in a plume of soot. He sneezed, shook out his rolls, then scurried over the black sand. It clung to his heavy paws like iron filings, and behind him he left a trail of pawprints that seemed very small in comparison to the canyon of the Underworld, but he struggled on with single-minded certainty.
He followed the smell until a gnarled shape broke the even line of the Styx's riverbank; a lone tree, a shepherd's crook lying in the ash by its roots, its branches stretching for the water. He cocked his head. Transforming back into himself, he approached with slow, almost reverent steps.
He reached up to one of the reaching twigs and - with an apologetic wince - snapped one off.
"Agh!" A voice shouted from the snap, though the tree itself remained perfectly still - no breathing of any lungs, no movement of any mouth. Pain jumped into the air with a shout, rolled back into the sand, then hopped back onto his feet.
"Hey! Guess who!" His teeth spread into a needle-filled smile, but then it faded.
"Pain!" Ganymede's voice quavered with hysteria. "Pain, I'm begging you, please don't leave!"
"I won't!" Pain replied, skittering forwards to press his hand against the trunk. "We've got to get out of here! Zeus showed up, and he's already grabbed Hades!"
"What?! Already?!"
Pain faltered. "You're not mad at him?"
"I'm still figuring that one out! I..." Ganymede's voice stumbled into a tangle of some strange mix of grief and an emotion Pain didn't know how to describe. Though he couldn't have put it into words himself, Ganymede's heart burned with love for the god of the dead.
Hopping from foot to foot, Pain replied. "Here - he gave me this!"
Pulling out the pink vial, he presented it to the tree with a puffed chest. Sensing the pause, the tree drawled, "I can't see anything, Pain."
"Oh! Right!" He yanked the stopper and - after only a momentary flap of uncertainty - dumped the contents onto the roots.
A soft glow sank into the wood. It carried up the trunk, past the join where frozen legs had bound together, up the angles and edges of his hips and waist, up the corners of his arms and up his throat, until with a sudden and wretched splutter of air the bark fell away from Ganymede's body and he crumpled forwards into the sand. He gasped squeaking and frantic breaths, his green skin clammy, his chest squeezing in and out like a pair of sick bellows.
Something shuffled behind his elbow. Soft wool pressed under his arm.
Pain bleated up at him with a wag of a fluffy tail. Ganymede jumped, then a wobbly grin cracked over his face as love and grief hit him in equal measures. His arms swept out and scooped the pink sheep to his front, clinging to him so hard that his wooly coat bulged out like a stress toy. It bugged Pain's eyes from his head.
Like water carrying the echoes of whales, the silence transmitted Ganymede's exhaustion and fear, then accepted the unspoken promises that Pain wasn't saying, but nevertheless felt all the way to the bottom of his heart.
Pain's chest surged so suddenly that it could have cracked his ribs. His hooves - or hands, they straddled a middle-ground - threw themselves around his middle and squeezed back. They both gripped onto each other as tightly as they could, each responding to the determination of the other. Again those words rang through Ganymede's heart; tend to your flock. It was no longer a command, but advice for what he already knew he wanted.
Perhaps he was drunk on the relief of no longer being a tree, but he had been so worried about both of his sheep. The top of Pain's head had never been kissed with sheer delight before. He was nuzzled, smooched, then finally released, and he stumbled around in a woozy circle as the feeling of being adored truly sank in for the first time. Then Ganymede took up his crook and rose to a stand.
"Okay..." Ganymede let out a breath and placed his hand on his hip. He matched Pain's uncertain look of joy, though they both knew it wouldn't survive contact with the task ahead of them. "I'm fine - I'm fine! What's one more weird trauma on top of everything else?" He tossed his hair and settled back to business. "Zeus has Hades. Right. We need a- " Then it occurred to him. "Where's Panic?"
"He went to help Hera! That's how we got the idea for the potion thing," Pain replied, still smug about the whole situation. A slightly mad chuckle somehow escaped from Ganymede's chest.
"I'll remember that when Hades calls it his idea."
The world shook all around them, tipping Ganymede off his feet. It shook with such power that it felt for all the world as though the cavern roof would crash down on top of them. It faded like a crash of thunder, but then a longer, lower rumble began, as if the Underworld was waking from sleep. They locked eyes, then kicked themselves back onto their feet.
"Can you do a horse by yourself?!" Ganymede asked. "I don't think we've got much time!"
"You know, this is as good a sign as any, Hades-" Zeus said as his entourage picked its way down the shaking steps to the dock, "-that you're about due retirement!"
Hades wrenched his shoulders out of his captors' hands, but they landed firmly back down on him again. "Retirement?!" He spun to Apollo, on his left shoulder, then to Athena on his right. "Don't you guys have anything to say about this?!"
"Stop squirming, Hades," Apollo said with ringing dignity and a red-eyed glare. "Accept your sentence like a man."
"No!" Hades tried to wriggle his way free. "I'd rather take it like a worm that wants to live!"
Athena's chariot waited for them, floating above the quaking surface of the Styx, too good to notice the futile grasping of the spirits as they slid beneath it. Zeus gestured to his minions, and Apollo grabbed Hades' head to shove him into the back. He went with the dignity of a cat refusing a bath.
"No!" He gripped the chariot's edges with both hands, forcing both Apollo and Athena to wrap their arms around his middle and shove. "No! Don't wanna!" Athena braced her foot against the side and heaved as hard as she could. Hades' fingers gouged scratch-marks, and Zeus watched the tumble and subsequent struggle to pin him down again with a judgemental tut.
"By the gods, Hades, I'm not going to kill you!"
"That's what I'm afraid of!" Hades snapped, lashing around on him in a moment of rage as flames leapt from his shoulders. "Immortality's a bitch!"
"You and I are just going to have a sit-down discussion with the Cretans," Zeus said as he moved to take the reins and hands slammed Hades down into his seat. His face morphed with horrified disgust as Zeus' red eyes leered around at him. "Who knows? Maybe you'll even like what they have to say."
A whinny cut the air above their heads. Zeus reared back around as a pair of bright pink wings opened up and a flying pony shook out its stubby little mane. Ganymede gave a savage grin from the saddle, his crook braced at his side.
Hades threw himself back to his feet. "You made it! Great going, kid!" He was shoved back down again. Zeus roared back at him.
"You promised me he was taken care of!"
"Oops," Hades replied, poking his cheek in a hate-filled pantomime of innocence, "Guess I'm not as cute as I look, huh?"
"Eyes up here, ya big idiot!" Ganymede called from his steed, and couldn't keep the smirk off his face when both brothers looked to him. "I'm here to lodge a complaint!"
Zeus' voice shook with rage. "How dare you! Never, in all my life, has any mortal whelp caused me so much trouble!"
"That's because I'm smarter than you!" Ganymede stood in the stirrups, leaning over Pain's head to fix his leer on the King of the Gods. "And because he's smarter than you! The only reason you're still here is because your son let you back on the throne!"
Hades winced with joy as Zeus roared down the chasm. "YOU LITTLE BRAT!"
Pain glanced up at Ganymede and muttered past his bridle, "You sure you know what you're doing?" Ganymede gave him an encouraging pat, then called down again,
"Where's your wife, Zeus?" Whether or not this worked, he still cackled at the look on the old tyrant's face. "Bet that made you feel real big, huh?!"
Zeus lashed the reins and the chariot shot forward with such force that the souls below blasted out in every direction. Pain and Ganymede both let out a bark of panic as Pain wheeled around in midair and raced down the tunnel.
"Ohh, he's fast!" Pain cried as Ganymede flatted down and gripped on tight to his mane.
"You're faster!"
"Than Athena's chariot?!"
"Just move!"
They swung around a hard corner, Pain's hooves stumbling against the rock, as the chariot crashed and banked behind them. Hades had an iron grip on his seat, teeth gritting as tight as iron bars, as both of his guards braced their helmets to their heads. He heard Athena tut, "Oh, the new paint-job." He jerked himself around with wide eyes.
"My walls!"
Pain bounced around corners and kicked off of the stalactites as they grew longer and sharper around them, wings fluttering as Zeus's chariot gained. Ganymede glanced over his shoulder, pulling his hair out of the way, and saw the murder in Zeus' eyes. He yelled over the world's rumbling,
"When I give the signal, you gotta do that thing I told you!"
"Are you sure?!" Pain replied.
"Only if you are!"
The horses of Apollo's chariot - foaming, red-nostriled, pure-bred stallions - nipped at Pain's pink tail. Zeus pulled a thunderbolt from his side and drew back his arm. Pain's voice managed to reach a brand new shrillness as he screamed out,
"Okay!"
A turn appeared in the canyon wall.
"Then LEFT!"
Pain vanished in a puff of smoke, and Ganymede fell towards the water. Slimy hands reached up, moaning faces expanding suddenly into view as he plummetted towards them. Zeus' chariot barrelled on, missing the sharp corner, and he heard the man's bark of fury as he forced his horses to swivel back around.
Ganymede screamed as the moaning faces of the Styx bloomed large beneath him. "Now-now-NOW!"
A maroon-coloured hummingbird zipped beneath him, and as a second plume of smoke engulfed them both, the pony's solid flank once again blocked him from the water.
"GO!" Ganymede's voice, too, discovered new, shrill heights. They threw themselves forward, taking all the could from the spare few seconds they had saved. Zeus' chariot crashed and shook behind them, but this time they didn't waste time by looking back.
They followed the glowing green light of the river's souls until they thinned and disappeared, skimming the water as Ganymede pulled his calves out of reach. Zeus' furious shouts rattled all around them, amplified by the curving walls to the strength of a hurricane.
"Get back here!" The thundering voice became one with the darkness. "Face me like a man!"
The chasm expanded with a sudden flare of violet light, and in his shock Pain reared back.
"The Lethe?!"
The waterfall crashed upwards, swalled by the blackness above. Though the whole Underworld shook around it, its trajectory remained unchanged.
Zeus' chariot smashed into the back of them. They were sent reeling down onto the stone platform, skidding and scuffing over the dirt, Pain returning to his usual form to the sound of Zeus' furious laughter.
"Ohh my boy!" His wide, red eyes stared down at Ganymede as the chariot lowered him down. "You're in trouble now!"
As he pushed himself from the ground by is crook, Ganymede slipped a key from his pocket and gave Pain a breathless nod. He nodded back, then vanished in a plume of smoke. A hummingbird vanished into a crack in the wall, leaving him alone.