Right Address, Wrong Universe
Imagine, dear reader, the foul depths of Tartarus, final home of the most heinous criminals and loathsome wretches of humanity. Countless blocky buildings, tomblike in construction, abutting one another in necropolitan sprawl. All of it lit only by the bilious glow of Ixion and the luminescence of forsaken souls. It is a place of eternal torment. And in recent days (or possibly nights,) some of that torment has come by the hand of willful Zagreus, Prince of the Underworld, as he cleaves his way through his father's domain.
Yes, once more did flame-soled Zagreus cleave through the denizens of Tartarus, the Eternal Spear Varatha a whirlwind of death for those already long departed.
“Don’t recall asking you, old man,” the godling said to no apparent source.
“Can still hear you.”
Perhaps isolated Zagreus sought the company of the shades he had before eradicated with little concern.
“Much better.”
Whatever the case, he then threw the ancient bident through the lunging, bloated hulk of a wretched lout, making the corpulent shade burst into dark smoke. With that last foe vanquished, a stylized trident appeared in the lout’s place with the sound of a crashing wave. Divine energy, blue as the waters of the briefly-glimpsed surface, flowed up from the head-sized symbol and past the ceiling of the grim chamber, as though longing to rejoin its source on distant Olympus.
As Zagreus had many times before, he extended his hand to the symbol, feeling the resonance between his divine essence and that of his family on distant Olympus. “In the name of Hades,” he intoned, “I accept this message.”
“Ho there, Little Hades!” cried boisterous Poseidon, barely glimpsed through their shared divine might despite the unfathomable distance between them. Even so, Zagreus could tell his pearly-white smile was even wider than usual. “Your favorite uncle has a plan to get you out of there once and for all!”
Then a second divine presence made itself known to the prince, one clad in gleaming bronze, the goddess who first lent her aid to his efforts to escape his father’s realm. “Indeed, Cousin,” said wise Athena. “Uncle Poseidon conferred with me, and after gathering as many glimpses as we could of the Underworld's shifting passages, I believe we can exploit them.”
“Oh. Really? That’s, uh, great.” Zagreus held back his true thoughts, for weeks had passed since he had fulfilled his true goal: Finding his birth mother, the goddess Persephone, and persuading her to return to the House of Hades. But the circumstances by which she had left Olympus meant the charade had to continue. Lord Hades himself was happy to treat the prince’s attempts as testing the security of the realm against longer-term escape attempts, but as far as the Olympians knew, his every effort was still a sincere attempt to join them on the holy mountain.
And if they ever learned the truth... Worse, if news of her daughter ever reached the embittered Demeter, who thought her gone for eternity…
The prince grimaced as he forced out his next words. “So, what’s the plan?”
“Elegant in its simplicity, if I may say so.” So said Poseidon. “The boons I’ve bestowed upon you may draw on my purview as god of the sea, Little Hades, but do not forget that I am also the Earthshaker! With your esteemed cousin helping me, I’ve charted all the routes those moving chambers can take. So, rather than send my boon to you, I’ll send it into the ground. One good tremor in the right spot, and we’ll have you out of there faster than you can say Charybdis!”
Duty to his parents and realm kept young Zagreus from calling off the plan entirely, but this was a bit much. “Ah. Yes. Earthquakes. A notoriously precise and collateral damage-free process.”
The chamber shook, presumably not as part of the sea god's plan. “What was that?”
Long-suffering Zagreus winced, recalling those times he was forced to spurn one god or another in a trial for their favor. He had hardly ever seen the surface, but Poseidon's wrath had still taught him the taste of seawater. “Sorry, Uncle. I'm just concerned that this sounds more like an elaborate way to send me into the Styx.”
The tremor subsided, and Poseidon answered with what might be called defensiveness from a lesser being. “I may not be as much of a sharpshooter as Zeus and his flashy lightning bolts, but I dare say he won’t be much help in this plan.”
“Peace, Uncle. Zagreus’s concern is entirely reasonable." Zagreus felt Aegis-bearing Athena's focus turn to him. "And that is where I come in. My power will protect you from all harm until the tremor has subsided, Cousin. I ask only for your trust.”
Once more, the embattled prince found himself in an unenviable position. “Without you, Lady Athena, I would not have gotten nearly as far as I have. You trusted the goddess Nyx when she asked you to aid someone you had never met. I owe you more than this. All I ask is that we only try it once. Father will not be pleased, no matter the outcome.” And Zagreus himself did not envy Daedalus and whatever shades worked with him, their labors unseen by the prince's mismatched eyes as they repaired his repeated ransacking of the realm.
Poseidon belted out a belly laugh at that. “Is that all? Hades isn’t pleased with anything as it is, Nephew! So, hold on tight. This will definitely be a bumpy ride.”
Zagreus cast his gaze about the barren chamber, devoid of so much as a shelf of coffins. "Hold on tight to what?"
His answer came in the form of a flash of blue and a much stronger tremor, one that knocked the prince off his ever-burning feet. Helplessly, he watched as cracks spread through the ceiling above him, the floor shook like a quailing soul beneath his father's pitiless gaze, and an unseen force pressed him down like that selfsame gaze did in his younger days. The golden light of Athena's blessing surrounded him, and he was certain that without it, he would have perished long ago.
Still, he was unsure if he would survive. He was unsure if he wanted to survive.
And, just as Zagreus was certain the room would cave in and crush him, all went still, and Athena's light receded. Slowly, gingerly, he rose to his feet. "Did... did it work?"
Silence answered the wary prince. Whatever the Olympians had done, they were not there to hear him now.
"Well, at least you're still with me, old man. For whatever that's worth."
Strangely assured by his own nonsense, Zagreus strode to the door out of the chamber, and was met with another mystery. Each door leading deeper into the Underworld bore on it an image of what the prince could gain from conquering the chamber within: the hearts of centaurs, bottles of precious Nectar, the icons of gods offering their boons. But never before had he seen a symbol like the one before him.
"Three blue gemstones? Odd. Either there's more than a few troves in that next chamber, or this thing's broken in all kinds of new and exciting ways. Well, let's see what happens." The intrepid prince threw open the slablike door and scaled the staircase it revealed, now more a rubble-strewn ramp.
Once at the top, he took a few moments to take in the unfamiliar view. The cavern bore elements of both Tartarus and the surface temple of the Styx, where the newly dead began their journey with the boatman Charon. But not found in either were the cages filling the vast chamber he now stood in, warped things of crudely beaten iron and twisted bars that contained all manner of monsters both familiar and not to the indifferently educated prince.
Here was clearly a manticore, if one with the face of a lion and not a man. There a perfect example of a cockatrice, and swift-witted Zagreus averted his eyes from it before it could notice him. But what then was the oddly mottled beast with six paws and a massive stinger? The creature with claws as long as its arms and a nose like a fleshy blossom? The formless lumps of pulsating flesh with too many unblinking eyes, like cast-off shreds of Chaos, the ancient progenitor of all things?
"Something tells me I'm not in Tartarus anymore," said Zagreus. And yet, some unnamed sense assured him that that was precisely where he stood.
The prince shook himself. There was nothing to do but press forward. "No shades have tried to kill me yet, so at least there's that."
As if the Fates had waited for him to say that, Zagreus then heard a high-pitched scream in the distance. With no thought beyond a blurted "Someone's in trouble!" he raced towards the source. Only as he drew closer did he stumble to a halt, for he beheld an impossibility.
“The gates… in Tartarus? Open and unguarded?”
For indeed, a pair of great, imposing doors hung open. Ones that, while bearing dread sigils, did not have the familiar, twining mark of his father's House. And yet, in his very blood, Prince Zagreus knew he was yet in Tartarus.
Another scream drew his attention away from the gates to what lay beyond them, and the prince stumbled half-blind into unfamiliar sunlight, guiding himself more by hearing as he adjusted to the glare.
“No, no, no, bad Cerberus! Bad!”
Thrice was Zagreus struck by what he saw. Once by the light of a sun unblocked by his vengeful grandmother’s clouds. Second by the grace and elegance of the mysterious creature who spoke the tongue of men yet was wholly bestial in form. And third by sheer disbelief at something so familiar, yet so clearly wrong.
For before far-wandering Zagreus stood Cerberus, the guardian hound of the underworld… yet just as this was not his Tartarus, he could tell this was not his Cerberus. He needed no divine sense to determine this, only his mismatched eyes. For while the Cerberus he knew was a great lupine beast red as the waters of the Styx and noses green as Ixion’s light, this snub-nosed creature was black as the prince’s own hair, with muzzles gray as his skin.
To the unicorn's despair, the strange Cerberus had also cocked its leg in a manner universal to all hounds, hellish or otherwise, and was currently befouling an assembly of wood and rope.
The prince, poorly versed in the ways of surface creatures, especially one as elusive as the unicorn, could only draw comparisons to the seamares of the River Lethe.
"'Unicorn.' I see." After nodding at the sourceless epiphany, keen-eyed Zagreus noted that the same three-gem mark that he had seen before adorned the mare's hips. Needing no further excuse to meddle in another's affairs, he approached and called, "Miss? Can I help you?"
“I’m not sure why you’re here, good sir, but I’ll gladly—" The unicorn stopped midsentence as she turned to face the prince, craning her neck up and stepping back from him to take in what was to her an imposing figure twice her size. Her ears folded back as her gaze darted to the open gates. "Good heavens! Did… did you come out of Tartarus?”
“Yes. Though I can’t say I was expecting the surface to look like this." While the path leading to Tartarus was cracked and blasted earth, that soon gave way to lush verdure like the richest parts of Elysium. The sensation of fresh grass was sadly lost to Zagreus's ever-burning soles, but he could still appreciate a landscape not gripped in eternal winter. "Sorry, I should introduce myself.”
The unicorn glared and lowered her horn at him, which glowed with azure energies not unlike his Lord Uncle's. “What you should do is return to whatever cell you crawled out of, fiend!”
It was all the patient prince could do to not bring a palm to his face. “Blood and darkness," he swore, "it’s Theseus all over again.”
Threefold growls rattled unwary Zagreus's bones as much as they made themselves known in his ears. For all their earlier difficulties, the Cerberus of this realm seemed to side with the unicorn now.
“Oh no. And he’s your Asterius.” The prince’s heart sank. He gladly challenged the great minotaur to honorable combat with each meeting, in part because Asterius gave him no choice, in part because it also meant triumphing over the historically revered but personally offensive king of Athens in the process. But the prince and his Cerberus had an understanding. Neither could bear to raise arms or bare teeth against the other. But he had made no such arrangement with this Cerberus.
Hesitantly, Zagreus called forth the Eternal Spear. But the thought of facing off even this distorted reflection of his beloved pet bade him to try once more for diplomacy. “I think this may all be a misunderstanding.”
“Misunderstanding?" echoed the incredulous unicorn. "You crawl out of a prison meant for the most dreadful beings in existence and tell me it’s a misunderstanding?” She waved a hoof over him. “My goodness, just look at you! You're covered in skulls!”
The bone-bedecked prince frowned at the three examples on his shoulder. "Skulls are expected for someone of my station,” he insisted. “They're a symbol of office, like the laurels."
"What, all of them?"
"There also aren't many accessorizing options in the Underworld beyond bones and gems."
The unicorn rolled her eyes. "As enlightening as this discussion has been, I must insist you go back to Tartartus!"
“It isn’t my Tartarus." The prince paused as he considered that statement. "Crazy as that sounds.”
The unicorn answered with a scoff that encompassed five breaths. “Your Tartarus. What do you mean, your Tartar…" She trailed off, eyes wide with understanding. "Oh. Oh, of course. I’ve only seen pictures, but you’re human, aren’t you?”
Zagreus scowled, for even a self-proclaimed god of nothing had his pride. “A quarter mortal on my mother’s side, but I am still a god and Prince of the Underworld.”
“My heavens!" The unicorn knelt into a quadrupedal bow. "Forgive me… my lord? Your worship?" She glanced up from her prostration. "I fear Miss Persnickety’s three-week etiquette correspondence course didn’t cover how to address gods. Though princes..." Her expression twisted in distaste for a moment. "Will ‘Your Highness’ suffice?”
The humble prince, unused to sincere respect paid to his position by any but a single gorgon head, found himself stumbling for a response. “Er, ‘Zagreus’ is fine, Miss…?”
“Oh! Of course, how terribly rude of me." The unicorn returned to her hooves, and extended one to him. "I am Rarity. A pleasure.”
“A pleasure indeed," said occasionally courteous Zagreus, gladly clasping the offered appendage. "And may I ask what brings you to the outskirts of a worryingly shallow Tartarus?”
The enormous hellhound, nearly forgotten by both, made himself known with a trio of heavy woofs.
“Ugh, that menace,” said Rarity, casting a loathsome gaze at the dread guardian.
“Hey now, I’ve got a menace a lot like him at home.” Zagreus approached this strange Cerberus. Without its keeper's displeasure, it viewed him with far less apparent hostility, sniffing at his offered hand.
“Really?" Rarity all but pranced at the prince's heels. "Do you think you can help me? Princess Celestia has asked me to make him a bit less of one, at least enough that he’ll actually stay at his post.”
“Ah." Zagreus nodded, considering his own tactics for getting guardians of the underworld to look the other way. "Get a lot of satyrs around here?”
“A lot of what?”
“I’ll take that as a no. Well, what does he like? Besides pets.” The beast's trust won, Zagreus began rubbing it behind the ears of its right head.
Dear reader, pity the dog in a land of hoofed creatures, with scarcely a hand available to show it affection. And blame not attention-starved Cerberus for a moment of weakness with the foul Tirek.
“Nothing I’ve been able to offer him. You saw what he did to that scratching post.” Rarity shuddered at the thought.
Dog-loving Zagreus took in the many attempted tools of obedience training strewn about the fields around him. Feathered wand-like items bent by immense jaws, the despoiled scratching post, a vast trove of cloth mice. “I believe one of the larger issues here, Miss Rarity, is that Cerberus is a dog. Though you're close with the vermin.”
The unicorn gritted her teeth before answering. “Your High— Zagreus. I should warn you that my past experience with princes has not been what anypony could call ‘mutually satisfactory.’ I am trying to look past my own bad experiences, but you are not helping.”
“Well, I intend to do so now." Zagreus moved to the center head. "All right, boy, which one of you likes getting pets the most, Alpha, Beta, or Gamma?”
"Based on his food dishes," observed Rarity, "they're Cer, Be, and Rus."
"I'm working with what I know, Miss Rarity." Curious Zagreus found his second subject just as amenable to affection as the first. "Which is surprisingly applicable for having ended up in some vastly unfamiliar realm, but I won't question the Fates' mercy."
Rarity scraped a hoof against the ground, an equine show of concern that the prince had no hope of comprehending.
“Something wrong?”
"Make no mistake, Zagreus,” said the unicorn, “I'm quite grateful for your aid. But what are we going to do about getting you back home?"
"You seem to be taking this 'other realms' thing in great stride," the prince observed as he moved to the great beast's final unpetted head.
"Oh, this is hardly my first brush with alternate universes. The only surprise is that there aren't any mirrors involved this time. But I would hate to take you from your home just to help me look after a dog."
"Don't worry, I know one way home that works from anywhere," said the confident prince. He stepped back from Cerberus, the behemoth ear-rubbed into submission for the time being. "Now, how often does your Cerberus get breaks?"
Bemused Rarity blinked, as though she had suddenly stopped understanding Greek. "Breaks?"
"Yes.” After a moment, Zagreus saw he would need to clarify. “You know, a chance for him to have a lie-down, unwind, get a bit of time to himself?"
The unicorn shook her head, as much in confusion as refusal. "He's meant to be the guardian of Tartarus, Zagreus."
"He's still a dog. You want an unblinking, unwavering sentry, go to Olympus and see if Hephaestus is willing to give the whole Talos experiment another go." The prince grinned at an old memory. "Oh, Father hated that one. Spent a week sorting out if the poor fellow even had a soul, much less where to put the thing. But even the best boy can't keep watch every day or..." Zagreus looked up into a sky bluer than any he had ever seen. "Well, I suppose up here it is clear what time it is."
Thoughtful Rarity followed his gaze, though her own seemed unfixed on anything physical. "Do you really think that will help?"
Zagreus nodded with confidence born of experience. "I like to think I know something about three-headed dogs, Miss Rarity. This Princess Celestia you mentioned, is she his mistress?"
"So I am given to understand."
"And how often does he get to see her?"
The unicorn brought a hoof to her mouth as she gasped in understanding. "Oh dear. Only when he runs away and causes trouble."
"She may not have meant to, but she's been training him to abandon his post whenever he feels lonely." Zagreus patted the shoulder of the implacable beast, who panted merrily in response. "Which for a poor boy like this must be all the time."
Wary Rarity thrust a hoof at the open gates. "But there are still horrific monstrosities in there! Ones that should never see the light of day again! I should know, I've fought a few personally!"
"Well, that's a matter for your princess's parents. If the living are in charge of guarding the gates, crazy as that sounds, you'll need to devote more than one warm body to them. Get your army on it." Belatedly, the provincial prince realized that a land of tiny talking horses may operate differently than his own. "Assuming unicorns have an army, anyway. I don't suppose you have any way of actually getting this advice to someone who can put it into action? I'd hate to think I'm just handing out suggestions you can't actually use."
"Oh, rest assured, Zagreus, I have a near-direct line to the princess herself," Rarity said, confident in her social web as Arachne before her punishment. "I can only hope she will heed the advice of fellow royalty on this matter. You seem to have far more experience than her in these matters. I fear she isn't used to that."
Humble Zagreus shrugged at the idea of his own competence. "Looking after Cerberus was the one thing I was actually good at for much of my life. Though I admit, I hated spending all my time cooped up in one spot a lot more than he did."
"You've still given me a much better idea of what I'm doing than I had before." Once more, Rarity knelt to the prince. Once more, he was unsure what to think of such reverence. "Thank you ever so much. I don't suppose I could convince you to stay for a time, get to appreciate the Equestrian countryside a bit further away from the, ah, hell-prison?"
The prince shook his head. "I'm afraid I have to decline, Miss Rarity. I have duties back home to attend to. Though I will happily take a walk with you as I go. And while I have the chance..." From his personal store of treasures pilfered from his Father's realm, acquisitive Zagreus produced a bottle of nectar, offering it to his new acquaintance. "Here. A custom from my home, and a token of my thanks. I doubt the Fates will be so whimsical as to have me come by terribly often.”
“Oh! Oh my." Rarity took the bottle in her magic and pulled the cork. Stars seemed to dance in her eyes as she took in the fragrance. "Exquisite bouquet." She trotted to the saddlebags that lay abandoned with many of the ill-chosen implements she'd employed in trying to tame the wandering warden of Tartarus. "Well, I can hardly let such generosity go unmatched. As it happens, I did bring a few supplies in case I had some time…”
“That’s hardly necessary.”
“Oh, but I insist." The unicorn returned with a treasure of her own in tow. "Here.”
Zagreus contemplated it as the two began to walk together. “Ah. A sapphire.” A single gemstone paled in comparison to the hundreds on the prince's person, looted from his father’s stores, but he said nothing. He knew mortals valued the treasures far more than any denizen of the deep.
And yet Rarity regarded the stone with as much disregard as Lord Hades beheld most things. “I know, common as dirt. Not even a baby-blue. But I have enchanted it with my personal spell. You’ll find good things coming to you a bit more readily with that on… hand, I believe is the term?”
Whimsical Zagreus smiled at her hesitation, despite the growing chill in his veins. “It is. Thank you…" He stumbled, feeling his heartbeat waver. "Very much…”
Rarity was at his side in a moment, offering him support. “Zagreus? Are you quite alright?”
“A personal affliction, Miss Rarity," gasped out the prince. "Can’t stay out here for long… especially not too far from the Gates." Darkness closed in around the edges of his vision. "And the quickest way home…”
“Zagreus? Zagreus?”
“Is... to die.”
“Zagreus!”
Normally, when the oft-slaughtered prince breathed his last, the River Styx claimed him and ushered him back to his Father's House. But Equestria—
"Oh, go gush about Odysseus." Discord popped into being in a puff of illogic. He looked over Zagreus's inert, unclaimed body and clicked his tongue. "Typical," he said as he spat out a photo of the corpse. "Go five universes out of your service area and you still expect perfect reception."
Rarity emitted a noise that made Cerberus whimper and fold back all six ears.
"Oh, Rarity!" Discord brightened visibly until his oversaturated colors were covered in a crust of bacon bits. "Didn't see you there behind the toga model's ego."
“It’s a chiton.” Rarity blinked, the reflexive correction breaking her out of her horrified stupor. "Discord, you have to do something!" she cried.
"Well, yes, that's why I'm here." The next moment, Discord wore a lure-filled vest, broad-brimmed floppy hat, and waders, hauling up Zagreus by a line in his mouth. "This catch is far out of season. Needs to get tossed back before it starts to stink up the place. Believe you me, the last thing we need is the kind of divine drama his family puts out on the regular."
"I mean save his life!"
Discord raised an eyebrow and poked Zagreus in the ribs. The body swung side to side until the grandfather clock housing it doled out a single mournful tone and spat out a broken cuckoo. "A bit late for that, I'm afraid."
"You can do anything!" Rarity pleaded, kneeling before him. "You're Discord!"
He grimaced and shook his head, all gimmicks and gags abandoned. "Not quite. Bringing life to that which never lived is simple. Bringing it to that which did? Not so much. The patterns get... muddled." He reached behind his head and produced a tomato with fangs, or at least a jagged-edged mouth. It promptly began to nibble on his talon tips until he dismissed it from existence. "Besides, he's used to this."
"Used to this?" By this point, Rarity's shrill tones had Cerberus fleeing for the gates of Tartarus out of self-defense. "He's dead!"
"Yes, which is why I'm doing something." Discord drew back the fabric of reality with his free hand, revealing a test pattern. He adjusted a dial attached to nothing in particular, calling up other incongruous images as he continued. "I can't save this life, but I can get him to where the next one's waiting for him."
"Ah." Between the visions of what lay beyond the veil and her crashing adrenaline, Rarity found she just didn't have the energy to keep panicking. "Well... thank you?" A metallic clang drew her attention to the ground. "Oh dear, he dropped his— Wahaha!"
An eye sprouted at the tip of Discord's tail, widened at the sight, and smacked him in the back of the head to get him to see for himself. "Oh. That was unexpected." He took the item from Rarity and slithered into an impenetrable black void. "I'll just tuck it away with the rest of his things. Back in shaken lambda tools."
Rarity fell on her side, curled into a fetal position, and whimpered for a bit. Then she noticed the quart of vanilla oat swirl and spoon Discord had left for her.
For an unknowable distance and duration, Discord moved in directions poorly understood by minds designed to operate in just four dimensions. The being that greeted him was not remotely so limited.
Whereas the draconequus was a patchwork chimera of about a dozen species, this entity was roughly humanoid, but draped in a mantle of their own flowing flesh, where faces of all genders and ages formed and receded in the light of their kaleidoscopic halo. In the center of their forehead, their third eye was not merely open, but contained their fourth and fifth as well. A blue-green planet the size of a grape hovered in one palm, or perhaps the entity themself dwarfed the world.
"Discord," Chaos, source of all things, said in two voices, or many, or none at all. "My senses grow attenuated within your bubble of spacetime. I was unsure when you would next leave it."
"Hello, Parent. I'm afraid something found its way in my neck of the woods." Discord presented Zagreus's body like a letter sent to the wrong mailbox.
A hint of a smile crossed Chaos's primary face. "Ah. The Son of Hades. No doubt he has introduced a number of intriguing perturbations to your realm's causal chain."
"It would appear that way, yes." Discord gave an irritated shake of his head, jostling his own extra eyes loose. "Darn it, you know I hate it when you get me looking at what lies ahead."
"All you see are possibilities. The Fates do not decide, merely observe all possible choices."
"Yes, and I'm happy to leave that sort of thing to my nieces. In fact..." With a grin, Discord held up Zagreus's limp form and whispered into his ear. "Prophecize that, girls."
"Ah. Intriguing indeed. A moment." With the barest exertion of their will, Chaos returned Zagreus both to life and to the Pool of Styx in the House of Hades.
The two beings hung in the primordial dark for a moment. Discord cleared his throat. "You know, while I'm here..." He trailed off, twiddling his mismatched thumbs.
"Speak, Discord. Through the efforts of the Son of Hades, I recently reconnected with your sister, the goddess Nyx. Though I find maintaining these connections difficult, it would still bring me considerable pleasure to do so with you as well."
"Nyx, really?" Discord offered a grin of his own. "That little hellspawn really does lead to interesting outcomes, doesn't he?" His expression fell to something almost bashful. "But... I actually wanted to talk to you about something you tried to explain to me a while back.” A pink butterfly formed from the inky ylem and settled on one of his talons, bringing a smile to his lips. “I think I finally understand what you meant about misunderstanding chaos."
Chaos's own smile was downright overt. "The set of things I would enjoy more is vastly outweighed by its complement. Let us begin, away from the prying eyes of narrative."
Discord scowled at you, then even more nastily at me. "Yes, let's."
Some time later, once he had checked in with all in his Father's House, restless Zagreus once more stood ready to make his escape. Yet he hesitated to make the first and final step off his balcony, instead watching Varatha as the spear floated amid the other Infernal Arms.
The enigmatic Skelly, seemingly self-appointed training dummy for the Prince, cleared his vertebral throat. "Hey, uh, you okay there, boyo? You've been starin' at that pig-sticker o' yours for a good five minutes now. You gonna hit me with it or what?"
"Sorry, Skelly. That last escape attempt went... Well, 'oddly' is an understatement." Thoughts roiling in his mind, Prince Zagreus clutched the sapphire that had been waiting for him in his cabinet of keepsakes. "This awakening phrase…”
Skelly scratched his bare skull. “Ain’t you already got one for that thing?”
“The Arms have as many aspects as wielders.” The prince nodded towards Stygius, the Infernal Blade, currently in the form of a broadsword glowing with divine light of an unfamiliar nature. “Past and future. There’s no telling how many each has. But this time, I don't even recognize one of the words."
"Well, either say it or don't. I ain't gettin' any deader over here an’ I expect you t’ fix that."
"All right." The prince extended his arm and will to his spear. "Varatha: I see you turn on the spindle of a carousel!"
Zagreus gasped as light flared and knowledge flooded his mind. He anointed Varatha with the blood of the ancient Titans and watched it reshape itself into a form undreamt of. It resembled nothing more than a sewing needle as long as a man was tall, encrusted with sapphires along a hilt wrapped in soft fabric. A single strand from the Fates’ loom was tied to the massive eye, wrapping around the prince's arm and filling him with a sense of incredible certainty.
Skelly gave a low, impressed whistle. How he accomplished this task without lips is best left unconsidered. "Heck of a spear there, boyo. You gonna skewer me or sew me a new chiton?"
Battle-ready Zagreus grinned as he turned to the skeleton. "Let's find out."
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My sister actually beta-tested this game for the developers. Great to see a story with it here!
Hah! I dunno why, but your descriptions and such crack me up.
This had me giggle. Never expected to see a Hades crossover here, good show
Most excellent.
This may be the most obtuse nitpick of all time, but did you mean Ariadne or Arachne?
Very well done. Everything for this story is just perfect. Also, I loved the ending. Wished that aspect was actually in the game xP
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Neat! I greatly appreciate her efforts, along with everyone else involved it bringing it to the high polish of v.1.0.
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If ever there were an E-rated story with the Death tag, this would be it. And yeah, "spoilers for Greek mythology" does make things enjoyably absurd.
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I blame the Yarn of Ariadne item in the game for mixing me up on that one. There are clearly too many Greek myths that involve thread in some manner.
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I'll just point out this bit I buried in a blog's comments.
Having home set as respawn is so convenient.
Curse you, Professor Gangrene!
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Delightfully, Theseus will get flustered if you have Yarn of Ariadne on you when you meet him
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I shall tell her.
Inside Baseball Alert: The saturation bombing of the fourth wall is true to the game's source material, although I'm sure that the game does it too because it's come back into fashion recently.
I know how hard it is to make a Greek gods crossover and remain non-M rated, so great job!
I'm glad I read most of this in the narrator's voice
A fun crossover idea but also kind of devoid of any real tension or drama to make it a fuller story. I'm not sure how much sense it will make to someone who hasn't played Hades.
Well, that was a fun little jaunt.
At least Rarity got her ice cream. Hope she's not too traumatized.
Was it his spear that fell out or something else? I'm wondering what it was that had Rarity acting like that. Obviously something Divine but no idea what.
Fun story, I love seeing characters interact with the narrator in this fashion. Maybe one day I'll get around to playing the game myself.
Thanks for the story FoME.
Hmm, weren't there six weapons available to Zag? Methinks the other 5 each have a form for the other bearers.
That was really clever. I like it.
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The idea for this story apparently started with the sneaking suspicion that Pinkie Pie somehow managed to obtain Exagryph before the game was even out. Note the blog's tags, and the comment that elaborates on the exact connections.
If you continue this story, you should include an omake of Zagreus, wielding Rarity's Needle, meeting Hornet from Hollow Knight.
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Heh. So, so finish it out, we've got the Twilight Blade, Spearity, Fluttershield, RainBow, AppleSmack, and Party Rail.
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Recently? It came back in massively in 90s, now it's just some odd-ball TV-series which do that.
Flat
That was demented. I love it.
Next time, make a spoiler warning plis
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Compared to Greek Mythology, that's pretty damn recent.
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Well, greek chorus was used during all that time minus some selected periods. E.g. being replaced by narrator in early renessaince thetre
Brilliant
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You have the sword and bow the wrong way around, which the flavor texts would make clear.
You know, if Hades ever gets modding support, I want someone to make this spear aspect into a thing.
"What do Earth Ponies hate the most?"
"Hay Diss"
I'm not sorry!
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Even Discord can recognize when it's time to visit the old entity-that-existed-before-the-concept-of-gender and get some advice for the future.
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I'd say it wasn't too hard, but the game does have multiple romanceable characters. Also Aphrodite exists, and in this game, her outfit doesn't beyond Godiva hair. Suffice to say, the majority of the fic takes place in either Equestria or the foundational void for a reason.
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That was the intent, yes.
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I admit, this was more an exploratory exercise than anything else. Though I did make sure that my prereaders covered a wide spectrum of Hades exposure and tried to accommodate their concerns as best I could.
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A potential sequel idea involves Fluttershy helping her get through the trauma by introducing her to another nonpony friend. Rarity and Thanatos hit it off great... until she finds out he's gay and already taken.
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The intent is that he drops the spear, yes. Thus Rarity gets a brief glimpse of something she'll wield in the future for unclear reasons.
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There seems to be an issue of scale there. As I understand it, the cast of Hollow Knight are still bug-sized. It's not unworkable, just potentially awkward.
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Glad to hear it. Few things are more fun than a crazy idea taken seriously.
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Next time, I recommend reading the whole story description.
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I'd volunteer, but my 3D modelling abilities are even more nonexistent than my 2D art skills.
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Ha......sorry, my bad :(
Neither of those was really a thing back in Mythic Greece. Hades' staunch monogamy was considered unusual, and if you start the polyamorous relationship in the most mechanically likely manner then it turns out that Meg's snark about romancing Thanatos if you love dying so much wasn't snark.
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No harm done. Use it as a learning opportunity.
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See, you know that, and I know that, but does Rarity know that? And even if she does, will she want to be a part of a larger polycule? (Fully aware there are many fics where the answer there is a resounding yes, but still.)
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I mean, yes, she's a hopeless romantic and goes into histrionics at the slightest provocation, but I wanted to make sure you were aware that Thanatos' reaction would be genuine bafflement that anything he said was an issue. Especially if he's familiar with horses.
Aww! He cares!
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Hmm... On that note about family... Fluttershy meeting his parent / family would be interesting...
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Hook that sequel like Discord did to Zag's corpse
A Hades crossover eh? Intrigued
Awww, that one felt a bit too short! But I guess one must always return to the Styx, no matter how fast! (also, there's always a bonus to riffing on Sun-butt) see ya.
I recognized the bugbear and the dread maulwurf, but what was this one?
What is Ixion in the game's setting? I thought he was a man strapped to a burning wheel, but it sounds like Ixion is something else here. I've not played or watched much of Hades.
Found a typo here:
Overall, I enjoyed this, though I feel like I'd probably have gotten more out of it if I were more familiar with the game. Thanks for sharing with us, FOME.
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Frankly, I'd like to know what some of these things are. The only other time we saw those nameless horrors was in the scariest cave in Equestria back in "Pinkie Apple Pie."
In the context of the game, Ixion is basically the sun of the Underworld, providing light where Apollo cannot reach. (Not that Apollo does anything to help Zagreus, despite several of his siblings getting involved.) Wouldn't surprise me if it were still a guy on a burning wheel.
And yeah, this leans pretty heavily on familiarity with both sides of the crossover. Glad you enjoyed it as much as you did.
Read it again! Now I'm left with craving more! Can we have him "do a run" and meet another pony?
A crossover like this always made me wonder why we never got a villian named Haydes.
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The one at the bottom looks like a gargoyle.