header by hanaxsongs

Jaskier & Scoia’tael

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Rumor and gossip rips through the Hades's realm, words whispered across every dark corner, words that have been spread once before.

Queen Persephone has left the underworld.

At first, Thanatos does not believe them. But Hades rages, the tale spreads, and he cannot find her in any of the three levels of Hades. It makes his stomach sink. There is precedent for Persephone leaving her husband, of course, but not her son. Not knowingly.

He slips into the Prince's Court, but knows as soon as he's there that it contains neither Zagreus nor his mother.

It's the surface next, because if she left she must have told Zagreus. She wouldn't leave him behind again, not when as far as she knows he can't follow her without suffocating on his own blood. Foolish and selfish he has privately thought their queen to be at times, but not cruel.

Finding the warm pulse of Zagreus's power among the mortals is easy now. He has to only feel for the steady thump of life brighter than any other god could produce. Like a heart pumping blood, Zagreus's power brings life to all those who sacrifice to him, who pray to him, protecting them from the might of Demeter's rage.

To find himself in the grandest of Zagreus's temples is no surprise, nor is at all odd to find him eating and laughing with his first priestess.

The roar and bang of what sounds like a war outside is, however, new.

"Zagreus?" he says uncertainly.

He brightens, giving a little wave. "Than! What's up?" A pause while he takes in the incredulous expression that Thanatos can feel on his face. "Mom and Grandma are fighting, don't worry about it."

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Thanatos has always felt Zagreus's warmth.

Flames lick at his feet, he lives his life as if walking across coals, but it's more than that. Zagreus bleeds like a mortal, hot red blood in his veins, and it gives him a physical warmth that other gods lack. Hestia and Apollo burn and Hephaestus's skin absorbs the heat of his forge but it's only Zagreus who has that gentle, constant warmth.

The only time he's cold to the touch is when he's dead.

"What are you thinking about?" Zagreus asks, appearing out of nowhere and flinging an arm across his shoulders. The House of Hades always has a lingering chill in the air but Thanatos can't feel it while Zagreus is pressed into his side.

He looks Zagreus over, but he seems unharmed. Of course he does. Death heals all wounds. But Zagreus doesn't die that often these days, moving between the levels of the underworld and his Court and the mortal plane as easily as moving from one room to the next.

There was a time when he thought the power hanging over Zagreus was borrowed. It seems foolish now when he knows how Zagreus's protection blankets the mortal world, when he knows of the temples and sacrifices the people make to the deity they simply call Prince.

Zagreus frowns, pulling him even closer. It's not comfortable. Thanatos has no desire to move. "Than?"

"Nothing, my prince," he answers and Zagreus rolls his eyes.

PJ Miles Edgeworth is a must! Certainly a side that Phoenix hasn’t seen.

But in 200 years’ time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people will pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of the tail that is lost no doubt was.

We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by their loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that china dog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs will have become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and say how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as “those grand old artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those china dogs.”