Fic: and they called it peace (Greek Mythology; written for raedbard)
Title: and they called it peace
Author: Drea (bluerosefairy/d_generate_girl)
Rating: PG. Seriously, there is nothing offensive in here, unless you're offended by mixing religions, in which case, you probably shouldn't be in this comm.
Fandom: Greek Mythology/Various World Religions.
Disclaimer: I really, really don't own any of this, because it would be rather presumptuous and stupid to claim ownership of a fictional personification of a cultural myth and a largely-invented place. Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy, and did all the hard work on how Hell could be laid out. I'm just working off his concepts.
Word Count: 2795.
Author's Note: Written for raedbard in the ninebillion ficathon: Request 5: Wildcard: Greek mythology: Hades (the god rather than the place, just in case the prompt confuses the interpretation). Kingdom: the shapes, sounds, tastes of the Underworld. Title and summary from a quote by the Roman historian Tacitus. And of course, much love and thanks to carla_scribbles, my favorite sounding-board, beta, and braintwin, who puts up with my every insane whim with much more grace than I'd manage in her place.
Summary: "Pax Romana; where they made a desolation, and they called it peace."
~*~*~*~*~
Phlegethon
(the river of fire)
Hell is what you make it - this, Hades knows, is true.
There are cities here, and there are eternal plains. There are wastelands and forests and deep seas. He has walked them for eons, and he never grows tired of his ever-changing domain. Let Zeus have the heavens and Poseidon the sea. Let the rest of the Dodekatheon squabble over the earth - he still posesses them all, within his kingdom. And for better or worse - depending on your point of view - he shares his kingdom with the souls of the dead.
Call it what you will: Hell. Sheol. Jahannam. Naraka. Gehenna. Dis. The House of the Lie. Tartarus.
It matters not.
Sooner or later, every soul who is born with Hera's blessing, who travels Poseidon's seas, who makes love under Apollo and Artemis's skies, who drinks the wine of Dionysus . . . eventually, they come to him. Sometimes they plead, curse, and rage, bargaining with Charon for passage back to the world above. Sometimes they fall at his feet, thanking him for deliverance.
He almost prefers their anger, when their throats open up and howl, because then they shine. They come so close to godhood in it; a pure, blinding rage that pierces truer than one of his niece's arrows. He and the other gods are creatures of Destruction, who must not touch mankind too deeply.
Icarus fell when he soared too close to the sun - the legends still tell of this. Humans forget that once, the sun was Helios, and a god. For humans and gods do not, can not, ever come to any good. Apollo has learned this. Poseidon has learned this. You'd think that Zeus would have figured it out over the milennia, but Hades' younger brother has always been obstinate and more than a little blind to the idiosyncracies of humanity.
Hades knows this, though, because it is his job. To come close enough to those souls that reside in his kingdom and watch them burn. Listen to every scream out of every throat and hear every plea for forgiveness. He's gotten so accomplished at it, he can differentiate between the heretics and the sowers of discord; between the wood of suicides and the gluttonous.
The screams of the fire-bringer, though. Those are like nothing else.
Hades wishes he could block them out.
~*~*~*~
Cocytus
(the river of lamentation)
It was a perfect and brilliant solution then. It's all a blur to him now.
He'd watched her for years - remembers her birth and how radiant Demeter glowed as she held her baby daughter. Hades had kissed his sister, wishing her well, and inquiring why such a beautiful child would be named "pursuit of grief".
Don't they have a saying about how children will always make you cry before you laugh? she'd responded, laying a hand atop his. I expect much laughter, so I thought I would prepare myself for the grief.
Prophecy had never run in the family before - not that branch, at least. Apollo was a different matter. But it hadn't changed anything - Demeter had been more right than he'd ever suspected.
He remembers her, barely out of childhood, serious and calm, explaining the rules of a game to a few wood nymphs. Recalls the sound of her laughter as a young woman, trading jests with Hermes about the Spartans. Memorized the exact reshaping and fullness that occurred in her body when she passed into womanhood. Youthful innocence blossoming into true beauty, and it drove him mad to possess even a small part of that beauty.
He's not proud of the kidnapping.
Nor is he proud of forcing her, that first time.
She was bowed below him, shuddering and pleading, and then a sound echoed from her. A pure keen of heartbreak and loss, and it had finally pierced the possessive haze surrounding him. He'd frozen, moving to his side and gathering her into his arms. She pressed her face, wet with tears, into his chest - he'd never even noticed she was crying - and let him console her before curling into a ball and falling asleep.
That lament had echoed throughout the whole of hell, and it still rung when he rose the next morning and walked the banks of Acheron. Standing there on the bank of the river, it occurred to him that he'd done her wrong - no matter how beautiful, she was the daughter of his sister and his brother, and she deserved more than possession.
It took time, but she stopped crying. Consented to walking with him along Lethe's banks or sitting in his palace to hear grievances. He showed her the Elysian Fields and Isle of the Blest, but it wasn't long before she actually requested to visit the Wood of Suicides and the Malebolge. She wanted to learn every aspect of his domain, she said, if she was to stay here with him.
On the seventh day, she took a bite of pomengranate, spat four seeds into her palm, and kissed him.
Beneath the taste of her lips and pomengranate, beyond the softness of her body against his and the flutter of her dress against his feet, he hears it again. That cry, and he realizes it's not coming from her: it's Demeter, calling for her lost child.
Zeus comes to him the next day, Hermes beside him, and they negotiate the terms - Persephone will spend eight months on the earth and four in his kingdom. He could argue, but his sister's grief and his brother's temper force his hand. For Persephone, he's willing to compromise, and that scares him more than anything ever has.
Now, those eight months pass in what seems like an endless trudge. He does his duty as a monarch each day, and returns to his empty palace each night. But then the ninth month comes, and the smell of fresh grass and flowers creeps into the Eternal City. He can tell she's returned before he even ventures into his chambers to find her there, warm from the sun and speaking of what she's done in the interregnum.
Then, it was necessity and brute force. It was constant fighting and soothing tempers and a good deal of tentative reaching-out. Now, it is companionable silences or spirited arguments. It is easy banter and pragmatic decisions they share between them.
He knows she'll never tell him how much she misses her mother and the sun for those four months. And he'll never tell her that he would have given up everything - his title, his power, all the wealth in his kingdom, even his immortality - for even just a day more with her.
It's not love, but even Aphrodite would admit it's close.
~*~*~*~
Styx
(the river of hate)
When he closes his eyes, he can see the man as he was once.
Hades still wonders if Thetis knew what she was doing, anointing a son like that with Stygian protection. He'd given his consent for her to immerse the child, but as he'd sat on the shore, listening to the startlingly shrill cries of the infant, he'd almost stopped her.
Humans are fragile - of course Hades knows this. It would be impossible not to, with all the ways they manage to find their way to him. But this boy-child is staring at his kingdom with widened brown eyes and huddling closer to his mother's breast, absolutely terrified. This is the prophesied savior child of Peleus and Thetis, the feared future king of the Myrmidons?
Why do you wish this, Thetis?, Hades had asked.
She had stared him down, so strongly reminiscent of his Persephone that he'd taken a step back.
Because he is my son, Rich One. If I do not protect him from the Sky-Father and the Ocean Lord, who will?
Who, indeed? If he allows her to go through with this, his younger brother will not see it as protection. Zeus will see it as Hades' continued meddling in what should be a personal matter: Thetis spurned Zeus and Poseidon, but went to Hades of her own volition. Considering the tongue-lashing Hades received over his treatment of Hercules, he feels a little payback is in order.
But yes, though he can be as petty and as judgmental as the other gods, there is a reason one of his epithets is "the just one".
Everyone comes to him in the end, even the other gods.
He had watched as the black waters closed over Achilles' head. Watched as the boy emerged, glowing with immortality and uncrying. Apotheosis strips you to the core - Hercules told him that once, standing at Ceberus's gates - takes what you were and makes you into what you need to be. Achilles needed to be the strongest, physically and mentally, and he'd met the gaze of the Lord of the Dead completely, all fear gone from those fathomless eyes.
It was then that Hades began to hate him.
Achilles grew into manhood, and the souls he culled from the earth in his travels of war told Hades of his ferocity when they reached his palace of judgment. Told him that Achilles had spoken his name as he'd killed them.
Greet Lord Hades for me, when you see him.
It became a game between them - the number of men Achilles killed pitted against which souls Hades accepted and which he cast out to wander the earth as shades. Patroclus had not been one that Hades wished to cast out, but Hector's treatment of his body had left Charon no choice but to leave him on the shore of the living. When Achilles cut Hector down, Hades heard the entreaties of Priam and Hecuba and Paris - give us justice on the man who desecrates our son, our brother.
Justice, then.
All it had taken was a reminder to Apollo, and then a whispered command into the ear of Paris. One shot to an exposed flaw. Thetis's protection had failed, and Achilles welcomed into the kingdom of the dead. Hades hears the criticism, but the choice went to Charon, and Achilles had carried his obolus like every other soul.
That little snipe Achilles made while speaking with Odysseus was ungrateful of him, but then again, what good is a beaten enemy?
~*~*~*~
Acheron
(the river of sorrow)
He'd always hated the lyre.
Many musicians dwell in his kingdom - hell does have all the best music - but none had ever impressed him. When you've only got six strings to work with, what can you really express? Then came Orpheus. When the son of dreams played his lyre, it was like nothing Hades had ever heard. Orpheus had come to plead for the return of his lady love, and when his music floated over the Lake of Fire and the Elysian Fields alike, all of Hell listened.
The boy's fingers ran over the instrument, and the sounds that issued forth were like nothing Hades had ever known.
Minor chords wept along with Orpheus, and crescendoed over the silent Eternal City. Orpheus begun to sing - a haunting, beautiful melody about the unfairness of love and the hope of reunion (it would have been manipulative of him if his love for the girl weren't so obviously, painfully pure) - and before he knew it, his wife's hand had covered his.
Persephone never expressed affection in public. Ever.
His lovely, fallen goddess had crafted herself into the feared Iron Queen. The pitiless ruler of the underworld whose justice was harsher than even his own. It was better to be despised, she had told him once, than pitied. She was no child yearning for her mother; her choice had been made.
But this song, this lament for a stolen woman, had touched her in a way that he never could have done. And so they broke the rules for this boy, to give him the second chance he'd earned.
Persephone had brought the girl from the banks of Acheron, where Charon had first ferried her across, and given Orpheus the instructions - his faith would have to carry him through the kingdom of the dead, and nothing else. Hades had thought it harsh of Persephone, but she'd been implacable, and so he'd pointed the boy to the path he'd need to climb to the upper entrance to his domain.
Hell was quiet - had been ever since the last note had been plucked from Orpheus's lyre - and so his wail of loss echoed across the underworld. Persephone's eyes closed next to him, a quiet sigh of disappointment breathed out amid the lamentation for Eurydice.
Do not let him plead his case again, my lord, she'd said, rising from her throne. I do not wish to see her so disappointed a second time.
He hadn't asked why she was so sure that it was Orpheus's lack of faith that doomed him. Why she knew that, had he granted Orpheus another chance, he would again doubt that Eurydice was with him. The girl was now under his wife's protection, and not even he dared to incur her wrath when it came to lost women.
He had sins of his own to atone for.
~*~*~*~
Lethe
(the river of forgetfulness)
It took one day - one single, human day - for everything to change.
On this day, he'd found the main Gates wide open, Cerberus curled in a corner whimpering, and a man in Judean garb awaiting his presence. Hades knew prophets and princes when he saw them, and the man certainly carried himself well, but this man was no mere prophet. He looked - not like one of Hades's own breathren, but like Hercules, like Achilles.
The man invited him to sit - invited him, in his own palace, and if that wasn't warning enough, he didn't know what else would have convinced him - and they took seats on the smooth slate ground beneath the Gates. Cerberus, snuffling and nosing at Hades's side, the big baby, laid between them, and the Judean absently scratched at the dog's ruff above the left head before speaking.
You know what I'm here for, Lord Hades.
No epithets. No fearful titles of placation and flattery. Just his name, and it didn't sound strange at all from this thin, wide-eyed halfling. And he couldn't pretend the man wasn't right - he knew, had known since he'd seen him.
Why are you still here, then? Take your souls and go. I have no quarrel with you, nor with your followers.
I wanted to speak to you, he answered simply.
And they did, the Judean asking this question or that question about various souls in his kingdom. Telling him a rather amusing parable about a rich man and his servant. Listening as Hades spoke of how Persephone had been rather off-color recently (gods couldn't get sick, per se, but even they had their less-than-healthy days).
The man was easy to talk to - very much like Odysseus, actually - and, had Hades known of his importance, he'd have fallen at the man's feet and begged him to be spared what was to come. As it was, the man had turned just outside the Gates.
I am truly sorry, Lord Hades, for what my coming brings. I wish you and your Persphone well.
The Gates closed, and Hell changed.
It became harsher and kinder in turns as the humans believed they were more or less worthy of punishment. Elysium's groves of olive trees grew tall, then disappeared altogether, to be replaced by first vines of grapes, then by fields of wheat.
The great rivers began to dry up and form a central lake - sometimes of flame, sometimes of ice - then flowed once again. His palace grew from a majestic onyx fortress into a twisted crimson abattoir, and it had taken him centuries to gather enough power to wrest it back to his control again. He'd always disliked the color red, but the belief heralded by the Judean's followers was pervasive.
Soon after, Persephone faded away altogether.
He shut himself away in his sorrow, letting the underworld do with itself what it would. He had his palace, Cerberus lazing across the threshold, and the spectre of Persephone to mourn. As the centuries passed, there were fewer and fewer souls who remembered him as the vibrant, fair ruler of the ever-changing lands - not the sullen, brooding guardian of a place of torment.
The epithets changed as well, and he became entwined with another feared guardian of souls. They called him Morningstar, now, and with that knowledge, he waited.
Time was one thing he did have left.
~*~*~*~
Author: Drea (bluerosefairy/d_generate_girl)
Rating: PG. Seriously, there is nothing offensive in here, unless you're offended by mixing religions, in which case, you probably shouldn't be in this comm.
Fandom: Greek Mythology/Various World Religions.
Disclaimer: I really, really don't own any of this, because it would be rather presumptuous and stupid to claim ownership of a fictional personification of a cultural myth and a largely-invented place. Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy, and did all the hard work on how Hell could be laid out. I'm just working off his concepts.
Word Count: 2795.
Author's Note: Written for raedbard in the ninebillion ficathon: Request 5: Wildcard: Greek mythology: Hades (the god rather than the place, just in case the prompt confuses the interpretation). Kingdom: the shapes, sounds, tastes of the Underworld. Title and summary from a quote by the Roman historian Tacitus. And of course, much love and thanks to carla_scribbles, my favorite sounding-board, beta, and braintwin, who puts up with my every insane whim with much more grace than I'd manage in her place.
Summary: "Pax Romana; where they made a desolation, and they called it peace."
~*~*~*~*~
Phlegethon
(the river of fire)
Hell is what you make it - this, Hades knows, is true.
There are cities here, and there are eternal plains. There are wastelands and forests and deep seas. He has walked them for eons, and he never grows tired of his ever-changing domain. Let Zeus have the heavens and Poseidon the sea. Let the rest of the Dodekatheon squabble over the earth - he still posesses them all, within his kingdom. And for better or worse - depending on your point of view - he shares his kingdom with the souls of the dead.
Call it what you will: Hell. Sheol. Jahannam. Naraka. Gehenna. Dis. The House of the Lie. Tartarus.
It matters not.
Sooner or later, every soul who is born with Hera's blessing, who travels Poseidon's seas, who makes love under Apollo and Artemis's skies, who drinks the wine of Dionysus . . . eventually, they come to him. Sometimes they plead, curse, and rage, bargaining with Charon for passage back to the world above. Sometimes they fall at his feet, thanking him for deliverance.
He almost prefers their anger, when their throats open up and howl, because then they shine. They come so close to godhood in it; a pure, blinding rage that pierces truer than one of his niece's arrows. He and the other gods are creatures of Destruction, who must not touch mankind too deeply.
Icarus fell when he soared too close to the sun - the legends still tell of this. Humans forget that once, the sun was Helios, and a god. For humans and gods do not, can not, ever come to any good. Apollo has learned this. Poseidon has learned this. You'd think that Zeus would have figured it out over the milennia, but Hades' younger brother has always been obstinate and more than a little blind to the idiosyncracies of humanity.
Hades knows this, though, because it is his job. To come close enough to those souls that reside in his kingdom and watch them burn. Listen to every scream out of every throat and hear every plea for forgiveness. He's gotten so accomplished at it, he can differentiate between the heretics and the sowers of discord; between the wood of suicides and the gluttonous.
The screams of the fire-bringer, though. Those are like nothing else.
Hades wishes he could block them out.
~*~*~*~
Cocytus
(the river of lamentation)
It was a perfect and brilliant solution then. It's all a blur to him now.
He'd watched her for years - remembers her birth and how radiant Demeter glowed as she held her baby daughter. Hades had kissed his sister, wishing her well, and inquiring why such a beautiful child would be named "pursuit of grief".
Don't they have a saying about how children will always make you cry before you laugh? she'd responded, laying a hand atop his. I expect much laughter, so I thought I would prepare myself for the grief.
Prophecy had never run in the family before - not that branch, at least. Apollo was a different matter. But it hadn't changed anything - Demeter had been more right than he'd ever suspected.
He remembers her, barely out of childhood, serious and calm, explaining the rules of a game to a few wood nymphs. Recalls the sound of her laughter as a young woman, trading jests with Hermes about the Spartans. Memorized the exact reshaping and fullness that occurred in her body when she passed into womanhood. Youthful innocence blossoming into true beauty, and it drove him mad to possess even a small part of that beauty.
He's not proud of the kidnapping.
Nor is he proud of forcing her, that first time.
She was bowed below him, shuddering and pleading, and then a sound echoed from her. A pure keen of heartbreak and loss, and it had finally pierced the possessive haze surrounding him. He'd frozen, moving to his side and gathering her into his arms. She pressed her face, wet with tears, into his chest - he'd never even noticed she was crying - and let him console her before curling into a ball and falling asleep.
That lament had echoed throughout the whole of hell, and it still rung when he rose the next morning and walked the banks of Acheron. Standing there on the bank of the river, it occurred to him that he'd done her wrong - no matter how beautiful, she was the daughter of his sister and his brother, and she deserved more than possession.
It took time, but she stopped crying. Consented to walking with him along Lethe's banks or sitting in his palace to hear grievances. He showed her the Elysian Fields and Isle of the Blest, but it wasn't long before she actually requested to visit the Wood of Suicides and the Malebolge. She wanted to learn every aspect of his domain, she said, if she was to stay here with him.
On the seventh day, she took a bite of pomengranate, spat four seeds into her palm, and kissed him.
Beneath the taste of her lips and pomengranate, beyond the softness of her body against his and the flutter of her dress against his feet, he hears it again. That cry, and he realizes it's not coming from her: it's Demeter, calling for her lost child.
Zeus comes to him the next day, Hermes beside him, and they negotiate the terms - Persephone will spend eight months on the earth and four in his kingdom. He could argue, but his sister's grief and his brother's temper force his hand. For Persephone, he's willing to compromise, and that scares him more than anything ever has.
Now, those eight months pass in what seems like an endless trudge. He does his duty as a monarch each day, and returns to his empty palace each night. But then the ninth month comes, and the smell of fresh grass and flowers creeps into the Eternal City. He can tell she's returned before he even ventures into his chambers to find her there, warm from the sun and speaking of what she's done in the interregnum.
Then, it was necessity and brute force. It was constant fighting and soothing tempers and a good deal of tentative reaching-out. Now, it is companionable silences or spirited arguments. It is easy banter and pragmatic decisions they share between them.
He knows she'll never tell him how much she misses her mother and the sun for those four months. And he'll never tell her that he would have given up everything - his title, his power, all the wealth in his kingdom, even his immortality - for even just a day more with her.
It's not love, but even Aphrodite would admit it's close.
~*~*~*~
Styx
(the river of hate)
When he closes his eyes, he can see the man as he was once.
Hades still wonders if Thetis knew what she was doing, anointing a son like that with Stygian protection. He'd given his consent for her to immerse the child, but as he'd sat on the shore, listening to the startlingly shrill cries of the infant, he'd almost stopped her.
Humans are fragile - of course Hades knows this. It would be impossible not to, with all the ways they manage to find their way to him. But this boy-child is staring at his kingdom with widened brown eyes and huddling closer to his mother's breast, absolutely terrified. This is the prophesied savior child of Peleus and Thetis, the feared future king of the Myrmidons?
Why do you wish this, Thetis?, Hades had asked.
She had stared him down, so strongly reminiscent of his Persephone that he'd taken a step back.
Because he is my son, Rich One. If I do not protect him from the Sky-Father and the Ocean Lord, who will?
Who, indeed? If he allows her to go through with this, his younger brother will not see it as protection. Zeus will see it as Hades' continued meddling in what should be a personal matter: Thetis spurned Zeus and Poseidon, but went to Hades of her own volition. Considering the tongue-lashing Hades received over his treatment of Hercules, he feels a little payback is in order.
But yes, though he can be as petty and as judgmental as the other gods, there is a reason one of his epithets is "the just one".
Everyone comes to him in the end, even the other gods.
He had watched as the black waters closed over Achilles' head. Watched as the boy emerged, glowing with immortality and uncrying. Apotheosis strips you to the core - Hercules told him that once, standing at Ceberus's gates - takes what you were and makes you into what you need to be. Achilles needed to be the strongest, physically and mentally, and he'd met the gaze of the Lord of the Dead completely, all fear gone from those fathomless eyes.
It was then that Hades began to hate him.
Achilles grew into manhood, and the souls he culled from the earth in his travels of war told Hades of his ferocity when they reached his palace of judgment. Told him that Achilles had spoken his name as he'd killed them.
Greet Lord Hades for me, when you see him.
It became a game between them - the number of men Achilles killed pitted against which souls Hades accepted and which he cast out to wander the earth as shades. Patroclus had not been one that Hades wished to cast out, but Hector's treatment of his body had left Charon no choice but to leave him on the shore of the living. When Achilles cut Hector down, Hades heard the entreaties of Priam and Hecuba and Paris - give us justice on the man who desecrates our son, our brother.
Justice, then.
All it had taken was a reminder to Apollo, and then a whispered command into the ear of Paris. One shot to an exposed flaw. Thetis's protection had failed, and Achilles welcomed into the kingdom of the dead. Hades hears the criticism, but the choice went to Charon, and Achilles had carried his obolus like every other soul.
That little snipe Achilles made while speaking with Odysseus was ungrateful of him, but then again, what good is a beaten enemy?
~*~*~*~
Acheron
(the river of sorrow)
He'd always hated the lyre.
Many musicians dwell in his kingdom - hell does have all the best music - but none had ever impressed him. When you've only got six strings to work with, what can you really express? Then came Orpheus. When the son of dreams played his lyre, it was like nothing Hades had ever heard. Orpheus had come to plead for the return of his lady love, and when his music floated over the Lake of Fire and the Elysian Fields alike, all of Hell listened.
The boy's fingers ran over the instrument, and the sounds that issued forth were like nothing Hades had ever known.
Minor chords wept along with Orpheus, and crescendoed over the silent Eternal City. Orpheus begun to sing - a haunting, beautiful melody about the unfairness of love and the hope of reunion (it would have been manipulative of him if his love for the girl weren't so obviously, painfully pure) - and before he knew it, his wife's hand had covered his.
Persephone never expressed affection in public. Ever.
His lovely, fallen goddess had crafted herself into the feared Iron Queen. The pitiless ruler of the underworld whose justice was harsher than even his own. It was better to be despised, she had told him once, than pitied. She was no child yearning for her mother; her choice had been made.
But this song, this lament for a stolen woman, had touched her in a way that he never could have done. And so they broke the rules for this boy, to give him the second chance he'd earned.
Persephone had brought the girl from the banks of Acheron, where Charon had first ferried her across, and given Orpheus the instructions - his faith would have to carry him through the kingdom of the dead, and nothing else. Hades had thought it harsh of Persephone, but she'd been implacable, and so he'd pointed the boy to the path he'd need to climb to the upper entrance to his domain.
Hell was quiet - had been ever since the last note had been plucked from Orpheus's lyre - and so his wail of loss echoed across the underworld. Persephone's eyes closed next to him, a quiet sigh of disappointment breathed out amid the lamentation for Eurydice.
Do not let him plead his case again, my lord, she'd said, rising from her throne. I do not wish to see her so disappointed a second time.
He hadn't asked why she was so sure that it was Orpheus's lack of faith that doomed him. Why she knew that, had he granted Orpheus another chance, he would again doubt that Eurydice was with him. The girl was now under his wife's protection, and not even he dared to incur her wrath when it came to lost women.
He had sins of his own to atone for.
~*~*~*~
Lethe
(the river of forgetfulness)
It took one day - one single, human day - for everything to change.
On this day, he'd found the main Gates wide open, Cerberus curled in a corner whimpering, and a man in Judean garb awaiting his presence. Hades knew prophets and princes when he saw them, and the man certainly carried himself well, but this man was no mere prophet. He looked - not like one of Hades's own breathren, but like Hercules, like Achilles.
The man invited him to sit - invited him, in his own palace, and if that wasn't warning enough, he didn't know what else would have convinced him - and they took seats on the smooth slate ground beneath the Gates. Cerberus, snuffling and nosing at Hades's side, the big baby, laid between them, and the Judean absently scratched at the dog's ruff above the left head before speaking.
You know what I'm here for, Lord Hades.
No epithets. No fearful titles of placation and flattery. Just his name, and it didn't sound strange at all from this thin, wide-eyed halfling. And he couldn't pretend the man wasn't right - he knew, had known since he'd seen him.
Why are you still here, then? Take your souls and go. I have no quarrel with you, nor with your followers.
I wanted to speak to you, he answered simply.
And they did, the Judean asking this question or that question about various souls in his kingdom. Telling him a rather amusing parable about a rich man and his servant. Listening as Hades spoke of how Persephone had been rather off-color recently (gods couldn't get sick, per se, but even they had their less-than-healthy days).
The man was easy to talk to - very much like Odysseus, actually - and, had Hades known of his importance, he'd have fallen at the man's feet and begged him to be spared what was to come. As it was, the man had turned just outside the Gates.
I am truly sorry, Lord Hades, for what my coming brings. I wish you and your Persphone well.
The Gates closed, and Hell changed.
It became harsher and kinder in turns as the humans believed they were more or less worthy of punishment. Elysium's groves of olive trees grew tall, then disappeared altogether, to be replaced by first vines of grapes, then by fields of wheat.
The great rivers began to dry up and form a central lake - sometimes of flame, sometimes of ice - then flowed once again. His palace grew from a majestic onyx fortress into a twisted crimson abattoir, and it had taken him centuries to gather enough power to wrest it back to his control again. He'd always disliked the color red, but the belief heralded by the Judean's followers was pervasive.
Soon after, Persephone faded away altogether.
He shut himself away in his sorrow, letting the underworld do with itself what it would. He had his palace, Cerberus lazing across the threshold, and the spectre of Persephone to mourn. As the centuries passed, there were fewer and fewer souls who remembered him as the vibrant, fair ruler of the ever-changing lands - not the sullen, brooding guardian of a place of torment.
The epithets changed as well, and he became entwined with another feared guardian of souls. They called him Morningstar, now, and with that knowledge, he waited.
Time was one thing he did have left.
~*~*~*~