Chapter 154 – Engagement Blessing
“We’re engaged?!” The siblings shout while looking at each other. The divine glow from the projection of Hera intangibly enters their bodies and they both feel that something has changed. The psychic connection they have is much stronger than it had been before!
Coronacht floats back into Nuwa’s hand now that Hera is gone. Oddly, she feels closer to the bow as well. ‘Maybe I can coax it to do more damage? Or help my muscles out with drawing more than one arrow at a time?’
Suddenly, they both hold hands at the same time without any prior cues, even in their body language. “Hey!” shouts Nuwa with excitement. “I knew where you were going to move!”
Zagreus smiles and says, “Me too, looks like we met each other halfway.”
Feeling naughty, Nuwa swings her other hand around quickly to try to boop her big brother’s nose. When he moves to intercept, she knows where he is going to block. At the same time, he also knows where she is going to go when she maneuvers her hand around his block. Of course, he captures her hand with his superior speed now that she doesn’t have any element of surprise.
They burst into giggles. It is a strange and wonderful feeling for Nuwa, being so connected to someone else without even having sex or E-Nuwa’s involvement. She feels nervous, as if her inner thoughts are laid bare. Secrets of her bodily motion that she had never known she wanted to keep from others are now available to her brother. The trade off is worthwhile though, because she can naturally sense his secrets too.
Their lips meet each other and Nuwa feels a kaleidoscope of all the things that Zagreus wants to do to her body, but is holding himself back from. She pulls back and gives him a sultry smile. An engagement is a special occasion! She starts to pull down his trousers and whispers, “I know what you want to do to my body. Just this once, be selfish and don’t hold back. Everything you want, I’ll allow it.”
Zagreus growls and practically pounces on her, eliciting a yelp of glee from Nuwa.
~ ~ ~
Hades stares down the snivelling shade to be judged in front of him and reads from the scroll, ‘Normal guy. Didn’t do anything wrong. I just felt like killing him. Send him somewhere nice, bro. ~ Yours truly, Truck-kun.’
He slams his desk and shouts, “Bro?? Who is this Truck-kun? He thinks I’m a travel agent?! I’m the God of the Dead! You’re going to Tartarus!”
The shade bursts into tears, but Hades mercilessly teleports him away to be tortured. Nearby, Hypnos fumbles with his things from being awakened from his floating nap by the sudden bang and subsequent outburst. He coughs, checks his own scroll, and says, “Ehem, Boss. I know things are boring without your kids around.. but, according to the rules, that’s not really an excuse to blow up on a nice guy.”
Hades furiously adds another 50 years of punishments each to the previous 10 violent criminals that he judged. There’s no double jeopardy protections in his Underworld. He shouts, “I make the rules! Thanatos!”
The God of Death poofs into the room upon Hades’ summon. He shows no surprise at the sudden summon and monotonously utters, “You called, Lord Hades?”
“Indeed. It would behoove those lackadaisical sun-lovers upon the Surface to put more respect to my name! Find and kill the one known as Truck-kun.” orders Hades, finally managing to calm down after all that.
Thanatos replies, “Sure.” but Hypnos calls, “Hang on Big Bro Than!”
Hypnos gives him a super obvious wink and says, “Are you sure you aren’t busy with other work?”
Thanatos returns a blank stare and says, “I’m not. It’ll be really easy. It only takes one slash.”
“Gah!” Hypnos groans and pulls Thanatos away to a side hall, leaving Hades to go back to his judicial duties alone temporarily. While Hypnos tries to explain how Hades is clearly being unnecessarily vindictive to his serious elder brother, who always takes everything literally, Nyx floats into the main hall and stands by, waiting for Hades to take a break.
Hades mutters with a begrudging tone and without eye contact, “What do you want, Nyx? I haven’t forgiven you.”
“Hmm.. be that as it may..” Nyx says, “Have you noticed that Hera has dipped her Authority into the Underworld?”
Hades jolts in his chair. “My cousin? That shouldn’t be possible. No one is allowed to get engaged or married down here.. unless.. she does it herself..”
He slams the desk and shouts, “Nyx!!”
Nyx blushes minutely in an extremely rare moment of embarrassment. She is the one who is concealing the Olympians' orbs and allowing them to penetrate deep into Hades’ territory. If it weren’t for her, they would be blocked out by Hades’ Authority. He knows of it, but there’s nothing he can do about it. She really did mess up in allowing Hera’s through.
To be fair, the Olympian Gods that had been in contact with Zagreus for the past 10 years had not changed this whole time, so the fact that Hera suddenly joined the entourage of Gods sending orbs below had caught Nyx off guard. In the first place, two-way communication via the orbs should not be possible, so she had thought nothing would change.
Nyx berates herself for not taking into account the fact that Nuwa, as someone who had been sent here by Chaos, will have a tendency to casually derail any plans she makes. Her daughters cannot scry any of Nuwa’s Fate due to the void substance in her soul sealing the [System]. Nyx’s parent is not called Chaos for nothing.
For Hera to have a portion of her Authority in Nuwa and Zagreus is bad news for one particular reason: she will know of any violations to their oaths of marriage! Even without taking the oaths, the violations record themselves on her Authority. Based on Nuwa’s nature, Nyx feels worried on her behalf.
Nyx knows that there are various reasons that Hera might have for taking the initiative to plant her Authority in Nuwa and Zagreus. Hera would not have cared if a man was to visit Olympus, but if she found out that his beautiful sister is coming with him.. then that’s a different story. Besides for her own purposes, she might have been asked by Zeus to spy on his brother’s House. Zeus has always wanted to reconnect with his brother since they had lost contact. Finally, she might actually be doing her job as a Goddess of Marriage and Family by providing her blessings to the new couple, but that’s unlikely considering her past behavior.
Hera is very abrasive towards those who are unfaithful to their marriage. Her Authority forces her to be a dutiful wife, so she cannot take her anger out on her promiscuous husband, Zeus. Instead, she acts like a snobby bitch and plans increasingly creative schemes to kill his mortal lovers and torment his illegitimate demigod children, all within the bounds of her Authority. Out of all of Zeus’ children, Hera has only given birth to Hephaestus and Ares.
Zeus is a prolific lover. He sired the twin godlings, Artemis and Apollo, with the Goddess Leto, as well as Hermes with the Goddess Maia. But among Zeus’ many demigod (half-mortal) children, only Dionysus ascended to Godhood!
This is a testament to Dionysus’ incredible wits, talent, perseverance, charisma, and Fate. Apollo, Artemis, and Aphrodite had played no small part in his survival, but in the end, he ascended with his own ability. So even though Dionysus is only early-t4, he is very powerful and his Hangover Boons provide some of the best DPS upgrades out of all the blessings that Zagreus has encountered.
Naturally, with so many of Zeus’ children populating Olympus and the other Goddesses who gave birth to his children also present upon Olympus, Hera is the centerpiece for a great deal of drama. As often as Zeus butts heads with her regarding her violent transgressions against his demi-god children and lovers in the mortal world, Zeus finds he has to defend Hera for her verbal outbursts against the illegitimate children he sired who had ascended to Olympus.
It is a lose-lose situation. He feels guilty that he betrays his wife and knows that her outbursts are his fault, while at the same time, he feels a tiny spark of genuine love for all of the mortal women he seeds. Even with the foreknowledge that he might be dooming them several years down the line, he cannot resist the emotional comfort and pleasures that follow.
Nyx knows this is the reason that Athena, one of the few of Zeus’ children who has a good relationship with Hera, had called in so many favors from other Gods and Goddesses to help get Zagreus to come to the Surface. Nyx had told her that Zagreus has an uncanny charisma and always prefers to make friends. She had told Athena that if she helps him, he will be able to ease tensions.
When Athena ran that statement through her Wisdom Authority, it returned a ‘True’ response. An outsider, who is still family, is indeed a good stopgap measure to ease tensions. After agreeing with Nyx’s rationale, she went all-in on helping Zagreus.
Now, Nyx worries that if Hera is added to the mix too early, then Zagreus would not be able to stay in the role of an impartial outsider or on friendly, cordial terms with each Olympian as had been fated when he finally does make it to the Surface in another 50 years. Especially due to the fact that, in the short talk with her daughters prior to her current meeting, they found that Zagreus’ Fate is muddled by proximity to Nuwa’s. All her plans are bungled.
As strong as she may be, Nyx is not omnipotent. She cannot travel freely through the dungeons of Tartarus where even the Night cannot reach without using brute force, which would be disastrous. Retreating from her thoughts, Nyx admits in her soothing voice, “It’s my mistake this time, Hades. I need you to teleport me to them, so I can fix this.”
Hades shouts, “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT! If you think I’ll just roll over and..”
Nyx interrupts, “Do it for your daughter’s sake, at least.”
Hades chokes on his next words and shouts, “You..! Just get out of my sight so I can get back to work!”
He waves at Nyx and a summoning circle appears under her feet. “Hmm..” Nyx hums thankfully, gives Hades a knowing smile, and allows the teleportation to take place. Hypnos walks back into the main hall and waves, “Goodbye, Mother!” Just before she vanishes.
Hades goes back to ranting, “Humph! Those Olympians are always making trouble. You’d think they have no work at all!”
“Emm.. you’re right, Boss.” Hypnos plays the sounding board to Hades’ rants, despite the clear irony that they have two people in their own House who also always make trouble and don’t do work.
“Of course I’m right!” Replies Hades in a pleased tone, before furrowing his brows and wondering out loud, “How does one even tamper with the Scroll of the Dead to make the cause of death look like a message?”
Hypnos twirls the curls in his hair and wistfully says, “Oh.. I dunno. There’s all sorts of strange and useless abilities among mortals. No use worrying over something inconsequential, Boss.”
Hades shrugs off Hypnos’ attempt to bury the topic and mutters, “I’d like to see the look on that blasted Truck-kun when he shows up here as a shade. That’ll teach them not to mess with me.”
Hypnos winces slightly. Thanatos is normally a stickler for doing his duty, but considering the fact that all mortals inevitably meet him when they come of age, he didn’t consider it a big deal to let Truck-kun live longer when Hypnos had asked him privately. But now, Hypnos anxiously worries about how he will get in contact with his elder brother to undo that cancellation request he had made on the assassination mission. Hypnos thinks to himself, ‘I shouldn’t meddle. Maybe I should ask big bro to kill all the mortals. Then I could do all of my work in one go and take a long nap..'
(A/N: Hypnos is trying his hardest.. when he’s not sleeping or impatient to get back to sleep, both of which take up most of his time.)