WHAT IS HAPPENING TO DIONYSUS?
everything starts subtle. not being able to shapeshift, change faces, forced to rot longer. twitchier. the voices in dio’s head, the prayers, take a turn from let me be happy to let me get out.
skin starts to feel too tight. face becomes faces in a blur and a vibrating body starts pulling itself apart.
all dio knows is that they’re a nuclear bomb, and the timer’s just started to count down.
dionysus tells a small group of people, apart from the maenads, that there’s something happening to them, that they have to go somewhere because something is wrong. it doesn’t go over well with anyone, but dio disappears.
they’re gone for four months.
what returns is something else entirely.
madness, the long reigning king in dionysus’ mind and body, has been overthrown.
freedom has come to claim the crown.
during the months dio was gone, they were in the house, buried deep and hidden where no one could, or would ever possibly find them. it was a painful, long, shitty experience. dionysus became a civil war, as everything inside them, everything they are, went at it.
becoming freedom is — something else. dio is in a constant state of instability, and has only recently become able to regain some control over their entire essence to be safe enough around people.
people is what dionysus needs. contact, voices. movements. revolutions. but also smaller freedoms, witnessed in quiet moments.
their return has shaken all of olympus, some of the gods spectating that dionysus had taken on too much when they reclaimed their godhood. when they dramatically and forcibly reunited the gods to proclaim their return, and their claim on their power, they created a constant hum of chaos that runs between each god, especially with poseidon dead by dionysus’ hands and aphrodite only beginning to reform.
god is free.