Stanis stands at his father's feeet, the soot covered skin of his hands not any better than it had been during the battle, missing only the gold specked on his fingertips by magic. His veins climb up, visible and marked where divinity had bleed through. Battlescars, he guesses, though not the kind he expected to gain.
He brushes his hair back, white strands new though not unwelcome. He does feel considerably more tired than last time he did this. He pours down coins into an offering plate, followed by the same pomegranate seeds and asphodel he'd offered last time. This time though, he adds leaves from trees that have just started to grown on places his companies' activities had stopped, transformed into something new after his dream. nyron himself had asked to go with, to see if the son of hades could really plant the trees he promised.
"Hello father." He greets somberly, "I feel we are closer now than we have ever been..." It's part joke, part earnest honesty. He has felt the pull of death, and he has also felt his father's embrace, even if perhaps it was all a dream.
"I come not asking for blessings, or to get back what has been willingly given." He motions at his hands, he knew very well some prices demanded to be paid, the value of a life... the forces which he felt at his fingertips, pulling and stirring like the strings of a guitar, "I have used your gifts to heal, to protect. And I cannot fault balance when it demands its price from myself."
"I come for clarity instead. To understand what we are facing, what we must do." he breathes out. having asked himself all the questions, having faced the wrongness mnemosyne carried with her yer again.
"We fought a hard won battle, and I saw my peers fall and rise back, I felt their souls almost out of reach... as I felt myself drawn to your arms once more." he sighed, perhaps it was bound to be, the flirtation with death for the sons of Hades.
"Mnemosyne erased someone before, threatened to erase one of us, and she proved herself almost too strong to withstand. Help me understand, to reach her if we can; to hold onto balance where she threatens it and if we must... to silence her before she can do more harm." He throws in a last golden coin, older than most he has run into. Lets it cling into the plate and the sound resonate in the empty temple.
"And..." he hesitates, a glance upwards towards the statue's face. "I hope we've proved ourselves. I hope you are proud, dad. I hope you've been listening."
It was not the first time. He'd been there before, sitting at the temple, looking at his father's statue. Large, imposing, less visited than the rest.
Hades was regal, Hades exuded power. Even there, a hint of the underworld seemed to cling to him, giving him a gravity that wasn't there for the rest of them.
Arthur had reminded him it was said even the gods feared him. He could understand.
It was not the first time he came to speak with the statue, but it was perhaps the first time real words were used. He had met the man, drank his ambrosia and looked into his eyes. He'd been welcomed by him, but then he was gone. No time for talking, no time for questions.
And since then, silence.
Well, not silence. Hades had never been silent, he thought. There were whispers, there were hauntings.
Glimpses of his realm, seeping into Stanis' life.
"Father." He greets the lord of the dead, king of the underwold. Hades was a ghost to him most of his life, the mysterious, enticing figure who not only promised but delivered his father the world. Took him out of misery with hell being the only price.
Now he was real. And the hauntings changed, now there were voices on his ear. Whispers, dead following him around wherever he went. Even now he could feel them at his back.
"I had hoped you'd come for me. I had imagined..." He sighed, "I spent the last years chasing you, hunting shadows, seeing misery and death firsthand. I looked for you everywhere. And now that I'm chosen, one of the chosen. The second. And not a word..."
He opens his bag, the coal from the mines. Displayed in front of his feet, pointing north. He fails not to think of Samson and his father as he moves on.
"You welcomed me, into your realm, into your arms. You called me to battle. Yet I do not understand..." He continues, "What designs you have for me. What your embrace means."
He places golden drachma coins in front of him next, pointing south. Ones he found at his feet when he walked through camp, the good fortune his father brought, the rich and gold, blessed by Stanis' powers. As befuddling as they can be.
"What is your design? What role do you wish me to play in this? I am no healer. When you left my father, he chased you in every place, in every moment. You left no map, no guidance. He built altars in your honor, he created hells and now both your subjects haunt me at every turn." He breathes, eyes closing then opening. "You promised him the world and delivered. You promised me power, you promised me your realm but I need clarity, I need..." You. He had tried to move past his father's obsession, past the man who meant everything to him, he sat on top of the world, he saw every place someone could wish to visit and yet he found himself back here. At Hades' feet.
He pours dark coffee, recently brewed into a cup, places it east. He offers the best chocolate he's tasted in Belgium, the smell takes him back to lazy mornings in the countryside, to trying to be free and realizing that would never be true until he faced what was in his past. That his father's doings would always follow him, that now those were intimately tied to his own doings and would be, forevermore. There was no running from what made you you.
"Clarity. I need clarity, father. Your design in all this. What being welcomed by you means. Olympus has not been kind to you, yet here you stand, here we stand. Are we with them, despite it all? Or are we the outsiders it feels like we are. What role have you for your son? Is it the same as my brother's? Should I listen to the dead as they cry and beg and demand or send them back where they belong?"
West he carefully places Asphodel flowers, collected on camp where one restless soul guided him. Their beauty and their scent not at all reminiscing of the glimpse he had of the Meadows in the Underworld during his vision. He had no way of knowing if that was truly it, or if there was some lost beauty to it. He longed for another glimpse, even if the experience had been harrowing then. He wanted to know his father's realm as intimately as he knew his mortal father's empire but despite his welcome, an invitation had not been extended.
"You've been silent for too long father, guide me. Help me. Answer me." He swallows, fingers stilling, reaching gently. "You've left my father wandering and wondering, waiting. He longs for answers I don't know how to give. Talk to me, help me make sense of the tale you've created. Let me take my rightful place, sure of my role in all this. Let me look you in the eyes lord Hades and know you see me as I see you, father."
Who was Hades truly? What was his Underworld like? Should he believe the tales, the Olympians... Should he fear and cower, or stand proudly beside him? Was he a mirror to his godly father, like he'd felt upon seeing him the first time, or was he simply a lost child?
Did Hades truly care for him? For his father? Did he love Persophone or had he truly tricked and kidnapped her. Trapped her in his hell with him for as long as he could...
Stanislaw does not know what'll he do with any answers he might be given, does not think he could reject one father's sins more than the other but the questions rung in his mind anyway. Even as his fingers find the last of his offerings.
Pomegranate seeds, collected from the fruit of the tree that, strangely enough, grew in the backyard of his father's favored manor. It was a treat he adored, something else they shared it seems.
He places the seeds gently over the center of his little circle. Spreading them with careful movements of his fingers. His eyes met the face of the statue. He breathes out. There are no more words, like his father, he now communicates in silence. Respect, devotion, quietness.
He lights incense with a snap of his fingers, the smell of it heavy and sweet, he thinks of his fathers. And he waits.
