I think it only fair to ask on this, the beginning of Spoopy Season, for a continuation of Living Blood? 🧡🖤🧡🖤🧡 Also Happy Halloween!!
a continuation of 1 2 3 4
Zagreus hoards the darkness.
It's a waste to spend it on the mirror when he can twist it into something different, something better and more useful.
Wielding chaos doesn't come to him easily, but that just means it's like everything else in his life. He uses it to hide things from his father and to change things without his notice.
This domain belonged to Chaos first, after all. They can see everything that he's doing, but they;re intrigued and amused and even offer boons and advice to help him. Zagreus is grateful for it, even though it's always a double edges sword.
He wouldn't have been able to do so much so quickly without it.
Replicating Chaos's portals is tedious and pulls the blood from his veins, but less and less as time goes on. And as his priestess spreads his names and his blessings across the mortal earth, he has more blood to give.
Zagreus bleeds, and bleeds, using the power of his blood melded with chaos to twist the underworld into a different shape, and yet his body never runs dry. These days he only dies when he chooses to.
He shifts among the levels of the underworld, bypassing all the irritating challenges and using the time everyone thinks he's using to fight his way to the surface on more substantial pursuits.
Creating a path from Tartarus to Asphodel to Elysium without getting caught by Charon does drain him to exhaustion a few times, but it's worth it.
"Oh, you've been up to something interesting, haven't you Prince Z?" Sisyphus asks in delight when Zagreus shows him the entrance.
"We could use some help with the next harvest," he says, grinning. "If you're up to keeping a secret."
It's a huge swath of the underworld that he's edged his way into, formed by chaos and blood and that can’t be touched by anyone without his express invitation.
“This isn’t a path,” Patroclus scoffs when Zagreus shows him. “This is – it’s nearly the size of Elysium! You could fit a whole kingdom in here!”
That’s an exaggeration. It’s much smaller than Elysium.
“Or a princedom,” Eurydice adds thoughtfully. “The clearing has been getting a little crowded. I don’t suppose anyone knows how to build a castle?”
“I designed a few in my time,” Sisyphus says, rubbing his hands together.
Zagreus frowns. “I don’t – it’s just supposed to make things easier for us, and to give us more room to grow things.”
“We’ll do that too,” Patroclus says, surveying the land with a contemplative air that makes Zagreus nervous. “But every god needs his domain.”
“This is my father’s domain,” he points out. “My domain lives in my followers’ veins and perhaps in the temples they’ve started constructing.”
“Where is your father’s power here?” Patroclus asks. “All I feel is yours.”
Well – well. Hm.
“There are a few more nymphs I trust that could help,” Eurydice says, “if you don’t mind, Prince.”
He gives up. “If you trust them, I trust them. Just don’t go overboard.”
Three of his very good friends are smiling at him and nodding and Zagreus tells himself the unease he feels is paranoia.
~
Meg hears rumors but doesn’t understand them and dismisses them. The dead are all a bunch of gossips and nothing they say can be trusted.
Except she vanquishes another disobedient soul and as it vanishes it hisses, “Horrible harpy! You deserve to be part of the Prince’s Court!”
What an odd way to phrase that, she thinks. She and Zagreus are just sleeping together, whenever she’s free and she can stop him for long enough to roll him into bed.
It’s almost laughable – the idea that Zagreus would have any court of his own, that there’s any power that could be clawed out of Hades’s grip.
It’s impossible.
She’d once thought escape was impossible too.
